USA > Indiana > Johnson County > Franklin > Franklin College, Franklin, Ind. : first half century jubilee exercises, June 5 to 12, 1884 : addresses, historical, biographical and statistical matter, poem, hymn, general catalogue, etc > Part 2
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In person he was tall, a little more than six feet in height, and of a dignified bearing, with a finely-shaped head. an intel- ligent and kindly expression and a genial manner. He was a lover of books, a close observer, a clear thinker and a forcible speaker ; was an advocate of temperance, Sunday-schools and missions. Removing from the state, he died in Bellvue, Iowa,
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in 1852, aged sixty-four, leaving the print of his noble soul upon those of his own household, some of whom are still with us.
WILLIAM REES.
In this brother we find the beloved disciple and real pio- neer. He was born in Washington County, Pa., August 17, 1797. While yet a child, his father moved his family to the vicinity of Columbus, O. In carly life he gave his heart to Christ and was baptized ; subsequently removed his membership to Mount Zion Church, on Wills Creek, by which church he was licensed to preach, and in the same year was ordained. He entered upon the ministry with great zeal, and for nearly thir- teen years was pastor of churches in Muskingum, Morgan, Washington and Guernsey counties, Southeastern Ohio, during which period he baptized, on an average, twenty-five a year. Doubtless his labors were largely instrumental in the estab- lishment of the cause in that region, now so generally prevail- ing there, and where some few still live to testify to his ardent piety. In the light of events I can easily gather that he was one of the inspiring movers in organizing the O. B. Conven- tion, which was formed in the main town of the region of his labors ; and it is known that he was one of its missionaries as early as 1827.
In 1833 he moved to Delphi, Ind., his future and final earthly home, and there he organized the Baptist Church and went through the struggle of building a meeting-house for it. For a long time he stood almost alone as a Baptist preacher in his section of country. True to the missionary spirit that ever characterized him, he pushed in all directions, securing the formation of a large number of churches and of the Lafayette (now Tippecanoe) Association. After serving Delphi and neighboring churches for about six years, he be- came (1839) agent for the General Association, and subse- quently agent for the college. For ten years, and until his death, he gave his strength to these two causes, reporting an unusually large amount for the college, considering the times.
He was twice married ; was the father of nine children, and
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three of the surviving sons are following the noble example of their father in preaching Christ -one in Texas, one in Lower California and one in Oregon. A daughter has for fifteen years been a teacher of good standing in the public schools of Delphi and Peru. So greatly did he believe in education, that besides persuading many to attend this col- lege, he sent to it six of his children.
In person, Brother Rees was large and portly, weighing over two hundred pounds. He had a very happy temperament, which made him an accepted guest. He and his old horse, Charlie, were always welcome, and many were the delightful hours spent at the early firesides, with him as the center of the group, twirling his thumbs above his knees after the man- ner of fat men, and singing the sweet old songs of Zion, of which he was a master. His good nature was a great help to him in meeting the opposition to education and missions which he necessarily encountered; while his belief in both these objects carried him through all things, and was the occasion for the feeling experienced in his last illness, that he should yet be permitted to carry on the work of agency, the favorite work of his life.
JOHN L. RICHMOND, M. D.,
one of the foremost Indiana Baptists, in his time, evinced his worthiness of the high estimation in which he was held, by enlisting heartily in the establishment of the college. He was born in Chesterfield, Mass., in 1785; was married in 1806; was ordained in Camillus, N. Y., in 1817, and in the same year moved West; united with East Fork Church, O., on the Little Miami, and soon afterward with the Clough Church, near Newtown, O. Removed to Pendleton, Ind., and joined the church there (1833), and finally to Indianapolis, where he united with the First Church (1835), and where his active career closed (1847) by a stroke of paralysis. His death occurred; eight years later (1855) at Covington, Ind. Age, seventy years and six months.
