USA > Indiana > Indiana Methodism : being an account of the introduction, progress, and present position of Methodism in the State; and also a history of the literary institutions under the care of the church, with sketches of the principle Methodist educators in the state . . > Part 22
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BENJAMIN F. RAWLINS, D. D.,
WAS some time President of Asbury Female College. He was a graduate of Indiana Asbury University, of the class of 1849. Dr. Rawlins is more extensively known as an able preacher, the ministry being his chosen pro- fession. He is a frequent contributor to the periodical literature of the Church.
ALBION FELLOWS, A. M.,
GRADUATED at Asbury University in 1854. He filled, for some time, the Chair of Languages in Fort Wayne Female College.
JOHN P. ROUS, A. M.,
GRADUATED at Asbury University in 1855. He taught some time as Professor of Languages in Brookville Col- lege, as Principal of the Preparatory Department in In- diana Asbury University, and as Principal of Stockwell Academy.
BENJAMIN W. SMITH, A. M.,
ALSO a graduate of Asbury University, of the class of 1855, taught some time as Professor of Mathematics in Cornell College, and as President of Valparaiso Male and Female College.
W. R. GOODWIN, A. M.,
TAUGHT for some time as President of Brookville College, and Professor in Illinois Wesleyan University. He is more generally known throughout Indiana and Illinois as a popular and efficient preacher. He is also a frequent contributor to the Church papers. He graduated at Asbury University, in the class of 1856.
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OLIVER H. SMITH, A. M.,
GRADUATED at Asbury in 1856, and spent several years in teaching, as Principal of Thorntown Academy, and President of Rockport Collegiate Institute. Mr. Smith is an able and efficient preacher.
WILLIAM H. DE MOTTE, A. M.,
TAUGHT for some time in the Indiana Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, and as President of Indiana Central Female College, and as President of Jacksonville Female College, Illinois. Mr. De Motte graduated at Indiana Asbury University in 1849.
REV. THOMAS HARRISON, A. M.,
A NATIVE of England, was educated in an 'academy in Yorkshire, England, and has spent twenty years in teaching. He was for several years President of Moore's Hill College; during which time he filled the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Natural Science. He is at present Professor in Brookville College. Previous to his coming to Indiana, he taught in the Ohio Confer- ence High School, Springfield, Ohio; and in the Linden Hill Academy, New Carlisle, Ohio. He received the honorary degree of A. M. from the Ohio University, at Athens. Professor Harrison is an able preacher, and an instructive lecturer on moral and scientific subjects.
REV. J. P. D. JOHN, A. M.,
Is a native of Brookville, Indiana. Poor health brought his school-boy days to a close when he was but twelve years of age, with the exception of a few months ; yet such was his desire for learning, and such his strength
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of will, and his readiness to acquire knowledge, that he succeeded in obtaining a good education. He commenced teaching in his seventeenth year, and has continued ever since. He taught three years in the public schools of his native county, and eight years in Brookville College. During the first years of Professor John's connection with Brookville College, he was Professor of Math- ematics, and during the past two years he has been President of the institution. Professor John received the honorary degree of Master of Arts from M'Kendree College, in Illinois, in 1867. And if his achievements hitherto are an earnest of his future, the Church has a good deal to expect from Professor John.
REV. JOHN W. LOCKE, D. D.
DR. LOCKE was the son of Rev. George Locke, one of the early pioneers of Indiana Methodism. He was born in Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky, February 12, 1822. He made a profession of religion and united with the Church in his twelfth year. After the death of his father, in 1834, he assisted his mother in school until the organization of the New Albany Seminary, in 1837. Dr. Locke's mother had been accustomed to teach school in her husband's life-time, and the chief support of the family came from her earnings during the four years he was presiding elder on Wabash District; and, after the death of her husband, she had no other dependence. She met the responsibilities of her situation heroically, and literally raised her children in the school-room, and laid in their young minds the foundation of thorough mental discipline, and inspired them with the deter- mination to become scholars.
