Oberlin College - Hi-O-Hi Yearbook (Oberlin, OH)

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Volunteer lnfantry. Their captain was G. W. Shurtleff, tutor of Latin. Nearly one- third of them, with their captain were captured in the first engagement and had a bitter experience of southern prisons. Thirty-one of the remainder lost their lives in battle, seven by disease, and one was drowned. Company C was known in the army as the praying companyf, Each mess had a chaplain responsible for daily worship. Another company from Oberlin joined the 4lst O. V. l., and the Znd Ohio Cavalry was largely made up of Oberlin students and citizens. A. P. Nettleton, O. C., '63, rose from the rank of private to the command of this regiment and at the close of the war was brevetted a brigadier general. wi Q Second Ladies' Hall The second Ladies' l-lall, when opened in 1865, was decidedly the finest of the college buildings. It cost with the furniture of the private rooms, 540,000.00 lVlore,i' safd President Fairchild, than all the buildings previously erected by the college. It stood on the corner of West College and South Professor streets, with a frontage on each of l2l feet. It was of three stories, had accommodations for one hundred young women, and on the first floor a society room, assembly room, and reading room. lr was admirably adapted to its uses and great regret was felt when it was burned down in january, ISS6. President Fairchild described this building as of npleasing aspect. It was the first of' the college buildings of which this could truly be said. lts erection may therefore properly mark the boundary line between the old Oberlin and the new. A brighter day was about to dawn upon the college, a day of better buildings and more adequate equipment, of instructors with more varied knowledge and more liberal views. The present body oi students are enjoying the full radiance of that brighter day. Only by strong effort of the imagination can they picture to themselves the hardships and toils of the pioneers who laid the foundations of the early Oberlin and made possible the growth and enlargement of succeeding years. Others have labored and ye have entered into their labors.',-Mrs. Mary B. Shurtleff. INOTE -The facts in this sketch have been largely gathered from President Fairchild's Oberlin, the Colony and the College anrl Dr. D. L. Leonarrl's 'tThe Story of Oberlin. I I6

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1, ...Q 1. sa a 1 The Campus in 1860 in the rear of which was a gallery. It was constructed outside and in like a church, and unfortunately its acoustic properties were poor, until it was reconstructed by throwing out an addition at the side to give a platform for the faculty, and arranging the seats in semicircular rows rising at the back. Every student had then a good view of the stand and could distinctly hear the speaker. It had a seating capacity of only nine hundred and the need of more ample quarters was felt before the fire of l903 destroyed the building. The anti-slavery sentiments of the colonists were widely known. Oberlin was a noted station on the Underground Railroad to Canada. It was a city of refuge from which no fugitive was ever taken back to a life of bondage. In l.858 occurred the Oberlin-Wellington rescue of john Price, from his slave holding captors. This violation of the Fugitive Slave Law was taken bythe owner of John Price tothe Circuit Court of Cleve- land, and indictments were served upon twenty-four citizens of Oberlin and thirteen of Wellington. Fourteen of them, refusing to give bail, were held as prisoners in Cleveland jail for nearly three months. Among them were some of the most prominent and highly respected citizens of Oberlin. Professor H. E. Peck was a member of the college faculty, M. Fitch, superintendent of the large Sunday School, and Ralph Plumb, a lawyer. When the Civil War broke out and Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers, Oberlin was prompt to respond. Slavery was in rebellion against the government and slavery must be put clown. One hundred and thirty students were ready to go, but only one hundred could be received. For two days there were no college exercises. Groups of women gathered in the recitation rooms and made suits of gray cloth for the volunteers. Thus uniformed they were accompanied to the station by almost the entire body of citizens. They were mustered into service as Company C of the 7th Regiment, Ohio I5

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05' i is Q5 l 1 b v! . ,Q we m Wi .?A Q gf? 1 '11, , m in HE character of any institution, it is almost trite to say, is judged by the product it turns out, and this is particularly true in regard to a college or other educational institution. Nearly everyone is familiar with the fact that it is not equipment, nor buildings. not the peculiarities of curriculum which make a college, nor even the faculty, but the body of alumni. If this familiar statement holds good for Oberlin College, then it is worth while to take stock of the Oberlin product, and ask who and what are the alumni of Oberlin, and have they made good? From the beginning, Oberlin has laid greater emphasis upon social service, in the broadest sense of that phrase, than upon the achievements of the remunerative professions and business, as ends in themselves. And, while financially the institution would probably be better off if its alumni had more generally gone into money-making, nevertheless, it is probably true that the college glories most in the service its alumni have rendered to all kinds of good causes. In common with most of the privately endowed institutions of the country, Oberlin in the beginning, sent out, in proportion to the number of its graduates, a very large number of men and women into purely religious work-preachers and missionary teachers, and missionaries, and in common with other institutions of the same class, as the years have gone on, the number going into this particular group has lessened noticeably, and other branches of social service, including the fields of medical missions, institutional work, and social service in the strict sense. have all had their quota. In the total number of graduates, teaching has been the preeminent profession. The United States Bureau of Education report of 1912 on the Professional Distribution of College and University Graduates. stated that out of a total of 4,029 graduates from all departments, 1,374 had gone into the profession of leaching. Recent statistics support this statement. For a period of years, approximately forty per cent of the graduating class each year have gone into some kind of teaching, about ten per cent into business, eleven per cent into graduate work, and the balance, in small percentages, are scattered through a wide variety of fields. Probably as I7