Founded by Friends : the Quaker heritage of fifteen - Scarecrow Press

Founded by Friends 

The Quaker Heritage of Fifteen 

American Colleges and Universities 

Edited by 

John W. Oliver Jr. 

Charles L. Cherry 

Caroline L. Cherry 

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC. 

Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 

2007

SCARECROW PRESS, INC. 

Published in the United States of America 

by Scarecrow Press, Inc. 

A wholly owned subsidiary of 

The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 

www.scarecrowpress.com 

Estover Road 

Plymouth PL6 7PY 

United Kingdom 

Copyright © 2007 by John W. Oliver Jr., Charles L. Cherry, and Caroline L. Cherry 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored 

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, 

mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission 

of the publisher. 

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Founded by Friends : the Quaker heritage of fifteen American colleges and 

universities / edited by John W. Oliver Jr., Charles L. Cherry, Caroline L. 

Cherry. 

p. cm. 

Includes bibliographical references and index. 

ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5818-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 

ISBN-10: 0-8108-5818-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 

1. Society of Friends—Education—United States—History. 2. Quakers— 

Education (Higher) 3. Universities and colleges—United States—History. I. 

Oliver, John W. (John William) II. Cherry, Charles L., 1942– 

LC571.F68 2007 

378.0796—dc22 

2007006239 

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper 

for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. 

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Contents 

Preface v 

Acknowledgments vii 

Introduction: The Search for the Quaker College 

Thomas D. Hamm 

ix 

1 Haverford College 

Diana Franzusoff Peterson 

1 

2 Guilford College 

Gwen Gosney Erickson 

21 

3 Earlham College 


43 

4 Swarthmore College 

Christopher Densmore 

57 

5 Cornell University 

Elaine D. Engst 

69 

6 Wilmington College 

Larry Gara 

91 

7 William Penn University 

John Wagoner with Marsha Riordan 

109 

8 Johns Hopkins University 

James Stimpert 

125 

iii

iv Contents 

9 Bryn Mawr College 147 

Eric Pumroy 

10 George Fox University 163 

Paul Anderson 

11 Whittier College 187 

Anne Kiley and Joseph Fairbanks 

12 Malone College 203 


13 Friends University 223 

Earl Holmes 

14 Azusa Pacific University 241 

Sheldon Jackson and Tamsen Murray 

15 Barclay College 253 

Glenn W. Leppert 

Conclusion 265 


Index 273 

About the Contributors 287

Preface 

Jim Stuckey, an American historian, noted that few sketches of prominent 

Americans mention religious backgrounds. In contrast, he observed, 

Quaker ancestry is often mentioned. 

What of higher education? Few Presbyterian colleges give great attention 

to ancient dogmas like predestination, few Methodist to revivalism, 

few Baptist to total immersion, and few Catholic to proving their Church 

is the one true Church. Yet, for numbers of institutions in this volume, 

Quaker traditions—nonviolence, peacemaking, gender equality, services 

to the poor, sexual purity, and the interconnectedness of all persons—are 

relevant to the academic experience. Some schools attend to some pieces 

of the tradition, some to others. 

These Quaker stories challenge us to revisit the query “What does 

Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” This volume invites us to give closer 

attention to how religion and education sometimes compete with and 

sometimes complement or enrich one another. 

The importance of the question “What should religion have to do with 

higher education?” may be one reason why Azusa Pacific, Bryn Mawr, 

Cornell, Earlham, Friends Center at Azusa Pacific, George Fox, Guilford, 

Haverford, Johns Hopkins, and Swarthmore donated monies for this volume 

that promises to enlarge the dialogue. The initial interest came from 

Earlham, to which we are especially indebted. 

v

Acknowledgments 

It was a joy to work on Founded by Friends, to no small degree because I 

was privileged to work with two extraordinary people, Charles and 

Caroline Cherry. Charles and Caroline represent the best of the Quaker 

spirit and of academic excellence. 

Working on Cradles of Conscience: Ohio’s Independent Colleges and Universities, 

I was impressed by the role of religion and reform in higher education 

and intrigued to know more about what a Quaker heritage has to do 

with the character of schools founded by Friends. The first place I went to 

plan for this volume was to Charles Cherry, editor of Quaker History. If 

Charles would agree to join this project, I knew scholars from Quaker institutions 

of higher learning would happily join in. This volume stands as 

a monument to all these good people and to the Society of Friends. 

Caroline Cherry was icing on the cake. A member of Friends General 

Conference, Caroline knows the liberal Quaker scene. As chair of the Department 

of English at Eastern University, she is also well acquainted with 

the evangelical mind. To no small degree, this volume is a product of the 

loving labors of Charles and Caroline Cherry. 

I am also grateful to Thomas Hamm for his excellent introduction to the 

topic of Quaker higher education. It has been a joyous privilege to work 

with Friends who I know to be friends. 

vii 

John W. Oliver Jr.

Introduction: The Search 

for the Quaker College 


The history of Quaker higher education in the United States begins 

with a seeming paradox. In the earliest days of the sect, which rose in 

the tumult of the English Revolution of the 1640s and 1650s, Quaker leaders 

were united in their opinion of the universities at Oxford and Cambridge: 

they were abominations, institutions that inculcated false visions 

of religion and which Friends who were firm in the Light would avoid as 

dangers to their souls. Today, however, Quakers around the world support 

colleges, universities, and theological seminaries. In the United 

States, twelve institutions identify themselves as Quaker colleges through 

their membership in the Friends Association for Higher Education. This 

volume tells the stories of thirteen Quaker-born colleges, twelve of which 

are members of the Friends Association for Higher Education. It also informs 

readers about two universities founded by Friends to be nonsectarian 

institutions. 

QUAKER COLLEGES IN CONTEXT 

Such a volume, in the opinion of the authors and editors, serves three 

functions. The first is to contribute to a scholarly dialogue about the history 

of the higher education in the United States. For two decades now, 

historians of religion and education in the United States have been interested 

in what they have come to call “the secularization of the academy.” 

Before the Civil War, the overwhelming majority of American colleges 

and universities were founded by religious denominations. They include 

ix

x Thomas D. Hamm 

most of the elite colleges and universities of the United States today, 

schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, Oberlin, 

Kenyon, Carleton, Duke, Northwestern, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, and Columbia. 

Even state schools saw the inculcation of Christian faith as part of 

the task of education. Today, many colleges and universities continue 

some sort of affiliation with the church that founded them. Yet many of 

these “church schools” show little interest in religious life or in contributing 

to their sponsoring denominations and in fact often see this disinterest 

as entirely appropriate to their mission to embrace within their faculties 

and student bodies a wide variety of believers and nonbelievers and 

to defend the right of teachers and students to challenge any Christian orthodoxy. 

Historians who have studied this process have found that it tended to follow 

a common course. Even before the Civil War, American colleges found 

themselves under increasing pressure to provide an education that would be 

useful for those in secular professions or callings instead of focusing primarily 

on training clergymen. Their alumni would be physicians, attorneys, 

and businessmen. The same held true for women’s colleges that opened in 

the antebellum period, although, given the gender expectations of the period, 

they focused more on producing teachers or “Republican Mothers” 

and wives who could inculcate virtue and good citizenship in their sons and 

daughters. After the Civil War, the Darwinian revolution and the growing 

professionalization of higher education produced a sea change in college 

faculties. The emphasis was increasingly on expertise rather than on religious 

orthodoxy; higher education was inevitably affected by scholars who 

questioned received doctrines ranging from the age of the earth to the Virgin 

Birth. Increasingly, the mark of a good college was the number of Ph.D.s 

rather than the clerical standing of its faculty. And even faculty with religious 

commitments (which most continued to have) tended to separate 

those commitments from their teaching. Religious life was something apart 

from the classroom. Simultaneously, the continuing role of college as a force 

for social status or mobility meant that parents and administrators increasingly 

looked with favor on the creation of a college student culture of fraternities 

and sororities, athletics, and other forms of competition. Later came 

pressures to allow smoking and dancing on campus. By the early twentieth 

century, many colleges concluded that intellectual respectability (and financial 

viability) required a kind of compartmentalization: they would encourage 

and nurture religious life on campus but separate from academic life 

and usually in nonsectarian ways. By the 1960s, that often meant abolishing 

mandatory chapel and eschewing any attempt to continue the practice of in 

loco parentis. 

Some colleges, of course, did not choose that path; Wheaton in Illinois 

is probably the best-known example. In the twentieth century, they were

Introduction xi 

joined by many new colleges and universities, often founded in reaction 

to the changes taking place in older denominational schools. Today, they 

are usually lumped together as “Christian” colleges, but that label embraces 

considerable diversity. It usually involves requiring subscription to 

a faith statement by faculty, close ties to a sponsoring denomination, and 

a vibrant evangelical religious life on the campus. But such schools range 

from the academic rigor and prestige of a Wheaton or Taylor to the idiosyncratic 

notoriety of a Bob Jones University. 

What does it mean to be a Quaker college in the twenty-first century? 

Therein lies the second contribution of this volume, and these chapters 

show that there is no one answer. As will be seen, these colleges began at 

different times under different circumstances with different purposes in 

mind. Reading these chapters will show, moreover, how Quaker colleges 

have made different decisions that place them at different places today on 

the spectrum of American higher education. Some of the Quaker colleges, 

while proudly acknowledging their Quaker roots, see them as historical 

rather than determining the current life and the future of their institutions. 

It may not be an exaggeration to say that some (or at least some faculty 

and administrators at some of the schools) see a Quaker identity as a 

hindrance to the future that they think that excellence or even survival requires. 

But even among the schools that still see a Quaker identity or affiliation 

as critical, there is no consensus on what that means. At Earlham 

and Guilford, for example, it means a studied antipathy to anything that 

suggests a creed, and it involves support for gay rights. At George Fox 

and Barclay, on the other hand, it means upholding older moral standards 

and seeing truth as ultimately best understood through Christian revelation. 

How these colleges, rooted in a common religious tradition, came to 

be at such very different places is one of the contributions of this volume. 

Finally, this volume should be useful to the thousands of American 

Quakers who find themselves contemplating their relationship with their 

colleges. The number of American Quakers today, about 100,000, is 

roughly the same as a century ago. Many Friends are deeply concerned 

about the future of the denomination and, not surprisingly, look to 

Quaker education to produce the leaders who will help Friends thrive 

and grow. Thus signs of alienation or indifference or uncertain identity on 

the colleges’ part are worrisome. As these chapters show, this is not a new 

expectation or a new concern. All these schools, save perhaps Bryn Mawr, 

were founded to educate “the children of the meeting” and to strengthen 

Quakerism. And most have experienced some strain with their founding 

bodies. Almost all have faced worries that they were making too many 

compromises, were not sensitive enough to the Quakers who founded 

and provided the critical early financial and moral support, and, by appealing 

to non-Friends, were forgetting the reasons for which they came

xii Thomas D. Hamm 

into being. In some cases, that alienation has culminated in legal separation. 

In others, yearly meetings have retained close control and have kept 

some of these schools under close oversight. And in still others, a legal relationship 

continues, but one marked at best by apathy and at worst by 

considerable tension. 

QUAKERS AND EDUCATION: THE AMBIVALENT LEGACY 

Early Quaker attitudes toward education, as noted previously, were paradoxical. 

Friends valued it as useful but also feared it as potentially dangerous. 

This was especially true of higher education. 

Nowhere is this tension more evident than in the writings of George 

Fox (1624–1691), the preeminent figure in the early Quaker movement. 

Fox argued that all true ministers of Christ, men or women, should be 

called by Christ. Thus, “being bred up at Oxford and Cambridge did not 

make a minister of Jesus Christ.” This view of ministry shaped Quaker attitudes 

toward higher education. Before 1800, colleges and universities in 

Great Britain were tied to established churches and existed in large part to 

train clergy. For Friends, the link between these “hireling priests” and 

higher education was so strong as to make Friends fearful of either. A college, 

by its very existence, suggested that “head knowledge” could compete 

with or even complement knowledge gained through obedience to 

the Inward Light and the Holy Spirit. Friends were not given to compromise 

on matters of faith, and they saw no room for compromise here and 

little to be gained even if they had been so inclined. And in England and 

the British colonies in North America, as dissenters from the legally established 

churches, Friends could not enter the colleges and universities 

even if they had been so inclined. 

On the other hand, George Fox and other early Friends were not entirely 

anti-intellectual. They valued certain kinds of education. Fox, for example, 

in a 1668 statement, urged Quakers to establish schools, for both 

boys and girls, that would instruct them “in whatever things were civil 

and useful in creation.” By the eighteenth century, Quakerism and learning 

were by no means incompatible. By 1825, for example, sixteen English 

Friends had been admitted to the Royal Society, the highest honor possible 

for a British scientist. As Quaker communities developed in North 

America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, schools usually appeared 

soon after the erection of a meetinghouse, with the same building 

often housing both. Quaker education, for the most part, was not that different 

from that found in other schools. Latin was useful in foreign trade, 

and Greek and Hebrew could contribute to understanding the Bible. 

Quakers valued learning that they saw having practical applications. As

Introduction xiii 

William Penn (1644–1718), the founder of Pennsylvania and one of the 

most influential Quaker leaders of the generation after Fox, put it, learning 

should be “liberal,” but “useful . . ., such as is consistent with Truth 

and godliness, not cherishing a vain conversation or idle mind.” Thus, it 

is not surprising that Friends tended to emphasize mathematics and the 

natural sciences more than many of their contemporaries. 

Quaker education, in a more positive sense, reflected enlightenment on 

gender roles. Seventeenth-century Friends had horrified their contemporaries 

with their position that women could be ministers of God just like 

men. For this reason, among others, Quakers were pioneers in seeing 

learning as valuable for both sexes. Quaker schools were coeducational 

from the beginning. While Friends later developed single-sex schools, especially 

in the Philadelphia area, just as many admitted both sexes. 

While Friends agreed that learning was and should be useful, they also 

agreed that it should be “guarded.” For many Quakers, that meant that 

the ideal school would be “select,” one in which only Quaker students 

would be admitted and only Quaker teachers employed. While Friends 

never attempted to separate themselves from the world as much as some 

other sects, such as the Amish, they had a strong sense that consistent 

Quakerism was something separate from its neighbors, even other Christians. 

A “guarded” education would be one in which Quaker children 

were protected from any influences, whether they be classmates or textbooks 

or ideas, that might tend to lead them away from the peculiarities 

of Quakerism. Where to draw that line was often the focus of intense debate. 

A good example is the establishment by some yearly meetings of 

boarding schools in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 

Many Friends saw them as an absolute necessity. Enough Quaker children 

wanted the equivalent of a secondary education that failure to supply it 

under Quaker auspices would probably mean their entry into non- 

Quaker schools. So Friends founded schools like Westtown near Philadelphia 

and Nine Partners in the Hudson Valley. Yet these projects brought 

protests from other, more conservative Friends. They saw the boarding 

schools as the first entry of a worldly spirit. In 1828, for example, Makefield 

Monthly Meeting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, produced a memorial 

against such undertakings. When Christ was on earth, it noted, He 

avoided contact with “the crowded seminaries of that day” and consistently 

denounced scholars. Boarding schools were “the fruitful source of 

that pride and ambition which characterises an aspiring priesthood.” They 

had become “the . . . source of pride and Idleness and the nursery of that 

spirit which made such devastation among the flock and family of God in 

the primitive Church, and of latter times has got into the society of friends 

like a wolf in sheep clothing.” In the eyes of such Friends, anything beyond 

elementary education was dangerous.

xiv Thomas D. Hamm 

The Makefield Friends, however, spoke for an outlook that was increasingly 

embattled among Quakers. Significantly, within two years of 

their protest, the first public discussion of the possibility of a Quaker college 

appeared in print. In the Philadelphia Quaker weekly the Friend, an 

anonymous Friend argued that Quakers repudiated higher education because 

of “unfounded prejudice.” Early Friends, he asserted, had not objected 

to higher education on principle, just the universities of the seventeenth 

century, with their “crowds of dogmatic and self-sufficient 

pedants” who were concerned largely with producing aristocratic fops 

and “hireling priests.” Now, however, a significant number of young 

Friends, seeking useful learning, had no choice but to find it outside the 

Society of Friends, in colleges under the control of other denominations. 

Friends, if they wished to hold their best and brightest young people, 

should no longer resist “keeping pace with the progress of knowledge.” 

This impulse would be critical in the founding of Haverford in 1833 and 

its formal transformation into a college in 1856. 

This intellectual ferment took place against a background of controversy 

and division among Friends. The first split came in 1827–1828, as 

American Friends divided into Hicksite and Orthodox groups. Hicksite 

Friends took their name from their leader, the Long Island minister Elias 

Hicks (1748–1830). Hicks emphasized the authority of the Inner Light of 

Christ within each individual over that of the Bible and sometimes suggested 

Christ achieved divinity rather than being born divine. Orthodox 

Friends were those who held views on these subjects similar to those of 

evangelical Protestants. Hicksites tended to see the Orthodox as overly influenced 

by non-Quaker evangelicals and were often skeptical of the social 

and economic changes they saw taking place around them. (Makefield 

Monthly Meeting, which was so dubious about boarding schools, 

was a Hicksite stronghold.) The Orthodox responded with charges that 

Hicks was a disciple of the notorious freethinker Thomas Paine. Hicksites 

were strongest in the Delaware Valley, New York, and around Baltimore 

and in northern Virginia. Orthodox Friends dominated New England, the 

Quaker communities of southern Virginia and North Carolina, and those 

west of the Appalachian Mountains. Both groups, in turn, saw more splits 

in the 1840s and 1850s. Hicksites lost a significant number of Friends who 

were drawn into radical reform movements that more conservative Hicksites 

saw as threatening Quaker distinctiveness. At the same time, Orthodox 

Friends were dividing into Gurneyite and Wilburite groups. The former 

took their name from the English Quaker minister Joseph John 

Gurney (1788–1847), who had himself studied at Oxford under a series of 

tutors without formally entering the university. Gurney advocated an 

evangelical vision of Quakerism that encouraged ties with other evangelicals 

in good causes, including education. The overwhelming majority of

Introduction xv 

Orthodox Friends embraced his views. His opponents, who found their 

leader in the Rhode Island minister John Wilbur (1774–1856), feared such 

openness to “the world” as threatening Quaker distinctiveness. This separation 

is vital for the history of the Quaker colleges. All but Swarthmore 

come out of the Gurneyite tradition. Wilburites founded boarding 

schools, but they never became colleges. 

These paths became even more divergent in the second half of the nineteenth 

century. After the Civil War, most Gurneyite Friends underwent a 

revolution. Beginning around 1870, with the exception of the Baltimore 

and Philadelphia areas, most of their congregations were powerfully 

moved by a movement that introduced most of the techniques of evangelical 

holiness revivalism. By the 1890s, most Gurneyite Friends had embraced 

a pastoral system of worship that was not significantly different 

from that of other Protestants. They simultaneously had given up most 

traditional Quaker peculiarities, such as the “plain language” of “thee” 

and “thy” and the distinctive Quaker “plain dress.” The revival eventually 

produced a reaction, especially after 1890, led especially by young 

Friends in Quaker colleges, such as Rufus M. Jones at Haverford and Elbert 

Russell at Earlham. They argued simultaneously for heightened 

awareness of Quaker history and tradition and an embrace of many of the 

doctrines and practices of modernist Protestantism, such as critical Bible 

study. This modernist movement and the evangelical/fundamentalist reaction 

would have profound consequences for Quaker higher education. 

As will be seen, it would produce fierce battles for control of some schools 

and lead to the founding of new ones. 

QUAKER COLLEGES: FOUNDING AND CONSTITUENCIES 

The beginnings of these colleges reflect these conflicting currents in 

Quaker history. The three that opened before 1850—Haverford, Guilford, 

and Earlham—were all boarding schools projected in the tradition of a 

“select” education. None was originally envisioned as a college. All were 

projects of Orthodox Friends who had double motives. They believed in 

education, and they wanted their children to procure it under Quaker 

auspices. They also embraced the ideal of “guarded” education, which 

meant that teachers would be Friends and, ideally, that the student bodies 

would be “select.” Their students, in turn, would in many cases become 

teachers in other Quaker schools. And that was all the more important 

in the aftermath of the Hicksite Separation. Orthodox Friends 

were convinced that lack of scriptural learning explained why Hicksite 

heresies had led so many astray. Education would be a safeguard against 

a repetition.

xvi Thomas D. Hamm 

Hicksite Friends, perhaps because they had in the 1820s seen themselves 

responding to Orthodox compromises with “the world,” were 

slower to follow suit. Discussions of the Hicksite college that would become 

Swarthmore did not begin until the 1850s. And even then, it may be 

significant that at the center of the movement were Friends like James and 

Lucretia Mott, who in the disputes of the 1840s over Hicksite involvement 

in reform movements had been seen by other Hicksites as dangerous radicals. 

The colleges that had their start after 1860 reflected different influences. 

Some—William Penn, George Fox, and Whittier—like the older Orthodox 

schools, began as academies or secondary schools. Others—Wilmington, 

Friends University, and Bryn Mawr—were founded as institutions of 

higher education. They were, with the exception perhaps of Bryn Mawr, 

envisioned as institutions to serve Quakers but in ways that were different 

from the older vision of a guarded education. To be sure, the founders 

of all saw themselves as mixing faith and secular education, and all would 

have agreed it was the duty of a Quaker college to guard its students 

against evil influences, whether they be moral or intellectual. But they 

usually took as their intellectual models non-Quaker colleges and followed 

general trends in American higher education. All, save Bryn Mawr, 

were connected with Gurneyite yearly meetings that accepted the pastoral 

movement and gave some attention to training pastors. But all assumed 

that most of their students were bound for secular careers. 

The two notable exceptions are Malone and Barclay, which were reactions 

to developments in the other Quaker schools. These were Bible colleges, 

institutions that took decades to develop into four-year colleges, 

and only then with considerable debate and some misgivings. They were 

designed to serve Friends, specifically pastoral Friends, by providing 

what was in essence a guarded education. In this case, that meant guarding 

against critical Bible study and other forms of modernism that were 

becoming increasingly influential in other colleges and seminaries, including 

other Quaker colleges, in the late nineteenth century. But like 

other Quaker colleges, the founders of these two schools were also influenced 

by non-Quaker models, in this case the Bible colleges that became 

bulwarks of fundamentalist Protestantism in the early twentieth century. 

Moreover, while by 1900 the other Quaker colleges accepted that most of 

their students were bound for secular careers, the schools in Cleveland 

and Haviland were designed to produce men and women who would 

make their careers as pastors or missionaries or in other forms of “Christian 

work.” 

Closely related to patterns of founding in determining the future of 

these schools were patterns of control. Surprisingly, only Guilford and 

Earlham were projects of their yearly meetings, and even then the con

Introduction xvii 

nections were somewhat complicated. North Carolina Yearly Meeting 

turned over control of its school (the forerunner of Guilford) rather 

quickly to an independent committee, while in 1881 Indiana Yearly Meeting 

conveyed ownership of Earlham to an independent corporation, albeit 

one to which it and Western Yearly Meeting appointed the trustees. 

George Fox and William Penn were originally academies that began under 

the care of a quarterly meeting but then were taken under the care of 

yearly meetings. Friends, Wilmington, Whittier, and Malone all were originally 

the projects of private groups or individual Friends who, after obtaining 

physical facilities or laying the foundations for institutions, turned 

them over to the control of yearly meetings. In the case of Whittier, however, 

the legal connection was so uncertain that it was easy to break in the 

1940s. Kansas Yearly Meeting, in turn, actually gave up its ownership of 

Friends University in 1931 but apparently without anyone realizing it until 

the 1970s! In contrast, the three Philadelphia colleges were also the 

projects of groups of private Friends, but, significantly, they never sought 

legal affiliation with the adjacent yearly meetings. Doubtless the development 

of George Fox and Malone in the directions they have taken is explained 

in large part by the close control of their yearly meetings. On the 

other hand, significant yearly meeting control over a board does not guarantee 

harmony, as Earlham’s relationship with its yearly meetings shows. 

Ironically, it is Barclay, which has never had legal ties to its adjacent yearly 

meeting, that has probably had the least tension with it. 

One also sees a growing distance of these colleges from each other over 

the course of the twentieth century. Swarthmore, of course, was always 

set off by its Hicksite affiliations in an otherwise Gurneyite world, but 

even it had an Earlham alumnus, William W. Birdsall, as president from 

1898 to 1902. Well into the twentieth century, one sees a kind of chain, almost 

genealogical, in leadership. Many of Earlham’s early faculty had 

been students or faculty at Haverford in the 1840s and 1850s. Haverford 

and Earlham, in turn, produced most of the early presidents of the other 

Quaker colleges. Guilford is a good example. Its first president, Lewis L. 

Hobbs, was a Haverford graduate. Since Hobbs’s retirement in 1915, 

every Guilford president until the most recent one was either an Earlham 

alumnus or former Earlham faculty member. At Wilmington, the first four 

presidents were Earlham alumni and at William Penn four of the first five; 

at Pacific, three of the first four were Earlham students or former faculty; 

and at Whittier, the same was true for six of the first eight presidents. 

David M. Edwards was president first at William Penn, then at Earlham, 

and ended at Friends; S. Arthur Watson went from Wilmington to Friends 

to Penn. That kind of cross-fertilization (some might see it as a kind of academic 

incest) has largely disappeared. It fell victim to two forces. One 

was the growing alienation of evangelical from more liberal Friends. By

xviii Thomas D. Hamm 

the mid-twentieth century, they preferred their own alumni (or graduates 

of non-Quaker schools that they perceived as “sound”) to Quakers who 

might be tainted with modernism. The other force was a growing emphasis 

on professionalization. As Quaker colleges became more diverse 

and more responsible to diverse constituencies, they have cast wider nets 

in looking for leaders. At a majority of Quaker colleges, it apparently is no 

longer an expectation that the chief executive officer be a member of the 

Society of Friends. 

PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT 

Certain patterns of development are clear in the history of all these institutions. 

One is how money talks. The generosity of eastern Friends, especially 

in Philadelphia, meant that Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn 

Mawr were relatively secure from the beginning. This also allowed them 

to avoid the strictures that the need to rely on a yearly meeting for financial 

support would have caused. Some of these colleges, most notably 

Earlham with its ties to the Lilly family of Indianapolis, have been skillful 

in cultivating wealthy donors, often without Quaker ties. In the case of 

Malone, money stimulated migration, as eminent-domain funds from 

freeway construction and a bargain-basement land offer moved the campus 

from Cleveland to Canton in 1956. More common is a realization, usually 

early in the history of the institution, that survival meant attracting 

and enrolling non-Quaker students. That was often a source of dramatic 

conflict because it inevitably led to a relaxing of some of the elements of a 

guarded education. 

The development at most colleges, in the late nineteenth and early 

twentieth centuries, of what historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz calls 

“campus culture” was a direct outgrowth of this urge for survival. Thus, 

we find in most of these chapters accounts of the development of athletics, 

especially football, and the conflicts that this sometimes brought with 

constituencies, most notably the attempt of a disapproving Philadelphia 

Friend to buy out Swarthmore’s football team with a million-dollar bequest 

early in the twentieth century. Later, students agitated for other 

changes that would make their Quaker colleges more like other schools. 

At some places, such as Wilmington and Swarthmore, that meant the development 

of fraternities and sororities. At several institutions, it meant 

the acceptance of academic honoraries like Phi Beta Kappa. By the 1920s, 

it meant agitation by students for the end of campus rules against smoking 

and dancing. The exceptions that prove the rule are Friends, Malone, 

and Barclay. A commuter institution throughout its history, Friends never 

experienced significant debate over regulating the lives of its relatively

Introduction xix 

few dormitory students. At least until the move to Canton, Malone’s students 

were so anchored in holiness Christianity that such elements of student 

life on other campuses had little appeal for them. That is still the case 

at Barclay. 

Student lifestyles were not, however, the only sources of conflict between 

Quaker colleges and their constituencies. Legal ties were often determinative. 

Liberal professors beset by more conservative denominational 

constituencies are one of the set pieces of the history of American 

higher education, and Friends shared in these battles. Nevertheless, the 

situation was complicated. Doubtless many Wilburites in Philadelphia 

Yearly Meeting looked with skepticism on Bryn Mawr and Haverford, but 

since they had no formal ties with them through the yearly meeting and 

none of their money was going there, they showed relatively little interest 

in making spiritual war on them. The direction of Swarthmore generally 

mirrored liberalization among Hicksite Friends after 1870, who 

prided themselves on their tolerance and commitment to religious inquiry. 

In contrast, the colleges connected with Gurneyite yearly meetings 

have often found themselves at the center of controversy for theological 

reasons. Earlham experienced more tension than any other institution, in 

part because it was home to a series of visible and articulate modernist 

biblical scholars—Elbert Russell, Alexander Purdy, and Clarence Pickett— 

between 1895 and 1929, in part because of its close formal ties to two 

yearly meetings where Friends of outspoken fundamentalist views were 

plentiful. It actually underwent a kind of heresy trial in 1920, an experience 

that some Whittier professors shared at the hands of California 

Yearly Meeting a decade later. Today Earlham still finds itself in conflict 

with its yearly meetings over matters of theology and student and faculty 

lifestyles. Incipient liberals at Friends, George Fox, and Penn, which were 

more dependent on yearly meeting financial support, found themselves 

obliged to be circumspect or seek new positions. On the other hand, with 

a faculty not notably more conservative and a yearly meeting not much 

different from its neighbor in Indiana, Wilmington has largely escaped 

such conflicts. 

QUAKER HIGHER EDUCATION: HOW DISTINCTIVE? 

Have Quaker colleges been different from their neighbors over the years? 

Since the attempts to enforce the plain life passed away in the 1860s, it is 

difficult to find too many distinguishing characteristics throughout their 

history. One might formulate the question in terms of Quaker distinctives. 

Friends, for example, have been noted as among the earliest opponents of 

slavery and are generally identified with a commitment to racial equality

xx Thomas D. Hamm 

and justice. Yet one does not see this in the history of Quaker colleges. 

Haverford did not admit a black student until the 1920s, Swarthmore until 

the 1940s, and Wilmington until the 1950s. Guilford deferred to local 

segregationist mores until the 1960s. Even colleges like Earlham, which 

admitted its first black student in the 1880s, often reflected the prevalent 

racism of the larger society in other ways. In many respects, the best early 

record may have been that of Malone, whose color-blindness as early as 

the 1890s was striking. By the 1960s, however, a commitment to the civil 

rights movement was seen as one of the distinguishing marks of a Quaker 

college, and campuses like Earlham, Haverford, and Swarthmore were 

centers of activism and support for it. 

Another test might be commitment to gender equality. Only Haverford 

and Bryn Mawr were founded as men’s and women’s colleges. The rest 

were committed to coeducation. With the exception of Haverford, all the 

Quaker colleges early hired women as faculty members. On the other 

hand, one sees relatively little women’s rights activism on their campuses 

before the 1960s, save at Swarthmore and, of course, Bryn Mawr. And 

with the natural exception of Bryn Mawr, only a few of these colleges 

have had a woman president. 

Yet another mark of Quaker distinctiveness might be a common commitment 

to the Quaker Peace Testimony against all forms of physical coercion 

and violence. Today, many of these schools, as will be seen, manifest 

this historic Quaker commitment through peace studies programs or 

centers for conflict resolution. Yet this has hardly been a consistent motif 

of the history of Quaker higher education. The information we have on 

twentieth-century wars indicates that most of the men in Quaker colleges 

went into military service during World War I and World War II. Open antiwar 

activism could bring trouble, as Henry J. Cadbury found himself 

forced out of Haverford and critics at William Penn of U.S. entry found 

themselves under attack by neighbors during World War I. The roles of 

the colleges themselves brought controversy. Swarthmore, for example, 

accepted a military unit during World War I, and Whittier was willing to 

perform certain forms of military training during World War II. Other 

Quaker colleges saw these as inappropriate. During the Cold War, pacifism 

that was too pronounced could have costs, as witness the ouster of 

Cecil Hinshaw from William Penn and the controversies over draft resistance 

at Earlham. By the time of the Vietnam War, the cleavages between 

liberal Friends colleges and more evangelical ones was clear. Haverford, 

Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Earlham had active antiwar movements. 

On the other hand, as the chapters on Whittier, Malone, and Friends show, 

such movements found little support on those more politically conservative 

campuses. George Fox was apparently unique in being both evangelical 

and pacifist.

Introduction xxi 

What, then, makes a Quaker college? These chapters show that today 

there is no consensus. Some see their Quaker identity in their history and 

the roles they play in helping to preserve Quaker history and heritage. 

Some see it in the service they provide to Quakerism, producing students 

who will become pastors or missionaries or teachers in Quaker schools or 

administrators for Quaker service organizations. Some see it in the types 

of communities they try to be: framing their community codes as sets of 

queries, governing themselves by consensus, or requiring courses or offering 

programs of study that reflect Quaker values or concerns. And 

some are honest in admitting that other identities, as Christian, as serving 

a local community, or as one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges, 

have become equally if not more important for them. In that way the history 

of Quaker higher education is a reflection of the history of American 

higher education generally, albeit with twists and turns that reflect the 

tangled and diverse history of American Quakerism over the past two 

centuries. 

SOURCES 

The starting points for anyone interested in the relationship between 

church and college in American history are George M. Marsden, The Soul 

of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief 

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and George M. Marsden 

and Bradley J. Longfield, eds., The Secularization of the Academy (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1992). Histories of Quaker education tend to focus 

on elementary and secondary education, but useful material on 

higher education can be found in Helen H. Hole, Things Civil and Useful: 

A Personal View of Quaker Education (Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 

1978). The best recent history of Quakerism is Hugh Barbour and J. 

William Frost, The Quakers (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988). 

Background for the critical period of the nineteenth century may be found 

in Thomas D. Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox 

Friends, 1800–1907 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1988).

1 

 

Haverford College 

Diana Franzusoff Peterson 

Haverford, the first Quaker college in the United States, opened as 

Haverford School on October 28, 1833. In the three years since its 

conception in 1830 by a group of New York and Philadelphia Orthodox 

Quakers, the name had already been changed from Friends’ Central 

School Association. “Friends” was dropped from the school’s name to 

avoid the notion that the college represented all Quakers, after the major 

schism within the Society of Friends at the end of the 1820s resulted in Orthodox 

and Hicksite branches and a struggle for power and control of collective 

assets. In the late 1830s, Haverford further aligned itself with the 

Gurneyites, a group associated with the activist teachings of the English 

Quaker theologian, Joseph John Gurney. 

Haverford’s stated philosophy was to provide a “guarded” and “liberal” 

higher education to Quaker boys. The term “liberal” as in “liberal 

arts” originally referred to those arts and sciences “worthy of a free man,” 

“becoming a gentleman,” and “general intellectual enlargement and refinement.” 

Intending to bridge the gap between “guarded” and “liberal” 

by providing “literary instruction . . . combined with a religious care over 

. . . morals and manners and . . . observance of the testimonies of our religious 

society” for their sons, Haverford combined the concepts of useful 

secular knowledge with Quaker ethics and doctrine. An examination of 

the 1833 curriculum reveals courses in abstract and natural sciences, philosophy, 

and classical languages. The daily schedule included Scripture 

reading, gymnastics or horticultural labor, classes, exercise, and study. 

Sunday study included Scripture and other religious books. There was a 

summer term—in other words, the students were at school all year. 

1

2 Diana Franzusoff Peterson 

There may have been two additional reasons for the establishment of 

Haverford School. By instilling Orthodox Quaker values, the school tied 

the boys more decisively to the Orthodox branch and, imbued with those 

values, prepared them to enter society ready to participate in its business. 

The founders were silent on how Quaker daughters would be educated. 

However, within fifty years of Haverford’s founding, two other Quaker 

colleges were formed within a fifteen-mile radius, one answering the 

need for a college for women, the other for a college affiliated with the 

Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends. 

An 1830 fund appeal published the reasons for establishing the school. 

In response, 145 contributors gave over $40,000 to the school’s capital 

fund, including some women, Sally Norris Dickinson, Elizabeth Guest, 

and Ann Guest among them. Thomas P. Cope and John Paul purchased 

the largest number of shares and were on the twenty-member all-male 

board of managers. Only Orthodox Quakers could play a role in the institution’s 

affairs, and only a minority of the Orthodox Friends in 

Philadelphia and New York Yearly meetings contributed to the school. 

Haverford School was situated on a 200-acre farm, acquired for $17,865, 

in Haverford, Pennsylvania, “near the junction of the Columbia railroad 

and the Lancaster Turnpike eight miles west of Philadelphia . . . a fine, 

healthy district of country and the buildings . . . are spacious and convenient.” 

This portrait drew on the contemporary popular theme of agrarian 

healthfulness. The railroad soon had a Haverford College station, and 

the new Orthodox Haverford Meeting was held on an adjoining farm. 

SAMUEL HILLES (1788–1873), 

THE FIRST PRINCIPAL, 1833–1834 

Samuel Hilles, a mathematics teacher, an elder in his Orthodox Meeting 

(Wilmington, Delaware), and an abolitionist who would refuse to serve in 

the army during the Civil War, was a good fit for the managers’ 1831 requirement 

that “the Principal shall have charge of the government, order 

and domestic economy of the family.” Among his other qualifications, 

Hilles had a large family. 

Founders Hall, the first school building on the campus, accommodated 

approximately sixty students and cost $19,251.40. It was built of stone 

from the quarry on the original Haverford School farm, rubble and stucco 

in an intentionally simple style, but sturdy construction. The school section 

was 110 feet long and twenty-eight feet wide and contained a kitchen 

and dining room in the basement, auditorium and two classrooms on the 

first floor, and bedrooms for the students on the second and third floors. 

Two fifty-two by twenty-eight-foot wings housed families of the superin-

Haverford College 3 

tendent (a title that was used interchangeably with principal), a teacher, 

office of the managers, infirmary, library, and an additional classroom. 

There were twenty-one students enrolled in that first term. Their ages 

ranged from twelve to twenty. Room, board, and tuition were $200. 

Even before the school opened, seven books by William Sewell, George 

Fox, John Selden, Joseph Besse, William Penn, and Samuel Fisher were 

donated to the library; shortly thereafter came a number of manuscripts. 

The only periodical that could be read by students was The Friend, an Orthodox 

publication. 

By 1834, the students had a debating society (short lived) and the Loganian, 

a society for “the promotion of literature and science.” The latter 

was a major influence in the education of students and had the flavor of 

a fraternity, though officially fraternities were banned. The Loganian Society 

library had its own classics, religious texts, and scientific works. Its 

1850 catalog lists 376 books; by 1887, when it became part of the main library, 

the number was up to 2,500. 

THE SECOND THROUGH FOURTH PRINCIPALS 

John Gummere (1784–1845), who had studied and taught at Quaker 

schools, was Haverford’s second and fourth principal, serving 1834–1838 

and 1839–1843, with an intervening tenure by Isaac Davis (1783–1849), an 

overseer of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting for the Northern District. By 

the age of forty-five, Gummere was considered one of America’s foremost 

mathematicians. Among the Haverford boys, Superintendent Gummere 

was known as “Agathos” (the good). 

In 1835, the college hired William Carvill to create a landscape design. 

With Carvill’s design, trees bordered open spaces, trees created alleys, 

and lanes were lined with plantings, leaving some virgin wooded areas 

and open spaces. There has been no individual influence on the design of 

the campus since Carvill, who left Haverford in 1844. Today, the campus 

design is of repeating greens, groups of buildings, and open spaces with 

extended vistas, all bounded by a number of gates. 

DANIEL B. SMITH (1792–1883), 

THE FIFTH PRINCIPAL, 1843–1845 

Daniel B. Smith was also one of the school’s founders and teachers. During 

his administration, rules for students included use of plain language 

and dress (in general, students did not attend to much washing of dress), 

avoiding smoking, and reading only approved books and periodicals. In


1837, the school had begun to suffer a financial depression, and it was 

forced to close in 1845 for three years. When it reopened, it was not just 

for Quaker boys but also for the sons of those who were “professors of 

Friends,” wanting to be educated on Quaker religious principles. A charter 

obtained in 1846 allowed for the admission of non-Friends. 

THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH PRINCIPALS 

Lindley Murray Moore (1788–1871) and Joseph Cartland (1810–1898), 

who consecutively served until 1853, followed Smith. The former brought 

no radical changes to the school but was content with the original intent 

of its founders. The latter was a man who “regretted some of the changes 

introduced among Friends, but remained tolerant and loving.” 

JONATHAN RICHARDS (CA. 1812–1882), 

THE EIGHTH PRINCIPAL, 1853–1857 

On Jonathan Richards’s watch, the Pennsylvania legislature voted a new 

charter for the school in 1856, which officially made Haverford a college, 

and gave it the right to confer bachelor’s degrees and “such degrees in the 

arts and sciences . . . as are conferred in other colleges or universities in 

the United States.” The first honorary degree was conferred in 1858 to 

Thomas Wistar, an Indian commissioner, and to Quaker abolitionist and 

poet John Greenleaf Whittier in 1860. A master’s degree was first awarded 

for academic work in 1870, and Randolph Winslow, class of 1874, took the 

first exam for an MA degree. Such degrees were awarded throughout the 

nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, though before 1916 there 

seemed to be no unifying theme, and no woman had received an MA at 

Haverford. 

JOSEPH HARLAN (1825–1857), 

THE NINTH PRINCIPAL, 1857 

Joseph Harlan served as principal, professor of mathematics and astronomy, 

and director of the observatory. At this time, students were still either 

Friends or near-Friends, and there was continuing concern that no 

other doctrine take root. Harlan died while in office, and in rapid succession 

he was followed by Joseph Jones (1858–1859), Timothy Nicholson 

(1859–1861), and William F. Mitchell (1861–1862); the latter left Haverford 

to become a superintendent of freedmen’s schools in the South.


In 1860, president-elect Lincoln, en route to Washington by train, appeared 

on the rear platform and bowed to the students assembled at the 

Haverford station. Charles Roberts, class of 1864, who was at the station, 

reportedly rushed forward and requested the president’s signature. Not 

only did he receive a note from Lincoln, but this conquest also forged him 

into a lifelong collector of autograph letters. When Roberts died in 1902, 

he left the college 12,000 autograph letters (including the Lincoln note), 

encompassing the whole spectrum of human endeavor, from astronomy 

to zoology. This open-ended collection has continued to grow and today 

is comprised of more than 20,000 documents. 

SAMUEL J. GUMMERE (1811–1874), 

THE FIRST PRESIDENT, 1862–1874 

Samuel J. Gummere, son of Haverford’s second principal, John Gummere, 

was hired by Haverford in 1833 to teach mathematics and natural philosophy, 

returning again in 1862 to take up the newly titled president’s position, 

created as part of Haverford’s transformation into a college. English 

literature was added to the curriculum in that year. In 1864, the board of 

managers reaffirmed the need to conduct a school for the benefit of members 

of the Society of Friends. 

In 1861, the Civil War had reduced the total number of students to fifty; 

by 1863–1864, it had risen to sixty-one, and there were eleven graduating 

students—practically the largest class in the college’s history. The war 

proved a particularly difficult time for Quakers, pitting the peace testimony 

against the antislavery principle. Some Haverfordians felt compelled 

to fight. Among them were Brigadier General Isaac Wistar, Colonel 

Norwood Penrose Hallowell, and others, including James Parnell Jones, 

class of 1855. Jones was the son of Eli and Sybil Jones and cousin to Rufus 

M. Jones, who would later become a professor of philosophy. Haverford’s 

Jones Family Papers manuscript collection includes (among others) two 

letters from James Parnell Jones, one from “10th mo 31st [18]52,” in which 

he told his parents that discussion of slavery was not allowed at Haverford. 

In the second, dated September 25, 1861, Jones told his father that he 

believed wholeheartedly in the union’s cause and hoped that his parents 

would see his viewpoint. Jones rose to the rank of major and was killed 

by a stray bullet in 1864. 

In 1870, faculty members considered admitting women and agreed 

unanimously on the benefits of such a move. The opening of Swarthmore 

College in 1864, a “Hicksite” coed institution, may have influenced their 

decision. Haverford’s board of managers didn’t agree, and the college remained 

single sex.


THOMAS CHASE (1827–1892), 

THE SECOND PRESIDENT, 1875–1886 

The road to student self-accountability (and perhaps the honor code) began 

with the completion in 1877 of Barclay Hall, a separate dormitory 

where students were no longer under continual supervision. This was the 

first new building since 1864, when the college finally had a library separate 

from Founders Hall designed by Samuel Sloan in the Gothic style of 

the day. Barclay was designed by Quaker architect Addison Hutton and 

built of Port Deposit granite, trimmed with Nova Scotia stone. In 1904, 

then-president Isaac Sharpless eliminated the proctors in Barclay and 

made students responsible for their behavior. 

A New Testament scholar, Thomas Chase, came to Haverford from Harvard 

dedicated to high scholarship. During his tenure, student enrollment 

rose from a low of forty-two to ninety-three, courses preparatory to a BS 

degree and civil engineering were instituted, and some elective courses 

were added. Chase played to two of Haverford’s great strengths—science 

teaching and the caliber of the students. Theodore Richards, class of 1885, 

received a BS in chemistry and won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1914. 

ISAAC SHARPLESS (1848–1920), 

THE THIRD PRESIDENT, 1887–1917 

The thirty-year presidency of Isaac Sharpless could arguably be called 

Haverford’s golden age. Sharpless, who had come to Haverford in 1875 to 

teach math and astronomy and had become its first dean in 1884, spearheaded 

an infusion of very strong faculty. Several new buildings were 

added; the number of students spiraled up to nearly 200, even while the 

caliber was further improved by more strenuous entrance requirements, 

resulting in some notable graduates; the endowment rose by more than 

100 percent; the budget was balanced; the college’s reputation was recognized 

nationally (Haverford was rated one of the top five colleges in 

Pennsylvania in a 1911 national report); and the curriculum expanded to 

new subject areas. 

While Sharpless was liberal in much of his thinking, he remained 

within Quaker tradition with regard to the arts. Hence, although neophyte 

groups of musicians and thespians made their appearance during 

his tenure and there were five lectures on the arts at the college in the 

1890s, he did not encourage them. Even so, the Glee Club was formed in 

1887, and then the Banjo & Mandolin Club. An unofficial drama group 

was organized in 1895–1896. The first regular evidence of dancing at 

Haverford did not appear until 1921. In spite of his disinclination toward


the arts, Sharpless did have his portrait painted by no less than the eminent 

Cecilia Beaux, considered by her contemporaries to be the most distinguished 

woman portrait painter in America. 

While the founders’ philosophy was deeply rooted in the Quaker concept 

of the value of each individual, the concept of diversity was introduced 

during Sharpless’s deanship. The first nonwhite students to be admitted 

to the college were Asians. Koichi Takasaki of Japan matriculated 

in 1884, possibly a result of Quaker missionary work in Japan. The first 

black student at the college, Osmond Pitter, graduated in 1926. 

Isaac Sharpless believed in student self-government, even while rules 

governed student life. These were meant to foster mature behavior, solidarity 

among freshmen, and a class spirit that would result in the “best 

Haverfordian” possible. In such a climate, students introduced the Haverford 

College Association in 1891 “to promote the interest of the students 

of Haverford College.” The idea of an honor system followed in 1896. In 

its earliest form, it allowed students to take tests without proctors. Practically 

from that time on, all classes had an honor system. 

Beginning as early as the 1870s, there was a mild form of hazing for 

freshmen, such as being thrown into the duck pond or having their heads 

shaved. Prescribed forms of dress may also have been a form of hazing. 

Freshmen were forced to wear a stiff collar, bow tie, and beanie until 1938. 

Failure to do so or to obey other rules resulted in a variety of creative punishments. 

Freshmen were referred to as “Rhinies,” a mythical Greek term 

for “little green worm.” 

The college was not without fun. From its early days, cremation of some 

unpopular textbooks had been a favorite entertainment of the sophomores. 

For some years, it was Paley’s Evidences of Christianity that was 

burned before an audience covered with sheets or dressed in costume. 

Later, other works suffered the same fate. Invitations were issued, and 

large crowds attended. President Sharpless banned this amusement in 

1889, suggesting the inappropriateness of book burning at an institution 

of higher education. 

The student newspaper, the College Weekly, was first issued in 1909 and 

may have been further evidence of Isaac Sharpless’s faith in the maturity 

of Haverford’s students. The newspaper’s stated mission was to broaden 

discussion of college news and publish all college events of interest “in a 

fair, impartial way.” 

Athletics had existed since the founding of the college but burgeoned 

during the Sharpless administration. Cricket had been a Haverford sport 

possibly since 1833, and its athletes participated in the first American intercollegiate 

match in 1864. Between 1890 and 1910, Haverford dominated 

the sport, which still flourishes here. The first tennis tournament took 

place in 1886, even while some complained it interfered with the playing


of cricket. Gymnastics reappeared in the 1890s but did not achieve a lasting 

foothold and was replaced by basketball in the 1920s. Track-and-field 

events were first held in the early 1890s, and in 1901–1902, Haverford had 

the distinction of being the first college to play soccer. Beginning in 1897, 

American football was played with enthusiasm and, often, great intercollegiate 

rivalry, notably with Swarthmore College; a variety of pressures 

brought the sport to an end in 1974. 

Isaac Sharpless brought to campus several superlative faculty members. 

One of them, Rufus Matthew Jones (1863–1948), received a BA in 

1885 and an MA in 1886 from Haverford. In 1893, he was simultaneously 

made editor of the Quaker periodical American Friend and began his fortyone-year 

teaching career in philosophy at Haverford College. In an extreme 

fast-forward through history, Jones made an indelible impression 

on a vast number of his students, was instrumental in the accomplishments 

of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), served on 

countless committees, succeeded in creating an atmosphere for the reunification 

of the two lines of American Quakerism, and made important inroads 

toward world peace. Before his death in 1948, a Rufus Jones chair of 

philosophy and religion was established at Haverford. 

This whirlwind biography of a man many consider to be one of the 

foremost Quaker philosophers of the twentieth century barely touches the 

surface of his accomplishments, which include the authoring of over fifty 

Figure 1.1. The Rufus M. Jones Study


monographs, all of which are to be found in the Quaker Collection at 

Haverford. In addition, in 1980, a vast collection of Rufus Jones’s manuscripts 

was added. An inventory of the collection reveals the variety and 

output of his mind. 

Henry J. Cadbury (1883–1974) was another of Sharpless’s extraordinary 

faculty choices. Cadbury graduated from Haverford in 1903, received his 

MA from the college in 1904, and was hired to teach Greek, religion, and 

biblical literature in 1910. In October 1918, already a well-known scholar, 

he wrote a letter to the Public Ledger deploring the “orgy of hate” expressed 

in the American press toward Germany, stating that the American 

nation itself was the greatest obstacle to peace and least worthy of it, that 

it lusted for vengeance and blood, while what was needed was moderation 

and fair play. Responses from various constituent groups at Haverford 

ranged from a request for Cadbury’s resignation to support for his 

pacifism and for academic freedom of expression. Cadbury left the college 

but some decades later renewed his ties. On his death in 1974, Haverford 

received a collection of his papers consisting of a wealth of articles, books, 

book reviews, Bible course notes, extensive correspondence, and lectures. 

Isaac Sharpless also brought to campus the mathematician Frank Morley. 

His three sons, Christopher, Felix, and Frank Vigor Morley, all graduated 

from Haverford and were selected as Rhodes scholars. Christopher 

Morley reached the pinnacle of his popularity as a writer in the 1930s and 

1940s. Erudite, witty, and quintessentially versatile, he probed every literary 

genre. By a series of gifts, Haverford has acquired one of the largest 

collections (over 3,000 items) of Morley manuscript materials extant. 

Through these materials, it is possible to glean not only the events of Morley’s 

life and his lifelong interest in Haverford but also, quite evidently, 

the way in which his mind worked. This is often most clear in the letters 

he wrote—and he was a prolific letter writer. 

Another famous Haverfordian from the Sharpless era was the artist Maxfield 

Parrish, who matriculated at Haverford College in 1888 when art was 

not a part of the curriculum. As a freshman, Parrish was a member of the 

“Classical Section” of study (there was also a “Scientific Section” and an 

“Engineering Section” as well as an undefined or “Special Section”). By his 

junior year, Parrish was in the Special Section along with six other members 

of the class of 1892. While a student, Parrish was already creating some of 

the artwork for which he would become famous. Visitors who have seen 

Parrish’s extraordinarily illustrated chemistry notebook from 1890 have 

been awed by it. No less creative are the place cards he made for some classmates, 

depicting them by their most striking characteristics, such as “historian” 

or “banjo player.” Haverford has received this and other Parrish materials, 

such as correspondence, drawings, and even a guitar decorated by 

Parrish, primarily by gifts over the years.


In 1916, T. Wistar Brown, a member of Haverford’s board for sixty-three 

years, gave a bequest to the college to fund a specialized master’s degree 

program, the T. Wistar Brown Graduate School, which offered biblical 

studies, philosophy, religion, and social work. Isaac Sharpless was named 

dean of the school. Forty-eight theses from that program have been saved 

in the archives, their topics as varied as “The Mexican Problem in Its Historical 

Settings” and “The Quaker Attitude toward Amusements” as well 

as “Friends and Temperance” written by Elizabeth Marie Marsh in 1925. 

WILLIAM WISTAR COMFORT (1874–1955), 

THE FOURTH PRESIDENT, 1917–1940 

Haverford has never had any organic connection with Philadelphia 

Yearly Meeting (PYM), but many men from the yearly meeting were 

Haverfordians. In 1925–1926, for example, 111 men out of a total of 264 

serving on PYM committees were Haverfordians, and seven Monthly 

Meetings within PYM had Haverfordians as clerks; other men were ministers, 

elders, or overseers in their Meetings. Haverford graduates also included 

the editor of The Friend and officers of many organizations and faculty 

members at many colleges, both Quaker and non-Quaker. 

William Wistar Comfort was one of these men. He graduated from 

Haverford in 1894, received his PhD from Harvard, and returned to 

Haverford as professor of Romance languages, but he was also an elder 

and, later, minister in PYM and clerk of the meeting from 1934 to 1953 as 

well as an author on Quaker topics. During his twenty-three-year tenure 

spanning between the two world wars, the numbers of students and faculty 

increased about 50 percent, the classroom student-to-teacher ratio 

stood at seven to one, several new buildings sprang up, the endowment 

expanded to $5 million, and the curriculum gained in depth. Haverford 

under W. W. Comfort was Quaker and upper class. Yet by 1940, only 

forty-six out of a total of 325 students were Quaker. 

World War I brought new challenges and new curriculum to the campus. 

In 1917, Rufus M. Jones organized the Haverford Emergency Unit on 

Haverford’s campus. The Unit drew from Haverford’s undergraduates, 

and their training included physical and manual exercises, auto mechanics, 

and first aid to prepare them for noncombatant participation in World 

War I while remaining in college. Nonetheless, by May 1917, nineteen 

Unit members left college to volunteer for hospital work and eleven for 

Army training. The Unit ceased at the end of May, replaced in June by students 

and faculty training for the work of relief and reconstruction in 

France in conjunction with the newly formed AFSC. Almost every student 

in the class of 1917 was either in military or in reconstruction work; by the


fall of 1918, 173 Haverfordians were in the former and 130 in the latter. A 

1930 student newspaper poll found that 121 students considered themselves 

pacifists, while another 143 said they believed in peace but would 

support the government. By 1939, most students favored increasing U.S. 

armaments, and only twelve said they were opposed to any war. 

Among the new faculty brought to Haverford during Comfort’s tenure 

was the highly talented Douglas Steere (1901–1995), who came in 1928 to 

teach philosophy and stayed for thirty-six years. He was also a popular 

lecturer and prolific writer and traveled under the auspices of the AFSC 

as a personnel worker. He opened up relief and reconstruction work in 

Finland in 1945, was chair of the Friends World Committee for six years, 

and was Quaker representative to the Second Vatican Council. In January 

1943, Douglas Steere was made chair of the Haverford Reconstruction 

Section of the Citizenship and Reconstruction Unit, which trained men to 

go into service under governmental direction while emphasizing Quaker 

principles “to minister to suffering peoples abroad and work in needy situations 

in this country . . . built around language study, study of special 

areas . . . social method and practice.” In 1993, Haverford began to acquire 

what has become one of its most voluminous manuscript collections, the 

Douglas and Dorothy Steere Papers, which consist of correspondence, 

journals, travel letters, manuscripts, and biographical materials. 

FELIX MORLEY (1894–1982), 

THE FIFTH PRESIDENT, 1940–1945 

Felix Morley graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford in 1915, was a 

Rhodes scholar at Oxford, and received a PhD in government. A career 

journalist, he came to the presidency after running the Washington Post as 

a Pulitzer Prize–winning editor. 

World War II presented Morley with a dilemma: preserve the college or 

maintain the Quaker peace testimony. After Pearl Harbor, students were 

resolutely for some sort of involvement in the war effort. In the student 

newspaper for December 9, 1941, Felix Morley wrote that students should 

follow their own consciences in determining whether to enlist in the war 

effort. Meanwhile, the student editor of the paper suggested that military 

training at Haverford should be an option. 

Taking a course to appeal to both camps, President Morley suggested 

bringing a noncombatant officers’ unit to train for meteorological service, 

and the board of managers approved. In addition, there was a premedical 

unit, an area and language study unit, and sixty engineers. By September 

1943, there were 200 in the premeteorological unit as well as twenty women 

among the students in a graduate relief and reconstruction program and


Figure 1.2. Relief and Reconstruction Women 

130 “regular” students, or 550 in all. By 1946, of the seventy-two enrolled 

students, more than one-third were returning veterans. 

During Morley’s administration, there were approximately fifty students 

in the MA program for relief and reconstruction (R&R). The greatest 

number of women in this group graduated in 1945 and 1946. The R&R 

women were well received, fitting in more than the military unit. Courses 

in the program included German, social casework, area studies, nutrition, 

auto mechanics, and French. After two years of training, the R&R men 

and women were appointed to posts in Germany or did social work in 

Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States. 

Morley’s original intent had been to make few changes at the college, 

to maintain the high levels of education, to preserve the curriculum, 

and, perhaps, to broaden cooperation with Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore 

colleges to the extent that such a plan as unifying the three college 

libraries was deeply investigated. Despite his original intent, Morley 

introduced Asian, African, and South American studies and expanded 

the scope of political science and history. He also moved to bring more 

Jewish and African American students, and while there were no 

women undergraduates, faculty, or administrators at the college between 

1927 and World War II, there were female librarians, nurses, and


secretaries. Under Morley, the first female professor, Elisa Asensio, was 

brought to campus in 1941. 

President Morley supported efforts to expand student government and 

the honor code into the social sphere. Although a form of the honor system 

had been in place from the turn of the century, rules for student behavior 

in relation to the honor system and independence in student life 

continued to evolve. In the 1940s, the honor code was expanded beyond 

its academic scope to include a social component based on the premise 

that respect and concern should guide interpersonal relations. 

Felix Morley resigned in 1945, stating, “Problems particularly grim and 

dislocating for a Quaker college limited to men students have had to be 

confronted without evasion. . . . I have found the constant strain of administration 

under these circumstances cumulatively severe.” 

GILBERT WHITE (1911–2006), 

THE SIXTH PRESIDENT, 1946–1955 

Gilbert White was a convinced Friend who worked for the AFSC in 

France during World War II and helped obtain civilian relief for Germany 

in 1946. He also served as a geographer for the U.S. government dealing 

with natural resource problems in the 1930s and 1940s. This was his life’s 

work to which he always returned, but at the age of thirty-five, armed 

with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he was already president of 

Haverford College. 

White had specific plans for Haverford—raising money, hiring young 

professors, and improving the level of teaching—and a deep concern for 

the excellence of the institution. He thought of Quaker education as having 

a “balanced concern for the intellectual, emotional and spiritual.” 

During his presidency, Friends’ business practice (consensus), especially 

in faculty meeting, was introduced. By 1954, the endowment was at $10 

million, faculty had tuition benefits for their children (as well as other 

benefits), and a woman first became a tenured professor in 1955. In the 

mid-1950s, women were invited for the first time to become corporation 

members. Distinguished visitors came to campus, including Ralph 

Bunche, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. 

Ira De Augustine Reid (1901–1968), who was hired during White’s 

term to teach sociology in 1946 and remained until 1966, was a Quaker 

and Haverford’s first African American professor. In 1949, during the 

McCarthy-era frenzy to uncover communists, a Philadelphia politician accused 

him of membership in “communist organizations,” and his passport 

was withheld by the State Department for a time. While the bulk of 

his papers is elsewhere, a collection of Ira Reid’s papers was donated to 

Haverford consisting chiefly of correspondence relating to this incident.


The Social and Technical Assistance program, 1951–1956, was the last 

organized master’s degree program at Haverford, based on the theory 

that reorganizing economic and political structures and understanding 

conflicting social ideologies would result in peace. Training for the program 

included a six-week field seminar for work-study experience in divergent 

cultural settings. The students’ goals were to work toward increased 

productivity in underdeveloped areas, elimination of famine and 

disease, and improved health and living conditions. Theses from this program 

form a part of the college’s archives. 

A small picture of student life in the late 1940s to mid-1950s can be drawn 

from rules and activities. Freshmen still had to dress according to a prescribed 

code. They had to carry a Rhinie Bible (handbook) and pass an 

exam on its contents. Students occasionally were responsible for transgressions—such 

as removal of silverware from the dining hall, food fights, and 

missing library books—all of which resulted in fines. They were interested 

in religious diversity. One student wanted to start a Christian Science Youth 

Movement on campus, and others got a Christian and Jewish group started. 

While one student claimed there was no religious intolerance or discrimination 

on campus, others felt that having various religious organizations on 

campus could be divisive. By the time Gilbert White resigned in 1955, a new 

dormitory was built, the much-needed field house for athletics was under 

construction, there were sixty-five faculty members, the enrollment was at 

459, and the endowment was $11,000,000. 

HUGH BORTON (1902?–1995), 

THE SEVENTH PRESIDENT, 1957–1967 

Hugh Borton was a 1926 graduate of Haverford College, a member of its 

soccer team. He received a PhD from Leiden University, had been a professor 

of Japanese and director of Columbia’s East Asian Institute in the 

1940s and 1950s, and served as chief of the American delegation for three 

of the United States–Japan Conferences on Cultural and Intellectual Interchange. 

In 1968, the Japanese government decorated him with the Second 

Order of the Sacred Treasure, First Class. 

Borton’s philosophy was that a Quaker education should provide “a 

certain spiritual dimension, a preparation for life service, rather than 

preparation for material success.” Another influential Quaker scientist 

and educator of the twentieth century and member of the class of 1904, 

Howard Brinton, wrote in 1962 that his interest in science was similar to 

other Quakers, closer to truth and reality than other subjects, but that religion 

was more effective in putting the world right. In 1962, a history of 

Quakerism was first taught through the history department; a named religion 

department was organized in 1961.


In 1961, Hugh Borton concluded that the college needed to expand from 

450 to 700 students over the next ten years. Accommodating this change 

would require replacing, enlarging, or renovating outmoded facilities, especially 

science laboratories and the library. The issue of adequate compensation 

for faculty had to be solved. While the previous ten years had not 

brought many changes to the curriculum, there were some significant shifts 

in emphasis. These included an African studies program, cooperation with 

Bryn Mawr College in academics, and a postbaccalaureate fellowship for 

students who wanted to attend professional or graduate school. 

Two underlying tensions were the growing involvement of the United 

States in the Vietnam War and expansion of the draft. The college turned 

down government tuition loans that would obligate filing an “antisubversive” 

affidavit and loyalty oath, presaging the college’s policy toward 

student activism during the Vietnam War. Alumni and others contributed 

against the loss of financial aid. For a time in 1966, peace vigils were held 

on campus every week. There were few dissenters to the generally antiwar 

position. That year, some faculty refused to pay federal income tax in 

protest, others sent telegrams to various government leaders against “indiscriminate” 

bombing policy in Vietnam, and more than $650 was sent 

for relief of civilian victims of the Vietnam War to be used for medical relief 

in both North and South Vietnam. Over the period 1964–1972, perhaps 

250 articles or editorials relating to the Vietnam War or to war-and-peace 

issues appeared in the student newspaper. 

Some students and faculty were also involved in the civil rights movement. 

Several students had gone to Mississippi to protest segregation and 

marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Haverford was primarily white upper-class 

Protestant until the end of the 1950s. Unfulfilled desires for diversity 

yielded to frustrations by the end of the 1960s. Tendrils toward diversity 

also found their way in protest against compulsory Fifth Day 

Meeting. President Borton recommended it be ended, and the decision to 

do so came in 1967. Other changes evolved. The Students’ Association by 

the 1950s was practically self-governing. There were no proctors for exams; 

by 1963, self-scheduled exams were in place. The honor code’s current 

structure of parallel academic and social responsibilities emerged in 

the 1970s, “and all other rules governing students faded.” The last vestige 

of discussion on the issue of dress code appeared in the 1963 student 

handbook: no gym suits, short shorts, or bare feet in the dining room. 

JOHN R. COLEMAN (1920– ), 

THE EIGHTH PRESIDENT, 1967–1977 

John Royston Coleman, a Ford Foundation executive and a noted economist 

who had taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the


Carnegie Institute of Technology, came to Haverford as its first non- 

Quaker president but left as a convinced Friend in 1977. Three issues 

would dominate his tenure: the Vietnam War; diversity, particularly racial 

and coeducational; and increased cooperation with Bryn Mawr College. 

After the May 1, 1970, announcement by President Richard Nixon of 

the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, there were campus protests nationwide 

(though there were never any riots at Haverford). Several days later, 575 

Haverford students, fifty faculty, almost the entire senior administration, 

and twenty-five staff members went to Washington to “express the full 

depth of concern for what the Cambodian crisis [was] doing to American 

life.” In April 1970, Haverford had become the first college in Pennsylvania 

to defy a Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Act demand to 

report any disciplinary actions related to disturbances to the state agency 

on threat of losing state financial assistance to students. Further, the idea 

for a Center for Non-Violent Conflict Resolution was born in 1967 during 

increased campus agitation over Vietnam and racial unrest. The program 

consisted of lectures, community projects, training sessions, and demonstrations 

and learning about social change. But the importance of the center 

waned in 1972. 

Regarding diversity, Coleman believed that Haverford had a responsibility 

for the education of women as well as men, and a resolution for coeducation 

was brought before the board of managers with the support of 

students, faculty, and administration. The board compromised and allowed 

female transfer students beginning in 1978 while advocating further 

cooperation with Bryn Mawr College. Coleman resigned over this issue. 

“Haverford now needs a president who musters more enthusiasm 

than I can for the compromise decision [limited enrollment] on women’s 

access to all that this College offers. And Haverford now needs a president 

who is more credible to Bryn Mawr’s board, administration, and faculty 

as an advocate of two-college cooperation.” 

Another aspect of diversity was the issue of minorities. By 1972, inadequate 

diversity was identified as insufficient minority faculty, students, 

administrators, and curriculum. Minority students and others in sympathy 

with the cause used silent confrontation, such as the boycott of 1971, 

public statements, and position papers. Consensus was hard to reach. 

Haverford recruited minority students but often competed for the same 

students with other institutions. Minority faculty were difficult to hire. In 

1976, the first director of minority affairs was hired. A diverse curriculum 

was achieved only slowly. 

The third issue was cooperation with Bryn Mawr College. In 1970, Bryn 

Mawr strongly disapproved of Haverford admitting female first-year students 

or transfers but wanted to extend cooperation with Haverford. A 

majority of Haverford students favored increasing academic and social


cooperation with its sister institution. Full cross registration and a combined 

student newspaper occurred in 1970–1971. 

A little bit of background on the culture at Haverford in the late 1960s 

and early 1970s will help one understand the Haverford of Coleman’s 

time. The state of the arts had not moved ahead appreciably since Sharpless’s 

time, and there were those who felt the time had come for a change. 

Thus, in the summer of 1967, a faculty–student committee set up a department 

of fine arts in conjunction with Bryn Mawr College, and somewhat 

later Haverford organized its own fine arts department. Between 

1967 and 1977, the Haverford chamber music program began, the faculty 

brought in five musicians-in-residence as members, the Ruth M. Magill 

chair in music was endowed, a new music center and library was opened 

in Union (a professional librarian for the music library was not hired until 

the 1980s), an art gallery was installed, and a student-run, summer 

stock repertory group was formed. 

Haverford offered no fine arts classes until a sculpture course was introduced 

in 1968, nor was there a painting course until 1969–1970 or photography 

until 1970. Still, Haverford has acquired a good deal of art over 

the years. Some examples are the 1942 bequest that included an oil painting 

of St. Sebastian presumed now to be the work of a follower of Pietro 

Perugino; an oil on panel, Early Autumn, White Birch, by Maxfield Parrish; 

an oil portrait of Samuel Johnson; and a number of other works. Today, 

artwork can be found all over Haverford’s campus. 

ROBERT BOCKING STEVENS (1933– ), 

THE NINTH PRESIDENT, 1978–1987 

It would be incumbent on Robert Stevens, a former provost at Tulane University 

and professor of law at Yale, to resolve the coeducation dilemma. 

Indeed, during his tenure, the college became fully coeducational (the 

board agreed to coeducation beginning in 1980, though nine BAs had 

been awarded to women before 1979). By 1982, there were also twentyseven 

women faculty members and ten women administrators. The decision 

to make Haverford coeducational may have weakened social cooperation 

with Bryn Mawr but seemed to strengthen academic cooperation. 

While numbers of women on campus increased, numbers of Quakers 

did not. In his speech to the Newcomen Society in 1983 on Haverford history, 

President Stevens stated that while the number of Quakers in all of 

Haverford’s constituent groups (except the corporation) was low, Quaker 

values and spirit were high. In 1987, the corporation approved a steering 

committee on Quakerism with the charge of “seeing that Quakerism remains 

strong and vibrant at Haverford.”


Stevens’s charge from the board of managers was to “shore up the College’s 

academic reputation and programs.” Following this directive, 

nearly half of all tenure-track faculty were hired during his administration. 

Diversity appeared in the curriculum with concentrations in African 

American, gender, and peace studies and among the faculty with an increased 

number of minorities and women on tenure track. 

The peace studies program was established in 1982 as a three-year cooperative 

effort between Haverford and Bryn Mawr. The program included 

semester-length courses, summer internships, and fact-finding 

missions. For the latter, students traveled abroad to evaluate views of the 

United States and to discover how other governmental systems dealt with 

issues such as poverty. The peace studies program preceded the peace 

and conflict studies concentration consisting of courses on conflict and cooperation 

among nations and today still includes fact-finding missions to 

various countries. 

In 1986, concern about apartheid in South Africa resulted in a divestment 

of holdings in South African businesses in order to effect policy 

change. In addition, a fund was created to bring South African students to 

Haverford. (In the same way, a concern raised by religion professor 

Michael Sells in 1994, during the war in the former Yugoslavia, led to 

scholarships that brought Bosnian students to Haverford.) 

Meanwhile, the Students’ Council set up a committee to work on curricular 

and institutional ethnic diversity. In 1982, the Students’ Council offered 

resolutions on diversity: favoring funding of groups contributing to 

diversity; reaffirming affirmative action in making appointments; supporting 

the Black Cultural Center and Hispanic La Casa; socializing firstyear 

students to concepts of community and diversity; providing forums 

on diversity; diversifying the curriculum; and making funds available to 

the student newspaper to get an article on the history of diversity written. 

Outside the academic curriculum, in 1978 a student-initiated program to 

relate Quaker belief with community service resulted in the formation of 

“Eighth Dimension,” which took on such projects as AIDS awareness and 

activities to benefit the homeless. Today, community service has become a 

component of a number of courses offered at the college. 

TOM G. KESSINGER (1941– ), 

THE TENTH PRESIDENT, 1988–1996 

Tom Kessinger, a 1963 Haverford graduate, returned in 1988 with experience 

as a culture and education adviser in planning, designing, and implementing 

educational programs for the Ford Foundation in India and later in Indonesia. 

Kessinger’s interest in Southeast Asia developed while he was a


student at Haverford on leave as a member of the first group of Peace Corps 

volunteers in India. Following graduation, he received a PhD from the University 

of Chicago, writing his doctoral dissertation on social and economic 

movements in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. This led to teaching 

posts at the University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania. 

Kessinger strongly supported liberal arts education. The Kessinger 

years were marked by an increase in the endowment and new buildings, 

including plans for an integrated natural sciences center. New recognition 

for the strength of sciences at Haverford came in 1993 when Joseph Taylor, 

class of 1963, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. 

THOMAS R. TRITTON (1947– ), 

THE ELEVENTH PRESIDENT, 1997–2007 

Thomas Tritton came to Haverford from the University of Vermont, where 

he taught pharmacology and was later vice provost. He brought a strong 

research background and ability as a fund-raiser as well as skills in computing, 

information technology, and arts and museum programs. 

President Tritton also brought an interest in community and the Quaker 

character of Haverford, drawing on Haverford values of respect, consensus 

decision making, and the honor code. In terms of cooperation with Bryn 

Mawr College, he proposed “full consultation with each other at all appropriate 

faculty, student and administrative levels before any decision is made 

concerning policies which will have a significant effect on the other college.” 

Two of the innovative projects that have taken shape since his arrival 

are the Hurford Humanities Center established in 2000 and the Center for 

Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC), which arose in 1999. The former 

was envisioned to spur faculty and students to new levels of intellectual, 

artistic, and ethical engagement through a number of programs outside 

the curriculum with faculty fellowships and student internships. The latter 

was instituted to prepare students to connect with communities beyond 

Haverford. The CPGC’s aim is to foster social justice through a combination 

of research, interdisciplinary education, and action. 

In addition, in 2002, the Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center 

opened, where astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer 

science, and psychology are taught, to accommodate a need for integrated 

science instruction and to promote research in rising fields. Technology, 

moreover, connects the campus and the campus to the world, with 

computer-equipped classrooms and digital projects that allow professors 

and students access to the universe of knowledge. Haverford College’s 

newest (2005) and largest building, the Douglas Gardner ’83 Integrated 

Athletic Center, serves athletic options to greater numbers of students


through its extended offerings and, as with the other centers, hopes to provide 

an interdisciplinary approach to athletics in association with performance, 

music, and art. 

Thomas Tritton leaves the college in a strong financial and academic position 

and value structure, but therein lay some issues for his successor: 

Should the college expand to provide even stronger academic resources? 

What role should Quakerism play on a campus that is predominantly 

non-Quaker? And what should be the focus of the next capital campaign? 

Haverford began its life in the cradle of Orthodox Quakerism, with 

mandatory study of Scripture and attendance at collection for an exclusive 

group of twenty-one boys. Today, there are neither mandatory religious 

readings nor attendance at religious meetings, and while its Quaker 

roots are valued, the school is nonsectarian. According to current statistics, 

the coed, diverse population at Haverford numbers 1,168, with 47 

percent men and 53 percent women, of whom eighty-four are Quaker. 

There are only eight Quakers among the faculty. Haverford is managed by 

two bodies: its corporation and board of managers. Members of the corporation 

are required to be Quakers, and of the thirty-three board members, 

fifteen are Quaker. Thus, except for its corporation, Quakers are in 

the minority in every one of Haverford’s constituent groups. Yet the 

Quaker ethos pervades the life and values of the college. 

POSTSCRIPT 

Haverford sits poised on the threshold of a new administration under the 

presidency of Stephen G. Emerson, a medical doctor with a research specialization 

in hematology and oncology and a 1974 summa Haverford 

College graduate in chemistry and philosophy 

FURTHER READING 

A History of Haverford College for the First Sixty Years of Its Existence, prepared by a 

Committee of the Alumni Association. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1892. 

http://www.haverford.edu/library/collegehistory/#text1. 

Isaac Sharpless, The Story of a Small College. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston 

Company, 1918. http://www.haverford.edu/library/collegehistory/#text2. 

Rufus M. Jones, Haverford College: A History and an Interpretation. New York: 

Macmillan, 1933. http://www.haverford.edu/library/collegehistory/#text3. 

The Spirit and the Intellect, edited by Gregory Kannerstein. Haverford, Pa.: Haverford 

College, 1983.

2 

 

Guilford College 

Gwen Gosney Erickson 

Guilford College has the distinction of being the only Quaker college 

in the southeastern United States. Friends in North Carolina had a 

growing concern about the education of their young people in the early 

nineteenth century and began exploring the idea of a yearly meeting 

school to provide a guarded education and training for Quaker teachers. 

New Garden Boarding School developed from this concern and was later 

transformed into the institution known today as Guilford College. 

Throughout its history, the college has found itself balancing a commitment 

to Quaker principles and to maintaining a quality educational institution 

in the face of financial and societal challenges. 

NORTH CAROLINA QUAKERS 

Friends had been in North Carolina since the seventeenth century and 

were among the earliest European settlers in the region. Irish Friends’ 

minister William Edmundson held the first documented religious service 

in the colony in 1672, and Quaker founder George Fox also visited. North 

Carolina Yearly Meeting held its first sessions in 1698. There is little documentation 

of Friends establishing schools during this early period, but 

there is evidence that meetings made efforts to ensure education of their 

young people. 

The mid-eighteenth century brought the establishment of a number of 

meetings in the central, or piedmont, region of North Carolina as well as 

South Carolina and Georgia. Friends moving from eastern North Carolina, 

21

22 Gwen Gosney Erickson 

Pennsylvania, and Nantucket settled the area where Guilford College 

would later be established. Beginning in 1790, North Carolina Yearly Meeting 

began alternating its annual meeting among the traditional sites in 

Pasquotank and Perquimans counties in northeastern North Carolina and 

New Garden Meeting House in Guilford County. From this point on, 

North Carolina Friends and their major institutions were centered primarily 

in Guilford County. 

Starting in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth, Friends began 

leaving the state in large numbers—first to Tennessee and later to the 

new slave-free lands of Ohio and Indiana. Only the strong Quaker communities 

were able to survive the large number of migrations. Concerns 

about the slavery issue and the decision of whether to remain in the South 

dominated Friends’ work in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 

Other issues, such as education, were of less concern. However, 

sentiments were to shift in the 1830s. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAN 

Friends in North Carolina looked to those who remained for the survival 

of Quakerism in the South. Many of the young people who had not 

moved West were being lost either to other denominations or through disownments 

due to disciplinary infractions. As a result of an investigation 

spurred by a discussion of education at the 1830 yearly meeting sessions, 

it was reported at the 1831 sessions of North Carolina Yearly Meeting that 

“there is not a school in the limits of the Yearly Meeting that is under the 

care of a committee of either monthly or preparative meeting. The teachers 

of Friends’ children are mostly not members of our Society and all the 

schools are in a mixed state.” Such a statement raised great concern since 

education was seen as the best way to ensure the continuance of Friends. 

This would be possible only if there were Friends trained as teachers who 

could provide the leadership for local meeting schools. A committee was 

named to consider the subject of education. 

The plan drafted by the committee set the framework for what would 

become New Garden Boarding School. They stressed the importance of 

this endeavor to Friends through their explicit statement, “And we believe 

that the Christian and literary education of our children consistent 

with the simplicity of our religious profession [is] of very deep interest if 

not of paramount importance in supporting the various testimonies that 

we profess to bear to the world, and even to the very existence and continuance 

of our Society.” Throughout its history, New Garden Boarding 

School remained closely tied to North Carolina Yearly Meeting, and each 

was dependent on the other for survival.

Guilford College 23 

Jeremiah Hubbard, teacher and member of New Garden Monthly 

Meeting, was the clerk of North Carolina Yearly Meeting from 1830 to 

1835. He was a highly respected minister and educator among North Carolina 

Friends and a crucial player in the early establishment of the school. 

His position in the New Garden community and the presence of his 

monthly meeting school there is credited with influencing the placement 

of the school at New Garden. However, like so many Friends, Hubbard 

left for Indiana before the actual opening of the school in 1837. He continued 

to support the effort from a distance and came back to New Garden 

to attend yearly meeting sessions following the opening of the school. 

Nathan Hunt, born in Guilford County in 1758 and patriarch of 

nineteenth-century North Carolina Quakerism, introduced the subject of 

education at the 1830 yearly meeting and continued to press for the formation 

of a yearly meeting school. He presented his vision for a school 

both to Friends in North Carolina Yearly Meeting and among the wider 

world of Friends. Before the 1831 yearly meeting sessions, Hunt had traveled 

among Friends in the North and believed they would provide 

needed assistance. Through his efforts, he was able to raise the substantial 

funds necessary for the opening. Although he did not serve on the early 

boarding school committees, his sons-in-law—Dougan Clark and Joshua 

Stanley—were officially involved in the founding and later served, with 

Hunt’s daughters, as superintendents of the school. 

It would take several years for the plan to develop into an actual school, 

and committees were established to determine the details. Originally, a 

group of forty-five was chosen to implement the plan and deliver its report 

at the 1832 yearly meeting sessions. A smaller committee made up of 

eight men and eight women was then appointed to choose a location. Before 

the purchase of land at New Garden, the charter was drafted, and 

trustees were appointed. 

EARLY OVERSIGHT AND ORTHODOX QUAKER INFLUENCE 

The original charter placed all power in the hands of twelve men: Joshua 

Stanley, John Beard, Thomas Hodgin, John Russell, Elisha Coffin, Henry 

Macy, Zacharias Coffin, Thomas T. Hunt, Jeremiah Pickett, Nixon Henley, 

Peter Dicks, and Phineas Nixon Jr. There was no mention of the yearly 

meeting or restrictions on the makeup of the trustees. Originally, a committee 

of women Friends was appointed in equal number to oversee the 

school, but women members were not prominent in the business of the 

trustees and, though they met with the board until 1869, were only noted 

as present and never listed. Women did not formally serve on the board 

until Mary Petty was appointed in 1937.


Despite the independence granted in the charter, the trustees usually 

acted under the direction of the yearly meeting. Customarily, they made 

recommendations to the yearly meeting for approval before formal election 

of members. Board members had defined terms but often succeeded 

themselves and were later replaced by sons or brothers from one of several 

prominent North Carolina Quaker families. Even so, the trustees received 

criticism of their management from factions within the yearly 

meeting. In 1841, the board offered to transfer its power to the yearly 

meeting, but no formal action was taken on this suggestion. The yearly 

meeting did establish a committee in 1844 to supervise the school and recommend 

changes in policy. This committee proposed in 1850 to give the 

trustees the power to form rules and regulations for the school as long as 

the school’s officers remained Friends and Friends’ children were given 

priority in admissions. The committee to oversee the board was discontinued 

in 1852. 

Luckily for New Garden Boarding School, North Carolina Friends were 

not divided by the Hicksite-Orthodox controversy of 1827 or the Wilburite- 

Gurneyite controversy in 1845. Some in the yearly meeting held Wilburite 

sympathies, but there was no division in the yearly meeting until the 

twentieth century. Southern Friends were experiencing enough hardships 

without dissension within the yearly meeting. North Carolina Yearly 

Meeting remained Orthodox with little discussion, probably in part because 

of their respect for the strongly Gurneyite Nathan Hunt. The very 

survival of the school was dependent on support from Orthodox Friends 

in the wider Quaker world. Joseph John Gurney himself visited the school 

in 1837 and donated 100 pounds in support. 

Fund-raising and building construction was well underway by the 

mid-1830s. Generous financial support and encouragement were given by 

Friends from England, New York, and New England. North Carolina 

Friends consulted with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Westtown School 

for information about equipment and supplies. Advice on teachers was 

received from Rhode Island Friend Rowland Greene, and several New 

England Quaker teachers served on the first faculty. The school building 

was completed in the late spring of 1837, and Friends worked to have 

everything in order for opening in the fall. 

NEW GARDEN BOARDING SCHOOL 

New Garden Boarding School opened its doors the first of November 

1837 with twenty-five boys and twenty-five girls. Other denominational 

schools were also opening in North Carolina during this time, as both 

Quakers and others in the state held a growing interest in education.


However, these other schools, such as the Methodists’ Greensboro Female 

College (1838) and Union Institute (1838, later Trinity College and Duke 

University), were limited to a single sex. As for Quaker coeducational secondary 

schools in North Carolina, New Garden Boarding School was preceded 

by Belvidere Academy (1835), which remained an important educational 

institution in northeastern North Carolina but did not reach the 

prominence of New Garden in terms of yearly-meeting-wide influence or 

future growth into a college. 

The early New Garden Boarding School was greatly influenced by 

other Quaker schools. The rules and regulations were adapted from those 

at Westtown School in Pennsylvania. Several of the early teachers were recruited 

from Moses Brown School in Rhode Island. Like the other coeducational 

Quaker schools of the time, there was strict separation of the 

sexes within the buildings with girls on the west side and boys on the 

east. There were two male teachers for the boys and two female teachers 

for the girls. 

Quaker education in the state was much improved twenty years after 

the 1831 disheartening report on the status of education of Friends’ children. 

Much of this improvement was due to New Garden Boarding 

School since it provided training of teachers. It was reported in 1843 that 

400 students received education at New Garden and nearly 100 of them 

were employed as teachers in different Quaker communities. In 1851, 

North Carolina Yearly Meeting counted among its membership 804 children 

between five and sixteen and another 336 between sixteen and 

twenty-one. Over 97 percent of them received education that year in one 

of the 130 coeducational schools available to them. 

New Garden grew over the years, but there were still periodic declines 

in student enrollment due to difficulties present in the antebellum South, 

such as sickness, economic hardships, and, by the 1850s, the possibility of 

war. The school’s enrollment peaked at 179 in 1855, but just four years 

later the number dropped to sixty-five. Measures were taken to maximize 

enrollment. Day students were first allowed in 1842. The school experimented 

with admitting non-Friends briefly in 1841 and became open to 

non-Friends in 1846 with the expectation that they follow the school’s regulations. 

One practical reason was financial since non-Friends were initially 

charged a higher tuition that helped cover costs. Only 59 percent of 

the students in 1850 were Quakers. By 1865, there was no longer a Quaker 

majority with only 36 percent of the students identifying as Friends. 

The strict rules and regulations associated with New Garden in the early 

years were gradually modified, especially as more non-Friends joined the 

student body. Basic guidelines and expectations considered part of a 

guarded education, such as plainness in dress and speech, were recommended 

but not required. Music and dance were forbidden throughout the


years of the boarding school. However, literary societies began to be seen 

as early as 1851. Sports also became popular, and the first interscholastic 

athletic event, a modified game of football, was held against students at 

Marlboro Monthly Meeting School during the 1858–1859 school year. The 

academic program was varied since the ages of students often ranged from 

eight to twenty-three and students’ abilities differed greatly. 

The single most influential teacher during the boarding school years 

was Nereus Mendenhall. A member of the Deep River Quaker community 

in Guilford County and graduate of the first class at Haverford College, 

Mendenhall taught at the school for twelve years (1839–1841, 

1843–1844, 1846–1847, 1849–1851, and 1861–1867). He worked to standardize 

courses of study, and his students were often accepted at Haverford 

College without examination because of the excellent educational 

foundation they received under his instruction at New Garden. He believed 

that girls needed the same level of instruction as boys and saw no 

reason to maintain separate sections for his Greek and Latin classes. During 

the 1860s, it became expedient to hold classes together, and the transition 

to coeducational classes was made smoothly. 

Despite its growing respectability as an educational institution, the 

school was financially unstable during much of the nineteenth century. 

Few families were able to pay the fees required, and many students paid 

portions of their tuition with farm produce and other goods. A committee 

from Baltimore and Indiana yearly meetings came in 1860 to confer about 

the school’s finances when shortfalls reached a level that threatened to 

close the school. Trustee Isham Cox agreed the previous year to become 

the financial agent for the college and calculate the debt. Once all the unpaid 

bills were located, the school’s debt in 1861 was calculated at 

$27,245.52. Jonathan and Elizabeth Cox, hired in 1859 as superintendents, 

offered to operate the school themselves to ensure its survival. North Carolina 

Yearly Meeting worked, with the assistance of an estimated $15,000 

in contributions from other yearly meetings and the careful bookkeeping 

of Isham Cox, to repay the amount. By 1865, the debt was reported settled, 

but the school was by no means wealthy. 

CIVIL WAR 

With the onset of the Civil War, the school’s future was uncertain. Finances 

were already precarious, and many of the teachers left for the free 

states of the Midwest. Principal Nereus Mendenhall also made plans to 

relocate his family to Minnesota. However, at the last minute, he and his 

wife, Orianna, elected to stay and, with Jonathan and Elizabeth Cox, kept 

the school open throughout the war.


In 1865, the war was over, but the situation for North Carolina Quakers 

had not improved. A large number of Friends elected to move to the Midwest 

rather than remain during an uncertain reconstruction of the wartorn 

South. The efforts of the Baltimore Association to Advise and Assist 

Friends of the Southern States, under the leadership of Francis T. King, 

were key to the survival of North Carolina Quakers and New Garden 

Boarding School. A grant of $5,000 was used for building repairs, new 

equipment, and tuition assistance for students. It is likely that the grant 

money was the sole source of income for the school during the immediate 

aftermath of the war. Such a level of direct aid did not continue for New 

Garden, but the Baltimore Association’s establishment of elementary 

schools across the state prepared students to study at New Garden and 

led to the hiring of New Garden graduates as teachers. 

After the difficulties immediately following the war, New Garden 

Boarding School remained fairly stable for the next decade. Efforts were 

made to meet new educational standards and occupational training 

needs. A collegiate course of study was formally adopted by the trustees 

in 1867, and there is some indication that the trustees considered offering 

more advanced work. However, the recently stabilized boarding school 

was not in a position to take on the expenses required to make the transition 

to a college, and the Baltimore Association rejected the trustees’ request 

for assistance. During this time, the school maintained a two-year 

preparatory department and a four-year academic one. Students in each 

department could choose between the classical and the English track. A 

few new courses were implemented and offered students some practical 

knowledge. Boys in the 1870s could elect to take bookkeeping and business 

courses, and girls were offered courses in traditional female crafts, 

such as needlepoint. 

FROM BOARDING SCHOOL TO COLLEGE 

North Carolina Friends did not give up on their desire for a higher level 

of Friends’ education in the state and continued to plead their case to others. 

The need for an institution of higher education in North Carolina was 

discussed in Baltimore by representatives of various yearly meetings at 

the 1878 Educational Conference of Friends called by Frances King and 

John Thomas. Whether the level of education would be that of a high 

school or a college was not clear, and there was disagreement about the 

location of such a school with some, including King, feeling it should be 

in the more centrally located and thriving community of High Point. The 

discussion continued at future educational conferences and among 

Friends in North Carolina for several more years.


The North Carolina Yearly Meeting sessions in 1881 prepared the way 

for the eventual establishment of Guilford College. The yearly meeting 

had recently constructed a large meetinghouse near the New Garden 

Boarding School building. It was decided to give the new building to the 

school if the yearly meeting was kept at New Garden. The yearly meeting 

would then construct a new meetinghouse in High Point, thus providing 

an acceptable compromise for the two competing communities. Francis 

King was in attendance and accepted the proposal. Within a month, the 

Baltimore Association began raising funds for endowment and campus 

improvements. 

Renovations and construction began in earnest at the end of the spring 

term in 1883 as New Garden Boarding School was transformed into The 

Friends School at New Garden. The original main campus building was 

completely renovated and renamed Founders Hall. The former yearly 

meetinghouse was converted into classroom and dormitory space and 

named King Hall in honor of benefactor Francis King. Several cottages 

were built as cooperative houses for boys wishing to have a low-cost option 

outside the dormitory. 

Figure 2.1. Friends School at New Garden. Staff and Students in Front of Founders Hall, 

1886


The transition was going smoothly, and enrollment increased with the 

improved standards and facilities. Francis King proposed that the trustees 

invite Joseph Moore to lead the institution during its transformation into 

a college. Moore was president of Earlham College and had headed up 

the Baltimore Association’s establishment of the elementary school system 

in the late 1860s. Joseph Moore worked with the faculty and built the 

school’s natural sciences program. All the leading teachers of the past, 

such as the influential Nereus Mendenhall, had been classical scholars 

rather than scientists. During Moore’s last year, he reorganized the curriculum 

by reducing the number of courses and by offering advanced 

classes in both the classical and the literary-scientific track. There was no 

controversy about curricular innovations as the course work was revised 

to meet collegiate standards and as new scientific theories, such as evolution, 

were added to the course of study. 

The school did experience an unexpected setback before it completed 

the transition. In 1885, the original King Hall donated by North Carolina 

Yearly Meeting burned. The decision was made to replace it with two 

buildings: a classroom building and a dormitory for boys. The brick from 

the destroyed building was salvaged to construct what would become 

Archdale Hall (named for the colonial Quaker governor of Carolina, John 

Archdale). A new King Hall was completed in time to open only a year after 

the first burned. 

A NEW BEGINNING: GUILFORD COLLEGE 

The trustees offered the position of first president to Joseph Moore. Moore 

returned to Earlham instead and recommended Lewis Lyndon Hobbs for 

the position. Hobbs and Moore had worked closely together during the 

years of Friends School at New Garden, and Hobbs had served as principal 

of New Garden Boarding School before Moore’s appointment. Hobbs 

had attended New Garden as a student under Nereus Mendenhall and 

went on to graduate from Haverford College in 1876. He was well respected 

both as a scholar and as a member of North Carolina Yearly Meeting, 

serving as yearly meeting clerk from 1886 to 1916 and from 1921 to 

1928. 

Although New Garden Boarding School was widely regarded as a 

Friends’ school and had close ties to North Carolina Yearly Meeting, no 

connections to Friends were explicitly made until the incorporation of 

Guilford College. The college charter of 1889 specified that the trustees 

had to be members of the Society of Friends and “recognized as such by 

the North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends.” This limitation to Quakers


lasted until 1969, when the total number of trustees increased to twentyfour 

and six of the slots were made available to those from “other religious 

denominations.” 

The first faculty was composed of J. Franklin Davis, Mary M. Petty, Elwood 

C. Perisho, Julia S. White, Mary E. Mendenhall, Gertrude W. 

Mendenhall, Lewis Lyndon Hobbs, Priscilla Benbow Hackney, and John 

W. Woody. These were familiar faces dedicated to Quaker education. All 

but two had taught at either New Garden Boarding School or the interim 

Friends School. All received some or all of their education at Friends’ institutions, 

and over half were former New Garden Boarding School students. 

Only one, Indiana Friend Elwood Perisho, was not a North Carolina 

native. The vast majority of the early faculty was recruited from 

Haverford or Earlham. 

Although the new charter was not granted until January 1889, Guilford 

College opened for classes on August 15, 1888. Recent graduates of the 

Friends School were allowed to return for one additional year to complete 

their college degrees, and the college graduated its first class in 1889. Students 

could choose the Latin, scientific, or Latin-scientific track. Also 

available were a three-year teacher course and a one-year vocational program. 

As with the original founding fifty years earlier, training of educators 

remained a core mission, and preparation for other professions was 

added to meet student and community needs. Because of the inadequate 

high school options in the region, the college also maintained a preparatory 

department that often enrolled more students than the college program. 

In addition to academic endeavors, students enjoyed participation in a 

growing number of extracurricular activities. Literary societies were a center 

of social life, sponsoring debates and beginning, in 1888, the first college 

publication, a monthly known as the Guilford Collegian (transformed into 

The Guilfordian in 1914, the weekly college newspaper that continues to the 

present). Baseball was the first organized sport, having already gained popularity 

at New Garden Boarding School in the 1860s. Guilford excelled at 

the sport, sending several team members to play professionally and winning 

successive championships in the early twentieth century. Girls were 

given an opportunity to play in sports when the college gym, built for the 

women students, opened with an exhibition game of basketball in 1896. 

Students also participated in temperance rallies and prayer meetings both 

on campus and in the surrounding community. The Young Men’s Christian 

Association (YMCA) was established on campus in 1889 and raised funds 

to build a YMCA building, which opened in 1892 with an assembly room, 

reading room, classrooms, and boys’ gymnasium. 

Although the school had always been coeducational and had prided itself 

on a tradition of equality, enrollment of female students dropped from


50 to 32 percent in the transition from boarding school to college. Mary 

Mendenhall Hobbs, daughter of Nereus Mendenhall and wife of Lewis 

Lyndon Hobbs, brought the issue of women’s education to North Carolina 

Yearly Meeting as well as to educators throughout North Carolina. She observed 

that families were often unwilling to invest as much in a daughter’s 

education. Gaining support in 1889 from the yearly meeting, she spearheaded 

initiatives to make a college education more accessible to women. 

The Girls’ Aid Committee was founded to raise funds for an endowment 

to support women students. Initially, funds provided a cottage system so 

that girls could live cooperatively and save on expenses. However, the 

more suitable New Garden Hall opened as a cooperative women’s dormitory 

in 1907. Later, the building’s name was changed to Mary Hobbs Hall 

and continued to serve as a cooperative women’s dormitory with reduced 

room rates for the remainder of the twentieth century. 

CHALLENGES AND CONTROVERSIES 

Lewis Lyndon Hobbs was continually faced with the dual challenge of establishing 

an adequate endowment and constructing the necessary facilities 

with limited funds. Despite steady enrollment and good management, 

the college still operated with a deficit, and the $50,000 endowment 

did not produce sufficient income to balance the budget. Allen Jay (Indiana 

Friend and former superintendent of the Baltimore Association) was 

brought in to run the fund-raising campaign, and by 1905 the endowment 

had increased to $175,000. A much-needed science facility was constructed 

in 1897 and allowed for expansion of current departments and 

establishment of the biology department. King Hall, lost to fire a second 

time in 1908, was rebuilt as a classroom building, and a new separate library 

was constructed with money from Andrew Carnegie. Plans were 

also made for a new boys’ dorm to replace the cottages and Cox Hall 

opened in 1912. 

In his 1889 report to the yearly meeting, Hobbs stated, “The College in 

its entirety is the child of the Church.” Nevertheless, the child had an independent 

board of trustees and the yearly meeting’s attitude toward the 

college varied over the years. For the most part, strong ties remained into 

the twentieth century as key leaders in the yearly meeting also worked at 

the college or served on the board. However, some Friends felt that the 

college was antirevivalist and did not trust Guilford as a place to educate 

Friends ministers. Others felt the college was the obvious place for North 

Carolina Friends to receive religious education and training. The question 

of Guilford’s role in providing ministers to the yearly meeting has been 

asked periodically throughout the college’s history.


As North Carolina Yearly Meeting began having a professional ministry, 

there was a need for something more formal than the required infrequent 

Bible classes to benefit young ministers and religious workers. 

The concern was brought to the trustees in 1901, and a biblical department 

was founded with a separate yearly meeting–funded endowment in 

1903. Thomas Newlin, a scholar in his field as well as a preacher acceptable 

to most in the yearly meeting, served as the first professor in the new 

department. The focus on biblical instruction was short lived, as the department 

remained small and was without a professor by 1912. The department’s 

lack of strength was probably due to two somewhat related 

causes: lack of financial support to fully fund the initiative and controversy 

within the yearly meeting from Holiness activists about the doctrinal 

soundness of Guilford’s academic curriculum. The college later tried 

to meet yearly meeting needs with the option of short courses such as 

“Life of Christ” and “History of Quakerism” in the 1920s, but the program 

was not able to sustain itself during the Depression years. 

By 1915, Lewis Lyndon Hobbs was no longer a young man and felt a 

need to turn over the leadership to someone else. Thomas Newlin, having 

left in 1907 to be the first president of Whittier College, was willing to return. 

Unfortunately, Newlin’s administration was fraught with controversy. 

Newlin inherited a deficit budget, wartime inflation, and a shortage 

of students. There was disagreement over the college’s financial management 

under treasurer George White, and both faculty and students revolted 

against Newlin’s leadership, causing him to leave after only two 

years. He was replaced by a trustee-appointed interim executive committee 

comprised of Howard H. Brinton, Lewis Lyndon Hobbs, and Alma T. 

Edwards. 

BECOMING A TWENTIETH-CENTURY COLLEGE 

President Raymond Binford, previously professor of biology at Guilford 

from 1901 to 1914 and on the faculty at Earlham for the intervening four 

years, arrived in 1918 to face the challenge of raising endowments, stabilizing 

the faculty, establishing a new curriculum, and planning for the future. 

He endeavored to bring the college fully into the modern world with 

an innovative curriculum and recruitment of top-quality faculty, many of 

whom stayed until the 1970s. 

Before Binford could take on the academic program, he had to pull Guilford 

out of financial crisis and begin an endowment to sustain the college 

for the future. After raising $83,000 in the first year of a $200,000 campaign, 

Guilford decided to join the “Forward Movement of American Friends,” a 

comprehensive fund-raising campaign for Friends’ colleges associated


with Five Years Meeting (now Friends United Meeting). Guilford’s share 

was to be $350,000, but in the end Guilford realized only about $8,000. 

Grant and loan money provided some funds to sustain the college until a 

new campaign was launched in 1922. The next campaign was more successful, 

and by 1924 the college held an endowment of $460,000. 

The crisis had been averted, and Binford could shift focus to faculty and 

development of courses. Hobbs oversaw a major curriculum revision in 

1910 that began a system of majors, minors, and electives and established 

Guilford as a leader among North Carolina college programs. Binford 

took Guilford to the next level in 1928 with the implementation of the 

“Core Curriculum,” a set of courses to equip students with basic intellectual 

tools, to give students an understanding of the world around them, 

and to master one field of knowledge. The preparatory department was 

discontinued in 1924 as need decreased with the availability of public 

high schools, allowing faculty to focus more on college academic work 

and less on supervision of younger students. Membership in the Southern 

Association of Colleges and Schools began in 1926, and new departments 

were established and old ones extended to meet new standards. The atmosphere 

of academic progress was further enhanced with the institution 

of an honor system in 1931—one of the first in use at a North Carolina college. 

Under Binford’s leadership, Guilford left behind the remnants of its 

boarding school existence and became a twentieth-century college. 

Preparations then began for the centennial celebrations, and goals were 

set for the next phase of Guilford’s history. Unfortunately, the Depression 

hit before any plans could be implemented. Endowment funds decreased 

rather than grew. Building projects were put on hold for another twenty 

years, and faculty deferred portions of already small salaries to provide 

loans to students. Binford left the presidency and returned to teaching before 

the centennial celebration began, and Clyde Milner led the college for 

the next thirty years. 

THE MILNER YEARS 

Clyde and Ernestine Milner came to Guilford in 1930 as a team from Earlham, 

where both had served as deans. Both were effective speakers and 

traveled throughout the state promoting the college as well as teaching 

courses and providing administrative management. In addition to getting 

a president, the college also had the leadership of Ernestine Milner as 

dean of women for many years and as a member of the faculty throughout 

her husband’s tenure. She provided a common experience for several 

decades of students with her required art appreciation course, “Philosophy 

24,” and personal contact with every student on campus.


While her involvement in the college was often controversial, Ernestine 

Milner’s presence provides a clear example of Guilford’s long tradition of 

partnerships in leadership. Eight of the twelve superintendents of New 

Garden Boarding School were married couples, and the wives played an 

active role in supervising the campus. From the beginning, Guilford had 

strong and influential “first ladies.” Mary Mendenhall Hobbs was a 

teacher at New Garden before her marriage and during her married life 

held leadership roles in North Carolina Yearly Meeting, organized initiatives 

for women’s education, and lectured across the state. Helen 

Titsworth Binford also took an active part in the life of the college as an 

adviser to student leaders, as a course instructor, and as a leader in the national 

Parent-Teacher Association. 

The 1930s brought increasing changes to the campus as student activities 

became more secular and some of the direct ties to the yearly meeting 

decreased. For example, the Yearly Meeting Advisory Committee was discontinued 

in 1935, though trustees were still required to be Quakers and 

the board had a committee charged to deal with yearly meeting relations. 

Students demanded greater privileges, and there were increasing numbers 

of non-Quaker students. Restrictions lessened, and formerly taboo 

activities were permitted. Music began to be offered through unofficial 

private lessons on campus in 1887, and a music department, complete 

with an organ and piano, was established in 1894. Dancing was officially 

allowed on campus in 1933, though North Carolina Yearly Meeting continued 

to oppose this change until 1937. A smoking ban for men was discontinued 

in late 1920s. 

Although Guilford’s culture seemed to be shifting away from the strict 

discipline and guidelines of early years, the campus remained committed 

to Quaker ideals regarding the peace testimony. The campus has never 

had an ROTC program or other types of military recruitment on campus. 

During World War II, the college did not allow the Army Air Force to rent 

dormitory space or any other use of the campus by the military, even 

though the rental income was needed because of low wartime enrollment. 

A program was held during the summer of 1941 to prepare conscientious 

objectors for alternative service with a daily schedule of calisthenics and 

classes. However, many of the college’s potential students enlisted, and 

the student population was depleted. The class of 1945 had just twenty 

students, only four of whom were men. 

As chair of Five Years Meeting Board of Education in the 1940s, Clyde 

Milner encouraged Quaker colleges to admit Japanese American students 

during the war to enable them to complete their educations instead of going 

to internment camps. The campus was generally accepting of these 

students, but Clyde Milner had to use his connections and public relation 

skills to deflate complaints from the larger Greensboro community.


Following the war, the economy and student enrollment finally worked 

in Guilford’s favor. There were a large number of students wishing to attend 

college, and there was a shortage of space to accommodate them. 

Campus building projects and fund-raising campaigns deferred throughout 

the Depression and war years were quickly implemented. The culmination 

of the building program came with the construction of Dana Auditorium 

in 1961. Philanthropist Charles Dana became involved with 

Guilford in 1959 and by 1961 promised to pay $250,000 if the college 

raised $150,000. Clyde Milner organized a campaign, and funds were provided 

for the new auditorium and several other building projects, including 

a new downtown campus. 

ADULT EDUCATION AT GUILFORD 

Perhaps the most significant new development during the postwar period 

was the decision to offer adult education services. On March 15, 1953, 

Guilford College acquired Greensboro Evening College and now had the 

opportunity to offer lifelong education to nontraditional students. The 

evening college had opened five years earlier under an independent 

board in response to an unmet need for adult education in the Greensboro 

area. However, the college was not accredited, and the board was looking 

for a way to offer degrees. The most logical way to accomplish the task 

was to merge with one of the local colleges. 

The new Greensboro Division of Guilford College offered both high 

school and college degrees through several tracks: a high school division, 

a business education division, a college credit division, and an adult education 

(noncredit) division. During the 1950s, it was the only institution to 

offer “formal” adult education and had strong support from members of 

the local business community. Despite growing competition in the 1960s, 

the program remained strong and throughout its history has provided additional 

funds for the largely tuition-dependent Guilford College. 

The downtown division was relocated to the main campus in 1973 and 

began to become more integrated with the traditional students. The presence 

of the continuing education program at Guilford brought a greater 

diversity of students to the classroom. Traditionally, the adult program focused 

on business and industry through preprofessional courses, while 

the main campus had a more traditional liberal arts curriculum. Even before 

the physical merger of the two campuses, the adult program began to 

incorporate more liberal arts into its preprofessional courses. The development 

of the adult education program brought opportunities for all students 

to major in preprofessional programs such as accounting, management, 

and justice and policy studies within a liberal arts curriculum.


Changes in courses and formats have been made over the years to respond 

to the changing needs of the local adult community and to ensure 

that Guilford’s commitment to adult education remains strong and viable. 

CULTURAL CHALLENGES AND CHANGES 

While the college was a regional leader in women’s education during the 

first half of its history, the institution did not always extend the testimony 

of equality to people of color. Except for a few Asian students attending 

before World War II and the college’s welcoming Japanese American students 

to campus during the internment period in the 1940s, the institution 

remained almost exclusively white until the 1960s. While the college 

property includes land once used in the Underground Railroad and North 

Carolina Friends banned slaveholding by members sixty-one years before 

the opening of the school, the diversity on campus reflected the dichotomy 

of the larger community. 

People of African descent were noticeably absent for the institution’s 

first 125 years except for a few underdocumented staff roles despite the 

fact that a significant number of African Americans lived in the area. The 

first African Americans to take courses at Guilford were adult students 

and did not reside on campus. Guilford initially integrated its main campus 

with African students when two Kenyans enrolled in 1962. The first 

African American student enrolled soon after and graduated in 1966. 

Guilford was by no means a leader in the region, and its maintenance of 

segregationist policies continues to be viewed as a significant fault. 

Interestingly, pressure from the international Quaker community is 

credited with the integration of Guilford in 1962. Plans were being made 

for a Fourth World Conference of Friends to be held at the college in 1967. 

College officials were informed that there was opposition to the conference 

being held at the college if all Friends, including those of African descent, 

were not allowed to reside on campus. This continued an earlier 

trend of Quaker connections bringing students from cultures outside the 

United States to the college. For example, several Cubans attended the 

college’s preparatory department in the early twentieth century at the 

same time that North Carolina Yearly Meeting worked to establish Cuba 

Yearly Meeting. Providentially, the insistence of influential Friends and 

recognition of Quakers in Kenya finally provided the opening needed to 

allow full entrance to African American students. 

The campus was transformed in the 1960s with the end of the Milner 

reign in 1966 and responses to the cultural changes at colleges nationwide. 

By the end of the decade, the curriculum was revised significantly 

for the first time since 1928, the campus facilities received massive reno-


vations and rebuilding, and in loco parentis was no longer the norm in the 

college’s relationship with students. Campus traditions common to the 

national college experience, such as homecoming events, dances, and 

football games, were a part of the Guilford experience. The rules and regulations 

of New Garden Boarding School’s guarded education had almost 

all fallen away, and additional changes were ahead. 

Although the next administration brought dramatic lasting changes, 

Guilford’s incoming president was not new to campus. Grimsley Hobbs, 

grandson of Lewis Lyndon and Mary Mendenhall Hobbs, graduated from 

Guilford in 1947. He was the chair of the philosophy department at Earlham 

College immediately prior to his arrival at Guilford. Hobbs came to 

campus seeking faculty and student involvement—a major change in 

leadership style for Guilford. Beginning in 1966, Guilford faculty participated 

in campus governance through faculty committees and regular faculty 

meetings overseen by a faculty-selected clerk and using consensus 

for decision making. Hobbs also brought new initiatives in global awareness. 

He listed five distinctives of a Guilford education: academic integrity, 

intellectual community, individual development, religious centeredness, 

and global involvement. All five of these remain defining 

qualities of the college thirty-five years later. 

Although the core curriculum was outstanding in its time with clearly 

presented core courses balanced with electives, revisions were needed. 

During the 1960s and 1970s, the curriculum was modified to allow greater 

flexibility in course work. Some requirements, such as the senior thesis for 

all graduates, ended. A new interdisciplinary course, initially titled “Man 

in the Twentieth Century” and later the “First Year Experience,” became 

the new first-year requirement. The emphasis on interdisciplinary work 

was further enhanced by a required senior-level interdisciplinary course. 

Students’ involvement in the world around them was integrated into new 

study-abroad programs and internship and volunteer opportunities. 

For the first time, the new administration inherited an institution in 

good financial shape. The fiscal health continued throughout the Hobbs 

administration with the conservative financial practices of business manager 

David H. Parsons. Several major building projects were quickly 

taken on by the Hobbs administration. Extensive renovations were done 

on the 1897 Duke Memorial Hall and the 1912 New Garden Meeting 

House, which was turned over to the college in the 1960s. The 1837 

Founders Hall was considered for renovation but was found to be unsalvageable 

and was replaced with a new Founders Hall in 1973. 

The strict discipline of the early Quaker boarding school was completely 

erased with the demise of in loco parentis. Although some significant 

changes had been made in the 1930s, regulations on student life continued 

to be enforced throughout the 1950s. By the early 1970s, dress


Figure 2.2. Mary Hobbs Dormitory Residents, ca. 1979. Built in 1907 as New Garden 

Hall to Serve as a Cooperative Dormitory for Women and Students. In 1933 the Name 

Was Changed to Honor Mary Mendenhall Hobbs Who Worked to Establish a Dormitory 

as Part of Her Wider Efforts to Support Women’s Access to Education. 

codes, the ban on women smoking, residence hall hours, and visitation 

policies were a thing of the past. A new alcohol policy titled “Quaker Testimony 

and College Statement” was implemented, and drinking was allowed 

in 1971. 

Required chapel also ended. Until 1915, students were required to attend 

chapel six days a week and meeting on Sunday. The requirement 

was reduced to four times a week by 1940 and further modified to twice 

a week by the 1960s. However, discipline and enforcement had always 

been a problem, and faculty members were increasingly unwilling to enforce 

attendance. Chapel was entirely abandoned in October 1969, and 

there were no longer any events requiring campuswide attendance. 

A QUAKER COLLEGE? 

With all the changes, some accused the college of no longer being Quaker. 

The percentage of Quaker students was in decline, and a 1969 change in


bylaws opened board of trustee membership to non-Quakers. During the 

1958–1959 school year, Quaker students made up 18 percent of the student 

population with 81 percent from North Carolina and 19 percent from 

other yearly meetings outside North Carolina. Over time, the percentage 

of North Carolina Quaker students increasingly declined. For several 

years, Guilford offered a graduate program in religion in an effort to 

strengthen ties with North Carolina Yearly Meeting and to give local 

Quaker ministers and leaders greater educational opportunities. The 

small program began in 1958 but never gained large numbers and was 

discontinued in 1969. The college’s relationship with North Carolina 

Yearly Meeting was increasingly strained. 

Guilford’s sixth president, William Rogers, came in 1980 with a goal to 

strengthen college ties with its heritage and improve campus relations 

with the Greensboro community. Rogers, who came to Guilford from a 

faculty position at Harvard University, was the first president to come 

without previous ties to Guilford, but he was a Quaker and a former faculty 

member at Earlham College. Under his leadership, Guilford shifted 

its image to that of a national college and received increased recognition 

and improved visibility. He made service learning and community involvement 

a priority and enhanced the curricular focus on interdisciplinary 

studies and international programs. During Rogers’s tenure, Guilford 

completed its first capital campaign in over forty years and 

celebrated its sesquicentennial. The college had grown and developed 

over the past 150 years from a small boarding school to a nationally rated 

college. 

Friends Center was established in 1982 to develop a closer relationship 

among the college, North Carolina Yearly Meeting, and the wider world 

of Friends. During its first decade, the center brought a variety of Quaker 

visitors and speakers to campus and improved college relations with 

Quaker groups and organizations on local, national, and international 

levels. Friends Center expanded during the 1990s and began the Quaker 

Leadership Scholars Program (QLSP) in 1992. Over 100 students participated 

in the first eight years of the program, and QLSP graduates have 

gone on to work in a variety of internships and occupations serving 

Friends. As it enters its third decade at the college, Friends Center is 

poised for new development and expansion to the wider campus with the 

award of a $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to implement the 

campuswide Initiative on Faith and Practice and preparation for a major 

fund-raising campaign to provide sustainable funds for the future. 

In addition to formal college activities under the auspices of Friends 

Center, several important Quaker organizations and events have been 

based at the college since the last quarter of the twentieth century. College 

employees coordinated some events, while others were more loosely connected 

to the college. Friends Association of Higher Education (FAHE)


was organized in 1980, and the office was located on the campus until it 

was relocated to Philadelphia in 1998. The FAHE annual meeting has been 

hosted by Guilford several times over the years. An International Conference 

on Friends Education occurred in 1988. A World Gathering of Young 

Friends was hosted on the campus during the summer of 1985. Both 

North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) and North Carolina Yearly Meeting 

(Conservative) have traditionally met on campus and held joint sessions 

together in 1972 and 1997 to mark special anniversaries in their shared 

history. 

Donald McNemar, an Earlham graduate, became the last Guilford president 

of the twentieth century with his arrival in 1996. While Guilford 

benefited from the growing national recognition from the Rogers years 

and was enjoying a good reputation, building projects and implementation 

of new technology caused major financial strains. McNemar oversaw 

a successful $50 million fund-raising project—the largest capital campaign 

in the institution’s history. Simultaneously, the campus underwent 

the most comprehensive curriculum revision since Grimsley Hobbs’s administration 

and experienced an increased focus on racial justice issues, 

including a growing commitment to hiring faculty of color. The curriculum 

revision did not change the student flexibility and encouragement of 

interdisciplinary study with first-year and senior capstone seminars. Interdisciplinary 

majors, including peace and conflict studies, continued to 

be offered, and a new Quaker studies concentration was approved. Antiracism 

work was identified as an area for continued dialogue and focused 

support. Decisions were made to make greater efforts to recruit 

North Carolina students and to increase enrollment in an effort to offset 

growing costs. 

In 2002, the college faced a major change from tradition with the appointment 

of the first non-Quaker president. Kent Chabotar, a Catholic 

who came to Guilford from Bowdoin College, was also the first president 

without previous affiliation with a Quaker institution. Chabotar brought 

skilled experience in higher-education fiscal management and planning 

and quickly worked to stabilize college finances and initiate a planning 

process. The resulting strategic long-range plan was formally approved in 

2004. 

Interestingly, the feedback from the campus community and the final 

plan authored by a non-Friend reaffirmed the institution’s commitment to 

its Quaker heritage by identifying seven core values consistent with traditional 

Friends’ testimonies. One of the three major goals, along with a 

commitment to enhancing diversity, was to strengthen the Quaker presence 

on campus. Within this context and through the existing Quaker 

Leadership Scholars Program, Guilford has made concerted efforts to attract 

students from a variety of Quaker backgrounds and to work more


closely with North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) in recruitment. Recruitment 

and hiring of Quaker faculty and administrators remain an often 

unmet challenge, but many of the non-Friends on faculty identify with 

their understanding of Quakerism, especially the commitment to social 

justice and community, and are attracted to Guilford for that reason. 

Perhaps the most notable change was the dramatic growth in enrollment, 

which provided additional tuition revenue and took advantage of 

college market opportunities. For most of its history, Guilford was comparable 

in size to Earlham College with the addition of a proportionally 

smaller adult degree program. At the start of the twenty-first century, 

Guilford’s long-established continuing education program exploded and 

quickly matched the traditional age residential student population. Total 

student enrollment doubled from 2000 to 2004, and the college is on track 

to meet a goal of 3,300 students (1,500 traditional, 1,700 continuing education, 

and 100 early college) by 2009. 

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE 

Guilford College continues to place its Quaker heritage at the center of its 

mission, though it has broadened its outlook beyond North Carolina 

Friends and has at times faltered in its efforts to maintain high ideals. 

Throughout its history, the institution has endeavored to offer a valuesbased 

liberal arts education informed by Quaker testimonies. However, 

the implementation of these values has been adapted from the strict discipline 

of the boarding school to a secular-humanist campus ethos. During 

the last half of the twentieth century, the view broadened to include 

recognition of diverse communities of learners and increased emphasis 

on interdisciplinary education and service learning. In addition, it continued 

to value practical educational programming and the integration of 

preprofessional course work within a liberal arts curriculum. 

Guilford is aware of its strengths and weaknesses as it faces the financial 

challenge of maintaining a high-quality private college without sacrificing 

the community environment that makes it special. It is poised between 

the well-endowed national institutions and the less competitive 

regional schools as it tries to offer academic excellence to a varied student 

population. According to its mission statement approved in 2004, the institution 

is challenged “to provide a transformative, practical, and excellent 

liberal arts education that produces critical thinkers in an inclusive, 

diverse environment, guided by Quaker testimonies.” Like New Garden 

Boarding School, Guilford College continues to adapt and grow to meet 

the education needs of a community. This community has expanded beyond 

North Carolina Friends to include students from a wide variety of


faith traditions, regions, and life experiences and strives to educate creative 

leadership for the twenty-first century. 


For a history of the first century of New Garden Boarding School and 

Guilford College, see Dorothy Gilbert’s Guilford: A Quaker College (Greensboro, 

N.C.: Guilford College, 1937). Alexander R. Stoesen’s pictorial history, 

Guilford College: On the Strength of 150 Years (Greensboro, N.C.: Guilford 

College, 1987), provides information about the first 100 years of 

Guilford College, 1888 to 1987. The most comprehensive listing of early 

students, faculty, and board members is given in the special Alumni Directory 

edition of the Guilford College Bulletin (February 1937). Additional 

unpublished sources are located in the Friends Historical Collection at 

Guilford College. News of current events and information can be found 

on the college website at http://www.guilford.edu. 

The founding of Guilford College is integrally tied to the history of 

Quakers in North Carolina. The most comprehensive history of the first 

200 years of North Carolina Quakerism remains Stephen Weeks’s Southern 

Quakers and Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1896). 

Information about the college’s relationship with North Carolina Yearly 

Meeting during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is found 

in Damon D. Hickey’s Sojourners No More: The Quakers in the New South, 

1865–1920 (Greensboro: North Carolina Friends Historical Society and 

North Carolina Yearly Meeting, 1997). Two additional sources are The Carolina 

Quaker Experience (Greensboro: North Carolina Friends Historical Society 

and North Carolina Yearly Meeting, 1984) by Seth B. Hinshaw and 

Friends in the Carolinas by J. Floyd Moore (Greensboro: North Carolina 

Friends Historical Society and North Carolina Yearly Meeting, 1997).

3 

 

Earlham College 


All colleges see their stories as unique. Earlham is unusual in being a 

church-related college that has retained a strong religious identity 

while also becoming a nationally recognized and selective institution. In 

many ways, Earlham has always been countercultural. Founded by Orthodox 

Friends to provide “a guarded religious education for the children 

of Friends” at a time when colleges were beginning to appeal to Quaker 

young people, Earlham began as a thoroughly sectarian institution. Between 

roughly 1870 and 1945, it followed the paths of many other denominational 

colleges in equating academic excellence with escape from 

sectarian peculiarities. But, beginning about 1920, in a critical series of 

choices, Earlham came to emphasize and strengthen its Quaker identity. 

The coming of a new generation of Quaker faculty and students after 

World War II reinforced this vision of Quaker higher education. Today, 

Earlham College’s understanding of what it means to be a Quaker school 

is different from what it was fifty or 100 or 150 years ago. But that Quaker 

understanding of its foundations remains critical for its governance, curriculum, 

and self-image. 

Earlham’s story begins among the Quakers of South Virginia and the 

Carolinas, especially North Carolina, in the last years of the eighteenth century 

and the first years of the nineteenth. Around 1800, Southern Friends 

were an uneasy people, troubled both by problems of practicality—Friends 

always being a practical people—and conscience. The practical problem 

was one of economics. Nearly all Friends were farmers, and by 1800 

Quaker farmers in the southern uplands were anxious about their situation. 

Their land simultaneously was both more expensive and less fertile 

43

44 Thomas D. Hamm 

after years of cultivation. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Friends 

to see their children settled on farms around them. 

The other problem was a moral one, the fruit of one of the peculiarities 

of Quakerism. In the 1770s and 1780s, Friends had concluded that slavery 

was sinful and had thus freed their slaves or disowned members who refused 

to do so. This made them suspect in the eyes of their neighbors. By 

the 1790s, grand juries in at least a dozen North Carolina counties petitioned 

the state legislature to do something about the subversive and 

seditious antislavery activities of the Quakers. Friends returned this alienation—they 

regarded their slave-owning neighbors with distaste, and 

many a Quaker parent worried lest a child marry out of the society into a 

slaveholding family. 

Faced with the same desire for land that drew many other Americans 

westward in the nineteenth century and also conscientiously distant 

from the population around them, Friends looked toward the Northwest 

Territory in what is now Ohio and Indiana for new homes. About 1800, 

what Quakers have come to call “The Great Migration” began, as thousands 

of Quakers left what one called the “Egyptian darkness” of the 

slave states for free soil. 

The first settlements were made in Ohio. It was not until 1806 that 

Friends came to Richmond and Indiana, and that was the result of a particular 

Quaker and his uneasy conscience, Andrew Hoover Sr. In 1802, he 

had sold his farm in Randolph County, North Carolina, and had brought 

his large family to Ohio. His reasons for migrating were much the same 

combination of practicality and conscience that characterized other migrants—a 

desire for land in a free territory. 

Once in Ohio, however, Andrew Hoover was still the victim of an uneasy 

conscience. The lands on which Friends were settling in southwestern 

Ohio were part of the Virginia Military District, reserved by that state 

for its Revolutionary War soldiers as bounties for their service. Andrew 

Hoover, however, was uncomfortable living on land that, in his words, 

“had been given to the poor soldiers for killing the poor Indians.” So in 

the spring of 1806, he sent his son David westward, following a section 

line into the Indiana Territory, where land could be purchased directly 

from the federal government. David Hoover’s orders were to find land 

that was well timbered, showed signs of fertility, and had good springs 

for water and falls for mill power. The first spot that David Hoover located 

was the present site of Richmond. 

Between 1806 and 1821, hundreds of other Quaker families followed 

the Hoovers to Wayne County. They were drawn in part by the good land 

and water that David Hoover had sought. As a people who valued community, 

they were also drawn by the presence of other Friends, many of 

them “weighty” and influential, who had settled in the neighborhood of

Earlham College 45 

Richmond. By the late 1820s, Friends were spreading into the adjoining 

counties. By 1860, there would be more Quakers living within a fifty-mile 

radius of Richmond than anywhere else in the world, other than perhaps 

Philadelphia. In 1821, the number of Friends in Indiana and “the western 

parts of Ohio” had grown to the point that they were granted the right to 

hold their own yearly meeting, Indiana Yearly Meeting. As the central 

point of population, Richmond was chosen as the site for its sessions. It 

was the presence of the yearly meeting every year in Richmond that had 

much to do with Earlham’s location here. 

By 1832, Indiana Friends had concluded that the time had come to establish 

a boarding school for the “guarded religious education of the children 

of Friends.” Once again, practicality and morality underlay a decision. The 

Hicksite Separation of 1828 had a profound impact on Indiana Yearly Meeting. 

About 80 percent of its members sided with the Orthodox, and their 

leaders were convinced that ignorance—ignorance of the Bible and the doctrines 

of early Friends—lay at the root of the schism. Thus, they gave increasing 

attention to education. Since settling in the Northwest Territory, 

Friends had had schools, but they were basically elementary schools, concerned 

with reading, writing, and arithmetic. By the 1830s, some Quaker 

families wanted more for their children—it was this impulse that later in 

the century would lead to the establishment of the Quaker academies. But 

in 1832, there was not sufficient interest to set up an academy in every 

Quaker neighborhood. So what was more natural than that the new boarding 

school be located in the vicinity of the yearly meetinghouse? 

Fifteen years passed between the formation of the Orthodox yearly 

meeting’s boarding school committee in 1832 and the opening of the 

school in the half-finished building that would later be named Earlham 

Hall in the summer of 1847. Money was raised slowly in quarters and half 

dollars and dollars; many Friends expressed reservations about building 

a “great Temple of Baal” that would fill the minds of young Friends with 

pagan learning and distract them from the good old plain ways. But 

Friends persevered, and finally the day came for the school, staffed with 

Friends from New England, to begin its operations in June 1847. 

Friends Boarding School was founded with a sectarian vision. Revealing 

are the letters of Elijah Coffin, the clerk of the Orthodox Indiana Yearly 

Meeting, to Huldah C. Hoag, who was one of the teachers when the 

school opened. He inquired about her competence as a teacher but was 

more concerned about her standing as a sound Quaker. “One thing I can 

say we look to, that is, we desire as far as may be practicable to employ 

teachers who are Friends at heart, and will manifest it in their appearance, 

conduct, and conversation,” he wrote to her. He insisted on a clear “profession 

of conviction of the truth and excellence of the doctrines held by 

our Society, and thy willingness to be placed in circumstances where thou


canst contribute to the promotion of our peculiar and precious testimonies.” 

The curriculum was not much different from that of other secondary 

schools of the period, founded on the classical languages and 

mathematics. Quaker peculiarities could be seen in the bans on works of 

fiction and musical instruments. Students were to wear Quaker plain 

dress; on arrival, a watchful matron and superintendent greeted them at 

the door to inspect their trunks. One student wrote in 1859 that they were 

“tucked and pinned and wrinkled and rolled in and rolled up, yes, any 

way imaginable to make a friendly appearance.” Many students found 

the regulations irksome; typical was Miriam Jane Hill, who wrote home 

in 1850 that she felt that she was in “Quaker prison.” Yet the number of 

students grew steadily in the 1850s, and some evidence indicates that the 

sectarian atmosphere strengthened Quaker commitment. Analysis shows 

that students who attended in the 1850s were far less likely to marry out 

of meeting or violate the Discipline in other ways than their contemporaries 

among Indiana and Ohio Friends. 

For its first twelve years, Friends Boarding School operated solely as a 

secondary school. Its first years, however, coincided with considerable 

ferment among Friends of the Midwest. Advances in transportation and 

communications were breaking down many of the physical barriers that 

had separated Quakers from the rest of American society. The contacts of 

Friends with non-Friends in reform movements and humanitarian efforts 

in the 1840s and 1850s had broken down many of the old suspicions and 

had opened Friends to new ideas. So had the revolution in printing, as 

Ohio and Indiana Quakers increasingly subscribed to and read both secular 

and religious newspapers and magazines. 

One of the results of the cultural shift was a change among many 

Friends in their attitude toward higher education. Friends had lagged far 

behind most other denominations in the establishment of colleges for a 

simple reason: since the 1650s, Quakers had regarded higher education as 

the abomination of desolation, a sop to the senses, a distraction from the 

tried and tribulated ways that led to holiness and salvation. But by the 

1850s, a number of young Friends were rebelling against this ancient prohibition 

and were seeking admission to schools like Antioch and Oberlin. 

In response to this, Indiana Yearly Meeting approved its boarding 

school’s transformation into Earlham College in 1859. It became the second 

Quaker college in the world, three years younger than Haverford, 

which attained collegiate status in 1856. 

The name Earlham marked both sentimental ties and good Quaker 

practicality. It was chosen to honor Joseph John Gurney, the eminent English 

Quaker minister who had traveled in the United States from 1837 to 

1840 and who, while in Indiana, had urged Friends to press forward with 

the boarding school. Earlham Hall was Gurney’s home outside Norwich.


His financial support of the school had been relatively modest, but he had 

imparted to American Friends a vision of a Quakerism that was founded 

on an aggressive Christian faith, that was committed to benevolence in 

the larger world, and that valued intellectual inquiry. Gurney was widely 

admired in the Midwest, an admiration that did not diminish after his 

death in 1847. But Indiana Friends doubtless had other things in mind as 

well. It was standard practice among American Friends when embarking 

on any new project to seek money from well-to-do English Quakers. What 

better way to loosen their purse strings than by tying the new college to 

London Yearly Meeting’s most venerated minister? 

Thus, in the 1860s, Earlham’s first period came to an end. The boarding 

school had been established and had in turn become a college, one that 

admitted non-Quakers as well. Between 1870 and 1945 came the second 

period, as Earlham survived to become a respected Indiana church 

school. In 1881, Indiana Yearly Meeting gave up its ownership of the college, 

conveying title to a corporation whose trustees were appointed by 

both Indiana and Western yearly meetings. (The latter had been set off 

from Indiana in 1858.) In these years came two struggles, the first for financial 

survival, the second for intellectual freedom. 

Well into the twentieth century, Earlham’s financial situation was precarious. 

Before the 1880s, the college had virtually no endowment. Professors 

taught a wide variety of subjects: Joseph Moore, the president 

from 1868 to 1883, was responsible for instruction in everything from 

French to zoology. There was a long struggle to develop the physical 

plant. Until the 1880s, the campus consisted of Earlham Hall, which 

served as classroom, administration building, and dormitory. The addition 

of new buildings involved debts that were not completely cleared until 

after the turn of the century. 

Gradually, however, Earlham achieved financial viability. The endowment, 

which had been $71,000 in 1890, had increased to a quarter of a million 

dollars in 1902. By 1925, it was over $1,000,000, putting Earlham in 

the position that it still holds, ranking only behind the Friends colleges 

around Philadelphia in resources. 

Academically, Earlham also grew in these years. New departments 

were added, such as history, English literature, public speaking, economics, 

sociology, physical education, and religion. The size of the faculty increased 

in proportion, although one-person departments remained common 

well after 1900. It was in the natural sciences that the college first 

made its reputation, and much of the credit for that must go to Joseph 

Moore, who taught botany, geology, and zoology for most of the years 

from 1852 until his death in 1905. In 1859, he went to Harvard to study under 

the great naturalist Louis Agassiz, but he was more influenced by the 

botanist Asa Gray, who was the first proponent of Darwinian evolution in


the United States. When Moore returned to Earlham in 1863, it became the 

first college west of the Appalachians in which the theory of evolution 

was taught. Moore’s embrace of evolution created relatively little controversy. 

It would not be until 1920 that Earlham’s science program became 

embroiled in dissension. And by then, Moore had been joined or succeeded 

by other remarkable men and women who would turn out generations 

of new scientists, including a Nobel laureate. 

Changes in student life accompanied academic change. In the last third 

of the nineteenth century, most midwestern Quakers gave up the peculiarities 

of speech, dress, and separation from “the world” that had set 

apart Friends for 200 years. By the 1870s, Earlham students were outwardly 

indistinguishable from those on other campuses. By the 1910s, 

Earlham had a “campus culture” that was also not much different from 

the rest of the country. Sports, especially football, were at its center. “The 

interest and enthusiasm shown in the athletic sports is a fair standard to 

judge the general wide-awake condition of the college,” the campus 

newspaper editorialized in 1907. Student literary societies formed an elite 

leadership group, centered on the newspaper and yearbook. There was 

also an elaborate body of ritual and custom devoted mostly to ways that 

upperclassmen could make miserable the lives of freshmen. Many of 

these did not disappear until the 1960s. 

Figure 3.1. Campus Culture, 1915. Coeds Dressed for an Earlham Hall Play


To be sure, the ties with Indiana and Western yearly meetings held back 

some of these developments. They doubtless were responsible for the 

happy failure of fraternities and sororities to develop on campus. A good 

example is the Press Club. Founded to publish the Earlham Press, a weekly 

campus newspaper, in 1911, it functioned as a fraternity: membership was 

limited to men, and admission was only through a unanimous vote of all 

members. One member described it as the “‘he-man’ organization” of the 

campus. In 1925, President David M. Edwards, after an investigation, 

gave the members a choice: they could open membership to all students, 

both men and women, on the basis of tryouts or dissolve. Significantly, 

the Press Club men, supported by alumni, chose the latter. 

Different kinds of battles brought dancing and smoking to campus. Until 

1929, only “folk dancing” was allowed—and that in women’s physical 

education classes. The faculty, convinced that dancing encouraged an emphasis 

on couples and costly dating practices, supported the ban. In 1929, 

however, the new president, William C. Dennis, faced with growing unhappiness 

among students, decided to compromise and allow campus organizations 

to sponsor dances off campus. Women could attend only with 

written permission from their parents. By 1933, Dennis and the faculty 

had concluded it would be easier to supervise dances if they were held on 

campus, and so the last barrier fell. As Dennis put it, no longer would 

dances be held in morally suspect places but “amid beneficial associations.” 

A few Friends protested; for example, Western Yearly Meeting of 

Ministry and Oversight sent a minute of opposition, but that was exceptional. 

Ending the smoking ban was more controversial. By the 1930s, the 

college allowed students to smoke off campus, which meant that the adjacent 

city cemetery and vacant lots next to campus were thronged between 

classes. In 1941, on the recommendation of the faculty, the board 

voted to allow smoking in an “unheated shelter, artistic and inexpensive,” 

on campus. This brought a hail of protests. Anderson Monthly Meeting, 

for example, condemned the decision as one that “sanctions and gives approval 

of ensnaring vices and habit forming corruptions.” 

These developments followed a long period of controversy, from 

roughly 1900 to 1921. The issue was nothing less than the intellectual liberty 

of the college: whether Earlham would be committed to academic 

freedom or whether its curriculum would be determined by the sensitivities 

of fundamentalist-leaning Friends in the two yearly meetings. 

In the background of these developments was the theological revolution 

that most Gurneyite Friends in the United States underwent between 

1870 and 1890. A group of gifted young Quaker ministers, influenced by 

the great interdenominational holiness movement among American 

Protestants after the Civil War, transformed traditional Quaker ways. The 

old plain life virtually disappeared, revivals became an accepted part of


the life of many meetings, and unprogrammed worship gave way to pastors. 

Many Friends formed ties with emerging evangelical groups like the 

Nazarenes and Wesleyans and often drew pastors from them. 

These changes affected Earlham in an important way. The need of pastors 

for Friends meetings created a demand that many looked to Quaker 

colleges to fill. In response, in 1884, Earlham created a biblical department 

intended largely for ministerial training. It was presided over by Dr. 

Dougan Clark, a physician and recorded minister who was well known as 

a writer on the subject of holiness. In 1894, however, Clark created a furor 

by submitting to water baptism. Joseph John Mills, then the president of 

the college, responded by arranging for no students to enroll in Clark’s 

classes, so he resigned. Mills then filled Clark’s place with his brightest 

young graduate of recent years, Elbert Russell. Russell had been a German 

major with absolutely no training in religion; it was only later that he 

realized that Mills regarded his lack of association with suspect seminaries 

and graduate schools as an advantage. 

Russell, however, set out to turn himself into a biblical scholar, first 

through intensive reading, then with graduate work at the University of 

Chicago, a modernist stronghold. By 1901, Russell was outraging holiness 

Friends across the country by identifying himself with other liberal 

Friends like Rufus Jones in Philadelphia and John Wilhelm Rowntree in 

England. Through his teaching and writing, Russell embraced modernist 

positions on a number of biblical issues: that the world was not created in 

six twenty-four hour days, that evolution was not incompatible with 

Scripture, that not every word in the Bible was to be interpreted literally, 

and that heaven and hell were states of being rather than places. 

The result was growing friction between the college and the yearly 

meetings. In 1915, Russell did leave, although his departure, ironically, 

was caused not by his enemies in the yearly meetings but by his conflict 

with then-president Robert L. Kelly over what Russell saw as the declining 

influence of Quakerism on campus. The conflict was all the more 

ironic because in many ways Kelly and Russell were of like views. Both 

were committed to critical scholarship, and both applauded the growing 

professionalism of the Earlham faculty, which was increasingly staffed by 

PhDs specializing in a recognized discipline rather than alumni who were 

recorded ministers. Kelly, however, had been convinced that Earlham’s 

survival entailed becoming more attractive to non-Quaker students. Although 

Russell’s enemies applauded his departure, he was replaced first 

by Henry J. Cadbury and then Alexander C. Purdy, both modernist stalwarts. 

In 1920, the controversy reached its head. A committee of ten ministers 

from the two yearly meetings provoked it by publishing a long list of 

charges, focusing on the presence of faculty who were “unsound” in


evangelical faith and on the teaching of evolution. The yearly meetings responded 

by appointing a joint committee to investigate the charges. It 

was headed by S. Edgar Nicholson, an alumnus and outspoken liberal. 

President David M. Edwards struck back by releasing the Earlham transcripts 

of several of the ministers, which showed them to have been somewhat 

less-than-stellar students. Probably more critical was the overwhelming 

support given the college by alumni, many of who were 

well-known and active Friends. Joined to a board dominated by weighty 

Friends who resented holiness attempts to take over what they regarded 

as peculiarly their territory, the liberals emerged from the investigation 

exonerated. Never again would either of the yearly meetings attempt to 

control the teaching in the college. But the events of 1920–1921 were the 

beginning of a long, slow process of alienation of many Indiana Friends 

from Earlham that would continue to manifest itself sporadically down to 

the present day. 

That alienation coincided with the arrival at the college of a new generation 

of Quaker faculty, all of liberal theological outlooks and many of 

them veterans of Quaker Reconstruction work in Europe under the American 

Friends Service Committee (AFSC) during and after World War I. 

When Purdy left for Hartford Theological Seminary in 1923, his replacement 

was Clarence Pickett. Six years later, Pickett left to head the AFSC. 

In 1922, Howard and Anna Brinton, perhaps the most remarkable Quaker 

couple since George Fox married Margaret Fell, had joined the faculty. 

They were responsible for starting an unprogrammed meeting on the 

campus, the first since the 1880s. In 1925, yet another young Quaker, 

Thomas R. Kelly, came to Earlham to teach history and philosophy. All 

these Friends would leave for other posts by 1935, but they made a considerable 

impact on the campus, strengthening tendencies toward doctrinal 

liberalism and an interest in social activism, pacifism, and reform. 

Other Quaker faculty with similar views, such as Ernest Wildman in 

chemistry, Millard Markle and Murvel Garner in biology, Merrill Root in 

English, and Perry Kissick in history, stayed to make their careers at Earlham. 

These professors would put considerable energy into preserving 

and strengthening the college’s Quaker identity and values. 

World War II marked a critical turning point for the college. The tensions 

that American Friends faced in wartime were clear. On one hand, 

the overwhelming majority of Earlham’s male students, Quakers included, 

accepted service in the armed forces; the ratio of men bearing 

arms to conscientious objectors was about ten to one. On the other hand, 

unlike some other Quaker colleges, no military training unit was placed 

on the campus. In some ways, the war was one of Earlham’s finest hours, 

as the stalwartly conservative president William C. Dennis worked with 

Elton Trueblood to bring Japanese American students to Earlham from


the internment camps of the West despite overwhelmingly negative community 

reaction. As the war ended, however, Dennis announced his resignation. 

A 1912 graduate, the president of Fisk University, Tom Jones, 

succeeded him. 

Jones became president in 1946 and remained until 1958. He laid the 

foundations of modern Earlham. In 1946, 80 percent of the student body 

was from Indiana. By 1960, only 40 percent was. This coincided with an 

enrollment explosion. In 1945, enrollment had been around 300. In the 

next five years it doubled, and by 1960, it was close to 1,100. 

One of the first subjects to command Jones’s attention was the physical 

state of the campus. In the next ten years, he would erect ten new buildings, 

ranging from dormitories to classroom buildings. All this took 

money, of course, and Jones proved successful at that as well, raising ten 

million dollars over the course of his presidency. Most of this was raised 

in relatively small sums from alumni and Indiana businessmen. It was in 

this period, however, that ties were established with pharmaceutical manufacturer 

Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, which would become the college’s 

largest single benefactor. 

For Earlham’s students, however, Jones’s most important accomplishment 

was assembling an outstanding faculty. Jones pointedly sought 

Quakers, many of who were veterans of Civilian Public Service (CPS) 

during World War II. Often bringing with them outstanding academic credentials, 

these men might have gone on to careers in more prestigious institutions, 

but their pacifism made them suspect to many universities in 

the era of the GI Bill and the Cold War. At Earlham, however, they set the 

spiritual and academic tone of the campus well into the 1970s. 

The best-known person to join the faculty in this period, however, had actually 

been recruited by William C. Dennis. He was, of course, Elton Trueblood. 

Well known in Quaker circles before he came to Earlham from Stanford, 

his arrival on campus coincided with the publication of the first of a 

series of best-selling books that made him a national figure. His writings, 

affirming traditional values of religion, self-discipline, and hard work, as 

well as thousands of speeches ranging from scholarly lectures to afterpitch-in-dinner 

talks in church basements, left a favorable impression of 

Earlham in the minds of many who found some campus doings suspect. 

Jones must also take credit for giving new meaning to Earlham’s identity 

as a Quaker college. It would probably not be inaccurate to say that 

much of Earlham’s first century had been a struggle to escape from 

Quaker influences, academic excellence being measured by conformity to 

the standards being set by institutions under Presbyterian influence. 

Jones, however, conceived of a college that would be run like a Quaker 

business meeting. This manifested itself in a variety of ways. One of the 

most unusual was the discarding of titles by the campus, with everyone


from Jones down to the lowliest freshman being on a first-name basis. 

Similarly, in 1956, the faculty and board moved from using parliamentary 

procedure to making decisions through consensus. While the proportion 

of Quaker students was decreasing—they had not been a majority since 

1920—the campus was probably more self-consciously Quaker in 1960 

than it had been since 1900. 

Quaker consciences are often prickly things, however, and in the 1940s 

and 1950s, they more than once made Earlham a center of controversy. In 

the late 1940s and early 1950s, a number of students and faculty picketed 

local restaurants that refused to serve blacks. The refusal of eleven absolute 

pacifists to register for the draft in 1948 was a public relations 

nightmare for Jones, who faced the local newspaper, the Palladium-Item, 

giving front-page coverage to the arrests of the “draft dodgers” at Earlham 

by FBI agents and federal marshals. The Palladium-Item and the Indianapolis 

Star were certain that any campus that harbored pacifists was 

probably a red haven, and a handful of incidents involving alleged “subversives” 

received wide publicity, culminating in one case in a “trial” before 

the local American Legion post. On the other hand, no faculty member 

was ever the target of as many demands for firing from unhappy 

alumni and parents as E. Merrill Root, the English professor who was one 

of McCarthyism’s most notable academic defenders. 

By the time that Jones retired in 1958, replaced by Landrum Bolling, the 

foundations of modern Earlham had been laid, and the subsequent evolution 

of the campus has followed those lines. The Quaker identity was affirmed 

in the 1980s when, as the CPS generation retired, concerns surfaced 

about the disappearance of a core of Quaker faculty. The response 

was to give priority to hiring young Quaker scholars, maintaining the 

Quaker proportion at about 25 percent. Another widening of Quaker 

commitment came with the founding of the Earlham School of Religion in 

1960, the first accredited Quaker seminary in the United States. For a generation, 

Earlham’s presidents have boasted that no other institution 

brings together so many Quaker scholars on a permanent basis. 

Increasingly after 1946, Earlham came to understand and enunciate its 

Quaker identity in ways that had more in common with unprogrammed 

Friends tied to Friends General Conference than with evangelical or pastoral 

Friends bodies. Quaker faculty were as likely to attend the unprogrammed 

Clear Creek Meeting on campus as the programmed West 

Richmond or First Friends Meetings. By the 1970s, most Quaker students 

came from unprogrammed yearly meetings, especially Philadelphia, 

New England, New York, and Baltimore. For many such students and 

faculty, Quakerism was not even necessarily Christian but was defined in 

terms of social activism and an eclectic spirituality that found truth in all 

religions.


The 1960s completed Earlham’s transformation. Racial justice became a 

center of campus attention. While Earlham had never excluded black students—the 

first enrolled in 1880—until the 1940s they had been few in 

numbers and often faced petty harassment. After World War II, however, 

as noted previously, a growing number of students saw any kind of discrimination 

as incompatible with Earlham’s Quaker identity. They targeted 

not only segregation in Richmond but also the college’s policy of 

“discouraging” interracial dating. It was gone by the early 1960s. A few 

students in the early 1960s went south to work in the Freedom Movement. 

By the late 1960s, there were vociferous demands for more black students 

and faculty and a black studies program. 

On the defining issue of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, Earlham took an 

almost unique course. Teach-ins and vigils against the war began on campus 

in 1965, although observers guessed that at that time most students 

probably still supported American intervention as a stand against communism. 

By 1968, antiwar sentiment on the campus was overwhelming, 

but it never became violent or nihilist. Probably the best example was in 

November 1968, when Lewis B. Hershey, the head of Selective Service and 

possibly the single most unpopular man on American college campuses, 

spoke at Earlham. Invited by a Richmond teachers group that was using 

the dining hall, some in the group apparently hoped that Hershey’s presence 

would provoke an incident that would embarrass the college. Instead, 

as one local observer wrote, “Earlham students met the flaunting of 

Lewis B. Hershey . . . with such power and equanimity that we should all 

be proud.” While some students and faculty held a silent vigil and questions 

in a session with Hershey were pointed, they were civil. Even Hershey 

praised student behavior. Since that time, support for pacifism and 

peace activism has always been strong on campus. Any major antiwar 

rally in Washington will have an Earlham contingent present. Military recruiting 

does not take place on campus. Some students and a few faculty 

argue that only antiwar speakers should be welcomed. Earlham became 

the center of national attention in March 2005 when a pacifist student hit 

neoconservative pundit William Kristol, a strong supporter of the Iraq 

War, with a gooey “pie” to protest Kristol’s appearance on campus. 

Subsequent decades also affirmed Earlham’s commitment to the liberal 

arts. Vocational programs, such as nursing, home economics, and bookkeeping, 

disappeared from the curriculum. New courses were added, 

many of them like peace and global studies, reflecting the interest of a 

new generation of students in translating Quaker values into study and 

action. Another manifestation was the growing interest in off-campus 

study and international studies. By the 1980s, the college’s program in 

Japanese studies under Jackson Bailey had acquired an international reputation.


Figure 3.2. Earlham Students March in Washington, D.C., 1965. Courtesy of Earlham 

College Archives 

Perhaps the most visible changes were in student life, as Earlham followed 

trends at most other campuses in the 1960s. Dormitories became 

coeducational, dress codes disappeared, and mandatory convocation attendance, 

the last vestige of chapel, was abolished in 1969. Many old customs—the 

hazing of first-year students, the elaborate complex of homecoming 

rituals, and finally Big May Day—also disappeared. Athletics, 

especially football and basketball, became less central to student life. It 

was one of the ironies of Earlham’s history that the golden age of Earlham 

men’s basketball came between 1965 and 1975, with a series of winning 

seasons and national small-college rankings, at a time when many students 

were least inclined to be appreciative. Competitive sports were 

judged “irrelevant” in a world plagued by war, imperialism, and racism, 

and some student activists demanded that they be abolished and the 

funds be devoted to more socially useful causes. The Student Activities 

Board in 1970 actually cut off all funding for cheerleaders. 

Such changes brought tensions, especially with Indiana and Western 

yearly meetings, which continue to hold considerable power over the college 

by controlling most board appointments. Flash points have been varied, 

ranging from materials in the bookstore to perceptions of widespread 

drug and alcohol abuse to teachings in the Earlham School of Religion. 

Over the past twenty years, gay and lesbian issues have been central. 

Most Friends in both yearly meetings have held to traditional sexual


morality, while Earlham has tended to follow more liberal Friends in asserting 

and upholding the validity of same-sex relationships. In 1992, for 

example, such tensions led to an unsuccessful attempt by some members 

of Indiana Yearly Meeting to replace two trustees with Friends who were 

perceived as more sensitive to the concerns of the yearly meeting, and in 

1994 a student-sponsored gay and lesbian conference brought ferocious 

criticism. One result was the formation of a joint committee of the two 

yearly meetings to study their relationship with the college. Working with 

a committee from the college, it has made considerable progress in heightening 

mutual understanding. 

Earlham was born amid tensions—tensions between Hicksite and Orthodox 

Friends, tensions between Friends who were willing to try to adjust 

to a changing larger culture and Friends who wished to resist it, and 

tensions between those who thought that a Quaker college was possible 

and those who saw it as an unthinkable compromise of Quaker principles. 

Once established, Earlham faced other tensions: tensions between those 

who wished to create a student culture like that of other colleges and 

those who resisted it and tensions between those who wished to preserve 

a Quaker faith that was essentially evangelical and those who saw the future 

of Quakerism in melding it with modernist thought. Today, Earlham 

still faces tensions that grow out of all these older struggles, still trying to 

define what it means to be a Quaker college. 

NOTE ON SOURCES 

Earlham has been the subject of three published histories, all based on extensive 

research in the college archives. Opal Thornburg’s Earlham: The 

Story of the College, 1847–1962 (Richmond, Ind.: Earlham College Press, 

1963), is a traditional college history in many respects, centering on institutional 

development, personalities, and “brick and mortar.” My own 

Earlham College: A History, 1847–1997 (Bloomington: Indiana University 

Press, 1997), focuses on the evolution of the college’s understanding of itself 

as a Quaker institution. Wilmer A. Cooper tells of the development of 

the Earlham School of Religion in his The Earlham School of Religion Story: 

A Quaker Dream Come True, 1960–1985 (Richmond, Ind.: Earlham School of 

Religion, 1985).

4 

 

Swarthmore College 

Christopher Densmore 

THE ORIGINS OF SWARTHMORE COLLEGE 

Swarthmore College, chartered in 1864 and opened for instruction in 

1869, was founded by members of the Hicksite branch of the Religious 

Society of Friends from Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore yearly 

meetings. The concern for establishing a “Friends Boarding School” to 

supply qualified teachers for local Quaker schools began in the early 

1850s in Baltimore Yearly Meeting. In 1854, the Committee on Education 

reported to Baltimore Yearly Meeting its plan for a boarding school 

“where such of our youth of both sexes, as may need it and desire it, may 

receive a liberal education under the care of society; where Teachers can 

be Educated, and properly prepared to take charge of Schools in Friends’ 

neighborhoods; and where Orphan Children, and others whose circumstances 

require them to be sent from home to School, can receive a 

guarded education, and at a moderate expense.” The committee hoped to 

cooperate with Friends from New York and Philadelphia yearly meetings. 

It was a good start, but the concern languished until October 1860, when 

the proposal was reintroduced at a meeting held at the home of Martha 

and Nathan Tyson in Baltimore, Maryland. Early in 1861, an Address to 

Some Members of the Religious Society of Friends to their Fellow Members on 

the Subject of Education and on the Establishment of a Boarding School for 

Friends’ Children and for the Education of Teachers, written largely by Quaker 

educator Benjamin Hallowell, as well as articles in the Friends Intelligencer, 

publicized the need for the school. The school was to teach the liberal arts 

and natural sciences, be concerned with the moral development of the 

57

58 Christopher Densmore 

students, and be coeducational, and students would be expected to conform 

to Quaker standards of dress and behavior. It would, in Quaker 

terms, provide a “guarded education” where Quakers could be nurtured 

and trained in an atmosphere where their beliefs and practices were understood 

and would not have to be confronted or tempted by the 

“worldly” colleges of the day. Haverford College, under the control of Orthodox 

Friends, was not then considered an option by Hicksite Quakers. 

In October 1862, the Friends Educational Association was created to 

carry on the work of establishing the school. Its board of managers consisted 

of sixteen members of each sex. The equal involvement of men and 

women in the management of the school, an extension of Quaker meeting 

practices, was radical at the time, and after the college was chartered, the 

State of Pennsylvania had to pass special legislation to recognize the authority 

of women on the board of managers. The members of the board of 

managers had to be members of the Society of Friends, a requirement that 

was continued at Swarthmore College until 1908. Although the Friends 

Educational Association and its board of managers were drawn from Baltimore, 

Philadelphia, and New York yearly meetings and the donors to 

the endeavor were Friends, the Educational Association (and later 

Swarthmore College) was never directly under the control of a yearly 

meeting. 

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

The college, named after Swarthmoor Hall in England, the refuge and 

later home of Quaker founder George Fox and Margaret Fell Fox, was 

chartered on May 4, 1864. The college purchased land in Springfield 

Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, a rural situation west of 

Philadelphia, and in 1866 the cornerstone of the main college building, 

later renamed Parrish Hall after Swarthmore founder and first president 

Edward Parrish, was laid. It took an additional three years, until 1869, for 

Swarthmore to obtain sufficient funding to begin operations. At the inaugural 

ceremonies, two oaks were planted near the college hall in honor of 

James and Lucretia Mott, the noted Quaker abolitionists and women’s 

rights activists, whose lives were held up as a model to the students of the 

new school. 

In the beginning, Swarthmore’s preparative department was larger 

than the college. When Swarthmore opened for instruction in 1869 with 

199 students, only twenty-six were qualified for entrance in the freshman 

class of the college; the remainder took classes in the preparative department. 

A decade later, enrollment in the preparatory department and the 

college were roughly similar. The preparatory department was ended in

Swarthmore College 59 

Figure 4.1. Parrish Hall, Swarthmore College, ca. 1900 

1892, after the academic strengthening of Quaker and non-Quaker secondary 

schools assured Swarthmore an adequate population of students 

ready to attend college. 

The founders of Swarthmore and its early presidents (Edward Parrish, 

1869–1871, and Edward Magill, 1872–1884) were prepared to be flexible 

about the curriculum and practices of the new institution. The approach 

was pragmatic: no one was quite sure what Quaker higher education, at 

least in its Hicksite manifestation, should be. The reports of the board of 

managers and the college catalogs of the early years of the college represent 

changing attitudes toward the value of the sciences, mathematics, 

and languages and in modes of teaching and in electives. 

In one respect, Swarthmore was radical, at least among colleges in the 

East, and that was in coeducation. The board of managers was equally divided 

between men and women, women held professorships in the college, 

and men and women learned and ate together. The mingling of the 

sexes in the classroom did not extend to student social life. Interaction between 

male and female students was closely and carefully regulated well 

into the twentieth century. President Magill was particularly vocal in his 

support of female education. His daughter, Helen, was a member of the 

first graduating class of Swarthmore in 1873 and the first woman to earn 

a PhD in the United States. 

Swarthmore was clearly a Quaker institution, though even in the nineteenth 

century many students were not members of the Society of Friends.


