The history of Colby College, Part 7

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

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Although Chipman has made a strong case, it is a bit difficult to believe that the trustees intended a college like that at Brunswick. Certainly they did not originally intend to have a college displace their theological seminary. They did clearly plan for theological and literary departments to operate side by side, and quite naturally they wanted the right to confer degrees. We must admit that the reasons why the institution, within a few years, abandoned its theological department, are not at all clear. The most compelling reason may well have been the clear intent of Massachusetts Baptists to establish the seminary which soon became the Newton Theological Institution. If Waterville College could train men thoroughly in the classical studies, good literature, and an introduction to the fields of philosophy and religion, it could then send prepared graduates on to Newton for their theological training. And that is exactly what the College did for more than a century.

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

Of one thing we are certain: not all Baptists, in Maine or elsewhere, ac- cepted the change. Burrage says, "There were those among the Trustees who deprecated the change, and in many parts of the state, among the churches and ministers, there was not a little disappointment."7

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the college in 1870, President James T. Champlin expressed regret at the change. He said:

The Institution began as a literary and theological school. Those who established it were chiefly ministers of the gospel, mostly without any regular theological training, and who therefore looked upon it as a school in which future pastors were to be prepared. With them the literary department was preliminary to, but entirely subordinate to the theo- logical department. What must have been their disappointment when, in less than three years, all this was reversed and the literary department was exalted above the theological, which was depressed more and more, until within a few years it was entirely crowded out. I know not under whose counsels this was done, but it has always seemed to me a great mistake. There was great dissatisfaction in a large portion of the de- nomination throughout the State, which some years later culminated in the establishment of the ephemeral theological school at Thomaston. One consequence of this disaffection was a general falling off of interest in the Institution among its natural friends, and a certain coolness and indifference towards it, from which it has not fully recovered to the present day. Had the Institution retained its original and more popular form, till the affections of the denomination had crystallized around it, and the denomination had itself so grown up as to demand a college, I can but think that its history would have been different.8

The Trustees had by no means been insistent on naming the college for the town, although they had been insistent on getting a degree-granting college. At their annual meeting in August, 1820, they voted "to raise a committee to petition the Legislature of Maine to allow the Maine Literary and Theological Institution to take the name of the College at Waterville, with the liberty to add the name of such gentleman as shall make the most liberal donation." But no James Bowdoin opened his purse, and when the Legislature acted in 1821, the Trustees asked that the name be Waterville College.

Now that they had a college, the Trustees needed a president. At their meeting in August, 1821, they elected to that office Rev. Daniel Barnes of New York. The rumor that the office was first offered to and refused by Chaplin can- not be confirmed. If he were offered the post and, as Burrage insisted, he was the principal figure in changing the institution into a college, why did he refuse? It is one of those questions that must remain unanswered. Chaplin's many extant letters contain not a word about it.

Daniel Barnes refused the appointment, and in May, 1822, the Trustees elected Jeremiah Chaplin as president. Meanwhile the big brick building had been completed, not as originally hoped, in 1820, but in the following summer of 1821. It was indeed completed under trying circumstances. On July 19, 1821, Chaplin wrote to Lucius Bolles of the Board of Trustees:

We have lately met with a disaster, the consequence of which we cannot as yet fully ascertain. I think, however, there is reason to hope it will not be entirely or permanently disastrous to the seminary. Mr. Scott, who contracted to build our college, has absconded. I do not know

WATERVILLE COLLEGE

exactly how his accounts stand with our Prudential Committee, but I presume we are owing him. He has been induced to take this course, it is presumed, in consequence of dissatisfaction with his wife, who is said to be a bad woman. The probability is that he will not return while she lives. And, as our contract with him is, in effect, the same as void, we have to begin anew. The work is stopped and the masons will not lay another brick till a new contract is made. How long it will be ere the work is resumed I cannot tell.9

A month later the Trustees authorized Nathaniel Gilman, Timothy Boutelle and Otis Briggs to superintend the completion of the college building. They at once made arrangements with another builder and pushed the project through to completion before the fall term opened.

