Page images
PDF
EPUB

said Town by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, and the circumstances of the College shall require, will grant a free and full use of the house, called the Academy in the Town of Schenectady, for the transacting the business of the College until a transfer of said house be legally made to the Trustees of the College.

(A true copy from the minutes of the Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the Academy in the Town of Schenectady.)

JOHN TAYLOR, Secretary pro tem."

These proceedings did not pass without a rival effort for establishing a College in the city of Albany. As early as January 4, 1792, the Common Council had voted to convey a part of the Public Square for the use of a College, provided that a charter should be obtained, and had appointed John N. Bleecker, Simeon DeWitt and Philip S. Van Rensselaer, a committee to draft a subscription for a College. These efforts were continued a year or two after, and were revived by the above recited proceedings in the interest of Schenectady in 1794-5.

A meeting was held in the City Hall at Albany on the last day of 1794, for taking measures toward securing a charter for "Albany College," and a full plan, certified under the seal of the city, was forwarded to the Board under date of January 12, 1795. The fund proposed was $50,000, including a lot of two acres for buildings, and of this sum $10,000 were to be used for building.'

A charter was granted to Union College on the 25th of February, 1795, with full powers for the granting of degrees, and the most ample guarantees against sectarian control."

See an extended account of these early proceedings with subscription lists, etc., in an article prepared by the editor of this volume for Munsell's Annals of Albany, VII., p. 126. A subscription list is published in the First Semi-Centennial Anniversary of Union College, 1845, p. 172, with other historical information of interest in this connection. Minute details are also given concerning the Old Academy in Prof. Pearson's History of Schenectady Patent, p. 433.

2 The charter of 1795 named Robert Yates, Abraham Yates, Jr., Abraham Ten Broeck, Goldsbrow Banyar, John V. Henry, George Merchant, Stephen Van Rensselaer, John Glen, Isaac Vrooman, Joseph C. Yates, James Shuter, Nicholas Veeder, James Gordon, Berial Palmer, Samuel Smith, Henry Walton, Ammi Rodgers, Aaron Condict, Jacobus V. C. Romeyn, James Cochran, John Frey, D. Christopher Peak, Jonas Platt and Jonas Coe, as first Trustees, and fixed their numbers at twenty-four.

The charter was amended March 30, 1797, by authorizing the Trustees to make rules and ordinances authorizing the Faculty to inflict on any student the punishment of degradation, subject to the approval of the Trustees at their next meeting, and also in respect to the formation of a quorum.

An act granting a lottery, passed March 30, 1805, provided for reducing the

An act of April 6, 1795, allowed the Trustees of the Academy to convey and of the College to accept the Academy building, upon which the powers of the former were supposed to cease.1

The College was organized October 19, 1795, by the election of the Rev. John Blair Smith, D. D., of Philadelphia, as President,' John Taylor, A. M., as Professor of Mathematics, and the Rev. Andrew Yates as Professor of Greek and Latin. The first Commencement was held in May, 1797, and three young men received the first degree.'

They express great confidence of success, but indicated a point in their charter relating to discipline which needed amendment.

For several years the Trustees in their report complain of the want of preparatory classical schools. Washington Academy (Salem) was for many of the early years the principal source of supply. An act was passed March 30, 1797, defining the powers of the Trustees. In April, 1798, the financial condition of Union College was reported as follows:

Given by Trustees of the Town..
Given for House and Lot...

House and Lot for President...

$20,301 60

5,712 50 3,500 00

number of Trustees to twenty-one, whereof the Chancellor, Justices of the Supreme Court, Attorney-General, Secretary of State, Comptroller, Surveyor-General and Treasurer were ex-officio members of the Board. The Constitution of 1821 having reduced the number of Justices from five to three, an act of February 14, 1823, added the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor.

The Constitution of 1846 by abolishing the offices of Chancellor and Justices of the then existing Supreme Court, created vacancies which the Trustees were by an act of April 19, 1847, authorized to fill, in the same manner as other vacancies in their Board.

