USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 24
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83
178
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
of 1842, who at the time of the incident had just become a Baptist pastor in Bangor after distinguished pastorates in Illinois and Kansas. Young Nathaniel graduated from the College in 1873, and at once began a notable career as an educator. In 1884 he was called by President Harper to the Chair of Rhetoric and English Literature at the new University of Chicago, then became the Uni- versity's Director of Extension. In 1895 he was called by his alma mater to be its president, in which office he served with great distinction for six years. He then returned to the University of Chicago as Professor of Education and later Dean of its College of Education. So it becomes a matter of historical record that one of the presidents of Colby College did in his student days confess to "Privy Arson."
When the Trustees assembled for their annual meeting in 1872, with Co- burn Hall about to be opened for the sciences, they were in an affluent mood. They appropriated $2550 to complete the renovation of North College, on which they had already spent $5750 in the previous year. They granted Professor Hamlin's request that he be released from all duties not directly connected with instruction in Chemistry and Natural History. They granted the first paid sab- batical leave known in Colby history. Hitherto any permitted leave had been at the faculty member's own expense. But, so sound was the treasury in 1872 that the Board voted that "the request of the Professor of the Department of Modern Languages (E. W. Hall) for leave till the summer term of next year, for the purpose of study in France and Germany, be granted, and that the Treas- urer be instructed to pay him in advance two-thirds of his salary for the coming year." The Board then proceeded to make the hitherto unprecedented appro- priations of $500 each to the departments of Mathematics and Natural History for the purchase of apparatus.
It had been some time since any attempt had been made to feed the stu- dents in a common dining hall. Meals were obtained at boarding houses operated at homes in the village, although in the 1870's a few students were still getting meals in their rooms, obtaining weekly supplies of cooked food from their homes. The Trustees, remembering well the financial losses and the constant complaints about the old dining service, had no intention of resuming the facility in Cham- plin's time. In 1872 they voted to sell the old Commons Hall. At the same time they decided "to retain the house on Front Street." That was a small dwelling house, south of Memorial Hall, which had been built in the 1830's for occupancy of a faculty family. It had served various purposes and by 1870 was not in good condition. But, with the recent division of two departments into four the Trustees looked forward to faculty additions, and the house might still be made useful.
The Trustees wisely decided that the recent renovations in living quarters for students justified more revenue. They voted that, effective with the fall term of 1872, room rent for double rooms should be raised from $6.66 to $8.00 per term, and in single rooms from $6.00 to $7.00. It is to be noted that the room charges at that time were not made per student, but per room. The fee of $8.00 was for the double room, each occupant paying only $4.00 per term.
The climax of the Board's annual meeting in 1872 was the resignation of President Champlin, to take effect on January 24, 1873. He had been connected with the College for thirty-two years and had been its president for exactly half of that time. The Board reluctantly accepted the resignation, expressing their gratitude for his diligent and devoted service. And what a service it had been! A comfortable endowment, three new buildings, plans for a larger faculty, sub-
179
CHAMPLIN'S YEARS OF FULFILLMENT
stantial increase in salaries, enthusiasm of alumni and friends-these things had all come since the summer day in 1857 when James T. Champlin, humbly and very reluctantly, agreed to change from his professorship of Ancient Languages to the greater burden of the presidency of an impoverished and all but doomed little college. His accomplishments had been indeed remarkable. Of all the money collected between 1857 and 1872, Champlin had personally secured nearly $200,000. When he left the presidency, the College had no debts. His col- league Samuel K. Smith said of him, "He came to Waterville as a professor when I entered as a student in 1841. I came to know him as a man of unswerving, invincible integrity. What particularly struck me was the complete subordination of his personal interests to the broader interests of the College."
James T. Champlin had steered the leaky ship through the wild waves of civil war, had stopped the leaks with new funds, and had at last brought the ves- sel into the port of financial stability.
