1. James T. Mitchell and Henry Flanders, eds., The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1896-1915), vol. 12, pp. 221-25. The trustees had appointed a committee, June 14, 1785, to petition the legislature for "an Endowment for the College". Trustee Minutes, vol. 1, p. 139. DCA. On Nov. 28, Rush wrote Montgomery that it would mean hard work even to get a few hundred pounds and a few thousand acres. "The consider a Presbyterian College only as a nest for vipers and Bryans and Ewings to engender in." Lyman H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, 1951), vol. 1, p. 377. Montgomery had more optimistic aims. To Benjamin Franklin, Dec. 6, 1785. Franklin Papers, American Philosophical Society.
2. Philip Gardiner Nordell, "The City Hall and Dickinson College Lottery," Dickinson Alumnus, Oct., 1962, pp. 5-8. Mitchell and Flanders, vol. 15, pp. 276-82. C. H. Haskins and W. 1. Hull, History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania (Wash., 1902), p. 49. The drawing was announced in General Advertiser, April 25, 1791.
3. Trustee Minutes, Sept. 28, 1790.
4. A Statement Exhibiting the Receipts and Expenditures of the Trustees of Dickinson College, from March, 1785, till October, 1809. Broadside, DCA.
5. Mitchell and Flanders, vol. 14, pp. 123-24. Trustees' petition, Trustee Minutes, Sept. 28, 1790.
6. Trustee Minutes, May 2, 1792. Dr. Nisbet, catching a rumor of this action, suspected a further invasion of faculty prerogatives. 1792. Darlington Library, University of Pittsburgh.
7. An Act for Raising by way of Lottery the Sum of Seven Thousand Five Hundred Dollars for erecting a suitable College-house in the Borough of Carlisle. (Harrisburg, April 1, 1794).
8. April 11, 1795. Mitchell and Flanders, vol. 15, p. 282.
10. March 24, 1803. Mitchell and Flanders, vol. 17, pp. 352-53. The Hon. (not Prof.) James Ross opposed: "it was placed in a bad soil, it could not produce good fruit; that it had sent forth a parcel of fellows to prey upon the public, and that if it did not flourish it ought to be moved to another place; that it was an ungrateful county that would not pay their taxes, that they owed $97,000 and if they had paid the interest it would have built two such colleges." Philip S. Klein, "James Buchanan at Dickinson," SL 2, p. 163.
11. Feb. 24, 1806. Mitchell and Flanders, vol. 18, pp. 94-95.
12. March 23, 1819. Pennsylvania, Laws, 1818-1819, p. 152.
13. Pennsylvania, Laws, 1820-1821, pp. 47-48. Franklin College, recipient also of 10,000 acres, had cleared over $12,000 from the sale of 4,771 acres by 1828. Joseph Henry Dubbs, History of Franklin and Marshall College (Lancaster, 1903), p. 92. To Alexander Addison, May 11,
14. Pennsylvania, Laws, 1825-1826, p. 27.
15. Saul Sack, "The State and Higher Education," Pennsylvania History, vol. 26 (1959), pp. 244- 45.
16. Trustee Minutes record, e.g., a vote of Feb. 17, 1826, that the names of all members of both houses of Assembly "be transcribed in a neat style and suspended in the College Library."
17. James Mulhern, A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania (Phila., 1933), p. 312.
18. Salaries remained in arrears throughout their tenure. Dr. Nisbet's sarcasm on the subject only echoes more sharply that of Dr. Ewing, who wrote on behalf of the faculty to the University of Pennsylvania trustees, June 12, 1783: "We hear indeed that your Committee have settled our Accounts, but we know not how[eve]r if it can be called a Settlement of an Account, for one Party to determine how much they will pay, and have the other at Liberty to receive it, or let it alone." University Papers, 1, 24. University of Pennsylvania Archives.
19. Butterfield, vol. 1, p. 376. Rush had suggested that John King write the announcement. Ibid., p. 383. It appeared with the date, Dec. 19, 1786, and gave 11 great pleasure in our city." Ibid., p. 411. Philadelphia saw it in the Pennsylvania Journal, Feb. 10, 1787, and on the reverse of the front cover of the dignified Columbian Magazine, Feb., 1787.
21. Trustee Minutes, April 10, 1787.
22. Carlisle Gazette, Oct. 3, 1787. James Henry Morgan, Dickinson College (Carlisle, 1933), pp. 133-34.
23. Sept. 26, 1787. Copy by John Young. Library of Centre College.
24. Trustee Minutes, Sept. 27, 1787.
25. Rush Papers. Library Company of Philadelphia, on deposit at HSP.
26. Edgar Bruce Wesley, Proposed: The University of the United States (Minneapolis, 1936), pp. 4-5.
27. Joseph B. Smith, "A Frontier Experiment with Higher Education," SL 1, p. 93. Charles Page Smith, "James Wilson and the Era of the American Revolution," SL 2, pp. 90-91. John Montgomery to William Irvine, Jan. 9, 1788, Irvine Papers, HSP. Dickinson student John Shippen to his father, March 3, 1788, in Two Hundred Years in Cumberland County (Carlisle, 1951), pp. 66-67.
