History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia Part 4

He was fortunate in casting his lot in a very religious community, whose leading men, patrons of the academy, were pious Methodists. He had had no acquaintance with Methodists. He was not only not a Christian, but he had been much troubled in his religious belief, and was inclined to he skeptical. His views were changed by reading Butler's _a.n.a.logy_ and Paley's _Evidences_.

It was the rule and custom at the c.o.kesbury Academy to open the school with the reading of the Scriptures and prayer. This requirement he had to carry out. One day while engaged in prayer he was powerfully convicted, and immediately sought pardon, and found peace in believing.

Very soon afterwards he felt called to preach, and entered the ministry, and after a few years he joined the Conference, and was appointed to a church in Charleston, S. C. His health, however, allowed him to remain but a short time in the itinerancy. He accepted a professors.h.i.+p in Franklin College, Athens, Ga., at which inst.i.tution he remained till he left to become President of Randolph-Macon College.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. STEPHEN OLIN, D. D., _First President of Randolph-Macon College._]

Rev. Solomon Lea, who was a.s.sociated with Dr. Olin during his presidency at Randolph-Macon, gives the following points in regard to him:

"In his physique he had large frame and limbs, but was well proportioned. He had dreamy eyes and sallow complexion, indicating deep affliction. He never saw a well day, and yet he faithfully attended to all his duties. I have heard it said that he thanked G.o.d for his affliction. Like Paul he could glory in his affliction. He preached but seldom on account of his health. I shall never forget his sermons. The impression made by them seemed to follow me day and night for weeks and months. His style and manner were peculiar, differing from any other man I ever heard. His language was simple, pure English, free from technicalities and pompous words. His manner rather labored, not from loudness of voice, nor from gesticulation, but his profound thoughts elaborated in his giant mind seemed to struggle for utterance. There was no attempt at what is called eloquence. I have heard most of the great preachers of the day, some of them yery great, but I never heard the equal of Olin."

Rev. Leroy M. Lee, D. D., long a member of the Virginia Conference, and editor of the Conference paper, said of Dr. Olin: "He was the only truly great man I have ever seen of whom I do not feel constrained to say, on a.n.a.lyzing his character,

"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.'"

Rev. W. M. Lewis, D. D., of Missouri, who spent several years of college life under him, said of him: "He was of large and majestic form, a physical and intellectual giant, a paragon of moral and religious excellence, a perfect model of a Christian gentleman and scholar and pulpit orator. In my opinion the church has never had a better or greater man."

Rev. W. B. Rowzie, long connected with the College as Financial Agent and also as Chaplain, said: "He was a genial companion. No one could he in his society without feeling that he was in the company of one of the first men of the age, and yet he was modest and una.s.suming, as if unconscious of his greatness."

Dr. John E. Edwards, who visited the College frequently in its early history, wrote: "Dr. Olin's personal appearance impressed me as no other man ever impressed me. The Greeks would have deified him as a G.o.d."

W. F. Samford, LL. D., of Alabama, who graduated at Randolph-Macon College in June, 1837, wrote: "Physically, intellectually and morally, Stephen Olin was a giant--as veritable a one as Og, king of Bashan. He might well rank with the 'mighty men who were of old, men of renown'

_facile princeps_ among all the great men I have ever known. The etymology of this word, by which I have designated him, _gigas_, suggests its appropriateness--a man of violence and terror. Without the restraints of divine grace his pa.s.sions were volcanic, his ambition boundless. He once told me that before his conversion to Christianity he 'would have bartered a crown in heaven for a seat in Congress.' How humble, how patient, how loving he became as a disciple of Christ!

'Great, humble man!' exclaimed Dr. Leroy Lee, of Virginia, when he met him at the Conference in Lynchburg in 1835. Olin had disclosed his whole heart to Lee in a rebuke which he administered to him for a display of untempered zeal in a debate on the Conference floor--'What business have you with any feelings in the matter? A man of G.o.d should be gentle and easy to be entreated.'"