CHAPTER XIX
Redoubtable Quintet
HE faculty members associated with James T. Champlin, during his presidency, deserve individual mention. One of them, still in the rank of tutor when Champlin resigned, had then been on the faculty too short a time to be- come a member of the influential ruling group, but he was destined to have longer service than any of the others, for Julian D. Taylor taught at Colby Col- lege for sixty-two years. Since his most important service was rendered much later than Champlin's time, an account of it must be reserved for a later chap- ter. Each of the remaining five teachers, however, who comprised the faculty in 1873 was a dynamic individual, who made the little college a lively place during the crucial years when President Champlin brought it from near oblivion to security.
Those five professors saw at Colby a combined service of 169 years. In the order in which they joined the faculty they were Samuel K. Smith, Professor of Rhetoric from 1850 to 1892; Charles E. Hamlin, Professor of Chemistry and Natural History from 1853 to 1873; Moses Lyford, at first Professor of Mathe- matics and Natural Philosophy, later Professor of Natural Philosophy and As- tronomy, from 1856 to 1884; John B. Foster, at first Professor of Ancient Lan- guages, later Professor of Greek, from 1858 to 1893; and Edward W. Hall, who served as Professor of Modern Languages from 1866 to 1891, and Librarian from 1873 until his death in 1910.
Edward Winslow Hall was the youngest, but by no means the least influential of those who held professorial rank in the Champlin administration. Born in Portland in 1840, he was a graduate of the old Portland High School, from which he entered Waterville College in the fall of 1858.
Hall was a master of the classical, as well as of the modern languages, and his interest in literature extended to all the world. Early he became familiar with the writings of Tolstoi and other Russian mystics, and he delved deeply into the literature of the Far East. He was celebrated for his clear, unblemished handwriting, not the stilted formations of the old-time writing masters, but a fine, legible hand of marked individuality. For more than a quarter of a cen- tury he served as clerk of the Waterville Baptist Church, and the carefully kept records in his easily legible writing have been the delight of church historians.
Graduating in the second year of the Civil War, Edward Hall's plans were for military service, but physical disability caused his rejection. Determined to play a part in the prosecution of the war, he secured appointment as Requisition Clerk in the War Department at Washington, where he had charge of the ac- counts pertaining to military expenditures amounting to several hundred millions
182
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
of dollars. When Maine's senator, William Pitt Fessenden, left the Senate to be- come Secretary of the Treasury, he secured Hall's transfer to the Treasury De- partment.
When the Trustees of Waterville College made the hitherto incidental teach- ing of modern languages a position of departmental rank in 1866, they chose Edward Hall to take charge of the new department. At the age of twenty-five he became a full-fledged colleague of such older men as Smith and Hamlin. For several years he taught classes in mathematics and Latin, as well as in his own department of French and German. In 1873 he succeeded his colleague, Pro- fessor Smith, as librarian, and carried on those duties in addition to his heavy teaching load. He was the first Colby professor to be granted paid sabbatical leave. He spent the year of 1872-73 in Germany, studying at the University of Goettingen under the noted Wilhelm Mueller.
It was as librarian, rather than as teacher of languages, that Hall won last- ing fame. His achievements in that field are recounted in a later chapter. But, with all his other duties he found time for writing. His Higher Education in Maine is the most authoritative work available in a single volume concerning the Maine colleges prior to 1900. He edited the General Catalogue of Colby Uni- versity1 in 1882 and 1887, and his last distinguished work for the College was the General Catalogue of 1909. The latest edition of that Catalogue was pre- pared in 1920, ten years after Hall's death, by his successor as Librarian, Charles P. Chipman. Many Colby graduates regret that the College has not seen fit to publish another edition since 1920. Those issues of the General Catalogue, through the years from 1840 to 1920, are a mine of information about the alumni.
Hall was champion of a cause not popular with such professors of the old school as Samuel K. Smith. That cause was the "Elective System." Complaints concerning the rigidly required curriculum became louder year after year. Colby students were made aware that the rigidity had been broken in other colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, and Williams. Although we have already described in some detail the fixed requirements of the 1860's at Colby, it is well to emphasize the situation by quoting Hall's classmate, Richard C. Shannon.
