Wesleyan University - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Middletown, CT)

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O L L A P O D I D A H-IMM-Hll- MHJJTI-m- mMj-lmwg.uoomjj 4 A Short History of W esleyan University CARL F. PRICE, 102 HE little town of Middletown, a century ago? was already ancient, as American towns go,--one hundred and eighty years old. It would have been years older, had not the troublesome Chief Sowheag and his Mattabesett Indians stood OPE the white settlers until 1651. By 18.31 it was a thrifty, pious, smug community with muddy streets, frame houses, six churches, a two-horse ferry to Portland tthen known as Chathamy, and a few public buildings, such as the Custom House, a court House and a Iail. tThe whipping post on the South Green had not been used for criminals since 1805J The leading hotels were the Central, where the MeDonough later stood, and the Washington tsite later of Berkeley Divinity SchooD, where General Lafayette had been feted in 1825. The post office was in a Main Street store. Small manufaetories, chiefly of machinery and woolen goods, thrived, and three of our present-day banks had started, Middle- lown National, Middlesex County and Middletown Savings. Elijah Hubbard was mayor, and John Fisk was in the midst of his fifty years, term as town clerk. The hero of the town was Commodore Thomas McDonough, victor in the naval battle of Lake Champlain in 1814. Two little weeklies, the Ameri- can Sentinel and the Middlesex Gazette, retailed the news. The glory of the town was its natural beauty. The Vistas of the long, winding river and the hills beyond added a charm which led President Adams, when touring the Connecticut towns, to exclaim: 11Middletown, 1 think, is the most beautiful of allV High Street was adorned with TTStately mansionsf and the overarching elms and maples gave a touch of loveliness to almost every street in town. It was a long way from New York, whether you went by steamboat, sail- boat, stage-eoach, or horseback. Willbur Fisk made many of his journeys, mounted, with his books and his 11nightie in the saddlebags that now repose safely in Olin Library. The perils of steamboat travel were not imaginary. If you shipped to New York by the schooner-rigged steamboat, TiOliver Ells- worthf you could scarcely forget that in 1827 her boiler had burst on the EDITORIAL NOTHII is with great pleasure that we HHLT this uhlc article from one of Wultyun's most active alumni. He has been officially appointed to write the Centennial History of the Univcrxiiy. This article is :1 small edition of that larger work. The treatment of th' athletie ih'xelnpment of the College will be found in Dr. Faux'cr's Thllistury uf Vleeyan Athletics? which begins on page 181. Su'mltm