The history of Colby College, Part 22

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

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That night, after they had come home from the prayer meeting, Gardner Colby said to his wife, "Suppose I give fifty thousand dollars to Waterville Col- lege?" Mrs. Colby readily agreed.

There can be no question that it was Dr. Swain's recollection of Jeremiah Chaplin which sparked Mr. Colby's beneficent action, but it only set fire to fuel already supplied by the man chiefly responsible for the progress of the College during those years, James T. Champlin. Gardner Colby was one of a dozen wealthy Baptists whom Champlin had been cultivating ever since he became President of the College in 1857. He had seen to it that Mr. Colby should become acquainted with the steady stream of Waterville graduates who went on to prepare for the ministry at Newton Theological Institution, of which Mr. Colby was treasurer and leading benefactor. He assured the wealthy merchant that Waterville College was a sound Baptist school, true to the faith as delivered to the saints. He convinced Mr. Colby that the college had good financial man- agement and recent subscriptions evidenced the good will of Maine Baptists. Mr. Colby expressed concern and disapproval that the College had been obliged to use some of its meager endowment to pay off recent debts, but Champlin assured him that such action had been the result of war, and that if the enroll- ment, which had been well over a hundred in 1860, could have been maintained, expenses would easily have been met. What the College needed now, Champlin insisted, was an endowment fund the interest of which would meet deficits until pre-war enrollment could be restored. For at least seven years President Champlin had been quietly impressing this wealthy Massachusetts Baptist, and it took only Dr. Swain's dramatic story to bring at last a favorable response.

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HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

Who was Gardner Colby? How did he accumulate a fortune from which he could easily give away $50,000? He had been born in Bowdoinham in 1810, and in 1815 had moved with his widowed mother to Waterville. In 1818 the mother had gone to Boston, where through financial necessity the family became separated. Mrs. Colby was obliged to place her children in different families, and Gardner was taken by a kindly man named Stafford in St. Albans, Maine. Through friends of the Chaplins, Mrs. Colby was able to start a small business in Charlestown, and within a year she could make a home for her children again.

When he arrived in Boston, Gardner went to work at once in the grocery store of Phelps and Thompson in Charlestown Square. Mr. Phelps agreed to take the boy into his home and let him go to school, working in the store during out-of-school hours. He delivered groceries to the firm's customers by wheel- barrow. School did not go well. He had missed so much early schooling and was so far behind that he became discouraged and ceased attending at the age of fourteen. But two years later he became convinced of the need of education, and managed to enroll in a private school at Northboro, Massachusetts. Though he afterwards insisted that he learned much there, he actually stayed less than six months. He was determined to make business connections where he could expect advancement.

He became a clerk in the dry goods store of a Mr. Foster on Boston's Wash- ington Street. Soon the enlarged firm became Houghton and Foster, forerunner of the famous Houghton and Dutton Company. Colby stayed with the new firm until 1831, when he launched out for himself.

In 1830 the young man had become a member of the First Baptist Church of Charlestown, starting his career as a devout Baptist only a few months before his start as an independent merchant. When Gardner reached his twenty-first birthday, he told his employers he was ready to go into business for himself. So impressed had they become with the young man that, instead of laughing at him or putting obstacles in his way, they encouraged him. With a hundred and fifty dollars of savings he made the venture. Purchasing a small stock on credit, he opened his store, having first tacked up tablecloths to hide many empty shelves. He made a specialty of laces, gloves and hosiery. Soon he built up a solid reputation, especially with fashionable ladies, who found him courteous, obliging and scrupulously honest. The cost and the sales price of every article was writ- ten down when it was sold. The cash was balanced every night, and he always knew just where he stood. By meeting bills promptly and taking all discounts, he established wide credit. Everyone was ready to sell to him. At the end of the first year he had paid all expenses and had cleared a profit of four thousand dollars.

By 1836, when he was only 25 years old, Gardner Colby had accumulated the means to enlarge his business substantially. To save commissions paid to importers, he began direct importation from England, and within another year he had left his retail business entirely and had become a wholesale importer with a big warehouse on Kilby Street. So marked was his success and so careful his management, that he weathered without embarrassment the destructive panic of 1837.

