USA > Iowa > Kossuth County > History of Kossuth County, Iowa > Part 57
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The first term opened September 9, 1867, in the town hall on State street with Miss Leonard in charge. She was a lady of fine mental attainments and had a charming personality. Her home was at Potsdam, N. Y., from which place she had come to Algona to be one of the teaching force in the young college. It was the desire of the founders to begin in a small way and pursue lines that would eventually lead the school up to their college ideal. The attend- ance was not as large as had been expected, but those attending were much benefited, for she was an instructor of rare merit.
At the annual meeting of the incorporators held in June, 1868, Rev. Taylor
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was elected president; Judge Call, secretary; Ambrose A. Call, treasurer ; J. S. Love, auditor of the board; J. E. Stacy, one of the executive committee, and E. C. Miles, one of the trustees. The board, in its minutes at that time, said that the school was prosperous and in the hands of good instructors. There are but three of the members of that embryo college who are now in the county. They are Elizabeth M. Reed (Horton), Eva Fitch (Gardner) and Stella E. Hudson (Reed). Harvey Ingham was one of the boy students at that time. Discourag- ing conditions caused Miss Leonard to resign her position in a few months to take charge of the public school. In going she took with her for her assistant her most advanced student, Miss Elizabeth M. Reed.
In September, 1868, the trustees of the college secured the services of M. Helen Wooster as leading instructor. She was also from the state of New York, was a lady of refinement and a most excellent teacher. Like her prede- cessor, she taught in the town hall where the accommodations were very limited. She closed her services with the college at the end of the 1869 spring term. The constantly growing attendance so encouraged her that she decided to start a seminary of her own. In the meantime the college was continued for several months under the supervision of other instructors.
THE WOOSTER SEMINARY
Miss Wooster carefully matured plans to found a permanent institution of higher learning. In the fall of 1869 she commenced making arrangements to erect a suitable building for her school. The contract was let to Abram Wolfe and the work was completed in the following spring. The main body of the present John Galbraith residence is the one that she then erected. The school rooms were below and boarding rooms for the students above. While her building was being made ready for occupancy in the spring, she had her school for a short time in a temporary building up in the business center of the town. From the time she opened her school in her new building it continued to prosper. Her widely advertised notice: "Especial attention given to those preparing to teach" brought her rich returns. Mrs. Horton was then her assistant and Mrs. J. E. Stacy had charge of the students in music. There are several lady resi- dents of Algona who were members of her school. They are all able to recall many funny incidents that occurred in that carly-day institution, but none more so than that of Harvey Ingham's jumping through the open window like a cricket when his teacher went to chastise him for some ludicrous answer he had given to her question. It appears that he and a couple of his chums were a terror to Miss Wooster's sensitive nature. These eye witnesses declare that these boys as often entered the school-room through the transom or over the upper sash as through the door. In after years Harvey used to tell how he managed to fool his teacher. He said that on account of the hard times the legs of his oft-patched trousers had been cut off and turned front side backward, and as a result his teacher was never able to tell whether he was coming or going.
Conditions soon so changed that Miss Wooster's school, for a brief period, suspended when she accepted a position in the faculty of an institution which was designed to succeed her school.
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PROFESSOR O. H. BAKER Head of Old Algona College
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ALGONA SEMINARY AND COLLEGE
Miss Wooster was enjoying a season of prosperity in 1870 when a new movement began for the founding of a seminary on a more permanent basis. That year was one of unusual activity in Algona and in the county generally, and was in many respects one of the most memorable in their history. The oldest pioneers, after waiting for sixteen years, had at last seen a railroad train arrive with passengers and had seen freight unloaded. Strangers were pouring into town looking for business openings, and the trades and professions became over-crowded. Algona being the county seat and the end of the railroad, took on a new lease of life and showed prosperity in a multitude of ways. It was amid these scenes of activity that the new movement was started to found Algona Seminary.
