USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > History of Andover theological seminary, 1933 > Part 3
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CHAPTER II
SEMINARY LIFE IN THE EARLY YEARS
O N a delightful day in early autumn, the twenty-eighth of September, 1808, the friends of the new Seminary gathered from far and near to celebrate the opening of the school. Some of them had been present at the founding of the Academy thirty years earlier. Andover was still a small village, but it was to become famous for its educational insti- tutions. Already the Academy was in good repute. Now it was to become a shrine of religion, and from it were to radiate influences that would be unbounded in their scope. No one in the audience which gathered to share in the exercises of the day could have imagined how soon alumni of the Seminary would go far afield on foreign mission bent, to India and Burma, to Africa and the Near East, or how many would find almost as difficult a field of labor with Indians on the southwestern frontier of America. But already the mission purpose had crystallized under a haystack in Williamstown at the other end of Massachusetts, presently it would focalize at a point nearby for missionary organization, and then its sponsors would make the name of Andover known at the ends of the earth.
The people filed into the pews of the parish meetinghouse, and gave their attention to the order of exercises. It would have been unseemly if so grave an event as the institution of a theological seminary should not be observed with the most solemn dignity and with a profound sense of the significance of the occasion. It was fitting that the people should take time to dedicate the institution and to invest its faculty with the authority of their office.
Reverend Jonathan French, pastor of the church, made the introductory prayer. This was especially appropriate because
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of his primary interest in organizing a seminary, his part in its organization, and his office as pastor of the church. After the prayer had been offered, Dr. Eliphalet Pearson recounted the history of the Academy from the time of its founding. Then he read the Constitution for the new foundation. Dr. Jedediah Morse read the statutes of the Associate Founders. These were supplemented by the Additional Statutes which Squire Farrar had penned for the original Founders, read now by Dr. Daniel Dana, the most uncompromisingly conserva- tive of the Board of Trustees. These events were carried out in the prolix fashion of that day, and the forenoon exercises ended with music. The music of the day was furnished by the musical associations of Middlesex, Essex, and Suffolk coun- ties, aided by "other respectable gentlemen, both of the clergy and the laity, who politely gave their assistance in the solem- nities of the day."
After the visitors had enjoyed the hospitality of the towns- folk, they wended their way again to the meetinghouse for the service of the afternoon. This was an occasion of special interest because it was to include the ordination of Dr. Pear- son, professor-elect. No unordained man could be a professor in Andover Seminary. The village had long known and hon- ored Dr. Pearson. The people knew him in Revolutionary days, when he dabbled in chemistry to obtain the saltpetre needed for the army. They had sat under his instruction in one of those singing schools that relieved the tedium of village life and combined education and enjoyment. They had known him as a schoolmaster, and had been gratified over the honors that he had received at Harvard. They had welcomed him back to citizenship in the old town. They were aware of the part that he had taken in the creation of the new theological foundation. They were ready to give him his full meed of local honors.
Prayer was offered by Dr. Dana ; the sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College; and the consecrating prayer was made by Dr. Spring; then followed the charge to the candidate by Mr. French, and the hand of fellowship by Dr. Morse. After the ordination service was
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over Dr. Spring read the Creed, which to the Hopkinsians was so important a part of the machinery of the establishment. Dr. Dwight declared Dr. Pearson a professor in the Seminary and invested him with the rights of office, and Dr. Pearson in turn rendered the same service to Dr. Woods. Professor Woods then delivered his inaugural address, On the Glory and Excellency of the Gospel. Leonard Woods had been valedic- torian of his class at Harvard, he appreciated the importance of the occasion, and he did full justice to it. The day proved too wearisome to Dr. Pearson, who was not in the best of health, and his oration was omitted. After a closing prayer by Dr. Dwight, the service concluded with an anthem by the choir, which was pronounced highly gratifying to the audience.