The year 1836 also saw Mr. Colby's marriage to Mary Roberts of Glouces- ter, with whom he spent forty-three happy years until they were separated by his own death on April 2, 1879. They began housekeeping at 32 Temple Street in Boston, then moved to Roxbury, then back to Boston's Pemberton Square, finally to their permanent home at Newton Centre.

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A NEW NAME

Gardner Colby was a man who put the same enthusiasm and the same care- ful management into his religious philanthropies as he had into his business. He became treasurer of the Northern Baptist Education Society, principal donor of the new Rome Street Baptist Church in Boston, and generous contributor to the Baptist missionary societies. But, previous to 1864, it was the Newton Theological Institution that had been Gardner Colby's chief denominational interest. Mr. Colby had become treasurer of the Newton seminary in 1844, and it was probably his interest in the school that made him and Mrs. Colby decide to move to Newton Centre in 1847. On the occasion of Newton's fiftieth anniversary in 1875, Presi- dent Hovey said of Gardner Colby's treasurership: "Not a penny was either wasted or lost. Vigilance, promptness, personal supervision, were everywhere manifest. The lands, buildings, investments, students and professors, seemed to be under the treasurer's eye from September till June. We are indebted to him for the preser- vation of our school in the darkest hour of its history."5 Because of his generous contribution of its new library and chapel in 1864, the building was named Colby Hall. Before his death, his gifts to Newton had exceeded a hundred thousand dollars.

In 1850 Mr. Colby had branched out into manufacturing, by purchase of a half interest in the Maverick woolen mills at Dedham, Massachusetts. Demand for cloth to make army uniforms during the Civil War made those mills very successful and added substantially to Mr. Colby's wealth.

In 1863 Mr. Colby retired from active business and devoted himself to his philanthropies and the care of his investments in manufacturing, mining, railroads, and real estate.

Such was the Boston merchant and financier, lay leader of Massachusetts Baptists, who at the invitation of President Champlin attended the Commence- ment of Waterville College in 1864 and who sat silent at the head table while another voice announced his gift of $50,000 to the little college on the Kennebec.

First on its own, then in cooperation with Brown University, Waterville College had been struggling against overwhelming odds to raise substantial en- dowment. Mr. Colby's offer in 1864 readily took into consideration all that had already been raised in that long continued campaign. But, to bring the total to a hundred thousand dollars, as Mr. Colby demanded, seemed an almost im- possible task. The war was not yet over; prices were inflated; money was scarce.

Into the situation stepped another generous layman of the Baptist faith, and he too was a Massachusetts man. J. Warren Merrill, a prominent attorney and financier of Cambridge, had been approached by President Champlin as early as 1858, but had at first made no response. As the Cambridge man came to know Champlin better, his confidence in the college president increased, and gradually he became interested in the Waterville institution. In 1862 he con- sented to become a member of the Board of Trustees, and a few weeks after Gardner Colby's great offer, he made his own fine contribution. He agreed to contribute $10,000 on condition that the entire $100,000 demanded by the Colby offer be raised by September 1, 1865.

What a thing to do in war time! How could the little college expect to meet such conditions? But a man like James Champlin was not to be thwarted even by war. President, faculty, trustees, and alumni beat the by-ways and hedges of all New England for the needed dollars. As a result, when the Trustees as- sembled in annual meeting in August 1865, they could record in their minutes these words: "From the report of the President it appears that the sum of $105,444, exclusive of Mr. Colby's subscription, has been received. This fulfills one of the

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HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

precedent conditions and entitles the College to one-half of Mr. Colby's sub- scription."

Meanwhile Mr. Merrill had added another provision to his gift. Specific appropriation of the income from his $10,000 must be used toward support of a professorship of chemistry and natural history. Although the record makes it evident the Trustees would have preferred an unrestricted gift, they were in no position to "look a gift horse in the mouth," and they agreed to Mr. Merrill's conditions. It thus came about that in 1866 the College got its second endowed professorship, the Merrill Professor of Chemistry. The first had been the Bab- cock Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, named for the second presi- dent of the College, Rufus Babcock.

