Temple University School of Law - Restatement Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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 u££eU Contoell By I)h. Laura II. Carnei.i. Associate President of Temple University RUSSELL H. CONWKLL was born on February 15, 1843, among the bills of Western Massachusetts, where every prospect pleases, but where money was so scarce that he had to earn all that be needed for an education beyond that he got in the little red school house about a mile from his home. He taught music, waited on table, did all sorts of things to carry himself through Wilbraham Academy and Yale University. The Civil War interrupted his college course, he volunteering in the beginning and serving to the end. His New England friends will always know him as Colonel Conwell. In camp he read law and after the war was over he attended the Albany Law School, which granted him its diploma. While studying law he worked as a reporter first on the “Poston Traveler,'' and then on the New York Herald. While with the Poston Traveler’' he was sent on a trip around the world, at that lime a great undertaking. It was to him a university education because he was alive to every scene, to every condition with which he came in contact. After serving a valuable apprenticeship in the newspaper world, and having secured his diploma with the right to practice law, lie opened a law office in Boston, where he built up a successful practice. But the hills had given him a great gift, a marvelous voice that could control the hearts of men. When a very young boy he was one day “teaming from his father’s village store to Huntington, a town eight miles away. He had to do this very often. There were no motor trucks and the way back was all up hill so that it was the better part of a day’s journey. This morning as lie went down the mountain he was practicing a speech he was to make in their debating society. He came to the quotation, “Woe unto you, Cliorazin. His oratory was so effective that the old horse “whoaed instantly and the young orator went over the horse’s back into the ditch striking a stone, .lust at the edge of his hair the scar could be seen to the last day of his life. As a result of this episode lie always defined oratory as effective speech. He had this gift of oratory and the young lawyer began to make speeches and deliver lectures. He taught a great Bible Class in Fremont Temple and here the feeling grew that he must go out as a preacher and a teacher. He studied theology in the Newton Theological Seminary, still a lawyer, but now also a lecturer and a teacher. u

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On Sundays lu preached in old historic Lexington in a little wooden church. Hut the church grew so fast under his preaching that the little church was pulled down and a larger and finer one built. By this time his fame as a preacher was spreading and a man down in Philadelphia heard of him. He asked him to preach a trial sermon in his church which needed a preacher, and on Thanksgiving Day, 1882. he began his work in Philadelphia. He started almost immediately a Young Men’s Congress modeled on our National Congress. Whenever in the city he presided at its meetings. Here hundreds of young men in the city received training in public speech and parliamentary procedure. Some members of this Congress today hold positions of national importance. But in that church there were some young people who soon realized that they could not achieve the possibilities of the vision held out to them unless they had more education; they appealed to Dr. Conwell; in response he formed a class in 1X81 to help a group of young men get ready for college. He taught the class himself. Very soon others had to he called in to help him. By 1888 he realized that the need was so great in Philadelphia and the classes he had started had already become so numerous it was wise to obtain a charter that these students might have official recognition for the work they were doing. Young people of all denominations had applied for admission to the classes that had been formed, and Doctor Conwell wisely decided that this new college must be entirely non-sectarian, open to all the people of the city who needed it regardless of sex, race or religion. Its charter read “primarily for working men.” When the old church was sold. Temple College, as it then was, went into a couple of rented houses. It was an independent institution but still had to turn to Dr. Conwell and the friends he could rally round him for its support. It opened a day department to give stability to its night work. The two houses were crowded day and night. These houses were inadequate to hold ail those who came for help. There was a lot just south of the large new Temple which he was building, for sale. Even Dr. Conwell hesitated to ask his people to subscribe any money for so seemingly wild a project; so he quietly bought the land himself on mortgage and held it until the trustees of the young college could raise funds to pay him. But they raised the money and three years after the opening of the Temple went into a building of their own. There were several gifts of one thousand dollars each from the moneyed men of that day, one for five thousand, the rest being small in amounts. With the opening of the new building the educational needs of the city became more and more apparent. When a young person came