rofessors in the medical school, a subscription
to the Saybrook Platform.
[Illustration: PROPOSED NEW COLLEGE BUILDINGS.]
[Illustration: (signature) Geo. Williamson Smith]
The trustees of the new college were authorized to locate it in any town
in the State as soon as $30,000 should be secured for its support; and
when it was found that more than three-fourths of the sum of $50,000,
which was soon subscribed, was the gift of citizens of Hartford, who
thus manifested in a substantial way the interest which they had
previously expressed, it was decided to establish Washington College in
that city. A site of fourteen acres on an elevation, then described as
about half a mile from the city, was secured for the buildings, and in
June, 1824, Seabury Hall and Jarvis Hall (as they were afterwards
called) were begun. They were of brown stone, following the Ionic order
of architecture, well proportioned, and well adapted to the purposes for
which they were designed. The former, containing rooms for the chapel,
the library, the cabinet, and for recitations, was designed by Prof. S.
F. B. Morse, and the latter, having lodging-rooms for nearly a hundred
students, was designed by Mr. Solomon Millard, the architect of Bunker
Hill Monument. The buildings were not completed when, on the 23d of
September, 1824, one senior, one sophomore, six freshmen, and one
partial student were admitted members of the college; and work was begun
in rooms in the city. The faculty had been organized by the election of
Bishop Brownell as president, the Rev. George W. Doane (afterwards
Bishop of New Jersey), as professor of _belles-lettres_ and oratory, Mr.
Frederick Hall as professor of chemistry and mineralogy, Mr. Horatio
Hickok as professor of agriculture and political economy (he was, by the
way, the first professor of this latter science in this country), and
Dr. Charles Sumner as professor of botany. The instruction in the
ancient languages was intrusted to the Rev. Hector Humphreys, who was
soon elected professor, and who left the college in 1830 to become
President of St. John's College, Maryland. The chair of mathematics and
natural philosophy was filled in 1828 by the election of the Rev.
Horatio Potter, now the venerable Bishop of New York. The learned Rev.
Dr. S. F. Jarvis soon began his work in and for the college, under the
title of Professor of Oriental Literature; and the Hon. W. W. Ellsworth
was chosen professor of law. The provision
|