BREAD AND DOCTRINE AT OBERLIN*
By ROBERT
SAMUEL FLETCHER
"Reform is manifold and yet it is
one," declared President
Asa Mahan of the Oberlin Collegiate
Institute in an address
before the American Physiological
Society in Boston in 1839.
The true Christian reformer, he said,
was a universal reformer,
seeking the correction of all evils. No
man could consistently
be a temperance advocate and not an
opponent of slavery nor an
enemy of war and not a sponsor of moral
reform. He recognized
that the "great reformatory
movement of the age" was legitimately
divided into special departments, but
insisted that it was equally
true that all real reforms were
"based upon one and the same
principle, to wit, that whatever is
ascertained to be contrary to the
rights, and destructive to the true
interests of humanity, ought to
be corrected." Among the evils
deserving the attention of the
reformer he listed "intemperance,
licentiousness, war, violations
of physical law in respect to food,
drink, dress, and ecclesiastical
civil and domestic tyranny."1
In the years 1833 to 1835 the Reverend
Charles G. Finney
and a group of his followers, including
Asa Mahan, had founded
the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in the
woods of the Connecticut
Western Reserve in northern Ohio as a
training school for Christ-
ian crusaders.2 Here in the controlled environment of
the pious
colony established "for the express
purpose of sustaining this
Seminary" youth of both sexes were
trained to become "gospel
ministers and pious school
teachers" and ministers' wives and in
these capacities to spread the gospel of
personal salvation and of
Christian reform. This was the means by
which Oberlin was to
become, as one of the founders put it,
"the burning and the shin-
ing light which shall lead on to the
Millenium."
* A paper read at the April, 1938,
meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical
Association at Indianapolis under the
title "Grahamism at Oberlin."
1 Advocate of Moral Reform (New
York), June 15, 1839.
(58)
FLETCHER; BREAD AND
DOCTRINE AT OBERLIN 59
The antislavery
movement and Oberlin's activities in this
field received
extensive though not wholly satisfactory treatment
by historians at an
early date, but only in recent years has much
attention been paid to
the great, central, federated, Christian re-
form movement as
envisaged by Mahan, Finney, Theodore Weld,
the Tappan brothers,
Gerrit Smith and others. Of course, the
antislavery,
temperance, pacifist and feminist phases of the move-
ment were historically
perhaps more important, but there were
other full-fledged
reform movements, an examination of which
is necessary to
complete the picture of the Great Cause: the move-
ment for reform in
sexual morals, the manual labor movement,
and physiological
reform, or "Grahamism." The last of these was
almost entirely
overlooked until the publication of the researches
of Dr. Richard H.
Shryock a few years ago.3
Oberlin is particularly
significant to the student of romantic
Christian reformism in the mid-nineteenth century because
the
colony and
college were so
completely dedicated to
the
Cause and so many of its departments were there represented.
The most long-lived and
successful of all of the early experi-
ments in manual labor with
study was made at Oberlin; the
Oberlin Female Moral
Reform Society was probably the most
influential moral
reform society in the country outside New York
City; Elihu Burritt's Christian
Citizen called Oberlin the "banner
town" in the peace
movement; Oberlin's devotion to temperance
and antislavery
were--and are--known to all the world. But for
some years there was
perhaps more interest in physiological re-
form than in any of
these other causes.
Of course, Sylvester
Graham was the leading advocate of
physiological reform,
who saw gluttony and all "bad habits"
harmful to the body as
sin, and gave to the campaign its neces-
sary moral
implications. His ponderous two-volume Lectures on
the Science of Human
Life was the Bible of the
physiological
2 On the most important
of these founders aside from Mahan and Finney see
the author's sketch of
John Jay Shipherd in the Dictionary of American Biography
(New York, 1928-1937).
3 Public Relations of
the Medical Profession in Great Britain and the United
States,
1600-1870," Annals of Medical History (New York), new ser., II
(May, 1930),
308-309, and
"Sylvester Graham and the Popular Health Movement, 1830-1870," Mis-
sissippi Valley
Historical Review (Cedar Rapids,
Iowa), XVIII (September, 1931),
172-189.
