Wylie, Andrew, 1789-1851

First president of Indiana University.

Prior to coming to Indiana College, as it was then known, Wylie served as president of both Washington and Jefferson Colleges in Pennsylvania. He assumed his new duties as first president of Indiana College on 29 October 1829. Under his administration, Indiana College became Indiana University, the institution adopted the "One-Study Plan" which outlined the required studies for each of the classes, and Wylie himself faced a number of scandals. Under Wylie's guidance enrollment at the university grew an average of 163 students per year until his death on 11 November 1851.

Andrew Wylie, the first president of Indiana University, was born on 12 April 1789, on a farm in western Pennsylvania. The son of an Irish immigrant, Wylie was brought up in a Scots-Irish Presbyterian household where education, religion, and discipline were instilled deeply into the young man’s psyche. Before entering Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, at the age of fifteen Wylie helped his father farm the land and took classes at the public schools in the area as the seasons permitted. Wylie’s mother also supplemented his education.

Wylie graduated from Jefferson College in 1810 at the top of his class with honors. Promptly after graduation Wylie was appointed as a tutor at the college. In a relatively short amount of time Wylie made a reputation for himself as one of the most gifted scholars in the east. This lead to Wylie being unanimously elected president of Jefferson College by the Board of Trustees a mere two years after graduating from the school. Sometime during this period Wylie was ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

In 1817 Wylie resigned his position at Jefferson College and became the president of Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to unify the two Presbyterian schools which were only located about seven miles away from one another. The attempt to unite the two colleges failed when the board members of Washington College and Wylie clashed on the terms of the unification. Wylie resigned as president of Washington College in December of 1828 when he realized he no longer had the full support of the College Board of Trustees. During his presidency at Washington College Wylie received his D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) from Union College in 1825.

In 1828 Indiana Seminary was undergoing the transformation to Indiana College and Wylie was contacted about becoming president of the fledgling institution. After being continuously courted by the faculty and other officials of the college, the Indiana College Board of Trustees elected Wylie president in 1829. Wylie, his wife Margaret, and his family moved to Bloomington to assume his new duties as the first president of Indiana College on 29 October 1829.

When Wylie arrived in Bloomington he not only served as president but was also an instructor. One of the first things he did was change the curriculum and the student body structure. The institution adopted the “One-Study Plan” adding both a junior and senior class. It outlined that the freshman and half of the sophomore year be dedicated to the study of Greek and Latin. In the second half of the sophomore year and the entire junior year, mathematics and some “natural sciences” were to be the main course of study. In the senior year all students studied philosophy, Christianity, constitutional law, political economy, and literary criticism under the watchful eye of Wylie himself. When classes at the college opened in December 1829, Baynard Hall and John Harney had the responsibility of teaching the other three classes with a total enrollment of forty students. During the remaining years of Wylie’s presidency the curriculum changed very little.

During the first years of Wylie’s administration the biggest scandal of Wylie’s presidency was born. The events of 1832 were so tumultuous that they almost resulted in the death of the college. The scandal, christened the “Faculty War of 1832," began in the spring of that year when a representative of the student temperance society, Samuel Givens, asked Wylie if he could speak either first or last at the student oration presentations. Wylie agreed, but later preoccupied by a troublemaking carpenter at the site of the orations, Wylie forgot his promise to the young man, and he called upon Givens to speak second. Mr. Givens, outraged by Wylie recanting his word, refused to speak to the assembled students. That following Saturday morning in the chapel Wylie called upon Givens to explain his behavior to the assembled faculty and student body. Givens explained that Wylie had reneged on a promise and that he did not want his speech mixed up with the others. Wylie apologized and explained the problem with the unruly carpenter at the Presbyterian Church. Wylie asked Givens that if faced with the same situation again would he behave in the same manner. The young man responded with a “yes” and Wylie denounced him as a “very mean man.” Upon this declaration faculty members Harney and Hall entered into the fray causing Wylie to lecture them in front of the student body. Hall and Harney in turn denounced the president as a liar and spy.

The events surrounding the oration were in essence the final factor which brought about the complete degeneration of an already failing relationship between the faculty members and the president. Harney and Hall were at odds with Wylie over the new curriculum and the methods used to teach it almost from the beginning of Wylie’s presidency. Complicating the situation was the fact that Wylie was a rigid uncompromising man. The power struggle ended with Wylie retaining his position and with Hall resigning and Harney being dismissed.

Adding to the difficulties faced by the college was an outbreak of Asiatic cholera in August 1833. The disease struck very quickly forcing people to flee from Bloomington by whatever means they could manage. Classes were cancelled and the students sent home after one of the students died of the disease. Classes did not resume until September after the epidemic had run its course and the new faculty thought it safe for the students to return.

Not long after the fires of the first scandal burned themselves out did another scandal erupt. In 1838 the college became a university, and Wylie was re-elected president. However, in 1839, William C. Foster, an officer of the board of trustees, brought charges against Wylie accusing him of abuse of trust. After being investigated by the members of the board of trustees Wylie was exonerated of the charges. In the end the scandal cost the university three more professors and a drop in enrollment. During his twenty-two year administration Wylie had to defend himself four times from charges brought against him. He was cleared of any wrong doing each time.

