USA > Nebraska > Congregational Nebraska > Part 13
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"In 1871 Mr. Doane thoroughly identified himself as a citizen of Crete, Nebraska, selecting what is now known as the college section, on which he erected a dwelling-house and occupied it with his family during his connection with the Burlington system. In 1873 Mr. Doane returned to . Charlestown and shortly after was reappointed consulting engineer of the Hoosac tunnel and also of the reconstruc- tion of the Troy & Greenfield railway. On February 9, 1875, the Hoosac tunnel was opened and Mr. Doane ran the first train through. He remained in charge of the tun- nel work until 1877. In 1879 he was appointed consulting and acting chief engineer of the Northern Pacific railroad and served in this capacity for one year. From that time
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on Mr. Doane devoted himself chiefly to office practice as a consulting engineer.
"While in Nebraska Mr. Doane saw the possibilities of the country and believed that it would soon become a pop- ulous and wealthy section of the republic. His first thought was a characteristic one-how best to provide for the edu- cational growth of the young commonwealth.
"Before the railroad reached Crete he took a prominent part in the effort to establish a college there. Cooperating with the land commissioner, Mr. George S. Harris, and others, he secured from the Burlington railroad company the offer of a beautiful college site just east of Crete, em- bracing in all 600 acres, and when the Congregational churches of Nebraska in General Association had located their college at this point, he gave liberally of his means to make it a success. In recognition of his services the college was named after him, and for many years he was the effi- cient chairman of its board of trustees. His interest in the college never waned, and from his eastern home he did much to guide it by wise counsel and tide it over financial difficulties. He was rarely absent from its annual com- mencements, though his attendance involved a journey of 3,000 miles. He made generous provision for the college in his will, and a large part of his estate has become a per- manent college endowment. Doane College is fulfilling the expectation of its founders. From its walls are going forth young men and women who are making their mark in the world and leaving a noble impress upon their generation.
"Mr. Doane was also one of the founders of the first bank established in Crete in 1872 and its first president. During the years that he was actively engaged in his profession he received many young men into his office as students, and a goodly number of these have carved their names high in the engineering world. For upwards of twenty years he was a
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member of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers and for nine years its president. He was greatly interested in various educational and charitable institutions, and took an active part in religious work.
"November 5, 1850, Mr. Doane was married to Miss Sophia D. Clark, who died December 1, 1868. To this union five children were born, viz .: Mrs. David B. Perry, wife of the President of Doane College; Mrs. William O. Weeden, Concord, Massachusetts ; Mrs. Henry B. Twombly, Summit, New Jersey; the Rev. John Doane, Fremont, Ne- braska; and Thomas who died in infancy. November 19, 1870, Mr. Doane was married a second time to Miss Louisa A. Barber of Brattleboro, Vermont, who was in close sym- pathy with him in his Nebraska enterprises, taking an active part in the first efforts to establish the college at Crete. October 22, 1897, after a short illness and while on a visit at West Townshend, Vermont, he departed this life. It was fitting that he should pass away among the rock-ribbed hills and amid the trees he loved so well, the maples all aglow with autumn's choicest colors. His grave is in the old family burial ground at Orleans, Massachusetts, a com- manding knoll which looks out over a pleasantly diversified landscape and the great sea, an environment rich in ances- tral associations. Of him it may be well said that the world was better because of his having lived. Successful in the management of his own business affairs, he took delight in assisting others, and he was never more pleased than when doing something to help those about him to higher and better things. The long line of generations constituting the Doane family contains many illustrious men, but none was more so than Thomas Doane, founder of Doane College. The family is an old one, probably of Norman origin, its history being traceable to the year 1000. There were Doanes with William the Conqueror; Doanes were promi-
15
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nent in English church history; they were conspicuous in the civil life of England. When the good ship Fortune sailed from Wales in the wake of the historic Mayflower a Doane placed his name upon the passenger register and established the family in the new world.
