Wabash College - Wabash Yearbook (Crawfordsville, IN)

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From the Portrait by Lucile Stevenson Dalrymple approved, and a liberal subscription was commenced to carry forward the enterprise. A tract of fifteen acres of land was presented by Hon. Williamson Dunn, upon which, the Trustees having selected the site for a building, in the forest, in the midst of nature’s unbroken loveliness, consecrated this enterprise for the furtherance of virtue and knowledge among mankind, to God, and solemnly invoked upon it the Divine Blessing.

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— Charles White, B B. 1841-1861 The second president of Wabash College was a proud descendant of a pilgrim family that came to America on the Mayflower. Dr. White was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, on December 28, 1795. In keeping with the New England tradition his parents lived by a pious, religious faith so common in those days. Because of the death of his father when he was two yenrs old, his mother exerted the chief influence on his youth. By 1817 White had fitted himself for college. He went immediately to Dartmouth College and was gradu- ated with highest honors four years later. Refusing to accept a tutorship in Dartmouth, he went to pursue his studies at Andover Theological Seminary. a ccna Illness forced him to go south for a year, but he completed his preparation for the ministry in 1824. From 1825, the year in which he was married, until 1841, Dr. White per- formed successfully the duties of a pastor, first as a colleague in the Congre- gational Church of Thetford, Connecticut, and after four years there, as minis- : ter of the Presbyterian Church in Cazenovia, New York. Whence he went to Bidee: a pastorate in Oswego, New York, where he remained until he became presi- | EES dent of Wabash College after the death of President Baldwin. Dr. White had ets been given the Doctor of Divinity degree by Union College, New York, in mi gees 1840. He was president of Wabash College until his death in [861. Aside from oe his religious and academic successes, it is interesting to note that Dr. White de- Le | voted much time to his large family of ten children. In 1861, one year after the bee | death of his wife, when Dr. White was apparently in the best of health, he was stricken suddenly by a fatal illness. Pid ba Dr. White was both a thinker and a master of expression. His frequent A ea sermons were models of clarity and graceful expression, the results of thorough Bitiay preparation. His writings, it is said, were almost perfect in form and in nicety rf of phraseology. With firmness and foresight he directed the affairs of Wabash College. Undoubtedly the words describing him in ‘The History of Mont- gomery County” speak truth when they say, “He was the highest style of a Christian Scholar.” Paye Twelve A Committee, to act temporarily as Trustees of the Institution, was appointed at this meeting, consisting of the following individuals, viz.: Hon. Williamson Dunn, Rev. Messrs. Edmund O. Hovey, James Thomson, James A. Carnahan, John S. Thomson, Martin M. Post, Samuel G. Lowry, and John Gilliland, E'sq. A public meeting of the citizens of Crawfordsville and vicinity was called, and the subject of the new institution presented to them on the 22d of November. The movements of the previous meeting were

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fs I My ggrmeneremry Sosa a ah BRON Farrand Cuttle, 2.B., LL. B. 18h2-1892 The third president of Wabash, Dr. Joseph F. Tuttle, took official charge in May, 1862. He came just before the Civil War at a time when the college was suffering serious financial difficulties. Despite the loss of many students due to the war Wabash prospered during his thirty years of administration, so that when he died the college had an endowment fund of $500,000 and was enjoying a high reputation among the colleges of the middle west. Dr. Tuttle was born in Bloomfield, N. J., March 12, 1818, the son of a pastor. His early education was received in the schools of Newark, which he left at the age of fourteen to go to work on his uncle’s farm in Ohio. He spent four years on the farm, and liked farming so well that he had practically decided to make it his life work. One day when he was eighteen years old one o f his brothers who had graduated from Princeton came to visit him, and Dr. Tuttle was so charmed by the intellectual superiority of his brother that he decided to go to college himself. In 1836 he began his studies at Marietta College, from which he graduated with highest honors in 1841. He began his theological studies the same year at Lane Seminary under Dr. Lyman Beecher. Three years later he was licensed as a Presbyterian minister. Dr. Tuttle began his career as a minister in Delaware, Ohio, where he remained only until 1847. At that time he accepted a call to the church of his wife’s father in Rockaway, N. J. Here he worked for fifteen years until he became president of Wabash. His church grew; he acquired an increasing experience of life; and he made a name for himself in both the religious and secular world by his numerous contributions to magazines and by the publi- cation of several books. Two years before he assumed his duties at Wabash he was given the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity by his alma mater, Marietta College. From Rockaway, Dr. Tuttle came to the presidency of Wabash College, where he remained until his death. The school prospered. He was accorded two more honors in the years 1884 and 1885 when he was made a member of the “Societv of Cincinnatus” and was given the Doctor of Laws degree by Marietta College. In 1892 he retired from active participation in the work of the college, though he continued to conduct the Monday morning chapel exercises almost until his death, Tune 8, 1901. Page Fourteen The contrast between the settlement of our own great Western domain, and the early settlements of New England and Virginia, is very wide. The latter were effected only by slow degrees, their growth was very gradual; the former especially of the newer States, has been, with a rush and rapidity unknown in the history of emigra- tion. Hfforts to plant and sustain institutions of learning and religion were demanded in a corresponding ratio.