At that time this county was in the Fort Dodge district of the Des Moines M. E. conference. The floating rumor that summer that conference contem- plated setting off the northwest part of the state into a new district which would probably maintain a school of high order, enthused a number of influential Algona citizens to make an effort to capture that prize. Agitation of the sub- ject had originally begun in the spring of the previous year at an educational meeting of the ministers, held in "Hands' Settlement" in Humboldt county in March, 1869. The resolution offered by Reverend Atkins of Dakota City, was adopted : "That in the sense of this convention, we need within the borders of the Fort Dodge district an institution of learning of high grade, under the supervision of the M. E. church." Dakota City and Rutland, by their represen- tatives, made bids for the location of the school, but both were turned down. Rev. J. H. Todd, who had been active in the matter on behalf of Algona, pre- sented a resolution which was finally adopted after an exciting debate of several hours. It was this: "Resolved, that we accept the proposition presented by the citizens of Algona, and pledge ourselves to present the same to the Des Moines conference for its adoption, when buildings worth $5,000.00, situated on ten acres of ground, in or near the village of Algona are furnished clear of debt."
The agitation then went to sleep and slumbered until the summer of 1870, when it broke forth with renewed fervor. Reverend Todd and Judge Call were warm friends and also the leaders in championing the cause. They worked in harmony and with much enthusiasm. The two made a strong team. The judge was a man of great natural ability and was so recognized by all, whether friends or foes. Todd, the local pastor, was a man of commanding presence, a forceful speaker and a powerful organizer. He worked the Methodists to a frazzle and the judge followed up convincingly clinching Todd's arguments. The scheme was to locate the campus on what is known as Normal Hill, in the third ward. They were succeeding fairly well and the work went merrily on till near the close of that year, when they had an unfortunate dispute which they could not settle in regard to the size and style of the building, each stubbornly refusing to accept the other's plans. As the writer remembers it, the judge wanted a much more costly building erected than Todd thought could be built from the contributions of the citizens at that time. The judge was of the opinion that an imposing edifice would not only help to forward the growth of the town, but Vol. 1-28
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would fill up with fine residences the space between the main town and the Milwaukee depot village which he was starting.
When it became evident that the two could not agree, Todd then proposed to have the campus located on the south side of town and accordingly looked for a new set of backers. The response to his new proposition was surprisingly great to everybody. On the last day of the year 1870, at the bank of Ingham & Smith, steps were taken to perfect the organization, which would bring into existence a new school of high order. Articles of incorporation were formu- lated and signed in accordance to law by Dr. S. G. A. Read, J. E. Stacy, Lewis H. Smith, W. H. Ingham and D. H. Hutchins. The association was to be known "by the name and style of The Trustees of Algona Seminary." These trustees then elected the officers of the board. The first of the above named was chosen president ; the second, vice president ; the third, treasurer ; the fourth, secretary, and the fifth and Mr. Stacy were elected the executive committee. Five better men than these for the undertaking could not have been found to bind them- selves together to insure the success of the school they were about to establish. With the exception of Mr. Hutchins all lived in the southern or eastern part of town, and all were men of good judgment and of much business experience. Before the sun went down over thirty thousand dollars had been pledged for the support of the school. Lewis H. Smith donated a beautiful campus of five acres in the edge of the timber at the foot of Harlan street. Others tendered their services to help put the school into successful working operation. From the moment the board organized the enterprise was known as Algona College, although the school was only to begin on a seminary grade and continue as such for a few years. In referring to the institution the people generally ignored the word seminary and used the word college. It was simply college, college, college.
