Ohio History Journal

164       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 3

 

 

RIO GRANDE COLLEGE-REV. J. M. DAVIS,

PRESIDENT.

When asked but a few hours ago to take part in the exercises

of this forenoon, I gladly consented; for, in my opinion, no inter-

est that has been developed in Gallia county in the first century

of its settlement is more worthy of being brought to remem-

brance and notice than its educational interests, and my connec-

tion for a number of years with Rio Grande college enables me

to set forth briefly its history and present condition. Other

gentlemen, who have given much time and research to the task,

have given an account of the public and other schools of this

city and of the county in general. I will confine my remarks to

the institution just named.

Shortly after the war of 1812, Nehemiah Atwood, a native

of Shenandoah county, Virginia, a man who had done honorable

service as an officer in the American army, settled in this county.

In 1819 he was married to Permelia Ridgeway, daughter of David

Ridgeway, who had come to Gallia county from South Carolina

in 1803. Mr. Atwood and his wife settled upon a farm near

where the present village of Rio Grande stands, and the remain-

der of their long and active lives was spent in the same neighbor-

hood. Without children, with good health, industry, economy,

and more than ordinary business qualifications, they accumulated

in about thirty years an estate of one hundred thousand dollars.

About 1850 a new personal force began to make itself felt

in the vicinity of their home, and we are called to notice a man

who afterward became one of the most useful and honored

citizens that this county has ever had. Rev. I. Z. Haning,

a native of Athens county, and a student of the Ohio University,

came as an evangelist into Huntington and Raccoon townships,

and under his divinely blessed labors a profound and extended

religious reformation took place, the good results of which are

yet visible in many forms.

Mr. and Mrs. Atwood listened to his teaching, were con-

verted to Christ, and from that day forth lived a new life. They

became studious and constant workers in their church and



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Rio Grande College.                165

 

Sunday-school. They contributed largely to the building of

a meeting house near their home, and gave two thousand dollars

as an endowment fund to aid in the support of regular preaching

at this church for all time. They gave financial assistance

to the organized charities of the church to which they belonged,

and to a school at Albany, Ohio, called after that the Atwood

Institute.

As a result of their growing conceptions of Christian benevo-

lence, and influenced by the advice of Mr. Haning, they finally

decided to give their estate for the founding and endowment of

a college in the place where they had spent the most of their

lives and accumulated their fortune. Mr. Atwood died in 1869,

before any steps had been taken toward carrying out this plan.

At the invitation of his widow, Mr. Haning soon afterward

removed to Rio Grande, and action was taken toward the erection

and opening of the college. The college building costing, $17,000,

and the boarding hall, costing $13,000, were erected, and the

college opened in September, 1876.

A few weeks before its opening, the founder executed her

will, bequeathing her entire estate for its endowment. This

estate, which came into the possession of the college trustees

upon her death in 1885, now amounts to about $66,000.

The college has been in continued and successful operation

since its opening; and at the present, with its fine buildings and

grounds, its income equal to the economical but vigorous man-

ner in which it is carried on, its established character for thorough

work and for the inculcation of those principles which are the

prime essentials in all the true manhood and womanhood, and

with a warm place in a large and growing portion of our people, is

one of the things that, as citizens of Gallia county, we can look

upon with the deepest gratification as we recount the progress

of a century and take account of the things that make the com-

ing years bright and hopeful.

It is our privilege to rejoice in the fact that our city and

county are sharing richly in all the elements of welfare to be

found in a highly developed social condition. We have left the

pioneer days behind us.

The clearing of the forest, the opening of roads, the bridg-

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166       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 3

 

ing of streams, the building of comfortable places for residence,

business, instruction, and worship have been accomplished.

Already, we are not only in the possession of schools and

churches, but have entered upon the day of orphanages, hos-

pitals and asylums.

All that a complex Christian society can do for the pleasure

and improvement of adults, for the culture of the young, for the

relief of the suffering and for the care of the unfortunate, has

its foundation already laid in this county. In matters pertaining

to higher education, we have not been entirely outside the great

movements of thought and beneficence that have done so much

for the advancement of learning in our country in the last thirty

years.

What great and happy things of this kind we can recount.

The wise and munificent benefactions of George Peabody have

shed a lustre on his name that is only surpassed by the richness

of the benefits they have produced. The John F. Slater fund,

in the management and disbursement of which one of the best

citizens of our State, ex-president Hayes, is doing himself addi-

tional honor and his fellow-citizens additional service, is one of

the greatest and best gifts of this kind. A citizen of New York,

in the building of Cornell University, has reared a noble monu--

ment to his name.

The Johns Hopkins University, at Baltimore, has leaped into

vigorous being and is doing a great work toward that which its

own president has pointed out as the true office of all higher in-

stitutions, the work of "bestowing upon society continual acces-

sions of highly-trained and liberally-educated young people,

capable of contributing to human welfare not only in the tradi-

tional professions but in all the complex affairs of modern life

which require the application of intellectual force to difficult and

often unexpected problems."

On our Pacific coast a United States Senator now has it in

mind and hand to establish, upon a financial basis of twenty

million dollars, an institution in which any person may pursue

any line of profitable study possible to the human mind.

To these larger and more noticeable gifts are to be added

the numerous smaller but not less praiseworthy and useful gifts.

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Rio Grande College.                167

 

all over the country that of late years have enlarged the resources

of existing institutions and founded a multitude of new ones,

thus bringing the facilities for learning to almost every door in

the land.

I repeat, it is something that may well move our gratitude

to-day, that among all its other elements of progress and pros-

perity, Gallia county has also had a share in those gifts and

works that look toward the highest intellectual and moral possi-

bilities of its sons and daughters. We may well rejoice that

among our many worthy citizens in the past there have been

some who labored and planned for these things; that out of the

abundant wealth created by honorable toil from the material re-

sources of this county, every acre of which except the little spot

where these meetings are held was an undeveloped wilderness a

century ago, one goodly portion of one hundred thousand dollars

has been sacredly set apart for the work of higher Christian edu-

cation. Looking at this fact, taking into consideration the his-

tory and work of the other schools of the county, to be pre-

sented to you by others, and firmly believing that these institu-

tions will be fostered and enlarged by the wisdom and benevolence

of our citizens in all coming days, the only feelings possible to

my mind as I join with you in this centennial celebration are

gratitude for the past and high hopes and purposes for the future.

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