The history of Colby College, Part 14

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716

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In the general field of natural philosophy5 Eaton preferred Olmstead. Of Farrar's well-known book he wrote, "Farrar is good after the first volume, which is a bad botch." Finally he got in a plug for another book of his own. "You will like Eaton's Philosophical Experiments, made to accompany all reading books in Philosophy as the Chemical Instructor accompanies the books on chemistry. It will be ready also in March." Eaton told the Waterville professor that all the books he had listed, including the expensive London Encyclopedia of Plants, could be purchased for a total of seventy dollars.

When Professor Keely died in 1878, the Baptist journal The Watchman said of him: "He engaged early in original research, and his articles in English and American scientific journals gained for him high reputation among scientific men. In 1874 he was invited by the heads of the British Colonial Surveys to make a series of magnetic observations in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the re- sults of which were published in England. The remarkable range of his scholar- ship always kept abreast of the progress of learning, yet he was one of the most modest of men, free from the least parade of erudition; a despiser of shams, he won respected ascendancy over the minds of successive college generations, who respected his learning and loved his human personality.""

Unbelievably broad were the interests and remarkably keen were the abilities of one of the most unusual men ever connected with the old college on the Ken- nebec. As one looks back over the years, one can only conclude that Colby Col- lege owes much to the Englishman with the Irish surname, whose Lancashire father sent him out into the world with the name of the American patriot, George Washington.

CHAPTER XI

Years Of Struggle

G EORGE KEELY'S accomplishments had indeed been heroic, but he could do no more than barely keep the College open. The next ten years, even before the Civil War brought a new crisis, were years of constant struggle. The Col- lege had no endowment of any consequence, grants from the state had ceased, a loosely administered plan of scholarship aid made it impossible to depend upon regular tuition fees, and no one could find a way to meet, even partially, the annual deficits. There are few harder financial tasks than soliciting money "to bury dead horses," and that is what Waterville College was constantly doing until the genius of James T. Champlin changed the situation in the 1860's. Through- out the fifth decade of the last century, members of the faculty became doorstep beggars in behalf of the College. Several of them spent every winter vacation in a constant effort to keep the wolf from the college door.

The Trustees had depended heavily on Professor Keely to guide them in their choice of a president; but in spite of their sending him to Boston to talk with candidates and their consideration of his report to the Board, when they met in annual session on August 10, 1841, it was the former president, Rufus Babcock, who pressed for his favorite candidate. Eliphaz Fay, principal of Duchess Academy at Poughkeepsie, New York, had been a classmate of Bab- cock's at Brown. Babcock was sure that Fay was just the man to continue the work of rebuilding which Keely and his faculty colleagues had so well started. The Board agreed, and Eliphaz Fay became the fourth president of Waterville College.

It was not a happy choice. Fay stayed in the presidency only two years. When he arrived, enrollment stood at 75. When he left, it had dropped to 60. Whittemore says only that Fay "was not the man for such an exigency."1 Hall tells us, "There is, unhappily, some ground for believing that the faculty and President Fay did not work harmoniously."2 On the other hand, Fay seems to have been popular with the students, who, on the occasion of his resignation in 1843, presented a petition urging his retention as their president. In light of what happened ten years later, when another president resigned, it is possible that the thorn in President Fay's flesh was none other than the same George Washington Keely who had kept the college open. Fay definitely was not Keely's choice. While the Trustees' record is cryptic, it is suggestive. "After state- ments by Professor Keely, Dr. Babcock made a communication respecting Eliphaz Fay, naming him as a candidate and presenting several letters of recommenda- tion."

Whatever happened, it was to Fay's credit that he soon realized he was not the man for the task; and we can be sure that George Keely was too big a man

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to let the slighting of his recommendations serve as an obstacle to the new presi- dent. Babcock, who ought to have known what the Waterville presidency called for, was the man most to blame for letting an undergraduate friendship sway his judgment.