Early in the following year improvements began to be made on the campus. The contract was let to Yeamans & Bongey for constructing the building which was to be 40 x 66 feet, and full two stories in height. When completed it had cost in the neighborhood of $4.500.00. There was one obstacle in the way of having the in- stitution prosper and that was Miss Wooster's seminary which was in successful operation. She was finally induced to abandon her enterprise to accept a posi- tion as instructor in the new institution. Prof. L. C. Woodford was called to the head of the school and Sadie Nash was made instructor in music. While the new edifice was in process of construction the school started in Miss Wooster's build- ing early in the spring of 1871. Many of the students present were those whom Miss Wooster had induced to be transferred from her own school. During the late spring, or early summer, the instructors and students were moved to the new building before the plastering was hardly dry where conditions were crude and strange. President Woodford, who conducted the morning devotional exercises, was compelled to do so with one eye open. The reason for this unusual practice be- comes apparent when it is remembered that in one instance he began : "Oh, Lord. we pray thee-Charley Rist please sit down and keep your feet still until I get throngh." Only four persons now in the county are remembered as having been students at the opening term of the seminary. They are Ida McPherson Hall, of Wesley, and Nettie Wilson Butler, Julia Stacy Nelson and B. F. Reed, of Algona. Woodford's administration ended with the summer term and Miss Wooster also
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severed her connection with the institution and began reorganizing her school.
Prof. O. H. Baker was called from Simpson College to become president of the faculty and took charge of the institution at the beginning of the fall term of 1871, having Mrs. Baker as his principal assistant. During the following school year he had to overcome many troublesome obstacles, for the school was not heavily en- dowed. In spite of that fact he managed to put the institution in good working order. He was employed for the next year when conditions seemed much more favorable.
This county having been set off as a part of the territory of the new northwest Iowa conference in May, 1872, the seminary board in September offered to donate the entire property to conference providing it proceeded to maintain the school under its control. This gift was to include the campus and building worth $8,000.00 and the $16,000.00 endowment. Conference agreed to accept the proposition pro- viding the endowment could be raised to $50,000.00 in five years. The board at once became active in securing notes to meet this requirement. The most of the other citizens also became enthused in the matter and helped as best they could to swell the endowment. Professor Baker was elated over the prospects and man- aged the affairs through the school year of 1872-73 with great energy and signal success.
The school enterprise was much strengthened in the spring of 1873 when the board amended the articles of incorporation raising the grade to a college rank, giving the institution the appropriate name of Algona College, and placing it under the exclusive control of conference, the same as though the trustees had been elected by that body of clergymen. From that date, May 31. 1873. the school became an established college in fact. Previously its rank was really only that of a seminary. Realizing the responsibility of his position after that change had been made, Professor Baker began the fall term in 1873 with unusual zeal and continued for two years. He induced the trustees to call to his aid. besides Mrs. Baker, A. I .. Day and Miss Wooster, who had again been persuaded to dissolve her school to enter the college faculty. The year was a noteworthy one for scholastic training. Professor Baker was a stickler for the benefits to be derived from the study of the dead languages and made these studies take the right of way. He fed the students on Greek and Latin and when they were well filled he continued to pound in as much more. The very atmosphere seemed to be impregnated with the spirit of ancient languages. He supplemented this work by hammering geometry into every student he could force into line. Besides this, German, French, rhetoric and physics were taught as well as the normal school branches. He was just the man for the place. Events happened lively, especially when jerking boys out of their seats when he found it necessary to enforce his rigid discipline. He was serious, profound, cold, blunt, conscientious, prosy and cranky. He ruled with an iron hand but held the respect of board, citizens and student body alike. Among the 150 enrolled were husbands and wives, some of whom were occupying little rooming cottages that had sprung up on the campus. The school published The Algona Collegian and filled its columns full of live matter that always attracted attention. There never was a time when a real college was in our midst except dur- ing the administration of Professor Baker. After four years of active labor. he resigned his position, at the close of the 1875 spring term, because the grasshopper scourge and a divided sentiment had seriously interfered with the finances and
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general prosperity of the school. Among those yet in the county who were fortu- nate in being students under his supervision, besides those who have already been mentioned as having attended the institution, are Jennie McIntyre Wadsworth, Julius Chrischilles, Walter Ward, M. D. L. Parsons, Emma McGetchie Taylor, Dave Mitchell, Z. C. Holman and Luella McPherson.
