Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III THE SOJOURN AT HAMPDEN The School was thus temporarily located at Hampden in connection with the Academy. The Professor of Theology School had been elected, but was not yet able to begin his Opened work. The only Instructor was Mr. Jehudi Ashmun. October, He opened the School some time in October, 1816 1816, the day is unknown, but necessarily must have been later than October 9.1 Mr. Ashmun was a native of Champlain, N. Y. He had attended Middlebury College from 1813 to 1815, but was graduated from the Mr. Jehudi University of Vermont in 1816, just prior to as- Ashmun f , .a e Preceptor surmnS ms work at Hampden. He was a man of more than common intellectual ability, and was one of the speakers at the time of his graduation. He was of a profoundly religious nature, and it was his deeply cherished purpose to become a missionary to the heathen. An unhappy break in a romantic attachment made during his closing year at college left him open to engage temporarily in some line of work in this country. " In entering upon the discharge of his duties as Principal of this School, Mr. Ashmun was far from abandoning his long cherished purpose of devoting himself to the cause of Foreign Missions."2 In a letter addressed in April, 1818, to a friend3 who was proposing to act as financial agent for the School, he writes: " I ought to have no motive for tarrying [in America], connected as I am with the Seminary, but to glorify the God of Missions, by assisting in ' Among the early papers of the Seminary is Mr. Ashmun's bill for hi first year's services, dated October 25, 1817. and covering " 1 year and 2 weeks." This would make the data of his beginning service " as Preceptor of Academy " October 11, 1816. ' Gurley's Lifs ofj. Ashmun, 1835, p. 29. Probably Mr. C...