\nIn these days when fund drives for Colby College are conducted in terms of several million dollars for each drive, it is interesting to note how much more simply, but more difficult, was collection of funds for the Waterville College in days gone by. Colby graduates of my own age well remember President Roberts sole, unaided, but successful efforts to raise the centennial fund of $500,000 in 1920.<\/p>\n
I have recently run across a four-page folder printed in 1895 when Beniah Whitman was President of Colby. The folder does not mention Whitman nor anyone else connected with the college administration. But it is definitely an appeal for funds made to the alumni of Colby by 18 graduates of the college, some of whom were on the Board of Trustees. The folder was a very simple document compared with the elaborate brochures heralding the fund campaigns of most colleges today. This appeal of 75 years ago is entitled “The Next Progressive Step for Colby”.<\/p>\n
Especially interesting is the emphasis placed on the reason why those 18 alumni felt Colby needed funds at that particular time. That reason was to prepare its graduates more adequately for work in the graduate schools of the nation’s most prominent universities. Here is what the first paragraph of the folder had to say: “The time has come for placing Colby upon an equal footing with the best New England colleges. It can and must be done. There are directions in which the work of our college must be enlarged, if we are to prepare students for the professional and graduate schools. The great graduate schools of Chicago, Hopkins, Columbia and Harvard rest upon work done in the colleges. More and more, in every activity, the world is demanding, as a basis for professional training, the broad and deep foundation which only the college can lay.<\/p>\n
“All about us the New England colleges are responding to this demand. But with the exception of the timely and generous gift of Col. Shannon of the physics building ten years ago, the equipment of Colby has not been enlarged since the days of Gardner Colby and Governor Coburn. Ultimately the endowment of the college must be doubled, but other needs are first more pressing.”<\/p>\n
In these sophisticated days of 1970, it would be hard to guess what these 18 prominent alumni considered the pressing needs to be. They put first the establishment of a department of biology. Yes, in 1895 Colby had no biology department. From the earliest teaching in the college, there had been instruction in what were called two areas of science, natural philosophy and natural history. The former included what we now call physics, chemistry and astronomy; the latter was the field of the present life and earth sciences, biology with its many subdivisions, and all the elements of geology.<\/p>\n
By 1895 the distinct sciences of physics and chemistry were both being taught at Colby, and there were courses in some areas of geology, especially mineralogy; but in biology, nothing at all. In fact true biological instruction had to await the coming of Professor Webster Chester in 1903; and how splendid it is that now in retirement that great teacher is still with us, a lively, alert nonagenarian.<\/p>\n
So let us now see just what was the 1895 circular’s appeal for biology. It said: “There should be at once provision for instruction in biology. We cannot today conscientiously advise any prospective medical student to come to Colby. There are physicians allover the state who would gladly recommend such students to come to Waterville, who cannot now do so because of the lack of undergraduate instruction in biology.”<\/p>\n
The circular continues: “Fortunately the Trustees are already determined to set up such a department. At a recent meeting of Colby Alumni in Boston, an individual offered $150 to start the needed fund. Others quickly responded, and the money for teaching of biology seems assured.”<\/p>\n
If biology was already on the way, what then was the folder all about? It was about what the signers called the next greatest need, suitable laboratories for the Department of Chemistry. If the Trustees were going to take care of biology, the alumni must attend to chemistry. That was the folder’s major plea.<\/p>\n
How much money did they want to erect the building we who were later to be students on the old Colby campus knew as Chemical Hall? They were trying to raise for such a building the huge sum of $30,000. There are many Waterville people now living who remember Chemical Hall, the first building one came to as he entered the college drive from Front Street. Just imagine, trying to put up that big, three-story building for $30,000! It is true that, when erected three years later, the building cost $35,000, but that is less than a modest 6-room dwelling costs today.<\/p>\n
