USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 34
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 34
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 34
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 34
USA > New York > St Lawrence County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 34
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In 1835 an agreement was made with the Black River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to take over the school, and the name was changed to Gouverneur Wesleyan Academy. It was speci- fied, however, that the school should be open to all students without regard to their religious affiliations. Rev. Jesse T. Peck was appointed the first principal under the new arrangement. The building burned in 1839 and along with it went the bell, the only one in Gouverneur. The trustees of the academy in their contract with the Methodist Church had particularly reserved the bell and it is a question which caused the most consternation in the village, the loss of the academy or the loss of the bell. In 1841, however, a new building was erected, three stories high with the inveterate cupola.
FRANKLIN ACADEMY AND OTHER SCHOOLS
As has been mentioned the first attempt at an academy in all Northern New York was made in Malone, probably in 1806, when a two-story frame structure was erected on what was known as Academy Green, and which was known ever after as Harison Academy. It was never chartered as an academy and none of the early records are preserved, but it is probable that the higher branches were taught there. The story is told that two of the early teachers of the academy were discharged for drunkenness, both hav- ing bottles of brandy in their pockets during school hours, but
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probably these teachers in no way typified the early faculties. Later the Harison Academy was discontinued and in 1831 the movement started for a school of academic standing for Malone. Seventy-three men executed mortgages on their homes to furnish the means. An academy building was erected in 1831 and the doors were opened that same year. This early building was burned and in 1836 it was replaced by a three-story stone structure which long served the pur- poses of the people of Malone for an academy.
There were other early academies of prominence of course. One quite famous institution was the Ives Seminary at Antwerp, Jeffer- son county. When the Methodist conference severed its connection with the Gouverneur Wesleyan Academy, it erected Ives Seminary, absorbing a previous institution, known as the Antwerp Liberal Literary Institute. This was in 1856 and the following year a large stone structure was erected. Later a large boarding hall was erected in connection with the seminary. Originally the name of the school was the Black River Conference Seminary but when in 1873 an en- dowment fund was being raised Willard Ives of Watertown headed the list with a subscription of $8,000 and the name was promptly changed to Ives Seminary.
The Adams Collegiate Institute was chartered in 1855, later called the Hungerford Collegiate Institute when a substantial contribution was received from General Solon D. Hungerford of Adams. It was quite a well known institution in the seventies and eighties.
The Fulton Female Seminary was incorporated in the village of Fulton, Oswego county, in 1836, the Rev. John Eastman of the Presbyterian Church being largely responsible for its existence. In 1842 its title was changed to Fulton Academy and young people of both sexes were admitted to its classes. In 1849 the school passed into the control of the Black River Conference of the Methodist Epis- copal Church and became known as the Falley Seminary. A large brick building was erected. Later the seminary became the property of Rev. James Gilmour, who conducted it until about 1883 when it was closed.
The Pulaski Academy, located at Pulaski, Oswego county, came later, being incorporated by the legislature in 1853. A brick build- ing, three stories high, was erected in 1855.
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THE NORMAL SCHOOLS
In 1843 Calvin T. Hulburt, then a member of assembly from St. Lawrence county, introduced a bill in the state legislature for the establishment of a state normal school with the result that the follow- ing year the Albany State Normal School was opened. This is the institution which is now the New York State College of Teachers. So successful did the Albany Normal School prove that in 1861 a second normal school was established, this time at Oswego. Origi- nally the Oswego Normal was known as the Oswego Training School, to which only graduates of high schools or academies were admitted. Miss M. E. M. Jones, an English teacher, was invited to come to Oswego to take charge of this school, which she did. From the start it prospered, many pupils coming from away, and in 1863 the legis- lature made an appropriation of $3,000 for two years for its support, provided there should be fifty pupils in attendance and that every senatorial district in the state should have the privilege of sending two pupils free of charge. The school, however, remained under the control of the Oswego Board of Education. It occupied a building in East Fourth street.
