The history of Colby College, Part 75

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

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For 75 years every person who held a professorship on the Colby faculty was a member of Waterville's First Baptist Church. Most of them joined that church by letter from some other Baptist congregation, but a few had been born in Waterville and the church on Elm Street had always been their religious home. Not until 1894 was a non-Baptist named to a Colby professorship. After Chap- lin's time two pastors of the church became Colby presidents: David N. Sheldon in 1843 and George D. B. Pepper in 1882. The famous author of "America," Samuel Francis Smith, was at the same time pastor of the church and Professor of Modern Languages at the College. Among the pastors who were influential Colby Trustees were Milton Wood, Henry S. Burrage, and Edwin C. Whittemore. It was a Colby student, George Dana Boardman, who became the first missionary of both the College and the Waterville Church. It was another student, Jona- than Forbush, who in 1834 had started the mission to the French Canadian im- migrants that later became the Second Baptist Church of Waterville.

It is mistakenly assumed that, in its early years, the College graduated only men destined for Baptist pulpits. In the first fourteen classes, from 1822 to 1835, one hundred and thirteen men received diplomas, and it is true that the large num- ber of forty-six entered the ministry, but that was less than half of the total num- ber. Surprisingly, in those first fourteen classes, the ministers barely outnumbered the lawyers, for thirty-eight of those 113 men were admitted to the bar. Only seventeen adopted teaching as a career, but ten of those taught at college level, some of them at famous American universities. Nine became physicians. In fact, all except ten of the entire 113 men entered one or another of the learned professions. Of those ten, two were publishers, one a commission merchant, one a banker, one a career naval officer, two farmers, and two plantation owners in the deep South.

Benjamin F. Butler's class of 1838 was one of the largest Colby classes be- fore the Civil War, graduating fifteen men and numbering twenty-four non- graduates. In that class the lawyers equalled the pastors, five each; three others were teachers, one became a publisher and the remaining man was a ship's purser.

During the first twenty years of Colby history not all of the graduates who chose the ministry as a profession were Baptists. Colby's most honored graduate, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, 1826, was a Presbyterian; two men entered Congregationalist pulpits, and two became Episcopal rectors. Long before its twenty-fifth anniver-

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sary, in 1845, Waterville College had proved that, while close to its Baptist in- heritance, it was by no means a training ground solely for Baptist ministers.

One of Colby's great classes was the Civil War class of 1862. It included the illustrious librarian, Edward W. Hall; the generous benefactor, Colonel Richard C. Shannon; the renowned missionary to Burma, Alonzo Bunker; Ozias Whitman of the U. S. Weather Bureau; and Zemno Smith, editor of the St. Louis Globe- Democrat. That is surely variety as well as distinction for one Colby class a century ago. In fact, among the 26 men in that class only six became ministers, and two of them were not Baptists.

Although clergymen did not predominate among even the early graduates, the College has had reason to be proud of her many distinguished sons who chose to enter the ministry. Nor did their numbers cease with the early years. Almost every class from 1822 to 1960 has seen at least one man enter the most sacred of professions. They have included such prominent divines as Everett Carlton Herrick, 1898, President of the Andover-Newton Theological School; Frank W. Padelford, 1894, Executive Secretary of the Board of Education of the Northern Baptist Convention; Edwin C. Whittemore, 1879, Secretary of the Maine Baptist Convention and Colby's first historian; Woodman Bradbury, 1887, William Dono- van, 1892, and John W. Brush, 1920, all professors at Andover-Newton; Isaac Higginbotham, 1911, Secretary of the Massachusetts Baptist Convention; and Shailer Mathews, 1884, Dean of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

It was in the field of missionary enterprise, however, that Colby made its most celebrated contribution to the Christian faith. George Dana Boardman, valedictorian of the first graduating class in 1822, was only the first of a long line of Colby missionaries. Interest in Baptist missions had been stirred during the early years of the century, and Adoniram Judson had gathered in Burma a staunch band of New England men and women. When one of them, James Colman, died of tropical fever in 1823, George Dana Boardman, then a tutor at Waterville College, said, "I will go in Colman's place." Ordained in his father's church at North Yarmouth, with President Chaplin preaching the sermon, Boardman married a Salem girl and departed for Burma. There for six years he worked among the Karens, a wild tribe in the Burmese hills. Afflicted with tuberculosis, he died in 1831, only thirty years old. His widow later became the second wife of Adoniram Judson.

