1860s Overview
While grammar, rhetoric, and composition were subjects of study at the Western University of Pennsylvania, there was no English department (as we understand the designation) at this time and no formal program in the study of English literature, and this was consistent with other institutions across America. Harvard first granted English departmental status in 1872, and it was not until 1876 that Harvard appointed Francis James Child to its first professorship in English.
In 1862, there were six Professorships at the Western University:
George Woods, M.A., Principal and Professor of Metaphysics and Ethics
Hon. Moses Hampton, Professor of Law
Joseph F. Griggs, M.A., Professor of Ancient Languages
George H. Christy, M.A., Professor of Mathematics
Rev. Samuel Findley, M.A., Professor of Rhetoric
The Professorship of Natural Sciences remained open.
George Woods
And there were three non-professorial positions:
Alphonse D. Danse, Teacher of the French Language
F.S. Apel, Teacher of the German Language
Glaucus H. Bonnafor, Instructor in Military Tactics
In 1864, George Woods took the title of President of the Western University. In 1873, Rudolph Leonhart was appointed as Teacher of the German Language. Leonhart published several books of fiction and non-fiction, including Adventures of a German Soldier in Virginia (1863). As the faculty grew in size over the period of the 60s, the additions came through new professorships in science and engineering including, for example, the appointment of Samuel Pierpont Langley, who became head of the new Allegheny Observatory in 1867.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Annual Catalogs from the 1860s separated the college curriculum from the “Preparatory” program, a program designed for students not yet ready for collegiate academics. The Preparatory program had three tracks: Preparatory English, Preparatory Classical, and the Scientific Department (for “students who do not wish to study the ancient languages). In 1865, for example, 182 of 222 students in the Western University were in a preparatory program; there was one resident graduate, and the remaining 39 college students were represented by 31 freshman and sophomores and 8 juniors and seniors.
Courses
In the “collegiate” curriculum of the freshman and sophomore years, students in the college read classic texts by Livy, Cicero, Herodotus, Homer, Euripides, and Aeschylus. In English, students studied Fowler’s English Grammar and Whately’s Rhetoric. Juniors took a course called simply “English Literature”; seniors studied Butler’s Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature. Shaw’s English Literature was adopted for use in instruction in the 1860s.
There were weekly exercises in declamation for all classes, with original declamations required from the Sophomores and Juniors. There were also weekly translation exercises (from English to Latin by the freshmen and from Latin to English by the sophomores). All classes had regular exercises in English composition. There were occasional “lectures on literature,” as well as weekly meetings of the Literary Society devoted to discussion, declamation and essays. Both the Philomathean and Irving Literary Societies existed at this time. Later in the decade, another literary society, “The Optic,” was added. According to Agnes Lynch Starrett, “Except with the three literary societies, which flourished under faculty supervision, little attention was paid to the study of English literature and composition.”
Samuel Findley served as the Professor of Rhetoric from 1861 until 1865. In 1866, Edward P. Crane was appointed as the Provisional Professor of Latin Language and Literature. He would later be titled the Professor of Latin and Rhetoric.
According to the University Catalog, candidates for admission into the Freshman Class were required to be well versed in Geography, Arithmetic, two sections of Robinson’s Algebra, seven of Cicero’s Select Orations, the Bucolics, Georgics, and the first six books of the Aeneid, Sallust, Greek Reader, three books of Xenophon’s Anabasis; together with Latin and Greek Grammar and Prosody, and the first twelve chapters of Arnold’s Latin Prose Composition.
Faculty
Samuel Findley was born in 1818 in West Middletown, Pennsylvania. In 1862, he was invited by George Woods to join the new Western University of Pennsylvania as Professor of Rhetoric, a position he held until 1865. Findley was a graduate of Franklin College in Ohio, and the Allegheny, Pennsylvania theological seminary. Ordained in October 1842, he served as a clergyman before becoming Principal of a succession of institutions, including Edinburg Academy in Wooster (Ohio), Chillicothe Female College, and Madison College. In 1857 he became the pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, a position he resigned five years later when he accepted the professorship at Western University. From 1859 to 1861 he was the editor of the Pennsylvania Teacher.
After leaving Pitt, Findley became Chaplain and Professor in the Western Military Academy at Dayton, Ohio, and the pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church (also in Dayton) and remained there from 1865 to 1870. In the years following he was employed as pastor in a number of other churches in Ohio. He was a member of the American Entomological Society and published Rambles among the Insects in 1878. He died in Roxabell, Ohio, on November 2, 1889.
Edward Payson Crane was born in Jefferson, NY, on March 6, 1832. In 1851 he graduated as the English salutatorian from the University of the City of New York, and then from the Union theological seminary in 1855. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, he served as a pastor in New York and Florida from 1855 to 1861. Between 1861 and his time at the university, he did missionary work in parts of Florida. In 1866, Crane was appointed as the Provisional Professor of Latin Language and Literature to replace Samuel Findley. He would later be titled the Professor of Latin and Rhetoric.
On the way to Drawbridge Peak, Ansel Adams for the Sierra Club
Dorville Libby graduated from Bowdoin College in 1862 and was selected to deliver the class oration. He was described as a “courtly, scholarly, kindly man,--on all respects a gentleman,--beloved by all who know him.” From 1863-1865, he was the Principal of the Preparatory Department at the University of Pittsburgh. In the summer of 1868, while on vacation in Kansas, and (according to his obituary in The Pacific Unitarian) “while watching the glory of the setting sun, he suddenly determined to follow the glow and settle in California.”