The curriculum we pursued was a hard and fast one, exactly the same for all, chiefly consisting of Classics and Mathematics. The course be- gan with Latin, Greek and Mathematics, continued with Rhetoric and Logic, and something of Physics and Modern Languages, and concluded with Mental and Moral Philosophy.
Opponents of the elective system, who at Colby were chiefly Smith and Foster, argued that it tended to bewilder the student, scattering his attention superficially over too wide a range of subjects, unconnected with one another, and that it gave the student a freedom he was too immature to indulge with impunity. The defenders, notably Hall and Hamlin, claimed the new system would give scientific studies their rightful place in the curriculum, would provide more than single, scattered terms in modern languages, and best of all would give the student a chance to choose what especially interested him. It is clear that neither side was entirely free from the charge of self-interest. Smith and Foster were teaching in the entrenched fields of the required curriculum, while Hall and Hamlin were in the fields of science and modern languages, then strug- gling for recognition. The latter disciplines were viewed by the classicists of 1870
183
REDOUBTABLE QUINTET
much as scientists and teachers of any language, ancient or modern, viewed the social sciences in 1910. At Colby the opposition to the elective system was so strong, both in the faculty and among the Trustees, that it was not substantially introduced until many years after Champlin's time. In fact President Champlin himself had little use for it. Never at Colby did the system apply fully, as Presi- dent Eliot insisted upon it at Harvard. There has never been a time at Colby when there have been no fixed requirements for all students, though the proportion between required and elective courses has changed, with a kind of pendulum swing, through the years.
Professor Hall never lived in an ivory tower, although that kind of life is unjustly suspected of all librarians. He was interested in town affairs as well as those of his church, and several times served as moderator at Waterville town meetings. He was long a member of the local school committee, and he took such interest in the public schools that he became a founder and vice-president of the Maine Pedagogical Society, forerunner of the now powerful Maine Teachers Association. For twenty-six years he served as secretary and treasurer of the Colby Alumni Association, and in that capacity he carried on correspondence with several hundred graduates of the College.
In 1904 one of the Trustees, Dudley P. Bailey, asked Hall about faculty salaries when Hall first joined the faculty. Hall replied:
I relinquished a salary of $1600 in Washington and accepted a pro- fessorship here at $1200. After a few years my salary was raised to $1400, then to $1600, and finally to $1800. I do not recall the dates of the increases. The President's salary was $1800 in Dr. Champlin's time, at least at the close of his administration. Sometimes he had house rent, sometimes its equivalent in cash.
Professor Hall's case was made a sort of trial balloon when, in President White's administration, the Colby Trustees tried to get the faculty under the benefits of the Carnegie pensions. On April 2, 1907, John G. Boneman, Assistant Sec- retary of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, wrote to President White:
At the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Foundation, held March 28, the application of Dr. Edward W. Hall for a retiring al- lowance was considered and, I regret to say, not granted. As long as our charter stands as it does, the Committee is not able to vote retiring allowances to professors in institutions which are controlled by a church body or in which any denominational test is imposed upon trustees or faculty. The problem of dealing with applications from denominational colleges was given much attention at the meeting. Almost without exception the applicants were abundantly deserving, but to not one of them was an allowance granted. The decision, therefore, does not reflect in the least upon the merit of Dr. Hall's case.
Edward Winslow Hall died at his home in Waterville on September 8, 1910. The following day would have been his seventieth birthday, and forty-four of his seventy years had been spent in devoted service to his alma mater.
Samuel King Smith was quite a different man from Edward Winslow Hall. While the latter had a keen sense of humor, the former was stern and solemn. For levity of any kind he had no tolerance. He was a conservative in both
184
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
education and religion, in contrast to Hall's more liberal views in both areas. Smith had no use for any educational method except memoriter learning and strict repetition of the text. He was suspicious of science and regarded Ham- lin's ventures in the laboratory and out in the fields and woods as anything but true scholarship. In religion, both Hall and Smith were loyal Baptists, but Smith was eager to have the church return to the disciplinary measures of Dr. Chaplin's time, while Hall always advised tolerance toward the "backsliders." Judged by modern standards Hall is the more attractive man, but Smith in his different way made strong and lasting contribution to the College.