Dr. Richmond early began the study of medicine; gradu- ated at the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, and kept up the study of this science in connection with a long and successful
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practice. Also was a lecturer in the Medical College; gave close attention to his duties as such, making himself able to read the Bible and medical works in different languages, and to lecture without the use of a book. But while following this profession he statedly preached, being one of the early pastors of the First Church, of Indianapolis. He was compelled to practice medicine to maintain his family, but his heart was in the work of the ministry, and he saw clearly that the churches needed pastors of undivided mind.
As a Christian, he was in fullest sympathy with every good work, particularly with education and missions. While heartily co-operating with his successors in Indianapolis. pastors Cressey and Chandler, he seemed glad of other occa- sions for sympathy, presented in the work of such a man as Isaac M'Coy, and in the promotion of Christian learning. He borrowed funds with which to send to Brown Univer- sity a young man who became a foreign missionary-Judson Benjamin. His benevolence was manifest in his business. For example, he practiced through the cholera season in Cin- cinnati in 1833, without entering a charge on his books for sixty days, and when he broke down under fatigue and his own experience of the epidemic, God provided for him and his family by finding them a home and nursing in the Clough Church, with which they had labored. He never financiered for himself so much as for others, yet he found a competence in his effects to carry himself and wife through their years of infirmity to the end. A touching letter to him from the Hon. Nicholas MeCarty, written during his final sufferings, shows how he was esteemed by one who, though not a member of the church, sat under his ministry. In it Mr. McCarty said that he had " heard as profitable sermons from: him as from any other," and inclosed fifty dollars, not as "a deed of charity, but an honorable one of justice." He was a great believer in colonization, and during his last years he was sufficiently clear and influential to secure the sending to Liberia of nineteen of the twenty-one Africans of Covington. His memory of what he had read was marvelous, and his habits of study were so well formed that they were a means of constant happiness in his last years, he being able to plan sermons which he could
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not preach, and did so each week. His good wife, whose early advantages were better than his, shared his joy in this, and they together, in the good home and tender hands of Deacon Albert Henderson and his wife, passed peacefully away ; leav- ing to represent them in the Baptist denomination their daugh- ter, Mrs. Henderson, the mother of a choice preacher, of the choice wife of a preacher, and the choice wives of some other happy men.
NATHANIEL RICHMOND,
brother of the foregoing, was the pioneer of the Richmonds in Indiana. He came, with his father's family, from Onon- daga County, N. Y., in 1817; landed at Lawrenceburg ; was married in the southern part of the state, and removed to Pendleton, where he lived, labored and is gratefully remem- bered. It is thought that he was mainly instrumental in organizing the Fall Creek Church, at that place, to which he preached several years. His ministerial labors extended into Fayette and Wayne Counties, where he saw and felt the blight upon the Baptist cause, through anti-mission influences, which has existed from his day to the present, as he predicted it would.
The data of this brother's life are wanting; yet the recol- lections of him are vivid and creditable. He was small of stature, slow in speaking and quiet in manner ; was something of a mental plodder, yet logical and clear and well-nigh re- sistless when acting under conviction as to truth. He was familiar with the Bible, and so kind in manner that his hearers were blind to his defeets. He was familiarly known as " Uncle Nat." He and his good wife were said to approxi- mate the character given of Zachariah and Elizabeth. They finally moved to some point in Iowa, where he died.
J. V. A. WOODS,
at the time of the founding of the College, lived and labored in Shelby County ; but it seems that he removed at an early day. He is remembered as a very earnest Christian minister, and. the records of the College show that he participated actively in promoting its welfare.
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ELIPHALET WILLIAMS.
This venerable servant of the Lord still lives, and is the sole representative on the earth of the noble fourteen. He was born in Ashford, Mass., in 1804; came West in 1833, in the employ of the American Baptist Home Mission Society ; settled in Shelby County, and was ordained in the Hanover Church, on Blue River, taking the pastoral care of that and . Franklin Churches. In 1836 he was married to Mary Ann Harding, who still walks the path of life with him; and they rejoice in the near presence of eight godly children, all Bap- tists, and cherish the memory of three others who await them on the other shore. In their evening time it is light.
