USA > Pennsylvania > Delaware County > A history of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and its people; Volume II > Part 9
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Haverford College has had the prominent place it has held in the world of athletics, not always because it has turned out championship teams. but for the spirit and enthusiasm that has ever characterized her representatives. No team could ever be sure of a victory over Haverford, no matter how strong its line- up. for in the joy of contest and the glory of battle Haverford teams often be- came the possessors of prowess to which, on paper, they had absolutely no right. For many years cricket was chiefly indulged at the college, and in this sport the college ranked high. In due time foot-ball and soccer found their places in the recreation of the students, and at the present time the college is represented by many teams.
Previous mention has been made of the societies which have at different times existed in the college. Of these only one remains, the Loganian Society, whose chief object is for instruction and practice in debating. The Classical Club is an organization for the study of the life and literature of the Greeks and Romans. Membership is held by both faculty and students. There is also a chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa, an honor fraternity. The Campus Club is an association for the study and preservation of trees, shrubs, birds, and wild animals found on the campus and in the vicinity. Another college organization is the Haverford Union, open to alumni and students, whose aim is the promotion of social fellowship at the college. It is housed in a large and handsome building, the gift of Alfred Percival Smith, '84, and has a library, comfortable lounging rooms, and sleeping accommodations.
The periodicals of the institution are the Haverford College Bulletin, pub- lished eight times a year by the college ; "The Haverfordian" issued monthly by the students ; and the "College Weekly.' also edited by the students.
Haverford College has real estate worth $1,500,000, and a productive endowment of $1,800,000. It owns a library of 60,000 volumes and many thousand pamphlets, and an excellent equipment in Astronomy, Biology, Chem- istry and Physics. Its students nearly all reside in dormitories on the College grounds and take their meals in a common dining room. Picked by Entrance Examinations, and kept to their work by the stimulus of close association with the Professors and the necessity for a good record, they hold a high place at graduation. They are received at Harvard and other universities on equal standing with their own graduates, in advanced scholarly or technical work.
The College has given its energies to general cultural studies rather than professional. All of its courses embrace languages, literature, science and the
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other essentials of a liberal education, and it is in this field that it has earned its laurels.
The curriculum of the college permits it to award degrees in three courses. arts, science, and engineering. The faculty is large and efficient for the num - ber of students, and in 1913 is as follows: Isaac Sharpless, Sc. D., LL.D., L. H. D., president and professor of ethics; Allen Clapp Thomas, A. M., librarian and professor emeritus of history ; Lyman Beecher Hall, Ph.D., John Farnum, professor of chemistry; Francis Barton Gummere, Ph.D., LL .. D., Litt. D., professor of English literature; Henry Sherring Pratt, Ph.D., David Scull, professor of biology; James Addison Babbitt, A. M., M. D., pro- fessor of hygiene and physical education : Rufus Matthew Jones, A. M., Litt. D., professor of philosophy; Oscar Marshall Chase, S. M., registrar and instructor in drawing; Albert Sidney Bolles, Ph.D., LL. D., lecturer on com- mercial law and banking : Don Carlos Barrett, Ph.D., professor of economics; Albert Elmer Hancock, Ph.D., professor of English; Legh Wilber Reid, Ph.D .. professor of mathematics; William Wilson Baker, Ph.D., associate profes- sor of Greek; Frederic Palmer, Jr., Ph.D., dean and associate professor of physics; Leon Hawley Rittenhouse, M. E., associate professor of mechanics and electricity ; Richard Mott Gummere, Ph.D., associate professor of Latin ; Thomas Kite Brown, Jr., A. M., instructor in German ; Alexander Guy Hol- born Spiers, Ph.D., associate professor of romance languages; Rayner Wick- ersham Kelsey, Ph.D., associate professor of history; Albert Harris Wilson, Ph. D., associate professor of mathematics ; Henry Joel Cadbury, Ph.D., instruc- tor in Biblical literature : Edward Eugen Krauss, instructor in physical train- ing; Victor Oscar Freeburg, A. M., instructor in English; William Otis Saw- telle, A. M., instructor in physics ; William Henry Collins, A. M., superinten- dent of grounds and buildings ; Helen Sharpless, assistant librarian ; Charles Otis Young, S. B., assistant in chemical laboratory ; Paul W. Weaver, assistant in engineering.