Professor Baker was forty-one years old when he came to Algona. He was an A. M. graduate of DePauw University and had been previously at the head of Cherry Grove Seminary, Illinois, Delaney Academy, Indiana, Des Moines Confer- ence Seminary and Glenwood Collegiate Institute, besides being professor of ancient languages at Simpson College. Since leaving here he has been consul to Denmark, Australia and North Borneo, which latter position he is still holding. His daughter, Joanna (Jodie), who was a little girl about the college while the Baker family lived here, holds the chair of Greek at Simpson College. She has been a marvel since her earliest childhood for her profiency in that language. She was familiar with Greek conjugations at an age when other children were learn- ing to spell the simplest words. She was taught Greek by her parents as soon as she could speak distinctly. Before she was five she was studying that language, Latin and French systematically and had finished the elementary books before she was twelve. She certainly has some of the educational earmarks of her well- remembered father.
The resignation of Professor Baker had a damaging effect upon the growth of Algona College, but the board determined to continue the school though condi- tions were very discouraging. The whole country was suffering from the effects of the grasshopper scourge which had brought poverty to hundreds of families. The endowment fund had almost stopped growing and the interest on a large num- ber of the notes was not only unpaid but could not be collected. Furthermore, a considerable amount was owing to the instructors on salaries, and there was but little in sight to cancel this unfortunate debt.
Under these unfavorable circumstances the 1875 fall term opened. The officers of the board at that time were Rev. Bennet Mitchell, president ; J. E. Stacy, vice- president ; D. H. Hutchins, secretary, and W. H. Ingham, treasurer. They re- organized the faculty, making Rev. Will F. Barclay its president and his wife an assistant. The other instructors were A. N. Bushnell, mathematics : Ella Ray, Latin and French; Theodore Chrischilles, German ; Mrs. Dona Sheetz, painting ; Theresa Burlingame, music; Rachie Henderson, assistant in English, and Miss Barnes in mathematics. The enrollment for the year was 108. Among those who are in the county now who were students then, besides those who have heretofore been mentioned, are Mary Hine Patterson, Angie Robison Waterhouse, Ada Smith Rist, Hattie Willson Ward, Will Hall, James Patterson and S. H. McNutt.
Although the school that year was much more widely advertised by catalogues and otherwise than ever before, the necessary finances to give it satisfactory suc- cess were sadly lacking. Professor Barclay remained at the head for two years and then resigned.
By the fall of 1877 the school was moving on a descending plane when Prof. D. W. Ford was called to the head of the faculty. He managed to hold on during the school year and then surrendered his position. It was then that some of the conference members began a movement to locate a conference school elsewhere and thus kill the Algona institution. The overtures made by LeMars and Sioux
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City caused conference in September, 1878, to hesitate in adopting Algona College under existing conditions. J. H. Lozier, of Sioux City, who was never a friend of our college, headed a movement to procure its death warrant. In order to prevent conference from adopting it at that session, he, as chairman of the committee on education, asked conference to delay its action in locating the conference school until the next session so as to give other localities time to make definite and bona fide propositions. This request, in the form of a report, would have been granted had it not been for the gallant fight made by Rev. Bennet Mitchell, who had been one of the most ardent supporters of the school from the start. Rev. J. W. Lothian came to his aid and the two instituted such a vigorous defense that they won over the sympathy of conference and won the victory for Algona. Reverend Mitchell in his valuable "History of the Northwest Iowa Conference" says in regard to this proceeding that he offered a minority report signed by himself and Reverend Loth- ian and moved its adoption "setting forth that the trustees of Algona College have under great difficulties increased the endowment of said college to about $50,000.00, so that now they present us with an offer for our adoption an institution with build- ings and grounds estimated at $8,000.00 and endowment notes of $20,000.00 draw- ing ten per cent interest, and real estate amounting to $30,000.00; and further that this is the amount, upon the raising of which, conference has previously agreed to accept of unconditionally and adopt said institution. Therefore, Resolved: that the Northwest Iowa Conference now accepts and unconditionally adopts Algona College as its conference institution."