'As this act did not expressly declare the dissolution of the Academic Corporation, it was construed to remain, and more than twenty years afterward it was revived, as mention in our notice of Academies on a subsequent page.

The old Academy received an appropriation of $310 in 1793 and $400 in 1794. The chronicles of the day record that the event of receiving a College charter was celebrated with the ringing of bells, display of flags, bonfires and a general illumination.

Mr. Smith was a Presbyterian clergyman in Philadelphia when elected. He returned to his charge after leaving Union College, and died there August 22, 1799, aged 43 years.

The Trustees in their first report, dated December 9, 1795, state that they had organized the following classes, commencing with the lowest :

(1.) Class of Languages, 16 students. (2). Class of History or Belles-Lettres, 4 students. (3.) Mathematical Class, 3 students. (4.) Philosophical Class, no students.

Lot on which the new College is to be built....
Philosophical and Mathematical apparatus and Library.
Cash raised for apparatus and Library but not expended.

$3,250 00

2,516 00 1,234 00

$36, 514 10

In addition to this property the College owned 1,604 acres of unimproved lands. The Faculty consisted of a President, a Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, a Professor of Mathematics and one Tutor.

The Legislature had before this made the following appropriations:

Act of April 9, 1795, for books and apparatus..
Act of April 11, 1796, for building..

Act of March 30, 1797, for salaries, two years........

$3,750 00 10, 000 00 1, 500 00

The Rev. Jonathan Edwards, D. D., succeeded to the Presidency in 1799, but died in 1801,1 and was followed by the Rev. Jonathan Maxey, D. D., who resigned in 1804.*

A College edifice, magnificent for its day, was begun under President Edwards, and opened for use in 1804.'

Mr. Edwards was a son of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Mass., afterward President of the College of New Jersey. He was a pastor in New Haven, Conn., when elected President, and died in Schenectady August 1, 1801, aged 56 years.

2 Mr. Maxey was born in Attleborough, Mass., September 2, 1768, and was pastor of a Baptist Church in Providence when chosen President of Union College. He became President of the College of South Carolina, at Columbia, and died there June 4, 1820, aged 52 years.

3 The sum of $10,000 was granted March 7, 1800, for completing the College and establishing a permanent fund for the support of professors. By the same act the trustees were authorized to select ten lots in the Military Tract, and the proceeds from sales were to be invested in public or bank stock for the benefit of the College.

The following lots were selected amounting to 5,500 acres: Manlius, No. 18, 550 acres; Aurelius, No. 36, 550 acres; Marcellus, No. 19, 550 acres; Pompey, No. 31, 550 acres; Romulus, No. 55, 550 acres; Scipio, No. 83, 550 acres ; Fabius, No. 36, 550 acres ; Ovid, No. 23, 550 acres; Milton, No. 56, 550 acres; Solon, No. 41, 550 acres.

Further aid was granted March 24, 1801, in the payment of interest on moneys borrowed on the credit of the State.

The lands granted to the Regents at Lake George, Ticonderoga and Crown Point were divided between Columbia and Union Colleges.

The College received $43,483.93 from its lands in the Military Tract and $9,373.20 from the "Garrison lands," near Lake George.

See acts of March 16, 1810 (chap. 53), relating to loans of 1800 and 1801.

The Trustees were peculiarly fortunate in their selection of a man as President to fill the vacancy that occurred in 1804. They elected the Rev. Eliphalet Nott, a young clergyman of Albany, who at the age of thirty-one had already become well-known as an eloquent and effective public speaker, of dignified and courteous manners and distinguished learning. But he possessed a talent as yet latent, in the education of young men, that afterward made him one of the most distinguished of College Presidents. He held the office until his death, January 29, 1866.1 Dr. Nott found the College wanting both means and students. The inhabitants of Schenectady had proposed to raise an endowment in lands, obligations and money; but the largest subscription was $250 and the next $100, and the total sum from all sources other than direct gift by the State, was but $42,343.74. The State, before 1804, had given $78,112.13. The. building begun in 1798,' was unfinished, and the College was burdened with a heavy debt.

