II. The establishment of the college later was an afterthought, due to the influence of some unknown person or persons.
These views I believe to be entirely mistaken, and due either to ignorance of the original documents still on file in the State Archives of Massachusetts, or to hasty conclusions drawn from an incomplete examination of those documents. The real facts, as we shall see, are these:
The founders of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution intended from the beginning to establish an institution of collegiate rank in which both literary and theological instruction should be given, but were unable, at first, to secure a charter commensurate with the full scope of their plan.
It was the Rev. Arthur Warren Smith, Librarian of the New England Baptist Library in Boston, who first called my attention to the existence of the above mentioned documents in the Massachusetts Archives. For some years Mr. Smith has been collecting materials for a biography (as yet unpublished), of the Rev. Daniel Merrill, A. M., who bore a leading part in securing the original charter of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, and who deserves, perhaps, to be called the father of Colby College. In the course of his investigations, Mr. Smith discovered that there are in existence documents which have never been quoted in any published history of the college. These documents are the first petition (presented to the General Court in 1812)[1] and the charter which failed to pass in that legislature, together with the first draft of the charter of 1813, which was amended in its most important sections before its passage. These papers show clearly the real purpose of the founders, and throw an interesting light on the so-called change of policy in 1820—for it should be remarked in passing that it was not the act of February 5, 1821, which raised the institution to full collegiate rank, but the earlier act (June 19, 1820), which, without altering the name, empowered the President and Trustees of the Maine Literary and Theological institution "to confer such degrees as are usually conferred by universities established for the education of youth." The act of the following year merely changed the name without altering the powers of the Institution.
Let us now take a brief survey of the documents, from the first action of the Bowdoinham Association in 1810 to the passage of the bill on February 5, 1821, by which the Maine Literary and Theological Institution became Waterillle College, and see if we do not find one unvarying purpose pervading them all.
- ↑ The petition quoted by Dr. E. W. Hall (History of Higher Education in Maine, Chapter V, Colby College, pages 96-97) is the second petition, presented to the next legislature. It varies only in the signatures at the end.
