Like finding a shilling in a pig track
Lost and Found:
A Document Relating to the
Origin of Maryville College
by George Apperson
A “lost”
circular from the files of the Synod of Tennessee is held by the Special
Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago. The document,
in the Reuben T. Durrertt Collection on Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley,
gives a dramatic picture of Presbyterian effort to educate ministers,
trained to work under frontier conditions of poverty and widespread ignorance.
The Synod of Tennessee in 1819 extended to present
day Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio, but an urgent sense of the
need for missionaries centered in East Tennessee. Guided by two dedicated
ministers, Isaac Anderson and Charles Coffin, the project for a theological
seminary was Anderson’s passion. After settling in Maryville, he
began preparing men for the ministry, including George M. Erskine, an
African slave, whom he bought and educated to preach the gospel. Anderson’s
remarkable sympathy for the poor, the disadvantaged and the enslaved was
inspired by his education at Liberty Hall in Lexington, Virginia, where
a classmate was John Chavis, the first African American Presbyterian minister.
The original manuscript of the Circular was
in the lost files of the Synod of Tennessee and the copy in Chicago appears
to be a unique survival.
CIRCULAR
To the Moderator of the [Synod or]
Presbytery of [Miami]
Rev. Sir and Brethren,
THE Synod of Tennessee
respectfully solicit your inspection of the Constitution of the Southern
and Western Theological Seminary, and your Christian co-operation in
the upbuilding and advancement of the institution. We deeply feel our
insufficiency, in ourselves considered, for the high demands of the
object proposed. But it animates us to reflect, that you all have perceived
the urgent necessity for combined efforts upon an extensive scale to
establish a Theological Seminary west of the Apalachian mountains, to
furnish the pious youth of the Western and Southern States, who may
resort to it, the appropriate instruction and privileges necessary to
instruct them in their preparation for the gospel ministry; and thus,
to supply, in some degree, with well qualified ministers, the very numerous
and increasing population in the widely extended regions in the South
and West; a population, which has no prospect of receiving from other
sources, one minister in ten of the requisite number to relieve its
necessities. We have felt ourselves constrained to commence this effort,
feeble as we are, from the imperious nature of the demand, and a mature
consideration of the central situation of our state, viewed in connection
with the Southern and Western population, the health of our climate,
the advantages here in point of economy, and the great utility of having
preachers of the gospel educated, where they may be familiarly acquainted
with the habits, customs and situation of the people of that part of
the country where they are to labor. Our constitution, you will observe,
is so formed, that it gives, as far as practicable, equal rights and
privileges in elections and concerns of the Seminary to all other Synods,
and due proportions to all Presbyteries, that they may be induced to
co-operate with us, and, likewise, admits the co-operating ministers
of Synods and Presbyteries, not co-operating, to all the rights and
privileges secured to members of this Synod.
ANY propositions respecting
the plan and methods of co-operating will meet our respectful and candid
attention. Your earliest and most vigorous efforts to procure funds,
contingent and permanent, and by all the means in your power to move
on the institution to its desired usefulness, will engage the warmest
gratitude of our hearts. It is our earnest prayer to God, that we may
be enabled so to combine our exertions and prayers, that they may result
in great glory to himself and good to our fellow-men for ages to come.
It would be highly
gratifying to us, if you would send a delegation from your body to meet
with us in our next session in the town of Franklin, West Tenn. on the
first Wednesday of October, 1820. We have given the institution a temporary
location in Maryville, and wish the concurrence of the Synods, Presbyteries
and individual ministers that may consent to co-operate with us, in
finally fixing its permanent location.
George Newton, Mod.
Isaac Anderson, Clerk pro tem.
Maryville, October 20th, 1819
[The Constitution of the Southern and Western Theological Seminary is
recorded in the manuscript minutes of the Synod of Tennessee.]
In 1815, an organized effort to deal with frontier
needs prompted the founding of the East Tennessee Missionary Society.
To explain the objectives of these concerned Presbyterians, Dr. Anderson
wrote on 11 May 1815, to the Missionary Society of Connecticut appealing
for one or two missionaries to work in “destitute places in East
Tennessee.” In addition to preaching, they would distribute Bibles
and religious tracts. He explained that, “There are eighteen counties
in East Tennessee; and there is not more than 3000 souls out of a population
of 100,000, that have any opportunity to hear the gospel, except from
illiterate men, many of whom cannot even read the Scriptures.”
Dr. Coffin, of Greeneville College, wrote to the
Connecticut Society on 7 June 1815, saying, “We fear less injury
to the cause of religion here from sectarianism, wild and irregular as
it often is, than from irreligion, ignorance and stupidity. Well qualified
Missionaries would be sure to gain attention, from the various denominations
among the people.” In response, men were sent by the Connecticut
Society, but only one, Stephen Foster, remained to work permanently in
Tennessee.
The need for help was increasingly urgent as new
areas under the jurisdiction of the Synod received floods of emigrants.
A theological seminary to serve the southern and western frontier was
successfully established at Maryville under the steady hand of Dr. Anderson
and in 1842 it received a charter from the state of Tennessee as Maryville
College. Recently, more information on this heroic effort, apparently
overlooked by modern historians, has come to light at Harvard University,
the Tennessee State Library and Archives, and other repositories, including
the vast collection of Presbyterian records at Montreat, North Carolina.
… “I have other documents, including
the minutes of the first two meetings of the Board of Trustees of the
Southern and Western Theological Seminary, unknown to modern historians
of Maryville College. For me, it is like finding a shilling in a pig track
but it may not excite the imagination of our contemporary Presbyterian
colleagues.” … George Apperson
 
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