BIO: Pennsylvania State College, Centre County, Pennsylvania Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/centre/ _______________________________________________ Commemorative Biographical Record of Central Pennsylvania: Including the Counties of Centre, Clearfield, Jefferson and Clarion: Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens, Etc. Chicago: J. H. Beers, 1898. _______________________________________________ COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD, pages 35-39 THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE is, as its name implies, a State and not a denominational institution. It is situated in the small village of State College, in one of the most picturesque and healthful localities of central Pennsylvania. Practically surrounded by mountains, with Nittany on the east, Tussey on the south, and Muncy on the north, it is, as the poet says of Lake Constance, "girt round with rugged mountains," yet the rugged mountainous view is relieved by the more restful and peaceful beauty of the foot-hills and lowlands, forming a well-contrasted panorama of natural scenery. The college campus of sixty acres, containing the numerous college buildings and professors' residences, is artistically laid out with drives, avenues and walks, with here and there a secluded bower or romantic walk, and well merits the title of the ideal college campus so often bestowed. The College is one of the so-called land grant colleges, established under the Act of Congress of July, 1862. The section of the Act relating directly to the character of the work to be pursued by the institution reads: "The leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in such a manner as the Legislature of the State may prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial class in the several pursuits and professions of life." The State Legislature accepted this Act of Congress, and further "pledged the faith of the State to carry it into effect." The College was opened in 1859 as a school for instruction in practical agriculture. An active movement in this direction had begun several years earlier, and had enlisted the enthusiastic support of some of the most intelligent and public-spirited citizens of the State, among them Hon. Frederick Watts, of Carlisle, and Hon. Hugh N. McAllister, of Bellefonte. After prolonged consideration of the various plans presented, a charter was secured in 1855, superseding one granted the previous year, and two officers of the State and twelve other gentlemen were constituted a Board of Trustees. There was thought to be at that time a considerable prejudice among farmers against the word "College," and, for that reason, as subsequently explained, the institution was called The Farmer's High School of Pennsylvania. Donations of land as a site for the institution were offered in several parts of the State and, after a very careful examination, the Board accepted the gift of 200 acres in Centre county from Gen. James Irvin, to which they soon afterward added, by purchase, 200 acres more. For the purpose of providing the necessary funds for erecting and equipping buildings, the State Agricultural Society gave $10,000, the trustees raised $25,000 by subscription, and the Legislature in 1857 appropriated $25,000, absolutely, and $25,000 more on condition that a similar amount should be raised by private subscription, which was done. In 1861, the Legislature made an additional appropriation of $49,900, for the completion of buildings, though the institution had been opened February 20, 1859, with such accommodations as were then available. The first president of the school was Dr. Evan Pugh, who had become deeply imbued with the fundamental conceptions underlying modern methods of teaching the applied sciences. He had studied in Germany at a time when very few American students went abroad for that purpose, and had spent several months at Rothamstead, England, working under the direction of Messrs. 36 COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. Lawes and Gilbert. He entered upon this work here with great energy and enthusiasm, and the scheme of instruction was put upon a college basis from the beginning. Dr. Pugh stated in 1862, that "the school, on being organized, adopted a course of instructions in mathematics and the natural sciences more extensive than that in any agricultural college in Europe, required correspondingly longer time for graduation, and that the trustees only awaited the time in which they would be able to complete its buildings to change its name." Accordingly in 1862 the name was changed to "The Agricultural College of Pennsylvania." From 1855 to 1867 the sum of $99,900 was the total amount given to the institution by the Legislature, and the entire amount was expended in the erection of the original building; but, owing to the great advance in the cost of building material, occasioned by the war which broke out in 1861, the resources at the disposal of the trustees proved inadequate to complete the one main building, and the Legislature, by an act approved April 11, 1866, authorized them to borrow $80,000 and secure the same by a mortgage. The institution had no endowment and no source of revenue except the fees of students, and the attempt to make such an institution self-supporting failed as it has everywhere and always failed. Since 1873 it has received an income of $30,000 annually from the United States fund. In 1878 the Legislature provided for the payment of the debt of the $80,000, which it had authorized twelve years before, and that sum is the total amount given by the State to the College between 1867 and 1887, except an appropriation of $3,000 made for the erection of a barn on one of the experimental farms. From 1857 