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W&J College unified after ‘contentious’ merger The school this month is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Washington and Jefferson colleges consolidating

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Professor Emeritus Lloyd Mitchell points to his Washington & Jefferson College memorabilia after giving a presentation Wednesday on the “contentious” merger between rival colleges located in Washington and Canonsburg 150 years ago this month.

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Washington & Jefferson College archivist and outreach librarian Amy Welch holds the original ballots cast April 20, 1869, to decide the college would be located in Washington instead of Canonsburg, where Jefferson College once stood.

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Old Main on the Washington College campus in 1850

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The Roberts House on North Central Avenue in Canonsburg was once part of the Jefferson College campus.

A “contentious” merger born out of necessity between two rival colleges in Washington County bleeding both money and students at the height of the Civil War ultimately created a stronger institution – and divided two communities – 150 years ago this month.

Washington & Jefferson College celebrated the sesquicentennial anniversary of its unification last Wednesday with a presentation that showed how it thrived despite a tenuous relationship in its infancy between alums from both schools and people living in Washington and Canonsburg.

“They had been bitter, bitter rivals throughout the 19th century,” W&J College President Tori Haring-Smith said last week. “It was incredibly contentious.”

Jefferson College in Canonsburg, the first to be founded, was more stable in the early 1800s than Washington College, located eight miles south, but trustees from both sides pondered consolidation in 1810 and 1814. The blowback each time was ferocious and the suggestion was dropped before any serious negotiations could occur.

The Civil War changed that, when men from both colleges went to fight, some for the Union and others with the Confederacy. Lloyd Mitchell, a retired philosophy professor who taught at W&J for 40 years, said both institutions “suffered from the lack of financial support and students” during the war.

“The boiling point was the Civil War. It really drained the bank of students,” Mitchell said. “Neither would’ve survived without each other. There were people out there at the time, that if there was any other way of doing it, they would have tried.”

In November 1863, just four months after bloody battles at Gettysburg about 200 miles to the east, the Rev. Charles Clinton Beatty offered a $50,000 endowment if the schools could agree to merge. An advertisement in The Presbyterian, a tabloid distributed out of Philadelphia, appeared Nov. 7, 1863, offering “a proposition” with Beatty’s endowment. An original copy of that newspaper is stored in W&J’s archives.

“Union of Colleges. – Washington and Jefferson Colleges, in Western Pennsylvania, are within a few miles of each other. A proposition has lately been made by a benevolent gentleman, to give fifty thousand dollars to the Institutions if they will unite and establish a first-class Institution at either place The Synod of Wheeling has taken action in favour of the project.”

With the endowment too enticing to pass up – and with few viable options for survival – the trustees from both sides agreed Oct. 13, 1864, to merge and began working on details over the next few months before the state Assembly formally approved the charter March 4, 1865. To this day, the college does not have an original copy of the approved charter, which is stored in the state archives in Harrisburg.

“There was a growing demand not for more colleges, but better colleges,” Mitchell said.

The first four years of unification divided the students, both in the physical location for classes and opinions about the Civil War. Haring-Smith said students serving on both sides of the battlefields returned to school and, at times, argued over the war at gunpoint or held sword fights to settle disagreements.

The united college’s first president, Jonathan Edwards, worked to promote harmony, but the split campus – with freshmen attending classes in Washington while sophomores, juniors and seniors studied at Jefferson College’s campus – proved to be unworkable.

“He certainly had his work cut out for him,” Washington & Jefferson archivist Amy Welch said of Edwards. “I don’t envy him.”

A bidding war began to see which community could raise more money to attract the college to permanently settle in its town. Washington, with the courthouse and a wealthy legal base, raised $50,000 while Canonsburg could only scrounge up a fifth of that amount. People living in Canonsburg believed their college was “stolen away” from them by an unfair bidding war.

“There were those who were bitterly opposed the relocation,” Mitchell said.

Even with Washington’s clear financial advantage, the final decision had to be ratified by the college’s conjoined board of trustees.

It took eight ballots by the trustees working in Pittsburgh April 20, 1869, to settle on Washington, although the vote was never in doubt. The first four ballots resulted in 16-10 votes for Washington, but did not exceed the two-thirds threshold needed for ratification.

The next round of votes, recorded on the back of a receipt from one of the trustees purchasing 25 cents worth of potatoes the previous week, began with several abstentions. The final 15-7 vote included several Jefferson College sympathizers abstaining, paving the way for Washington to officially hold the college.

Beatty, who first pushed the unification six years earlier, closed the day of voting by leading the trustees in prayer, according to the meeting minutes stored in the college’s archives. The trustees returned the following day to discuss the details of a permanent location and appointed Samuel Wilson to become the unified school’s second president, replacing Edwards.

Construction would soon begin to erect twin towers at Old Main as a show of unity, while Jefferson College alums seethed about losing their Canonsburg campus.

With a campus location finally selected, animosity brewing from Jefferson College alums and the Canonsburg community boiled over with a slew of lawsuits against the merger. Uniontown attorney James Veech, a proud Jefferson College alumnus, made a fierce argument later that year in Washington County Court in a futile attempt to overturn the “radical, violent, destructive, overtaking, overwhelming change undertaken” and return classes to Canonsburg.

“My remedy for this evil was to dissolve this illfated union and go back to where we started,” according to court records of his argument held by the Washington County Historical Society.

He was a member of the unified board of trustees, but resigned his seat in June 1869 out of protest. Veech argued many college officials publicly stated the relocation was adopted “without a dissenting voice” but he announced he fiercely argued against it in 1869 without success.

In a long and often rambling presentation recorded by court reporter S.S. Gibson, Veech used a slippery slope argument that a move to Washington would spell doom for the college. He sarcastically suggested the college should send freshmen to Burgettstown, keep sophomores in Washington, teach juniors in Kittanning and have seniors study “at some other place.”

“They may tomorrow locate it at Punxataweny (sic) or Millford or anywhere in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania if there is only some other institution there with which they may unite,” he said during his argument.

There were multiple lawsuits filed, which Veech acknowledged in his 1869 argument, and the issue ultimately was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the merger in 1871.

Crews completed work on Old Main’s twin towers in 1875 and the college moved forward after a less than harmonious unification. Still, Haring-Smith said its consolidation was vital to the college’s survival and they now proudly tout “together we thrived.”

“It was a time the college leaders did something very wise,” Haring-Smith said. “We’ve come a long way.”

Mitchell, who in addition to being a professor emeritus at the college, is also member of the Jefferson College Historical Society, still ponders what would have happened to W&J College had Canonsburg been selected as its home instead of Washington.

“I think Canonsburg would look very different right now.”

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