Brother Williams has ever been a pronounced friend of that which is good and a foe to that which is evil; a typical Christian, gentle and easy to be entreated, willing to bear reproach for the name of Christ and the honor of oppressed man, while refusing to compromise with evil. He rejoices to remember that he was a sturdy Abolitionist, and that his children, including their husbands and wives, so fully repre- sent him in religion. in politics and in habits of life, loving what he loves and hating what he hates. Verily, his sun is setting well.
His relation to the College was assumed when he and Ezra Fisher and Lewis Morgan first conferred upon the subject of establishing it, previous to the first meeting; these three having the credit of its incipience and being the locating committee. After the location was agreed upon a meeting was held at Lawrenceburg, and he was appointed agent. He canvassed the Southeastern part of the state, finding many warmly in favor of the enterprise and many bitterly opposed to it, and regarded his work a success.
Thus, we have accorded to fourteen men the honor of founding Franklin College. And yet it should be said that the locating and naming of an institution is not establishing it in the full sense ; and the accumulation of a few books and a little apparatus, with the erection of a building or two, does not assure to it life. In early times colleges were merely begun by one generation, while subsequent generations have
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entered into the labors of the inaugurators and shown, if not achieved, the success which they simply made possible, The same may be said of other members of the same generation that gave a college an existence. In those days it did not lie in the power of a few movers to make an institution an absolute success ; and while to such the inspiring motive was first given and the credit of tugging manfully in the employ- ment of weak, diverse and untrained elements is most gladly accorded, there is a class of supplementing lifters who dis- covered the project at its very inception and put to it their shoulders, that it might not fall unrealized. What are these if not founders, also? Is he who lays the corner-stone less a founder than he who excavates? Or, he who lays the sill, than he who places the stone? Time was when the roll of founders was a long one, and in the case of this College an exact definition might place all its present friends in such a roll. All rejoice together.
All except two of the fourteen were ministers ; but while these twelve apostles preached for a living, they actually got their living by other means. And the business end of their calcula- tions was made necessarily so large, to keep leanness out of the larder, that the people were justified in saluting them as "Elder," " Mister," "'Squire," "Doctor," " Captain," almost anything. and be sure to be right. And those two were so enlisted in the cause, were such good praying and begging deacons that they were doubtless taken for preachers ; and possibly they knew as well how to expound the Scriptures as those who had gotten a little learning by a bark fire. In their day the two classes ran together in the matter of occupation, and stood apart in the character of their Sunday clothes-when they had any ; now, they separate more in week-day occupation, while in dress it would puzzle an angel to tell which is preacher and which is man, and stump him completely to tell which is man and which is woman ! This mixing of business with religion was fortunate for the young college ; it assured such an aggre- gate of practical wisdom as pioneer experience made possible, and a common consecration to the cause undertaken that made a wider and deeper effect upon the public mind than could otherwise have been expected.
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It . is noticeable in the reading above, that the founders had large families. Each one whose record is clear and com- plete had a numerous seed ; like the sands of the sea, for illus- tration. At least an honest count would show an av- erage number of children to each of-several and a large fraction. This fertility we also place to their credit. To rear a nice, large family, is to contribute to the de- velopment of the race! The founders projected a college and meant to fill it. And as they believed in education. so. by necessary consequence, they believed in missions, in tem- perance, in Sunday-schools, and their heroic endeavor for the College was attended all the time with a contest for the advancement of these also. They worked. like the pious Jews, with the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other ; for the foundation had to be laid in troublous times, when the Philistines were many and large, and constantly opposed them. They saw clearly that Christian culture pertains to a denomination as blood to the body, and their belief in saving men and building up churches, and in spreading the Gospel abroad, was the inspiring motive to create an institu- tion of learning, in order that all this work might be done and well done. At the preliminary meeting the first record made, after organization, was this :
" Resolved, That the members of this meeting take into consideration the importance of the subject of education as it relates to our denomination.