60 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
reformers and his
public appearance at Boston furnished the im-
mediate occasion for
the founding of the American Physiological
Society. Hardly less
important, however, were Dr. William A.
Alcott, first president
of the society and editor of the Moral Re-
former, a monthly periodical devoted to "Health and
Physical
Education" and
David Cambell, editor of the Graham Journal of
Health and Longevity
and manager with Mrs. Cambell of the
Graham boarding house
on Brattle Street in Boston.4 Dr. Graham
never came to Oberlin,
though he was invited, but he recom-
mended the college to
prospective donors as a "most interesting
and promising literary
institution . . . closely associated with all the
best interests of
Man."5 Alcott spent ten days in Oberlin in the
spring of 1840, lecturing on
dress, diet and marriage, and seriously
considered removing his
residence and his magazine to that prom-
ising community.6 Cambell discontinued publication of the
Graham Journal in 1840 in order to supervise personally the
Graham diet at the
Oberlin student commons. Cambell explained
this move by declaring
that he looked upon the Oberlin Collegiate
Institute as "a
model institution for the approaching 'Millenial
Church'" and felt
that "every disciple of Christ who can con-
tribute his mite
towards its perfection in any department of labor
should do so."7
From its beginning,
long before the coming of Alcott and
Cambell, Oberlin had
enthusiastically espoused this reform. The
original settlers had
agreed in the colony covenant to eat "only
plain & wholesome
food" and renounced "all strong & unneces-
sary drink, even tea
& coffee as far as practicable." The women
promised to give up
tight lacing.8 The original rules of the in-
stitute provided that
board furnished to students should be "of
plain & holesome [sic]
kind." "Tea & Coffee, highly seasoned
meats, rich pastries
& all unholesome & expensive foods" were
4 On Graham and Alcott
see the Dictionary of American Biography. There is
mention of Cambell in
the article on Graham.
5 MS. minutes of the
Trustees of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, July 6, 1836,
and Graham's letters to
Dr. Peter Mark Roget and Dr. William Prout copied in the
manuscript book of
credentials of the Oberlin mission to England of 1839-1840.
6 MS. minutes of the
Oberlin Female Moral Reform Society, May, 1840, and
Alcott to Gerrit Smith,
June 30, 1840, Gerrit Smith MSS., (Syracuse University).
7 Cambell to Levi
Burnell, October 1, 1839 (Letter in the office of the Treasurer
of Oberlin College).
8 See the author's
"The Government of the Oberlin Colony," Mississippi Valley
Historical Review, XX (September, 1933), 179-190.
FLETCHER: BREAD AND DOCTRINE AT OBERLIN 61
prohibited.9 Physiology was
made a required course. In 1835 the
Female Society of Oberlin for the
Promotion of Health was
founded and the co-eds and faculty wives
agreed to "abstain from
all modes of dress that are injurious to
health, such as exposing
the feet by wearing thin hose and shoes
in cold or wet weather,
compressing the chest and preventing the
full expansion of the
lungs, especially by lacing and tight
dressing." The men of the
colony and college organized the Oberlin
Physiological Society,
whose object was declared to be "to
acquire and diffuse a knowl-
edge of the laws of life, and the means
of promoting health and
longevity." Mahan was president of
the society; a student was
recording secretary; Finney was on the
executive committee. Two
delegates from the Oberlin society
attended the national health
convention held in New York City in June
of 1839.10 In the
same year Mahan was able to say of
Oberlin in his speech in
Boston: "Tea and coffee are
excluded from almost every family
in the place; flesh meat is seldom
eaten. . . . All condiments and
seasonings are laid aside. Due regard is
paid to dress, exercise,
etc. Sickness is rarely known in the
place."
Oberlinites seem to have subscribed to
all of the major
tenets of Grahamism. Regular exercise in
the open air was en-
couraged by the manual labor system. The
taking of medicine
was frowned upon except in case of
extreme sickness. Clothing,
it was urged, should be adequate but not
too warm or too tight.
All should sleep at least seven hours
each night; the college rules
provided that students must keep to
their beds from ten to five.