Dr. Nott undertook to provide funds for an ample endowment,

'Dr. Nott was born in Ashford, Conn., June 25, 1773, graduated at Brown University in 1793, studied theology with the Rev. Joel Benedict, of Plainfield, Conn., and settled at Cherry Valley, N. Y., in 1796, as pastor of a church and teacher of a classical school. His talents soon secured for him a call to the Presbyterian church in Albany, where he remained until 1804.

During the long course of years that he held the office of President of Union College, and was actively engaged in his duties, over four thousand students enjoyed the opportunity of listening to his instruction, and received their diplomas at his hand. Dr. Nott had an inventive turn of mind, and patented various devices, one of which was a coal stove, that came into very extensive use, being one of the very first in which coal was burned. His active mental powers gradually failed toward the end of life.

2 Chapter 62, Laws of 1805.

* This building, long known in after years as "West College," was doubtless from designs by Philip Hooker, an eminent architect of Albany, is of the Italian style, of stone, three stories high, besides a basement, and is surmounted by an elegant central cupola. It is 150 by 60 feet on the ground plan, and cost about $56,000 besides the site. It contained the President's residence, chapel, library and recitation-rooms, and a considerable number of dormitories. In 1815 it was sold to the county for a court-house, for 3,000 acres of land in Schenectady county, but was repurchased in 1831 for $10,000, and used by the two lower classes until 1854. It was then sold to the city for $6,000, and is now used by the city union school.

Between 1805 and 1810 a row of two-story brick buildings was erected on Col. lege street for dormitories. It was sold in 1830. A one-story brick building, 30 by 80 feet, built in the rear of the old College, and used for a Lancasterian school while the county owned it, afterward became the College museum, and is still in use by the city school.

by the aid of a lottery, and on the 30th of March, 1805, an act was passed for raising the sum of $80,000 in four drawings of $20,000 each. He also procured laws for enforcing rigid police regulations for the protection of students,' and adopted measures which presently began to place the College in very successful operation.

The grounds in the city were scanty, and no enlargement was practicable. This led to the securing of some two hundred and fifty acres on the eastern borders of the city, where the fields rise by a gentle slope to a plain of moderate elevation and easy of access. Near the upper edge of this slope, a terrace a few feet high would afford a level campus of ample space, and a site for buildings that would overlook the valley, the city and the Mohawk river, while northward glimpses of mountains blue from distance, and southwestward ranges of hills dividing the waters of the Mohawk and Susquehanna rivers, would present a panorama of peculiar loveliness. A gently murmuring brook issuing from dense woodlands flowed across the grounds just north of the proposed site, and in the rear alternating fields and groves extended several miles eastward to the Hudson.

Plans for new College buildings were drawn by Mons. Ramée, a French engineer, then eminent in the country, and for a time employed by the Government in planning fortifications and public works. Construction on College Hill was begun in 1812, and the premises were occupied in the summer of 1814.

Another Lottery Grant was allowed April 13, 1814,' in which the sum of $100,000 was directed to be raised for buildings, $30,000 to pay debts, $20,000 for Library and Apparatus and $50,000 for a charitable endowment of Union College-in all $200,000. The same act made provision for the raising of $40,000 to Hamilton College by lottery-gave the Botanical Garden, bought of Dr. Hosack, to Columbia College, and gave a valuable privilege in the subscription of bank stock to the Medical College at Fairfield.

Under this provision a large number of students of limited means have since received free tuition. This Lottery was many years in progress. By an act passed April 5, 1822, the institutions having an interest were allowed to assume conjointly, or to appoint one of

Of this the sum of $35,000 was for buildings, an equal sum for professorships $5,000 for a classical library and books for needy students, and $5,000 for expenses of indigent students.

2 Chapter 126, Laws of 1808, etc.

3 Chapter 120, Laws of 1814.

Chapter 163, Laws of 1822.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »