History of Cayuga County, New York, Part 15

Author: Cayuga County Historical Society, Auburn, N.Y
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Auburn, N.Y. : s.n.
Number of Pages: 714

USA > New York > Cayuga County > History of Cayuga County, New York > Part 15

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The following table shows the schools in Auburn, their location and number of teachers engaged, with number of pupils attending same (1908).

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CITY OF AUBURN

SCHOOL

NO. OF TEACHERS

No. OF PUPILS

High School

473

Central Grammar School

208

Fulton Street School -

586

James Street School

255

Seymour Street School

235

Grover Street School

300

Franklin Street School

258

Division Street School

242

Madison Avenue School

168

South Street School

158

Evans Street School

I59

Genesee Street School

142

Bradford Street School

I32

*Orphan Asylum School

Manual Training

+Training School

Music

Drawing

Penmanship

§ Evening School

179

Total

- 156

3,947

*School in Cayuga County Orphan Asylum Building

+School in Fulton Street School Building.

#Training School in James Street School Building.

¿Evening School in Central Grammar School Building.

NOTE-Fourteen Public School Buildings.

+ Ungraded School

378

North Street School

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HISTORY OF CAYUGA COUNTY

CHAPTER XII.

THE AUBURN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

BY PROFESSOR WILLIS J. BEECHER D. D.

At the close of the War of the American Revolution, Onondaga County and the parts of New York further west were mostly unbroken wilderness. But the influx of population was rapid. According to Hotchkin's History of Western New York the popula- tion was about 63,000 in 1800, about 220,000 in 1810, about 507,000 in 1820. A differential characteristic of this immigration was that it was mainly of American people. The English, French, Dutch, Scottish and German elements in it came not directly from the home countries, but from New England and Eastern New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They had already become mingled in blood, and modified by their New World surroundings. They came in small groups, and settled mostly on the farms.

As the churches multiplied, the question of the means for train- ing ministers to serve them came to the front. In 1809 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church sent down to its presbyteries the question whether one theological seminary should be established for the entire church, or one seminary for the North and another for the South, or a seminary for each of several great regions The

New York presbyteries west of the Hudson voted for more semin- aries than one. They recognized the fact that a single large plant has some advantages, but it seemed to them that the advantages of the other plan were greater. They feared that if all the students from the interior went to some place on the Atlantic coast to study, they would not return in sufficient numbers to serve the inland churches They held that a seminary ought to be a center of light

WILLIS J. BEECHER, D. D.

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CITY OF AUBURN

in the region where it was located, and that it would be unwise to place all the light in one region, leaving the rest of the country in darkness. Further, they saw that if there were but one seminary for the whole church, that seminary must needs stand for some one type of orthodoxy, while it seemed to them desirable that the church be hospitable to more types than one. They claimed to be as strictly orthodox as their forbears from New England or Scotland or Holland, but they thought that the church ought to be more broadly inclusive than any one of these types.

There was then a certain idea of church unification in the air, and these peculiarly Americanized immigrants had come into peculiar relations with this idea. For a good while the Presbyterian General Assembly had been exchanging delegations with the Con- gregational bodies of New England. The two churches were study- ing the art of co-operation, and were not averse to the idea of ulti- mate consolidation. In those years began the great inter-denom- inational organizations, such as the American Bible Society, the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the American Tract Society, the American Sunday School Union, the national temper- ance organizations. Facts like these indicate the spirit of the time. The most unique of the movements of this kind began when the Middle Association of Congregational churches, covering the region from Syracuse to Geneva, offered itself, in 1807, for membership in the Presbyterian church, and was accepted. The example thus set was eagerly followed. In a few years most of the Congrega- tional churches of Western New York and Ohio came into organic relations with the Presbyterian General Assembly. Many of the local churches retained their Congregational form, but they were organized in presbyteries and synods and an assembly that were strictly Presbyterian.

It was in part due to this condition of things that these people- desired more seminaries than one. They believed that the Presby-

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HISTORY OF CAYUGA COUNTY

terianism of this inclusive type could train its own ministers better than they could be trained for it in some other region.

