USA > Iowa > Linn County > History of Linn County Iowa : from its earliest settlement to the present time, Volume I > Part 33
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Dr. Stephen Phelps, then the pastor of the Presbyterian church at Vinton, had been very prominently connected with the college ever since its reconstruction as Coe Collegiate Institute in 1875. And now, when it became Coe College, under the care of the synod, he was invited to become its president. He was by nature and grace a pastor greatly beloved by his people, and very useful in the community at Vinton. It was a great request to make of him to ask him to lay down his pastoral office and undertake the new and untried work of a college president. And this was made especially significant because he was asked to preside not over an institution already well endowed, richly equipped with buildings, and pos- sessed of the prestige of a generation, but over an institution still in the process of formation, without any endowment or equipment or faculty or history. He paused to consider his duty, and decided to come to the college and with the help of God to undertake the task.
He was a man of many gifts; an eloquent preacher and lovable pastor who attracted young people to him, and a man of conseeration and singleness of aim. Ilis pure spirit and untiring energy were rewarded with much suceess in spite of the many difficulties which resulted from the limitations of the new situation. Ife remained in the presidency of the college six years, when he resigned his office to go back to his loved work in the pastorate, to which he felt called of God. He became the pastor of the Presbyterian church at Council Bluffs, and has subse- quently served other churches, until at the present time he is in charge of the church at Bellevne, Nebraska, where he lives enjoying the respeet and affection of all who know him. He will ever be cherished as the first president of Coe College.
Another figure that rises very prominently and pleasantly before us, as we go back to this period of our history, is that of the first treasurer of Coe College, Mr. John C. Broeksmit. Mr. Broeksmit became the treasurer of Coe Collegiate Institute in 1878, and passed on into the new administration in 1881, and con- tinued in the exercise of his duties as treasurer until he was made treasurer emeritus in 1903, when Mr. John M. Dinwiddie, our present very efficient treasur- er, assumed the duties of the office which Mr. Broeksmit laid down. In the formative period of our college history it was very important that the charge of our slender funds should be placed in hands which were trustworthy, not only because of honesty, but also because of business ability and experience. Mr. Broeksmit possessed ideal qualities for a treasurer. As anditor of the B., C. R. & N. R. R. he was acenstomed to the handling and careful accounting of the funds of that corporation, and he brought his knowledge, judgment, and integrity to bear upon the financial affairs of the college. We always felt secure in placing these affairs in his hands, and we were not disappointed. Besides his services as
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treasurer, he also rendered valuable services as a trustee, always faithful in at- tendance, and giving his full and entire interest to the matters in hand; wise in counsel, kind and genial in manner, and friendly in attitude, he was a peculiarly attractive co-laborer. He should be written down as one who loved his fellow men. His decease in March, 1907, at the age of 82, was universally lamented.
We note the fact that Williston Hall was completed as a boarding hall and dormitory for young ladies in 1881-1882, and the college building, which had been occupied more or less since September, 1868, for school room purposes, was en- larged in 1884 by an addition which simply duplicated the original building.
In 1882 the Rev. E. H. Avery, D. D., who had succeeded Dr. Phelps in the pastoral charge at Vinton when Dr. Phelps came to Cedar Rapids to be president of Coe College, came into the board of trustees, and was elected president of the board. He remained in this office until 1899, when he removed to California where he subsequently died. Dr. Avery's long administration of seventeen years was marked by his qualities of cool, calm judgment, enlightened understanding, and zealous attention to educational interests. He was punctual in attendance at the many meetings of the board, and of the executive committee, coming down from Vinton many times at much sacrifice of personal comfort and the laying aside of his pastoral work, and during that long and eventful period, marked by so many changes from 1882-1899, it was fortunate that we had so wise and safe a president of our board as Eugene II. Avery.