Descendant of an early colonial family, which had settled in Ferdinando Gorges' Maine province of Yorkshire in the seventeenth century, Samuel King Smith was born on a farm in Litchfield, Maine, on October 17, 1817, the youngest of eleven children. His father was for several years a member of the Massa- chusetts legislature and made the long journey, to attend its sessions in Boston, on horseback.
In his youth Smith came to admire a somewhat older boy in the neighbor- hood who attended Bowdoin, and Smith determined that he too would secure a college education. With so large a family and so many financial burdens, the father could not help. Nor was any member of the family sympathetic with what they considered Samuel's high flown ideas. Entirely on his own financial resources, Smith prepared for college at Monmouth and Waterville academies. Entering Waterville College in the fall of 1841, he graduated at the head of his class in 1845. His earnings by teaching in Litchfield schools during the long winter vacations did not provide enough money to meet college expenses, but he was able to finish the course with timely aid from Deacon Scribner of Topsham.
After attending Newton Theological Institution, Smith received ordination as a Baptist minister and served for two years as editor of the organ of Maine Baptists, Zion's Advocate, the same paper which many years later would be edited by his son, William Abbott Smith of the Class of 1891.
In 1850 the College Trustees called Smith to the chair of Rhetoric. For forty-two years he devoted himself loyally to an ever expanding service for his alma mater. He was greatly interested in history, a subject which received little attention in the college curriculum before the end of the nineteenth century. Abraham Jackson of the Class of 1869, a member of the faculty at the theological school in Meadville, Pennsylvania, recalled: "His wise reflections led me to Guizot; he sent me to Montesquieu; he told me what I would find in Hooker; he warned me against the special pleadings of Froude and cautioned me against the sophisms of Buckle."
It was Abraham Jackson who testified to Smith's special scholarly interests:
I believe inductive logic, so necessary in science, was an instrument he could have successfully used, but manifestly he had little sympathy for it. The deductive was his province. Its forms were almost the toy of his understanding, its philosophy a congenial theme of his deeper musing. His mind could hardly work otherwise. As for rhetoric, it seemed to be not something that he knew, but something that he vitally was, the very texture of his intellect.
English literature, in fact any literature except the ancient classics, had little place in the college curriculum in Smith's time. It was an innovation, therefore, when Smith decided to teach a term course labeled English Literature. His un-
185
REDOUBTABLE QUINTET
yielding Baptist beliefs were somehow reconciled with his love of the English poets and masters of prose. Again it is one of his students who gives pertinent testimony. "Under his incidental guidance I found my way into the rich do- main of Chaucer, into Spenser's great allegory, into the noble sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney. 'Read Milton's prose', he once counseled me, 'and don't forget to keep Bacon always in mind.'"
Teachers of English in any day would agree with President Roberts' com- ment that English composition is the most difficult of all subjects to teach. In Smith's time students complained about rhetoric just as they complain about English composition today. Twice the complaints against Smith reached the Board of Trustees. On both occasions a committee of the Board investigated and both times he was soundly vindicated. As he himself put it,
Young men in college are at that age when specific knowledge alone appeals to them. They want facts, not theories. They are not yet enfranchised in the realm of thought, and thought is the material with which rhetoric must deal. Whately's rule 'Write as though you have something to say and not as though you wish to say something' must be taken by college students often in reverse. They are pumping from an empty well, which no instruction about the pump handle can make attractive.
This was the man who taught many generations of Colby students to write accurate, forceful, convincing prose. He moulded the style of such men as Wil- liam Penn Whitehouse and Leslie C. Cornish, both chief justices of the Maine Supreme Court. He taught great teachers like Nathaniel Butler, Jr., and Albion Woodbury Small, competent preachers like Edwin C. Whittemore and George Merriam, skillful writers like Holman Day and Walter Emerson. Many Colby men achieved an effective written style under the stern instruction of Samuel King Smith.
Dr. Smith died on August 24, 1904, and is buried in Waterville's beautiful Pine Grove Cemetery.
