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The Yale College Journal of Benjamin Trumbull

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Sheldon S. Cohen
Sheldon S. Cohen*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Bradley University
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Extract

The influence of higher education on the history and development of eighteenth-century Colonial America greatly exceeded the small existing institutions and the relatively few scholars which they enrolled. When the American Revolution erupted in 1775, there were but nine scattered collegiate schools within the colonies, and only two of them had been in existence for over thirty-five years. Most of these colonial colleges operated under the restrictive limitations of poor plant facilities, inadequate libraries, little or no endowments, sectarian domination, an authoritarian discipline system and a curriculum which was largely a carry-over from sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Europe. By 1775 the combined enrollment of all these institutions was less than thirteen hundred students and their alumni totaled less than one percent of the entire population. Yet the importance of the end product of the higher educational system in the colonies far outweighed its limited quality or its few participating members. College-trained theologians generally dominated religious thought; their pervasive importance was apparent in the social, economic and intellectual circles of their respective colonies, and their influence in political affairs was illustrated by the fact that one third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were graduates of a colonial college.

Type
Notes and Documents I
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Fall 1968 , pp. 375 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Brubacher, John S. and Rudy, Willis R., Higher Education in Transition, An American History: 1636–1956 (New York: Harper Bros., 1958), pp. 3–25; Edwards, Newton and Richey, Herman G., The School in the American Social Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963), pp. 66–69, 104–7, 163–65, 175–78.Google Scholar

2. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Prelude to Independence; the Newspaper War in Britain 1764–1776 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1958), p. 15.Google Scholar

3. Among the exceptions to this are the following works: Morgan, Edmund S., The Gentle Puritan, A Life of Ezra Stiles 1727–1795 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962); Shipton, Clifford K. and Sibley, John L., Sibley's Harvard Graduates; Biographical Sketches of those who attended Harvard College (Boston and Cambridge: Welch, Bigelow & Co., Harvard University Press, 1873–1965), I-XIII; Dexter, Franklin B., Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History (New York, 1885–1912), I-VI; Tucker, Louis L., Puritan Protagonist, President Thomas Clap of Yale College (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962); Morison, Samuel E., Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936).Google Scholar

4. Sprague, William B., Annals of the American Pulpit (New York: R. Carter Bros., 1857), I, 584–87; Dexter, , op. cit., II, 621–23.Google Scholar

5. Trumbull, Benjamin, A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical, 2 vols. (Hartford and New Haven, 1797–1818); Dexter, , op. cit., II, 624–27.Google Scholar

6. Cohen, Sheldon S., “Benjamin Trumbull, The Years at Yale 1755–1759,” History of Education Quarterly, VI, No. 4 (Winter 1966), pp. 33–34; Tucker, , op. cit., pp. 88–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Dexter, , op. cit., II, 357; Tucker, , op. cit., pp. 175–200; Cohen, , op. cit., 34–35. The legislative grants to Yale College were suspended for several years after 1755.Google Scholar

8. Cohen, , op. cit. , pp. 35–46.Google Scholar

9. Miller, Perry, The New England Mind; From Colony to Province (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. xi–513; Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritan Family (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966), pp. 1–186.Google Scholar

10. Correspondence, Professor Leo M. Kaiser, Classics Department, Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois, November 24, 1967.Google Scholar

11. The journal is located in Box 1 of the Trumbull papers. Words or letters have been added in brackets to the text of the journal when the editor considered it necessary to clarify the meaning of a word or phrase. Latin and Hebrew translations were made with the assistance of Professors Michael Chelik of Hunter College in New York City and Professor Leo M. Kaiser of Loyola University.Google Scholar

12. The Reverend Elijah Lathrop (1724–1797) was the minister of the Gilead Society in the town of Hebron. He graduated from Yale College in 1749. Dexter, II, 212–13.Google Scholar

13. Samuel Peters (Yale, 1757), Samuel Gilbert (Yale, 1759) and John Peters (Yale, 1759) were all from Hebron. Dexter, II, 482–87, 582–83, 607–8.Google Scholar

14. Pitkin, Ashbel (Yale, 1755), Goodrich, Elizar (Yale, 1752) and Hillhouse, James (Yale, 1749). Dexter II, 208–10, 282–85, 374.Google Scholar

15. Leonard, Zephaniah (Yale, 1758) was a brother-in-law of the Reverend Mr. Lathrop. Dexter, II, 545–46.Google Scholar

16. Noble, Oliver (Yale, 1757). Dexter, II, 478–80.Google Scholar

17. The Reverend Joseph Noyes (1688–1761), minister of New Haven's First Church. Noyes was a 1709 graduate of Yale College. Dexter, I, 85–89.Google Scholar

18. Munson, Eneas (Yale, 1753). Dexter II, 311–13.Google Scholar

19. Stoddard, Israel and Hopkins, Mark were in the class of 1758 at Yale. Dexter, II, 536–37, 554. The incident, which took place in Mr. Lyon's tavern, is also mentioned in the Yale College Book of Faculty Punishments, Yale University Library.Google Scholar

20. Pell, John (Yale, 1757), Burbank, Shem (Yale, 1758) and Huntington, Jabez (Yale, 1758). Huntington was sent to live with a minister until his conduct improved. Dexter, II, 481–82, 517–18, 540–41.Google Scholar

21. The Reverend Benjamin Woodbridge (1712–1785), Congregational pastor at Amity. He graduated from Yale in 1740. Dexter, I, 656–57. The Reverend Naphtali Daggett (Yale, 1748) was president of Yale College from 1766–1777. See Starr, Harris E. in DAB s.v. “Daggett, Naphtali.” Google Scholar

22. Trumbull appears to be in error by one week regarding this event. According to an item in the Connecticut Gazette from New Haven dated February 28, 1756; “Col. Washington of and from Virginia, but last from New York, passed through this Town, early last Monday Morning, on his way to Boston's to consult, as 'tis said, with General Shirley, Measures proper to be taken with several Tribes of Indians to the Southward, and particularly the Cherokees, some hundreds of whom from the back Parts of North and South Carolina, it is reported, have assured the western Governments of their coming in and firmly adhering to the Interest of the English, in Opposition to the French.” Connecticut Gazette (New Haven), February 28, 1756.Google Scholar

23. Benjamin Trumbull's diploma is dated September 12, 1759. Benjamin Trumbull papers, Box 1, Yale University Library.Google Scholar