On the 13th of May, 1887, the Rev. James Marshall, D. D., was elected presi- dent of the College to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr. Phelps. Dr. Marshall was an alumnus of Yale University and had spent several years in New York City in city missionary work. He entered upon the duties of his office in September, 1887. He brought with him to these duties a mind matured and well rounded, a culture produced by wide reading and considerable foreign travel and residence, and an intelligent appreciation of college work. He had a strong sense of the value of discipline in college life. He was much assisted by his cultured wife, whose attractive personality won for her a valned place in the hearts of the students. Mrs. Marshall died in Cedar Rapids after a brief illness in November, 1892, leaving her husband sadly alone, for there were no children in the household. Dr. Marshall labored on bravely in his work until September, 1896, when, just at the opening of the college year, he was stricken down with pneumonia, and his death occurred after a few days amidst circumstances of pe- culiar solitude. His funeral services were conducted at the First Presbyterian church of this city, September 13, 1896, and the address on that occasion was given by Dr. J. Milton Greene, then of Ft. Dodge, Iowa, now of Havana, Cuba, and a life long friend of the deceased. Dr. Marshall is the only one of the presi- dents of our college who has departed this life, and he died literally in the harness. In snmming up his life and work we avail ourselves of the words which it was our privilege to report to the board at their meeting October 13, 1896:
"He was a man of power, the power that is born of the possession of a high ideal and consecrated purpose and unusual faculty to organize, and an unflagging zeal to execute and perform. He never spared himself. He forgot himself, but he never forgot the college. His works do follow him. These works which re- main with us are the strong and united faculty which he organized, and which he inspired with his own high ideals, the noble standard of scholarship to which he elevated the curriculum, the beautiful campus, which is a wonder of improve- ment when we contrast it with what it was when his hands first touched it, and the example of industry and energy which his life has furnished. It seems pathe- tic that he should have passed away withont seeing the fulfillment of the hopes he so dearly cherished, and the plans he so wisely formulated. But it is a common thing in this world that one should sow and another reap. One conceives the
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building of the house, but leaves it to another to build it. Yet no one ever thinks that the former lives in vain."
The college pursued its work in the year 1896-7 without a president, and it is a happiness to note the fact that owing to the harmonious cooperation of a devoted faculty and a sympathetic body of students, the year passed with much smoothness and prosperity.
On the 5th of August, 1897, the Rev. Samuel B. McCormick, D. D., was called to the presideney of the college from the pastoral charge of the Presbyterian church of Omaha, Neb. He entered upon the duties of his office with the opening of the college year 1897. He soon made it manifest that a man of great vigor was directing its affairs. Ile went at his work with a spirit almost fieree, and he kept at it with a persistency that compelled things to come his way. His energy was contagious, and his colleagues in the faculty and on the board of trustees felt it from the day he came among us until the day he left. The pace he kept was not always pleasurable, but it was always fruitful. It was during the seven years of his administration that great growth of the college was experienced in the size of the faculty, the number of the student body and increase of college buildings. The financial campaign that was undertaken to secure the $25,000 promised by Mr. Ralph Vorhees, of New Jersey, on condition of our raising $125.000 addition- al, was successfully conducted when Dr. MeCormick was president. It was he who brought to Coe College the Rev. II. IT. Maynard as field secretary, and the two men worked together with congenial vehemence and brought things to pass. Among the things which were brought to pass was the present college gymnasium a very useful and attractive asset.
In the summer of 1904 Doctor MeCormick was invited back to his old home in western Pennsylvania to become the chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania, located at Pittsburg, and which is now called the University of Pittsburg. This invitation was attractive to him chiefly because it seemed evi- dently to offer him unusual opportunity of enlarged nsefulness in the educational field to which he had devoted his life. Yet it plainly cansed him a struggle to sever his connection with Coe College, and with Cedar Rapids as a city. For in the seven years of his life here, he had become strongly attached to his friends and to the community which were strongly attached to him. He also left this portion of our country, the Mississippi Valley which was to his mind so full of hope and promise, with great reluctance. Yet it was clear to him that he ought to go, and we parted from him with much regret September 15. 1904.
Marshall Hall and the Athletic Field House were erected in the summer of 1900, the latter the gift of Mr. C. B. Soutter. The College Gymnasium was com- pleted in 1904.
