Dickinson College - Microcosm Yearbook (Carlisle, PA)

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eral donation to the Institution, the said college shall be forever hereafter called and known by the name of Dick- inson College. On September 1 5,1 at the house of Governor Dickin- son, in Philadelphia, the first meeting of the Board of Trus- tees was held and an organization effected, making Gov- ernor Dickinson president, an office which he held till his death, in 1808. The seal adopted was suggested by Gov- ernor Dickinson, as also the motto, Pietate et doctrina tuta libertas, which embodied the thought uppermost in all minds-the protection of the new liberty through the safe- guards of virtue and learning. The Revolutionary War had exhausted the resources of the States and had left a large debt, manufactures were ruined, commerce was seriously affected by the lack of general tariff legislation, the paper currency was worthless, and poverty everywhere abounded. The political and eco- nomic conditions were closely paralleled in the educational world. There were but eleven colleges in the country, and they were nearly all small and feeble. Columbia, for ex- ample, had but two professors and twenty-four students, while Princeton, with the same sized faculty, had sixty students. Primarily the college owes its origin to Governor Dick- inson and Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Its assured income during the early yearswas only S5650 a year, supplemented by pri- yate donations and occasional appropriations of the Legis- ature. On April 6, 1784, the trustees met in Carlisle and elected Rev. Charles Nisbet, of Montrose, Scotland, prin- cipal ,of the Board of Instruction, while james Ross was chosen Professor of Languages. Prof. Ross at once started the Grammar School, with his assistant, Robert Johnson. When Dr. Nisbet arrived, in July, 1785, he had Rev. Robert Davidson, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Carlisle, appointed to the chair of History and Belles Lettres. Prof. Johnson was promoted to the professorship of Mathe- matics, and a Mr. Jait was chosen to teach the students to read and write the English language with elegance and propriety. Principal Nisbet taught Moral Philosophy, Logic, Philosophy of the Mind and Systematic Theology. The college long did effective work while occupying only a small two-story brick building near the corner of Bed- ford street and East Liberty avenue, now used'as a school- house. Dr. Nisbet's intellectual attaimnents were little short of marvelous. While he was considered one of the best Greek scholars of Europe, and could repeat whole books of Homer, he was scarcely less learned in Latin, and was familiar with seven other languages. His collection of books, containing many old, original and first editions, is now the Nisbet Library at Princeton Theological Semi- nary, and shows him to have been a polyglot and a collector of odds and ends in many languages. For nineteen years, until his death, on February 14, 1804, Dr. Nisbet guided the college well, though he was sadly disappointed in the new land of promise, which seemed, as he expressed it, not the land of performance. He was buried in the old grave- yard at Carlisle, and his monument is still frequently visited. In 1787, the college being in good working condition and the Bachelor's degree having been conferred on nine men, arrangements were begun for obtaining more suitable buildings. In the years immediately succeeding, although the public and private funds alike were crippled, money gradually came into the treasury of the college. The fund was augmented by a State lottery in 1790, and by a State appropriation soon after. In 1788 the present campus

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f' itll 7 X ZXAQ f f ff 2 wwf QW f HISTORY 4 f f f Z 9 X0 if I f ww f W k ff l W! af flf 3fQllllmffQJ1ml, fit 7 QM fi, ?701W 1 X , NVQ R ,,, f f X On the 3d of September, 1783, in Paris, a treaty was signed by the United States, France, Spain and Holland on one side and Great Britain on the other, oflicially recog- nizing the independence of the United States. Five days afterward the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed a bill reading in part: Be it therefore enacted by the Representa- t' f the Freeman of the Commonwealth of Pennsyl- vania, in General Assembly met, ant y 1 ives o l b the authority of 7 AH BRowN. X l X XXX Q 1- x at-tel ff if 5 -Y iss K I , I 4' X! t, l X as 5 ?sfN- be New 1 G, O Q, - ' X: , XNNNNQ- New . xxlQ'l-. 0 ua F1r'omnl':OQ ,.!. x...5....Of- ..a QCTCZ-o: 'E,'n 0... 5937 f--4:- n..'T'5-...CD hl p-I 1 1-+0-JW CD'-N .-54.-. :, V13 4-593.-21.-'T'.-1 WHZEZSSF O 1111 C73-g:.:.09'....:-L Q:,.,,,,'.... 139, -' 003' r+ Stjw'-za-'ZH Q-.-.2,:i5f-r-ELT' - '04:::ru5' rn 7q',...-ga-,Q -1 SU'--0c ' C30 :a53 L'mOo- F' '-' 1 -0 'tOm :-FFS 12: -' :IPS-QU3-2 np-1-'3-'-3..,'-'fn O of-gp 0 3g: t .... Qr-+ ...-rgxwuqm.-..rn ..., ... ,- :3 w'-30 :- r'D'5r+'O.-E255 E-10 E092 052:-igiqggl 3:.5.g:,-F U, ,,. ... --... no Swv-no-a 510-'UQ3'2 ...f-4-O20 ...G ..i .-,Jw ,.. O:-w :-'U' gmgezaaf L7-Qlfkcgmgall. 575:-2,:9' rn 14 ua--C7-1 cm 2.0302 rsg:'5':',..:.-+ Qwa' :510 -1 ... 'l- ..Qmfa--- ..-.E 5-1 23 cr Xmgooz: lfblf-r- v-4-,H-.Qt