In 1865 such was the success of the school that the legislature appropriated $6,000 annually on condition that each assembly district could send one pupil free. That same summer the Board of Educa- tion purchased the old United States Hotel on Seneca, between Sixth and Seventh streets, and considerable money was spent in making this property fit for school purposes. Here the Normal students attended their classes and here, too, they conducted their practice school, teaching children under the direction of their instructors. When the General Normal School Act was passed in 1866, providing for six new normal schools, the Oswego Training School was accepted by the state as one of their schools. The first local board consisted of Delos De Wolf, Daniel G. Fort, Samuel B. Johnson, David Harmon, John M. Barrow, Gilbert Mollison, Benjamin Doolittle, Theodore Irwin, John K. Post, Abner C. Mattoon, Thomson Kingsford, Thomas S. Mott and Robert F. Sage. Dr. Edward A. Sheldon was the first principal. Dr. James S. Riggs is the present principal.
In 1866 the Board of Trustees of the St. Lawrence Academy at Potsdam passed a resolution tendering to the State Normal School
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Commission the grounds, buildings, library and apparatus belonging to that institution for the use of a Normal School should it be located in Potsdam. In addition to that the Board of Supervisors and the Village Corporation together voted an appropriation of $72,000, if such normal school should be located in Potsdam. In 1867 a contract was signed for the construction of a building, the corner stone of which was laid in 1868. The original local board consisted of Henry Watkins, Charles O. Tappan, Jesse Reynolds, Ebenezer Fisher, presi- dent of St. Lawrence University, John I. Gilbert, R. G. Pettibone, Noble S. Elderkin, A. W. Deming and Abraham X. Parker. The first principal was the Rev. Malcolm MacVicar, former principal of the Brockport Collegiate Institute, and the first year the school registered 328 students. The first class was graduated in 1871 and consisted of eight students.
As this is written the Potsdam State Normal School occupies a large building, the greater part of which is new construction. The building contains seventy rooms and in the auditorium is one of the largest organs in Northern New York. An appropriation has been granted by the state for the construction of a new building to be used exclusively for a practice school. The faculty numbers sixty. Dr. Randolph T. Congdon is the principal.
ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY
Out of the educational impulse which came from the successful operation of academies of high standing in all the Northern New York counties, came the first North Country college, St. Lawrence University, established in 1856 at Canton. It was natural that Can- ton should desire a college. The people of that town had seen what St. Lawrence Academy had done for the neighboring village of Pots- dam. It had brought Potsdam considerable fame as an educational center. It had attracted a high class of residents to the village and it had brought students from far and near. There was no institution of higher education anywhere in the vicinity of Northern New York. Hamilton at Clinton, Union at Schenectady and Hobart at Geneva were the nearest. Most of the young men who came to be principals of the North Country academies had graduated from one of these three institutions. The people of Canton dreamed of the day when
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in their own village would be located a college to which they could send their children after they had left the academies.
The Universalists had built up a number of strong churches in Northern New York. From the first the North Country had been a fertile field for the spreading of their doctrines. There was a strong Universalist Church in Watertown over which for many years one of the most notable clergymen of his times, the Rev. Pitt Morse, had officiated. There was another strong Universalist Church at Canton. So it was when agitation among the New York state Uni- versalists was revived for the establishment of a theological seminary in the early fifties, Canton was at once interested. By 1854 the state Universalists had raised $26,000 for the purpose of establishing a seminary and a committee on location was named to consider sites. This was Canton's chance and when the committee on location met in Utica in late August, 1855, it reported that it had received applica- tions from twelve places for the proposed theological seminary and among them Canton.
The offer made by Canton was really quite remarkable consider- ing the smallness of the village and its remoteness from the large centers of population. The people there agreed not only to donate a site of twenty acres in a desirable location but also to erect a build- ing for the school to cost not more than $11,500. It might appear at first glance somewhat strange that the villagers of Canton would be so generous in view of the fact that what it was purposed to estab- lish was not a college, in the true sense of the word, but a theological seminary for the training of young men to the ministry. But it appears that the people of Canton were determined all the while that it was a college which should be built and that funds were solicited with this in view, although this object does not seem to have been made known to the committee of the Universalist society having the selection of a site in hand. So the offer was accepted.
