This was the second Methodist College in the world, and was organized in
1816, the year of Bishop Asbury's death. After a year or two of
successful work, a charter was applied for and it was granted to the
College February 10, 1818.[40] The President, Samuel K. Jennings, M.D.,
a Methodist local preacher, was a rather remarkable man. Coming from New
Jersey, graduating at Rutgers, and settling in the practice of the
medical profession in Virginia, he was converted by the preaching of
Asbury, and was persuaded by him some years later, to move to Baltimore
and take the leadership of the new enterprise.[41] He was said to be, at
one time, the only Methodist preacher with a collegiate education and
was well adapted to the task, from his administrative ability and wide
learning. Around him, he gathered an undenominational faculty of four
professors and began the life of the institution in a large brick
building on the corner of Park Avenue and Franklin Street. In March,
1818, the _Methodist Magazine_ tells us that there were one hundred and
seventy students, and that "The Asbury College has probably exceeded in
its progress, considering the short time it has been established, any
literary institution in the country."[42] In that spring, a class was
graduated, and yet only a few months later Dr. Bangs wrote that the
College "continued for a short time and then, greatly to the
disappointment and mortification of its friends, went down as suddenly
as it had come up, and Asbury College lives only in the recollection of
those who rejoiced over its rise and mourned over its fall."
This statement is not absolutely correct; it is probable that there was
some catastrophe, and possibly Dr. Jennings then began to break away
from the Methodist Episcopal Church, which he left entirely, when the
Methodist Protestant Church was formed in 1828. Still some sort of an
organization was kept up under the old name; for does not good Hezekiah
Niles, of Register fame, tell us of examinations and exhibitions he
witnessed in the early spring of 1819,[43] at which time prodigies of
learning and cramming were exhibited, and do we not find in 1824, a
pamphlet published by Dr. Jennings, entitled "Remarks on the Subject of
Education, to which are added the general rules of the school under the
appellation of Asbury College." Apparently the College had passed
entirely out of the control of the church, and having lowered its grade,
was now little more than Dr. Jennings' private school. The school was
then situated on the corner of Charles and Baltimore Streets and, in
1833, when we catch the last glimpse of it, another removal had taken it
to the corner of South and Fayette Streets. It was then merely a boys'
day school and doubtless soon perished. So the second Methodist College
failed as the first had done and another was added to the many abortive
attempts to found a college in Maryland.