"From such stock as this sprang the eminent engineer and philanthropist whose monument is the splendid college upon the upland overlooking the beautiful valley of the Big Blue where the river, as seen from college heights, turns sharply to the west to make room for the picturesque little city of Crete, Nebraska. Not marble shaft or polished brass can best perpetuate his memory, but it will live forever in the minds and hearts of thousands who have been, and will yet be made better and more useful citizens by reason of his integrity, his wisdom, his enterprise, his liberality, and his devout Christianity."
THE HEAD OF THE COLLEGE
In 1871 Mr. David Brainerd Perry, graduate of Yale College and Theological Seminary, traveler and student in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, tutor in Yale College, de- cided to be a missionary on the western frontier, and asked for one of the hardest fields. He was stationed at Aurora, and the same year, 1872, was ordained at Crete to the Gospel ministry.
Mr. Perry was the man whom the trustees decided to call to take charge of the new college; he accepted the call and began service in the autumn of 1872, being, during the first year, the only teacher in the school. Thirteen students were in attendance, but at the end of the year five young men, examined and approved by the trustees July 1, 1873, entered the freshman class of Doane College, and at the July meeting, 1873, the trustees elected Mr. Perry professor of Greek and Latin, and also Miss Mary W. Merrill as
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principal of the preparatory department and teacher of Ger- man and French. As yet the office of president had not been created, but Professor Perry had charge of the institution.
He has the unique record of being the first teacher in Doane College, its first professor in charge of the school, and its first and only president, being elected to that office, and Perry professor of mental and moral philosophy in 1881. A man who has been and still is so intimately con- nected with the development of Congregational educational interests in the state is worthy of the more extended sketch of his life which we are permitted to use, and it is here introduced.
DAVID BRAINERD PERRY, D.D.
"David Brainerd Perry, president of Doane College, Crete, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, March 7, 1839. His ancestors on his father's side came from England to Massachusetts at a very early date, and the old home- stead farm bordering on the city of Worcester was for many generations a permanent and noted family possession. Sam- uel Perry, the father of the subject of this sketch, inherited the sturdy characteristics of his family and was a thrifty farmer. Possessing the respect and confidence of his neigh- bors to a rare degree, he was an important member of the community in which he lived and a generous supporter of religious and educational enterprises near and far. The aid he rendered to Doane College at an early and critical period in its history was invaluable. He married Mary Harring- ton, who in addition to the care of her own family of ten children, was an efficient and much loved medical adviser for the neighborhood.
"In his early boyhood Brainerd Perry preferred work on the farm to attendance at school. Perhaps few boys have
PRESIDENT D. B. PERRY, D.D.
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been more fond of an outdoor, active life. Few boys took more interest in the great anti-slavery agitation with which New England was at that time all alive. As he was too young to go in person to Kansas to take part in the struggle for freedom he did the next best thing-he sent his small earnings to buy Sharps rifles. When at the age of seven- teen his life work had been chosen, he gave himself with intense purpose to making amends for lost educational time. He fitted for college in the Worcester high school, an in- stitution of high grade. He went to college for the purpose of preparation for the Christian ministry. His high school teachers, who were recent graduates of Yale, did much to determine his choice of a college. He entered Yale in 1859 and graduated in 1863 with the degree of A.B., taking sec- ond rank in scholarship in a class of 122. During his train- ing at Yale the freshman and senior college societies were in high favor, but he carefully avoided the sophomore so- ciety and used that of the junior year simply as a stepping stone to the senior society. The war for the Union was being fought out while he was in college and he would gladly have thrown himself into the conflict, but he was held back by the advice of friends.
"Immediately after graduation from Yale he took one year of theological training at Princeton Seminary, New Jersey. For an interval during this year he was able to give himself to the service of the Christian Commission in Virginia where he saw the camp-fires of the enemy.
