Oberlin: the colony and the college. 1833-1883

Front matter

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The Colony and the College.

Preface

Fifty years have passed since a community and a college were planted together in the woods of Northern Ohio. An invitation has gone forth to all who, during the fifty years, have been numbered with the Community or the College, to return to the family heritage for a brief reunion. As a help toward rendering the occasion a season of interest and profit, this brief record has been prepared. No one can feel more sensibly than the author the inadequacy of the presentation. The struggles and triumphs of the fifty years cannot be written. There are many single lives that have been wrought into the work, any one of which could only be inadequately presented in a volume like this. The record as given is necessarily limited to the outward and visible changes and movements which have marked the years, while the inward and spiritual history must be left unrecorded.

And even much that is visible and tangible must be passed over without notice ; probably facts more important that some presented in these pages have been thus omitted. The author has had no personal interests to serve, no feelings to gratify, no theories to sustain. If important omissions or other errors shall appear, they must be attributed to imb PREFACE.

perfections of apprehension or of recollection. In general, facts are stated with little exhibition of authorities. Where such facts have been matters of record the proper records have been consulted ; but to a great extent they depend upon personal observation and memory, and can have no other endorsement. The reader will make due allowance for all the liabilities involved.

J. H. F.

OBERLIN, May, 1883.

Persons who have shared in the Work 272

OBERLIN.

Chapter I. The Origin Of The Enterprise. — Its Founders

OBERLIN is known in the world as an institution of learning and a community, the two having a common origin and a common history. As seen to-day, it is a pleasant village of thirty-five hundred inhabitants, surrounded by a prosperous farming community, in the midst of which stands a college with its various departments, theological, collegiate, preparatory, and musical, and an average yearly attendance of twelve to fifteen hundred students.

The foundations of the college and the town were laid together, in the spring of 1833, in what was then an unbroken forest, in the south part of the township of Russia, county of Lorain, and state of Ohio. The tract of land secured for the purpose was three miles square, with a very level surface and a somewhat stiff clay soil, entirely covered with the heavy timber of Northern Ohio, beech and maple predominating, with a plentiful intermingling of oak, whitewood, elm, ash, and hickory, and other varieties usually found in such forests.

The people who took possession of this tract were

IO BERLIN.

a number of Christian families, gathered from the different New England states, with a few from New York and Northern Ohio, who came to establish a colony and an institution of Christian education, with the added object of making desirable homes for themselves and their children.

Such a movement, of course, could not spring up of itself. The projectors and prime movers in the enterprise were Rev. John J. Shipherd, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Elyria, in the same county, and his associate and friend Philo P. Stewart, extensively known in the country as the inventor of the Stewart Stoves.

John J. Shipherd was the son of Hon. Zebulon R. and Elizabeth B. Shipherd, and was born in West Granville, Washington Co., N. Y., March 28, 1802. He was carefully and religiously educated, and while at school at Pawlet, Vt., in preparation for college, his conscious religious life opened in a conversion which began in intense conviction and conflict, and resulted in great peace and joy. From this time to the end of his days his character and life were marked with profound earnestness and .restless activity.

He had prepared to enter the college at Middlebury, Vt.; and while spending a few days at home, before leaving for college, under a slight indisposition, proposing to take a remedy, he swallowed, by mistake, a poison. By vigorous measures his life was saved ; but to the end of his days he was afflicted with persistent irritation of thetoats of the stomach, and with greatly impaired eyesight. After repeated endeavors to resume his studies he reluctantly ac-

THE ORIGIN OF THE ENTERPRISE. II

cepted the necessity, and turned his attention to such business as opened to him.

In 1824 he married Miss Esther Raymond, of Ballston, N. Y., and removed to Vergennes, Vt, to engage in the marble business. He had assumed that his poor eyesight, which prevented his reading more than a few minutes continuously without intense pain, utterly precluded the idea of his preparing for the gospel ministry. All his prepossessions and convictions were on the side of a full education as a requisite for the work, and he resisted decidedly every intimation that such a duty could be his. But after a long conflict in his own mind, and many marked providences, he entered the study of Rev. Josiah Hopkins, of New Haven, Vt., where he spent a year and a half, in company with other young men, in theological study. He had already acquired a system of short-hand writing, and his associates in study helped him with their eyes. He adopted the practice of arranging the heads and subdivisions of his discourse upon a card, in stenographic characters, because his eyesight would not permit him to write in full ; and this practice he maintained throughout his life. His first year in the ministry was with the church in Shelburne, Vt. The next two years he was engaged in the general Sunday-school work in the state, making Middlebury his headquarters, editing a Sunday-school paper, and travelling throughout the state in the work of organizing schools. Then, under a strong conviction that the " Valley of the Mississippi " — as the whole country west of the mountains was then called — was to be the field of

