Daniel Coit Gilman

Daniel Coit Gilman (July 6, 1831 to October 13, 1908) was a Yale University librarian and professor of geography who became president of the University of California, of Johns Hopkins University and of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and a trustee of the John F. Slater Fund, the Peabody Education Fund, the General Education Board and the Russell Sage Foundation.¹ The 1856 act of the Connecticut General Assembly incorporating the Russell Trust Association, the corporate body of Skull and Bones, names him among its six incorporators.² Antony C. Sutton placed the Gilman family on his chart of old-line American families with a settlement at Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638.³

Family and origins

Edward Gilman, the progenitor of most of the Gilman name in America, came from Hingham, Norfolk, England, with his wife and family in 1638 and settled at Hingham on Massachusetts Bay; a few years later he removed to Exeter, New Hampshire.⁴ Daniel Coit Gilman was born at Norwich, Connecticut, on July 6, 1831, the son of William Charles Gilman and Eliza Coit.⁵ Sutton and Kris Millegan give the birth date as July 8, 1831.⁶

At fourteen he moved with his parents to New York City and prepared for college under John J. Owen, principal of the Cornelius Institute. During his college course he lived in the household of his uncle, Professor James L. Kingsley of Yale, was president of the Linonian Society and was an editor of the Yale Literary Magazine.⁷ His brother Edward W. Gilman (Yale 1843) was for thirty years secretary of the American Bible Society, and his brother-in-law, the clergyman Joseph Parrish Thompson (Yale 1838), was an author whose works Gilman edited together with those of Francis Lieber.⁸ Millegan wrote that Gilman's uncle Henry Coit Kingsley (class of 1834), treasurer of Yale from 1862 to 1886, and his brother-in-law Thompson were both members of the Order.⁹

Yale class of 1852 and Skull and Bones

Gilman entered Yale in 1848 and graduated in 1852; of fifty-five prizes awarded to twenty-eight members of the class, he took four.¹⁰ The class secretary, Ephraim Cutter, listed Gilman's society memberships by college year in the memorial volume the class published in 1909 after his death, and gave "Skull and Bones" with Phi Beta Kappa for his senior year.¹⁰

An 1876 pamphlet, The Fall of Skull and Bones, compiled from the minutes of the seventh regular meeting of the Order of the File and Claw, described the contents of the society's hall after a night entry by that body. It reported a framed engraving of an open burial vault accompanied by a card on which was written "From the German Chapter. Presented by Patriarch D.C. Gilman of D. 50."¹¹ Millegan reproduced the passage and glossed the name on the card as that of "Daniel Coit Gilman, initiated into the Order of Skull and Bones 1850."¹²

Sutton lists him as "Daniel Coit Gilman ('52)" and Millegan as "S&B 1852."¹³ Millegan wrote that Gilman, Timothy Dwight (class of 1849) and Andrew Dickson White (class of 1853) "formed a troika which still influences American life today."¹⁴ Lyman Bagg, in his 1871 account of Yale, described the society as founded in 1832 by fifteen members of the class that graduated the following year, with William H. Russell, "the valedictorian of that class," as its reputed founder and Alphonso Taft of Cincinnati as the best known of his associates.¹⁵

Russell Trust Association

The act of the Connecticut General Assembly passed in 1856 reads: "Resolved by this Assembly, That William H. Russell, John S. Beach, Henry B. Harrison, Daniel C. Gilman, Henry T. Blake and Henry D. White, and all such other persons as may be from time to time associated with them, together with their successors, be and they are hereby constituted a body corporate and politic," under the name of the Russell Trust Association "for the purpose of the intellectual and moral improvement of its members, and for that only." Section 1 limited the real and personal estate the association could hold to fifteen thousand dollars; section 2 fixed the first meeting at New Haven on the last Wednesday of July 1856; section 3 made the act subject to alteration or repeal by the General Assembly.²

Lyman Bagg listed the six names with their class years ("William H. Russell of '33, John S. Beach of '39, Henry B. Harrison of '46, Henry T. Blake of '48, Henry D. White of '51, and Daniel C. Gilman of '52") and wrote that "the first of whom has since acted as president, the one next the last as treasurer, of the association." In Bagg's list the name next to the last is Henry D. White.¹⁵ Sutton wrote that Gilman became treasurer and that William Huntington Russell, the cofounder, was president, and Millegan gave the same offices.¹⁶ Millegan also wrote that there is no mention of the Order or the Russell Trust "in Gilman's biography, nor in open records."¹⁷ Millegan further described Gilman as "a Russell & Co. partner relation" who "incorporated the Order of Skull & Bones as the Russell Trust Association."¹⁸