"He spent the following year at Union Theological Sem- inary, New York city, and engaged in religious work in Iowa during the summer vacation. He had gone to An- dover, Massachusetts, for a third year in the theological seminary at that place when he received an invitation from President Woolsey to become a tutor in Yale, which led him to change his plans and to take his third seminary year
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in the Yale Divinity School during the two years of his college tutorship.
"President Perry graduated from the Yale Divinity School in 1867 with the degree of S.T.B. In the following year he went abroad and continued his study and travel for fourteen months. Upon his return he was engaged for nearly two years again as a tutor at Yale. At the end of his student life his health, which had always been excep- tionally good in his college days, was so much impaired that he asked the Congregational Home Missionary Society for a frontier parish, where he could have outdoor life and breathe the high, dry air of the plains. Superintendent O. W. Merrill assigned him to Hamilton county, Nebraska, where he lived near Aurora from April to September, 1872. In a short time the north half of Clay county was added to his parish, and he was then in charge of three little churches.
"Efforts that had been put forth for some time to estab- lish a Congregational college in the state culminated in June of this same year, and Mr. Perry was at once urged to take up educational work in the new institution soon to be known as Doane College. During his first year of service at Doane, 1872-73, he was sole instructor with the title of tutor, and was engaged in preparing a few students to enter a freshman class. Then he became professor of Latin and Greek, and afterward successively senior professor, acting president, and, in 1881, president. He received from Yale the degree of M.A. in 1866, and of D.D. in 1898.
"His sympathies have always been with the Republican party, but he has taken no active part in politics and has neither held nor sought public office. He is a member of the Crete Congregational Club, the oldest organization of its kind in the state, and the Schoolmasters' Club, which was organized in 1898. He was married July 3, 1876, to
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Helen Doane, and five children were born to them: Thomas Doane, born May 27, 1877; Brainerd Clark, August 13, 1879 (died July 21, 1880) ; Charles Boswell, January 25, 1884; Helen Clark, February 17, 1888; Henry Eldridge, October 8, 1889.
"If, contrary to expectations, the college educator speed- ily took the place of the frontier home missionary, President Perry has never forgotten the missionary work that drew him to Nebraska, and he has lost no opportunity to identify himself with the religious life of the state. He has sought to come in close touch with every phase of school life whether public or private. It has seemed to him that there should be no divorce between education and religion, but that each should help the other to what is highest and best. The college of which he has been the head for thirty years has taken a high rank, and it is his ambition that he may be a part of its vitalizing power in the generations to come. He still fills the office of president of Doane College ac- ceptably to all who are concerned in its welfare."
THE DELIBERATION OF TIIE TRUSTEES
In this sketch we have anticipated somewhat the action of the trustees of Doane College. They were very careful in making a choice of president and took time thoroughly to study the question.
In 1875 the State Association by resolutions recommended to the trustees that "as soon as possible and expedient they secure a suitable man to fill the place of president of the institution." But still they waited, it may be to watch more fully the development of the young head professor whom they had in mind and whom they finally chose.
The association the same year unanimously recommended "to the trustees of Doane College that they take measures .
8 Minutes, 1873, p. 8.
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to open at the carliest possible date a training school for ministers competent to work among the Germans and other foreign populations of our country, and to call upon the churches of our state and such others as may be interested to carry out the needful work," and also resolved to "take steps to raise $10,000 to be appropriated to the erection of a permanent building, to be called Merrill Hall, in memory of O. W. Merrill, one of the earliest and stanchest friends of the enterprise."? The churches of the state, which at that time, 1875, numbered only seventy-seven with a men- bership of 2,002, had no small task before them-the prose- cution of missionary work, the building and equipping a Christian college, and the training of men for service among the foreigners in our own state. How large this foreign work was we may not fully realize, but the churches and the college as well felt the imperative need of immediate action and earnest effort. Professor Perry in 1876 reported :
"In less than five years in Nebraska I have met the rep- resentatives of sixteen different languages. In this number I do not include various Indian tribes of discordant tongues, nor the African, whose speech, like his nationality, has been merged in our own; nor certain of American parentage, who were born in Asia and first learned to speak Mahratta ; and I am reckoning respectively as one, Englishman and American, Hollander and Frisian, Dane and Norwegian. The rest are Swede, German, Pole, Bohemian, Russian, French, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Scotch, Hungarian, and Jew. Within a radius of twelve miles of Doanc College I can count the representatives of more than twelve different nationalities."10
We do not wonder that in 1877 the association votes "especially [to] welcome foreigners and their children to
