Chapter 8: Continuity and Growth

In an illuminating essay on the first seventy-five years of the U. of R., Professor John R. Slater divided the record into three periods: the Age of Foundation, ending about 1867; the Age of Concentration, to the close of the century; the Age of Expansion, to the point at which Slater laid down his pen in 1925. 1

Much can be said for selecting 1867 as a dividing line in the Rochester story. By then the upheaval in University affairs caused by the Civil War was subsiding; Anderson having declined the invitation to assume the fresh presidency of Brown, envisaged opportunities for the Rochester institution, and a set of new trustees and professors, as is indicated in the next chapter, filled the places left vacant the original managers and teachers.

From a national point of view, the decades after the Civil War witnessed significant and substantial changes in American higher education, facilitated by the remarkable industrial expansion of the country, the accumulation of large private fortunes, unexampled philanthropy for educational purposes, and improved standards of secondary schooling. Endowment assets of old established academic institutions, it may be mentioned, were still of modest dimensions; as of 1870 the resources of Harvard and Columbia each totalled about $3,000,000, of Yale only half that amount.

Challenging the historic American college were emerging universities modelled more or less upon the leading German shrines of teaching and research. Authentic universities obeyed a dual mandate: teaching, the transmission of learning, and increasing knowledge, which meant far greater attention than before to professorial investigation, original research, and publication. When the authorities at Yale decided in 1860 to pioneer in offering the doctorate in philosophy as an earned graduate degree, it was explained that the innovation was intended "to enable us to retain in this country many young men, and especially students of Science, who now resort to German Universities for advantages of study no greater than we are able to afford." Other institutions that felt competent to furnish advanced graduate training presently imitated the New Haven pathfinder.

Several outstanding academic leaders, "prophets of new ideals," directed their institutions toward broader and deeper educational objectives: Andrew D. White at Cornell, which admitted its first students in 1868; Charles W. Eliot, who became president of Harvard the following year; and Daniel Coit Gilman, who organized (1876) the Johns Hopkins University on the German, pattern, though with collegiate instruction as well. President Anderson perceived in Eliot, with whom he conferred in 1874, a type of educational executive distinctly different from himself. "... He is evidently not a broad scholar," the Rochester administrator wrote, "but an active, clear-headed and determined man. He never teaches the student and has not the least formative control over their minds or characters. He is really a sort of general manager with duties analogous to those of a Superintendent or President of a Railroad. The same is to a certain extent true of Professor [Ephraim W.] Gurney, who is Dean of the Faculty and governor of the students. He does not teach and meets the students only for discipline or giving excuses. In fact there is no social tie between the double-headed executive and the students." 2

Aside from the eastern institutions of higher learning, state universities in the central section of the nation--Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, for example--advanced in stature and applied novel public service and vocational principles in education. As rule, these newer institutions admitted women on the same terms as men, and at the same time new colleges for women were being founded, Vassar leading the way, Smith and Wellesley coming along shortly afterward.

Secular accents, moreover, became increasingly pronounced in higher learning, as the traditional role of promoting evangelical Christian interests and cultivating the moral character of students diminished. Curricular reform reflected the changing ties and the conviction that students should be confronted with stiffer intellectual challenges; instead of the standard instruction in the classics and mathematics, new disciplines (or older ones expanded), notably the natural sciences and social studies, and vocational, utilitarian, and technical training appropriate in an expanding industrial economy, found places in course offerings. And, in contrast to rigid prescriptions on subjects to be studied in order to gain a degree, the principle of free election of studies secured ever wider acceptance and application, though not without stiff resistance from educational leaders, like Anderson, who stubbornly insisted on the traditional studies for their disciplinary values and as essential for educating "the whole man"--the enrichment of personality. Critics of the elective concept disdainfully dismissed student liberty to pick their studies as "the restaurant system." Freedom in choice of courses, required, to be sure, greater library and laboratory facilities and enlarged and more specialized teaching staffs.

II

Viewed in retrospect, the diversified university--one day to be labeled the "multiversity"--represented "the wave of the future" in American higher education. But the post-Civil War innovations, in "the age of the university," by no means destroyed the historic small college, different in ideals, in curriculum, and in organization from institutions offering work for graduate degrees. However much plans were talked about, none actually matured to transform the college at Rochester into a true university. If no other countervailing influences had existed, the condition of institutional finances alone would have vetoed so far-reaching a reformation. 3

More funds were urgently needed, Anderson periodically reported to the trustees, to enlarge the teaching force, to raise salaries, to increase instructional facilities, and to cover annual deficits. Apparently, expenses exceeded income every year, and accounts were only balanced by almost literally "passing the hat" around to trustees and other friends of the University. The President lamented that despite immense national prosperity, no large benefactions had been forthcoming; more working capital was desperately required, but Anderson said he did not think it was his personal duty to solicit money. On his recommendation, the trustees appointed in 1869 LeRoy R. Satterlee, who conducted a preparatory school in the city, as general agent of the and financial secretary of the U. of R. but it is doubtful whether the funds he collected during his two-year tenure much exceeded the salary he was paid. A bequest in 1870 of $30,000 by Tracy H. Harris, a Baptist merchant of New York City, was applied to the endowment of a chair in mathematics and natural philosophy bearing the name of the donor.

Anderson time and again praised William N. Sage for astute management of University finances and for his self-sacrificing labors on behalf of the college. In his annual report of 1871, the President spoke in, optimistic tones about the short-term prospects and the longer future of the institution. Two solid reasons encouraged faith and hope: Hiram Sibley of Rochester promised to finance the construction of a joint library and museum building, and the trustees voted to seek $100,000 in new productive funds. 4

For years, the trustees and officers of the U. of R. had been counting on Sibley to do something handsome for the college in his home community. A man of remarkable acumen in handling intricate financial transactions, he had amassed a large fortune in telegraph and other business operations, and had donated the money to start a school of engineering at Cornell University, of which he was a charter trustee, though he seldom attended board meetings. Like many of Rochester's most important benefactors, Sibley had received but scanty formal education and never knew by personal experience how thorough schooling might nourish the whole of life, yet he developed tastes for the higher living, above economic secularities, and for educational philanthropy. It seems that the managers of the U. of R. even considered changing the name of the institution to "Sibley" (which would match the honor accorded his business associate, Ezra Cornell) in return for a substantial benefaction. This gambit, however, was out of harmony with the thinking of Trustee President William Kelly, who wrote, "It belittles a public institution to bear a private citizen's name.... If Mr. Sibley would give the University any sum he might name, I would not consent to part with one [a name] that though of recent adoption has many dear and interesting associations; but I have no objections to naming a Library or some other edifice after him." 5

When revealing in 1871 the Sibley offer to erect a new building, Anderson informed the trustees that the donor wanted guarantees that in the event the college should go out of existence, or should ever move to a site outside the city, the structure would still be available for the benefit of the residents of Rochester. Sibley stipulated that the library should be open for study to anyone, whether connected with the University or not. Accordingly, a provision in the formal agreement between him and the University stated that if the building should cease to be used for college education it should "become the property of the municipal corporation of the City of Rochester, to be maintained for and made available" to the general public. It seemed to the President that the Sibley edifice would substantially strengthen the conviction that the U. of R. was here to stay and so would enhance its attractiveness for other potential donors. 6

Under the leadership of Trustee Dr. Edward Bright, a fund campaign was started to increase the resources by $100,000, and in 1872 it was disclosed that the money had been secured. At the same time, the alumni engaged in their first substantial money-raising effort, pledging to collect $25,000--a goal that was not reached until 1889. Highly gratified over the improved financial outlook, Anderson incautiously declared that in a comparatively short time the college would be beyond "all pecuniary embarrassment."

In actual fact, the books of the treasurer year after year were stained with red ink. A drive to obtain as much as $350,000 in productive funds was talked of by trustees but not implemented; and in 1874 yet another special agent was hired to solicit subscriptions, but his work profited nothing or so the scantiness of the records would appear to show. Trustee President John B. Trevor donated (1875) $10,000 and indicated that if he continued to prosper he would make an annual contribution, for he was well pleased with the way education was being carried on at Rochester. Until other provision was arranged, Trevor agreed to pay a salary of $2,000 for an additional teacher of Latin. 7

To enlarge the student body, Anderson wanted additional scholarship funds to aid young men who were poor in purse, and to help graduates pursue advanced studies, either at Rochester or elsewhere. He also asked the trustees to provide a secretary to assist him and especially to handle correspondence, which averaged one hundred letters a month. The President again invited the trustees to consider offering professional instruction in science and technology and graduate work in the humanities. Now and then, pleas were sounded, outside of the college community and in it, for the establishment of schools of medicine and law, in which the teachers would be Rochester physicians and attorneys:

In 1876, the Baptist denomination conducted a Centennial Movement to raise endowment funds for "the perpetuation and sustenance" of higher educational institutions connected with the church. Rochester faculty and students subscribed liberally, yet the net receipts to the U. of R. barely exceeded $33,000, far below expectations. So serious did the financial stringency become in 1878 that University salaries were sharply reduced, ranging from a cut of $500 for Anderson down to $100 in the case of the janitor. 8

III

The University catalogues of the 'seventies recommended preparation for entrance to college at a public or private secondary school--or at the Brockport State Normal School. Admission formalities were extremely simple, especially if the applicant or his father was known to the University authorities. An entrance examination in the form of "a little close questioning!" by the President or a professor on the applicant's previous studies usually sufficed. In one instance, a candidate had to tell the professor of Greek whether he was fond of that subject, whether he liked the Anabasis or the Iliad better, and after he replied the Anabasis, he was asked to indicate which chapter in the work he had found most rewarding. "I told him... the speech of Clearchus to his soldiers, when they refused to cross the river in their advance against Cyrus." The statement prompted further cross-examination and "in less than half an hour, the professor had sounded my depths and shallows.'' Another applicant who lacked the Latin requirement for admission begged "Prexy" to admit him on trial--and he carried the day.

In 1877, the faculty decided that students would be admitted by certificates from the principal and the teachers of languages and mathematics in qualified academies and high schools. These schools were subject to visitation by representatives of the college, and students who entered by certification had a probationary status for all or part of their first term of study. 9

As witness to the continuing commitment to the Christian faith, it was obligatory for professors and students, unless they were Roman Catholics or Jews, to attend daily chapel, held at nine in the morning in the 1870's. Terming compulsory attendance ''a mild species of religious persecution," an unconventional undergraduate argued that exemption should be extended to deists and atheists. Seniors, it was complained, had little regard for decency and propriety during the daily devotional exercises.