What had been happening with respect to the fund of $50,000 which the Trustees had voted to solicit, just before Pattison resigned in 1839, reveals how bad the financial situation had become when Fay also resigned four years later. The Prudential Committee reported that it should be obvious to all persons con- nected with the College that the term bill collections could not possibly meet the expenses of operation; that unless funds continued to be raised, the college would certainly have to close, as it had come so near doing in 1839.

A statement made in that 1843 report seems to us, more than a century later, peculiarly naive, but it must have expressed exactly what the college leaders believed to be the true situation. The report said, "It must have been the in- tention of all who subscribed that, in so far as the term bills fell short of pro- ducing a sum sufficient to meet the salaries and general expenses, the deficit should be supplied from the subscription fund." The report admitted that every cent that had been collected on the subscriptions up to the end of June, 1843, had been used to pay expenses. The way the committee put it was, "The College owes to the fund $13,778."

So low was the college treasury that, unlike his two immediate predecessors, Fay was not reimbursed for the expense of his moving to Waterville. Fay pressed his claim for that expense, and after he had been in the presidency for more than a year, the Trustees passed the following vote:

Considering that intimations to that effect had been made to Mr. Fay, and with the understanding that the action of the Board in this case should not be made a precedent for adjusting similar business in future, it was voted to allow the account of President Fay's expenses occa- sioned by his removal from the interior of New York to this place, amounting to $227.65.

It was in Fay's administration that long smoldering discontent about the assignment of student parts at commencement came to a head. The graduating classes were still small enough for every member of the class to have a speaking part in the exercises, and from the time of Boardman and Tripp in 1822 those parts had been assigned according to the student's rank in his recitations and examinations over his entire college course. The students first petitioned the faculty for a change, but getting no satisfaction they presented their plea directly to the Trustees. Their request was not for the abolition of assignment by rank, but a more modest proposal that "no student shall be alone distinguished for his part, but that the parts shall all belong either to the first, second or third grade, and the students thus be ranked as belonging to one of those grades in their class." The petition, signed by fifty of the seventy-six students then in college, was referred to a committee under the chairmanship of Judge Weston of Augusta. They declared it was a matter for the faculty, not the Trustees to decide. The committee did, however, express their informal approval of the students' request, for they proposed that it be referred to the faculty with recommendation of ap- proval.

The faculty granted the petition by passing the following vote: "If the average standing of any student for the whole course is not below 8, he shall be

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in the first grade, if it be below 8 but not below 61/2, he shall be in the second grade; if it be below 61/2, but not below 5, in the third grade; if below 5, but not below 3, in the fourth grade." The record does not tell us what happened to a student whose average was below 3. That was possible because, the marks from which the average was computed ranged from 0 to 10.

There were complications in the marking system that called for faculty at- tention. One was how to integrate into the average the marks for declamations and compositions. There was at that time no such course as English, and writ- ten compositions were not a part of any regularly studied subject, but were weekly demands upon certain classes. This is how the faculty solved the prob- lem: "At the end of each term the average standing of each student in declama- tion and composition shall be added to the six recorded markings for the daily recitations, and one-seventh of the whole shall be his standing for the term." When that arrangement proved unsatisfactory, the faculty passed a vote that is as difficult for us to interpret a century later as is the "officialese" of a govern- ment document. They voted that "the average of all daily recitations be taken in the usual way, and also the average in declamation and composition. One- sixth of the second average shall be added to or subtracted from the first average, according as it is greater or less than the second. The result shall be the stand- ing for the term."

Sometimes cases of individual standing were laid before the faculty. In December, 1842, they voted "to raise two markings of Mr. Smith by one unit." The favored student was Samuel K. Smith of the Class of 1845, who was later to serve the college for forty-two years as Professor of Rhetoric, and whose son and two grandsons would also be distinguished Colby graduates.

Occasionally the faculty admitted delinquency on its part. In May, 1843, they voted to excuse one Jones from examination in trigonometry because the faculty had for a full term neglected to call upon him for it.

