Radio Script #1299

Little Talks on Common Things
January 31, 1982

On this program, as well as in my published History of Colby College I have given much publicity to the first president of Colby, Jeremiah Chaplin. Although the published history also contains such information about a later president, James Champlin, I have said little about him on this program.

Because their names were so similiar, the two presidents have often been confused. For instance, when I was a student at Colby, a marble bust of Pres. Champlin was often erroneously said to be a bust of the first President Chaplin. That first president of Colby, Jeremiah Chaplin, owned his fame to being the first head of the new Maine college, when he started the first college classes ever held in Waterville in 1818. James Champlin came to the presidency three decades later in 1857, and headed the college during the critical years of the Civil War.

Financially Champlin saved the college from extinction by persuading a prominent Boston merchant, : Gardner Colby, to give $50,000 on condition that the college raise from other sources an equal amount. The campaign was successful, and that endowment of $100,000 saved Colby. That is why, in gratitude, the trustees then changed the name from Waterville College to Colby.

Some of the information about Pres. Champlin that I now put on the air comes from an address to the Maine Historical Society made in 1890 by Dr. Henry Burrage, first state historian of Maine, who as Baptist pastor in Waterville had known Champlin well.

James Toft Champlin was born in Colchester, Connecticut in 1811. His boyhood was spent in Lebanon, Connecticut, where his parents moved when he was a small child. There, as soon as he was old enough he wielded hoe and pitchfork on his father’s farm. Not content with being an uneducated farmer, he determined to get education beyond the simple common school. In 1830, with no financial help from home, he graduated from Plainfield Academy and entered Brown University where he graduated as class valedictorian in 1834. Appointed a tutor in the University, he remained in that position for three years. James Maguire, popular minister at the First Baptist Church in Portland, Maine, was appointed Professor of Theology at the Baptist Seminary in Hamilton, NY.

A graduate of Brown, Maguire kept an eager eye on its promising graduates. He suggested that Champlin be engaged to replace him in the Portland church. The young graduate of Brown, with no seminary training himself, was reluctant to assume the responsibility of following such a distinguished pastor; but he agreed to preach to that congregation on two successive January Sundays in 1838. The church issued him a call to be their pastor and in April 1838 he was ordained in the Portland church, with President Pattison of Waterville College preaching the sermon.

Even as a student at Brown, Champlin had experienced periods of ill health. Although he apparently did not have tuberculosis, then called consumption, his lungs were weak, and he was a victim of asthma. He began to have violent attacks soon after he started his Portland ministry.

During his first year in Portland he married Mary Ann Pierce of Providence, a girl he had met when a student at Brown. Indeed, President Wayland of Brown performed the wedding ceremony. Though his bronchial affliction continued so that he was frequently unable to preach, he was such a conscientious and well liked pastor in the Baptist homes that the church would not let him resign.

Champlin began as early as 1840 to feel that his true career lay in teaching, not in preaching. So he eagerly accepted the offer of professorship of Ancient Languages at Waterville College, and began his teaching there in the fall of 1841. Waterville was then a small country village on the stage route from Augusta to Bangor, but it was a rapidly growing community, in which the college was one of its attractions. “It was,” said Dr. Burrage. “the day of small things.” The college enrollment consisted of about fifty men. Women were not admitted until thirty years later. The college was constantly struggling against poverty and it was hard put to pay professors’ salaries. In fact one of the principal sources of college funds was to send the whole faculty out on the road to collect donations during the long winter vacation.

Even as early at 1841. Waterville College was fortunate in the quality of its faculty. The Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy (what we now call the physical sciences) was a sound scholar who carried on correspondence with leading scientists in England and Scotland. Prof. Justin Loomis was so highly regarded for his work in the comparatively new science of Chemistry that the coroner investigating Waterville’s first murder said there was no need to send the contents of the victim’s stomach to the medical school at Bowdoin because Prof. Loomis would do the examination quite as well right in Waterville. Martin Anderson. Professor of Rhetoric. became so highly regarded that he was made the first President of the new University of Rochester. Keely, Loomis and Champlin were all graduates of Brown.