Phillips Hall was not yet ready for classes, so that Dr. Woods held his first class in his own house. In due time the new building was ready for occupancy, and the proceedings became more regular. It had been hoped that perhaps as many as twelve young men might desire to avail themselves of the opportunity to study at Andover in preference to residing with a Congregational minister, or living in the dangerous environment of Harvard College. No one was optimistic enough to expect a larger number. It was not easy to gain admittance. The candidate must show a certificate of good character from those who knew him. The Constitution pre- scribed that students must be young men, "of good natural and acquired talents" who have honorably completed "a course of liberal education" and who sustain "a fair moral char- acter." Each man must submit to an examination before two professors and Dr. Spring, and show his ability to use Latin and Greek, and if he had not graduated from college he was required to show some knowledge of science.
The influx of students surprised everybody, and taxed the accommodations of the school. Before the first year was over thirty-six students had enrolled. Classes averaged approxi- mately fifty men during the first eight years, then the numbers increased until in 1819 more than one hundred were enrolled. Students came mainly from the Congregational colleges of New England, but Hamilton, Union, and Princeton, each had
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its quota. The class of 1810, with fifty-six students, repre- sented Williams with sixteen men, Yale nine, Middlebury seven, Brown, a Baptist college, seven, Princeton five, Har- vard three, Union, Dartmouth, and Bowdoin two each, and the University of Vermont one. In the first ten years only four men were graduated who had not received the Bachelor of Arts degree. During the first twenty-five years only forty- two out of six hundred and seven Andover graduates were not college graduates. By that time Dartmouth rivaled Yale in furnishing the largest number of students, the one sending one hundred and sixteen, the other one hundred and nine. Middlebury had prepared and sent eighty-six. These three thus supplied more than half of the total number. The record continued with Williams sixty-two, Amherst forty-six, Brown thirty-eight, Bowdoin thirty-two, Hamilton twenty-two, and Union sixteen. In the first thirty-eight years of the school's existence twenty different colleges were represented. Andover thus brought together into a close fraternity men for the min- istry who otherwise might have remained provincially minded. And in the first quarter century of the Seminary's history sixty-seven men were commissioned as foreign missionaries. Altogether fifteen hundred students sat in Andover class- rooms in less than forty years.
It was some time before those who came were persuaded that the theological discipline required three full years in prep- aration for pastoral responsibilities. Less than two-thirds of the whole number of students completed the three years' course. Some came to receive instruction in a single subject or from a particular professor. The curriculum rather en- couraged such a method, for it was organized on the principle of concentration on a single field of discipline, biblical studies during the first year, theology for the second year, and homi- letics with a little church history for the third year. The junior class usually declined in numbers as the year wore on. Certain students were impatient to get settled in a parish. To one such youth who claimed that he must be sowing the gospel seed a professor suggested that it might be advisable to get some seed to sow. Sometimes the real reason for a theologue's
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haste was his desire to marry. The health of not a few stu- dents broke down and a number died. Too sedentary an occu- pation following upon farm work sapped the health, and insufficient or improper nourishment took its toll. Pecuniary difficulties hampered some and prevented a continuance of study, in spite of the low cost of living in the school, and the student aid that was provided. Certain men improved an opportunity to teach. A few shifted to another seminary for denominational reasons, as when the Baptists founded Newton Theological Institution in 1825. As an offset other men entered to advanced standing.
The founders realized the need of substantial buildings, and when the need arrived they were ready to make generous provision. The ground available for construction needed to be landscaped. It was a field of rocks and bushes. A stone wall surrounded the present campus. There was need of super- intendence in putting the grounds in order, and it became a frequent spectacle to see the dignified form of Professor Pear- son perched aloft among the branches of a neighboring tree. From this vantage point he planned and directed the improve- ment of the grounds. Before everything was in order students had made gravel walks across the campus; maple, chestnut, birch, and especially elms, were shading the area; and the place began to resemble the classic environment of college students.