They were in the minority. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of one seminary for the whole church. The minority loyally accepted the result, and sent their contributions and their young men to Princeton. But a vote does not always express the real mind of a community. Princeton was opened for students in 1812. The church waited respectfully for nine years, and then, in the fol- lowing nine years, opened six additional seminaries, one for each of the great regions lying between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, this number including only the seminaries that still exist and are vigorous. Of these six Auburn was the earliest.

Probably no one man ought to be called the founder of Auburn Seminary. The needs of the situation were apparent to many, and the idea of an institution to meet the need came independently to different persons. But doubtless the Rev. Dirck Cornelius Lansing comes nearer than any other to deserving the title of founder. His account of the matter is as follows:

"Late in the autumn of 1817, and early in the winter of 1818, I enterprised the establishment of the Auburn Theological Seminary. After having matured my plans in my own mind, and prepared myself to meet as well as I could the objections which I apprehended might be offered, I unfolded my views to a few friends-particularly some liberal and wealthy individuals of my congregation, whose confidence and co-operation I secured-and then began to speak more openly of my plans."

Mr. Lansing and the First Church of Auburn brought the matter before the Presbytery of Cayuga. The Presbytery carried it to the Synod of Geneva, the motion in synod being made by the Rev. William Wisner, pastor of the Ithaca church. In February, 1818, in its meeting at Rochester, the Synod decided to establish a semin- ary, provided the project should meet the approval of General Assembly. The Assembly in May took non-committal action, and

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CITY OF AUBURN

the Synod, at a meeting held in August at Auburn, voted to go forward. At this meeting a delegation was present from the Synod of Albany, one of its members being the Rev. Dr. Henry Davis, president of Hamilton College. It was decided that the new insti- tution should be exclusively a theological seminary, designed for college graduates, and not a mixed academic and theological school; and that it should be located at Auburn provided the citizens of the locality would provide a site, and would raise $35,000 toward the expense.

It should be noted that Mr. Wisner became pastor at Ithaca in 1816, that Dr. Davis became president of Hamilton in 1817, and that in the same year Mr. Lansing became pastor of the Auburn church, returning to this region from his pastorate in Boston. The nearly simultaneous arrival of these three forceful men was an important fact in the early history of Auburn.

At the meeting of the Synod held early in 1819, it appeared that the requisite funds had been subscribed, and that an acceptable site had been secured, six acres by gift from the heirs of John Harden- burgh, and four acres partly by gift and partly by purchase from Glen and Cornelius Cuyler. The Synod took measures for procur- ing a charter, organizing a corporation, and erecting a building. The ground was broken November 30, 1819; the charter was enacted by the State Legislature April 14, 1820; the cornerstone was laid May IIth of that year, and the commissioners and trustees organ- ized the twelfth of July. Dr. Davis was the first president of the board of trustees, and the Rev. Caleb Alexander the first president of the board of commissioners. A faculty was chosen, and the seminary opened for students in the autumn of 1821.

The contemporary newspaper accounts of the ground-breaking show that it was in many respects a typical occasion. The work was done by the citizens, including the farmers from the vicinity. At noon they were reinforced by "about forty of the laborers in the different mechanical arts" from the prison. These came marching

178

HISTORY OF CAYUGA COUNTY

with precision, in an elaborate spade drill, preceded by a bugle and carts and the officers of the prison. They were received with enthusiasm by the citizen-laborers. Half an hour before sunset the whole body, about two hundred men and twenty-three teams, with music and the prison guard, marched through the village, and were formally dismissed with thanks and refreshments. From this time for several decades the prison and the seminary were the two best known institutions of Auburn, the prison being its great industrial center during the period before the farm machinery industries were established. Five years after the prison men assisted in the ground- breaking a Sunday-school was inaugurated in the prison by the men of the seminary, and it remained effective for fifty years.

The building was of Cayuga County limestone. It faced on Seminary street, well back from the street, with its center opposite Seminary avenue. It consisted of a square center, with high base- ment and four stories, flanked to east and west by dormitory halls of three stories. It was intended for future enlargement by the building of four-story wings at the ends of the halls. The con- templated west wing was actually erected about 1830. In 1874, on the building of Morgan Hall, it was demolished, and the materials used in the constructing of St. Lucas' church. The original building stood until 1892. Then its materials were built into the Welch- Willard edifice, and the site was graded down several feet, thus removing the very ground on which the building had stood.

