USA > New York > Tompkins County > Landmarks of Tompkins County, New York : including a history of Cornell University > Part 36
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Following is a list of the supervisors of the town from its organiza- tion to the present time:
1821. Walter Payne.
1864. Daniel Colegrove.
1825. John Applegate.
1865-67. D. W. Bailey.
1826-27. Gilbert J. Ogden.
1768-70. S. V. Graham.
1828-31. Christopher Miller.
1871. J. G. Wortman.
1832-33. Wm. Hunter.
1872-74. Ebenezer Havens.
1834. David Atwater.
1875. Daniel W. Bailey.
1836-38. Bethuel V. Gould.
1839-41. C. C. Applegate.
1880. Seth B. Harvey.
1845-47. Cyrus Gray.
1881. Isaac Newman.
1848. Daniel L. Starr.
1882. John J. Abel.
1849. C. C. Applegate.
1850. Amos Curry.
1884. Lysander T. White.
1851. John Hardenburg.
1885. Byron Jackson.
1852. Joseph Rolfe.
1886. Tertelus Jones.
1853. Joshua S. Miller.
1887. Burr Rumsey.
1888. Daniel W. Bailey.
1889. Joshua S. Miller.
1890. Daniel W. Bailey.
1891. T. Jones.
1859-60. Henry Brewer.
1892-3. William F. Smith.
1861-62. Wm. L. Bostwick.
1894. Levi J. Newman.
1863. Daniel W. Bailey.
1883. Daniel WV. Bailey.
1854. Joseph Rolfe.
1855. Peter VanDorn.
1856. Chester Rolfe.
1857-58. Samuel V. Graham.
The town of Enfield was crected from the southwestern part of Ulys- ses on the 16th of March, 1821, and received its name from the town of Enfield, in Connecticut. The records of the town down to the year 1845 are lost.
Following are the names of the principal town officers for the year 1894:
45
1876-78. Leroy H. Vankirk.
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Levi J. Newman, supervisor, Enfield Center; William Barber, town clerk, Enfield Center; John J. Johnson, collector, Enfield Falls; Hen- ry A. Graham, justice of the peace, Enfield Center; Fred V. Ball, con- stable, Enfield; Lewis Wallenbeck, constable, Enfield Center; George Havens, constable, Enfield Center; Abram Creque, constable, Enfield Center.
STATISTICS,-The report of the board of supervisors for the year 1893 gives the following statistics : number of acres of land, 22,00 ?. Assessed value of real estate, including village property and real estate of cor- porations, $531,493; total assessed value of personal property, $42, 200. Amount of town taxes, $3,356.64 Amount of county taxes, $1, 235.87. Aggregate taxation, $5,832.93. Rate of tax on $1 valuation, .0102. The town has fifteen school districts besides the joint districts.
Applegate's Corners took its name from John Applegate, who built and kept the first tavern there in 1807, and the first school house in the town was built a little to the north of the Corners about the year 1809. A small mercantile business has been carried on there from the begin- ning, and some of the men who later on became leaders in business in the county first started here. Among these were Josiah B. and T. S. Williams. The first road laid out in the town was from these corners southwesterly to the farm where Nicholas Kirby lived in recent years; the road is now unused. Joseph Tibb now keeps a store here and is postmaster, the name of the office being Applegate.
Beside the post-office at Applegate there are two others in the town -Enfield Center and Enfield Falls. At Enfield Center is a pretty little village, where Charles Wright, William H. Rumsey and George Lord are merchants. John G. Wortman, now the undertaker of the place, was for many years in inercantile business here, and rebuilt Wortman Hall from the old Presbyterian church. Samuel D. Purdy, now a farmer, was a former merchant.
William Barber, a blacksmith, was postmaster ever since the war, until the present year, when he was superseded by Charles Wright. The hotel has been kept many years by Moses L. Harvey.