In 1928 there was celebrated in Tavoy, Burma, the one hundredth anni- versary of the baptism of the first Karen Christian convert by George Dana Boardman. In the hundred years Karen communicants had increased to more than seventy thousand. A monument of polished red granite was dedicated to Boardman's memory. On one side was the inscription, "Sacred to the memory of George Dana Boardman, American missionary to Burma, born February 8, 1801, died February 11, 1831. His epitaph is written in the adjoining forests." On the monument's opposite side is inscribed, "Ask in the Christian villages of yonder mountains who taught you to abandon the worship of demons? Who raised you from vice to morality? Who brought your Bibles, your Sabbaths, and your words of prayer? Let the reply be his eulogy."

Before Boardman had graduated from Waterville College he had led in the founding of a student missionary society. One of his fellow members was Calvin Holton, 1824, who became Colby's first missionary to Africa. Like Boardman, he succumbed early to the rigors of tropical climate, dying in Monrovia at the age of 29.

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The Burmese mission attracted many Colby graduates. Classes represented extended from 1822 to 1926. Best known of those missionaries was John Cum- mings, 1884, who spent many years in Rangoon and was several times honored by the British government. Vernelle Dyer, 1915, and his wife, Odette Pollard Dyer, 1916, gave faithful and fruitful service in Burma, as did also Gordon and Helen Baldwin Gates, both of the Class of 1919. Teaching biology at the Uni- versity of Rangoon, Gordon Gates became a world authority on earthworms. Altogether eighteen Colby men and women were missionaries to Burma.

The second largest group of Colby missionaries, numbering fifteen, went to China. There, in fact, went the larger number of Colby men and women who entered the mission field in this century. Ten of the fifteen who went to China graduated later than 1905, and eight of them in the six classes from 1913 to 1918. Only in China did two generations of the same Colby family serve in the mis- sionary enterprise. John M. Foster, 1877, went to Swatow ten years after his graduation. His son, John H. Foster, 1913, with his wife, Helen Thomas Foster, 1914, took up work as a medical missionary at Nanking in 1919; and his brother, Frank C. Foster, 1916, went to Swatow immediately after his Colby graduation.

Japan attracted Colby missionaries in 1889, when John L. Dearing, 1884, went to that land. For fifteen years he served as President of the Baptist Theo- logical Seminary at Yokohama. Dearing was followed by the only native Christian who, after attendance at Colby, returned as a missionary to the land of his birth. Yagoro Chiba, born in Japan in 1871, entered Colby in 1893, when Beniah Whitman was President. Whitman, who had planned to go to Japan as a mis- sionary, had to abandon that plan because of his wife's health. He decided to give some Japanese Christian an education in America. John Dearing recom- mended young Chiba, who took up his American studies at Waterville.

Yagoro Chiba had a distinguished career after receiving his degree in di- vinity from Rochester Theological Seminary in 1898. Starting with a Baptist pastorate in Tokyo, he rose rapidly to prominence as head of various seminaries, including the presidency of the famous Kanto Gakuin and chairmanship of the Na- tional Christian Council of Japan. In 1910 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Mississippi.

In 1933, Dr. Chiba, in answer to an inquiry from his fellow Colby missionary, Marlin Farnum, wrote about his years in Waterville.

It was forty years ago that I went to Colby. As I had finished my col- legiate course at Aoyama Gakuin, I was able to take Colby studies with the juniors and seniors. With them I studied ethics, psychology, Eng- lish Literature, Hebrew, history and political economy. I had the privilege of living in the home of Dr. Pepper, former president of Colby and at that time Professor of Hebrew and Christian Evidence. Two of my most delightful years in America were spent in Waterville. The people were very kind to me. I was the first Japanese many of them had ever seen, yet soon I did not feel that I was in a foreign country.3

Marlin Farnum and his wife, Melva Mann Farnum, both of the Class of 1923, were worthy followers of John Dearing and Yagoro Chiba in Japan. Their work was carried on during the years of international tension that preceded World War II, when they labored valiantly to promote Christianity in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Other Colby missionaries went to India and Siam, to Syria and Greece, and to the West Indies. Nor were the older Christian countries of Europe neglected.