12 OBERLIK

his life-work, he took a commission from the American Home Missionary Society, and " went out, not knowing whither he went." At Cleveland he fell in with Rev. D. W. Lathrop, who had just closed his labors as pastor of the church in Elyria, and upon his invitation he came to Elyria in October, 1830, and was installed pastor of the church the February following. During the two years of his pastoral work at Elyria, he was intensely occupied in revival labors in his own parish, and in the region round about ; and under the same restless impulse to hasten the coming of God's kingdom, he tendered his resignation in October, 1832, and entered upon the work of laying the foundations at Oberlin, being now thirty years of age.

Philo Penfield Stewart was born in Sherman, Conn,, July, 1798, hence was about four years older than Mr. Shipherd. When ten years of age, on account of his father's death, he was sent to live with his maternal grandfather in Pittsford, Vt., and at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to his uncle in Pawlet, Vt., to learn saddle and harness making. In this apprenticeship he served seven years, with a term of three months each year in the Pawlet Academy, a privilege which he greatly prized and thoroughly improved. Young Stewart had a natural mechanical bent, and was famed as a whittler in his childhood ; but the calling to which he devoted these seven years of his life did not afford scope for his genius, and had no special attractions for him. Under the influence of a Christian teacher in the academy, he had devoted his life to the Master's service ; and after completing his apprenticeship he experienced a sort of second conversion, in a conflict with his love of money, which seemed a natural tendency in his character. Thus he was prepared, at the age of twenty-three, to accept an appointment from the American Board to a mission among the Choctaws in the state of Mississippi. The journey of almost two thousand miles to his field of labor he made on horseback, a pair of saddle-bags containing his whole outfit. The officers of the Board had furnished him seventy dollars for his travelling expenses. But from the time of starting he entered upon his missionary work, and preached the Gospel in the families along the way, until he reached the Choctaw Nation, at an expense to the Board of only ten dollars for himself and his horse.

An important part of his work at the mission was the superintendence of its secular affairs, for which he was well fitted. In addition he taught the boys' school, and with the help of an interpreter held services on the Sabbath in the different Indian settlements. His health failing, he returned to Vermont to recruit, but returned again to the mission, in 1827, with a re-enforcement of one young man and three young women, whom he took over the long journey in a wagon, at an expense only slightly greater than that involved in his own journey six years before.

In 1828 Mr. Stewart, now thirty years of age, married Miss Eliza Capen, one of the young women whom he had taken out to the mission, the preceding year, from Pittsford, Vt. ; and together they wrought in the mission two or three years more, when

Mrs. Stewart's broken health compelled them to return North and resign the mission work. Still on the outlook for a field of Christian labor, he corresponded with his old friend, Mr. Shipherd, the companion of his boyhood at Pawlet Academy ; and as a result, leaving Mrs. Stewart behind, he joined him at Elyria in the spring of 1832, and became an inmate of his family. Thus the two founders of Oberlin were trained for their work, and finally brought together. They were one in consecration to the great cause, ready for any sacrifice which the work required ; were alike in their general views of the wants of the world and the aim of Christian labor; were both born reformers, strongly impressed with the conviction that the Church as well as the world needed to be lifted up to a higher plane of life and action, and with an intense purpose to make their own lives contribute to this result.

In constitution and natural movement they were greatly unlike. Mr. Shipherd was ardent, hopeful, sanguine, disposed to underestimate difficulties and obstacles ; while Mr. Stewart was slow and cautious, apprehensive of difficulties, and inclined to provide for them in advance. It is rare that two men unite in a common enterprise who are more unlike in natural temperament. They had entire confidence in each other, in respect to rectitude of heart and purpose; yet their co-operation doubtless involved some difficulty. A brief extract from a letter from Mr. Stewart to Mr. Shipherd, written soon after they had entered upon the Oberlin work, gives intimation that they sometimes felt the difficulty : " The letter was no less acceptable because it contained a complaint against your poor, erring brother. I thank you for opening your mind so freely — hope you will always do so. Then, when you have occasion to find fault with what I say or do, if I cannot give a justifiable reason for my conduct, I will confess. The difference in our views of things arises, no doubt, from the cause which you stated, and as long as we co-operate together we shall doubtless often feel like complaining of each other. But if these complaints are given and received in Christian love and kindness, no injury will be done. You acknowledge that you are constitutionally inclined to go too fast, and I acknowledge that I am disposed, from the same cause, to go too slow. If this be true, a word of admonition now and then from each other may be salutary. . . . But after all, I would not have you like me in your constitutional temperament, if I could. I think we may balance each other, and become mutual helps. If you should occasionally feel a little impatience at my moderation, and I at your impetuosity, it would not be strange ; but if we are always in the exercise of that charity which hopeth all things, it will be well at the last."