The corporation governing Haverford College has as its officers T. Wistar Brown, president : J. Stogdell Stokes, secretary; and Asa S. Wing, treasurer. There is also a board of managers of twenty-four members, of which the pres- ident of the corporation is president, er officio.
The present president of the college, Isaac Sharpless, Sc. D., LL.D., L.H. D., has held that position of honor, trust, and responsibility for twenty-six years. Ile was born 12th month 16, 1848, and attended the Friends' Boarding School at Westtown, Pennsylvania, whence he was graduated in 1867, and where he taught for the four years following his graduation. In 1873 he was graduated S. B. from the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, and two years later his connection with Haverford began, when he was called to fill the chair of Mathematics at the college. In 1879 he became professor of astronomy, a subject upon which he is a well-known authority. In 1884 he was made dean of the college, and on May 17, 1887, his formal inauguration as president was held.
Doctor Sharpless is the author of several scientific works, and in connec-
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.
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tion with Professor Phillips, of West Chester State Normal School, has pub- lished treatises upon astronomy and physies. In early recognition of his seien- tifie researches the University of Pennsylvania, in 1883, conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
He is also the author of a volume on "English Education," and of several treatises on Pennsylvania History-"A Quaker Experiment in Government," "Quakerism and Polities" and "Two Centuries of Pennsylvania History."
In the quarter of a century that Dr. Sharpless has been at the head of Haverford College, the institution has had an era of unprecedented growth and expansion, due to the loyal support of many friends.
Swarthmore College .- The Society of Friends, finding its immediate im- pulse in the Puritan Revolution, shared the sympathy of the Puritans in a widespread and thorough-going system of education. Throughout the subse- quent history of the society it has laid especial stress upon the importance of education, not merely for the sake of a better understanding of the Bible af- forded thereby, but because it has recognized as man's highest duty the culti- vation of every means by which the Inner Light may be best comprehended, and the voice of the Christ Within may be distinctly heard and most effectually obeyed. The founders of the Society emphasized the value of education as the handmaid of religion, and when the Friends, very early in their history, turned their faces towards America, they brought with them this belief as the pal- Jadium of their intellectual and civil liberty.
It was not so much the meeting-house and the block-house, as in New England, nor the church and the courthouse, as in Virginia, as it was the meeting-house and the school which served as the bulwark of Quakerism in the wilds of the New World. The materializing influences of the Colonial struggle for existence were counteracted by the ideals of a common-school edu- cation ; and when, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the more insidious influences of commercialism, following in the wake of the industrial revolution, asserted themselves so powerfully in America, the Friends came to appreciate the higher education as an idealizing force in sustaining the spiritual life. It is noteworthy that this conviction was first definitely expressed by Friends who dwelt in that part of America where the doctrine that "Cotton is King" had led to the enthronement of human slavery as well.
Benjamin Hallowell, of Alexandria, Virginia, and Martha Tyson, of Bal- timore, Maryland, in the dark days just before the Civil War, made so earnest an appeal to their fellow-Friends in Baltimore that the Yearly meeting of that city appointed a committee to promote their plan of establishing a Friendly institution of higher education. This committee issued in the first year of the war an address to the Friends in the Middle States and Maryland urging "the establishment of a boarding-school for Friends' children and for the education of teachers," and it began the collection of $150.000, the sum of money deemed necessary for the purpose. During the four years of the Great Struggle which solved the problem of slavery for America, the Friends furthered their educa- tional project, and in 1864 a charter was secured from the General Assembly
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and Governor of Pennsylvania incorporating Swarthmore College. This name- was derived from Swarthmore Hall, the Northern England home of George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends. Its first suggestion for the college- is ascribed to Benjamin Hallowell's wife Margaret, although Martha Tyson. suggested and advocated it at the meeting in which the name was chosen.
