Until 1823, Yale College, a Congregationalist institution, was the only college in Connecticut. Washington College, as Trinity was originally called, was founded as an Episcopal institution, and its name changed to Trinity in 1845 to reflect those roots. According to Eben Edwards Beardsley, Class of 1832, “the great object in establishing the college was to provide a place where the sons of Episcopalians might obtain a classical education without having their early religious predilections tampered with by sectarian teachers.” 1)
The Episcopal Church (also sometimes called “Anglican”) finds its roots in the Church of England, primarily during the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century, when the King broke ties with the Papacy in order to seek an annulment from his wife, Catherine of Aragon. The separation placed the English Monarchy at the head of the Church, not Rome, though Henry's intent was for the Church of England to remain Catholic. After Henry's death, during the rule of Edward VI, Protestant reforms were introduced and the persecution of Protestants under Mary I generated much sympathy for the cause. Under Elizabeth I in 1558, an independent Church of England was formed and The Book of Common Prayer (1549) and the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) became the standard for liturgy and doctrine.
The Church of England is identified by adherence to the threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, and by a common form of worship found in the Book of Common Prayer. The Church also is characterized by a common loyalty to Christian tradition, while seeking to accommodate a wide range of people and views. It holds in tension the authorities of tradition, reason, and the Bible, but asserts the primacy of the Bible. It thus seeks to combine Catholic, humanist, and reformed elements, historically represented by Anglo-Catholics (high church), Liberals (broad church), and Evangelicals (low church).2)
The Episcopal Church found its way to America in Jamestown in 1607, “conforming to the typical colonial expansion pattern of the English Church in other parts of the world at the time.”
During the Revolution, northern Episcopalians were typically Loyalists, while Southerners were typically Patriots. With the success of the Revolution, public support for the Church was withdrawn with the new principle of Separation of Church and State.
By 1784, most states agreed on the need to (1) draft a binding constitution for the whole church; (2) revise the English Book of Common Prayer to make it appropriate for use in the U.S. church; and (3) obtain consecration of bishops in apostolic succession to give the U.S. church proper episcopal oversight and ministry.3)
As the History of Trinity College opens, “Connecticut had been founded by tough-minded Puritans [Congregationalists] who were determined to build a new English Canaan from which Episcopacy was to be forever excluded.” The first Episcopal mission to Connecticut took place in 1707, and from there, Episcopacy slowly grew, but not without strong opposition.
Yale College, founded in 1701, was a Congregationalist institution which trained “most of Connecticut's Congregational Ministers.” Throughout the 18th century, some ministers, exposed to Anglican theology and teachings at Yale, began defecting to the Episcopal Church.
The books that had whetted the appetite of Cutler and the others for Anglican learning were kept under lock and key, and in 1753 a stringent test was fixed by the Yale Corporation by which the president, tutors, and all other officers were obliged to attest to the orthodoxy of their beliefs. 4)
Yale remained the only higher-education institution in Connecticut, where Anglicans as well as Puritans attended despite orthodox Congregationalist teachings and obligatory attendance at the Congregational Meeting House. However, as the only Anglican colleges were thousands of miles away, either across the United States or in England itself, Yale was a practical and suitable institution for Connecticut residents regardless of its teachings. “In 1748, there were at Yale ten candidates for degrees who were members of the Church of England. Of these, one was the son of Samuel Johnson and another was Samuel Seabury, Jr., who was later to become the first Bishop of Connecticut.”
Once Seabury was ordained on Nov. 14, 1784 in Aberdeen, Scotland, it became possible to consider establishing an Episcopal College in Connecticut. In 1788, Seabury expressed his aim to fundraise in order to establish an Episcopal academy, though “the real plan was to establish a 'college' which would offer preparatory, collegiate, and theological education.” The Episcopal Academy of Connecticut, today the Cheshire Academy, opened in Cheshire, Connecticut in 1796, “really a combination of preparatory school, New England academy, and junior college,” and could confer no degrees as a College could.
The Academy's Trustees petitioned in 1804 and 1810 for a “a Charter empowering them to give degrees in Arts, Divinity, and Law, and to enjoy all other privileges usually granted to Colleges,” including a name change to the “Episcopal College of Connecticut,” but were denied. And once Abraham Jarvis, Connecticut's second Episcopal Bishop, died in 1813, all efforts to “raise the Episcopal Academy to the college level” ended, for a time.
In 1816, a committee was organized by the Diocesan Convention: the Rev. Philander Chase, the Rev. Daniel Burhans, Charles Sigourney, Asa Chapman, and Nathan Smith, to “prepare a petition…to obtain an act of incorporation and charter for an Episcopal College, to be erected in this Diocese, and to pursue all proper measures for the obtaining a grant of said petition.” 5) However, the committee did not accomplish this charge, even after the Rev. Thomas Church Brownell was elected Bishop of Connecticut in 1819.