Most non-Quaker students until the twentieth century were related to 

Friends or at the least were familiar with Quaker practices. If any were not, 

they would learn at Swarthmore. Students were required to attend meeting 

daily. A meetinghouse was built on campus in 1879, and Swarthmore 

Friends Meeting was established in 1894. Students were expected to attend 

Friends Meeting on First-Day (Sunday), and well into the twentieth century, 

Swarthmore College presidents and professors played a prominent 

role in the life of the meeting. 

The initial intention of the founders of Swarthmore to establish a school 

to prepare teachers for other Quaker schools was partially realized in the 

nineteenth century, but Swarthmore had a much greater impact on the Society 

of Friends. The pages of the Friends Intelligencer, the organ of the 

Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends, regularly carried news of 

Swarthmore College well into the twentieth century. Commencements 

and annual reports of the board of managers were Quaker news. Hicksite 

Friends took an interest in and commented on the successes and failures 

of the college. In addition to educating generations of Quakers, Swarthmore 

provided a home for influential Friends. Elizabeth Powell Bond, 

Figure 4.2. Swarthmore Students Walking to Swarthmore Friends Meetinghouse, ca. 

1900


dean of women, was a well-known Quaker writer. Jesse Herman Holmes 

represented a liberal and socially conscious brand of Quakerism. Swarthmore 

College presidents were welcome speakers at Quaker meetings and 

at Friends General Conference, and their writings, even on purely educational 

topics, could find a place in the Intelligencer. 

Friends Historical Library, originally the Anson Lapham Repository, 

was established in 1871, and the Jenkins professorship of Quaker history 

and research was established in 1924. The Swarthmore College Peace Collection 

began in the 1930s. Several prominent Quaker historians have 

been associated with the college, William I. Hull, Frederick Tolles, and J. 

William Frost among them. 

STUDENT LIFE AND ATHLETICS AT SWARTHMORE 

Student life at Swarthmore, aside from a heavy dose of in loco parentis to 

guide students against unseemly behavior and any unregulated social 

mixing of the sexes, was not unlike other colleges of the time. Students 

could join one of several literary societies, the first established in 1871; 

write for the college newspaper, The Phoenix, established in 1882; or, in the 

case of men, play intercollegiate football and participate in track and field. 

Despite the early Quaker aversion to music, by the end of the century 

Swarthmore students had organized an orchestra club, mandolin club, 

and glee club. Fraternities for men came in the 1880s and are still part of 

student life at Swarthmore, though the two remaining fraternities attract 

less than 10 percent of the male students. Sororities for female students 

came in 1891 but were voted out by the women students in 1933. A majority 

of the women in sororities supported the move to terminate the 

sorority system at Swarthmore. 

Football, a feature on the Swarthmore Campus since 1878, was controversial 

in the opening years of the twentieth century and not just at 

Swarthmore. Many felt that intercollegiate football was becoming too professional 

and too violent and not in keeping with educational purposes of 

higher education. In the midst of this controversy, Swarthmore gained national 

notoriety when a photograph of Robert (Tiny) Maxwell, bloodied in 

the Swarthmore–University of Pennsylvania football game of 1905, was 

reprinted in newspapers nationwide. It was not just Quakers who wondered 

whether intercollegiate football belonged on a college campus. The 

issue was brought to a head in 1907, when the will of Anna T. Jeanes left 

coal lands, reportedly worth from $1 million to $3 million, to Swarthmore 

College on the condition that it end football. The question of whether 

Swarthmore should accept the gift received national attention in the 

newspapers. Quakers, at least those writing to the Friends Intelligencer,


were in favor of accepting the gift and getting rid of intercollegiate football. 

The board of managers rejected the bequest, and President Joseph 

Swain explained the reasoning in a lengthy article, “Conditional Endowments,” 

in the Intelligencer. The specific issue of football was beside the 

point, and there was reason for rethinking its place on the college campus. 

Swain expressed openness to the idea of ending football as an experiment. 

What Swain and Swarthmore College were unwilling to do was to accept 

conditions that bound the college to a course of action for all time. The 

college had to have the independence and the flexibility to decide to 

change according to its own best thinking at the time. 

Swarthmore College deliberately stepped back from emphasis on intercollegiate 

competition. In reviewing his tenure as president in 1939, Frank 

Adylotte (president 1921–1940) summed up the changed attitude of the 

college, saying, “We have entered frankly upon a policy of playing games 

for fun.” The success of the new athletic idea was that 60 to 70 percent of 

both men and women students participated in some intercollegiate athletic 

contest rather than settling for “the inferior activity of watching 

games from a grandstand.” Intercollegiate football was eliminated by the 

action of the board of managers in 2000, a decision that was controversial 

among alumni and others. Those opposed to the board of managers’ decisions 

questioned whether the action was in keeping with Quaker principles 

of consensus and deliberation. A group opposed to the decision 

took as its name “Mind the Light.” 

SWARTHMORE’S CHANGING RELATIONSHIP 

WITH THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 

Until 1908, the board of managers of Swarthmore College was limited to 

members of the Religious Society of Friends. The requirement was 

dropped not from any sense of a changed mission of the college but for 

pragmatic, financial reasons. In order for the college faculty to participate 

in the Carnegie Foundation’s retirement system, Swarthmore was required 

to be nonsectarian. The board acquiesced, reporting in 1908 that 

“the denominational restriction referred to is not needed; that the college 

will be as absolutely under the management of Friends without the clause 

as with it.” At the same time, the board claimed that Swarthmore had 

been founded “as a protest against sectarianism.” Clearly, there were differing 

conceptions of what constituted a sectarian institution. For the 

board and the college, the fact that the college was not under the direct 

meeting control of the Society of Friends and that it was open to non- 

Quakers meant that it was nonsectarian.


Swarthmore College was the sole Hicksite Quaker institution of higher 

learning in North America. Other Quaker colleges, including Haverford, 

only a few miles away, were securely under Orthodox control. The divide 

between Hicksite and Orthodox Friends diminished over time. In 

Philadelphia and New York yearly meetings, the bodies most closely connected 

to Swarthmore and its students, there were signs of growing cooperation 

between the two branches in the late nineteenth century and a 

slow process of reunification of Hicksite and Orthodox in the first half of 

the twentieth. 

SWARTHMORE IN THE WORLD WARS 

Friends had a long-standing testimony against participating in the military, 

but that testimony had severely eroded by the entrance of the United 

States into World War I in 1917. Swarthmore students, apparently including 

many Quakers, requested military training opportunities on campus. 

What was a Quaker College to do? In May 1918, the board of managers 

rejected the student request for training, pointing to Friends’ historic testimonies 

and the positive need for men of technical and administrative capacity 

in the war and the peace to follow, but also wished “Godspeed to 

all in the path of their conscientious convictions.” This “Godspeed” was 

intended to include those whose path included military service, though 

that path would not be open at Swarthmore. The situation changed over 

the summer, and it appeared that male students would be faced with the 

alternative of being drafted or remaining in college under a military training 

program. Swarthmore College, after polling benefactors of the college 

and parents of students, who overwhelmingly asked for military training, 

contracted with the government to create a Student Army Training Corp 

(SATC) unit at Swarthmore. Swarthmore’s brief experience with a militarized 

campus ended in December 1918, as the end of the war ended the 

necessity for SATC. 

Swarthmore College policy during World War II was more deliberate. 

The United States was mobilizing its manpower resources, and able-bodied 

college-aged males would be in military service, in war industries, or, for 

Quaker and other conscientious objectors, in Civilian Public Service work. 

In his 1942 annual report, Swarthmore College President John Nason, 

himself a Quaker, wrote, “I feel bound to recommend a policy . . . which 

will enable us to do positive good rather than merely refrain from evil.” 

Swarthmore College’s contribution was to educate people for a world at 

peace. Swarthmore was to provide a quality education for trainees in the 

Navy’s V-12 program and for men preparing for alternative service in


Civilian Public Service. The V-12 program at Swarthmore included a 

contingent of Chinese naval officers. John Nason also chaired the National 

Japanese-American Student Relocation Council, which placed 

Japanese American students in colleges and universities rather than internment 

camps. Swarthmore College during World War II thus included 

on the same campus pacifist conscientious objectors, Chinese 

naval officers, and Japanese American students. The ready acceptance by 

the college and the board of managers of military training at Swarthmore 

was a break from the historic Quaker peace testimony. For midtwentieth-century 

Swarthmore, the goal of education, understood as being 

based on Quaker educational values, was to prepare intellectually 

aware and socially conscious students. The choices that such students 

made about the nature of their careers and service were a matter for their 

individual consciences. 

A TRADITION OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE 

Swarthmore College at the beginning of the twenty-first century is regarded 

as one of the top residential liberal arts colleges in the United 

States. The institution has come a long way from its opening in 1869, 

when it could find only six people prepared to enter the college course. 

When Swarthmore began its rise to academic excellence is a matter of 

some debate. It is true that just as all institutions of higher education claim 

distinctiveness, all presidents of colleges and universities claim to be 

striving for excellence. The desire to improve academics at Swarthmore 

and to improve the quality of students applying to the college is a theme 

running through the reports of the presidents and the board of managers 

from 1869 on. One aspect that may set Swarthmore apart from many colleges 

was the willingness of the administration to continually reexamine 

and redirect educational objectives. Aside from the desire to remain a 

small, residential and liberal arts college, everything else in the college 

curriculum seems open to reexamination in each generation. 

In the nineteenth century, the concern for improvement of the student 

body was linked to the concern for Friends’ secondary education. Friends’ 

secondary schools needed to prepare students who were able to take advantage 

of the college offerings at Swarthmore. The 1884–1885 Catalogue 

listed nine schools, all Friends’ schools, and all in Pennsylvania, 

Delaware, New York, and New Jersey, whose students would be admitted 

to the college without examination on a written certificate of the school 

principal. As the number of qualified secondary schools rose, including 

by the end of the century non-Quaker public high schools, the potential 

body of applicants rose. Swarthmore also attempted to increase its geo-


graphical base, marketing itself to Hicksite Friends throughout the United 

States and Canada. Slowly, the numbers of people who wanted to attend 

Swarthmore rose. Swarthmore College presidents of the late nineteenth 

and twentieth centuries did their best to make the college attractive to 

both the superior student and the best faculty by increasing the college 

endowment and its physical plant and providing scholarships for students 

and competitive salaries for the faculty. 

The annual reports produced during the administration of Joseph 

Swain (president 1902–1921) reflect the growing professionalism of American 

higher education in the first part of the twentieth century. Statistics 

on students provided a benchmark for college progress, and reports on 

faculty publications emphasized the desire for faculty who engaged in research. 

At the same time, Swarthmore emphasized that it did not intend 

to compete with large public and private research universities with their 

large class sizes. Smallness was a virtue not for a guarded education of 

young Quakers but for a close working relationship between professor 

and student. 

The college honors program was instituted at the beginning of the administration 

of Frank Aydelotte (1921–1940) and increased Swarthmore’s 

national reputation as a distinctive college. One longtime faculty member, 

writing in 1973, went so far as to call the honors program “the principal 

mechanism by which excellence has been achieved, and over the years 

sustained.” Swarthmore continued to think of itself as a Quaker school, 

but where the majority of the students of the nineteenth-century institution 

were drawn from Quakers or Quaker-related communities largely in 

southeastern Pennsylvania and almost exclusively from the mid-Atlantic, 

Swarthmore was, by the 1930s, a national college and saw institutions like 

Oberlin College in Ohio or Carleton College in Minnesota as its peers. The 

Quaker focus of old Swarthmore was not rejected but lessened in priorities. 

The “Quaker” heritage of the college was increasingly understood as 

a set of educational values that could prepare the superior student for 

multiple activities. As selectivity and enrollments grew and as Friends declined 

nationally as a proportion of the population, the numbers of actual 

members of the Society of Friends attending Swarthmore declined. 

SWARTHMORE AND RACIAL DIVERSITY 

In its origins, Swarthmore was a protected environment for Friends, a 

group with distinctive beliefs and practices that were not always welcome 

in the existing institutions of higher learning. Despite the antislavery credentials 

and specific concern of a number of Swarthmore’s founders and 

early presidents for African American education, no African Americans


attended the institution until 1943. The de facto racial segregation of 

Swarthmore seems paradoxical to modern sensibilities. 

The opening of Swarthmore to a racially diverse student body should 

be seen as part of a reexamination of racial attitudes among Americans 

generally and Quakers particularly in the 1920s and 1930s. The Race Relations 

Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the Friends Council on 

Education, and other Quaker organizations were actively questioning 

whether Friends’ racial attitudes were in keeping with Quaker testimonies. 

Swarthmore students also pushed the administration and board 

of managers by petitions and editorials in The Phoenix to open the college 

to African Americans. The board of mangers finally responded in 1943, issuing 

a statement that race, color, or creed did not limit admissions to 

Swarthmore, and the first two African American women students entered 

that year. Later, black students came as part of the V-12 program. 

The removal of paper barriers to admission in 1943 resulted in a small 

number of African American students. The issue of attempting to be more 

positive in admitting black students was raised in the 1940s and later. In 

1968 and 1969, colleges in general were grappling with questions of race, 

diversity, and the obligations of institutions of higher education to solve 

social problems. These issues, already under discussion among the administration, 

faculty, and students, reached a climax late in 1969 when 

members of the African American Students Society occupied the admissions 

office. The discussions of the 1960s and the crisis of 1969 resulted in 

a reexamination of the college’s role in supporting and fostering diversity 

among the students and faculty. In 1970, the Black Cultural Center was established 

and later the Women’s Center and Intercultural Center. Diversity, 

in 1869, meant establishing a college where the needs of Friends 

could be accommodated. In 1943, it meant eliminating former barriers so 

that all qualified students could attend Swarthmore. In 1969 and 1970, the 

college was called to actively cultivate diversity as a positive good, with 

an educational benefit to the college. As of the fall of 2005, students of 

color, either citizens or permanent residents of the United States, made up 

33 percent of the student body. This includes Asian American (15.3 percent), 

Latino/a (9.5 percent), African American (6.9 percent), Native 

American (0.7 percent), and multiracial (0.4 percent). 

SWARTHMORE’S EDUCATIONAL MISSION 

Contemporary Swarthmore College remains an intentionally small, residential, 

liberal arts college. The enrollment, as of the fall of 2005, was 1,479 

(711 men and 768 women) with 163 members of the faculty full-time. More 

than 90 percent (92.6 percent) of the students come from the United States


and its territories, with the remaining students coming from thirty-eight 

foreign countries. Members of the Society of Friends are a small minority 

among the student population, though the college gives special consideration 

to Friends and to children of alumni. The institution is committed to 

academic excellence. The Quaker origins are part of the traditions of the 

institution, and the deliberations of the college’s board of managers and 

the faculty reflect an understanding of Quaker procedure. The College Catalog 

makes note of Swarthmore’s religious tradition, though expressed as 

educational and social objectives: 

Swarthmore College was founded by members of the Religious Society of 

Friends (the Quakers). Although it has been nonsectarian since 1908, and although 

Friends now compose a small minority of the student body, the College 

still values highly many of the principles of that Society. Foremost 

among these principles is the individual’s responsibility for seeking and applying 

truth and for testing whatever truth one believes one has found. As a 

way of life, Quakerism emphasizes hard work, simple living, and a generous 

giving, as well as personal integrity, social justice, and the peaceful settlement 

of disputes. The College does not seek to impose on its students this 

Quaker view of life or any other specific set of convictions about the nature 

of things and the duties of human beings. It does, however, encourage ethical 

and religious concern about such matters and continuing examination of 

any view that may be held regarding them. 

A case statement, The Meaning of Swarthmore, prepared for the current 

(2001–2006) development campaign, emphasizes the twin themes of high 

intellectual achievement and social values. Personal growth, ethical consciousness, 

and social commitment are stressed. The document, focusing 

on the future rather than the past, makes no reference to the Society of 

Friends or to Quakerism apart from a reference to “the inner light in 

everyone” that refers to personal potential rather than divine guidance. 

Considered against the intentions of the founders to create a Quaker institution 

to serve the Society of Friends, modern Swarthmore might be 

judged to have become an almost entirely secular and non-Quaker institution. 

However, much of the language of this document would likely appeal 

to the liberal Quakers who organized and led the college for most of 

its history. 

One of the speakers at the inaugural celebration of Swarthmore College 

in 1869 was John D. Hicks of New York. His formulation of the goals of 

Swarthmore, though expressed in religious terms, is not so different from 

those stated in the College Catalog in 2005. Hicks said, 

We have no creed, no confession of faith, no formalism in worship. We propose, 

so far as is practicable, to influence the students in the general principles


of well-doing; that each individual is sovereign in his responsibility to the 

higher law of his creator, manifested in his own heart, from the dictates of 

which spring all the Christian virtues. . . . 

This claim is too broad for sectarianism. . . . We will endeavor to establish 

principles and leave the applications to individual minds, knowing well that 

in their application they must need assume a diversity of form. 

Swarthmore College began as a guarded education for Friends and for 

the benefit of Friends and the improvement of Quaker education generally. 

By the twentieth century, it was well on its way toward becoming a 

nonsectarian institution, but one with educational principles based on a 

secular vision, articulated by successive presidents and faculty, of a quality 

education growing out of Friends’ principles. Somewhere in the twentieth 

century, Swarthmore passed a point of transition where a Quaker 

college became a college founded by members of the Society of Friends. 

Nineteenth-century Swarthmore had an impact on and largely within the 

Society of Friends. The impact of twentieth- and now twenty-first-century 

Swarthmore is far broader. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Babbage, Homer D., Jr. Swarthmore College in the Nineteenth Century: A Quaker Experience 

in Education. PhD diss., Yale University, 1953. 

Clark, Burton R. The Distinctive College: Antioch, Reed and Swarthmore. Chicago: Aldine, 

1970. 

Walton, Richard J. An Adventure in Education: Swarthmore College under Frank Aydelotte. 

New York: Macmillan, 1941. 

———. Swarthmore College: An Informal History. Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 

1986.

5 

 

Cornell University 

Elaine D. Engst 

On April 27, 1865, New York State Governor Reuben E. Fenton, in his 

chambers in the old state capitol in Albany, signed the bill that constitutes 

the charter of Cornell University. The ideals of the founders, Ezra Cornell 

and Andrew Dickson White, were remarkable in their day and constituted 

a radical educational experiment. They have continued to inspire 

Cornell’s distinctive evolution. In the small rural community of Ithaca, New 

York, can be seen the realization of the first truly American university. 

The founders themselves were extraordinary men. Ezra Cornell, a 

birthright Quaker and self-educated and self-made man, was the son of a 

farmer and potter. His belief in education fits with William Penn’s ideal of 

“liberal” but “useful” learning. His interest in practical and scientific subjects 

corresponded with Friends’ emphasis on the natural sciences and 

mathematics. His commitment to coeducation reflected enlightened 

Quaker views on education for girls. While Cornell University has always 

been a nonsectarian university, it seems clear that Ezra Cornell’s Quaker 

background and upbringing had a profound influence on the founding 

and development of the university. 

EARLY YEARS 

Ezra Cornell was born on January 11, 1807, at Westchester Landing in the 

town and county of Westchester, New York, the eldest son of Elijah and 

Eunice Barnard Cornell. Elijah Cornell and Eunice Barnard were both 

birthright Quakers, descended from farmers, artisans, and seamen. While 

69

70 Elaine D. Engst 

their ancestors had come to Massachusetts as part of the seventeenthcentury 

Puritan migrations, at some point they had joined the Society of 

Friends. At the time of their marriage on July 4, 1805, in the Quaker meetinghouse 

in New Britain, New York, Elijah was thirty-four, Eunice seventeen. 

They were married for nearly fifty-two years and had eleven children, 

six sons and five daughters, all of whom lived to adulthood. 

Figure 5.1. Ezra Cornell, ca. 1845

Cornell University 71 

After the birth of their son, the Cornells joined other Quakers from Columbia 

and Dutchess counties to settle in De Ruyter, Madison County, 

New York. After trying farming in the pioneer community in De Ruyter, 

Elijah Cornell resumed his occupation as a potter. During his childhood, 

Ezra Cornell and his ten younger siblings lived in Westchester, Tarrytown, 

and Westfarms in Westchester County and in English Neighborhood, 

Bergen County, New Jersey, before the family finally settled again in De 

Ruyter, New York, where the family farmed and operated a pottery. From 

the time he was six years old, Ezra helped in whatever way he could in 

his father’s businesses. He began to work on the family farm in De Ruyter 

at twelve and at seventeen learned carpentry skills when his father 

erected a new building for the pottery. In 1825, Cornell constructed a twostory 

house for his parents and family. Opportunities for formal education 

were limited. The children attended school only occasionally, and, as an 

adolescent, Ezra could go to school for only three months each winter. 

While life was hard, there were also opportunities for recreation: hunting 

and fishing, quilting and apple bees, barn and house raisings, as well as 

time for Quaker meetings. 

Ezra Cornell left home in the spring of 1826 and found work in Syracuse 

as a journeyman carpenter. He helped build sawmills and worked as 

a contractor getting out timber for shipment by canal. From Syracuse, he 

moved to Homer, New York, where he worked in a shop that produced 

wool-carding machinery. In his free time, he studied mechanics handbooks. 

Throughout his life, he retained an interest in mechanical subjects 

that would eventually include millwork, the telegraph, railroads, coal oil, 

agricultural machinery, and photolithography. 

ARRIVAL IN ITHACA 

In the spring of 1828, Ezra Cornell arrived in Ithaca, the town he would 

make his home. Ithaca in the 1820s was a growing community. Water from 

the creeks powered lumber, flour, plaster, paper, cotton, and woolen mills. 

The state legislature had chartered the Ithaca and Owego Railroad, and 

there was talk of a canal link to Lake Ontario. Cornell first found work as 

a carpenter before being hired as a mechanic by Otis Eddy to work at his 

cotton mill on Cascadilla Creek. On Eddy’s recommendation, Jeremiah S. 

Beebe hired Cornell to repair and overhaul his plaster and flour mills on 

Fall Creek. During Cornell’s long association with Beebe, he designed and 

built a tunnel for a new millrace on Fall Creek, a stone dam on Fall Creek, 

and a new flour mill. By 1832, he was in charge of all Beebe’s concerns at 

Fall Creek. In the 1830s, Cornell also became active in local politics and 

speculated in real estate.


Ezra Cornell married Mary Ann Wood on March 19, 1831. Benjamin 

Wood, Mary Ann’s father, was a friend of Elijah Cornell, and the Woods 

ran a model farm in Dryden, New York. Ezra bargained with Beebe for a 

building lot and acreage for a garden and orchard at Fall Creek, where he 

built a one-and-a-half-story frame house. In this house, called The Nook, 

Ezra and Mary Ann began housekeeping in the summer of 1831. The 

Nook remained their home for more than twenty years, and nine children 

were born there. Of these, three sons died in infancy, and the eldest 

daughter died at fifteen. Three sons and two daughters were raised to 

adulthood. While both families were initially pleased with the marriage, 

there was a problem. The Woods were not Quakers. In a postscript to a letter 

from his father to Ezra, Cornell’s sister, Lucretia, wrote, “Father says 

he forgot to give thee an invitation to come out to quarterly meeting and 

shew thy wife and so I must tell thee.” 1 Cornell did not attend this or subsequent 

meetings, and early in 1832, he received written notice of his excommunication 

from the De Ruyter Society of Friends. The society informed 

Cornell that he could be reinstated if he expressed proper regret 

for his marriage. Ezra answered, 

I have always considered that choosing a companion for life was a very important 

affair and that my happyness or misery in this life depended on the 

choice and for that reason I never felt myself bound to be dictated in the affair 

by any higher authority than my own feelings. I have done as reason directed 

me. I am satisfied at any rate with my choice. But as they have severed 

the member from the body it must be lost to them. I hope it will not wither 

and decay; perhaps it may flourish and increase in strength after it recovers 

from the hurt. 2 

According to his son, Alonzo, the expulsion had a lasting influence: 

His only practical remedy was in direct, silent communion with his Heavenly 

Father, and this mode of worship was ever after the form which he observed. 

He held himself aloof from connection with other churches, as evidence 

of his faithfulness to the form of worship from which he felt that he 

had been unjustly and wrongfully excluded. He refused to recognize the 

right of any church organization to place themselves between him and the 

Divine Master, and attempt to exclude him from the right of worship. Beyond 

this he felt that the condition attached to his expulsion, of reinstatement 

upon his rendering an apology and expressing regret for his action was 

wholly inconsistent, to comply with which would be to dishonor himself. 

He, therefore, firmly and persistently refused. 3 

While he would never again rejoin the Society of Friends, Cornell’s religious 

sentiments continued to be influenced by his Quaker upbringing,


including his sentiments about antislavery, women’s rights, and temperance. 

Many years later, his brother-in-law, Otis Wood reminisced, 

The old gentleman, Ezra’s father, was a thoroughbred Quaker, a potter by 

trade. . . . The old people wore Quaker garb and spoke the “plain language.” 

Mr. Cornell married “out of meeting” and did not wear the garb. In conversation 

with the family he always used the plain language, but not in talking 

with those outside. He had many Quaker ways. He liked the Sunday afternoon 

“visitation.” . . . Mr. Cornell had a Quaker hospitality and generosity. 4 

His own religious feelings were expressed in a letter he wrote on October 

30, 1845, to Mary Ann and the children: 

Your going to church I approve as I do your doings in general, I think however 

the churches are not as usefull as they would be if they would teach 

their diciples . . . to practice upon the precepts laid down by Christ. Do unto 

others, as you would that should do unto you, Love your neighbour as your 

self, Let him who is free from sin cast the first stone, &c &c &c. 5 

While his views about formal religion remained nonconformist, he contributed 

financially to different churches and helped to found Ithaca’s 

Unitarian Church. 

The prosperity that Ithaca had experienced in the 1830s declined severely 

after 1837. Reckless speculation in commodities, securities, and 

land prompted the Panic of 1837 throughout the nation. Debtors defaulted 

on loans, businesses failed, banks closed, construction projects 

stopped, and employers laid off workers, including Ezra Cornell. When 

Colonel Beebe sold his milling concerns in 1839 and 1840, Ezra Cornell 

had to find other ways to make a living. He turned his attention to raising 

sheep and to agricultural experimentation. He tried setting up a grocery 

store and built houses on land he had bought earlier. In 1842, he purchased 

the patent for the states of Maine and Georgia for Barnaby & 

Mooers’ Double Mold-board Plow, a new plow designed for both sidehill 

and level-land use. He hoped to make a profit by selling the patent rights 

to machinists or merchants who would manufacture and sell the plows locally. 

In the spring of 1842, he left for Maine and, after several months of 

traveling and selling there, went on to Georgia. He did not meet with a 

great deal of success in this business, but he made the most of his travels 

as he passed, often on foot, throughout the counties of Maine and Georgia, 

displaying the plow at fairs, auctions, and plowing matches. He 

recorded keen observations of the land, the people, and the industries. 

While not an abolitionist, Ezra Cornell held very strong feelings about 

slavery. In his letters home during and after his trips through Virginia,


North Carolina, and Georgia, he frequently commented on slavery, the 

plantation system, and the general backwardness of the area. In describing 

the malignant effect of slavery, he wrote his wife and children on August 

18, 1844, “This ‘Sunny South’ this land of praise, is cursed with human 

slavery. The Soul of man is made an article of merchandize by his 

fellow man and can such a land be happy? No! Happyness does not dwell 

in any land that is scard by the blighting curse of Slavery.” 6 

THE TELEGRAPH 

While traveling in Maine, Ezra Cornell met F. O. J. Smith, editor of the 

Maine Farmer. When Congress appropriated $30,000 for the laying of a test 

telegraph cable between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Smith had 

taken a contract from the inventor Samuel F. B. Morse to lay the lead pipe 

that enclosed the telegraph wires. In the summer of 1843, on his second 

trip to Maine, Cornell visited Smith’s office and found him struggling to 

design a machine to place the cable underground. At Smith’s request, 

Cornell created a plow that would both dig the trench and put down the 

cable. Morse came to Maine for a demonstration of the machine, approved 

it, and hired Cornell to lay the cable for the test line. In October 

1843, Cornell went to Washington to begin work on laying the telegraph 

line. As the work proceeded, he became concerned that the insulation of 

the wires was defective. He notified Morse, who ordered the work 

stopped. Cornell then devised a machine for withdrawing the wires from 

the pipes and reinsulating them. 

Cornell spent that winter in Washington studying works on electricity 

and magnetism in the Patent Office library and the Library of Congress. 

His reading convinced him that underground wiring was impractical and 

that the wires should be strung on glass-insulated poles. Morse retained 

him as an assistant at the pay of $1,000 per year. In the spring of 1844, Cornell 

built the overhead line from Washington to Baltimore, and on May 24, 

Morse tapped out the historic message, “What hath God wrought.” Some 

of Cornell’s earliest telegraph communications relayed the results of the 

1844 Whig and Democratic conventions, which nominated Henry Clay 

and James K. Polk, respectively. 

Always confident of the great commercial future of the telegraph, Cornell 

enthusiastically exhibited it, enlisted capital, and built lines. Although 

doing so frequently left his family destitute, he took a large part 

of his pay in stocks and invested in the first telegraph company, which 

connected New York and Washington. He built lines from the Hudson to 

Philadelphia and from New York to Albany as well as lines in New York, 

Vermont, and Quebec and west to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago,


and Milwaukee. He was involved in the rapid construction of subsidiary 

lines, especially in the Midwest, where the telegraph preceded rather than 

followed the railroad. 

The early days of the telegraph industry were tumultuous. Many companies 

were formed, operated briefly, and died. Stronger companies managed 

to survive despite conflicts, deception, and numerous lawsuits. Service 

on the hastily built lines was frequently unreliable. In 1851, Hiram 

Sibley and others in Rochester organized the New York & Mississippi Valley 

Printing Telegraph Company, with the goal of creating one great system 

with unified and efficient operations. Meanwhile, Cornell had bought 

back one of his bankrupt companies and renamed it the New York & 

Western Union Telegraph Company. Originally fierce competitors, by 

1855 both groups were finally convinced that consolidation was their only 

alternative for progress. Cornell insisted that the merged company be 

named the Western Union Telegraph Company. Western Union rapidly 

expanded operations to most parts of the United States and Canada. 

While Cornell now took a less active role, he continued to have faith in the 

telegraph. He held on to his Western Union stock and for more than fifteen 

years was the company’s largest stockholder. 

TOWARD A NEW AGRICULTURE 

Ezra Cornell’s parents owned a ten-acre farm in De Ruyter. As an adult in 

Ithaca, he resumed his interest in farming. He began by raising sheep and 

hogs and wrote letters to the Ithaca Chronicle and the Ithaca Journal on agricultural 

subjects. His interest in livestock breeding led to his purchase of a 

pureblooded Shorthorn Durham bull. Early in 1840, he called for the revival 

of a county agricultural society. He was named marshal of the 1841 

Tompkins County Fair and one of the judges at the New York State Fair in 

Syracuse. Early in 1857, Cornell purchased the 300-acre De Witt farm between 

Fall Creek Gorge and Cascadilla Gorge. He named it Forest Park 

and decided to concentrate on raising purebred cattle. He also worked to 

improve the general level of agriculture in the county. In letters to the 

Ithaca Journal, he surveyed the county’s farm records from the 1855 state 

census and discussed agricultural improvement. In 1858, he became president 

of the Tompkins County Agricultural Society. He was instrumental 

in the formation of a Farmers’ Club and an agricultural reading room. Before 

long, he had moved into the front ranks of American Shorthorn breeders. 

In 1861, he was elected vice president of the New York State Agricultural 

Society and a year later became its president. As official delegate of 

the Agricultural Society, Cornell attended the International Exposition in 

London in 1862. On the trip, he wrote a series of detailed reports for the


Ithaca Journal and the State Agricultural Society. His interest in farm machinery 

led to his investment in the Albany Agricultural Works and the 

Steam Agricultural Company. 

A MAN OF POLITICS 

Ezra Cornell was deeply interested and involved in politics. As early as 

1837, he was chosen as a delegate to the Tompkins County convention of 

the Whig Party, and he backed William Henry Harrison and John Tyler in 

the 1840 election. He was not an abolitionist, writing, 

Slavery as it is garenteed in the states by the Constitution is bad enough and 

must be indured until it is removed by the fource of enlightened publick 

opinion acting upon the slaveholder, but for the sake of humanity let it not 

be extended. 7 

His political sense, however, led him to support Henry Clay in 1844, 

even though Clay was a slaveholder. He also bitterly opposed the war 

with Mexico in 1846. On November 20, 1846, he wrote to his son Alonzo, 

I am so thurorly disgusted with the whole of this miserable Mexican War that 

I have no patience even to consider the good qualities of some of our best and 

bravest men. This war I firmly believe was provoked by our rulers to gratify 

a lust for conquest and extend the curse of human slavery. I don’t believe that 

our constitution authorises the waging [of] a war of invasion and it only authorises 

a defensive war through the sanction of the peoples representatives 

in Congress. This is not such a war as any man in my opinion can justify by 

the sacred document the Constitution of the United States. 8 

By 1854, the anti-Catholic and anti-immigration movement had 

emerged as an important political force. Officially called the American 

Party, it was popularly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Cornell’s attitude 

toward the new party is expressed in a letter to the American Citizen 

of Ithaca, August 20, 1856, in which he writes, “As for the Pope, I am too 

old to be frightened by his shadow, and am quite sure his shadow or Substance 

will do less harm to the liberties of my country than will a party, 

who seek to acquire political power by exciting religious bigotry in the 

minds of their duped followers.” 9 Popular dissatisfaction with the 

Kansas-Nebraska Act also led to a realignment of political forces in the 

North and West. In 1854, a coalition of Whigs, Free-Soilers, and antislavery 

Democrats met to recommend the formation of a new party and suggested 

the name Republican. Cornell early identified himself with the 

new party, serving as a delegate to the first national Republican conven-


tion in February 1856. The new Republican Party met in Philadelphia later 

that year, nominating John C. Frémont on a platform that included the upholding 

of congressional authority to control slavery in the territories and 

the admission of Kansas as a free state. That year, the Democratic Party 

nominated James Buchanan, and the Know-Nothing Party nominated 

Millard Fillmore. Cornell supported Frémont and continued to be active 

in the Republican Party, campaigning for Lincoln in the 1860 election. He 

attended Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861. 

In 1861, Ezra Cornell was elected to the New York state legislature. Because 

of his experience with farm issues and his position as president of 

the State Agricultural Society, he was appointed chairman of the Committee 

on Agriculture. In the 1862 election, the Democrats made major 

gains in New York State, but Tompkins County remained firmly Republican. 

Cornell was reelected to the Assembly. In 1863, he was elected to the 

state Senate, where he served for four years, representing Broome, Tioga, 

and Tompkins counties, and in 1866 there was talk of nominating Cornell 

for governor of New York State. His son Alonzo B. Cornell served as governor 

from 1880 to 1883. 

THE CIVIL WAR 

Seven southern states had seceded from the Union by February 1, 1861, 

and formed the Confederate States of America. On April 12, shore batteries 

in Charleston Harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter. After thirty-four 

hours of bombardment, the fort surrendered. On April 15, President Lincoln 

declared that “insurrection” existed and called for volunteers. With 

this pronouncement of the American Civil War, Lincoln introduced all 

nineteenth-century Americans to the event that would inexorably alter 

their lives. In Ithaca as elsewhere, there were meetings, rallies, and enlistment 

drives. The Cornell family was caught up in the war effort. Ezra 

Cornell headed a citizens’ committee to organize aid for the dependents 

of volunteers and personally subscribed $1,000. Mary Ann Cornell was 

president of the Ladies’ Volunteer Aid Association. 

In mid-July, as a member of the Volunteer Aid Committee, Ezra traveled 

to Washington with medical supplies. Refused a pass through the lines to 

the main camp of the Union army, the group journeyed to Alexandria and 

joined a troop train to Fairfax Station. Setting out on foot for the front, they 

found themselves at the first battle of Bull Run, an adventure Ezra recounted 

in letters home and to the Ithaca Journal. He remained in Washington, 

visiting hospitals and traveling to the camp where the Tompkins 

County volunteers were stationed. While in Europe at the International 

Exposition in 1862, Cornell sponsored the passage of four volunteers who


were anxious to join the Union army. Despite their Quaker background, 

many of his relatives served in the army. His younger brother Daniel was 

wounded while with Grant’s army at Vicksburg, and his nephew Irving 

died of wounds received in battle. As a state legislator, Cornell received letters 

from constituents requesting his assistance in obtaining promotions 

for local officers. Throughout the war, he continued to visit the wounded 

and to aid soldiers and their families. 

“TO THE POOR AND TO POSTERITY” 

The creation of Western Union had made Ezra Cornell a wealthy man, 

with an annual income of $140,000. On July 20, 1864, he wrote in his old 

“Cyphering Book,” “My greatest care now is how to spend this large income 

to do the greatest good to those who are properly dependent [on 

me], to the poor and to posterity.” 10 Cornell had always been generous, 

particularly when the cause embraced his own values of education and 

honest hard work. His personal philanthropies were numerous, and he 

often made small grants to individuals. During the Civil War, he was active 

in local and state war-relief activities, heading the Ithaca relief committees. 

For Cornell, however, the greatest good was always education. In 1858, 

he had been instrumental in founding an agricultural reading room, personally 

purchasing books and subscribing to journals. He took an active 

part in creating the New York State Agricultural College at Ovid and 

served on its board of trustees. He had always had an enormous respect 

for books and for their influence, purchasing books for his family, even 

when he had very little money. In 1863, he built and endowed a public library 

for Ithaca and Tompkins County, with space for 30,000 volumes, 

rooms for the Farmers’ Club and Museum, and a place for the new Tompkins 

County Historical Society, which he also was helping to organize. He 

also supported Dr. Samantha Nivison’s proposed establishment of a water 

cure sanitarium and school for the education of women doctors and 

nurses. Both charters would come to the attention of the New York State 

Senate’s Committee on Literature (Education), a committee chaired by 

Andrew Dickson White of Syracuse. 

FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

In contrast to Ezra Cornell, Andrew Dickson White came from a prosperous 

and prominent family. From his parents he gained a love and respect 

for education. Educated at Hobart College, at Yale University, and in Eu-


rope, White had served as a professor of history at the University of 

Michigan. When his father died, he became a wealthy man, with an estate 

of about $300,000. He had long been interested in educational reform; in 

1862, he wrote to Syracuse abolitionist and philanthropist Gerrit Smith (a 

cousin of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) with a proposal for “a new university, 

worthy of our land and time.” Smith replied that his health was poor and 

that he could not think about such a massive project. 

By 1864, Cornell’s family, his personal philanthropies, and the public library 

required only a small part of his considerable fortune. Through discussions 

with White, the idea of a university grew in his mind. The opportunities 

also were there. In 1862, the U.S. Congress had passed the 

Morrill Land Grant College Act to provide public lands to fund higher education. 

While the Morrill Act provided a mandate and support for the 

teaching of agriculture and the mechanic arts, both Cornell and White 

considered it essential that these studies be integrated with a broad liberal 

education. When the legislature met in 1865, White introduced a bill in the 

Senate “to establish the Cornell University and to appropriate to it the income 

of the sale of public lands granted to this State.” After much political 

maneuvering, the bill was passed in the Assembly on April 21 and in 

the Senate on April 22 and was signed by Governor Reuben E. Fenton on 

April 27. The first meeting of the board of trustees was held on April 28. 

Cornell endowed the university through an outright gift of $500,000, to 

which would be added the sum realized by Cornell’s purchase of the 

Morrill land scrip from the state. White was named a member of the board 

of trustees and appointed to draft bylaws. His Report of the Committee on 

Organization was presented to the board on October 21, 1866. The trustees 

applauded the plan and unanimously elected Andrew Dickson White as 

the first president of the new university. On October 7, 1868, Inauguration 

Day, 412 students, the largest entering class admitted to any American 

college up to that time, came to Ithaca. 

The founding of Cornell University brought together all of the themes 

that were important in Ezra Cornell’s life: his deep and abiding concern 

for education, his interest in agriculture, his philanthropic impulse, and 

his political sense. Although there were numerous unique circumstances 

surrounding the university’s creation, there are four characteristics that 

particularly distinguish Cornell. The first is the integration of the study of 

the mechanical arts and the liberal arts, treating both on an equal basis. 

The second is Cornell’s nonsectarian nature, with no denominational affiliation. 

The third is Cornell’s commitment to equal education for both 

men and women. The fourth is the university’s goal of educating students 

of all races. 

From its inception, the Cornell curriculum was unique in its diversity, 

embodying the unconventional thinking of its founders. The early course


Figure 5.2. The Cornell Campus Under Construction, ca. 1869 

offerings for Cornell students ranged from modern history and political 

science to applied mechanics and horticulture to Greek and Latin. That 

modern languages and literature and theoretical and applied sciences 

were taught side by side with classical studies was innovative in terms of 

both educational philosophy and practice. Cornell’s interest in practical 

education reflected his Quaker upbringing as well as his own interests in 

technological and scientific innovation. His ideas on education, while 

blurring the distinctions between pure and applied science, were always 

clear. In 1846, he wrote his son Alonzo, “You had better pay very close attention 

to Mathematicks, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Civil engineering 

&c &c, with that you want to learn thurorly the English language, 

History, Composition, Writing, Geography, Phylosophy, Chemistry &c 

&c.” 11 Cornell was closely involved in all aspects of the new university. He 

superintended construction and purchased equipment, books, and collections. 

White was largely responsible for recruiting faculty to come to the 

new institution and particularly for the idea of nonresident professors 

who could enhance the educational atmosphere. He traveled in Europe to 

purchase collections and to learn about the newest innovations in technical 

education. As president, he was instrumental in the development of 

the university’s library and of its other collections by his own purchases 

and through encouraging the gifts of others. White was responsible for 

other educational developments. He suggested the establishment of mechanical 

laboratories and workshops for the Department of Mechanical 

Engineering and bought the first piece of equipment, a power lathe. He 

promoted the first department of electrical engineering in the United 

States; taught and encouraged historical studies, appointing the first professor 

of American history; founded a department of political science “for


practical training”; and developed the first four-year architecture program 

in an American university. 

A NONSECTARIAN UNIVERSITY 

The breadth of instruction envisioned at Cornell relates closely to its nonsectarian 

tradition. Both Cornell and White opposed any sectarian control 

since they believed that religious orthodoxy frequently limited the scope 

of instruction in universities. White had from his youth been opposed to 

sectarian orthodoxy. While he grew up in an Episcopalian family and was 

strongly influenced by his parents’ ideas, even as a child he simply could 

not accept his minister’s statement that infants who died before they were 

baptized went to hell or that his grandmother was doomed to damnation 

because she joined the “wrong” denomination. As a result, he refused 

confirmation in spite of his parents’ pleas. This instinctive disapproval of 

religious dogmatism was reinforced by his educational experience. Although 

he wanted to attend Yale University, his father insisted that he attend 

Geneva College. After a thoroughly disappointing first year, White 

arranged on his own to transfer to Yale. Although White enjoyed his time 

at Yale, Congregationalists dominated the school. White’s experience convinced 

him that education could not be conducted freely in a religiously 

affiliated institution. The “truly great University” that White proposed to 

Gerrit Smith in his 1862 letter would “afford an asylum for Science— 

where truth shall be sought for truth’s sake—where it shall not be the 

main purpose of the Faculty to stretch or cut Science exactly to fit ‘Revealed 

Religion.’” 12 

White was impressed to learn of Cornell’s commitment to a nonsectarian 

ideal, initially in the charter for the new public library. In his Autobiography, 

he later reminisced, 

On reading this bill I was struck, not merely by his gift of one hundred thousand 

dollars to his townsmen, but even more by a certain breadth and largeness 

in his way of making it. The most striking sign of this was his mode of 

forming a board of trustees; for, instead of the usual efforts to tie up the organization 

forever in some sect, party, or clique, he had named the best men 

of his town—his political opponents as well as his friends; and had added to 

them the pastors of all the principal churches, Catholic and Protestant. This 

breadth of mind, even more than his munificence, drew him to me. 13 

The charter of Cornell University explicitly stated that “persons of 

every religious denomination or of no religious denomination shall be 

equally eligible to all offices and appointments.” The university’s nonsectarian 

stance was controversial in 1868. The governor of New York State


had been scheduled to speak but feared the political consequences of attending. 

White scribbled a note on his copy of the program for the inauguration 

exercises: “But Gov. Fenton was afraid of Methodists & Baptists 

& other sectarian enemies of the University & levanted the night before 

leaving the duty to Lieut. Gov. Woodford who discharged the duties admirably.” 

14 In the letter he placed in the cornerstone of Sage Hall (the university’s 

first women’s residence), Ezra Cornell wrote on May 15, 1873, 

To the Coming man and woman 

On the occasion of laying the corner stone of the Sage College for women 

of Cornell University, I desire to say that the principal danger, and I say almost 

the only danger I see in the future to be encountered by the friends of 

education, and by all lovers of true liberty is that which may arise from sectarian 

strife. 

From these halls, sectarianism must be forever excluded, all students must 

be left free to worship God, as their conscience shall dictate, and all persons 

of any creed or all creeds must find free and easy access, and a hearty and 

equal welcome, to the educational facilities possessed by the Cornell University. 

Coeducation of the sexes and entire freedom from sectarian or political 

preferences is the only proper and safe way for providing an education that 

shall meet the wants of the future and carry out the founders idea of an Institution 

where “any person can find instruction in any study.” I herewith 

commit this great trust to your care. 15 

“REGARDLESS OF SEX OR COLOR” 

As this letter also indicates, the inclusion of both male and female students 

was also basic to the University from the first. Ezra Cornell’s support 

of education always meant educational opportunities for all. His sentiments 

are most poignantly expressed in his letter of February 17, 1867, 

to his four-year-old granddaughter, Eunice. He wrote, 

I shall be very glad when I get through with the business here so I can go 

home and see you and your little brothers, and have you and them go with 

me up on the hill to see how the workmen get along with the building of the 

Cornell University where I hope you and your brothers and your cousins 

and a great many more children will go to school when they get large enough 

and will learn a great many things that will be useful to them and make them 

wise and good women and men. I want to have girls educated in the university 

as well as boys, so that they may have the same opportunity to be 

come wise and useful to society that the boys have. I want you to keep this 

letter until you grow up to be a woman and want to go to a good school 

where you can have a good opportunity to learn, so you can show it to the


President and Faculty of the University to let them know that it is the wish 

of your grand Pa, that girls as well as boys should be educated at the Cornell 

University. 16 

Cornell’s interest in education for women may also be traced to his 

Quaker heritage. As Thomas D. Hamm reminds us, as early as the seventeenth 

century, Friends asserted a scriptural justification for the calling of 

women as well as men to preach. Quakers believed in the value of education 

regardless of gender, and many early Quaker schools were coeducational. 

Cornell’s wife Mary Ann was also an influence. For many years, 

while he traveled widely, attempting to develop his telegraph companies, 

she remained at home, taking care of their nine children on income from 

a small farm, some cows, pigs, and sheep, and rent from a few tenants. 

Cornell knew firsthand the plight of a woman with children dependent 

on others for economic support. Cornell was also aware that the new technology 

could provide new opportunities for women and hired them as 

telegraph operators. In the New York State Assembly, he supported the 

bill for the chartering of Vassar College, and two of his daughters attended 

Vassar. 

Andrew Dickson White’s mother had attended Cortland Academy, one 

of the most prominent schools in the region. While White himself did not 

attend Cortland Academy, he credited it with influencing his education in 

two ways: “it gave my mother the best of her education and it gave to me 

a respect for scholarship.” 17 When White was seven, his father became 

president of a bank, and the family moved to Syracuse. Syracuse during 

that period was a highly political city, and White was able to attend frequent 

public debates between the various abolitionist groups. Many abolitionists 

also supported women’s rights. In 1845, White may have heard 

Samuel Joseph May, the Unitarian minister and reformer, preach sermons, 

such as “The Rights and Conditions of Women” (published in both the 

United States and England), which demanded equal education for 

women. May became a mentor and close friend, and, in September 1857, 

he wrote to the twenty-five-year-old White exhorting him to devote himself 

to the cause of coeducation: 

But I would have both sexes educated equally well-educated together. . . . I 

pray you, turn your attention to this great subject. I am sure that contempt 

for women—the denial to them of a full participation with our sex of the advantages 

of education, and crippling their powers of self support—is the 

source of some of the direst evils that debase and afflict mankind. 18 

In his 1862 letter to Gerrit Smith, White first required “a truly great University,” 

“to secure a place where the most highly prized instruction may 

be afforded to all regardless of sex or color.” And he continued, “To admit


women and colored persons into a petty college would do good to the individuals 

concerned; but to admit them to a great University would be a 

blessing to the whole colored race and the whole female sex,—for the 

weaker colleges would be finally compelled to adopt the system.” 19 Cornell 

University’s charter itself is explicitly inclusive in its choice of words, 

repeatedly using the term “persons” rather than gender-specific references. 

During these years, there was still considerable debate about the merits 

of coeducation as opposed to single-sex colleges. Catharine Beecher wrote 

a series of letters to Andrew Dickson White opposing coeducation and recommending 

the creation of an adjacent institution designed for the particular 

needs of women. Coeducation, unless properly managed, she wrote, 

would be like “bringing gunpowder and burning coals into close vicinity.” 

20 On the other hand, Maria Mitchell, the famous astronomer and professor 

at Vassar, wrote Cornell in March 1868, “I consider Vassar the best institution 

in the world of the kind; it is not of the right kind.” 21 She then 

urged Cornell to admit women students. The New York State Teachers’ Association 

also submitted a memorial praying for coeducation at Cornell. 

While women from Ithaca took advantage of lectures and classes at the 

new university, difficulties remained. In March 1869, Susan B. Anthony 

came to Ithaca and gave a speech in Library Hall, declaring that the day 

Cornell University would admit women on the same basis as men would 

be celebrated by posterity as sacredly as the Fourth of July. The first 

woman student was said to have been Jennie Spencer of Cortland, who 

won a state scholarship in 1870 but remained for only a week after passing 

her entrance exams with distinction. 

In the fall of 1871, two young women, Emma Sheffield Eastman and Sophie 

Phillipa Fleming, attended Cornell classes and worked in the laboratories 

with the understanding that their work be counted toward a degree. 

They did not come as beginning freshmen, and in 1873, Emma 

Eastman, who had also studied at Vassar, became the first woman to graduate 

from Cornell. Under the strong leadership of President White, 

women were able to take advantage of all the educational opportunities 

at Cornell. Like men, they were admitted on the basis of their abilities and 

performance on the entrance examination. They competed equally for the 

state scholarships offered by Cornell. One of Cornell’s major benefactors, 

Henry W. Sage, continued his support of women’s education by providing 

funds for the building of a women’s residence and three additional 

scholarships to be awarded specifically to women based on competition 

in the entrance examinations. All students were assigned to a class level 

based on their educational qualifications. Women attended all classes 

along with men, taking full advantage of Cornell’s elective system and 

freedom of choice in selecting a curriculum.


Cornell University was also notable for its support of racial and ethnic 

diversity. Ezra Cornell’s own views were dramatically influenced by his 

travels in the South in the 1840s. In describing the malignant effect of slavery, 

he wrote his wife and children, “I don’t know as it can be different 

where people are bred as stock and sold in the market as cattle. It is one 

of the evils of the cursed institution that hangs like a plague spot over a 

portion of America.” 22 From his youth, Andrew Dickson White was, like 

his parents, a fervent abolitionist. He was deeply influenced by prominent 

abolitionists of the period, including Gerrit Smith, William Lloyd Garrison, 

Frederick Douglass, and Samuel Joseph May. At Yale University, 

when White served as editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, the editorial 

board found it necessary to forbid him from using the journal as a forum 

for abolitionist thought. After graduation, his first historical writings focused 

on the pernicious effect of slavery on European societies. White’s 

interest in modern history was always stimulated by his belief that scholars 

should use their knowledge to influence contemporary politics. 

After a “grand tour” and study in Europe, White sought a position as a 

professor of history. He recounts that he “received two calls—one to a 

Southern university, which I could not accept on account of my anti-slavery 

opinions; the other to the University of Michigan.” 23 As a popular lecturer 

in Ann Arbor, White wrote that his “main wish was to set people thinking 

on various subjects, and especially regarding slavery.” 24 He also invited 

noted abolitionists, like Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, to give 

lectures at the university. When he returned to Syracuse, White was 

elected to the New York State Senate, where he became chairman of the 

Education Committee. At this time, in Troy, New York, a young black 

woman had petitioned to attend a white high school. When she was rejected, 

her father sued in state court and lost. While he was planning an 

appeal, an interracial group of Troy citizens decided to approach the state 

legislature. In February 1864, the Troy group found a local state senator 

who was willing to introduce such a bill for them. The Senate referred the 

bill to White’s Education Committee, which held hearings on the bill. 

Representatives of the Troy Board of Education spoke against admitting 

blacks to their high school, but other Troy whites spoke in favor. The Education 

Committee twice reported in favor of the bill, but the Republican 

legislature would not enact it into law. White continued his efforts toward 

opening all the public schools in the state to blacks. When drafting a revised 

state education law, he tried to write into it a provision prohibiting 

separate public schools for blacks. He requested the opinion of the Reverend 

Samuel Joseph May, who, as a member of the Syracuse school 

board, had been a major factor in preventing Syracuse from establishing 

a separate black public school. May wrote back on March 11, 1864, that the 

existence of separate schools for blacks was a “perpetual imputation of . . .


inferiority.” In most of New England, blacks had been admitted to schools 

with whites, May wrote, “and everywhere it has led to good results.” In 

New York State, too, there had been favorable results where it had been 

tried. In New York Central College, of which he had been a trustee, blacks 

“were good scholars.” And in Syracuse, he said, “for more than fifteen 

years, we have had no separate schools for colored. . . . They are to be seen 

in all our schools.” 25 

White’s attempt to abolish segregated schools in New York State by 

state law failed, but with his help, the legislature wrote into the education 

law for the first time a section that provided that the black schools in any 

district were to be “supported in the same manner and to the same extent 

as the school or schools supported therein for white children” and that 

districts must provide to the black schools “facilities for instruction equal 

to those furnished to the white schools.” 

While White’s efforts were unsuccessful, he continued in the struggle, 

believing that quality education was essential to building a democratic society. 

Both Cornell and White hoped that Cornell University could play a 

leading role in the effort. There is evidence that others also saw the possibilities. 

In 1869, Malvina Higgins wrote to Ezra Cornell from Maryville, 

East Tennessee, 

Mr. Cornell will permit one who has been teacher among the Freedmen in 

different states, to thus tax his valuable time with a note of thanks that he 

does not exclude colored persons from the benefits of his University. Seeing 

the universal horror with which such a suggestion is received in our schools 

at the south, and yet seeing that “Cornell” has become a subject of interest 

among the intelligent of these places far beyond my expectations, even, we 

can but regard this step in your institution as greater than a political victory—and 

an important aid in reconstruction, notwithstanding the fact that 

a few northern colleges have thus done. That such an institution as yours has 

taken this step in recognition of the brotherhood of man seems to be of special 

consequence just now. . . . It is with pleasure, that on returning to East 

Tennessee, where this Maryville College has struggled so hard, I am able to 

say that the beautiful University which graces my home has taken this step. 26 

In 1874, in response to a letter inquiring as to whether the university 

had any black students, White wrote, 

In answer to your letter . . . , I would say that we have no colored students at 

the University at present but shall be very glad to receive any who are prepared 

to enter. Although there is no certainty of the entrance of any such students 

here during the present year, they may come and if even one offered 

himself and passed the examinations, we should receive him even if all our 

five hundred white students were to ask for dismissal on that account. 2


Cornell also admitted international students from almost the very beginning. 

Ezra Cornell’s 1870 diary includes a list of “where students are 

from.” In 1870, there were students from twenty-eight states, Washington, 

D.C., and eleven foreign countries, including a student from Japan. 

There were black students during the 1870s from Cuba and the 

Caribbean. Three African American students, Charles Chauveau Cook, 

Jane Eleanor Datcher, and George Washington Fields, graduated in 1890. 

Today, minority students make up over 25 percent of the undergraduate 

population. 

OPENING THE UNIVERSITY 

In his address at the opening of the university on October 7, 1868, White 

reiterated his fundamental ideas for the new university: the union of liberal 

and practical education; equality in prestige among the courses of 

study; variety of courses and freedom of choice among them; the magnification 

of scientific study; the need for full cultural development of the 

individual; student self-government; continued renewal of the board of 

trustees 28 and election of alumni trustees; a close relationship between the 

university and the state school system, with state revenues provided for 

higher education; nonsectarianism; and a refusal to make any distinctions 

by race or sex. Cornell reinforced these ideas in his inaugural address: 

I hope that we have laid the foundation of an institution which shall combine 

practical with liberal education, which shall fit the youth of our country for 

the professions, the farms, the mines, the manufactories, for the investigations 

of science, and for mastering all the practical questions of life with success 

and honor. . . . I trust we have laid the foundation of a university—“an 

institution where any person can find instruction in any study.” 29 

During the debates in the state legislature, Cornell’s motives in founding 

the university were attacked. He was accused of seeking “to erect a 

monument to himself” and other charges. He responded by submitting a 

statement “made while the CU bill or charter was pending before the 

committee of the Assembly 1865” describing his background: 

My parents were quakers, and I was brought up in that faith and have only 

deviated from the direct line by marrying a lady who was not a member of 

the society, and by falling into the popular form of dress and speech. My 

grand parents and great grand parents on the side of both father and mother 

were of the same religious denomination. I am a mechanic and farmer and 

my wealth is the legitimate fruit of those pursuits. . . . My wealth has arisen 

from carefully investing my surplus earnings in a business which has grown


with the growth of the country (the Telegraph). . . . My father was a mechanic 

and depended on his trade to support his family—his brothers were all mechanics 

or farmers, as were my mothers brothers. My father’s father was a 

farmer, my mothers father was a mechanic. My brother and sisters husbands, 

are all either farmers or mechanics. . . . 

I have no relation of any degree within my knowledge who is or has been 

a lawyer, physician, Minister of the Gospel, merchant, politician, office 

holder, gentleman loafer or common idler—None who have been drunkards 

or recipients of charity. All have procured an honest and compleat support 

for their families by productive labor, none but myself have acquired anything 

like a fortune, and mine is placed at the disposal of the industrial classes. I 

cannot conceive it to be possible that any man can be more thoroughly identified 

with the industrial, laboring, and productive classes, than I am, and my 

ruling desire is to dispose of so much of my property as is not required for 

the reasonable wants of my family, in a manner that shall do the greatest 

good to the greatest number of the industrial classes of my native state, and 

at the same time to do the greatest good to the state itself, by elevating the 

character and standard of knowledge of the industrial and productive 

classes. 30 

While Ezra Cornell left the Society of Friends as a young man, his 

Quaker upbringing had a lasting effect on his personal philosophy. His 

personal characteristics, frankness, industry, perseverance, and patience 

combined with a practical intelligence to make him a radical and original 

thinker. The new university that Cornell and White founded would reflect 

these ideals, combining liberal and practical education with equal opportunities 

for all regardless of sex, color, politics, or religion. 

NOTES 

1. Lucretia Cornell to Ezra Cornell, May 19, 1831, Ezra Cornell Papers, #1/1/1, 

Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 

2. Ezra Cornell to Nehemiah Merritt, February 24, 1832, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

3. Alonzo B. Cornell, “True and Firm”: Biography of Ezra Cornell, Founder of the 

Cornell University: A Filial Tribute. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1884, 276. 

4. “Reflections of Ezra Cornell by Otis E. Wood,” quoted in Carl L. Becker, Cornell 

University: Founders and the Founding (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 

1964), Document 14, 180–87. 

5. Ezra Cornell to Mary Ann Cornell, October 30, 1845, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

6. Ezra Cornell to Mary Ann Cornell, August 18, 1844, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

7. Ezra Cornell to Mary Ann Cornell, August 18, 1844, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

8. Ezra Cornell to Alonzo Cornell, November 20, 1846, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

9. Ezra Cornell to the American Citizen, August 20, 1856, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

10. Ezra Cornell Cyphering Book, 1823–1864, Ezra Cornell Papers.


11. Ezra Cornell to Alonzo Cornell, December 6, 1846, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

12. Andrew Dickson White to Gerrit Smith, September 1, 1862, original in Gerrit 

Smith Papers, Syracuse University, copy in Andrew Dickson White Papers, #1/2/2, 


13. Andrew Dickson White, Autobiography Vol. 1 (New York: Century Company, 

1905), 294–95. 

14. Inauguration Program, October 7, 1868, Andrew Dickson White Papers. 

15. Ezra Cornell, May 15, 1873, Sage Hall Cornerstone Collection, #1/1/3251, 


16. Ezra Cornell to Eunice Cornell, February 17, 1867, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

17. White. Autobiography, 6. 

18. Samuel J. May to Andrew Dickson White, September 1857, Andrew Dickson 

White Papers. 

19. Andrew Dickson White to Gerrit Smith, September 1, 1862, original in Gerrit 

Smith Papers, Syracuse University, copy in Andrew Dickson White Papers. 

20. Catharine Beecher to Andrew Dickson White, March 28, 1872, Andrew 

Dickson White Papers. 

21. Maria Mitchell to Ezra Cornell, March 10, 1868, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

22. Ezra Cornell to Mary Ann Cornell, April 18, 1843, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

23. White, Autobiography, 257. 

24. White, Autobiography, 269. 

25. Samuel J. May to Andrew Dickson White, March 11, 1864, Andrew Dickson 

White Papers. 

26. Malvina Higgins to Ezra Cornell, October 19, 1869, Ezra Cornell Papers. 

27. Andrew Dickson White to C. H. McCormick, September 5, 1874, “copy of 

letter sent,” Andrew Dickson White Papers. 

28. According to the Charter, “at no time shall a majority of the board be of any 

one religious sect, or of no religious sect.” None of Cornell University’s first 

trustees were Quakers. 

29. The Cornell University Register, 1869–1870 (Ithaca, N.Y.: University Press, 

1869), 16–17. 

30. “Ezra Cornell’s Defense against the Charge of Being the Founder of an 

‘Aristocratic’ University, 1856,” quoted in Becker, Cornell University, Document 11, 

168–70. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Primary Sources: Manuscripts 

Andrew Dickson White Papers, #1/2/2. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, 

Cornell University Library. 

Ezra Cornell Papers, #1/1/1. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell 

University Library. 

Sage Hall Cornerstone Collection, #1/1/3251. Division of Rare and Manuscript 

Collections, Cornell University Library.


Primary Sources: Published Sources 

Cornell University. Account of the Proceedings at the Inauguration, October 7, 1868. 

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1869. 

Cornell University. The Cornell University Register, 1870–1871. Ithaca, N.Y. University 

Press, 1870. 

Ogden, Robert Morris, ed. The Diaries of Andrew Dickson White. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell 

University Library, 1959. 

White, Andrew Dickson. Autobiography. New York: Century Company, 1905. 

Secondary Sources 

Altschuler, Glenn C. Andrew Dickson White: Educator, Historian, Diplomat. Ithaca, 

N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979. 

Becker, Carl. Cornell University: Founders and the Founding. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell 

University Press, 1964. 

Bishop, Morris. A History of Cornell. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962. 

Cornell, Alonzo B. “True and Firm”: Biography of Ezra Cornell, Founder of the Cornell 

University: A Filial Tribute. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1884. 

Dorf, Philip. The Builder: A Biography of Ezra Cornell. Ithaca, N.Y.: DeWitt Historical 

Society of Tompkins County, Inc., 1952. 

Hewitt, Waterman T. Cornell University: A History. New York: University Publishing 

Society, 1905. 

Kammen, Carol. Cornell: Glorious to View. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Library, 

2003. 

Parsons, Kermit Carlyle. The Cornell Campus: A History of Its Planning and Development. 

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968. 

Online Sources 

“I Would Found an Institution”: The Ezra Cornell Bicentennial. http://rmc.library 

.cornell.edu/Ezra/

6 

 

Wilmington College 

Larry Gara 

eace, social justice, and nonviolence are at the very heart of our 

“Pmission,” said Wilmington College President Daniel DiBiasio, 

speaking in 1998 to participants in the annual Westheimer Peace symposium. 

Although in the past, Wilmington’s football teams were called 

“Fighting Quakers,” a nonviolent philosophy that DiBiasio stated has influenced 

the college for decades. Specifically, Wilmington College has advanced 

the goal of preparing “practical idealists,” a phrase that Dean and 

later Provost Sterling Olmsted borrowed from a student. There were, of 

course, many students over the years whose college experiences were 

only minimally influenced by Quaker values or faculty idealism, but such 

values nevertheless remain an integral part of Wilmington College. 

In its early years, Wilmington College was traditional, emphasizing 

personal morality as understood and practiced by Quakers and most 

mainstream Protestants. Yet even from the start, there was some attention 

to integrating personal morality and outward service in pursuit of a liberal 

arts education. In 1872, John Henry Douglas, one of the college’s 

founders, predicted that the school would become “a great means of advancing 

the cause of education in our land and promoting the cause of 

morality and Christianity.” Three years later, Wilmington’s second president, 

Benjamin Trueblood, told the first graduating class, “The design of 

education is character building.” But, he added, “Knowledge is for use 

and not merely for display. It is to feed and strengthen your power of doing 

good.” 

Wilmington College began not as a Quaker institution but as a project 

of three brothers, Hugh, James and Thomas Garvin, who hoped to create 

91

92 Larry Gara 

Franklin College in Athens County. When they learned that Ohio University 

was already serving that area, they decided to establish their college in 

Wilmington, where they purchased the Clinton County Fairgrounds. On 

July 4, 1866, the Garvins began construction of Founders Hall and offered 

free tuition to disabled Civil War veterans and “ladies of good moral character 

without sufficient means.” Such generosity may have contributed to 

the institution’s downfall because the Garvins were unable to pay the brick 

masons for their work on the uncompleted Founders Hall. The masons 

went to court, and Franklin College went on the auction block. 

At the same time, several Wilmington area Quakers were hoping to establish 

a college. In 1870, representatives of three quarterly meetings of 

the Religious Society of Friends bought the Garvins’ college at public auction 

for $11,334. After completion of the first building, renamed College 

Hall, Wilmington College became a reality. After major renovations in 

1970, College Hall remains in use today. The Quaker founders, affiliated 

with Indiana Yearly Meeting, soon realized that having their own college 

suggested having their own yearly meeting as well. In 1892, they established 

Wilmington Yearly Meeting, which comprised three quarterly 

meetings. Wilmington College remains under the care of Wilmington 

Yearly Meeting today. During its first thirty-five years, the institution also 

included a preparatory or high school that was larger than the college itself. 

While Quaker influence has remained strong throughout its history, 

Figure 6.1. College Hall

Wilmington College 93 

a number of the college’s presidents, as well as many faculty members 

and students, have been members of other denominations. 

SOCIAL BEHAVIOR 

Changing times have brought practices that contrasted with and openly 

challenged Friends’ stated principles, often causing considerable controversy. 

An early example was the introduction in 1907 of sororities and fraternities. 

Many Friends believed that such organizations condoned social 

elitism, contradicting the Quaker belief that all persons were of equal importance. 

Moreover, they feared, the resulting emphasis on competition 

could be a divisive and unhealthy influence on the campus. It was student 

pressure that led to the introduction of Greek societies, though their influence 

has waxed and waned over time. 

During the period of intense student activism in the 1960s and 1970s, 

the Greek organizations dwindled in number and influence. Then it was 

the more conservative students who tended to join fraternities and sororities. 

They resented President James Read’s insistence that every student 

be considered for membership in one or another of the Greek organizations, 

and their anger grew when three fraternities were placed on probation 

because of a snowball fight that got out of hand. The campus was increasingly 

divided between so-called straights and grubs. Fraternity 

members believed themselves the victims of discrimination by the college 

administration, even a besieged and neglected minority. One evening, a 

small group, probably under the influence of alcohol, marched around 

campus shouting, “It’s our campus too.” They made threats and ended 

the event by burning in effigy the figure of a “hippie.” By the last decade 

of the twentieth century, the picture had changed, when a majority of 

Wilmington students joined one of six sororities or fraternities. Most 

Greek organizations were local or regional, though two fraternities were 

national, and two had their own living quarters. In recent years, much of 

the college social life as well as social service projects have been sponsored 

by Greek organizations. 

The older practice whereby the college functioned in loco parentis gave 

way to a more progressive campus environment. One example is the gradual 

abandonment of strict rules for women living in the dormitories. The 

subject of relationships between the sexes was a favorite one when President 

Unthank (1881–1903) spoke at required daily chapel services. Mary Mills, 

who taught English during his presidency, reported that Unthank “frowned 

upon romance,” while the popular Latin teacher Ellen Wright “glorified affection.” 

As late as 1970, the Wilmington College Catalog warned that any 

student intending to be married during the school year must notify the dean

94 Larry Gara 

of students no later than one week before the wedding. Failing to do so, the 

student could be asked to withdraw from the college and apply later for 

readmission. In recent years, despite a Quaker testimony against the use of 

alcohol, students have been permitted to drink on campus under strictly 

controlled conditions, though such conditions are frequently bypassed. Although 

some Quaker practices have weakened, the use of given names 

rather than formal titles is still practiced by all members of the college community. 

Decisions of faculty and board meetings are still reached by finding 

a “sense of the meeting,” a kind of consensus. The practice is sometimes 

questioned by members of the faculty who are unfamiliar with Quaker tradition, 

but it has never been supplanted by Robert’s Rules of Order. 

QUAKER WORSHIP 

Traditionally, Quaker meetings for worship were unprogrammed, with 

individuals speaking out of the silence as they were moved to do so, and 

that practice continued in the United States. As American Quakerism expanded 

into the Midwest, however, some meetings took on a form more 

like other Protestant churches, with music in the service and a hired pastor. 

Most young Friends who attend Wilmington College are from programmed 

meetings, and when they attend a place of worship, it is usually 

Wilmington Friends Meeting, which follows the pastoral model. In the 

late 1940s, a small group of faculty, staff, and students began holding regular, 

unprogrammed worship in the traditional manner. In 1954, the 

group became Campus Friends Meeting, a constituent member of Wilmington 

Yearly Meeting and, later, of Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting as well. 

The need to provide more structured religious support for students led 

in 1988 to employment of a college pastor with partial funding from 

Wilmington Yearly Meeting. The college pastor holds services, keeps the 

college community informed of the need for special prayers or concerns, 

acts as a personal and religious counselor to students, and plays an important 

role in keeping the Quaker element visible on campus. 

From its beginning, Wilmington College was coeducational, with most 

of its graduates trained for teaching. In its early years, the college had to 

compete with Lebanon National Normal University, a 2,000-student private 

school in Warren County. By 1917, however, Lebanon University had 

fallen on hard times, and its administration proposed a merger with 

Wilmington College. When that change was accomplished, Wilmington’s 

teacher training program benefited through the acquisition of excellent 

teachers and students. 

In the 1950s, when the college assumed a stronger liberal arts character, 

there was considerable questioning of the emphasis on teacher education.


The solution was to keep teacher training but provide potential educators 

with a solid liberal arts background as well. The college set a record in 

1958 when 75 percent of its graduates entered teaching. Today, though it 

cannot approach that figure, Wilmington continues to have a strong education 

department. 

CREATIVE ARTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

Early Friends frowned on including the arts as a part of education, and in 

the early years, formal instruction in music, art, and theater was not part 

of the curriculum at Wilmington College. Change was gradual. Music instruction 

began as private lessons in piano and voice. Instrumental music 

came later to provide a marching band for athletic events. Eventually, 

Wilmington College provided outstanding teaching and performances of 

choral and instrumental music. From 1955 to 1962, the college hosted the 

professional Allard String Quartet in residence. Much the same is true of 

the art and theater departments, which now offer professional-level exhibits 

and stage productions not only to the college community but also 

to the city of Wilmington and beyond. The Wilmington College theater 

department has trained many teachers of drama and counts several talented 

actors among its former students, including Gary Sandy, Andre 

DeShields, and Ellen Gross, all now working in television or professional 

theater. 

One Quaker value that played an important part in the post–World War 

II years was a belief in self-reliance. With the influx of veterans, the enrollment 

jumped from 105 in 1944 to 550 in 1946, stretching facilities beyond 

their limits and ushering in a new era in the college’s history. President 

Samuel Marble recognized a serious need for new living quarters, 

though the college lacked funds for a building project. In an unusual 

chapel presentation, Marble challenged students, faculty, and staff to volunteer 

their labor to help construct a men’s dormitory. His contagious enthusiasm 

prompted several faculty members to solicit building materials 

from local businesses and led student and staff volunteers to compete in 

giving record amounts of time to the project. With a professional contractor 

to coordinate the work, Marble Hall was ready in two years and dedicated 

on October 27, 1950. Now a coed residence, it is still in use today. 

The project brought national attention to Wilmington College and congratulatory 

messages from such luminaries as former President Herbert 

Hoover, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ralph Bunche. 

A further example of self-help initiatives involved student workers at 

the local Randall Corporation which manufactured machine parts. Professor 

Menzo Stark, head of the industrial education department, reached

96 Larry Gara 

an agreement with Randall whereby two students were hired to do one 

job by working alternate days. The college adjusted class schedules to accommodate 

work-study students, which meant holding some classes on 

Saturday. Students working at Randall were thus able to earn the entire 

cost of their Wilmington College degrees. Without the program, many 

would not have been able to attend college. In 2005, the work-study concept 

was revived when the college signed a contract with a local air 

freight company, ABX Air. The new student work program makes available 

jobs and scholarships to Wilmington students. 

THE PEACE TESTIMONY 

Along with a belief in self-reliance, the Friends peace testimony has 

played an important part in the history of Wilmington College. Benjamin 

Trueblood, the second president, was secretary of the moderate American 

Peace Society and editor of its journal, The Advocate of Peace. The nearby 

community of New Vienna was the center for that organization’s publications. 

One recent president was a conscientious objector during World 

War II, and another refused to register for the postwar draft. Never has 

Wilmington had an ROTC unit, and when certain government grants required 

a loyalty oath, Wilmington College refused those funds at considerable 

financial sacrifice. 

During World War II, when some Quaker colleges hosted military 

units, Wilmington College abstained. With low wartime enrollment, this 

decision carried a severe price tag and was not unanimous. The chairman 

of the board of trustees was also state chairman of Selective Service, while 

two board members belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

When he received an official request for the college to host a Navy 

unit, President S. Arthur Watson replied that it would be acceptable only 

if sailors took regular college courses but received no military training on 

the campus. Watson wrote later that a naval officer visited him to express 

regret at having caused an “embarrassing and difficult situation.” Had officials 

known that Wilmington was a Quaker college, said the officer, they 

would not have made the request. The manner in which the incident was 

handled suggests that the use of college campuses for military training 

units was as much a matter of public relations for the war effort as it was 

an attempt to fulfill a clear need. 

Although unwilling to welcome a military unit, Wilmington College 

gladly accepted a Japanese American student when individual Nisei were 

released from relocation camps to pursue their educations. President Watson, 

concerned about possible negative reaction in the community, requested 

a female student, believing that a woman would be less contro-


versial than a young man. The Nisei student who came to the college was 

well received and encountered no difficulties on the campus or in the city 

of Wilmington. At the same time, adherence to the Friends peace testimony 

has never meant discriminating against veterans or members of the 

military. Many young men studied at Wilmington College under the GI 

Bill of Rights, and from time to time some graduates have entered the military. 

However, when a professor requested faculty approval to teach a 

course at nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a heated discussion led 

to rejection of the request. 

Closely related to its peace testimony has been Wilmington’s international 

emphasis, which began immediately after World War II under President 

Samuel Marble and evolved during the administration of James M. 

Read. Marble attracted students from Central and South America as well 

as some Caribbean countries and added an international component to 

the core curriculum. In 1948, Wilmington held the first in a series of annual 

international folk and music festivals. The festivals, drawing on the 

expertise of international students, featured music, dance, and discussions 

as well as renowned speakers and an all-Ohio high school chorus. 

Carl Sandburg, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl Buck, and Clement Atlee were 

among the keynote speakers. The unique festivals were dedicated to 

“peace through international understanding.” In 1950, nearly 1,000 persons 

participated. 

The international festivals continued on an occasional basis and in a 

modified format until the early 1980s. In the fall of 1967, the college 

hosted a folk festival featuring a concert of international music by Joe and 

Penny Aronson and another by Judy Collins. The demise of the festivals 

did not mean the end of an international emphasis, which James Read 

strongly supported during his ten-year presidency from 1960 to 1969. 

Among other activities under his leadership was a special celebration on 

the occasion of Kenya’s independence. International students continue to 

attend Wilmington College, and American students are encouraged to 

study abroad. For a number of years, a term in Vienna proved to be a popular 

option. Other students have studied for shorter periods in Mexico, 

Kenya, and Nicaragua. In 1990 and 1991, a Wilmington professor took 

groups of volunteer students to Mexico to work on projects for Habitat for 

Humanity. In 1991, Wilmington College instituted a global issues requirement 

with designated faculty members teaching in rotation. 

ANTIWAR ACTIVITY 

During the years of the Vietnam War, the historic Quaker peace testimony 

inspired numerous antiwar actions on campus that were always carried

98 Larry Gara 

out in a spirit of nonviolence, with no vandalism, rioting, or shouting 

down of visiting speakers. When a tiny minority attempted to foment 

violent actions, it had no success. Students organized the Committee for 

Peace and Freedom, which planned and coordinated most of the antiwar 

events, with some faculty and staff participation. Beginning in October 

1966, the group met weekly under a sign proclaiming, “A silent 

vigil to express our protest and our sorrow for the people of Vietnam, 

our brothers.” 

As with other issues, members of the college community held differing 

views. While some were moved to oppose the war, others believed that 

peace vigils were an affront to the young men who had been drafted to 

fight. In October 1967, a countervigil appeared with signs that read, “We 

support our men in Vietnam and back our government.” Although one of 

the leaders charged that peace vigils hurt the morale of the men in Vietnam, 

she insisted that her group was not opposed to other organizations 

or to anyone’s grooming or dress. “We want peace as do the antiwar 

demonstrators,” she emphasized. “These people do not realize their efforts 

only help to prolong the war.” On that chilly day, many joined the 

vigil of their choice. More than 200 participated, the two vigils equally divided 

in number. The mood was serious and the silence profound. At the 

end of the hour, the students scattered quickly to warm up as rain began 

to fall. The vigil in support of the troops lasted for a few more weeks. 

