Topic: Why was Berea incorporated in 1890? Mayor Steve Connelly answers

(C) copyright by Steven Connelly, 2008.

Question: WHY WAS BEREA INCORPORATED BY THE KENTUCKY GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON APRIL 3, 1890? WHY AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME? WHAT EVENTS PRECIPITATED INCORPORATION IN 1890?

Response: Two answers have been suggested for this question; to some extent, each may apply.

1. Berea needed better roads and sidewalks. Incorporation would allow the town to raise money with taxes and license fees for such public improvements.

Prior to 1890, Berea College, itself incorporated in April1866, had been the impetus behind many town improvements. As the community grew around the college, the Prudential Committee of the Board of Trustees acted like a town council, laying out streets and selling lots. In her history of Berea College, Professor Elizabeth Peck mentioned how president Fairchild, president of Berea College from 1869 to 1889, was dedicated to improving public services in the village.

She wrote that from the beginning of his term of office he and the Prudential Committee acted like the mayor, town council, and chamber of commerce for the unincorporated village. “For instance,” she wrote, “in 1872 President Fairchild and the Committee subscribed $1,000 to the Kingston and Boone’s Gap turnpike, secured by ten lots along the pike, on condition that ‘the pike be opened to Berea passing over the Ridge.’” However, such public support for community improvement was not without controversy. “After the Prudential Committee voted to donate $3,000 to secure the right of way of the proposed Kentucky Central Railroad through Berea,” Peck reported, “some trustees rebuked this Committee for pledging so large a sum when the college already had a $10,000 debt.”

The reluctance exhibited by some trustees to spend college money on city improvements, coupled with the existing college debt and the continuous challenge to raise money to operate, certainly argued for the town standing on its own financially. A town charter with a governing structure independent of the college would allow the town to tax and pay for public improvements. In fact, the failure of Fairchild’s eventual successor, William B. Stewart, during his two year interregnum, was caused, in large part, by his lack of attention to fund raising for the college – or a preference to teach rather than seek donations.

2. Community leaders feared the impact of a leadership vacuum at Berea College after the death of President Fairchild in 1889 and supported incorporating the town to give it the independence to meet its needs as the college administration sorted out issues of succession.

Jean J. Welsh and her husband, William B. Welsh, offered another answer to the question in their monograph “BEREA: City and College Growing up Together 1865-1940,” published for the city’s centennial celebration in 1990. They suggested that the impetus to incorporate arose from the leadership vacuum that had developed after the death of John Hanson in 1885 and president Fairchild in 1889 and Rev. Fee’s preoccupation with the theology of baptism.

During this time, the college turned to William B. Stewart to succeed Fairchild as president, but he proved to be controversial and unable to raise sufficient money to finance the cost of operations. According to the Welshes, “Uncertainty over how the new leadership of a reconstituted Prudential Committee under Stewart would affect the town and college relationship caused key college officials and leaders from the community to seek stability through a statutory town charter from the State of Kentucky.”

Professor LeVant Dodge was the instrument of incorporation. He was a veteran of the Union Army, a member of the Executive Committee of the Kentucky YMCA, and organizer of the Republican party, and a future Republican candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1891. With his political connections and help from Sen. Phil Roberts of Richmond, Dodge was able to have the bill to charter Berea introduced on March 11 and signed by the governor on April 3, 1890.

The Welshes argued that incorporation proved timely. “The two-and-a-half years of Stewart’s presidency at Berea were marked by financial distress and controversy. In 1892 a palace coup was engineered by Eugene Fairchild, president Fairchild’s son and college financial officer,” and another trustee. But at least the town organization was insulated from this turmoil by its newly formed incorporated status.

i(Shannon H. Wilson, Berea College, An Illustrated History, 2006, pp43-44; Richard D. Sears, A Utopian Experiment in Kentucky: Integration and Social Equality in Berea, 1866-1904, pp99-100).

(Elizabeth S. Peck, Berea’s First Century 1855-1955, 1955, p.36; Prudential Committee Min., May 25, 1872; Board of Trustees Min., June 22, 1883).

(See Wilson, History of Berea , p71; Peck, p47; According to Wilson: “In 1891 expenditures were $18,008.79 whereas receipts totaled $16,274.91, a shortfall of $1,733.88. Donation of $6,466.57 and endowment interest of $5,233.20 made up the bulk of the budget for the year.” p67).
(Welsh p7).
(Welsh p9).

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