USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > History of Andover theological seminary, 1933 > Part 12
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Harrison G. O. Dwight lived for thirty years among the Armenians before his life was cut short by a railroad accident in America when he was on furlough. He saw the Armenian mission grow from one station at Constantinople to twenty- three stations and eighty-one out-stations scattered through- out the Armenian country. Forty-two churches had recruited sixteen hundred members, and almost two hundred pastors and teachers were at work. So rapid were the gains of thirty years. Dwight was spiritually minded, kindly, tactful but resolute, and statesmanlike in his policies. He encouraged self-support of native institutions. His death left vacant a place that was hard to fill. It was among the Armenians that William Goodell spent thirty-four years of his missionary life, translating the Bible into the Armeno-Turkish language. Dis- turbances of various kinds compelled him to pack up and move thirty-three times in twenty-nine years, but he gloried in his service. Benjamin Schneider left Andover in 1833 and until 1877 he was busy trying to keep pace with the rapid develop-
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ment of the Armenian mission, and with all his other activities he translated books and tracts.
A few references like these to the Armenian mission convey little impression of the extent or intensity of the missionary enterprise among the Armenians. Particularly effective was the educational endeavor carried on at Aintab, Marsovan, and other centers. Over in Persia where the pioneers had sought out the Nestorians, Justin Perkins ended his labors of thirty-six years, which included the whole time from the be- ginning of the mission until it was transferred to the Presby- terians. Like so many other of the missionaries he was eminent in Bible translation. But he had a part also in establishing the eighty-five Christian centers and twenty-four hundred con- gregations, and in helping the hundreds of students in Chris- tian schools. Nor was he the only Andover man to labor in Persia. The class of 1859 gave Ambrose for a short term and Labaree and Shedd for long service.
The Syrian mission was in time transferred to the Presby- terians, but not until Eli Smith had made his translation of the Bible into Arabic, had used his knowledge of Hebrew, Turkish, Italian, French, and German to widen the usefulness of the missionary press, had explored as far as the Nestorian country, and had helped Robinson in his Palestinian re- searches. He was Hopkinsian in his theology, and he preached in Arabic the truths of the gospel as he understood them. William Bird was in Syria for a half century. Daniel Bliss went from Andover about the time that Smith died, founded the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, and saw it grow in thirty-six years from sixteen to six hundred students. He wrote philosophical textbooks in Arabic. Edwin E. Bliss spent an equal length of time in publication work in Constan- tinople, including a newspaper issued in three languages, which circulated among ten thousand readers. In the same city of Constantinople William G. Schauffler labored among the Spanish Jews living there, and prepared the Bible, a gram- mar, and a lexicon in their language. Later he gave his time to the Mohammedans. C. F. Morse opened the Bulgarian mission at Adrianople, William W. Meriam worked at
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Philippopolis until he was murdered by brigands, and William Arms was located near by. In Bulgaria James F. Clarke had one of the records of almost fifty years, which would seem wonderful if not repeated so many times. In 1872 George D. Marsh went from Andover to Bulgaria for a long lifetime of service. Soon after he arrived a more rapid development be- gan, which brought more participation of native workers, and an increased number of converts. Henry C. Haskell, Andover 1862, who spent twenty-five years in Bulgaria, wrote to the Society of Inquiry at the Seminary that in spite of all the tra- ditions of Christianity that the people had had for a thousand years their moral and spiritual condition showed the utter inability of their form of religion to bring the people into fel- lowship with God. This justified all the efforts of American Congregationalists in a nominally Christian land.
George F. Herrick had an almost unparalleled record in Turkey. He graduated from Andover in the class of 1859, sailed for Constantinople that autumn and was there at inter- vals until 1893, when he made it his permanent residence. At one time he was teaching in the theological seminary at Mar- sovan, at another time was president of Anatolia College. For five years he served on a committee of three in the revis- ion of the Bible into the Turkish and Armenian languages, and he translated theological textbooks and commentaries into Greek as well as Turkish and Armenian. The disasters that overcame the Armenian mission after the World War, and the growing tide of religious skepticism in the lands of the Near East, cannot dim the glory of these men and women whose blessed influence brightened and ennobled the life of their generations for a century.