The opening of that first of the big brick buildings of Waterville College, the building known through the subsequent years as South College, was a momentous occasion. Albert W. Paine, a graduate of the Class of 1832 was in his 83rd year when, in 1895, he replied to a letter from Warren Foss, who was then be- ginning his senior year at Colby and had applied to Paine for information to be published in the Echo. Paine wrote:

The question of site having been settled, the axman was at once em- ployed to make room for the building by cutting down sufficient of the thick forest to accommodate the enterprise. Thus 'Old South' found its birth, and when it was ready for occupancy the event was celebrated by a grand illumination, every seven by nine square of glass in all the windows on the south and west sides having placed behind it a lighted tallow candle, thirty-two to each window.10

At first only eighteen rooms were fitted for student occupancy. Others were set aside for recitation rooms, a library and a chapel. The Trustees had already appointed E. T. Warren, Judge Weston and Timothy Boutelle a com- mittee "to examine such students as may be candidates for degrees and determine to whom diplomas shall be given," and they had also decided that "Commence- ment of Waterville College shall be held on the third Wednesday of August an- nually." But no one was ready to graduate in that August of 1821, and it was not until August in 1822 that two young men proudly received their diplomas. They comprised the entire first class to be graduated from the college, and both of them later won distinction.

George Dana Boardman was the son of one of the founders, Rev. Sylvanus Boardman of Yarmouth. Young Boardman became a member of Waterville's first Baptist church in his student days, decided to enter the ministry and go to join Adoniram Judson as a missionary in Burma. Jeremiah Chaplin himself preached the lad's ordination sermon in the church of the boy's father at Yarmouth. Board- man did go to Burma, where he had a brief but spectacular career among the wild Kareus of North Burma. He was stricken with jungle fever and died at the age of thirty, leaving a young bride who later became the wife of the great Judson.

Boardman's classmate was Ephraim Tripp, son of Elder John Tripp of Hebron, pastor of the Hebron Church and co-founder with Deacon William Bar- rows of Hebron Academy. Young Tripp was himself principal of that academy during the first year after his graduation from college. Then he went south, where he taught successively in North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, was influen- tial in founding a female seminary (one of the earliest in the South) at Winona,

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

Mississippi, where he also served many years as Clerk of Courts of Carroll County, and where he died at the age of 72.

That first commencement has been described by several eyewitnesses, notably by the President's son, John O'Brien Chaplin, whose article in the Christian Mirror is quoted in full in Whittemore's History of Colby College.11 As many a later commencement was to be, this first one was a public spectacle. People came in carriages, on horseback, and on foot from miles around. Some even arrived by canoe from up or down the river. Hucksters, selling gingerbread, cheese, cider and beer, set up their stands. From the college building on the edge of the town a dignified procession marched toward the center of the village. In the procession were the Governor of Maine, the marshal and his staff, the sheriff of Kennebec County, the trustees, the president and the other professors and tutors in their silk gowns, the two members of the graduating class, all the undergraduates, and certain distinguished citizens of Waterville, all preceded by the Waterville Artillery Company of the state militia and by a loud-playing brass band. Down the main street marched the procession, to the community meetinghouse on the village common. The dignitaries began, orderly enough, to file into the meetinghouse between lines of assembled citizens, but the scene soon changed to disorderly con- fusion. As John Chaplin told it, "When it seemed evident to the crowd that they were likely to be shut out by the ordinary people at the tail of the procession, whom they regarded as no better than themselves, they could not longer be restrained. They broke up the line of march and forced their way inside without the least re- gard to order. For a few moments all was mad confusion. This rude, but well- meant display of democratic freedom soon subsided, however, and the exercises began."

The order of exercises has been preserved for us to read more than a cen- tury later. Dr. Baldwin of Boston, the head of the Baptist Educational Society and the man who had first recommended Chaplin to the college trustees, opened the exercises with prayer. On behalf of the Trustees, Stephen Chapin addressed the president-elect, and handed to him the charter and keys of the college. Rev. Avery Briggs was then inducted into the office of Professor of the Learned Lan- guages.