Now we turn again to the words of the folder: “It is believed that the alumni can easily contribute $30,000 for the erection of the Alumni Chemical Laboratory. A suitable tablet could be placed in the building, bearing the names of all contributors. We earnestly hope that at the 1896 Commencement we can announce completion of our project. No Colby alumnus should fail to respond to the appeal of this circular. Surely many can pledge $15 a year for ten years; a few can give more; and everyone can contribute something.”<\/p>\n
I wish I could say that the campaign was at once successful, but it was not. Like so many such attempts, it had to wait for a Santa Claus. Three years later such a man appeared in the person of Chester W. Kingsley of Cambridge, Mass., not a graduate. but a trustee of the college. His gift of $10,000, together with funds already pledged by alumni, made it possible for the trustees to vote on February 17, 1898, to proceed at once to erect a building for chemistry. It was in that building that the late Professor George Parmenter built a department that was able to place its graduates in the best graduate schools, just as Professor Chester did the same for biology in the older Coburn Hall.<\/p>\n
Among the 18 signers of that fund-raising circular were some men who had already, or would soon afterward, gain renown. Heading the list was the venerable William Mathews of the Class of 1835. When the circular was printed he had already been 60 years out of college, and had been college professor, editor, publisher, and author of many books, some of them translated into as many as ten foreign languages.<\/p>\n
Also signing the circular was Col. Richard C. Shannon of the Class of 1862, donor of the unique sound-proof physics building that stood near the old athletic field. Col. Shannon had left college to enlist in the Fifth Maine Regiment in the Civil War. From First Lieut. of that regiment, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Awarded his Colby degree with others of his class, he entered the country’s diplomatic service in 1871, serving for four years in the U.S. embassy in Brazil. There he became interested in the development of South American railroads, left the government service to become a private promoter of the rail lines, made himself a millionaire, then decided to become a lawyer. In 1886, at the age of 47, he was admitted to the bar as a member of one of the most prominent law firms in New York City. Between 1891 and 1893 he was U.S. Ambassador to Central American countries, where his knowledge of Spanish made him especially valuable. For two terms Col. Shannon was a member of Congress from the 13th District of New York.<\/p>\n
A third signer of the alumni appeal was the prominent Maine attorney and nationally known Free Mason, Josiah Drummond of the Class of 1846. Born in Waterville, he had many years before 1895 made his home in Portland, and in 1895 he was chairman of the Colby Trustees. A younger lawyer, Leslie Cornish of the Class of 1875, was another signer of the circular. He was the man who later became the most renowned of all chief justices of the Maine Supreme Court, and when I was a student in Colby, nearly a generation after 1895, he was chairman of the Colby Trustees.<\/p>\n
Still another to sign the circular was America’s most noted sociologist, Albion Woodbury Small, who a few years earlier had been President of Colby, and who had created the unique system of coordinate divisions for men and women at the college. The youngest alumnus whose name appeared was Shailer Mathews of the Class of 1884. Though only eleven years out of college in 1895, Mathews was already making his name well known as Professor of Religion at the University of Chicago, where he would soon became the head of the Divinity School richly endowed by John D. Rockefeller.<\/p>\n
Two local names appeared among the signers, Julian Taylor and Reuben Wesley Dunn of the Class of 1868. Taylor was the man who, on his retirement in 1931, held the longest record by any American professor for continuous teaching in one college, a continuous teaching experience at Colby of 63 years.<\/p>\n
R.W. Dunn was a member of the prominent Waterville family that had started the Lockwood Mills, after first coming to the community then known as West Waterville, to develop there a thriving business in the manufacture of edged tools. The Dunn scythes and axes became known allover the nation.<\/p>\n
Colby finances had a hard time for more than a hundred years. Now the college thinks nothing of asking for several million dollars and getting it. In 1895 those 18 prominent alumni couldn’t raise even $30,000 until Chester Kingsley, a non-alumnus, came up with a third of it. Colby alumni of today have come to realize what a tremendous debt they owe to Franklin Johnson, the President from 1929 to 1941. It was his faith, his zeal, his undying optimism, that made it possible for Colby to build its great plant on Mayflower Hill. Had that not been done, no one would dare to speak of multi-million dollar Colby campaigns.<\/p>\n
Year: 1970<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #857, Broadcast on June 14, 1970<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1205,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}