For a brief period in 1820, the General Seminary was moved from New York to New Haven. Its presence halted theological instruction at the Episcopal Academy, even after the Seminary moved back to New York City. Too, “the Connecticut Legislature had granted a charter for the Seminary without any serious opposition, and there was little reason to believe that a college charter could not be received with the same ease.” 6)
The Seminary's removal back to New York also left over $3700 in unfulfilled pledges for a Seminary professorship endowment. According to Weaver, “it was probably these unfulfilled pledges, more than anything else, which in 1822 started Bishop Brownell and several of his friends on the course which was to lead to the founding of what is now Trinity College.” 7)
Bishop Brownell watched the success story of Episcopal Geneva College in New York as it achieved in four years what Connecticut had attempted for decades, and inspired him to action. In December 1822, he gathered 18 friends and clergymen to draft a petition to the Connecticut General Assembly for a college charter. The petition was circulated to every parish in the Diocese and all “male Episcopalians of lawful age” were asked to sign. The document expressed the benefits that a second college, particularly an Episcopal one, would bring to Connecticut: the South and West were reliant on New England to educate their sons; the large number of Episcopalians meant that another College would be soon established, so best to do it in Connecticut first to attract them; and Connecticut, though small, could grow and become “the Athens of our Republic,” so a second College would bring the state closer to that end.
The committee brought the petition to the General Assembly in New Haven “the first Wednesday in May,” which was the 7th, and “every effort had been made to avoid anything in either their propagandizing or in the petition itself which would jeopardize their case.” This included the College's name, which was to be Washington College, as to “offend no one.” The name “Brownell” was also considered, but Brownell himself opposed it. The bill passed without any issue, and the Charter for Washington College was granted to “great rejoicing in Hartford,” including cannon fire and bonfires.
Work began immediately on designing and constructing the College buildings, once the campus site was selected. The College's two buildings were to be a dormitory (called the “College”) and Chapel.
Despite it specifically existing to be an Episcopal College, the Charter establishing Washington College was quite liberal in comparison to other Colleges, such as Yale: “Though given upon the prayer of Episcopalians, and contemplating their management, the charter, as the petitioners wished, required that the college should be conducted on the broad principles of religious liberality, and about one-third of the original corporators were taken from outside the church.” 8)
The Charter states that there would be no religious testing, nor confession of faith required: “Provided always, that such ordinances or Bye-Laws shall not make the religious tenets of any person a condition of admission to any privilege in the said College, and that no President, or Professor, or other officer shall be made ineligible for or by reason of any religious tenet that he may profess, or be compelled, by any Bye-Law, or otherwise, to subscribe to any religious test whatsoever.”
Whether or not the College was “firmly committed to the Episcopal Church” appears to be a matter of perspective: “To the non-Episcopalian community, the 'commitment' was minimized; to the Diocese of Connecticut, the 'commitment' was magnified.” 9) The College was not a beneficiary of the Diocese's financial support, and there were no legal ties to the Diocese of Hartford, either. However, the College did have a close relationship with Christ Church in Hartford, and it was there that Commencements and Alumni Association meetings were held, as well as where much financial support was founded.
Despite its careful language in the Charter, aspects of the College were decisively Episcopal, such as mandatory daily Chapel in mornings and evenings, but the College also allowed students to attend mandatory Sunday worship at the Church of their choosing. And too, though the majority of students came from Episcopal families, there were still others that were Presbyterians or Congregationalists who “left the campus four years later without changing ecclesiastical connections.”
The students organized “the Washington College Association Auxiliary to the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America” in 1826, a group which solicited funds for the Seminary in hopes that it would be used for a scholarship. The “Auxiliary” was replaced by the “Missionary Society” in 1831. “The Missionary Society met weekly “for religious exercises, serious reading, and the discussion of theological subjects” and the group raised funds for “missionary objects.” 10) The organization existed until at least 1820, and, for a long while, the Chapel Choir was the only singing group on campus.
In 1837 the Trustees resolved that “the Right Reverend Bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut be requested to extend a particular religious superintendence over the students of the College – [and] that in connection with the clerical members of the Faculty he designate the course of religious exercises & instruction to be provided in the Institution, and [that he] preside at all meetings of the faculty (at which he may be present) for carrying the same into effect.” In 1839, the Diocese of Connecticut directed that the records, papers, and documents of the Diocese be placed in the Library of the College under the care of the President, and thus the College Library became the depository of the Diocesan Archives.
The Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut remained in the College library until 1974, when they were moved to Diocesan House in Hartford.