Antiwar activity was not restricted to the campus. Students took to the 

streets of Wilmington as early as 1965 when a group carrying antiwar 

signs marched silently from the campus to downtown Wilmington, following 

a route that took them past the American Legion Hall. Psychology 

professor Robert Halliday went along as an observer, in part because his 

own son was in the march. As they passed the Legion Hall, a veteran attacked 

Halliday, knocking him to the ground. Unhurt, Halliday met later 

with Legionnaires, pointing out that he himself was a veteran of World 

War II, and attempted to explain the concerns of the students. Although 

the wall of misunderstanding had not been broken, he recalled later, he 

believed the effort had been worthwhile. 

In May 1968, eight members of the Committee for Peace and Freedom 

challenged a Wilmington city ordinance making it illegal to leaflet downtown 

without a permit. They had requested permission but were denied 

by the mayor, who said that leafleting against the war would further divide 

the community. After consulting with the American Civil Liberties 

Union on the constitutionality of such a policy, the students returned 

downtown to distribute informational leaflets about conscientious objection. 

While some citizens angrily refused to accept leaflets, several surprised 

the students by expressing sympathy for their cause. Next they 

handed out leaflets at the local high school. In neither instance did the city


attempt to enforce the ordinance, which had been effectively annulled by 

the students’ action. 

Even more controversial was a large support vigil in downtown Wilmington 

for nearby resident James Wessner, who was arrested for refusing 

to report for induction. Local news organizations reported the demonstration 

as if it were an invasion from outer space. 

Wilmington students also sent contingents to the many antiwar demonstrations 

in Washington, while small, local actions provided an opportunity 

for those unable to make the trip to express their concerns as well. 

The largest local demonstration was in 1969, organized to coincide with 

the massive Moratorium in Washington. Many who had never participated 

in demonstrations joined a vigil line that reached completely 

around the Clinton County Courthouse. Students also collected money to 

assist the Canadian Friends Service Committee in buying medical supplies 

for hospitals in North Vietnam and held an overnight reading of the 

names of young Americans who had been killed in the war. Several students 

and faculty members also participated in weekly antiwar vigils at 

the gates of nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that began on Christmas 

Eve 1971 and continued every Saturday until the end of the conflict. 

Wilmington’s peace activist students initiated a protest that was observed 

at few other colleges. For some years, local citizens and a few students 

had held Tax Day Vigils outside the post office, the principal federal 

Figure 6.2. Vigil to Witness Against the War in Iraq

100 Larry Gara 

building in town, to call attention to and protest the large percentage of 

tax money being expended for war and the military. In addition, one tax 

was specifically earmarked for war, the federal excise tax on telephone 

service, which increased to 10 percent to support the Vietnam War. As a 

“witness for peace,” staff members at The Witness, the student newspaper, 

deducted those charges from the office telephone bill. Their war tax resistance 

had deep roots in Quaker tradition from at least the eighteenth 

century, when John Woolman practiced and advocated refusal to pay war 

taxes as a matter of conscience. 

Like many other colleges and universities, Wilmington faced a serious 

crisis following the killings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. In a 

hastily called all-campus meeting, some students, faculty, and administrators 

suggested a march to Columbus to protest the action by the National 

Guard and to demand an explanation of Governor James Rhodes. 

That rally was also another witness against the war. While thousands of 

Ohio college students met in Columbus, the Wilmington delegation was 

the only one to walk the entire route, with Dean Sterling Olmsted joining 

the march to lead it to the grounds of the Ohio statehouse. The killing of 

four students in Ohio and two students at Jackson State in Mississippi a 

few days later united the student body as never before. Divisions between 

the more conservative fraternities and sororities and the antiwar group 

were for the time being set aside. Although classes continued to meet, 

many students received approval for such alternative activities as workshops, 

films, and discussions related to urgent national and international 

problems. 

TOWN-GOWN STRIFE 

Reaction in the city of Wilmington, however, was far from sympathetic. 

Many merchants and political leaders placed a full-page advertisement in 

the Wilmington News Journal saying, “Thank You, National Guard.” 

Adding to the uproar was the 1970 yearbook, which pictured anti–Vietnam 

War actions, some modestly photographed nudity, and a call to revolution. 

A full-page photograph showed Wilmington’s mayor standing 

across a street to watch a peace demonstration, with the image of a “hippie” 

superimposed over the mayor’s picture and a quotation from the 

Declaration of Independence under the photo. Furious, Mayor Dale Minton 

protested inclusion of his photo in the yearbook, saying the political message 

under his picture bothered him more than the nakedness on other 

pages. 

Kent State and the ensuing demonstrations brought to the surface much 

of the simmering anger some Wilmington residents felt toward the college


and its administration. Many, already resentful of the college’s perceived 

reputation for promoting radical thought and action, reached near hysteria 

about the yearbook. Soon after its appearance, a pamphlet that 

reprinted most of the “offensive” pictures and carried an accompanying 

angry letter was mailed to parents, trustees, donors, and other friends of 

the college. The letter, purportedly from a nonexistent “Wilmington Citizen’s 

Council,” carried the names of the mayor and chief of police along 

with many of the town’s business and political leaders. Suddenly a trickle 

of angry letters to the Wilmington News Journal became a flood. “This book 

is an affront to every decent person in this community,” said one reader, 

while another wrote, “I want to disassociate myself from the trash and 

filth that was published in the Wilmington College yearbook.” 

An editorial in the News Journal described the yearbook as a “crummy, 

offensive, stupid, inexcusable piece of trash” but suggested that readers 

should keep it in perspective. “Let’s not close ranks against Wilmington 

College,” the editor wrote. “It’s much bigger and lots more important to 

us than a crummy yearbook.” The editor made a good point. At that time, 

the college was the county’s largest employer. Yet a well-reasoned letter 

from the chair of the college’s board of trustees did little to calm the waters. 

For several years afterward, the new president, Robert Hinshaw, had 

to devote precious time and energy to fending off criticism of the 1970 

yearbook. 

One of the requests of Wilmington students in the aftermath of the Kent 

State tragedy was that the college add peace studies courses to the curriculum. 

In 1969, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities 

had enabled the college to implement an experimental program 

called, in the vocabulary of the time, “Man in Focus,” which aimed to introduce 

students to pressing social and economic problems then facing 

the nation and the world. A section of the program that dealt with war 

and peace remains in the course listings today, though in greatly modified 

form. In 1978, the college adopted a peace studies major and hired a peace 

studies coordinator who also taught in the religion and philosophy department. 

However, as few students chose the major, it was eventually replaced 

with a peace studies minor. 

PEACE RESOURCE CENTER 

Since 1974, the Wilmington College Peace Resource Center has also 

played an important role in peace education and research. The center is a 

unique institution, housing one of the most complete collections anywhere 

of source materials relating to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 

and Nagasaki. Barbara Reynolds, a Quaker peace activist, gathered the


collection during her more than fifteen-year residence in Hiroshima, a city 

that made her an honorary citizen. When she returned to the United 

States seeking a home for her collection, Wilmington College agreed to 

house it and made Barbara herself the first director. In 1975, as part of an 

observance marking the thirtieth anniversary of the destruction of the two 

cities, incoming president Robert E. Lucas formally accepted transfer of 

the collection to the college. The center and college also hosted a week of 

peace studies and workshops on the campus with Japanese and American 

participants. Over the years, the center has attracted numerous Japanese 

visitors, including the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as 

scholars engaged in researching the bombing and its aftermath. Since its 

founding, the center’s collection has expanded to include materials on 

conscientious objection and other aspects of war and peace. Its tapes, 

films, and books, available for purchase or rent, have been used by individuals 

and organizations around the world, giving Wilmington College 

an international reputation. The center’s current emphasis is on promoting 

nonviolence and conflict resolution in elementary and high schools. 

Since 1991, the college has hosted the annual Westheimer Peace Symposium, 

a one-day event named for Charles and May Westheimer, who 

established an endowment to ensure its future. Each year, the symposium 

focuses on one aspect of such peace and justice concerns as the nuclear 

threat, the environment, and human rights. Speakers have included Helen 

Caldicott, George McGovern, Colman McCarthy, and Julian Bond. In 

addition to providing Wilmington students an outstanding educational 

experience, this special day attracts visitors from many other parts of 

Ohio. 

In April 1999, the college officially hosted a reunion of seven of ten authors 

included in A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World War II Tell 

Their Stories, edited by Emeritus Professor of History Larry Gara and his 

wife Lenna Mae Gara. The unique event included an evening symposium 

that was taped and later broadcast on C-Span’s BookTV, bringing national 

attention to the support at Wilmington College for the peace testimony of 

Friends. 

Another unique aspect of Wilmington College is its agriculture department, 

established in 1948, making it the only private college in Ohio to offer 

such a program. In 1967, President James Read announced a joint venture 

with the U.S. Peace Corps, which was to combine the agricultural 

program with the college’s long-standing interest in peace. The plan was 

to train volunteers for agricultural development work in Latin American 

countries, combining two years at Wilmington College with two years of 

field service. However, when only 125 students applied for the program, 

Peace Corps administrators, afraid it would not produce a sufficient number 

of qualified volunteers, canceled the program before it could get un-


derway. Nevertheless, a number of the Peace Corps applicants remained 

at Wilmington, where their presence added an additional element of idealism 

to the college. 

JAMES M. READ 

Although a majority of Wilmington College trustees must be members of 

the Society of Friends, a crisis in 1959 threatened to eliminate much of its 

Quaker emphasis. Over the years, Wilmington Yearly Meeting had willingly 

approved presidents chosen by the college’s board of trustees, but appointment 

by the trustees of G. Richard Gottschalk of Syracuse, New York, 

alarmed the Quakers. The decision had been made by a majority vote of the 

board rather than through the traditional practice of reaching consensus. 

Moreover, the president-elect was an industrialist with little or no knowledge 

of Quakerism and no previous experience in educational administration. 

When the permanent board of Wilmington Yearly Meeting in effect 

overrode the trustees’ decision, Gottschalk resigned without ever having 

assumed the post. That series of events caused deep divisions in the college 

community, among Ohio Quakers, and in the city of Wilmington. It was the 

skill of James M. Read, newly appointed to the post, that enabled a healing 

process to begin and the college to return to its Quaker roots. 

Read had served as a conscientious objector in World War II and came 

to the college after ten years in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was UN 

deputy high commissioner for refugees. His strong interest in peace and 

international relations, along with a program of welcoming inner-city and 

international students, led to a number of programs consistent with traditional 

Quaker values. For several years, he continued support for the international 

festival. He worked out a plan to bring visiting historians from 

other countries to teach a year in the Department of History. The visitors 

came from England, Denmark, Wales, Japan, Spain, and India, providing 

a broadening academic experience for Wilmington College students. Read 

also devised a program called Goals for America, which focused on specific 

aspects of world problems, bringing to the campus international experts 

and scholars. 

Because of his work with the United Nations, Read had many valuable 

contacts whom he used to secure speakers for the series. These visitors 

were asked not only to speak but to remain on campus for at least a day 

to interact with students, faculty, and staff. Stephen Spender, John Hope 

Franklin, and Sir Herbert Read were a few of the visitors who brought an 

exciting atmosphere to Wilmington College. 

President Read’s international emphasis and open support for the 

Quaker peace testimony, including encouragement to students and faculty


who participated in various peace actions, fueled opposition from a conservative 

faction in the city of Wilmington. False rumors that the college 

did not display the American flag led Read to take action. While a flagpole 

in the center of campus had always flown the flag, Read, in 1967, had two 

poles erected at opposite ends of the new gymnasium, one for the Stars 

and Stripes, the other for the blue and white flag of the United Nations. 

Wilmington is still one of only a few colleges that fly the flag of the United 

Nations. 

Even before completion of the new gymnasium, when the building’s 

donor learned from local citizens that Read was a pacifist and had been a 

World War II conscientious objector, he refused to attend the building’s 

dedication, saying that had he known of Read’s past he would not have 

approved the grant. His contact person, however, had known about and 

approved the college’s Quaker affiliation as a peace church college. 

In his ten years at Wilmington College, James Read never retreated 

from his peace position. Shortly before leaving the college in 1969, he expressed 

the hope that it would remain “a center for the cultivation of inquiring 

minds and sensitive spirits, where the young learn the ways of 

peace and how to achieve a world where nations not only tread on the 

moon, but do not learn war any more.” 

SOCIAL JUSTICE 

Not only peace but also social justice and racial equality were Quaker concerns, 

though with the latter the record has sometimes been flawed. In the 

1920s, Wilmington had many of the characteristics of a southern town, 

and strict racial lines existed in places of public accommodation. City elementary 

schools remained segregated until 1952, and that change occurred 

only after a prolonged challenge from African American parents. 

The college was drawn into the dispute when some students and staff 

members supported the parents, causing cries of “outside agitators and 

communists” to cloud public discourse. The Wilmington school superintendent 

defended board policy, while college trustees and administrators, 

trying to avoid further controversy, demoted a faculty member and pressured 

students to drop their actions. When the school board finally closed 

the segregated building, it cited economic reasons for its action. The 

episode left bitterness in Wilmington and on the campus. 

During much of its history, the college, with one or two exceptions, did 

not accept students from the substantial African American population of 

Wilmington. That changed during World War II when a local African 

American student was accepted at Wilmington College. After the war, 

students from Africa and Haiti began arriving on campus, and the color


barrier fell. With the advent of the civil rights revolution, some Wilmington 

students held support vigils on the campus, and one, Carol Kornfield, 

participated in the Mississippi Summer of 1964. The students, whose objective 

was to help African Americans in the South to prepare for and register 

to vote, trained at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. 

While in Oxford, Carol and two friends drove to Wilmington, where one 

of them, Andrew Goodman, attended Campus Friends Meeting. Kornfield, 

Goodman, and Michael Schwerner then drove to Mississippi. A few 

days later, word came that the two young men, along with James Cheney 

of Mississippi, were missing. Their brutal murders shocked the nation 

and the world. Carol Kornfield’s participation in the Mississippi Summer 

gave Wilmington College a bit part in that tragic drama and underscored 

the possibilities for heroism in the use of nonviolence. 

PRISON PROGRAM 

Another active focus on social justice grows out of the historical Quaker 

concern for prisoners and prison reform, which Wilmington College expressed 

in its educational programs for prison inmates. Beginning in 

1975, course offerings at the Lebanon Correctional Institution in Warren 

County developed into an associate degree program called Project Talents. 

Nine years later, the State of Ohio granted authority to Wilmington 

College to award baccalaureate degrees in designated majors to prison 

inmates who met the requirements. Eventually, the college also offered 

classes to inmates of the Warren Honor Camp and the Warren Correctional 

Institution. 

The Wilmington prison program spawned a number of related projects 

and research studies, one of which clearly demonstrated that prisoners 

who completed college-level courses were far less likely to return to 

prison than those who had not. Other programs provided training and 

service to prisoners not enrolled in college courses as well as to those who 

had been released. Several hundred inmates of the Franklin Pre-Release 

Center for Women participated in vocational and skill-building programs 

provided by Wilmington College. Again, the value of educational programs 

was demonstrated, for a survey of former inmates found that 60 

percent of those who had enrolled in the Franklin program were either in 

school or gainfully employed at the time of their response. Nevertheless, 

all the college’s prison programs were affected and had to be sharply reduced 

after Congress eliminated all federal funding for the education of 

prison inmates. However, the experience and expertise generated by its 

prison work has prompted the college to enrich its offerings by adding a 

popular major in criminal justice.


SEIZURE OF COLLEGE HALL 

In 1971, a dramatic incident helped illuminate the Wilmington College 

commitment to Quaker nonviolence. Newly installed President Robert E. 

Hinshaw was an anthropologist with a special interest in developing a 

multicultural campus. Among other factors, the number of African American 

students at Wilmington began to increase. From their ranks came an 

organization called Concerned Black Students, in which both men and 

women assumed leadership roles. When black students experienced discrimination 

and prejudice from some white students, open conflict 

erupted on the basketball court during an intramural game. An all-black 

team walked off the court, charging the referee with racism. The administration 

reacted quickly to form a task force on racism at the college. During 

a meeting of that group, a leader of the Concerned Black Students confronted 

administration representatives with eleven nonnegotiable 

demands. President Hinshaw wrote a reasoned, five-page response and 

met again with African American student leaders. Coincidentally, this 

was taking place during the week of inaugural events to honor Hinshaw, 

a week the anthropologist president had termed an “Un-inaugural.” It included 

a performance by an African dance troupe and a seminar featuring 

distinguished scholars and guests from other institutions. In the midst 

of this important event, word came that African American students had 

seized College Hall, the oldest and best-known building on campus. 

Early in the morning of April 23, a select group of faculty and guests 

met at the president’s home to plan strategy. There were ample grounds 

for concern. Events relating to the Vietnam War had seriously strained 

town-gown relations, and there were disturbing signs of potential violence 

from young outsiders. Someone suggested cutting off all utilities to 

the building, another wanted a hard-line ultimatum, and one person favored 

calling in the police. A visiting scholar suggested a softer approach, 

and Wallace Collett, chair of the board of trustees, challenged the group 

by asking, “Has anybody thought about getting some food to them? They 

must be hungry.” 

Arrangements were made to send food through other African American 

students, and instead of calling the police, the college summoned 

Arthur Slater of the U.S. Department of Justice. Slater, an African American 

with considerable experience in conflict resolution, acted as negotiator 

in a meeting between college officials and the students. After two and 

a half hours, an agreement was reached, and the students left College Hall 

in essentially the same condition they had found it. There were a few nail 

holes where they had placed plywood, and they had broken a lock on the 

switchboard to use a phone. They left no cigarette butts or other litter.


Several years later, when College Hall was being renovated, Sterling 

Olmsted noticed some words scratched on a hand rail in the old building: 

“College Hall Liberated April 23, 1971.” Olmsted hoped to preserve that 

part of the rail for his own collection or for the college archives, but workmen 

destroyed the rail before he could retrieve it. The entire incident revealed 

a lot about the board and administration, about the students themselves, 

and about Quaker nonviolence at Wilmington College. 

With a new second branch campus in Cincinnati, a recently added master’s 

degree in Education, and a listing in U.S. News and World Report as 

one of the “Top Schools Among Midwestern Comprehensive Colleges,” 

Wilmington entered the twenty-first century with optimism. 

In 2005, the aging Boyd Auditorium was enlarged, renovated, and renamed 

the Oscar F. Boyd Cultural Arts Center, which includes the Hugh 

G. Heiland Theater, named for a longtime professor of theater. The new 

building also houses the Quaker Heritage Center, which includes public 

space modeled after a traditional Quaker meetinghouse and programming 

designed to promote Quaker values. 

Town and gown relations have steadily improved since the presidency 

of Robert E. Lucas (1975–1982), an alumnus of the college who was known 

and respected locally. The college’s reputation reaches far beyond Ohio, in 

part because of enthusiastic alumni and also because of the outreach of 

the Peace Resource Center. Wilmington College became familiar to readers 

of Crankshaft, a nationally syndicated comic strip, because Tom Batiuk, 

the strip’s cocreator, had one of its characters mirror the college experiences 

of Batiuk’s son, who is a recent graduate. In 2004, the women’s basketball 

team, the Lady Quakers, won the NCAA Division III national 

championship, energizing its fans and bringing national attention to 

Wilmington College. 

Once again, Wilmington College draws most of its students from southwestern 

Ohio. Student idealism is oriented more toward such projects as 

a one-day fast for Oxfam, an on-campus recycling program, volunteering 

at a local soup kitchen, working with Habitat for Humanity, and traveling 

to Washington to lobby for peace and less toward public demonstrations 

for peace or other issues. Such service projects supplement students’ personal, 

career, and financial concerns and express a degree of idealism that 

is shared by many in the Wilmington College faculty and staff. 


Much of the material for this article was based on thirty-eight years of teaching 

at Wilmington College, with reliance on various college publications to


check my memory. I am greatly indebted to Ina Kelley, former Wilmington 

College archivist, and Lew Marcuson, professor of English, for providing 

material and checking the manuscript for accuracy. Any errors, of course, are 

my own responsibility. Both the 1970 march to Columbus after the tragedy 

at Kent State and the occupation of College Hall have been described in writing 

by Emeritus Provost Sterling Olmsted. The section on Wilmington’s 

early history is based on a brief history of Wilmington College written by the 

late Professor Oscar Boyd and published in 1959. Several articles in Partners 

in Education: Wilmington College and Wilmington Yearly Meeting of Friends 

(Wilmington, Ohio: Wilmington Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of 

Friends, 1992) also proved very useful.

7 

 

William Penn University 

John Wagoner with Marsha Riordan 

To say that the history of William Penn University is a succession of 

crises is to say that it is at the same time a succession of triumphs. The 

recent observance of its 125th anniversary was a celebration of one triumph 

after another. And so the words spoken by members of the university 

family—words written into the annals of the university—as they 

viewed the smoking ruins or learned of great financial distress represent 

hope and determination: “We must go forward.” 

The spirit of the university, even in heady times, has been the desire and 

determination to move forward. Each of the ten or so most important developments 

in the university’s history were birthed by that spirit. Today, 

with the university enjoying a number of triumphs, the dominant spirit 

remains, “We must go forward.” 

BEGINNING AND EARLY GROWTH 

The westward flow of pioneers across the great prairies included Quakers. 

William Penn’s Quaker ancestors lie at rest in North Carolina and elsewhere 

between there and Iowa. The first Quakers arrived in Iowa in 1837 near 

Salem. Thomas Stafford and family were the first Quakers in Mahaska 

County in 1843. Their home was the first Quaker Meeting, later to become 

known as the Spring Creek Meeting. In 1854, the Cedar Grove (also referred 

to as the Center Grove) meeting was organized. These two meetings eventually 

merged to became Oskaloosa Monthly Meeting. By 1865, Oskaloosa 

109

110 John Wagoner with Marsha Riordan 

was considered the center of Iowa Quakers, indeed, of Quaker settlements 

west of the Mississippi River. 

Early on, there was a passion for education and for creating school associations 

and academies. During the second half of the nineteenth century, 

Iowa Quakers founded sixteen academies, seminaries, and colleges. 

Early leaders in the Oskaloosa and Quaker communities, including John 

Woody, Benjamin Trueblood, William Morgan, Absalom Rosenberger, and 

David Edwards, were united in the purpose of founding a Christian liberal 

arts college offering broad religious and cultural education to youth 

of the Society of Friends and any others, notwithstanding that it was an 

unusually difficult time to start a college. The Civil War was still raging in 

1863 when the Spring Creek Institute building was destroyed by fire. 

Times were uncertain, people were financially pressed, the future did not 

look promising. Yet with little assurance of help from outside sources, 

they said, “We must go forward.” 

Spring Creek Meeting had earlier formed the Spring Creek College Association. 

Plans for Spring Creek Union College were underway when a 

fire destroyed the Spring Creek building. With the involvement of the 

yearly meeting, the name was changed to the Iowa Union College Association 

of Friends. In 1869, the Spring Creek property was sold and other 

funds raised to purchase thirty acres in Oskaloosa for a building site. The 

name Penn College was chosen, and construction of Old Main began in 

1872. Constructed in three phases—west wing, center section, and east 

wing—the building was completed in 1898. A gymnasium was built in 

1907, and College Avenue Meeting House was completed in 1913. These 

buildings represented the first Penn College campus. One other building, 

housing the Penn School of Commerce, was located in downtown Oskaloosa. 

One of the first students on the unfinished campus spoke of the scene 

as dreary and lonely looking, without trees or shrubbery but piles of 

stones, sand, and mortar boxes all about. But Professor Woody’s genial 

personality and hearty welcome soon warmed the chilly atmosphere and 

made the newcomers forget the discomfort from lack of sufficient heating, 

even while shivering in heavy overcoats in the cheerless classrooms. From 

the first, the college was rooted in religion. A weekly prayer meeting was 

a distinctive feature, recalled by one of the earliest students with “greatest 

gratitude.” 

By the time Penn got started in 1873, there were eight Quaker secondary 

schools and one other Quaker college in Iowa. One of these was the 

Friends High School in Oskaloosa, opened in late 1872 because storm 

damage delayed the opening of Penn College. The teachers who had been 

hired for Penn College taught at the Friends High School until the Penn 

College building opened. When Penn College opened in September 1873,

William Penn University 111 

the high school courses continued as the prep department of the college. 

Later, the name Penn Academy came into use. By 1911, the academy was 

organized as a four-year course of study. 

In the college’s first year of operation, there were 206 students, nineteen 

of whom qualified for college-level courses. By 1924–1925, when the academy 

closed, there were 402 students, all registered for the college course. 

Many academy students, on graduation, simply continued their education 

in the same buildings and classrooms as newly minted college students. 

A number of leading Oskaloosa citizens recall with pride that they 

received their high school education at Penn Academy. 

The college’s personality began to emerge during the first two or three 

decades under the guiding hand of strong leadership, notably Benjamin 

Trueblood, Absalom Rosenberger, and David Edwards. A number of literary 

societies were formed, the Quakerly alternative to fraternities and 

sororities. Student efforts to break free of certain Quakerly restraints— 

singing at commencement services and an organ in the chapel—were gently 

laid aside by the administration. By 1911, in fact, the yearly meeting worried 

that the college had become too worldly; reincorporation allowed it 

a bit more control. 

Gradually, under Trueblood, the college took on the shape and substance 

of a real college, with an expanding curriculum, increasingly 

higher standards of scholarship, and faculty who were academic specialists 

in math, the classics, literature, history, and science. A monthly college 

newspaper came into being and has continued to this day. Within two 

decades of the college’s founding, it began to make its mark in athletics, 

with baseball in 1891, football in 1892, and basketball in 1904. Completion 

of a gymnasium in 1907 opened up many athletic possibilities. The academic 

departments grew to ten, with music organized in 1892. Public 

speaking and oratory became a strong part of a flourishing calendar of 

student activities. 

In 1898, what was to become one of the most fortuitous gifts in the college’s 

long history was given by Charles and Albert Johnson: a tract of 

about forty acres of land a short distance north of the campus. The gift 

was contingent on the college’s raising $50,000 for endowment, a goal that 

was met by November 2, 1900. It was fortuitous because it served as an 

early impetus to build an endowment and because it was to become the 

future and permanent college campus. 

That future moved quickly and tragically into the college’s early history 

with destruction of Old Main by fire on May 27, 1916. The college leadership, 

in the spirit of “We must go forward,” made a threefold decision. For 

the time and under the circumstances, it was a courageous and farsighted 

decision, that is, to rebuild the campus as a series of buildings—to do it 

on credit and at a new site. Within hours of the disaster, planning was


underway. A campaign goal of $400,000 was set, with an additional 

amount for endowment. The first construction phase included two buildings, 

Penn Hall and the heating plant. During the construction, College 

Avenue Friends Meeting was the center of all college activity, and by 

1917 classes opened on the new campus. 

The fire had occurred during the administration of David Edwards. 

Some years later, he wrote, “What struggles we have all made, what hardships 

endured for the dear old college. The two strenuous campaigns for 

the endowment and rebuilding funds in 1911 and 1916, the fire, the loss of 

life and property, the dropping out along the way of those of our number 

held dear, and so on and on. . . . I honor and respect those of you who have 

worked and strived for the college.” 

As in all such crises, there were elements of heroism and generosity 

among the college’s sister institutions in Iowa and the Quaker community. 

An unusually strong bond existed between Penn and Earlham College, 

and the Earlham student body, faculty, and administration responded 

within days in a number of helpful ways. 

NEW CAMPUS 

Slowly, the new campus began to rise from the ashes, beginning with 

Penn Hall and followed in succession by the heating plant, Lewis Hall, 

and Spencer Memorial Chapel. By the mid-1920s, these buildings, together 

with the gymnasium a short distance away at the original campus, 

constituted a distinctive and appealing campus, notwithstanding the fact 

that it was located beyond the end of the trolley line in the wide-open 

spaces north of the city. Not until 1945 would additional facilities be 

added. 

The growth of the college’s curriculum and academic reputation during 

this stressful period was almost as dramatic as the rise of the new campus. 

North Central Association accreditation had been achieved in 1915–1916 

under David Edwards, and with this recognition the academic program 

moved forward. The curriculum was expanded and new faculty hired. 

The academic vision of the college remained solid, combining religious 

aims, liberal arts and sciences, and, especially under Edwards, an emphasis 

on business and commercial preparation. 

The events of this defining period also brought the college and Iowa 

Quakers even closer. The yearly meeting was involved in all major decisions 

about future directions and worked mightily to contribute its share 

toward the endowment and rebuilding fund campaign goals. 

Having barely picked itself up from the crisis of fire and rebuilding, the 

college faced other challenges related to World War I. Enrollment suffered

Figure 7.1. Lewis Hall 

Figure 7.2. Spencer Memorial Chapel


as young men answered the call to arms. This, in turn, led to a reduction 

in faculty and other personnel. Young Quaker men who, as conscientious 

objectors, could not take up arms were called into areas of alternative service. 

The college’s relationship with the local community suffered, as it 

was viewed as unpatriotic and unwilling to participate fully in the cause. 

While these stresses were experienced for little more than eighteen 

months to two years, they added additional weight to the college’s financial 

burden of the fire and rebuilding. By the end of the 1920s, the college 

was deeply in debt and remained so for at least the next three decades. 

Still, this time of stress and rebuilding was clearly one of the most triumphant 

periods in the college’s history. Its academic reputation was 

solid, its campus and facilities were considered to be one of the finest in 

the state, and its leadership widely was held in high regard. From 1917 to 

1928, Henry Edwin McGrew served as president, the first of two periods 

of service totaling the longest presidential tenure in the college’s history. 

Under his leadership and that of his successor, Linnaeus McCracken, the 

college enjoyed a time of achievement. In 1929, a conference of worldwide 

Friends was held at Penn. The list of speakers and attendees represented 

the cream of worldwide Quakerism. Local newspaper accounts of the 

event included highly complimentary comments by speakers concerning 

this institution whose star, after years of crisis and triumph, was rising. 

Yet through the 1920s, the college’s future was challenged on a daily basis. 

Faculty diminished to twenty-five from a high of thirty-one in 1914. 

S. Arthur Watson, president from 1958 to 1964, has written that “the wellbalanced 

program that Penn had attained before World War I and the 1916 

fire was maintained. From all outward appearances the college was in a 

golden age of sorts for the decade of the 1920s. However, the economic 

strain due to the fire and the war were body-blows that began to tell on 

the college’s reserve strength.” 

The stock market crash and the Great Depression hit Penn hard. Many 

other colleges and social institutions suffered as well, of course, but Penn 

was particularly vulnerable. The extent of its external financial commitments 

was not widely known among its constituents. A major fund-raising 

effort launched by Linnaeus McCracken was barely underway before the 

college’s financial structure began to crumble, threatening to bring the 

college down. The college community—students, faculty, and administration, 

as well as the alumni, yearly meeting, and community—mobilized 

to meet the crisis. The college simply could not meet its financial obligations. 

Some faculty moved into a residence hall and ate their meals in 

the college dining room. Farmers brought produce. Students devised a 

number of ways to save money as well as contribute to the crisis. It 

gradually became clear to the North Central Association that the col-


lege’s future was problematic, and accreditation was withdrawn in the 

spring of 1931. 

In time, the administration and trustees came to see that unless a settlement 

could be reached with its creditors, the college faced bankruptcy. 

Legal counsel advised the administration to file for protection and claim 

immunity from past debts. Articles of incorporation were executed on 

March 21, 1933. As a further step in hope of protecting the college, its 

name was changed from Penn College to William Penn College on June 5, 

1933. 

In the words of one who lived through those difficult months, “Only 

the patience of creditors and the sacrifices on the part of faculty and employees 

made possible the college’s continuance.” That, of course, and the 

legal options it exercised. Clearly, the college was able to continue its academic 

and student life programs because of the sacrifice and devotion of 

the faculty. Curriculum innovations were set aside, and courses that continued 

were focused on practical applications. Agricultural and secretarial 

courses were expanded, and teacher training and economics courses 

remained popular. In fact, while it was not altogether business as usual, 

the decade of the 1930s was a time of patient rebuilding, during which 

much that was familiar at Penn College was carried forward by the faculty 

and students. The loss of accreditation was endured with less difficulty 

than might have been expected. The college’s efforts to continue to 

offer academic and student life programs of quality did not go unnoted 

by either its sister private and Quaker colleges or the accrediting association. 

As S. Arthur Watson writes, “The same ideals of scholarship motivated 

the program. The same ideals of life motivated personal responsibility. 

And there was still the close-knit core of dedicated teachers.” The 

State University of Iowa and Haverford College continued to award annual 

scholarships. Oratory, debate, athletics, deputation work, and other 

activities continued. 

The strain of reorganization was very great on many, but especially so 

on Henry C. Bedford, who served as president during those difficult 

months. It was his task to face creditors and donors with whom the college 

had annuities that it could not honor. After his decisive time of leadership, 

he was followed in fairly quick succession by acting presidents 

Benjamin F. Andrews and H. Randolph Pyle. The second half of Edwin 

McGrew’s long tenure followed thereafter until 1942, when he was succeeded 

by Erroll Elliott, who served until 1944. 

Erroll Elliott’s short presidency, which he described as “chiefly a 

holding operation,” was dominated by World War II. This raised the 

old questions concerning the peace testimony and ideological challenges 

not unlike those the college faced in World War I. Additionally,


the war’s effect on enrollment was predictable, but in this instance the 

college lost both men and women because of the role women played in 

industrial mobilization. One student at the time remembers that the 

1944–1945 school year boasted fourteen men and 100 women. The actual 

figure for the year was ninety-five. Of course, faculty as well as students 

faced the question of whether to answer the call. As some went 

away to areas of alternative service, the college was forced to seek replacement 

faculty, one of whom was an African American professor, 

Madeline Clark Foreman, an appointment that caused great controversy 

at the time in the college’s relationship with the community and 

the yearly meeting. 

The college and Oskaloosa Monthly Meeting suffered, each in its own 

way, for Friends in their respective institutions who refused to register for 

the draft. As happened in World War I, someone smeared yellow paint on 

the parsonage “a time or two” during the war. The college faced continuing 

challenges during and after the war. During this period, Friends made 

up about 70 percent of the student body. When Cecil Hinshaw assumed 

the presidency in 1944, he actively promoted the Quaker peace testimony, 

counseling students on their options but asserting his preference for nonregistration 

for the draft rather than conscientious objection. 

CECIL HINSHAW 

Cecil Hinshaw’s presidency was, in fact, a time of stress. He came to the 

role following a succession of crises during which the college experienced 

the loyal support and generosity of its major constituencies, without 

which it could not have survived. This support was threatened, 

however, by the unsettledness created by some of Hinshaw’s ideas on 

behalf of change. Hinshaw was an idealist but impatient of progress toward 

ideals he cherished. Basic college purposes were not lost, but divisiveness 

developed among some members of the yearly meeting and the 

college and within the family of alumni about his goals and methods. 

Given the fragile nature of the college’s program and finances, this was 

perhaps not the time for innovation. Hinshaw’s administration felt that 

the emphasis on strong academics, an active Quaker witness in areas of 

social need (particularly in the matter of race relations), and a campus 

community guided strictly by Quaker principles of consensus would be 

affirmed by the wider Quaker community. In fact, the commitment to a 

process of breaking away from some of the more traditional aspects of 

the liberal arts to break new academic and spiritual ground did not resonate 

well.


WITH THE LOCAL COMMUNITY 

This fact was a matter of concern to the college, of course. The administration 

was not indifferent to the importance of the goodwill and financial 

support of local Quakers and friends. The college was determined, however, 

to try to create a national body of influential Friends who would validate 

this new vision, and this determination was perceived by the local 

constituency as indifference to their vision for the college. Rather than finesse 

the “image” to try to be all things to all constituents, the college 

went on its way and left disenchanted supporters in its wake. During this 

fairly brief period of five or so years, the college had little concern about 

the “marketing” and “image” of a successful liberal arts institution. It was 

concerned primarily with following a vision of a thoroughly Quaker college 

attempting to bring together strong academics and activist concern 

for the ills and inequities of our society. The enrollment showed that 

prospective students were not enchanted by this vision. The board of 

trustees felt the college needed a new direction. 

However one might view the Hinshaw years, one of the largest gifts 

in the college’s history, to that date, enabled it to expand across the 

highway to the east. A gift of $47,000 from the Peasley family enabled 

the college, in 1945, to purchase the Gibbs house, a large mansion adjacent 

to the campus. The house first served as a men’s dormitory, later 

as the home of the Department of Fine Arts. This was the first addition 

to the campus since the early 1920s. Other funds from the same family 

were used to purchase a 300-acre dairy farm adjacent to the Gibbs mansion. 

The mansion was named Peasley Hall, then later changed to Griffith 

Hall in honor of Charles Griffith, for many years director of the fine 

arts program at the college, then still later Peasley-Griffith, at the request 

of descendants of the donors, who felt that the original donors of 

the building should continue to be honored. The building was razed in 

1997 to accommodate a new facility constructed by an area community 

college to offer lower-division courses to students who would continue 

their studies on the main campus. The farm property served the college 

well for many years as an outdoor laboratory, some modest crop farming, 

and a portion subdivided for new community housing called College 

Heights. 

In September 1949, a former professor and head of the chemistry department, 

Forester Stanley, was appointed president. He served little 

more than two months before his death in November. He is credited with 

able and understanding leadership and did much to steady the college after 

a period of unease. Financial concerns continued, of course, but there 

were intimations of new life. With the appointment of Charles Ball as


president in 1949, the college appeared to be on the threshold of coming 

into its own once again. 

SIGNS OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 

The college was still fragile in 1949, resulting from a series of financial and 

ideological challenges going back nearly three decades. Ball brought to 

the presidency a strong evangelical faith, some experience gained in 

teaching and administrative positions as president of Friends University, 

and, perhaps most important, insight about what had to take place at the 

college to establish it once again among its sister Quaker institutions and 

the private colleges of Iowa. His evangelical Quakerism resonated 

strongly with the yearly meeting, and so during his tenure members of 

the yearly meeting took a very practical interest in the college. Teams of 

men came to the campus to paint and help in areas of deferred maintenance. 

Young Quakers held meetings and workshops on the campus. Not 

since the crisis of the fire of 1916 were the college and yearly meeting 

more closely bound together. 

The community welcomed Ball’s engagement with business leaders 

and his efforts to situate the college firmly in the Oskaloosa community. 

The alumni, in tentative ways, began again to accept their role in the life 

of the college. This trend would continue even more strongly with Ball’s 

successor, S. Arthur Watson. In fact, Ball opened doors that all succeeding 

presidents have opened even wider, connecting with the wider public 

in all its aspects. There was, of course, a very pragmatic purpose in 

this, related to the college’s desperate need for an infusion of students 

and gift income. Ball and his successors were uniformly convinced that 

the college must become a lively reality in the consciousness of its friends 

and supporters. It needed money, students, talented leadership for the 

board of trustees, and the ability to attract ever more talented members 

of the faculty. 

In short, it needed to be seen as a real player in private, Quaker, and 

church-related higher education. For this to happen, the college would 

need, at all costs, to recover the accreditation it had lost in 1931. Ball 

worked tirelessly toward this end. It would not be easy, given the fragile 

nature of college finances and weakness in a number of academic areas. 

Ball moved patiently forward, often without salary. Working with Dean 

Wendell Farr and with an eye toward accreditation standards, Ball established 

a traditional liberal arts and sciences curriculum, with perhaps a bit 

more biblical and religious emphasis. During this period, there were a 

number of students—men and women—who were studying for service as 

religious professionals.


The athletic program, which even in the worst of times was an important 

part of student life, became increasingly competitive. It was midway 

through Ball’s presidency when a meeting of local, business, and civic 

leaders was held in a downtown hotel meeting room. Some of the most 

influential among them reminded their colleagues of the toughness and 

tenacity of “this little college.” “It’s clear you cannot kill it,” they said, “so 

let’s get busy and make it thrive.” In a meeting of the board of trustees 

soon thereafter, Oskaloosa and Quaker leaders took a bold step in deciding 

to build a new gym with the simple but profound declaration, “Gentlemen, 

let’s get these students a gym.” Completed in 1957, the gym was 

the first facility built on the “new” main campus in thirty-five years. It 

represented the college’s commitment, in good times and bad, to a vibrant 

and comprehensive athletic program. 

Moving from the science faculty to the president’s office in 1958, 

S. Arthur Watson continued the trend, started by Ball, of reconnecting the 

college to its national constituency. At the same time, by far the most important 

focus of Watson and his administration was the reaccreditation by 

the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges. Working with his 

new academic dean, Dr. Donald Schultze, Watson was able to see the college, 

at long last, achieve this reaccreditation in 1960. Not long thereafter, 

the college also sought and achieved, in 1965, membership in the National 

Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. 

One of the most important developments occurring during Watson’s 

presidency was the college’s merger with Nebraska Central College, a 

small Quaker college in central Nebraska that had closed its doors a few 

years before the merger. Penn received Nebraska Central’s library and 

modest endowment and all alumni and financial records. It also received 

the warm and generous support of a new body of alumni and friends who 

were pleased to once again have a home campus. 

Through the Ball and Watson years, enrollment began a tentative upswing. 

Taken together with other encouraging signs of growth, it seemed 

the right time to celebrate the college’s ninetieth anniversary (in 1963) 

with a major fund-raising campaign to build a new library and dormitory 

and upgrade other selected academic resources. The $750,000 campaign 

was successfully concluded in 1963. In addition to achieving certain resource 

development goals, the campaign mobilized the college’s national 

family in an unprecedented way, identifying and enlisting community, 

Quaker and alumni leadership, and donor capability. All this served the 

college well, as in the following quarter century it launched several fundraising 

campaigns with increasingly challenging goals. 

By 1964, the college was clearly moving beyond decades of unremitting 

financial hardship as well as a somewhat insular institutional personality. 

Enrollment was inching upward, financial resources were more abundant,


the faculty was engaged in an ongoing fine-tuning of the curriculum and 

academic program, and facilities were improving. It was at this point that 

the college began to experience some fundamental changes in its character. 

More aggressive recruiting brought larger enrollments through the early 

1970s. Students from the East Coast and other parts of the nation brought 

different cultural perspectives. The college began to change from a fairly 

small, rural-oriented, tightly controlled, evangelically inclined liberal arts 

college with a predominance of Quaker students. 

Students raised issues of smoking on campus, of a more permissive social 

atmosphere, and of dormitory visitation. They also sought a larger 

role in campus governance and an understanding of how financial and 

other administrative decisions were made. Fraternities and sororities became 

a more prominent feature as a cocurricular activity, although most 

administration up to the recent past were uneasy about the place of Greek 

organizations in a Quaker environment. 

The enrollment reached 1,000 in 1969–1970 but thereafter began a gradual 

decline that seemed to frustrate all efforts to swing it around. With the 

decline in enrollment from the early 1970s until the late 1990s, the college’s 

financial position became increasingly compromised. With very little 

endowment, tuition had for decades been the main source of operational 

revenue. With the decline in enrollment, the college began to show 

annual operating deficits that were only occasionally mitigated by fundraising 

campaigns and large unexpected gifts. Nevertheless, the 1960s 

and 1970s were a time when change and diversity held out the possibility 

that the college would open itself even further to new ideas and markets. 

Reaccreditation was routinely approved, although for shorter periods— 

from five to seven years—than hoped. Athletics enjoyed something of a 

“golden age” in a number of both men’s and women’s sports. The faculty 

was increasingly empowered in matters of institutional planning and 

governance. All major constituencies, including the Quakers of Iowa, 

were generally positive about the college’s direction and showed their approval 

with increasing financial support. 

While traditional in many ways, the academic program attracted 

greater numbers of students in teacher education, industrial technology, 

and physical education. On the horizon, one could see the first signs of an 

emerging new market: the adult, nontraditional students. Academic alliances 

and reciprocal agreements with both public and other private colleges 

in Iowa expanded the college’s offerings. Beginning in the early 

1980s, technology changed both the way the college delivered its “product” 

and the way it took care of its business. Major grants from Lilly Endowment 

and the Teagle Foundation enabled the college to work on issues 

of community life, student services, faculty support and mentoring, 

and curriculum revision. And, finally, the college’s centennial in 1973 was


an opportunity for major facility expansion, that is, a physical education 

complex, a fine arts building, and upgraded science labs and classrooms. 

It also gave the college the opportunity to bring a number of creative and 

exciting people to the campus for public forums and lectures. 

JOHN WAGONER’S PRESIDENCY 

Following the fairly brief administration of Gus Turbeville (1979–1984), 

during which his “Great Issues Program” focused the academic program 

on debate and oratory, John Wagoner accepted the board’s invitation to 

move from advancement vice president to president. Born and bred as an 

Iowa Quaker and an undergraduate product of the college, he sought a 

reaffirmation, in action, of its historic Quaker identity. His concerns were 

not so much how to “market” the college’s “product” to new “customers” 

in the twenty-first century as how to authenticate the college as a Quaker 

educational community. It soon became clear to Wagoner that realities 

called for a fairly hard-nosed determination to make the college and its offerings 

as compelling as possible. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s 

(roughly the scope of his tenure), strategic planning helped the college 

identify needs and focus its energies and resources. The faculty was further 

empowered in this process: the curriculum and academic plan were 

thoroughly studied—helped by the Lilly and Teagle grants and by Title III 

awards for technological upgrades—to prepare the college for the coming 

adult, nontraditional student enrollment. Private gift funds and a bond issue 

enabled the college to make campus and facility improvements totaling 

well over $2 million. 

While his sentiments were in the direction of creating a clearer, more 

unmistakable Quaker institutional profile, he was encouraged by advisers 

to open the college to the benefits, to both students and the college, of a 

“fast-track, degree-completion program for working adults,” similar to 

programs already in place at a number of Iowa colleges. The college was 

well into the early planning stages of what became known as the “College 

for Working Adults” (CWA) when he retired in 1995. It was carried forward 

very successfully by his successors who deserve the credit for making 

it work so well. The CWA, which offers a bachelor of business administration 

degree, has a larger enrollment than the traditional campus 

and has helped boost the college’s total enrollment to about 1,500, a more 

dramatic enrollment increase over five years than any college in Iowa. 

The impetus to follow other colleges into the “satellite-campus fasttrack 

degree” program was realism at work in the college’s view of the future; 

the college needed to offer something different in order to attract a 

larger share of the prospective student market. It needed to attract a larger


share of the market to enhance income revenue, and it sought a way to be 

of larger service as a Quaker college with the obvious result of raising the 

college’s profile in the public eye. All this has been accomplished. The 

CWA has had a larger impact on the life of the college than any other recent 

development through increased enrollment and revenue, heightened 

morale, and public awareness. 

CHANGE AND GROWTH 

The change of administration in 1995 was more than a change of people. 

It was a change in how the college would be led, how it would see itself, 

and how it would be viewed by the public. The board sought leadership 

with marketing and business savvy. They sought someone who was 

solidly grounded academically but who also had training and experience 

in how to apply business principles and processes to make the college 

work better, to capture its share of the student market, to stay on the cutting 

edge of technology, to field winning teams in all sports, and thus to 

project the image of a winning college. 

Through the new leadership of President Thomas Boyd, most of this 

has been achieved. Enrollment has increased strongly both in the traditional 

arts and sciences programs on campus and in the CWA. Increased 

tuition revenue and several major anonymous gifts of $1 million or more 

have enabled the college to make sweeping campus and facility improvements. 

The general education curriculum has been renamed the leadership 

core, with emphasis on courses and skills that help students increase 

their leadership and service potential. Two new residence halls have been 

built and others fully renovated. Persons with marketing skills and experience 

have been hired and have designed creative, attractive themes and 

supporting materials to increase student recruitment and to project the 

college’s image. “Image” is the operative theme. Athletic logos project 

strength and vitality with a soaring eagle. President Boyd has extended 

the college’s reach into Japan and Korea, with institutional alliances and 

athletic linkages. He has stressed the need and goal of diversity and of a 

global perspective. Accordingly, on January 21, 2000, the board changed 

the name of the institution to William Penn University, stating that the 

new name more accurately reflects the institution’s vision and scope of 

operations. 

These changes appear to have the support of the alumni, local community, 

and Iowa Quakers for what is—in effect, a new kind of college where 

diversity, a “winning” image, strong academics, and a kind of “corporate” 

ethos are dominant. No, Quaker values and identity are not incidental. 

Deliberate steps have been taken to raise the awareness of the entire stu-


dent body of the college’s Quaker roots and to offer opportunities 

through the curriculum, campus worship, and icons around the campus 

to be fully informed about the Society of Friends. This is all pretty much 

an internal affair, however. It does not appear that the college’s Quaker 

personality, whatever there is left of it, is given much expression in the recruitment 

of students or in other marketing efforts. 

In the last seven years, more specifically beginning in 2004 under the 

presidential leadership of Dr. Richard Sours, William Penn University has 

focused on the words of William Penn’s advice from 1699, “be humble, be 

just, be meek, be true, be patient, be grateful, be merciful, be diligent, be 

loving, be thrifty, be generous, be temperate,” as a philosophy to live by 

not only for our own lives but in the lives of the many students who seek 

education here. 

At this juncture in history, thanks to the vision and work of talented 

leadership, William Penn University is a thoroughgoing liberal arts and 

sciences institution with a strong degree-completion program. Its future 

looks bright. It has enjoyed a number of recent triumphs. This is as it 

should be, after a long and distinguished history wrought from the challenge 

of crisis, during which those who loved and served her were heard 

to say, “We must go forward.”

8 

Johns Hopkins University 

James Stimpert 

THE FOUNDER 

Johns Hopkins was born on May 19, 1795, on a tobacco plantation in 

Anne Arundel County, Maryland, south of Baltimore. He was the second 

of eleven children born to Samuel Hopkins and Hannah Janney 

Hopkins. His distinctive and often-misspelled first name came from his 

great-grandmother, Margaret Johns. Hopkins’s ancestors emigrated 

from Great Britain in the late 1600s to the Tidewater region of Maryland 

and Virginia, where they became established and prosperous farmers, 

due in large part to their use of slave labor. In 1807, following the direction 

of the Society of Friends, Samuel freed the family’s slaves. The ablebodied 

individuals were given their freedom, and those unable to provide 

for themselves were retained as dependents. As a result, Johns, at 

the age of twelve, along with the older siblings, had to leave school to 

help maintain the farm. Although he never received any further formal 

schooling, he had a hunger for knowledge and worked to educate himself 

in his spare moments. 

When Hopkins was seventeen, his uncle, Gerard Hopkins, asked the 

young man to come to Baltimore and learn the trade of a merchant in his 

store. Johns’s mother urged him to accept the offer with the prophetic 

statement, “thee has business ability.” 1 

Within two years, Johns proved his mother correct. His uncle left Johns 

in charge of the store for several months while he traveled to Ohio to attend 

a Society of Friends meeting, and Johns not only maintained the 

business but increased its profits significantly as well. 

125

126 James Stimpert 

While living in his uncle’s house, Johns fell in love with his cousin, Elizabeth, 

several years younger than himself. Although he proposed marriage 

and she accepted, Gerard opposed the union, citing the Friends’ disapproval 

of the marriage of first cousins. Unable to overcome family 

opposition, Johns and Elizabeth vowed to marry no one else, and neither 

ever did marry. They remained close friends throughout their lives, and 

on his death, Johns provided Elizabeth with a house. 

By 1819, Johns was ready to strike out on his own. His decision was influenced 

by a disagreement with his uncle over the ethics of accepting 

whiskey, instead of cash, in payment for goods. At that time, corn was a 

primary cash crop of farmers west of the Appalachians. Before the railroads, 

the only practical way to move goods eastward was by horsedrawn 

wagon. A bulk commodity such as corn, which could be distilled 

into whiskey before shipping, was more easily transported in liquid form. 

The western farmers thus had a product in high demand in the eastern 

states, and Johns was quite willing to accept wholesale whiskey as payment 

for goods transported westward. Gerard opposed this practice, declaring 

that he would not “sell souls into perdition.” 2 The parting was amicable, 

however, as Gerard backed his nephew’s fledgling enterprise with 

$10,000. 

Hopkins’s first business partner was a Quaker named Benjamin Moore. 

Their wholesale company dissolved after three years, with Moore commenting, 

“Johns is the only man I know who wants to make money more 

than I do.” 3 Soon after, Johns went into business with three of his brothers, 

forming a wholesale house known as “Hopkins Brothers.” Initially, 

most of their business was in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, but 

the growing population west of the Appalachians could not be ignored. 

Using Conestoga wagons, goods were shipped across the mountains, 

with payment in the form of barrels of whiskey. This whiskey then was 

bottled and sold under the name “Hopkins’ Best.” 

Despite Johns’s disagreement with the Quakers over their views on 

marriage, he remained a devoted member of his church. In response to 

Hopkins’s selling whiskey, however, he was expelled briefly from the Society 

of Friends. At the time of his expulsion, he was the wealthiest member 

of the meeting, which may have caused some consternation among 

the elders. While he expressed no regret, he was soon reinstated to his 

meeting. In his later years, however, he acknowledged that he should not 

have sold liquor. 

In 1838, Hopkins purchased a mansion, Clifton, then located outside 

the city boundaries, where he lived during the summer months. On the 

500-acre grounds, he laid out gardens, giving explicit instructions for their 

maintenance to his gardener and checking progress on his daily walks. He 

expanded the house, adding an observation tower from which he could

Johns Hopkins University 127 

observe, through a telescope, ships entering Baltimore’s harbor, including 

those in which he had a vested interest. 

While spending little on his own physical comforts, he entertained lavishly 

at Clifton, with fine food and champagne always at hand. Disliking 

pretenses of superiority, he once rebuked a nephew who covered his wine 

glass as a servant was about to fill it. “Take thy hand off thy glass, Joe. Let 

the wine stand if thee does not want it, but don’t publish thy temperance 

resolves.” 4 

At the age of fifty, after the early deaths of his three younger brothers, 

Hopkins retired from his family business a wealthy man. He turned from 

the wholesale merchandise business to that of venture capitalist, using his 

skills to become a leading financier of his time. An excellent judge of character, 

Johns saw potential in individuals and lent money at generous interest 

rates, even after they had been turned down by banks. An observer 

who saw him lend money to an entrepreneur on favorable terms remarked 

that he had done a good thing. Hopkins replied that it was strictly 

a business deal and that he was certain the man would repay the loan and 

that both of them would profit. He was seldom disappointed, and regardless 

of the profit earned, he surely enjoyed watching young entrepreneurs 

repay their loans and vindicate his judgment. 

Hopkins understood that the prosperity of Baltimore was dependent on 

transportation, through its Chesapeake Bay port as well as the emerging 

railroads. He began buying acres of decaying warehouses along the waterfront, 

erecting new warehouses and office buildings, and expanding 

the port area to ease the movement of goods from ship to shore. Replacing 

the Conestoga wagons, railroads linked the East Coast to cities, farms, 

and industries to the west, with trains transporting goods at less cost and 

in greater volume than before. Many conservative investors refused to 

back railroads in the 1840s, but Hopkins, perhaps because of his experience 

with horse-drawn wagons, was quick to recognize their potential. 

He became the largest stockholder in the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad 

and was named a director in 1847. He became chairman of the finance 

committee in 1855 and held this position until his death. Twice, in 

1857 and 1873, he pledged his private fortune to keep the railroad operating 

during financial panics. 

During the American Civil War, Hopkins was a staunch Unionist. 

Along with B&O president John Work Garrett, he placed the railroad at 

the disposal of the U.S. government. Despite Confederate sabotage attempts, 

the railroad remained a valuable asset to the North, transporting 

troops and supplies westward. 

While generous with deserving friends and family, who could count on 

him for financial backing if he was convinced of their ability to use the 

money wisely, Hopkins was not known as a philanthropist until late in his


life. George Peabody, a contemporary already known for his philanthropy, 

may have convinced Hopkins to bestow his wealth for the benefit 

of the larger community. With no wife or direct descendants to provide 

for, he was free to dispose of his wealth. His own lack of formal schooling 

may have influenced his decision to found a university, and his recogni- 

Figure 8.1. Johns Hopkins


tion of the poor state of medical care in Baltimore likely prompted him to 

found a hospital. Whatever his reasons, in 1867, he incorporated The 

Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins Hospital and named 

trustees for each corporation. Of the twelve original university trustees, 

three were relatives, two by blood and one by marriage. The others were 

business colleagues whose judgment Hopkins trusted. Six were members 

of the Society of Friends, four were Episcopalian, one was a Presbyterian, 

and one was a Swedenborgian. When John Fonerden (the Swedenborgian) 

died in 1869, he was replaced by James Carey Thomas, thus giving 

the board seven Quakers. From this diversity and from the trustees’ 

knowledge of Hopkins’s own beliefs, it may have been only natural that 

neither corporation bearing his name ever had any religious affiliation. 

The university’s board of trustees met formally only once during Hopkins’s 

life. Since the founding of the university was to be based on a bequest, 

there were no resources for planning or operating the corporations 

until the bequest was received. In 1870, they convened to elect officers and 

then adjourned. 

In December 1873, Hopkins contracted a cold that developed into pneumonia 

after he insisted on walking to his office without an overcoat on a 

cold day, giving rise to a popular story that he was too penurious to buy 

himself a proper coat. He died peacefully on December 24, 1873, at his 

townhouse on Saratoga Street in Baltimore. Reporting his death, the Baltimore 

Sun (December 25, 1873) added this tribute: “This city owes no 

small share of its prosperity to his enlightened and energetic efforts.” He 

was buried in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery. Of his $8 million fortune, 

$7 million was divided equally between the university and the hospital, 

with the remainder distributed among family members and servants. 

BEGINNINGS 

Hopkins left specific instructions regarding the location, mission, and operation 

of the hospital, and he set aside real estate to ensure that it would 

be located within the city. He admonished hospital administrators to 

serve the public without regard to race or financial status. It was his intent 

that the medical school, which would be part of the university, should cooperate 

closely with the hospital in all matters concerning medical training. 

The hospital was thus to be a “teaching hospital” where medical students 

could learn by observing and questioning practicing physicians as 

well as receiving rigorous classroom and laboratory instruction. 

The second meeting of the board of trustees took place in February 

1874, following Hopkins’s death and the receipt of the bequest. Here they 

adopted bylaws, appointed committees, and began the first tentative


steps toward building a university. In contrast to the hospital, Hopkins 

left no specific instructions regarding the establishment of a university. 

None of the trustees were educators, so they were left to decide for themselves 

what should constitute a university. Following the founder’s instruction, 

they sought “to obtain the advice and assistance of those at 

home and abroad who had achieved the greatest success.” 5 Thus, they began 

soliciting counsel from presidents of established universities. Three 

who gave generously of their time and ideas were Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, 

Andrew D. White of Cornell, and James B. Angell of Michigan. The 

trustees may have been aware that for decades promising American 

scholars with the means to do so were traveling to Europe for advanced 

study. The universities of Germany were a popular destination, perhaps 

because of their emphasis on “learning by doing” rather than “learning by 

listening” to a professor’s lectures. 

Following the advice of Eliot, White, and Angell, the trustees began 

searching for a president to recruit a faculty and solidify the educational 

course of the fledgling university. Toward this end, they solicited nominations 

from interested and informed parties. One name mentioned frequently 

was that of Daniel Coit Gilman, presently at the University of California. 

Born on July 6, 1831, to a prosperous family, Gilman was raised in 

Connecticut and New York and educated at Yale, graduating in 1852. His 

family assumed he would enter the ministry of the Congregational 

Church, but Gilman was unsure. Not knowing exactly what he wished to 

do but desiring further education, he was disinclined to continue his education 

in the United States. Through contacts, Gilman (along with Andrew 

White) secured appointments as attachés in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

His diplomatic duties were light, allowing him considerable freedom to 

travel around Europe, attending lectures in England and Germany. He returned 

to the United States in September 1855 and was appointed to a position 

with the New Haven, Connecticut, Board of Education. Drawing on 

his observations and experiences in Europe, Gilman drew up a plan to 

raise the educational standards of the New Haven public schools. 

Deciding that his interests lay in education, Gilman declined an offer to 

join the editorial staff of a New York newspaper and accepted a faculty 

position with the Sheffield Scientific School, affiliated with Yale. Following 

the death of his first wife, Gilman moved to the West Coast in 1872 

and assumed the presidency of the University of California. There, he encountered 

vocal opponents of the Morrill Act (which mandated that states 

set aside land and tax money to support higher education) who did not 

believe the state should support public universities. When an independent 

study board issued a report that fully vindicated Gilman and the 

board of regents and refuted serious charges against them, Gilman won 

the battle, although there was no assurance that his opponents would not


renew the struggle. Despite his vindication, Gilman knew the California 

legislature held few supporters of public education, so the chances of adequate 

funding in the future seemed doubtful. 

Loathing such battles for funding and public support, Gilman submitted 

his resignation just two years after assuming the presidency. Before 

leaving office, he had heard about a new university being established in 

Baltimore. It would be a private university, not dependent on the state, 

and it appeared to have a sufficient endowment to permit a first-class 

quality of education. In late December 1874, having been contacted by the 

Johns Hopkins trustees, Gilman met with them in Baltimore. When asked 

what he would do if placed in charge of a brand-new educational endeavor, 

Gilman answered that he would not advocate just another college 

but rather a university founded on the twin principles of research and 

teaching—such as he had observed in Germany during his travels—one 

that would quickly achieve a reputation far beyond the boundaries of Baltimore 

or Maryland. He declared that he “would select as professors men 

now standing in the front rank in their own fields, pay them adequately, 

give them only students far enough advanced to keep them stimulated, 

and expect from them the publication of the results of their researches.” 6 

At the conclusion of their meeting, the trustees conferred and were in 

complete accord with Gilman’s ideas. The following day, they elected him 

president. Gilman left California in March 1875 and returned to the East 

Coast, from whence he had departed so recently. Gilman’s presidency officially 

began May 1, 1875, though his formal inauguration was not held 

until the following year. In large part, this was due to the fact that, as of 

May 1875, the new university consisted of just a president, with no faculty, 

administration, or students to preside over. The trustees had such 

confidence in Gilman that they turned over to him all further details of 

setting up the university, reserving to themselves only the duty of confirming 

his faculty choices and advising him as best they could. They 

urged him to consider “the devotion of the candidate to some particular 

line of study and the certainty of his eminence in that specialty; the power 

to pursue independent and original investigation and to inspire the 

young with enthusiasm for study and research; the willingness to cooperate 

in building up a new institution, and the freedom from tendencies 

toward ecclesiastical or sectional controversies.” 7 

In keeping with his declaration to the trustees during his interview, 

Gilman set out to recruit a faculty. He solicited applications and nominations 

and rigorously evaluated them to find the kind of people he wanted. 

He made it known that he was perfectly willing to open the university 

without offering instruction in a given field if he could not find a suitable 

instructor. He embarked for Europe in July 1875, determined to locate and 

lure established and promising scholars who subscribed to his belief that


research, along with teaching, should be the foundation on which the new 

educational venture should rest. 

The first faculty member recruited came from New York. While on a 

speaking engagement at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Gilman 

asked the academy’s physics professor if he could recommend anyone in 

his field. He was immediately given the name of Henry Augustus Rowland, 

a young man of “unusual promise” currently a junior faculty member 

at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Gilman summoned Rowland by 

telegram and met him a few days later at West Point. He liked what he 

saw, and after consulting with the trustees, he asked Rowland to accompany 

him to Europe, both to further Rowland’s own knowledge and to allow 

Gilman to observe him further. 

Gilman visited most of the great universities of Europe, meeting with 

renowned scholars and gaining their counsel on whom to pursue. As a result 

of these initial contacts, many of these scholars later lectured in Baltimore, 

an additional benefit. The first professor offered a chair was Basil 

Lanneau Gildersleeve, who, like Rowland, was recruited in the United 

States. Gildersleeve was raised in South Carolina and educated in Germany, 

earning his PhD in classics from Göttingen in 1853. He enlisted in 

the Confederate army in 1861 and served as a staff officer throughout the 

war, returning to his faculty position at the University of Virginia to teach 

during the winter months, when little military campaigning took place. 

He was wounded in a skirmish, an injury that left him partly disabled for 

the rest of his life. After the war, he returned to full-time teaching and 

wrote a number of widely acclaimed textbooks. Gildersleeve’s selection 

also served another purpose. Gilman was a northerner and Baltimore a 

city that held strong feelings for the Confederacy during the war. Citizens 

of Baltimore were uneasy over a “Yankee” importing new educational 

ideas and methods, and they feared the new university might be a “carpetbagger” 

institution such as had sprung up in many places farther 

south after the war. The appointment of a southerner—one who had 

fought for the Confederacy—helped calm those fears and win acceptance 

for the new institution. 

The second official faculty appointment (Rowland was not named formally 

to a position until later) was James Joseph Sylvester as professor of 

mathematics. Sylvester, already recognized as one of Britain’s foremost 

mathematicians, was a native of London and a graduate of St. John’s College, 

Cambridge. Despite his recognized brilliance, he was denied a degree 

because, as a Jew, he could not subscribe to the Anglican Articles of 

Faith, a requirement at the time. Relegated to positions in less prestigious 

institutions, Sylvester labored in near anonymity. In the early 1850s, he 

“burned his bridges” and moved to the United States, where he assumed 

a faculty chair at the University of Virginia. His tenure in Charlottesville


was brief, however, because he could not accept the lack of respect accorded 

professors by students. Shaken by the knowledge that another 

professor had been murdered by an enraged student shortly before his arrival, 

Sylvester soon regretted crossing the ocean. He returned to London, 

studied law, and took a job performing actuarial work for an insurance 

company. He had retired in 1870 but was recommended highly to Gilman 

by educators in England and the United States. Despite some difficult negotiations 

(among other concerns, Sylvester wished to be paid in gold), an 

agreement was reached, and he was appointed formally in February 1876. 

Considered brilliant but eccentric, he was known to interrupt a lecture 

when a new (and irrelevant) thought entered his mind, pursuing that 

thought for the remainder of the class, to the utter bewilderment of his 

students. Although he spent only seven years at Hopkins, he was instrumental 

in setting up a vibrant mathematics department, vigorously encouraging 

research, and cultivating younger faculty to assume higher positions 

at Hopkins and elsewhere. 

In the field of chemistry, Gilman recruited a young faculty member 

from Williams College. Ira Remsen had earned an MD to please his parents, 

then he followed by earning a PhD in chemistry, which is where his 

real interest lay. He studied in Munich, Göttingen, and Tübingen, returning 

to the United States in 1872 to assume a position at Williams College. 

Despite a heavy teaching load, in 1873 he published an English translation 

of Wohler’s Outlines of Organic Chemistry, which brought him to Gilman’s 

attention. Devoted to research, Remsen realized his best chance to pursue 

this interest lay beyond Williams. He eagerly accepted Gilman’s invitation 

and went on to publish numerous textbooks, winning renown for his 

ability to render complex ideas in a form easily understood by the beginner. 

While the trustees had decided early that the arts and sciences would 

take precedence in the founding years, they planned for the eventual establishment 

of a school of medicine. To that end, Gilman was on the lookout 

for faculty members who would teach the basic concepts of science to 

undergraduates who would go on to the medical school. While traveling 

in England, Gilman heard of a young biologist named Henry Newell Martin. 

Son of a clergyman-schoolmaster, Martin was by 1874 a fellow of University 

College, London. Gilman persuaded him to move to Baltimore, 

and he became the first professor of biology. 

These five men—two scholars established in their fields and three who 

showed immense promise—formed the basis of the faculty when classes 

began in October 1876. Numerous junior faculty members joined them, 

including Herbert Baxter Adams, who became instrumental in founding 

the American Historical Association and revolutionized the teaching of 

history. From these junior ranks and from the early classes of graduate


students came many individuals who achieved prominence in their fields, 

many of them at Hopkins. 

Early in the trustees’ discussions with Gilman concerning the new university, 

the idea arose that the university would devote itself to educating 

graduate students. This seemed to fit with the planned emphasis on the 

European method of instruction—compelling students to perform original 

research and present the results of that research in seminar meetings. 

This seems to have been Gilman’s assumption in his early planning, but 

when it became known that Hopkins would seek only those students capable 

of advanced work (formal undergraduate degrees were never a requirement 

in the early years), the community protested. Fearing that they 

would lose the support of the city if they were perceived as an “elite” institution, 

Gilman changed his thinking and embraced undergraduate education, 

never looking back. This early idea has given rise to the modern 

erroneous belief that Hopkins admitted only graduate students at its inception. 

The truth is that classes opened in 1876, the first doctorates were 

awarded in 1878, and the first class of undergraduates received bachelor’s 

degrees in 1879. 

But, while Hopkins has always admitted undergraduates, on two occasions 

the university did try to eliminate undergraduate instruction. In 

1925 and again in 1952, a plan was implemented briefly to admit students 

after their sophomore year to graduate standing, bypassing the undergraduate 

degree entirely. In both instances, the trustees were forced to revert 

to the traditional model. Again, community pressure played a large 

role, as did the perceived difficulty of convincing enough students to 

transfer from other institutions after two years to create a viable student 

body. 8 Perhaps because of these attempts to eliminate undergraduate 

study and a heavy emphasis on advanced research, undergraduates even 

today sometimes feel like tolerated stepchildren. 

At the time of Hopkins’s death, it was assumed by all that the new university 

would open on the grounds of the founder’s Clifton mansion, a 

330-acre estate northeast of the downtown area that was included in the 

bequest. But Hopkins also preferred that the trustees not spend the principal 

of his bequest on buildings. The trustees and President Gilman 

were in full accord with this sentiment. Another difficulty with the 

Clifton location was its relative isolation from residential areas of the city 

and absence of utilities. Some were also nervous because the area around 

Clifton contained many saloons and “houses of ill repute,” which the 

trustees feared would have a negative influence on the young scholars 

they hoped to attract. Although horse-drawn public transportation was 

available, dormitories would have been required, in addition to classroom 

and laboratory buildings, necessitating a serious drain on the original 

endowment.


For all these reasons, the trustees decided to open in downtown Baltimore, 

acquiring existing buildings and erecting such structures as would 

facilitate operations until sufficient capital had been accumulated to allow 

construction of a permanent campus on the Clifton grounds. Perhaps at 

that future time, the Clifton neighborhood would have improved in multiple 

ways. The short-term solution was therefore to acquire a two-block 

site in the downtown area, with adequate potential for several years of 

growth. An additional important benefit to this location was its proximity 

to the Peabody Institute Library, established by George Peabody and comprising 

an excellent circulating library and reference collection. While the 

university included a library from the beginning, it grew slowly since the 

Peabody Library allowed the administration to apply financial resources 

in other areas. By the 1890s, the university consisted of an administration 

building plus six classroom and laboratory buildings as well as a gymnasium. 

For outdoor athletics, the Clifton grounds were utilized, and students 

traveled to and from Clifton by horse-drawn “bus.” No dormitories 

were constructed because the university was located in a residential 

neighborhood and it was assumed that students would commute from 

home or rent rooms in the vicinity. 

THE NEW UNIVERSITY 

While the finishing touches were still being applied to both the faculty 

and the physical arrangements, the trustees inaugurated Daniel Coit 

Gilman with a public ceremony. On Tuesday, February 22, 1876, in the 

presence of numerous dignitaries and the general public, Gilman was formally 

invested with the title and duties of president of Johns Hopkins 

University. 9 President Charles Eliot of Harvard gave the main address, 

followed by Gilman’s own inaugural address. Gilman laid out his and the 

trustees’ guiding principles for the institution, and he made a statement 

that has been paraphrased “build men, not buildings,” referring to Hopkins’s 

admonition that the university should emphasize education, not 

vine-covered buildings and ornate edifices. During the university’s 125thanniversary 

celebration in 2001, Gilman’s inaugural address became the 

centerpiece of the event, with scholars and administrators comparing the 

current institution to Gilman’s statements and admonitions. The anniversary 

of Gilman’s inauguration became known as Commemoration Day 

(celebrated annually until recent years) and was well received by the 

larger community. 

A later public event was not so well received, however. On September 

12, 1876, the prominent biologist Thomas Huxley delivered an address at 

Hopkins on “university education.” This was not a formal occasion but


rather an attempt to show the community what to expect when classes 

opened the following month. Trying to avoid sectarian conflict and a battle 

between science and religion, the university ran headlong into both in 

a single event. In his Inaugural Address given in February, Gilman had 

tried to steer a middle course: “Religion has nothing to fear from science, 

and science need not be afraid of religion. Religion claims to interpret the 

word of God, and science to reveal the laws of God. The interpreters may 

blunder, but truths are immutable, eternal, and never in conflict.” 10 

Huxley, a noted proponent of the theory of evolution, spoke on evolution 

and religion, and his fame (or notoriety), together with the lack of an 

opening invocation, caused local clergy to attack the university as an “irreligious 

foundation.” Gilman had asked the trustees whether an invocation 

would be in order and was advised that this was an unofficial event, 

so a prayer was not necessary. A Presbyterian newspaper summarized the 

content of the speech in impartial fashion, then stated, “As [the exercises] 

had been opened, so they were concluded, without prayer or benediction” 

(emphasis in the original). One participant in the public discussion that 

followed recognized that a full prayer had been offered at Gilman’s inauguration 

in February, so nothing was needed at this event. Eventually, 

tempers cooled, in part because of respect for Gilman’s impartiality, and 

a New York minister concluded to a Baltimore colleague, “It was bad 

enough to invite Huxley. It were better to have asked God to be present. 

It would have been absurd to ask them both.” In Gilman’s writings, he 

pled the case for Hopkins as a nonsectarian but not irreligious institution. 

His vision was that scholars should be free to “discuss great themes in a 

manly spirit, rather than petty differences in a narrow way.” 11 

While religious beliefs and attitudes were never far from the surface in 

1880s America, Gilman and the trustees did their best to remain nonsectarian. 

Worship, prayer, and meditation were always encouraged, but no 

official provision was made for these activities. Although the YMCA operated 

a branch on the Homewood Campus until the 1970s and supported 

a university chaplain, there was no chapel on campus until—perhaps 

ironically—the late 1990s, when Hopkins acquired a vacant church building 

adjacent to the campus and turned it into an Interfaith Center, where 

all faiths and beliefs could be accommodated with no favoritism for one 

over the others. In the nineteenth century, there is mention of professors 

inviting students and colleagues to their homes for prayer and meditation. 

Given limited classroom space, they also held classes in their homes 

on occasion, so religious discussion might have been a natural extension. 

Since the original Arts and Sciences campus was in a residential neighborhood, 

there were churches nearby, including a Friends meeting house 

near the campus, to minister to students. When Arts and Sciences moved 

to the Homewood Campus, there was again a Friends meeting across the


street from the campus. While there was never any formal affiliation with 

either of these Friends meetings, many students have been active in promoting 

the social endeavors of the Society of Friends. 

EXCLUSIONS 

While scholarships and fellowships were instituted from the beginning to 

help attract worthy students, two segments of the population were excluded 

in the beginning and for much of the twentieth century: women 

and African Americans. Gilman and the trustees studied the idea of coeducation 

in the early planning stages and, as in other areas, consulted Eliot 

and Angell. Eliot felt that “coeducation of the sexes is not possible in 

highly civilized communities” since it could lead to “unequal” marriages 

and might even “threaten a woman’s good health.” 12 Angell had no such 

reservations about coeducation, but he had little praise for it either. He 

wrote, “The thing takes care of itself. . . . The girls go to and from the College 

undisturbed. When boys are hustling about the streets, they fall back 

and let the ladies pass by.” 13 Expressing the hope that a college for women 

would be established in Baltimore, Gilman pledged $1,000 toward such 

an institution, but the consensus was that Hopkins would not be coeducational. 

Several women did gain admission to graduate study as early as 

1877, but undergraduate women were not admitted to full-time programs 

until 1970. Interestingly, the first woman to earn a degree from Hopkins 

was not the first one to receive a degree. Christine Ladd completed her 

studies for a PhD in mathematics and logic in 1882 and received high 

praise for her efforts, but the trustees refused to award her the degree until 

1926. In the meantime, Florence Bascom earned and received a PhD in 

geology in 1893. 

For those women who did gain admittance, their presence in classes 

was at the discretion of individual faculty members. There are reports that 

women were excluded from certain biology classes and an unconfirmed 

report of a professor requiring a woman to sit behind a screen during lectures 

to avoid “distracting” her male colleagues. 14 Perhaps contributing to 

the exclusion of women was the fact the Baltimore has always been a 

“blue-collar” city. Its residents have always looked with suspicion on attempts 

to set up “elite” institutions for the benefit of the higher social 

classes. This attitude weighed heavily against Hopkins as a graduate-only 

institution, and it may also have played a part in limiting undergraduate 

admittance to men. 

African Americans also had a difficult time gaining both admittance 

and acceptance. Despite the founder’s expressed wish that race not be 

considered a factor in admitting students to the university (or as patients


in the hospital), the reality was that Baltimore was a heavily segregated 

city and remained so until the 1960s. A young man from Howard University, 

Kelly Miller, was admitted as a graduate student in 1887 and spent 

two years at Hopkins. By all accounts, including his own, he faced no 

overt racism, but neither was he welcomed into the student community. 

