HARTWICK’S FIRST 200 YEARS

By Dr. Thomas C. Beattie and Shelley Burtner Wallace

John Christopher Hartwick was born in Germany in 1714 and educated as a Lutheran minister at the University of Halle. He arrived in America in 1746 to serve as a missionary for the German settlers. He was a very eccentric man with a rigid personality and little tolerance of people’s vices. He frequently required his parishioners to sign a covenant that “they would forswear shooting, horse-racing, boozing, and dancing.”

He moved from parish to parish up and down the East Coast and was never very successful in finding a congregation that was willing to submit to his strict dictates. However, this only confirmed Hartwick’s belief that American society needed to be reformed by regulating settlement patterns and enforcing a disciplined code for each community.

Utopian communities were very popular in the 18th century and Hartwick envisioned a community dedicated to the principles of pious living. To this end he made numerous land deals and eventually was successful in obtaining the majority of a 24,000-acre patent from the Mohawk Indians in Otsego County, New York. Hartwick never spent much time on his property, and he commissioned his neighboring landowner, Judge William Cooper, to lease his land to suitable, Christian settlers for the establishment of this “New Jerusalem.” Cooper, however, being a wise businessman, ignored Hartwick’s stipulations, and leased property to whoever could afford it. Much to Hartwick’s dismay, the people who settled on his property were not in the least interested in abiding by the dictates of his utopian ideals.

In many ways, idealistic, scholarly John Christopher Hartwick was a man ahead of his time. In the spring of 1764 he wrote an article vehemently protesting the death penalty for theft on the grounds that such a punishment was contrary to divine law, an opinion which did not set well with 18th century city officials. He also envisioned government-run educational institutions. He opposed the exclusiveness of private schools, then the primary means of higher education, and in his will stipulated that the Seminary was to be public.

Hartwick died in 1796, disappointed at not having fulfilled his dream for a New Jerusalem or having established a public school, but he did leave complete instructions in his will for the founding and organization of a seminary. Although he complicated matters by designating Jesus Christ as his heir, the executors of the will were able to overcome this and other thorny legal problems. Jeremiah van Rensselaer and Frederick Muhlenberg, both prominent in colonial political and religious circles, were dedicated to honoring Hartwick’s intentions. They persuaded Dr. John Christopher Kunze, Hartwick’s choice and arguably the leading Lutheran theologian of the day, to become director of the Seminary and to teach theology at his home in New York City. Meanwhile, Rev. Anthony Braun taught sciences and languages at Albany and Rev. John Frederick Ernst taught elementary school on the Hartwick Patent. All three were supported by interest on the endowment that Hartwick had established as the result of William Cooper’s land deals.

There was great debate about the permanent location of the Seminary, but due to the persistence of the residents on the Patent, the first Seminary building was established there in 1815 and the school was chartered the following year. The Seminary offered a classical, or prep-school, department, and a theological department that prepared students for the ministry.

During the first 20 years or so the school averaged between 60 and 70 students. Women were admitted in 1851, and during the 1880s enrollment was over 100. In 1888 the classical department introduced the freshmen year of a collegiate course, and in 1927 it expanded to a four-year college and was moved to Oneonta. The Seminary’s classical department (or academy) continued to hold classes at Hartwick Seminary, New York until 1934 when it closed. The Seminary’s theological department moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1930. It closed in 1940 and formal consolidation with Hartwick College was enacted in 1947.

In 1927, Hartwick Seminary and the New York Synod conducted a $500,000 campaign for a “Greater Hartwick.” Included in this plan was an expansion of its collegiate program to a four-year college. An eager Oneonta Chamber of Commerce offered to guarantee $200,000 and a piece of land if the College would be located in their city. The Seminary Board of Trustees accepted this offer and within 16 days the citizens of Oneonta had enthusiastically fulfilled the pledge.

On September 26, 1928 classes began in the temporary quarters of the Walling Mansion with Rev. Charles R. Myers (former President of Hartwick Seminary) as President and Dr. Olaf M. Norlie, a nationally respected scholar, as dean. Although only 25 students were expected on the opening day, over 100 appeared, much to the surprise and delight of Myers and Norlie. By the end of the semester, enrollment stood at 235.