In Africa the small beginnings that Grout and Champion made in the Zulu country were reinforced at the middle of the century. Lewis Grout remained there for sixteen years ; half of that time the progress was very slow, but before he returned to America he felt himself rewarded. Thereafter missionaries found more time to engage in education. William Ireland went from Andover to spend forty years in the mission. George R. Ferguson of the class of 1859 became a missionary
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of the Dutch Reformed Church and principal of the Mission- ary Training School at Wellington. Erwin H. Richards was commissioned by the American Board, and later was under the direction of the Methodists. The Zulu mission had a self- propagating power through native evangelists. Herbert D. Goodenough, arriving in 1881, ministered in education and administration. The outstanding Andover figure in West Africa is William Walker, who in the tropical Gaboon terri- tory remained in service for thirty years, returned to America in the service of the American Board for five years, and then went back to Africa under the Presbyterian Board for six years longer.
A few men from Andover Hill found their posts in Latin American countries. In an environment of ignorant, super- stitious Catholics and under governments that were unfriendly to Protestants, it was exceedingly slow and discouraging work, but Nathaniel P. Gilbert was in Peru and Chile for a number of years, and Theodore S. Pond after twenty years in the Near East commenced an extended period of service in the northern part of South America, first in Colombia and then in Venezuela. Mexico claimed more of Andover's sons. James D. Eaton, Andover 1872, opened the Northern Mexican mis- sion at Chihuahua in 1882. His experience was typical of other missionaries in the same country. The Roman Catholic Church was losing its grip, but was fighting to retain it. The local Catholic authorities nailed to the church door a notice that any one who did not boycott the missionary would be excom- municated, yet in twenty years the local Protestant church took into membership two hundred and fifty persons, and fourteen other churches had been organized in the State of Chihuahua. One of the churches was so inaccessible that it took thirty days to make the journey there on muleback.
Congregational missionaries to the American Indians in the early part of the nineteenth century operated under the American Board, and among them were several Andover men. Cyrus Kingsbury of the Andover class of 1815 went to the South and served as Congregational missionary to the Chero- kees and Choctaws for forty-two years. He went with them
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when they removed west to the Indian Territory, and after 1859 was commissioned for eleven years by the Southern Presbyterian Board, thus completing fifty-three years of mis- sionary service. Alfred Wright of the next class was with the Indians for thirty-four years, Cyrus Byington was missionary to the Choctaws for nearly fifty years. Samuel A. Worcester, graduating from Andover seven years after Wright, gave the same length of service to the Cherokees. These men felt keenly the injustice that Georgia forced upon the United States Government in its dealings with the Indians, and they were glad to accompany them when possible on their arduous journey west. It was the policy of the missionaries to train the Indians to be useful in the manual arts, and to give them an education as well as to teach them the truth about religion. Encouraging progress was made in the South, but the whites wanted the Indian lands and tried to get rid of the mission- aries. When Worcester stood by his mission he was thrown into prison and kept there for fifteen months.
With the scattering of the southern Indians the American Board pushed out its stations among the northern Indians also, even as far as the Pacific coast, but small results were gained. Cutting Marsh, Andover 1829, was sent by the Amer- ican Board to work among the Stockbridge Indians, who at that time were in the region of the Great Lakes. Seventy of these Indians were gathered into church membership. From Andover Boutwell, Hall, and Wheeler went to the Ojibwas and settled in Minnesota; Wright, Bliss, Wight, and Ford sought out the Senecas in New York; Edmund Mckinney found his way to the Choctaws and the Omaha Indians, Willey to the Cherokees, and Ranney to the Pawnees and Cherokees. All these were in service before 1850. It was of course impos- sible to do more than ease the transition to civilization for a vanishing race, but the missionaries were as earnest in their work in America as were the workers on foreign fields.