Enfield Falls, in the southeastern part of the town, is a hamlet cen- tering around the grist mill, on the site where the first mill was built. R. S. Halsey has the mill, and Charles Budd is postmaster; there is at present no mercantile business here.
CHURCHES .-- The Baptist church of Enfield was formed in 1817, at the house of Elder John Lewis, and comprised twenty-six members. Ser-
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vices were held at the house of Jonathan Rolfe and later at the Wood- ward school house in the south part of the town. In 1842 a house of worship was built at Enfield Center at a cost of about $1,300. The present pastor is Rev. T. F. Brodwick.
In 1821 five persons instituted the Christian church, of which Elder Ezra Chase was the first pastor; he was succeeded by Rev. J. M. West- cott. The church was built at Enfield Center many years ago. H. L. Griffin is the present pastor.
The Methodist church at Kennedy's Corners was the development of a class which was formed at the North school house in 1844, with Elias Lanning as leader; it was at first under the charge of the Jack- sonville church; but later under the church at Enfield Center. The church edifice was built in 1848.
The Methodist church of Enfield was recognized as a separate charge January 19, 1835. Rev. Joseph Pearsall was the first pastor. Prior to that date class meetings had been held in a barn at Bostwick's Corners, and in other barns near by. On the 3d of June, 1835, a lot was bought of Andrew Bostwick for $50 and a church erected upon it. On the 13th of March, 1876, it was determined to remove the building to Enfield Center, which was done and the building was repaired at a cost, incluid- ing the new site, of $3,200, and on June 20, 1876, the church was ded- icated. The present pastor is Rev. J. H. Britton.
In about the year 1831, Rev. William Page, who was then filling a pulpit as stated supply in Ithaca, visited Enfield and became instru- mental in organizing a Presbyterian church, which was fully effected under the care of the Presbytery of Cayuga, February 14, 1832. The society has been several times changed to other Presbyteries, as they were organized. On the 28th of February, 1838, after several others had served the church, Rev. Warren Day was installed and remained until 1844, when he was succeeded by Rev. Moses Jewell. A meeting house was finished at Enfield Center in 1835-5, which is now used as a public hall. The society disbanded many years ago.
THE HISTORY OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY
IN THE
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF ITS EXISTENCE, 1868-1893. BY
WATERMAN THOMAS HEWETT, PH.D.,
Professor of the German Language and Literature in the University.
I.
INTRODUCTION.
IT had been proposed as early as in 1822 to found a college in Ithaca, and in March of that year a request was presented to the Regents by the Genesee Conference of the Methodist church for a charter. It was stated that six thousand dollars had already been raised for the support of such a college, with which it was the intention to proceed to the erection of buildings in the following spring. At the same time the trustees of the Geneva Academy applied for a charter for a college, on the basis of certain funds already subscribed and land and buildings already erected, and an annual grant promised by the corporation of Trinity Church in New York. As both these colleges were to be erect- ed by religious denominations, the Board of Regents considered what its policy should be toward applications of this kind from various religious organizations. The board had adopted, as early as March 11, 1811, the view that no academy ought to be erected into a college until the state of literature therein was so far advanced and its funds so far enlarged as to render it probable that it would attain the ends and sup- port the character of a college in which all the liberal arts and sciences would be cherished and taught. "The literary character of the State is deeply interested in maintaining the reputation of its seminaries of learning, and to multiply colleges without adequate means to en- able them to vie with other similar institutions in the United States would be to degrade their character and to be giving only another name to an ordinary academy. The establishment of a college is also imposing upon the government the necessity of bestowing upon it a very liberal and expensive patronage, without which it would languish and not maintain a due reputation for usefulness and universal learn- ing; colleges, therefore, are to be cautiously erected, and only when called for by strong public expediency."
