Office of the President, George Colby Chase records

George Colby Chase, the second president of Bates College, was born March 15, 1844 in Unity, Maine to Freewill Baptist parents. In 1862, at the age of eighteen, he entered the Maine State Seminary and, despite having his studies interrupted by periods of country school teaching and helping his father on the farm, he graduated in 1864. In the fall of 1864, with the encouragement of his mother, he enrolled in Bates College, graduating in 1868. Chase then spent the next two years teaching Latin, Greek and Philosophy at the New Hampton Literary Institute.

Although Chase thoroughly enjoyed teaching and had a strong aptitude for it, his mother's hope had been that he would enter the ministry. In 1870, in order to resolve the question of his life's work, he returned to Lewiston and enrolled in the theological school which had just become a department of the College after having been previously located at New Hampton, N.H. Meanwhile the College offered him a position teaching Greek and he spent the next year teaching and pursuing his studies in theology. At the end of that year, after he realized that the ministry was not his calling, the College offered him a position teaching English. In order to better prepare himself, he spent a year as a graduate student at Harvard, returning in 1872 to join the Bates faculty as Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature.

George Chase taught for 22 years and during that time his administrative skills were also being developed. President Cheney was often gone for long periods of time soliciting funds for the College, and Professor Chase served as Acting President during these absences. When the College found itself in a tight financial situation, Professor Chase offered to do what he could to raise money. He was so successful that President Cheney and the Trustees came to depend on him and eventually the solicitation of funds was added to his responsibilities. In 1894, upon President Cheney's resignation, George C. Chase became the second President of Bates College. During Chase's 25 years as president, the College grew in many areas-the endowment, the number of buildings and the number of faculty and students. However, what he strove to see realized were the ideals that he felt Bates stood for: scholarship, democracy, a spirit of service and most of all, Christian character.

President Chase received several honorary degrees: a Doctor of Divinity from Colby College and Doctors of Laws from Bowdoin College, the University of Colorado and the University of New Brunswick. He was a member of the Lewiston School Board from 1874-1890 and served two years as its president.

In 1872 George Chase married Emma F. Millett, a former member of the College's first graduating class. They had five children: George, Emma, Muriel, Elizabeth and Caroline. President George C. Chase died at his home in Lewiston, Maine on May 27, 1919 at the age of 75.