Students likewise protested about "the multitudinous discords" that issued from the chapel organ, if the regular organist was absent, or when the instrument was out of tune. "No one can offer suitable praise," an undergraduate wrote to the college paper, "while the air is filled with the dying groans of a murdered tune." To remedy indifferent hymn singing, Anderson at one point named Joseph T. Alling, 1876, as organist, and Edmund Lyon, 1877, as precentor to stand beside the organ and beat the time; it is highly improbable that these youths imagined that one day both would have places on the University's board of trustees.

Following chapel, each student attended three classes in succession, with a five minute interval between each, and after 12:15 Anderson Hall was virtually deserted. To call classes and dismiss them, the janitor rang the old hand-bell used in the original home of the University. "We wish the janitor would ring the bell louder,'' ran a typical undergraduate appeal. "Some of our profs. are hard of hearing especially at 12:15."

With apologies to Thomas Gray, a student saluted the janitor, Elijah Withal, who sometimes intervened to stop interclass fracases, with "Not in a Country Churchyard:"

Elijah tolls the knell of youthful play;
The verdant Frosh winds slowly o'er the lea;
The bolter homeward plods his wicked way,
And leaves the halls to Withal and to me.

More in the same vein followed. What Elijah could not overcome was thievery of overcoats, umbrellas, and other student possessions while classes were in session.

How the students spent their afternoons and evenings is largely a matter of conjecture. One of them--Edmund Lyon, 1877--who may or may not have been representative, recorded, "...From 1:30 to 2:00 I would take some sort of bodily exercise--sawing wood or the like. From 2:00 until 6:00 I was unremittingly at work on my studies... From 6:30 until 7:00 I allowed myself a half-hour of recreation. From 7:00 to 10:00 I was engrossed in my studies. I recall one occasion when I devoted eight solid hours to a single page of Greek text."

Christian accents pervaded all teaching at the college, though officers took pains to repudiate the charge of sectarianism. "The religious convictions of each [student] are respected, " an official statement read, "in so far as this may be done consistently with a dominant purpose to impart instruction, in every department of study, from a thoroughly evangelical point of view.... "

An overall description of the course offerings and their objectives appeared in the annual catalogues under the title, "The Conspectus of Exercises." Intellectual and Moral Philosophy was taught so as to fix convictions in the mind of students regarding the reality, the certainty, and the limits of knowledge, and to prove that man possessed "a moral and intellectual constitution, even before processes of thought and action begin." In the teaching of the classics, the aims were a thorough command of Latin and Greek "to unlock the treasure house of ancient thought" and to help in mastering living languages. Although there was no professor of history, that subject was given consideration by teachers of the classics and of English; and Seniors had a term of study on the history of civilization. Rhetoric meant logic, elocution, study of the English language, and experience in declamation, essay writing, and orations; each undergraduate in the 'seventies was required to study German and French for two terms. Mathematics embraced higher algebra, calculus, and applications of mathematics to natural philosophy (physics) and astronomy. In natural science, the offerings were geology (in which use was made of the Ward Cabinet), zoology, physiology, the principles of hygiene, chemical physics, and general chemistry "with illustrative experiments" and visits to Rochester plants in which chemical processes were applied. 10

Descriptions of courses in the catalogues reveal little, needless to say, about their intellectual content and nothing about the standards of performance expected of the learners. Catalogues disclosed, however, that noteworthy revisions were effected in the methods of instruction. For example, the use of textbooks (which shed some light on what was taught) steadily declined in upperclass studies in favor of lectures and "free discussion" as supplements to recitations. In physics and political economy manuals in the French language were prescribed, but after four years of trial the experiment was abandoned as a failure.

Something maybe learned about course content, too, from written examinations, though they were less frequent than oral examinations. For a time each course had an "associate examiner" attached to it, whose duty it was to visit the class occasionally, to be present at oral examinations, and to participate in evaluating the academic achievement of each student. That written examinations were no farce is attested by the challenge (in printed form) set (1871) for a class in. "The Art of Composition and Morals:"

1. What are the essential elements in every act of thought?
2. Write a brief essay, taking CONSCIENCE as your theme and touching upon these points:
   • Conscience defined.
   • Possessed by all men.
   • To be implicitly followed by the individual.
   • Yet the individual conscience not the absolute or universal standard of right
   • Hence, conscience must be trained, developed and regulated by the Word of God.

Seniors in the class of 1873 were confronted with a long array of propositions in an examination in history. One read, "Explain the bearing of Physical Geography upon the support of population and the development of national industry and civilization. " A second challenge summoned the student to "give an account of the relation of Medieval cities to the Feudal Lords and the Royal Power, respectively." And another called for "illustrations of the various collisions between Asiatic and European civilization, and [state] the fundamental significance and justification of the Crusades." Since the paper contained ten more items of similar dimensions, it is small wonder that students protested that examinations were too long and too hard. By way of solace Janitor Withal, in keeping with custom, "furnished apples in both solid and liquid form" at the end of examinations. Cheating or "cribbing" was due, a student explained, to the pressure for high marks, and it was demanded that the faculty should protect honest men by severely penalizing cheaters. 11

Medieval and modern history and in 1878 Sanskrit, oldest of the Indo-European languages, were introduced to the curriculum; and as early as 1872, antedating Charles Eliot Norton at Harvard, Anderson started to offer lectures to Seniors on the history of art, and continued to do so until 1886. The public was welcome to attend and Rochester society ladies flocked to the class, crowding the room to capacity. Photographs and engravings were extensively used and the lectures involved discussion of aesthetic principles and the bearing of the fine arts on culture in general; as a by-product of the Anderson course, it appears, a group of Rochester citizens formed an organization to establish a public art gallery in the city.

Student spokesmen begged for more instruction in French and German, one heretic remarking, "Much of the time spent in study of Latin and Greek... after the Sophomore year is ... practically wasted." A second voice appealed for greater attention to English literature at the ancient expense of the Classics. "Eight term [courses] are devoted to math, more to the classics," a protestant complained, "while hardly one is given to literature." English study, it was said, would be more pleasurable than Greek and would have more practical value after graduation. Instead of having history taught as side-line, as it were, by professors who were not specialists, a chair in history ought to be created, it was urged. After a Rochester oculist gave Seniors a series of non-technical lectures on the "Eye," a cry went up for more of the same.

By faculty action in 1872, candidates for a degree in science were obligated to study as much Latin as was necessary for groundwork in modern languages and scientific terminology. About the same time, juniors and seniors were permitted to substitute for prescribed classes courses calculated to prepare them for graduate work, or for the vocation they had in mind. This modest measure of choice was spoken of in official U. of R circles as a concession to "the spirit of enlightened conservatism." And a scheme of "honors studies" in a particular department was announced for superior, competent students; the work emphasized independent investigation and achievement was tested in a searching examination. If successful, the student received special mention at the Commencement exercises and in the annual college catalogue. 12

To meet an insistent demand, a laboratory of chemistry was fitted up in the basement of Anderson Hall, although space was limited and it was necessary to apply a year in advance in order to be sure of a bench at which to work. Odors from chemical experiments impregnated the atmosphere of the mathematics room on the floor directly above, but the professor resigned himself to the inescapable--until he discovered that the noxious smells sometimes issued from the bottles of chemicals mischievously placed underneath his rostrum. Calling the attention of the trustees to the need for a building in which to teach chemistry and physics and to carry on research, the President reminded the managers of the University that it was "always desirable that every teacher be, to a certain extent, an original investigator... able to add somewhat to the branch of knowledge he professes." A student, experimenting with nitroglycerin, touched off an explosion that knocked out the windows of the improvised chemical laboratory, though no one was injured. In addition to the primitive chemical laboratory in the cellar of Anderson Hall, a private laboratory for the professor of chemistry was attached to his lecture room. "We had very little work in the laboratory," George E., Olds, 1873, recalled. "In physics there was no laboratory at all. All we saw was demonstration work, with the use of an old-fashioned air pumps some magneto-electric apparatus, an insulated stool, upon which in succession we took our stand, became electrified, and felt our hair stand on end."

Whereas the master's degree had traditionally been awarded almost as a matter of course to graduates (or as an honorary distinction), after 1878 it was restricted to U. of R. graduates of three years standing who gave evidence of "satisfactory progress in liberal studies," or after satisfactory performance of a year of graduate work, including preparation of a thesis on a piece of individual investigation. 13

IV

Expansion of campus facilities, crowned by the erection of Sibley Hall, and beautification of grounds moved modestly ahead. To heat rooms in Anderson Hall, coal replaced (1869) wood as fuel, but student complaints of insufficient warmth in the rigorous months of winter were common. "The stoves in the chapel are very ornamental, but a little fire every morning would add to comfort," an undergraduate wryly observed. After the President had devoted a chapel talk to the health hazards of cold weather, the students repaired, we are told, to a "fireless recitation room." In a fiery letter to the Campus, an undergraduate blamed the janitor for failure to keep rooms warm and recommended that unless he bettered his ways he should be discharged; "My feet are cold, but my indignation is hot," and the writer signed himself "Yours freezingly."

Carriage drives on the campus were laid out and surfaced with gravel (1869) trees, shrubbery, and flower beds were added, and, inevitably, signs appeared imploring students to "Keep off the grass." Pleas were voiced for the removal of the residences along Prince Street which marred the attractiveness of the campus and for an iron fence to replace the neglected and unsightly wooden barrier encircling the college park. To show their feelings positively, students ripped down sections of the fence and placed the planks end to end over mud in front of Anderson Hall.

Thanks to a benefaction from Trustee President Trevor, a telescope, seven and a half feet long, was acquired (1876) primarily for class work in astronomy, though sufficiently powerful for research investigations; a small structure to house the telescope was erected, and eight decades later it was transferred intact to the River Campus where it remained until torn down in 1967. During a class period a student, who was asked to report on his personal observations of the heavens, replied that he had had a "date" on Saturday evening "and found an unusual halo around Venus." Near Anderson Hall, a small nondescript building was erected to store chemicals apparently, and subsequently converted into a tool-house; someone tagged it "Cutting Hall" in honor (?) of the professor of rhetoric.