At this time a question arose concerning faculty tenure. Was a profes- sor's election meant to be annual, permanent on good behavior, or at the pleasure of the Board? Hitherto the Trustees had established no policy concerning the appointment of president or professor. Their only rule was that tutors were subject to annual appointment. After the subject had been investigated by a committee under the eminent attorney, George Evans of Portland, the Board laid down the following policy:

Any person hereafter elected President of the College or professor in any department of instruction shall hold his office during the pleasure of the Trustees, subject to be removed by a vote of a majority of the members present at any regular meeting, a quorum being present; such notice to be given to the officer to be removed, and such proceed- ings held thereon, as the Trustees shall deem just and proper. In every case of such removal, the duties of the office shall forthwith cease, but the removed officer shall be allowed and entitled to receive his salary for the period of three months beyond the time of his re- moval. Any person elected president or professor may resign his of- fice at any time by giving notice three months prior to the time when the resignation is to take effect.

Although President Pattison had at one time received a salary of $1200, the Trustees guarded against any such inflationary salary for President Fay. They paid him only $1000, and at the same time fixed salaries for all other

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faculty members. Professor Keely, awarded an extra $200 for unusual services, received thereby a total equal to the President's. Keely's loyal colleague, Justin Loomis, got $800. For his part-time teaching, the Baptist pastor, Samuel F. Smith, received $275. As tutor in Greek, Edwin Noyes was paid $480, while Calvin Park, another tutor, was made a professor at $600.

In Fay's administration, for the first time, some severity was shown toward students delinquent on their college bills. "Voted, that those young gentlemen of the graduating class who shall discharge all their college bills and produce a Treasurer's receipt therefor shall be entitled to their degrees, and no degree shall be conferred unless this requirement is complied with." The Board further decreed that any student who owed money to the steward of the college commons for meals should not receive his degree.

Withholding the diploma was a potent weapon to insure payment from seniors, but what could be done about underclassmen who owed college bills? The Treasurer was instructed, when three months had elapsed and repeated re- quests for payment had been ignored, to demand payment from the person who had given surety for the student. In President Chaplin's time, some sort of bond had been required, but the requirement had been feebly enforced and in no in- stance had the surety been forced to pay. The Trustees were now determined that such laxity should cease, and they voted, "It shall be the duty of the Presi- dent to furnish each student, on his examination for admission, with a blank bond for the security of his term bills, which the President shall require each student to return to him, executed and signed by a sufficient surety at the commencement of the term when the student is first enrolled. Failing to do so, the student shall not be admitted to recitation." Treasurer Stackpole rigidly enforced the new order, and it is not recorded that he alienated any friends of the college by that straightforward and commendable policy.

Although the years of struggle were not ended, the situation did become somewhat easier under President Fay's successor. David N. Sheldon, elected President of Waterville College in 1843, had graduated from Williams in 1830 and had then spent four years in France in charge of a Protestant mission. His thorough knowledge of French and German, besides the fact that he had studied with outstanding European philosophers, made his teaching of moral and in- tellectual philosophy, a subject conventionally assigned to the President, out- standing and memorable. Furthermore, Sheldon was surrounded at Waterville by a group of distinguished scholars, most of whom became widely known for scholarly writing or won fame as teachers in large universities. George Keely was un- surpassed as a teacher of mathematics and an insatiable inquirer into the realms of nature. James T. Champlin, Professor of Greek and Latin, afterwards one of the greatest of Colby presidents, had already written classical texts which would be used in American colleges for several generations. Justin R. Loomis, Pro- fessor of Chemistry and Natural History, not only proved that no outside patholo- gist was needed to examine the stomach of the victim in Waterville's first murder in 1847, but he went out from Waterville to serve for thirty years as the president of the University of Lewisburg (now Bucknell University). Martin B. Anderson, the Professor of Rhetoric, became the first president of the University of Roches- ter.