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was purchased from the Penns, a building was erected and partially occupied by the students, when, in February, 1803, it was totally destroyed by fire. Wide sympathy was aroused by this disaster, and contributions came in from all sides, so that in August of the ,same year it was possible to lay anew the foundations of the building, and West Col- lege, as it is to-day, was finished and occupied in 1805. The society system began at Dickinson soon after its founding, for on February 22, 1786, the Belles Lettres Society was founded, and the Union Philosophical followed on.August 31, 1789. These societies have had a continuous existence ever since. and have comfortably furnished halls and libraries of ten thousand volumes each. I After Dr. Nisbet's death Dr. Robert Davidson acted as principal until 1809, when Rev. Jeremiah Atwater, D. D., of Vermont, was elected principal. He served until 1815, when the college suspended operations until 1821. The War of 1812 brought a series of difficulties for the college. So many of the Senior Class of 1814 had been called to the defense of Philadelphia that it was found necessary to con- fer the degrees in absentiaf' In 1815 a duel, resulting in the death of a member of the Junior Class and the disap- pearance of five other students implicated in the matter, had a depressing effect. Defects in the charter and in the administration also began to appear. In 1821 the college was reopened under Dr. I. M. Mason, of New York, as principal and flourished until 1824, when Dr. Mason resigned. Drs. William Neill and Samuel lf. Howe succeeded him, 'ut the college declined, until, in I832, it was determined to discontinue it. The Methodist Episcopal Church happened to be casting about at this time for a suitable location for a college.. Attention was directed to Dickinson, and after the necessary preliminaries it was purchased by the Baltimore and Philadelphia Conferences in 1833. Although the college before this transfer had not been definitely denominational, the larger part of the trustees and faculty had been members of the Presbyterian Church. Immediately after the transfer a new and vigorous rule was inaugurated by electing Rev. John Price Durbin, D. D., president. The college was carefully organized in all its parts, and law and preparatory departments were added. Quotations from the catalogue of 1834 may serve to show the careful minuteness of the plans. The government, for example, consisted of Private advice, affectionate entreaty and frequent private admonition. The section on the Steward and his duties -the janitor was graced with this title--provides that the steward shall conduct himself toward the Faculty and students with all proper respect, shall ring the bell as often and at such hours as the faculty may direct, shall regularly, every morning, sweep the stairs, entries and passages of the college building, and see to pre- serve them in neat and clean order.', It further states that the Steward shall prohibit all hawkers or venders of fruit or confectionery or jewelry, or any other article whatever, fromentering the college edifice or coming upon the campus to trafiic with the students, and hc shall, regularly, at nine o'clock in the winter and at ten o'clock in summer, have all the doors of the college building and gates of the campus closed. A good example of the regulations for the students is found in the section, If any student shall, during the session, attend a ball, private dancing party, the- atrical performance, dancing school, horse race, or any place of similar resort, he shall be suspended or dismissed if he reform not upon admonition by the Faculty. An interest- ing bit of daily life is found in the paragraph which reads, The public exercises of the college shall commence at sunrise during the whole period of time when the sun rises