It may be thought that the estimates of Dr. Olin above given were partial, and hence not fully reliable. It is proper, therefore, to give the opinion of Rev. Theo. L. Cuyler, D. D., one of the most distinguished ministers of the Presbyterian Church, and one of the best writers of the present century. He speaks of him as President of Wesleyan University, Connecticut, about ten years after he left Randolph-Macon:

"In physical, mental, and spiritual stature combined, no Methodist in the last generation towered above Dr. Stephen Olin. He was a great writer, a great educator, and preeminently a great preacher of the glorious gospel. During the summer of 1845, While I was a student for the ministry, I spent some time at Middletown, Conn. Dr. Olin was then the President of the Wesleyan University, and was at the height of his fame and usefulness. Like all great men, he was very simple and una.s.suming in his manners; with his grand, logical head was coupled a warm, loving heart. When his emotional nature was once kindled it was like a Pennsylvania anthracite coal-mine on fire. These qualities of argumentative power and intense spiritual zeal combined made him a tremendous preacher. No one doubted that Stephen Olin had the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

"In physical stature he was a king of men; above six feet in height, he had a broad, gigantic frame and a lofty brow that resembled the brow of Daniel Webster. The congregation of the princ.i.p.al Methodist Church in Middletown always knew when Dr. Olin was going to preach; for the astral lamps were moved off the pulpit to prevent their being smashed by the sweep of his long arms. He was a vehement speaker, and threw his whole man, from head to foot, into the tide of his impa.s.sioned oratory. In the blending of logical power with heat of spiritual feeling and vigor of declamation, he was unsurpa.s.sed by any American preacher of his time.

His printed discourses read well, but they lack the electricity of the moment and the man. Thunder and lightning must be heard and seen: they cannot be transferred to paper. As I recall Olin now (after the lapse of five and forty years); as I see him again in the full flow of his majestic eloquence, or when surrounded by his students in the cla.s.s-room, I do not wonder that the Middletown boys were ready to pit him against any president or any preacher on the American soil. There are old graduates of the University yet living who delight to think of him and to speak of him, and to a.s.sert that

"'Whoso had beheld him then.

Had felt an awe and admiration without dread; And might have said, That sure he seemed to be the king of men.

Less than the greatest that he could not be Who carried in his port such might and majesty.'

"In August, 1851, I paid a visit to Professor Smith, whose wife was my kinswoman, and on my arrival I learned that the President of the University was dangerously ill. The next morning my host startled me with the announcement, 'Dr. Olin is dead!' He had fallen at the age of fifty-four, when he was just in his splendid prime. There was great mourning for him throughout the whole Methodist realm, for he was a prince in their Israel, who held an imperial rank above any of his contemporaries. He took a large life with him when he went home to heaven; and valuable as were his writings, yet his imposing personality was greater than any of his published productions."

Rev. Martin P. Parks, Professor of Mathematics, acted as President of the College from its opening session, in October, 1832, until Dr. Olin took the place, March, 1834. He was a minister in North Carolina when elected professor. He had been educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where mathematics was taught more thoroughly than at other schools of that day. He was a brilliant preacher, and on that account he was put forward frequently, like his contemporaries, Hammett and Maffitt, to advance the enterprises of the church. Of his administration of the College not much can be said. His military education had much to do with making the laws exacting and minute. Rev. Solomon Lea (quoted above) said of Professor Parks:

"Professor Parks was a great and good man, a fine preacher, was of a sad, morose temperament, arising, no doubt, mainly from his physical condition, as he was a great dyspeptic, and the most nervous person I ever met. He could not bear the crowing of a rooster or the bleating of a calf; this, together with other considerations, had the tendency to make him suspicious, cold, and envious, so much so that Dr. Olin remarked to me that he had to go often once a month to Parks' house, read a portion of the Bible, and then pray together, and part with expressions of mutual love and kind feelings. This was often done by Dr.

Olin. Poor Brother Parks, great and good man as he was (for I never doubted his piety), finally yielded so much to his temperament and jealous feelings as to resign his position, withdrew from the Methodist Church, and joined the Episcopalians."

Professor Landon Cabell Garland, first professor of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and Geology, was a native of Nelson county, Va., of which his father was the clerk. He was born March 24, 1810. At the age of nineteen he took his degree of A. B. at Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia.

Immediately afterward he was elected to the chair of Chemistry at Was.h.i.+ngton College, Lexington, Va., where he continued till October, 1832, when he took charge of the same chair at Randolph-Macon. Bishop Fitzgerald, in _Eminent Methodists_, says of him: "His change from Was.h.i.+ngton College to Randolph-Macon was characteristic of Dr. Garland.