Perhaps in no way did Andover men render more distin- guished service than in their literary labors. The missionaries who had known the serviceableness of the Andover Press valued printing as one of the best means for the propagation
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of Christianity, and they emulated Professor Stuart in their diligence in preparing literary material for the printer. Pa- tiently studying native tongues, sometimes creating a written language, and then translating the Bible by laborious process extending over years, the missionaries made the Scriptures available in the vernacular for Tamil and Marathi, for Turk and Armenian, for Greek and barbarian, for Kanaka and Cherokee, and even for the natives of Africa. The necessary helps of dictionary and grammar and commentary accom- panied Bible translation. Textbooks for school use and tracts to carry the gospel message came from the missionary presses, and now and then especially useful books in English were translated for the benefit of the native Christians.
As the nineteenth century drew toward its close the Society of Inquiry wrote letters to prominent missionaries in the Near and Far East, asking for first-hand information about their activities. The replies of the missionaries, busy men as they were, showed an appreciation of the interest of the students in writing them. Hume of India, Smith of China and Her- rick of Turkey, expressed cordial interest in the Seminary that had mothered them, and hoped that students would not fail to follow on to the mission field. Every one of them after long years of experience rejoiced in his task and thought of nothing more desirable than to carry on as long as God should give life and strength. William A. Farnsworth, Andover 1852, after forty-six years of service, writing from Cæsarea, told of his care of a territory six times as large as Massa- chusetts with thirty-four communities that must be visited at least once a year. He explained to the students at Andover that the missionary must know how to deal with men, to read character, to sympathize with every need, and to aid the dis- tressed ; in short, hardly any good quality of head or heart would fail to be summoned to his help. A missionary in Cey- lon suggested that, since several of the early members of the Society of Inquiry had been founders of the Ceylon mission, it would be fitting for present and future members of the Society to build several inexpensive schools in the island to celebrate the centennial of the mission.
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OF AHOVER SEMINARY
ADONIRAN NOSON SAMUEL NOTY SAMUEL J.MILLS GORDON HALL, JAMES TRICHARDS LUTHER RICE
CONSEGUE NED PURPOSE TOCARRY
ENTENNIAL YEAR DE
19.0
THE MISSIONARY BOULDER IN ANDOVER
The celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Amer- ican Board in Boston included a visit to Andover and the placing of a tablet to the memory of that little company of Brethren which made the nucleus of the mighty enterprise which had gone around the world. After a century the Board was spending a million dollars a year, and was sponsoring six hundred missionaries. Andover had a brilliant record in mis- sionary service. In the first ten years every missionary but one was trained on the Hill. One hundred and twenty went abroad in the first fifty years. During the century two hun- dred and forty-eight alumni had answered the Macedonian call. The five hundred visitors who went to Andover by special train and wended their way to the Missionary Woods near the Seminary felt the thrill of it all. The exercises of the hour of dedication were impressive. The tablet was unveiled and prayer was offered by relatives of the pioneers, Richards and Hall. The large company sang the missionary hymn, "The Morning Light Is Breaking," which was written by Samuel Francis Smith while a student in Brick Row. The tablet was affixed to a granite boulder erected by the citizens of Andover, and bore the impressive inscription :
"In the 'Missionary Woods' once extending to this spot the first missionary students of Andover Seminary walked and talked one hundred years ago, and on this secluded knoll met to pray. In memory of these men
Adoniram Judson
Samuel Nott Samuel J. Mills
Samuel Newell
Gordon Hall
James Richards
Luther Rice
whose consecrated purpose to carry the gospel to the heathen world led to the formation of the first American society for foreign mis- sions. In recognition of the 248 missionaries trained in Andover Seminary and in gratitude to Almighty God, this stone is set up in the Centennial year of the American Board, 1910."
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CHAPTER VII ANDOVER MEN IN EDUCATION AND LITERATURE
T O study on Andover Hill was to expand the horizons of thought as well as of sympathy. To pass in review the centuries of history and think other men's thoughts after them was like breathing the invigorating atmosphere of the hills. To muse upon the problems of philosophy and the- ology was like climbing a mountain range to view a region in perspective. As was said at the Centennial in 1908: Old Andover had the spirit of "creative imagination able to dis- cover the universal in the particular and to make of the familiar experiences of a New England village a stage broad enough on which to pass in review the procession of the eternities."
