The history of Colby College, Part 74

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

USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 74

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).

The regulations as well as the mores of the Women's Division were so different from those of the men that during the 1920's the girls saw the need of a handbook of their own. In 1917 they had formed the Student League of the Women's Division, and it was that organization that produced the Women's Handbook. It acquainted new girls with the regulations governing women in the dormitories, the operation of the Panhellenic Council, and information about many aspects of college life. In 1935 the book surprisingly included the entire membership list of each Colby fraternity, probably because the girls considered it important information.

In 1932 the college administration decided to resume publication of the administrative rules, a practice that had continued throughout the nineteenth century but had been abandoned soon after the student handbooks began to in- clude some of the regulations. The new official publication, the Colby Gray Book, was issued annually after 1932. It contained detailed information about regis- tration, election of courses, attendance, examinations, marks, academic standing, eligibility, finances, residence rules, health service, and social functions.

Originally the Gray Book listed and described 32 student organizations. By 1959 the number had grown to 52. As time passed, the Gray Book included such additional matters as war credits, veterans' affairs, employment and place- ment, traffic regulations, special events, and a directory of office and residence tele- phone numbers.

Literary and Scholarly Magazines

Colby students have made repeated attempts to publish a strictly literary magazine, often with the active support of the Department of English. Invariably those publications have been short-lived for lack of general support. In the 1950's a group of talented students succeeded in issuing for several years a maga- zine called Drokur. Its contents were of high literary quality, though inclined to be excessively sophisticated. Student gossip had it that a test of superior in- telligence was the ability to understand a story or a poem in Drokur. When the magazine was gasping for breath in 1958, an earnest group attempted to revive it under the name Ikon.

Faculty interest in production of a scholarly journal, to contain contributions from both faculty and students, has likewise lagged. President Bixler, aided by a handful of faculty members, launched a publication called the Colby Scholar. In addition to the usual features of such a journal, the Scholar had the added merit of seeking articles that could be used in the classroom to supplement textbook

573

ORGANIZATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

and customary readings. For two years the magazine appeared regularly, then lapsed into only occasional appearance. The faculty as a whole failed to respond to the editorial board's appeal for articles, the promoters themselves became dis- couraged, and the Colby Scholar was no more.

Despite other failures, one scholarly publication at Colby has been success- ful, has enjoyed continuing publication, and has won national acclaim. That is the Colby Library Quarterly, described fully in our chapter on the Library. The Library Quarterly was in fact preceded by the Colby Mercury, published by the Department of English under the editorship of Professor Carl J. Weber. The Mercury was indeed the true forerunner of the Library Quarterly because its last issue in July, 1942, was immediately succeeded by the first issue of the Quarterly under the same editor.

Originally intended, as the editor stated, "to appear from time to time in the interests of students enrolled in English courses," the Mercury gradually fea- tured bibliographic items, usually under the heading "Recent Accessions to the Colby Library." By 1940, Professor Weber's patient collecting of rare books and manuscripts by and about Thomas Hardy, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and other writers was given recognition in the Mercury. One issue, for instance, announced that on November 28, the exact anniversary of Mrs. Hardy's birth, the Colby Library would place on exhibition twenty-four rare and important Hardy items. The issue of January, 1941, featured Colby's collection of Wordsworth; that of May, 1942, concluded a series on "Rebekah Owen's Hardy Collection"; and the final issue of July, 1942, was devoted largely to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Had the Colby Mercury continued to be a repository of student themes, as it began, it might have gone the forgotten way of other literary journals. The fortunate circumstance that its editor became a noted bibliographer and Colby's official Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts gave the Mercury and its suc- cessor, the Library Quarterly, a distinctive quality. In creating that kind of literary mousetrap, Carl Weber assured a beaten path to the door of the Edwin Arlington Robinson Treasure Room.

The Colby Alumnus

In the chapter on the alumni brief mention has been made of the Alumnus, and other chapters have included so many quotations from that magazine that the reader is well aware of its importance as a source of information about the Col- lege. The time has now come to recount the history of that publication.

