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Robert Aaron Condit: The Father
of Coe College
In 1900, having completed 25 years of service
to Coe Collegiate Institute and Coe College, Robert A. Condit was the
recipient of an honorary Doctor of Divinity, granted to him by Coe's
Board of Trustees. Upon his retirement six
years later, he was honored by becoming the first Professor Emeritus in
the college's history. At that time he was
also the first faculty member to be granted an annual pension of
$1,000, made possible by recent arrangements with the Carnegie
Foundation.
It is fitting that Prof. Condit would be so
honored in his final years, because he perhaps more than any other
single individual deserves the title of the "Father of Coe College." On September 1, 1875, the Board's Executive
Committee chose Condit as the Institute's principal at a salary of
$1,500 per year. One month later the
school began the first of its six years of operation, years when Condit
served as the institution's principal and primary instructor. Born in 1835 and the son of a Presbyterian
minister, Condit came to Cedar Rapids
after graduating from Princeton College in 1859 and serving as a
Presbyterian minister for churches in Minneapolis, St. Louis, Peoria,
and Chicago.
With the
Coe College began its first classes in the fall of 1881, Robert Condit
as Professor of Ancient Languages and Literature was
listed first among the faculty. At the
death of President Marshall in 1896, it was Professor Condit who
functioned as acting president until McCormick assumed the presidency
in 1897. It was at this time that Condit
began a six-year tenure as Dean of the college. |