The Trustees turned to Sheldon in 1843 because they knew him well and he was close at hand. They had not done well in turning to what they called "in- terior New York" for a president. So now they took a long look at the man who

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had been in Waterville just a year as pastor of the Baptist Church. They liked what they saw, and unanimously elected David Sheldon their new president. Sheldon knew all of the faculty intimately, for every one of them was associated with his church. He also knew many of the students, and he was one of the first presidents to treat them informally and without the austere aloofness usually ex- pected of a college officer at that time. Hence he became extremely popular.

By persistent solicitation of funds during the 1840's, the financial situation was eased, but the college enrollment continued to be far from satisfactory. Under the spirit of enthusiasm at first engendered by the new president, numbers did reach a maximum of 92 in 1845-46, but by 1848 they had dropped to 75, and in 1850 to 72. The reason for the decline is to be found chiefly in a bitter dissen- sion, both within the faculty and in the Baptist constituency, concerning Presi- dent Sheldon's theological views.

As early as 1844, when he had been president little more than a year, Sheldon preached a sermon before the Maine Baptist Convention at China which aroused discussion and dissent. Among the most bitter critics was Sheldon's successor in the Waterville Church, Rev. Nathan Wood. He and Sheldon waged theological war in the columns of Maine's official Baptist organ, Zion's Advocate. Sheldon later defended his liberal position in a volume entitled Sin and Redemp- tion,3 whereupon the Baptist Convention voted that "the main doctrines of a work entitled Sin and Redemption, recently published by a member of this body, are in the views of this Convention essentially unscriptural and fatally erroneous."

Professor Keely was only one of the faculty members who sided with Pas- tor Wood and against President Sheldon, but his concern, as always, was the welfare of the College. He felt strongly that, if Sheldon was going to hold theological views which responsible Baptists in state convention considered heret- ical, he couldn't possibly continue to do the College any good. Prospective givers would be alienated, prospective students would be advised to go else- where, and constant controversy would disrupt the college for both students and faculty. When Keely saw that Sheldon had no intention of leaving, he presented his own resignation to the Trustees in 1852 and despite their urgent protests he insisted upon its acceptance. The College had already lost Professor Anderson, partly because of his feeling that Sheldon was stirring up disharmony. The added resignation of the beloved, respected and profoundly loyal Keely was just too much. In the following year Sheldon himself resigned.

Sheldon's resignation letter, in the sharp, clear handwriting of that dissident Baptist, leaves no doubt as to the cause of his action. It was to Nathan Wood, as secretary of the Trustees, that Sheldon addressed his letter. Though he made no mention of his long controversy with this successor of his in the Water- ville Baptist pulpit, he may have felt some sense of defeat, for the result was just what Wood and his supporters had sought-to get this "heretic" out of the col- lege presidency. Sheldon wrote:

Waterville College, August 11, 1852

Rev. N. M. Wood, Secretary of the Trustees of Waterville College

Dear Sir;

In view of the want of harmony and cooperation among the faculty of the College, I herewith resign the office of President, which I have held in the College; the resignation to take effect within either three or six

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months from date, at the option of the Trustees, though preferring my- self the latter date.

I am respectfully yours, D N Sheldon

When Sheldon left, he presented the Trustees with an unusual financial claim. He pointed out that, when he had arrived in Waterville to take over the presidency in 1846, his predecessor Eliphaz Fay was still occupying the president's house which Chaplin had erected in 1819, while Sheldon had been obliged to rent a house in the village. In view of that fact, he asked for com- pensation equal to a quarter of a year's rent of the president's house at what- ever rental the Trustees thought was just. He asked also to retain personal possession of a Bible and a chair that had been placed in the college chapel. He said, "Last year there were placed in the chapel a large, elegant Bible, with my name written in it, and a mahogany armed chair. An accompanying note expressed the desire that I should accept them as an expression of respect from the students. I have every reason to believe that they were intended as a present to me personally. As I now leave the College, I should like to take them with me." The obliging Trustees granted both of these requests.