Students appealed in 1870 to the college authorities to construct a dormitory, and once raised the cry never wholly faded away, though the appeal was not realized until 1913 and even then only in a small way. On behalf of a residence hall, it was argued that it would foster college esprit de corps, deepen friendships, and enable students to get to chapel on time; undergraduates living with private families; it was said, too often became enamored of daughters in the households to the neglect of their studies. Satterlee, the financial agent of the University, recommended that eating clubs should be organized and that student living quarter should be obtained either on the top floors of downtown buildings or in rented houses--all with the object of reducing the cost of getting an education. But Anderson was deaf to entreaties and proposals on a dormitory, and the trustees echoed his hostile point of view. The President contended that students lived more cheaply in private homes than was true of their contemporaries in colleges that possessed dormitories, and he believed that "the dangers incident to youth are always lessened by... residence in respectable families and by association with women." 14

Needs of a different sort were met by the erection of Sibley Hall to contain the library and (in time) the Ward Museum. In 1868 a faculty committee was appointed to devise plans for such a structure, and the same year Sibley became a trustee. At Commencement in 1871 it was revealed that Sibley--hailed as a "present-day Maecenas"--would finance the cost of a building, and on May 29, 1872, the donor, shovel in hand, broke ground on a plot to the west of Anderson Hall. The final plan was chosen by competition; the winner, a Rochester architect, John R. Thomas, designed the structure, in the shape of a Greek cross, two stories in height, though so constructed that if desired two more floors could be inserted. The building, made of Medina brownstone trimmed with white, would be capped with a cornice of Ohio sandstone and a mansard roof. On the ground floor, the principal library room would measure forty by a hundred feet and rise to height of twenty-five feet; galleries would surround it; on the floor above, the main area for the museum would have similar dimensions. A Rochester newspaper described the projected Hall as "the best planned and designed building of the kind on this side of the Atlantic."

Construction proceeded at a slow pace, for one reason because Sibley believed that foundations and the walls of each floor should settle firmly before another story was put in place. The donor personally hired the workmen for excavation, masonry and carpentry jobs, and made daily visits to supervise what was being done. When he decided that the windows planned for the north and south sides would not furnish, sufficient light, he ordered that they should be extended by six inches. Limestone used in the cellar walls and in the upper stories, behind the facing of brownstone, was dug from Sibley's own quarries a few blocks distant from the Campus.

An air-space of some five inches was left between the limestone and an inner screen of brick, so that the entire wall was about three feet thick. The first "fireproof" structure to be erected in Rochester, Sibley Hall had beams and staircases of iron; only the floors, laid on sand over brick arches, were made of wood. A panel in the arch over the entrance contained the date " 1874 " , though in fact construction proceeded from 1872 to 1876, and grading and other finishing touches were not completed for several years more. From Italy, Sibley shipped to Rochester eight female statues, symbolizing as many areas of knowledge, to occupy niches in the exterior walls, which was interpreted in some quarters as indicative of his views on coeducation, and he also gave two sphinxes to keep watch and ward at the front of the structure. 15

This last feature inspired an undergraduate versifier of extremely modest talents to sing:

How fit it is that there should be
Two sphinxes guarding Sibley's door
Without our precious library.
How fit it is that there should be
Those emblems of perplexity.
Each day I go I think the more
How fit it is that there should be
Two sphinxes guarding Sibley's door.

On June 28, 1876, the dedication of Sibley Hall took place, Rossiter Johnson, 1863, reading a poem, and the annual class day exercises and alumni dinner were held in the building. It was not, however, until the summer of the next year that the book collections were transferred from Anderson Hall, and along with them came a desk at which books were charged out, which is believed to have done service in the original home of the college, and the desk of the librarian. (A section of the former library quarters in Anderson was set aside as a reading room with newspapers and magazines.)

Assisting in the job of removal was Herman K. Phinney, 1877, who filled the office of assistant librarian from 1880 to 1930, and he, probably more than anyone else, collected and preserved materials pertinent to the early history of the U. of R. At the end of nearly forty years service, the librarian described Phinney as a mixture of information and misinformation, not at all quarrelsome, but long-winded and devious, he had made himself a veritable mine of information not only on the library and the college, but on the city of Rochester as well. Phinney was regarded as "a good reference tool," but experience dictated that he should not be consulted if the desired information could be secured from any other source.

In the Interpres of 1878 an engraving of the new hall appeared under the caption "Sibley - $150,000" (which was something of an exaggeration), standing hard by Anderson's "Scholars to Order Factory." Undergraduates of later generations sang the praises of "Sibley Hall," to the tune of "Clementine:"

On the Campus is a structure,
Where the Muses ever dwell,
Where the ages fill the pages
With a charming mystic spell.

Chorus:

'Rah for Sibley, 'Rah for Sibley,
'Rah for noble Sibley Hall.
Thou dost charm us, never harm us,
Magic spot, our Sibley Hall.

Placed in the hall (1879) was a much admired bust of Frederick A. Douglass, Negro antislavery lecturer and journalist, who, for a time resided in Rochester. In 1968 when the men's dining center was named the Frederick Douglass Building in honor of the great Negro leader, the bust, after varied vicissitudes, was put on display there. For a brief period a collection of paintings owned by Hiram Sibley were exhibited on the second floor, but they were removed in 1881 to make room for the Ward museum. 16

It was estimated that Sibley Hall could house 90,000 volumes, or substantially more than seven times the size of the library when the building was first occupied. Gifts of books from the estate of Professor Dewey, from Hiram Sibley, and from alumni enhanced the resources, but only about $200 a year were allocated to purchases until the income from the Rathbone fund, mentioned earlier, became available. The Rochester public--or at any rate "all well-behaved persons"--was welcome to read in the library, but borrowing of books was restricted to college personnel.

After an apprenticeship as assistant librarian, a teacher of mathematics, Otis H. Robinson, 1861, took over the management of the library in 1868 and kept at it for twenty-one years. He pioneered in improving service, making it easier to carry on reference study, and encouraging greater recourse to the library by students; elaborating a system of cataloguing books that had been worked out by an undergraduate assistant, Robinson perfected what was called "the dictionary plan." Instead of listing holdings in large folio volumes, the title and author of each book was written on an individual card. Cards were filed in boxes, and to prevent removal of cards holes were punched in the bottom of each one and wire rods were inserted running through the boxes. With some advice from faculty colleagues, Robinson classified the books into forty-two categories, and similarly organized pamphlet materials.

There is a great demand in this busy age,'' Robinson dared to write in 1874, "for knowledge in nutshells." To make access to periodical literature quicker, he devised a scheme for indexing articles that appeared in twenty current reviews and magazines subscribed to by the University. But that procedure stopped in 1882 when the well-known Poole's Index to Periodical Literature began publication. By employing student assistants, Robinson was able to keep the library open for three hours in the afternoon as well as in the morning. After the Saturday morning class, undergraduates were allowed unrestricted access to the library shelves; some of them abused the privilege by sub-coat tailing," or concealing a book under one's coat without charging it out. Faculty regulation permitted students to borrow only two books at any time. The practice of imposing fines if books were returned late began in 1878, with the professors exempt from penalties. Robinson acquainted librarians at other colleges with his innovations through reports in journals and addresses at professional meetings. 17

V

Student enrollment gradually recovered from the effects of the Civil War. Whereas only 100 students attended in 1867, there were 115 by 1870, three years later a peak of 173 was reached, and throughout the 'seventies, the average figure was around 160, or about the same number as at Hamilton College and a few more than at Madison University. As of 1871 approximately a quarter of the undergraduates came from Rochester or within commuting distance (some of them travelling on horseback), an equal number within a radius of fifty miles, and nearly half from a greater distance. Although the records are incomplete, it is evident that the percentage of "dropouts" was very high; for example, fifty-three Freshmen entered in the class of 1877, the largest to that time, and nineteen more were added later, yet only, thirty-five obtained degrees, three of them baccalaureates in science.

Competition from other institutions in Upstate New York, especially the new Cornell and Syracuse Universities, the feeling in some Baptist circles that Rochester was insufficiently denominational in tone, the absence of a dormitory, and the repercussions of current events like the depression of 1873--all militated against faster growth of the undergraduate body. It ought also to be pointed out that collegiate education was still limited to a privileged few in the United States; in the entire country the college population as of 1871 stood close to 22, 000 (of which about 1,500 were women), and that year fewer than 2,000 bachelor degrees were awarded--indicating, parenthetically, a very considerable academic mortality:

"The students [at the U. of R.] belonged to a single social class," one of them tells us. "Apart from the local Rochester residents, they came from Baptist homes, widely scattered throughout the North. They were usually poor, a year or two older than college students generally, serious in purpose, studious and of excellent character... " 18

As seen by an undergraduate, the peculiar advantages of the U. of R. lay in its location in a suburban setting on the edge of a middle-sized city, the attractiveness of the Rochester community itself, the opportunities that were available in churches and home missions for youths pointed toward a Christian vocation, the expanding facilities of the college, and, not least, the traditional absence of tight regulation of the lives of students by the University officers. "The discipline of the University, " a slightly gilded official publication proudly proclaimed, "is that of the family rather than of the police station. Young men are put, as far as possible, upon their honor... '' [and] "in place of the time-honored antagonism between teachers and pupils, relations of personal friendship" prevail. 19

Though several efforts were made to revive the defunct literary societies, they invariably failed. Enthusiastic student mass meetings favored (1876) entering an Intercollegiate Literary Association which organized contests between colleges in eastern cities; not much information on the Association has been found, and in any case the frown of "the powers that be''--a common euphemism for the President--prevented Rochester from joining. "The Cicadas," a literary society of Juniors, disintegrated after a few years.

As a sort of variant of the literary society, a "great spelling match" between collegians and Theological school students attracted a capacity audience to Corinthian Hall. Rochester celebrities graced the platform, the mayor presided, the Glee Club sang, and the original group of fifty contestants was gradually whittled down to one man on each team, and they just could not be floored. So the judges ruled the battle a draw.

It was often complained that competitors in the annual Sophomore Exhibitions expressed themselves badly, and it was recommended that poor speakers should be wholly barred from participation. An undergraduate essayist after a searching inquiry into "The Prize System" concluded that prizes should be abolished. While acknowledging that they lent an incentive to individual study, recognized superior ability, and perhaps even induced some youths to enroll at the U. of R., the writer felt that there were too few competitors and that preparation robbed men of time better spent in general reading or in extracurricular activities. Yet oral examinations for prizes acquired a reputation for stiffness; an aspirant to the Stoddard Prize in mathematics, for instance, remembered that he had to review all the mathematics, physics, and astronomy he had learned and the examination "thoroughly exhausted the length and breadth and height and depth of my acquaintance with science." After 1878 prize winners were given cash instead of books.