to 1887, a period of thirty years, the State appropriated a total amount of $179,900 for the erection of the main building and $3,000 for the erection of a barn. It is doubtless true that the institution during that period largely failed to satisfy the public expectation. It is also true that from the passage of the Act of 1867 until 1887 the Legislature of the State was directly responsible for its administration, but, though it heard and entertained complaints from time to time, it took no step to ascertain and supply the needs of the institution, and seemed to feel no responsibility for the proper execution of the trust which it had assumed. In 1874, in recognition of the fact that the Law of Congress necessarily widened the scope of its work, the name of the institution was again changed, and it has since been known as The Pennsylvania State College. In 1887 the State entered upon a new era in its dealings with the College. All the work of the institution was then carried on, as it had been from the first, in the one original building, except that a small frame building for mechanical work had been erected three years before. All the lecture rooms, laboratories, dormitories; society halls, boarding club, armory, chapel, library, and everything else required for the work of the institution, besides five families of professors, were crowded together under that single roof. In the meantime other States had taken active and continuous steps, and made large appropriations for carrying out the Congressional Act, and leading men, in our Legislature and elsewhere throughout the Commonwealth, felt that Pennsylvania had too long disregarded her own interests as well as the obligations she had assumed toward the United States. It is not necessary to recall the long and not very agreeable record from 1867 to 1887, during which the College maintained a difficult struggle for existence. It is easy now to see that a different policy on the part of the State might have brought about different results during that period; but that has become a part of ancient history. In 1887 the attention of the Legislature was called to the situation, and the sentiment became general that if Pennsylvania was to maintain a State institution, it should be kept up at least to the standard of her penal and reformatory and charitable institutions; and, after a careful and detailed examination, $112,000 was appropriated with a view to beginning the work of reconstruction and placing the institution on a footing that would be creditable to Pennsylvania, and in keeping with what other progressive States were doing for their institutions which had been established in accordance with the same Act of Congress. The total amount then and since appropriated up to 1895 inclusive was: Buildings $303,500; repairs, improvements and insurance, $36,220; equipment, $102,200; maintenance, $38,300; making $480,220. For these recent expenditures the College has buildings to show which are worth every dollar they cost. They are: an armory, a botanical building, with conservatory and green houses, a chemical and physical building, with lecture rooms and laboratories, an experiment station building, with offices, laboratories, etc., a cottage for the ladies' department, a residence for the United States military detail, a residence for the director of the experiment station, four professors' houses, and an engineering building, arranged for the departments of civil, mechanical and mining engineering, which is believed to be the best for its purpose in the United States. Besides these, the barns and outbuildings on the two farms have been greatly enlarged (one of the barns being entirely new), and a central boiler COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. 37 house and steam plant erected for heating all the public College buildings, while a smaller plant serves the same purpose for all the experiment station buildings. In 1881, a very important rearrangement and enlargement of courses of study was made by the Faculty and approved by the Trustees, which may be said to mark a distinct epoch in the educational organization of the College, and one from which may be dated a new era in its growth. The substance of the new scheme was specialization, in technical lines. A classical course and a general educational course, called the "General Science Course" were substituted for the three previously maintained ("Agricultural," "Classical" and "Scientific") and four Technical Courses added, viz: - Agriculture, Chemistry and Physics, Civil Engineering, and Natural History. These courses began with the Junior year, all alike being based on the general training given in the Freshman and Sophomore years. The number of full four-years' courses now organized is thirteen, as follows: I. Classical Course. II. General Courses: A General Science course; a Latin Scientific course; a course in Philosophy. III. Technical Courses: A course in Agriculture; a course in Biology; a course in Chemistry; a course in Civil Engineering; a course in Electrical Engineering; a course in Mathematics; a course in Mechanical Engineering; a course in Mining Engineering; a course in Physics. Besides these regular courses, there are eight short courses - four in Agriculture, one in Chemistry, two in Mining, and an elementary course in Mechanics. The scheme was necessarily incomplete, but, while it has since been modified and enlarged in nearly every detail, the fundamental principle of differentiated (rather than elective specialties), based on a common foundation of training, has been ever since substantially maintained, and the growth of the College has followed along the main lines of the plan thus sketched out. In addition to these courses there exists the military drill