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A member of the Class of 1829 went to France, while half a century later a graduate of 1882 went to a Protestant mission in Spain. In the 105 years from Boardman in 1822 to Virginia Baldwin Kinney and Doris Gates in 1926, a total of 57 Colby men and women entered the field of foreign missions. To these were added sixteen who worked in the home mission areas. Of the latter the most distinguished was Charles F. Meserve, 1877, who, after long service as head of an Indian school in Kansas, ended his career as President of Shaw University, a Negro college at Raleigh, N. C. Noteworthy is the fact that two of Colby's home missionaries were not Baptists. Hannah Powell, 1896, a Universalist, is fondly remembered in the Carolina mountains, and Delber Clark, 1911, an Episcopalian, became a tireless worker among the impoverished derelicts of a great American city. The entire list of Colby's 73 foreign and home missionaries will be found in Appendix S.

It was the Philippines that saw the two Colby missionaries who, next to Boardman, will probably be longest remembered, for like the Christian martyrs of old they were executed for their faith. Francis Rose had graduated from Colby in 1909, and his wife, Gertrude Coombs, in 1911. In 1912 they went as mis- sionaries to the Philippines, assigned to the Jaro Industrial School at Iloilo. In subsequent years their efforts were largely responsible for the school becoming first a junior college, then a four-year institution awarding degrees, when its name was changed to Central Philippine College. Francis taught religion, zoology, ethics, and English, while Gertrude taught French, German, mathematics, and served as treasurer of the mission. Francis was a skilled carpenter, a musician and composer, and a competent accountant. In 1936, on furlough in the States, they attended the 25th reunion of Gertrude's Colby class. Francis delivered the Boardman sermon and received from his alma mater the D.D. degree.

When the Japanese overran the Philippines early in World War II, some of the missionaries surrendered and were interned, but the Roses chose to flee to the hills with the native Christians. There they lived from April, 1942, to December, 1943. They prepared a mountain retreat, called Hopevale, reached only by a winding, narrow trail. There they built a little chapel called the "Cathedral in the Glen".

A week before Christmas in 1943 the little band was betrayed by some Fili- pino renegade, and Japanese soldiers swooped down upon them. All attempted to flee, but when the women and children were captured, the men all surrendered. The captors told Francis and Gertrude Rose that, since they had helped the Filipinos escape and had not surrendered when the Japanese first took over, they as well as the captured Filipino leaders had forfeited their lives. So there, in the Philippine mountains, still true to their Christian faith, Francis and Gertrude Coombs Rose fell under the executioner's sword. Among the finest of their me- morials, of which Baptists have erected several in this country, is the Rose Me- morial Chapel, a wing of the Lorimer building at Colby. In that tastefully de- signed room for small services and intimate communion has been placed the Colby Missionary Tablet, listing the names of Colby's many missionaries through- out the years. --

There was no time during the nineteenth century when religious organiza- tions were not active among Colby students. There were societies for prospective ministers, for missionaries, and for laymen. Groups were repeatedly formed to send delegations into the rural areas of Central Maine, and the old campus saw many a religious revival under some visiting evangelist or by concerted action of the evangelical clergy of Waterville.

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For nearly twenty years before the turn of the century the student religious interests had come to be centered in the YMCA and YWCA. In 1877, when associations had been established in about twenty-five colleges, there was formed the International YMCA. By 1900 it included 450 local associations, one of which had been established at Colby in 1882. It was soon followed by a local association of the Intercollegiate YWCA. Each association conducted a weekly meeting and pursued a regular course of Bible study. To show that the two associations did not completely ignore each other, the 1900 Handbook said, "Oc- casionally during the year the YMCA meets with the YWCA in a union meeting."