The second section of the charter states thus succinctly the purposes of the corporation : "That the said corporation be authorized to establish and maintain a school and college, for the purpose of imparting to persons of both sexes knowledge in the various branches of science, literature and the arts; and the board of managers shall have power to confer upon the graduates of the said College, and upon others, when, by their proficiency in learning they may be entitled thereto, such degrees as are conferred by other colleges or universities in the United States."
The site chosen for the college, and purchased in 1864, combined the vir- tuies of country environments with easy access to a great city. It was a large tract (now comprising over two hundred acres ) of beautiful lawn and wood- land, about ten miles west of Philadelphia and overlooking the Delaware river and its valley, all of which are so rich in historic memorials of the Quaker Founders of Pennsylvania. The United States postal authorities had given to the post office standing on the edge of the college tract the name of West- dale, in commemoration of the fact that Benjamin West, the first great Ameri- can artist and president of the Royal Academy, had been born in a house still standing on the college campus-and had there given the first crude expres- sion to the forms of beauty which his eye perceived amid the modest environ- ments of his parents' Quaker home.
The selection of a site was followed in the same year by the appointment of a president. The choice of the managers for this important position fell upon Edward Parrish, of Philadelphia, who was at the time professor of ma- teria medica in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and president of the American Pharmaceutical Association. Retiring from his arduous duties in the middle of the second year after the college opened its doors to students, Dr. Parrish was appointed soon afterward by President Grant to undertake a friendly mission to the Indians, and in the course of its performance he died, September 9, 1872, at Fort Sill. Indian Territory.
It was not until the second year after President Parrish's appointment that the corner-stone of the first college building was laid (May 10, 1866), and three years more elapsed before its doors were opened to students ( November 8, 1869). The delay in commencing and completing the erection of the first building was due to the fact that the requisite sum of money ($304,000) had come in slowly, and to the determination that the college should not enter on its career burdened by a load of debt. To this first and largest building has been given the name of Parrish Hall, in commemoration of the services of the first president.
Twelve years after its completion (September 25, 1881), Parrish Hall was almost completely destroyed by fire, only the solid stone wall and one sec-
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tion containing the Friends' Historical Library being left standing. This mis- fortune, instead of being fatal to the young and struggling institution, only served to rally its friends the more enthusiastically to its aid, and by June of the following year the commencement exercises were held as usual in the re- built though still unplastered assembly hall; and in the following October the students were again installed in the resurrected building. During the interval of rebuilding. the college had taken up its abode in two large boarding-houses in the borough of Media three miles distant, where, with the loss of only a fort- night and of three students, it held its own against cramped quarters and inade- quate equipments. The magazine published by the students for the past thirty-one years has borne the name of The Phoenix, in commemoration of the conflagration and the swift and complete rejuvenation which followed.
The students who first came to Swarthmore numbered 170. and comprised 82 girls and 88 boys. This approximate equality has been preserved to the present day, and has facilitated the maintenance of co-education. When Swarthmore was founded, co-education had been adopted by three colleges and one State University (Indiana) in the west, but it was still looked upon with doubt or disfavor in the eastern states. The theory and practice of the Society of Friends in home and church determined them, however, in their organiza- tion of school and college as well; and throughout the forty-four years of Swarthmore's history their faith in co-education-in "college life in a home setting"-has been justified and strengthened.
In order to encourage, and, when necessary, to make possible post-grad- uate study, especially on the part of those desirous of teaching, five fellow- ships of from $400 to $525, each, have been established.
More than seventy scholarships varying in sums from $25 to $350 are awarded annually by the college and individuals to undergraduate students of bright promise and limited means.
The completion of Parrish Hall in 1869 has been followed by the erection of 20 other college buildings. Most of these are built of Delaware county's famous building stone, and they form a group which dominate the Borough and serve as a land-mark for many miles around.