28. William Petriken to John Nicholson, May 23, 1788. Nicholson Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives.
29. Nisbet to Alexander Addison, Oct. 29, 1793. Darlington Library, University of Pittsburgh.
30. Nisbet to John Montgomery, Jan. 21, 1787. Butterfield, vol. 1, p. 410.
32. David Wilson Thompson, Early Publications of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1785-1835 (Carlisle, 1932), p. 14.
33. Samuel Miller, Memoir of the Rev. Charles Nisbet, D.D. (N.Y., 1840), pp. 228-29.
34. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Diaries of George Washington (Boston and N.Y., 1925), vol. 4, p. 212. Printed as A Sermon on the Freedom and Happiness of the United States of America, preached 5th Oct., 1794, and published at the request of the Officers of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Troops of Light Horse (Phila., 1794), where we see, p. 23, that Dr. Davidson does not let so fine an opportunity pass without mention of the College, its "sons of science" and its promise of being "an extensive blessing to the Western Country, if supported by a generous public."
35. Robert Davidson, Jr., in William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (N.Y., 1858), vol. 3, p. 324.
36. Petition of Dr. McCoskry, Robert Davidson, John Montgomery, John Creigh, etc., March 14, 1796. Pennsylvania State Archives.
37. Miller, p. 317; Conway Phelps Wing, History of the First Presbyterian Church of Carlisle, Pa. (Carlisle, 1877), pp. 135-36.
38. Richard Hofstadter and W. P. Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (N.Y., 1955), p. 218.
39. Nisbet to William Young, June 9, 1792. DCA.
40. Rules and Regulations for the Government of Dickinson College, adopted by the Board of Trustees the 26th May, 1795. Carlisle, Printed by George Kline. This broadside was reprinted with additions as a pamphlet, 1805.
41. Nisbet to Alexander Addison, Feb. 23, 1797. Darlington Library, University of Pittsburgh.
42. Trustee Minutes, April 27, 1796. Grammar School pupils were to study the Latin texts from Cordier's Colloquies to Ovid and Virgil and the Greek Testament. Freshmen would move on to Lucian, Horace, Cicero, Juvenal, Xenophon, Homer and rhetoric, chronology and history. Seniors were to go further in mathematics and have the culminating courses in natural and moral philosophy, logic, metaphysics and criticism. The two upper classes would continue to review the classics.
44. Trustee Minutes, June 20, 1798. The minutes of Sept. 26, 1798; Sept. 29, 1799; April 23 and Sept. 23, 1800, at odds over the wording of the commencement formula.
45. DCA. Reproduced in Archibald Douglas Turnbull, William Turnbull, 1752 - 1822 (privately printed, 1934), p. 43.
46. The incident, which had been sponsored by trustee William Bingham is fully described, but without date, in Morgan, pp. 162-65. Bingham must have been inspired by the march of 1,200 young men of Philadelphia in support of Adams, May 7, 1798. The address of the Dickinson students was widely publicized—New York Spectator, July 14, 1798, and elsewhere.
47. Nisbet to Rush, Nov. 12, 1803. Rush Papers.
48. Nisbet to trustees, July 29, 1799. DCA. Miller, p. 283. The one-year graduates had a record of ill success in after life, e.g., March 6, 1801 when the faculty was unable to recommend any prospective teacher to the York Academy. George Hay Kain and others, A History of the York County Academy (York, 1953), pp. 34-35.
49. Herbert M. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America (N.Y., 1934), pp. 160-62. G. Adolph Koch, Republican Religion. The American Revolution and the Cult of Reason (N.Y., 1933), p. 277.
51. Nisbet to William Young, Nov. 23, 1798. DCA.
53. Nisbet reported to the trustees, Dec. 4, 1799, DCA, a year after "this imperious Requisition of the Students," that his colleagues were attempting to break the new pattern by "raising a junior Class in Masquerade." On the afternoon of the commencement of Sept. 23, 1800, the trustees rescinded "the regulation regarding a commencement once in every year," and directed the faculty to present students for graduation only as they had made sufficient "proficiency in learning." Trustee Minutes. Nisbet's report, Oct. 8, 1800, DCA, complained that this offered no real solution and asked the restoration of the rule on three classes. He was still pleading for this in his report of April 27, 1802, "tho' it is to be feared that the Students will not submit to this at present." On Oct. 18, 1802, DCA, he reported that the faculty "had contrived to keep their last class for a year and a half," with a hope of the three-year course in view. It remained at two years, however, through Nisbet's and Davidson's administrations.