Of all the professors in Champlin's time, the one most popular with stu- dents was "Johnny" Foster. John B. Foster was born in Boston in 1822, but came to Waterville with his father and mother at the age of six. When the Waterville Academy was established in 1829, he was one of its first pupils. When he reached the age of fourteen he had no thought of further education, but decided to learn a trade. He became a skilled carpenter and was a competent "do-it-yourself" man all his life. Through the influence of interested leaders in the Waterville Baptist Church, the boy gradually became interested in what was going on at Waterville College, and in 1839, when he was still only sixteen, he decided to attempt college studies. But he was not quite ready. Two intensive terms at his old school, the Waterville Academy, were enough, however, to assure him admission into the College. A diligent and eager student, he soon came to regard the emphasis on Greek and Latin not as an impractical burden, but as the sure and rewarding road to a life of learning.
Graduating from the College in 1843, Foster followed a number of his prominent predecessors, including Elijah Lovejoy, as principal of China Academy. After subsequent teaching at Lexington, Massachusetts, he decided to prepare for the ministry, and entered Newton Theological Institution in 1847. By 1850 he held three degrees, A. B. and A. M. from Waterville College, and B. D. from Newton. Instead of taking a pastorate, he was called to the editorship of Zion's
186
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
Advocate in Portland, a position which Samuel K. Smith had just resigned in order to accept the professorship of Rhetoric at Waterville College.
It was James Champlin's elevation to the presidency of the College which opened the way for Foster to join the faculty of his alma mater. The Trustees invited the young editor to take the professorship of Latin and Greek vacated by Champlin, and Foster gladly accepted. When, in more affluent days, the pro- fessorship was divided, Foster became Professor of Greek and Professor Julian Taylor took charge of the Department of Latin. John B. Foster taught at the College for thirty-five years, endearing himself to hundreds of students.
It is somewhat amazing that throat trouble is said to have contributed to the decision of three faculty members to enter teaching careers. In his letter of resignation to the First Baptist Church in Portland, Champlin himself had given his throat affliction as a decisive factor in his decision to go to Waterville. Professor Samuel K. Smith had become convinced that his ailing throat would not permit him to continue a pulpit career. Of John B. Foster, Dr. George B. Ilisley said in 1893, "A throat trouble prevented his entrance upon the work of the ministry." There is something about this common affliction that smacks of more than coincidence. Perhaps if Colby's noted throat specialist, Dr. Fred- erick T. Hill, 1910, had been around at the time, he could have thrown light on the puzzling question, why three Colby professors of the same era should all have throat trouble, yet all live beyond the allotted three score years and ten.
Like Professor Hall, John B. Foster had absorbing interests in church and town. For many years he taught a large Bible class at the Waterville Baptist Church and held many offices in its organizations. For thirty years he was treasurer of the Maine Baptist Missionary Society, during which time he handled skillfully and prudently $400,000 of the Society's funds. He served not only on the Waterville school committee, but also for several years as supervisor of the public schools.
John B. Foster will also be remembered as the first of four generations of John Fosters to graduate from Colby. His son, John M. Foster, 1877, was a prominent Baptist missionary in Swatow, China, President of Vashon College in Burton, Washington, and President of Ashmore Theological Seminary. John H. Foster, 1913, grandson of John B., was born in Swatow, China. The paternal missionary influence and a desire to study medicine turned him to a career as a medical missionary in China, where he spent fruitful years following his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania and his interneship at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Returning to the United States, he settled in Waterbury, Connecticut, where he became one of its leading and best loved physicians. John B.'s great-grandson, John T. Foster, graduated from Colby in 1940, became a pilot in the Army Air Force in World War II, and had the thrilling experience of having his plane shot down near the village in China where he had spent his boyhood. Other members of the family who hold Colby degrees are Dr. Frank Foster, 1916, a professor at the University of Maine, Dr. Grace Foster, 1921, a prominent New York psychologist, and Anna Foster Murphy, 1944. The wife of John H. Foster, and his missionary companion in China, was Helen Thomas, 1914, daughter of Arthur M. Thomas, 1880, and Frank's wife was the daughter of the famous Colby educator, Randall Condon.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.