Simpson College - Zenith Yearbook (Indianola, IA)

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ruo stories above the basement, and stood directly south of the present site of Ladies’ Hall. During its building the school was held wher- ever it could find shelter, E. H. Winans being principal. The fol- lowing year he was both principal of the school and pastor of the church, U. P. Golliday, the pastor sent by the conference, having ac- companied the Thirty-fourth Iowa to the field as chaplain. Prof. Winans was also from Iowa Wesleyan. Besides his school and church duties he found time to canvas for photograph albums, and this evidence of thrift gave omen of his future, as he is now a rich man, living in California. CLASS OF 1872. From 1863 to 1866 the school was in charge of Prof. O. H. Baker, a graduate of Indiana Asbury University, now DePauw. Owing to the “unsettled” feeling caused by the war, the board resigned the building to Prof. Baker to carry on the school for what he could make from it. These were the days of the curfew, which curtailed the pleasure-seeking of the guileless student at 7 p. m., and of other rules which might now be considered infringements of personal lib- 24

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Reed, secretary, and Hon. Geo. W. Jones, treasurer. The first catalogue shows an enrollment of 184 students, unclassified, and varying in age from six to twenty or twenty-five. It also contains the following information: ‘‘The price of tuition ranges from $2.75 to $5.50 per term in the Preparatory Department, and from $6.00 to $9.00 in the Academic Department. Instruction in the Normal De- partment, extra, $1.00 per term. Modern Languages, Drawing and Painting and Music at mod- erate prices extra. In all cases payment in advance. Parents and guardians arc ad- monished that students do not need spending money. Hoarding in private families from $1.50 to $2.00 per week. Students can ar- range to board themselves for about one-half these prices, and those who are near enough to bring their provisions from home, need, in this way, incur but a trifling expense pver what it would cost them at home to live. The daughters of all ministers of the Gospel who are regularly employed in pastoral work, will be admitted to all classes of the regular course at one-half the above prices of tuition. Also the daughters of ministers deceased.” Although today parents could hardly be convinced that their “sons and daughters do not need spending money,” the school has never fostered extravagance. Plain clothing is the rule, and there have always been many self-supporting students who pay their way by- manual labor, suffering thereby no loss of esteem. Prof. Gray’s so- journ extending over but one school year, he left but a faint impress. All we can learn of his subsequent career is that he was surgeon of an Illinois regiment in the Civil War, having studied medicine before he came to the Seminary. About the same year—’61—Geo. W. Jones and Dr. Isaac Windle, brothers-in-law, when surveying their addition to the town, gave to the Seminary that part of the grounds now forming the southwest corner of the campus. A like plot of three acres on the southeast was soon afterward purchased and George E. Griffith gave six acres on the north. The citizens subscribed $4,500 with which a brick building was erected, called by the students “The Bluebird” on account of the color it was painted. As it lasted but little more than ten years, it must have been of flimsy construction. It was .38x48 feet square, 23

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erty. Mrs. Baker and her sisters, the Misses Ridley, ably assisted her husband in bringing the school safely through this crisis. Prof. Baker afterward spent many years among us as teacher and editor, and is now United States consul in Sidney, Australia. From September 1866 to February, 1868, Rev. S. M. Vernon, of Iowa Wesleyan, was at the head of the school. It was during his administration that the conference raised the grade of the school, and it was given the name “Simpson Centenary College,” the word “Cent- enary” being dropped in 1884. Bishop Simpson visited his name- sake on twoi or three occasions, but his contributions to its mainten- ance were small. When Dr. Vernon resigned in February to take a pastorate in Pennsylvania, Prof. W. E. Hamilton filled his place tr. the end of the year. Dr. Vernon has remained in Pennsylvania, a minister and writer for religious papers. His successor, Dr. Alex- ander Burns, was much more a college man. A native of the Emerald Isle, he was educated in Canada, and when elected to this presidency, was a professor in Iowa Wesleyan. During his first year the total attendance was 161, and during his last, 178, though in 1875-6 there were 297. This includes 38 law students, the department having been added in that year, and continuing to 1880 as an adjunct of Simpson, though located in Dcs Moines. In the five years the law graduates numbered 95. The citizens had, in 1867, under the leadership of Hon. Geo. E. Griffith, subscribed funds for the erection of the chapel building. The contract was let for $17,500, but the final cost was much more. It was completed and dedicated in October, 1870. Two literary so- cieties, the Everett and the Zetalethean, were organized in 1868, and the Smithsonian, named after its patron the Rev. D. N. Smith, of Burlington, in 1876. For some years the catalogue stated that “these societies have large and elegantly furnished halls,” but, because of a change of standard in furnishings, or an appreciation of the force of adverbs, this glowing description no longer appears. A graduate whose entire course was under the presidency of Dr. Burns gives us the following estimate of him: “A man in the early prime of life, of medium height and weight, of Irish parentage, the fair dark-haired type; a man whose abounding vitality and tense ner- vous energy were seen at a glance; a man of genial yet commanding presence, possessing a quick sense of humor, a keen and caustic wit, boundless tact, great eloquence and scholarship so broad and deep that 25