54. Armstrong to Benjamin Rush, Dec. 13, 1784. Rush Papers.
55. Oct. 21, 1786. Butterfield, vol. 1, p. 397.
56. Trustee Minutes, Dec. 18, 1792. A grant of land was to be solicited from the Penns, and bids then invited "for the building a college agreeably to the plan furnished by Mr. Kien." John Keen of the Carpenters' Company, Philadelphia, had been an apprentice of Robert Smith, architect of Nassau Hall. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., "The Other Man on Bingham's Porch," SL 2, pp. 51- 52
57. "If we don't begin soon we will not be able to get the Roof on nixt Summer." Montgomery to William Irvine, Dec. 19, 1792. Irvine Papers, HSP.
58. Bid of John Hunter, Nov. 24, 1798. DCA.
60. Montgomery to Francis Gurney, Aug. 23, 1799. DCA.
61. Miller, pp. 226-27. Alexander Nisbet, writing to John Dickinson, July 27, 1808, Rush Papers, describes him as "the best friend of my father."
63. Nisbet to trustees, Nov. 8, 1803, DCA; to Rush, Nov. 12, 1803, Rush Papers. Trustee minutes, Oct. 27 and Nov. 29, 1802, show the Board calling for faculty advice on "the future of academic government." Unanimity here, however, seems to have been accompanied by a lack of it in faculty. Davidson to judge Hamilton, Oct. 23, 1803, James Hamilton Papers, HSP, begs a glimpse of Nisbet's plan. Nisbet's plan, Oct. 18, proposes the three-year course on terms impossible without Davidson's full cooperation.
65. Feb. 4, 1803. Rush Papers.
66. To Alexander Addison, Feb. 12, 1803. Darlington Library, University of Pittsburgh.
67. "A Sketch of the Rise, Progress and Present State of Dickinson College," Port Folio, vol. 5 (1811), p. 243.
68. Montgomery to Rush, June 22, 1803. Rush Papers.
69. Including a second $100 from Dickinson. (Report on collections, Aug. 22, 1804. DCA.)
70. Brackenridge to James Hamilton, May 19, 1803. DCA. The Judge's extended novel, Modern Chivalry, touches upon college-burning as a possible manifestation of frontier anti- intellectualism. (Quoted by Smith, SL 1, pp. 76, 84-85.)
71. Latrobe to Brackenridge, May 18, 1803. DCA.
72. Two of Latrobe's preliminary drawings are extant (DCA), basement ground plan and elevation of "proposed North Front." The sill courses are shown here. In his sketch of the building at the Maryland Historical Society, made when he first saw it in 1813, Latrobe has indicated the horizontal lines of his original plan-evidence that he was not satisfied with the trustees' substitution of coigns for sill courses.
73. Paul F. Norton, "Latrobe and Old West at Dickinson College," Art Bulletin, vol. 33 (1951), pp. 125-30. The source of the mermaid vane was first identified in Charles F. Himes' pamphlet, The Mermaid of Old West (n.p., c. 1917).
74. Quoted in Morgan, pp. 94-95.
75, Butterfield, vol. 2, p. 867.
77. According to the broadside Statement of expenditures from 1785 to 1809, DCA, $12,000 had been spent on rebuilding, and $7,000 to $8,000 would be needed to "perfect the design of Mr. Latrobe, who furnished the Plan, and to enclose and improve the College grounds in a suitable manner."
79. Trustee Minutes, Jan. 20, 1804.
80. Isabella Oliver, Poems on Various Subjects (Carlisle, 1805), pp. 20-21. Robert Davidson wrote the introduction to the book.
81. Miller, pp. 298-99. In translation in Sarah Woods Parkinson, Memories of Carlisle's Old Graveyard (Carlisle, 1930), pp. 182-83.
82. Nisbet to Charles Wallace, Oct. 31, 1797. Bulletin of the New York Public Library, vol. 2 (1898), p. 285.
84. Miller, p. 193. Thompson, pp. 20-23.
85. $6,693.37 from the College, $1,206.20 from the church. (Inventory of estate Cumberland County Court House, Carlisle, Pa.)
86. "Sketch," Port Folio, vol. 5 (1811), p. 244
87. John Hayes, Rural Poems, Moral and Descriptive (Carlisle, 1807). Thompson, pp. 57-61. Of Borland, Montgomery had written to Rush, June 22, 1803, Rush Papers: "Our new Grammer Master is a Compleat scholar and has an Excellent Metode of speaking and is a Decent good looking man. The young men are highly Pleased with him and the trusties feel no loss in the change of his being in the place of Mr. thomson."
88. John Linn to John McDowell, 1804, Presbyterian Historical Society, Phila: "His character as a teacher never stood high either with ye students or with persons of information at home or abroad."
90. Philip S. Klein, SL 2, pp. 166-70.
92. Rules and Regulations for the Government of Dickinson College (Carlisle, 1805), pp. 7-8.
93. Trustee Minutes, Sept. 25, 1805.
94. Butterfield, vol. 2, p. 969.