and discipline which furnishes, as it were, the brawn for the healthful growth of the brain. The military organization consists of the entire student body as a battalion, divided into companies, with their respective cadet captains. All the necessary territory for the various military manoeuvres is readily afforded by the large campus, and in winter the spacious armory is utilized as a drill hall. The National Government has furnished the College with two field pieces of modern pattern, and a large number of cadet rifles similar to those used at West Point. By a recent law of the State, commissioned officers of the battalionare eligible to appointment as brevet second lieutenants in the National Guard. Based upon this broadened foundation, the special work of the State College is the training of youth in those branches of learning which lie at the foundation of modern industrial pursuits. In accordance with the purposes of its founders and the terms of its original charter, it aims to give special and prominent attention to agriculture, both theoretical and experimental; but it also provides "a liberal and practical education" in the leading branches of mathematical, natural and physical science, in order to prepare youth for "the several pursuits and professions of life." In other words, while the College is no longer exclusively agricultural, it is doing more in the direction of progressive and scientific agriculture than when that was its principal object; and at the same time it has increased its subjects and courses of study, and its teaching and illustrative equipment, to such an extent that now, " without excluding classical studies," its leading object is to teach the various sciences in such a manner as to show their applications in the more important industries - to combine with every branch of instruction such an amount of actual practice in the shop, the field and the laboratory as will serve to illustrate and apply the theory, but without subordinating it. Dr. Evan Pugh served as president of the college from 1859 to 1864, his death occurring April 29 of the latter year. He was a profound scholar and a man of wonderful intellectual powers. He spent six years abroad; he was three or four years in Europe at the Universities of Leipsic, Gottingen, Heidelberg and, as stated above, in the laboratories of Lawes and Gilbert. Dr. Pugh by his scientific investigations while in Europe settled several important scientific questions, and gained for himself a world-wide reputation as a scholar and investigator. Dr. Pugh was succeeded by William H. Allen, LL. D., of Girard College, who served two years, and resigned to accept his old position as president of Girard College. On the resignation of Dr. Allen, Gen. John Frazer, A. M., professor of mathematics and astronomy and lecturer on astronomy, was elected president. President Frazer was mainly instrumental in securing to the College part of the National land grant. He resigned his position in 1868, and was afterward president of the University of Kansas, and also State superintendent of public instruction of that State. Thomas H. Burrows, LL. D., became president in December, 1868, and died in office in 1871. Of Dr. Burrows, J. P. McCaskey, editor of the Pennsylvania School journal, said: 38 COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. No other man in the history of Pennsylvania has touched our common-school system so nearly, so powerfully, or throughout its whole range to such a degree, as Dr. Burrowes. He put the system into working force in 1835-8; he established The Pennsylvania School Journal in 1852, and was its editor for eighteen years; he was the first president of the Pennsylvania State Teachers' Association, and the first president of the Lancaster County Teachers' Institute, called to both positions by the unanimous choice as the leading spirit among the advocates of general education by the State and of an improved common-school system; he wrote the Pennsylvania State Book, which we recall as a reader in a country school, in 1847, before we knew anything of its author; he wrote the Pennsylvania School Architecture, which, being supplied to all the school districts, did much to improve the plans of school buildings and their surroundings in 1856 and thereafter; he wrote the Normal School Law at the request of Hon. H. C. Hickok, who tells elsewhere in the present issue of The School Journal the interesting story of the origin of that law of vital importance to our educational progress; he was called by Gov. Curtin - who originated that most worthy public charity - to organize the system of Soldiers' Orphan Schools, which was done with his customary energy and strong practical sense; and he died, after thirty-five years of almost continuous effort in behalf of general education, at the head of the school that, we believe, is destined soon to be recognized as the last essential feature which rounds out into satisfactory completeness our Pennsylvania system of public instruction. In March, 1871, Dr. Calder, the president of Hillsdale College, Mich., was chosen president, and during his administration ladies were admitted to the privileges of the institution. Dr. Calder resigned in 1880, and was succeeded by President Shortlidge, and the latter in 1882 by Dr. George W. Atherton, the present executive. A writer in referring to the College in 1894 said: The rapid growth of the institution into a position of national prominence has taken place within the last decade, and has been the result of the policy adopted by the present executive, Dr. George W. Atherton. Previous to his inauguration the College had gained scarcely a local reputation, and was on the verge of a retrograde movement. He immediately outlined the present courses