During the summer of 1832 these two men talked and prayed together over the wants of the world, and especially of the " Mississippi Valley," and gradually there grew up in their minds a scheme of a community and school where their ideas of Christian living and education could be realized. Mr. Shipherd was especially interested in the establishment of a community of Christian families, from which, to a great extent, worldly influences should be excluded, and where gospel principles should prevail in place of worldly views and fashions. At times he seemed to incline even to a community of property, as the surest means of overruling selfishness, and subordinating all interests to the common good. It was no part of his plan to concentrate the interests of the community upon itself. His thought was to establish a centre of religious influence and power for the generation of forces which should work mightily upon the surrounding country and the world — a sort of missionary institution for training laborers for the work abroad.

Mr. Stewart, on the other hand, was especially attracted by the idea of a school where study and labor should be combined, and the whole establishment conducted upon such principles of thrift and economy, that enterprising students could defray all their expenses by their labor, without any detriment to their progress in study. His mind reverted to the academy in Pawlet, Vt., where he had spent six hours a day in the schoolroom, and almost as many in his uncle's shop, and still made satisfactory progress in study. The same academy furnished an example of young men and young women pursuing study together, in the same school and the same classes, with increased interest and profit, as he thought, on both sides ; and thus his ideal school must involve manual labor and coeducation.

Mrs. Shipherd shared in their consultations and prayers, and in a brief record of those times she thus

THE ORIGIN OF THE ENTERPRISE. I J

gives the scene in which the diverse views became consolidated into a common plan :

" In their deliberations they would exchange views ; one would present one point of interest and another a different one. Mr. Stewart proposed a college, of which Mr. Shipherd could not at first see the necessity, as Hudson College was in its infancy, and poorly sustained ; but Mr. Stewart suggested the manual-labor system, which Mr. Shipherd fully approved. Thus they labored and prayed, and while on their knees asking guidance, the whole plan developed itself to Mr. Shipherd's mind, and before rising to his feet he said, ' Come, let us arise and build.' He then told Mr. Stewart what had come into his mind — to procure a tract of land and collect a colony of Christian families that should pledge themselves to sustain the school and identify themselves with all its interests. They came down from the study, and Mr. Shipherd, with a glowing face, said, ' Well, my dear, the child is born, and what shall its name be ? ' He then related what had passed through his mind."

John Frederic Oberlin, a German pastor of Waldbach, in the Vosges Mountains, in Eastern France, had died a few years before, and an interesting account of his labors in elevating the people of his parish had been published in this country,as a Sunday-school book. This little volume had been recently read in Mr. Shipherd's family, and thus Oberlin was adopted as the name of the establishment which was yet to be.

The earliest known presentation of the purpose and plan is found in a letter from Mr. Shipherd to his father and mother, dated Elyria, August 6, 1832, as follows :

" I have been deeply impressed of late with the certainty that the world will never be converted till it receive from the Church a better example, more gospel laborers, and more money. We do not now keep pace with the increase of population in our own country. Something must be done, or a millennium will never cheer our benighted world. The Church must be restored to gospel simplicity and devotion. As a means which I hope God would bless to the accomplishment of some part of this work, I propose through his assistance to plant a colony somewhere in this region, whose chief aim shall be to glorify God, and do good to men, to the utmost extent of their ability. They are to simplify food, dress, etc., to be industrious and economical, and to give all over their current or annual expense for the spread of the Gospel. They are to hoard up nothing for old age, or for their children, but are mutually to covenant that they will provide for the widowed, orphan, and all the needy as for themselves and families. They are to establish schools of the first order, from the infant school up to an academic school, which shall afford a thorough education in English and the useful languages ; and, if Providence favor it, at length instruction in theology — I mean practical theology. They are to connect workshops and a farm with the institution, and so simplify diet and dress that, by four hours' labor per day, young men will defray their entire expense, and young women working at the spinning-wheel and loom will defray much of their expense. And all will thus save money, and, what is more, promote muscular, mental, and moral vigor.