To assist alumni in carrying on graduate studies, two scholarships with stipends of about $350 a year were established in the 'seventies. On the basis of competitive examinations, the income from the Sherman Scholarship, endowed by Isaac Sherman, was awarded to the outstanding Senior in Political Economy. And John Pomeroy Townsend of New York City set up a graduate scholarship for "constitutional law and political institutions;" an annual stipend was furnished by the donor until his death in 1898 and then his son, Charles J., 1879, permanently endowed the scholarship.

Undergraduate musical activities oscillated uncertainly. Class glee clubs flourished when enough men were sufficiently interested, and the same was true of the University Glee Club. At the mid-seventies after years of somnolence, the Glee Club, formally organized in or about 1875, presented well-received concerts in towns in the Rochester area. After a performance in nearby Canandaigua, the local hosts entertained the singers at "one of the most royal repasts ever tasted since Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of bread and milk," A University Orchestra, a Männerchore Society, and a Johann Strauss Club (organized just after the famous Viennese composer of light operas conducted concerts in Boston and New York), each had their day and ceased to be.

Writers bombarded student publications with earnest requests for more and better college songs--the scarcity of songs, like so much else in undergraduate life, was attributed to the lack of community spirit, which only the erection of dormitories could overcome. "If we can't sing, let's go out on the campus and yell," one correspondent wrote. "Anything but this awful silence." Meritorious melodies for class parties were often composed, but they soon passed out of vogue without ever being collected. The president made it clear that he disapproved of drinking songs, though he was favorably disposed to songs "worthy of use among Christian gentlemen." Jacob Spahn, infused the spirit of German student songs into a musical composition with a verse for each class in the college, the first of which ran:

Twinkle, twinkle little Fresh,
What faith and guileless face you bring,
What midnight oil,
And patient toil,
You waste on books, oh simple thing.

At a time when secular currents were gathering headway in American institutions of higher learning, there is little evidence of that trend at the U. of R. Under the auspices of the University Y. M. C. A., a weekly prayer service was conducted and each Saturday morning class closed with prayer. Besides encouraging youths to undertake pulpit or missionary careers, the "Y" cooperated in the traditional day of prayer for colleges, intended to quicken commitment to Christianity and to elevate the moral tone of the undergraduate body. At these annual occasions, men from the Theological Seminary united with the collegians in a morning of worship, Anderson normally delivering a sermon, and an afternoon of discussion. For three weeks in a row in 1876, Christian concern surged so high that daily religious meetings were held, devoid of excitement but marked by "profound earnestness." 20

Students also frequented public lectures in the city, musical performances, the theater for some, along with less sophisticated entertainment--the circus with but a single ring and a solitary clown, minstrel shows, visits to a popular German beer garden, or watching horses race on turf or snow. On the lighter and extracurricular aspects of the collegiate experience an undergraduate who came from a Baptist ministerial household has written, "I took almost no exercise... and too little recreation of any kind. ...Occasionally, I went to a professional ball game, once to a horse race... But I never went to a dance or to a students' card party or to a theatre. With my earlier training these in fact were taboo....My habit of hard and continuous mental work became a joy to me and so deeply inwrought as to last me through life.... I heard many orators of national distinction.... My musical taste was quickened by not a little good music. I was able to spend many hours with the pictures in the Powers Art Gallery, a fine selection of paints open to the public...." If students chose not to walk to places of entertainment, they traveled into the city on horse cars, whose floors were strewn with straw in winter to keep the feet of passengers warm. 21

Greek letter societies occupied a significant, doubtless an enlarging place in the extracurricular life of many undergraduates. Sixty years after graduation, "an old boy" remarked that he "owed more to his fraternity than to any one of the departments of the college, except that of the president." "I found it highly useful in literary criticism,'' another remembered of Alpha Delta Phi. "The social element... in the Greek letter fraternities was in Rochester in my time subordinate to helpful mutual criticism, mainly literary, addressed by the higher classmen to the lower." Lodge rooms in the city were frequently changed to more spacious quarters or where rentals were more attractive. Ill feeling between fraternities flamed up time and again due to rivalry over "pledging" of members and the election of class officers and other positions of distinction.

And "bad blood" reappeared between the secret societies and non-secret Delta Upsilon. As one consequence, this fraternity attracted so few new members that it looked as though it was fated to succumb, but revival soon set in. At the Delta Upsilon national convention of 1875, the Rochester delegate, George W. Coon, 1876, reported: "Morality, scholarship, and social culture are prime requisites for membership. Debates and literary meetings alternate. At the former we have an essay or an oration, two declamations, and a select reading; at the latter, an oration or an essay, three declamations, a paper, and music." "Our men stand high in the respect of the Faculty and the students generally," Coon told the convention. "The utmost harmony prevails... We meet Monday evenings." 22 The chapter had the pleasure of entertaining the national convention at Rochester in 1876; the high point was a public meeting in Corinthian Hall replete with an address, a poem, and music, and a huge banquet for delegates in a downtown hotel.

A new society, Phi Kappa Alpha, organized in 1872 as the Literary Union, passed out of existence seven years later. Alongside of the fraternities were class societies, such as the Psi Phi, of Juniors (1873) and the Sophomore Kappa Nu (1875), which lasted only a few years; but a chapter of the notorious national Sophomore society, Theta Nu Epsilon, instituted in 1878, flourished until 1900, when it was banned by the faculty because of mischief-making and hell-raising. Curriculum clubs were likewise formed, though most of them were short-lived; noteworthy was the Astronomical Association founded after the erection of the Trevor Observatory.

The quality and variety of student publications progressed importantly in the 1870's. Under a variety of names the Interpres (Universitatis) enjoyed the sponsorship of the secret societies until 1870, when it became the responsibility of the Junior class, an arrangement that persisted. Periodically enlarged and altered in format, the Interpres served as a mirror and spokesman of the under-graduate interest, faithful to its stated objective of providing a "glimpse of life and customs." "You will find spread out on its pages a rare feast," proclaimed the Interpres of 1870, "succulent statistics... pungent items... delicate tid-bits of information." It spoke up on behalf of dormitories, for example, and of afternoon in place of morning classes. It was standard Interpres practice to publish fraternity memberships and insignia, lists of class and club officers, and faculty; but it also carried notices of bogus organizations, dreamed up by mischievous editors, along with authentic ones. The ambitious 1870 Interpres of thirty-two pages allocated two pages to advertisements by city shops, and a "Miscellany" section featuring a jolly essay on tobacco to which, it was said, most students were addicted. General college news, snippets of doggerel, humorous pieces and engravings, not excluding caricatures of University officers, some of which critics decried as indecent, appeared in the Interpres.

Its advocacy of an undergraduate newspaper had fulfillment in October, 1873 with the publication of the University Record, which came out monthly, ten times a year. It was designed, commented the Rochester Union & Advertiser "to supply a want long felt... by furnishing a reliable organ through which the College may speak...." A creation of eight men in the class of 1875, the Record was a well-printed paper, without pictures, and costing originally a dollar a year or a "shilling" for a single copy. Its sponsors presented a broad variety of news about the college with the aims of fostering "that indescribable something--college spirit,'' of serving as a channel of communication with the faculty and alumni, and of promoting general educational interests.

A full page University advertisement emphasized that no dormitories were available since the college imitated "the German rather than the English model" But students could obtain board in a private household for as little as $3.50 a week and hire a room for $1.00 a week; the tuition charge stood at $25.00 a term with a reduction to $5.00 for men who intended to enter the ministry. "Rochester affords peculiar advantages to those who desire to help themselves, pecuniarily, by teaching or by engaging in mechanical pursuits," prospective students learned. Other ads, by "reliable business men only," invited attention to schools and bookshops, cigars, pianos and singing, birds, dry goods, and a "patent foot rest" on which particulars might be obtained from the college janitor. Certain undergraduates protested that too much of the precious space of the Record was assigned to advertisements.

One thousand copies of the first issue were printed, and a copy was sent gratis to every alumnus, "the five hundred brothers." It became customary to place the Greek motto of each class responsible for publication on the masthead. Professor Joseph H. Gilmore acted as a sort of godfather of the Record and frequently penned little essays for the paper: for instance, in the first number he contributed an historical sketch of "Our College." In a series on "Hints about Book-Buying," the Professor of English counseled that a book should not be bought unless it had first been read, nor should a man be beguiled by elegant bindings, nor by books issued in installments, nor by sets; only books that were of immediate use should be purchased, and in second-hand shops at that.

Occasionally, a learned article was contributed by the President or a professor on topics like "On the Value of Pi", "Wordsworth and the Poetry of Nature," or "The Revision, of the English Scriptures;" undergraduate essays dealt with "Bismarck and the [Roman Catholic] Church," "The Tuscarora Indians," and a Jewish student, David Hays, 1878, explained "Modern Judaism," comparing the reformed and orthodox versions of the ancient faith. Materials thought to be of interest to Rochester students were culled from the newspapers of other colleges.

In 1876, the name of the paper was changed to the more appropriate Rochester Campus (later The Campus); the doings of alumni were given extensive coverage, and wit and humor occupied a whole page. Additions to library resources were faithfully and regularly noticed: As would be expected, editorial reflections covered a wide spectrum, one of enduring worth reproached undergraduates for speaking slang. "The English language is copious enough to enable us to express our ideas... strongly and elegantly," readers were reminded, "without resorting to words that ... are coarse and inelegant." On the subject of awarding honorary degrees, the Campus advocated that they should be given "only in cases of thorough and acknowledged literary or technical education. "

The editors of the Interpres considered closing up shop after the University Record made its debut--a fate devoutly wished for by the latter- - but abandoned the idea. In appraising its young rival, the Interpres remarked that it displayed some commendable qualities without, however, attaining the stature of a live college journal. Altogether too much attention, it was charged, was devoted to "ponderous literary and scientific articles" and to stories without relevance to the college enterprise. Returning good for evil, the Record hailed the Interpres of 1874 as the most handsome ever, and rejoiced that fictitious clubs had at last been eliminated from its pages. Witticisms were of a finer grade than previously, the Record stated, though reprehensible jokes about certain college teachers should not be repeated in future editions. 23

As a phase of the warfare with the secret Greek fraternities, the men of Delta Upsilon were excluded from the editorial staff of the Interpres, so in 1871 they started to publish a pamphlet-type periodical of their own, called the University Annual. It prided itself on being a literary sheet, in contrast to the Interpres which was denigrated as "merely an abbreviated thesaurus of the minutiae of college life." Of the first number, no copy of which has been preserved, alas and alack, a city newspaper said, "It contains thirty-two pages of interesting matter prepared with a degree of taste quite creditable to the young gentlemen having the work in charge." 24 The second volume of the Annual ran into forty pages, half of them given over to literary interests, six filled with editorials, four to miscellaneous materials, and the rest to advertisements. Toward the end of the 'seventies, tension between Delta Upsilon and the secret societies subsided, the Annual succumbed (1877), and DU's were given representation on the Interpres board.