He left Hopkins without earning a degree because of an increase in tuition 

that he could not afford. He subsequently returned to Howard and became 

a tireless advocate of education for African Americans. Not until the 

late 1940s did another African American gain admission to Hopkins. In 

1937, one individual did make a valiant attempt to gain admission. Edward 

S. Lewis, an African American with impeccable undergraduate credentials, 

applied to graduate school at Johns Hopkins. Broadus Mitchell, 

an economics professor, took up his cause and argued forcefully in favor 

of Lewis’s admission. Ultimately, having exhausted every avenue of appeal, 

Mitchell and Lewis were forced to admit failure. President Isaiah 

Bowman may have been instrumental in blocking Lewis, refusing to give 

a reason for the exclusion and preventing other academic bodies from 

saying why they would not support him. Mitchell himself, an avowed socialist, 

was forced to resign from the faculty shortly after Lewis’s application 

was rejected. He didn’t help his cause—or perhaps that of Lewis— 

when he referred to the Supreme Court, in class, as “nine old bastards.” 15 

Another area where Hopkins might have fallen short of its founder’s 

ideals was in the admission of Jewish students. Despite the fact that the 

first professor of mathematics was Jewish, by the early decades of the 

twentieth century it was well known in the Jewish community that Hopkins 

employed a quota system to keep the number of Jewish students at a 

prescribed percentage of the student body. Strangely, this quota did not 

seem to apply to Jewish faculty. As with women and African Americans, 

this policy likely had roots in the social attitudes prevalent in Maryland at 

that time. 16 

GROWING PAINS 

While Gilman and the trustees recognized in 1876 that the Johns Hopkins 

Hospital and the School of Medicine would follow the establishment of 

Arts and Sciences, they did not intend for either to wait for thirteen and 

seventeen years, respectively. Economic problems forced the trustees to 

delay opening the School of Medicine (as a division of the university 

rather than a department of the hospital) until 1893. Medical education 

was to be conducted in conjunction with treating patients in the hospital, 

and faculty department chairs in the medical school headed the corresponding 

departments in the hospital. Students could thus learn not just


from listening to physicians’ lectures but also from becoming directly involved 

in patient care, under appropriate supervision. 

Johns Hopkins left explicit instructions to guide his trustees in establishing 

a hospital and medical school, and he even specified that the hospital 

should be located in east Baltimore, a community then (and now) in 

dire need of medical care. But constructing buildings and appointing faculty 

required money, and the trustees were averse to starting small and 

growing gradually, so the hospital did not open its doors until 1889. Once 

patient care facilities were in place, a medical instruction curriculum 

could be established, paving the way for the School of Medicine to open 

in 1893. Ironically, a major factor contributing to the start of medical instruction 

was a Women’s Fund Committee, led by several prominent Baltimore 

women and wives of local philanthropists. Hopkins seemed to hit 

a ceiling in their fund-raising efforts for the School of Medicine, and at 

this point the women’s committee stepped forward and offered their assistance. 

Of the original $500,000 endowment needed, Mary Elizabeth 

Garrett, daughter of a university trustee, pledged and delivered over 

$300,000 in 1892 to make the medical school a reality. 17 Her pledge had 

one important condition, however: women must be admitted to the medical 

school on the same basis as men. Reluctantly, the trustees agreed, and 

of the eighteen students in the first class admitted, three were women. Ultimately, 

the trustees eliminated the disparity between Arts and Sciences 

and the School of Medicine in 1907 when they agreed to admit women 

graduate students, also on the same basis as men. No longer would a 

woman need a “champion” on the board of trustees or the faculty to gain 

admittance to advanced study. 

When deciding to establish the university in downtown Baltimore, the 

trustees planned all along to move to Clifton as soon as possible. But 

events conspired against this assumption. Johns Hopkins’s bequest had 

been almost entirely in the form of B&O Railroad stock, and the trustees 

had maintained this out of deference to Hopkins’s recognized financial 

acumen. As long as the railroad prospered, so did the university. But during 

economic downturns, the consequences were severe. In 1889 and 

again in 1896, the B&O Railroad stopped paying dividends on its stock, 

leaving the university almost without income. 18 On the first occasion, an 

informal “word-of-mouth” fund-raising campaign filled the gap. The second 

time dividends ceased, the trustees made the painful decision to sell 

the B&O stock and diversify. But they still had an immense shortfall to 

cover to keep the university functioning. 

The ultimate solution was to sell the Clifton property to the City of Baltimore 

in 1895. This replenished the financial coffers, but it also eliminated 

the site of the future campus, leaving the university stranded in 

downtown Baltimore, hemmed in by existing structures. The hospital and


medical school campus was not large enough to support Arts and Sciences. 

The solution to this problem came almost without effort. In 1898, 

William Wyman and William Keyser, two cousins with no connection to 

the university or its founder, approached Gilman to see if Hopkins would 

be interested in acquiring several contiguous parcels of property in north 

Baltimore. Four years later, the deal was done, and what became known 

as the Homewood Campus was formally received as a gift from Wyman, 

Keyser, and several other property owners. 19 With little money for building, 

the new campus would have to wait to see serious improvements begin, 

but at least the trustees could again plan for expansion. In 1913, construction 

began on two large buildings designed to house Arts and 

Sciences and Engineering. The buildings were named Gilman Hall and 

Maryland Hall, the former in recognition of Daniel Coit Gilman’s twentyfive 

years as the founding president (he had retired in 1901). Because the 

State of Maryland provided funds to open an engineering school, the engineering 

building was so named in recognition. Gilman and Maryland 

halls were completed and occupied in 1915, and a year later the university 

officially moved to the Homewood Campus. Certain branches of instruction 

remained downtown until suitable facilities could be constructed 

at Homewood. Chemistry was the last to move, doing so in 1924 

when their new laboratory building was completed. 

Figure 8.2. Gilman Hall on Johns Hopkin’s Homewood Campus


With a small student body and a correspondingly small faculty, students 

had easy access to faculty, and classes often took place at faculty 

homes. In the humanities and social sciences, seminar rooms were located 

near their library materials, giving ready access to published 

sources and promoting cooperation and discussion. Once a faculty 

member was appointed full professor, he had almost total discretion in 

what courses he would offer. This naturally led to spotty coverage in 

advanced aspects of certain topics, but students gained the advantage 

of studying under a professor who was an expert in his field and who 

was teaching what he wanted to teach. Faculty discretion extended to 

admitting graduate students as well. Prospective students would contact 

the professor under whom they wished to study, and that person 

would decide whether the hopeful applicant met the appropriate criteria 

for admission. Once a student was admitted, his professor would 

guide the student’s academic career and usually serve as mentor on 

completion of his studies. For undergraduates, the process was less 

subjective since prospective students had to pass certain exams and 

prove their ability to handle rigorous academic work. Given small class 

sizes, however, both undergraduates and graduate students had nearly 

equal access to faculty. 

STUDENTS FROM NEAR AND FAR 

Daniel Coit Gilman was a tireless advocate of higher education and 

guided the infant institution with a firm hand. Under his administration, 

Johns Hopkins University survived its early years and grew steadily 

stronger in terms of the quality of faculty and students. Within just a few 

years, young scholars were seeking the institution from far afield, desiring 

to study under its renowned faculty. Students came from other continents 

as well. In Hopkins’s early years, Japan began sending students to 

North American universities with government support, and Hopkins 

welcomed its fair share. One, in particular, deserves mention. Inazo Nitobe 

came to Hopkins to study under Herbert Baxter Adams in 1884. He 

was fascinated with the Quaker faith and joined the local Friends meeting, 

and the congregation welcomed and helped to support him. He later 

married a Quaker woman in Philadelphia. Leaving Hopkins in 1887 (in 

part because of homesickness), he went on to become a diplomat in Japan. 

Between the world wars, he was an advocate for peace in an increasingly 

militaristic society. After World War II, he was “rediscovered” by a Japanese 

nation trying to come to grips with events of the 1940s. 20 Another 

Hopkins alumnus is well known in this country even today. Woodrow 

Wilson studied at Hopkins from 1883 to 1886 and earned a PhD in history


and political science. Although better known as president of Princeton 

University, governor of New Jersey, and president of the United States, 

Wilson remains the only U.S. president with an earned PhD. 

SUCCESSION, GROWTH, AND DEPRESSION 

Gilman turned over the presidency in 1901 to Ira Remsen, first professor 

of chemistry. Remsen guided Hopkins as it moved to the Homewood 

Campus, setting priorities and channeling growth opportunities. In addition 

to governing Hopkins, Remsen served on many government boards 

and commissions studying secondary education and public health issues. 

He retired in 1913 because of declining health and was succeeded by 

Frank Johnson Goodnow, an expert on China and adviser to the Chinese 

government. He was succeeded in 1929 by Joseph Sweetman Ames, a 

physicist who spent his entire academic career at Hopkins, first as student, 

then as a member of the faculty. Ames, who disliked fund-raising, 

was forced into the role of fund-raiser during the Great Depression and 

had to make painful decisions about which programs to support and 

which to eliminate. One example of this was the Institute of Law, a research 

body founded in 1928 to study the effects of the law on society. It 

was not a law school and was never intended to be a law school, but this 

distinction is overlooked by some. Unfortunately, the Institute of Law began 

with the assumption that an endowment would be raised gradually 

and that this endowment would eventually supplant support from the 

general university budget. With the onset of the Great Depression, however, 

fund-raising for this infant institute ground to a halt, and the university 

could not support it from its reduced funds. Consequently, the institute 

ceased operation in 1935. 21 

In 1935, Isaiah Bowman became president. Bowman, a geographer with 

an emphasis on Central and South America, served as an adviser to several 

U.S. presidents, both before and during his Hopkins presidency. During 

World War II, he divided time between Baltimore and Washington, 

advising Franklin Roosevelt’s government on foreign policy matters and 

helping to plan the administrative structure of the United Nations. He 

also welcomed massive federal research support during the war. Hopkins 

scientists worked on the Manhattan Project and founded the Applied 

Physics Laboratory (APL), sponsored primarily by the U.S. Navy to assist 

with fleet defense research. Midway through the war, APL scientists perfected 

a proximity fuse that would explode an artillery shell in the vicinity 

of a target, not just on contact. This fuse played a major part in the Pacific 

war, helping to defeat the waves of kamikaze attacks launched by the 

Japanese. 22 Since the end of the war, government-sponsored research has


grown dramatically, both in national defense and in medical areas. The 

university has enlarged accordingly, but not without much discussion 

over how Hopkins’s present relates to its past and the circumstances of its 

founding. 

A NEW WORLD 

Johns Hopkins in the postwar years was guided by Detlev Wulf Bronk 

(1949–1953) and Lowell Reed (1953–1956). Bronk was a biophysicist who 

left Hopkins to head the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University). 

Reed served in a caretaker capacity, having retired as vice president 

of Johns Hopkins Hospital shortly before his appointment as president. 

Hopkins did not escape the hysteria surrounding Senator Joseph Mc- 

Carthy’s unfounded charges, and a faculty member’s career was placed in 

limbo for several years and nearly ended. Owen Lattimore had been director 

of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations since before 

World War II, and he served as an adviser to Chiang Kai-shek during 

and after the war. With Chiang’s expulsion to Taiwan in 1949, the Western 

world—and Senator McCarthy in particular—searched for someone to 

blame and came up with Owen Lattimore. It was charged in 1950 that he 

had almost single-handedly “sold out” Chiang and had delivered classified 

information to the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. 

Formal charges were brought against him, and the case dragged on until 

1955, when a federal judge threw out the charges and the prosecution was 

dropped. By this time, Senator McCarthy had been discredited, and passions 

had cooled enough to make this action possible. When charges were 

filed against Lattimore, Hopkins placed him on leave with pay, and he remained 

in this status while the charges were pending. Presidents Bronk 

and Reed were deluged with demands that Lattimore be summarily fired 

before any judicial determination of guilt. To their credit, Bronk and Reed 

refused to bow to this pressure, much of which came from alumni and 

prominent donors, instead choosing to stand up for academic freedom 

and the basic constitutional right of “innocent until proven guilty.” 23 

In 1956, Milton Stover Eisenhower was elected president. Brother of 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Milton left the presidency of Penn State in part to 

be closer to Washington. He served as an informal adviser to Dwight, who 

ensured that he had direct access to Milton’s views without going through 

official White House channels. Milton Eisenhower quickly became the most 

beloved Hopkins president since Gilman. Easily accessible to students and 

faculty, he was genuinely interested in the people who made up the university. 

Eisenhower retired in 1967, then returned briefly in 1971 when his 

successor, Lincoln Gordon, resigned abruptly and left the campus. Perhaps


no one could have compared favorably to Eisenhower as his immediate 

successor, but Gordon managed to alienate the faculty by cutting their 

ranks while greatly expanding the university’s administration. Surprisingly, 

he got along fairly well with the students during the turbulent late 

1960s, but the faculty ultimately forced him to resign. 

After Eisenhower’s temporary return, Steven Muller was appointed 

president in 1972. Muller had come to Hopkins as provost in 1971, having 

been appointed by Gordon. After a period of observation while serving as 

provost, Muller was offered the presidency and led Hopkins through unprecedented 

growth. Muller became the first since Gilman to serve as 

president of both Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital. 

On his retirement in 1990, he was the second-longest-serving president in 

Hopkins’s history. William C. Richardson took over the presidency in 

1990, leaving in 1995 to head the Kellogg Foundation. In 1996, Hopkins’s 

current president, William R. Brody, took office. 

CONCLUSION 

Shortly after the founding of the University of Chicago in 1891, W. Rainey 

Harper, founding president of that institution, wrote, “Until the founding 

of Johns Hopkins University there was but one type of college in America. 

No institution doing real university work existed.” 24 Johns Hopkins 

University does not claim to be the first institution granting advanced degrees, 

as is sometimes erroneously reported. Numerous institutions conferred 

doctorates before 1876. Hopkins does claim credit as the first true 

university in America. By this it is meant that Hopkins was the first institution 

to require students to perform original research in their own field, 

present their findings to their professors and fellow students, and publish 

the results of their research. Johns Hopkins never had the benefit of an advanced 

education, and he never presumed to dictate the form his university 

should take. He left that to the twelve able men he named and the 

man they chose to lead the university from its cradle into adolescence, 

Daniel Coit Gilman. The course pursued by these men built a university 

and left a legacy to be followed by others. In an important sense, Johns 

Hopkins provided the fuel, while Gilman and the trustees built the machine. 

Johns Hopkins—the founder—was a bundle of contradictions throughout 

his life. He belonged to a religious denomination that preached abstinence 

from alcohol, yet he sold whiskey under his own name. He received 

little formal education, yet he became an astute businessman and loved 

fine literature. He owned several houses and entertained lavishly, yet he 

was reluctant to replace his own threadbare clothes or furnishings. He


had no children of his own, yet he enjoyed the frequent visits of his nieces 

and nephews. He shunned publicity during his lifetime, yet his name is 

known worldwide from the hospital and university he founded. 

In all his dealings, he followed his own conscience and took considerable 

risk when the objective was worthy. To all, his word was his bond, 

and his understanding of complex business matters was recognized by associates 

and competitors alike. Johns Hopkins is remembered as an astute 

businessman who gave his fortune back to the community. 

NOTES 

1. Kathryn A. Jacob, “Mr. Johns Hopkins,” The Johns Hopkins Magazine, January 

1974, 13. 

2. Jacob, “Mr. Johns Hopkins,” 14. 

3. Jacob, “Mr. Johns Hopkins,” 15. 

4. Helen Hopkins Thom, Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 

Press, 1929), 46. 

5. John C. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins (Baltimore: 

Johns Hopkins Press, 1946), 23. 

6. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, 32. 

7. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins. Original attribution 

unknown. 

8. Ferdinand Hamburger Archives of The Johns Hopkins University, Record 

Group 04.001, Records of the Dean of Arts and Sciences (unpublished finding 

aid available in repository or at http://www.library.jhu.edu/collections/special 

collections/archives/inventories/rg04001.html). 

9. From the university’s founding, the formal name has been The Johns Hopkins 

University, often shortened to The Johns Hopkins or The Hopkins, but always 

including the capitalized article. Alumni jealously guarded that little word 

for decades, and only late in the twentieth century has it begun to disappear from 

formal usage. 

10. Inaugural Address of Daniel Coit Gilman, 1876, quoted in Hugh Hawkins, 

Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell 

University Press, 1960), 68–69. 

11. Hawkins, Pioneer, 70–72. 

12. Julia B. Morgan, Women at The Johns Hopkins University: A History (Baltimore: 

Johns Hopkins University, 1986), 1. 

13. Morgan, Women at The Johns Hopkins University, 2. 

14. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, 72–73. 

15. “Dr. Broadus Mitchell Is Dead at 95,” Baltimore Sun, May 25, 1988. Original 

source material can be found in the Ferdinand Hamburger Archives, RG 02.001, 

Office of the President, series 1, file #57.2, 1937–1939. See also Neil Smith, American 

Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (Berkeley: University 

of California Press, 2003), 247–49. 

16. Smith, American Empire, 247.


17. Morgan, Women at The Johns Hopkins University, 8. 

18. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, 130. 

19. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, 122–30. 

20. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, 394. See also 

Vertical Reference File, Nitobe, Inazo, in Ferdinand Hamburger Archives; in particular, 

see unattributed biographical sketch and various memorials in this folder. 

21. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, 243–48. See also 

Ferdinand Hamburger Archives, RG 08.020, Records of the Institute of Law (unpublished 

finding aid available in repository or at http://www.library.jhu.edu/ 

collections/specialcollections/archives/inventories/rg08020.html). 

22. Applied Physics Laboratory, The First Forty Years: A Pictorial Account of the 

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Baltimore: n.p., 1983), 1–11. 

23. For a full description of this incident, see Lionel S. Lewis, The Cold War and 

Academic Governance: The Lattimore Case at Johns Hopkins (Albany: State University 

of New York Press, 1993). 

24. Quoted in French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, 87.

9 

 

Bryn Mawr College 

Eric Pumroy 

Bryn Mawr’s early years were marked by a struggle between those who 

wanted to it to be a sectarian Friends school and those who believed 

that sectarianism was incompatible with the goal of creating a first-rate 

academic institution for women. In the end, it was the latter position that 

prevailed, even though nearly all the players in the contest were Orthodox 

Quakers. How Bryn Mawr chose that course and whether anything 

of Quakerism remained is the subject of this chapter. 

FOUNDING OF THE COLLEGE 

Bryn Mawr College was established by Joseph Taylor (1810–1880), a 

Quaker born and educated in the Philadelphia area. Taylor made his fortune 

in his family’s tannery business in Cincinnati, then retired in 1851 

and settled on a farm in Burlington County, New Jersey, not far from 

Philadelphia, where he lived as a bachelor with his sister. Here he took an 

active part in social and educational causes, including serving as a member 

of the Haverford College Board of Managers from 1854 to the end of 

his life. In the mid-1870s, Taylor began discussing the possibility of using 

his wealth to underwrite a Quaker college for women, modeled on the allmale 

Haverford, and devoted his remaining years to planning this college. 

He purchased land for it in the town of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 

near enough to Haverford so that the two schools could share some resources 

but not so close that his new women’s college would become an 

appendage to it. At the time of his death in 1880, plans for the first group 

147

148 Eric Pumroy 

of buildings had been completed and the foundations laid for the central 

academic building, Taylor Hall. 

Taylor’s planning of Bryn Mawr came at a time when two important 

movements in American higher education were gathering strength: the 

opening of higher education to women and the establishment of American 

institutions modeled after European research universities. The first 

women’s college, Mount Holyoke, was started as a seminary for the training 

of teachers in 1837, but it was not until after the Civil War that serious 

efforts were made to create educational institutions for women that aspired 

to the same standards as men’s colleges. The best of these new 

schools were Vassar, opened in 1865, and Wellesley and Smith, both of 

which opened in 1875. Unlike the earlier teacher seminaries, each of these 

colleges offered a broad, classically based curriculum taught by strong 

faculties and had the goals of becoming the female equivalents to Harvard 

and Yale. A small number of schools were also opening their doors 

to both men and women. Cornell and Michigan, for example, began admitting 

women in 1870. Nonetheless, opportunities for advanced education 

for women were still very limited. Most of the leading institutions remained 

all-male, and many prominent educators publicly doubted the 

intellectual capacity of women. Taylor did not share those doubts. Influenced 

by his experiences in the Society of Friends where women played 

leadership roles, Taylor had no interest in offering women a second-rate 

education. To ensure that his college could stand with the best, he made 

careful studies of Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith and consulted with some 

of the country’s leading male educators, most notably Daniel Coit 

Gilman, president of the newly created Johns Hopkins University. 

Johns Hopkins University opened a year after Wellesley and Smith and 

would come to have an enormous influence on the early history of Bryn 

Mawr. Hopkins was a wealthy Quaker businessman in Baltimore who established 

a trust to support the establishment of a university and hospital 

on his death. While still alive, he appointed the trustees, and on his death 

in 1873, they hired Daniel Coit Gilman as the university’s first president. 

Gilman, previously the president of the University of California, was one 

of the leaders of the movement to reform American higher education to 

bring it into line with the best European universities. In the new Johns 

Hopkins University, he saw a unique opportunity to build a model institution 

from scratch, one devoted to research and the advancement of 

learning. The trustees were excited by his ambitions and supported his efforts 

to recruit a faculty from among the best scholars of the day and a student 

body heavily weighted with graduate students who were to be 

trained as professional scholars. 

Among the first board members at Johns Hopkins were two Baltimore 

Quakers, Francis T. King and James Carey Thomas, both of whom also

Bryn Mawr College 149 

served on the board of managers at Haverford with Joseph Taylor. Both 

later became members of the board at Bryn Mawr, with King serving as 

the board’s first chairman. At the same time that Taylor was making his 

plans for Bryn Mawr, King and Thomas were pushing Friends to think 

more seriously about modern education. In December 1877, they convened 

a conference on education in the Society of Friends, held at the Baltimore 

Friends meetinghouse. They invited only a small number of men, 

including Taylor and many of those who would eventually serve on the 

board of trustees at Bryn Mawr. King outlined the reasons for the meeting 

in his opening address, noting the limited educational opportunities for 

Quakers and concluding that the lack of well-educated men prevented 

the Friends from having an influence on society, politics, and modern 

thought. The conference’s featured speaker was Daniel Coit Gilman, who 

spoke at length about his ambitions for Johns Hopkins. As he concluded, 

Gilman observed with approval that although Hopkins and a majority of 

the members of the board of trustees were Quaker, “neither he (Hopkins) 

nor they endeavored to make the University a religious or ecclesiastical 

body. The Trustees have indeed expressed the desire to see it pervaded by 

the spirit of enlightened Christianity, for on that they believe the highest 

progress of the world depends; but they have not desired to see it the 

arena of sectarian dogmatism, or of ecclesiastical despotism.” By the time 

Bryn Mawr College opened eight years later, most of its trustees would 

subscribe to the same philosophy. 

Taylor sought advice from a wide range of people in planning Bryn 

Mawr and in the end wanted to find a way to combine the educational 

ambitions of Johns Hopkins University with the Quaker religious purpose 

of Haverford. This ambivalence was reflected in his will, where Taylor 

outlined his wishes for the college and established the college’s board 

of trustees. The will called for a college that had for its object the “advanced 

education and care of Young Women or girls of the higher and 

more refined classes of society.” The college was not to be exclusively for 

Quaker young women, although preference in admissions was to be 

given to members of the Society of Friends, “other things being equal,” 

and students who were not Friends “must conform to the customs and 

rules of the institution, and be willing to be educated as Friends.” To ensure 

that the right sort of Quaker principles ruled the college, he appointed 

a group of his friends and advisers to the board of trustees, most 

of whom were already serving on the Haverford College Board of Managers, 

and he stipulated that all board members in the future must belong 

to the Orthodox branch of the Society of Friends. In spite of the religious 

requirement for serving on the board, Taylor did not assign responsibility 

for appointing board members to any Quaker meetings but instead made 

appointments the responsibility of the board itself. Over time, the effect of


having a self-perpetuating board was to greatly simplify Bryn Mawr’s 

movement away from the Society of Friends. 

The future of Taylor’s Quaker college for women occupied a major part 

of the discussion at the Conference on Education in the Society of Friends 

held at Haverford College in the summer of 1880, six months after Taylor’s 

death. The Haverford conference was attended by many more delegates 

than the 1877 meeting and, unlike the first conference, included a 

substantial number of women delegates, including Mary Whitall Thomas, 

wife of James Carey Thomas and mother of the future president of Bryn 

Mawr. The discussion focused on the role of the college within the Society 

of Friends, but underneath this open debate was a more fundamental 

discussion of the role of women in society and the type of education best 

suited for them. The strongest proponent of Bryn Mawr as a Quaker sectarian 

college was Henry Hartshorne, a past editor of the Friends Review 

and headmaster of the Howland School, a Quaker high school for girls in 

New York. His paper “How May Bryn Mawr College Best Serve the Interests 

of the Society of Friends” called for the college to follow the motto 

“Consecration to God: For Christ and the Church.” He argued that all the 

officers and faculty should be Friends by conviction, that Bible classes 

form a basic part of the curriculum, and that all the students be instructed 

in the history of Quakerism. Intellectual development should still be valued, 

he assured the group, and literature, philosophy, and science should 

be taught, but religion must come first. He warned against following the 

Johns Hopkins model, in which faculty are hired for their intellectual 

standing, without regard to their religious beliefs, and students vigorously 

pursue cultural and scientific studies to the neglect of religion. 

Quaker graduates of such a school, he warned, would lead the Society of 

Friends away from its Christian roots. Mary Haines, a delegate from 

Philadelphia, took Hartshorne’s argument a step further with her paper 

on “home feeling,” in which she argued that Bryn Mawr must provide 

both religious training and instruction in a woman’s duties to the family 

and home. 

Among those opposing the sectarian vision for the college was Francis 

T. King’s daughter, Elizabeth King, who sent a paper encouraging education 

that prepares women for an active professional life. During the discussion 

period, James Carey Thomas outlined a position that indicated 

how influential the Johns Hopkins example had become for many of Bryn 

Mawr’s trustees. Bryn Mawr should “become a centre of higher education, 

which will extend its usefulness and that of our Society throughout the 

country, providing a more universal knowledge of the great truths of 

Christian philosophy, and the exemplification of them in purer and nobler 

lives.” In short, Bryn Mawr can best extend Quaker influence by becom-


ing not a Quaker college but a nonsectarian educational leader run by 

Quakers. 

THE ARRIVAL OF M. CAREY THOMAS 

Bryn Mawr’s trustees would undoubtedly have worked to maintain a balance 

between religion and intellectual rigor had it not been for the arrival 

on the scene of James Carey Thomas’s daughter, M. Carey Thomas. 

Thomas had followed an ambitious educational program from the time 

she was sixteen. After graduating from Cornell University in 1877, she attempted 

to pursue graduate work at Johns Hopkins under the highly restricted 

circumstances required of women. Allowed only to meet privately 

with faculty and barred from attending seminars and other classes, 

she soon realized that she was receiving a second-rate education. Learning 

that European universities were more open to women, she moved to 

Leipzig in 1879 and attended lectures at the university there for two years. 

When Leipzig refused to consider her for a degree, she transferred to the 

University of Zurich, where she received her PhD summa cum laude in 

1882. 

With both a father and an uncle on the Bryn Mawr Board of Trustees 

and having personal connections with many other trustees in the small 

world of East Coast Orthodox Friends, Thomas was very much aware of 

the plans being made for Bryn Mawr College and saw herself as having 

an important role to play in its future. In the summer of 1883, she wrote 

to James Rhoads, by then appointed by the trustees to serve as the college’s 

paid executive, proposing herself as the school’s first president. As 

qualifications, she cited her background as an Orthodox Friend, her stellar 

academic record and experience in Europe’s most advanced universities, 

and her status as a woman, for “it is best,” she wrote, “for the president 

of a woman’s college to be a woman.” The rest of her letter outlined 

her vision for the college: that it have high standards, entrance requirements 

advertised in advance and enforced through rigorous entrance examinations, 

a first-rate faculty that should not be limited to Friends, and 

graduate students who would be educated to fill the need for women 

scholars to teach at women’s colleges. The trustees were not yet prepared 

to turn over the running of the college to a twenty-six-year-old woman, 

but her lobbying eventually paid off, and she was appointed professor of 

English and dean of the faculty under President Rhoads early the following 

year. In this role, she managed the hiring of the faculty, established the 

entrance requirements for students, and wrote most of the early literature 

for the school.


Although raised in a prominent Quaker family in which both of her 

parents and an aunt were influential leaders in Quaker meetings, Thomas 

had moved away from religion during her years in college and in Europe 

and followed instead the call of science and aesthetics. Bryn Mawr, for 

her, represented an opportunity not to educate Quaker women but to create 

a model college for women that would be as rigorous, demanding, 

and advanced as the best men’s universities. The change in tone that she 

brought to the college is most striking in the text of the two circulars issued 

before the opening of Bryn Mawr. The first, written by the trustees 

in 1883, lays out the college’s high educational ambitions and invites students 

from all denominations, but it is also patronizing toward women 

and clearly states that Quaker beliefs will form the foundation of the 

school’s program. The second circular, written by Thomas in 1884 to attract 

students to apply to the first class at Bryn Mawr the following fall, 

sets a very different tone, one of seriousness of academic purpose. Instead 

of phrases about developing “womanly character,” Thomas’s circular sets 

out the high standards that the new college will expect of its students, emphasizing 

the necessity of “persistence of application” and warning of the 

“severity of examinations.” The circular makes no mention of the Society 

of Friends. 

During the year before the opening of Bryn Mawr, Thomas recruited 

some of the best young scholars available, almost all of them men and 

non-Quaker. Johns Hopkins University was both an important influence 

in setting up the academic program and the source of a number of the 

young professors. Bryn Mawr adopted the system of majors pioneered at 

Johns Hopkins and established fellowships for graduate students. When 

the first college catalog was published in the spring of 1885, it discussed 

at length the entrance requirements and examinations, the system of academic 

organization, and the contents of the courses. In the opening section, 

it recognized Joseph Taylor for his role in founding the school and 

Johns Hopkins University for serving as an academic model, but at no 

point does the catalog refer to the role of the Society of Friends, nor does 

it discuss the religious expectations for the students. 

The change that M. Carey Thomas brought to the philosophy of Bryn 

Mawr was dramatic, although there were many conflicts still to come between 

her and the Quakers on the board of trustees. But why did the 

trustees, all Orthodox Friends, consent to being led so far in the direction 

of academic achievement that they were willing to downplay the religious 

foundations of the college? In part, Thomas’s strong personality, her family 

connections, and her conviction that her vision for the college was the 

right one were extremely important for winning support on the board. 

But, in addition, she found a receptive audience among those board members 

who were familiar with Johns Hopkins and saw that following its


lead was the only path to success for Bryn Mawr. Early in 1885, President 

James Rhoads discussed the trustees’ thinking in a letter to Henry 

Hartshorne in response to his protests over the hiring of non-Quaker faculty. 

The trustees had seen only two options, Rhoads explained. Either 

they would hire a faculty of Friends, or they would hire the best faculty 

available and trust to themselves to give the college as Friendly an influence 

as possible. If they had followed the former course, Bryn Mawr 

would have to settle for a second-rate faculty because the Society of 

Friends had produced few strong scholars and Haverford already employed 

nearly all of them. Moreover, Rhoads wrote, Haverford was seriously 

below the standard of the best New England colleges, so Bryn 

Mawr would necessarily be inferior to Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith, a situation 

that Joseph Taylor would not have found acceptable. Finally, 

Haverford was founded expressly for the Society of Friends, whereas 

Bryn Mawr was “founded as an Institute for the Higher Education of 

Women.” M. Carey Thomas certainly pushed the trustees away from becoming 

a denominational college, but it was a direction in which many of 

them were prepared to go. 

Rhoads’s underlining of the phrase “higher education for women” suggests 

another consideration pushing the trustees in Thomas’s direction, 

although it is one that was rarely written about. Quite simply, there were 

not enough Quakers who believed in women’s higher education to populate 

a college. There were slightly more than 100,000 American Quakers 

in 1890, but even this small number was divided among a number of factions. 

Many of the Quakers in the Philadelphia region were Hicksites who 

had broken away from the main group in 1827 and were barely on speaking 

terms with Orthodox Quakers through the rest of the century. If they 

wanted their children to receive a Quaker education, they sent them to 

Swarthmore, the Hicksite-founded college. Among Philadelphia’s Orthodox 

Quakers, the largest number belonged to the conservative branch, 

one that practiced a quietist form of religion and saw little purpose in 

higher education, either for men or for women. The supporters of Bryn 

Mawr, as well as Haverford, were mostly to be found among the prosperous 

group of modernizers belonging to the Twelfth Street Meeting, the 

Baltimore Yearly Meeting, and a few other congregations on the East 

Coast, and even this small group was divided on the value of higher education 

for women. With the likelihood that few Quakers would send 

their daughters to college under any circumstances, the Bryn Mawr 

trustees must have found the Johns Hopkins model even more compelling. 

Bryn Mawr’s success would have to depend on its ability to attract non- 

Quaker women, which meant that it would have to offer an education 

equal to that offered by the best colleges in the country. As James Carey 

Thomas said at the 1880 conference on Friends education, Bryn Mawr


would be a means of expanding the influence of Quakers throughout the 

country by becoming a center of higher education for everyone, not just 

for Quakers. 

PRESIDENCY OF M. CAREY THOMAS 

The trustees were by no means unanimous on this point. As long as the 

reliable James Rhoads was president, though, the trustees were satisfied 

that the college would continue to have an appropriately Friendly atmosphere. 

The crisis came in 1893 when Rhoads announced his decision to 

step down as president. As the person who had been running the academic 

side of the college since before its founding, Thomas saw herself as 

the only appropriate choice to succeed him, and in this Rhoads agreed. 

Many other trustees did not. In part, many of them were uncomfortable 

with entrusting the college to a woman, and a relatively young one at that. 

Figure 9.1. Bryn Mawr Students in the Science Laboratory in the 1890s. Courtesy Bryn 

Mawr College Library


But the greater fear was that she was no longer a Quaker at heart and that 

once in control she would lead the college away from its religious roots. 

Their fears were well founded. Her strong influence had already set Bryn 

Mawr on a course to being not the women’s Haverford but the women’s 

Johns Hopkins, and the results were disturbing to those members of the 

board who wanted to see a strong Quaker presence. Indeed, Rhoads 

warned her in a letter written shortly after his decision to retire that there 

were a number of members of the board who wanted to make Bryn Mawr 

more Friendly than it was and were concerned that she would make it less 

Friendly and ignore the intentions of the school’s founder. In the end, 

though, the lack of any other acceptable candidates, Rhoads’s declining 

health, and the presence of a significant number of Thomas supporters on 

the board led to a decision in her favor. She took office in mid-1894 and 

served as Bryn Mawr’s president for the next twenty-eight years. 

Thomas’s first years as president were ones of struggle with the trustees 

over the future of the college. The trustees’ first act was to add language 

to the college catalog acknowledging the Quaker origins of Bryn Mawr, 

something that had not been deemed necessary under Rhoads’s presidency. 

Three years later, they added stronger wording to the introductory 

statement of the college, noting that while the college was nonsectarian, it 

was Joseph Taylor’s desire “that the college should be pervaded by the 

principles of Christianity held by the Friends, which he believed to be the 

same in substance as those taught by the early Christians.” Thomas, in 

turn, won a more substantive victory with her successful effort to expand 

the size of the school and to do so in an architectural direction that was 

very much in opposition to the simplicity of design that had been the original 

plan for the campus. Working with Philadelphia architects Walter 

Cope and John Stewardson, both Quakers, she built a campus modeled on 

those of Oxford and Cambridge, complete with turrets, arches, and gargoyles. 

Campus architecture mattered to her as a way to create a visual 

representation of the seriousness of the college’s academic purpose. Her 

building program brought her into conflict with the more conservative 

trustees, but her success in fund-raising to support the construction ultimately 

silenced them. 

Thomas was able to raise the money she needed to build Bryn Mawr because 

of the growing international reputation of both her and the college as 

leaders in women’s education. Her campaigns depended heavily on the energies 

and support of an active and influential group of alumnae, most of 

whom were not Quakers, and she also attracted major non-Quaker donors, 

most notably John D. Rockefeller and her wealthy Baltimore friend Mary 

Garrett. In 1905, the trustees formally recognized the important role of non- 

Quakers in the college’s life by creating a new body, a board of directors, that 

would be parallel to the board of trustees established by Joseph Taylor’s will.


Figure 9.2. Bryn Mawr College Graduation, ca. 1909, With the Neo-Gothic Thomas Library 

in the Background. Courtesy Bryn Mawr College Library 

Unlike the board of trustees, the board of directors could include people 

who were not Orthodox Friends. The board of directors included all the 

trustees but also Mary Garrett and two members elected by the alumnae. 

Over the course of Thomas’s presidency, the number of non-Quaker directors 

increased to where they constituted nearly half of the board of directors 

by the time she left office. Thomas’s victory in bringing non-Quakers into 

the governing structure of the college was soon followed by changes in the 

college catalog’s description of the college. By 1909, all references to Joseph 

Taylor’s Quakerism and the Quaker principles underlying Bryn Mawr had 

been removed from the college catalog and did not reappear until the early 

1950s. Any lingering questions about Bryn Mawr’s status as a Quaker college 

were laid to rest in 1920 when the college asked to take part in the 

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s retirement program 

for faculty, the forerunner of TIAA-CREF. The foundation at first denied 

the application on the grounds of Bryn Mawr’s sectarian status but reversed 

its decision when M. Carey Thomas and the college’s board 

successfully argued that the Quaker board of trustees was only a holding 

company and that the real power resided in the nondenominational board 

of directors.


One of the important reasons for the failure of the more conservative 

members of the board to strengthen the Quaker atmosphere of the college 

was that the college had grown too big and non-Quaker for it to turn into 

a female Haverford. In 1898, Bryn Mawr had an enrollment of 354 students, 

with an entering class of eighty-one, roughly three times the number 

of students at Haverford. Few of them were Friends. Of the 354 students, 

only twenty-two were Quakers (about 6 percent), compared with 

105 Episcopalians, seventy-seven Presbyterians, twenty-nine Unitarians, 

twenty-two Congregationalists, and smaller numbers of Methodists, Baptists, 

Jews, and Catholics. In 1906, the number of students had grown to 

437, but only twenty were Quakers, and just two in a freshman class that 

had ninety-four young women. During the rest of M. Carey Thomas’s 

presidency, the number of Quaker students fluctuated between 3 and 5 

percent of the student body and never again reached twenty students. 

Thomas addressed the lack of Quaker students at Bryn Mawr in a lecture, 

“Our Uneducated Quaker Women and Their Effect on the Quaker 

Church,” given at the 1915 Educational Conference of the Committee on 

Education of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Thomas said that the small 

number of Quaker students had been a profound disappointment but, to 

her mind, reflected the small number of Quakers interested in advanced 

education for women. She noted that she and James Rhoads had received 

abuse because of their insistence on maintaining the highest educational 

standards rather than offering a specifically Quaker education with 

Quaker faculty. “The simple fact is,” she charged, “that as a church we 

have until now been afraid of the best education.” She concluded her talk 

on a hopeful note, observing that Swarthmore and Haverford had followed 

Bryn Mawr’s lead in hiring faculty on the basis of qualifications, 

not religion, and thus freeing them “from the fetish of a guarded education 

for Friends only given by Friends only.” With most of the Quaker secondary 

schools by then providing appropriate preparation for admission 

to Bryn Mawr, she expressed hope that many more Quakers would be 

sending their daughters. Nonetheless, the number of Quaker students remained 

small. 

In spite of the trustees’ suspicions of M. Carey Thomas’s commitment 

to religion, the religious life at Bryn Mawr remained much the same under 

her as it had been under Rhoads. The college offered a short prayer 

service at the beginning of each day and a longer service one evening of 

the week. There was no chapel or meetinghouse on campus for Sunday 

worship, but students were encouraged to attend services at the 

churches in the neighborhood, and the college provided transportation 

to make this easier. Students were not required to attend any of these 

services, however. So much religious freedom for students was unusual 

for colleges at that time, including Quaker ones, but it reflected the


Quaker belief in individual conscience, coupled with the trustees’ efforts 

to run a college in which women of all denominations would feel 

welcome. Under Rhoads, the longtime editor of the Friends Review and 

a Quaker minister, the daily services undoubtedly included more of 

Quakerism in them than would be true under Thomas. Even so, he 

seems to have used a light touch. At his memorial service, Thomas 

talked about his religious teaching as being “so simple and all-embracing 

that our Roman Catholic and Jewish students have felt they could unite 

in them.” After Rhoads’s death in 1895, the religious leadership role on 

campus was taken over by George Barton, professor of biblical literature 

with a PhD from Harvard but also a Quaker and a graduate of 

Haverford. Barton frequently attended the once-a-week evening worship 

services and offered the prayers during the morning sessions. Under 

Thomas, though, the daily morning services became less religious 

in tone and more an occasion for announcements and commentaries 

about issues of the day, while the evening services became increasingly 

interdenominational with visits from ministers from many Protestant 

churches. 

By the time Thomas retired as president in 1922, membership in the Society 

of Friends was no longer considered a requirement for leading Bryn 

Mawr. The Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin ran several articles on the search 

for a new president and discussed the issues to be considered in selecting 

a new president, most importantly whether the new leader should be a 

graduate of the college and whether preference should be given to 

women candidates. None of the articles or announcements made any 

mention of religious affiliation as a qualification. In the end, the person 

chosen was Marian Edwards Park, a woman who had earned her undergraduate 

and graduate degrees from Bryn Mawr but whose background 

was thoroughly New England and Congregational. During Park’s eighteen 

years as president, Bryn Mawr rarely took public notice of its Quaker 

origins. Instead, its literature emphasized the college’s role in providing 

women with a rigorous education and preparing them for careers in the 

academy and other professions. The literature reflected the reality that 

Quaker affiliations played no role in the recruitment of either students or 

faculty and that Quaker religious beliefs and practices had no special 

place on the campus. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF QUAKER ORIGINS 

A change in attitude toward Bryn Mawr’s Quaker origins started to occur 

in the late 1930s as the college began conversations with Haverford and 

Swarthmore over ways of cooperating to make their schools more effi-


cient and enable them to offer stronger educational programs at a time 

when money was in short supply. Cooperation among these three colleges 

was attractive because they were relatively close to each other, similar in 

size, and similar in setting high academic standards, and, of course, all 

had Quaker origins and boards dominated by Quakers. During World 

War II, when many professors from all three campuses were called away 

for war work, the three colleges shared faculty to ensure that students 

continued to receive a strong education. Over the past half century, the 

connections among the colleges have grown stronger and particularly so 

between Haverford and Bryn Mawr. The two colleges began allowing students 

to take courses on each other’s campuses in the late 1940s, and each 

created dormitory space for the other’s students in the late 1960s. The cooperation 

among the three institutions has expanded to where students 

now can freely register for courses on the other campuses, search for 

books in a unified library catalog, and travel among campuses on a reliable 

and frequent tricollege bus service. 

The growing sense of common purpose with Haverford and Swarthmore 

was reflected in the college’s willingness to acknowledge its Quaker 

origins. After almost forty years in which the Bryn Mawr College catalogs 

made no mention of the Society of Friends, the 1952–1953 catalog opens 

with a celebration of its Quaker heritage. The focus, though, is on the academic 

ambitions of its early leaders, not the religious ones: “Bryn Mawr 

has preserved the purpose and much of the tradition of its founders. It believes 

that intellectual endeavor and discipline provide a sound foundation 

for living. It believes in the rights of the individual and in freedom to 

think and act as intelligent and responsible members of a democratic society.” 

Although the language has changed periodically over the fifty 

years since this was written, the college has continued to cite intellectual 

discipline, individual freedom, and mutual respect as the qualities of college 

life that are the products of its Quaker heritage. 

BRYN MAWR AND SOCIAL REFORM 

During the course of her presidency, M. Carey Thomas firmly established 

that Bryn Mawr College would follow a separate path from the Society of 

Friends. Nonetheless, the Quaker values of the trustees and Thomas’s 

own upbringing as a member of a prominent and socially conscious 

Quaker family played a role in setting the tone for life on campus and led 

the college to take an active interest in social reform. The Quaker trust in 

individual conscience created a climate in which independent thinking 

and the principled life were celebrated. In practical terms, this trust led to 

a remarkable degree of personal freedom for students and not only on the


issue of attending religious services. Whereas most colleges had strict behavior 

codes that were written and enforced by college administrators, 

Bryn Mawr’s trustees in 1891 allowed the students to establish their own 

system for regulating personal behavior, the Self-Governing Association, 

which is still in place. 

Bryn Mawr’s emphasis on independence and self-regulation was balanced 

by a Quaker social consciousness. James Rhoads was a leader of 

the Indian Rights Association, and a number of early trustees had been 

active in helping freed slaves and in the temperance movement. Rhoads 

brought this sense of engagement into his classes and religious services, 

leading his students into discussions on social and political issues as 

much as on theological ones. Thomas was less engaged in broader issues 

of social reform than Rhoads had been, focusing her energies instead on 

promoting women’s education and suffrage, her two principal causes. 

Nonetheless, during her presidency, she set up three innovative programs 

that engaged the college in the business of educating women for 

social action. The first, the Phebe Anna Thorne Model School, opened in 

1913, was an experimental children’s school run by Bryn Mawr’s education 

department and was designed to train teachers while testing new 

approaches in progressive education. During the 1910s and 1920s, the 

school was one of the country’s leading sites for putting into practice the 

ideas of John Dewey and the European educational reformers. The second, 

the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy 

and Social Research, opened in 1915 as the first graduate social work 

program in the country connected with a college or university. Now 

much larger and renamed the Graduate School of Social Work and Social 

Research, the program continues the original aim of providing advanced 

education for professionals working in social welfare issues. The 

third was the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which 

opened in 1921 as an eight-week program to bring higher education to 

women industrial workers. The school operated until 1938 and during 

those seventeen years played a leading role in the workers’ education 

movement. 

This early commitment to social engagement and individual conscience 

has continued throughout Bryn Mawr’s history. During the 1930s, Bryn 

Mawr was one of the colleges that found places for German refugee scholars, 

including the celebrated mathematician Emmy Noether. During the 

Cold War years, Bryn Mawr was a leader in resisting government efforts 

to enlist colleges in suppressing student dissent. In 1958, President 

Katharine McBride won board approval to withdraw Bryn Mawr from the 

National Defense Education Act student loan program when new regulations 

required a loyalty oath. The move brought national attention to the 

college and may have helped gather the support needed to rescind the


regulations in 1962. In 1969, President McBride again withdrew Bryn 

Mawr from a government student aid program when new regulations required 

colleges to report student protesters of the war in Vietnam. 

McBride led a faculty and alumnae group that raised the funds needed to 

replace the lost financial aid. 

When Harris Wofford took office as Katharine McBride’s successor in 

1970, Bryn Mawr was still governed by the two-board, Quaker-dominated 

structure created during M. Carey Thomas’s time. The Quaker trustees 

themselves thought that this level of control was no longer justified since 

the college had long since ceased to be a Quaker institution. In 1976, the 

board approved a change in the governance structure by eliminating the 

old board of trustees established by Joseph Taylor, all of whose members 

were required to be Orthodox Friends, and creating a single board of 

trustees. The board nominating committee is encouraged to find qualified 

Friends willing to serve, but from this point forward, Quakers no longer 

had a significant presence on the board. 

At the ceremonies opening Bryn Mawr College in 1885, Daniel Coit 

Gilman had observed that the Society of Friends does not build institutions 

but plants them and allows them to grow. Bryn Mawr did indeed 

grow and prosper as an academic institution, as its founders wished, but 

not as a religious one, which they had also wished. The tension between 

academics and religion was settled in favor of the former by M. Carey 

Thomas, a dynamic leader who saw that Bryn Mawr’s great mission was 

to prove that women were capable of the same intellectual achievements 

as men. If accomplishing this mission for women meant sacrificing a 

Quaker-based education, it was a sacrifice she was willing to make. To the 

credit of the board members, all Quaker and all men, they too were willing 

to make the sacrifice in order to advance opportunities for women. 

Bryn Mawr has not been a Quaker college in a religious sense, but perhaps 

by growing into a college that helped advance justice and equality 

for women, Bryn Mawr nonetheless fulfilled the ambitions of its Quaker 

founders. 


Benjamin, Philip S. The Philadelphia Quakers in the Industrial Age, 1865–1920. 

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976. 

Finch, Edith. Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr. New York: Harper & Bros., 1947. 

Hamm, Thomas D. The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 

1800–1907. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. 

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s Colleges 

from Their Nineteenth Century Beginnings to the 1930s. 2nd ed. Amherst: University 

of Massachusetts Press, 1993.


———. The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. 

Labalme, Patricia Hochschild, ed. A Century Recalled: Essays in Honor of Bryn Mawr 

College. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Bryn Mawr College Library, 1987. See especially Millicent 

Carey McIntosh, “Heavenly and Earthly Wisdom: The Quaker Heritage of 

Bryn Mawr,” pp. 35–54. 

Meigs, Cornelia. What Makes a College? A History of Bryn Mawr. New York: Macmillan, 

1956. 

See also the Bryn Mawr College Archives for the publications of the college, the 

voluminous papers of M. Carey Thomas, and the records of the board of trustees 

and the Quaker Collection at Haverford College for early publications on Quaker 

education and the family papers of a number of men involved with Bryn Mawr 

during its formative years.

10 

 

George Fox University 

Paul Anderson 

George Fox University aspires to be a Christ-centered Quaker institution 

of higher education. Visitors often comment on the friendliness 

of the environment and the pervasive sense of calling evident among its 

faculty, staff, and administrators. On the institutional seal are inscribed 

the words “Christianity and Culture,” but this conjunction is more than a 

slogan. Central here is the Friendly conviction that the living Christ is at 

work redemptively in the world, seeking to illumine, guide, and teach— 

leading persons into liberating truth—evoking a spiritual quest as well as 

an academic one. Accordingly, the opening sentence in its mission and objectives 

reads, 

The mission of the university from its beginning has been to demonstrate the 

meaning of Jesus Christ by offering a caring educational community in 

which each individual may achieve the highest intellectual and personal 

growth, and by participating responsibly in our world’s concerns. 

While this mission is furthered by a comprehensive set of endeavors, a remarkable 

factor in the success of George Fox University is the broad ownership 

of its mission among students and faculty alike. Recent accreditation 

reviews have commented directly on the impressively common sense 

of purpose shared by those serving at all levels of the institution. 

As broad ownership of mission and a clear understanding of purpose 

are central to the effectiveness of any venture, one might inquire how this 

has come to be so in this case. It cannot be said, for instance, that George 

Fox has maintained its identity by remaining small and manageable. Over 

the past two decades, the institution has nearly sextupled its size, growing 

163

164 Paul Anderson 

from 549 undergraduate students in 1986 to 3,217 graduate and undergraduate 

students in 2005. In addition, sixteen graduate and doctoral programs 

have been added since 1990, and ten undergraduate majors have 

been added since 1998. Most of the numerical growth over the past decade 

has been a factor of the addition of new graduate programs, although the 

undergraduate programs have also expanded to 1,579 (traditional) and 249 

(degree completion) students in 2005. From 1995 to 2002, while the enrollments 

in the traditional undergraduate program grew only from 1,272 to 

1,316, the growth in graduate programs went from 267 to 1,188. The number 

of graduate students in 2005 was 1,345. Separate campuses have been 

established in Portland and Salem, Oregon, and also in Boise, Idaho, and 

the Newberg campus continues to expand in its capacity and development. 

Nor can it be said that preserving the mission of the institution has 

transpired at the expense of excellence in academics or in service. Between 

1990 and 1998, student SAT scores improved by 9 percent over the 

national average, and the percentage of incoming student grade-point 

averages over 3.5 increased by 30 percent. Numbers of academic merit 

scholarships continue to rise, and our students’ applications to top graduate 

programs have accelerated in number and in terms of success percentages. 

In terms of service, over 250 students a year participate in major 

service trips ranging from inner-city ministries to house-building 

projects in Mexico, and in 1999 President Dave Brandt established an annual 

campuswide Serve Day in which classes are laid down, offices are 

closed, and some 1,400 volunteers scatter throughout Yamhill County 

and beyond, serving the needs of others with no expectation of return. 

We see it as an extension of Jesus’ instruction to his followers to serve 

others with liberality. 

Neither has the institution softened its religious identity in attempting 

to appeal to wider populations of students or in order to become eligible 

for state funding. We continue to require high levels of spiritual commitment 

and lifestyle agreement for employees and students, and in the 

1980s the board of trustees reaffirmed that the mission of George Fox University 

is indeed a “pervasively religious” one, thereby forfeiting hundreds 

of thousands of dollars annually available to nonreligious colleges 

and universities in Oregon. In many ways, these developments represent 

an impressive success story in recent American private higher education, 

but the story is not yet completed. George Fox continues to be a tuitiondriven 

institution, and an amazing fact about its recent history is its astounding 

advances in terms of quality, size, and scope. Many of the previously 

mentioned combinations, however, might seem counterintuitive, 

and this chapter explores how we approach fulfilling our mission—how 

we got here and the sorts of issues with which we struggle—the emerging 

story of George Fox University.

George Fox University 165 

HOW WE APPROACH OUR MISSION 

George Fox University is owned by Northwest Yearly Meeting, which appoints 

all its trustees. Four-sevenths of these must be Friends, and this relationship 

keeps the institution close to its parent religious body. This being 

the case, a high degree of interaction exists between Northwest Yearly 

Meeting and the university, and this relationship is felt to be mutually 

beneficial. While the number of Friends students in the traditional undergraduate 

program has remained between 74 and 145 over the past three 

decades or more (making up between 4 and 15 percent of the traditional 

undergraduate population), aspects of Quaker identity are nonetheless 

present. The Center for Peace Learning (founded in 1985 by Lon Fendall 

at the recommendation of Lee Nash) was sparked by Mark O. Hatfield’s 

question about what we are doing to resolve the problems of war. It was 

expanded into the Center for Peace and Justice in 2003, and its annual 

John Woolman Peacemaking Forum maintains a focus on the instructions 

of Jesus to be effective peacemakers in the world. Quaker Heritage Week 

(founded by Arthur Roberts and the Department of Religious Studies in 

1975) endeavors to heighten the visibility of a particular aspect of our 

Friendly heritage in ways serviceable to all members of the community, 

not just Friends, and a variety of other campuswide emphases on Quaker 

concerns also address the furthering of the institution’s mission. Other 

special-interest weeks, including Spiritual Life, Multicultural, Missions, 

and Alcohol Awareness, as well as the Spring Theological Conference, 

provide special foci on particular concerns. 

Much of the present concern to recover a sense of Quaker ways of being 

and doing came during the second half of the 1980s as both the Faculty 

Business Meeting and the board of trustees began to adopt Quaker 

decision-making approaches to their business. On the faculty level, this 

change involved the development of a faculty clerk position who sought 

to gather a “sense of the meeting” around faculty discussion of issues. On 

the board level, in the 1990s Dea Cox introduced Quaker decision-making 

process within the academic affairs committee of the board (letter from 

Lee Nash, March 14, 2002) and continued the practice within the plenary 

board meetings. In addition, meeting together for open worship and a 

pervasive emphasis on service have become trademarks of the spiritual 

center of our community of learning. As Lee Nash emphasized in his 1984 

Evangelical Friend essay (vol. 18, no. 3, p. 7), distinctive features of Quaker 

colleges include the following: 

1. Special approaches toward worship and the devotional life 

2. The concern for peace in life and among nations 

3. An emphasis on community


4. Group decision making with a difference 

5. A historic valuing and involvement of women in leadership 

6. A special sort of servant-oriented leadership 

7. Concerned service to hurting people 

8. A valuing of simplicity 

9. A tradition of creative individuality, sometimes prophetic 

The university also seeks to serve the larger evangelical community, and 

this aspect of leadership development is approached by curricular and extracurricular 

means. While students need not hold Christian commitments 

to attend the university, they are required to commit to several lifestyle 

agreements. These include abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and 

extramarital sex, and undergraduates are required to attend their choice of 

approximately two-thirds of twice-weekly chapel meetings. Alternatives 

to large-group chapel experiences include spiritual-formation credit for 

small groups, unprogrammed Quaker worship, and special events; these 

programs are organized by the campus pastor and the Student Life staff. 

Within the curriculum, all first-year students are required to take an introductory 

Bible class, a “Christian Foundations” class (theology in historical 

perspective), a Bible or religion elective or the “History and Doctrine 

of Friends” class (for Friends students), and a senior capstone course 

facilitating the integration of faith and learning. 

A particular distinctive of George Fox University is the conviction that 

one’s occupation deserves to be regarded as a spiritual vocation, and this 

concern extends to employees and students alike. Successful applicants 

for faculty, staff, and administrator positions are expected to support 

George Fox University’s statement of faith, and it is expected that they 

will be readily able to help students integrate faith and learning experientially 

from within that dialogue. They are also expected to adhere to the 

same lifestyle agreements as students and to participate regularly in a 

worship community of their choice. A spiritual sense of calling to serve at 

George Fox University is expected to be normative for its employees, and 

faculty, administrators, and staff regularly engage in meetings for worship 

and prayer. Likewise, students participate heavily in voluntary Bible 

studies and worship groups, and many become engaged in meaningful 

ministry while at George Fox. We try to help our students perceive their 

education as preparation for service and leadership, and a trademark of 

our graduates is that they see their work as Christian service, whether it 

is teaching, business, social work, engineering, medicine, or another field. 

The combination of an evangelical commitment and a Quaker ethos 

makes for a remarkable set of strengths. The evangelical approach to the 

life of faith calls for a life-changing relationship with Christ. The acknowledgment 

of human need before God converges powerfully with be-


lief in the Holy Spirit’s ability to transform the individual. Scripture becomes 

an authoritative source of guidance, and believing the Light of 

Christ is at work in illuminative ways provides a dynamic alternative to 

more dogmatic approaches to faith. Concerns for social justice and commitments 

to nonviolent approaches to problem solving provide a welcome 

complement to customary religious expressions, and the leadership 

of churches in the Northwest and beyond is strengthened by the service 

George Fox University provides interdenominationally. These connections 

extend across the institution’s twelve decades of history. 

HOW WE GOT HERE 

The story of George Fox University begins not as an educational venture 

alone but as a factor of Quaker migrations westward during the second 

half of the nineteenth century. The first known Quakers to come to Oregon 

were the Lewelling brothers, who settled in the Milwaukie and Oregon 

City areas in 1847. They planted hundreds of grafted fruit trees and 

were known for innovative agricultural contributions in the area. As other 

Friends moved to the Willamette Valley in the 1870s and 1880s, they 

sought not only to provide for their families by starting farms and clearing 

the land but also to provide for the education of their children. Soon 

after William Hobson moved out to Chehalem Valley in the 1870s, 

Chehalem Monthly Meeting (now Newberg Friends Church) was 

founded, and Oregon Yearly Meeting was established in 1893. While 

Friends in Newberg had already opened the first district school in 1877, 

Friends Pacific Academy was founded in 1885. One of its first students 

was Herbert Hoover, who after the death of his parents in West Branch, 

Iowa, had been brought out to Oregon to live with his uncle and aunt, 

Henry J. and Laura E. Minthorn. Dr. Henry Minthorn became the first 

principal of the academy, and Herbert Hoover was one of its first 

alumni—and certainly its most famous one. 

In his excellent treatment of the first hundred years of the institution (A 

Heritage to Honor, a Future to Fulfill; George Fox College, 1891–1991), Ralph 

Beebe fittingly divides the history of George Fox into seven chapters, and 

much of the following material is a summation of his work. There is no 

need to improve on his markings of the periods, although the seventh 

may be extended to 1996, when the college moved to university status, 

marking the eighth chapter as the present one at the time of this writing. 

By considering a brief history of George Fox University, one is helped to 

understand how we got to where we are today. 

The first chapter (1885–1911) saw the establishing of Friends Pacific 

Academy in 1885 and of Pacific College in 1891. The academy served a


dual preparatory role: preparing students for service in teaching and business 

(offering courses of study in the classic disciplines of history, science, 

Greek, Latin, and math) and in Christian ministry. The sacrificial contributions 

of Friends and other members of the community secured property 

and developed aesthetically pleasing buildings and grounds. In 1888, 

the local newspaper had already described the academy as “the pride of 

Chehalem Valley,” declaring that its reputation was as strong as any academy 

in the Pacific Northwest (Beebe, 3). Six years after the opening of the 

academy, Pacific College opened its doors with fifteen students and with 

Thomas Newlin (1881–1900) as its first president. On the strength of the 

academy’s enrollment, the collegiate mission extended the original mission 

further. After all, says Beebe, “no other Quaker college existed closer 

than William Penn College in Iowa” (Beebe, 5). The original description of 

“The Aim of the College” (Beebe, 6) is as follows: 

The purpose of the college is to offer to young men and young women the 

benefits of a liberal Christian education. The courses of study are arranged to 

give that broad culture which should be the possession of every intelligent 

man and woman. The founders recognized the great importance of religious 

training, and the work of the classroom is not merely consistent with Christianity, 

but decidedly Christian in its tendencies. It is the fond hope of the 

management that Pacific College shall send forth many Christian teachers, 

ministers, and missionaries, and that it shall be a strong support not only to 

the Friends Church, but to Christianity wherever its influence may reach. 

The addition of the college made it necessary to move to a new site. In 

1892, a twenty-three-acre plot of land was purchased, and the two existing 

buildings (later called Minthorn and Hoover, although the latter was 

later damaged by fire and torn down in 1954) were moved across town to 

the new campus from their original site where Newberg Friends Church 

now stands. By 1896, the number of students reached fifty, but over its 

first two decades the enrollment of the college averaged about forty, 

meaning that the first three presidents had their work cut out for them in 

terms of striving for institutional survival. Thomas Newlin worked hard 

to develop the college–yearly meeting relationship, asking every member 

of Oregon Yearly Meeting to share with faculty members equally in “the 

blessing of sacrifice” (Beebe, 11). 

Under Newlin’s care, the institution matured and developed a course 

of study for ministry preparation, designed to serve the growing needs of 

the yearly meeting. Despite Newlin’s hard work and optimism, however, 

H. Edwin McGrew (1900–1907) assumed his presidential mantle under 

the burden of a $12,000 debt. McGrew dedicated a full year to eradicating 

the debt, and in January 1902, Jesse Edwards was able to burn the mortgage 

note in a celebratory bonfire. At the end of W. Irving Kelsey’s


(1907–1910) presidency, the board launched a major drive to raise $30,000 

toward the construction of a new building. After the mayor of Newberg 

raised over half the money at a large town meeting, two women, Amanda 

Woodward and Evangeline Martin, completed the drive, appealing successfully 

to over 600 members of the community. They declared the triumph 

of the new-building subscription with their horse-drawn buggy in 

July 1910, and in their honor the new building was called “Wood-Mar” 

Hall. 

The early years of Pacific College were characterized as times of sacrifice 

and joy, and the college immediately distinguished itself as the leading 

oratorical power among all of Oregon’s colleges. With four first-place 

winners and three second-place winners of the Oregon State Oratorical 

Association competitions in its first fifteen years, Pacific College quickly 

established itself as a center of rhetorical excellence and intellectual deftness. 

More important, however, the sorts of issues address by its students 

demonstrate an incisive social conscience and sensitivity to matters of justice 

and social concern. For instance, the 1907 first-place address of 

Katherine (Romig) Otis criticized sweatshop child labor in America, and 

in 1904, Walter Miles won the national contest of the Prohibition Associa- 

Figure 10.1. Levi T. Pennington, the Institution’s Longest-Serving President, and Herbert 

Hoover, the Institution’s Most Famous Alumnus


tion of Colleges where over twenty states were represented (Beebe, 

14–16). Students at Pacific College were expected to abstain from profanity, 

intoxicants, tobacco, card playing, carrying concealed weapons, and 

attending dancing parties (Beebe, 9). By and large, students complied 

cheerfully with the expectations. These were seen as factors in the development 

of exemplary Christian character, and regular participation in 

meetings for worship was also expected. With the presidency of Levi Pennington, 

the second chapter in the institution’s history began. 

The second chapter (1911–1926) involved Levi Pennington’s guiding 

the academy and the college through difficult years leading to official 

recognition by the U.S. Bureau of Educational Standards. Like the presidents 

before him, Pennington had also received training at another Quaker 

college, in his case, Earlham. Pennington sought to use his connections 

with Eastern and Midwestern Friends to the fullest degree possible, and 

he took many trips back East seeking to raise support for the emerging 

Quaker college in the Pacific Northwest. When he assumed his responsibilities, 

the National Education Association was requiring $100,000 in endowment 

before accrediting collegiate institutions, but the Wood-Mar 

campaign had exhausted most of the local resources. In something of a 

miraculous show of support from Oregon Yearly Meeting constituents in 

1914, the pledges came to exceed $100,000. The victory bell in the tower 

rang once again, and yet the Bureau of Educational Standards had just 

raised the minimum endowment to $200,000. So Pennington and the 

trustees set themselves to raising the next $100,000—a task delayed by 

World War I and finally completed in 1926. 

During World War I, Pacific College distinguished itself among Oregon 

colleges in its adherence to the Quaker Peace Testimony and the teachings 

of Jesus on the love of enemies. Pennington believed Pacific College was 

the only Oregon college continuing to teach German during the war, and 

it refused the institution of the Reserve Officer Training Corps on campus 

(Beebe, 25). As many as twenty-five of its students served in war-relief efforts 

in Europe, and Pennington believed that Pacific College “was better 

represented, proportionately, than any other college in the world” (Beebe, 

25). As the attendance during its second chapter averaged around fifty 

students (with twenty-seven in 1918), this estimate seems justified. Pennington 

also worked hard to establish Pacific College as a liberal arts institution, 

and he was known as an effective Christian orator, regionally 

and beyond. 

In 1919, Pennington took a two-year leave of absence in order to head 

up the “Friends Forward Movement,” and John Mills served as acting 

president during the interim. During this time, the endowment campaign 

was resumed, and as 70 percent of the students were Friends, the yearly 

meeting was exhorted to contribute to the cause as they had in the past.


As faculty members were already contributing as much as one half their 

potential salaries to the college, fund-raisers among Friends in the West 

and in the East finally exceeded the campaign’s goals. On December 12, 

1925, the U.S. Bureau of Education granted standardization to Pacific College, 

securing its future as a viable academic institution. 

While standardization and a preliminary endowment were huge 

strides, the third chapter of Pacific College’s history (1926–1941) saw the 

continuing of difficult times through the Great Depression and the closing 

of the academy in 1929. In many ways, the second fifteen years of Pennington’s 

presidency may have been more difficult than the first fifteen, 

and several factors were involved. First, the modernist–fundamentalist 

divide, which had been sweeping America for the previous two decades 

or more, finally struck the relationship between Oregon Yearly Meeting 

and Five Years Meeting. Feeling disenfranchised by Friends who had 

aligned themselves with modernistic approaches to the Bible and more 

liberal aspects of faith and practice, Oregon Yearly Meeting withdrew 

from Five Years Meeting (now Friends United Meeting), eventually becoming 

a founding member of the Association of Evangelical Friends 

(now Evangelical Friends International). As Pennington had done a good 

deal of his education, service, and fund-raising among eastern Friends, he 

became entangled in the politics of these developments. He became suspect 

to more conservative and revivalist Friends despite the fact that he 

personally was fairly evangelical in his faith. Then again, his efforts to retain 

the liberal arts emphasis of the institution as opposed to interests in 

more of a Bible-school orientation contributed to the erosion of confidence 

in his leadership by some leaders and members of the yearly meeting. 

Ironically, Edward Mott, who replaced Pennington as Clerk of Oregon 

Yearly Meeting in 1924, served as president of North Pacific Evangelistic 

Institute (later Portland Bible Institute and eventually Cascade College). 

Not only did Mott and Pennington clash on matters doctrinal, perhaps as 

a microcosm of religious tensions on the national scene, but in competing 

for similar pools of students and resources, their endeavors conflicted in 

more ways than one. 

A second challenge was the closure of the academy in 1929. As the enrollment 

had declined from eighty-six to sixty over the previous seven 

years and as other preparatory schools across the nation were also closing, 

the Newberg school followed suit. While the reduction of expenditures 

brought some relief, the reduction of a critical mass of students also 

meant there were fewer resources to support the college’s ventures. 

Everyone pitched in to help keeps things afloat. Some days classes were 

canceled, and everyone went out and picked prunes to contribute to the 

cause. In 1932, the crisis was so severe that the faculty voluntarily contributed 

a tenth of their salaries back to the college to help make ends


meet (Beebe, 42). The loss of the academy was accompanied by a third 

challenge, which ironically occurred during the presidency of the academy’s 

most famous alumnus: Herbert Hoover. 

The Depression hit all American institutions hard, especially serviceoriented 

ones, and Pacific College was no exception. While attendance averaged 

around ninety during this chapter of its history, the attendance 

dropped to fifty-nine in 1928 and to seventy-five in 1929 and 1932. During 

these years, Pennington gave his best efforts to bolster the prosperity 

of the college, but both the raising of money and the recruiting of students 

during the Depression were challenging. Mark Ankeny (155–315) highlights 

the educational leadership Pennington provided in Oregon and beyond, 

and he is to be credited with keeping the institution going during 

some of its most difficult times, making his the longest presidential tenure 

in the institution’s history. 

The fourth chapter (1941–1954) brought to a head another sort of challenge: 

theological controversy leading to closer ties with the yearly meeting 

and the renaming of the college. The tensions with the yearly meeting 

continued under the presidency of Emmett Gulley (1941–1947), who continued 

to advocate for a liberal-arts ethos over a Bible school one. In 1946, 

the percentage of Friends students at the Pacific College rose to 74 percent, 

and over half of Oregon Yearly Meeting’s young people (57 percent 

in 1947) attended its college during some years during this time period 

(Beebe, 56). Despite Gulley’s commitment to Quaker values, his theological 

education at Hartford Theological Seminary and service with the 

American Friends Service Committee made support difficult within fundamentalist 

sectors of the yearly meeting, and in 1945 a group of ministers 

asked him to resign. He did so, but the board asked him to reconsider, 

and he served for two more years before finally stepping down. 

The end of World War II brought a considerable influx of students, and 

the enrollment in 1946 nearly doubled, from eighty-five to 161 in a single 

year. Gervas Carey (1947–1950) followed Gulley, and hiring more faculty 

with doctorates became a pressing concern for the institution. Following 

Carey, Paul Parker (1950–1952) served for two years as president, followed 

for two years by an administrative team of Donald McNichols, 

Paul Mills, and Harlow Ankeny. Financial pressures continued, but several 

bright spots accompanied this era. In addition to growing success in 

a variety of intercollegiate athletic ventures, the organization of a male 

quartet, the Four Flats, led to international recognition as the group eventually 

represented Youth for Christ and World Vision for many years. In 

1949, the college also opted for a name change, hoping to avoid confusion 

with Pacific University in Forrest Grove (some twenty miles away). It also 

became an opportunity to define more clearly the mission of the institution, 

and the recommendation of Arthur Roberts to call it “George Fox


College” was adopted unanimously by the board. Associating the college 

with George Fox, the founder of the Friends movement, allowed for emphasizing 

the connections between several polarities: a social witness and 

a spiritual outlook, a traditional grounding in Quaker history and an emphasis 

on the dynamic work of the Spirit, and concerns for peace and concerns 

for holiness. In 1954, the percentage of yearly meeting students rose 

to 81 percent, and a new chapter in the history of the institution was beginning. 

The fifth chapter (1954–1969) saw the continuing development of the 

college–yearly meeting relationship under the leadership of Milo Ross 

and the receiving of full accreditation in 1959. While the receiving of full 

accreditation was one of the most significant events in the institution’s 

history up to this point, it could not have been done without the elimination 

of debt (now nearly $150,000) and the yearly meeting’s confidence in 

the leadership of the institution. With the hiring of Arthur O. Roberts in 

1953 and Milo Ross in 1954, George Fox College became an exciting place 

for Oregon Yearly Meeting to consider sending its young people. With 

Roberts’s Boston University PhD in hand and his keen, analytical mind, 

the college was about to climb new heights, academically and otherwise. 

Ross, a creative leader and a standout pastor in Oregon Yearly Meeting, 

took new approaches to the challenges faced by the institution. Rather 

than saving money by means of austerity, he sought to raise the quality of 

programs and facilities, believing that investment follows quality. Rather 

than obligating students to come, he raised money to fund seven scholarships 

instead of one. He borrowed a hiring principle from Harvard’s president 

and adapted it as follows: “(1) Agree on the best person in the world 

for the particular position, then go after him or her; and (2) pray specifically 

about that person, anticipating that the college and candidate would 

together ascertain God’s will” (Beebe, 77). This person strategy was used 

over time to recruit intentionally the likes of Ralph Beebe, Don Millage, 

and many others who have served the institution with distinction. 

In soliciting support for the college, Ross traveled extensively to Friends 

churches and constituents, and the debt was retired in 1959, a full year 

ahead of schedule. The American Association of Colleges awarded him a 

citation of merit “for having the best dept liquidation drive of its kind in 

the United States” (Beebe, 76), and full accreditation was received later that 

year. Ross also sought to raise faculty salaries, and he standardized tenure 

and promotion procedures. Sports and arts programs grew dramatically 

during the Ross years, and, most important, the yearly meeting came to a 

full level of support for the college, committing itself solidly to its success. 

The size of the board was increased from fifteen to thirty members shortly 

after Ross began his tenure, and in 1964 this number was increased to 

forty-two, thirty of whom had to be Quakers. Over this fifteen-year period,


the enrollment more than tripled (from 109 to 392), and full accreditation 

facilitated further fund-raising and recruiting success. During these years, 

several important buildings were added to the campus, including the 

Shambaugh Library, Brougher Science Hall, Calder Center, Heacock Commons, 

and Hobson Residence Hall. The presidency of Milo Ross brought 

by far the most buoyant season of the college’s history to date, and this 

growth continued into the next chapter. 

The sixth chapter (1969–1982) witnessed the remarkable growth of the 

college under David LeShana’s presidency and the flowering of the campus 

and its institutional structures. David LeShana came to his service as 

president with the strongest academic credentials yet. Son of missionaries 

to India, LeShana served as a pastor in California Yearly Meeting, and the 

subject of his PhD research was the history of Quakers in the American 

West. Enrollment nearly doubled during this period, from 406 to 743, and 

the addition of Don Millage to the staff as the business manager in 1972 

gave the institution an unprecedented string of twenty-eight consecutive 

years of balanced budgets. Millage was willing to deny financial requests 

that seemed out of line with budgets and projections, and he increased the 

amount of contingency monies available making unforeseen developments 

less daunting. At least eight important buildings were added during 

these years, including the Coleman Wheeler Sports Center (enclosing 

the James and Lila Miller Gymnasium), the Herbert Hoover Academic 

Building, the Mary Sutton and Charlotte Macy Residence Halls, the Milo 

Ross Center, the Gervas Carey Residence Hall, the Video Communication 

Center, and the William and Mary Bauman Chapel/Auditorium. With 

these additions to the campus, the form of the institution came to take 

shape in significant new ways, and measures of success accompanied 

many of the institution’s ventures, including all-American status for several 

athletes, exciting traveling musical groups, and an ever-increasing academic 

reputation regionally and beyond. 

In addition, several other programs were initiated during the LeShana 

years. In 1971, an extension program was launched to bring educational 

programs to Kotzebue, Alaska, and for three years Roy Clark directed the 

center. In 1975, Northwest Yearly Meeting (formerly Oregon Yearly Meeting) 

donated the Tilikum Retreat Center to the college (a property with 

seventy-seven acres of meadows and woods and a fifteen-acre lake), and 

its founder, Gary Fawver, developed a program at George Fox for Christian 

camping and administration. In 1977, Lee Nash instituted a biennial 

Herbert Hoover Symposium in which top Hoover scholars—nationally 

and internationally—present papers and assess the contribution of 

George Fox’s most distinguished alumnus. During these years, many service 

projects were also begun, including ministries to the inner-city 

“Burnside” area of Portland and the interracial ministries of John Perkins


and the Voice of Calvary in Mississippi. As numbers of students rose, the 

percentage of Friends students shrunk. With about half of Northwest 

Yearly Meeting’s students attending George Fox (the yearly meeting having 

membership of about 7,000), the number of Friends had risen as high 

as 225 in 1975, making up 41 percent of the student body (Beebe, 117). Especially 

during the LeShana years, many Friends students were from California 

(now Southwest) Yearly Meeting, averaging anywhere from forty 

to eighty students. While these numbers and percentages would not be 

sustained in the long term, Northwest Yearly Meeting stayed very much 

engaged with the mission of the institution, and the relationship was felt 

to be mutually beneficial. 

The seventh chapter (1982–1996) covers the presidency of Ed Stevens, 

rebounding from difficult initial years to a season of unprecedented 

growth and the becoming of a university. Academic Dean William Green 

served as an interim president during the 1982–1983 school year, and Ed 

Stevens assumed the presidency in 1983. Smitten by a national economic 

recession and reduced student enrollments (going from 683 to 549 between 

1982 and 1986), the college leadership came to another crisis: how 

to turn around enrollment and bolster support for new programs. In addition 

to Ed Stevens’s getting known by the constituency (Stevens was the 

first non-Quaker president at George Fox), several initiatives contributed 

to turning things around. Consultations with Dagley and Associates 

helped the admissions staff strategize more effectively with their recruitment 

efforts, and a degree-completion program (Management of Human 

Resources) began in 1986, adding new tuition dollars to the budget. Such 

programs as the Juniors Abroad program (1987) and Computers Across 

the Curriculum (1990) added appeal for prospective students, and enrollments 

benefited as a result. 

The year 1990 saw the addition of the first graduate program at the college, 

as Western Conservative Baptist Seminary offered to hand over its 

entire doctorate of psychology program, including faculty, library holdings, 

students, and curriculum. Three questions were raised by Stevens: 

Is it in keeping with our mission? Can we do a qualitatively excellent job 

at it? And will the program be viable financially? All these were answered 

in the affirmative, and the entire program was transferred to 

George Fox College—faculty, students, and all. In 1991, a masters of arts 

in teaching was added to the graduate offerings, followed the next year 

by a masters of arts in business administration and a masters of arts in 

Christian studies. A masters of arts in education was added in 1994, and 

in 1995 a new campus was added in Boise, and the degree-completion 

program was changed to a management and organizational leadership 

degree. The addition of graduate programs complemented the undergraduate 

offerings, but they also raised a number of other issues. They


made the college consider differences between the spiritual and religious 

components of graduate and undergraduate programs, evoking questions 

as to how to serve undergraduates and graduates effectively, in 

keeping with the mission of the college. They also evoked reconsideration 

of academic and governance structures. 

Growth in the college’s graduate and undergraduate programs was accompanied 

by enhanced national visibility for its academic and other measures 

of excellence. During the 1990s, a combination of other factors, including 

Ed Stevens’s rare marketing abilities and emphases by the trustees 

on scholarship and excellence in teaching, contributed to the institution’s 

receiving ever-increasing publicity for its expanding academic reputation. 