During the year following the departure of Doctor McCormick the duties of the presidency were discharged by Dr. Stephen W. Stookey. Dr. Stookey was an alumnus of Coe of the class of 1884, the first class to be graduated after Coe became a college. He was always from the beginning greatly attached to the college, and after teaching a while in the schools of Manchester, Iowa. he returned to his alma mater in 1892 to become professor of the natural sciences. From that time onward he filled a place of very distinguished usefulness in the institution. commanding the high respeet of his fellow workers in the faculty, the student body, and the board of trustees, until 1908 when he left Coe to assume the office of the presidency of Bellevue College, Nebraska, a position which he still occupies very much to the benefit of that school of learning.
At this point of our story we note the fact that at the October meeting of the board of trustees in 1899. Mr. C. B. Soutter was made the president of the board. Mr. Soutter had been a resident of Cedar Rapids since 1881 when he came from New York city to fill the very responsible place in the business house of T. M.
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BAPTIST CHURCH, CENTRAL CITY
OLD BARN BUILT IN THE '50s AT CENTRAL CITY Now Used as a Store and Post Office
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Sinelair & Company made vaeant by the death of Mr. Sinclair. The duties of the management of the large paeking house were very onerous and responsible, yet Mr. Soutter was able, besides fulfilling them, to give muel of his valuable time to his duties as a trustee of the college, to which he was ealled in 1883. He had already, therefore, for many years, shown marked interest in college work and adaptation for it by taste and culture when in 1899 he was felt to be the logical successor to Dr. Avery in the presideney. He entered at once with zeal and intelligence upon his new and enlarged duties. He was nnintermitting in his attention to them until he resigned his office in October, 1907, and, greatly to the regret of his brethren, withdrew from the board of trustees.
On the 23rd of December, 1904, Dr. William Wilberforce Smith was chosen president of the college to succeed Doctor MeCormick. Doetor Smith was not a elergyman as his predecessors had been and as hitherto has been usual with American colleges in their selection of a president. He had studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, and had been graduated therefrom, but he had never been ordained to the ministry. Hle had followed the voeation of a teacher, and was called to the presidency of Coe from the Berkely School in New York city, a school of high grade for boys. Ile entered upon his duties as president of Coe College at the opening of the college year 1905, and remained with the college for three years. lle is now occupying the very honorable position of head of the School of Commerce and Finance in the James Millikin University. Decatur, Illinois.
His administration was marked by three notable events, all of which indicate stages of great progress in the history of the college : First, the successful launeh- ing of the plans to put the college on the list of the accepted colleges of the Carne- gie foundation for the advancement of teaching. This took place near the elose of the year 1908. Second. the attainment of the Seienee Hall, given by Mr. Carnegie at the cost to him of $63,500 upon the condition that the college raise $45,000 for its maintenance. Third, the sueeessful completion of a finaneial cam- paign whereby a conditional grant of $50,000 was obtained from the General Board of Education [John D. Rockefeller Foundation ] on the condition that the college pay all its debts and raise in various funds the sum of $200,000 additional for endowment and buildings. This campaign increased the assets of the college by $293,000.
It was during this campaign that the services of the Rev. Dr. H. H. Maynard, field secretary of the college, were so peculiarly strenuous and so uniquely valu- able. Dr. Maynard merits most honorable mention for his bold conceptions and his heroie execution of them, wherein the word "fail" was expunged from his dietionary. Dr. Maynard left Coe College in the summer of 1908 and has become the vice president and field secretary of the University of Omaha, Nebraska.