Undergraduate publications reflected student initiative in several directions, especially interest in athletics, though to a much lesser extent than would be true in the twentieth century. President Anderson disapproved of "muscular sports," which led a non-conformist student to tag him "an unprogressive fossil." Not all the students, to be sure, took an interest in sports, one wryly observing that he walked six miles daily to the campus from his living quarters, and, therefore, "needed no other bodily activity." Pleas for a gymnasium at the college increased after one was provided at the Theological Seminary, from which collegians were debarred; a "Gym Club" hired facilities at the Young Men's Catholic Association. A Cricket Club and a Billiard (not a particularly strenuous sport) Club were organized but their years of popularity were few. Individual college classes went in for boating. 1868 boasted the finest craft, a six-oared boat called Sans Souci with rowers dressed in natty costumes consisting of white shirts and pants and caps trimmed in magenta. 1869's Dux was completely outclassed. The formation of a college Boating Club provoked lively student discussions about a U. of R. crew which could practice on the Genesee River and take part in intercollegiate regattas; the organization of a crew at the infant Syracuse University stimulated agitation at Rochester. Yet one austere gentleman roundly condemned the project, reasoning that few undergraduates would be able to participate, that the expense would be prohibitive, and that intercollegiate contests were conducive to gambling. University officers let it be known that they disapproved of aquatic sports; if students desperately wanted a crew they should join a city boat club and organize a crew in it.

As early as 1872, interclass baseball games were played and a Baseball Association staged games on the campus; these contests diminished interest in class fights, which had plagued University officialdom for years. In 1874 men of the college played baseball with nines from the city; the appearance in Rochester of a Hobart College club fitted out with snappy uniforms and standard equipment spurred U. of R. sports enthusiasts to clamor for the same. As matters stood, Rochester players dressed in their old clothes, they had no good bats, and only second-hand balls, poor in quality. It seemed absurd and humiliating that Hobart with a student body only about a third that of Rochester should be well-equipped and should compete with other colleges, while the U. of R. played only local clubs. Every U. of R. student, it was urged, should be required to pay a tax to purchase respectable uniforms and equipment. In the following year (1875), baseball suits of steel gray with blue trimmings were obtained from an unrecorded source; soon men were practicing seriously and were prepared to play other college teams, against the wishes, needless to say, of President Anderson. Interclass football games were also held, but even more popular a pastime was kicking a football against Anderson Hall, whenever, that is, the President was not in evidence. 25

Months and months of debate preceded the initiation in 1876 of a day for track and field athletics. An earnest partisan, of this innovation wrote, "We go to college to recite and immediately hurry home--the monastic element is too largely dominant;" a day devoted to track and field sports would enliven the whole institution, he contended. His wishes were gratified in the spring of 1876 when an intramural field day was held on the campus with Professor Gilmore as referee; the main contests were a hundred yard dash, a mile run, jumping, hurdle and sack races, throwing a baseball, and an interclass rope pull. This affair was neither a great success, nor was it a total failure. Next year the events were staged on the grounds of the Rochester Baseball Club and a football game of sorts was added, and thereafter field day was an annual fixture on the undergraduate calendar. Sports-minded students set up a clamor for more attractive college colors than white and magenta, which in fact varied from "carnelian to crimson;" in 1876 the alumni formally adopted steel gray and light blue of the baseball uniforms as official colors.

Precisely as "the powers that be" frowned upon organized athletics, so they were aggrieved by manifestations of rowdyism, student escapades, and raucous midnight revels. The custom of hazing newcomers--a practice that reaches back to medieval European universities--sometimes culminated in battle royal between underclassmen. In defiance of the Sophomores, Freshmen carried canes which their elders tried to wrest away in hurly-burly "cane rushes." Anderson often intervened, seizing and separating two embattled contestants, and then plunging into the fray to grapple with two more. Reporting one fracas, a Rochester newspaper told of the "air filled with fragments of costly wearing apparel, cuffs, collars, etc." Even the arrival of the austere man from Maine at "the fearful scene of carnage" on this occasion made little impression upon the happy warriors. When an armistice was proclaimed, the tally revealed, "killed none; seriously injured, two; slightly injured, thirty-eight...We congratulate the boys on making the acquaintance of each other in this friendly way," the paper sarcastically commented.

A really serious accident resulting from "one of those insane and unprofitable pieces of college amusement" attracted national attention--and condemnation. Against Freshmen in battle array at a gate leading from the Campus, the Sophomores launched a frontal assault, in the course of which a Freshman--Everett A. Brown, 1876--was thrown against the fence with such force that the timbers fell on him and he was trampled upon by his mates. Several ribs were broken and his spine was injured; only narrowly did he escape death, a fate that befell the victim of a class struggle at Cornell.

Following, a stirring exhortation by Anderson, the students unanimously foreswore "all challenges, taunts, actions or expressions, calculated to bring on such contests as have heretofore taken place among us..." To "our suffering brother student" a message of warm sympathy was dispatched and the undergraduates footed the bills for medical care and treatment. Upon recovery, Brown resigned from the college and in maturity developed into an opera singer of considerable repute!

To the trustees, Anderson explained that hazing, a grave evil at all academic institutions, was "an outcome of popular muscular Christianity, and the glorification of physical strength among the young. It belongs to the same general tendency as the passion for sporting [sic] which has grown up widely among our colleges, and which has been frequently favored by college authorities. Instead of proposing athletic activities to release the animal spirits of undergraduates, the "old-time" academic executive reasoned that "the glorification of athletic exercises... tends to make success in sporting more honorable than success in mental activity, attainment and scholarship...." He was delighted to be able to say in 1875, "With some little watchfulness and by appeals to the good sense of` the students, I have been able to keep down hazing and all class collisions.'' 26

In, the autumn months raiding an apple orchard near the campus afforded diversion to students, and in the winter Anderson Hall was the frequent scene of gumshoe throwing, which the President decried as "the rubber epidemic;" only his appearance caused the warfare to peter out. Violent snowball fights between underclassmen evoked protests from older students; sleighing parties with Rochester girls as companions were much in favor, and if an equipage happened to upset the whole company seemed pleased.

Whether put up to it by students or not, a boy of Italian antecedents wandered into the classroom of Professor Kendrick, strumming a violin; the Greek master expelled the unwelcome urchin from the room, and Anderson drove him from the building. For his audacity, the lad was rewarded with a pocketful of pennies by students; the episode provided a conversation piece for many years. At another time undergraduates seated a monkey, borrowed from an organ grinder, in Kendrick's chair and when the august professor arrived he merely said, "Gentlemen, pardon me for interrupting your class meeting."

Hirsute adornment--if such in fact it was--had had no little acceptance among students in the first decades of the University and grew in popularity during the 1870's, perhaps in imitation of President Ulysses S. Grant. "We were a bewhiskered lot," an "old boy" recalled, for it was felt that a "full beard added age and dignity" to the wearer. Smoking, too, was the vogue, though disapproved of by more austere (or more health-minded) souls who felt the habit offended good taste and should not be allowed in the college environment. Proposing that a room in Anderson Hall should be set aside for smokers, a disgusted youth observed, "Let the room be totally without ventillation [sic] and painted in imitation of a meerschaum pipe;" over the door a device should read, "The Rowdys' Paradise.''

Every class prided itself on group frolics, generally held at the Newport House on Irondequoit Bay, a well-loved rendezvous of Rochester collegians deep into the twentieth century. Boating, fishing, games and singing preceded supper and literary exercises; often professors were invited as guests, and commonly the parties adjourned to the city to serenade teachers at their homes. To tone up extracurricular activities and to counteract the preponderance of fraternities in the undergraduate way of life, the desirability of forming a students association which would embrace all four classes was periodically discussed, but several years elapsed before talk led to action:

Beyond doubt, the high point in undergraduate pranks was the annual burial of "Calculus," which began in 1872 and matched a tradition popular at other colleges. Many a Sophomore regarded calculus as the driest, toughest, and most dreaded member of the "Matthew Matics" family. Upon finishing the course, student exuberance celebrated the victory over the tyrannical enemy with elaborate pageantry and a cremation ceremony ("Crematio et Sepultura Calculi"). Normally the exercises were conducted at night in deep secrecy, which Freshmen, above all, were not supposed to witness lest their spirits be chilled before they attacked the subject, but now and then the greenlings learned of the time and place of the ceremonial and tried to break it up. A jolly Sophomore banquet, lasting well into the next day, ordinarily rounded off the happy, sorrowful cremation.

To vary the procedure, the class of 1876 staged the cremation exercises on the campus in daylight, while preserving the customary ritual, as shown on a printed program. To watch the spectacle, a throng of 1,500 onlookers assembled and two policemen were needed to maintain order. A procession was formed downtown and marched to Prince Street behind a band playing a doleful funeral dirge; a herald, a high priest, an orator, and a prophet were decked out in costumes reminiscent of ancient Rome, while their classmates wore masks and were arrayed in long black robes. After a bier holding "Calculus" had been placed on the steps of Anderson Hall, the orator orated, the prophet prophesied, and then the corpse was gleefully hurled on a funeral pyre in the middle of the college park, to which a torch was applied. Hated textbooks and "cribs" caused the flames to mount high, and when calculus had been reduced to ashes the embers were quenched with wine and milk. Whatever remained was swept into an urn, which was solemnly interred as the class chanted a lugubrious funeral lament:

Fondly cherished Calculus
Endeared was thy relation;
Sacred are these rites to us.
Attending thy cremation.
With blighted hopes, we gather round
Thy funeral pile now viewing,
Our flowing tears, `midst grief profound,
Thy memory warm bedewing

Two more stanzas of similar import followed, ending, ironically, with:

Thy mem'ry sweet shall never die;
Farewell, dear friend, forever.