U.S. News and World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” issues consistently 

placed George Fox in the top ten colleges in the West in categories of academics, 

best value, and overall ratings since 1990. Academically, Fox placed 

third for three years, moving to second for three years and attaining first 

place in 2000, when it also placed second in the overall and best-value ratings. 

Additionally, George Fox has been singled out annually since 1990 by 

the Templeton Foundation’s Honor Role for Character-Building Colleges 

(the only college or university in Oregon to receive such an award), and 

over the past decade and a half, numerous grants have been received from 

such charitable trusts and foundations as M. J. Murdock, Lilly Foundation 

Inc., Pew, Kresge, Teagle, W. M. Keck, Templeton, and others. While it 

might seem contrary to Quaker modesty to make much of such accolades, 

institutional support follows perceived quality, and this is especially the 

case when prospective donors consider the stewardship of their resources 

and when students shop for the best tuition-dollar value. Between 1993 and 

1997 the number of Friends students averaged 115. 

During the Stevens administration, the cost of tuition rose considerably, 

yet this enabled the institution to provide more student scholarships and 

greater services for students. It also reflected the Quaker appreciation for 

“fair pricing,” which in this case implied raising the tuition price tag to 

match the high-quality product rather than lowering it. Over 90 percent 

of George Fox students receive some sort of financial aid, and many have 

also been helped to procure loans and to be involved in work-study forms 

of employment. To meet the rising demand for housing, the Jack L. Willcuts, 

Richard H. Beebe, and University residence halls were constructed during 

this era, and other building projects include the Esther Klages Dining Hall, 

the M. J. Murdock Learning Resource Center, the Edwards-Holeman Science 

Building, and notably the Centennial Tower, in which the old Pacific 

College victory bell is hung. One of the greatest boosts during these years 

came with the appointing of Senator Mark O. Hatfield as the Herbert 

Hoover Distinguished Professor in 1996. Hatfield agreed to team-teach


Figure 10.2. The Centennial Tower, 1990, Designed by Noted 

Architect Pietro Belluschi, and the Virginia Millage Memorial 

Rose Garden, 1992 

courses on such themes as the contribution of Herbert Hoover (his political 

mentor), American government, war and conscience in America, 

ethics in the public square, and other themes. Former dean and professor 

of history Lee Nash crafted Hatfield’s arrangement after considering the 

needs of George Fox, the senator’s schedule, and Emory University’s 

arrangement with Jimmy Carter. 

Between 1990 and 1998, faculty salaries nearly doubled, insuring a 

more competitive edge in terms of hiring and retaining top-quality faculty. 

With the increase in salary, however, came the raising of the bar in 

terms of scholarship. Tenure would no longer be something of an entitlement; 

faculty would have to demonstrate distinction in at least two of 

three categories: scholarship, teaching, and service. Some faculty opposed 

this development, arguing that emphasis on scholarship could displace 

the high value placed on service and faculty–student relationships. Indeed, 

catering to an academic guild could jeopardize a faculty member’s 

participation within the local communities and could impair service, but 

these are not mutually exclusive options. The institution also provided increased 

funding for traveling to professional conferences at which faculty 

were presenting papers, and summer research funds were expanded to 

support publication-related work. 

In 1994, the college articulated eight community values in response to 

the urging by Professor Mark McMinn to examine its core values so that 

they would not be lost amidst the growth of the institution. Throughout 

many discussions on several levels, the following values were articulated,


and cards with these listed on them were reproduced and made available 

for all who wished to have a reminder of “what we’re all about.” Here are 

the George Fox Community Values: 

Following Christ, the Center of Truth 

Honoring the Worth, Dignity and Potential of the Individual 

Developing the Whole Person—Spirit, Mind and Body 

Living and Learning in a Christ-Centered Community 

Pursuing Integrity over Image 

Achieving Academic Excellence in the Liberal Arts 

Preparing Every Person to Serve Christ in the World 

Preserving Our Friends (Quaker) Heritage 

As in most deliberative processes, the greatest value in deciding something 

lies in the discussion, wherein understanding grows and internalization 

occurs. When faculty developed a sense of unity around these values, 

little could they see their importance in surviving the next crisis—the 

move from college to university status. Within a year or so, David Le- 

Shana (then president of Western Evangelical Seminary) began exploring 

with Ed Stevens what a merger between the two institutions might look 

like. The seminary had accrued a considerable level of indebtedness, and 

it would benefit from association with the college’s fiscal stability and rising 

reputation. The addition of a Tigard campus centered in a wellequipped 

professional building would facilitate the delivery of graduate 

and professional programs in ways operating from Newberg alone could 

never achieve. In addition, the college had always wanted to have a graduate 

program in ministry, and this seemed like a win-win situation. During 

the discussions, tensions emerged over the perception that it was 

more of an acquisition of a smaller partner by a larger partner than an 

egalitarian merger, even though it was presented as the latter, but finally 

the boards of the seminary and the college agreed, and the merger led to 

the transition from college to university status. 

On July 1, 1996, George Fox College became George Fox University, 

and with the addition of the seminary and its programs, enrollment 

jumped from 1,719 to 2,188 overnight. Many issues were left to be sorted 

out from proximity rather than at a distance, so the merger went ahead 

with the understanding that things would be worked through as needed. 

The position of seminary president was eliminated, which coincided 

with David LeShana’s retiring and moving to emeritus status, and program 

adjustments continued over several years. One casualty was the 

master of arts in Christian studies program, which was eliminated so as 

not to duplicate the seminary’s programs. The logo of the institution obviously 

had to change, and the original artist who had designed the


George Fox College logo on the basis of the seventeenth-century Quaker 

leader’s own autograph was commissioned to perform a similar rendering 

of the new name. Portland graphic designer Charles Politz, who had 

designed the original in 1973, effectively replaced “college” with “university” 

and produced the new logo in the original style of the handwriting 

of George Fox himself. Within thirteen years, the enrollment of 

the institution had more than tripled, and the budget had gone from just 

over 5 million to 36 million. 

The eighth chapter (1996–2007) involves a season of becoming who we 

are—a growingly complex institution seeking to stay true to its mission 

while seeking to survive the throes of success. While Ed Stevens continued 

to lead effectively into the first year of the institution’s university status, 

he was tragically smitten with a stroke on June 7, 1997. Following the 

detection of a brain tumor, he died the following May. This produced a 

terrible shock for the new university, and Tom Johnson, who had been 

asked to be the dean of the seminary, was asked to serve also as interim 

president. Johnson had been president of Sioux Falls College in South 

Dakota, and when he received the presidential charge from Dea Cox, 

chairman of the board of trustees, in that September student chapel service, 

he brought his baseball glove, developing the metaphor of serving as 

a “relief pitcher.” A year later, Dave Brandt (1998–2007) assumed the presidency, 

and the eighth chapter of George Fox University was well underway. 

President Brandt hired Robin Baker as the next vice president of academic 

affairs, and within his first year Baker facilitated discussions 

leading to the shifting from three schools (humanities, sciences, and professional 

studies) with a dean heading up each to a two-dean structure involving 

graduate/professional studies and undergraduate departments 

under each new dean. This led to a simplification of faculty governance 

structure in 2002 preserving the plenary faculty meeting conducted by the 

clerk of the faculty in a Quaker decision-making format while still delegating 

greater authority to the undergraduate and graduate councils. A 

further adjustment of the faculty governance structure was introduced in 

2004, designed to shift routine matters of maintenance to committees and 

working groups in order to streamline the sorts of issues requiring full 

faculty action. The university then moved to more of a “school” structure, 

adding schools of education, arts and sciences, health and behavioral sciences, 

and management. 

During this chapter of the university’s history, more programs continued 

to be added, including three more doctorate programs: the doctorate 

of education (1999), the doctorate of ministry (1999), and the doctorate of 

management (2006); masters of arts in organizational leadership (1999), 

Christian ministries (1999), clinical psychology (1999), business and information 

science (2001), school psychology (2002), family counseling (2002),


and spiritual formation (2005); and several entrepreneurial graduate-level 

education programs (such as the MAT in Your Community, 2002). These 

were added to existing masters of business administration, masters of arts 

in teaching, masters of divinity, and masters of arts in theological studies 

degrees. On January 1, 2000, the name of the seminary was changed to 

George Fox Evangelical Seminary, and in 2002 Jules Glanzer became its 

new dean. Tom Johnson then came over to teach New Testament in the 

Department of Religious Studies, and he was soon pressed into service as 

the primary teacher in the new faculty theology courses. In 2000, the offices 

for the degree completion, MBA, graduate education, and some 

other programs were moved to the Portland campus, facilitating delivery 

of classes to Portland-based adult learners. These programmatic advances 

have brought in considerable revenue and have offset added expenses on 

the undergraduate side of the university, but they nonetheless force ongoing 

discussions about mission and our effectiveness at accomplishing it. 

A $22 million Legacy Campaign was launched in 1999, and a significant 

part of that campaign sought to procure the funding for the Edward F. 

Stevens Center, a student services center that had been envisioned for 

over a decade. Receiving several awards for environmentally sound and 

light-maximizing architecture, the Stevens Center opened in September 

2001 as a tribute to Ed Stevens’s love for students and his unprecedented 

contributions to the institution. The Wood-Mar Theater and the Lemmons 

Center in Calder had been renovated in 1997, and two years later the historic 

Jesse Edwards home, which had been donated to the university by 

the Edwards family, was thoroughly renovated as the home of the university’s 

eleventh president. Dave and Melva Brandt have used the home 

to extend the ministry of hospitality to the larger community, and it 

makes a gracious and historic connection with the university’s past. In addition, 

the Edwards family gave a million dollars in endowment for faculty 

development. The interest from these funds is used to support summer 

research, residential research part-time leaves, and other ventures 

designed to bolster faculty development. A half-time administrative position 

of faculty development dean was established in order to help faculty 

devise their own growth plans and to encourage them in their development. 

Becky Ankeny was appointed in 2000 to serve in this capacity, and 

later her position was expanded to become the associate vice president for 

academic affairs. Dwight Kimberly was awarded the Carnegie/CASE 

award as the Oregon Professor of the Year for excellence in teaching in 

2000, and Vicky Defferding received the Pacific Northwest Postsecondary 

Teacher of the Year Award from the council of Foreign Language Teachers 

in 2005. The first endowed chair was established in 2005, and Mark Hall 

became the first recipient of the Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor 

of Political Science, despite being a just-war advocate.


The merger with the seminary forced the revision of both institutions’ 

statements of faith, and the new statement presents an orthodox Christian 

set of beliefs in less technical theological language. It was also the case 

that many applicants for positions had taken exception to the statements 

on war and sacraments. The new statement softens these parts in ways 

that still make the same points but does so in less definitive ways. Other 

concerns include the fact that running operational expenses exceeded revenues 

from 1999 through 2001, leading to more than a $2 million indebtedness. 

While this amount is a small percentage of a budget of more than 

$40 million, the president’s cabinet took concerted steps to eliminate this 

indebtedness over several years. Following twenty-eight consecutive 

years of balanced budgets, the impact of such a challenge was more manageable 

than it would have been at other times in the institution’s history, 

but priority was given to paying it off, which happened in 2006. Another 

shortfall occurred, though, in the spring of 2007. 

As George Fox University plans for the future, several aspects of the 

strategic plan are worthy of mention: the university hopes to enhance the 

diversity of its faculty and students in order to better serve the larger 

world. It also hopes to help in the integration of faith and learning within 

faculty members’ development. Starting in 2001, new faculty receive a 

one-course-load reduction in the fall for three years in a row, and they are 

expected to take a graduate-level course each fall semester in Bible and 

theology, an introduction to Quaker history and doctrine, and a course integrating 

faith and learning personally. In 2000, George Fox University received 

a Rhodes Consultation grant designed to strengthen the relationship 

between the institution and its founding church body, and it received 

a Rhodes Institution Renewal grant in 2002 as a means of strengthening 

those ties further. Parallel to these discussions have been the emerging interest 

in creating a Friends Center coordinating the Quaker leadership development 

features of the university’s seminary, its Newberg campus resources, 

and programs on the yearly meeting level. The establishment of 

such a center was approved enthusiastically at the 2001 sessions of Northwest 

Yearly Meeting, and it was established in 2002 with Richard Sartwell 

appointed as its first director. 

Described as “Dave’s To-Do List,” six items were outlined as goals of the 

strategic plan: (1) establish and improve the financial health of the university, 

(2) develop an operational definition of quality, (3) complete several 

important initiatives, (4) bring health care programs to Fox, (5) investigate 

the possible acquisition of the new properties (including the adjacent Providence 

Newberg Hospital), and (6) prepare a new campus plan. In addition 

to these goals, Dave Brandt instituted a “Blueprint for Diversity” as a 

means of making the undergraduate community more racially and ethnically 

diverse. By 2006, a new nursing program was indeed designed and


implemented, the hospital property was effectively purchased, several 

construction projects were either completed or gotten underway (including 

the expansion of the Hoover Academic Building, a new student residence 

hall, the building of an outdoor amphitheater, and a new athletic 

field complex on 24 acres of new property, bringing the total to 108 acres), 

and a long-range master plan was designed laying out what developments 

might be serviceable over the next four decades. This new campaign 

was called the Defining Chapter Campaign, seeking to fund $13.4 

million. 

As a means of consolidating the university logo and image, an extensive 

reworking of the logo was conducted in 2004, using the Centennial 

Tower as the image. The cuddly image of “Bruin Jr.” was replaced on athletic 

wear by a more ferocious bear with sharp claws. Some community 

members decried the apparent abandonment of less violent images, although 

others questioned whether a sports logo was the best place to register 

a testimony for peace. The marketing materials nonetheless won 

over a dozen regional awards for their designs and products, and the replacement 

of the thirty-year-old logo brought with it a bold new look. The 

two-tone publication Life was also retired after thirty-three years of service, 

to be replaced by the George Fox Journal, a full-color magazine. Also 

in 2004, the baseball team won the NCAA Division III national championship, 

and this brought about considerable recognition for Coach Pat 

Bailey and the baseball program. 

In his last two years of office, President Brandt pushed to redefine the 

lifestyle agreements on sexuality and the use of alcohol. In 2005 the university’s 

stance on sexual activity was clarified, calling for celibate behavior 

for all single adults, heterosexual and homosexual alike, and faithfulness 

within marriage. The university’s commitments to biblical standards 

of behavior were thereby reaffirmed. The alcohol policy was revised 

slightly, maintaining an expectation of no alcohol use for traditional undergraduate 

students, and alcohol use remains forbidden on all campuses 

and university-related functions. In April 2007, some liberty of conscience 

was extended to employees and members of graduate and degree-completion 

programs, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of 

living lives of exemplary conduct and of curtailing personal freedoms out 

of loving concern for the vulnerable. The social-concern aspect of the 

Friends testimony on alcohol was thereby preserved. 

In October 2006, at the age of 68, Dave Brandt announced his retirement. 

The search committee chaired by Kent Thornburg performed a nationwide 

search and found the leading candidate at the end of the day to 

be Robin Baker, our provost and academic vice president since 1999. 

While the university had not had a Quaker president for twenty-five


years, Baker’s track record in supporting Friends’ values and perspectives 

had been impressive. Robin instituted the three-year faculty training program, 

involving courses in Bible and theology, the history and doctrine of 

Friends, and the integration of faith and learning. Baker also planned several 

faculty conferences dealing with such issues as the Friends testimonies, 

globalization, women in leadership, faculty scholarship, and the 

integration of faith and learning. 

As the ninth chapter of George Fox University begins on July 1, 2007 under 

the presidency of Robin Baker, he brings an impressive set of assets to 

the mission of the institution. Growing up in the Southern Baptist tradition 

and having taken leadership within the larger evangelical movement, 

Baker’s genuine interest in furthering a Christ-centered Quaker approach 

to learning, living, and being has been compelling. This is especially timely 

as the number of undergraduate Friends students dropped from 135 in 

2000 to 74 in 2006, raising concerns about the Quaker mission of the institution 

within the yearly meeting leadership. In terms of a vision for this 

new chapter of George Fox University, Baker says, “This is an excellent 

place to earn an undergraduate or graduate education in an environment 

that seeks to nurture and develop the whole person. I now look forward to 

leading the institution in its effort to become one of the premier institutions 

of Christian higher education in the country.” 

CHALLENGES WE FACE 

Herbert Hoover’s Uncle Henry Minthorn used to say, “The worst thing a 

man can do is to do nothing.” As the programs and organizational structures 

of George Fox University have changed radically over the past 

decade or more, several challenges face us, which must be addressed if we 

are to continue to fulfill our mission. As the university thinks about what 

it means to be a Christ-centered Quaker academic institution with graduate 

and undergraduate programs, several issues present themselves as 

needing to be addressed. If we want to move successfully into the future, 

we cannot do nothing. 

First, faculty development continues to be a concern. Each faculty member 

is charged with developing a personal growth plan that is reviewed 

with the dean of faculty development and his or her department chair. 

These two-year plans need to be updated annually, and they need to clear 

enough so that application for conference-attending funding and other requests 

for support are seen as furthering part of a larger plan. While 

George Fox will never be a research institution, the scholarship of its faculty 

will continue to be a significant measure of the university’s academic


reputation, and the challenge is to find ways of supporting the faculty in 

that difficult venture. From 1997 to 2003, as many as 160 faculty publications 

were cited in the university’s 2004 Self Study Report, and faculty continue 

to contribute in their fields regionally, nationally, and internationally. 

Also needing to be supported are the callings to excellence in service and 

teaching. Here we resist the separation of scholarship, teaching, and service 

from one another. The Quaker conviction that all life is a sacramental 

whole may help us resist compartmentalizing these callings and may help 

us explore the connectedness between them. 

A second challenge facing faculty is the continuing need to integrate 

faith and learning. We want this for our students, but faculty must also be 

learning and personally engaging the tough issues of integration. The development 

plan for new faculty will facilitate this venture, but even established 

faculty need to continue learning and exploring how their faith 

fits into their disciplines. Here I believe we have something to say about 

Christian witness. It is not just something we declare verbally; it has to do 

with the ways our lives speak to the needs of the world—a spiritual calling 

in and of itself. Recent discussions on the science–religion debate illustrate 

this interest, but faith should be integrated within every field, and 

breaking new ground within our disciplines may be the sort of contribution 

faculty feel called to make. 

A third challenge relates to the question of how to further a dynamic experience 

of a Quaker ethos without intruding on those who come from a 

non-Quaker background. Settings in which faculty come into contact with 

Quaker ways of doing things include the Faculty Business Meeting, times 

of faculty sharing, and the fall faculty conference. Heightening the value of 

attending unprogrammed meetings for worship and helping one another 

develop a “centered” way of living could make a difference, and, certainly, 

learning more about Quaker contributions within each academic discipline 

could add interest to the venture. In addition, the adding of a Quaker 

studies minor will bring some student energy to this endeavor, and targeting 

Quaker themes of interest with Quaker Heritage Week and Quaker 

seminars may also bolster the addressing of this concern. 

A fourth challenge is the need to continue to address the structural and 

organizational needs of an ever more complex institution. The recent decision 

to empower the graduate and undergraduate councils with more 

decision-making authority should alleviate some of the burden felt from 

the need to attend seven or eight faculty meetings per semester because 

there will be fewer meetings. Creative problem solving is always a corporate 

venture, and the challenge will be to keep structures simple while still 

holding to the value that engaging issues in community often makes for a 

better product qualitatively. In that sense, structure should be crafted as a 

means of addressing needs and evaluated accordingly.


A fifth challenge is the need to catch a glimpse of how we are to move 

toward the future and to mobilize to do so effectively. Concerns for 

greater ethnic and racial diversity among our students and faculty are 

rooted in a global understanding of the ways of God, transcending particular 

segments and expressions. We also believe that we are called to 

serve together and that a calling to serve is what motivates our commitment 

to excellence. We are called to serve, and the educational venture 

provides the focused attention on how to prepare young leaders for service 

meaningfully in seeking to address the needs of the world, energized 

and empowered by the love of Christ. 

“Christianity and Culture” bespeaks a holy conjunction. As the motto 

on the insignia of George Fox University, it reminds us that the religious 

and worldly walks of life must engage each other for us to do what we are 

called to do and for us to become what we are called to be. As George Fox 

said in 1656, “And this is the word of the Lord God to you all, and a 

charge to you all in the presence of the living God: be patterns, be examples 

in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that 

your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; 

then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of 

God in every one.” On that matter and many more, the stories of the institution 

and its namesake converge. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ankeny, Mark. Levi T. Pennington, Quaker Leader and Educator: Pacific College Presidential 

Years 1911–1941. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Dissertation Services, 1998. 

Beebe, Ralph. A Garden of the Lord; A History of Oregon Yearly Meeting of Friends 

Church. Newberg, Ore.: Barclay Press, 1968. 

———. A Heritage to Honor, a Future to Fulfill; George Fox College, 1891–1991. Newberg, 

Ore.: Barclay Press, 1991. 

Haines, Marie. Remembering 75 Years of History. Newberg, Ore.: Barclay Press, 1967. 

McNichols, Donald. Portrait of a Quaker; Levi T. Pennington (1875–1975): A Critical 

Biography. Newberg, Ore.: Barclay Press, 1980. 

Mott, Edward. The Friends Church in the Light of Its Recent History. Portland, Ore.: 

Loomis, 1935. 

Nash, Lee. “Friends Colleges: Originals or Copies?” Evangelical Friend 18, no. 3 

(November 1984): 6–7. 

Roberts, Arthur O. The Association of Evangelical Friends: A Story of the Quaker Renewal 

in the Twentieth Century. Newberg, Ore.: Barclay Press, 1975.

11 

 

Whittier College 

Anne Kiley and Joseph Fairbanks 

As members of the Religious Society of Friends began to trickle into 

southern California in the latter part of the 1880s, they shared many 

of the interests and imperatives of the original Quakers who came to colonial 

America two centuries earlier. Frederick Tolles described what he saw 

as their two most important motives: their desire to foster their religious 

beliefs in the “Meeting House” and their desire to exploit the vast economic 

opportunities in the New World represented as the “Counting 

House.” The midwestern Quakers, led by wondrously named Aquilla 

Pickering, who moved into the valley and hillsides of eastern Los Angeles 

County in 1887–1888 to establish the colony of Whittier, shared these 

potentially dichotomous aspirations and brought with them another abiding 

interest shared and demonstrated by Friends in the East and Midwest: 

education. 

These Friends began to organize their town and decided to call it Whittier 

in honor of the poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. Shortly 

after founding the town, they began plans for establishing a Friends’ college 

and created a board of trustees on December 19, 1887. This marked 

the beginning of a formal structure for this dream, but there were vast difficulties 

to be worked out, and this educational enterprise had to be 

launched three times before it finally succeeded. 

Changes in the economic climate of southern California made fundraising 

problematic, and some supporters of the new educational institution 

fell away from the enterprise. However, a more modest beginning 

took place in 1888 with the establishment of the Whittier Academy, a 

187

188 Anne Kiley and Joseph Fairbanks 

preparatory school that many of the optimistic Friends hoped would 

eventually evolve into a college. 

The initial struggles of the college were not unique, paralleling those of 

many other nascent institutions of higher education in southern California 

(including the University of Southern California, Occidental College, 

and Pomona College) and beyond. Some of the others, however, eventually 

acquired substantial endowments, thus rendering them less vulnerable 

to outside economic factors than Whittier. Initially conceived of as 

Friends College and then the Whittier Academy, the institution first enrolled 

students in 1888, and in 1891 control was shifted to a community 

board, the Whittier Educational Association (WEA). After a time of meeting 

in temporary quarters, the WEA established a campus early in 1894 

with the dedication of an all-purpose building later named Founders 

Hall. For a time, this single building provided all the facilities available: 

classrooms, library, offices, and even dormitory space. In 1918, a major 

fund-raising drive yielded only the requisite funds to construct Naylor 

Hall, a modest facility to house the chemistry department. But collegelevel 

classes were few in number at first, and preparatory students constituted 

the majority of the enrollment for a number of years. Only in 1904 

did the first four students graduate from Whittier College with the AB degree. 

The preparatory department continued to constitute an important 

element in the institution until 1913, when its last class graduated. 

Hoping to provide a secure financial basis, the WEA offered the college 

to the California Yearly Meeting in 1900, and the meeting accepted it. 

However, a year later, the WEA applied for and received incorporation by 

the State of California, independent of the California Yearly Meeting. Subsequently, 

the trustees ordered the construction of an auditorium in 

Founders Hall that provided both space for assemblies and dramatic productions 

for the college and a place for sessions of the yearly meeting. 

One Whittier tradition growing directly out of the Quaker precepts of 

the founders and continuing to the present was diversity. The founding 

board included a woman as treasurer; both men and women were enrolled 

from the outset, and three of the four initial recipients of the AB degree 

were women. Women made up a significant part of the faculty beginning 

in 1895 and have played a leadership role in the faculty for a 

number of years. Leadership roles in administration came later, but the 

two most recent presidents, as well as three current vice presidents, are 

women. 

While the absence of racial records makes it difficult to determine exactly 

how many minority students enrolled in early classes, we do know 

that the children of the local barber, one of Whittier’s few African American 

residents, attended the academy in its earliest years. Of Whittier’s 

four Rhodes scholars, three have been African American. Hispanic names

Whittier College 189 

Figure 11.1. Upper Quad with Students 

appear fairly early in the records as well, and the current student body is 

among the most ethnically diverse among private colleges in the country. 

Roughly half the current student body consists of American “minority” 

groups, and there is a significant and varying sprinkling of foreign students: 

several years ago, the two outstanding graduates in English were 

Sri Lankans, and several Bulgarians have done outstanding work in the 

sciences. 

Outside recognition of the new college came in the form of approval of 

the Preparatory School program by the University of California in 1899 

and 1900 and Stanford University’s acceptance of the Whittier College 

credits in transfer. In February 1927, the college received accreditation by 

the Association of American Universities and has been fully accredited 

ever since. Other recognition took the form of success in the world of athletics. 

The first “Whittier College” football team was organized in 1893, although 

so few rules existed at that time that not all the members of the 

team were even enrolled students. The following year, Whittier played its 

first intercollegiate game, a 12–6 loss to Occidental College. In the next 

few years, Whittier’s teams, dubbed the “Poets” in 1911, had some success 

in football, but even greater achievement came in the new sport of 

basketball. Beginning in 1904 Whittier fielded a men’s basketball team 

and often excelled in spite of initially having only a dirt court on which to 

play on the campus. A year later, a rudimentary gymnasium was built,


largely by students, for the princely sum of $1,000. (Coping with financial 

limitations is part of the Whittier way of life; nearly ninety years later, several 

faculty members did the carpentry needed to convert a disused gymnasium 

into art studios.) In 1907, Whittier men won the first of numerous 

intercollegiate basketball championships, and women played intramural 

basketball as early as 1903. Athletics has remained an important part of 

student life, though the college does not award athletic scholarships and 

takes seriously the idea that its athletes are to be student-athletes. Early in 

the twentieth century, Whittier’s athletes defeated teams from schools 

that are now large universities and major athletic powers, but in recent 

years Whittier teams have only occasionally excelled. An exception is the 

remarkable recent record in lacrosse, where both men and women have 

fielded excellent teams. 

Growth in a number of critical areas lagged far behind what the optimistic 

founders of the college had hoped. Enrollment was slow to increase, 

a continuing problem for what has always been a tuition-driven 

school. In 1895, the total enrollment was eighty-five, sixty-four of whom 

were Friends and only thirty-seven of whom were doing work at the college 

level. Eight years later, there were only eighty-nine students, twentyfour 

doing college-level work. On the eve of World War I, the student 

body numbered only about 100, and in the immediate postwar years, the 

number of men enrolled had dwindled to just fifty in the fall of 1919 

(twenty-five of whom went out for football!). Enrollment never numbered 

more than 1,000 students until the fall of 1947, this increase in large part 

due to the effects of the GI Bill of Rights. 

Another area in which Whittier lagged from the outset and with which 

it still struggles was endowment. The early members of the board of 

trustees certainly recognized the pressing need to secure the fledgling institution 

financially, and many of them gave generously of their land and 

funds. However, they saw the academy fail twice as the real estate market 

fluctuated, and they were never able to acquire the sort of fiscal cushion 

that would have eased the early years; nor were subsequent boards or administrations 

able to generate sizable donations until fairly recently. As a 

natural consequence of limited resources, the physical plant was also slow 

to develop. A women’s residence hall was completed in 1909, but it was 

not until 1924 that male students got a comparable facility. Founders Hall 

continued to accommodate most of the classrooms and administrative offices. 

The space crunch was alleviated somewhat in 1936 with the acquisition 

of a large new building that the Whittier Elks Lodge had built for 

its own use on land adjoining the campus but was forced to sell because 

of financial difficulties stemming from the Great Depression. This impressive 

Mission-style building, complete with ballroom, was named 

Mendenhall in honor of the man whose widow donated its cost; it became


and remains the primary administration building. In addition, the building 

fulfilled various other functions from time to time, including service 

as the college library between 1939 and 1963. 

The Quaker connection was strong in the beginning but was to diminish 

in succeeding years. The school can be described as a “Friends Denominational 

College” from 1900 to 1918, and all the early presidents were members 

of the Society of Friends. The proportion of Friends in the student 

body continually declined during the first few decades of the history of the 

college both in real numbers and as a percentage of the total enrollment; 

for example, students who were Friends were 44 percent in 1923 and 17 

percent ten years later. In 1942, fifty-four Quakers were enrolled and were 

13 percent of the student body; in 1955, only 5 percent of the students were 

Friends. These declines paralleled the decline in the relative number of 

Friends living in the Whittier area. During these years, the percentage of 

Whittier students who came from the surrounding community also declined 

as the student body became more diverse geographically. 

Another key element in denominational affiliation was the makeup of 

the board of trustees. In the early years of the college, most of the board 

members were Friends, and they constituted a majority for many years, 

partly because the board became self-perpetuating at an early date and 

partly because the bylaws required it. Despite this, however, the yearly 

meeting was never able to provide the support the college needed. 

Figure 11.2. Hoover Hall, East Side


Demographic changes, however, were not the only factor, for local 

Quakers were by no means unanimous about what sort of education the 

college should provide. The financial crisis that led to the board’s offering 

the college to the California Yearly Meeting had been precipitated by the 

founding of a local and presumably competing institution, the Training 

School for Christian Workers (eventually to evolve into Azusa Pacific University), 

independent of the college. Nine years later, controversy over the 

religious orthodoxy of the college did lead to the creation of a department 

of religion, but one in which religion was to be primarily an object of 

study, not a creed to be adopted. The competing claims of religious and 

secular education and of practical, vocationally oriented education as opposed 

to the liberal arts became, in one form or another, recurring issues. 

Gradually, however, the board determined to stand in the center, and between 

1915 and 1918, President Absalom Rosenberger endeavored to 

make the college acceptable to Friends of all persuasions, exercising some 

closer control over student social functions and making changes in language 

that reflected the notion of a “guarded education” more closely. 

Gradually, in the aftermath of World War I, the curriculum moved away 

from the religious to the secular, and the school built even stronger ties to 

the Whittier community Quakers and others. At this same time, many of 

the older trustees left the board, to be replaced by younger and perhaps 

more ecumenical members. The composition of the board after the college 

was taken over by the yearly meeting was set at thirty, sixteen of whom 

were to be members of the California Yearly Meeting. This requirement 

continued for a number of years; the board would receive nominees from 

the yearly meeting and dutifully elect them. Gradually, this close tie and 

degree of oversight began to fade in the 1930s, presumably because of the 

failure of the yearly meeting to provide the financial support that the college 

had hoped for and because the board began to see this arrangement 

as too restrictive. They wanted more latitude in finding board members 

who could do the work required and who might be substantial donors to 

the institution. Therefore, in 1945 the requirement was changed to state 

merely that only sixteen needed to be members of the Religious Society of 

Friends. This requirement was later modified to reduce the number of 

Friends to one-third, and in 1970, instead of a percentage, it was stipulated 

that there should be no fewer than six Friends on the board. This requirement 

gave way to the present system, in which no religious affiliation 

of any sort is required. 

Nevertheless, Whittier at large continued to greatly value its Quaker 

roots both outwardly and in the beliefs and actions of all elements of the 

community. One reason for these continuing ties is the close relationship 

between the college and the First Friends Church of Whittier and, over the 

years, links to various unprogrammed meetings in the area, one of which,


the Whitleaf Meeting, now simply a meeting for worship, has been meeting 

on campus for over fifty years. There were also ties, both formal and 

informal, between various elements of the college community and the 

American Friends Service Committee. Moreover, all but four of the presidents 

have been Friends, and since the present system of faculty governance 

was adopted in 1970, the faculty has placed a high value on consensus; 

faculty committees work by consensus, and the faculty as a whole 

attempts to achieve it whenever possible, although sometimes resorting 

to voting. 

At times originating with the administration and at other times from 

the faculty, a number of innovative curricula have been developed, and 

Whittier was nationally recognized for several of these efforts. Each curriculum 

has demonstrated the multiple and sometimes competing goals 

involved in the developing mission of the college. Many have been controversial, 

and as both internal constituencies and external factors have 

changed, many aspects have been superseded, but continuity has been 

maintained, and each new curriculum has contained and reembodied 

some aspects of its predecessor. 

Early in the twentieth century, President Thomas Newlin divided the 

courses of study into four groups: letters, social sciences, natural sciences, 

and Bible study. This program was not markedly different from those of 

peer institutions. Requiring students to attend weekly chapel reflected the 

religious emphasis in this early period. Compulsory chapel was abolished 

in 1940, but at various times students were required to attend a weekly 

convocation, with secular as well as religious programs, as the college 

tried to preserve the benefits of having the entire student body participate 

in a corporate activity at least once a week. Elective chapel services continued 

for a number of years. 

A new direction was planned and implemented in the mid-1920s, 

largely the work of then dean of the college, J. Hershel Coffin, called the 

“Correlation Course and the Project Method” or “The Five Worlds Concept.” 

The Correlation Course was to be an interdisciplinary sequence of 

courses that would span all four years of the Whittier experience and 

would focus on the institutions that make up society. The goal was not 

only to see the world from a variety of perspectives but also to connect 

those perspectives. This sequence would constitute twenty-four academic 

units of social science credit for each graduate. Some faculty, at least 

partly driven by perceived threats to the integrity and strength of individual 

disciplines, balked at this plan, and it proved to be time consuming 

and difficult to implement as well. By the fourth year of the new plan, 

in 1929–1930, it came “under direct fire from all directions.” By this time, 

the financial crisis caused by the onset of the Depression added additional 

stresses between the faculty and the administration, and there was some


student resistance to the curriculum as well. It was next made an optional 

method of achieving a degree and gradually faded away as a cohesive 

whole. However, the notion of correlation among disciplines and between 

the academic and other life situations was to remain a continuing theme 

in Whittier life. 

Although the Depression brought major problems to Whittier and required 

significant austerity in all phases of its operations, the administration 

kept the doors open and enrollment relatively robust. Members of the 

faculty were guaranteed only a portion of their salaries, with the remainder 

to be paid if the money could be found, and at one point faculty took 

voluntary cuts in order to save the jobs of colleagues who might have 

been let go. As a result of these measures, the worst of the fiscal crisis was 

over by 1934. 

The next curricular innovation to attract widespread attention was developed 

in the mid-1930s by professor of English Albert Upton. Drawing 

in part on Coffin’s educational philosophy, Upton’s goal was “education 

for citizenship in a Christian democracy” and the “development of wellrounded 

personalities.” Upton believed that even more important than 

the students’ grasp of subject matter was an understanding of “interrelationships, 

insights,” and “attitudes.” This plan of study, which emphasized 

team teaching, was strongly supported by the faculty and proved 

highly successful for a number of years, lasting through the 1960s. Perhaps 

partially in response to the reinvigorated academic atmosphere, 142 

freshmen enrolled in the fall of 1937, 40 percent higher than the previous 

year and the largest entering class to date. In the meantime, Whittier, like 

all segments of the Society of Friends, had been confronted by the challenges 

raised by the specter of total global war in 1917–1918 and the question 

of what place the peace testimony had in a world at war. Once the 

United States entered the conflict in 1917, some students, both Friends 

and others, enlisted or accepted a draft into the military services. However, 

the college, like many other institutions of higher learning, declined 

to train a military unit, nor did it develop training programs for humanitarian 

work. Some young Quaker men declared themselves to be conscientious 

objectors, and some of these volunteered for alternative service, 

including Friends Reconstruction work and service with the YMCA or the 

medical corps. Fortunately, no major schism occurred as a result of these 

varying courses of action, and the college scene remained relatively calm. 

One new member of the English faculty, however, Maxwell Anderson, not 

yet a famous playwright and, ironically, not himself a Quaker, came under 

fire for defending a student who had declared himself a conscientious 

objector after being drafted and who was arrested and jailed for desertion. 

Anderson’s vigorous defense of this student caused something of a furor, 

which, unfortunately for Whittier College, led to his resignation.


World War II confronted the college with renewed challenges. The 

school’s Quaker roots, although greatly valued and frequently referred to, 

had attenuated greatly since the previous crisis in 1917–1918, and most of 

those it was serving were not Friends. Nor were California Friends universally 

supportive of the peace testimony. Although it was invoked by 

some on campus, few of the members of the board of trustees who had 

ties to the Society of Friends proclaimed themselves pacifists. The student 

body as well, confronted by what appeared to many to be a crusade 

against international evil, was overwhelmingly supportive of the war, 

and only a few of the fifty-four Friends enrolled declared themselves to be 

conscientious objectors. Some members of the faculty departed for military 

or war-related service. However, President W. Orville Mendenhall, a 

dedicated Friend, was disappointed when the board rejected his proposal 

to have Whittier join other Quaker institutions of higher learning in the 

Nason Plan to train a small number of conscientious objectors on campus. 

When, instead, the board began to discuss the possibility of providing 

training for a group of Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs) or other 

military groups, President Mendenhall resigned. In fact, the board supported 

the war effort so overwhelmingly that it discussed (but did not implement) 

a plan to summarily dismiss any member of the faculty who refused 

to teach military groups on campus. Instead, it approved a 

stipulation that in the event that military units trained on campus, it was 

understood that faculty members, in signing their contracts, were thereby 

agreeing to teach them. However, some faculty members’ angry resignations 

protesting the board’s thus requiring them to participate in the war 

effort led the board to rescind this policy. Ultimately, discussions between 

the college and the military broke down, and no groups of military personnel 

in uniform trained on the campus. 

The effects of World War II were felt in every aspect of the college and 

community. An obvious initial effect was the sharp decline in the number 

enrolled, a problem that was somewhat alleviated by the fact that Chapman 

College, a Los Angeles institution of the Disciples of Christ Church, 

had even greater problems. Its enrollment shrank so precipitously that its 

board requested that its students be invited to attend Whittier for the duration, 

a proposal that was gladly agreed to by the Whittier trustees. The 

shortage of students at Whittier and, for that matter, at virtually every 

comparable institution vanished for a time in the flood of veterans returning 

from the military beginning in 1945–1946. 

The war years were no time for civilian construction, and the physical 

plant had been inadequate for years in terms of both land and buildings. 

The available classroom space, residence halls, and other facilities, barely 

sufficient to support the student body before World War II, proved wholly 

inadequate to serve the huge increase in enrollment following the war. A


quick but temporary fix to provide housing for married students came in 

the form of the ubiquitous government-surplus Quonset huts. However, 

it was clear to the board that a much more comprehensive solution was 

essential. A capital fund drive in 1948 resulted in a general classroom 

building, named the Lou Henry Hoover Memorial Building in honor of 

the wife of Herbert Hoover, who had attended the Whittier Academy in 

its early years. In addition, a men’s residence hall and a permanent home 

for the Broadoaks School were constructed. 

Another major period of building took place in the early 1950s during 

the presidency of Paul Smith and was accompanied by an extensive acquisition 

of land. The new facilities included a large new women’s residence 

hall, a student union and campus dining facility, an addition to the 

Hoover building, the Memorial Chapel, and a complex to house the music 

program. Following this came three additional women’s residence 

halls and a new football stadium. In 1964, the first freestanding library in 

the history of the college opened, providing not only the usual amenities 

but also housing the Quaker Collection, the premier such collection west 

of the Mississippi. In recent years, the library has acquired important collections 

of the papers of John Greenleaf Whittier and authors Jessamyn 

West and Jan de Hartog. It also houses an extensive collection of books 

and memorabilia about Richard Nixon. Finally, between 1966 and 1968, a 

new science center was built on the ground formerly occupied by the football 

field. Whittier could now be called a residential college. In 1951, it 

had had dormitory space for just 30 percent of its students; by 1966, this 

had increased to 70 percent of a student body that had doubled. 

The physical plant was not the only thing to change during these years. 

In 1959, Whittier established a working relationship with the Danish International 

Study Program and continued for many years as a coordinating 

institution through which many students from other American colleges 

as well studied in Denmark. Today, Whittier continues in the 

Copenhagen Program but also sends students to study in a number of 

other foreign-study programs. Individual faculty members have also conducted 

January programs in Europe, India, Egypt, and Latin America. 

The late 1960s was a time of educational innovation and experimentation 

nationally, and Whittier was no exception. Although some among the faculty 

and alumni were fiercely loyal to the curriculum developed under the 

charismatic leadership of Albert Upton, there was also a whole new generation 

who wanted a curriculum and a way of doing business that they could 

own. A comprehensive plan for faculty governance, including formal approval 

of standards on tenure set by the American Association of University 

Professors, was adopted and, with some modifications, remains the basis for 

the faculty’s extensive involvement in the governance of the college.


The curriculum developed at the same time was to prove more controversial 

and to have a rockier future, but it too reflected some of Whittier’s 

continuing themes. Based on the book Realms of Meaning by Philip H. 

Phenix, it attempted to replace conventional divisions and disciplinary requirements 

with epistemological categories. Departmental structures remained, 

but students were to organize their educations around ways of 

understanding rather than external structures—and students were themselves 

to do the organizing; specific graduation requirements were replaced 

by individual graduation contracts, the cocurricular was to be integrated 

into the plan, and an interdisciplinary colloquium was to be the 

capstone experience. A new calendar divided each “semester” of fifteen 

weeks into three equal segments, with a normal student load of two fiveweek-long, 

two-credit classes in each. 

Controversy continued as the curriculum was implemented. The 

philosophical basis was disputed. The separate January interim, in which 

students took only one course, allowed for innovative experiences and 

was popular with students and many faculty. The five-week system as a 

whole was another matter, as it made substantial reading and writing assignments 

improbable, and many courses could not be well adapted to 

it. Moreover, most students had no particular need or desire to design 

their own educations, and the advising time required to make sure that 

the self-designed graduation contracts were intellectually sound was 

simply not available. Eventually, the new calendar was phased out, and 

the January session was combined with traditional semesters. In 1980, 

the faculty reached consensus on an innovative and challenging Liberal 

Education Program, which required the study of the cultures of the non- 

Western world and which included another innovation that attracted national 

attention, “paired classes.” These exemplified the Whittier concern 

with connection among disciplines by requiring that students enroll in 

two “paired” classes in different disciplines. Faculty members planned 

courses and assignments together and attended each others’ classes, requiring 

the students to confront the integration of knowledge and modeling 

that activity for them. Courses in, for instance, literature and history, 

theater and psychology, or philosophy and art history provided 

contexts for each other and stimulation and challenge for both faculty 

and students. 

The previous curriculum’s emphasis on self-direction lived on in the 

Whittier Scholars Program, a highly successful “rigorous, individualized, 

interdisciplinary” path to graduation begun in 1977. Supported by 

an intense advising and continuous review process, students in this program 

design their own academic programs, each culminating in a senior 

project. While not a formal honors program, this option has attracted a


number of highly talented students and has produced a wide range of 

original work. 

Of course, Whittier has also developed a variety of the majors one 

would expect to find at a liberal arts institution. The practical concerns of 

both its Quaker founders and its students, many of whom have been the 

first generation of their families to attend college, probably have something 

to do with the strong continuing interest in career preparation. It is 

noteworthy that many of the careers for which Whittier students have 

prepared have been service oriented. A large number have gone into public 

school teaching, which made the 1931 acquisition of the Broadoaks 

School a natural match. This highly reputed Pasadena kindergarten had 

developed its own teacher-training program, threatened when the State of 

California required that all candidates for a teaching credential have a 

bachelor’s degree. The merger enabled its teacher trainees to receive 

Whittier degrees and brought to the college, which now enrolls 300 children 

from preschool to grade 6, a laboratory/demonstration school for 

students and faculty. An extensive graduate program in education, with 

classes held mainly in the late afternoon and evening in order to accommodate 

working teachers, continues to flourish. 

Other career-oriented programs have also been prominent from time to 

time, some being laid down as external conditions made them less relevant 

or more difficult to staff. A training program for YMCA workers, for 

instance, was part of the college for a number of years, with a director 

who was a professor of applied sociology. The program is long gone, but 

the idea of applied sociology lives on in a thriving major in social work. 

Currently, the Department of Education (whose students all have majors 

in other departments) and the Department of Business Administration, 

which offers both a major and a minor, are the strongest directly careeroriented 

programs on campus. 

Several master’s programs had also been developed; as the college focused 

more sharply on its mission as an undergraduate institution, most 

were laid down in the 1980s, leaving only the graduate program in education 

on the main campus. In 1975, however, Whittier acquired an existing, 

small state-accredited law school. Like Broadoaks a generation earlier, 

the school needed affiliation with a four-year institution of higher 

learning, and its mission seemed compatible with Whittier’s values and 

variety of preprofessional programs. Unlike Broadoaks, however, the Law 

School has never been on the main campus, and the connection between 

the two has been primarily administrative. The Law School achieved 

American Bar Association accreditation in 1975 and moved from its toosmall 

location in Los Angeles to its own facility in Costa Mesa in 1997. 

Like Whittier, it enrolls a highly diverse student body.


Development of the physical plant continued slowly during the 1970s 

and 1980s. In 1968, a fire destroyed Founders Hall, depriving the campus 

of its only theater and forcing the theater department to stage its productions 

in the Whittier Community Theater for more than twenty years. The 

Graham Athletic Center was opened in 1979, and eventually the fulfillment 

of a long-deferred dream seemed near as construction began on the 

Shannon Center for the Performing Arts. Before it was completed, however, 

the most typical of all California disasters struck in the form of the 

1987 Whittier Narrows Earthquake. A few older buildings, including several 

former private homes converted into student housing that were 

scheduled for eventual demolition anyway, were seriously damaged. The 

neighboring Whittier business district, characterized by boarded windows, 

piles of rubble, and deserted buildings for many months to come, 

presented a daunting sight to prospective students. All this contributed to 

a precipitous drop in enrollment the following year and a consequent financial 

crisis that tested the nature and strength of the college community. 

The spirit of consensus prevailed, property not used for academic purposes 

was sold, and faculty and administration worked together to reorganize 

and cut programs and defer or eliminate positions. 

A bond issue initiated in 1990 provided the basis for refinancing debt 

and making major alterations to the campus. Subsequent years saw the 

construction of several new residence halls, major remodeling of several 

existing buildings and improvement of others, and the acquisition of 

Weingart Hall, a new home for the Office of Admissions. The construction 

of Masters Houses provided another way to practice Whittier’s idea of 

connection, as resident faculty members invited students into their homes 

for a variety of social, intellectual, and cultural events and programs. Finally, 

in 2003, a grant from the Rose Hills Foundation enabled the college 

to rebuild the Bonnie Bell Wardman Library, doubling its size and providing 

space for an information technology section in the same building. 

Modifications to the curriculum adopted in 1980 have continued Whittier’s 

tradition of making connections and moving beyond rigid disciplinary 

boundaries. The adoption of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program 

engaged faculty in all departments in the teaching of freshman 

writing. The demands of laboratory courses had made it difficult for faculty 

in the science division to participate in paired courses, and in 1997 

the science requirement in the Liberal Education Program was modified 

to include Science and Math in Context courses so that students and faculty 

might look at population problems or environmental issues or alternative 

reproductive technologies from multiple perspectives. 

The liberal education curriculum was further modified in 2004, when 

faculty adopted an explicit statement on learning goals and decided to


introduce beginning students to ideals of community and multiple perspectives 

by a series of linked courses. Each freshman writing seminar is 

linked with another class, with the expectation that at least some of the 

same topics will be discussed at some time during the semester in each 

class; in the second semester, the links may be between any two classes, 

with fifteen students in each class also being enrolled in the other. 

Change—sometimes slow because that is how ideas develop and how 

consensus works and sometimes rapid because circumstances offered no 

alternatives—but continuity as well. Today, 100 years after incorporation 

and 114 years after the founders first dreamed of its creation, Whittier is a 

flourishing institution of higher education. It is still underendowed, and 

that, combined with its commitment to the education of the less privileged, 

means that its students often graduate with a high burden of debt, 

but financial constraint does not mean financial crisis. The college has a 

stable enrollment of about 1,300 remarkably diverse students, ethnically, 

socially, and geographically (plus some 700 in the Law School), more than 

two-thirds of whom live on campus; a highly professional faculty of 

nearly 100 full-time members in nineteen academic departments; and a 

full complement of academic majors appropriate for a selective liberal arts 

college. 

As Whittier moves further into its second century, it is a “going concern,” 

with a sense of purpose and a mission that is clearly defined but 

that is always being redefined as it and the world around it change. If 

Aquilla Pickering and the other members of the Religious Society of 

Friends who originally founded the college could see it now, they would 

be amazed by the trappings of modern technology and certainly disapproving 

of such things as coeducational residence halls. They would 

probably be rather puzzled by a college that enrolls not only more 

Catholics than Quakers but even more Muslims, by students who study 

in India or Latin America, and by programs and classes in areas that did 

not exist for them. But had they not been committed to their own traditional 

values and to making those work in a new place and time, they 

would not have been founding a college in California in the first place. 

Overall, they would surely be delighted to see that their dream has come 

to life in the college on the hill, overlooking the town they founded and 

named after John Greenleaf Whittier. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Back files of the Whittier College student newspaper The Quaker Campus, the yearbook 

The Acropolis, and similar materials are in the Bonnie Bell Wardman Library 

at Whittier College, Whittier, California.


Cooper, Charles. Whittier: Independent College in California. Los Angeles: The Ward 

Ritchie Press, 1967. 

Elliott, Charles. Whittier College: The First Century on the Poet Campus. Redondo 

Beach, Calif.: Legends Press, 1986. 

Harris, Herbert E. The Quaker and the West: The First Sixty Years of Whittier College. 

Whittier, Calif.: Whittier College, 1948. 

Records of the California Yearly Meeting may be found at Friends Church Southwest, 

P.O. Box 1606, Whittier, CA 90609.

12 

 

Malone College 


Malone College, like Azusa Pacific, Barclay, George Fox, and Wilmington, 

arose out of an evangelical Quaker Holiness faith that flourished 

in the United States in the late nineteenth century. It retains a 

generic Christian if not a Quaker or Holiness identity. 

Malone’s professors are encouraged to explore relationships between 

religion and the sciences, humanities, and professions and to attend conferences 

on integration of faith, learning, and living. The school advertises 

on Christian radio and recruits students through churches. Students attend 

at least twenty of twenty-eight chapels each semester, volunteer for 

mission work overseas and in poverty areas in the United States, and participate 

in study programs in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, England, 

Latin America, China, Russia, and the Middle East, led by faculty from the 

Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). Bible studies 

meet in every dorm. Some students are opening “discipleship houses” off 

campus where they covenant to live together as Christians. 

If mixing religion with education seems an anomaly in a post-Christian 

age, Naomi Schaefer Riley notes that while enrollment at schools of 

higher learning “barely fluctuated” over the past twenty years, enrollment 

at some 100 institutions connected to the CCCU “jumped a remarkable 

60 percent between 1990 and 2002.” This chapter will prepare readers 

to compare Malone to George Fox and Azusa Pacific. If Malone lags 

behind these and behind most CCCU schools, one piece of an answer may 

lie in missed opportunities to respond to two minds that challenged leaders 

to think outside the box: Joseph Grabill in the 1960s and John David 

Geib at the turn of the new millennium. 

203

204 John W. Oliver Jr. 

Figure 12.1. Emma B. Malone 

The school’s history can be divided into two principal eras. The Bible 

college era began in 1892, when John Walter and Emma Brown Malone 

opened an Evangelical Holiness Quaker school in Cleveland that they 

called “The Christian Workers Training School for Bible Study and Practical 

Methods of Work.” The Christian college era started in 1957, when Byron 

Osborne, their son-in-law, founded an evangelical Christian college in 

Canton, Ohio. 

BIBLE COLLEGE ERA 

The founders embodied a nineteenth-century Holiness movement that 

believed in the possibility of moral perfection or “complete sanctification.” 

Proponents of Holiness touted egalitarian causes and moral reforms: 

free pews, urban rescue work, women ministers, abolition, tem-

Malone College 205 

perance, and so on. At the same time, they revved up their faith through 

revivalism, Bible study, strict rules to protect personal morality, and 

prayer. Holy living called for sexual purity, nonviolence, and racial and 

gender equality uncommon to that era. 

As a boy, J. Walter lived beside John Henry Douglas, the leading 

nineteenth-century Quaker evangelist (see chapter 6). Walter’s mother established 

a school to teach children the doctrines of Friends. As a young 

man, Walter later said, “I hungered to be a preacher like my mother.” 

Emma was led to evangelicalism by Dwight L. Moody and to Holiness by 

a Quaker woman, the evangelist Esther Frame. 

In the school’s first years, faculty and students did rescue work in a district 

around Cleveland’s Public Square with 400 saloons, forty houses of 

prostitution, opium dens, and most of the city’s “gambling resorts and 

wholesale liquor stores,” a district the pastor of Old Stone Presbyterian 

Church called “the devil’s throne.” Urban vice challenged Quakers from 

rural meetings with strict moral codes. In Cincinnati, where Walter lived 

before coming to Cleveland, Quakers were “active in every public agency 

for poor relief.” Each student in Cleveland was assigned to visit a poor 

district each day to evangelize and offer food, coal, and medical care, all 

paid for by the Malones. Walter warned the nation faces “terrible judgment 

if we do not pity the poor.” 

Rescue work got mixed reviews. A Quaker “gentleman” complained 

that, with “Holiness band, Salvation Army, or Free Methodists becoming 

Friends, I can no longer be proud of my Quaker ancestry.” The father of 

Bryn Mawr’s president, Carey Thomas, scolded Walter after he pled with 

Friends to “take in the poor people and go after the outcasts . . . with the 

expectation that we will be a poor, despised people.” The father called 

Friends to prefer people with education, influence, and money, not “the 

poor and ignorant and uneducated [who] are willing to accept anything 

and everything.” 

By 1900, students had founded or worked in five orphanages, twenty 

shelter homes, and twenty-nine rescue missions. Cleveland’s director of 

charities cited two of Emma’s homes for unmarried mothers that offered 

free medical services, reunited mothers with their parents, and assisted 

with adoptions as “models of practical Christianity.” The school ran an orphanage, 

with J. Walter Malone Jr. as superintendent. He later served as 

vice president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and president 

of Millikan College in Decatur, Illinois. 

As a boy, Walter was schooled in the peace witness by John Henry 

Douglas, first general secretary of the Peace Association of Friends, and 

Daniel Hill, who lived 100 yards south of Walter’s home. Hill led the 

Peace Association for thirty-one years and edited two peace journals, 

The Messenger of Peace and The Olive Leaf, the latter the first Quaker

Figure 12.2. Walter and Emma B. Malone


periodical for children in the United States. The Messenger of Peace was 

later owned by the Malones. 

Walter and Emma condemned all killing. Their publications called war 

a “system of murder, falsehood, robbery and desolation,” said that military 

personnel who think they are led by God are in “delusion,” and shouted 

to soldiers, “Get Out. Get Out.” They labeled suicide “self-murder,” capital 

punishment “willful murder,” and abortion “pre-natal infanticide” or 

“deliberate murder.” They attributed the movement to legalize it to the 

“cultured and refined” class that devalues life and to men who abandon 

mothers and children. They opposed violent sports, chiding an editor for 

reporting professional boxing and contending that football has “no rightful 

place in athletics.” 

Walter’s home in New Vienna had a hiding place for runaway slaves. As 

a young man, he worshipped in Cincinnati with Levi Coffin, leader of the 

Underground Railroad in Cincinnati, and later with a former slave who became 

a Quaker evangelist. Journals owned by the Malones praised black 

leaders Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois. Two students who went 

to South Africa were accused by whites of breaking down the “natural separation 

between the races” and making the black “think he is as good as a 

white man.” African Americans attended the Cleveland school from at least 

1901, three decades before being admitted to any eastern Quaker college. 

Gender equality was part of this heritage. If Quaker women were, as 

Margaret Bacon says, “mothers of feminism,” so were Bible college 

women (see chapter 14). Four of the first five Bible colleges had women 

presidents, three were coeducational, and two were for women only. 

From 1888 to 1903, Bible college women founded at least twenty hospitals 

and dozens of rescue homes. 

Five of the first seven teachers in Cleveland were women. Emma shared 

with Walter the title “principal” seventy-five years before a woman 

headed a coeducational university. Emma was coclerk of Ohio Yearly 

Meeting and of a national meeting of Quakers in 1897. 

Walter called women to take up God’s “call to ministry.” Emma was a 

minister. Thirteen women from the first class were recorded (by Quakers) 

or ordained (by other churches) as ministers—twice the number in any 

large denomination in the 1890s. By 1907, the school had produced at least 

sixty-eight women ministers. More women ministers came from this school 

than from any other in the nation at the turn of the twentieth century. 

A publication owned by the Malones credited Quaker growth “largely . . . 

to the preaching of women.” Carole Spencer contends that this claim “could 

not have been voiced at any previous era in Quaker history other than its beginnings 

and probably has not been heard since.” The decline of women 

ministers among evangelical Friends may be due to the retirement of the


Malones in 1917 and because hiring married women saddled churches with 

finding jobs for husbands. As Quaker traditions crumbled among Ohio’s 

evangelical Friends and ties to fundamentalism grew, conservative Baptists, 

Methodists, and Presbyterians who opposed women ministers convinced 

some Friends that God had created men, not women, to oversee His work. 

Bible study, revivals, and hagiographies fueled holy living. Walter and 

Emma prayed for an hour on their knees before each class. Prohibitions 

against cards, dancing, “immodest dress,” and theaters were hedges for 

an “enclosed garden” in which to raise children and for purity for intimacy 

with a soul mate and with God. 

Mysticism was central. Christ appeared to Emma: an encounter so sacred 

that we have no record of it until Walter recorded it as an old man (see J. 

Walter Malone: The Autobiography of an Evangelical Quaker). At the moment of 

his death, Walter’s face glowed as he reported seeing “a great multitude 

gathered around a throne.” Gazing with rapturous joy, he said, “I know a 

great many of them.” Walter’s Autobiography tells of incidents where he and 

Emma saw and exorcised demons. This, he said, “opened our spiritual eyes 

to see unseen things. After this we knew what was opposing us.” Spiritual 

warfare was serious business to Walter and Emma Malone. 

Most of all, holy living required mercy and a tender spirit. A professor 

resigned in 1892 after a woman became pregnant with his child. After their 

marriage, he became a frequent speaker at the school. In later years, small 

groups gathered daily to watch Walter and Emma enter the school together, 

arm in arm, to one observer “the most beautiful sight I ever saw.” 

If most of their six children didn’t practice their ascetic lifestyle, all spoke 

of their parents as “saints.” A former student tearfully recalled Walter’s 

gentle whisper, “The Lord and I are counting on you.” Another example of 

Walter’s and Emma’s gentle spirits appears in their unwillingness to chastise 

a daughter who smoked and drank, even though they disapproved. 

This daughter’s daughter told me that her grandparents never, in public or 

in private, chastised their mother for this “worldly behavior.” 

Walter and Emma had only high school degrees, he from Chickering 

School in Cincinnati and she from West High School in Cleveland, where 

she was also valedictorian. Some students had no high school education. 

Others had college degrees. Professor William Pinkham had been acting 

president of Earlham College. Some teachers were simple soul winners— 

an academically diverse faculty with a common mission to honor all persons 

and bind them together in love. The school opposed “modern 

thought” because it threatened to undermine biblical authority and challenge 

the uniqueness of each person as an incarnation of “the Light of 

Christ.” Modern thought didn’t compute. It was unthinkable to kill Christ 

incarnate or permit Him to go homeless or hungry. “Racial science” common 

to that era or individual rights seemed small in comparison to a joy-


ous responsibility to care for Christ in “the least.” Love, not rights, was 

the passion of Emma and Walter Malone. Love demanded more. 

The school embarrassed some. A Quaker reported women from the 

school “dressed in ancient Quaker garb and wholly in black spend 

evenings in missionary work, street preaching or slum visiting . . . [and] 

their days in Bible study under their leader.” This, he said, “must cramp 

their minds.” Others had a different response. The Oberlin [College] Review 

called Willis Hotchkiss, a graduate who took Quakerism to Kenya 

and spoke for the Student Volunteer Movement, “more sought after by 

colleges and universities than any other missionary.” More than 1,000 

people heard Hotchkiss speak at Oberlin, with large crowds also at 

Princeton, Yale, and other Ivy League schools. 

The Malones, Elliott says, saved Quakers in the Midwest and West from 

“near extinction.” At the same time, they prepared evangelical Friends to 

assimilate with other traditions. Gospel choruses, revival meetings, and 

altar calls supplanted silent meetings. Mysticism and extrabiblical Quaker 

traditions gave way. Evangelical Friends embraced sola scriptura, which 

set the stage for assimilation with fundamentalists and later with New 

Evangelicals. 

After Walter and Emma retired, the Cleveland school had less to do, by 

mutual consent, with theologically liberal Friends. All succeeding presidents 

in Cleveland were Holiness preachers. Few were Friends. One led 

the National Holiness Association. Another headed the National Holiness 

Missionary Society. Byron Osborne spent all his life as a Friend but also 

served as director of education for the National Holiness Association. 

The transcendent value Walter and Emma saw in each person had to do 

with their opposition to Darwin and their practice of hosting homeless 

people overnight, honoring them “as if they were Jesus.” Later, by the 

1930s, rescue work diminished, perhaps in part because they lost a privileged 

sanctuary in an upscale neighborhood in Cleveland. 

In its first days, the school stood close to Euclid Avenue, “the most 

beautiful street in the world.” Forty years later, the neighborhood was infected 

by crime and urban blight, which made parents reluctant to send 

daughters to the school. In the 1940s, the Cleveland Bible College Messenger 

ignored the poor. In the 1950s, a dean, speaking of a destitute woman, 

charged that “it is not merely unfortunate to be the victim of evil, it is 

wrong.” The focus of the Malones had been to rescue the victims. The 

dean’s message was to blame the victims. Nevertheless, by the sixtieth anniversary 

in 1952, the school’s 1,200 graduates included forty rescue mission 

workers, eighty foreign missionaries, and 600 pastors as well as two 

doctors, four founders of Bible colleges, twenty-five nurses, and forty college 

or Bible college professors.


The peace witness also declined. While in 1948 the faculty endorsed a 

letter from a “Committee to Oppose Conscription” at Antioch College, in 

1955 the school advertised itself as “Ohio’s West Point of Christian Service.” 

Its radio program, carried on nine stations, called socialism “evil” 

and communism “a system modeled after the devil and his angels.” Osborne, 

last president in Cleveland and first in Canton, remained a pacifist. 

Younger Friends did not. In 1958, the superintendent of the church, later 

second president of the school in Canton, complained that “almost none 

of our young men are . . . conscientious objectors.” 

Hedges for sexual purity remained. Women in the 1950s had to dress in 

“modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety”: elbows covered, 

skirts not above fourteen inches from the floor. Men had to wear “long 

trousers.” Couples had to secure permission to sit together in class, at 

church, or in the school parlor (Wednesday evening until 7:10 P.M., Friday 

until 11:00 P.M.). They were not permitted to sit together in parked cars. In 

1949, an evangelist, innocently we may be sure, made an “inopportune 

gesture” directing a “bird circus” in chapel. The faculty sent “a statement 

of disapproval.” The president sent a letter. 

Intellectual hedges also existed in later years. Students who advocated 

Darwinism or Calvinistic doctrines could be expelled (perhaps because 

some feared the dogma of predestination discouraged soul winning). 

While urban missions declined, in 1936 the school adopted a four-year 

degree program with courses in liberal arts. In 1956, after the state took 

away land for an expressway, the school was invited to relocate in Canton, 

Ohio, the nation’s largest metropolitan area with no liberal arts college. 

Canton needed a college. The Bible college needed a campus. Voters 

had rejected a levy for a community university. Friends could not staff or 

fund a Quaker Holiness liberal arts college or draw enough like-minded 

students. A Friends pastor in Canton chaired the school’s board of 

trustees. Canton was within thirty miles of one-third of all members of the 

supporting denomination. When a trustee at the school, a Canton businessman, 

presented an invitation from Canton civic leaders to bid on a 

fifty-four-acre tract of land, some members of the board saw this as Divine 

guidance. 

A college wary of secularism, a community wary of sectarianism: the 

future for this oddly matched couple would not be boring. 

CHRISTIAN COLLEGE ERA 

Byron Osborne, son-in-law of Walter and Emma and first president in the 

new era, kept most faculty and staff from the Bible college and tried to 

preserve the Quaker-Holiness heritage. President from 1951 to 1957 in


Cleveland and from 1957 to 1960 in Canton, he lived with Walter for fifteen 

years (and for one with Emma, who died in 1922) after marrying 

their daughter and taught at the school for thirty-seven years. He prayed 

that “the mantle of Walter Malone might fall on me.” Determined to build 

a foundation in Holiness, he selected the eponymous name to reaffirm the 

Holiness “message and character . . . of the school.” 

To Osborne, the college rested on (1) divine guidance (his The Malone 

Story presents a providential history of the school), (2) Scripture, and (3) a 

Discipline that from Ohio’s first yearly meeting in 1813 forbade participation 

in war, dancing, and theaters because these “alienate the mind from 

the counsel of divine wisdom.” 

Holiness, in Osborne’s mind, set Malone apart from liberal Quaker 

schools. Swarthmore trained military units during World War II and had 

dances by at least 1910. Haverford had dances by 1921, Wilmington by 

1932, and Guilford and Earlham by 1933. Holiness Friends, he believed, 

were different. The Bible interpreted through the Discipline of Ohio’s 

Friends (later the Evangelical Friends Church, Eastern Region) and by 

Holiness theology would prepare men and women for holy living and 

Christian service and protect from erosion of these standards. 

Hedges against alcohol, dancing, theaters, tobacco, and war (no military 

recruitment on campus) held under Osborne. Most trustees had to be 

Friends. Most administrators and faculty were Friends or from Holiness 

churches with degrees from Holiness or fundamentalist schools. The college’s 

creed said the “purpose of this Institution is to maintain and inculcate 

doctrines,” including the “inviolable authority” of Scripture and a belief 

in “entire sanctification . . . as a definite, instantaneous experience” 

followed by “continuous victory over sin.” Christians could be spiritually 

perfect. The defense and propagation of right “doctrines” was central to 

the mission of this school. 

Osborne called for “perfect love” to the “spiritually underprivileged.” 

Chapel met five days a week, with revivals and altar calls. In 1960, Look 

magazine carried a picture captioned “Emotion overwhelms this [Malone] 

student as she kneels at the altar to pray for salvation.” 

Catalogs said the college allows “considerable liberty,” but rules from 

the Bible college remained. Women’s knees and elbows had to be covered. 

At the same time, however, they could not wear slacks on campus. 

African Americans made up 10 percent of the first graduating class in 

Canton, larger than in any succeeding year. Students resisted racism. In 

1958, the choir canceled a concert in Virginia after a Friends Church told 

them their African American member wasn’t welcome. 

After retiring in 1960, Osborne affirmed Holiness Quaker taboos 

against abortion, sexual impurity, and war in letters to the Canton Repository. 

He did not condemn racism. Raised in North Carolina, he was ill at


ease with the civil rights movement. As a Holiness Christian, he was also 

uncomfortable with the theology of Martin Luther King. 

Everett Cattell (1960–1972), Osborne’s successor, had been a missionary 

to India and superintendent of Ohio’s Evangelical Friends. He 

championed the “Malone Experiment,” in which “a church college attempts 

to preserve spiritual integrity while serving community needs.” 

Malone would school religiously diverse students with an evangelical 

Protestant faculty. It would serve “the interests of a very small church, 

admittedly conservative, narrow and thoroughly committed, and those 

of the community, which is heterogeneous, progressive, broad and undecided.” 

It would give Canton a “center for independent moral judgments,” 

a “voice in the wilderness . . . crying out for national righteousness 

and denouncing evil.” 

Cattell’s judgments were shaped by Holiness and the Cold War. Evangelicals 

saw the locus of evil in an atheistic foreign enemy and of good in 

Protestant America. Canton’s Republican business elite scoffed at the college’s 

religious taboos but applauded Cattell’s first commencement 

speaker, who called free enterprise “God-centered economics.” 

Religion faculty utilized economic, political, social, and theological conservatism 

to fashion a “Christian worldview.” Under Cattell, a conservative 

Baptist chaired the religion and philosophy department. He wrote a 

guide on “Americanism” for schools and gave anticommunist talks in 

schools, civic clubs, and churches. The college sponsored the Army Field 

Band, films by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and a rally 

“to awaken America to dangers of Communism.” Freshmen wrote required 

essays to honor freedom and denounce Communism. The college 

received a Freedom Foundation award for its “campus program in teaching 

Americanism.” 

Church and college marched in lock step. In 1961, Ohio’s Evangelical 

Friends dropped prohibitions by Ohio’s first Quakers against participation 

in war while expressing support for “members who refuse to bear 

arms for conscience sake.” In 1963, Cattell invited military recruiters to 

campus. Students who later stole recruiting materials had to explain why 

stealing, not killing, is immoral. Their answers had to be approved by a 

religion professor who supported the Vietnam War. In 1964, the student 

paper called for “total war” in Vietnam. 

In the year the church reversed its stance on war, it dropped its threat 

to disown members who attend movies. The prohibition on dancing remained. 

It, the church explained, was “defiling.” At Malone, some wryly 

commented that sex while standing was forbidden by church and college 

because it could lead to dancing. 

Hiring faculty, Cattell took special note of academic credentials and a 

candidate’s “personal relationship with Christ” but gave less attention to


their views about legislating morality for students. Some new faculty 

came to escape rigid rules at Holiness and fundamentalist colleges, perhaps 

influenced by the “New Evangelicalism” that arose after World War 

II. It opposed secular thought, sought a social conscience for fundamentalism, 

and set about to dispel “legalisms.” 

This “evangelical mind” captured older colleges (Wheaton and Taylor) 

and took hold at schools (Gordon and Malone) that had been Bible colleges. 

Led by a new generation of scholars, it entered the American mainstream. 

If hedges to guard sexual purity fell among New Evangelicals, 

pure “Americanism” sometimes took their place. 

In the 1960s, the student newspaper debated restrictions on alcohol, 

dancing, dress, and tobacco. In contrast, Joseph Grabill, a historian and 

graduate of Fort Wayne Bible College and Taylor University, had been 

persuaded that Christianity has more to do with relationships than rules. 

He helped start groups where at least one-fifth of the faculty, with their 

spouses, met in supportive environments to examine a spectrum of emotions, 

ideas, experiences, and theologies. In addition, he organized male 

and female student groups to discuss spirituality and life issues and a 

Men’s Bible Study Breakfast to sponsor the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in 

Canton. With his wife, he opened “The Way Out,” a coffeehouse off campus 

where street people mixed with students and faculty, street kids were 

delivered from drugs, and smoking was not prohibited. The latter was a 

scandal to some, as was his support for a marriage between a white 

Quaker woman and an African American male. 

Administrators and professors of religion weren’t prepared to think 

that far outside the midwestern evangelical cultural box. Denied tenure, 

he left for Illinois State University, where he cofounded a peace studies 

program and convened a committee to create a women’s studies program. 

Each year, the university awards a Grabill/Homan Peace Prize in his 

honor. Before leaving, he sold his home in a white neighborhood to a 

black minister who had had Ku Klux Klan crosses burnt on his lawn in 

spite of higher offers from real estate firms. 

All the deans of students under the first two presidents in Canton were 

ministers. Each was a Quaker or from another Holiness or peace church. 

No student was permitted to marry during the school year without notifying 

the college two months before the wedding. Unmarried pregnancies 

were rare. When they occurred, mothers, but not all fathers, had to leave, 

with permission to reapply after one year. This protected the college’s reputation 

and facilitated maternal care. Some professors made special efforts 

to support these women. 

As Holiness gave way to the New Evangelicalism, two religion professors 

left the college. Four new teachers were hired to replace them: two 

held a Holiness theology akin to the founders, but only one (a Mennonite


who, a graduate said, “encouraged separation from the sinful world”) opposed 

all violence. Earlier religion majors were encouraged to attend Holiness 

schools, especially Asbury Seminary. After 1967, broader-based 

evangelical schools (Fuller, Gordon-Conwell, and Trinity Evangelical) 

were recommended as well. 

Neither of two chaplains in the later 1960s was a Quaker. Neither promoted 

Holiness theology or revivalist preaching. The first brought scholars 

and writers to chapel. The second recommended replacing chapel 

with small-group Bible studies. Chapel continued, but not as the emotiondriven 

engine that fueled and sustained Holiness in the earliest days in 

Canton. 

Malone attracted able professors. Grant Staley was a prominent microbiologist 

and former dean at Ohio State. Charles King left to head the 

Ohio Geological Survey. David Lindberg later chaired the history of science 

department at the University of Wisconsin. David Rawson, son of 

Quaker medical missionaries, taught African history and later headed the 

Africa Desk at the State Department. History majors from the 1960s and 

1970s were accepted at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and other 

strong schools. The debate team defeated Ivy League schools. 

In Cattell’s last years, he wearied of controversy. Some complained the 

college was too restrictive. Others complained it was too permissive. 

While insisting any student or employee who uses alcohol, tobacco, or 

dances “violates a sacred trust,” he conceded the school could no longer 

enforce bans on off-campus behavior. Debt rose as enrollment fell from 

1,132 to below 800. Weary of grumbling over in loco parentis, he warned, 

“Malone is not for everyone. If you want to leave we will help you go.” In 

1972, he left the college. 

In the 1970s, which Time magazine dubbed the “decade of the evangelicals,” 

Malone became a broader-based evangelical Protestant college. The 

third president in Canton, Lon Randall (1972–1981), a PhD from Indiana 

University, minister in two Holiness bodies, and son of a Pilgrim Holiness 

minister, had been influenced by New Evangelicalism’s antipathy to legalism 

and broadening influences from the Christian College Consortium 

and Coalition (now the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities). 

Under Randall, the college became less sectarian. Popular with Canton’s 

corporate world, he sat on the board of Canton’s First National Bank. 

Cutbacks occurred. Modern foreign languages were eliminated. Literature, 

history, science, and social science courses were trimmed. A professional 

program, social work (not sociology), was added for pragmatic reasons. 

Some faculty struggled to protect liberal arts. A historian directed 

the Midwest Writers Conference that brought 350 writers and editors to 

campus in 1979. Annual Christianity and Literature Conferences met until 

the late 1970s. Every year from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, more


than 100 students attended a Faith and History Conference (later renamed 

Faith and Learning Conference). Speakers included two past presidents of 

the American Historical Association. 

Title IX for federally funded programs put gender-based rules in a new 

context—not hedges to protect women but gender-based discrimination. 

Resident women now received the same rights as men. The strict dress 

code fell, a change facilitated by a cultural shift in Holiness churches that 

gave less attention to modesty or plain dress. 

Plain living was also redefined. The president’s starting salary in 1972 

was more than four times what Osborne was paid in 1960. The college 

provided him with a stone home, six bathrooms, two elegant libraries, 

servant quarters, and an elevator. Osborne had lived in a two-bedroom 

cottage. 

The campus was upgraded. The school bought adjacent land where a 

barn was renovated into a campus center, called by Pulitzer poet Howard 

Nemerov “the most beautiful building I’ve ever been in.” Administrative 

offices were air conditioned: some faculty had enjoyed this luxury since 

1966. A wing of the cafeteria was enclosed and remodeled to entertain 

guests in a more elegant setting on campus. 

In the 1970s, the chair of religion and philosophy, a military veteran, 

missionary, and superintendent of Ohio’s Evangelical Friends, called Vietnam 

a “just war.” The “Malone Experiment” (Christians schooling non- 

Christians) became the more inclusive “Malone Experience.” The college 

community became the “Malone family.” The school advertised as simply 

a “College of Persons.” Chapel continued, but without alter calls and 

more attention to “community building.” Promotional materials said less 

about the Christian character of the college. Admissions counselors and 

coaches gave less attention to religion when recruiting in public schools. 

After struggling for nine years to keep the college afloat, the president left 

to become director of international operations for the Peace Corps. 

In the 1980s, Gordon Werkema (1981–1988), founder of what is now the 

CCCU, an “international higher educational association of intentionally 

Christian colleges and universities,” led the college. In 2005, membership 

in CCCU included 102 Protestant colleges and universities in North 

America and seventy-one affiliate institutions in twenty-four countries. 

Werkema focused on “integration of faith, learning, and living.” He 

required higher ACT scores for full admission but added a remedial program. 

To balance the budget and adapt to demands for professional 

training, he made further cutbacks in liberal arts and, if reluctantly, purchased 

a degree-completion program in business education to be called 

the Malone College Management Program (MCMP). It came from Lon 

Randall, then with the National Teachers College (now Lewis National 

University). To ensure a religious component, Werkema required one


class in religion. Few instructors, however, had been schooled in business 

ethics or Christian thinking about economics. Only John David 

Geib gave much attention to varied views about economic justice. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, administrators were caught between demands 

of professional associations for more hours of professional training and 

pressure from professors in sciences and humanities to protect their turf. 

Professional training wasn’t new, for the college had a program in teacher 

education. But most education professors belonged to Holiness churches. 

A Christian witness in public schools had been at the core of the college’s 

mission since its first days. 

By 1985, there were 125 students in MCMP. Chaired by a professor of 

music, three of eight primary instructors were business professors, two 

were coaches, and others had degrees in religion, education, and communications. 

