A00421 - The Websters of Amherst College
My beloved suitemate and classmate, Chris Webster, wrote back to correct my knowledge of his connection to the famous Websters in Amherst and American history. Chris corrected me with regards to William Webster and states that they are not related. He does note that he is a distant (non-blood) relation to Noah Webster
Noah Webster and the Founding of Amherst College
 | Old Academy. Amherst, Mass. [Photograph] Lovell Photo. |
In September 1812 Webster moved from New Haven, CT to Amherst, MA. He was upset by the conditions of the school in Amherst. The following year Webster helped raise funds for an academy “where their sons could be fitted for college and their daughters taught the higher branches of education.” As president of the board of trustees, Webster opened the Amherst Academy in 1815 to 90 girls and more than 100 boys. The Rev. Nahum Gould wrote about the Academy as follows: “None need leave on account of pecuniary embarrassments. Tuition was free to any pious student who was preparing for the gospel ministry. Board was one dollar a week, and if this could not be afforded, there were families ready to take students for little services which they might render in their leisure hours.” The great success of the Academy encouraged the trustees to begin a fund-raising effort “for the gratuitous instruction of indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to Christian ministry.” This was the basis for the founding of Amherst College.
 | Printed Letter from Noah Webster, John Fiske, and Rufus Graves, by order of the Board of Trustees, Amherst, Sept. 11, 1818, to the settled ministers of the gospel, within the three counties of Hampshire, Hampden and Franklin, and of the towns in the western part of the county of Worcester.
|
This letter invites the ministers of the area, attended by lay-delegates, to “meet in convention with the subscribers to the [Amherst College] fund, at the church in the West Parish in Amherst” on Tuesday, September 29, 1818, at nine A. M. to deliberate on the need to establish a charitable institution in Amherst.
 | Letter from Noah Webster, Amherst, MA, to William Leffingwell, New Haven, CT,. Sept. 27, 1820. Amherst College Library. |
Webster’s letter to William Leffingwell reports “we have collected in small subscriptions from our common people chiefly, a sum of $50,000 dollars [equivalent to $1,000,000 today] to educate pious young men.” He writes further “…we do hope that this infant institution will grow up to a size which shall contribute to check the progress of errors which are propagated from Cambridge. The influence of the University of Cambridge [Harvard], supported by great wealth and talents, seems to call on all the friends of truth to write in circumscribing it. This is a cause of common concern.”
 | A Plea for a Miserable World. I. An Address Delivered at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Building Erecting for the Charity Institution in Amherst, Massachusetts, August 9, 1820, by Noah Webster, esq. II. A Sermon, Delivered on the Same Occasion, by Rev. Daniel A. Clark… III. A Brief Account of the Origin of the institution. Boston: Printed by Ezra Lincoln, 1820. |
Webster gave the principal address at the corner stone laying ceremony for the first Amherst College building, South Dormitory. In his address he stated, “Let us then take courage! The design is unquestionably good, and its success must be certain. Small efforts combined and continued, cannot fail to produce the desired effect, and realize the hopes of its founders. Prudence and integrity will subdue opposition, and invite co-operation; perseverance will bring to our aid new accessions of strength, and a thousand small streams of charity from unexpected sources, will flow into the common current of benevolence…” At the end of the exercises, Webster was elected as the second president of the Amherst College Board of Trustees.
Comments
Post a Comment