On October 15, 1840, all 74 members of the Wabash College student body came to Elihu Baldwin’s home to bid him fare-well. The beloved first president of Wabash College was dying.
When Baldwin accepted Edmund Hovey’s call to the presidency of Wabash College, he explained his decision to his Presbyterian congregation in New York City: “I have endeavored, by seeking direction at the Fountain of all wisdom, to ascertain what is duty; and if I have erred in respect to it, I must still feel that a solemn impression of my obligation to God has dictated this decision.”
Many of Baldwin’s closest friends feared that his life would be shortened by exposure to the rigorous life of frontier Indiana. Believing that there would be no later opportunity, an artist friend asked Baldwin to sit for a portrait before leaving New York. A copy of that portrait hangs in the Chapel; the original hangs in the Wabash president’s office. The painter was Samuel F. B. Morse, who would later achieve fame as the inventor of the telegraph.
Baldwin and Hovey spent the first half of 1835 soliciting contributions to the College, raising more than $28,000 in cash and books, thus ensuring that the College could move forward. They then embarked on the arduous journey to the West.
Arriving in Crawfordsville in October, Baldwin immediately established himself as the moral and intellectual leader of the College. Yet Wabash remained chronically short of funding and was obliged to borrow money, $2,000 in 1837 and $10,000 in 1838, at rates of interest ranging from 8% to 10%.
After a fire destroyed most of South Hall in September 1838, the financial situation became even more desperate. Baldwin was constantly on the road raising money. In 1837, 1838, and 1839 he journeyed back to New York and New England, still the primary source of gifts to the College. Much of the rest of the time he was traveling throughout Indiana, preaching, giving addresses, and asking for contributions.
All this took its toll on Baldwin’s health. While on a fund-raising tour in Fort Wayne in the summer of 1840, he accidently ate some poisonous berries, and this was a blow from which he never fully recovered. By early October it was obvious that the president was dying, and on October 15 the students were called to his bedside.
In the February 1899 edition of The Wabash, President Burroughs describes Baldwin’s final hours: “When the end was near, the students were permitted quietly to pass through the darkened room and look upon his face. Suddenly he revived and one asked him, ‘Have you any messages for the students?’ His reply was, ‘Tell them to seek first the kingdom of God.’ With the exception of a single answer to an inquiry, these were his last words.”
Baldwin’s death was a grievous blow to the college. In less than six years he had established Wabash as a growing, thriving institution. Baldwin had been everything a college president should be: a strong leader, loved and respected by all who knew him; an articulate defender of liberal education in the West; a tireless fund-raiser; and, perhaps most important of all, a constant source of strength and encouragement when others despaired for the future of the College.
In the face of offers of a new church building if he would return to his New York congregation, he had remained steadfast in his commitment to Wabash.
President Baldwin was buried in Caleb Mills’ cemetery, and his remains were removed to Oak Hill Cemetery in 1878. In 1848 Bald-win’s eastern friends had a marble slab erected on the site of his grave. The inscription, in Latin, begins: Reverendi Elihu Whittlesey Baldwin, D.D., Wabashiensis Colegii Praesidis Primi Honorati…Dormit Subtus Pulvis—“Beneath rests the dust of the Reverend Elihu Whittlesey Baldwin, the honored first president of Wabash College.”
David A. Phillips is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Wabash.