There was more money in the one place, but more usefulness in the other.

He was a Methodist, and he felt that Methodism had a paramount claim to his services." This was indicated clearly in his letter of acceptance of the place. Few men ever filled chairs at two colleges at an age just past twenty-one. This will indicate what estimate was placed on him at so early an age, and what was proven in this case to have been fully correct, by his long service of sixty-five years as an educator. Nothing but a most natural and remarkable modesty prevented him from becoming as conspicuous as he was well ent.i.tled to be, unless it was that he spent his long life in the South, the Nazareth of the nation, out of which few "prophets can come," if we judge by _The Cyclopedia of Biography_, which side-tracks such men as Garland and Duncan, whose names will s.h.i.+ne "forever and ever" when thousands of those given in full, with portraits, shall have been forgotten, as if they never had lived.

If a man could be too modest and retiring Dr. Garland was such a man.

Notwithstanding this, he lived to become President of Randolph-Macon College from 1836, after Dr. Olin left, till 1847, then Professor and President of the University of Alabama, Professor in the University of Mississippi, and finally Chancellor of the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tenn. In all these high places he influenced for good hundreds of young men whose praise is in all the churches and homes of the land. When he died, in 1895, these multiplied hundreds rose up and "called him blessed." If Virginia ever gave birth to a man who did more real service to the manhood of the South, his name and place would be hard to find.

Prof. Edward Dromgoole Sims was born in Brunswick county, Va., March 24, 1805. He was the grandson of Rev. Edward Dromgoole, one of the pioneer Methodist preachers in the State of Virginia, and one of the trustees appointed by Bishop Asbury for Ebenezer Academy, before referred to as the first Methodist school of its kind in the State.* He was a man of talents and great influence, and a member of the original Virginia Conference. One of his sons, George C. Dromgoole, was a member of Congress for many years, and was probably the most talented and influential member of the Virginia delegation in his day.

* This school was established in 1796, instead of 1786, as the Records of Brunswick County, recently found, show.

Prof. Sims took his A. B. degree at the University of North Carolina in 1824, and his A. M. degree in 1827, and was a tutor at that University for three years. He was a Professor at LaGrange College, Alabama, at the time he was elected Professor at Randolph-Macon. Like Dr. Olin his personal appearance was very marked. He was a man of great dignity and gentlemanly manner, and a most devoted Christian. Though not endowed by nature with the mental power of others of his a.s.sociates, he nevertheless, by industrious application, became a fine scholar and a model professor. He was the originator of the "English Course" in colleges, of which more will be said further on. His department embraced the "Ancient Languages."

The Preparatory Department was under the control of Rev. Lorenzo Lea, an A. M. of the University of North Carolina, and a native of North Carolina. His contemporaries spoke well of him as a man of fine accomplishments and skill as a teacher. He also had been a tutor at his _Alma Mater_.

Thus equipped, Randolph-Macon College entered on its career--a career full of unforeseen trials and difficulties. It was to a great extent a new experiment, and the great need of the College, without which few, if any, have ever lived beyond a sickly existence, that is, a proper endowment, was a _desideratum_ unprovided for at this time. The funds on hand and subscriptions did not suffice to supply the buildings necessary and other outfit. Other colleges of the Methodist Church in distant States had entered on the same course. They had gone down or were soon to go down. This one now to be launched, under the good providence and blessing of G.o.d, was to survive the chill of poverty and the disasters of war--cast down often, but not destroyed. After over a half-century of struggle it was to anchor in a safe haven. Hope kindly blinded the eyes of those who launched the s.h.i.+p and prophesied a prosperous voyage. Faith sowed in tears ofttimes, and after many days gathered in the precious harvest. It was to be indeed _Alma Mater_ to many sons, and daughters, too, and a mother of many other Methodist colleges, blessing every State in the South, some of them surpa.s.sing in outfit and endowment the mother. As a loving mother rejoices with and in her daughters, so does Randolph-Macon rejoice in the colleges of the church she has lived to see grow and flourish.

Before proceeding further, let us look at the location and outfit of the College at the opening day.

The first College building erected stood on gently rising ground, one mile west of the village of Boydton, in the centre of what had been a race-track. On the north was an "old field," once cultivated, but now partially covered with pine and broom-sedge, a part seamed with gulleys.