The seminary was founded by the Synod of Geneva, but it was never owned or controlled by that body. The charter placed the control in the hands of a board of commissioners elected by ten designated presbyteries, with such other presbyteries as should afterward be associated with them for the purpose. The seminary was to be absolutely owned and controlled by the Presbyterian Church, exercising its authority through its presbyteries. In this it differed from Princeton and other seminaries in which the author- ity of the Church is exercised through the General Assembly, but it

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CITY OF AUBURN

differed much more widely from the seminaries which are controlled by their own directors or trustees, independent of ecclesiastical authority. The charter provisions were at once interpreted and supplemented by the regulations adopted by the governing boards. Under the constitution thus framed all the professors and two- thirds of the commissioners must perpetually be ministers under the jurisdiction of the presbyteries. In addition to this judicial safe- guard administrative safeguards were provided. One-third of the commissioners were elected each year directly by the presbyteries; and these commissioners elected the trustees and the professors, and controlled the appropriations of funds. If the presbyteries disapproved what was going on in the seminary they could change any ordinary majority in the governing boards in a single year. This constitution was subsequently changed in slight details. Legis- lative modifications were made in 1857 and 1899. In 1873 the governing boards gave to the Presbyterian General Assembly a restricted right of veto in the appointment of professors. But there was no essential change till 1906, at which date a new legislative charter was procured. In 1907 the directors published the regula- tions which obtain under the new charter. This revised constitu- tion simplifies the organization, and eliminates ecclesiastical con- trol. The boards of commissioners and trustees give place to a board of directors. Authority is largely vested in the president. The presbyteries have the power to change annually six or less of the twenty-eight directors, each presbytery having the power to change its representative only once in three years. These provisions render the administrative control of the presbyteries merely nominal. And the new charter and regulations repeal all the requirements to the effect that professors or members of the governing board must be under presbyterial or other ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

The original faculty consisted of three professors, of whom the Rev. Matthew La Rue Perrine, D.D., was the senior. He was then forty-four years old. He came to Auburn from the Spring Street

180

HISTORY OF CAYUGA COUNTY

Church in New York City. His name seems to indicate Huguenot descent. He was born in New Jersey, and educated at Princeton College. His chair was that of church history and ecclesiastical polity. For two years he also gave instruction in theology, until the seminary secured a professor in that department. He remained in the service fifteen years, until his death in 1836.

The Rev. Henry Mills, professor of Biblical criticism, was thirty- five years old. He was born in New Jersey, and a graduate of Princeton College. He studied theology with Dr. Richards, after- ward his colleague in Auburn. Apart from his proficiency in the languages of the Bible, he was a scholar in German and a translator of German hymns. He was professor in Auburn forty-six years, till his death, being emeritus professor the last thirteen of those years.

The Rev. Dirck Cornelius Lansing was thirty-six years old. He was of patrician Dutch descent, born in Lansingburg, N. Y., and a graduate of Yale College. He was dainty and aristocratic in dress and presence. As a public speaker he was sparkling, dramatic, and wonderfully effective. He had a fervid appreciation of Christianity as a religion for all mankind, and of the importance of Christianizing these pioneer regions for the sake of the regions beyond. At twenty- one years of age he was minister of the newly gathered church on Onondaga Hill. He was afterward pastor in Onondaga Valley, and the founder of the Onondaga Academy. He returned to Eastern New York, and afterward was pastor of the Park Street Church in Boston. But the call of Central New York and the regions beyond pursued him, and he returned in 1817, and became pastor in Auburn. On the founding of the seminary he became professor of sacred rhetoric and pastoral theology, serving, without salary, for five years. Later he was a trustee, and served the seminary in many ways.

The Rev. James Richards, D. D., was elected professor of theology when the other three were elected, but at that time he declined.