" Resolved, That in the opinion of this meeting the Baptist> of this state need an institution of learning under their inme- diate patronage and subject to their direction.
" Resolved, That in the opinion of this meeting the present exigencies of the Baptists of Indiana require their united and prompt efforts to establish an institution of learning, adapted to their present wants, whose improvements shall be regulated by the wants of the denomination."
. You notice the repeated and emphatic reference in their action to the good of the denomination. They believed in promoting true, vital Christianity, and that is why they be- lieved in higher education.
And they were men of faith. The last in the series of reso- lutions quoted provided for a committee of thirty-five to
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correspond, solicit " friendly co-operation," examine sites and receive proposals for sites. Not a syllable in reference to raising money. They did not seem to be impressed with the modern notion that it takes money to make colleges! But they meant business, just the same. Before night they had their thirty-five men selected and their platform adopted, and then they went out to get their College and bring it in ! And they did get it. And when they saw the little ark, resting up there on its little aere, and heard the music of its little bell echoing through the leafy aisles of God's first temple, those fourteen " feeble Jews " were the proudest men on the footstool !
Again, these men, taken in their entirety, had extraordinary mental and physical capacity. I have been surprised and instructed by this fact. They were mostly giants in body and had a long tenure to existence. And their physical develop- ment was but a type of their mental, for they were excellent preachers and clear on all great moral questions. They rep- resented an age farther on, and some of them lived to hail its coming ; while our venerable Brother Williams has continued his stay to be their spokesman in this great day of Jubilee.
Consider the origin of these men. Two extremes meet. They are mostly from the South and East - from Kentucky or Massachusetts. The Kentucky Baptist comes up here with fire in his eve, to contend for the faith by all lawful means, . and to contend for it anyhow; the Massachusetts Baptist, thinking that a level head is about the best thing in this world, comes all the way from the Bay State to tell us to be sure we are right and then go ahead. The two find themselves one in soul ; they lose their native airs so soon as they take their eyes from each other and fix them upon the grand object before them. If they had any jars, the recording angel thought best to leave them out of the history. Indiana has performed the part of nurse - sometimes " performing," and sometimes thinking of performing after the child is grown !
The pleasure of recalling the names and the deeds of many others, both of the dead and the living, I will leave, for the most part, to others present; yet will indicate the number of stanch friends which the College has had. In referring to
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two, who come first to mind, I can but note the fact that Bap- tist journalism was on the side of the College, in a most de- cided manner, from its very inception. The Baptist Journal of the Mississippi Valley, to which the Hon. A. H. Dunlevy attrib- utes great influence in the early and right mokling of Baptist affairs in the West, was prompt to utter its voice, giving an early report of the first meeting. and offering a commendatory word. This was, at a later day, seconded by the Christian Messenger, started at Madison. And, from the time the twain became one, the Journal and Messenger has made its record for the College in a manner known to you all. So that, after the founders themselves, I can but mention those noble men who used their columns, largely at a pecuniary sacrifice, in behalf of the interests we to-night consider a success, viz : The Rev. John Stevens, D. D., a scholar of New England type and train- ing, and the Rev. E. D. Owen, whose relict, his helpmeet on the paper, still lives; not to speak of the unbroken line of edit- orial talent from their day to the present. that has been em- ployed for the same good end.