Thus it was that on April 3rd a bill was passed by the state legis- lature granting a charter to "the St. Lawrence University," which provided for the "establishing, maintaining and conducting a college in the town of Canton, St. Lawrence county, for the promotion of general education, and to cultivate and advance literature, science and the arts; and to maintain a theological school at Canton aforesaid." This must have been surprising news to the Universalists, who were
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interested in the establishment of a theological seminary and had no knowledge of anything further being contemplated. Particularly must this have been so since it was expressly provided also that the college of letters and science of the new institution should remain unsectarian but that the theological school should be maintained as an institution for the training of persons for the Universalist ministry.
Even then it does not seem to have dawned upon some of the sponsors of the project for a theological school at Canton what the people of Canton had in mind. Thus according to "Sixty Years of St. Lawrence," the most authoritative work on the history of St. Law- rence University, the first the Rev. W. S. Balch, a leading sponsor of the theological school, knew that a university was to be established was when he arrived in Canton for the laying of the corner stone of the college building in June, 1856. Then he was surprised to be handed a placard announcing the laying of the corner stone of "The St. Lawrence University." It must have been a bewildered Mr. Balch who took his seat for the ceremonies on College Hill in Canton that late spring day.
But if the Universalist committee was surprised, not so the people of Canton and vicinity. They turned out for the corner stone laying as if it were a field day. It was no easy task to get to Canton in that day. From Watertown to Canton hardly more than construc- tion trains were being run. The Mr. Balch referred to above, who made the trip from Ludlow, Vermont, found the nearest he could get to Canton by railroad was Madrid and he drove the remaining ten miles. But despite this there was a gathering of prominent Univer- salist ministers and laymen from all over New York state and from portions of New England. The farmers of St. Lawrence county flocked into the village by the hundreds. The basement of the new building was already up and a crude platform had been erected on the first floor joists. In a semi-circle around about seats had been erected and here the audience seated itself to listen to the exercises.
It would have been a strange sight to a present-day audience. The grave dignitaries seated on the crude platform had an uninterrupted view of an unattractive pasture, the campus of the new school. A few scrubby apple trees grew near the present Fisher Hall. Other- wise there was nothing but rolling pasture land. Probably not one
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of those who gathered there that June day in 1856 ever dreamed that within seventy-five years that campus would be a place of beauty on which would stand building after building of marble and granite and brick, representing an investment of many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Probably no one even dared hope that the college which they were establishing there that day would in the course of years send out into the world thousands of educated young men and women, among them such distinguished graduates as Owen D. Young and Irving Bachellor. The exercises took the usual form. There was singing by a choir, prayer by the Rev. Day Kellogg Lee of Ogdensburg, after which the Rev. Mr. Balch laid the corner stone, taking care to remind his listeners that the College of Letters and Science was purely local in its origin and had formed no part of the plan of the Universalist Educational Society. Then a couple of original odes were read, neither of which seem to have come down to posterity, and there were two more lengthy addresses, one by the Rev. Thomas Jefferson Sawyer and the other by the Rev. E. H. Chapin.
Eventually the college building was completed, a bare, brick struc- ture three stories high, looking not unlike one of the academy build- ings which dotted Northern New York. This is the building which, greatly modified and improved, stands today as Richardson Hall. Into this bare structure, with little furniture and no library or equip- ment of any kind moved the first four students of the theological school, Benaiah Loomis Bennett, Andrew Jackson Canfield, Mahlon Rich Leonard and James Minton Pullman with their principal and instructor, Dr. Ebenezer Fisher of South Dedham, Massachusetts. The next spring the Rev. John Stebbins Lee came from Vermont to take charge of the preparatory department of the University, the forerunner of the present College of Letters and Science. Soon Prof. Lee was instructing sixty-five students in his preparatory school and in addition to this was teaching Greek in the theological school. All the students from away lived, boarded and had their classes in the brick college building. The salary of Dr. Fisher, the first president of St. Lawrence University, was $1,100 a year.