The Colby Y's became diligent in their attendance at religious conferences. Colby men led in the formation of the Maine Intercollegiate YMCA Conference, the presidents of the Colby association were prominent in the conference of New England "Y" presidents, and the national conference at Northfield annually attracted many Colby attendants.

Activities of the religious organizations at Colby in the early years of this century were described in reminiscence by Leon Staples, 1903.

We were a heterogeneous group, rather puritanical in our conception of religion, and I for one was a militant crusader. We never had the cooperation of fifty percent of the men students, and at times we en- countered active opposition. We were quite confident of our own right- eousness and actually sought a few crosses to carry. We were earnest and sincere, but intolerant and inconsiderate. Some of us discovered that long ago it had been the practice in the 'Bricks' to close the day with prayer and reading of scripture. My roommate and I revived the practice. It worked, and soon many of the fellows who did not be- long to the 'Y' were meeting with us. In our junior year this resulted in such a revival of religion that about twenty students joined local churches. The experience led my roommate into the ministry. As for me, after my Colby experience I could not live for myself alone. To be sure, my faith has been broadened, and I hope I am now more tolerant of other men; but my conception of eternal values was permanently shaped during those college years.4

Early in the century Colby students were stirred by the Student Volunteer Movement. All the Maine colleges sent delegations to the huge SVM conference at Toronto in 1902, but Colby topped the list with twenty-two delegates. The entire Maine group traveled together in a day coach, sitting up all night in order to live within a very limited budget.

After World War I President Roberts became concerned because religious life on the campus was not showing its former vigor. He recommended that there be added to the staff a full-time director of religious activities, with faculty rank, to teach courses in religion as well as direct the student organizations. The Trustees approved the new appointment, and as the first incumbent Roberts chose Herbert L. Newman of the Class of 1918. Thus began a career of sacrificial service for the beloved "Pop" Newman that ended only with his death in 1950. After serving as an officer of Field Artillery in the war, Newman had been pastor of the Baptist Church at Hebron, then briefly of a church in Worcester, before coming to Colby as Director of Religion in 1922. Newman was more than a conscientious student pastor; he continued to be a devoted Christian scholar. Receiving his B.D. degree from Andover-Newton in 1922, he earned the M.S.T.

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degree in 1927, and in 1939 was awarded his Ph.D. at Boston University. When Newman died in 1950, President Bixler said of him:

His death means for Colby College an irreparable loss. Dr. Newman was a thorough Christian. He always turned the other cheek; he al- ways walked the second mile. In his great patience and generosity he was tolerant almost to a fault and never allowed his own ideas to make him blind to what was true in the convictions of others. At the same time, where principle was concerned, he was adamant. He knew what he believed and why. His religious faith was backed up with sound philosophical insight. As a teacher and religious leader he had the respect and affection of many generations of Colby students, and as a friend he had a unique place in hundreds of hearts.5

In his patient, unobtrusive way, Herbert Newman strengthened the Christian associations, widened their area of service, and eventually consolidated them into a single organization. During the 1930's religious groups in New England col- leges cooperated in what was called the Student Christian Movement. Herbert Newman wholeheartedly endorsed this plan to unite and consolidate various and sometimes conflicting organizations. By 1937 he had established a unit of SCM at Colby, in which were five cooperating groups: YMCA, YWCA, Forum, Board- man Society, and Freshman Cabinet. Forum was a Sunday evening meeting sponsored by SCM, featuring speakers on subjects of interest to the whole col- lege community-such subjects as marriage, Marxist philosophy and Christianity, the church and world peace, Christianity and democracy, the Christian attitude toward war.

SCM started the first of what are now called the annual religious embassies. It was originally styled the Fraternity Religious Embassy. In the spring of 1938 it brought to the campus nine religious leaders to live as guests for several days in Colby's nine fraternity houses. Other activities of SCM was the compilation of an annual directory of student religious preference, a Christmas party for underprivileged children, an Easter sunrise service at the Central Maine Sana- torium, and the singing of Christmas carols to shut-ins. In 1937-38 SCM sent speaking and musical delegations to twenty-five Maine churches, gave a religious drama "The Color Line," and for the Christmas vesper service produced a four- teenth century mystery play of the nativity. Other projects included folk danc- ing, summer programs, Lenten calendar, mid-year teas, and Forum suppers. Though having "Christian" as the middle word in its title, it was SCM that made the first concerted action at Colby to harmonize relations of Protestants, Cath- olics, and Jews in the student body.