" In these schools all the children of the colony are to be well educated, whether destined to professional or manual labor; for those designing to be mechanics will learn their trades while in a course of study. These schools will also educate school-teachers for our desolate Valley, and many ministers for our dying world ; also instruct the children and youth of the surrounding population. To do this we want some twenty-five or more good families, and two thousand dollars' outfit for the schools. Dear parents, shall I try ? I do feel that such an establishment would not only do much itself, but exert a mighty influence upon other churches, and lead them along in the path of gospel self-denial.

" I have given you but a brief and imperfect sketch, but you will discern its bearings. In all this Brother Stewart, formerly assistant missionary to the Choctaws, is with me."

In a letter to his mother, dated a month later, he says :

" My confidence in the utility of our colonizing plan is strengthened by prayer, meditation, and conference with the intelligent and pious ; yet I feel that it is a mighty work, difficult of accomplishment. But when any one goes about a great and good work Satan will roll mountains in his way. Believing that all he has rolled in our way can be surmounted through the grace of God, and that I can do more for His honor and the good of souls in this valley of dry bones by gathering such a colony and planting it, with its literary and religious institutions, in this region, I am inclined, Providence favoring, to resign my charge, and spend the winter at the East for the purpose."

The resignation followed, and was accepted by the church, October 29, 1832. These two men then addressed themselves without delay to the work of putting forward their favorite enterprise. In the selection of a location the general fact had already been determined in their minds that they were to build somewhere in Northern Ohio, and on the Western Reserve ; but the definite site remained to be selected. Judge Ely, of Elyria, proposed to Mr. Shipherd to give for the purpose the land which now forms the beautiful portion of the village known as " The Point," but which was then covered with a dense forest. Another site proposed was in Brownhelm, to be constituted of two or three farms lying on the beautiful North Ridge Road. But neither of these situations gave sufficient scope to Mr. Shipherd's ideal community. There must, in his view, be room, for a score or two of farms, for the public grounds of a large school, and for the village centre which such a community would naturally form. It was also essential to his idea, that this community should have opportunity to develop its own social life, and its social and religious institutions, apart from any community already constituted. Hence a considerable tract, remote from existing settlements, must be secured. To buy out any such settlement with its improved lands seemed impossible.

The earliest immigrants to this region had naturally taken up the more accessible and more desirable portions of the country — the shore of the lake, the pleasant ridges running parallel to the shore, and the banks of the larger streams. The level clay land of the south part of Russia township remained in its primitive state, and the proprietors had offered, upon certain conditions, five hundred acres of this land for educational purposes. The day following the season of prayer in which light seemed to fall upon their project, Messrs. Shipherd and Stewart mounted their horses, and took their course through the woods, about eight miles, to this undisturbed portion of the forest. The line of a road, north and south, through the tract had been marked, years before, by a party of surveyors, who felled the trees for a breadth of about four rods ; and this roadway was now grown thickly over with bushes. At a certain point on the west side of this roadway, our friends dismounted, tied their horses to a tree, and knelt under the boughs of another, in prayer for divine guidance. A hunter came up soon after, who informed them that about ten minutes before they arrived, a black bear with her two cubs had come down the tree to which they tied their horses. How our friends interpreted this omen we are not told, but they settled upon this ground for the Oberlin that was to arise; and an undisputed tradition, running back to the earliest days of the settlement, designates the beautiful elm near the south-east corner of the

22 OBERLIX.

college park as the tree under which they knelt to pray. That brush-covered road is now Main Street, in the village of Oberlin.

Messrs. Street & Hughes, the owners of this tract, resided in New Haven, Conn. Captain Redington, of South Amherst, about six miles north, was their agent for the sale of the land ; but in a transaction of such importance it seemed necessary to treat with the proprietors themselves. The colonists, too, who were to take possession of this portion of the wilderness, must come chiefly from the East. The desirable Christian families in the region had already passed through the experience of an emigration, and the work of making homes in the heavy-timbered country ; and one such experience, however enjoyable, suffices in general for a lifetime. Hence those must be appealed to who could look with complacency upon such an enterprise. Such people lived in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and Mr. Shipherd had a wide acquaintance among them. Hence a journey must be made to New England for the threefold purpose of securing the land, the money, and the men. In November, 1832, Mr. Shipherd undertook this journey.

