in]

[Illustration: (signature) Samuel Eliot]

[Illustration: (signature) J. B. Kerfoot]

[Illustration: (signature) A. Jackson]

In June, 1867, the Rev. Dr. Abner Jackson, of the class of 1837,
formerly professor here, then President of Hobart College, was elected
president. Under his administration, in 1871-72, the number of
undergraduates, for the first time, reached a hundred. In 1871 the
legacy of Mr. Chester Adams, of Hartford, brought to the college some
$65,000, the largest gift thus far from any individual. In 1872, after
much discussion and hesitation, the trustees decided to accept the offer
of the city of Hartford, which desired to purchase the college campus
for a liberal sum, that it might be offered to the State as a site for
the new capitol, the college reserving the right to occupy for five or
six years so much of the buildings as it should not be necessary to
remove. In 1873 a site of about eighty acres, on a bluff of trap-rock in
the southern part of the city, commanding a magnificent view in every
direction, was purchased for the college, and President Jackson secured
elaborate plans for extensive ranges of buildings in great quadrangles.
The work, to which he devoted much time and thought, was deferred by his
death in April, 1874, but the Rev. Dr. T. R. Pynchon, of the class of
1841, who succeeded him in the presidency, entered vigorously upon the
labor of providing the college with a new home. Ground was broken in
1875, and in the autumn of 1878 two blocks of buildings, each three
hundred feet long, bearing the old names of Seabury and Jarvis Halls,
were completed. They stand on the brow of the cliff, having a broad
plateau before them on the east, and, with the central tower, erected in
1882 by the munificence of Col. C. H. Northam, they form the west side
of the proposed great quadrangle. Under Dr. Pynchon's direction the
former plans had been much modified, in order that this one range of
buildings might suffice for the urgent needs of the college, provision
being made for suitable rooms for the chapel, the library, and the
cabinet, as well as for lecture-rooms and for suites of students'
apartments. During his presidency the endowments were largely increased
by the generous legacies of Col. and Mrs. Northam, whose gifts to the
college amount to nearly a quarter of a million of dollars; large and
valuable additions were made to the library and the cabinet, and the
number of students was, in