Mention should be made of the first Board of Trustees of the Uni- versity. It consisted of Dr. Jacob Harsen of New York, Preston King of Ogdensburg, Sidney Lawrence and George C. Sherman of
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Watertown, John L. Russell, Francis Segar, Martin Thatcher, Levi B. Storrs, Barzillai Hodskin and Theodore Caldwell of Canton, James Sterling of Sterlingville, F. C. Havemeyer, Thomas J. Sawyer and William S. Balch of New York, Thomas Wallace and Josiah Barber of Auburn, Caleb Barstow and Norman Van Nostrand of Brooklyn, H. W. Barton and George E. Baker of Albany, A. C. Moore of Buffalo, L. C. Browne of Hudson, Peter H. Bitley of Branchport, John M. Austin of Auburn and George W. Montgomery of Rochester. When the first meeting of the trustees was held Preston King presided and the Rev. Dr. Thomas J. Sawyer was elected president of the board. Soon the legislature was petitioned to grant an endowment of $15,000 and this was done on condition that $25,000 more be raised by pri- vate subscription. One suspects the hand of Preston King, a political power in the state, in this appropriation. The $25,000 needed by subscription was raised and thus the College of Letters of Science started with a financial foundation of $50,000.
But for thirty years and more money was always desperately needed. It became evident early that Dr. Fisher and Prof. Lee could not hope to do all the work, willing though they were. In 1860 two new instructors joined the teaching staff. Rev. Massena Goodrich of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, became professor of Biblical languages in the theological school and Prof. J. W. Clapp, a graduate of Am- herst and a civil engineer, became professor of mathematics and natural science. Then came the Civil War, a particularly trying period for the infant institution. Students left, many of them enter- ing the army. It was found practically impossible to raise necessary funds. At one time the trustees seriously considered suspending the college department, which by now contained several students, but fortunately the trustees decided against such drastic action, and the college struggled on through the dark days of the war. The first student graduated from the college was Hiram Henry Ryel in 1864, but he was awarded a degree as a member of the class of 1865, the first class to be graduated from the college. The other member of this class to receive a degree was Delos McCurdy. Degrees were subsequently conferred upon Pardon Clarence Williams and Leffert Lefferts Buck, nunc pro tunc, as of the class of 1863. St. Lawrence was now a college in every sense of the word, even though its in- structors and its students were few. So in 1866 the preparatory
POTSDAM STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, POTSDAM, N. Y.
CLARKSON COLLEGE, POTSDAM, N. Y.
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department was abolished and from then on nothing but college courses were taught.
Prof. Goodrich had resigned his position in the theological school in 1862, Dr. Fisher in the meantime carrying on alone. It was not until 1865 that this chair was filled, the appointee being Rev. Orello Cone, who had already made considerable of a reputation for himself as a scholar. That same year Prof. Nehemiah White was called to fill the chair of Prof. Clapp, who had resigned. There were never more than four instructors in the two departments in those early years and usually there were less. The professors were handicapped seriously by the number of classes they were forced to teach and yet from that little college in the sixties went forth graduates who in the course of time made a name for themselves in varied pursuits. There was Delos McCurdy, who became one of the most noted lawyers of his day; William A. Poste, afterwards deputy attorney general of the state; Albert L. Cole, who later was a candidate for governor of Minnesota ; John S. Miller, who became a noted corporation lawyer; Albert Duane Shaw, who became widely known as member of con- gress and in the diplomatic service, and Alexander O. Brodie, who served as an officer in the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War and was for a time governor of Arizona.