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CITY OF AUBURN

Afterward Mr. Arthur Tappan of New York endowed the chair in the amount of $15,000. Dr. Richards was again elected and accepted the election, beginning service in 1823. He was then fifty- six years old, of New England birth, and an honorary graduate of Yale. He came to Auburn from a long pastorate in Newark, N. J. but with a distinguished reputation as a theologian and a teacher. He served as professor twenty years, till his death in 1843.

From 1823 the number of students increased rapidly, and the increase does not seem to have been checked by the fact that Dr. Lansing retired from the faculty in 1826, and from that time for nine years the entire work of instruction was done by the three remaining professors. The catalogue of 1827-28 shows an enroll- ment of seventy-six students, the largest in the history of the semin- ary except for the years 1893 to 1899. For the following seven years the average enrollment was fifty-five, the falling off being probably due to the founding of Lane Seminary, and to the con- vulsions in the Presbyterian Church, the convulsions that culmin- ated in the disruption of 1837. In 1835 the numbers rose again, and maintained themselves, though with fluctuations, till the death of Dr. Richards in 1843.

In 1835 the chair of sacred rhetoric and pastoral theology was filled by the election of the brilliant and distinguished Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox. He resigned after two years, and the chair again became vacant till 1839, when the Rev. Dr. Baxter Dickinson was elected. He was then forty-four years old, a native of Massachu- setts and a graduate of Yale. He came to Auburn from six years of service in the Lane Theological Seminary. He resigned in 1847. He was one of the leaders in the formation of the New School Pres- byterian Church. In 1837, while professor at Lane, he wrote the famous "Auburn Declaration," a statement, adopted in a conven- tion held in Auburn in that year, of the theological platform of the Presbyterians of the synods in New York and Ohio.

In 1837 the Rev. Dr. Luther Halsey had succeeded Dr. Perrine

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HISTORY OF CAYUGA COUNTY

in the chair of church history, coming to Auburn from the theologi- cal chair at Allegheny. On his retirement in 1844 Professors Dick- inson and Mills were left alone to keep up the work. Union Semin- ary in New York had been opened, and was drawing strongly upon the constituency of Auburn. Auburn had but little endowment. Its brilliant success had been due largely to the fact that its original professors had persistently remained in the service, raising by their personal efforts much of the money needed for current expenses, determined to keep up the seminary at any cost of toil or self sacri- fice. It was hardly to be expected that they would have successors who would be at once men of equal influence and equal devotion to the seminary. There came a time when the terms of service of the professors were brief, and when there was a falling off in numbers and interest.

In 1844 the Rev. Dr. Laurens Perseus Hickok was chosen to succeed Dr. Richards. As a scholar in philosophy he was a man of international reputation, and his strength drew students to some extent. The classes of 1851 and 1852 were full classes. But in 1852 he left the seminary, to become vice-president of Union College.

In those years there were many changes in the faculty. In 1847 Dr. Dickinson withdrew from the chair of sacred rhetoric. The same year the Rev. Samuel Miles Hopkins was made professor of church history. The Rev. Joseph Fewsmith became professor of sacred rhetoric in 1848, and the Rev. William Greenough Thayer Shedd in 1852. In 1852 the Rev. Dr. Clement Long succeeded Dr. Hickok in the chair of theology. Some of these were men of ability, but their terms of service were too short to count. During the year 1854-55 the doors of the seminary were closed.

The thirty-three years had been especially characterized by religious earnestness. The establishing of the seminary had been largely due to the powerful religious revivals in the region. In

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CITY OF AUBURN

August, 1817, Pastor Lansing received one hundred and forty per- sons to church membership at one time, and it was shortly after that that he was thinking out his plans for the seminary. Revival work was a potent influence in the training of the first twenty or more of the seminary classes. The Rev. Charles G. Finney visited Auburn more than once. The students participated in the choral singing and the meetings and the personal work. There may have been mingled good and evil in the methods that were used. Certainly there were differences of opinion concerning them in the seminary faculty. But when those students became old men, their revival experiences in Auburn were the experiences they remembered most vividly.