Mrs. Minnie Philbrick, historian of the First Baptist Church of Waterville, states: "After he left the presidency of the College, Dr. Sheldon went to Bath as pastor of the Baptist church there. It was while he was there that he changed his views and became a Unitarian."4 It is questionable whether Sheldon changed his theological views after he went to Bath. Those views seem to have departed radically from Baptist doctrine at least eight years earlier, though it is true that he did not become a member of a Unitarian organization until 1856, when he became pastor of the Unitarian Church at Bath. In 1863, Waterville Unitarians made a grand coup by persuading Sheldon to become the first pastor of their new church in the town where he had been both Baptist pastor and college president.

Dr. Sheldon's return occurred at a time several years beyond the scope of the present chapter. It came during the Baptist pastorate of another man who would one day be president of the College, George Dana Boardman Pepper, and for him the experience proved extremely trying. To the new church started by Sheldon the Baptists lost many prominent members, including Ephraim Maxham, editor of the Waterville Mail. Only the remarkable Christian spirit of the Lin- colnesque Dr. Pepper prevented an open and bitter clash. Instead of engaging in extended warfare, the two pastors became such friends that, when the Baptist church was closed for extensive repairs, that society accepted the invitation of the Unitarians to hold services in the Unitarian meetinghouse.

It should not be assumed that the ten years of the Sheldon administration were filled only with theological controversy and were wholly unproductive for Water- ville College. Those ten years were by no means an educational vacuum. They saw the coming of the Greek letter fraternities in the organization of chapters of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Zeta Psi. They saw the fruitful service of one of the most distinguished faculties the college has ever had. They saw marked growth in both the size and the influence of the college library under Professor Champlin. They saw diplomas presented to men who would gain fame in diverse vocations: Josiah Drummond, leader of the Maine bar and a nationally known Mason; Stephen Longfellow Bowler, named for the poet's father and long the successful financial agent of the Bangor Theological Seminary; Charles E. Ham-

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lin, who was to become Colby's great teacher of Natural History and Curator of Palaeontology at Harvard; Mark Dunnell, member of Congress from Minne- sota; Edward C. Mitchell, President of the Baptist Theological School in Paris, France; and the one Colby graduate who was forced into Confederate service in the Civil War, Lorenzo A. Smith.

Eleazer Coburn of Skowhegan, who had been a trustee since 1836, died in 1845, and in his place was chosen Abner Coburn, a man who would later make significant gifts to the College and for whose family the old Waterville Academy would be renamed Coburn Classical Institute.

Throughout the administration of Presidents Fay and Sheldon the proposed $50,000 fund was a center of attention. So determined were the Trustees to collect payment of subscriptions that in several instances they brought suit against persons who refused to pay. Often those refusals were occasioned by dissent from President Sheldon's religious views. At the annual meeting in 1845, Timothy Boutelle served as chairman of a committee which recommended drastic action concerning the "refusal of certain subscribers to pay their subscriptions." In the following year the Board's attention was directed toward delinquent sub- scribers in Waterville, concerning whom it was voted that "the Treasurer, after giving by letter reasonable notice to subscribers in Waterville, who are able to pay but have not done so, that payment must be forthwith paid or secured, and still not receiving payment, shall take legal measures to enforce collection."

In 1846 Martin B. Anderson, the young professor who would one day become President of the University of Rochester, felt that he merited an in- crease in salary, and with President Sheldon's approval laid his request before the Trustees. Their action shows that, while there was no established policy, the Board was just as attentive to precedent as are most corporate bodies. A special committee to which the matter was referred reported that, in their opinion, it had been the "prevalent usage of the College" to raise the salary of a professor after satisfactory service of two years from $600 to $700. Because Anderson had been a professor since 1843, and a tutor for two preceding years, the com- mittee felt it was only just that his next year's salary be $700. But again, this decision had one of those almost inevitable strings attached to it. Anderson, having a teaching schedule far more burdensome than his colleagues, had asked for an assistant and had recommended his own student, Samuel K. Smith of the Class of 1845. The Board agreed to appoint Smith a tutor in the college, pro- vided Anderson would pay Smith's salary out of his own $700.

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The history of Colby College, Part 14

Author: Colby College Publication date: 1963 Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press Number of Pages: 716

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716