In San Francisco, he met Bret Harte, who had just begun a new magazine, The Overland Monthly, where Libby published a much cited and reprinted essay in February 1869, “The Supernatural in Hawthorne.” A year later, he met John Muir at Yosemite and began a long and close friendship. Libby made two ascents of Mt. Shasta and one of Mt. Hood. He placed the Sierra Club cylinder on Freel Peek. According to the Bowdoin College obituary, “all the lofty peaks and mountain lakes above Lake Tahoe knew him and gave him their treasures for thirty summers.”
Libby signed the articles of incorporation for the Sierra Club in 1892, and he served both on the club’s Board of Directors and as the Chairman of the Committee on Publications and Communication. John Muir’s library contained a number of schoolbooks, including rhetorics and grammars, that were most likely gifts from Libby. In San Francisco, Libby served as the head of the “literary department” of the A.L. Bancroft & Co. publishers, and as the Pacific Coast manager of D. Appleton & Co.
I.N. Forner came to the Western University of Pennsylvania in 1867 to replace Dorville Libby. Like many of his colleagues, he served many administrative functions during his tenure. In addition to the teaching of English, Forner was Principal of the Commercial Department of the University, which taught the skills of Penmanship, Book-Keeping, and Accounting, as well as other areas of Business.
Students
Albert James Barr, after taking his degree at WUP, worked for the Artisans Deposit Bank in Pittsburgh, later as Secretary and then President of the Artisans Insurance Company. In 1886, following his father’s death, he became president of the Pittsburgh Post Printing and Publishing Company and held that position until 1911. He was an Associated Press director from 1892 until his death in 1912. Barr was appointed as the Pennsylvania state representative and commissioner to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and was a standing member of the Carnegie Museums committee, as well as the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institute.
David Riddle Breed began his studies at WUP but graduated from Hamilton College (1867). He became a Presbyterian clergyman and educator at the Western Theological Seminary. He wrote a number of tracts and works on hymnody, notably More Light, History and Use of Hymns and Hymn Tunes, and Preparing to Preach, all of which still enjoy wide circulation.
William D. Brickell worked at the Pittsburgh Post after leaving the university, learning the trade and serving in each of the paper’s various departments. He left Pittsburgh to work with newspapers in St. Louis and Indianapolis, returning to Pittsburgh to serve as Assistant Managing Editor of the Pittsburgh Leader. In 1876, Brickell became part owner of the Columbus Evening Dispatch and, in 1882, its sole proprieter until he sold the paper in 1910. He served as a director of the Associated Press for ten years.
Charles Romyn Dake was a homeopathic physician and writer. He became the editor of Homeopathic News in 1893 and published a number of works of fiction. These included two short stories and a novel, A Strange Discovery (New York: H. Ingalls Kimball, 1899), which serves as a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
George Wilkins Guthrie graduated in 1866 and earned a degree in law at Columbian University (now George Washington University). After his admission to the bar in 1869, he became increasingly involved with reform issues. Guthrie first ran for mayor of Pittsburgh in 1896 and was elected to the position in 1906, upon which he immediately implemented city policies to stem corruption. His legacy is profound; with D.T. Watson, he authored the legislation that merged Pittsburgh with Allegheny City, making Pittsburgh the sixth largest city in the United States. He also implemented a water filtration system that dramatically reduced the typhoid death rate in the area. After leaving office, Guthrie was appointed United States Ambassador to Japan and died in that post in 1917. At the 1869 Commencement ceremonies for the Western University of Pennsylvania, Guthrie delivered his Masters oration on "American Literature."
John Nicholas Neeb, a native of Pittsburgh, left the university after his junior year to begin work as a compositor for Freiheits Freund, a local German-language paper. He ultimately became its managing editor and held that position until his death. Neeb was a major organizer of the Pittsburgh Press Club; he entered city politics at twenty-one. He was elected to the Pennsylvania state senate in 1890, a position which he held until his death in 1893.
Student Writing
In 1869, students began to publish essays and stories (and the occasional poem) in the new student magazine, College Journal. It is certainly possible that these compositions were prepared as part of course work. If not, they still show the influence of an education in the literary and rhetorical arts at the Western University of Pennyslvania. Below are some examples:
“The Merry Eyes, ” by Beauchamp
“The Secret of National Prosperity,” by Sigma
“Western University of Pennsylvania,” by Kappa
Footnotes
Butler's Analogy
Joseph Butler (1692-1752) wrote his infamous Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature in 1736. Butler was born and educated in England as a Presbyterian but became ordained in the Church of England in 1718, and eventually became the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral and later Bishop of Durham. He studied Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson, philosophers who all influenced his writing. In his Analogy, Joseph Butler discusses his views on morality and how, under normal circumstances, humans are designed to follow moral lives. The work impressed Hume and Wesley and became widely read, first in Scotland during the end of the eighteenth century before making its way to Oxford. It eventually spread to American universities and colleges during the early part of the nineteenth century when many such institutions were heavily influenced by Scottish philosophy.
The Analogy was not popular with students. In September 1850 at Dickinson College (according to the Encyclopedia Dickensonia),
A group of students buried a copy of Butler in full ceremony, accompanied by much noise, lighting, and firing of pistols. Peck [the College president] punished the students involved, but only by scolding them in a public meeting, where he reprimanded them for their rude behavior of “boisterous hallooing, the firing of pistols, ringing of the bell, and thus disturbing families, exciting public resentment and bringing odium upon the college.” The following year, Peck was to admit final defeat and resigned as President.
Despite this display of disapproval, Butler's Analogy continued to haunt seniors for forty-five more years. Its overall influence waned at the end of the nineteenth century after it fell under the eye of critics like Leslie Stephen and last appears in student catalogues at Dickinson in 1895-96 academic year.