John Chaplin tells us that, at this point, the crowd of on-lookers, who had assembled largely out of curiosity, just as they had when the first elephant was brought to town, showed that they were bored by the whole proceedings and made a mad rush for the door. After order had been restored, President Chaplin pro- ceeded to deliver his inaugural address. Back the procession then marched to the college, where was served the first of many Colby commencement dinners. Then back to the hall trooped the whole assemblage to listen to addresses by the two graduates Boardman and Tripp, and watch President Chaplin confer upon them the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

CHAPTER VII

The First Decade

T HE erection of a college building generated a new burst of activity. In the fall of 1821 twelve young men entered the freshman class, and prospects for the following autumn were even brighter. The Trustees therefore decided that a second building should be erected. On May 1, 1822, the Board voted to authorize the Prudential Committee to contract with Peter Getchell for the erec- tion of a brick building, and with Lemuel Dunbar to do the carpenter work. During the winter, urgent solicitation had brought in $3000, and the Trustees were confident the building could be paid for by the end of the summer. The site chosen was at the north end of the college lot, on a line with South College parallel to the road to Kendalls Mills (Fairfield Village), so that both buildings faced that highway. The new building was named North College. Besides stu- dent rooms, it contained a dining commons.

In the names of these two buildings lies the explanation for an expression used by older residents of Waterville well into the twentieth century. When this writer was a student in the college (1909-1913) he often heard residents ask a question like this: "What was going on up at the colleges last night?" Perhaps even more common was the remark, "I walked up by the colleges." Whenever a collegiate institution had more than one building it had become common, at first with Cambridge citizens in respect to Harvard, and later at other institutions, to refer to the physical plant by the plural form "colleges." Probably this cus- tom had arisen from the British manner of referring to the separate colleges (separate in organization as well as in physical plant) of their ancient universities. Whether for that or for some other reason, New Englanders came to regard each separate building at such an institution as a "college," and two or more of them were "colleges." When a building had the word "college" attached to its name, as "North College" or "South College," it must have been even more natural to speak of the plant in the plural form. A walk out into the country, where the two brick buildings of Jeremiah Chaplin's institution loomed big and impressive, was a stroll past the "colleges."

At the annual meeting in 1822, when the construction of South College was already well under way, the Trustees took several important actions. To avoid suspension of a continued appeal for money, they provided that President Chaplin should have leave of absence during such part of the ensuing year as he should think proper, for the purpose of soliciting donations. In anticipation of such absence, the Reverend Stephen Chapin, who was himself a member of the Board, was persuaded by his fellow trustees to accept the position of Professor of The- ology. Increased enrollment now justified the addition of a tutor, and one of

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

the two young men who had just received their diplomas in the first graduating class was selected. George Dana Boardman thus had the distinction of being, not only Colby's first foreign missionary, but also the first tutor elected to the faculty. Professor Chapin would get $600 a year, but young Boardman's salary as tutor was to be only $200. Chaplin, who had originally come as Professor of Divinity at $600 a year, was given a raise to $800 when he became president of the college.

About this time, Avery Briggs wrote to Ebenezer Nelson:

The silvery Kennebec hemmed in South College and North College. At night candles in the students' rooms shone out the windows, glimmering on the dense forest. During the day, the square buildings, their simplicity enhanced by red brick and striking white trim, stood like castles of learning, remote and aloof from the distractions of the village. Within South College were eighteen rooms and a chapel,1 a room used for the philosophical society, one for a library, and one for minerals and a cabinet of curiosities. In North College was a commons hall. As rapidly as the rooms were furnished, they were occupied by young men eager for learning.2

It is significant that Briggs said nothing about classrooms. Where were classes held? Since the number in any class was small and since there was no such thing as a laboratory, space in which two professors and one instructor could hear recitations did not have to be large. Probably some classes met in the homes of Professor Chapin and Professor Briggs, but we know that at least one room in South College was regularly used as a classroom even before the chapel in that building was turned over for recitations. As time went on, more and more space was taken for classes in South College, so that there was grave need of a classroom building long before Recitation Hall was erected in 1836.