Young Locke entered the New Albany Seminary in 1837, and prepared for college. Most of the time
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during his stay in the Seminary he assisted his mother in her school-teaching when his class-mates studied, studying when they played, and reciting when they recited. This overwork in his youth materially im- paired his health during a number of the years of his early manhood.
In the Spring of 1839, he entered the Freshman Class in Augusta College, and graduated in 1842. He taught school in Portsmouth, Ohio, until the Fall of 1843. On the 15th of July, 1843, just nine years after the death of his father, he was licensed to preach, and recommended for admission into the Annual Con- ference. In the Fall of 1843, he was admitted into the Ohio Annual Conference. He was ordained a deacon by Bishop Hamline in 1845, and an elder by Bishop Janes in 1847. In 1850, he transferred to Indiana Confer- ence, and was stationed in Vevay for two years; and then stationed in Rising Sun one year, when he was elected President of Brookville College in 1853, and remained in that position four years. In 1856, he was appointed presiding elder of Connersville District, which position he filled four years. In the Fall of 1860, he was elected Professor of Mathematics in Indiana Asbury University, which position he yet holds, and the duties of which he performs with marked ability.
Dr. Locke was a member of the General Conference of 1860, and also of 1868. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Dickinson College in 1868. Dr. Locke was elected President of Baker University, in Kansas; but the climate not agreeing with him, he re- turned to Indiana after an absence of a few months, retaining his position as Professor of Mathematics in In- diana Asbury University. Dr. Locke is an able and popular preacher, and enjoys the pastoral work; but,
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yielding to what he deems an imperative call of duty, he continues in the work of education.
JOHN M. OLCOTT, A. M.
PROFESSOR OLCOTT graduated at Indiana Asbury Uni- versity in the class of 1860. He taught four years as Principal of the High School in Lawrenceburg, some two years in Columbus, and was Superintendent of the Public Schools in Terre Haute for six years. He is ardently devoted to the cause of education, and is a con- tributor to the literary journals of the country. He is an advocate of the broadest and most thorough culture. He lacked but a few votes, in 1866, of being nominated on the Republican State ticket for Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State-a fact highly compli- mentary for one of his age.
REV. J. H. MARTIN, A. M.
REV. J. H. MARTIN is the present efficient President of Moore's Hill College. He received his education at Wood Vale Academy, Pennsylvania, and at the Ohio Wesleyan University. He entered upon the work of teaching in 1856, and has devoted fifteen years labori- ously and successfully to that work. The first three years of his teaching life were spent in Middletown, Pennsylvania. In 1859, he came to Franklin, Indiana, and soon thereafter took charge of the Superintendency of the Union Schools of that city. In 1864, he ac- cepted the Superintendency of the Public Schools in Edinburg, which position he filled for some two years, when he resigned to accept the Presidency of Brookville College, which position he resigned in 1869, and returned to Edinburg again to accept the Superintendency of the Public Schools of that place. His return to Edinburg
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was induced mainly by domestic affliction. In 1870, he was elected President of Moore's Hill College. While in Franklin and Edinburg, Professor Martin held the position of School Examiner for Johnson County. Pro- fessor Martin is ardently attached to the profession of teaching, and brings to the discharge of his duties a zeal, an ability and enthusiasm, that make him eminently successful.
REV. SAMUEL R. ADAMS, A. M.
PROFESSOR ADAMS was a graduate of the Wesleyan University, at Middletown, Connecticut. He chose the profession of teaching as his life-work. He came to Indiana in 1854, and had charge of an Academy at Wil- mington for some time. On the opening of Moore's Hill College, in 1856, he was elected President of that insti- tution, which position he retained until his death. When the Government called for troops to suppress the Re- bellion, most of the students of sufficient age in the College under his care volunteered; and, actuated by patriotism toward his country, and by an affectionate re- gard for the young men under his care, President Adams also volunteered as a Union soldier, and accepted a com- mission as chaplain, which position he filled with such efficiency and zeal as prostrated him with sickness, and ended his life before the termination of the War. He met death at the post of duty, although that post was far from home and friends.
MILES J. FLETCHER, A. M.