Featherbeds were considered injurious,
though some students
seemed to have had them. Regular bathing
of the body all over
was recommended even in winter, though
the students had to
carry water from the outdoor pump to
their stove-heated rooms
for the purpose. Cambell planned to
build special "bathing apart-
ments" but this was never done. The
use of wine, beer or to-
bacco was prohibited.
It was the dietetic aspects of
Grahamism, however, that at-
9 From the manuscript rules of 1834 in
Oberlin College archives, never pub-
lished.
10 New York Evangelist, January
16, 1836 and Graham Journal (New York),
III (September 28, 1839), 326.
62
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
tracted most attention at Oberlin as
elsewhere. The dining room
in Ladies' Hall, where most of the
students of both sexes ate
their meals, offered a tempting
opportunity for controlling the
diet of a large group.
Tea and coffee were anathema. In 1837
the colonists agreed
to boycott any merchant who sold them.
The secretary of the
institute and his wife admitted,
nevertheless, that they occasion-
ally imbibed, but the students at the
boarding hall were arbitrarily
limited to crust coffee and rain water!
Graham taught that soft
water was, by itself, nutritious. The
eating of meat was con-
sidered as dangerous as the drinking of
tea and coffee. It was
not only thought to be unhealthy and
unnatural but, declared a
writer in the Graham Journal, the
eating of animal food tends
"to produce ferocity of
disposition."11 Usually students could
secure a meat diet by paying extra for
it and sitting at a special
table, but Cambell declared that he had
conscientious scruples
against handling meat and so for a while
in I840 the meat table
was discontinued.12 "Butter,
at best," ran the Graham rules, "is
a questionable article." E. P.
Ingersoll, the first Professor of
Sacred Music at Oberlin, wrote to the Graham
Journal in 1837
telling how he had conquered his
appetite for butter, which he
loved "as the drunkard does his
brandy." Having finally won out
against temptation he found that he was
entirely cured of cankers
in the mouth. Milk, eggs, and cottage
cheese were allowed though
of animal origin.l3
Pastries, candies and all highly
flavored foods were to be
eaten, if at all, in very moderate
quantities. Cake a la Graham
was suggested as a
substitute--"made of coarse wheaten meal,
like gingerbread (without the ginger),
wet with milk, without
other shortening." If pies were eaten the crust, according to
Graham, should be made by "sifting
coarse flour, and taking hot,
mealy potatoes, and rubbing them in as
you would butter; then
[taking] pearlash, and sour milk or
water and wet [ting] it."14
11 Graham Journal, III (January 5, 1839), 19-20.
12
MS. minutes of the Prudential Committee of the Oberlin Collegiate
Institute,
May 23, 1840.
13 Nature's Own Book (New York, 1825), 16, and the Graham
Journal, I (Sep-
tember 26, 1887), 193-194.
14 Nature's Own Book, 45-46.
FLETCHER: BREAD AND DOCTRINE AT OBERLIN 63
"You can better imagine than
describe my surprise," wrote a co-ed
to her brother in 1837, "when on
entering the dining hall one
day, I saw something that looked like
pie, in a sheet iron platter
two feet long, and one wide, and three
inches deep, these were
in fact, monstrous pies, the
upper crust was about an inch thick,
the lower, half an inch, and the rest
was filled with apples,-they
were very nice however."15 Very
little sweetening was to be
used in any case. Honey and maple sugar
were preferred to
refined cane sugar because in a more
natural state. While in
Oberlin, Cambell kept bees to produce
honey for the boarding
house. Students were prohibited from
using at the table pepper
or other condiments, even when purchased
at their own expense.
When Professor John P. Cowles, an
unmarried teacher who took
his meals at the hall, brought a pepper
shaker to the table it was
ordered removed by the trustees. His
subsequent dismissal, he
believed, was not unrelated to this
offense! Such spices were be-
lieved to be irritating to the lining of
the stomach and unduly
stimulating to the passions.16
Cereals, fruits and vegetables were the
basic elements in the
diet provided. A student wrote home to his parents in 1836:
"Cold water, milk & wheat will
make the sum almost entirely of
our articles of food. Bread & butter or bread without butter,
bread & milk--& milk
toast--compose the variety of our break-
fasts & suppers. We have not had
what you could call a meal
of meat since we have been here. Twice
we had a few mutton
bones--just enough to set the appetite,
once we had a little fish,
& a little dried beef several times.