By 1871 the collection of books, which had commenced before the col- lege opened, had become large enough to justify the appointment of a librar- ian; and ten years later there were 3600 volumes in the general library. These were all destroyed in the fire of 1881; but the friends of the college speedily repaired this disaster, and the number of bound volumes has grown to over 40,000. The Friends' Historical Library, founded in 1871 by Anson Lapham, of Skaneateles, New York, contains over 6,000 books and pamphlets. which, together with photographs and manuscripts, form one of the most valuable collections extant of materials relating to the history of the Society of Friends.
The five scientific departments have been equipped with adequate labo- ratory facilities, the expense and labor of whose collection and arrangement have been borne by many individuals. Perhaps the name which stands out
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most prominently is that of Dr. Joseph Leidy, who for eleven years before the fire, and for four years after that disaster destroyed the first fruits of his labor, devoted himself with peculiar assiduity and success to building up the biological and geological museums and laboratories.
Commencing in 1869 with 170 students, the number rose to 289 in 1883. The gradual cutting-off of the preparatory school began soon afterwards and the number declined until, in 1897-8, five years after the abolition of the pre- paratory classes, it reached 162. From that time the number slowly increased to 207 in 1901 ; and beginning with the new era of 1902 the number has risen more rapidly to 420 in 1913-14. The present number comprises college stu- dents only, and as such represents a gain of more than 1500 per cent. over the 26 college students of the year the college opened 44 years ago. Although the great majority of the students have always come from the four Middle States and Maryland, they have come to represent in the present year twenty-five states of the Union, extending from Maine to Hawaii, and from Florida to Montana.
The first class graduated in 1873 and the 4Ist in 1913. The total nim- ber of graduates is 1265, of whom 27 women and 36 men have died : 33 women and 84 men have received second degrees at Swarthmore, with 4 as the smallest in 1885, and 83 as the largest in 1913. The twenty classes graduated before 1892, when the preparatory school was discontinued aver- aged 15; the twenty-one classes graduated since that time have averaged 43. A number of the children of alumni have entered the college, and several of these have also graduated from the college.
Although one of the younger colleges, with a comparatively small num- ber of alumni, Swarthmore is justly proud of the useful and distinguished rec- ord of her sons and daughters; and one of her chief causes of gratitude as well as one of her most marked characteristics, is the enthusiastic loyalty and self-sacrificing devotion with which her alumni have encircled her spirit, even as the ivies planted by departing classes have enveloped her walls.
Commencing in 1869 with fourteen instructors, the number has grown to 44; at first there were three resident professors, now there are 15; then there were four separate departments, now there are 18. This increase not so much in the number of instructors as in the number of full professorships and departments of study, is an emphatic evidence of the growth of the insti- tution into full college rank. For example, the subjects of ethics, chemistry and natural science were first taught by an instructor, who acted also as presi- dent of the college ; at present there are 5 departments in languages and litera- ture, 5 in science, 7 in history, economics, philosophy, law, art, political science, and education, and the department of physical training.
In accordance with the catalog of 1912-13 the 44 instructors have been students in 24 colleges and universities: 12 have studied in 16 universi- ties in Europe ; they have received degrees from 35 colleges and universities ; 10 are Swarthmore graduates; 7 have taught at Swarthmore for more than to years each.
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Among the historically prominent names are those of Dr. Joseph Leidy, who gave weekly lectures in natural history from 1870 to 1886; Dr. Joseph Thomas, who gave weekly lectures in English literature from 1873 to 1887 : Professor Eugene Paulin, who filled the chair of French from 1872 to 1888; Arthur Beardsley, professor of engineering from 1872 to 1898, and the organ- izer and care-taker of the Friends' Historical Library from its establishment to the present time; Susan J. Cunningham, who had charge of the depart - ment of mathematics and astronomy from the opening of the college until 1906; and Dean Elizabeth Powell Bond, who for twenty years ( 1886-1906) infused into the social relations of the college those elements of sweetness and light which have done so much to realize Swarthmore's ideal of "a col- lege life in a home setting." An important source of scholarly and moral impulse in the college has been lectures delivered each year by men and women of high character and distinction; among these have been Goldwin Smith, Thomas Hughes, Matthew Arnold, Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Goodyear, David Starr Jordan, Charles Wagner, Baroness von Suttner, John W. Foster, Jacob A. Riis, An- drew D. White, Woodrow Wilson, William J. Bryan and Horace Howard Furness.
