WHITMAN SEMINARY AND COLLEGE.
Many institutions of learning have been erected and endowed by the
generosity of the rich, but Whitman Seminary and College had its
foundation laid in faith and prayer. Viewed from a worldly standpoint,
backed only by a poor missionary, whose possessions could be packed
upon the back of a mule, the outlook did not seem promising. During
all the years of his missionary service in Oregon, none knew better
the value of the patriotic Christian service of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman,
than did the Rev. Dr. Cushing Eells and his good wife. After the
massacre, Dr. Eells, and all his co-workers were moved under military
escort to the Willamette, but he writes:
"My eyes were constantly turned east of the Cascade Range, a region I
have given the best years of my life to."
It was not until 1859 when the country was declared open, that he
visited Walla Walla, and stood at the "Great grave of Dr. Whitman and
his wife." Standing there upon the consecrated spot, he says:
"I believe that the power of the Highest came upon me." And there he
solemnly vowed that he would do something to honor the Christian
martyrs whose remains rested in that grave. He says: "I felt as though
if Dr. Whitman were alive, he would prefer a high school for the
benefit of both sexes, rather than a monument of marble."
He pondered the subject and upon reaching home, sought the advice of
the Congregational Association. The subject was carefully canvassed by
those who well knew all the sad history, and the following note was
entered upon the record:
"In the judgment of this association, the contemplated purpose of
Brother C. Eells to remove to Waiilatpui, to establish a Christian
school at that place, to be called the Whitman Seminary, in memory of
the noble deeds and great works and the fulfillment of the benevolent
plans of the late lamented Dr. Whitman and his wife: And his further
purpose to act as home missionary in the Walla Walla Valley, meets our
cordial approbation and shall receive our earnest support."
Dr. Eells at once resigned from the Tualitin Academy, where he was
then teaching, and in 1859 and '60 obtained the charter for the
Whitman Seminary. Dr. Eells had hoped to be employed by the Home
Missionary Society, but that organization declined, as its object was
not to build seminaries and colleges, but to establish churches. He
bought from the American Board for $1,000 the farm of 640 acres where
Dr. Whitman had toiled for eleven years.
It was Dr. Eells' idea to build a seminary directly upon this
consecrated ground, and gather a quiet settlement about the school.
But he soon found that it would be better to locate the seminary in
the village, at that time made up of five resident families and about
one hundred men. It, however, was in sight of the "Great grave."
Here the Eells family settled down upon the farm for hard work to
raise the funds necessary to erect the buildings necessary for the
seminary. He preached without compensation up and down the valley upon
the Sabbath, and like Paul, worked with his hands during the week. His
first Summer's work on the farm brought in $700; enough nearly to pay
three-fourths of its cost; thus year after year Dr. Eells and his
faithful wife labored on and on. He plowed and reaped, and cut cord
wood, while she made butter, and raised chickens and saved every
dollar for the one grand purpose of doing honor to their noble friends
in the "Great grave" always in sight.
Rarely in this world has there been a more beautiful demonstration of
loyalty and friendship, than of Dr. and Mrs. Eells. They lived and
labored on the farm for ten years, and endured all the privations and
isolations common to such a life. An article in the "Congregationalist"
says:
"Mother Eells' churn with which she made four hundred pounds of butter
for sale, ought to be kept for an honored place in the cabinet of
Whitman College."
It was by such sacrifices that the first $4,000 were raised to begin
the buildings. Five years had passed after the charter was granted,
before the seminary was located, and then only on paper. And this was
seven years before the completion of the first school building; the
dedication of which occurred on October 13, 1866.
The first principal was the Rev. P. B. Chamberlain, who also organized
and was first pastor of the Congregational Church at Walla Walla. In
1880, under the new impulse given to the work by the Rev. Dr. G. H.
Atkinson, of Portland, Whitman Seminary developed into Whitman
College. This was finally accomplished in 1883. During that year,
College Hall was erected at a cost of $16,000. During 1883 and 1884,
in the same spirit he had at all times exhibited, Dr. Eells felt it
his duty to visit New England in the interest of the institution. He
says:
"It was the hardest year's work I ever did, to raise that sixteen
thousand dollars."
The old pioneer would much rather have cut cord wood or plowed his
fields, if that would have brought in the money for his loved college.