As Professor of Greek as well asof Latin, Champlin was dissatisfied with existing texts of “Demosthenes on the Crown,” and he decided to edit one himself. Published in 1843, it was so satisfactory that it was adopted at Harvard and many other colleges. Prof. Fulton of Harvard, in a review in the North American Review, wrote: “This is the most valuable addition to classical works yet produced in the U.S.” Eventually that work saw seven revised editions and was used in almost all American college That success encouraged Champlin to edit other texts in both Greek and Latin. In 1848 he published “Select Orations of Demosthenes.” The next year he brought out a translation of Kuhner’s Latin Grammar from the German. In 1852 came “Orations of Aeschines, ” and in 1854 “Short Comprehensive Greek Grammar.” In 1855 the University of Rochester conferred upon Champlin the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. Champlin had held the classical professorhip for 16 years when in 1857 he was elected President of Waterville College. In his inaugural address he said: “Knowing well the condition of this college, I do not regard its presidency as any sinecure. Entering upon my new duties at a time of severe crisis for the institution, I see nothing but labor and increased responsibility for me. But I have long considered labor less irksome than leisure, and responsibility more inspiring than quiet security. I refuse to admit that the situation”is completely discouraging. If Waterville College does not make appreciable progress it will be either from lack of proper management here or from lack of support by its friends in Maine and Massachusetts.”

When Champlin became president, the college had only three buildings, all constructed before 1835. Its endowment was less than $1,500. To increase college income was absolutely essential, and Champlin resolutely set about that task. The result was a successful campaign for $100,000 led by Gardner Colby’s gift of $50,000.

Then Pres. Champlin saw the erection by subscriptions from Colby alumni of Memorial Hall, which until the move to Mayfiower Hill three-quarters of a century later, contained both the college library and the chapel. It was the first building erected by any college in the nation in memory of its Civil War dead. At the same time, the old, hitherto unnamed recitation building midway between the dormitories North and South College, was named for Champlin himself.

When he became President, Champlin relinquished his professorship in Ancient Languages to John B. Foster, and Champlin became Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy. His subsequent publication was in that field. In 1860 he brought out an edition of Butler’s Analogy of Religion. He followed it with “A Textbook on Moral Philosophy”, one of the earliest American ventures in what later became Psychology. In the midst of the war in 1864 he published “First Principles of Ethics.”

Never free from the asthma attacks that had afflicted him for years, Champlin felt he could no longer continue as college president, and he submitted his resignation as the annual meeting of the trustees in 1872. He left the college free from debt and with an endowment close to $200,000. Brown University gave him an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

Dr. Champlin returned to Portland where he continued his writing. In 1875 he published “Bible Selections for Family Reading.” Then he returned to his old love of the classics and produced an edition of Tacitus’ History. In 1880 he published an historical study of the Constitution of the U. S. Meanwhile he wrote numerous articles for religious publications. In retirement, Champlin led the movement to make several Maine academies preparatory schools for Colby. The result was the college’s making long affiliation with Coburn, Higgins, Hebron and Ricker.

Returning to Portland, Champlin became a member of the Free Street Baptist Church because it was near his residence, but he did not forget his old church at the foot of Munjoy Hill.

In 1880, because of severe return of his old bronchial trouble, his physician sent him to take the waters at Saratoga Springs. He had scarcely returned to Portland when one side became completely paralyzed. He lingered on for more than a year until the end came in March 1882. One of the speakers at his funeral was President Joshua Chamberlain of Bowdoin, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg, who said: “Colby is a monument to Dr. Champlin. Beyond books, beyond walls of brick and stone, beyond instruction in the classroom he was possessed of a mighty power that made him a true educator. The influence of the man is more important that the books he has written. Dr. Champlin’s strong, generous and noble character was what was most impressive about him.”

And with that account of one of Waterville’s leading citizens in the middle of the 19th century, we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1982