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“Mayflower Hill is more than a well-done narrative of its founding (ca.1813), the post-Civil War ‘rescue’ by Gardner Colby's donation, and the course of the college from then to now. It is more, too, than a supplement to archival records and personal memories for, portraying as it does a college as a ‘City on a Hill,’ it explains how one school justifies its existence.”—Maine History
A lively history of Colby College from its founding in 1813 to the present day.
Founded by Baptists in Waterville, Maine (and originally named the Maine Literary and Theological Institution), Colby College began as a tiny place—half college, half seminary. It faced doom at the end of the Civil War but was rescued by Gardner Colby, a wealthy manufacturer whose $50,000 donation saved the college. Three years later, it changed its name to honor its benefactor. Sixty years after that, the tiny college had become choked by the city’s success. Squeezed between the Kennebec River and the railroad tracks, it faced the daunting challenge of building a larger campus. The book tells the story of that audacious move, made in the darkest days of the Great Depression and funded by Waterville’s residents, who raised $100,000 for a new campus on the heights above the city—on Mayflower Hill.
The years after the move were marked by vibrant growth and daring change, leading to an institutional prominence unimagined by the founders. Using anecdotes and biographical asides to humanize this history, Earl H. Smith describes Colby’s shift from a religious focus to secularism, from “coordination” to coeducation, and from provincialism to global notice. Smith tracks the growth of an ever-stronger faculty who were willing to make innovative changes in the curriculum, and of trustees who dared to revolutionize student life by shedding outdated traditions. He brings to life student voices of the 1960s and 1970s, eager to change the old rules, protest an unpopular war, and demand equality and social justice on campus and worldwide. And perhaps most important of all, Smith illuminates how Colby College slowly reversed its role from the protected to a protector of the city that saved it.
Far more than a mere institutional history, Mayflower Hill resonates with the independent spirit of its founders and of subsequent generations of presidents, trustees, faculty, and students, who took inspiration and courage from the story of the old College and carried the new Colby to its place among the finest small colleges in the land.
“Smith's narrative is scholarly, meticulous, and wordy, making this a complete reference book of Colby history, but it is also funny and interesting, offering unique insights into campus politics, struggles with growth, finances, and strong personalities. Amidst stories of campus expansion, construction, and finances, Smith also tells wonderful anecdotes about its contentious co-ed transition and fraternity management, Colby's ‘highway war’ with the Maine DOT, its strange feuds with the CIA and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, the ugliest building on campus, the surprise of nitroglycerin, and the school's rivalries with Bates and Bowdoin colleges.”—Kennebec Journal
"Earl Smith's life and career make him uniquely qualified to write this history. It is a must read for those who care about Waterville and its relationship with the college that is so much a part of my home town."—The Hon. George J. Mitchell, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and a former resident of Waterville, having been born there. Senator Mitchell is currently chairman of the law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary as well as chairman of The Walt Disney Company.
“Colby College consistently ranks in the top twenty-five small Liberal Arts institutions in the nation. How a rural Maine college achieved and continues to maintain this enviable standing is revealed in Earl Smith's skillfully researched and written history of Colby. After summarizing the college's first one hundred and fifty years, a story covered in detail by Ernest Marriner in 1963, Smith gives us a rich accounting of the institutional challenges and achievements of the last five decades, bringing Colby into the twenty-first century.”—Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., Maine State Historian
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Waterville native EARL H. SMITH has held a variety of positions at Colby College for more than forty years, including dean of students, dean of the college, secretary of the corporation, and as an assistant and advisor to three Colby presidents. For the past three years he has served as the college’s historian.
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Cover design by Brian Speer.
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