of technical work, and the degree of success which they have attained is sufficient evidence of their practicability, and the demands of the times for instruction of such character. Referring to a visit to the college in 1892, Editor J. P. McCaskey said: The president, Dr. Atherton, was absent in attendance upon a meeting of the Association of College Presidents and Professors then in session at Swarthmore, where he had a paper upon the relations of the High Schools of the State to the Collegiate institutions. It was a disappointment not to see him. But what was better still, we saw everywhere evidence of his devotion to the interests of the College, everywhere the master hand in the work that has been done and is doing under his administration. We heard also on every hand admiration of his good judgment, broad plan, executive ability, tireless energy, and unlimited capacity for work. Dr. Atherton, we may add, is a soldier as well as a scholar, holding one of the honor medals awarded by Act of Congress during the late war for gallantry in action. In an address delivered in 1894, Wm. Pepper, M. D., LL. D., said: I feel that it is impossible to let such a day as this pass without some word of tribute, such as I as an outsider might fitly speak, of what President Atherton has done for this place, and for the people of Pennsylvania. Twelve years ago, in 1882, State College had thirty-four students in the college classes, one building on this campus, and a very unsavory reputation. To-day, after twelve short years of vigorous administration, we see this fine group of buildings, we know there are three hundred students in attendance, that the curriculum has been enlarged, and the standard greatly raised, and that all over the State thoughtful men and women are turning their eyes to this College as one where excellent educational results are secured. The Faculty and Instructors in 1897-98 are: George W. Atherton, LL.D., president, professor of political and social science; William A. Buckhout, M.S., professor of botany and horticulture; I. Thornton Osmond, M.S., M.A., professor of physics; Harriet A. McElwain, M.A., lady principal, professor of history; Louis E. Reber, M.S., professor of mechanics and mechanical engineering; William Frear, Ph.D., professor of agricultural chemistry; George Gilbert Pond, M.A., Ph.D., professor of chemistry; Henry P. Armsby, Ph.D., lecturer on stock feeding; Henry T. Fernald, M.S., Ph.D.; professor of zoology; Benjamin Gill, M.A., professor of Greek and Latin; Magnus C. Ihlseng, E.M., C.E., Ph.D., professor of mining engineering and geology; John Price Jackson, B.S., M.E., professor of electrical engineering; Fred E. Foss, B.S., M.A., professor of civil engineering; Joseph M. Willard, B.A., professor of mathematics; Fred Lewis Pattee, M.A., professor of English and rhetoric; George C. Watson, B. Agr., M.S., professor of agriculture; Lawrence M. Colfelt, D.D., preacher to the College, professor of ethics; Martin G. Benedict, M.A., Ph.D., professor of pedagogics, in charge of subfreshman class; Daniel C. Pearson. Captain 2d Cavalry, U.S.A., professor of military science and tactics; George C. Butz, M.S., assistant professor of horticulture; Harry H. Stoek, B.S., E.M., assistant professor of mining engineering and metallurgy; Madison M. Garver, B.S., assistant professor of physics; Franklin E. Tuttle, M.A., Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry; William Mason Towle, B.S., assistant professor of practical mechanics; Erwin W. Runkle, M.A., Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and ethics; Joseph H. Tudor, C.E., M.S., assistant professor of mathematics; Thomas C. Hopkins, M.S., M.A., assistant professor of geology; Carl D. Fehr, M.A., assistant professor of German; Harry K. Monroe, M.A., assistant professor of English; T. Raymond Beyer, B.S., C.E., assistant professor of civil engineering; Charles L. Griffin, B.S., assistant professor of machine design; Silvanus B. Newton, A.B., M.D., director of physical education; Anna E. Redifer, instructor in industrial art and design; Herbert E. Dunkle, B.S., M.E., instructor in mechanical drawing; John A. Hunter, Jr., B.S., M.E., instructor in mechanical engineering; Henry A. Lardner, B.S., E.E., Instructor in electrical engineering; Harry COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. 39 Hayward, B.S., instructor in dairy husbandry; John H. Leete, B.A., instructor in mathematics; Irving L. Foster, M.A., instructor in the romance languages; Francis J. Pond, M.A., Ph.D., instructor in assaying; Walter J. Keith, M.A., Ph.D., instructor in chemistry; Paul B. Breneman, B.S., instructor in civil engineering; Thomas H. Taliaferro, C.E., Ph.D., instructor in mathematics; F. H. Greenwood, B.S., instructor in practical mechanics; Budd Frankinfield, B.S., E.E., instructor in electrical engineering; Lloyd A. Reed, B.S., assistant in the electrical laboratories; Warren P. Smiley, B.S., assistant in the chemical laboratories. Other Officers - Helen M. Bradley, librarian; Clara Dayton Wyman, in charge of music; Anna Adams McDonald, assistant librarian. AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. - Officers and Assistants. The President of the College; Henry Prentiss Armsby, Ph.D., director; William Frear, Ph. D., vice-director and chemist; William A. Buckhout, M. S., botanist; George C. Butz, M.S., horticulturist; George C. Watson, M.S., agriculturist; William C. Patterson, superintendent of farm; Miss Julia C. Gray, secretary; William S. Sweetser, B.S., J. August Fries, Milton E. McDonnell, M.S.; Charles Albert Browne, Jr., M.A., and Cassius W. Norris, assistant chemists; Harry Hayward, B.S., instructor in dairy husbandry; Enos H. Hess, assistant to the director; Miss Minnie Edith Gray, stenographer.