was certainly a very
creditable beginning. The name of the Institute was now changed to
Lawrence University.

A record of the early years of struggle and sacrifice necessary to found
the University would fill a volume, and cannot be given at length in
these pages. Having been a member of the Board for nearly a quarter of a
century, I could say much of the noble men who performed double service
on half pay, but such a recital cannot here be given.

Rev. Dr. Edward Cooke was installed President of the University June 29,
1853. At the same time the corner stone of the College building was laid
by Hon. M.C. Darling, Rev. Alfred Bronson, D.D., delivering the address.
The edifice, a substantial stone structure, one hundred and twenty by
sixty feet, and five stories high, was pushed forward to an early
completion by the untiring energy of the agents, Rev. J.S. Prescott and
Col. H.L. Blood. For college purposes the building ranked among the
first in the West.

In both Students and Faculty Lawrence University has been fortunate from
the beginning. As to the former, she has sent out not a few
representative men to the several occupations of life, several of whom
will find mention in these pages. As to the latter, she has enjoyed the
labors of a class of instructors whose names have found an honorable
place in both the clerical and literary circles of the Commonwealth.

Of Rev. Wm. H. Sampson, the first head of the Faculty, a record has been
made in a former chapter, and it would afford me pleasure to refer at
length to the several members of the first Faculty, as also to all the
Professors who have followed, but I find it will be impossible to do so
in these brief pages.

Rev. Edward Cooke, D.D., the first President, entered the New Jersey
Conference in 1843. He was a graduate of the Wesleyan University,
Middletown, Conn. His first appointment was Principal of the Pennington
Male Seminary, N.J. In 1847 he was transferred to the New England
Conference, and stationed at Saugus. His subsequent appointments were
Union Church Charlestown, D. Street, Centenary, and Hanover, of Boston,
Mass. He was transferred to the Wisconsin Conference in 1853, having
been elected President of the University. As a President he was very
popular, and during his administration of six years had the satisfaction
to see the Institution rise from a feeble preparatory school to a
full-fledged University. In addition to the ordinary duties of his
positi