The Christian who reads Dr. Eells' diary during the closing years of
his life, will easily see how devoted he was to the work of honoring
the memory of the occupants of the "Great grave." His diary of May 24,
1890, says:
"The needs of Whitman College cause serious thought. My convictions
have been that my efforts in its behalf were in obedience to Divine
Will."
June 11, 1890. "During intervals of the night I was exercised in
prayer for Whitman College. I am persuaded that my prayers are
prevailing. In agony I pray for Whitman College."
October 2d. "Dreamed of Whitman College and awoke with a prayer."
His last entry in his diary was: "I could die for Whitman College."
The grand old man went to his great reward in February, 1893. Will the
Christian people of the land allow such a prayer to go unanswered?
In 1884 Mrs. N. F. Cobleigh did some very effective work in canvassing
sections of New England in behalf of the college, succeeding in
raising $8,000.
Dr. Anderson, after his efficient labors of nine years, with many
discouragements, resigned the Presidency in 1891, and the Rev. James
F. Eaton, another scholarly earnest man, assumed its duties. In the
meantime the struggling village of Walla Walla had grown into the
"Garden City," and the demands upon such an institution had increased
a hundred fold in the rapid development of the country in every
direction. The people began to see the wisdom of the founder, and cast
about for means to make the college more efficient. The Union Journal
of Walla Walla, said:
"It is our pride. It is the cap sheaf of the educational institutions
of Walla Walla, and should be the pride and boast of every good Walla
Wallan. It has a corps of exceptionally good instructors, under the
guidance of a man possessing breadth of intellect, liberal education
and an enthusiastic desire to be successful in his chosen field of
labor, with students who rank in natural ability with the best product
of any land. But it is deficient in facilities. It lacks room in which
to grow. It lacks library and apparatus, the tools of education."
President Eaton and the faculty saw this need and the necessity of a
great effort. It was under this pressure, and the united desire of the
friends of the college that the Rev. Stephen B. L. Penrose, of the
"Yale band" assumed the duties of President in 1894, and began his
plans to raise an endowment fund and place the college upon a sound
financial basis, as well as to increase its educational facilities and
requirements.
It was the misfortune of these educators to enter the field for money
at a time of great financial embarrassment, such as has not been
experienced in many decades; but it was at the same time their good
fortune to enlist the aid of Dr. D. K. Pearsons of Chicago in the
grand work with a generous gift of $50,000, provided that others could
be induced to add $150,000 to it.
With such a start and with such a man as Dr. Pearsons, there will be
no such word as fail. He is a man of faith like Dr. Eells and has long
been administering upon his own estate in wise and generous gifts to
deserving institutions. With such a man to encourage other liberal
givers, the endowment will not stop at $200,000. If Whitman College is
to be the Yale and Harvard and Chicago University of the Far West, it
must meet with a generous response from liberal givers. Its name alone
ought to be worth a million in money. When the people are educated in
Whitman history, the money will come and the prayers of Dr. Eells will
be answered.
The millions of people love fair play and honest dealing and can
appreciate solid work, and they will learn to love the memory of the
modest hero, and will be glad to do him honor in so practical a
method. It will soon be half a century since Dr. Whitman and his
noble wife fell at their post of duty at Waiilatpui. Had Dr. Whitman
been a millionaire, a man of noble birth, had he been a military man
or a statesman, his praise would have been sung upon historic pages as
the praise of others has. But he was only a poor missionary doctor,
who lost his life in the vain effort to civilize and Christianize
savages, and an army of modern historians seem to have thought, as we
have shown in another chapter, that the world would sit quietly by and
see and applaud while they robbed him of his richly won honors. In
that they have over-reached themselves. The name of Dr. Marcus Whitman
will be honored and revered long after the names of his traducers have
been obliterated and forgotten.
It is a name with a history, which will grow in honor and importance
as the great States he saved to the Union will grow into the grandeur
they naturally assume. There is not a clearer page of history in all
the books than that Dr. Whitman, under the leading of Providence,
saved the States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho to the Union. There
is a possibility that by a long and destructive war we might have held
them as against the claims of England. There were just two men who
prevented that war and those two men were Drs. Whitman and McLoughlin.
The latter indirectly by his humane and civilized treatment of the
missionaries when he might have crushed them, and the former by his
unparalleled heroism in his mid-winter ride to Washington, and his
wisdom in piloting the immigrations to Oregon just the year that he
did.