The early Auburn classes were well represented in the foreign mission fields, and on the Western frontiers of the United States. They found the work in the Hawaiian Islands, for example, already begun, but the men who accomplished the great results there were Titus Coan and Lorenzo Lyon and their seven or eight colleagues from Auburn. An "Auburn band" did especially strong work in Missouri, though it is probable that no records exist giving an account of that work. But it was not in these lines of work alone that the earnestness of the Auburn men made them leaders. When the seminary closed in 1854 there were about six hundred of the alumni, and they were serving in the faculties of colleges and semi- naries, and in influential city pastorates, as well as in hundreds of humbler churches.

In these conditions the interest in the seminary was too strong to permit the doors to remain closed. Certain men of wealth and liberality had become interested in the seminary. Any list of these that could be given here would be so incomplete as to be unfair, but any such list would include the names that were in 1860 inscribed upon the halls of the seminary building-those of Sylvester Willard and Theodore P. Case and William E. Dodge. It was clearly under- stood that any professors who might be elected ought not to be

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HISTORY OF CAYUGA COUNTY

burdened with the duty of soliciting funds, and other provision was made for raising what might be needed. The first financial secre- tary was the Rev. Frederick Starr. In later years he was succeeded by the Rev. Simeon Sartwell Goss and the Rev. Alfred Martin Stowe. It should be noted, however, that up to 1872 the total of the amounts given to the seminary through Professors Hall and Hunt- ington and Condit was larger than the total given through the successive financial secretaries.

In the fall of 1855 the seminary reopened with a full faculty of four active professors. Dr. Mills of the original faculty still remained as professor emeritus. Professor Hopkins remained in the chair of church history. Thirty-four years old at his original election, he had now reached the age of forty-two. A graduate of Amherst College, he had taken part of his theological course in Auburn, but had graduated from Princeton. His term came to be the longest served by any Auburn professor, extending to forty-six years of active service, with eight years more as emeritus professor.

The Rev. Dr. Edwin Hall, the new professor of theology, a graduate of Middlebury College, came to Auburn, at the age of fifty-four years, from a long pastorate in Norwich, Connecticut. He had a national reputation as a pastor, a preacher, and an organ- izer of church work, as a leader in temperance reform and an author in the field of New England history, and as a theologian. He served twenty-two years, being professor emeritus the last year of the twenty-two.

The Rev. Dr. Jonathan Bailey Condit was a native of New Jersey and a graduate of Princeton College. He had held two pastorates in New England, a chair in Amherst College, and a pastorate in New Jersey. He became professor of sacred rhetoric in Auburn at the age of forty-seven years, having held the same chair at Lane the preceding four years. He was active as professor in Auburn eighteen years, and professor emeritus the following three years.

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CITY OF AUBURN

The Reverend Dr. Ezra Abel Huntington became professor of Biblical criticism in Auburn at the age of forty-two years. He was a graduate of Union College, and had served for eighteen years as pastor of the Third Presbyterian church of Albany. He remained in the chair through thirty-eight years of active service and eight years as professor emeritus. The management of the affairs of the seminary, external as well as internal, devolved largely upon the members of the faculty. This burden gradually slipped from the shoulders of his older colleagues, and was carried mainly by Dr. Huntington. To his wise pilotage the seminary largely owes its successful passage through the times that included the Civil War, the reunion of the Presbyterian Church, and the transfer of the work of the seminary from the old building to the Dodge-Morgan Library and Morgan Hall.

Having again a permanent faculty, and funds to meet immediate needs, the seminary soon had full classes. In 1861-62 there were more than seventy students. Then the Civil War reduced the num- bers. Many of the students enlisted, and the supply from the col- leges diminished. Then the drift toward the largest cities and the largest institutions set in, and was to the disadvantage of Auburn. The numbers fluctuated. The minimum was reached in 1870-71 when there were only thirty-five students.

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History of Cayuga County, New York, Part 15

Author: Cayuga County Historical Society, Auburn, N.Y Publication date: 1908 Publisher: Auburn, N.Y. : s.n. Number of Pages: 714

Author: Cayuga County Historical Society, Auburn, N.Y
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Auburn, N.Y. : s.n.
Number of Pages: 714