The decision to launch out thus upon an untried experiment cost him a struggle. He was naturally hopeful and sanguine. His life-long habit had been, to depend upon Divine guidance, as indicated in some inward conviction or illumination. The evidence that he was to go forward was, to his mind, unquestionable. The plan of the enterprise he had accepted as divinely given, and through all his re-

HISTORIC ELM.

maining years he was accustomed to refer to it as the pattern shown him in the Mount. But thus far he had little human sympathy in his undertaking. As a devoted servant of God, and an earnest and effective preacher of the Gospel, he had, during the two years of his residence in Elyria, secured a wide influence. He possessed the confidence of the ministers and the churches of the region. But the scheme of a college and a colony, to be located in the wilderness, which he presented as the reason for his resignation of the pastorate, seemed too visionary to command the respect of reasonable and prudent men. His earnestness and devotion and intense conviction could scarcely save it from ridicule. Here and there a single person was brought into sympathy with his views. This was the situation when he set out on horseback for his eastern campaign. Mrs. Shipherd's record gives us some insight into the inward conflict :

" He had his horse saddled at nine o'clock in the morning, but was unable to proceed before three in the afternoon. The adversary assailed him and presented every possible thing to discourage him ; he prayed and agonized for light, but the temptation continued. He finally started, but had to return ; he had forgotten something, and we had to have a second parting. The third time he had to turn back, but I was not aware of it. He finally proceeded on his way a few miles until he came to a piece of woods, where he dismounted and fell upon his knees and acknowledged to the Lord that he had no desire for the work if it was not His will, and that he could not proceed until he had a ' Thus saith the Lord.' He arose from his knees with his heart full of praise, and remounted his horse with these words, 1 With Jesus at home ;' and this assurance followed him through all his years of travelling without a cloud crossing his mind.

" He accomplished the journey and arrived in New Haven in about two weeks, where he stopped with friends of ours. The day after his arrival he called on Messrs. Street & Hughes, and laid his plan before them, and asked the gift of five hundred acres for a Manual Labor School, proposing to gather a colony of families who should pay a dollar and a half an acre, for five thousand acres in addition, representing that this would bring their lands into market, and thus prove a mutual benefit. But they could not see the prospect. He called on them day after day unsuccessfully, until at length he came down from his room one morning, and remarked to the lady of the house, our friend, ' I shall succeed to-day ; ' and she told me afterwards that his face shone like the face of Moses. He accordingly went over to the office, and after the morning salutations one of the firm said, 'Well, Mr. Shiphcrd, we have concluded to accept your proposition.' They adjusted matters, and he was prepared to proceed with his work of collecting the colony."

The arrangement was to sell the five thousand acres, bought for one dollar and a half an acre, to colonists, at an advance of one dollar an acre, and thus secure a fund of five thousand dollars for laying the foundations of the college. But Mr. Shipherd engaged that from this fund a saw-mill and a grist-mill should be erected, to be owned by the college, as these were essential to the very existence of the colony, and there was no probability that the mills could be erected as a private enterprise.

It was to be a distinctively Christian colony, and this was to be secured by personal consultation, on the part of Mr. Shipherd, with families of farmers and mechanics in New England churches, who gave promise of usefulness in the enterprise, and who could be induced to join it. This feature of the plan had been criticised in advance by some as an undesirable arrangement, involving a waste of Christian influence. It was urged that Christians were scattered abroad in the community providentially, for the very purpose of contact with the world, and the good that results from it. Even Mr. Stewart, in letters addressed to Mr. Shipherd, while on his eastern tour, expresses his own doubts upon this point. But there was little ground for apprehension in the matter ; sinners soon found their way to the colony without an invitation.

To secure colonists of the right stamp, and inspire them with the true idea of the enterprise, they were asked to subscribe to the following covenant, called

The Oberlin Covenant.

" Lamenting the degeneracy of the Church and the deplorable condition of our perishing world, and ardently desirous of bringing both under the entire influence of the blessed Gospel of peace ; and view-

26 OBERLIX.

in" with peculiar interest the influence which the valley of the Mississippi must exert over our nation and the nations of the earth; and having, as we trust, in answer to devout supplications, been guided by the counsel of the Lord : the undersigned covenant together under the name of the Oberlin Colony, subject to the following regulations, which may be amended by a concurrence of two thirds of the colonists :

" i. Providence permitting, we engage as soon as practicable to remove to the Oberlin Colony, in Russia, Lorain County, Ohio, and there to fix our residence, for the express purpose of glorifying God in doing good to men to the extent of our ability.