In the year 1908-9 which followed the resignation of Dr. Smith, the college was governed by a commission of four members of the faculty, who distributed among themselves the duties of administration. The result was a smooth and prosperous year, although at the end of it all parties concerned were looking very wishfully towards a filling of the vacant office of the presidency. At length, on the 7th of September, 1909, Rev. Dr. John Abner Marquis, pastor of the Presbyterian church at Beaver, Pa., was chosen to be the head of the college. After due deliberation he decided to accept the eall, and on the 12th of October, 1909, he was presented to the students and friends of the college as the president-elect. He returned to Beaver to sever his relations with the church there, with the Presbytery and synod, and he came in December and entered upon his duties. On the 13th of June, 1910, in connection with the exereises of commencement week, Doetor Marquis was formally inaugurated president of Coe College. This was the first time in which formal exereises of this character were observed in connection with setting a president over the institution, and the occasion was greeted accordingly with
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peculiar pleasure, and large use was made of it to perfeet a relationship which it is believed augurs great things to the advantage of the eollege. Doctor Marquis has been so short a time in his office that it would be too soon to speak of what he has done, but it is not too soon to say that in the brief period in which he has been president of the college, he has already awakened the fondest hopes and most stead- fast convictions that under his administration the institution over which he pre- sides is destined to move forward to a future which will far surpass any measure of size and value that it ever attained in the past.
On the same week in last June in the midst of the commencement season which witnessed the inauguration of Doctor Marquis, ground was broken on the college campus by Mr. Robert S. Sinclair for a chapel in memory of his father, Mr. Thomas M. Sinelair. This memorial chapel was prepared for almost thirty years ago very soon after Mr. Sinclair's death, but the execution of the purpose has been long delayed. But now at last we see our thoughts and wishes about to be realized in the ereetion of a building which shall from its beauty and the purposes which it is destined to fulfill be a worthy monument to keep in perpetual remembrance a man, who, in his life-time, did so much to make it possible for us to have a college at all.
We have now accomplished the purpose for which we set out. We have, to the best of our ability, traced the history of Coe College from its beginnings to the present time. We have followed the institution from its fountain head in the heart and home of the Rev. Williston Jones, when a handful of young men gath- ered in his parlor for sueli elementary instruction as could be given by the zealous pastor and his wife, down to the present day, when more than three hundred stu- dents, young men and maidens, gather in the halls of buildings erected and equipped for college purposes, and one of these buildings at least prepared and provided along the most progressive modern lines, the equal of any in the land. Today the faculty of thirty-two persons condnets the teaching of a curriculum which embraces every department of learning that is recognized as belonging to a liberal education. And these teachers have been prepared for their work by special training and selection.
The endowment also has grown from the paltry sum of $1,500, furnished in 1853 by Daniel Coe, to the sum of $450,000, and the total amount of money in- vested in the plant known as Coe College must exceed $750,000, which is surely no mean aggregate.
In the course of our history, we have seen a feeble rivulet sink at least twice in the sands only to reappear with new volume and freshness further down the bed of the stream. And we see it now a river of such dimension that it cannot dis- appear again. We have seen the work of the heroie men who have nobly spent upon the college in the days when it sorely needed their help. Sneh men were not wanting in the days of emergeney but were sent from God. They eould not have known as we now can plainly see what they were doing. They wrought in faith what it is now given us to possess in sight. They sowed in weakness what we now reap in power. Surely the lesson is plain and impressive ; surely the teach- ing of this historical sketch is to the purport that we with our larger resources should enrich the institution which they sustained and promoted in their poverty.
They could not see how much worth their while it was to give and labor for Cedar Rapids Collegiate Institute, for Parsons Seminary, for Coe Collegiate Institute, for the institution was then but a tender, feeble shoot, whose future development was an uncertainty. We now can plainly see that it is well worth our while to give and labor for Coe College, for it is now one of the most potent and promising of all the colleges in this Mississippi valley. And every intelligent mind who has any powers of observation and has any experience of college work, knows full well that as colleges grow and prosper they need more financial help. It would
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be the extreme of selfishness and folly to take the view that Coc College is now strong enough and rich enough to advance on its present assets to meet its futurc.
Its needs are greater than ever. But it presents itself not as a beggar or a suppliant, but as a splendid opportunity for investment. It presents itself as the finest possible place to locate something to be spent in buildings, equipment, and endowment whereby in the course of the years, and we may even say the cen- turies to come, this money can go on yielding the richest conceivable dividends in the preparation for life and leadership of those of our choicest young men and women who shall come hither from near and far to enjoy the privileges of a college education. And thus as we close, our history becomes really an appeal.