In the spring of 1929, Rev. Charles W. Leitzell resigned as president of the Seminary and the College Board of Trustees to replace Dr. Myers as president of the new college. In December of that same year, the first building on Oyaron Hill, which had been designed by a leading architect of the time and eventually became Bresee Hall, was completed. President Leitzell’s attempts to carry on the dream of building a Greater Hartwick College were hampered first by the Depression, then by a proposed merger with Wagner College (also a Lutheran institution) in 1936, and finally by an $8,000 deficit in 1938. The fact that the College survived at all during these difficult years is largely due to what an admirer has called Leitzell’s “energy, faith, and optimism.”

Henry James Arnold assumed the presidency in 1939, remaining in the post until 1953. Arnold saw the College through the war years, when enrollment dropped as low as 150 students, most of whom were in nursing. The end of the war brought a flood of veterans–some of them returning to finish their interrupted Hartwick education–swelling the student body to 600 and assuring government financing for four new buildings: an arts building (1946), a men’s dormitory (1946), a temporary cafeteria (1946), and a field house (1948). The dramatic growth in numbers, facilities, and quality of education resulted in Hartwick’s being accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in 1949.

Miller A. F. Ritchie followed Dr. Arnold as president, serving from 1953 to 1959. Ritchie’s administration was marked by careful enrollment and fiscal management. Although enrollment had dipped to 315 after the veterans graduated, it soon rose to 553. Ritchie also reduced the debt from more than $100,000 to less than $25,000, at the same time expanding educational facilities. Blessed with the ability to attract wealthy donors, he increased the endowment ten-fold.

Ritchie thus established the firm foundation on which Frederick M. Binder, president from 1959 to 1969, was energetically to build. Capitalizing on the “baby boom” and low-interest government loans for education, Binder ushered in an era of dynamic and rapid growth in both physical plant and academic offerings. Eight new buildings, including dormitories, Yager Library and Museum, and what was to become the Binder Gymnasium, went up. New programs in inter-cultural exchange and interdisciplinary studies were established. Near the end of his administration, Binder also supported the decision to end Hartwick’s direct affiliation with the Lutheran Church and to become a fully independent liberal arts and sciences college. With Binder’s resignation in February 1969, Wallace R. Klinger served as acting president throughout the remainder of the academic year.

Adolf G. Anderson, president from 1969-1976, was interested in new approaches to a liberal arts and sciences education and in modernizing the curriculum. Under his administration the Individual Student Program option and a Living/Learning Center were established. He encouraged the expansion of off-campus student opportunities, begun in Binder’s time. He oversaw the design and construction of a beautiful Center for the Arts, eventually named for him, and approved the acquisition of the Pine Lake Campus. When he died of cancer in 1976, Dr. Earl Deubler, professor of biology, became acting president until Philip Wilder Jr. was appointed in 1977.

The Wilder administration, 1977-1992, was marked by a period of financial stabilization and growth. The endowment increased dramatically to over $47 million, providing the College with a solid financial basis. Wilder also officially established 1797 as the date the College was founded, insisted on hiring outstanding faculty, and oversaw the establishment of Curriculum XXI, an innovative general education program designed to prepare students for the 21st century.

In 1992, Dr. Richard A. Detweiler became the College’s eighth president. Nationally known for promoting computer technology as an educational tool, Detweiler has overseen the modernization of Hartwick’s technological facilities and insisted that every entering student be provided with a notebook computer. Drawing on the past and looking toward the future, Detweiler has established the Five Plus Plan, which dedicates the College to preparing students for an increasingly technological, increasingly interdependent world. The Plan also emphasizes qualities that have characterized a Hartwick education since 1797: academic excellence, a caring faculty, and dedication to the needs of the nation.

[Dr. Thomas Beattie was the former Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of English at Hartwick College. Shelley Burtner Wallace served as the College Archivist since 1985. This article was published in the Oneonta Daily Star in January 1997, and in Hartwick’s alumni magazine The Wick in the summer of 1997.]