MILES J. FLETCHER was born in Indianapolis, in 1828, and was a son of Calvin Fletcher, Esq., who, although he had emigrated into the wilderness at an early day, had gained for himself a good general and classical
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education, and also brought with him from New England that love of educational advancement which is so char- acteristic of the sons of the Land of Steady Habits; so that, although young Fletcher's school privileges were limited to a few Winter months in the year, yet, with his other brothers, he had constantly the advantages of home instruction, which was of more value in building the noble characteristics of his nature than any training he could have received in academic halls.
In 1847, he entered Brown University, at Provi- dence, Rhode Island ; at which institution he graduated with honor in 1852, having interluded his years of student-life by a year of home-work. He was prom- inent in his class for his general knowledge. He cared but little for mathematics, although he acknowledged its importance, and he was never deep in love with the classics ; but in historical information and logic, he stood head and shoulders above his fellows.
In the Spring of 1848, while spending a vacation in the village of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, influenced by a letter from a brother, he became a sincere and earnest inquirer for the path of life; and He who has said, "Seek and ye shall find," soon opened the "wicket- gate" to one who knocked and asked with his whole soul. Without a moment's delay, he identified himself with religion. He united with the Methodist Episcopal Church, the one in which he was trained from child- hood ; he took an active, yet modest, part in the college and class prayer-meetings, and, with new light and zeal, taught a class that had long been under his charge in Sabbath-school. In this connection it may be proper to give Professor Fletcher's testimony in regard to the aid given to a seeker of religion by previous Sabbath-school instruction. About the time of his conversion, a spirit
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of religious inquiry came upon many of the students in Brown University. Some, reared under the cold, ration- alistic, semi-infidel influences that characterize certain portions of New England, were incarcerated, at their first awakening, in Doubting Castle, and only after long and severe struggling were enabled to break away. But Professor Fletcher remarked that all whose minds had been prepared by early Sabbath-school teachings, escaped all the gloom of doubt, and the temptations to skepticism.
Before his graduation he had determined on the career of a teacher. To him the preparation of the mind and heart for the world's broad field of battle was a high and holy calling. Immediately upon his graduation, he entered upon his duties as Professor of English Liter- ature in Indiana Asbury University, at Greencastle. With characteristic zeal and energy he labored in his department. He had the faculty of rendering his branches entertaining to the students. He was the friend of his pupils-not holding them off by any false notions of professional dignity, but wooing them to com- panionship by the kindness of his manners. He visited them in sickness, closed their eyes in death, gave encouragement to them in their despondency, and em- ployment to ameliorate their poverty. His life as a pro- fessor was intermitted by a year given to the assistance of his father, and a year spent at Cambridge Law School. The truth is, he was so efficient with his hands, head, and heart, that there was a constant temptation on the part of his friends to tax his time and strength.
In the Fall of 1860, he was elected Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Indiana. In this capacity his labors were incredible. He brought honest. industry and system to bear so efficaciously that at the
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time of his melancholy death, the machinery of his office was in fine working order. All this was accomplished notwithstanding the heavy drain upon his time incident to the Rebellion. When the firing upon Sumter aroused the nation, he assisted, at the request of the Governor, in the drilling of raw recruits for the three months' service at Camp Morton. Immediately thereafter, by appointment, he visited the armories of New England, and purchased the first arms for our State. In August, 1861, he made an arduous and dangerous journey to Western Virginia, in, search of his brother, Dr. William B. Fletcher, who was captured in July by the rebels- to whose pen we are indebted for the facts of this sketch. He visited Washington on the same fraternal mission. When the whereabouts of his brother was ascertained he spent many weeks in ameliorating his condition, and achieving his release, by exchange, from the loathsome warehouse prison at Richmond.