The first three of the oldest structures which constituted Brick Row was Phillips Hall. This was the gift of the Phillips family, and was completed during the first year of the Semi- nary. It was constructed of brick with a slate roof, was four stories in height, and was divided in the middle, with a front and a rear entry on each side. The building contained thirty rooms for students, and one room in the building was used successively as chapel, reading room, and a memorial to one of the later professors.
An unpublished letter which was written on Thanksgiving Day, 1825, gives a glimpse of the building. Addison Kingsbury had entered the Seminary as a junior, and he relates his ex- periences to his brother. Leaving Boston by stagecoach on a
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Saturday afternoon with eleven passengers inside and four outside, he spent three hours on the road, reaching Andover about seven o'clock in the evening. Then he continued: "I have had some trouble in getting located, as the rooms were principally taken up. I have at last succeeded in obtaining a room in the fourth story, though with few or no accommoda- tions. I expected the rooms were furnished. I accordingly brought no furniture with me and I find none here of conse- quence except a poor bed without any clothing. I have how- ever succeeded in obtaining some from a society that fur- nishes students in certain cases. My tables are not fit to stand in your old kitchen, and as for chairs I am now sitting upon one without any back writing to you. ... However I am not dis- posed to complain, though I have complained, but I would have students come on here with their eyes open and with the expectation of finding very inferior accommodations the first year." He says that the older classes of students have every- thing comfortable and pleasant in Bartlet Hall.
The second building to be erected in Brick Row was Bartlet Chapel. This was the gift of the generous benefactor, William Bartlet, to whom Trustees and Faculty turned as needs de- manded. Already he had provided houses for the professors, as well as contributing liberally to the endowment. Now in 1818 he was ready to pay for a chapel building in Bulfinch design, which would include classrooms as well as a place for devotions. As bricks made in Newburyport were better than those made in Andover, it was arranged that four powerful oxen should haul them over the hills, and so again Newbury- port came to Andover. The new building originally was three stories high, with a small, round cupola. The room for the chapel occupied one side of the building on the main floor, and the library was housed above it. On the other side of the chapel were three classrooms. Some confusion was caused by the fact that the building at first was called Bartlet Hall, but when the second dormitory was built in 1821 the name Bartlet Hall was transferred to that, and the chapel building was called Bartlet Chapel.
The increasing number of students was making more dor-
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mitory space imperative. Many of the students had to find lodgings at a distance. William Bartlet again was equal to the occasion. One morning the professors found his men at work excavating the cellar. The newest addition was a three-story brick structure, one hundred by forty feet, and flanked the Chapel on the right, completing Brick Row. It was the most pretentious of the three buildings, for its thirty-two rooms were arranged in suites of a sitting-room and two bedrooms. Each sitting-room had a fireplace with a broad hearth, and an opening above for a stovepipe in case stoves were preferred. For convenience the back of the fireplace had an iron door through which ashes might be started towards the cellar. The building was ornamented with Venetian blinds. The rooms were furnished by Mrs. Bartlet.
John Todd, a student in 1823, described his own room in Bartlet Hall as square and the floor painted yellow. "Here you will find," he wrote, "my chum and myself each bending over a comfortable writing-desk laid upon two marble-colored tables. You see our room ornamented with four pretty chairs, a beautiful mahogany bureau, large mirror-all furnished by the munificent Mr. Bartlet. All the rooms in this building are furnished alike. Nothing could add to our convenience if we had a carpet. But this is of little consequence."
The completion of Brick Row fixed the outward form of the Seminary for the next forty-five years. The three build- ings were dignified in their architecture and formed a unit of equipment sufficient for the needs of the school. Andover Hill was not a lofty height, but from the windows of the build- ings it was possible to get a view over the valley through which the Shawsheen River flows, and to glimpse the higher reaches to the north. Popularly the hill was called Pisgah or Zion.