The case was now different, for an additional question was involved. The board, however, after mature consideration, held that it had no
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right to inquire into the religious opinions of the applicants for a char- ter, and that it might wisely make use of denominational zeal to pro- mote the great educational interests confided to its charge. It was directed, April 10, 1822, that the charter of a college in Ithaca be granted whenever it should be shown within three years that a perma- nent fund of fifty thousand dollars had been collected for its support. It was, however, found impossible to raise this sum. This impulse, though fruitless in itself, may have led to the foundation of the Ithaca Academy, which was incorporated the following year, March 24, 1823.
II.
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT AND HIGHER EDUCA- TION .- THE LAND GRANT ACT, ESTABLISHING COLLEGES OF AGRICULTURE AND THE MECHANIC ARTS.
THE duty of the government to support and foster higher education existed with the first dream of national independence. In October, 1775, when Washington was in camp in Cambridge, Samuel Blodget, who was later distinguished as the author of the first formal work on political economy published in the United States, remarked in the presence of Generals Washington and Greene, with reference to the injury which the soldiers were doing to the colleges in which they were encamped: "Well, to make amends for these injuries, I hope after our war we shall erect a noble national university, at which the youths of all the world may be proud to receive instruction." Washington answered: "Young man, you are a prophet inspired to speak what I am confident will one day be realized." One of the earliest provisions of the colonial governments was for popular education, in addition to which were charters for private and county schools and colleges, which were to be supported by general taxation. In the Constitutional Con- vention of 1787, on May 29, Charles Pickering proposed that Congress should have power to establish and provide for a national university at the seat of government of the United States. Mr. Madison proposed later that this should be one of the distinctly enumerated powers in
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the Constitution. On September 14 Mr. Madison and Mr. Pickering moved to insert " power to establish a university in which no prefer- ence or distinction should be allowed on account of religion." The action proposed was lost, not from opposition to the principle involved, but because such an addition to the Constitution would be a super- fluity, since Congress would possess exclusive power at the seat of government, which would reach the object in question. The patriot and scientist, Dr. Benjamin Rush, issued an address to the people of the United States, strongly urging a Federal university as the means of securing to the people an education suited to the needs of the country, with post-graduate scholarships, and fellowships in connec- tion with the consular service, and an educated civil service generally. " The people," he said, "must be educated for the new form of government by an education adapted to the new and peculiar situation of the country." President Washington, in his address to Congress on January 8, 1790, said: " There is nothing that can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours, it is proportionably essential.
Whether this desirable object will be best promoted by afford- ing aids to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedients, will be worthy of a place in the deliberations of the legislature." The response of both the Senate and the House of Representatives to this address was favor- able, the latter saying: "We concur with you in the sentiment that agriculture, commerce and manufactures are entitled to legislative protection, and that the promotion of science and literature will con- tribute to the security of a free government. In the progress of our deliberations we shall not lose sight of objects so worthy of our regard." Washington contemplated also the possibility of the appropriation of certain western lands in aid of education. Jefferson held that the revenue from the tariff on foreign importations might be appropriated to the great purpose of public education.
This early recognition of the duty of the national government to promote higher education is of importance in considering the history of the passage of the Land Grant Act of 1862, in behalf of technical and liberal education, and the various views by which that measure was advocated or opposed.
46
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LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.
At the close of the Revolutionary war several of the original States claimed that their borders extended to the Mississippi River. To the west lay a vast extent of country whose possession had been deter- mined by the fortunes of the war. Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and even Georgia, claimed this country either as in- cluded in their original charters or as acquired by treaty with the Indians or by exploration. The national government, so far as it ex- isted at this time, possessed no territory. All the land was included within the borders of States. It was proposed by leading statesmen that these nebulous and conflicting claims should be surrendered to the general government on condition that the lands thus ceded should be used to pay the debt of the war, and for the general good. Between the years 1781 and 1792, all the States which laid claim to this land ceded their rights to the nation. On June 16, 1783, two hundred and eighty-eight officers petitioned Congress for a grant of land for their services. Of these officers two hundred and thirty-one were from New England and the Eastern States. This petition of the officers of the Revolution failed. Three years later representatives from the officers met in Boston, and on March 4, 1786, the Ohio Company was formed, the object of which was to purchase from the national government a million and a half acres of land in what was later Eastern Ohio.
