JOHN H. RAYMOND
1814 - 1878
At the first meeting of the Faculty of Vassar
College after the death of our late honored
President, John H. Raymond, we record a brief
statement of his work in this College, and an
expression, altogether inadequate, of the love
we have for his memory.
We appreciate, as others cannot, the unceasing
toil, the perplexity, the solicitude, the many
discouragements which attended his heroic and
successful endeavor to secure for this College
its present eminence among educational institu-
tions.
We appreciate, as others cannot, the complica-
tions of the problem given to him for solution
at the time of his election to his office. At
the outset, there was a Board of Trustees having
the heartiest interest in this work, but pre-
senting many shades of opinion on educational
questions. And the Faculty, organized under
peculiar limitations needed time and trial to
give it experience and strength. And the
demand made by the public upon this College in
its earlier years, insisting that students sent
hither should be trained to the accomplishments
of the fashionable world rather than to the
earnestness of the scholar, was a demand that he
resisted with an unfaltering, a religious con-
stancy, and defeated utterly, so that under his
leadership a victory, complete, enduring, has
been gained for the higher education of women.
Beset by the ill-advised and persistent appeal of
the parents of our students, with no pioneers to
guide him, President Raymond cautiously and
safely led this College through the wilderness
of its first years.
We know what his thoughtfulness has accomplished
in the improvement of all the appointments and
properties of the College, in securing for it
the respect of educated people, in winning for it
the loyalty of students, and in organizing a
happy domestic regime. But these achievements
made by devotion to the duties of his office,
though they have commanded expressions of public
JOHN H. RAYMOND (Continued)
admiration, still seem to us to fade in comparison
with the result he attained in promoting the steady
growth of our educational work. Comparing the
Scheme of Instruction" published in our first
catalogue, with the clear and well adjusted cur-
riculum now followed by our students we see the
traces of his most difficult work, and his brightest
success.
While others point to his temperament, or to his
scholarship, or to his literary and oratorical skill
as the secret of his power in this College, we,
recognizing all these qualities in him, point to his
rare gift for organization as his prime endowment -
a gift blending with comprehensiveness of plan a
conscientious zeal for the performance of smallest
details. This endowment made it possible for him to
watch every interest related to his office, and
insured the uninterrupted progress of Vassar College
under his administration.
We remind ourselves that our late President himself
grew to loftier ideas under the discipline of his
work. Each new success inspired him with grander
hopes, to more intense endeavor. He led the way to
broader freedom in the discipline of the College;
and in presiding over our legislative deliberations,
he had come to be the most advanced among us in
demanding an unfaltering respect for the womanliness of
our students.
Always considerate of the weariness of his fellow-
workers, he gave himself no rest. In recalling what
he has done for Vassar College, we pay our reverent re-
spect to his industry, to his fidelity, to his
sacrifice of self, to his wisdom, which have laid our
foundations so secure that no adversity, not even his
death, can overturn them.
He was modest, he was honest, he was cautious, he was
patient, he was just, he was devout, he was faithful
in all things. He was eminent, and he was eminently
good, He is dead, but his work survives,
I - 391-393