On occasion, orators voiced their sentiments in Latin, Greek, Hebrew or even Chinese, participants wore Prince Albert coats and silk hats, and the interment took place on the lawns of high schools in the Genesee country; one class of mourners traveled by boat to Port Hope, Canada, for the obsequies and another tossed an image of calculus "beneath the falls of the great Niagara." When calculus ceased to be a required subject, "Ann A. Lytics"--in deference to analytical geometry--took its place (1889) in Sophomore dread detestation, and funeral rites. After mathematics ceased to be a compulsory subject, Sophomores contented themselves with a more or less sober class banquet. 27

In terms of dollars, if not in purchasing power, student expenses at the U. of R. increased modestly, as has earlier been indicated. While the Civil War was being fought, tuition charges for three terms went to sixty dollars and in 1873 to seventy-five ($100 for men taking chemistry), somewhat more than at Syracuse, for example, and half the fees at Harvard; a professor was entrusted with the responsibility of collecting the tuition money. In 1873--a year of depression--he reported that unpaid bills amounted to $6,400, and the trustees presently ordered that if students failed to meet their obligations by the third week of each term they should be penalized. Costs of board in private homes moved up from a minimum of two dollars a week to three and a half, with six dollars as the top figure; inexpensive rooms could be engaged for as little as one dollar a week, or two dollars for more comfortable quarters. When a Rochester clergyman charged that only rich men's sons could afford to attend the University, he was promptly answered with incontrovertible evidence that in fact many students met their college expenses by working for remuneration. Once recitations - were over, "they set type, taught, kept books, wrote for the papers, delivered papers, worked in machine shops, factories, et cetera, took care of churches and schoolhouses, copied for lawyers, gardeners, nurserymen, clerks, private secretaries." An "old boy" testified that most of his contemporaries either worked their way through or went into debt, and that he personally earned money by preaching, teaching, and office work. A second youth who looked after street lamps and performed odd jobs found the challenge too exacting and withdrew from the college, leaving tuition bills unpaid, but years later he liquidated the debt. 28

VI

Several changes were introduced in 1870's in the Commencement week festivities, the time, for instance. Mid-July in Corinthian Hall, as the press properly observed, meant a ''sweating process beside which the hot-air bath is not to be mentioned... Few persons who have any regard for personal comfort or health will participate in one of these annual sweats...." Consequently, graduation day was moved successively to the last Wednesday before the Fourth of July, then to the last Wednesday of June, and in 1882 to the third Wednesday of June. Beginning in 1871, the academic procession for the graduation ceremony formed at the Second Baptist Church--on whose site the Baptist Temple was erected in the 1920's--a sandstone structure resembling "a religious fortress," one youth thought. Thence the company marched down Main Street as usual to Corinthian Hall, which in 1879 witnessed its last U. of R. Commencement exercises. Seniors wore Prince Albert attire and all undergraduates were expected to join in the parade, though a good many shirked this obligation.

As evidence that the college had come of age, alumni increasingly were invited to present the customary sermons, addresses, and poems during Commencement week. Due to the size of the 1873 graduating class in order to accommodate all the Seniors graduation orators, was split into morning and afternoon sessions. Senior speakers in 1876 were restricted to the sixteen men who stood highest, and each was limited to eight hundred words, which had to be approved by and three times rehearsed in the presence of the professor of rhetoric; admirers tossed bouquets onto the Commencement stage at the end of each oration.

Seldom does the historian find statistical data such as is available for the class of 1876. Of the fifty-nine men in the class at one time and another (the General Catalogue lists only forty-six), thirty-five earned baccalaureates. At the time of graduation, of the thirty-one who supplied data, ten planned to enter the ministry, eight would study medicine, three law, five intended to go into business, two into teaching, one into farming, and the rest indicated no vocational preference. The average age was twenty-three, three were twenty-eight and the youngest nineteen; two were married. On an average, the men weighed one hundred and forty-eight pounds and stood five feet nine inches tall. 29

In 1874, Senior class day, instead of being a separate June occasion, was made a feature on Monday of Commencement week. It seemed to a contemporary journalist that "when the student is called upon to bid adieux to all his college friends, he turns the sad occasion into a time of gay rejoicing... by throwing a cloak of mad hilarity over the ceremonies... called class-day." At an unknown date, it became customary for a Senior spokesman to hand to a representative of the Juniors "an ancient, ruby tinted horn," but that symbol of college continuity mysteriously disappeared in 1869, either lost or stolen, and the Juniors haughtily declined to accept a reasonable facsimile. "Poor, miserable, wretched class of `69," it was reproachfully protested, "with so much glory plastered to your name, you can afford to curl your several tails between your legs and slink to your kennels. A bowl of diluted milk awaits you." Tempers soon cooled, however, and the class of 1871, in place of "a meaningless horn," entrusted to the Juniors a celebrated Boneman (or possibly a Bonewoman). A ghastly skeleton without calves or thighs was perched on a venerable kitchen chair atop a table, either in the Anderson Hall chapel or on the campus. His head was shielded from the rays of the sun by a kerchief, green spectacles rested on his fleshless nose, his gumless teeth gripped a Havana cigar, and his hand clutched a learned manuscript. As the transfer of the Boneman was effected, the Seniors cut loose in a ribald melody--a Bone Symphony, forsooth:

You are going to leave us now,
And in tender hands we vow,
It will be your happy lot to pass a year in;
And we trust your winning smile
Will the Junior heart beguile,
And preserve him from superstitious fearin'.

Chorus:

Take then the Bone-man,
The Bone-man, the Bone-man,
Take then the Bone-man
And use him as well as you can....

Junior accepted the dubious gift with a witty speech or merry ditty. Then the Boneman was seated (1873) in a hack drawn by four white horses, flanked by a band of musicians and hauled through the streets of the city. Planting of a class tree remained a cherished college tradition. When workmen, nearly three-quarters of a century later, removed the decaying class tree of 1868, they uncovered a rusty tin box, filled with fragments of clay pipes, some of them works of sculpture; the bowl of one formed a bearded face resembling an Ethiopian monarch; a sea nymph rode a scaly dolphin and a dryad, naked like her companion, reclined at the base of a tree; two pipes had the shape of a bent female leg with the chubby thigh as the bowl and the shin and foot as the stem.

The class of 1873 commemorated its impending graduation with a set of resolutions buried in a jar beneath its tree. It was stated that the first son "born in lawful wedlock" to a member of the class would be given a silver cup; the men promised to enroll their sons in the U. of R., forgave the faculty for its shortcomings and the library for imposing fines, praised the janitor for removing snow, and breathed a prayer that the recurring freshness of the class tree would typify recurring memories of the college experience. Previously, the ceremonial had been conducted in the overcrowded chapel, but the class of 1873 arranged for a tent on the campus, unluckily, rain descended in torrents and leaked through the canvas upon the audience. The fates were even less kindly the following year, for wind and rain ripped down the canopy and of the estimated audience of over 2,000 only a tenth could find places in the chapel. 30

To return to the "big tent," to graduation day, all concerned looked forward eagerly to the customary message of Anderson. He addressed the class of 1875 on "The Tests of Character," stressing that the obligations resting upon the present generation of scholars were greater than divine Providence had ever before imposed. "In the great struggle for existence," he declared, "none but the fittest survived....Almost all the work which strengthens character is drudgery pure and simple." He exhorted the graduates "to learn wisdom from the failures of other men" and to apply their "powers up to the limit of the faculties which God has given you...." At the gala Commencement of 1878, marking the twenty-fifth year of Anderson's presidency, he dwelt on "The Demands of Modern Life," much of which might have been spoken at a similar occasion a century later. After remarking upon the rapid growth of scientific and historical knowledge, he said that every year "lays a new burden on him who would be ... an educated man." Consequently, he urged the graduates to keep minds receptive to new ideas while retaining settled convictions on what was right and what was not. "Character is the outgrowth of permanent beliefs," Anderson observed. Human knowledge had distinct limitations, he was sure, and the wise man would employ his abilities in "the pursuit of the practicable and the possible." 31 Invariably, the Rochester press carried generous accounts of the Commencement week proceedings, one newspaper alone in 1874 devoted the equivalent of twenty-five columns to them.

Once the exercises in Corinthian Hall were finished, horse-drawn street cars conveyed alumni to the annual dinner, spread either in Anderson or Sibley Hall. There was much speechmaking by graduates and officers of the University, and in 1874 portraits of the President and Professors Kendrick and Quinby, still (1968) cherished possessions of the University, were unveiled.

It was voted by the alumni in 1877 to focus the annual meeting of 1878 on Anderson in recognition of his twenty-five years of service, and to press forward with the Anderson fund of $25,000 commenced six years earlier; it was also proposed that an Anderson professorship should be endowed, but neither project was immediately fulfilled. Nevertheless, the 1878 festivities were long talked about by the persons who attended. Anderson had fallen dangerously ill at Freeport, Maine, in the summer of 1877 and was confined for months to a sanitarium; 32 when he appeared in chapel in May of 1878 the student body welcomed him with a loud and prolonged ovation; the alumni on their part intended to outdo the undergraduates in expressing esteem and affection for the veteran chief executive. A torrid wave swept Rochester on the day--July 2--picked to honor the President, and threatened to cut attendance sharply, but in fact Corinthian Hall was crowded to capacity.

In anticipation of the celebration, a Rochester editor toasted the "old-time" President as a "really distinguished man by reason of his natural powers--is because of these powers distinguished from other men of equal or greater learning. A 'born educator' ... he has instructed the minds and moulded the characters of the young men entrusted to his tutorage, has sent forth alumni whose number is stated roundly at 600, and has through these graduates and his own recognized standing made Rochester University a power in the land of letters, in the realm of thought, and in the varied spheres of action. It is meet that on such an occasion the general community should acknowledge its obligations to a man who has given the silver and golden years of his life to the education and elevation of other men.... the Union expresses the universal sentiment that Dr. Anderson... may yet reach the fiftieth" anniversary of his Presidency.

At the alumni anniversary party, Stephen H. Carpenter, 1852, University of Wisconsin professor, struck the keynote of the evening when he described the President as " tender as a mother in his counsels, firm in justice as God, he had guided the destinies of the U. of R. and in the hereafter that would be his greatest crown." Other alumni spokesmen in glowing rhetoric lauded the man from Maine, his meaning for them, and his educational accomplishments.

In his response Anderson said unassumingly that he was one of the least important factors in the evolution of the University, and then alluded to the endless perplexities he had encountered. He never would have dreamed of coming to Rochester, he remarked, could he have foreseen the difficulties with which he had to contend; nonetheless, he intended to carry on the executive functions as long as his health permitted. He thanked the alumni for letters during his recent illness--when he "struggled with death"--and attributed his devotion to undergraduates year after year to the fact that he had no children. Then, overcome with emotion, he sat down; vainly, the audience tried to sing a Homeric ode: Co-ca-chelunk.

