but Carl F. Price’s earlier Wesleyan’s First Century, published for the Centennial in 1931, should not be overlooked, especially its chapter on the fraternities. Methodism was a pervasive influence in both University and Fraternity in the early days. Many Eclectics went on to careers in the Methodist Episcopal Church. The turmoil of 1842 surrounding a student call for the resignation of President Nathan Bangs involved a number of Eclectics. One of these was John Wesley Beach (1845), who refused (at least initially) to sign an apology composed by the faculty. Those who refused to sign were to be suspended until the commencement of the next term—and then, if they had not signed with a confession of “contumacy,” would be dismissed in disgrace. Beach was not dismissed. The resignation of Bangs in August 1842 evidently made the earlier faculty decision moot. Stephen Olin was elected president again (he had been unable to assume his duties because of ill health) and this time assumed those duties for a term that lasted nine years. Beach himself became Wesleyan’s seventh president in 1880.
Initiates in the 1840s included such recurring names in Eclectic history as Beach (John Wesley and his brother Samuel F.), Haven (Gilbert), Ingraham (William M.), Newhall, (Fales H.), and Hyde (Ammi B.), all of the class of 1846. These early Eclectics had distinguished careers in church and academia, but they did not lack humor. I well remember one of Paul North Rice’s talks to an initiation banquet in the mid-1950s. He recounted a story concerning the aforementioned Professor Ammi B. Hyde (1824–1921), long a professor of Greek at Allegheny College and later at the University of Denver. During World War I, when Professor Hyde was long since retired, some acquaintance complained to the ninety-year-old expert in Greek that the people of that country seemed to be taking a “pusillanimous and cowardly part” on the side of the Allies. He replied, “Alas, yes, the Greeks don’t fight like Hell-as of old.”
A number of initiatives in the 1840s reverberated through the subsequent history of the fraternity. The motto represented by the Greek letters “Phi Nu Theta” was adopted sometime between 1840 and early 1844. The badge of the fraternity, a gold watch key in the form of a scroll with both the Greek letters and the word “Eκλ∈κ
From June 11, 1846, the minutes of fraternity meetings were preserved. Those of May 1,1847, describe another initiative which was continued in succeeding generations of Eclectics—that of cultivation.” The corresponding secretary, Daniel Steele (1848), “was instructed to write to several teachers of academies belonging to our society and ask of them information as to the students to be sent by them to our college next Commencement.” Pre-frosh cultivation had early roots.
In 1848 two resignations shook Eclectic. Both members, Nathaniel J. Burton and William S. Studley of the class of 1850, joined the Mystical Seven, then functioning as a regular fraternity. Burton was asked to give his reasons for leaving. His response was that he found the “largeness” of the organization detracted from its efficiency as a literary and social institution. Eclectics of a later era may smile at the assertion. There were eighteen members before the resignations.
The decade ended on a positive note. George F. Mellen (1849), who replaced the departed William S. Studley as corresponding secretary, could write in the minutes of the annual meeting at commencement on July 30, 1849, “We can speak of no trials endured during the past year, for we have had none. We can recount no great victories achieved, for no rival has been seen…. The conclave that is nearest the Eclectic is the Phi Beta [Kappa], yet this must ever fall below us while marks distinguish men.”
CHAPTER 3
ECLECTIC IN
THE 1850S
Just before commencement in 1849, a junior was initiated into the Eclectic Society of Phi Nu Theta who was to have great influence in the Fraternity and, still more, in the College. John Monroe Van Vleck (1850) was an undergraduate member for only one year, but during his long tenure as a professor at Wesleyan and loyal alumnus of the Fraternity, he was to leave an indelible imprint. “Uncle Johnny” was still invoked a hundred years later as the ideal Eclectic. Born in 1833, he became adjunct professor of mathematics in 1853. Five years later he was appointed professor of mathematics and astronomy, a post he held for forty-six years until his retirement in 1904, when he was made professor emeritus. He served three times as acting president of the university (1872–73, 1887–89, and 1896–97) and was a strong voice for curriculum reform and coeducation along with another stalwart Eclectic faculty member, William North Rice (1865). Professor Van Vleck is particularly remembered for hiring during his second interim presidency one of Wesleyan’s best-known late-nineteenth-century faculty members, Woodrow Wilson. Four years after Van Vleck’s death in 1912, the observatory bearing his name and dedicated to his memory was erected on Foss Hill. Professor Caleb T. Winchester ‘69, another giant of the era (even though a Psi Upsilon), summed up his recently deceased colleague’s contributions to the University as follows: “No other man had as much to do in making Wesleyan University what it is today.”
In the same year that John Monroe Van Vleck joined Eclectic, a committee of three consisting of W. F. Loomis (1851), Albert S. Hunt (1851), and A. C. Foss (1852) proposed revisions to the format of literary exercises so as to render them “more profitable and interesting, if possible.” Eclectics of succeeding generations will recognize the general shape, if not the details of what the committee developed:
1. There shall be two essays before the Society at each meeting except the monthly, and the sentiment as well as the style shall be subject to criticism.
2. Two criticisms shall be read before the Society each week on the essays of the week preceding, and these shall be subject to verbal criticism.
3. Each member who has no appointment as essayist or critic shall present to the Society at each meeting some short written article, it being expressly understood that essayists and critics also may, if they choose, present these articles.
4. At the monthly meetings a review and a written discussion shall be substituted for the essays and critiques, the first of which shall not be subject to criticism. At this meeting the articles presented by each member shall be original poetry.
“Articles” did not long survive as a part of literary exercises, although their echo, “Special Topics,” did.
In his manuscript chapter on the 1850s, from which much of the material in this chapter is taken, Paul North Rice commented that his chapter might have been called “The Foss Decade.” Family names appear repeatedly in the annals of the Society. The committee member Archibald Campbell Foss (1852) mentioned above was followed into the Fraternity by his brother, the future president of Wesleyan, Cyrus David Foss (1854), and two years later by a third brother, William Jay Foss (1856). All three were valedictorians of their classes and leaders in fraternity and university activities. All subsequently served on the faculty for shorter or longer periods.
Ralph Chandler Harrison (1853) was initiated as a freshman and was a notable addition to the ranks of Phi Nu Theta. Less than two months after joining, he was elected secretary; he later held the offices of treasurer (twice), recording secretary, and president. He served as chairman of a committee to revise the bylaws of the Society. His report, with its notations of the most important events in the history of the Society up to that time, was gathered from minutes and documents that have since disappeared. His efforts have provided invaluable information to subsequent researchers into the early history of Eclectic. In life after graduation he followed a career in law, a calling somewhat unusual in the days of minister and educator graduates. Even more unusual, he left the East and moved to California, where he served as a member of the Board of Freeholders that framed a charter for San Francisco in 1880, chaired the Board in 1886, served as Justice of the Supreme Court of California 1891–1903, and later (1905–6) presided over a District Court of Appeals in California. Ralph C. Harrison died in 1918, but obviously made a great impression on Eclectics of the early twentieth century, most