Like Edward W. Hall, his successor Charles Chipman became deeply in- terested in Colby lore and in every effort to bind the alumni closer to the College. Conceiving the idea of an alumni journal, Chipman launched in November, 1911, a modest publication called the Colby Alumnus. Associated in the editorship with Chipman was a man who would make that magazine enduring and memorable -Professor Herbert C. Libby. An advisory board included President Roberts, Professors Taylor and Hedman. The purpose of the magazine was avowed in an editorial.

The Colby Alumnus is published for the express purpose of bringing the great body of Colby alumni into closer and more sympathetic touch with the College. No publication with this aim has ever been under- taken by Colby men, with the result that many graduates are today uninformed about their College. For accomplishment of its high pur-

574

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

pose, it is imperative that Colby should bind its graduate body by the strongest bonds. That, in largest scope, is the work of this magazine.

The first issue set high standards. It began with an article about Chief Justice William Penn Whitehouse, 1863; presented a discussion of "Recent Growth at Colby"; and gave capsule accounts of pertinent events. Space was given to thumbnail sketches of seven new faculty members, there was a description of the new dormitory for men, and the welkin rang with three challenging editorials. The issue closed with what became a permanent feature-notes about individual alumni, arranged by classes and contributed by class correspondents.

Nothing more clearly reveals the attitude toward Colby women half a cen- tury ago than do those early issues of the Alumnus. The girls were simply ig- nored. A reader not acquainted with Colby would never suspect that women were enrolled. The Alumnus was intended for alumni; let the alumnae shift for themselves. It was that attitude which prompted the publication of Colbiana; and it was the later, long overdue recognition of the women by Echo, Oracle and Alumnus that made Colbiana unnecessary.

In its second issue (January, 1912) the Alumnus began publication of his- torical articles which have made it for nearly half a century an invaluable re- pository of Colby lore. Professor Chipman, long interested in obscure details about the origin of the College, published in successive issues his highly impor- tant monograph, The Formative Period in Colby's History.

When Chipman left the College temporarily, for service connected with World War I, he turned the magazine over to his associate, Professor Libby, who in 1917 began a brilliant editorship that continued until 1934. With its issue of October, 1917, the Alumnus assumed a "new look." Its editorials-a whole battery of them -- now came first, and those editorials did not dodge controversial subjects. Not everyone agreed with them, but everyone read them, and every reader came away with the feeling that no problem worth solving is forbidden de- bate, and that Colby still believed in democratic decisions.

At once the new editor opened the pages to every obtainable item about Colby men in the war. Probably no other college journal in the country con- tained such a complete account of the effects of World War I on a college and the participation of its students, faculty, and alumni in the conflict.

Just as the editor himself "pulled no punches," so did he welcome many contributions from alumni. An annual feature that many of the editor's colleagues awaited with "fear and trembling" was Eighty-Odd's review of commencement. But it was not alone the open discussion of controversial topics that made the Alumnus under Libby a distinguished publication. Even more significant were the completeness and the accuracy of the many informative articles.

When the editorship came to the Director of Public Relations, Joseph Co- burn Smith, it found a writer of great clarity and power, and a genius at ferreting out articles of amazing interest. Also an expert photographer, Joe made the Alumnus famous for unusual illustrations. Under subsequent editorship of the new Director of Public Relations, Richard Dyer, the Alumnus has several times been awarded national distinction. Still receptive to alumni opinion, it has be- come more than the voice of the graduates. To all who read it-and their num- ber is legion-it is now the voice of the College, of the whole "Colby family."

CHAPTER LI

Religion At Colby

H ow did a church-founded college suddenly become divorced from its denominational connections? The answer is that divorce is the wrong word and there has been nothing sudden about it. By the American Baptist Convention, Colby is still listed as a Baptist-related college, although the once closely-tied apron strings began to loosen a long time ago.