A plan for a State to be established between the Ohio River and Lake Erie was organized in New England, to be settled by army vet- erans and their families. Petitions of soldiers in favor of the plan were forwarded to Congress through General Washington. It was proposed that after the payment of soldiers for their services in the war, the public lands remaining should be devoted to public purposes, among which were specified "establishing schools and academies." A proposition from the State of Virginia came before Congress (1783) to devote one-tenth of the income of the territory to national interests, as the erecting of fortresses, the equipment of a navy, and the "found- ing of seminaries of learning." This act did not pass.
On May 20, 1785, the Congress of the Confederation passed an act for "Locating and Disposing of the Lands in the Western Territory." This act contained the provision: "There shall be reserved the central section of every township for the maintenance of public schools, and the section immediately adjoining for the support of religion, the profits arising therefrom in both instances to be applied forever accord- ing to the will of the majority of male residents of full age within the
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY.
same." To Colonel Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts, "if to any one man, is to be attributed the suggestion which led to the first edu- cational land grant." To the Hon. Rufus King the immediate merit of embodying this principle in the statute is due. "This reservation inarks the beginning of the policy which, uniformly observed since then, has set aside one thirty-sixth of the land in each new State for the maintenance of public schools." The use of this national land had, however, been separately advocated by leading statesmen of the time.
Generals Putnam, Tupper and Parsons were active in this scheme for settling the new territory, but its efficient agent before Congress was the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, of Hamilton, Mass., a chaplain in the late war, a man of legal training, and later a member of Congress from Massachusetts, a scholar whose scientific enthusiasm and attainments in astronomy and botany made him the friend and correspondent of the most eminent scholars of the world. Under the influence of Dr. Manasseh Cutler the "Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the North-West Territory " was passed. It contained the memorable words, "that religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." The committee which re- ported this act recommended that one section in each township should be reserved for common schools, one for the support of religion, and four townships for the support of a university. This was subsequently modified so that two townships should be appropriated "for a literary institution, to be applied to the intended object by the legislature." Dr. Cutler's friends and associates would not embark in this enterprise unless these principles were unalterably fixed. They demanded to know on what foundations their social organization should rest, and hence the organic law had to be first settled. By this action the prin- ciple of national aid to education was established.
The sale of the great tract of five inillion acres to the Ohio Com- pany was closely associated with the passage of the "Ordinance of 1787 " and determined in part its form. This act, so momentous in its sequences, rested upon a compact between each of the original States and the people in the proposed territory, and was to remain unalter- ble unless by mutual consent. It contained the great principles of civil and religious liberty, and of the rights of conscience. By it an orderly and representative government was secured to all the people of the great Northwest. Slavery was forever prohibited and public education
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LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.
was provided. The most eminent jurists have expressed their admi- ration for this enactment. Daniel Webster said: "We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity, but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787. It set forth and declared it to be a high and binding duty of government to support schools and advance the means of edu- cation. We see its consequences at this moment and we shall never cease to see them perhaps while the Ohio flows."1 Judge Story, in his work on the Constitution, said: This ordinance " has ever since con- stituted in most respects the model of all our territorial governments, and is equally remarkable for the brevity and exactness of its text and for its masterly display of the fundamental principles of civil and re- ligious liberty. American legislation has never achieved anything morc admirable, as an internal government, than this comprehensive scheme. Its provisions concerning the distribution of property, the principles of civil and religious liberty, which it laid at the foundation of the communities established under its sway, and the efficient and civil organization by which it created the first machinery of civil society are worthy of all the praise that has ever attended it. "?