The expenses of student life were small. There was no tuition to pay, rent was only a nominal sum of two to four dollars a year, and board in Commons was cheap. This was fortunate because the students had little money, but they were generous with one another. On one occasion, when an impe- cunious man appeared with a family of four children and no visible means of support, the students were ready to share
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with the family what little they had. The Faculty reported to the Trustees at the end of the first ten years that the indigent state of most of the students made it advisable not to impose any fines for damage done to library books. Addison Kings- bury spent in making himself reasonably comfortable the sum that he had intended for the purchase of books, and he had to get his first books on credit, with interest payable after three months.
Students were responsible in general for heating their own rooms. Once a year they appointed a committee on wood whose duty it was to arrange for the necessary fuel. They aided in the expense of heating the lecture rooms, but at a time when most meetinghouses were unheated it is not sur- prising that the dining-room in which they sat thrice a day was unwarmed for a considerable time. In the winter of 1832 the students voted "to request Squire Farrar to mend the old, or procure a new stove for the lower lecture room, lest our mental energies go off in fermo."
Many common conventions which now are regarded as necessities were as lacking as they were in the homes from which the students came. There was no water supply in town except wells, and students drew water in their own pitchers out-of-doors, and carried fuel for their wood-stoves upstairs from the Seminary woodpile. They took care of their own rooms when attention seemed to be required, made their beds and trimmed their lamps, as they had done in college. Three times a day they visited the Commons, which was provided by the Trustees, and which stood in the rear of the Chapel. The Trustees had a committee of exigencies, which promptly in 1808 licensed Mrs. Silence Smith "to keep boarders agree- ably to the rules of the Trustees." About ten years later the same committee voted that Daniel Cummings "be licensed to keep boarders provided upon examination it be found that he prays in his family."
The refectory was a low, brown, two-story house. The fare was simple, and hardly made more appetizing by the discus- sions of dour, theological questions. At times it became neces- sary to economize in the kitchen, and the students were inclined
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to rebel at such a substitution as molasses for meat. Indeed, it is among the legends of Andover that a certain student fell sick and after the medical practice of the day the physician resorted to blood-letting. But to the amazement of the prac- titioner the veins of the theologue oozed nothing but syrup.
The Founders seem to have believed in plain living along with high thinking, even for the Trustees. Article 33 of the Constitution ruled that "decent not extravagant entertainment shall be made for the Trustees while attending the annual meeting of the Board." Much less was the living of the stu- dents extravagant. The poverty of the table was aggravated by the fact that the students ate in a cold dining-room. The Faculty brought this matter to the attention of the Trustees after an experience of ten years had shown this infelicity. Cautiously they said : "You will permit us to mention that . . . some improvement in regard to diet and convenience at meals
. . are deserving of consideration. We refer particularly to the fact that during the whole winter season the students are accustomed to take their meals in a room without fire- place or stove. This custom occasions some difficulties which it is desirable to avoid." The students shivered through hur- ried meals and preserved few of the amenities. To render the occasion more endurable warm bread was provided every morning, which the professors regarded as "very prejudicial to the health of the students." The students did not complain directly, but "we have abundant evidence," said the Faculty report, "that the provision of a warm room would be very grateful to all, peculiarly so to those who are in feeble health."
The students themselves had doubts about the wholesome- ness of warm bread, and the records of the Brethren relate that a committee of three was appointed to interview the stew- ard regarding the desirability of substituting cold bread for breakfast. The asceticism of the New England Calvinist appears again during the same period when the students voted "that the steward be requested not to place sugar on the table." After a few months the Brethren appointed a committee of one "to inquire into the expediency of introducing sugar into the hall and report thereon." A year later it was voted to re-
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quest Squire Farrar to provide sugar for the Commons. Per- haps it was penury rather than asceticism which made the students sensitive to the subject of sugar. Two years later still, about the time when the matter of hot bread was in de- bate, the sugar discussion seems to have been settled by a vote of the students, to wit: "At a meeting after the Professors' Conference in which the importance of retrenchment in things not necessary to comfort and health was exhibited, Voted, that [three persons] be a committee to see who were willing to dispense with the use of sugar in Commons."