We frequently have what is
called Graham pudding made of wheat just
cracked, & boiled a
few minutes in water. Boiled Indian
puddings sometimes, &
Johnecakes--this makes the sum total of
our living-a splendid
variety--I assure you. . . . If only I
could have a little coffee &
a mouthful of meat now & then. . .
.17 When the Cambells ar-
rived in Oberlin in the spring of 1840 to take charge
of the
15 Nancy Prudden (a student) to her
father and mother, September 20, 1836
(in private possession, a photostat in
the Oberlin College Library).
16 J. P. Cowles to the Trustees,
November 23, 1839, published in the Cleveland
Observer, November 27, 1839, and article on
"Licentiousness" in the Library of
Health (Boston), V (April, 1841), 131-132.
17 Davis and George Prudden to their
father and mother, August 3-5, 1836 (in
private possession, photostats in the
Oberlin College Library).
64
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
boarding house they brought with them a
cask of rice, a cask of
tapioca, a box of sago and a copy of a
Graham cook book18
containing recipes for Graham bread,
pumpkin bread, cracked
wheat porridge, bread coffee, potato
coffee and other "plain and
wholesome" dishes, recipes that
would have been an inspiration
to the wartime Food Administration.19
Students were expected to be temperate
in the consumption
of all foods--even cracked wheat and
rutabagas. One record
survives of a co-ed being granted a
special thirty-cent rebate
on her board bill "for
abstemiousness".20 For awhile some twenty
students eating at the commons
voluntarily cut down their diet to
bread and water. "Probably you think
this would be hard living,"
wrote one of them, rather ambiguously,
"but I assure you it is
better than you or I think it is."21
Some students seem to have been as
zealous in the cause as
Finney or Cambell. A Quaker student,
after a year and a half
of "using only two or three
articles of food and those of purely
vegetable kind, without any condiments
or seasoning whatever,"
was ready to declare that the cause of
physiological reform
was "a cause which lays just claim
to the aid of every Christian
and philanthropist, and one which must
prevail as that day arrives
when 'Lamentation and woe shall no more
be heard in our
borders.'" Another student declared
that the Graham regimen
had saved him--body, mind and soul. Life
had become a com-
plete burden to him; he was constantly
attended by "a feeling of
languor and dullness" and
"could walk but a short distance with-
out intolerable weariness." His
mental alertness and moral judg-
ment also suffered, he said, "for
physical, mental, and moral
transgression, all go together."
Then he came to Oberlin and
began taking daily baths and eating
Graham bread. "My mind,"
he exulted, "immediately burst from
its debasement and reassumed
its pristine vigor. . . . Youth has
returned again. . . . Cheerfulness
18 Nature's Own Book.
19 Sarah
Ingersoll (a student) to parents. May 26, 1840 (in private possession).
20 Boarding
house account of Mrs. Eliza Stewart, March 4, 1835, MS. (in Oberlin
College archives).
21 James and E. Henry Fairchild to
Joseph B. Clark, April 2, 1835 (in private
possession).
FLETCHER: BREAD AND DOCTRINE AT OBERLIN 65
has taken the place of despondency.
Faith takes the place of
darkness, and happiness of gloom and
misery."22
The opposition was equally rabid. Prof.
John P. Cowles
insisted that physiological reform at
Oberlin went "beyant all the
beyants entirely," and charged that
the system had caused the
death of some of the lady students.
"But you," he accused the
trustees, "have simplified
simplicity, and reformed reformation,
till not only the health and lives of
many are in danger; but
some, I fear, have already been
physiologically reformed into
eternity."23 At least one
student walked the nine miles to the
town of Elyria to get one big meal and
break his fast at the local
tavern and then continued on to Hudson
where he enrolled in
Western Reserve College, a non-Graham
institution.24 "As for
their water gruel, milk and water
porrages, crust coffee, etc."
wrote another student, "they are
really too filthy and contemptible
to merit a comment. They are usually
known among the students
by their appropriate names, such as Swill
. . . slosh, dishwater,
etc., etc." The people of
neighboring towns, he said, had become
so well acquainted with the effects of
Oberlin diet that they
could identify an Oberlin student by his
"leak, lean, lantern-
jawed visage."25 Even the rhymsters
joined in the attack:
Sirs, Finney and Graham first--'twere shame to think
That you, starvation's monarchs, can be
beaten;
Who've proved that drink was never
meant to drink,
Nor food itself intended to be eaten
That Heaven provided for our use,
instead,
The sand and saw-dust which
compose our bread.