9 Ibid., p. 8.
10 Minutes, 1876, p. S.
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the halls of the college,"11 and that in 1879 it "Resolved, That we regard the effort to found a German Theological Seminary at Crete with deep interest, and are glad to learn that its friends have succeeded in raising about $9,000 to- wards the endowment, and hope that success will continue to attend their effort."12
The establishment of a German department in the Chi- cago Theological Seminary made the organization and de- velopment of a German Theological Seminary in Crete un- wise, but a "pro-seminary" was eventually organized and later on moved to Wilton, Iowa, and still later to Redfield College, South Dakota, as stated in a preceding chapter. As the "pro-seminary" movement began in Crete, the Ne- braska churches from the first have followed its develop- ment with deep interest and contributed to its support at the time they were seeking to build and equip Doane College.
The active interest of Congregational Nebraska in Chris- tian education in general, and in Doane College in particu- lar, was marked and abiding, and found expression in the meetings of the association from year to year.
PRESIDENT PERRY'S REPORTS
President Perry's reports on Doane College were a unique feature in former meetings of the association. They had the true ring in them, and many of them were classics. It is a decided loss to the association that it does not provide for their continuance. They could follow the reports of the Committee on Education, and the churches would be the gainer thereby.
President Perry's utterance on religion in our schools before the Fremont meeting in 1878 was timely and strong :
11 Minutes, 1877, p. 8.
12 Minutes, 1879, p. 13.
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"There are special hardships involved in legislating the Bible out of the school. No other place is so treated. The president-elect of the United States is inaugurated with ceremonies which culminate as he presses his lips to the sacred volume ; halls of legislation have their chaplain ; civil tribunals administer the solemn oath; the lawyer knows that the Bible underlies Blackstone ; the general understands that men who carry the New Testament in their vest pocket and drink in its spirit, like Cromwell's old Ironsides, make the best soldiers. But the great army of boys and girls, a mightier host than king or emperor can marshal, gathering in every town and school district, soon to join the ranks of those engaged in fighting the battle of life, standing in need of the same sanctions, warnings, and encouragements- these forsooth in the most plastic period of their lives must be far removed from Bible, oath, and chaplain.
"Even where free thought has not full sway religious in- fluences are greatly diminished. It can not be denied that there is a strong tendency toward the divorce of religion and education in our public schools. How shall education be kept Christian becomes an important question. The bal- lot can not be relied upon, nor the secular press. The classes to be reached are largely inaccessible to preaching. The great remedy lies in the Christian college."13
"We all believe in the common school system, but how shall it be kept Christian? Maintain the Christian college ; make the Christian college a success, and the light which shines from it will attract with more than magic power. From the higher institutions of learning go forth the teach- ers who are to shape and fashion the minds of the young people all over our great state. They who mould these young people determine the destinies of the next genera-
13 Minutes, 1878, p. 19.
CHANCELLOR E. B. FAIRFIELD, D.D., LL.D.
Chancellor of the State University, prominent Congregational minister and author, formerly president of Hillsdale College, Michigan, and lieutenant governor of Michigan.