By the third millennium, MCMP had graduated almost 2,000 

students. In 2005, 182 of Malone’s 469 undergraduates received MCMP 

degrees compared to ninety-six in all liberal arts combined. In Werkema’s 

next-to-last year, the school inaugurated a nursing program. In 1990, it 

graduated eight students. In 2005, it awarded fifty-three undergraduate 

degrees (more than half as many as in all liberal arts). 

If professional education is increasingly predominant, efforts to 

strengthen sciences and humanities help attract good students to Malone. 

Since the 1986–1987 academic year, Malone students consistently score 

two to three points above the national average on the ACT, higher than 

the other four colleges and universities in Stark County. 

Werkema worked to recruit students looking for a Christian college and 

cultivate relations with Christian secondary schools. For the first time, 

visiting scholars led workshops for faculty on how to integrate faith, 

learning, and living. Professors received stipends to attend lectures on 

philosophical roots of Christian and secular thinking. If theologically conservative, 

these academicians from Calvin and Wheaton did not embody 

a right-wing economic, social, or political agenda. They gave little attention 

to issues that polarized society in culture wars in the late twentieth 

century—abortion, gender, homosexuality, and war. 

After 1989, convergence of college and culture accelerated, even though 

presidents came from Holiness roots. Woody Self (1989–1994) was from 

the Church of the Nazarene. Ronald Johnson (1995–2007) is an evangelical 

Friend. Some Nazarenes joined the faculty, but Holiness-oriented ones 

left for Nazarene schools. Diversity grew. The first Catholics were hired as 

full-time faculty in liberal arts. By 2000, they headed two departments. 

After Werkema, culture wars brought division. In language and literature, 

some professors focused on classical Western Christian writers, but 

others preferred writers who promoted personal autonomy. A few took 

polar positions, fraternizing only with like-minded colleagues. Some


campaigned to reward like-minded colleagues with leadership. With position 

came power to influence decisions about tenure. 

A language and literature professor with traditional views about gender 

was dismissed in spite of protests from older teachers and highest student 

evaluations in his department. He left to chair the English department 

at a higher-ranked college where he received a Governor’s Award as 

one of the state’s outstanding teachers. In protest, a fundamentalist in another 

department resigned. On the other side, another professor in language 

and literature who publicly converted to Reformed Judaism had to 

resign in spite of support from her friends. In her case, pressure appears 

to have come in large part from outside the college. 

The Quaker heritage was caught in the culture war. Walter’s and 

Emma’s opposition to abortion alienated some powerful administrators. 

The founders’ opposition to war alienated others. An administrator angrily 

terminated the Conference on Faith and Learning after it focused on 

the founders, even though the topic drew the largest attendance in its history. 

Papers from the conference were published by Friends United Press 

as Hope and a Future: The Malone College Story. Soon after this, J. Walter Malone: 

The Autobiography of an Evangelical Quaker was banned from a general 

education course. Jim Perley, president of the American Association of 

University Professors, said, “In my work I see it all. But this is stunning.” 

Enrollment continued to rise. Self began a building program unparalleled 

in the school’s history. A new entrance and new buildings transformed the 

campus. A campus center was built in spite of the withdrawal of a promised 

gift from a local corporation of $1 million when he refused to hire a 

tenure-track Jewish professor. New sports programs for women were established, 

with football for men, although Malone remains best known for 

its nationally acclaimed program in cross-country. Better facilities, graduate 

programs, and online learning brought a new face to the school. 

NEW MILLENNIUM 

By 2000, 77 percent of full-time faculty (eighty-two of 106) had come during 

the 1990s. Yet some things remain the same. The peace testimony is 

still less popular than at other Quaker-born colleges. The chaplain (a 

Quaker minister and former army chaplain) annually honors veterans in 

chapel. The senior staff chaplain in the Gulf War credited soldiers for 

“making America great” and spoke of telling troops that our enemies 

don’t believe humans are created “in the image of God,” a phrase the 

founders used to condemn killing, not condone it. A petition against the 

Iraq War was signed by every professor of religion at Walsh University 

and Mount Union College, but only by one religion professor, John David


Geib, at Malone. After 9/11, when Geib presented a peace position akin to 

the minds of the founders, a business leader called for his removal from 

the college. Earlier, his work with 100 volunteers as executive director of 

a pregnancy crisis center had estranged him from persons who saw this 

taking him too close to another social controversy. 

John David Geib has, as Thomas Merton said of Mark Van Doren, the 

“gift of communicating something of his own vital interest in things.” In 

2000, hundreds of students filled the cafeteria to hear him debate a prominent 

atheist. Other hundreds were turned away. 

In contrast to strong interdisciplinary thinking by Geib and professors 

in history and the social sciences, many courses in the School of Theology 

concentrate on such marketable skills as counseling, youth ministry, and 

sports ministry rather than on the founders’ focus on works of mercy and 

peace. In 2003, Geib regretfully resigned after nineteen years to escape 

fierce opposition from some leaders in the School of Theology. In 2004, 

students invited him to speak at Senior Chapel and at Homecoming in 

2005. Further invitations were blocked. 

Geib’s legacy continues. Before he left, Sandra Johnson in special programs 

joined him to found a Worldview Forum. By 2006, twenty-six forums 

had attracted thousands from the college, community, and other 

schools of higher learning. In the 2005–2006 academic year, thousands 

more interacted with speakers about diverse understandings of gay 

rights, Christian and Hindu views of the cosmos, faith and family planning, 

and God in politics. In 2006, the college’s president quoted Jay Sekulow, 

a speaker at the forum, who said the forum is “precisely what Christian 

Colleges should be about the business of doing.” For a larger view of 

religion faculty in the Grabill and Geib eras, see chapters 10 and 14 on 

George Fox and Azusa Pacific, respectively, schools with heritages similar 

to Malone, if quite different histories. 

If success can be measured by enrollment, the college set an all-time 

record in 2005 with 2,293 students. But while it grew 37 percent from 1990 

to 2002 (from 1,561 to 2,146 students), this is well below the 60 percent average 

for member institutions of the CCCU. Malone’s growth is also outpaced 

by its two major evangelical Protestant competitors in Ohio, both 

with clearer Christian identities. Cedarville, a “Christ-centered Baptist” 

school, grew by 58 percent during these years (1,889 to 2,986 students) 

while raising standards to admit only one in every four applicants. Mount 

Vernon Nazarene grew by 121 percent (1,056 to 2,337 students). 

The gap with other Quaker-born colleges in the CCCU is more striking. 

Azusa Pacific grew by 143.5 percent (3,159 to 7,693) during these years. 

George Fox grew by 162 percent (1,072 to 2,822). An inability to think outside 

the box is a principal reason for Malone’s modest growth as an evangelical 

college.


The struggle continues to define the character of the college. Administrators 

wary of undue attention to Quaker roots focus on a “challenging 

contemporary Christian” identity. Yet young scholars are doing 

groundbreaking research in the history of the missionary movement, 

including Quakers in China, although the college remains unwilling to 

hire an archivist to catalog extensive materials on Quakers in Africa 

and India and on the founders of the college. For this reason, many materials 

on Walter and Emma Malone are now found in the Earlham College 

Archives. As enthusiasm for this research spills into classrooms, interest 

in this heritage grows. In 2006, at the suggestion of Dr. John P. 

Williams Sr., a dormitory was renamed after Mary Isabella DeVol, a 

Quaker missionary to China. 

An encouraging sign for a fixed identity is a recent focus on servicelearning 

trips to foreign nations and needy areas in the United States: 

seven trips with eighty-two students in 1997–1998 to fifteen with 224 in 

2004–2005. Service is one piece of what Walter and Emma were about. 

CONCLUSION 

Malone’s beginnings in 1892 fit with an era of optimism that birthed missions 

to “win the world for Christ in this generation” and serve the urban 

poor. It coincided with a seamless union of Quaker and Ohio Holiness 

theology: students at Oberlin College, another Holiness institution, did 

relief and mission work in the same theater in Cleveland in the 1890s used 

by students and faculty from the Malone’s school. Oberlin too promoted 

peace, racial and gender equality, and sexual purity for men and women 

who were to embody Christ to serve others. 

With the modernist–fundamentalist controversy, the school refocused 

to give attention to fundamentals to guard against modernism. Walter’s 

and Emma’s reverence for life was neglected. By World War II, the vision 

that all life is sacred had all but disappeared among Ohio Friends. War, 

capital punishment, and abortion were not central to fighting modernism. 

Legalism grew to protect students from urban dangers, obscuring links 

between passion and purity. Walter’s dream to touch Emma’s hand reflected 

a passion kindled by a vision of oneness of bodies and souls united 

to God and to one another. Legalists saw physical intimacy as unholy. A 

disconnect between body and soul sapped the passion that united husband 

and wife and the theological prop for nonviolence. 

In the Christian college era, Osborne’s faith in the fixed character of 

the college was based on his belief in Scripture as a clear inerrant guide, 

a Book of Discipline that would withstand change, and a fixed Quaker- 

Holiness weltanschauung. He was wrong. By 2000, there was little


inclination to cite Scripture. The Discipline proved more flexible than 

he imagined. The day before the college’s first dance was announced at 

yearly meeting, the church revised the Discipline to revoke its prohibition 

on dancing. Dancing, the president explained, is “a wholesome activity 

within a Christian setting.” Practices at Christian colleges and 

Friends churches, not Osborne’s bellwethers for divine guidance, were 

cited to support the decision. 

The Bible college and early Christian college eras are gone, with more 

attention in the new millennium to professional training than to liberal 

arts and a School of Theology that emphasizes ministry rather than 

worldview thinking, peace, social justice, or service to the poor. Commitment 

to a diverse student body remains from the Osborne and Cattell 

eras. An exclusively Protestant faculty passed with Self and Johnson. The 

founders’ focus on rescuing sinners from urban vice and a clear moral 

code fell to a faith with freedom to pursue one’s own understanding of 

right and wrong. The call to be a “voice in the wilderness” denouncing 

evil passed with the Cold War. 

To Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York 

and former president of Brown University, the absence of an organizing 

moral framework is “a missed opportunity of staggering dimensions.” To 

its credit, Malone’s Department of History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences, 

with Geib’s Worldview Forum, offers what Gregorian calls for, “a 

safe place for dialogue . . . [where] warring voices can be heard and acknowledged.” 

This story of the school founded by the Malones invites critical thinking. 

Is it possible to complement the early focus on personal acts of mercy 

(service learning) with an examination of injustices that follow from economic, 

political, and social systems? Can middle-class evangelicalism 

provide as persuasive a rationale to value persons as the Quaker-Holiness 

theology of the founders? 

In the “Afterword” to J. Walter Malone: The Autobiography of an Evangelical 

Quaker, a grandson writes that “for those of us who knew [Walter] 

intimately, the benediction of his life has haunted us all our lives, 

and, we hope, will haunt our children all of their lives, and their children 

to the end of time.” His spirit was caught by the revered professor 

and critic Lauren King, who “cannot remember a book I have read in all 

my reviewing and other reading that has moved me as has [this autobiography].” 

He believed that this heritage of purity, peace, gender 

equality, and solidarity with the poor will be found not in cold legalisms 

but in the playful, joyous, life-affirming spirits of Walter and 

Emma Malone. 

I see great good in Malone College, a school with a remarkable heritage 

of gender equality. I want to think that this school will one day be as


proud of Emma as of Walter Malone. If this is not yet to be, I trust an appreciation 

for Emma Malone will return as a whirlwind one day. 

Ironically, in spite of its early history of gender equality and prophetic 

voices of the founders, Grabill and Geib, the college is only now (April 

2007) in the throes of deciding if Emma Malone is to be formally recognized 

as a past president of the college. 

POSTSCRIPT 

On April 3, 2007, the Malone College student newspaper ran the following 

correction involving Emma Malone: 

In last week’s issue, issue 18, the cover story ‘President-elect announced,’ Dr. 

Gary Streit was incorrectly referred to as the 13th president of Malone College. 

He was announced as such at the formal all-campus meeting and press 

conference on March 23. It has since been officially determined that he is the 

12th president. The confusion stems from a question of whether Emma Malone 

is counted as a president. Dr. Ron Johnson said the school has not typically 

counted her as a president even though she functioned as one. Therefore, 

Dr. Johnson is the 11th president, making Dr. Streit the 12th. 


See the chapter on Malone College in Cradles of Conscience: Ohio’s Private 

Colleges and Universities, edited by John W. Oliver, James A. Hodges, and 

James H. O’Donnell (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003), 

263–75, and compare with Cedarville and Franciscan universities. See also 

J. Walter Malone: The Autobiography of an Evangelical Quaker, edited by John 

W. Oliver (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1993); Hope and a 

Future: The Malone College Story, edited by David Johns, with chapters by 

Martha Grundy, Thomas Hamm, David Johns, and John W. Oliver (Richmond, 

Ind.: Friends United Press, 1993); Byron Osborne, The Malone Story: 

The Dream of Two Quaker Young People (Newton, Kans.: Union Printing, 

1970); John W. Oliver, “Emma Brown Malone: A Mother of Feminism?” 

Quaker History 88, no. 1 (spring 1999): 4–21; John W. Oliver, “J. Walter Malone: 

The American Friend and an Evangelical Quaker’s Social Agenda,” 

Quaker History 80, no. 2 (fall 1991): 63–84; and John W. Oliver, “Cleveland 

Quakers from 1892–1907: Evangelism, Gender and the Poor,” Case Western 

Reserve University Library website, Western Reserve Studies Symposium. 

For more on Malone College, see John W. Oliver, “From Reason to 

Truth to Mystery: An Odyssey to Orthodoxy,” Quaker Theology 4, no. 7 (fall 

2002): 109–29.


For religious-based colleges, see Naomi Shaefer Riley, God on the Quad: 

How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America 

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005). For the Council for Christian Colleges 

and Universities, with attention to Gordon Werkema, see James A. 

Patterson, Shining Lights: A History of the Council for Christian Colleges and 

Universities (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001).

13 

 

Friends University 

Earl Holmes 

Quakers were motivated to move to Kansas to minister and teach the 

Indians, to vote for Kansas to enter the Union as a free state, and to 

acquire free or cheap land. On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted as 

a free state to the Union just a few months before the firing on Fort 

Sumpter. After the Civil War ended and Kansas was opened for settlement, 

Friends along with many others flocked in. By 1872, more than 

2,600 Quakers, primarily from Indiana, had settled in the northeastern 

part of the state. The Kansas Yearly Meeting was set off from the Indiana 

Yearly Meeting and included the geographical area of Kansas, Oklahoma 

Territory, Texas, and small portions of Missouri and Colorado. The charter 

from the State of Kansas states that the Kansas Yearly Meeting was organized 

to promote the fellowship and the religious education of the Religious 

Society of Friends in Kansas among those called Quakers “that do 

not hire pastors or sing hymns.” An education committee was established 

that reported that 800 members of the yearly meeting ranged in age from 

six to twenty-one. Of these, 600 had attended school in the past year, 

about half of them in schools taught by Friends. The average length of the 

school year was five months. No school within the limits of the yearly 

meeting was under the control of Friends. 

In the twenty-six years between the establishment of the yearly meeting 

in 1872 and Friends University in 1898, enormous changes swept 

through the yearly meeting. Gone for the most part were silent meeting 

for worship, plain dress, and plain language. The meeting became the 

Friends Church with a paid minister, vocal and instrumental music, and, 

as new buildings were built, stained glass. Friends embraced new forms 

223

224 Earl Holmes 

of worship but lacked denominational schools to provide training for 

their new leaders. During the 1880s, a group of Quaker investors attempted 

to establish a university in Wichita named after the English 

Quaker John Bright. Founding John Bright University was not a venture 

of the Kansas Yearly Meeting but rather a land deal of the boom of the late 

1880s in Wichita. Architectural plans were drawn up and the foundation 

was laid before the economic bust of 1888, when the city lost over 10,000 

residents. Friends were one of nine groups building universities in the 

city. A university meant that the city would extend the streetcar line and 

the lots along the way would increase in value. Thus, both educational 

and financial motivations drove the investors. Many of the men involved 

in that venture were also involved in the establishment of Friends University. 

Quaker settlements in northeastern Kansas were established before the 

Civil War. The city of Wichita was a post–Civil War creation established at 

the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas rivers (pronounce “Are- 

Kansas” by locals). The land immediately adjacent to the rivers supported 

a sparse growth of cottonwood trees. A few yards away from the water, 

the tallgrass prairie began. By 1870, there were about 800 inhabitants living 

in the area when the city was incorporated. For about three years, it 

was a cow town. Texas cattle were driven up the Chisholm Trail, loaded 

onto trains, and sent east for slaughter. By 1898, Wichita was no longer a 

cow town. Railroads connected the citizens to one another and to the rest 

of the country. National figures such as Eugene V. Debs and William Jennings 

Bryan visited the state. The Civil War continued to echo throughout 

the state. When the Maine was sunk in Havana harbor, the governor 

raised two battalions of Negro troops and sent them off to war. On their 

way through Harpers Ferry, they marched around the John Brown Monument 

with the band playing “John Brown’s Body.” Meanwhile, in Wichita, 

the Grand Army of the Republic committee planning an encampment 

regarded businessmen who did not decorate their stores in bunting 

as in sympathy with Spain. 

The public schools of Wichita graduated the first high school class of 

three girls and one boy in 1879. There were students in the grade school 

program, but only a small percentage and mostly girls attended and completed 

high school. During the boom years of the 1880s, the Wichita public 

schools continued to grow so that by 1887 there were 7,881 white students 

and 993 black students. In 1898, E. Thaddeus Summit had the honor 

of being the first black man to graduate from Wichita High School. Outside 

the larger towns and cities, education was sparse. As late as 1915, 

there were still three counties in the state that did not offer free public 

high schools. In this environment, the presence of the Quaker academies

Friends University 225 

across the state and into Oklahoma and Texas were crucial. The lack of 

public schools also meant that the preparatory department of Friends 

University flourished. 

James Davis (1853–1923) bought the abandoned Garfield University 

from creditors in 1898. Davis wanted to found a national university to 

which Quakers from all over the United States would flock for postgraduate 

training. In a letter to Rufus Jones in November 1898, Davis wrote, 

We believe in the principles of Quakerism or else this work would never 

have been undertaken. Every real University in the country has had to have 

a beginning and many of them a very small one. It seems to me if Friends 

ever intend to establish a University the sooner the beginning is made the 

better, and in the beginning by teaching people we mean it to be a first class 

University, and to work steadily to that end we will accomplish the undertaking 

sooner and more surely by naming it, what it already is in small measure, 

than by naming it something which falls below our hopes and expectations. 

It will take years and this generation may all be gone long before its 

highest purpose is realized; but the beginning though small is as worthy as 

a crown of success if it be done in the fear of God. If Friends had done their 

full duty this school would have been at least the twelfth University instead 

of the first and the name long since cease to have been such a bug-bear; our 

membership greatly enlarged and our young people instead of going out 

into State and Denominational Institutions where but little attention is paid 

to the moral and spiritual development to get their education, could have 

been kept under the protection and influence of our own denomination. 

What other denominations are doing in the line of education the Friends 

ought not to be afraid to undertake. If early Friends had done their whole 

duty, Phila. would today have had a Friends University as magnificent as the 

University of Pa turning out each year young men well rooted in the principles 

of Quakerism. 

James M. and Anna T. Davis had a twenty-two-page handwritten contract 

prepared to convey the Garfield University property to the Kansas 

Yearly Meeting. There were twelve conditions the yearly meeting was required 

to fulfill, or the university would revert to Davis or his heirs. The 

university opened on time, raised the required endowment ahead of time, 

and has maintained the name Friends University for all times. The requirement 

that the faculty be Quakers in good standing was not met. One 

of the first faculty members, Miss Evangeline Pollard, the daughter of a 

Methodist minister, was probably not a Quaker. In addition, the landscape 

plan that Davis was to have prepared, while mentioned by Stanley 

in his 1903 report to the yearly meeting, appears never to have been produced. 

One could argue that the multi-million-dollar industrial revenue 

bonds now carried by the university might be in violation of the condition


to never encumber university property and that the remote locations and 

online course work might be in violation of the condition never to carry 

out directly or indirectly any correspondence school, but no one has. 

Davis originally wanted the name Friends National University. He was 

dissuaded since that name would entail the approval of many if not all of 

the yearly meetings in the United States. I think he believed that young 

men and women completing their undergraduate education in a Quaker 

university would swell the ranks of the Society of Friends and that the 

graduate programs would solve the dilemma of leadership in Quaker 

meetings. The university opened under a modification of the Yearly Meeting 

Charter “to conduct in accordance with the principles of the Religious 

Society of Friends the Friends University . . . an institution of learning 

which shall have all the powers usually exercised by universities with full 

authority to confer degrees.” A board of directors, half men and half 

women, with entire control of Friends University under the approval of 

the yearly meeting, was appointed. When Friends University opened in 

September 1898 with fifty-three students, more than half were in the 

preparatory department. The preparatory department was never mentioned 

in the contract between Davis and the yearly meeting or in the 

modification of the charter. The preps continued as an important part of 

the institution until that department was closed in 1921. 

Edmund Stanley (1847–1928) became the new president. He was a 

seventh-generation American Quaker, Davis’s brother-in-law, superintendent 

for public education in Kansas, and the clerk of the Kansas Yearly 

Meeting. The early faculty of Friends University contained a high proportion 

of Earlham graduates. Some, such as William P. Trueblood in history 

and philosophy, had come to Kansas from Earlham to teach in one of 

the academies before moving on to the university. Some, such as Bevan 

Binford in Bible, came from well-known Kansas Quaker families. Others, 

such as Lucy Francisco in music and languages, were classmates of Stanley’s 

sons. Student life developed quickly along the lines of Earlham, including 

a YMCA, a YWCA, the Davis and Brightonian literary societies, 

and football. The Davis Society honored James and Anna Davis, and the 

Brightonian Society honored John Bright (1811–1889), the English Quaker 

Member of Parliament who worked for peace during the Crimean War 

and against the slave trade. Bright and his ideals were well known to 

Kansas Quakers. At an early stage, President Stanley presented the society 

with a portrait of Bright to hang in their society room. We suspect that 

Bright was something of an inspiration for Stanley, who had begun his 

teaching in a Freedman’s school in Tennessee. He wanted students to become 

active participants in both their religion and the public and political 

life of the community.


The university continued to operate under the Yearly Meeting Charter 

throughout the Stanley presidency. Shortly after Mendenhall became 

president, there was a movement to apply for a separate charter for the 

university. No reasons for this change are found either in the yearly meeting 

minutes or in University Life, a student literary magazine/newspaper. 

In November 1921, Friends University received its own charter as a nonprofit 

emphasizing “instruction in the various departments of arts, sciences, 

and literature, in the Bible and in such other fields of human endeavor 

as the Board of Trustees shall designate, and to provide that this 

instruction shall be given by such men and women and under such conditions 

that the Christian life of the student shall be encouraged and developed.” 

In 1931, the yearly meeting conveyed the property of the university 

held in its name to the new corporation. Again, no reasons for this 

lag are found in the yearly meeting minutes. 

For most of its life, Friends University has been a liberal arts college. 

Richard Felix made the development of graduate programs a priority in 

his inauguration in 1979. By 1986, the first graduate programs had been 

established. The programs were master’s degrees designed for working 

local adults and frequently paid for by their employer. Most programs 

were designed on a modular format, meeting for marathon sessions during 

the weekend or one evening a week. The programs were practical in 

nature and included the following areas: Christian ministry, teaching, executive 

MBA, human resource development, information systems, school 

leadership, family therapy, environmental studies, and management. In 

1994, the university moved from a Carnegie class IIB (liberal arts college) 

to a master’s comprehensive I institution, meaning that it awarded more 

than 40 master’s degrees in three or more fields on an annual basis. Thus, 

Friends University took another step toward fulfilling Davis’s dream of a 

national university attracting students from across the country. 

While Friends established academies in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas 

to provide education where none existed, by 1898 there were plenty of 

colleges and universities. Baylor was established in 1845 and Texas A&M 

in 1876. The University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University 

were chartered in 1890. In Kansas, Benedictine opened in 1854, Baker in 

1858. Three public universities opened in 1863 in Kansas. By 1898, the 

University of Kansas enrolled 1,062 students with fifty-seven faculty, 

Kansas State Agricultural College enrolled 803 with twenty-four faculty, 

and Emporia Normal enrolled 1,607 students. For three years, the yearly 

meeting had sent three representatives to Iowa to serve on the Penn College 

Board of Trustees. The gift of Garfield University to the Kansas Yearly 

Meeting came quickly and as something of a surprise. Although some 

Quakers must have known of the empty Garfield facilities, there is no


record of Quakers contemplating its purchase. When James Davis offered 

the Garfield buildings, the meeting accepted. In less than eight months 

from the time of purchase, the first classes were held. The main building 

was an enormous brick and stone structure of mixed architectural styles. 

Some have described it as Richardson Romanesque Prairie Gothic late 

nineteenth-century exuberant. The building had been abandoned for six 

years with only the north wing completed. Gradually, as money was secured, 

room after room was plastered, flooring laid in the hallways, and 

additional entrances, including the front, were completed. Alumni Auditorium, 

the third floor of the west wing, was not finished until 1925. Even 

today, one-half of the fourth floor and all of the fifth are unoccupied. All 

eleven presidents of Friends University have spent enormous amounts of 

time and energy planning and fund-raising to make Davis Hall a fit academic 

building. It might be argued that the gift was a two-edged sword. 

Had it not been for Davis, there would be no Friends University in 

Kansas, yet the old building has consumed the energies of all its leaders, 

leaving other educational tasks undone. 

Unlike the residential pattern of other Friends colleges, Friends University 

was and is predominantly a commuter college. Enrollment quickly outstripped 

the housing available in the wooden structures of North Hall and 

South Hall. By 1921, the school newspaper listed the names of the entire 

student body and their addresses, telephone numbers, and religious affiliation. 

Few lived in the dormitories, and many students worked in order to 

pay their tuition. One article in University Life indicates that a higher percentage 

of Friends students worked their way through college than at any 

other college in the state. This pattern of working students living either at 

home or in apartments continues and has probably contributed to the pattern 

of adult degree-completion programs and master’s degrees currently 

offered. Students who live off campus and work long hours have a social 

life apart from the university. This has spared the university the “culture 

wars” that have torn other campuses apart. Save for approving social dancing 

on campus in 1986 and the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage 

Family Therapy Education requirement to state explicitly that students in 

marriage and family programs will be admitted without regard to sexual 

preference, the university has not had to confront the issues of sexual 

mores, social drinking, and smoking. Rather than confront university administrators 

or the board of trustees requesting changes in social rules, students 

lead their own lives away from campus. 

From the beginning, Friends University was never predominantly 

Quaker. In the 1902–1903 catalog, the following statement can be found: 

Friends University is dedicated to the Christian religion no less than to 

higher learning. . . . A religious faculty and the influences of a Christian com-


munity are the forces, which are brought to bear upon the life of every student 

in this University. No sectarianism prevails. It is a University for the 

people, liberal, free, and ardent for the truth. 

Early reports to the yearly meeting list the percentage of students in each 

denomination. Quakers made up 41 percent. Catholics and Jews were also 

present in small numbers as well as students who indicated no religious 

affiliation; no objections to these facts can be found in subsequent yearly 

meeting minutes. The first Roman Catholic layperson, Charles B. 

Driscole, and the first member of a religious order, Sister Adelaide Marie 

O’Brien, CSJ, graduated from Friends University in 1912. Driscole went 

on to a distinguished career in journalism. During the years 1912–1960, 

forty-four nuns graduated from Friends University, and three of them became 

leaders of their order. This relationship between the Catholic 

Church and a Quaker university is probably unique, but no letters discussing 

this arrangement exist in the archives of the bishop, the convent, 

or the university. There is no record that the presence of Catholic nuns on 

campus was an issue. 

RELIGIOUS ISSUES 

The paradox of faith and learning among Quakers found expression almost 

from the beginning. Quakers had established academies across the 

prairies and now a university where the Bible, science, literature, music, 

foreign language, and art were taught. But the tradition of rejecting a 

hireling ministry of university graduates seemed alive and well. If God 

spoke directly to individuals through the Scriptures and out of the silence, 

why study Hebrew and Greek? And when you added new insights from 

archaeology, biological science, and historical research, religious truth and 

proper living seemed to get lost. Members of the yearly meeting moved 

toward a Holiness/fundamentalist position, while the university was accused 

of embracing the social gospel and new scholarship. This tension 

has existed between the yearly meeting and the university and within the 

university for a hundred years. Each time the university has faced a major 

challenge, it is entangled with this religious issue. 

Required chapel met from 10:00 to 10:20 A.M. five days a week. University 

Life contained short reports on various chapel talks. Most appear to 

have been led by faculty, but reports show that David Worth Dennis of 

Earlham College, an evolutionary biologist, gave the chapel address in 

March 1904 on “Knowledge Is Power.” Oscar Moon was the first pastor of 

University Friends Church while it met on campus. He wrote back to his 

mentor Elbert Russell at Earlham College in 1906–1907 that he had been


criticized for not preaching about atonement and that the views of Rufus 

Jones and Albert Ware were unpopular with many Kansas Friends. It is 

difficult to assess how Jones was viewed. Jones’s letter to his wife from 

Wichita in 1907 tells of a harrowing experience when President “Stanley 

got up and delivered a terrible speech—delivered to the gallery. It attacked 

evolutionists and higher critics. He inflamed and scared all the ignorant 

and descended almost to the level of ranting. It was one of the 

worst things I have ever heard.” University Life reports that Jones delivered 

entertaining and informative lectures and included no mention of 

the Stanley sermon. In 1908, the Friends University catalog listed important 

speakers who had been on campus, including William Jennings Bryan, 

Senator Robert La Follette, and Rufus Jones. 

Theological issues entangled in a bid for accreditation flared again in 

1913–1915. In the fall of 1914, a faculty report on the allocation of funds 

for biblical scholarship, new methods of teaching natural science, and library 

resources was prepared, probably associated with the university’s 

bid to be listed with the North Central Association. In order to force action 

on the report, professors Truesdell, Furnas, Cosand, and Reagan submitted 

resignations to the local board. Edmund Stanley commented on 

the resignations: “Should the teaching of new theories conflict with the 

Bible, the new theories are not needed.” Professors Pearson and Young 

lined up with the president; other faculty did not commit themselves to 

the press. W. L. Pearson, a graduate of Earlham, Princeton Theological 

Seminary, and the University of Leipzig, was religiously conservative and 

probably one of the best-educated members of the faculty. As head of the 

Biblical Institute at the university, he was a peacekeeper among those 

with divergent religious views. Although the report in the American Friend 

claims that the issues were not religious and doctrinal, Stanley’s undated 

editorial on “Friends University and the Bible” suggests otherwise. The 

editorial reflects a more reasoned position, including the statement, “The 

Bible never restricts really intelligent research; nor has Science ever disproved 

the Bible record fairly interpreted.” The educational issues receive 

little space. Eventually, the faculty resignations were rescinded, Stanley 

continued as president, the trustees provided money for laboratory 

equipment, and the North Central Association accredited the university. 

In many ways, this event may have reflected some of the tensions within 

the yearly meeting and Kansas society as a whole. 

In the mid-1920s, President Mendenhall extended an invitation to 

Quakers in the Five Years Meeting who were setting up an All America 

Friends Conference to gather at Friends University. Elbert Russell reported 

in his autobiography that because some evangelical friends in the 

Kansas Yearly Meeting objected, the Friends Conference was held at 

William Penn College in 1929, including Friends from England, Ireland, 

Canada, and the United States. Old divisions broke down as Quakers con-


sidered presentations from Tom Jones, then president of Fisk College and 

later Earlham, on Quakers and race; from Raymond Binford, president of 

Guilford, on Quakers as educators; and Levi Pennington, president of Pacific 

College (now George Fox University), on peace. No reports of this 

conference appear in the Kansas or Iowa Yearly Meeting minutes or in 

University Life. 

At the end of World War II, President W. A. Young submitted his resignation. 

He had been academic dean when President Edwards was killed 

in an automobile accident in August 1939 and reluctantly took on the responsibility 

for the university for the duration. In June 1946, he wrote an 

article for the Friends University Bulletin expressing his concerns and discouragement. 

The university had lost accreditation, enrollment was at a 

twenty-year low, and the facilities suffered from delayed maintenance. 

Recommendations diverged widely. Some looked to the American 

Friends Service Committee (AFSC) as a tangible form of expressing the 

Quaker way of life, while to others that would be anathema because they 

felt that World War II could have been avoided if the AFSC had made an 

effort to save souls rather than feed and help Europeans after World War 

I. At sixty-four years old, he was exhausted; it was time for new leadership. 

The board of trustees accepted President Young’s resignation, reaffirmed 

the liberal arts nature of the institution, and went looking for a 

new president. 

By the 1980s, chapel was renamed convocation and met once a week on 

Thursday morning. Each semester the schedule was modified for Christian 

Emphasis Week. An individual was invited to give a presentation to the university 

each morning for an entire week. Richard Foster, who had been hired 

by President Cope as writer in residence, was the organizer. Speakers from 

diverse denominational backgrounds discussed a wide range of issues. They 

included Tony Campolo, sociologist; Karen Mains, writer; Ken Medema, 

musician; Dallas Willard, philosopher; and Tom Sine, futurist. Critics could 

not agree if the programs should be academic, entertainment, or revival 

meetings complete with altar calls. When James Bryan Smith, a Friends 

graduate and ordained Methodist pastor, was appointed campus chaplain, 

the responsibility fell to him. Christian Emphasis Week has been transformed 

from a five-day series of programs into a regular Thursday morning 

faith and learning presentation once a semester followed by a weekend religious 

retreat for interested undergraduate students. 

PEACE TESTIMONY 

Although Friends University classes began as the Spanish-American War 

ended, the only immediate effects were chapel talks opposed to the 

United States becoming an empire. The yearly meeting and the university


were soon involved in a missionary effort in Cuba. The effort was reciprocal 

when a young Cuban boy immigrated to Wichita. Louis Casado became 

a wealthy man, member of the board of trustees, and major benefactor 

of the university. He and his family provided the funds for the 

present student center. 

The situation during World War I was a time of transition for the university 

with President Stanley stepping down and the search for a new 

leader underway. William O. Mendenhall, a graduate of William Penn 

and a faculty administrator at Earlham, was selected. When one considers 

the role that Mendenhall had played in the Elbert Russell situation at Earlham, 

it is surprising that a man of such liberal persuasion was chosen or 

consented to come. The student body of the university was about 35 percent 

Quaker and other peace church background during the war. In the 

1918 Talisman, there is a listing of 119 men who were serving with the 

armed forces, in the Red Cross, and in reconstruction work. At least two 

of these died, and one was disabled. Juliet Reeve revises the participant 

figure to 137 in the army, seventeen in the navy, ten in YMCA and reconstruction 

work, and seven in Red Cross work. A large flag with stars for 

each person serving and a larger one for those who died is shown in a 

black-and-white photograph. The disposition of this flag is unknown. The 

university honored those who participated but did not allow military 

training on campus. 

During World War II, President Young struggled with his conscience. In 

a letter to Rufus Jones in August 1942, he indicated frustration over how 

he and the university should respond to the requests of the army and 

navy for university training. But Young made his decision. Although Wichita 

was home to several aircraft companies and there was a great influx 

of war workers into the city, President Young knew what he had to do as 

a Friend leading a Friends school. There would be no military training on 

campus, but the university would be involved in summer programs to 

train additional teachers. Vacations were canceled, and the university 

went on a year-round plan. At one point, students suggested singing the 

“Star-Spangled Banner” to open chapel services. Young pointed out to 

students in an impromptu address not to confuse patriotism with religion. 

Friends University lost twenty-four young men during the war. They are 

remembered by special bookplates in volumes purchased for the library 

in their honor. This included men lost in combat, in reconstruction work, 

and in Chinese Communist Party camps. Among the dead were the sons 

of President Young and Professor Mills. Recently, a plaque with the name 

of one of the World War II dead and recipient of the Congressional Medal 

of Honor has been placed in the Flag Court in front of the library. When 

the war was over a GYB (Glad You’re Back) dinner was served on the 

campus and included those who served as GIs as well as those in YMCA


work and other noncombatant positions. The university also welcomed 

into the student body five Japanese American students who would have 

otherwise been interned behind barbed wire in Hunt, Idaho. Although 

their pictures appear in their respective yearbooks, no articles about their 

arrival appeared in the student newspaper. Two of these students married 

classmates of European descent. Their dating and marriages apparently 

did not cause undue alarm on campus. 

After World War II, the decline in Quaker students, faculty, and administrators 

resulted in the university speaking less clearly for the peace testimony. 

During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War, no 

lists of participants or of the dead were kept. No banners bearing the 

name of each participant were stitched together, nor was the tradition of 

memorial books for the library continued. On February 13, 1967, Dayton 

Olson, a representative of the AFSC, presented a chapel talk on the 

AFSC’s stand on the war in Vietnam. University Life reported that the majority 

of Friends students were upset by his views, and one administrator 

and one student walked out. On February 17, Dr. Turpin, the author of 

Doctor Vietnam, spoke in chapel giving firsthand information on the situation 

in Vietnam. University Life reported, “The chapel was . . . well received 

by the whole student body.” An accompanying editorial also spoke 

of the value of freedom of speech, even if you didn’t agree with it. In May 

1967, University Life carried the article “Army to Recruit.” The Officer 

Candidate School team would be “in the main lobby of Davis Administration 

Building for the officer candidate enlistment option.” A year later, 

the mood on campus and in the nation shifted, and one can find in University 

Life notices on how to register as a conscientious objector and of a 

peace rally where faculty and others spoke. 

The legacy of the peace testimony continues. The present university catalog 

states, “In keeping with our Quaker heritage, Friends University 

does not accept ROTC military credits.” A request to the president’s cabinet 

in October 2001 for military recruiters on campus was denied “due to 

the founding fathers and historical background.” 

RACE 

The majority of Friends University students have always been of European 

descent. International students provided ethnic diversity and were 

joined in the 1920s by minority students from the United States. Perhaps 

because there were Quaker missionaries in Japan, the first person not of 

European descent to attend Friends University was from Japan. At one 

point in 1905, University Life reports that he gave the invocation at the 

YMCA meeting and from early faculty meeting minutes that the faculty


agreed to pay his tuition for the 1904 year out of their own pockets. Another 

Japanese student, Regno Kumatsu, attended Friends from 1912 to 

1915. His experience must have been favorable because after World War 

II, Kumatsu corresponded with Juliet Reeve about sending his son to 

Friends. In due time, the young man arrived and graduated from Friends 

in 1952. Since we can see on his student record that his race is listed as 

“yellow,” the university clearly had some distance to go. 

In 1908, after the visit of the English missionary Warburton Davidson 

from China, students and faculty raised money for a Chinese student to 

study at Davidson’s school in China. When the missionary left, President 

Stanley led a large parade of students to the train station and presented 

him with the university flag. The 1912 Talisman has a photograph of the 

recipient of that scholarship, Hsie-Ta Chuen, dressed in traditional Chinese 

scholar’s robes. Students from overseas continued to attend Friends 

University, but nationalities have shifted; during the 1980s, there were sizable 

numbers of students from Kenya, Nigeria, and Iran. In the 1990s, 

there was an influx of students from Taiwan. The presence of international 

students on campus has stimulated American students to seek 

overseas opportunities. Today, for example, the university has exchange 

programs in education and Spanish. American students majoring in education 

spend about two weeks living with an English family and observing 

an English school. English education majors then visit the United 

States, stay with the families of the American students who visited England, 

and observe public schools in the city of Wichita. American students 

studying Spanish travel to La Salle University in Cancun, Mexico; live 

with Mexican families; and take some intensive courses in Spanish. Later, 

Mexican students enjoy a similar experience in Wichita. This program is 

an offshoot of the Sister Cities Program. 

Photographs in University Life and the student yearbook indicate that 

African American students appear in the student body about 1920. It is 

also at this time that President Mendenhall notes in his annual report to 

the yearly meeting that scholarships for Negro students have been provided 

by the Federated Negro Women’s Clubs of Wichita. Neither the 

records of the Kansas African-American Museum nor those of the university 

indicate who initiated this scholarship. Since the 1920s, there has 

been an important African American presence on the campus. The relationship 

has not always been tranquil. During the late 1950s, a Friends 

University student was involved in picketing local movie theaters, the 

YMCA, and grocery stores. The president of Friends University called 

her into his office and said, “It is not Christ-like to be picketing.” She believed 

that the Jesus who threw the money changers out of the Temple 

would not agree. In the fall of 2000, about 10 percent of the student body 

was “black non-Hispanic” and about 2.5 percent was “American Indian


or Alaskan Native.” We have no additional information about Native 

American students. 

The histories of Friends University do not mention how or if the university 

dealt with either African Americans or Native Americans. No 

mention of the first African or Native American graduate is noted, although 

the yearly meeting minutes contain reports about work with Native 

Americans, and applications to the Rockefeller Foundation contain 

references to both Native and African Americans. There is evidence that 

in addition to the sensitivity to Japanese and Chinese students, there was 

some sensitivity toward the two big minorities in Kansas. From University 

Life, we learn that Booker T. Washington spoke at chapel in 1905. What he 

said or how the student body reacted is not reported. Reported under the 

headline “Negro Speaker Addresses Chapel,” Wilton R. Boone of the Noxubee 

Industrial School for Colored Children gave a chapel talk in November 

1921. In January 1930, George Washington Carver spoke. University 

Life ran a sizable story. In February 1930, University Life reported that 

a large number of Friends students enjoyed the vesper service at University 

Friends church. The pastor and choir of New Hope African Baptist 

Church provided the program. The article concluded in the language of 

the day: “We hope we may enjoy another visit from our colored friends in 

future.” 

EPILOGUE 

The historical record suggests these trends: a decline in Quaker influence, 

a separation of university from the yearly meeting, an apparent shift in 

strength from the yearly meeting to the university, and a separation of 

university values from those of the yearly meeting. 

Quaker Influence 

The Society of Friends’ influence on the campus has declined in the student 

body, the faculty, the administration, and the board of trustees. 

Forty-one percent of the student body in 1905 was Quaker. By 2000, 

twenty-nine religious groups were reported, including Buddhist and Islamic. 

Thirty-seven percent of the students thought that their religious 

preference was none of the university’s business and reported no preference, 

while the Quakers fell to 1.3 percent. The faculty traditionally had 

Quaker roots. Among the first faculty, all but one was a practicing Quaker. 

Today, the number of Quaker faculty is minimal. There has not been a 

Quaker president since 1979, although at least two members of the president’s 

cabinet are Friends University graduates. In the beginning, the


Figure 13.1. View of the Friends University Campus 

board was composed of thirty Quakers. Half were men and half were 

women. Currently, there are seventeen board members, and only three are 

women. The chairman of the board is a Quaker, as are the yearly meeting 

appointees, but a number of alumni and at-large positions are not. 

Separation 

The university began operations under a modification of the Yearly Meeting 

Charter. In 1899, the yearly meeting met on campus during October. 

University Life carried a lengthy article for non-Quakers about the gather-


ing and encouraged students to attend the sessions when the President’s 

Report and Missionary Reports were read. Today, the yearly meeting convenes 

during summer vacation out of sight and mind of most university 

employees and students. In 1921, the university received its own charter. 

In 1931, university property was transferred to the University Corporation. 

While the plan to merge Fairmont College and Friends University 

was rejected by James Davis in 1921, the 1933 plan to merge Wichita University 

with Friends University was turned down by the yearly meeting. 

Strengths 

For the first forty years, the Kansas Yearly Meeting grew from 2,600 to 

12,000 members. The presence of the academies and the university 

seemed to bode well for the yearly meeting at the close of the nineteenth 

century. Through the first decade of the twentieth century, the yearly 

meeting could be proud of its accomplishments and confident of its future. 

In 1912, the expansion of the yearly meeting stopped. During the 

next ninety years, the membership of the yearly meeting was cut in half. 

Since 1974, the Kansas Yearly Meeting has changed its name twice to 

emerge as the Evangelical Friends Church–Mid America Yearly Meeting. 

While the yearly meeting operated Friends University as a self-supporting 

entity, members of the yearly meeting were generous contributors. The 

Figure 13.2. Another View of the Friends University Campus


academies closed as free public high schools were established. For the 

university’s part, it regained and has held accreditation in North Central 

since 1951. There are now about 1,000 traditional undergraduates and 

2,000 nontraditional students. The university appears stronger than ever 

but vulnerable. It has leveraged its growth on $9.5 million debt, mostly in 

tax-exempt revenue bonds. The university is constrained by a permanent 

endowment of only $9.2 million, a reliance on tuition income for 86 percent 

of the budget, and variable unrestricted gift income. The yearly meeting 

has had ninety years to adjust to its reduced circumstances. It is now 

focused on a modest agenda that does not involve the university. 

Values 

A careful reading of the Faith and Practice of the Evangelical Friends 

Church–Mid America Yearly Meeting shows that it does not fit into a simple 

“liberal or conservative” camp. While the yearly meeting is opposed to 

capital punishment and takes a strong pacifist stand, it also takes a strong 

stand regarding sexual preference and abortion on demand. It is opposed 

by name to Transcendental Meditation, the Hare Krishna, the Unification 

Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Unity, and Christian Science. Yet 

there are Mormons on the faculty and in the student body. There is a small 

group of lesbian and gay students, and students avail themselves of abortion 

services provided in the city. The synergy between the yearly meeting 

and the university has unraveled. 

SOURCES USED AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 

The archives of Friends University are limited. Minutes of the board of 

trustees are not available. Faculty minutes from 1898 to 1904 are minimal; 

no presidential papers are available. With help from Tom Hamm and 

Ellen Stanley at Earlham, Diana Franzusoff Peterson at Haverford, John 

Wagoner at William Penn, and Wendy Glickman at the Rockefeller 

Archives, I was able to unearth new documents related to Friends University. 

The past reference librarian, Kathy Gaynor, and the present reference 

librarian, Max Burson, provided invaluable help. These sources will 

be preserved in the Quaker Room at Friends University. 

Juliet Reeve’s Friends University: The Growth of and Idea; Floyd and 

Norma Souders’s Friends University 1898–1973; and Raymond and Margaret 

Nelson’s In the Shadow of the Tower: Friends University: The First 100 

Years are invaluable resources containing lists of board members, faculty, 

and students.


Friends University Archives (Quaker Room) contain copies of university 

catalogs, the student newspaper University Life, the yearbook Talisman, 

and the Fellow and Reeve Papers containing many photographs and 

documents. 

The Wichita Public Library, Local History Collection, holds additional 

information regarding the city of Wichita and its relationship to Friends 

University. 

The author wishes to thank Professors Brenda Cain, James Smith, Chris 

Kettler, and Raymond Nelson and his wife Margaret for reading the manuscript 

and making suggestions.

14 

 

Azusa Pacific University 

Sheldon Jackson and Tamsen Murray 

During the westward movement of the 1860s, Friends settlers began to 

appear in southern California. By 1895, there were 1,226 Quakers in 

their part of the state, and they established California Yearly Meeting. 

Their vision for education led to the establishment of Whittier College as 

a liberal arts college in 1900. 

While one Quaker group was launching Whittier College, another 

group dreamed of a training school for Christian workers. Friends 

churches needed ministers. Church leaders saw an immediate need to 

prepare ministers and missionaries and desired an institution that 

would have a faculty and curriculum geared specifically to training 

these workers and sending them out speedily to their ministry. In this 

zealous atmosphere, three prominent Friends leaders—Irvin H. Cammack, 

superintendent of missions of California Yearly Meeting; Philena 

B. Hadley, vice president of the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society; 

and Levi Gregory, evangelistic superintendent of the yearly meeting— 

took the initial steps. They set up a consultation with six other Quaker 

leaders plus a Methodist evangelist, Joseph H. Smith, in a historic meeting 

on March 3, 1899, at the Whittier home of Philena Hadley to establish 

a training school for this specific purpose. They had no school building, 

but Mrs. Hadley offered the use of her home for the first year and 

remained a staunch supporter of missions in general and the school in 

particular until her death in 1933. 

Subsequent meetings produced a constitution and articles of incorporation. 

They chose the name “Training School for Christian Workers” 

241

242 Sheldon Jackson and Tamsen Murray 

(TSCW). The articles of incorporation, approved by the state on March 

12, 1900, stated, 

The purposes of this Corporation are not for pecuniary profit, but, primarily, 

to provide thorough instruction in the Bible, and give practical training in all 

that pertains to HOME AND FOREIGN MISSION WORK: and to give such 

aid to such workers as may be practical. . . . That said corporation shall have 

the power to engage in evangelism and the raising up of new work for the 

Kingdom of Christ, the establishing of the same, and shall have the power 

necessary and incidental to do all and everything necessary to the promotion 

of the Kingdom of Christ on the face of the world. 

For principal (president), they chose Mary A. Hill, a forty-one-year-old 

Friends evangelist and schoolteacher with broad experience in the midwestern 

states. When Miss Hill read the specific statement of the school 

board, she breathed a hearty “Amen” and wrote, 

It is especially desired to make this school a place of inspiration, as well as of 

education: a place of gendering spiritual enthusiasm; a place of implanting, 

and then of the out-working of holy fires. An undertaking in which God will 

search and work in the refining of hearts; awakening and strengthening holy 

purposes, Christ-like motives, purified, sanctified ambitions, zeal for God, 

love for souls: deepening of spiritual life; and unconditional, absolute, unqualified 

crucifiction [sic] of self-life; and intense devotion to God in life of 

faith, peace, and constant soul victory: a work of taking the whole armor of 

God, and a special efficiency and mastery in wielding the offensive weapons 

of the Christian’s warfare. 

School opened in March 1900 in the Hadley home in Whittier, with 

two students. By April, twelve more had enrolled. As additional students 

enrolled, Hill added new courses and more teachers, who generally 

served without pay. Meanwhile, Principal Hill prepared the first 

school catalog, calling for twelve teachers. She carried more than her 

share of the teaching load by assigning six classes to herself: Biblical 

analysis, Ephesians, Pentateuch, poetical books, the life of Christ, and 

Hebrews. 

When the founding committee sent the invitation to Mary Hill to fill the 

position of principal in the new school, they were cognizant of her widespread 

ministry in the Midwest, but they were not aware of her spiritual 

vision that encompassed the world and of her classroom excellence. Her 

eloquent teaching delivered more than academic astuteness. Her enthusiasm 

in the first critical fifteen months bore fruit in a remarkable way, emphasized 

by an incredible statistic. Of the first thirty students who sat in 

Hill’s classes, twenty-five became missionaries in foreign countries: five 

to Guatemala, one to India, one to the Philippines, one to Bolivia, two to

Azusa Pacific University 243 

Figure 14.1. TSCW Staff and Students at Philena Hadley’s Home, c. 1900; Mary Hill 

(Standing Far Left, Holding a Bible), Irvin Cammack (Standing Fourth from Right), Philena 

Hadley (Standing Sixth from Right, Black Dress), and R. Esther Smith (Sitting on the 

Ground Far Left) 

Alaska, 1 and fifteen to China. Several of these students established missions 

that ultimately became independent Christian churches. After supervising 

the new school to a great start in her two years, Mary Hill went 

to China as a missionary and compiled a superb record as a missionary 

for thirty-five years. 

After Mary Hill’s departure for China in 1901, enrollments increased 

each year, and with every increase came the need for more classrooms and 

more floor space. In 1901, the Training School moved to a large building 

called the “Briggs Block” on North Greenleaf Street in Whittier. Within a 

year, another move took the school to a hotel building in the Boyle 

Heights area of Los Angeles. The school then purchased lots at First and 

Figueroa in Los Angeles and built a new fifty-four-room school building 

there. Finally, in 1907, under the leadership of Chairman of the Board 

William V. Marshburn, MD, the school moved to Huntington Park, where 

it built a building that provided more room for expansion. This became 

the home of TSCW for thirty-nine years.


Figure 14.2. TSCW Staff and Students at Boyle Heights Property, 1902; Anna Draper 

(Sitting Second from Left) and Irvin Cammack (Sitting Second from Right) 

In its first seven years, the school changed presidents almost as often as 

it did locations. Anna Draper, a Friends official from Iowa, served for two 

years until she resigned because of poor health in 1903. The board then 

chose one of the school’s most intelligent teachers, twenty-six-year-old 

Bertha Pinkham, as the next president. She was the daughter of William 

P. Pinkham, a teacher at the Cleveland Training School who later served 

as TSCW president himself (1909–1919). After Pinkham’s marriage to 

William Dixon in 1904, the board chose Matilda Atkinson as her successor, 

a mature lady with a broader range of experiences than any of the former 

presidents. She served at TSCW for five years until she resigned in 

1909. That the first four presidents of the Training School were women 

gave concrete testimony to the Quaker belief that women should have 

equal opportunity in institutional and church offices. 

Throughout the period 1909–1930, missions served as a catalyst for the 

Training School. Alaska, Guatemala, and other destinations continued to 

draw Training School students as missionaries. The works in Alaska and 

Guatemala were specifically supported by California Yearly Meeting. Early


TSCW literature is filled with accounts of life and evangelism in Kotzebue, 

Alaska; even today, there is a strong Friends presence in that area. R. Esther 

Smith, an early Training School alumna and Friends minister, served as 

field superintendent of the Guatemala mission from 1907 until her death in 

1947. In addition, graduates were increasingly called up to serve as pastors 

and teachers in mission fields and in other church responsibilities. The 

school’s influence reached into many states and beyond. 

In 1930, TSCW celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of its founding. 

Board members, friends, students, teachers, and alumni met for the occasion. 

The festivities included recognition of Training School students who 

had served as missionaries in foreign lands during that time: Guatemala 

(twenty-five), Alaska (twenty-one), China (seventeen), Africa (fourteen), 

Japan (seven), Peru (four), Bolivia (three), Mexico (three), Philippine Islands 

(three), British Guyana (two), Jamaica (two), Burma (one), Chile 

(one), and Persia (one). Returning missionaries recounted their experiences, 

spoke in chapel, and encouraged and advised students who were 

contemplating missionary service. 

There were intimations as early as 1929 that officials of the Training 

School were moving away from the three-decade unofficial relationship 

with California Yearly Meeting. William Kirby had joined the faculty in 

1924 and had become an unofficial spokesman for the fundamentalists in 

their criticisms of national and state Friends. Although President Ray L. 

Carter led TSCW in a significant scholarly advance by improving the 

school library in 1929, he was criticized for lifting the ban on dating. 

When he resigned in the summer of 1931, the board chose a Wesleyan 

Methodist, David H. Scott, to be the next (and first non-Friend) president. 2 

Previously, in August 1928, the Holiness Church in General Assembly formally 

adopted the Training School for Christian Workers as its “temporary 

school” and encouraged its members who felt called to do God’s 

work to seek their Bible training there. 

Kirby served as both TSCW professor and Huntington Park Friends 

Church pastor. He lobbied unsuccessfully for California Yearly Meeting to 

withdraw from the Five Years Meeting in light of its alleged modernism. 

California Yearly Meeting decided, instead, to forward to the Five Years 

Meeting the following emphatically evangelical statement: 

We hold that the Bible, as the divinely inspired Word of God, should have the 

central place in the Christian College; that every student should take some 

Bible Work each semester, and that none should be graduated therefrom 

without a clear understanding of its fundamental teachings regarding Divine 

Righteousness, human sin, Divine Love, and the deity of Jesus; and that all 

professors employed in the capacity of teaching the Bible should be known 

to hold views consistent with the above doctrines.


Adopting this statement gave clear indication that the general body of 

California Yearly Meeting was evangelical and dedicated to maintaining 

the integrity and continuity of the central doctrines without making an issue 

of specific interpretations. They hoped that the evangelical resolutions 

would quiet the furor. Kirby, however, was not willing to let the matter 

terminate. 

The story of the struggle between Whittier Quarterly Meeting and 

Kirby’s group at Huntington Park Monthly Meeting is recounted in more 

detail in Sheldon Jackson’s centennial history of Azusa Pacific University. 

The point of interest here is that in June 1933 Kirby withdrew from Huntington 

Park Friends Church with more than 100 followers and set up a 

new church that met in the TSCW chapel for the next two years. This 

church, Huntington Park Evangelistic Tabernacle, essentially supplanted 

Huntington Park Friends Church as the “school church.” Kirby’s move 

also marked the first such separation within the yearly meeting, a separation 

that also affected the Training School’s informal relationship to California 

Yearly Meeting. 

Although TSCW was not supported by California Yearly Meeting as an 

educational institution (that relationship being reserved to Whittier College), 

nevertheless the separation between TSCW and California Yearly 

Meeting was painful. There were divisions in loyalties within families. 

Both the school and the yearly meeting suffered temporary loss. The 

Training School lost income; California Yearly Meeting lost influence at a 

school that had been started by Friends and had received students, teachers, 

board members, and financial support during the thirty-three years of 

its history. By that time, for example, nearly all the pastors of evangelical 

Friends churches who had received their training in California were 

Training School graduates. 

On the other hand, it is evident that, in the long term, neither the Training 

School nor the yearly meeting received permanent damage. In fact, 

there is ample evidence of continuing involvement by individual Friends; 

it is safe to say that at least one Friend was always connected with TSCW 

and its successors as a member of either the faculty or the board. By 1940, 

the Training School (by then known as Pacific Bible College) began a period 

of consistent growth to the stature of a superb Christian evangelical college 

that represented many evangelical denominations yet was not controlled 

by any one. California Yearly Meeting likewise experienced steady growth 

after 1940. The liberal minority declined to relative weakness, and in 1993 

the strong evangelical yearly meeting (by then called Friends Church 

Southwest Yearly Meeting) once again established a supporting relationship 

with the school (by then called Azusa Pacific University). 

While TSCW suffered serious declines in enrollment and income in the 

decade between 1930 and 1940, the period from 1939–1984 proved to be a


time of growth. In 1939, at age twenty-seven, Cornelius P. Haggard, another 

non-Friend, became president of TSCW. Under Haggard’s energetic 

and vigorous management, the school expanded its ministries. Haggard 

first persuaded the board to change the name of the institution from 

Training School for Christian Workers to Pacific Bible College of Huntington 

Park, later shortened to Pacific Bible College. 

President Haggard envisioned not only a larger school but also a fully 

accredited college that would continue its spiritual ministry while offering 

college credits that would be accepted by other educational institutions 

at full value. In 1945, the school offered two degrees, bachelor of theology 

and bachelor of religious education. After World War II ended in 

1945, President Haggard pressed on with his positive program. In 1946, 

the school moved to a new location in Azusa that offered buildings for immediate 

occupation and more room for expansion. There were no organizations 

existing to accredit Bible colleges, so Dr. Haggard joined with 

other Christian educators to organize the Accrediting Association of Bible 

Institutes and Bible Colleges. Pacific Bible College was one of the first institutions 

to be accredited by this association. Enrollments increased, campus 

improvements followed, and the school’s name was changed again in 

1957 to Azusa College. 

An indication of the continued participation of Quakers in the school 

program was an event held at Pasadena Friends Church in 1956 to celebrate 

the burning of the mortgage on the Azusa property. The chairman 

of the board of trustees at this time was a California Friends pastor, T. Eugene 

Coffin. At the same time, another Quaker, Frank Marshburn, served 

as vice chairman. Marshburn was a son of Dr. William V. Marshburn, who 

had joined the board of the Training School in 1907 and served there until 

1935. Three of Dr. Marshburn’s sons—Frank, Bill, and Cliff—served on 

the board of trustees as well. These three men played a pivotal role in paying 

off the mortgage that made the previously mentioned celebration possible. 

Cliff’s son, Donald, was the first third-generation Marshburn 

elected to the board, where he has served since 1981; he retired as board 

chairman in May 2006. This family’s involvement with first the Training 

School for Christian Workers and now with Azusa Pacific University has 

been virtually continuous since 1907; only during the period from 1935 to 

1950 was there no one from the family on the board (though their behindthe-scenes 

support continued). One of the university’s three libraries is 

named in honor of Dr. Marshburn. 

Regional accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges 

came to Azusa College in 1964, when the school reported an enrollment 

of 330. This was the beginning of rapid growth. The merger of Azusa 

College with two other Christian Colleges, Los Angeles Pacific College and 

Arlington College (efforts directed largely by President Haggard), brought


the enrollment in 1968 to 1,007. The first merger led to adopting a new 

name in 1965: Azusa Pacific College. Continued growth under the able 

leadership of President Haggard saw the total enrollment rise to 2,000 in 

1975, an increase from seventy-one at the beginning of his tenure (1939). 

President Haggard died on August 16, 1975, after a brief illness. Enrollments 

continued to increase under succeeding presidents, and the institution 

became Azusa Pacific University in 1981. 

Moves for a restoration of an official relationship between California 

Yearly Meeting and Azusa Pacific University began in 1982 under the 

leadership of Yearly Meeting Superintendent Charles Mylander. Yearly 

meeting representatives approved “setting up a Friends Center Board to 

develop a Friends Center in cooperation with the School of Theology of 

Azusa Pacific University.” Moving quickly, the new board held a fundraising 

dinner, raised $60,000, developed a purpose statement, produced 

a brochure, and hired Glenn McNiel as director. The stated purpose was 

to train ministers and missionaries for the churches and missions of California 

Yearly Meeting of Friends Church. This was identical to the purpose 

of the original Training School for Christian Workers in 1900. 

Succeeding directors Don Ashley, Chuck Mylander, Gayle Beebe, and 

present director Kent Walkemeyer gave expert direction as the Friends 

Center grew to an enrollment of forty-one in 2004–2005. Since its founding, 

more than 200 Friends students have taken courses through the university’s 

Haggard School of Theology, and more than sixty have received 

graduate degrees. In addition, more than sixty undergraduate students 

from Friends churches were enrolled in 2005. Starting in 1989, yearly benefit 

concerts at Rose Drive Friends Church by the Azusa Pacific University 

Concert Choir and Orchestra have raised thousands of dollars for the 

scholarship fund of the Friends Center. 

The Friends Center now provides two courses that all Friends students 

in Haggard School of Theology must take as part of their degree 

requirements. The first, “Evangelical Friends History: Birth, Growth 

and Organization,” was developed and is taught by Dr. Jim LeShana. 

The second, “Friends Theology, Worship and Leadership,” was developed 

and is taught by Dr. Bob Ramsey. Each four-unit course is available 

via the Internet or in a classroom setting. The courses also satisfy 

a prerequisite for Friends students who desire to become either 

recorded or commissioned as a minister in the Friends Church Southwest. 

The Friends Center maintains its own website: http://www 

.friendscenter.org. Additional information is available online at http:// 

www.apu.edu/theology/centers. 

Sixty years after the informal relationship between the Training School 

for Christian Workers and the yearly meeting was broken, the rapport


was so cordial that the two parties lacked only a formal statement. The 

yearly meeting and the university approved the following new agreement 

in 1993: 

Historically the Friends Church founded the Training School for Christian 

Workers, which in time and through mergers became Azusa Pacific University. 

An informal cooperative relationship has existed for many years with 

Friends board members, professors, students and most recently, the Friends 

Center. It is the University’s desire to establish a more clearly articulated 

statement of cooperation with the Friends Church Southwest Yearly Meeting. 

Azusa Pacific University will openly solicit applications for employment at 

the university in staff and faculty positions. Azusa Pacific University will 

provide an annual written and oral report at the business sessions of Friends 

Church Southwest Yearly Meeting. Friends Church Southwest Yearly Meeting 

will provide copies of its annual Minutes to Azusa Pacific University. 

Provision will be made for official representatives of Friends Church Southwest 

Yearly Meeting to have opportunity for contact and conferences with 

students in the interest of the church. Provision will continue for instruction 

in Friends History, Theology and related courses through the Friends Center 

within the C. P. Haggard School of Theology. The present agreement will be 

honored. 

During the final decade of the twentieth century, the growth of Azusa 

Pacific University was remarkable. President Richard Felix, PhD, 

1990–2000, reframed the university’s cornerstones as Christ, scholarship, 

community, and service. During his ten-year tenure, student enrollment 

doubled, the institution constructed seven new buildings, and the number 

of graduate students quadrupled. 

Today, under President Jon R. Wallace, DBA, Azusa Pacific University 

continues its mission of service with new emphases around the world. 

The Study Abroad Program provides students with opportunities to attend 

schools in many different countries. The missionary emphasis of the 

founding institution (TSCW) continues with multiple missionary sites 

throughout the world available for student involvement. In fact, one of 

the cornerstones is service, and, as the statement emphasizes, “Service is 

at the heart of our local and international outreach, missions and servicelearning 

endeavors. Our students often find these experiences to be 

among the greatest of their lives.” 

The first students of the Training School were expected to participate in 

various kinds of ministries and evangelistic efforts; today, undergraduate 

students of Azusa Pacific University must complete 120 credits in ministry 

and service as part of their graduation requirements. These credits are 

earned in a variety of ways, including service in local churches, mission 

trips, and/or participation in neighborhood community development


programs. The first students of the Training School studied a curriculum 

that was centered largely on biblical studies and practical ministry training 

courses; today, university undergraduate students complete an eighteenunit 

core of courses, “God’s Word and the Christian Response,” as part of 

their graduation requirements. The list of courses provides an introduction 

to and overview of Bible, ministry, and doctrine. The first students of 

the Training School attended chapel and other kinds of religious services 

every day; today, university undergraduate students are required to attend 

chapel services at least three times a week, with six different programs 

provided every week. 

Some elements of classic Quaker themes have been less influential 

through the years, however. For example, the peace testimony associated 

with the Quaker tradition has received minimal attention. During World 

War II, the records show that President Haggard registered for the draft. 

There does not appear to have been a requirement of plain speech or 

dress, even in the earliest years, nor was there a particular emphasis on 

Quaker history. While women currently occupy significant academic and 

managerial roles at the university, no woman has served in the presidency 

since Matilda Atkinson’s retirement in 1909. The working relationship 

with the Evangelical Friends Southwest is but one of several collaborations 

between the university and denominational groups from the Wesleyan 

tradition, such as the Church of God, the Salvation Army, the Missionary 

Church, Brethren in Christ, and the Free Methodist Church. 

Nonetheless, more than a century after its founding by the Quakers as 

the Training School for Christian Workers, Azusa Pacific University serves 

as a comprehensive evangelical, Christian university, dedicated to the 

core value of “God first” in higher education. This phrase was adopted by 

the Training School for Christian Workers at the outset and remains in 

place over a century later. The institution offers more than forty areas of 

undergraduate study, twenty master’s degree programs, and four doctorates 

with a total enrollment of more than 8,300 students in September 

2005. In the wake of a century marked by enormous social and cultural 

change, Azusa Pacific University continues to prepare students to serve 

Christ throughout the world. 

NOTES 

1. Since Alaska did not become a state until 1959, it was considered a foreign 

mission field before that date by the Training School and California Yearly Meeting. 

2. Larry Lenard, however, identifies George A. McLaughlin, a Methodist Episcopal 

preacher, as the first non-Friend president. He was named president in 1924.



Haggard, Emma. The Intrepid Builder. Glendora, Calif.: Thaddeus Foundation, 

1983. The biography of C. P. Haggard, written by his widow. 

Jackson, Sheldon. Azusa Pacific University: One Hundred Years of Christian Service 

and Scholarship, 1899–1999. Azusa, Calif.: Azusa Pacific University, 1999. 

———. The Silent Partner: The Marshburn Brothers’ Legacy and Their Christian Walk. 

Azusa, Calif.: Azusa Pacific University, 2001. 

———. Yes, Lord! The Story of California Friends Responding to God’s Call from the Arctic 

to the Tropics. Whittier, Calif.: CYM Press, 1985. 

Lenard, Larry C. “The Path toward the Friends Center.” Unpublished paper for 

Haggard School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University, 2003. 

LeShana, David C. Quakers in California: The Effects of 19th Century Revivalism on 

Western Quakerism. Newberg, Ore.: Barclay Press, 1969.

15 

 

Barclay College 

Glenn W. Leppert 

Haviland, Kansas, is a small country town surrounded by fields of 

wheat and corn. You need to look quickly after you turn off the highway 

and cross the railroad tracks, or you might miss the downtown altogether. 

The main business district is just barely a block and a half long. But 

not all of what Haviland is known for is in the business district. Two 

blocks farther on, past the Friends Church a block to the east, and the 

Methodist church on Main Street is a small college campus. 

The word “small” may be rightly used to describe the physical size of 

the college. There are only seventeen acres at the most. “Small” cannot be 

used, however, to describe anything except the physical size. In terms of 

ministry, education, personal growth, and opportunities to build lifelong 

relationships, words such as “tremendous,” “huge,” and “gigantic” must 

be used. 

On campus you will find students doing what you would expect to find 

them doing on any typical college campus. Some are in class, either listening 

or hurriedly writing notes, or else doodling and caught up in wonderful 

daydreams. Others are in the library preparing for class, finishing 

assignments, or doing research, carefully preparing notes that will be 

used later to compose term papers and book reviews. Not all will be engaged 

in academic activities, however. There will be those working, usually 

for the maintenance department or the library. And there will be those 

lounging in the student center or just “hanging out” in the dorms. 

What will be common to all these students is their commitment to biblically 

based education and their desire for ministry. With a mission to 

“prepare students in a Bible-centered environment for effective Christian 

253

254 Glenn W. Leppert 

life, service, and leadership,” the focus of this college—Barclay College— 

is the Bible. From the college have come many who have become pastors, 

youth leaders, and missionaries or who have filled numerous leadership 

roles in schools and churches. 

To understand the college today, one needs to look back over a hundred 

years when in 1884 Benjamin H. Albertson, a Friend formerly from 

Mooresville, Indiana, wrote to the Christian Worker Magazine (later the 

American Friend, now Quaker Life) from his new home in Kiowa County, 

Kansas. He invited Friends in Indiana to join him in a new settlement on 

the Kansas prairie. Albertson’s dream was to create a Quaker community. 

By the end of that summer, Albertson had received fifty-three letters of 

inquiry. Other Friends had already joined him, each taking opportunity of 

homestead laws to claim a quarter (160 acres) of the good fertile Kansas 

land without cost—they only had to inhabit the land and make improvements. 

The core of the new community was to be Quaker families originally 

from Indiana. Albertson persuaded Jabez Hall, Lindley Pitts, and 

James Gulley, who had come to Kansas a few years earlier, to move from 

Rose Hill, a Quaker community near Wichita. By the spring of 1885, there 

were enough new Friends to establish the town of Haviland. 

One of the first things these incoming families did after surveying their 

claim and erecting either a frame shack or a “soddie” (made from blocks 

of the prairie soil) for shelter was to begin a school. After a worship service 

held in the home of James Gulley in April 1885, plans were made to 

begin a school in the half-dugout shelter on the claim of Gurney Mills just 

north of where the town would later be located. The shelter could also be 

used for first-day meeting. However, after the first week of school sessions 

and following the first worship service, a windstorm destroyed the 

shack. Seeking a new location, the parents chose a dugout on Riley D. 

Woodward’s claim, a ten- by fourteen-foot room with its floor eighteen 

inches below ground level and its ceiling so low that one could only stand 

in the center of the room. 

This humble building housed the school for the first three-month term. 

Miss Theodate Pickett served as teacher. When the sod church was completed 

in the fall of 1885, the school was moved there, and until 1891, this 

was the grammar school for the community; in fact, it was the only school 

in that portion of the county. Nathan Brown was the first to teach in the 

sod church. He taught a six-month term using Sunday school literature 

and the Bible to teach reading and spelling. Attendance increased rapidly 

and soon filled the building. 

With the coming of the railroad in 1887, proper supplies of lumber and 

hardware were available at the lumberyard begun by A. K. Kemp. Other 

businesses had been established as well, and the city of Haviland began 

to grow. The increased population soon organized a school district and

Barclay College 255 

constructed a new school building, a one-room frame building, in the 

north corner of the expanding town. The students moved from the church 

to the new building late in 1887. 

By 1890, the town had grown to more than 200, and among that number 

were teenagers who had advanced beyond the limits of the simple 

grammar school. Parents desired secondary education. Because there was 

no public secondary school yet in the county, they followed the example 

of several other Quaker communities. After making a canvas of the area 

to ascertain support, they formed a stock company, selected a board of 

trustees, and started a Quaker academy. Students were housed in a building 

in town for the opening semester in the fall of 1892 until the academy 

building was completed. The new building, built at a cost of $2,374, was 

located just north of the later college building, Music Hall (later called 

Founders Hall), on what was known as “academy hill.” Albert F. Styles 

served as the principal, and Cora Knowlton (later Styles) was the first fulltime 

teacher. There were forty-seven students. 

By 1913, the enrollment for the academy had grown to seventy-one, and 

there were seventy graduates counted as alumni. In 1916, in the twentyfifth 

year of the academy, the academy’s board realized the need for a new 

facility and made plans for a thoroughly modern building, sixty-four by 

sixty-four feet, that would contain classrooms, laboratory, library, and offices 

as well as a gymnasium and assembly room. Several developments 

were to change these plans in a dramatic way. 

The first thing to impact the board’s plans was the creation of the first 

public school in the Haviland area. While the community was predominantly 

Quaker, there were others who had helped increase the population 

of the town to nearly 550. Although the academy had served Friends well, 

Methodists, nonchurchgoers, and some Friends saw the need for a public 

high school and in 1915 arranged a special election that chose a threemember 

board of education. The new public high school that this board 

created took over the top floor of the public grade school that had several 

years earlier been built just a block away from the academy. Supporters of 

the academy were concerned and wondered if there would be support for 

two high schools so close together and in such a small community. 

The second item that impacted the plans of the academy’s board was a 

continuing revival in the church and community and in Kansas Yearly 

Meeting. Revival had been part of the Haviland community for several 

years beginning as early as 1904 with the ministry of Nathan and Esther 

Frame. The academy had been the center of this revival and the unofficial 

center of an evangelistic emphasis in the yearly meeting. Many had come 

through these revivals with a desire to carry the gospel well beyond Haviland. 

These Friends desired ministry training for the academy graduates 

and expressed the need for a training school for Christian workers to be


located in Haviland. Young people from the community had only three 

options for such training with a Friends perspective: Friends University 

in Wichita, Cleveland Bible Institute in Ohio, and the Huntington Park 

Training School for Christian Workers in California. The problem was that 

too few of the students traveling off to these institutions returned to the 

Haviland community to provide leadership for the church. 

Through the efforts of L. Clarkson Hinshaw, superintendent of Kansas 

Yearly Meeting, and Alvin Coppock, an evangelist who had helped plant 

fifteen Friends churches in the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma, these two 

concerns merged into a plan to replace the academy with a Bible training 

institute. On December 27, 1916, a public meeting was held in Haviland, 

and those in attendance formulated a structure for a school association. A 

committee was appointed to prepare rules and bylaws for the school, and 

early in 1917, papers were filed with the State of Kansas to form the Bible 

Training School Association, which would in turn establish the Kansas 

Central Bible Training School. One hundred and seven people immediately 

joined the Bible Training Association. The academy’s board saw this 

move as an answer to their prayer for guidance for the future of the academy 

and agreed to dissolve as a board in deference to the new association. 

Haviland Quarterly Meeting, which held the property of the academy, 

transferred the property of the Friends Haviland Academy to the new association. 

Since anyone who subscribed to the doctrinal statement and paid annual 

fees could become a member of the association, the new school was 

in effect a nondenominational institution. Friends predominated, however, 

and the bylaws called for all members of the board of trustees to be 

Friends. The academy was continued as one department of the school in 

addition to a preparatory course “to provide Christian workers with 

proper instruction and training for effectual service.” The aim of the college 

was not to duplicate advanced liberal arts and theological training 

that would be available in liberal arts colleges but rather “to provide practical 

training for service for those who felt a call into Christian ministry.” 

Specifically, the college would “teach the English Bible and train Christian 

workers for the Lord’s vineyard” and “seek to secure for each student 

the most perfect Christian experience possible, including thorough regeneration, 

entire sanctification, and a vital personal acquaintance with 

God.” 

Interested friends and community residents joined together starting in 

April 1917 to build a suitable building for the expanded school using the 

plans that the former board of the academy had put together. By September, 

the building, to be known to later generations as Founders Hall, was 

ready enough for use. It contained fourteen rooms, a gymnasium, and an


auditorium and cost $20,000. Even though the building was not finished, 

it was used for the opening of the school in September 1917 with Scott T. 

Clark, a graduate of Friends University, as the first president. On April 26, 

1918, the completed building was dedicated. The first class to enroll in the 

practical Christian training curriculum was a class of three: Lela Gordon, 

Carl C. Amick, and Edward O. Binder. 

From that beginning, the college experienced increasing enrollment, 

building through the 1920s to an average of over 100 students per year. In 

1925, a junior college course was added, and in 1930 the name of the institution 

was changed from Kansas Central Bible Training School to 

Friends Bible College. This would be changed in 1990 to Barclay College. 

The college suffered through the drought and the Great Depression 

from 1933 to 1935, but through prayer and sacrifice and the dedication of 

the faculty and administration, the work continued. Faculty served without 

pay or occasionally with payment in kind—especially beans—during 

this period. Even though the 1930s was a difficult time for both the people 

of Kiowa County and the college, it was a time of growth. The college 

participated in two revival meetings each year: the Kiowa County Camp 

Meeting in the fall and the Friends Church revival in the spring. Students 

were involved in both and also found ministry opportunities in the Haviland 

community and beyond. A student organization on campus was the 

Heralds. Each year, this group sent out gospel teams to churches in a fivestate 

area. In chapel, students preached, gave testimonies, sang, and 

taught. Each year on campus, there were drama productions. Numerous 

prayer meetings were held. Sheldon Jackson recounts the Depression in 

his book Barclay College: Lighthouse on the Prairies and suggests that the college 

succeeded in maintaining throughout the Depression a truly balanced 

educational system by “majoring in the spiritual as well as serving 

the mental, physical and social natures.” Those who experienced the Depression 

would always remember the dust, drought, heat, and wind but 

also the stronger memories of “spiritual, social, and educational growth 

during a bewildering decade.” 

The Depression and then World War II brought many changes in personnel, 

but along with change came a period of building. Scott Clark resigned 

in 1936. The board chose a member of the faculty, Bernard Mott, 

to succeed him. Mott guided the college through the later years of the 

Depression before he resigned for health reasons. Charles A. Beals took 

on the role of president and moved the college through the war years. 