* * * * *
Our table treasures vanish one by one,
Beneath your wand, like Sancho's, they
retire;
Now steaks are rare, and mutton
chops are done,
Veal's in a stew, the fat is in
the fire,
Fish, flesh and fowl are ravished in a
trice--
Sirs Finney and Graham! cannot one
suffice?
22 Pardon Hathaway in the Graham
Journal, III (July 20, 1839), 237-239, and
W. B. Orvis, ibid., III (December
14, 1839), 396-397.
23 Cleveland Observer, November
27, 1839.
24 Rev. Horace Dean Walker's
reminiscences as quoted in the Reserve Record
(Hudson, Ohio), May 25, 1934.
25 Delazon Smith, A History of
Oberlin; or, New Lights of the West (Cleve-
land, 1837).
66
OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
Venison is vile, a cup of coffee curst,
And food that's fried, or fricaseed,
forgot;
Duck is destruction; wine of woes is
worst,
Clams are condemned, and poultry's gone
to pot;
Pudding and Pork are under prohibition,
Mustard is murder; pepper is perdition.
But dread you not, some famished foe may
rise,
With vengeful arm, and beat you to a
jelly?
Ye robbers of our vitals' best supplies,
Beware! "There is no joking with
the belly."
Nor hope the world will in your
footsteps follow,
Your bread and doctrine are
too hard to swallow.26
Parents protested that their children
were being killed by
inches. Wild rumors of mass starvation
began to circulate. In
March of 1841 a group of Oberlin
townspeople protested that the
diet served in the boarding hall was
"inadequate to the demands
of the human system as at present
developed."27 In April Cambell
was forced by public opinion and
administrative pressure to
resign the stewardship.28
Oberlin abandoned the Graham diet. In
1845 Finney publicly
repented his former "bondage"
to strict dietetic reform. Oberlin
students and colonists, lamented one
disappointed zealot, "rushed
with precipitous and confused haste back
to their flesh pots; and
here under the exhilerating and
bewildering influence of fresh
infusions of the Chinese shrub and the
Mocha bean, with the
riotous eating of swine's flesh . . .
they succeeded in arresting a
necessary renovating work. . . ."29 Elsewhere, too, the cause de-
clined as such; Graham boarding houses
went into bankruptcy; the
physiological reform societies adjourned
without day. The Amer-
ican sense of humor and of balance,
reacting against the fanaticism
of some of the Grahamites, destroyed its
future effectiveness as a
moral crusade. Oberlin diverted its
millenial zeal to other de-
partments of reform--to the peace
movement, the antislavery
26 Ibid.
27 MS. notice of meeting in Oberlin College Library.
28 MS. minutes of the Prudential
Committee, April 14 and June 15, 1841; MS.
minutes of the Trustees, August 20, 1841.
29 Letter of Finney in Oberlin Evangelist,
April 23, 1843; Isaac Jennings, The
Philosophy of Human Life (Cleveland, 1852), 241-242.
FLETCHER: BREAD AND DOCTRINE AT
OBERLIN 67
cause and the effort to raise standards
of personal morality. But
Physiology continued as a required and
popular course. Diet
in the boarding hall continued to be
rationally "plain and hole-
some," though not strictly orthodox
according to Graham. There
was at Oberlin a continuing, and at that
time rather unique, in-
terest in student health.
Shryock has reminded us that it would be
ungrateful for a
nation so devoted to outdoor exercise,
the bathtub, orange juice
and spinach to forget the early prophets
of this cult. Graham,
Alcott and Cambell were the
prophets. But how about the
martyrs--the Oberlin College students?