Centennial Fund
In preparation for the celebration of its 100th anniversary, Trinity College launched a fundraising effort known as the Centennial Fund to support Trinity into its second century of existence. May 14, 1921 marked Trinity College’s 98th “Charter Day,” as well as the formal opening of the Centennial Fund. A truly massive show of effort was made to solicit funds for the College leading up to its Centennial anniversary in 1923. Undergraduates, alumni, and even non-Trinity affiliated people were encouraged to contribute through funds and word-of-mouth advertisement of the needs of the College as it entered a new era of change.
A goal was established by the Centennial Fund Committee to raise $1,500,000 by June 1923: $1,200,000 would be allotted for a professors’ salary endowment and $300,000 for the construction of a new gymnasium. In 1919, the salary of a full professor at Trinity was only $2,500, and the fund was intended to allow Trinity to offer competitive salaries to its professors that would attract highly accomplished individuals to teach at the College. The new gym would accommodate an expanded athletics program that would provide all students with access to exercise space and equipment.
During the two years prior to the centennial celebration, campaigning among alumni and friends of Trinity as well as Hartford residents was undertaken to raise money for the Endowment Fund. Solicitation was to be done in person to Trinity alumni, non-Trinity affiliated wealthy donors, and members of the Episcopal Church “who will appreciate what Trinity has done for the ministry since the days of its founding.” The campaign efforts were organized and carried out by a National Committee chaired by Judge Joseph Buffington, Class of 1875, with chairmen overseeing districts across more than 20 states to mobilize the fundraising efforts in their respective areas. Wherever in America there were Trinity alumni, there was an office of alumni organized to lead fundraising campaigns in that state, including California, District of Columbia, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin, among others.
Throughout 1921, the Trinity Tripod chronicled the first phase of the fundraising efforts and every issue of the Tripod during that year was sent out to alumni, whether they were subscribed to the paper or not, to keep them informed of the progress of the drive and to encourage their contribution to the cause. A supplemental Tripod issue published in April 1921 focused heavily on the centennial drive and urgently appealed to its alumni readers to chip in. Trinity’s undergraduates were also mobilized towards centennial fundraising. On May 23, 1921, the entirety of the undergraduate student body pledged support for the Centennial Fund Campaign.
Everett J. Lake, governor of Connecticut from 1920 to 1923 and member of the general organizational committee of the Centennial Campaign, expressed his support for the campaign and the endurance of Trinity as an educational institution in a speech delivered on May 24, 1921. Governor Lake praised Trinity as an “asset of great value to the city of Hartford and to the nation” and encouraged monetary support for the College, declaring that, “Our best insurance against radicalism is a well-developed educational system, and as an old, tested and living factor in that system Trinity College recommends itself to our active interest and support.”
The campaign for support from Hartford citizens began in November 1921, with a committee of 10 non-Trinity men who recruited around 80 solicitors to collect donations from non-alumni Hartford residents. In connection with the Hartford Campaign, an official visiting day was planned during which Hartford citizens were invited to tour Trinity’s campus and, hopefully, be enticed to contribute to the $1,500,000 Centennial Endowment Fund goal.
By the spring of 1922, the Centennial Fund had raised nearly 20% ($290,000) of its goal, and had been promised another $125,000 from the Rockefeller Fund once donations had reached the 25% mark. “A Half Million by Commencement” was the Centennial Fund’s slogan that spring, as efforts to reach $1,500,000 pushed on. Rhetoric warning against the recurrence of the horrors of World War I and disintegration of Christian values in society was aimed at procuring more support for the College, as Connecticut leaders made moral and religious appeals in favor of Trinity. One such proponent of the College’s moral mission in a post-war world was the Reverend E.C. Thomas, rector of St. James’ Church in Hartford; in a May 1922 sermon, he declared Trinity’s role in producing Christian leaders, the “greatest need of the world today.” More support was garnered, and by Commencement 1922, the first half-million of the final goal was raised.
The remaining $1,000,000 of the Fund was raised throughout the 1922-23 school year. The second phase of the campaign was more focused on raising money beyond the alumni. The effort was once again vigorously led by President Remsen Ogilby who took it upon himself to lead the campaign in person throughout the country, soliciting funds from those outside the Trinity sphere. A nation-wide organization of the alumni for reaching “non-Trinitarians” was also created to expand the Centennial Committee’s reach. A large dinner inaugurating the reopening of the campaign for the Centennial Fund in Hartford on January 15, 1923 was attended by many influential Connecticut “non-Trinity speakers,” the principal figure being Dean Jones of Yale University. Alumni and Hartford area residents were encouraged to attend. Following the January Hartford Campaign, which raised $30,000, was the wider Connecticut Campaign, supported by Bishop Brewster, who mobilized the Connecticut diocese behind the cause. By the end of the spring semester of 1923, the first tangible results of the money raised were enacted; in June, the Board of Trustees officially raised the salaries of professors to a maximum of $4,500 per year, and authorized three new faculty appointments.
Just as in the previous year, poignant reflection on the previous war-torn decade and apprehension about an industrialized future were refracted through the enthusiasm garnered by the Centennial. Among the excited accounts in the Trinity Tripod of money raised for the Fund during the second phase of the campaign are nestled brief and moving reflections written by students poised before an uncertain future. One such article, published in the January 31, 1923 issue of the student newspaper, warns that “this civilization is rapidly approaching a peneplanation which will entirely eradicate individualism of thought and expression, and wipe out all peaks of personal achievement….” Trinity and colleges like it, the writer asserts, are “the only hope for successfully combating machine-made, rubber-stamp, specialists.”
While much of the focus of the Centennial was pointed forward, one publication in particular made a concerted effort to look into the deep past of Trinity's campus. Assistant Professor of Geology Edward Leffingwell Troxell helped to put together the Trinity College Bulletin’s 1923 “Centennial Number,” a twenty-eight-page in-depth study of the history of the earth upon which Trinity’s campus stood. In his prefatory note to the publication, President Ogilby writes, “The college itself proudly records a single century, while the rocks below register in silence thousands and millions of years.” The geological study of the Trinity campus was made part of the permanent College records in the hope that “as Trinity begins to add another century to her years, a study of the geology of her campus will fill each class with reverence for Him in whose sight a thousand years are as one day.” The study is preserved in the Trinity College Archives to this day.
As fundraising for the Centennial Fund entered its final leg, preparations for the Centennial Celebration began. A three-day affair planned for June 9-11, 1923, the festivities would include an Alumni Reunion Banquet, athletic and musical events, the dedication of a war memorial to the alumni killed in military service, a Senior Promenade, and of course, the 100th commencement ceremony.
Sources
Trinity Tripod, 01/31/1923.
Trinity Tripod, 11/21/1922.
Trinity Tripod, 10/31/1922.
Trinity Tripod, 06/24/1922.
Trinity Tripod, 05/04/1922.
Trinity Tripod, 03/14/1922.
Trinity Tripod, 11/08/1921.
Trinity College Bulletin, July 1921 (Report of the Treasurer) 1921.
Trinity Tripod, 05/24/1921.
Trinity Tripod, 05/14/1921.
Trinity Tripod, 04/12/1921.
Trinity Tripod, 04/09/1921.