Cumberland University - Phoenix Yearbook (Lebanon, TN)

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Cumberland University. HE year is 1826, and the first session of Cumberland College, at Princeton, Kentucky, has just begun. The new Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, sixteen years old, has founded the new college. Its campus is a five-hundred acre farm ; its dormi- tories, single rooms, most of them built of logs ; its recitation hall, a big two-story log house, with wide, old-fashioned fire places, and a roof of clap- boards. Even- student must work two hours a day on the farm, under the direction of a superintendent; each one of the few professors wears the scholastic cap and gown of Oxford ; and the institution is in debt for the purchase price of all its property, for it has been founded upon the faith of sundry promises, and the Trustees have borrowed the money to make the first payment for land and buildings, and given a mortgage for the rest. These three things, each in its way, determine the fate of the school. The General Assemblv gets wind of the fact that the Faculty of the new College go gowned in silk, and directs the Trustees to adopt some means of securing economy among the students ; so the Trustees resolve as follows, in the spring of 1832: ' ■ ' ■Resolved, That in future the students and faculty of said College be, and they are hereby advised to wear as their weekly apparel during winter, good strong woolen jeans, or cassinette ; and for summer, flax linen, or hemp linen, or some other article of domestic manufacture, so as to secure the object con- templated by the General Assembly ; also that each student be requested to furnish himself with a large and strong linen apron, which may be used when at work, so as to protect his other clothes. Thus, the gown is abolished, and the College sentiment becomes that of economy, if it was not that already. But the requirement of two daily hours of labor remains, and to many of the students it is not pleasing ; so it is a cause of continued trouble. The Trustees could remove the cap and gown from the professorial head and back by the mere passing of a resolution ; to remove the debt from the College was not so easy. The history of their financial troubles need not be told here, but the result was that in 1842 the General Assembly resolved to remove the church ' s College from Princeton, and invited subscriptions from towns desiring the institution. Lebanon ' s bid was largest, and on the location of the College there, every dollar of that bid was promptlv paid, says history. 15

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Was Cumberland College really and rightfully removed ? They said no to this in Princeton, and yes in Lebanon ; but the question, though burning then, has grown cold now, and is too heavy to handle. At any rate, the new order of things at Lebanon was begun, and in the autumn of 1842 the College opened, with forty-five students and four professors the first year. The Lebanon people soon erected a College building, a hundred and ten feet long, forty wide, three stories high ; and they kept adding to it as fast as the College— its name changed in 1844 to Cumberland University— outgrew it. Then began the halcyon days of Cumberland. Everything she needed came to her , endow- ment, prestige, students (see how the attendance incr eases through the first eleven catalogues issued : 96, 13S, 154, 153, 227, 262, 242, 317, 329, 406, 470), strong men as professors, and above all, the love of the people of Lebanon. In 1847 the Law School was established ; at first, with only one professor, the Hon. Abraham Caruthers. The following year two more were added to the Faculty, Hon. X. Green, father of the present Chancellor, and Hon. B. L- Ridley, both of whom occupied high positions on the bench of the State ; and within ten years, Cumberland could truly boast of the largest and most suc- cessful law school North or South. In 1851 the Engineering Department began, in charge of Professor (after- ward General) A. P. Stewart. Though never large, its standard has always been high, its requirements rigid. In 1855 the Theological School began its work. Lectures on theology had been given since 1847, but no regular professor had been secured. The Rev. Richard Beard, D.D., was the man elected, and he gave the rest of his life to the work, dying in 1880, full of honors. No department of the University had so hard a struggle for existence as this one; none has done it greater honor, and of none are the graduates more loyal to the whole University. The first publication ever issued by the University, in 1843, two years before its first catalogue, was a book of rules— twenty-one mortal pages of them. Rules for the Faculty, rules concerning admission, rules about Loca- tion of Students, Damages, Dismissions, and everything else. Some of them sound strangely to-day : Chapter VII. — Of Punishments, Crimes and Misdemeanors. — Section 5: If any student shall break open the door of another, or privately pick his lock with any instrument, he shall be admonished or expelled, as the nature of the offense may deserve. Sec. 7. The President, a Professor or a Tutor, shall have authority to break open and enter any College chamber or study at all times, at discretion. Sec 8. If any student shall play at hand or foot-ball in the College build- ings, or in the College yard, or throw anything by which the College buildings may be in danger of damage, he shall be admonished, sent home, or dis- missed. 15