History correctly written, will truthfully say, "When Whitman fell at
Waiilatpui, one of the grandest heroes of this century went to his
great reward." The State of Washington has done well to name a great
county to perpetuate his memory; Dr. Eells did a noble act in founding
Whitman Seminary, and the time is coming and is near at hand, when the
young men and women of the country will prize a diploma inscribed with
the magic name of Whitman. Endow the college and endow it generously.
Make it worthy of the man whose love of country felt that no task was
too difficult and no danger so great as to make him hesitate.
After the endowment is full and complete, a great College Hall should
be erected from a patriotic fund, and upon the central pillar should
be inscribed: "Sacred to the memory of Dr. Marcus and Narcissa
Whitman. While lifting up the banner of the cross in one hand to
redeem and save savage souls, they thought it no wrong to carry the
flag of the country they loved in the other."
There is no such thing as dividing the honors. They are simply
Whitman honors; they lived and labored and achieved together; the
bride upon the plains and in the mission home was a heroine scarcely
second to the hero who swam icy rivers and climbed the snow-covered
mountains in 1842 and 1843, upon his patriotic mission. It is a work
that may well engage the patriotic women of America; for true
womanhood has never had a more beautiful setting than in the life of
Narcissa Whitman. At the death, by drowning, of her only child, that
she almost idolized, she bowed humbly and said: "Thy Will be done!"
And upon the day of her death, she was mother to eleven helpless
adopted children, for whose safety she prayed in her expiring moments.
What an unselfish life she led. In her diary she says, but in no
complaining mood: "Situated as we are, our house is the Missionaries'
tavern, and we must accommodate more or less all the time. We have no
less than seven families in our two houses; we are in peculiar and
somewhat trying circumstances; we cannot sell to them because we are
missionaries and not traders."
And we see by the record that there were no less than seventy souls in
the Whitman family the day of the massacre.
Emerson says: "Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of
individual character, and the characteristics of genuine heroism is
its persistency."
Where was it ever more strongly marked than in Dr. Whitman? We are
told that "History repeats itself." Going back upon the historic
pages, one can find the best illustration of Dr. Whitman in faithful
old Caleb. Their lives seem to run along similar lines. Both were sent
to spy out the land. Both returned and made true and faithful reports.
Both were selected for their great physical fitness, and for their
fine mental and moral worth; and both proved among the finest
specimens of unselfish manhood ever recorded. Turning to the Sacred
Record we read that a great honor was ordered for Caleb; not only that
he was permitted to enter the promised land, but it was also
understood by all, that he should have the choice of all the fair
country they were to occupy. His associates sent with him forty years
before were terribly afraid of "the giants," and now they had reached
"The land of promise," and Joshua had assembled the leaders of Israel
to assign them their places. Just notice old Caleb. Standing in view
of the meadows and fields and orchards, loaded with their rich
clusters of purple grapes, everybody expected he would select the
best, for they knew that it was both promised and he deserved it; but
Caleb, lifting up his voice so that all could hear, said:
"Lo, I am this day four score and five years old. As yet I am as
strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; as my strength
was then, even so is my strength now for war, both to go out and to
come in. Now, therefore, give me this mountain whereof the Lord spoke
in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there,
and that the cities were great and fenced. If so be, the Lord will be
with me, then I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said."
Noble, unselfish old Caleb! And how wonderfully like him was our hero
thirty-four and a half centuries later. It mattered not that he had
saved a great country, twice as large as New York, Pennsylvania and
Illinois combined, or thirty-two times as large as Massachusetts. It
mattered not that it was accomplished through great peril and trials
and sufferings that no man can over-estimate, he never once asked a
reward. "Give me this mountain," and he went back to his mission, and
resumed his heavy burden, and let others gather the harvest, and "the
clusters of purple grapes." There he was found at his post of duty,
and met death on that fatal November the 29th, 1847.
When a generous people have made the endowment complete, and built the
grand Memorial Hall, they should build a monument at the "Great Grave"
at Waiilatpui. Americans are patriotic. They build monuments to their
men of science, to their statesmen and to their soldiers. It is right
to do so. They are grand object lessons, educating the young in
patriotism and virtue and right living. The monument at no grave in
all the land will more surely teach all these, than will that at the
neglected grave at Waiilatpui. Build the monument and tell your
children's children to go and stand uncovered in its shadow, and
receive its lessons and breathe in its inspirations of patriotism.