Chief-Justice Chase said: "Never, probably, in the history of the world, did a measure of legislation so accurately fulfill, and yet so mightily exceed, the anticipations of the legislators."3
"It approaches as nearly to absolute perfection as anything to be found in the legislation of mankind; for after the experience of fifty years it would perhaps be impossible to alter without marring it."4
The draft of this great charter was made by Nathan Dane, of Massa- chusetts, but to Dr. Manasseh Cutler is due the distinct incorporation of the principle of the support of education and the establishment of a university, and probably the provision against slavery. It is even possible that his was the master mind which suggested the form of the whole, based as it largely is upon the constitution and judicial system of Massachusetts of 1780, and containing in addition the principle of the inviolability of contracts, which six weeks later was incorporated
1 First and second speech in reply to Foote's Resolutions.
2 Works III, 363, 433; Hist. of the Const., 1, 307.
$ Introduction to the Statutes of Ohio.
+ Judge Timothy Walker, address at Marietta.
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY.
in the draft of the Constitution of the United States. Certainly we know that the passage of this famous ordinance, as well as the sale of five and a half million acres of land by Congress, was due to his able advocacy and conquering personality.
One of the first acts of Congress after the adoption of the Constitu- tion was to affirm solemnly the binding force of this ordinance, and to adapt its provisions to those of the new Constitution. Following the precedent here set, the States which constituted a part of the North- west Territory, which were admitted later, made provision for the support of popular education and the endowment of colleges by appro- priations of land or a certain percentage of the income from the sales of public lands. Three to five per cent. of the proceeds of the sales of public lands within their borders had also been granted to the States by the national government before the national grant of 1862, which had in many cases been devoted to education. Since the year 1800, every State admitted to the Union, save Maine and West Virginia, which were taken from older States, and Texas, which was acquired from Mexico, have received two or more townships of land for the pupose of founding a university. The proceeds of the sale of saline and swamp lands, and grants of public lands to the States for internal improvements have in some cases been devoted to education. Three million five hundred thousand acres have thus been set apart for higher education. Special grants have been made to a few States, as one to Tennessee in 1806, and minor appropriations for specific purposes, to asylums, academies and missionary societies. The vast agricultural interests of the West now began to demand the recognition of agricul- tural and industrial education by the national government. The State of Michigan asked Congress in 1850 for a grant of 350,000 acres of land for the support of agricultural schools. The question of a national grant in aid of scientific and practical agriculture had been forced upon Congress by numerous petitions, which had been presented both by scientific bodies and even by State Legislatures. In the year 1854 the Legislature of Illinois presented a memorial to Congress request- ing such a grant of the public lands, and at the session of Congress of 1857 a similar memorial was presented from the State Board of Agri- culture of the State of New York asking a grant of land in aid of the agricultural colleges of the several States. From this time forward memorials poured in upon Congress in constant succession asking for appropriations for such schools.
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LANDMARKS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.
The Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, took his seat in 1855 as a member of Congress from Vermont. His attention was soon called to the numerous appropriations of public lands for railroads and local interests, by which our vast national domain was being gradually sacri- ficed without contributing to any permanent work of general benefit. He was soon impressed with the fact that this splendid possession might, by an intelligent and comprehensive plan, be so appropriated as to make it a source of perpetual blessing, placing resources in the hands of the government such as no previous nation had enjoyed. Mr. Morrill was from New England, where education was regarded as an essential of good government and upright citizenship; he was also from a State whose chief interest was in its agricultural resources, but whose wealth was gradually diminishing with the development of more fertile regions. He thus describes the reasons which led' to the intro- duction of the bill, and his part in its passage:
First, that large grants of land were made for educational as well as for other pur- poses, and that the older States were obtaining little special benefit from the large common property of the public domain.
Second, that the average product of wheat crops per acre in the Northern and Eastern States was rapidly diminishing, and that these States would soon be depend- ent for bread upon our Northwestern States. While in England their soil, maintain- ing its ancient fertility, under more scientific culture, and its wheat crop per acre appeared undiminished. Some institutions of a high grade for instruction in agri- culture and the mechanic arts, I know, had been established in Europe, and that something of the kind here was greatly to be desired.
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