On the first of November the students voted a definite bill of fare : "Resolved, that for breakfast we have milk, prepared in any method most agreeable to each brother, bread and baked apples, or a substitute. For dinner one kind of meat, bread, and a sufficient quantity and variety of vegetables. For supper milk, bread, and butter." Six weeks later it was resolved "that those brethren who cannot eat milk in the morning be fur- nished with butter and water instead of it."
The next year gustatory controversy arose in the Seminary, as if the air was not blue enough with the smoke of theological polemics. Two parties developed, one favoring the ascetic principle that always had its highest exemplification once a year on Fast Day, the other leaning towards a fair degree of self-indulgence. Some of the students proposed that the board be simplified beyond the bill of fare aforementioned. Others argued that the body was sufficiently subdued in the interests of the spirit. The tide of feeling rose so high that the Faculty was constrained to report in the following language to the Trustees : "The system of retrenchment in Commons, which was a voluntary arrangement of the students last year, originating in a laudable spirit of Christian self-denial and promising important results as to the health of the Seminary and the economy of its funds, was attended with some diffi- culties among themselves from the beginning. These difficulties increased during the last winter, so as to produce feelings of jealousy and strife to an unhappy extent. ... We lament the unfavorable influence which the causes of excitement . . . have exerted on the piety of the Seminary." The matter was not
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ended until one of the students was dismissed from the school.
Before the next Thanksgiving Day a majority of the stu- dents petitioned the Faculty that they might have tea and coffee added to the bill of fare. Professor Woods held a con- ference with seventy-five of them and by inquiries elicited the information that twenty-five were opposed to the indul- gence, but except in three cases they would acquiesce if the Faculty thought it best to make the change. The three opposed the change on account of the added cost of meals, but when it was proposed that other students meet the extra expense for them, they declared that they were able to pay their own board. The professor then announced that the petition was granted, and tea and coffee would be served henceforth. Commons was abolished in 1845.
It is easy to understand that students suffered from indi- gestion. Summer epidemics were common; on one occasion so many were ill that classes had to be suspended. A severe epidemic occurred in the winter of 1826. Frequently students nursed one another through diseases that in these days would receive hospital treatment. The Constitution anticipated a day when the school would have its own private hospital. In 1824 an infirmary actually was built and named Samaritan House, but it was not erected by the Trustees. The women of the community in the kindness of their hearts had formed the Samaritan Female Society of Andover and Vicinity for the purpose of aiding the poor students of the Academy and the Seminary who were ill and preparing for them free "rooms, bedding, furniture, fuel, diet, medicine, nurses, physicians, necessaries, and comforts, as may be requisite and proper for their respective cases."
The preamble to the constitution of the Society read quaintly : "Several females in the vicinity of Phillips Academy and of the Theological Institution in Andover, having been frequently called to witness among the students, and especially the indigent (of which last description there are in both semi- naries more than a hundred individuals) various and affect- ing cases of sickness and distress, which with their best exer- tions it has not been in their power to relieve according to their
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wishes, either by receiving the sufferers into their families, providing them nurses, or supplying them with comforts and necessaries, as their situation required ; and as it is not in the power of the guardians of these seminaries, without violation of their sacred trust, to apply the funds to any other purpose than those to which they are so wisely appropriated; ... in view of these and other reasons, too numerous to be named, after mutual and deliberate consultation, agreed on the fourth day of April, 1817, to form a society for the purpose, and upon the principles, contained in the following constitution." Two officers were charged with specific ministries. The almoner should "have the charge of keeping in a proper state the rooms, beds, furniture, clothes, and all other articles, provided and given for the accommodation and comfort of the sick; of superintending the use and distribution of the same, and also the principal care of giving due notice of the particular cases, wants and necessities of the sick, agreeably to the general or special order of the directors. The collector will be expected to use her diligence as well in procuring necessaries and com- forts for immediate use of the indigent sick, as in collect- ing subscriptions for the support of this establishment."
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