At home again, he resumed his system of county visitation and lecturing on education, until once more in- terrupted to hasten with the first boat that reached Pittsburg Landing after the bloody battle of Shiloh, to carry relief to the sick and wounded. Here he labored with such assiduity that he brought on an infirmity that would have gone with him through a long life. Pro- fessor Fletcher was killed on the 10th of May, 1862. He had left Indianapolis on the ten o'clock night-train for Terre Haute, in company with Governor Morton, Dr. Bobbs, Adjutant-General Noble, and several other citi- zens, on an expedition to our army at Corinth, to bring home such of our sick and wounded as were there able to travel, and provide hospital stores and accommo- dations for the others. At Terre Haute they took the connecting train for Evansville, which reached Sullivan,
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the scene of the catastrophe, about one o'clock. As the train was approaching that station it ran into a freight- car, which had been left either on the track or on a switch so close to the track that the passenger-cars jostled against it, or it had been run on the track after the retirement of the switchmen at that station. The noise and jar of the collision made Professor Fletcher put his head out of the window to see what the matter was, and something-probably the freight-car on the switch which the train was passing-struck him on the side of the head, crushing his skull, and killing him in- stantly. The loss of such a man at such a time, and in such a manner, produced a profound sensation.
Professor Fletcher had elements of popularity equaled by few. He was big-hearted and brave. He was tender and considerate to the poor and downtrodden He was frank and outspoken, and no one felt or feared that there was any dissimulation or concealment about him. He was the soul of honor, and the type of gener- osity, and, withal, had an inexhaustible flow of spirits, that gave a fascination and charm to his society, and made him popular, without an effort to be so. He was a prodigy of work; and he did his work so thoroughly and so well that his friends were always taxing him with ex- tra labor. He was no politician; and perhaps no other office in the gift of the State would have seduced him from his professorship; but he felt that, in the capacity of Superintendent of Public Instruction, he could accom- plish for the cause of education in the state at large, more than he could in any other position.
REV. L. W. BERRY, D. D.
DR. BERRY was elected President of Indiana Asbury University in 1849, as the successor of Dr. Simpson.
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He entered upon the duties of his office in the Fall of the same year, which position he held for five years, when he resigned, and re-entered the active work of the ministry. In 1855, he was elected President of Iowa Wesleyan University, where he labored with efficiency. A number of leading Methodists, determining to found a university at Jefferson City, Missouri, and looking around for a suitable man to put at the head of their enterprise, selected Dr. Berry, who, upon the advice of his friends, accepted the position of President and financial agent. He had barely entered upon his work, when he was pros- trated by a severe attack of sickness, that terminated his life in July, 1858. His disease was asthma, combined with erysipelas, which produced paralysis of the throat, tongue, and lips, depriving him almost wholly of the power of speech, and of the ability to swallow either nourishment or medicine. Dr. Berry received the hon- orary degree of D. D. while President of Indiana Asbury University.
While Dr. Berry's career as an educator was credit- able, his reputation rests chiefly on his ability and effi- ciency as a preacher. Dr. Berry entered the Ohio Con- ference on trial in 1834, and traveled a part of the year as junior preacher on Oxford Circuit. At the end of the year he discontinued, and entered Oxford University as a student; and although he did not complete the Col- lege Course, he laid the foundation for a good education, and he retained the habit of close and systematic study all through his life.
He was admitted on trial in the Indiana Conference, in the Fall of 1838, and continued in the itinerancy till the close of life. His sermons were prepared with labor, and delivered with earnestness, and often with marked success.
- , "by HREall&Sons62Fulton S. VY
yours Bully Theos, Bowman
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REV. THOMAS BOWMAN, D. D.
DR. BOWMAN, the present popular President of Indi- ana Asbury University, was educated at Dickinson Col- lege, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He entered the ministry in early life, and soon took high rank as a preacher. But his literary attainments and aptness to teach pointed him out as a successful educator, and the Church called him to the work of literary instruction. He came to Indiana in 1858, as the successor of Dr. Curry in the Presidency of Indiana Asbury University, which position he has filled with uniform acceptability and marked efficiency. His administrative ability is of a high order. He makes no display of authority, and secures obedience to disci- pline without seeming to demand it. As a preacher, his style is perspicuous and entertaining; his matter instruct- ive and evangelical. He addresses alike the head and heart, and few preachers are equally popular with all classes of hearers. Perhaps no man in the Church is called upon oftener, or called farther, to dedicate churches than Dr. Bowman; and on such occasions he is proverbially successful in raising money, having opened the hearts of his hearers until he has free access to their pockets.
