First Faculty
Tuttle and Millikin in the Professor’s Office (1876)
On September 17, 1873, seven men sat at a table in a bare room in the College’s only building sketching out the days ahead. None of the new professors had a terminal degree in his field; the youngest was 21 years old. Of necessity, the first seven were cohorts in research with the first students, styling themselves instigators of investigation, rather than masters to be obeyed.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, schooling proceeded as it had since the Middle Ages: rote memorization, recitation to a master. However, the new educators were, as Mendenhall put it, “disposed to seek the laws of nature in the various phenomena in which nature concealed them, rather than in the tomes of a library.”
Edward Orton Edward Norton The post of college president was first offered to Jacob D. Cox, former governor of Ohio, who declined, then to Senator James Patterson of New Hampshire, who was promptly ensnared in the Credit Mobilier scandal. Next, the Board turned to Edward Orton. Son of a Presbyterian minister, graduate of Hamilton College, Orton spent his twenties locating fertile ground for his increasingly liberal theology. He abandoned Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati for Harvard, left Harvard for Andover, and finally received a pastorate in Downsville, New York in 1855. Orton’s theology cost him a succession of pastorates and professorships, but gained him a seat at Antioch College. From 1865 until he was appointed college president in 1872, Orton ran Antioch’s preparatory division, teaching Latin, History, English and Math. The Board of Trustees of Ohio A&M only enticed Orton to the presidency by offering him the chair in geology as well. |
Norton Townshend Norton Strange Tonwshend, 1883 The oldest member of the first faculty, Norton Strange Townshend was born on Christmas Day, 1815, in Clay Coaton, Northampshire, England. As a teenager, he emigrated with his family to America, eventually settling in Lorain County. Apprenticed to an Elyria doctor, he studied medicine sporadically, taking classes in Cincinnati and New York. Townshend was an activist for temperance and abolition, travelling and speaking in support of both causes; in 1848 the Lorain County anti-slavery movement propelled him to the Ohio legislature. As an assemblyman, he agitated for the repeal of the state’s Black Laws. Later, in 1853, he was elected to the Ohio Senate. Dedicated to the project of training farmers in more efficient methods, with the help of teachers from Oberlin and Cleveland, he established short winter courses in agricultural science in 1854. Though this project failed, as Commissioner of Agriculture under Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and as a University trustee, Townshend would continue to promote agricultural education. |
Thomas Mendenhall Thomas Corwin Mendenhall Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, in OSU historian James Pollard’s words, a “distinguished physicist and scientist,” with a high-school education came to Ohio A&M from the faculty of Columbus Central High School. He taught physics and mechanics at the new college from 1873 to 1878, spent three years at Japan”s Imperial University, and returned to Ohio State University in 1881. Mendenhall later taught in the U.S. Signal Corps and worked for the Coast and Geodetic Survey. His reminiscences on the founding of the University, written in 1920 for its 50th anniversary, remain a valuable historical source. |
Sidney A. Norton Sidney Augustus Norton Sidney Augustus Norton, a native of Trumbull County and a graduate of Union College in New York, was brought on to teach chemistry. He served as a high school principal in Hamilton, Ohio, then joined the science faculty at Cleveland Central High School. He left Cleveland for Miami Medical College in Cincinnati, teaching chemistry and at the same time receiving his M.D. Norton was a gifted lecturer, with a gift for concision; known more for his teaching than his research, he published a revised edition of Weld’s English Grammar, and wrote a series of textbooks in physics and chemistry. He remained at OSU for 26 years. |
Joseph Millikin Joseph Millikin English professor Joseph Millikin, an Ohio native, followed a brother seven years his senior first to Hanover College in Indiana, then to Miami of Ohio. He graduated from Miami University at age 19 and moved on to Princeton Theological Seminary, joining the Presbyterian pastorate. Millikin suffered from a pulmonary disease his entire life, so would spend one year studying and one recuperating on his family’s farm. He spent much of the 1860s touring Europe in support of his declining health. An amateur biologist, his gradual acceptance of evolution led him into conflict with Presbyterian orthodoxy, and in 1870 he gave up the pastorate. Millikin resigned from Ohio State in 1881 and died two years later. Mendenhall described him as personable, but grave, as “the fear of complete failure in health was constantly before him.” |
John Wright John Henry Wright Born in February 1852 in Urmia, Persia, to American missionaries, John Henry Wright attended Riverview Military Academy in Poughkeepsie, and was fresh from Dartmouth when he joined the faculty of Ohio A&M to teach ancient languages and literatures. On the college’s opening day, as a sign of esteem, the other members of faculty elected him secretary. Wright spent three years at Ohio A&M, left to study Sanskrit in Leipzig, took a chair in Greek at Harvard, and eventually became dean of its graduate school. |
Robert MacFarland Robert W. MacFarland Robert W. MacFarland, a self-taught Scotsman, accepted the chair in mathematics and engineering. For 17 years at Miami University, MacFarland taught math, civil engineering and astronomy, and served as groundskeeper. From 1862 to 1864 he served in the 86th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, following General Ambrose Burnside to Tennessee. A self-taught classicist, he published a translation of Virgil. At Miami, his hobby was advanced computation by hand: he famously spent four and a half years plotting Earth’s orbit for the course of five hundred thousand years. |
Albert Tuttle Albert Henry Tuttle The last member added to the faculty, Albert Henry Tuttle was elected to the position of Professor of Zoology in 1874. A graduate of Penn State, he would also go on to attend graduate school at Johns Hopkins University. A member of the OSU faculty for 14 years, he resigned in 1888 to become chair of Biology and Agriculture at the University of Virginia. He left an enduring legacy with the University, being offered an honorary doctorate in 1888 as well as the position of University President in 1893. While he declined both offers, he retained close ties with the University and continued teaching until his death at the age of 83. |