In 1868 the Rev. Richmond Fisk was elected "president of the faculty of St. Lawrence University," Dr. Lee having in the meantime taken a professorship in the theological school. Mr. Fisk was only thirty-two years of age at the time and this was long before the time when it became the fashion to call young men to the head of colleges. Dr. Fisher of course continued as president of the theological school, a department over which President Fisk had no authority for all his high-sounding title. The year after President Fisk was appointed, ground was broken for the second building on the campus, the Her- ring Library, but soon after its completion Dr. Fisk resigned and the Rev. Absalom Graves Gaines was appointed in his stead. For fifteen years he continued as president of the college during what was perhaps its most critical period. Three successive generations of Gaines have served St. Lawrence University. Charles Kelsey Gaines, son of Absalom, graduated from St. Lawrence in 1876 and almost from that time to the present has been professor of Greek and Eng- lish literature at the Canton institution. His son, Clarence Hurd
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Gaines, is professor of English. For sixty years St. Lawrence Uni- versity has never been without a Gaines on its faculty.
It is beyond the scope of a work of this kind to give a detailed history of St. Lawrence University. Slowly but surely the college grew and gradually its endowment increased and more and more professors were added to its faculty. Under the administration of the late President Almon Gunnison a state agricultural school was established at Canton as a part of St. Lawrence University and a law department was opened in Brooklyn, which since has become one of the largest law schools in the country. First after Herring Library, old Fisher Hall was built to accommodate the theological school. In a later period came Cole Reading Room, the Carnegie Science Hall and the old gymnasium. Then came the administration of Richard Eddy Sykes with Owen D. Young, the great international statesman as president of the Board of Trustees. St. Lawrence experienced a phenomenal growth. Gunnison Memorial Chapel was constructed with the Bachellor chimes in the tall Gothic spire. Then followed Dean-Eaton Dormitory for Women, the Hepburn Hall of Chemistry dedicated by Madame Curie, co-discoverer of radium, the Brewer Field House constructed on the Weeks Athletic Field, the Administration Building, the open air theatre and finally the massive Men's Dormitory, costing upwards of $600,000 and made possible through the generosity of Owen D. Young, the late George F. Baker, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon and his brother, Charles Mellon.
So the St. Lawrence University of the fifties, consisting of one plain, brick building in the midst of a pasture, has become in seventy- five years an institution of a dozen or more beautiful buildings located on one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country. Her- ring Library was constructed in 1869, Fisher Hall in 1883, Cole Reading Room in 1903, Carnegie Hall in 1906, Gunnison Memorial Chapel in 1926, Hepburn Hall in 1926, Brewer Field House in 1926, Central Heating Plant in 1926, Abbott-Young Memorial Temple in 1926, Dean-Eaton Hall in 1927, C. P. Gaines Out-door Theatre in 1927, the President's House in 1927, the Administration Building in 1927, the Show Shop in 1927 and the Men's Dormitory in 1931. Dr. Richard Eddy Sykes is president of St. Lawrence University in 1931.
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Where once a handful of students gathered about the great wood stove in the old college building to listen to lectures, now hundreds of students from a score of states and from several foreign countries meet for classes in modern buildings equipped in the most approved style. In 1931 there were 136 members of the faculty of St. Law- rence University, 890 students in its College of Letters and Science and 1,956 students in the Brooklyn Law School, a department of the University. From 1861 to 1930 a total of 2,211 students have been graduated from the College of Letters and Science and 312 from the theological school.
Apparently the St. Lawrence county farmers of the fifties, who thought there was a place for a college as well as a theological school in Northern New York, were not mistaken.
NEW YORK SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE OF CANTON, N. Y.
by Van Crampton Whittemore (Director)
The desirability of locating a State School of Agriculture at Canton was brought to the attention of Dr. Almon Gunnison, Presi- dent of St. Lawrence University, while he was conferring with agricultural college men at Albany. So much was he impressed that he held a conference with Dean L. H. Bailey of Cornell. He found Dean Bailey sympathetic and ready to aid in every possible way. Senator George R. Malby and Assemblyman Edwin Merritt were soon interested and actively promoted the school. The bill entitled "An act to establish a State School of Agriculture at St. Lawrence University and making an appropriation therefor," was introduced into the assembly by Mr. Merritt, the 26th of February, 1906, and finally signed by Governor Higgins. The objects and purposes (including later amendments) were declared to be:
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