Part of the change was inherent in Baptist policy regarding the denomina- tion's schools and colleges. Like the Congregationalists and other sects that stood for the autonomy of the local congregation, the Baptists never sought to dominate their schools. Each school had its independent board of trustees, to whom the charter was issued, and seldom did such a charter call for representation from a Baptist association, and among Baptists the association was the natural body for broad action, although no association exercised any control over a particular church.

The early chapters of this history have made it clear that, while the pre- dominant purpose of the founders of Colby College was to provide an educated Baptist ministry, other persons than Baptists were enrolled in the theological as well as the literary courses from the opening of the institution. Colby men and women have always been proud that the college charter set no sectarian barriers to admission or instruction.

Another factor played an important part in the denomination's hold on Bap- tist schools. Throughout the first hundred years of Colby history, many Maine Baptists were lukewarm toward the College at Waterville. As was true of every other Baptist college, it could not depend upon unified support from the de- nomination. At first many Baptists were opposed to an educated clergy; it made the ministers worldly. Look at what had happened to the ministers from Harvard! Worse still, look at what had happened to Harvard, controlled not by the righteous orthodox of colonial Boston, but by the pagan Unitarians.

As time went on the Calvinist wing of the Baptist denomination regarded the colleges as more and more suspect. They were not teaching the ancient divi- sion of the saved and the damned; they were employing teachers not of evangelical faith; they did not preach Baptist doctrine from the chapel pulpit; they allowed students to indulge in sports and games.

So we find that, long before the days when anxious Baptists were asking whether the proposed new president, Arthur Roberts, would stand firmly against card-playing and dancing, Colby presidents were complaining bitterly about lack of denominational support for the struggling institution. At the time of the fiftieth anniversary in 1870, President Champlin stated that abandonment of the

576

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

theological school had been a mistake, because by that action many of the Bap- tist constituency were alienated. Even kindly President Pepper found it difficult to stir enthusiasm for the College at church gatherings; President Small found the Maine Baptists, especially in the rural areas, cold toward the College; and de- vout President White was disheartened because so many Maine Baptist families were not sending their sons to Colby. In 1892 Leslie Cornish received a letter from his fellow trustee, Josiah Drummond, in Portland: "In the Free Street Church there is an awful storm. Judge Bonney and Dr. Burrage are trying to quell the bitter attacks on the College. The bears were turned loose on Mrs. W-, who was ready to make us a substantial gift. Today Judge Bonney has put her in a more hopeful attitude, but it may not last. The enemies of the College are powerful in that church."

In 1917, Dr. Padelford reminded Baptists all over the country that they were sadly neglecting the schools and colleges which their forefathers had sacrificially founded. He reported that the great universities enrolled very few Baptists, in comparison to large numbers of other denominations. In the same year, Dr. E. C. Whittemore stated that Maine Baptists were providing far less than half the student body in any of their Maine institutions. "Even young men who have heard the call to the ministry," he said, "are not matriculating in our col- leges." Again in 1919 Dr. Whittemore requested Baptist ministers throughout Maine to send him a list of young people who, with encouragement, might attend a Baptist academy or college in the State. He sadly commented, "Only a few ministers saw fit to reply at all." As the Baptist historian Walter Cook aptly ex- pressed it, "With Baptist pastors and parents alike indifferent to their educational inheritance, it is little wonder that Maine schools are no longer theirs. Although these institutions are sometimes found listed in brochures on education as Baptist possessions, only the naive observer can find more than a tenuous, virtually in- visible thread leading from them to our churches."1

The policy of loose denominational control combined with continued theo- logical suspicion of its schools made it inevitable, as changes occurred in American education, that the stronger and more highly respected in academic circles a Bap- tist college became the farther it was removed from denominational ties. One by one they broke away-the University of Chicago, Colgate, and even the oldest of all, Brown. Today neither Colby nor Bates has official affiliation with the American Baptist Convention, and both colleges were long ago repudiated by the Maine Baptist Convention. Yet Colby still has a modest relationship with the Baptists. Neither the College nor the Convention has ever completely broken the tie. Colby did not participate in any way in the 1958-1960 National Baptist campaign to raise money for the church's related educational institutions, and for more than a quarter of a century the College has made no appeal to the Maine Baptist churches for financial support. But, proud of its Baptist heritage and knowing well that such a religious foundation is priceless, the Colby Trustees have persistently refused to sever completely the Baptist relationship, although both the College and the American Baptist Convention recognize clearly that the latter exercises no control whatever over the College. In 1960 the Colby catalogue still published the description: "Independent college of liberal arts for men and women; nonsectarian, founded under Baptist auspices."