Gardner Colby became a Trustee of the College in 1865, and he served loyally and devotedly until his death in 1879. Within two years he had given another $50,000 and his total contributions, including the bequests in his will, brought to the Institution more than $200,000. At the annual meeting in 1866 the Board voted, "that a committee be appointed to procure from the legislature a change of the name of this Institution from Waterville College to Colby Uni- versity." Josiah Drummond, Abner Coburn and President Champlin were named the committee to carry out that decision. On January 23, 1867, the Maine Legislature enacted Chapter 180 of the Laws of 1867, which read:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in Legislature assembled as follows:

Sect. 1. The name of the corporation "The President and Trustees of Waterville College" is hereby changed to the "President and Trustees of Colby University."

Sect. 2. This act takes effect when approved by the Governor.

The Institution of higher education that had started with no buildings at all as the Maine Literary and Theological Institution and had become Waterville College, with three brick buildings on the west bank of the Kennebec River just above the dam and mills of Waterville Village, had at last seen its long hoped for ship come into port. It was only natural, if a bit extravagant, that the Trustees should cele- brate by adding to the Colby name the grandiose title of university. Although true university it never became, it was a challenging title, and challenge as well as en- dowment was what the College needed as the nation emerged from the throes of civil war.

CHAPTER XVIII

Champlin's Years Of Fulfillment

T HE last ten years of President Champlin's administration were years of fulfillment. Gardner Colby's gift was only the beginning of better things for the College that came during the following decade.

First of Champlin's new accomplishments was the raising of $100,000 needed to meet the conditions of the Colby gift. The cherished endowment fund was at last on the way. The invested funds now exceeded $40,000, which were soon increased to $65,000 by payment of the first half of the Colby gift.

An example of the many complications caused by allowing donors to con- trol scholarships is the case of the scholarship given by a member of the Trustees, Rev. Adam Wilson, distinguished editor of Zion's Advocate. The Wilson donation had provided that he and his wife should name the recipient during their lifetime, and that after their deaths the right of designation should be held by their oldest child. That child, Dr. John B. Wilson, had recently died, and Adam Wilson now asked the College Trustees to agree that, if John's son Charles should ever enter the College he should have benefit of the scholarship. The Trustees accepted the new provision and solemnly recorded their decision.

President Champlin next turned his attention to procuring a new building. The old chapel had become hopelessly inadequate for the many demands upon it. The expanding curriculum called for additional classrooms, and the library had neither protection nor convenient housing. Champlin conceived the attractive plan of erecting for those needs a building which should be a memorial to Colby men who had fallen in the recent war. So it came about that, only sixteen months after Appomattox, the Trustees voted that "the interests of the College require that a new building be erected as early as possible, to be called 'The Memorial Hall.'" The Board voted to appropriate toward the cost of the new building the money raised by the ladies of Bangor for that purpose, and also the four thousand dollars recently received from the sale of timber on the College lands, as well as seven thousand dollars of prospective stumpage rights. They appointed a committee, composed of President Champlin, Abner Coburn and D. L. Milliken, to choose the site and see that "the foundation is carried forward sufficiently to have the cornerstone laid by the next commencement." Quite in accord with established custom the Board then turned to the faculty for money- raisers. "Voted, that the faculty of the College be requested to cooperate with its alumni in raising funds for the building."

The building cost $30,000, and all but $4,000 was in hand when the corner- stone was laid on August 14, 1867. The remainder was easily raised before the building was finished and dedicated on August 10, 1869. The largest subscrip-

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tions were $4,100 from Gardner Colby, $3,000 from Abner Coburn, $1,100 from George Edwards, and $1,000 from George Cummings. Eight other persons each gave $500 or more. But fully $5,000 came from alumni and friends each of whom gave $50 or less.

Memorial Hall was placed on the site of the first college building, the Presi- dent's house. The latter was partly torn down and partly removed. Clayton Smith of the Class of 1931, in the course of studies about his ancestor, Pro- fessor Charles Hamlin, encountered evidence which made him suspect that a part of the ell of what graduates of his time called the Boutelle House, and which in 1867 was the residence of former Professor George Keely, was once a portion of the President's house. Definite record, however, has been lost; no one today knows what became of the first building erected on the college lot.