The Maine Register for the year 1822 said of Waterville College:

Chartered, 1813. Powers enlarged, 1820. Name changed, 1821. Rev. Daniel Barnes, President, has been appointed and is expected to enter upon his duties as soon as funds adequate to his support can be pro- cured. Jeremiah Chaplin, Professor of Divinity; Avery Briggs, Pro- fessor of Languages. Besides these officers, three young men have been employed as assistant instructors. Commencement, third Wed- nesday in August. Vacations, two weeks from commencement, eight weeks from last Saturday in December, two weeks from second Wed- nesday in May.3

The Register's reference to the college calendar reveals a fact which the present generation finds strange. There was no significant observance of Christ- mas. How could the pious folk of that time pay so little attention to commemora- tion of the Savior's birth? Like the Maypole at Merrymount, Christmas had be- come associated with gaiety and frivolity abhorrent to the Puritan fathers of New England. Christmas feasts and Christmas parties were works of the Devil, not for a moment to be tolerated. Unless December 25 fell on the Sabbath, it was looked upon as any other working day. Although by 1820 the stern Puritan hand had relaxed its grip on New England social life, the custom of a holiday on De- cember 25th had not yet taken hold of the people. In fact, as late as 1872, the Massachusetts courts upheld an employer's right to discharge a workman for the

THE FIRST DECADE

latter's refusal to work on Christmas Day. So we should not be surprised to learn that, in 1822, the fall term of Waterville College extended right through Christmas Week and that classes were held on Christmas Day.

President Chaplin was anxious to enroll in the college, as candidates for degrees, the young men who were then studying in the theological department. Most of those men had meager classical background and, in Chaplin's opinion, greatly needed college training and the prestige of the college degree. Most of the theological students were supported by the Massachusetts Baptist Education So- ciety. With Rev. Nathaniel Williams, who had been pastor in Beverly, neighbor- ing town to Chaplin's Danvers, the Waterville president carried on a vigorous correspondence concerning those students, in whom Williams, as an officer of the Education Society, had a special interest.

Chaplin wrote first in 1823 about Caleb Clark, a young man who later finished the theological course in 1825, but did not enter the college. The anxious president wrote:

I feel a little anxious about Mr. Clark. It will be impossible for him to do more than qualify himself for the freshman class by the next Com- mencement. Of course it will be utterly in vain for him to try to obtain admission into the college as a sophomore. On receiving your letter, I advised him to give up the idea of going through college and to con- tent himself with the theological course. He acquiesced, but I find him so much disappointed and grieved that I thought I'll try to get him through the college course, and with this in view I beg leave, with all due submission to the pleasure of your executive committee, to ask whether they will not consent to his entering the freshman class at the next commencement, on condition that he will engage to support him- self the last year. In this way you will be at no greater expense than if he entered the sophomore class and was carried through. The only difference will be that one year more will elapse before he is prepared to enter the ministry.4

When the 1823 Commencement was held, it was not President Chaplin, but Professor Briggs who reported to Nathaniel Williams. He wrote:

The whole number of your beneficiaries last term was eighteen. Two of them, Henry Paine and Elijah Foster, have finished their collegiate course and have received their first degree. Paine has been elected preceptor of the Grammar School5 connected with the college, and Fos- ter has been chosen a tutor in the college itself." Haylord and Holton are members of the present senior class." Hovey, King, Macomber and Merrill are juniors8; Dodge, Freeman and Ropes are freshmen9; making the number in the several classes nine. In the Latin Grammar school, preparing for college, are Clark, Cummings, Maling and Willard. Go- ing, Kenney and Rowen are members of the theological department. Going and Kenney are young men of good natural talents and much promise. Of Rowen10 I cannot, with truth, say so much. Several of the students charge him with being frequently light and trifling in the presence of those who do not profess religion, telling funny stories, skuffling with them in playful mood, and acting in a manner below the character of one who would be a professed Christian minister. He is said also to be very irritable. He has also infringed upon the rule re- specting preaching, having preached eight Lord's Days out of town and once in town, although we have repeatedly told him we cannot give