In 1845, a committee sent a petition to the Connecticut legislature that Washington College's name be changed to Trinity College. The request surfaced for several reasons: first, that at least four colleges bore the name Washington, which was the reasoning transcribed in the Trustees minutes, and second, because the name would be directly associated with the Episcopal Church. The name change was also driven in part by Alumni, particularly High Churchmen, who were dissatisfied with the name of Washington. Again, “Brownell” was a contender, but the Bishop was again opposed.
Though the Trustees were in favor of the name change, they feared “too close an association of College and Church in the public eye,” and so only mentioned the multiple other Colleges named Washington, and recommended the name change to avoid confusion.
Eben Edwards Beardsley, Class of 1832, later wrote that Trinity was chosen to “attest forever the faith of its founders, and their zeal for the perpetual glory and honor of the one holy and undivided Trinity.”
The position of Chancellor, among others, was also created in 1845: “The Chancellor was to exercise a general supervision of the whole Academic Body with particular reference to moral and spiritual affairs and to hold periodic visitations of the College and to preside, when present, at meetings of the Board of Fellows.” 11) Bishop Brownell became the first Chancellor, and when John Williams assumed the presidency in 1848, the position of Chancellor remained with Brownell. As a result, the Trustees petitioned the General Assembly to amend the Charter of the College that would make the Bishop of Connecticut the ex officio Chancellor, which lasted until 1889; an amendment in 1849 also made the Bishop the chairman of the Board of Trustees.
In its early years, Trinity College faced regular opposition and “attempts were made to interfere with its success, to disparage its usefulness, and to produce an impression that it was 'an instrument of sectarian aggrandizement.'” 12) In 1856, an anonymous author “Justitia” wrote rebuttals to the Hartford Courant to dispel the myth that Trinity was a strictly “sectarian” institution, and that although the Board of Trustees was at the time wholly Episcopalian, that was not always the case:
“Trinity College is not a sectarian institution in any offensive sense. She makes no efforts at proselyting; she does not interfere with the religious preferences of the students in any way…it is true that the daily Chapel service is in the Episcopal form, and whatever religious instruction is given, is given in Episcopal channels and according to the Episcopal pattern,” but “The College claims to be and is a College, a proper College; a place for Classical and Mathematical training, aided and enlarged by such additional ethical, historical, philosophical, and scientific studies as are pursued in our best New England Colleges.” 13)
During the 1850s, students wanted less frequent religious observances, as they noticed other Colleges dropping evening prayer. They petitioned to the trustees in 1862, but were denied. According to President Eliot, “Our Chapel services are our pillars of cloud by day and of fire by night.” The faculty finally relaxed the requirements in 1881, when they reduced the number of required chapel services to six per week.
Under the Presidency of the Rev. George Williamson Smith, Hon. '87, Trinity was modernized and secularized, as he felt that “the College's ties with the Episcopal Church impeded progress and deterred students from seeking admission.” 14) Under his leadership, the College slowly pulled back and released the ties that bound them to the Episcopal Church in official fashions. In 1889, the College officially ended its legal ties with the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut when it repealed the amendment to the Charter which made the Bishop of Connecticut the ex officio Chancellor of the College and chairman of the Board of Trustees. Smith's decisions gravely endangered the College's financial situation with the loss of support from the Church, and when he recommended the College move to become a state institution, the Trustees put him on terminal leave.
However, the College did not immediately secularize fully. The Chapel Services requirements and schedule remained the same–morning and evening–“even though evening chapel had, by this time, been abandoned at most of the older colleges.” Students complained that compulsory chapel was “an infringement on the personal rights of religious thought and action.” Meanwhile a second, brief, religious organization called the St. Paul's Guild began on campus.
During the 1880s, further letters were published that encouraged Episcopalians to care about where they sent their sons to study, as other religions did, and that they should support an Episcopal institution like Trinity. In an echo of the 1856 letters, the author stated that though the student population was small, it could only grow if more families sent their sons. At the same time, Trinity was still being called “sectarian,” which was a detriment because neither non-Churchmen nor Episcopalians would support it. The student body was still nearly entirely Episcopalian, but President Smith's decision to secularize damaged relationships with the Episcopal Church.
Ogilby
According to College Archivist Peter J. Knapp, the position of college chaplain was established at Trinity in 1946 during the presidency of G. Keith Funston. Prior to that time, all the Trinity presidents had been Episcopal priests and served in the role of chaplain.
1950s-1960s - futher secularization
Trinity Reporter, Fall 2004, p. 2.
The History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, pp. 3-5.
Life and correspondence of the Right Reverend Samuel Seabury (1881), by Eben Edwards Beardsley, pp. 1-7, 27-42, 336-338, 437-445.
The History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut (1868) by Eben Edwards Beardsley, pp. 246-251.