College of Wooster - Index Yearbook (Wooster, OH)

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Preliminary Hisfory of the Unifversify of Wooster. UBLIC institutions are not usually of mushroom growth. Their roots often lie deeply hidden in the past, long before the institutions themselves take shape above ground. Their history cannot be fully understood until these beginnings are carefully traced and the sources of their nourishment laid bare. The province of the true historian must begin with the study of origins, and ultimate causes. For causes ever underlie conditions. Theories that attempt to explain conditions without study of causes belong to the realm of the imagination. Materials for such study in connection with our University were collected some time since by the writer with considerable research and much care from original sources in the records of the Ohio Synods of the Presbyterian church by which it was constituted and in other documents. These materials were compared with statements of Dr. John Robinson, a chief actor in the early history, to whose presentation of the subject reference is made hereafter. The Index can scarcely do greater or more permanent service to the University than by placing upon record such a sketch of the details of its history in the preliminary movements leading to its organization. To the general public this outline may not prove fascinating reading. But it is not devoid of interest and its permanent value can scarcely be questioned. The great tide of Scotch Irish immigration that flowed into South Eastern, Central and Western Ohio from 'Western Pennsylvania and New jersey early in this century, brought with it intense love of learning. These home- educated pioneers remembered the favorite maxim of john Knox,- Put up the school house with the church. Hence schools and academies speedily sprang up here and there throughout this territory. In the South Eastern quar- ter of the State old attachments drew Presbyterian patronage for higher education largely to Jefferson College and Washington College 'in Pennsylvania, already well established, while others, particularly students for the ministry, were attracted to the old Presbyterian College of New Jersey at Princeton. After the division of the Presbyterian church, the New School branch united with the Congregationalists in Marietta, founded 1835, in Southern Ohio, and in Western Reserve College, founded in 1827, at Hudson, in the North Eastern portion of the State. The Presbyterians of the other branch, Old School, had united with the United Presby-

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terians in supporting Franklin College, founded in 1825, in the South Eastern part of the State. Two State Institutions were established by national grants of land, Ohio University at Athens, founded 1804, and Miami University at Oxford founded 1824. These had naturally fallen largely under Presbyterial control with Presbyterian Presidents and mostly Presbyterian professors of the Old School, by far the larger branch after the division, in Ohio. The names of Presi- dents McGuffey and Wilson of the former and Presidents Bishop, Junkin, McMaster, Thomas and others of Miami, indicate how firm a hold our church had upon these State institutions. This fact will doubtless account for the delay in organizing a purely Presbyterian college of the Old School in Ohio. Yet the titles and control of these two institutionS last named being vested in the State, it soon became evident that the Presbyterian grasp upon them though vigorous might not te permanent and was ever indeed precarious. Ohio University indeed has long since passed under the virtual management of the Methodist Episcopal church. Meanwhile, as early as 1826 the Protestant Episcopal church had located Kenyon College at Gambier. The Baptists in 1831 founded Denison University at Granville. The Congregationalists, slightingthe union effort at Hud- son, set up for themselves in 1835 at Oberlin. In 1845 the Lutherans located Wittenberg College at Springfield, and the Methodists established Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, the same year. Other less significant educational moves were also made at earlier or later dates. All this was accomplished before our people of the--Oki School branch began active movements in the saine direction. It is therefore no wonder, with the prospect of being left badly in the lurch in the educational Held in Ohio, that the Presbyterians of Scotch Irish descent, boasted pioneers of education, should have seen with dismay their sons being trained in collegiate institutions of other denominations, or journeying to distant regions for Presbyterian instruc- tion. No wonder that they were deeply agitated as to their duty to furnish an institution representing their own faith, to take its place of usefulness beside those of sister denominations in their rapidly growing Commonwealth. The question was opened at an early date in both the Synods of Ohio and of Cincinnati, into which the Old School church of the State was then nearly equally divided. As time ran along and it became evident that not only Presbyterian patronage but also Presbyterian benefactions, estimated by some of the fathers at nearly a million dollars, had flowed into other institutions than our own, the agitation broke out into earnest action. In 1844 the subject of