Hard Times
The year is 1838. Wabash College is on a strong footing and signs of improvement are everywhere. The wooden two-story house from 1833 (Forest Hall) is sold and the campus moves from its donated land to a quarter section of 140 acres with room to grow. Students are moving along toward their degrees. In fact, two of them graduated in July at the first-ever Wabash commencement. Archibald Allen and Silas Jessup are the Class of 1838.
The faculty is working away on these rough-hewn boys. The largest group is the preparatory students, as most young men in the area do not have access to the building blocks of a college education. For two years they study as prep students and are then qualified to enter the collegiate program, which takes another four years to complete.
The new campus has one grand building, known simply as “the College.” It stands proud and tall facing the town. A marvel to the area at four stories tall, it has been built from plans by noted NYC architects Towne and Davis.
In August, newspaper stories are sent out as recruitment efforts. One article notes that the College has a library with 2,000 books and “equipment for the instruction in the sciences.”
At the start of school on September 13, 1838, the new building is very nearly finished, students have moved into it, and teaching is underway.
In the middle of the night of September 21, the whole town is “aroused by the alarming cry of fire.…” The College’s new building, the focus of fund-raising for several years, is burned. All the books and specialty equipment are destroyed. The fire is eventually contained by Caleb Mills’ bucket brigade.
The Fire of 1838 results in losses of $15,000. The building was not insured—its special construction with brick dividing walls running from the basement to the attic was supposed to make it fireproof.
A meeting is held in town the next day. John Steele Thomson, a founder, a minister, and one of the first three members of the faculty, speaks with feeling about the College and what it might become. The townspeople are so moved that they give Wabash the money they had collected to build a women’s college to repair the building.
In 1982 a plaque will be placed on the Mall in front of the site of the first building (now Baxter Hall) in gratitude for the generosity of the town during a particularly hard time.
But in 1838 all that the founders and friends of the College can do is pick themselves up, dust off their books and sermons, and go right back to work, this time in the top two floors of the Hanna Building downtown, pictured here.
Within a year, the repairs were finished and Wabash was back to normal.
—Beth Swift, Archivist