Many of the problems of the fledgling university were grounded in the sectarianism that pervaded the Bloomington community and the state government in general. Simply put, it was the Presbyterians vs. the Methodists as was best exemplified by the “Faculty War of 1832.” With the exception of enrollment, no real growth occurred in the first 30 years of the university’s existence until all of the perceived sectarians were either removed or died. As a result of the political strife surrounding the university, talk swirled between 1840 and 1850 of moving the university up to Indianapolis to a “more receptive audience.” In 1841 the University Board of Trustees was disbanded, and the restriction stating each county in Indiana could have no more than two members of their community represented on the board at any one time was introduced. This restriction helped to end the sectarianism or the “Bloomington Divide” which adversely affected the university.

Andrew Wylie died on 11 November 1851 of pneumonia which he developed after accidentally cutting his leg while chopping wood.

Family History: Andrew Wylie married Margaret Ritchie (b.1791) in 1813, and they had twelve children together: Andrew, William, Mary Ann, Craig Ritchie, Elizabeth, John Hosea, Samuel, Margaret, Irene Catherine, Redick McKee, Anderson McElroy and Jane Melheme. Margaret Ritchie Wylie died in 1859.

Andrew Wylie Jr. was born in 1814 in Pennsylvania, the eldest of Andrew and Margaret Wylie’s children. He graduated from IU in 1832 with a BA and an MA. He studied law in Kentucky and practiced in Pittsburg. He married Mary Caroline Bryan in 1845 and they had three sons, only one of whom survived to adulthood. They moved to Washington D.C., and Andrew pursued a long career in jurisprudence. He was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1863 by President Lincoln and served in the position until his retirement in 1884. He died in 1905.

William Wylie was the second Wylie child, born in 1816. He died of typhus during his senior year at IU in 1835.

Mary Ann Wylie was Andrew and Margaret Wylie’s third child, born in 1817. She married James Finley Dodds in 1838, and they had nine children. The first of these was (Rachel) Emma, who married William W. Irwin. The next child was Samuel Wylie. He died in 1861 from disease in the Civil War. Mary Ann Dodds died in 1886, a mere two days after her husband. They are buried in the same grave.

Craig Ritchie was born in 1819, the fourth of the Wylie children. He graduated from IU in 1838 and taught school in Kentucky. He died of congestive fever in 1840.

Elizabeth Wylie was born in 1821 the next child after Craig Ritchie. She married John McCalla in 1856, and they had one daughter, Mary Ballantine McCalla, in 1857. She died in 1900.

John Hosea Wylie was born in 1823 in Pennsylvania. He was the sixth child of Andrew and Margaret Wylie. He graduated from Indiana University in 1841 and from University of Louisville medical school in 1845. He set up practice in Richmond, Indiana. He married Lizzie Leeds in 1851, and they had one daughter, Irene. During the last few years of his life, Wylie traveled to California, modern-day Washington and Oregon and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in hopes of recovering from his tuberculosis. He finally died on the island of Kaui in March 1855. His wife died of consumption the next year back in Bloomington. Irene Wylie was raised by her mother’s family.

Samuel Theophylact Wylie was the seventh of the Wylie children, born in 1825 in Pennsylvania. He graduated from IU in 1843 and from IU’s Law Dept in 1845. He died of typhoid fever in Cincinnati in 1850.

Margaret Wylie was born in 1826. She married Rev. Samuel Martin in 1849 and worked with him as a missionary in Ningpo, China from 1850-1858. They also worked in Texas, Idaho, Kansas and Nebraska. They had seven children, including Susan Louisa, later Susan Martin, who was born in 1851. Margaret Wylie Martin died in 1898.

Irene Catherine Wylie was the ninth of the Wylie children, born in 1829. She married Joseph Bell in 1849, and they had five children, two of whom died young. The three surviving children were Margaret, Wylie, and Frances. Irene Wylie Bell died in 1878 due to a fall from a carriage. Another prominent correspondent is Samuel Brown Wylie who was born in 1854, the seventh of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie’s children. He was the second Samuel Brown in the family; his brother Samuel Brown died at the age of three in 1851. Wylie married Sarah Seabrook Mitchell of Edisto Island, South Carolina, in 1876. Their son was Theophilus A. Wylie. Samuel Brown Wylie died in 1890.

Redick McKee Wylie was born in 1831, the tenth of Andrew and Margaret Wylie’s children. He graduated from IU in 1851 and worked as a farmer and as a merchant in Bloomington with his brother-in-law John McCalla. He married Madeleine Thompson in 1870, and they had four children. They were Jane, who married Harry Axtell, Redick Andrew, who married Thana Winslow, Francis, who married Mary Grouch, and Madeleine, who married Lewis Sentney. Redick Wylie Sr. died in December 1904.

Anderson McElroy Wylie was born in 1833, the eleventh of the twelve Wylie children. He graduated from IU in 1852 and taught for three years in Philadelphia before attending the Episcopal Seminary in Virginia. He was a preacher in the Episcopal Church and then in the Presbyterian Church in New York and Massachusetts. He married Margaret Conklin in 1860, and they had four children. He died in 1892.

Jane Melheme Wylie was born in 1836, the youngest of Andrew Wylie’s children. She attended the Monroe County Female Seminary and was an accomplished pianist. In 1860, after her mother’s death, she traveled to Philadelphia, Wheeling and New York State, but eventually returned to Bloomington and lived with her brother Redick. She suffered for years from diabetes, but died of “congestive failure” in 1865.

Another prominent correspondent is Samuel Brown Wylie who was born in 1854, the seventh of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie’s children. He was the second Samuel Brown in the family; his brother Samuel Brown died at the age of three in 1851. Wylie married Sarah Seabrook Mitchell of Edisto Island, South Carolina, in 1876. Their son was Theophilus A. Wylie. Samuel Brown Wylie died in 1890.