Enrollments averaged seventy students each year. He helped the college 

increase its enrollments by laying special emphasis on music. One of the 

most important ministries of the school in the 1940s was music. Private 

piano and voice lessons continued. So did classes on theory. But more


important, many small ensembles and glee clubs were added to the curriculum, 

and these music groups joined the gospel teams already “on 

the road” for the college. 

Roy Clark, son of the founding president, Scott Clark, joined the college 

as music instructor when George I. Edie left. Clark came in 1940 

and, except for a small time away, continued until 1963. He organized 

many musical groups, including a fine choir and many women’s trios 

and male quartets. Mildred Shafer and Roy Knight added to the music 

program, and together Clark, Shafer, and Knight caused the name of 

Friends Bible College to be associated with inspirational and enjoyable 

music. 

Charles Beals resigned to take another position in 1942, handing the 

presidency over to Charles S. Ball, a graduate of Cleveland Bible College 

and a pastor from Ohio Yearly Meeting. Ball led the college through the 

remaining war years. During his tenure, the college celebrated the fiftieth 

anniversary of the founding of the academy and the twenty-fifth anniversary 

of the Bible College. The guest speaker for the occasion was President 

W. A. Young of Friends University, who had been first a student at the 

academy and later its principal. 

Charles Ball resigned the presidency in 1945 to accept a position on the 

faculty of Friends University. Mildred Shafer, who had been with the college 

for eight years as a faculty member and five years as a vice president, 

left at the same time. The board chose Sheldon Jackson as the fifth president. 

He would hold the position from 1945 until 1964. He would also return 

in the 1990s as an adjunct professor. 

Figure 15.1. The Barclay Choir, 2005


Jackson had the wonderful problem of seeking additional space for the 

expanding student body. Following World War II, with many veterans 

taking advantage of the GI Bill to further their education, the college experienced 

renewed growth. During this time, several buildings were 

added to the campus, including the beautiful Phillips Hall housing administrative 

offices, classrooms, the library, and the cafeteria as well as 

dorm rooms for women. Enrollment continued to grow as the school entered 

into the 1950s. A record high of 139 was reached for the 1950–1951 

academic year; this was also the year that the college began an interscholastic 

sports program. 

Following the construction of Phillips Hall, the college entered several 

decades of development, adding both buildings and students to the campus: 

Hockett Auditorium and Gymnasium (1959), Coppock Hall (1963), 

Broadhurst Student Center (1968), and Worden Memorial Library (1979) 

fleshed out the campus. Increasing numbers of students gave it life. Aided 

by a Student-Get-Student campaign, enrollment reached 111 for the 

1955–1956 year, 161 for 1957–1958, and 198 for 1959–1960. Enrollment continued 

past the 190 mark during the 1960s. The academy was dropped in 

1968, and Bible college accreditation, which had been sought on an associate 

level as early as 1948, was pursued in earnest with full accreditation 

earned in 1975. The curriculum was expanded as a part of the process, 

Figure 15.2. Phillips Hall


and the college assumed a full four-year curriculum leading to the bachelor’s 

degree. In part because of the discontinuance of the academy and 

the junior college program, enrollment leveled out during the 1970s, then 

took a drastic plunge in the late 1980s, dropping to a low of sixty-eight in 

the fall of 1987. 

A series of presidents followed Jackson’s departure: Stanley Brown 

(1964–1967), Harold Thompson (1968–1969), Robert S. Staley (1969–1971), 

and Wanda Mitchell (1971–1975). Delbert Vaughn stood in as an acting 

president following the end of Wanda Mitchell’s tenure before Norman 

Bridges was appointed in 1976. Each gave their expertise to the problems at 

hand. Brown set up an ambitious fund-raising campaign and hired a consulting 

firm to promote it. He spent six months on the road making presentations 

for the college in five states. During his presidency, the Ninth Annual 

Quartet Festival was held. A special feature of this festival was a 

tribute to Roy Clark for his years of service to the music program. The college 

publication The Progress was also begun in his time. Harold Thompson, 

who had been both principal of the academy and the dean of the college, 

helped raise funds for the construction of the Broadhurst Student Center 

built the year after he became president. While he was in office, talks were 

held with Friends University about merging the Bible college with that institution 

and devoting the Haviland campus to the academy. The final decision 

was to close the academy after more than seventy-five years of Christian 

education and focus on making the Bible college a full four-year 

program. Robert Staley initiated an additional campaign for funds: Friends 

and Alumni Involvement—Today’s Hope (FAITH). While he was president, 

the eighty-six-member Denver Symphony Orchestra conducted by 

Arthur Fiedler gave a concert in Hockett Auditorium. Wanda Mitchell was 

president as the college conducted its first self-study and then hosted a visiting 

team from the American Association of Bible Colleges and received 

full accreditation from that accrediting body. 

Norman Bridges became president in 1976, and he worked at furthering 

the financial stability of the college. Through his friendship with Dr. 

Richard Felix, he helped build a friendly relationship with Friends University. 

When Bridges left in the spring of 1985, the board appointed 

Robin Johnston, who had been with the college as a faculty member since 

1975. With the addition of Dr. Bruce Hicks as academic dean at the same 

time, Johnston’s tenure focused on strengthening academics and on increasing 

ministry opportunities for students. This focus on ministry countered 

a major problem faced by the college in the decade from 1985 to 

1995. During this period, there were few students interested in going into 

the ministry. Admissions personnel often encountered parents who disapproved 

of their children considering ministry as a possible career. 

Robin Johnston left the college in 1995. Glenn Leppert filled in as acting


administrator until the appointment of Dr. Walter Moody in 1996. Dr. 

Moody expanded the college by initiating a degree-completion program 

and offering correspondence courses. Maurice Chandler became the thirteenth 

president in 1998, agreeing to fill the position for five years. Maurice 

strengthened relations between the college and its constituency and 

set the college again on the path to gain regional accreditation. Candidacy 

status with the North Central Association was gained before the end of 

his tenure. Chandler stepped down at the end of the agreed five years, 

handing the position over to Dr. David Hietala, an evangelical Lutheran 

from Minnesota. The Presidential Search Committee hoped that having a 

non-Friend at the helm might increase the number of other denominations 

represented by the student body. Dr. Hietala stayed with the college 

from the fall of 2003 until the end of the spring semester of 2005, when he 

resigned. Herb Frazier, who had first served with the college as academic 

dean (1967–1975) and then as director of admissions (1978–1984) before 

becoming the development officer in 2001, was appointed the seventeenth 

president as of July 1, 2005. 

Before Robin Johnston left as president, Jackson Hall, a much-needed 

classroom building, was dedicated. It was built debt free and was a most 

welcome addition to the campus. The building was named for the former 

president, Sheldon Jackson. During the tenure of Maurice Chandler, the 

student center was expanded to include a dining hall nearly three times 

its former size, a set of student government offices, a health room, and a 

two-story women’s dormitory that functions as a retreat center through 

the summer. In addition, a new maintenance building was added to the 

campus property. Sadly, both Founders Hall (Music Building) and the old 

West Hall were razed. 

Despite low enrollments in the 1980s and 1990s, Barclay College continued 

to produce graduates who filled pastorates and teaching positions 

throughout several yearly meetings and on various mission fields. From 

the beginning of the college, more than 105 graduates have gone to the 

mission field as lifelong missionaries. Since 1985, 135 graduates have either 

pastored or served as youth ministers, while others have ministered 

in classrooms, as counselors, and in business situations. In proportion to 

its size, Barclay College has, since its founding, produced an exceptional 

number of graduates who have given leadership to many Friends Yearly 

Meetings and to other denominational bodies. A large percentage of the 

graduates from the elementary education major (1979–1995) earned high 

honors from the school districts in which they have been employed. 

The college successfully went through ten-year accreditation reviews in 

1985 and 1995 and in the process of self-evaluation dropped some majors, 

such as nursing and home economics, and added others, one very successful 

new major being youth ministry. A Christian school elementary


education major replaced the elementary education major, which was a 

joint project with Saint Mary of the Plains College (1978–1993) and with 

Tabor College (1993–1995). 

Considering carefully her mission statement—“to prepare students for 

effective Christian life, service, and leadership”—Barclay College has continued 

to strengthen its curriculum and faculty throughout the 1990s and 

to find creative ways to accomplish the goal of training Christian students. 

In 1996, the college began to offer HomeCollege, classes enabling 

students at a distance to enrich themselves through correspondence 

courses both in Bible and in ministry. The HomeCollege classes also 

played an important role in another distance-learning program, ADVAN- 

TAGE!, a degree completion program that was begun in late 1996. The 

ADVANTAGE! program saw students meeting in seven off-campus sites 

in Kansas (Dodge City, Haviland, Larned, Pratt, and Wichita), and in Colorado 

(Colorado Springs and Denver). An earlier site in Easley, South 

Carolina, also offered classes for several years. The degree-completion 

program, which offered majors in Bible/theology, Christian ministry 

leadership, business administration and management, and psychology, 

offered opportunities for adults busy with careers and families to complete 

a Christian education. The college suspended the program in 2004 

with plans to revive it as an online program. 

A steady stream of Christian workers has been graduated from the college 

and sent out into the Lord’s work in its ninety years. This body of 

graduates testifies to the unwavering commitment of the school to the basic 

vision of its founders. The college has attempted to follow the blueprint 

described by Quaker writer Elton Trueblood in its curriculum and in 

the Christian environment it builds for students: the experience of inner 

vitality that comes from the life of devotion and prayer; the experience of 

outer action of ministry to the college, the community, and the church; 

and the experience of careful thinking and determined study of the world. 

With these foci, Barclay College has “consistently produced pastors, missionaries, 

and other Christian workers. Its impact is all out of proportion 

to its size, and its future is not dependent upon might or power but upon 

its commitment to the sharing of the Good News of Jesus Christ.” 

POSTSCRIPT 

There is a story that most folks in Haviland know, that during a storm 

sometime in the early years of Scott Clark’s presidency, he stood on his 

front porch and prayed that the town of Haviland would be spared from 

the approaching tornado. That tornado lifted over the town, leaving it unharmed. 

Since that time no tornado has troubled Haviland, although


there were many in the county (twenty-five since 1950). The weekend of 

May 4–6, 2007, proved to be further confirmation of the prayer of the 

founder. The day after an F5 tornado tore Greensburg apart, a tornado 

touched down just south of Haviland, then lifted up, crossed over the city, 

and touched down to the north. Alumni on campus for the end of year activities 

were gathered in the library basement praying and singing praise 

to God as this happened. God continues to keep his hand on this small 

Bible College on the prairie. 

SOURCES 

The material for this chapter has been drawn mostly from Sheldon Jackson, 

Barclay College: Lighthouse on the Prairies, published by Barclay College 

(1990). I have also taken material from a manuscript written by Elaine 

Maack that, in turn, was heavily influenced by an earlier undated manuscript 

by Marjorie Conant, “History of the Friends of Haviland.” Also useful 

was a master’s thesis by Weston F. Cox (1966), titled “Haviland Annals 

Visions Industries Learning and . . . Neighbors Dreaming” (an acrostic 

spelling “HAVILAND”). Figures were taken from the Friends Haviland 

Academy 1913–1914 Catalog and the First Annual Catalog of the Kansas Central 

Bible Training Institute.

Conclusion 


These stories of the Quaker heritage of fifteen institutions of higher 

learning offer insights into attempts to integrate or separate faith and 

learning. These stories speak to the power of American culture to assimilate 

a religious sect, responses to changing times, and for some of these a 

struggle to determine what, if anything, the faith of their founders has to 

do with their identity and mission in our time. These are stories of continuity 

and change. 

ORIGINS 

The founding purposes of thirteen Quaker-born colleges can be understood 

by taking note of three eras. All three schools in the first era began 

as precollege academies to provide “guarded education” to Friends. In 

the second era, three of the next six began as colleges to equip students 

with a broader education: the others became colleges soon after their 

founding. In the final era, two began as Bible colleges, a third became a 

Bible college, and one began as a liberal arts college. 

1. 1833–1847: Haverford, Guilford, and Earlham began as undergraduate 

academies and later became colleges. Haverford, a school for 

boys in 1833, became a college for young men in 1856. Guilford, a 

boarding school in 1837, became a college in 1888. Earlham, a boarding 

school in 1847, became a college in 1859. These schools grappled 

in their early days with what it means to offer “guarded education,” 

265


with attention to “peculiarities” or “testimonies” that set Friends 

apart (plain speech, plain dress, and so on). In these years, they were 

not as concerned with preparing students to transform culture as 

with schooling them in the teachings of Friends. Guilford officially 

admitted non-Friends in 1846, Haverford in 1848, and Earlham in 

1859, when it became Earlham College. 

2. 1869–1891: Swarthmore (1869), Wilmington (1870), and Bryn Mawr 

(1885) began as colleges. The latter was the first Quaker college with 

no preparatory department. William Penn, a high school in 1870, became 

a college three years later. George Fox, a boarding school in 

1885, became a college in 1891. Whittier, a boarding school in 1887, 

became a college in the same year as Fox. All arose in a culture where 

men were commonly schooled for scholarship and women for domestic 

duties. Bryn Mawr provided an exception. William Penn and 

Swarthmore admitted non-Friends from their first days, although 

the latter declared that “members of the Society of Friends will have 

preference over others.” 

3. 1892–1917: Three schools began as Bible Colleges: Malone (1892), 

Azusa Pacific (1899), and Barclay (1917). Malone became a liberal 

arts college in 1957 and Azusa Pacific in 1965. Barclay continues as a 

Bible college. All three have a Holiness heritage and have had women 

presidents or copresidents in the twentieth century. The prominence 

of women in Bible colleges may be due not only to Quaker precedents 

but also to their focus on soul winning and nurturing converts, 

tasks for which women were as accepted, needed, and suited as 

men. Friends University, the only school from this period to begin as 

a college, was founded in 1898. All four were cofounded by women. 

None of these in its first days restricted admission to Friends only. 

As for contributions to nonsectarian schools, the Quaker-born Ezra 

Cornell founded what Elaine Engst calls “the first truly American university,” 

American because of its “integration of the study of the mechanical 

arts and the liberal arts, treating both on an equal basis.” Cornell’s interest 

in practical education, Engst concludes, “reflected his Quaker upbringing 

as well as his own interests in technological and scientific innovation.” 

The school from its earliest days was open to any person 

qualified to study at the university level regardless of race, gender, or pecuniary 

condition. 

At Johns Hopkins, a school founded by and named for a Quaker, a majority 

of trustees were Friends at one point in its early years. It too claims 

to be “the first true university in America.” It became, under Daniel Coit 

Gilman, “the first institution [in the United States] to require students to 

perform original research in their own field, present their findings to their


professors and fellow students, and publish the results of their research.” 

Johns Hopkins himself, James Stimpert says, “remained a devoted member 

of his church, [but] he never presumed to dictate the form his university 

should take.” 

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 

To varying degrees, Quaker-born colleges grapple with what, if anything, 

their religious roots have to do with their mission in a changing world. 

Four offer graduate programs in religion—Azusa Pacific, Earlham, 

George Fox, and Malone. Three, all except Malone, offer graduate courses 

in Quaker studies. Four of the thirteen Quaker-born schools require students 

to attend chapel services—Azusa Pacific, Barclay, George Fox, and 

Malone. All four have a Holiness heritage. Some others, while not stressing 

religion, utilize their Quaker heritage to affirm reform agendas. 

What follows is a summary of how each Quaker-born school has witnessed 

to historic teachings of the Friends. Reasons why some schools 

have been more wedded to some pieces of the tradition may be found in 

this volume. Cornell and Johns Hopkins will not be mentioned here because 

they were not intended to be sectarian schools. 

Azusa Pacific, with more than 8,300 students in 2005, is the largest 

Quaker-born college. The first four presidents were women. It has a history 

of training missionaries to pioneer the faith to the non-Western 

world. Twenty-five of the first thirty students became foreign missionaries. 

A founder was vice president of the Women’s Foreign Mission Society 

of California Yearly Meeting, and the school met in her home in its first 

year. At present, undergraduates must complete 1,800 to 2,400 hours of 

“service programs,” some directly connected to academic course work. 

More than sixty Friends have received graduate degrees from the university’s 

Haggard School of Theology since the Friends Center was established 

in 1982. Some sixty undergraduates from Friends churches were 

enrolled at Azusa Pacific in 2005. In line with its Quaker and Holiness heritage, 

sexual purity continues to matter: the student handbook requires 

that students not engage in unmarried sexual cohabitation, sexual misconduct, 

or homosexual activities. 

Barclay, like Azusa Pacific, has a Holiness tradition. Located in rural 

Kansas, it began in a frame shack or “soddie” where grade school students 

were instructed. After it was destroyed by a windstorm, classes met 

in a ten- by fourteen-foot room with a ceiling so low that one could stand 

only in the center of the room. Barclay is the only institution in this volume 

that continues as a school where “the focus . . . is the Bible.” It also 

offers practical training for pastors, youth ministers, and elementary


teachers in Christian schools. Holiness remains stronger than at any other 

of our schools, as does the heritage of moral and sexual purity. In spite of 

its diminutive size (131 students in 2005), more than 105 Barclay graduates 

have served “as lifelong missionaries.” Since 1985, 135 graduates 

have served as pastors or youth ministers. Barclay and Bryn Mawr are the 

only schools to have had woman presidents in the second half of the 

twentieth century. 

Bryn Mawr’s interest in Quaker roots has grown since the 1930s. For 

Carey Thomas’s vision of a college for research and free inquiry, Quakers 

seemed too weighted with religion. Later, connections to Haverford and 

Swarthmore and interest in Quaker teachings about peace, personal freedom, 

and the poor encouraged interest in this tradition. In 1915, Bryn 

Mawr pioneered the first graduate program in social work in the United 

States. In 1921 it opened a Summer School for Women Workers in Industry. 

In the 1930s it welcomed German refugee scholars. If slow to admit 

displaced Japanese Americans in the 1940s, it resisted government efforts 

to suppress dissent during the Cold War. It withdrew in 1958 from the National 

Defense Education Act student loan program when new regulations 

required a loyalty oath and in 1969 from a student aid program that 

required colleges to report students who protested the Vietnam War. 

Earlham, named for Joseph John Gurney’s English estate, was founded 

to give witness to Gurney’s “vision of a Quakerism that was founded on an 

aggressive Christian faith . . . committed to benevolence in the larger world, 

and which valued intellectual inquiry.” Ironically, while founded in the Orthodox 

Quaker tradition, most Quaker students are from meetings in the 

Hicksite tradition. With Bryn Mawr, it reaffirmed its Quaker identity after 

World War I. During World War II, Earlham had no military unit on campus 

and admitted Japanese Americans from internment camps. In the 1940s 

faculty and students picketed restaurants that refused to serve blacks and 

protested against racial discrimination. “Over the last twenty years,” 

Thomas Hamm tells us, “gay and lesbian issues have been central.” Earlham 

tends “to follow more liberal Friends in asserting and upholding the 

validity of same-sex relationships” and does not regulate consensual sexual 

relationships. However, after concerns about shared bathrooms in coed 

dorms, it has separate facilities for men and women. Benevolence continues 

to be encouraged through the Earlham Volunteer Exchange. 

Friends, cofounded by James M. and Anna T. Davis, required that its 

first board of directors be composed of an equal number of men and 

women. As a commuter college, it has had less to do with legislating behavior 

than some other Quaker colleges. In its earliest days, Friends had 

a close relationship with Catholic religious orders. It did not permit military 

training on campus during either world war but did not prohibit military 

recruitment on campus during World War II. At the same time, the


school did welcome Japanese Americans from internment camps. It later 

decided it would not accept ROTC military credits, nor has it permitted 

military recruitment on campus in the new millennium. 

George Fox University is distinguished by success in engaging students 

in community service. The fastest growing of our schools (quintupling 

from 1986 to 2005) with an average increase in SAT scores and 

grade-point averages from 10 to 20 percent in recent years, Fox holds a 

Quaker Heritage Week each year. With Azusa Pacific and Barclay, it requires 

students to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and extramarital 

sex (all pieces of its Holiness heritage). Fox requires courses in Bible and 

theology of all students and a capstone course on integration of faith and 

learning. During World War I, it was the only institution of higher learning 

in Oregon to teach German. After the war, it appears to have provided 

a higher proportion of relief workers “than any other college in the 

world.” Fox’s Center for Peace Learning sponsors an annual John Woolman 

Peace Forum. It has always refused to permit military recruitment 

or training on campus. 

Guilford, as New Garden Boarding School, was visited by Joseph John 

Gurney in 1837. The school, which began with an equal number of boys 

and girls, was a regional leader in women’s education during the first 

half of its history. From its first days, the yearly meeting appointed an 

equal number of men and women to oversee the school. It admitted 

Japanese American students during World War II, yet as a southern 

school it did not admit blacks until the 1960s. With student rejection of in 

loco parentis by the 1970s, Guilford wrestles with how to maintain community 

and balance values from the boarding school with contemporary 

culture. The result is, Gwen Erickson tells us, “a secular campus ethos” 

respectful of individual beliefs. It has never had ROTC or military recruitment 

on campus. It refused dormitory space to the army air force 

during World War II but offered a summer program in 1941 to prepare 

conscientious objectors for alternate service. 

Haverford’s engagement with peace issues merits special attention. The 

first principal of Haverford School refused to serve in the Civil War. Early 

graduate programs focused on relief, reconstruction, and social and technical 

assistance. It trained students in World War I for the American 

Friends Service Committee and noncombatant service. In World War II, 

training included meteorological work, medicine, language study, and engineering. 

In the Vietnam era, it rejected loans that required antisubversive 

affidavits or loyalty oaths. Peace vigils met weekly. Some faculty refused 

to pay federal income tax. After the invasion of Cambodia, 575 

students, fifty faculty, twenty-five nonacademic staff, and almost all senior 

administrators went to Washington to express their “depth of concern.” 

The first college to refuse to comply with a Pennsylvania Higher


Education Assistance Act to report disciplinary actions against protesters, 

it later created the Center for Non-Violent Conflict Resolution, a joint 

peace studies program with Bryn Mawr, and a peace and conflict studies 

concentration. It divested holdings in South Africa to protest apartheid 

and created a fund to bring South African students to Haverford. In 1987, 

it established a steering committee to see “that Quakerism remains strong 

and vibrant.” In 2000, it established the Humanities Center for humanistic 

inquiry and for contemporary intellectual, artistic, and ethical ideas 

and the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. 

Malone’s founders were Holiness Friends who welcomed African 

Americans and opposed all violence because every person is “created in 

the image of God.” Their school trained more women ministers than any 

other institution in the nation at the turn of the twentieth century. In keeping 

with the Quaker heritage of service, it promotes “service-learning 

trips” overseas and to needy areas in the United States. It “prohibits” alcohol 

on campus and at “college-related activities” and “discourages” its 

use off campus. “Students are required to abstain from sexual misconduct.” 

If the college downplays religious traditions to appeal to Evangelicals 

who prefer to be known as “mere Christians,” new teachers are now 

introduced to the history of the college, and a course titled “Friends Heritage” 

is offered to students as an elective. To better understand the Malone 

story it may be of interest to compare it with the chapters on Azusa 

Pacific, Barclay, and George Fox. 

Swarthmore from its first days has been committed to the proposition 

that “each individual is sovereign in his responsibility to the higher law 

of his creator, manifested in his own heart.” It hosted a Student Army 

Training Corps during the World War I but in the 1930s established the 

Swarthmore College Peace Collection. In World War II, it trained officers 

for the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (the navy’s V-12 program), 

and men prepared for alternative service in Civilian Public Service. 

Swarthmore’s John Nason chaired the National Japanese-American Student 

Relocation Council, which placed Japanese American students in 

colleges and universities rather than internment camps. No African 

Americans attended until 1943. Now an institution “with educational 

principles based on a secular vision,” it provides “quality education 

growing out of Friends’ principles.” 

Whittier is named, if indirectly, after the Quaker poet John Greenleaf 

Whittier. Three of the four initial recipients of the AB degree were women. 

The first women’s dormitory was built in 1910. Men had no comparable 

facility until 1924. In World War I, it refused to train a military unit. In 

World War II, disputes over training military groups on campus (negotiations 

with military groups broke down) and support for conscientious 

objectors split the college community: the president resigned after his pro-


posal to train a few conscientious objectors was rejected by the board. The 

library boasts a strong Quaker collection. More than 700 students are enrolled 

in the college’s law school. 

William Penn has had at least two presidents who actively promoted 

the peace testimony. Benjamin Trueblood, an early president, was secretary 

of the American Peace Society and editor of The Advocate of Peace. In 

World War II, Cecil Hinshaw encouraged students to refuse to register for 

the draft rather than register as conscientious objectors. Hinshaw envisioned 

“a thoroughly Quaker college attempting to bring together strong 

academics and activist concern for the ills and inequities of our society.” 

Wilmington, with nearby Earlham, affirms its Quaker roots by using 

given names rather than formal titles for members of the college community. 

Founder John Henry Douglas was first general secretary of the Peace 

Association of Friends. The second president, Benjamin Trueblood, was 

also a peace activist. One president was a conscientious objector during 

World War II. Another refused to register for the postwar draft. Wilmington 

has had no ROTC or military recruitment on campus and refuses 

grants that require loyalty oaths. Its students were far more active in opposing 

the Vietnam War than those at most Ohio colleges and universities. 

The Wilmington College Peace Resource Center houses source materials 

relating to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and hosts 

an annual Westheimer Peace Symposium. 

A COMMON, IF DIVERSE, HERITAGE 

A Quaker heritage continues to be of interest both at schools with an 

Evangelical faith that seeks to integrate traditional faith, learning, and living, 

and at schools with a secular vision that honors the sovereignty of the 

individual and challenges students to pursue “general principles of welldoing.” 

At schools in the Holiness tradition, protecting “purity” remains, if 

with less emphasis than in earlier years. This more than any other characteristic 

sets these schools apart. To Walter Malone, purity of heart, 

mind, and body was intimately tied to a sacredness akin to Thomas Merton’s 

vision of Christ incarnate in the Eucharist: “Heaven is right here in 

front of me.” To Malone, Christ was incarnate in each person. At best, 

such see physical intimacy as holy mystery. At worst, the tradition reduces 

purity to a chilling legalism. This vision explains their affirmation 

of the oneness of humankind that supersedes race or gender and their 

witness to nonviolence. The balance survives when these schools give as 

much attention to social service and reverence for life after birth as to 

sexual purity.


At schools in the liberal tradition, advocacy for autonomy and human 

rights remains strong. The fusion of “modern thought” and academic excellence 

with Quaker social teachings—especially nonviolence—in the 

twentieth century helped bridge the gap between a sectarian religious 

movement and American culture. Liberal Quaker schools commonly focus 

on educating students for leadership, championing social justice, and retaining 

strong programs in liberal arts. At their best, they provide a moral 

dimension to progressive movements that at times stand apart from traditional 

religion. 

The peace tradition best represents a common heritage for Quaker-born 

schools. It resonates at theologically conservative schools, like George 

Fox, concerned about “obedience to God,” and at theologically liberal 

ones, like Haverford, committed to simply “well-doing.” It reconnects 

both traditions with early Friends. Historian Jerry Frost concludes, “If 

there is a common denominator” that underlies the peace witness of seventeenth-century 

Friends, it is “a call to total obedience to God regardless 

of consequences” and a “gospel [that] demanded that Christians have 

love of enemy and be redeemed from the causes of war.” If in recent years 

the peace witness has been taken more seriously at liberal schools than at 

conservative ones, like Malone, the reasons are to be found in the chapters 

in this book. 

Finally, in this millennium, a task of higher education is to challenge 

students to think about how to fashion a just and safer world. If the old 

double standard—negotiate with strong opponents and crush weak 

ones—will no longer do as advancing technology promises to empower 

the weak to retaliate, this volume invites readers to note how Quaker 

schools integrate ethics and education. As science and technology level 

the playing field, will religions that reverence life and pragmatism find 

common ground, or will religions that support killing carry the day? I am 

personally persuaded that Brandeis professor Morrie Schwartz was right 

to conclude that we must be educated to love one another or die; that is, 

our humanity—and our presence in the universe—will perish. 

This volume invites us to learn from the Quaker-Holiness tradition 

about old, if neglected, ways to think and live, and from the liberal tradition 

about new ways to relate while seeking honor and learning from the 

past. The contributors dare to hope that institutions with traditions that 

honor service, gentleness, excellence, reform, and academic freedom will 

advance the dialogue about how to think, work, serve, and live in a world 

of unprecedented danger and unparalleled promise.

academic freedom: Bryn Mawr and, 

153; Earlham and, 49–51 

academics: at Barclay, 260; at George 

Fox, 164, 176; at Swarthmore, 

64–65; at William Penn, 120–21 

accreditation: Azusa Pacific and, 247; 

Barclay and, 259–61; Friends 

University and, 230–31; George Fox 

and, 173; Whittier and, 189, 198; 

William Penn and, 115, 118–19 

Adams, Herbert Baxter, 133, 141 

administration: at George Fox, 166; at 

Malone, 213, 216 

adult education: at Guilford, 35–36; at 

William Penn, 120–22 

African Americans. See race issues 

Agassiz, Louis, 47 

agriculture: Cornell and, 75–76; 

Wilmington and, 102–3 

Albertson, Benjamin H., 254 

American Civil Liberties Union, 98 

American Friends Service Committee, 

8, 51, 193 

American Legion, 98 

Ames, Joseph Sweetman, 142 

Amick, Carl C., 257 

Anderson, Maxwell, 194 

Index 

273 

Anderson, Paul, 163–85 

Anderson Monthly Meeting, 49 

Andrews, Benjamin F., 115 

Angell, James B., 130, 137 

Ankeny, Becky, 180 

Ankeny, Harlow, 172 

Ankeny, Mark, 172 

Anthony, Susan B., 84 

antislavery stance, xix, 22; Cornell 

and, 73–74, 76, 85; Haverford and, 

5; Malone and, 207 

Archdale, John, 29 

Arlington College, 247 

Aronson, Joe and Penny, 97 

arts: at George Fox, 173; at Guilford, 

25–26; at Haverford, 6–7, 17; at 

Wilmington, 95–96 

Asensio, Elisa, 13 

Ashley, Don, 248 

Association of Evangelical Friends, 

171 

athletics: at Earlham, 48, 55; at George 

Fox, 172–73, 182; at Guilford, 26, 30; 

at Haverford, 7–8; at Malone, 207, 

217; at Swarthmore, 61–62; at 

Whittier, 189–90; at William Penn, 

111, 119–20

274 Index 

Atkinson, Matilda, 244, 250 

Atlee, Clement, 97 

Aydelotte, Frank, 62, 65 

Azusa Pacific University, 241–51, 267; 

campus of, 243; enrollment of, 218, 

243, 247–48; faculty of, 242, 245; 

finances of, 246, 248; governance of, 

245–49; name of, 248; values of, 249 

Bacon, Margaret, 207 

Bailey, Jackson, 54 

Baker, Robin, 179 

Ball, Charles, 117–19, 258 

Baltimore Yearly Meeting, 57, 153 

Barclay College, 253–63, 267–68; 

campus of, 255–57, 259, 259f, 261; 

enrollment at, 257, 259, 261; faculty 

of, 257; finances of, 260; founding 

of, xvi; governance of, 256; mission 

of, 262; name of, 257 

Barnard, Eunice, 69–71 

Barton, George, 158 

Bascom, Florence, 137 

basketball: at Earlham, 55; at Whittier, 

189–90; at Wilmington, 107 

Batiuk, Tom, 107 

Beals, Charles A., 257–58 

Beard, John, 23 

Beaux, Cecilia, 7 

Bedford, Henry C., 115 

Beebe, Gayle, 248 

Beebe, Jeremiah S., 71, 73 

Beebe, Ralph, 167, 173 

Beecher, Catharine, 84 

Belluschi, Pietro, 177 

Bible colleges, xvi; Barclay as, 254; 

Malone as, 204–10; Pacific, 246–47 

Bible studies: critical, xv, xvi, 50, 171, 

208; at Friends, 230; at George Fox, 

166; at Guilford, 32 

Bible Training School Association, 256 

Binder, Edward O., 257 

Binford, Bevan, 226 

Binford, Helen Titsworth, 34 

Binford, Raymond, 32–33, 231 

Birdsall, William W., xvii 

boarding schools, xiii; Friends, 45–46; 

New Garden, 21–22, 24–26 

board of trustees. See governance 

Bolling, Landrum, 53 

Bond, Elizabeth Powell, 60–61 

Bond, Julian, 102 

Boone, Wilton R., 235 

Borton, Hugh, 14–15 

Bowman, Isaiah, 138, 142 

Boyd, Thomas, 122 

Brandt, Dave, 164, 179–82, 184 

Brandt, Melva, 180 

Bridges, Norman, 260 

Bright, John, 226 

Brinton, Anna, 51 

Brinton, Howard, 14, 32, 51 

Broadoaks School, 198 

Brody, William R., 144 

Bronk, Detlev Wulf, 143 

Brown, John, 224 

Brown, Nathan, 254 

Brown, Stanley, 260 

Brown, T. Wistar, 10 

Bryan, William Jennings, 224, 230 

Bryn Mawr College, 147–62, 268; 

campus of, 154f, 155, 156f; 

enrollment at, 153, 157; faculty of, 

152–53; finances of, 155; founding 

of, xvi, 147–51; governance of, 

148–50, 154–56, 161; and Haverford, 

16–17, 147, 158–59 

Buchanan, James, 77 

Buck, Pearl, 97 

Bunche, Ralph, 95 

business practices: at Earlham, 52–53; 

at George Fox, 165 

Cadbury, Henry J., xx, 9, 50 

Caldicott, Helen, 102 

California Yearly Meeting, 188, 241, 

244–46 

Calvinism, Malone and, 210 

Cammack, Irvin H., 241, 243f–244f 

Campolo, Tony, 231 

campus culture. See student life 

Carey, Gervas, 172

Carnegie, Andrew, 31 

Carnegie Foundation, 62, 156 

Carter, Ray L., 245 

Cartland, Joseph, 4 

Carver, George Washington, 235 

Carvill, William, 3 

Casado, Louis, 232 

Cattell, Everett, 212, 214 

CCCU. See Council for Christian 

Colleges and Universities 

Cedar Grove Meeting, 109 

Chabotar, Kent, 40 

Chandler, Maurice, 261 

chapel. See religious services 

Chapman College, 195 

Chase, Thomas, 6 

Chehalem Monthly Meeting, 167 

Cheney, James, 105 

Christian colleges, xi; Malone as, 

203–21 

Christian Workers Training School, 

204–5. See also Malone College 

Chuen, Hsie-Ta, 234 

Civilian Public Service, 52, 64 

civil rights movement, xx; Earlham 

and, 54; Malone and, 211; 

Wilmington and, 105 

Civil War: and Cornell, 77–78; and 

Guilford, 26–27; and Haverford, 5; 

and higher education, x; and 

Hopkins, 132; Johns Hopkins and, 

127; and William Penn, 110 

Clark, Dougan, 23, 50 

Clark, Roy, 174, 258, 260 

Clark, Scott T., 257 

Clay, Henry, 74, 76 

coeducation, xx; Cornell and, 79, 

82–87; Guilford and, 25–26, 30–31; 

Haverford and, 5, 16–17; 

Swarthmore and, 58–59; 

Wilmington and, 94. See also 

women 

Coffin, Elijah, 45–46 

Coffin, Elisha, 23 

Coffin, J. Hershel, 193–94 

Coffin, Levi, 207 

Index 275 

Coffin, T. Eugene, 247 

Coffin, Zacharias, 23 

Cold War: and Bryn Mawr, 160–61; 

and Earlham, 53; and Malone, 212 

Coleman, John Royston, 15–17 

College Avenue Friends Meeting, 112 

Collett, Wallace, 106 

Collins, Judy, 97 

Comfort, William Wistar, 10–11 

community relations: Guilford and, 34; 

Hopkins and, 136; William Penn 

and, 114, 117–18; Wilmington and, 

96–97, 100–101 

conscientious objectors: Guilford and, 

34; Whittier and, 195; Wilmington 

and, 104 

conscription. See draft 

Cook, Charles Chaveau, 87 

Cope, Thomas P., 2 

Cope, Walter, 155 

Coppock, Alvin, 256 

Cornell, Alonzo B., 72, 77 

Cornell, Elijah, 69–71 

Cornell, Ezra, 69–78, 70f, 85, 87–88, 266 

Cornell, Lucretia, 72 

Cornell, Mary Ann Wood, 72, 77, 83 

Cornell University, 69–90; campus of, 

80f; charter of, 69, 81, 84, 89n28; 

founding of, 78–81; opening of, 

87–88 

Cortland Academy, 83 

Council for Christian Colleges and 

Universities (CCCU), 203, 214–15, 

218 

Cox, Dea, 165 

Cox, Elizabeth, 26 

Cox, Isham, 26 

Cox, John, 26 

critical Bible study, xv, xvi; Earlham 

and, 50; George Fox and, 171; 

Malone and, 208 

Cuba Yearly Meeting, 36 

curriculum: of Azusa Pacific, 249–50; 

of Barclay, 259–60; of Cornell, 

79–80; of Earlham, 46; of Guilford, 

27, 33, 36, 40; of Haverford, 1; of

276 Index 

Whittier, 192–94, 196–97, 199–200; 

of William Penn, 111, 115, 118, 122 

Dana, Charles, 35 

dancing: at Earlham, 49; at Guilford, 

25–26, 34; at Haverford, 6; at 

Malone, 208, 211–12, 220 

Darwin, Charles, 47. See also evolution 

Datcher, Jane Eleanor, 87 

dating: Azusa Pacific and, 245; 

Earlham and, 54; George Fox and, 

166; Malone and, 210 

Davidson, Warburton, 234 

Davis, Anna T., 225, 268 

Davis, Isaac, 3 

Davis, J. Franklin, 30 

Davis, James M., 225–26, 228, 237, 268 

Debs, Eugene V., 224 

decision-making practices: at Earlham, 

53; at George Fox, 165, 179; at 

Haverford, 13; at Whittier, 193, 199; 

at William Penn, 116; at 

Wilmington, 94 

Defferding, Vicky, 180 

de Hartog, Jan, 196 

Dennis, David Worth, 229 

Dennis, William C., 49, 51–52 

Densmore, Christopher, 57–68 

DeShields, Andre, 95 

DeVol, Mary Isabella, 219 

Dewey, John, 160 

DiBiasio, Daniel, 91 

Dickinson, Sally Norris, 2 

Dicks, Peter, 23 

distance learning, Barclay and, 262 

Dixon, William, 244 

dormitories: at Whittier, 196; at 

William Penn, 120; at Wilmington, 

93 

Douglas, John Henry, 91, 205, 271 

Douglass, Frederick, 85 

draft: Azusa Pacific and, 250; Earlham 

and, 53–54; Haverford and, 15; 

Malone and, 209; William Penn 

and, 116; Wilmington and, 99 

drama: at Barclay, 257; at Malone, 208, 

211–12 

Draper, Anna, 244, 244f 

dress: at Earlham, 46, 55; at Guilford, 

37–38; at Haverford, 7, 14–15; at 

Malone, 208, 210, 215; at 

Swarthmore, 58 

drinking: at George Fox, 166; at 

Guilford, 38; Johns Hopkins and, 

126–27; at Wilmington, 94 

Driscole, Charles B., 229 

Du Bois, W. E. B., 207 

Earlham College, 43–56, 268; 

enrollment at, 52; faculty of, 45–47, 

51–53; finances of, 47; founding of, 

xv, 43–44; governance of, xix; 

values of, 45–46; and William Penn, 

112 

Eastman, Emma Sheffield, 84 

Eddy, Otis, 71 

Edie, George I., 258 

Edmundson, William, 21 

Edwards, Alma T., 32 

Edwards, David M., xvii, 49, 51, 

111–12 

Edwards, Jesse, 168, 180 

Edwards, president, 231 

Eisenhower, Milton Stover, 143–44 

Eliot, Charles W., 130, 135, 137 

Elliott, Erroll, 115–16 

Engst, Elaine D., 69–90, 266 

Erickson, Gwen Gosney, 21–42 

Evangelical Friends Church–Mid 

America Yearly Meeting, 237 

Evangelical Friends International, 171 

evangelicalism: and Azusa Pacific, 

245–46; and Malone, 213–14 

evolution: Earlham and, 47–48, 50–51; 

Friends University and, 229–30; 

Hopkins and, 136; Malone and, 

209–10 

faculty: at Azusa Pacific, 242, 245; at 

Barclay, 257; at Bryn Mawr, 152–53; 

at Earlham, 45–47, 51–53; at Friends 

University, 225–26, 235; at George 

Fox, 166, 171, 173, 177, 179–83; at 

Guilford, 37, 40; at Haverford, 8–9,

11, 18; at Hopkins, 130–34, 141, 

143–44; at Malone, 208, 212–14, 

216–17; at Whittier, 193, 195–96, 

199; at William Penn, 111, 114 

Fairbanks, Joseph, 187–201 

Fairmont College, 237 

Farr, Wendell, 118 

Fawver, Gary, 174 

Felix, Richard, 227, 249, 260 

Fendall, Lon, 165 

Fenton, Reuben F., 69, 79, 82 

Fiedler, Arthur, 260 

Fields, George Washington, 87 

Fillmore, Millard, 77 

financial issues, xviii; Azusa Pacific 

and, 246, 248; Barclay and, 260; 

Bryn Mawr and, 155; Earlham and, 

47; Friends University and, 238; 

George Fox and, 168–73, 176, 180, 

182; Guilford and, 26, 31–33, 35, 37, 

40; Haverford and, 2, 4, 13; 

Hopkins and, 133, 138; Malone and, 

214; Whittier and, 187, 190, 192–94, 

199; William Penn and, 114–15, 117, 

119–20, 122 

Fleming, Sophie Phillipa, 84 

Fonerden, John, 129 

football: at Earlham, 48, 55; at 

Guilford, 26; at Haverford, 8; at 

Malone, 207; at Swarthmore, 61–62; 

at Whittier, 189 

Foreman, Madeline Clark, 116 

Foster, Richard, 231 

Fox, George, xii, 21, 179, 185 

Fox University. See George Fox 

University 

Frame, Esther, 205, 255 

Frame, Nathan, 255 

Francisco, Lucy, 226 

Franklin, John Hope, 103 

fraternities. See Greek organizations 

Frazier, Herb, 261 

Fremont, John C., 77 

Friends. See Quakers 

Friends Association for Higher 

Education, ix, 39–40 

Friends Boarding School, 45–46 

Index 277 

Friends’ Central School Association, 1. 

See also Haverford College 

Friends Council on Education, 66 

Friends Educational Association, 58 

Friends Pacific Academy, 167–68. See 

also George Fox University 

Friends School at New Garden, 28, 28f. 

See also Guilford College 

Friends United Meeting, 33, 171 

Friends University, 223–39, 268–69; 

campus of, 224, 228, 231, 236f–37f; 

enrollment at, 228–29, 231, 235; 

faculty of, 225–26, 235; finances of, 

238; founding of, xvi; governance 

of, 225, 230; name of, 226; values of, 

238 

Frost, J. William, 61 

Gara, Larry, 91–108 

Gara, Lenna Mae, 102 

Garfield University, 225, 227–28 

Garner, Murvel, 51 

Garrett, John Work, 127 

Garrett, Mary Elizabeth, 139, 155–56 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 85 

Garvin family, 91–92 

gay and lesbian issues, at Earlham, 

55–56 

Geib, John David, 216, 217–18, 220, 221 

gender issues. See coeducation; 

women 

George Fox University, 163–85, 269; 

campus of, 168, 174, 176, 177f; 

enrollment of, 163–64, 174–75, 179, 

218; faculty of, 166, 171, 173, 177, 

179–83; finances of, 168–73, 176, 

180, 182; founding of, xvi; 

governance of, 165, 173–74, 179; 

logo of, 178–79, 182; name of, 

172–73; values of, 165–68, 177–78 

Gildersleeve, Basil Lanneau, 132 

Gilman, Daniel Coit, 130–31, 134–37, 

140–41, 144, 148–49, 161 

Glanzer, Jules, 180 

Goodman, Andrew, 105 

Goodnow, Frank Johnson, 142 

Gordon, Lela, 257

278 Index 

Gordon, Lincoln, 143–44 

Gottschalk, G. Richard, 103 

governance: of Azusa Pacific, 245–49; 

of Barclay, 256; of Bryn Mawr, 

148–50, 154–56, 161; of Earlham, 

xix; of Friends University, 225, 230; 

of George Fox, 165, 173–74, 179; of 

Guilford, 23–24, 29–31, 39; of 

Hopkins, 129–31; of Malone, 211; 

patterns of, xvi–xvii; of 

Swarthmore, 62; of Whittier, xvii, 

188, 191–93, 196; of William Penn, 

120, 122. See also Quaker 

governance 

Grabill, Joseph, 213, 218 

graduate education: at Bryn Mawr, 

160; at Friends, 227; at George Fox, 

175–76, 179–80; at Haverford, 10; at 

Hopkins, 134, 144; at Whittier, 198 

Gray, Asa, 47–48 

Great Depression: and Barclay, 257; 

and George Fox, 172; and Whittier, 

193; and William Penn, 114 

Greek organizations, xviii; at Earlham, 

49; at Swarthmore, 61; at William 

Penn, 120; at Wilmington, 93 

Green, William, 175 

Greene, Rowland, 24 

Greensboro Evening College, 35 

Gregorian, Vartan, 220 

Gregory, Levi, 241 

Griffith, Charles, 117 

Gross, Ellen, 95 

guarded education, xiii, xv, 265–66; 

Earlham and, 45; Friends 

University and, 236–37; Haverford 

and, 1; Swarthmore and, 58; 

Thomas on, 157; Whittier and, 192 

Guest, Ann, 2 

Guest, Elizabeth, 2 

Guilford College, 21–42, 269; campus 

of, 38, 38f; charter of, 29; enrollment 

at, 39, 41; faculty of, 37, 40; finances 

of, 26, 31–33, 35, 37, 40; founding 

of, xv, 22–23; future of, 41–42; 

governance of, 23–24, 29–31, 39; 

values of, 40–41 

Gulf War, Friends University and, 233 

Gulley, Emmett, 172 

Gulley, James, 254 

Gummere, John, 3 

Gummere, Samuel J., 5 

Gurney, Joseph John, xiv–xv, 24, 46–47, 

269 

Gurneyite Friends, xiv–xv, 1, 49–50 

Hackney, Priscilla Benbow, 30 

Hadley, Philena B., 241, 243f 

Haggard, Cornelius P., 247–48 

Haines, Mary, 150 

Hall, Jabez, 254 

Hall, Mark, 180 

Halliday, Robert, 98 

Hallowell, Benjamin, 57 

Hallowell, Norwood Penrose, 5 

Hamm, Thomas D., ix–xxi, 43–56, 83 

Harlan, Joseph, 4–5 

Harper, W. Rainey, 144 

Harrison, William Henry, 76 

Hartshorne, Henry, 150 

Hatfield, Mark O., 165, 176 

Haverford College, 1–20, 269–70; and 

Bryn Mawr, 16–17, 147, 158–59; 

campus of, 2–3, 6, 8f, 19–20; 

enrollment at, 20; faculty of, 8–9, 11, 

18; finances of, 2, 4, 13; founding of, 

xiv, xv; mission of, 1 

hazing: at Earlham, 48, 55; at 

Haverford, 7 

Heiland, Hugh G., 107 

Henley, Nixon, 23 

Hershey, Lewis B., 54 

Hicks, Bruce, 260 

Hicks, Elias, xiv 

Hicks, John D., 67–68 

Hicksite Friends, xiv–xvi, xix, 57, 59, 

63 

Hietala, David, 261 

Higgins, Malvina, 86 

higher education: Cornell and, 78; 

professionalization of, 65; Quaker 

views on, ix, xii–xv, 46, 149, 153, 

157, 192; secularization of, ix–x 

Hill, Daniel, 205–7

Hill, Mary A., 242–43, 243f 

Hill, Miriam Jane, 46 

Hilles, Samuel, 2–3 

Hinshaw, Cecil, xx, 116, 271 

Hinshaw, L. Clarkson, 256 

Hinshaw, Robert E., 101, 106 

Hiroshima collection, 101–2 

Hoag, Huldah C., 45–46 

Hobbs, Grimsley, 37 

Hobbs, Lewis Lyndon, xvii, 29–33 

Hobbs, Mary Mendenhall, 30–31, 38 

Hobson, William, 167 

Hodgin, Thomas, 23 

holiness movement, 49–50, 271; and 

Azusa Pacific, 245; and Friends 

University, 229; and Malone, 203–5, 

210–11 

Holmes, Earl, 223–39 

Holmes, Jesse Herman, 61 

homosexual issues, Earlham and, 

55–56 

Hoover, Andrew, Sr., 44 

Hoover, David, 44 

Hoover, Herbert, 95, 167, 169f, 172 

Hoover, Lou Henry, 196 

Hopkins, Elizabeth, 126 

Hopkins, Gerard, 125–26 

Hopkins, Johns, 125–29, 128f, 144–45, 

148, 267 

Hopkins University. See Johns 

Hopkins University 

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz, xviii 

Hotchkiss, Willis, 209 

Hubbard, Jeremiah, 23 

Hull, William I., 61 

Hunt, Nathan, 23–24 

Hunt, Thomas T., 23 

Huntington Park Evangelistic 

Tabernacle, 246 

Hutton, Addison, 6 

Huxley, Thomas, 135–36 

Indiana Yearly Meeting, xvii, 45–47, 

56 

in loco parentis: Guilford and, 37–38; 

Malone and, 214; Wilmington and, 

93 

Index 279 

interdisciplinary studies, at Whittier, 

197 

international students: Cornell and, 87; 


Guilford and, 36; Haverford and, 7; 

Hopkins and, 141; Whittier and, 

189; Wilmington and, 97, 104–5 

Iowa Union College Association of 

Friends, 110. See also William Penn 

University 

Iraq War: Earlham and, 54; Malone 

and, 217; Wilmington and, 99f 

Ithaca, New York, 71–74 

Jackson, Sheldon, 241–51, 257–59, 261 

Japanese American students: Earlham 

and, 51–52; Friends University and, 

233; Guilford and, 34; Swarthmore 

and, 64; Wilmington and, 96–97 

Jay, Allen, 31 

Jeanes, Anna T., 61 

Jewish faculty, Malone and, 217 

Jewish students: Haverford and, 12; 

Hopkins and, 138 

John Bright University, 224 

Johns Hopkins Hospital, 129, 139 

Johns Hopkins University, 125–46, 

266–67; and Bryn Mawr, 148, 

151–53; campus of, 135, 139–40, 

140f; enrollment at, 141–42; faculty 

of, 130–34, 141, 143–44; finances of, 

133, 138; founding of, 129–35; 

governance of, 129–31; name of, 

145n9 

Johnson, Charles and Albert, 111 

Johnson, Ronald, 216 

Johnson, Sandra, 218 

Johnson, Tom, 179–80 

Johnston, Robin, 260–61 

Jones, James Parnell, 5 

Jones, Joseph, 4 

Jones, Rufus Matthew, xv, 5, 8–10, 50, 

230 

Jones, Tom, 52–53, 231 

Kansas Central Bible Training School, 

256

280 Index 

Kansas Yearly Meeting, xvii, 223, 225, 

237 

Kelly, Robert L., 50 

Kelly, Thomas R., 51 

Kelsey, W. Irving, 168–69 

Kemp, A. K., 254 

Kent State killings, 100 

Kessinger, Tom G., 18–19 

Keyser, William, 140 

Kiley, Anne, 187–201 

Kimberly, Dwight, 180 

King, Charles, 214 

King, Elizabeth, 150 

King, Francis T., 27–29, 148–49 

King, Lauren, 220 

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 15, 212 

Kirby, William, 245–46 

Kissick, Perry, 51 

Knight, Roy, 258 

Knowlton, Cora, 255 

Know-Nothing Party, 76 

Korean War, Friends University and, 233 

Kornfield, Carol, 105 

Kristol, William, 54 

Kumatsu, Regno, 234 

Ladd, Christine, 137 

La Follette, Robert, 230 

Lattimore, Owen, 143 

Lebanon National Normal University, 

94 

Lenard, Larry, 250n2 

Leppert, Glenn W., 253–63 

LeShana, David, 174, 178 

LeShana, Jim, 248 

Lewelling family, 167 

Lewis, Edward S., 138 

liberal education, 271–72; Earlham 

and, 54; Friends University and, 

227; Haverford and, 1; Wilmington 

and, 95 

libraries: at Azusa Pacific, 247; at 

Haverford, 3; at Hopkins, 135; at 

Swarthmore, 61; at Whittier, 196, 199 

Lilly, Eli, 52 

Lilly Endowment, 39, 120 

Lincoln, Abraham, 5, 77 

Lindberg, David, 214 

literary societies: at Earlham, 49; at 

Friends, 226; at Guilford, 26; at 

Haverford, 3; at Swarthmore, 61; at 

William Penn, 111 

Los Angeles Pacific College, 247 

Lucas, Robert E., 102, 107 

Macy, Henry, 23 

Magill, Edward, 59 

Magill, Helen, 59 

Mains, Karen, 231 

Makefield Monthly Meeting, xiii–xiv 

Malone, Emma Brown, 204, 204f, 205, 

206f, 207–10, 218–20 

Malone, John Walter, 204–6, 206f, 

207–10, 218–20 

Malone College, 203–21, 270; campus 

of, 209–10, 215, 217; enrollment at, 

214, 216–18; faculty of, 208, 212–14, 

216–17; finances of, 214; founding 

of, xvi; governance of, 211 

Marble, Samuel, 95, 97 

Markle, Millard, 51 

Marsh, Elizabeth Marie, 10 

Marshburn, Frank, 247 

Marshburn, William V., 243, 247 

Martin, Evangeline, 169 

Martin, Henry Newell, 133 

Maxwell, Robert “Tiny,” 61 

May, Samuel Joseph, 83, 85–86 

McBride, Katharine, 160–61 

McCarthy, Colman, 102 

McCarthyism: and Earlham, 53; and 

Hopkins, 143; and Malone, 212 

McCracken, Linneaus, 114 

McGovern, George, 102 

McGrew, Henry Edwin, 114–15, 168 

McLaughlin, George A., 250n2 

McMinn, Mark, 177 

McNemar, Donald, 40 

McNichols, Donald, 172 

McNiel, Glenn, 248 

Medema, Ken, 231 

Mendenhall, Gertrude W., 30 

Mendenhall, Mary E., 30–31, 38 

Mendenhall, Nereus, 26

Mendenhall, Orianna, 26 

Mendenhall, W. Orville, 195 

Mendenhall, William O., 227, 230, 232, 

234 

Merton, Thomas, 218, 271 

Miles, Walter, 169–70 

military training: Earlham and, 51; 


George Fox and, 170; Guilford and, 

34; Malone and, 211–12; Swarthmore 

and, 64; Whittier and, 195; 

Wilmington and, 96 

Millage, Don, 173–74 

Miller, Kelly, 138 

Mills, John, 170 

Mills, Joseph John, 50 

Mills, Mary, 93 

Mills, Paul, 172 

Milner, Clyde, 33–35 

Milner, Ernestine, 33–34 

Minthorn, Henry J. and Laura E., 167, 

183 

Minton, Dale, 100 

mission. See values 

missions: Azusa Pacific and, 242–45, 

248–49; Barclay and, 261 

Mitchell, Broadus, 138 

Mitchell, Maria, 84 

Mitchell, Wanda, 260 

Mitchell, William F., 4 

modernism, xviii; Malone and, 208 

Moody, Dwight L., 205 

Moody, Walter, 261 

Moon, Oscar, 229–30 

Moore, Benjamin, 126 

Moore, Joseph, 29, 47–48 

Moore, Lindley Murray, 4 

Morgan, William, 110 

Morley, Christopher, 9 

Morley, Felix, 9, 11–13 

Morley, Frank, 9 

Morrill Land Grant College Act, 79, 130 

Morse, Samuel F. B., 74 

Mott, Bernard, 257 

Mott, Edward, 171 

Mott, James, xvi, 58 

Mott, Lucretia, xvi, 58 

Index 281 

Mount Holyoke, 148 

Muller, Steven, 144 

Murray, Tamsen, 241–51 

music: at Barclay, 257–58, 258f, 260; at 

George Fox, 172; at Guilford, 34; at 

Haverford, 6; at Swarthmore, 61; at 

Wilmington, 95 

Mylander, Charles, 248 

Nagasaki collection, 101–2 

Nash, Lee, 165, 174, 177 

Nason, John, 63–64 

Nebraska Central College, 119 

Nemerov, Howard, 215 

Newberg Friends Church, 167–68 

New Garden Boarding School, 21–22, 

24–26. See also Guilford College 

Newlin, Thomas, 32, 168, 193 

Nicholson, S. Edgar, 51 

Nicholson, Timothy, 4 

Nitobe, Inazo, 141 

Nivison, Samantha, 78 

Nixon, Phineas, Jr., 23 

Nixon, Richard, 16, 196 

Noether, Emmy, 160 

nonsectarianism: Barclay and, 256; Bryn 

Mawr and, 149–50, 152; Cornell and, 

79, 81–82; Hopkins and, 136–37; 

Swarthmore and, 62 

nonviolence. See peace testimony 

North Carolina Yearly Meeting, xvii, 

21–22, 24–25, 27–28, 32 

Northwest Yearly Meeting, 165, 174 

O’Brien, Adelaide Marie, 229 

Oliver, John W., Jr., 203–21, 265–72 

Olmsted, Sterling, 91, 107 

Olson, Dayton, 233 

Oregon Yearly Meeting, 168, 172 

Orthodox Friends, xiv, xv; and Bryn 

Mawr, 147; and Earlham, 43; and 

Guilford, 23–24; and Haverford, 2 

Osborne, Byron, 204, 209–12, 215, 

219–20 

Oskaloosa Monthly Meeting, 109–10, 

116 

Otis, Katherine Romig, 169

282 Index 

Pacific Bible College, 246–47 

Pacific College, 167–69. See also George 

Fox University 

Paine, Thomas, xiv 

Park, Marian Edwards, 158 

Parker, Paul, 172 

Parrish, Edward, 58–59 

Parrish, Maxfield, 9, 17 

Parsons, David H., 37 

pastoral training, xvi; Azusa Pacific 

and, 241–42; Barclay and, 255–56, 

260–61; Earlham and, 50, 53; 

Guilford and, 31–32; William Penn 

and, 118 

Paul, John, 2 

Peabody, George, 128, 135 

Peace Corps, Wilmington and, 102 

peace studies programs/centers: at 

Earlham, 54; at George Fox, 165; at 

Haverford, 18–19; at Swarthmore, 

61; at Wilmington, 101–3 

peace testimony, xx, 272; Azusa Pacific 

and, 250; Earlham and, 53–54, 55f; 


George Fox and, 170; Guilford and, 

34; Haverford and, 9, 269–70; 

Malone and, 205–7, 209–10, 217–18; 

Whittier and, 194–95; Wilmington 

and, 96–100, 103–4, 106–7 

Pearson, W. L., 230 

Peasley family, 117 

Penn, William, xiii, 69 

Penn Academy, 111 

Penn College. See William Penn 

University 

Pennington, Levi T., 169f, 170, 231 

Perisho, Elwood C., 30 

Perkins, John, 174 

Perley, Jim, 217 

Peterson, Diana Franzusoff, 1–20 

Petty, Mary M., 23, 30 

Phenix, Philip H., 197 

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 10, 66 

Phillips, Wendell, 85 

Pickering, Aquilla, 187 

Pickett, Clarence, 51 

Pickett, Jeremiah, 23 

Pickett, Theodate, 254 

Pinkham, Bertha, 244 

Pinkham, William, 208, 244 

Pitter, Osmond, 7 

Pitts, Lindley, 254 

Politz, Charles, 179 

Polk, James K., 74 

Pollard, Evangeline, 225 

prison program, Wilmington and, 105 

Project Talents, 105 

Pumroy, Eric, 147–62 

Purdy, Alexander C., 50–51 

Pyle, H. Randolph, 115 

Quaker colleges, ix–xxi, 265–72; 

characteristics of, xix–xxi, 165–66; 

context of, ix–xii; continuity and 

change in, 267–71; development 

patterns of, xviii–xix; founding and 

constituencies of, xv–xviii, 265–67; 

heritage of, 271–72; relationships of, 

xvii–xviii; yearly meetings and, 

xvii, xix 

Quaker governance, xvii, xix; and 

Azusa Pacific, 245–49; and Barclay, 

256; and Bryn Mawr, 149–50, 156, 

161; and Earlham, 47; and Friends 

University, 225; and George Fox, 

165; and Guilford, 29–30; and 

Haverford, 10; and Hopkins, 129; 

and Swarthmore, 62–63; and 

Whittier, 191–93; and Wilmington, 

92 

Quaker identity, xi, 271–72; Azusa 

Pacific and, 250; Bryn Mawr and, 

156, 158–59; Earlham and, 43, 

52–53; Friends University and, 225, 

228–29, 235–36; George Fox and, 

163–64, 178, 183; Guilford and, 

38–41; Malone and, 219; 

Swarthmore and, 59–60, 65, 67; 

Whittier and, 188; William Penn 

and, 116, 121–23 

Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, 

39–40 

Quakers: characteristics of, 3–4, 48; 

demographics of, xi–xii; and Ezra

Cornell, 72–73; Great Migration of, 

44, 109, 167, 223; and higher 

education, ix, xii–xv, 46, 149, 153, 

157, 192; and Johns Hopkins, 126; 

in North Carolina, 21–22; splits 

among, xiv–xv 

race issues, xix–xx; Cornell and, 79, 

82–87; Earlham and, 53–54; Friends 

University and, 233–35; George Fox 

and, 181; Guilford and, 36, 40; 

Haverford and, 7, 12–13, 16; 

Hopkins and, 129, 137–38; Malone 

and, 211, 213; Swarthmore and, 

65–66; Whittier and, 188–89; 

William Penn and, 116; Wilmington 

and, 104–5 

railroads, Hopkins and, 127, 139 

Ramsey, Bob, 248 

Randall, Lon, 214–16 

Rawson, David, 214 

Read, Herbert, 103 

Read, James M., 93, 97, 102–4 

reconstruction work: Earlham and, 51; 

Haverford and, 11–12, 12f; Whittier 

and, 194 

Reed, Lowell, 143 

Reeve, Juliet, 232, 234 

Reid, De Augustine, 13 

religious services: at Bryn Mawr, 

157–58; at Earlham, 55; at Friends, 

229, 231, 233; at George Fox, 166; at 

Guilford, 38; at Hopkins, 136; at 

Malone, 214–15, 217; at 

Swarthmore, 60, 60f; at Whittier, 

193; at William Penn, 110; at 


Remsen, Ira, 133, 142 

Republican Party, Cornell and, 76–77 

research, Hopkins and, 132, 142–44 

Reserve Officer Training Corps 

(ROTC): Friends University and, 

233; George Fox and, 170; Guilford 

and, 34. See also military training 

Reynolds, Barbara, 101–2 

Rhoads, James, 151, 153–55, 157–58, 

160 

Index 283 

Rhodes, James, 100 

Richards, Jonathan, 4 

Richards, Theodore, 6 

Richardson, William C., 144 

Riley, Naomi Schaefer, 203 

Riordan, Marsha, 109–23 

Roberts, Arthur O., 165, 173 

Roberts, Charles, 5 

Rockefeller, John D., 155 

Rogers, William, 39 

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 97 

Root, Merrill, 51, 53 

Rose Hills Foundation, 199 

Rosenberger, Absalom, 110–11, 192 

Ross, Milo, 173–74 

ROTC. See Reserve Officer Training 

Corps 

Rowland, Henry Augustus, 132 

Rowntree, John Wilhelm, 50 

Russell, Elbert, xv, 50, 230 

Russell, John, 23 

Sage, Henry W., 84 

Saint Mary of the Plains College, 262 

Sandburg, Carl, 97 

Sandy, Gary, 95 

Sartwell, Richard, 181 

Schultze, Donald, 119 

Schwartz, Morrie, 272 

Schwerner, Michael, 105 

Scott, David H., 245 

Sekulow, Jay, 218 

Selective Service. See draft 

select schools, xiii 

Self, Woody, 216–17 

Sells, Michael, 18 

seminaries, Earlham and, 53 

service work: at Azusa Pacific, 249–50; 

at George Fox, 164, 174–75, 184; at 

Malone, 205, 219; at Whittier, 198 

Shafer, Mildred, 258 

Sharpless, Isaac, 6–10 

Sibley, Hiram, 75 

Sine, Tom, 231 

Slater, Arthur, 106 

Sloan, Samuel, 6 

Smith, Daniel B., 3–4

284 Index 

Smith, F. O. J., 74 

Smith, Gerrit, 79, 85 

Smith, James Bryan, 231 

Smith, Joseph H., 241 

Smith, Paul, 196 

Smith, R. Esther, 243f, 245 

Smith College, 148 

smoking: at Earlham, 49; at George 

Fox, 166; at Guilford, 34; at Malone, 

213; at William Penn, 120 

social justice: Bryn Mawr and, 159–61; 

George Fox and, 169–70, 184; 

Wilmington and, 104–5 

Society of Friends. See Quakers 

sororities. See Greek organizations 

Southern Association of Colleges and 

Schools, 33 

Spencer, Carole, 207 

Spencer, Jennie, 84 

Spender, Stephen, 103 

sports. See athletics 

Spring Creek Meeting, 109 

Spring Creek Union College, 110. See 

also William Penn University 

Stafford, Thomas, 109 

Staley, Grant, 214 

Staley, Robert S., 260 

Stanley, Edmund, 226, 230, 234 

Stanley, Forester, 117 

Stanley, Joshua, 23 

Stark, Menzo, 95 

Steere, Douglas, 11 

Stevens, Ed, 175–76, 178–80 

Stevens, Robert Bocking, 17–18 

Stewardson, John, 155 

Stimpert, James, 125–46, 267 

student government: at Bryn Mawr, 

159–60; at George Fox, 183–84; at 

Guilford, 37; at Haverford, 6–7, 13, 

15; at William Penn, 120; at 


student life: at Barclay, 257; 

development of, x, xviii; at 

Earlham, 48, 48f, 49, 55; at Friends, 

226, 228; at George Fox, 166, 170; at 

Guilford, 30, 34, 37; at Haverford, 

6–7, 14, 17; at Malone, 208, 210–11; 

at Swarthmore, 61–62; at William 

Penn, 119; at Wilmington, 93–96 

student publications: at Earlham, 49; 

at Friends, 227; at George Fox, 182; 

at Guilford, 30; at Haverford, 7; at 

Malone, 212–13; at Swarthmore, 61; 

at William Penn, 111 

Styles, Albert F., 255 

Summit, E. Thaddeus, 224 

Swain, Joseph, 62, 65 

Swarthmore College, 57–68, 270; 

campus of, 58, 59f; enrollment at, 

66–67; founding of, xvi, 57–58; 

governance of, 62; mission of, 

66–68; name of, 58 

Sylvester, James Joseph, 132–33 

Tabor College, 262 

Takasaki, Koichi, 7 

tax resistance, Wilmington and, 99–100 

Taylor, Joseph, 19, 147–49, 152, 155 

teacher preparation: Barclay and, 

261–62; Bryn Mawr and, 160; 

Swarthmore and, 60; Whittier and, 

198; Wilmington and, 94–95 

Teagle Foundation, 120 

Templeton Foundation, 176 

theater: at Barclay, 257; at Malone, 208, 

211–12 

Thomas, James Carey, 129, 148–50, 

153–54, 205 

Thomas, John, 27 

Thomas, M. Carey, 151–59, 161 

Thomas, Mary Whitall, 150 

Thompson, Harold, 260 

Title IX, and Malone, 215 

Tolles, Frederick, 61, 187 

Training School for Christian Workers, 

241–42. See also Azusa Pacific 

University 

Tritton, Thomas R., 19–20 

Trueblood, Benjamin, 91, 96, 110–11, 

271 

Trueblood, Elton, 51–52, 262 

Trueblood, William P., 226 

trustees. See governance 

Turbeville, Gus, 121

Tyler, John, 76 

Tyson, Nathan and Martha, 57 

undergraduate education, at Hopkins, 

134 

United Nations, Wilmington and, 104 

Upton, Albert, 194 

values: of Azusa Pacific, 249; of 

Barclay, 262; of Earlham, 45–46; of 

Friends University, 238; of George 

Fox, 165–68, 177–78; of Guilford, 

40–41; of Haverford, 1; of 

Swarthmore, 66–68 

Vassar College, 83, 148 

Vaughn, Delbert, 260 

Vietnam War: Earlham and, 54; 

Friends University and, 233; 

Haverford and, 15–16; Malone 

and, 212, 215; Wilmington and, 

97–100 

Wagoner, John, 109–23 

Walkemeyer, Kent, 248 

Wallace, Jon R., 249 

Ware, Albert, 230 

Washington, Booker T., 207, 235 

Watson, S. Arthur, xvii, 96–97, 114–15, 

118–19 

Wellesley College, 148 

Werkema, Gordon, 215–16 

Wessner, James, 99 

West, Jessamyn, 196 

Western Conservative Baptist 

Seminary, 175 

Western Evangelical Seminary, 178 

Western Union, 75, 78 

Western Yearly Meeting, xvii, 49 

Westheimer, Charles and May, 102 

Wheaton Colelge, x–xi 

White, Andrew Dickson, 69, 78–81, 83, 

85–87, 130 

White, George, 32 

White, Gilbert, 13–14 

White, Julia S., 30 

Whitleaf Meeting, 193 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 4, 187, 196 

Index 285 

Whittier College, 187–201, 270; 

campus of, 189f, 190–91, 191f, 

195–96, 199; enrollment at, 190–91, 

195, 200; faculty of, 193, 195–96, 

199; finances of, 187, 190, 192–94, 

199; founding of, xvi; governance 

of, xvii, 188, 191–93, 196 

Wichita University, 237 

Wilbur, John, xv 

Wilburite Friends, xiv–xv 

Wildman, Ernest, 51 

Willard, Dallas, 231 

William Penn University, 109–23, 271; 

campus of, 110–16, 113f, 117, 121; 

enrollment at, 111, 119–20, 122; 

faculty of, 111, 114; finances of, 

114–15, 117, 119–20, 122; founding 

of, xvi, 109–12; governance of, 120, 

122 

Williams, John P., Sr., 219 

Wilmington College, 91–108, 271; 

campus of, 92, 92f; founding of, 

xvi; seizure of College Hall at, 

106–7 

Wilmington Friends Meeting, 94 

Wilmington Yearly Meeting, 92 

Wilson, Woodrow, 141–42 

Winslow, Randolph, 4 

Wistar, Isaac, 5 

Wistar, Thomas, 4 

Wofford, Harris, 161 

women: Azusa Pacific and, 250; Bryn 

Mawr and, 147–62; Earlham and, 

49; Guilford and, 23, 33–34; 

Haverford and, 11–12, 12f; Hopkins 

and, 137, 139; Malone and, 207–8, 

210, 215; Quakers and, xiii, xx; 

Whittier and, 188; William Penn 

and, 116. See also coeducation 

Wood, Benjamin, 72 

Wood, Mary Ann, 72, 77, 83 

Wood, Otis, 73 

Woodford, lieutenant governor, 82 

Woodward, Amanda, 169 

Woodward, Riley D., 254 

Woody, John W., 30, 110 

Woolman, John, 100

286 Index 

workers’ education movement, Bryn 

Mawr and, 160 

work-study programs: at Friends, 228; 

at Wilmington, 95–96 

World War I: and Friends University, 

232; and George Fox, 170; and 

Haverford, 9–11; and Swarthmore, 

63; and Whittier, 194; and William 

Penn, 112–14 

World War II: and Azusa Pacific, 250; 

and Bryn Mawr, 159; and Earlham, 

51–52; and Friends University, 232; 

and Guilford, 34; and Haverford, 

11–12; and Hopkins, 142; and 

Swarthmore, 63–64; and Whittier, 

195–96; and William Penn, 115–16; 

and Wilmington, 96–97 

Wright, Ellen, 93 

Wright, Frank Lloyd, 95 

Wyman, William, 140 

Young, W. A., 231–32, 258 

Young Men’s Christian Association, 

30

About the Contributors 

Paul Anderson is professor of biblical and Quaker studies at George Fox 

University, where he has served since 1989 except for a year as visiting 

professor at Yale Divinity School in 1998–1999. He edited Evangelical 

Friend (1990–1994) and is editor since 2000 of Quaker Religious Thought. He 

is coorganizer of Quaker Theological Discussion Group and assists the 

George Fox University Department of Religious Studies in sponsoring 

Quaker Heritage Week, now in its twenty-seventh year. His degrees are 

from Malone College (BA), the Earlham School of Religion (MDiv), and 

the University of Glasgow (PhD). He is the author of The Christology of the 

Fourth Gospel and in 1996 coedited with Howard Macy a collection of 

twenty-five essays in honor of Arthur Roberts titled Truth’s Bright Embrace. 

Caroline L. Cherry is professor of English at Eastern University and associate 

editor of Quaker History. In addition to essays on Quaker history 

and literature, she is author of The Most Unvalued’st Purchase: Women in the 

Plays of Thomas Middleton and coeditor of George Fox’s Legacy: Friends for 

350 Years. 

Charles L. Cherry is professor of English at Villanova University and, 

since 1991, editor of Quaker History. He is the author of A Quiet Haven: 

Quakers, Moral Treatment, and Asylum Reform as well as a variety of essays 

on literature and higher education. He recently edited, with Caroline 

Cherry and J. William Frost, a collection of essays by leading Quaker 

scholars titled George Fox’s Legacy: Friends for 350 Years. 

287

288 About the Contributors 

Christopher Densmore is curator of Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore 

College and serves on the boards of the Friends Historical Association, 

the Canadian Friends Historical Association, and the Conference of 

Quaker Historians and Archivists. He is the author of Red Jacket, Iroquois 

Orator and Diplomat, coauthor of Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years 

of the New York Yearly Meetings, and author of articles in Quaker History, 

The Canadian Quaker History Journal, and other publications. 

Elaine D. Engst is director of rare and manuscript collections in the Cornell 

University Library and also Cornell University archivist. She received 

a BA in history from William Smith College and an MA in history from 

Cornell University. She has been active in the archival profession, and in 

1996 the Society of American Archivists named her a fellow, the society’s 

highest form of recognition. 

Gwen Gosney Erickson is the Friends Historical Collection librarian and 

college archivist at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, 

where she has taught a course on the college’s history. In addition to graduate 

degrees in history and library studies from the University of North 

Carolina at Greensboro, she has a BA in history from Earlham College. 

Joseph Fairbanks received his PhD from the University of Arizona and 

taught American and English history at Whittier College from 1970 until 

his retirement in 1997. 

Larry Gara is a historian, teacher, and peace activist who lives in Wilmington, 

Ohio, where he is emeritus professor of history at Wilmington 

College. A member of Campus Friends Meeting, he served three and a 

half years in prison for war resistance during and after World War II. He 

is the author of six books, including A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of 

World War II Tell Their Stories, coedited with Lenna Mae Gara. 

Thomas D. Hamm received his PhD in history from Indiana University in 

1985. He is archivist and professor of history at Earlham College. His most 

recent book is The Quakers in America. 

Earl Holmes received his BA from Earlham College, his MA from 

Millersville University, and his PhD from Texas A&M University. Since 

1980, he has been on the faculty of Friends University. He is professor 

emeritus of Friends University and attends University Friends Meeting. 

Sheldon Jackson is professor emeritus of history and political science at 

Azusa Pacific University. His essay, written several years ago, provided

About the Contributors 289 

the major content for chapter 14; while illness prevented him from completing 

the project, he reviewed and approved Tamsen Murray’s final 

text. 

Anne Kiley received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin and has 

taught English and postcolonial literature at Whittier College since 1972. 

In addition to completing Joseph Fairbanks’s work in this volume, she 

collaborated with him earlier in Whittier’s paired-course program, combining 

English history since 1688 with the nineteenth-century English 

novel. 

Glenn W. Leppert, a birthright Friend from Boise, Idaho, is registrar and 

vice president for academic affairs at Barclay College. In addition to a 

bachelor’s degree from Northwest Nazarene University, he has a master’s 

degree in history from Fort Hays State University and a PhD in history 

from Kansas State University. 

Tamsen Murray is associate professor and executive director of the Office 

of Christian Leadership and Vocation at Azusa Pacific University. With 

the consent of Sheldon Jackson, he completed the chapter on Azusa Pacific, 

drawing from other materials, including other books written by 

Sheldon Jackson. 

John W. Oliver Jr., emeritus professor of history at Malone College, is 

coeditor of The Historical Dictionary of the Friends and of Cradles of Conscience: 

Ohio’s Independent Colleges and Universities. He is a former convener 

for the Quaker Historians and Archivists Conference and coordinator 

of the North American Chapter of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. 

Diana Franzusoff Peterson is manuscripts librarian and college archivist at 

Haverford College. She enjoys working on arts- and language-related projects 

and is the coordinator of the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery Committee. 

Eric L. Pumroy is the director of Library Collections and the Seymour 

Adelman Head of Special Collections at Bryn Mawr College Library. His 

writings include Research Guide to the Turner Movement in the United States 

and articles and presentations on immigration history, libraries, and 

archives. He holds graduate degrees in history and library science from 

the University of Chicago and is a graduate of Earlham College. 

Marsha K. Riordan is associate vice president for university relations at 

William Penn University. She completed work on this essay when John 

Wagoner died in 2002.

290 About the Contributors 

James Stimpert is archivist for the Homewood Campus divisions of the 

Johns Hopkins University. He was assistant archivist from 1983 to 1991 

and has been archivist since 1991. He graduated from Malone College 

with a BA in history in 1979 and attended Kent State University, earning 

an MA in history in 1983 and a master of library science in 1987. 

John Wagoner was born and nurtured in the Iowa Quaker community. A 

graduate of William Penn College, he received his graduate degree from 

Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary at Northwestern University 

and held three honorary doctoral degrees, including the LHD from 

William Penn College. He returned to William Penn in 1964 to build a development 

and advancement program. He became president of William 

Penn in 1984 and served until his retirement as president emeritus in 1995. 

He died in January 2002 while working on his chapter. Marsha Riordan 

completed his efforts.

Founded by Friends : the Quaker heritage of fifteen - Scarecrow Press

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?