During the year and a half of Dr. Parrish's tenure of the presidency after college opened, Edward H. Magill, was professor of Latin and French and principal of the Preparatory School. When Dr. Parrish resigned in the mid- dle of the year 1870-71, the president's duties devolved .upon Dr. Magill, who was formally inaugurated president in June 1872 and continued to fill that office until June 1889. After one year spent abroad, Dr. Magill returned to assume the professorship of French, whose duties devolved upon him alone from 1890 to 1900; in the latter year an assistant professor was appointed, and from 1902 to 1907 Dr. Magill was emeritus professor, lecturing occasionally on French and other themes. Thus it is seen that Dr. Magill's name and ser- vices link the earliest days of the college with the recent past, and form a gokdl- en chain bright with achievements and lustrous with the affections of an entire generation of college students. Among his more important services to the college should be mentioned three things which were due in a large measure to him: the recovery from the great fire, the abolition of the prepar- atory school, the collection of a sum of money for the endowment of a profes- sor ship which led immediately to the endowment of three more. To the teach- ing of French he contributed a grammar and readings, and the system of international correspondence ; and to the cause of education in general he con- tributed the foundation of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland.
William Ilyde Appleton, professor of Greek from 1872 to 1905, and of German and English for fifteen year periods each, was acting president in 1889-1890, and president in 1800-91. Preeminently a teacher, and finding his chief happiness in filling his students' minds with an abiding enthusiasm for the good, the true, and the beautiful in the literature of ancient Greece, of Ger-
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many, and of England, Professor Appleton reluctantly accepted the office of president, and gladly returned as soon as possible to his professor's chair. Although the diplomas of twenty-four graduates hear his signature as presi- dent, he is best known to a thousand other Swarthmore students as the gen- tleman and scholar who first inspired them with a discriminating appreciation of the best things in the world's literature.
Charles De Garmo, at present the head of Cornell University's School of Pedagogy, came to Swarthmore as president in 1891, and for seven years de- voted himself to its varied interests. His own chief interest and his chief suc- cess at Swarthmore lay in developing and organizing the course of study. The members of his class in pedagogy realized his logical strength and keenness as a teacher, and liis colleagues in the faculty profited by the stimulus of his scholar- ship.
William W. Birdsall was elected Swarthmore's fifth president in 1898, and served a four years' term in that capacity. Having been engaged in the work of secondary schools during the twenty years since his graduation from college in 1878, President Birdsall was anxious to strengthen the relations be- tween the college and its natural constituents, the Friends' preparatory schools, and he devoted himself largely to that task, resigning the presidency in 1902.
Joseph Swain coming to Swarthmore as president in 1902, at the end of the first generation of the college's career, commenced a new era in its history. Having found a most successful and congenial field of usefulness as president of Indiana University, with which as a student, professor and president he had been associated for twenty-one years, it was with great difficulty that he was persuaded to accept Swarthmore's leadership. One of the conditions of his acceptance was that the college should be placed upon a solid financial basis within three years by increasing its endowment from $400,000 to $1,000,000 ; this condition was fulfilled before the Commencement of 1905. The introduc- tion of the system of prescribed, major, and elective studies, which Dr. Swain had helped to inaugurate and administer in Leland Stanford Junior and Indiana Universities ; the strengthening of the faculty and the endowment of profes- sorships ; the erection of thirteen buildings; a closer relationship between the college and the public school system, with which he has been prominently iden- tified in the West ; a marked increase in the number of students; and the in- troduction of regular and frequent means of publicity, have followed his inaug- uration eleven years ago.
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