Duke University - Chanticleer Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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Washington Duke Building

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GROVER CLEVELAND INAUGURATED AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ALARCH 4, 1885 by Julian S. Carr, J. W. Alspaugh, and James A. Gray, all of whom were members of the Board of Trustees. On April 5, 1887, John Franklin Crowell, a young Pennsylvanian, who had just recently received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Yale University, was elected President. The Board had been convinced of his ability by Dr. Henry Horace Williams, but it doubted the wisdom of ap- pointing a Northern man. Dismaye d at first at the disappointment which he felt upon arriving at Trinity, hav- ing supposed it to be one of the finest schools in the South, Crowell was, nevertheless, by temperament and training well-fitted for the task which the conditions of the College and the State imposed upon him. Being the first modern university-trained man to be- come president of a college in the South, he is credited with bringing to North Carolina the modern concept of a college, the first real breath of progress from the outside. During his administration he not only succeeded in reorganizing and modernizing the curriculum, but he also established the right of the college to discuss public questions regardless of partisan objection or personal interests involved. Perhaps his chief contribution to Trinity College was to effect its removal to Durham, North Carolina, in 1892. President Crowell felt that in order to insure the future welfare of the College, the institution should be located in a larger center of population and wealth. Opposition to his plan came from some of the faculty and alumni, and from the citizens of Randolph County, many of whom were preju- diced because the move was being sponsored by a North- ern man. The College was about to be moved to Raleigh when certain citizens of Durham intervened in behalf of estab- lishing the institution in Durham. Impelled by religious and educational reasons and in part by civic pride, two Methodist laymen, Washington Duke and Julian S. Carr, became interested in bringing Trinity College to Durham. Upon the promise of Carr to donate a sixty-two acre tract of land known as Blackwell ' s Park and used as a race- track, along with the offer of Washington Duke to give eighty-five thousand dollars to be used in the erection of DR. MARQUIS L. WOOD BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE 1883 JOHN FRANKLIN CROWELL

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JULIAN S. CARR DONATES black- well ' s PARK, A FORMER RACE TRACK AS THE COLLEGE SITE buildings and for endowment, the Board of Trustees in 1891 decided upon the removal of the College to Durham instead of to Raleigh. Incidentally, the same charter which was issued by the Legislature in 1891 to authorize this removal, granted alumni the right of representation on the Board of Trustees for the first time. The financial depression of 1891 caught the college, newly-opened in Durham in the fall of 1892, with an overloaded faculty and an operating burden beyond its capacity to carry. The Faculty began to oppose Pres- ident Crowell partly on account of the inability of the College to make regular salary payments and partly because it considered many of his ad- ministrative policies to be autocratic. When in 1893 several members of the faculty tendered their resignations, Crowell decided that his usefulness as President of Trinity College was ended. However, the Trustees urged Crowell to remain as President. This he did, but within the next year he was convinced that his work at Trinity was finished because of the lack of support from the constituency of the institution. He resigned again in 1894, and although the Board of Trustees re- fused his resignation and reelected him by an unanimous vote, he de- clined to continue as president. Immediate steps were taken to secure a new leader. Editorials in newspapers of the state suggested a North Carolina man be chosen. m. i AN IRATE FACULTY PROTESTS THE RE- MOVAL OF TRINITY COLLEGE FROM RANDOLPH COUNTY THE FINANCIAL PANIC OF 1891