When that resolution carried in September, 1878, Algona College became the property of the M. E. conference. Even this proceeding did not save the life of the institution. Prof. A. G. Neff was at its head during the following year, and in 1880 while it was in charge of Miss L. S. Tallman its demise became complete and Algona College was no more. What was Algona's loss finally became Sioux City's gain. Had the school flourished here there would now be no Morningside College. Reverend Mitchell, in his history, gives the following two reasons for the failure of Algona College: "The grasshopper scourge that had wasted the sub- stance of all that part of the state and a divided sentiment in Algona. From the start a number of prominent citizens in town had opposed the school because it was not located in their part of the city; so intense was this town fight that many of the people were quite willing that the college might die if their side in the strife could not win. So one of these men got his grip upon the institution and strangled it."
The opposition referred to by Reverend Mitchell came largely from north side residents, and especially from many of those who had invested in property at the Milwaukee depot, because they believed that a prosperous college in the south part of town would retard the growth of the depot village and lessen the value of property in the north part of town. The result of this unfortunate condition caused the death not only of the college, but of the depot village as well. Furthermore, some of the instructors had procured judgments against the college for back sal- aries which later became the property of the lumberman who also held a claim against the institution. These becoming a lien upon the college property made the foreclosure proceedings possible. Had the citizens raised $26,000.00 at the last end, the college might have been saved; but even then if the opposition was to continue its growth would have been slow and unsatisfactory.
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The college building was moved from its original position and is now stand- ing on the corner of Dodge and Minnesota streets in front of the G. A. R. hall. When the top of the belfry was taken off prior to the removal, the building lost much of its majestic appearance. The hall for ten years was the central meeting place for all kinds of public entertainments as well as for church services. Fond recollections still cluster about it. Reverend Todd's stirring eloquence cannot easily be forgotten. Once while preaching from the text "As in the days of Noah so shall the coming of the Son of Man be," in a vivid word painting he so graphically de- scribed the flood that the waves seemed to be splashing against the windows and the hall rocking on the waves of the mighty deep. It was in those good, old days too when Baker delivered his memorable lecture on the dance and dudank, and when Reverend Fawcett went him one better by preaching from the text "Ye have lien among the pots." Numerous amusing events occurring in the hall during the life of the college are also remembered. Asa K. Smith became known as a phil- osopher of the school, because in one of his off-hand speeches he said that it really seemed to him that the longer he lived the older he grew. The wild burst of laugh- ter that he caused by that remark, however, was no louder than the one Julius Chrischilles raised one morning in the German class when he was called upon to translate a difficult passage into English. After succeeding admirably for a line or two he came to a sudden halt and then said in a rapid but low tone "I don't know what the d-I that next word is." He didn't get any further with his translation. owing to the outburst of laughter and the confusion that followed. The writer has hard luck trying to forget one of the incidents which concerns himself. One day as he was passing along the outside of the building some girls were sitting in the hall looking out of the open window. He very politely crooked up his nose at them and then broke for tall timber when he heard a voice saying, "Prof. Baker, Ben Reed is outside making up hog faces at us girls and so he is." One of these same girls is now Mrs. J. W. Wadsworth, who is lucky in having in her possession the old college piano, a relic which she very much prizes.
In closing this account of the career of old Algona College it may be fitting to state that A. N. Bushnell, the only resident professor after the college ex- pired. died at his home in Algona several years ago, and that M. Helen Wooster, who was county superintendent while she was doing college service, held her office till January 1, 1874, and then went west. For a long period of years she taught in the city schools at Los Angeles, and then for several years at San Fran- cisco. The earthquake shattering her nerves, she gave up teaching and has been since that time in New York at her old home.
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