History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia: The Oldest Incorporated Methodist College in AmericaIrby, Richard
History
History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia: The Oldest Incorporated Methodist College in America
Irby, Richard
Randolph-Macon College; Randolph-Macon Woman's College
"After the men at Randolph-Macon had been drilled in the rudiments and
given their primary inspiration, many of them were dispatched to Europe
for further training, and returned Doctors of Leipzig and fired with a
new zeal. In mere appearances, it should seem as if this Randolph-Macon
migration to Leipzig was the beginning of the attraction exerted by that
University on young Southern scholars, an attraction which has been
rivalled in recent years only by that of the neighboring Johns Hopkins.
The land lay open before these young men, and they proceeded to occupy
it. Robert Sharp returned Doctor from Leipzig, and was soon called to
Tulane; William M. Baskervill returned Doctor from Leipzig, and started
an impulse at Wofford College, South Carolina, which he broadened and
deepened after his transfer, in 1881, to Vanderbilt; Robert Emory
Blackwell returned from Leipzig and succeeded Professor Price in his
work at Randolph-Macon; Frank C. Woodward succeeded Baskervill at
Wofford in 1881, and removed to the South Carolina College in 1887; W.
A. Frantz has built up a following in Central College, Missouri; John R.
Ficklen, having followed Dr. Price to the State University, has become
associated with Sharp at Tulane. The English fever at Randolph-Macon
became epidemic. Dr. James A. Harrison accepted a call, in 1876, to
Washington and Lee as Professor of Modern Languages, and formed a new
Virginian centre for specialists. Even Price's successor in the Greek
chair at Randolph-Macon, Charles Morris, soon resigned to go to the
University of Georgia as Professor of English. Nor has the manufacture
of Randolph-Macon professors of English ever entirely ceased. Howard
Edwards, formerly of the University of Kansas; J. L. Armstrong, late of
Trinity College, North Carolina, and now of the Randolph-Macon Woman's
College; John D. Epes, of St. John's College, Maryland; John Lesslie
Hall, Ph. D. (Johns Hopkins), of William and Mary, are later accessions
to a list by no means complete.
"It is very curious to trace these various ramifications of mutual
influences, and to see them acting and interacting, crossing and
recrossing. Three main lines may be detected. Just as the University of
Virginia, through its graduates, became the pattern for many, especially
State institutions, and Hampden-Sidney, Davidson, Central, and,
particularly, Presbyterian colleges, felt the influence of the course at
Washington and Lee; so Randolph-Macon affected, among others, Wofford,
and then Vanderbilt, which, in turn, has become a new centre of
activity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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