Maine State Seminary

Abstract

This record group contains the administrative records of the Board of Trustees, the governing body of Bates College.

Abstract

This record group contains meeting minutes for the Board of Trustees, Board of Overseers, and directors of the Maine State Seminary, the various governing bodies of Bates College through its founding to the present.

Abstract This collection consists of the personal and professional papers of two nephews of the Reverend Oren Burbank Cheney, founder and first president of Bates College: the Hon. George Edwin Smith (1848-1919) (Bates, 1873; LL.D., 1918), three-time president of the Massachusetts Senate and attorney for railroad trusts; and of his youngest brother, the Hon. Clarence Cheney Smith (1865-1943) (Bates, 1888), a founding recorder and later a justice for the Massachusetts Land Court. Among the materials...

Abstract

The Maine State Seminary records include correspondence, items relating to the construction of the Seminary (later, Bates College), and several ledgers. Most of the records cover the period prior to the renaming of the Seminary as Bates College, in 1863. This collection, when studied in conjunction with the records and items in the Related Materials section of the finding aid, serve to give a good, general picture of the activities of the College in its earliest decades.