Memorial Hall had a central tower and a passageway through the building from north to south. In the belfry was a clock which hundreds of students consulted daily during their four college years. Although often needing adjust- ment and always in need of winding, that clock was somehow kept going until the whole building was abandoned with the move to Mayflower Hill. On the west side of the tower was the larger of two wings, rising two floors high. The lower floor was devoted to the chapel and the upper to what was called Alumni Hall, where for many years receptions and other social gatherings, as well as alumni dinners, were held. The east wing was smaller and contained a single, high-ceilinged room, with a balcony around its four sides. That room was the College Library, and as late as 1909, when this writer entered college, it was the only library room. A few years later a generous gift from Charles F. T. Seaverns, 1901, had converted the south end of the old Alumni Hall into an at- tractive reading room, and the north end into stack space for the most frequently used books.

Built into the east wall of Alumni Hall was the tablet which marked the building as a memorial to Colby's Civil War dead. On it was this Latin in- scription:

FRATRIBUS ETIAM IN CINERIBUS CARIS QUORUM NOMINA INFRA INCISA SUNT QUIQUE IN BELLO CIVILI PRO REIPUBLICAE INTEGRITATE CECIDERUNT HANC TABULAM POSUERUNT ALUMNI

It was Professor Hamlin who insisted that a suitable memorial object be placed above the inscription, but it was Burrage himself who suggested the form which that object should take.1 He told Hamlin he had been greatly impressed by Thorwaldsen's Lion of Lucerne, which Burrage had recently seen on a visit to Switzerland. When Hamlin expressed interest, Burrage showed him a card pic- ture of the statue. On the following day Hamlin told the pastor, "I am going to Boston by the night train to see Millmore the sculptor. I wish to ascertain if he can make for us in marble a copy of Thorwaldsen's Lion adapted to the needs of our Civil War memorial."

Millmore agreed to make the sculpture, substituting the shield of the United States for that of France. Hamlin at once set to work to raise the money to pay for it, and before it came time for Millmore to deliver the marble statue in Water-

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CHAMPLIN'S YEARS OF FULFILLMENT

ville, Hamlin had the money. When Burrage later referred to the incident, in his History of the Baptists in Maine, he wrote: "The money for this artistic me- morial was secured by Prof. Charles E. Hamlin, to whom this service, from high patriotic motives, was a labor of love most enthusiastically performed."?

Beneath the lion and the inscription were placed the names of twenty-five Colby men who had laid down their lives in the service of the Union. Colby alumni agreed that the Lion of Lucerne must be moved to Mayflower Hill, and that was done in 1962.

On August 14, 1867, the following items were placed in the cornerstone of Memorial Hall: a copy of the New Testament; Confessions of Faith and Cove- nant of the Waterville Baptist Church; Catalogue of Colby University; Catalogue of the Library; Catalogue of the Alumni; photographs of Mr. Colby and the Col- lege Faculty; list of subscribers to Memorial Hall; programs of class exercises during the year; copy of the Address to the Friends of Waterville College, issued October 17, 1863; copies of Zion's Advocate, Waterville Mail and Portland Press, containing notices of the Commencement Exercises in 1867; a copy of the Co- lumbian Centinel, dated December 29, 1802; a five dollar bill of the Con- tinental Currency, 1776; specimens of fractional currency; various United States coins.3

At the laying of the cornerstone, President Champlin explained why the new building was necessary and how the need fitted appropriately into the desire to memorialize the Colby men who had died in the war.

The first and most urgent necessity for additional accommodations springs from the unfavorable situation of our principal recitation rooms. These are in the basement under the chapel, with their floor from two to three feet below the surface of the earth. They are damp, un- pleasant and unhealthy. Indeed, for many years before they were drained, the water stood in them to the depth of several inches dur- ing the heavy rains of spring. After having endured this evil for more than thirty years, you will not wonder that both teachers and stu- dents demand better accommodations.

