Beloit College - Codex Yearbook (Beloit, WI)

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18 CODEX. only casual mention. It had the curious fortune of being mentioned in two editions of the American Cyclopedia. It stood on the northwest corner of Broad and Prospect Streets, where the house of C. C. Keeler now stands, it faced south, and had four tall brick pillars in front, the historic basement, of whose connection with the early history of Beloit College we have yet one IHOIC thing to tell, was entered by a door on the east. Had that church not existed and had it not been the best in theiregion outside of Milwaukee, the college might have gone elsewhere for a home. The first settlers had very little money, and it took a bushel of wheat to get a letter out of the post-office or a yard of calico from the store. t 5 gg' it Bi s ft s W lr.r fl ' t tt 1 wliilatt' iran FQ -LQLE in it ' L Q i M ., gg ., l gilt .E 243.4 1.-. 211,-xfwS?::::2L::E'2:i,T . gripe-ff - - - e X. ,ps . H+,-1 adam.. X-' S,,zj,,,, j-.- A 'Eg Du Sm-xc, CIW'-Jr THE OLD STONE CHURCH. Pork was only two or three cents a pound. Yet those beginners were willing to work. They got stone and lime from their quarries 5 they sawed the native trees into lumber 3 brick was made in' the neighborhood. Only the shingles must be got from abroad, and for those one of them went without money to Kenosha, driving an ox-wagon, sleeping under it, and asking in Kenosha for a Christian lumberman who would let them have the shingles on credit and wait till spring for his pay. The' trip took a week, but the shingles were got, the .church was used through the winter, and the promise to pay was kept. In that basement the Beloit Seminary found a homeg as we seek to estimate the iniluences that brought the College to Beloit, we must give

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TIJE H1S7'0A'V OF BELOIT COLLEGE. 17 the framing of this good ship, whose ribs and hull are wrought of eternal truths that know no decay. The Chesapeake might well have been cut on the college-seal. The Four Conventions. As we have said, there had been already much thinking and talking of a college. It was discussed in 1843, in Beloit, in the old stone church on Broad Street, in the General Convention of the Congre- gational and Presbyterian churches. But from that crowded conference on the steamer sprang a dennite purpose, and definite plans. A con- ference was called, to meet on the 6th of August, 1844. Enthusiasm had been sufficient so far, now they were face-to-face with work. Small as Beloit then was, with less than a thousand inhabitants, it was a large part of VVisconsin, for the Territory had in 1840 little more than thirty thousand people. Money was scarce, transportation was by horse, or ox, or on foot, over roads that were often desperately bad. It took devo- tion to come even a little distance to talk of a college. In that first conference there were four from Iowa, twenty-seven from Illinois, twenty-ive from Wisconsin, fifty-six in all. Aratus Kent, afterward known as the father of Rockford Seminary, was called to preside. They spent two days in earnest talk. They planned for a college for Iowa-afterward established, as Iowa College, at Davenport and later moved to Grinnell-and a college and a female seminary for this border-region connecting the state of the prairies and the state of the lakes. Only so much did they dare to do. They therefore published their results, and called another convention for October, to review their action and advance upon it if that should seem best. So cautious did they think it necessary to be. The October convention was composed of fifty members, all from Wisconsin and Illinois. Still another convention, of sixty-eight mem- bers, was held before they dared to take any irrevocable steps, that came in May, 1845, and decided on Beloit as the site, In October, 1845, a fourth convention adopted a form of charter and elected a board of Trustees. So BELOIT COLLEGE became a name and a splendid hope. The ora stone church. These four conventions and the first meeting of the trustees were held in the basement of the old stone church. That church is too closely connected with the beginnings of Beloit College to be left with

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THE HISTOA' Y OF BEL 017' COLLE GE. 19 a leading place to the impression made by an edihce then thought so hne, by the seminary then iiourishing under the shelter of those im- mortal shingles, and, back of both, by the temper of a community that, while still poorly housed, gave such proof of devotion to the church and the school. A picture of that church has been successfully drawn from memory, it should be hung in Memorial Hall. The Start. The first meeting of the Trustees was held October zgd, 1845, eight of the fifteen being present. That they felt their responsibility is shown by the silence with which they looked at each other, until one said: Well, brethren, what are we to do? and Father Kent answered: Let us pray. Of those eight and fifteen 'A. L. Chapin and Wait Talcott have served continuously ever since, the rest are gone on to service in another world. H The year 1846 passed in consultation and preparation, including the effort to find outside friends. It had been felt all along that Beloit was the place, Beloit had offered ten acres, being the central half of the present site, and a building to cost not less than three thousand dollars. As Father Kent said, Beloit was eighty miles from everywhere, that is, from the lake-shore, with the chain of cities expected to grow up there, from the lead-region, then supposed to be of inexhaustible wealth and likely to build up another group of cities, and from the Mississippi, then a great avenue of commerce, the development and superiority of the railroad not being then foreseen. A charter was granted by the territorial legislature, it was approved by the Governor February zd, 1846. The College Society took up the new institution and gave it a powerful moral support as well as sums of money amounting to eight thousand dollars in the first ten years. Some little formality attended the laying of the nrst stone by the citizens at the northwest corner of Middle College in the autumn of 1846. Something Visible. T . The corner-stone of Middle College was laid june 24th, 1847, Let us try to imagine the scene. There was a village, then of about seventeen hundred people, very few of them living on the West Side or on the college bluff' No rail- road had yet arrived. The campus of ten acres stretched from College