It was this characteristic which qualified Andover men to become educators. They did not have the special knowledge of a modern doctor of philosophy or the pedagogical methods of the best normal schools of the present day, but at least they knew how to think and to prod other minds to think. Not many schools of that time were so well qualified as Andover to give the intellectual training that was needed for the teach- ing profession. In the first decade the colleges were seldom above junior grade and their graduates were not mature. The three years in the professional school added much to the in- tellectual equipment. Another reason why theological grad- uates should be chosen as college presidents was the custom of selecting a minister and expecting him to teach philosophy, if not theology. The increasing number of new schools on the frontier as well as the older New England institutions made a heavy demand for teachers in college and academy. It is
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these considerations that make it easier to understand why so remarkable a succession of educators should be found among Andover alumni.
It is impressive to call the roll of colleges that invited An- dover men to be their presidents. In New England they include Bowdoin and Dartmouth, Middlebury and the Uni- versity of Vermont in the northern tier of states; Amherst, Smith and Brown in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In New York were Hamilton, Union, and Vassar. Five were in Ohio : Antioch, Marietta, Oberlin, Western Reserve, and Ohio Female College. Moving steadily westward one finds Andover alumni at Wabash, Indiana, Illinois and Knox in Illinois, Drury in Missouri, Washburn in Kansas, Colorado among the Rockies, and Pomona in California. In a more northerly latitude are Adrian and Olivet in Michigan, Beloit in Wis- consin, Iowa College in Iowa, and Fargo in North Dakota. Howard University in Washington, D. C., Atlanta in Georgia, Rollins in Florida, Fisk in Tennessee, and state colleges in Alabama and Tennessee, gave wide representation to Andover in the South. For good measure the universities of Wiscon- sin and Kansas should be added. And overseas were Robert College in Constantinople and the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut. Among the personal names are some of the greatest presidents in the history of these institutions. It is enough to name Hyde of Bowdoin, Tucker of Dartmouth, Marsh of Vermont, Stearns and Harris of Amherst, Seelye of Amherst, and Wayland of Brown, men illustrious in the ecclesiastical as well as the educational history of New England.
Names like these connected with the best colleges and uni- versities of the East give distinction to any school that has helped to train them, but less known colleges on the frontier have their heroic leaders whose achievements add lustre to the schools where they found themselves. Out in the North- west where the wheat fields reach to the horizon in summer and blizzards blot out that same horizon in the dead of winter is a college which does not forget to honor the man who made it. Joseph Ward graduated from Andover in the class of 1868. He had been in the army and the Christian Commission during
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the Civil War and then had completed his course at Brown. He went to Andover Seminary in the fall of that year and graduated at the age of thirty, a man ready for the challenge of a big task. It came to him from South Dakota. For four- teen years he grew into power in the community and the state while he served as a home missionary pastor in Yankton. He had the joy of welcoming the Dakota Band from Yale College, and helping to place the men in strategic locations. The people of Yankton made Ward superintendent of the local schools, then he became a member of the State Board of Education. In 1883 he was elected a member of the Constitutional Con- vention of the Territory which was becoming a State. People trusted his leadership, for they knew his character and ability. He matched swords with politicians and beat them. Then, as if he had not spent his life in public service already, he gave the rest of the time that was his to the creation of a college. Yankton College is his monument. He rallied the youth of the region for an education, and went East for the money to build the college. He assumed the presidency and taught mental and moral philosophy from the beginning. He selected the Faculty. Before he was fairly engaged in the enterprise he lectured at Andover on "The Building of Society in the New States." He had only a few years left for service but he filled them full. He belongs among the builders of the West.
With these administrators belong Cecil F. P. Bancroft, who was the able principal of Phillips Academy at Andover for twenty-eight years, and his successor, Alfred E. Stearns, who between 1900 and 1933 reconstructed the Academy into a modern institution in the front rank of its kind. Samuel H. Taylor was over an equal period of time an outstanding fig- ure as a teacher of the classics. At Phillips Academy, Exeter, Gideon L. Soule spent half a century, including thirty-five years of administration as principal.
One hundred and fifty professors of colleges were Andover alumni. The first class contributed a professor of mathe- matics and natural philosophy to the University of Vermont, the second another to a similar chair at Yale. The four classes from 1817 to 1820 sent presidents to Wabash and Western
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Reserve, and professors to institutions as far apart as Bow- doin, West Point, University of North Carolina, and the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia. Among the illus- trious names of later years are George P. Fisher of Yale, Charles A. Young of Princeton, Jeremiah L. Diman of Brown, Edward P. Crowell of Amherst, Joseph H. Thayer and George H. Palmer of Harvard, Moses C. Tyler of Cornell, and Samuel V. Cole, who made Wheaton Seminary into a woman's college.
Andover's position as a pioneer among seminaries fitted her to train men to teach in other divinity schools. Yale and Har- vard profited thereby, as did the Episcopal schools at Cam- bridge and Alexandria, and Lane Seminary, the Presbyterian school in Ohio. The first two professors at Newton Theo- logical Institution, Irah Chase and Henry B. Ripley, were Andover alumni, and they modeled the Baptist seminary after Andover. Horatio B. Hackett, renowned as a Greek scholar in his time, trained theological students at Newton and Rochester. No less than eleven men went from Andover to chairs in the seminary at Bangor. George W. Andrews of the class of 1867 trained ministers among the Negroes for forty years at Talladega College in Alabama. John W. Buckham of the class of 1888 went to the Pacific coast. And on the foreign mission field it was Andover men who taught native preachers in many of the mission schools.
These men are representatives of scores of others. To list a catalogue of them is far less impressive than to sit down and study the record of their lives. Most of them were teachers of subjects akin to the theological discipline, some of them famous men in the theological departments. Not least among their contributions was the number of men who were chosen to fill places on the Faculty of the institution itself, Andover alumni for Andover Seminary. Among them are Park and Phelps, Tucker, Harris, and Hincks, Smyth and Churchill, and thirteen less known to Andover men of recent years.
There are other alumni of the Seminary who rendered unique service in administrative positions, sometimes akin to an educator but in other cases far removed.
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Thomas H. Gallaudet graduated from Andover in 1814 with bright prospects for success in the ministry, but his interest in the deaf and dumb turned him aside. Presently he accepted an appointment to become the head of the Connecticut asylum for such defectives at Hartford and he established it on firm foundations. Later in life he was chaplain of a county prison and then of the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane. He was prominent in philanthropical societies, a writer, and an ac- ceptable preacher. Louis Dwight, Andover 1819, gave most of his life to work for prisoners. He was the wheel-horse of the Boston Prison Discipline Society for thirty years, and the inspiration of the daily morning prayer meetings in the Old South Chapel of Boston. A younger alumnus by forty years, William J. Batt, was chaplain of the Massachusetts Reform- atory at Concord, where in twenty-five years sixteen thou- sand prisoners came under his influence. George Dustan was chaplain at the Insane Retreat and Superintendent of the Orphan Asylum at Hartford.
Moses Smith, Alvah L. Frisbie, Asa S. Fisk, and John E. Goodrich, were among the army chaplains of the Civil War, and filled places of large usefulness afterwards in church and college and secretarial chair. Walter Cotton was chaplain in a military academy, then in the United States Navy. While stationed on the Pacific coast he was made alcalde, or chief magistrate, of Monterey, California, during an emergency.
Andover men turned their energies and abilities in many different directions. One man wrote the Conversation Corner for the Congregationalist; another, the son of the inventor of the Fairbanks Scales, became himself an inventor and took out more than thirty patents ; one man became an eminent microscopist, and another a college lecturer on ornithology. Henry A. Schauffler fathered the Slavic department at Ober- lin and the Cleveland Training School ; Judah Isaac Abraham was a missionary of the American Society for Ameliorating the Condition of the Jews ; Samuel W. Dike occupied a unique place as organizer and for twenty-eight years secretary of the National Divorce Reform League, working at the same time to introduce social subjects into educational institutions.
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Daniel W. Waldron for forty years was connected with the City Missionary Society of Boston, and sixteen years its secretary. Full of energy and devotion, he had oversight of an agency which visited thirty thousand families in a year, aided four thousand sick, distributed sixty thousand papers and tracts, held hundreds of meetings and brought children into Sunday schools and adults into church membership in surprising numbers. With the rest of his obligations he was chaplain of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
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