Another reason for a new building is found in the present unsafe and inadequate accommodations of our library. Our present library room is in the second story of the old chapel building, a building in which, throughout a greater part of the year, must be built many fires. A library, of course, should not be so exposed to fire. Moreover, the room is full to overflowing and new accommodations must be sought somewhere.

Still another reason for a new building has grown out of the recent bloody conflict in the land. A number of our graduates lost their lives in the great conflict. Such a noble band of martyrs requires a suitable memorial. What more appropriate than this noble structure to be known forever as Memorial Hall?+

The architect of Memorial Hall was Alexander R. Esty of Boston, who had made a specialty of constructing buildings of rubble stone-just such stone as was found in a quarry about a mile west of the College, and of which were con- structed not only Memorial Hall, but also two later buildings, Coburn and Chemical halls. Thomas A. Grahen of Cambridge was the contractor, and the carpenter in charge of all woodwork, including the fine paneling, was J. P. Blunt of Waterville.

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Two years later, at the Commencement of 1869, the finished building was dedicated. The chairman of the building committee, Abner Coburn, delivered the keys to the chairman of the Trustees, Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, who only five years earlier had finished his term as Vice-President of the United States. Hamlin in turn presented the keys to President Champlin. The key to Alumni Hall was accepted by the President of the Alumni Association, General Harris M. Plaisted.

The year 1868 was momentous in the history of the College. It saw the completion of Memorial Hall and its actual use a few months before its dedica- tion the following summer. It was also the first year in which a young graduate of the College began his teaching within its walls, a career which was to con- tinue through 63 uninterrupted years. Julian D. Taylor became a tutor in Greek and Latin, assisting Professor John B. Foster, only a month after his graduation from the College in August, 1868. Five years later he was elected Professor of Latin Language and Literature, holding that position until his retirement in 1930. Known as "Judy" to more than sixty Colby classes, he is still remembered as the very embodiment of a noble Roman.

The same year saw a student petition for a gymnasium. Other colleges had seen the installation of rings, climbing ropes, parallel bars, and other apparatus demanded by the development of "Swedish gymnastics." Furthermore, the day of modern college athletics was just around the corner. Baseball had already come in; the events of track and field were beginning to develop; a few colleges had taken up boxing and wrestling. It would be more than twenty years be- fore football would be played at Colby. That sport would indeed be preceded by bicycle racing. But even in 1868 the day was past when intercollegiate con- tests in Maine would ever again be restricted to croquet. The Trustees heeded the student demand and appropriated $1200 to build a gymnasium. With that modest sum they actually put up a small building that served the needs of in- door exercise for many years.

Another significant action in 1868 was the decision to establish the degree of Bachelor of Science. Hitherto only the Bachelor of Arts had been con- ferred as an undergraduate degree, but sciences were developing fast. Natural philosophy was rapidly becoming the recognized science of physics, and natural history was turning into the biological sciences. Nine years earlier, an English- man named Charles Darwin had shaken the scientific world with his Origin of Species. Darwin's basic theory, especially its application to the origin of man, was of course anathema to the Baptist divines who still controlled Colby University. James Champlin himself was a conservative Baptist, and he would not have countenanced the teaching of evolution, even if the more conservative Gardner Colby had not been dominant on the Board. Nevertheless science was on its way, and the time had come for Colby University to recognize it. On August 12, 1868, the Trustees therefore voted that "we establish a degree of Bachelor of Science in the University." Significantly it was not left to the faculty to lay down the curriculum for the new degree. That duty was left to a trustee com- mittee, composed of Rev. A. K. P. Small, Rev. E. E. Cummings and Hon. Moses Giddings. Cummings had been an early graduate of the College, in 1828; Small had graduated in 1849. Giddings, a prominent Bangor man, had been a member of the Board since 1852.

The result of this decision was no action at all. The trustee records do not indicate that the committee ever reported, and subsequent catalogues continued to list as the only undergraduate degree that of Bachelor of Arts. In fact almost forty years elapsed between the decision to confer the B. S. degree and its actual

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The history of Colby College, Part 22

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