“WE, Trustees of the University of the State of Pennsylvania . . .”
The grandly ceremonial scribal handwriting in this minute book, begun at the formal opening of the new “University of the State of Pennsylvania,” suggests the importance attached to the reinvented school by state leaders. Loyalty to the state constitution was a crucial part of this project, and the book prominently features the text of the oath sworn to by the new Trustees and faculty, along with more practical resolutions about recovering property, books, and papers that had belonged to the former College of Philadelphia.
This letter, in the hand of Timothy Matlack, the scribe who wrote the manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence and one of the new University Trustees of 1779, nominates Rev. John Ewing and David Rittenhouse to their new positions as Professors of Moral Philosophy and Natural and Experimental Philosophy.
“It is painful to us be repeating our own Wants and the Necessities of the Institution . . .”
Provost John Ewing sounds like a beleaguered department chair in this letter to the University Trustees. He bemoans low faculty salaries and a host of unfilled positions in the school. Seizing the opportunity the 1779 Act created, he argues, ambitiously, for hiring Professors of Divinity, History, Chronology, Geography, Drawing, and Design. Language teachers are also needed. And, finally, building upgrades are vital. American colleges, Ewing argues, are “in their infancy” and need sustenance. Only with that support could this school become a “laudable” example for all. It would also, he concludes, attract students from “the West-India Islands and
Awarding honorary degrees continued to play a political and social role in the revolutionary school institutions. Thomas Paine was granted an honorary degree in 1780. In 1783, following the victory at Yorktown, an honorary doctorate was granted to George Washington. He was not present for the ceremony but accepted it later in the year.[1] The Trustees did, however, met with Washington in 1789 to present the University’s congratulations on his election as President.
Provost in Exile
Pages removed from an unidentified publication of the proceedings of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania containing the text of the bill voiding the charter of the College of Philadelphia and establishing the University of the State of Pennsylvania, entered into law 29 November 1779 (Chapter 136, pp. 271–274).
In 1780, after the dissolution of the College of Philadelphia, Rev. William Smith moved with his family to Chestertown, Maryland. This was not exactly a banishment. He returned to Philadelphia occasionally to give sermons, and he continued to pressure the state Assembly on behalf of the College of Philadelphia and its original charters. Smith founded an academy in Chestertown, which became Washington College in 1782, named of course for George Washington, with whom Smith remained on friendly terms. He also worked to rebrand the Anglican Church, now separated from Britain, as the “Protestant Episcopal Church of North America.”
Cheyney, 139–140. ↑