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tion. . It is of the utmost importance that they who teach others should first have been taught by the Great Teacher."14
These strong words met the hearty approval of the churches, and it will be noted that Congregational Ne- braska, in most hearty accord with Christian education, has a deep and growing interest in the public schools of the state from the primary school to the State University. It believes with President Perry that we need the Christian college for the sake of the better moral influence of all these schools, common school, high school, normal school, and State University. We need the Christian college for what it is, for what it is doing directly and indirectly, for what it may do in conserving the best interests of the state, and in counteracting the "godless" influence which here and there seeks to control public action in education and government.
14 Minutes, 1879, p. 22.
EDUCATION IN THE STATE
237.
III
EDUCATION IN THE STATE
We shall find in the endorsements of the State Associa- tion the general attitude of the churches toward education in the state.
IRVING J. MANATT, D.D., LL.D.
The steady progress of Doane College was a source of satisfaction. Merrill Hall has a companion in Gaylord Hall, fittingly named after Reuben Gaylord, whose widow expressed in substantial ways her sympathy and interest.
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An observatory well adapted for practical use in due time appeared ; a library building was added to the group; debts are paid ; an endowment is being planned for, and the trus- tees are looking forward to a much larger and better equip- ment. In all these things the churches take a profound in- terest and help on in the work. But they can not forget that they are a part of a great state; and state interests have their claim. How shall they express themselves in reference to these? What is their relation thereto?
At the Beatrice meeting, 1885, Chancellor Manatt of the State University presented a minute bearing on this general ยท matter, and it was adopted by the association. It is inter- esting in showing not only the attitude of the association toward education in the state, but is also a good illustration of some of the problems with which the state had to deal, and though somewhat lengthy it is worthy of record here :
"I. The entire education of the commonwealth is one common interest, to be administered with a single view to the highest intellectual and moral improvement of the whole people and the people as a whole.
"II. In order to its administration with economy and effectiveness, its promoters must act on the principle of co- operation rather than of competition.
"III. We recognize as constituting our system of educa- tion in Nebraska : (a) the common schools and the private elementary schools; (b) the public schools and the acad- emies; (c) the University and the chartered colleges.
"IV. (a) We believe that in this system elementary edu- cation is for quantity abundantly provided for, while we urge the importance of improving its quality as a prepara- tion for life, and particularly as a means of moral discipline. (b) We recognize as a weak point in this system the want of good secondary schools. While Massachusetts has nearly 300 high schools and academies, training 30,000 pupils,
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from whose numbers five colleges are recruited, Nebraska has a smaller number of genuine preparatory schools than of colleges. We therefore urge the building up of good, honest high schools and academies throughout the state, at carefully chosen points, with an ultimate view to providing thorough preparation for college, as well as a sound English education, in at least one place in every county. (c) In the higher education we hold that concentration is the neces- sary law. The multiplication of colleges, out of all propor- tion to the provision for secondary and the demand for higher education, violates every principle of economy, and tends inevitably to the degradation of college standards and degrees. The fact that young Nebraska, with but a fraction of her sod turned over, has now three times as many col- leges as old Connecticut, nine times as many as New Hamp- shire, must convince even the wayfaring man that it is high time to call a halt.
"V. In view of these principles, it is the sense of this as- sociation : (a) that the founding of new colleges is unwise and inexpedient ; (b) that those now existing should be supported on their merits; (c) that the best interests of cducation would be promoted by such concert of action on the part of the University and the other colleges as to secure substantial uniformity in standards and degrees."1
Doubtless the association remembered its attitude and vote at this time when soon after it was called upon to de- cide whether it should support a second college in the state. Nor are we surprised that the next year, 1886, Chancellor Manatt, as visitor to the German Seminary at Crete, recom- inended that it should be affiliated with Doane College in the interests of economy and efficiency, having as much of the work as possible done in the college, and that the Com-
1 Minutes, 1885, p. 11.
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mittee on Education, Rev. Willard Scott, D.D., chairman, to whom the Chancellor's report had been referred, recom- mended that the report and suggestions be referred to a committee consisting of President Perry, Supt. George E. Albrecht, and Rev. Wm. Suess for such action as "in their united judgment may seem best."
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