On behalf of the community, Mayor Cornelius R. Parsons spoke gracefully of Anderson the man and the citizen and of the college that had become "a sacred spot" in the city. For the faculty, Kendrick, who was welcomed with hearty cheering, reminisced on the professorial emigration from Madison University, and likened the original U. of R. trustees to Diogenes, who had lit their lamp and gone out to find a University leader; unlike the Greek sage, however, they had discovered a man, Anderson, whose first quarter century of performance augured well for the next twenty-five years. A leading trustee, Dr. Edward Mott Moore, recalled the general rejoicing on the day the "omnibus" arrived in Rochester from Hamilton, New York, and "Billy" Sage recounted the genesis of the college and paid a handsome tribute to the President, paralleling sentiments set out in alumni resolutions.

Before dispersing, the party sang "Oh! Hail to Our Loved U. of R:" to the tune of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean."

Alma Mater, we cherish and love thee,
An round thee we gather to sing;
May the bright star of peace be above thee;
Thy children their offerings bring;
Round thy name may bright laurels entwining,
Sweet fragrance distil to the air;
On thy walls may the bright sunbeams shining,
Reflect back thy beauties so fair.

Chorus:

Oh hail to our loved U. of R.,
Oh, hail to our loved U. of R.,
May thy sons ever gather round thee,
Our noble and loved U. of R. 33

The joyous celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tenure of Anderson as president marked a high-point in his academic career. Crippled in body as he was and unsympathetic to novel currents sweeping across higher learning in the United States, it can scarcely be gainsaid that 1878 would have been an appropriate time for the sixty-three year old executive to have divested himself of the cares and responsibilities of office. But he decided otherwise.

VII

At a meeting of U. of R. alumni in New York City held on April 20, 1870, to organize the first regional club of graduates, Anderson declared, "It has always been my wish...that there should be constant communication between the alumni and the University.... The institution is an abstraction; you are realities; you are not so large [in number] but that we know you through and through, from the egg to the apple...we have come to be interested in you... it is this high personal regard for the alumni of Rochester...that has...held me, where I am .... I do not propose to leave for a better place.... I am glad to have this organization so that we can help each other.... We, in the University, need your supervision. Often we need your criticism--give it to us...." 34

By the time of this utterance the Alumni Association had grown substantially and was capable of exerting influence upon the character and conduct of the college. Trustees who had not graduated from the U. of R. were elected as honorary members of the Association. Dues varied from one to two dollars, although by no means all alumni contributed, and at one point the treasury boasted only ninety-one cents. Committees were appointed to perform a variety of tasks, but the reports of most of them, unfortunately, have not survived. It is known, however, that committees collected funds to enrich library resources and for portraits of leading faculty men. In 1871, the Association voted to raise $25,000, it may be recalled, to be presented on the twenty-fifth birthday of the college; and subsequently it was decided to label the money the Anderson Alumni Fund, from which the income was to be applied to general college purposes until Anderson retired and then to go to him as long as he lived. It proved a long, hard struggle to complete the Fund, and the goal was not reached in fact until after the first President resigned.

As another sign of the maturity of the alumni body, men from its own ranks were more and more chosen, as has been said, to present addresses and poems at annual meetings and at Commencement week affairs. Proudly the Association hailed Andrew L. Freeman, 1851, father of the first son (Spencer H., 1875) to be educated at Alma Mater.

The custom of publishing a pamphlet catalogue every three years listing alumni, recipients of honorary degrees, and officers of the University ended in 1873; the next comparable publication appeared in 1879 as a General Catalogue. Unlike its predecessor, the triennial issue of 1873, which was edited by Professor William G. Morey, used English instead of Latin names and contained a little biographical data about each graduate.

According to a compilation made in 1878, 746 men had graduated since the University opened its doors, thirty-nine of them with bachelor of science degrees. So far as vocations were concerned, 181 of the alumni were ministers, five were at work in mission fields, and there were 119 lawyers, nineteen [25] physicians, ninety [75 secondary school masters, twenty-two professors], 155 business men, but only two professional scientists, an astronomer and a geologist. 35 Between 1871 and 1880, 306 bachelor's degrees were awarded. Graduates who entered the legal profession or who chose business pursuits nearly equalled those who responded to the call of the church; teachers were not far behind, and the proportion of physicians increased substantially over earlier decades.

Addressing an alumni gathering in 1871, Ezekiel W. Mundy, 1860, said, "Unless college life is broad enough and profound enough to prepare men for the world's work it must be reckoned a failure. The test of the college is... the men whom it sends forth.... The standing of our Alma Mater depends... upon the manliness with which her graduates enter into the arena of life...." 36

Judged by the Mundy criteria, Rochester graduates of the period came off well, filling important places in many walks of life and furnishing estimable examples for future generations of young men. Educators formed the largest group of distinguished alumni: James M. Taylor, 1868, who as president of Vassar College (a post for which Anderson--his model--recommended him) for nearly thirty years set high intellectual standards and raised considerable sums of money; William C. Morey, 1868, of the U. of R. faculty, commented on in the next chapter, and William J. Milne, 1868, president of Geneseo and Albany Normal Schools (State University Colleges in 1968) and author of extensively adopted mathematics textbooks. To Amherst College (and before that to Rutgers), the U. of R. gave President Merrill E. Gates, 1870, not a successful executive whose quarrels with faculty and students caused violent eruptions--and his resignation. He appointed George E. Olds, 1873, as professor of mathematics, who eventually became dean and then the best loved of Amherst presidents, balancing off the dismal performance of Gates.

Henry C. Vedder, 1873, gained distinction as a church historian at Crozer Theological Seminary, and in his writings gave currency to the social applications of Christianity. That approach captivated George B. Stevens, 1877, theologian at Yale, of whom it has been written that he was "chiefly interested in the reinterpretation of religious truths in the light of the best scholarship of his day."

A graduate in 1870, Philip A. Nordell, "brilliant Biblical scholar," composed an impressive row of works on religious subjects, and quite in keeping with a Rochester tradition, Frank D. Phinney, 1878, spent his life in missionary work at Rangoon, Burma; as superintendent of the American Baptist Mission press, he managed a large publishing establishment and also devised a typewriter for the Burmese language. Mathematician and scientist, Frank S. Capen, 1868, achieved distinction as a college teacher and an educational administrator, as did John F. Forbes, 1878, whose twin brother, George M., was for many years a valued U. of R. professor. A Buffalo (New York) High School bears the name of Frank S. Fosdick, 1872, one of the truly great school principals of his generation. 37

In public affairs, the outstanding son of Rochester of the 'seventies was J. Sloat Fassett, 1875, many years a Congressman, an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of New York, and an influential figure in Republican party counsels. Walter L. Smith, 1877 non-graduate, served as Justice of the Supreme Court of New York State. Other noteworthy attorneys were Willis S. Paine, 1868, specialist in banking law, Theron S. Strong, 1868, a partner of Elihu Root, Walter S. Hubbell, 1871, chief counsel of the Eastman Kodak Company, and his classmate, Charles M. Williams, who for over thirty years was a key trustee of the U. of R. (Hubbell was also a board member), Benjamin. Folsom, 1871, who filled the office of United States consul at Sheffield, England, and Edmund Lyon, 1877, another Rochester trustee, whose broad humanitarian instincts were centered upon education, more especially training for children unable to hear or speak. 38

Internationally famed pediatrician Luther E. Holt, 1875, ranked at the very top of his profession as practitioner, teacher, and author; his "little catechism for mothers," Care and Feeding of Children, was reprinted more than seventy-five times, and the Babies' Hospital in New York City which Holt established "has been the example for many institutions throughout the world."

Holt resided in New York, as did a second accomplished medical man and fellow trustee of the University, John P. Munn, 1870, an exceptionally devoted and picturesque son of Alma Mater. A greatly respected physician of Rochester, Richard Mott Moore, 1877, also won esteem as an entomologist.

Several of the men mentioned above, such as Taylor, and also Francis J. Bellamy and Frederick T. Gates remarked upon below, entered the ministry before moving into the vocation for which they became more generally significant. An influential Boston clergyman, Francis H. Rowley, 1875, achieved distinction as a courageous promoter of humanitarian causes; if for nothing else, the Reverend Ebenezer W. Hunt, 1873, merits notice as the first of five brothers to graduate from the University. 39

Prominent among the journalists trained at the U. of R. were Charles R. Williams, non-graduate 1875, who worked on New York City and Indianapolis papers, and Francis J. Bellamy, 1876, who, while on the staff of The Youth's Companion, composed in 1892 (later textually altered) the twenty-three word "Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag" which millions of American schoolchildren have recited; a bronze plaque in Todd Union proclaims (1968) this achievement. The first winner of a civil engineering degree at the U. of R., Emil Kuichling, distinguished himself as an expert in municipal waterworks and sewage disposal. 40

Into the business community, the University sent William H. Davis, 1868, of Cincinnati; Francis W. Ayer, non-graduate, 1871, a national advertising leader who raised the ethical standards of the business; Edward Bausch, non-graduate 1873, Rochester inventor and manufacturer; Frederick, S. Fish, 1873, president of the Studebaker Corporation; Francis R. Welles, 1875, Chicago and European manufacturer of telephone equipment and a trustee and generous benefactor of Alma Mater, who gave him (1910) an honorary doctorate; among other gifts, he joined forces with Charles A. Brown, 1879, Chicago attorney and University trustee to provide the Welles-Brown Room in the Rush Rhees Library. Joseph T. Alling, 1876, wholesale dealer in paper in Rochester, was perhaps the most powerful force of his generation for municipal betterment in the community and a long-time trustee of the University, who, like Munn before him, also presided over the board; Lemuel W. Bowen, 1879, president of the Ferry Seed Company of. Detroit; and Frederick T. Gates, 1877, who warrants more extended comment. Minister turned educational and business executive, Gates was a prime promoter of the second University of Chicago and an influential factor in enlisting the financial backing of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. for that enterprise. Thereafter, he became "the architect of Rockefeller charities," concerned especially with foundations that supported education in general and colleges and universities in particular. Of him the oil magnate said, he "has been the guiding genius in all our giving.... He combines business skill and philanthropic aptitude to a higher degree than any other man I have ever known." "Gates did the heavy thinking," John D. Rockefeller, Jr., remarked, "and my part was to sell his ideas to father." Gates' Autobiography, never published, alas, written in the last years of his life is an invaluable source of information on American philanthropy and on the author's experiences at the U. of R. 41

