Few people around here have ever seen the original house built for the president of Antioch College, which is hardly surprising since nearly a lifetime has passed since it burned to the ground in 1924. Why should I care, you ask (you do ask, don’t you?), about a building so long gone that only the most venerable of Antiochians ever laid eyes on it? Well, it may interested you to know that it held our first coffee shop, or maybe you like cool old houses, or perhaps you just have a thing for fires. But to the historian, the old President’s House symbolizes the difficulties between Horace Mann and the College founders, an evangelical sect called simply “the Christians,” and the heap of unfulfilled promises they made to our distinguished first president.
By any account the President’s House was an impressive structure. Its nearly square frame measured over 40 feet on a side. It stood three stories high, not counting the oversized cupola that made it look much taller. A wide veranda encircled the house. The interior rooms were very large, and the home’s many windows let in plenty of light. What’s most remarkable about the house, based on the early history of the college, is that it ever got built at all.
The Christian Connexion (which sounds more like a boutique than a denomination), Christians for short, have been described as Unitarians with a better name, but don’t let them hear you say that. The Christians differed greatly, in fact, advocating conversion through Great Awakening-style revivals and emotionally charged prayer meetings. Despite their professed liberalism, they could be quite narrow and bigoted in their views, and especially distrusted the scholarly, inclusive Unitarians. For much of their history the Christians even opposed education for their ministry. By the 1850’s, however, they had become gradually convinced of its value, and sought to open their own institution of higher learning.
One of
the driving forces behind the new Christian college was an ambitious and prosperous
carpenter with the ponderous name of Alpheus Marshall Merrifield. Hailed as “the
master-builder from Massachusetts,” Merrifield’s interest in educating Christian
youth and considerable wealth propelled him to the leadership of the college movement. A
major figure at the convention in Marion, New York, where Antioch was conceived,
Merrifield contributed $1,000 to the cause and subsequently became the college’s
first treasurer. Soon after the convention commissioned him to design and build the
college that became Antioch.
While Merrifield and other Christian leaders developed plans on where and how to build the College, still others worked to develop its curriculum and locate a faculty and a president. They chose the eminent Horace Mann, who agreed to go west provided they allow him to appoint Calvin and Rebecca Pennell to the faculty, and that they build a house for him and his family. In September, 1852, Merrifield was given the job to “prepare a plan for a dwelling for the President of Antioch College, not to exceed $3,000, to be begun when funds will permit.” Mann gave much input into the design, suggesting the location of his library so he might better observe the happenings on his campus.
That was a heady time indeed for Merrifield and the Christians. For the next year he busied himself with construction, largely ignoring his treasurer’s responsibilities. The money, most of it in prospect, poured into Antioch coffers from all over, and he seemed to think that they had so much that bookkeeping was an unnecessary chore, and declared the hiring of an accountant as wasteful. Actually, his negligent treasuring resulted in such chaos that a later accounting of Antioch’s debt proved impossible.
The Antioch campus under Merrifield’s direction was a chaotic sight as well. Despite a feverish building pace (the men even worked on the Sabbath), the buildings stood largely unfinished on the first Founder’s Day in October, 1853, and the President’s House remained little more than a sketch in Merrifield’s oversized drawing pad (which, incidentally, we have here in Antiochiana). When Mary Mann arrived in Yellow Springs her house had but a single floor. The Manns lived like houseguests and transients in that first year, dwelling first in three rooms in North Hall, and later at the home of Judge William Mills, Yellow Springs’ leading citizen and the man who gave $20,000 to Antioch as well as the land on which it stands. In a letter to a friend back east, Horace (ever the wordsmith) wrote of his promised home in November: “Ohio growths are rapid growths but this does not hold true of our house which has not yet grown up to the chamber [i.e. second] floor.”
Mary
planned anxiously for their new home. Even before they moved in, she planted large gardens
about the place, only to have them ruined by the pigs and cattle that roamed freely about
in those days. Her repeated requests for a fence to protect the expensive fruit and
vegetable seeds she had brought from the east were met by repeated promises for one by
Merrifield, but he never built her one. She wrote in November, 1853, that he promised them
a roof in three weeks, but no roof materialized until summer. Even when the Manns finally
got to move into the house in August, they had to wait over a year for Merrifield to drill
a well, so Horace and the three Mann sons had to haul water from a cistern in North Hall.
What sort of problems did Merrifield encounter that it took two years to build a house that should have been ready in less than one? Was the soil too sandy to build on, or the workforce too small? Could the money have been tight or the materials unavailable? None of the above, my friends. Old Alpheus Merrifield, “the master-builder,” was engaging in that most human of all pursuits: politics. He and a growing number of Christians increasingly sided against Mann and some of the more liberal educators. The conservatives, led by mathematics professor Ira Allen and backed by Merrifield (and even Judge Mills to an extent), had always wanted Antioch to a be denominational college, and desired it have a theology department. When Mann suggested educating students in all religions, Allen, Merrifield, and other denominationalists feared this “Unitarianization” of their college. The dispute culminated in an attempt to discharge Mann in 1855 and replace him with Allen, an effort that ultimately failed.
Afterward, Merrifield opposed Mann at every turn. He must not have liked the Manns much from the start, exemplified by his pulling workmen away from the house when he feuded with Mann over some college business in the first school year. Merrifield grew tired of struggling against Mann, or at least lost interest, and resigned from the Board of Trustees in 1857. He soon left Yellow Springs, but returned for two weeks the following summer, apparently only to sharply criticize the Mann regime in person, and exhort Christian parents to send their kids to any school but Antioch.
Despite much tumult, the Manns got their house, and many a student ate supper with the president and his family in the spacious dining room. Mann held sway at Antioch until 1859, and died in the home he stipulated as a condition for coming west. Not all of Antioch's subsequent chief executives resided in the house, and it was frequently rented out as a source of revenue. It was formally abandoned as an official residence upon the presidency of Arthur Morgan, who built his own home upon coming to Yellow Springs. In the early 1920s the house had many functions: housing upper-class students, the bookstore, and a coffee shop called “Ye Anchorage,” managed by students in the Home Economics department and a good place for soup and a sandwich, or just a hot cup of coffee, which by the menu in Antiochiana, cost a nickel.
The second of January, 1924, marked the end of the venerable house, when a defective chimney flue caused it to catch fire. Responding to cries of “A little help needed here! Horace Mann House on fire!”, several students sprang into action, and managed to salvage many items. Those residing there must have been away, for no one was reported hurt. The damage was total however, and the morning after only the charred remnants of four brick walls remained. Horace Mann House was promptly replaced with Horace Mann Library, now call Weston Hall. Unlike Horace’s house, his library took less than a year to build since Arthur Morgan and not Alpheus Merrifield supervised its construction.