CHAPTER XXV
The Old Blair Building
The Kimball building in Cedar Rapids stands on the site of an old land- mark - the Blair building. This building, with the land and railroad companies it housed from time to time, was the center of mneh history in the development of lowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. It is difficult for us to realize now what an immense influence these companies in the early days had in the settling up of the central west. A debt of gratitude is due the men who risked their fortunes in this developing work that many of us now are too apt to forget. Had it not been for the railroads these early patriots projected into the unsettled portions of these states the development of the west would have been greatly retarded. Immigra- tion would have been slow, for people are never eager to settle in farming communi- ties where there is lack of transportation facilities to get the produce of the farms to market.
It is felt that a brief account of the influences that went out from this center is entirely appropriate here. In fact it is needed as a part of this history of Linn county. Greatly to our regret the gentleman responsible for the historieal data given below wishes his name withheld, but through modesty only. What is here printed was furnished by one who knows whereof he speaks, for as Virgil once wrote, "of it he was a great part."
THE BLAIR BUILDING
John I. Blair, of Blairstown. New Jersey, being then the president of several railroad companies having their general offices and official headquarters at Cedar Rapids, erected a building to furnish adequate room for the business of these companies and for the First National Bank of Cedar Rapids, in which he was heavily interested. This building was known as the "Blair Building." In its time it was much the most pretentious structure in the eity. It was located at the corner of Eagle and Adams streets - now Third street and Second avenue - was two stories in heighth with a high mansard roof, and set above and baek from the street. The plans for this building were made by W. W. Boyington, then the most prominent architect in Chicago. It was what might be termed of the "court honse" style, having more the appearance of a public building than one ereeted for commercial purposes.
On May 23, 1868, Mrs. Mary A. Ely purchased of A. C. Churchill. for Mr. Blair, lots 6. 7, and 8 in block 15, including the brick dwelling house thereon. for the sum of $10.000. Mrs. Ely afterwards conveyed this land to Mr. Blair, who deeded it to himself and Oakes Ames as trustees for the several companies who contributed to the cost of the land and the buildings.
The work of construction began in the autumn of 1868. The building was completed and oceupied in the spring or carly summer of 1869. The total cost of the land. the new building, and the overhanling of the dwelling house was $54,418. which was paid by the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad Com- pany. The Iowa Rail Road Land Company, the lowa Falls and Sioux City Rail- road Company, the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad Company, and the First National Bank of Cedar Rapids.
JAMES E. HARLAN, LL. D. President Cornell College
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In 1870 the dwelling house and the land lying southwesterly of the wall of the Blair building was sold to John F. Ely for $11,000. In 1884 the First National Bank conveyed its interest to the Iowa Falls and Sioux City Railroad Company, and thereafter, until the liquidation of the bank in 1886, occupied the banking room as a tenant. When the bank had gone out of business, the rail- roads had been sold and the offices moved away, and the real estate holdings of the companies very largely reduced, the owners having no use for the space for their own purposes, and the building being so constructed as not to be useful for commercial purposes, it was decided to sell the property. It was advertised for sale. A customer not being found at private sale, it was sold at publie auction on May 2, 1888, to David P. Kimball, of Boston, Massachusetts, for $25,000.
Mr. Kimball, together with his brother L. C. Kimball, of Boston, J. Van Deventer, then of Clinton but later of Knoxville, Tennessee, J. E. Ainsworth, then of Council Bluffs but later of Williamstown, Vermont, and P. E. Hall and Henry V. Ferguson of Cedar Rapids, organized the Kimball Building Company, to whom the property was conveyed.
During the year 1888 the Kimball Building Company rebuilt the Blair Build- ing, extending its exterior walls out to the street line and added a new portion so as to cover the entire lot, making the building when so completed 76 feet on Second avenue and 140 feet on Third street, four stories high, and thereafter known as the "Kimball Building."
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