One splendid sweet-gum tree fronted the west wing. On the south there were small oaks of second growth, just large enough to furnish partial shade. Outside of the campus further on were thickets on both sides of the avenue leading to the Clarksville road. The campus contained about four acres, and was enclosed by a heavy wooden fence. The style of the building is shown on the opposite page.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RANDOLPH-MACON COLLEGE. _Main Building, 1832._]

The centre building contained the chapel on the north side--a room about fifty-two feet by thirty-two, with galleries on all sides but one. The other parts of this building were arranged for lecture-rooms, laboratory and halls for the literary societies. The wings of the centre building contained each twenty-four dormitories, each large enough for two occupants. Until the Professors' houses were built there was not a dwelling-house nearer than Boydton. Soon after the College was built, an avenue was opened from it to Boydton, bringing the College building and the village in sight of each other. Clarksville, a town of some importance in the tobacco trade, was twelve miles distant. Here was a bank and mercantile and tobacco houses.

The country around was such as was usual in the uplands of South-side Virginia, fairly productive of tobacco and grain. Petersburg was the nearest town of much size. To this town, about seventy miles away, much of the products of the country was wagoned over a dirt road, indifferently good in some seasons and almost impa.s.sible in others. The people around the College were kind and hospitable, representative of old Virginia in those days, not Methodist particularly in their persuasion; the more wealthy inclined to the Episcopal Church. There was an old Methodist Church in Boydton, but after the College was built the chapel became the wors.h.i.+pping place for the Methodists of the community.

The Preparatory School, a building containing two school-rooms, stood about a mile away from the College. The "Steward's Hall," a two-story brick building, fronted the College building on the north, intended to afford board for the students. In "old Virginia" style, this was several hundred yards distant from the College building.

The President's house stood about the same distance away. It was a plain brick building of one story. To the south and southwest other professors' houses were located, all with a sufficiency of land for gardens and lawns.

"The Hotel" was built soon after the College was opened, about a quarter of a mile to the south, on the Clarksville road. This had about a dozen rooms in it, and was intended mainly for the boys at the Preparatory School and to accommodate visitors.

It will be seen that the Building Committee had much to do before suitable accommodations could be provided for the professors and students. That many mistakes were made in this work, and in the location of the buildings and other matters, was not to be wondered at. They were the result of inexperience in the men in charge, not of any want of good intention and effort on their part. When it is considered that all the lumber for the buildings had to be sawed by the old-fas.h.i.+oned "pit-saw,"

and much of the other material had to be wagoned for seventy miles, we must not wonder that two years were consumed in bringing the buildings to partial completion.

As the buildings stood when completed, they were as good as those of any other college in the State had, and possibly better. The University of Virginia, opened in 1825, had better and more extensive ones.

The regular exercises of the College proper commenced on the day appointed, October 9th, 1832, Prof. M. P. Parks acting as President, in the absence of President Olin.

If any account of the opening-day exercises were published it has not come down to us. The first schedule of expenses was as follows:

Tuition fee for session of ten months, ... . $30 00 Board (meals only), ... ... ... ... . . 60 00 Bedding and was.h.i.+ng, ... ... ... ... . 20 00 Fuel,... ... ... ... ... ... ... . 3 00 Lights,... ... ... ... ... ... ... 3 00 Deposit fee, ... ... ... ... ... ... 5 00 Total, ... ... ... ... ... ... . .$120 00

The first meeting of the Board of Trustees after the opening was held February 5, 1833.

At this meeting the following communication from the Georgia Conference Was received:

"LAGRANGE, Ga.

"We feel a deep interest in the success of Randolph-Macon College. We have full confidence in its moral and literary character and prospects, and we will recommend it to the patronage of all who may be disposed to send their sons or wards beyond the limits of the State to be educated.

"We will appoint four Trustees agreeable to the proposal made by Brother Early, the Agent of the College, who visited us. Whereupon the Conference nominated the Rev. Ignatius Few and Rev. Lovick Pierce, members of the Conference, and Seaborn Jones and John C. Poythress, Esquires, for that purpose.

"_Resolved_, That the Trustees of Randolph-Macon College be invited through their representative, the Rev. John Early, to send an agent, whenever they may judge it most suitable, to obtain donations within the Conference in aid of the inst.i.tution; and that Brother Early be, and he is hereby, invited to take up contributions.