[Garrett Biblical Institute]

Photographically-illustrated album of the 1867 class of the Garrett Biblical Institute (now Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) in Evanston, Indiana. The album is unusual because many of the albumen-print portraits are accompanied by hand-written “autobiographies” of the subjects.

The album begins with a frontispiece-photograph of the college itself, followed by three unidentified portraits. These images are followed by photographs and manuscript biographies of students Samuel Hawley Adams, B.E. Edgell, Samuel Newell Griffith (the album’s owner), Clark P. Hand, Gideon Libby, Edward McChesney, William E. Morgan, John Poucher, William A. Spencer, Martin L. Wells, Rufus H. Wilkinson. The students describe their places of birth, upbringings, and what led them down the path of the Lord.The biographies are generally quite thorough, running a couple pages, most relatively straightforward. The longest biography is Griffth’s, and the most poetic text is Wilkinson’s, who begins his “Nestled among the great hills on a delta formed by the confluence of two rivers, 28 miles from Cincinnati, is the place of my nativity, childhood, and youth. Its very name, Brookville, is suggestive of the picturesque which abounds on every side.’

The first Methodist seminary in the Midwest, Garrett Biblical Institute was founded in 1851 and commenced operations in 1853, funded by a gift benefactor Eliza Clark Garrett. It was established by the same group of people who founded Northwestern University, and both institutions have shared a campus in Evanston since their founding days.

The front cover is rather scuffed, and bears the gilt-embossed name of the owner, Samuel Newell Griffith. The album is missing most of the spine and back cover and at one point, a child seemingly got their hands on it, giving the book numbered pages in a blue crayon and decorating one blank page with numerous drawings.