Colby owes much to its Baptist relationship. A long line of Baptist teachers and administrators presented to generations of students strong religious principles, by no means narrowed to Baptist tenets. Colby was regarded as a Christian col- lege, not because of what it taught, but because of what its students caught from

577

RELIGION AT COLBY

the significantly spiritual lives of men like Johnny Foster, Samuel K. Smith, and Charles Hamlin; and in a later, more sophisticated day from men like Charles Chipman, Clarence Johnson, and Herbert Newman.

Not so well-known is Colby's material debt to the Baptists. During its first forty years, apart from a few men like Timothy Boutelle and William King, almost every substantial contributor to college funds was a Baptist. After the formation of the Education Society of the Northern Baptist Convention, and especially after a Colby alumnus, Frank Padelford, became its executive secretary, the national body of northern Baptists contributed frequently, sometimes in very large amounts, to the college treasury. Nor were the Colby Trustees reluctant to ask the Con- vention for funds. When the great financial campaign called the New World Movement was launched by the Northern Baptists in 1920, the Colby Board asked for $900,000. Since the great campaign proved surprisingly successful, Colby received a substantial amount of money. Again, when the campaign for Mayflower Hill had only begun, Dr. Padelford announced in 1932 that, in the recent past and since the completion of payment of its New World Movement pledge, the Northern Baptist Convention had paid into the Colby treasury more than $148,000; that the current year was seeing a final payment of $15,000 to- ward the Alumnae Building; and that the Convention had just made a new pledge of $100,000 to the Development Fund. Nor did Baptist contributions cease when the College moved to Mayflower Hill. Baptist funds made possible the employ- ment of a chaplain for Lorimer Chapel, and the money was paid although the chaplain chosen was not a Baptist.

One of the worst dilemmas ever confronted by a Baptist president of Colby faced President White in 1902. He wanted Colby to be considered a Baptist college, but he also wanted it to qualify for financial assistance from the General Education Board. His statement to the board was truthful, but at the time did not convince those hard-headed business men in New York. White could clearly show that no Baptist organization exercised any control over the College. He called attention to the charter of 1820, by which the Board of Trustees was pro- hibited from being denominational. He pointed out that the trustee chairman since 1890 had been a Unitarian, as was also the secretary of the Board; and that the Treasurer was an Episcopalian. "The College has received great help from the Baptists of Maine," he wrote, "but they do not select the Trustees nor assume to influence the Institution." But White could not deny, nor did he have any wish to deny, that Colby was considered a denominational, and not a truly independent college. White tried to persuade the General Education Board of the facts, but they were more interested in the name. Furthermore no one could get around the fact that the provisions of the Gardner Colby gift declared that a majority of the faculty should be Baptists. Yet the Colby family still held membership on the Board of Trustees that had long since abandoned any de- nominational test for faculty membership. So President White's attempt to show that at least this one Baptist college was not a Baptist college fell on deaf ears.

The assumption that non-Baptist predominance on the Colby faculty is of recent occurrence is far from the truth. To be sure, when Gardner Colby be- came a trustee in 1865, all five members of the faculty, including President Champlin, were Baptists. When Mr. Colby died in 1879, all seven teachers be- longed to the Baptist church. Even as late as 1889, when Mr. Colby's son was serving on the Board in place of his father, ten of the twelve faculty members were Baptists. By 1896, at the death of the third representative of the Colby family on the Board, non-Baptists had increased to seven of a total of seventeen.

578

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

In 1906, when an ardent Baptist clergyman was head of the College, the eighteen faculty members included eight Baptists, four Congregationalists, three Metho- dists, one Presbyterian, one Lutheran, and one Unitarian.

