Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon 253
How are all the folks? Dyer and his
wife? Kendrick and ditto? You will
write to me my dear Mc and tell me all
about yourself your past deeds
your future plans and prospects; and
believe me ever my dear friend.
Yours most affectionately
Edwin M. Stanton
Many of Stanton's friends and
associates in later life were Kenyon
men. He is quoted, certainly not
exactly, as having said more than
once, "If I am anything I owe it
to Gambier College."63 His son,
Edwin Lamson Stanton, was valedictorian
of the class of 1863 at
Kenyon and was said to have graduated
with the highest honors
in the history of the college. After
graduation E. L. Stanton and
George T. Chapman, a Kenyon graduate
and professor (1860-63),
went into the war department as
secretaries. Earlier Secretary
Stanton had appointed his sister
Pamphyla's husband, Christopher
P. Wolcott of Akron, first assistant
secretary of war. Wolcott, a
Kenyon man, worked himself to death64
in this office, which he
served but a half year from July 1,
1862, to January 1, 1863.
During the war years, to rest from his
grueling daily schedule, the
secretary in laxer times came to the
quiet of Gambier. Here he
visited his widowed sister, Mrs. C. P.
Wolcott, so unobtrusively
that the neighbors did not know of his
presence.65 When his two
nephews, Darwin Stanton Wolcott and W.
Merwin Wolcott, were
in college after the war, Stanton
attended a Philomathesian Society
meeting and spoke most affectionately
of the college and of his
college days and companions.
Kenyon in 1866, then granting honorary
degrees in absentia,
voted the degree of Doctor of Laws upon
this distinguished son
whose name led all Kenyon honor rolls
of men serving their
country. The following gracious letter
is preserved in the library
files:
War Department
Washington City
July 23, 1866
63
Doyle, E. M. Stanton, 20.
64 Professor P. W. Timberlake of the present Kenyon College faculty, who as
a
youth attended his great aunt Pamphyla's funeral, has
kindly supplied this family
legend. See also, Flower, E. M. Stanton, 20,
367.
65
W. B. Bodine, The Kenyon Book (Columbus, 1890), 286.