Beloit College - Codex Yearbook (Beloit, WI)

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Retrospect .E 'uv ,-,gf y IGHTEFN hundred and thirty-seven was a notable year in the history p 1 E l of Beloit, being the one in which the New England Emigrating Co. ji' 'ef 19 .gi selected the present site of Beloit for their new homes. This was the C153 L' year of the great financial panic which brought disaster to all the country. It was a discouraging condition of things which confronted this new colony. Mr. Merrill, in 1837, closed his engagement as teacher in the Chesterfield Academy in New Hampshire, and went to Georgia where he taught eight years in Sparta and in Cuthbert. He resigned his work there on account of the slavery agitation of those days and with his wife came west, hoping to find an open- ing for some manufacturing business. Hearing that in southern Wisconsin a New England colony had planted itself and was already a -power in the northwest, they went by stage coach and lake steamer to Beloit in May of 1846. They found the location on the banks of the Siminissippi river f now the Rockl a delightful one, and the people of the sturdy New England stock, who had already built a fine church and secured a charter for an institution of learning-the Beloit Seminary. They were pleased to learn that the good people of the northwest had decided on Beloit as the location for a college. Desiring to find a place having good water power for a manufacturing business, Mr. Merrill would have gone further north, but for the fact that the stage driver would not wait for him to dine on the day appointed for him to leave. Before the return of the stage, he reluctantly accepted the principalship of Beloit Seminary, which successfully closed the first year under the new administration a few days after the corner-stone of Middle College was laid, on july 24th, 1847. The fall term opened in September with an increased number of students, many of whom were preparing for college. Four young men were ready to e11ter, and although no building had been erected to house them, and no professor had been elected to teach them, they commenced the studies required for the Freshman class. On November 4th, 1847, they were formally examined in the presence of trustees of the college and became full-fledged collegians, who continued their recita- O tions in the basement of the old stone church, which was the home of the seminary until the arrival of Professor Bushnell in 1848. Professor Bushnell in his quarter centennial address said : Slender and inadequate as the means of the college were, it had already made a beginning. Five young men had been fitted for college in Beloit Seminary, under the instruction of Mr. S. T. Merrill for the greater part of the Freshman year. This was the beginning of Beloit College. Mr. Merrill filled worthily that year the positions of president and professor in all the departments. Mr. Hobart, editor of the Beloit Crescent, in July, ,72, says : lVIr. S. T. Merrill and Mr. T. L. VVright laid the foundation of the immense business of paper manufacturing 20

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SERENO T. MERRILL