In 1909, the year when this historian entered the College as a freshman, the faculty numbered twenty-two, with eight Congregationalists, seven Baptists, three Methodists, two Unitarians, one Lutheran, and one Disciple of Christ. By 1913, when this historian graduated, the Baptists had shrunk to six, while the Con- gregationalists had increased to eleven, and for the first time the faculty included a Roman Catholic. At the end of President Roberts' administration in 1927, Con- gregationalists still predominated, while the Roman Catholic had been joined by a Greek Orthodox and a Christian Scientist.

Anyone who supposes that Baptist influence suddenly ceased with the Colby administration that began instruction on Mayflower Hill is grossly misinformed. Not since the turn of the century had anyone paid the slightest attention to the supposedly sacred provision that a majority of the faculty should be Baptists, and during the first eighteen years of that century, as during the thirty-five years that preceded 1900, there sat on the Board of Trustees that elected faculty members a representative of the family that had originally made the provision.

It has already been intimated that Colby College has enjoyed more friendly relations with the national body now known as the American Baptist Convention than it has kept with the Baptists of Maine. The explanation is that the United Baptist Convention of Maine has long been more conservative than has the na- tional convention. Theological fundamentalism exercised a strong hold on Maine Baptists; so strong, in fact, that a number of the Maine churches withdrew alto- gether from the American Baptist Convention, and within the United Baptist Con- vention of Maine the liberal wing of the denomination came to have little voice. Colby College was avowedly liberal. Among its numerous Baptist communicants on the faculty in 1923, when this historian became a member of the staff, not one could be designated a fundamentalist. One of those most loyal Baptists was an evolutionist; another supplied the Universalist pulpit; a third led the movement that admitted unimmersed persons into transfer membership in the Waterville Baptist Church. Long before the break finally came, Colby College was much too liberal to satisfy the predominant view of Baptists in Maine.

When formal separation came, it was the Maine Convention, not the Col- lege, that took action. On February 23, 1933, the Commission on Education of the United Baptist Convention of Maine cut the already tenuous apron strings. For some time complaints about "modernism" at Colby and Bates had been in- creasing. Both colleges were accused of teaching Bible courses based on the "higher criticism." In Baptist pulpits from Kittery to Caribou the modernism and secularism of the colleges were being denounced. One Baptist pastor in a rural community told a mother he would rather see her son dead than enrolled at either Colby or Bates. Baptist clergymen and leading laymen felt they were fully justified in voting "no confidence" in such hotbeds of liberalism. Ten years earlier, when two Colby faculty members, both Baptists, had been giving instruc- tion in a local Institute of Religion, one Baptist pastor had refused to conduct a devotional service at that institute saying, "I'm not going down there and pray for those two infidels." Accepting the recommendation of its commission, the United Baptist Convention of Maine severed relations with both Colby and Bates. Since 1923, Colby in its home state has not been considered in any respect a Baptist college. Walter Cook summed it up thus: "In 1935 the Commission on Education was erased from the constitution of the United Baptist Convention of

579

RELIGION AT COLBY

Maine. The gravity of this act was reflected in many laments of people who remembered days when the colleges were in closest association with the Conven- tion. But such happy affiliation belonged to an era long passed."2

Not the least of Colby's Baptist connections was its long association with the First Baptist Church of Waterville. In the home which President Chaplin had established in the Wood house, on the present site of the Elmwood Hotel, on August 27, 1818, the local church had been organized. The first President of the College became the first pastor of that church. For nearly a hundred years every important public function of the College, including the commence- ment exercises, was held in the Baptist meetinghouse erected in 1826. The first Colby graduation to be held elsewhere was transferred to the City Opera House in 1920, and then only because the Centennial drew a crowd that could not be accommodated at the church. As enrollment continued to increase during the 1920's, it became necessary to hold both the baccalaureate sermon and the gradua- tion exercises at the Opera House, but other functions, especially public lec- tures, were usually held in the church until the opening of the Alumnae Building in 1929.

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.

The history of Colby College, Part 74

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