Wesleyan University - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Middletown, CT)

Page 26 text:

FROM ORIGINAL PLAN. THE AMERICAN LITERARY. SCIENTIFIC AND MILITARY ACADEMY The building on the left of Snuth College was nexer construrtcd. The one in the left of the picture was used as u Commons until it nuns turn down in 1x47. Note the guard houses at the from gate. Sound; and the iiChief Justice Marshall, that began plying the Connecticut River in 1832, was lost in a storm the following spring. Though seemingly sequestered far from the metropolis, Middletown had a touch of the cosmopolitan spirit. Did not the ships from her wharves sail the Seven Seas tsome of them built across the river in Chathami P Did not her captains bring home the produce and the ideas of other lands? Did not her aristocracy prize for their town the advantages of a higher education? Hart- ford boasted of her Washington College Outer Trinitw and New Haven proudly cherished Yale. Since 1825 Middletown had fed her pride by fostering Captain Alden Partridgeis American Literary, Scientihc and Military Aca- demy. But the Hery Captain, :1 West Point six-footer CiOld Pewt was his nicknameh, who had sometimes marched most of his 500 cadets and their officers to the White Mountains or Northern New York and back again, had early in 1829 led them all to Norwich, Vermont, never to return; and the stately brownstone buildings, that later became Wesleyan Universityis North and South College, were left vacant, except for a little school conducted by Professor E. F. Johnson and Col. Ransom. O for :1 college to hll the aching void! Along came Laban Clark, D.D., the Methodist Presiding Elder of the Eighla'n

Page 25 text:

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

Page 27 text:

W'KWLJl 'l M New Haven District, combining with his piety an eagerness for a business deal worthy of the ancient Hebrew whose name he bore. He was one of that eager group of Methodist ministers who were dreaming of a new Methodist college to be located somewhere in the northeastern states. They had strangled the superstition long rife, that the burning of Cokesbury College in 1795 was an act of divine wrath to teach Methodists not to blend educational with evan- gelistic enterprises. Now they were looking for a place wherein to establish the proposed college, which Willbur Fisk, president of the Wesleyan Academy at Wilbraham, Stephen Olin, president of Randolph-Macon College, and Nathan Bangs, Methodist factotum in New York, had been strongly advocat- ing in the General Conference and elsewhere. College grounds and buildings they wanted. Middletown possessed both, but wanted a college. Laban Clark was the astute broker who brought them together and consummated the deal. His commission he took in the opportunity for thirty-seven years of fine service which he rendered the college as president of the Board of Trustees. At First it was suggested that the Academy trustees might sell for $5,000 all of the property of the Academy. The proposition crystallized the sentiment for a new college. In May, 1829, the New York Methodist Conference, and a few days later the New England Conference, created a joint committee to meet the Academy trustees. It was a strange coincidence that brought Stephen Olin, jogging into Middletown, in the midst of a 600amile carriage trip with his Uncle Walker, on the very night in the summer of 1829 when this joint com- mittee met there to discuss Middletownls hnancial proposals. Mr. Walker, member of the legislature, introduced him to Willbur Fisk,-the first meeting of Wesleyanls First two presidents. Later, Olin was offered a chair on the First Wesleyan faculty, but. he refused. After this committee had set up competi- tive bidding from other places toffers came from Troy, New York, VVilbra- ham, Massachusetts, :1 n d Bridgeportl, Middletown 0 f - fered the buildings, equipment and grounds of Fifteen acres tin all worth $30,000L providing the proposed col- XVesleyun in 1x37 Xinctn'n