LXXXI.
EDMUND ASA WARE.
In another chapter of this book I have told you, boys and girls, something of the story of General S. C. Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute. I am now going to tell something about another white man, who was the founder of another great school for colored people. His name is Edmund Asa Ware, and he was the founder of Atlanta University. Of course you know that I must love Atlanta University because I was graduated there myself a long time ago; but I think that Atlanta University should have a warm place in the heart of every black boy and girl in America. It has done and is doing a great work for the higher training of our men and women.
Mr. Ware was born in North Wrentham (now Norfolk), Mass., December 22, 1837. When fifteen years old he removed with his father’s family to Norwich, Conn., where he entered the Norwich Free Academy. In 1859 he entered Yale University, from which institution he was graduated four years later. In 1865 he went to Nashville, Tenn., where he served for a year as principal of one of the newly organized public schools of that city. In 1866 he came to Atlanta, Ga., and under the auspices of the American Missionary Association began the educational work to which he devoted the rest of his life. In 1867 he was appointed superintendent of schools for the state of Georgia under the Freedmen’s Bureau, and traveled widely in the prosecution of that work. The same year a charter was obtained for Atlanta University, which institution was not opened, however, until 1869, and Mr. Ware became its first president and continued as president until his death. He died suddenly of heart disease September 25, 1885, in Atlanta, and was buried September 29th in Westview Cemetery in the suburbs of the same city.
A few years later his body was removed to the campus of Atlanta University, where it now sleeps. A huge granite bowlder was brought from Massachusetts, his native state, by funds contributed by the graduates of Atlanta University, and this bowlder, suitably inscribed, marks his last resting place on earth.
At the memorial services held in honor of President Ware in Stone Hall, Atlanta University, December 22, 1885, on the forty-eighth anniversary of the birth of the dead president, Prof. Bumstead, who is now president of Atlanta University, spoke the following words about Mr. Ware’s boyhood and early life:
“It was a pleasant boyhood, and its joys were innocent and wholesome ones. A white rabbit, a goat, and two hounds were the pets with which he played at home. He threw the line for speckled trout in the meadow brooks, and he rowed his boat upon the pond to gather the fragrant waterlilies.
“It was an industrious boyhood. In summer he gathered blueberries, huckleberries and blackberries for market. When twelve or thirteen years old he spent his school vacations in service as a clerk in a village store. When fourteen he cultivated and harvested thirty dollars’ worth of vegetables.
“It was a conscientious boyhood. His mother has no recollection of his ever being untruthful. His village teachers all commended him for his unvarying conformity to the right in school. It is said that when he was fifteen years old he had never been absent a day nor had a mark for tardiness. When serving as clerk in the village store his employer showed him a certain article which had some defect about it, not very readily noticed, and bade him say nothing about it. He promptly told his employer that he could obey no such instructions.
“It was an ambitious boyhood—ambitious, of course, in the best sense of the word. He eagerly seized upon and improved every opportunity for self-improvement. He read the best books and periodicals. He heard lectures from such men as Beecher, Phillips, Curtis, Everett and Gough.
“In the autumn of 1859 he found himself a member of the largest Freshman class which at that time had ever entered Yale College. Here for the first time I grasped the hand and looked into the earnest eyes of my friend. I remember him in those early college days for the unaffected modesty of his bearing, the simplicity of his dress, his manifest hatred of all pretense and shams, his keen sense of humor, and his dry wit. His professedly religious life had been begun at the Norwich Academy but a few months before he entered college. Both in the academy and college he was active in religious work, and his face was set like a flint against all forms of iniquity.”
Mr. Ware was married in 1869 to Miss Sarah Jane Twichell, of Plantsville, Conn. His wife served with him long and faithfully at Atlanta University, and continued to serve long after he had passed to his rest. She was left a widow with three daughters and one son. She herself died subsequently. The son has since been graduated from Yale University and from Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and is now chaplain of Atlanta University.
Mr. Ware was a good man who believed that God had made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and that Christ had redeemed us to God out of every kindred, tongue and people and nation; he believed in the common origin and common destiny of the whole human family, in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and, therefore, recognized no distinctions among men except those founded on character or merit. Along with a host of pioneer New England missionaries who came South to help us shortly after the war Mr. Ware’s name deserves to be honored and revered by a grateful people to the end of time.