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| Horace Bumstead From Atlanta University via Wikipedia |
Horace Bumstead (b. September 29, 1841; d. October 14, 1919)
Education: A.B. (Dartmouth), D.D. (New York University)
Occupation: clergyman
Horace Bumstead was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Josiah Freeman and Lucy Douglas (Willis) Bumstead. His father Josiah worked as a merchant and authored a number of schoolbooks written for primary schools. His father was concerned about the rights of African Americans. Before the Civil War, he served as superintendent of a Sunday school for African Americans, and during the war, he taught freed persons who had fled to the north.
Growing up, Horace attending public schools in Boston including the Boston Latin School. At Boston Latin, his teachers included a friend and former classmate of the abolitionist Wendall Phillips (Francis Gardner). Horace had several opportunities to hear Phillips and he was inspired by his speeches advocating for ending slavery.
After graduating from the Lain School, in 1859, Horace entered Yale College. He graduated with honors in 1863.
After receiving his college degree, Horace decided to fight for the Union in the Civil War. He was commissioned as a major for the 43rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment. He served during the final year of the war and then for six more years. He was present at the sieges of Richmond and Petersburg. In the summer of 1865, after the war had ended, Horace was and his troops were sent to Texas, near Brownsville, for garrison duty. Horace was discharged from military service on December 1, 1865.
After leaving the military, Horace continued his studies by enrolling at Andover Theological Seminar. He attended from 1866 to 1870 and then traveled around Europe. He spent fourteen months on the continent and visited Austria, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and England. While in Germany, he spent two semesters studying at the University of Tubingen. He attended lectures by the distinguished theologians Johann Tobias Beck, Gustav Friedrich Oehler, and Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker.
The Franco-Prussian War was on-going while Horace was in Europe. He was in Paris shortly before the German army besieged, and he was there a second time after the Paris Commune was put down.
After returning to America in February 1872, he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to serve as pastor at the Vine Street Congregational Church (now the Park Avenue Congregational Church). The church had only recently been formed with support from the American Home Missionary Society, and Horace was its first regular pastor. Horace found work at the church frustrated and began seeking alternative employment. In the summer of 1874, his classmate Edmund A. Ware, then founding president of Atlanta University, visited him. In college, the two had discussed moving to the south after the Civil War and working to educate freed persons. Excited by the prospect of realizing these plans, Horace resigned from his pastorship in spring 1875 and moved to Atlanta.
Horace planned to work at the university for a year as an experiment, but ultimately, he remained there for almost three decades. He first served as professor of natural science. In 1880, he became professor of Lain and treasurer, serving in the second position until 1886. The year after he received these positions (in 1887), he received a D.D. degree from New York University. This degree was honorary (rather than earned by studies), but the university had chosen to confer the degree in recognition of a recent publication of Horace's, "The Biblical Sanction for Wine."
Following the death of Atlanta University's founding president Edmund A. Ware, the university had a series of acting presidents. Horace served as acting president for the 1886-87 academic year and then received a regular appointment as president, serving from 1888 and 1907.
Horace faced a major controversy during his first year. Atlanta University had long had a racially integrated student body with the children of white professors studying alongside African Americans. During Horace's first year as university president, state legislators became upset upon learning that white students were studying alongside African American students. They threatened to withdraw financial support that the state government had been proving if the university continued to allow white students to attend. Horace refused to segregate the university, and in response, the legislature followed through on their threat to withhold funding. This had serious consequences for the university. For much of Horace's presidency, the university faced financial difficulties.
Horace's resistance to pressure from the state legislature was indicative of his presidency. Horace's former student and colleague George A. Towns one of the first and best allies that African Americans had among white people. In addition to resisting the state government's efforts to impose segregation, Horace promoted offering a high-quality academic education at Atlanta University during a time when there was intense public pressure to only offer vocational or "industrial" education for African Americans. One particularly notable act was the hiring of the celebrated academic W. E. B. Du Bois in 1897. During Horace's presidency, Du Bois wrote his celebrated books The Philadelphia Negro and The Souls of Black Folk.
As a figure on campus, Towns recalled Horace as a man with "[t]he culture of Beacon Street [in Boston] ... in his speech, his dress, and his very walk .... He was cultivated 'to his finger-tips;' yet with all he was a noble soldier in precision and in loyalty."
After stepping down from the university presidency, Horce retired to Brookline, Massachusetts. In retirement, he continued to support Atlanta University through fundraising. Horace died in New Hampshire in 1919. His death certificate lists cause of death as "unknown." Horace is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory in Jamaica Plain (in Boston).
Publications
1. "The Biblical Sanction for Wine." The Bibliotheca Sacra. Vol. XXXVIII, No. CXLIX. January 1881. 47-113.
Sources
1. Obituary Record of Yale Graduates, 1919-1920. (New Haven, Connecticut; Yale University, August 1920), 1360-1362.
2. Towns, George A. "Horace Bumstead." The Southern Workman. December 1919. 630-631.
3. A History of the Class of 1863, Yale College. Being the fourth of those printed by order of the class. (New Haven, Connecticut; The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company, 1905). 47-56.
4. Towns, George A. “Phylon Profile, XVI: Horace Bumstead, Atlanta University President (1888-1907).” Phylon (1940-1956) 9, no. 2 (1948): 109–14.
5. New Hampshire Archives and Records Management; Concord, New Hampshire; New Hampshire Death Records, 1650-1969. Box number: 1104.
6. Year: 1850; Census Place: Boston Ward 6, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 336; Page: 326b.
7. Year: 1860; Census Place: Monson, Hampden, Massachusetts; Roll: M653_504; Page: 919; Family History Library Film: 803504.
8. Year: 1880; Census Place: Atlanta, Fulton, Georgia; Roll: 147; Page: 141B; Enumeration District: 089
9. Year: 1900; Census Place: Boston Ward 17, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 684; Page: 12; Enumeration District: 1407; FHL microfilm: 1240684
10. Year: 1910; Census Place: Brookline, Norfolk, Massachusetts; Roll: T624_608; Page: 26A; Enumeration District: 1085; FHL microfilm: 1374621N
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