Footnotes to Chapter 8

1. John R. Slater, Rochester at Seventy Five (Rochester, 1925), an address before Iota chapter, Phi Beta Kappa, June 14, 1925.
2. Martin B. Anderson to his wife, Dec. 19, 1874. Anderson Papers, Box VI
3. By and large, the mood at the U of R. paralleled attitudes that prevailed in the older, well-established small colleges of New England. See, the excellent The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, Mass., 1964), by George E. Peterson.
4. President's Report, 1868, 1871. Anderson Papers Box XIII.
5. William Kelly to M. B. Anderson, Nov. 2 , 30, 1868. Anderson Papers, Box IV. For a sketch of Sibley see DAB, XVII (1935), 145-146. Consult, Morris Bishop, A History of Cornell (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), pp. 96-97, 181, 201, 241, 294
6. Trustee Records, II, June 27, 1871 , 5-6, 9, 14-20.
7. Trustee Records, II (1872), 27. Rosenberger, Rochester, pp. 184-186. R U&A, July 5, 1872. John B. Trevor to M. B. Anderson, March 5, 1875. Anderson Papers, Box IV. "What has Trevor done for the University ?" the undergraduate publication, The University Record, inquired in April, 1874. "We would like a gymnasium immensely, and we must have a chemical laboratory...."
8. President's Report, 1874, 1875, 1878, 1879. Anderson Papers, Box XIII. University Record, II (May, 1875), 58. R U&A, Apr. 5, 1876. A possible source of financial relief is pointed out by Samuel Hopkins Adams in "That Was Rochester," The New Yorker, August 23, 1952, 27-41. Presumably, one Asa T. Soule, a local purveyor of patent medicines, offered $100,000 to the University with the proviso that its name be changed to "Hop Bitters U" in honor of his best-selling nostrum. No record of the proposed transaction can be found in University, archives.
9. Robert J. Jessup, 1873, "Hurdling Entrance 'Exams' of an Earlier Day," RAR, V (1927), no. 5, 151. George D. Olds, 1873, "The University of the Early 'Seventies," Ibid., IX (1931), no. 3, 81-83. Faculty Minutes, Apr. 23, 1877.
10. Memorabilia, 1870. Rhees Library Archives. Campus, IV, April, 1877, 79. Ibid., V, December, 1877, 30. Carolyn L. Remington, Vibrant Silence, A Biography(Rochester, 1965), p. 59 (Lyon). Annual Catalogue, 1869-1870.
11. Faculty Minutes, Oct. 4, 1869. Memorabilia, Classes 1871, 1873. Rhees Library Archives.
12. William C. Morey to Rush Rhees, September 27, 1913. Rhees Papers. Norton, who started teaching at Harvard in 1873 is generally credited with beginning the first continuous instruction in the history of fine arts, referred to by his son as "lectures on modern morals as illustrated by the arts of the ancients"--Anderson's lectures could probably have borne the same title. DAB, XIII (1934), 570. University Record, May, 1874, 59, 60, June, 1874, 65, March, 1875, 45, November, 1875, 19. Annual Catalogue, 1869-1870. President's Report, 1874. Anderson Papers, Box XIII.
13. University Record, January, 1874, 29. President's Report, 1874. Anderson Papers, Box XIII. George D. Olds, op. cit. Faculty Minutes, September 22, October 14, 1878.
14. Campus, January, 1877, 41; Annual Catalogue, 1876. Interpres, LVIII (1916), 52, 230. Trustee Records, I, July 12, 1870. President's Report, 1874. Anderson Papers, Box XIII:
15. Faculty Minutes, May 25, 1868. R U&A, Feb. 13, 1872. Herman K. Phinney, 1877, 'Rah for Sibley,!' RAR, XI (1933), no. 3, 55-57. Hiram Sibley to M. B. Anderson, May 14, 1874. Anderson Papers, Box IV. Only six statues were in fact installed, two having fallen into the Hudson River or the Erie Canal, it appears en route to their destination. When Sibley Hall was torn down in 1968, three of the statues passed into possession of the Memorial Art Gallery. The sphinxes, often victims of undergraduate painting pranks, were moved (1955) to the side of steps at the rear of Morey Hall on the River Campus:
16. Interpres, LXIX (1917), 30. Ibid., XXI (1878), frontispiece. James A, McMillen to Donald B., Gilchrist, June 21, 1919. Rhees Papers. Kenneth P. Shedd, 1889, "Some Songs We Sing at Rochester" (1904), no. 8. The building, several times renovated, was razed in 1967.
17. RHSP XVI (1937), 106-112. Trustee Records, II, September 11, 1871. T he contract between Hiram Sibley and the University specified that Sibley Library be kept open daily, including Sunday, "for the free use...of the inhabitants of the city of Rochester and other persons including ladies." Otis H. Robinson, "Our Library," University Record, II November, 1874. John H. Scott to Rush Rhees, February 18, 1914. Rhees Papers.
18. Rush Rhees to Robert L. Duffus, December 23, 1925. Rhees Papers. Eaton, op. cit., p. xxi. Gates, op. cit., p. 127.
19. University Annual, II (1872), 6-7; Memorabilia, 1870.
20. R U&A, Jan. 11, 1872, Apr. 27, 1875. Campus, June, 1876. University Record, Jan., Apr., Nov. 1874.
21. Thomas Nolan, 1879, "Rochester as the Seventy-Niners Knew It," RAR, II (1924), no. 4, 75-76. Gates, op. cit., pp. 132-133.
22. John Q. Adams, 1874, An Old Boy Remembers (Boston, 1935), p. 70. Memorabilia, 1875. Rhees Library Archives. Gates, op cit., p. 133
23. Interpres, XVII (1874), 36. University Record, I, July, 1874.
24. R U&A, October 3, 1873.
25. University Record, II, November, 1874. Lewis W. Lansing, 1880, "Pioneering in Rochester Athletics," RAR, II (1923-1924), 2, 31-32.
26. R U&A, Nov. 23, 1870, Oct. 8, 15, 1873. University Record, Nov. 1873. President's Report, 1874, 1875. Anderson Papers, Box XIII.
27. R D&C, May 16, 1874. Interpres, XVII (1874), 31-34. Memorabilia, 1876, Rhees Library Archives. Margaret Butterfield Andrews, 1926, "Crematio Calculi," URLB, V (1950), 48-51. RAR, XX (1942), no. 4, 13-14, William D. Conklin, ed., "Scripta Diversa; Collected Papers of Henry W. Conklin, 1879" (in typescript, Rochester, 1967), pp. 25-48B, 309-315. Rhees Library Archives.
28. Memorabilia, 1870, Adams, op. cit., pp. 67-68. William L. Dickinson to Rush Rhees, March 2, 7, 1905. Rhees Papers.
29. R U&A June 25, 1870. John Q. Adams, 1874, "Commencement Sixty Years Ago," RAR, XIII (1934), no. 1, 5. Memorabilia, 1876, Rhees Library Archives.
30. R U&A, June 17, 1869, June 3, 1871; Interpres, XIV (1871), 18-19; R D&C, June 7, 1873. RAR, XX (1941-42), no. 2, 21.
31. Morey, Papers..., 159-165, 166-172.
32. During the illness, Anderson received substantial cheques from John B. Trevor and Hiram Sibley, which must have cheered his spirit. Sibley wrote, "Now, Doctor, you know my weakness and my great reliance on the 'Almighty Dollar' to give expression to our emotions.... I shall esteem it a great favor if allowed to contribute this trifle ($ 250) toward your private expenses." Hiram Sibley to M. B. Anderson, Sept. 11, 1877. Anderson Papers, Box V.
33. R U&A, July 2, 3, 1878. Memorabilia, 1878. Rhees Library Archives.
34. Rosenberger, Rochester, pp. 170-171.
35. No claim to total accuracy can be made for these statistics; the figures in brackets represent calculations published in 1876. An 1873 survey indicated 519 graduates and 140 holders of honorary degrees, with 604 of all living at that time. Cathcart, op. cit. II, 1007 (probably prepared by Professor Joseph H. Gilmore). Eaton, op. cit., no. 19, 122.
36. U. of R. Alumni Proceedings, 1865-1875, p. 11.
37. DAB, XVII (1936), 329 (Taylor). Claude M. Fuess, Amherst: The Story of a New England College (Boston, 1935), pp. 246-258, 324-332. Frank T. Ellison, 1873, "Recalling Personalities of Earlier Days," RAR, XIV (1935), no. 2, 39-40. DAB, XXI (Supplement 1, 1944), 693 (Vedder). Ibid., XVII (19.35), 610 (Stevens).
38. DAB, VI (1931), 296 (Fassett). Catherine Hayes, "Walter Hubbell and Theodore Roosevelt," URLB, XIV (1959), 21-27. Thomas T. Swinburne, 1892 non-graduate, "Noteworthy Career of Benjamin Folsom," RAR, I (1922-1923), no. 2, 39. Remington, op. cit. (Lyon);
39. DAB, IX (1932), 183 (Holt). Robert L. Duffus and L. Emmett Holt, Jr., L. Emmett Holt... (New York, 1940). Paul W. Beaven, 1913, "L. Emmett Holt," RAR, I (1923), no. 5, 115-116. New York Times, January 20, 1924. Anon., "Tales of the Hunt Swallow-Tail," RAR, IX (1931), no. 4, 119-121. Mitchell Bronk, 1886, "Dr, John P. Munn," Ibid., VI (1927), no. 1, 9-10.
40. DAB, XX (1936), 252 (Williams). Margaret Butterfield Andrews, 1926, "Francis Bellamy," URLB, VIII (1953), 25-39; John R. Russell, Ibid., XI (1957), 9-10; Francis Bellamy, 1876, "Story of the Origin of Pledge of Allegiance," RAR, V (1927), no. 3, 71-73.
41. DAB, I (1928), 449 (Ayer). Memorial Issue, Bausch and Lomb Magazine (c. 1944). Rush Rhees to Francis R. Welles, June 16, 1910. Rhees Papers. John R. Slater, "A Good Man Goes Home" (Joseph T. Alling), September 30, 1937. Slater Papers, Rhees Library Archives. DAB, VII (1931), 182 (Gates). Gates, op. cit. Anon., "Architect of Rockefeller Charities," RAR, VII (1929), no. 3,: 73-74. Allen Nevins, ed., "The Memoirs of Frederick T. Gates," American Heritage, V (1955), 65-86. George W. Corner, A History of the Rockefeller Institute (New York, 1964), pp. 19-25, passim.