REV. ERASTUS ROWLEY, D. D.
DR. ROWLEY, who has for some years been President of De Pauw Female College at New Albany, is a gentle- man of ripe scholarship and rare executive ability, and has rendered the cause of Christian education substantial service.
REV. D. HOLMES,
OF North-west Indiana Conference, gave several years to the work of education. He is both a ripe scholar and an
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able divine. He is more solid than showy, more pro- found than pretentious.
REV. G. W. RICE
HAS for some years had charge of the academy at Battle Ground, and is a successful educator.
REV. A. GURNEY
WAS for some years President of Valparaiso Male and Female College. The institution is now under the charge of Rev. R. D. Utter.
Indiana Methodism has given to the public a large corps of well educated and efficient teachers. The Church erred in multiplying denominational schools to so large an extent, but that evil is being corrected, and the Church is more wisely concentrating her efforts upon the endowment and liberal patronage of a few of her more central and prominent institutions.
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CHAPTER XVI.
Methodist Educational Institutions-Early Funds controlled by Presby- terians-Effort to amend the Charter of the "State University " -- The Legislature memorialized-" Indiana Asbury University " founded-First Meeting of the Board of Trustees-First Commence- ment-"New Albany Seminary "-" De Pauw College "-" Fort Wayne College " -- "Whitewater College "-" Brookville College " -- " Moore's Hill College "-Educational Record of Indiana-Names of Institutions-Number of Teachers-Scholars-Value of School Property.
EDUCATIONAL.
THE State funds for educational purposes in Indiana, as in most of the Western States, were for many years under the almost exclusive control of Presbyteri- ans, who assumed to be the especial guardians and pat -- rons of education. It is impossible, at this day, to com- prehend the self-complacency with which their leading men in the West assumed to be the only competent edu- cators of the people, and the quiet unscrupulousness with which they seized upon the trust-funds of the States for school purposes, and made those schools as strictly denominational as though the funds had been ex- clusively contributed by members of their own commun- ion. A young man who, in either the Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, or Lexington, Kentucky, or Blooming- ton, Indiana, would have questioned the correctness of any of the dogmas of Calvinism, would have been an ob- ject of unmitigated ridicule and persecution. Such was the spirit of exclusiveness with which State colleges were managed, in the early settlement of the Western coun-
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try, that for many years but few students, except those from Calvinistic families, were found in the State colleges. This tended to throw other denominations upon their own resources, and induced them not only to build up denom- inational schools, but caused them, in due course of time, to assert their rights in the management of the State in- stitutions; and the result has been that, in those states as Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, where Presbyterian greed has been most conspicuous, they now occupy, in educational matters, a subordinate position. When, in 1834 and 1835, efforts were made in Indiana so to change the management of the State University, by amending its charter, that the trustees should be elected by the State Legislature, instead of being a self- perpetuating corporation, a storm of indignation was raised among those who controlled the State University; and it was made the occasion of heaping all sorts of op- probium on the head of the Methodist Church. The movement was said to be an effort on the part of the Methodists to get a Methodist professor in the State University ; and it was tauntingly said, in the halls of the Legislature, that "there was not a Methodist in America with sufficient learning to fill a professor's chair, if it were tendered to him." Such taunts proved a wholesome stimulus to Methodist enterprise and inde- pendent Church action in the department of education, and the result is seen, in part, in the investment of more than half a million of dollars in property for school pur- poses ; in the employment of more than fifty teachers in Methodist schools in Indiana; in the endowment of de- nominational colleges second to none; and in the chief control of the State University, from which we had been so long and persistently excluded. And all this accom- plished, not by the seizure and appropriation of public
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funds, but by the willing contributions of our people, and by the moral force of the numbers and intelligence of our communicants.
At the first session of the Indiana Conference, held in New Albany, October, 1832, a committee, consisting of Revs. Allen Wiley, C. W. Ruter, and James Armstrong, was appointed to consider and report on the propriety of establishing a literary institution, under the patronage of the Conference. The committee reported, but no action was had, beyond providing for the collection of informa- tion, to be reported to the next Conference.
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