The records below, and above, show the names and doings of Jesse. L. Holman, the preacher-judge, who admitted pleas during the week, and himself did the pleading on Sunday : George Matthews, early and constantly appearing in the inter- ests of the College : Seth Woodruff, the good man who engaged to furnish the building with glass, and was amazed when he ascertained how much light it needed ; the Hon. Milton Stapp. the civilian, one of the early Presidents of the Board : A. R. Hinckley, agent, and the first elected instructor, highly qualified and early called above; A. F. Tilton, also agent. second to the preceding in time of election as instructor. a bold and brilliant young man from a New England college. who soon , laid down his life here in the cause of our institu- tion : Benjamin Reece, who compensated for being one year too late in his coming to be classed with the fourteen, by beginning to work for the College at once and holding on till his death ; Geo. C. Chandler and Silas Bailey, the mere men- tion of whose names makes every friend of the College feel like saying, " How godlike is man !" Lewis Hendricks, the friend of
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the self-helpful student and one of the treasurers; Robert Tisdale, another of those agents who made up their reports, in part, by donating their salaries ; U. B. Miller, the typical agent, whose untimely removal from earth was as sad as his work was hopeful; also many others. The names of some citizens of Franklin and vicinity, not Baptists, whose early benefactions to the College are not familiar to the writer, would very appropriately be recorded here. They aided very. essentially in founding it and in recovering it from states of " suspended animation "into which it has fallen betimes. From their number has been obtained competent legal service in great emergencies, while their moral support, from the first until now, is very grateful to the denomination that is imme- diately responsible for its maintenance.
The roll of living founders, coming under our definition, is growing every day, and gladly would I do them honor; but they are yet here to increase their credit year by year, and need nothing to speak for them except the monument of mind which they help to rear, and which is the imperishable form that their perishable means is permitted to take. However, passing the name of the beloved Grafton Johnson, whom I scarcely know whether to place among the living or the dead, so sensibly does he seem to be with us and so painfully must we note his absence, let me not omit to register the names of S. G. Miner, a father in this church and an early member of. the College Board ; Henry Brady, in great age and infirmity watching us from his retreat ; D. J. Huston, the man of verti- ral spine, who would gladly share his last half-loaf with the College ; Isom W. Sanders, an intelligent and constant friend and counsellor, who gave as long as he was able ; Robert M. Parks, an early friend and worker; Wm. Needham, the other " Uncle Billy," whose will is so much better than his way ; William Brand, of Iowa, and Jeremiah Brumback, of Idaho, who have not forgotten the teaching they did for a short living, and the begging for the College they followed for a recreation ; John S. Hougham, LL. D., who planned, planted and pedes- trinated for the College, and whose work stands like the binomial theorem; Albert Henderson, who would give all he
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has to the College, and a world or two besides, if he thought nobody would find out that he did it; James Forsythe, who is putting his property where thieves will not break through and steal-in the hearts and minds of other people's children ; Morgan J. Quick, who doesn't lean on the top of his staff because he is tired of working for the College; Joseph H. Dunlap, the venerable deacon, who represents the doctrinal attitudes of a former generation ; Barnett Wallace, the watch- dog of the treasury, whose actions need not to be very loud in order to speak louder than his words. And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak, and Jeptha and Samson. They all were tempted and tried, and saw many lions in the way. They did not realize that their obstacles were often apparitions, but, rather, set them down for hard realities and girded themselves for conquest, and stood girded. In the "Spectre of the Broeken," the image on the mists of the opposite peak is but the en- larged shadow and figure of the observer, projected by the morning sun. How little do we realize that, in our work, even in our frights, we are projecting ourselves upon distant, future generations, a thing made possible only by the rising of the sun, and which itself proves that the day has dawned.
The Board of Directors.
Historical Paper by W. C. Thompson, Esq., Franklin, Ind.
INTHE history of the several Boards of Directors of Franklin College may naturally be divided into two periods. The first period includes the time from the earliest beginnings of the College, in 1834, to the suspension, in 1872, during which time Franklin College was under the control of the "Indiana Baptist Education Society." The second period embraces the time from 1872 to the present, during which time the College has been managed by a joint-stock association styled the "Franklin College Association." The Education Society was composed of delegates from Baptist Churches, associations and Auxiliary Church Societies, the number of delegates being in proportion to the amount of money contributed by each organization to the treasury of the Education Society. Individuals of whatever religious faith were allowed to be- come either annual or life members on the payment of a small sum.
The object of the Education Society was to promote intel- ligence and learning among the Baptists of Indiana, and the Society was managed by a Board of Directors, and the mem- bers of this board, or enough to constitute a majority, were required to be members of Baptist Churches.
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