In an article in the Alumnus entitled "The Mysterious SCM" Newman pre- dicted in 1938 a merger just around the corner.

Increasingly at Colby men and women have been doing common tasks together. This spring discussion of a merger of all our religious groups into one has been a live topic. Do not be surprised if this union takes place within a year. As the result of a vote this spring, the twelve committees of YMCA and YWCA will next year be joint, with men and women on each. We seek also closer fellowship between the various religious groups, which now include Mohammedan as well as Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant. In such fellowship the Colby spirit is strengthened, as is also the cause of universal brother- hood.6

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When the merger took place in the fall of 1939 the officers of the new joint Student Christian Association were President Harley Bubar, Vice-President Nan- nabelle Gray, Secretary Geraldine Stefko, and Treasurer Gordon Jones, all of the Class of 1940. Herbert Newman's patient, persistent efforts had resulted in the religious organizations at Colby taking the lead in making the College truly coeducational.

Alumni returning to Colby in the 1930's after years of absence, were sur- prised and sometimes shocked at the changes they observed in student manifes- tations of interest in or apathy toward religion. President Johnson tried to con- vince skeptics that all such changes were not for the worse when he reported to the Trustees in 1932.

It is doubtful if the members of your Board are aware of the changes that have taken place in the religious life of the College. The required chapel service with which we of the older generation were familiar has been given up in many colleges and is relatively ineffective where it remains. To President Roberts the daily chapel gave opportunity for exercising a powerful influence upon the lives of individuals in the en- tire college community. Toward the end of his life, however, and to his keen regret, the attendance steadily diminished. When I came to the presidency, I found that three weekly chapel services each for men and for women, held separately, had lost most of their religious signifi- cance and were very slimly attended. Consideration by the President and the Student Council resulted in the requirement of attendance at assemblies, not religious exercises, on alternate days for men and women, with the programs prepared by a joint committee of students and fac- ulty. At these assemblies worship has had a diminishing part and has almost disappeared. We have therefore instituted a voluntary service of worship on each Wednesday morning, with a robed choir of forty voices. Attendance at this service has been well sustained. A group of four invited visitors, including the Chaplain at Yale, recently spent three days holding conferences with our students. One of the visitors said that he found more evidence of interest in vital religion at Colby than at any other New England college. I am convinced that there is more genuine religion among our students than was present in my own college days, though the forms of its expression are certainly dif- ferent.

President Johnson later made it clear that the varied nature of Colby stu- dents and the widening area from which they came could not but make more complex the demands upon religious organization at the College. In one of his last reports to the Trustees (November, 1941) Johnson pointed out that, among the freshmen men, Baptists ranked third, being exceeded by Congregationalists and Roman Catholics, and only slightly outnumbered the Episcopalians. He noted that one out of every four freshmen men had parents one or both of whom were born in foreign countries, and that among those parents were graduates of the ancient universities at Bologna, Heidelberg, Cologne, London, and Kiev. "It is plain," said Johnson, "that Colby, once a college attended by native sons and daughters of Maine, predominantly from Baptist families, has become cos- mopolitan geographically, racially, and religiously."

When the end of World War II finally enabled the release of building ma- terials and completion of the Lorimer Chapel, President Bixler was determined that the opportunity to vitalize religious life on the new campus should not be

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lost. Under the sponsorship of the Northern Baptist Convention, he set up a visiting Commission on Education and Religion, to study the situation and recom- mend steps to be taken to integrate effectively the intellectual and spiritual aspects of college experience. The commission had distinguished personnel: Howard Jefferson, then Professor of Philosophy at Colgate and later President of Clark University; Rev. Newton Fetter and Donald Faulkner of the Baptist Board of Education; Adelaide Case of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge; Sidney Lovett, Chaplain of Yale University; Elizabeth Johns and Wilmer Kitchen of the Student Christian Movement of New England; and Professor Newman.

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The history of Colby College, Part 75

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