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

him permission to preach more than four Lord's Days in this term. Two of the brethren, your beneficiaries, are charged with using very improper language and manifesting a bitter spirit toward each other on a certain occasion, and in the presence of several ungodly students. As one of them belonged to the Waterville Church, Dr. Chaplin and myself called up the delinquents and conversed with them on the painful subject. I have the satisfaction to say they frankly acknowledged their fault, appeared penitent and humble. As we were well satisfied with their confession and apparent penitence, I have thought it advisable not to give you their names. Dodge came here without money or books and very poorly clad. Would not the Society do well to grant him some immediate relief?11

It was to Williams that Chaplin, as the year of 1823 drew to a close, con- fided his anxiety for the future of the college:

I have been more than usually anxious of late respecting the college. The opposition evidently increases. Our enemies seem determined to destroy us if they can. During my stay in Portland last winter [during his leave granted by the trustees, to solicit funds] I had opportunity to notice the feelings of members of the legislature toward our college.12 I assure you there appeared a firm determination on the part of friends of Bowdoin College to resist all attempts on our part to obtain an equal share of the legislative patronage. I returned, I confess, with a heavy heart. In view of my contemplated tour through this state, I felt my- self but a worm of the dust, but realized in some measure that the Lord would enable me 'to thresh the mountains and beat them small and make the hills as chaff.' When I think on the stupidity of my heart and my little success as a minister, I am ready to conclude that I shall do but little good. But when I look on the all-sufficiency of God to bless my efforts in behalf of the college, I cannot but hope he will bless my intended tour.13

That was Jeremiah Chaplin, true to form. He was always excessively humble, greatly underestimating both his ability and his influence. What would he have thought if he had lived to hear Gardner Colby say that his life-saving gift to the college, as the Civil War drew to an end, was made because long ago Jeremiah Chaplin, emerging from a Portland home after being refused a subscription had been heard by a passerby to utter the despairing cry, "God help Waterville Col- lege!"?

Jeremiah Chaplin stood solidly by his conviction that a minister ought to be well educated. He once wrote to an unidentified correspondent:

I hope none of Ropes' friends will discourage him from getting an edu- cation. I am sensible that education alone will never make a minister of the gospel. A man must possess grace and natural gifts, and must be directed by the spirit of the Lord to the work of the ministry. But good education, added to those gifts, is of more importance than some are willing to allow. It is a great mistake to suppose that a minister can have too much knowledge. A knowledge of history will assist him greatly in explaining the prophecies. Besides, there are many things in the Scriptures which cannot be satisfactorily explained with- out an acquaintance with the languages in which the Scriptures were originally written, and with the manners and customs of eastern na-

THE FIRST DECADE

tions. Nor is that all. A good education will enable a preacher to ex- press himself more intelligibly and agreeably, and to arrange his thoughts much better than illiterate preachers can do. A good education gives a preacher a weight of character and influence in society which un- learned preachers seldom possess. Although unlearned preachers often do great good, our young men whom the Lord has called to the min- istry ought to obtain a learned education if they possibly can.14

In other correspondence Chaplin made it clear that the old two-year plan by which young men could be sent out into the ministry without any classical training at all still prevailed, though no doubt Chaplin hoped for the day when such a course could be abandoned. Since the college published no catalogue until 1824, it is to Chaplin's letters that we are indebted for our knowledge of that two-year course in detail. In an earlier chapter, its general scope has been given: a year of broadly cultural subjects, including geography and arithmetic, followed by a year of theology. In reply to a request from Nathaniel Williams in 1823, Chaplin told the Beverly minister precisely what the two-year course contained.

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The history of Colby College, Part 7

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