John S. Beach, one of the other five incorporators of the association, was with Gilman among the six incorporators of the Sheffield Scientific School in 1871, together with William Walter Phelps, whom Sutton's list places in the Order in 1860.¹⁹ Gilman's papers at Yale include correspondence with William H. Russell dated 1855, the year before the act.²⁰

Saint Petersburg and Berlin, 1853 to 1855

In December 1853 Gilman and White sailed for Europe as attaches of the United States legation at Saint Petersburg under Thomas H. Seymour, the former governor of Connecticut, minister plenipotentiary.²¹ White wrote that Gilman, "then of the class above mine," had been invited by Seymour to go as an attache and that, at Seymour's suggestion, a similar invitation would be extended to him; White also wrote that on a train to New York he found himself beside Seymour, whom he described as "pro-slavery" while he was "anti-slavery."²² White sailed on December 10, 1853 with Gilman.²³ A classmate, William W. Crapo, told the Massachusetts Historical Society that Seymour, "not a diplomat by training or experience," had "desired a friendly companionship which might at times be of assistance to him."²⁴

While the minister was detained in America, the attaches waited in England. Gilman, by invitation of Richard Cobden and John Bright, addressed a meeting of the National Public School Association at Manchester on "Common School Education in America," which the Manchester newspapers reported as "enthusiastically received."²⁵ A letter of February 23, 1854 describes his attendance at the reception ball of the Emperor and Empress at the Tuileries in Paris, which Seymour had declined to attend over the question of diplomatic costume.²⁶ He arrived in St. Petersburg on March 24, 1854, after nine days from Berlin.²⁷

A letter of June 19, 1854 describes how Seymour wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Nesselrode, asking leave for Gilman to see the public establishments of the city; a diplomatic letter sealed with the double-headed eagle answered that the request had been referred to the Grand Duke Heritier, and similar notes followed from the Grand Duke Constantine, the Ministry of War and the Ministry of the Appanages. Officers then called in their carriages to conduct him through the military corps, the naval corps, the Lyceum and the corps of pages. He wrote that the attentions were "intended by the authorities as a compliment to the Legation."²⁸ He inspected the flagship of the Russian fleet at Kronstadt under the escort of the admiral.²⁹

In April 1854 he wrote to his sister from St. Petersburg: "Day and night I think of that time, and in all I see and do I am planning for being useful at home. I find my wishes cling more and more towards a home in New England, and I long for an opportunity to influence New England minds." He added: "I look therefore more and more to the ministry as probably the place where I can do more good than anywhere else."³⁰ Sutton quotes the same letter.³¹ The family of William Ropes, an American merchant long resident in the city, drew him to the American Chapel, whose deacons asked him to conduct services after the pastor's departure; he declined.³²

White did not arrive in the Russian capital until October 31, 1854, after nearly a year in Paris, and lived in Seymour's household for the rest of his stay; he wrote that part of his duty was to accompany the minister as interpreter in his interviews with Nesselrode, Gortschakoff "and others then in power."³³ White later wrote that when he succeeded Gilman as attache he found at St. Petersburg "a number of the best people" who spoke of Gilman "in the highest terms."³⁴ Gilman spent the winter of 1854 to 1855 at Berlin, where he formed friendships with the historian Georg Pertz, the geographer Karl Ritter, Adolf Trendelenburg and Karl Lepsius.³⁵ In 1855 Connecticut appointed him its commissioner to the Paris Universal Exposition, and he served as secretary of the board of associated commissioners.³⁶

Yale librarian and Sheffield

Gilman returned at the end of 1855 and in the summer of 1856 was made assistant librarian of Yale College and, two years later, librarian; he resigned the librarianship in 1865. From 1856 to 1860 he was also acting visitor of the schools of New Haven, and from 1865 to the close of 1866 secretary of the State Board of Education of Connecticut. He assisted in preparing the 1864 edition of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and edited the Yale Obituary Record of graduates for 1863 to 1865.³⁷ White wrote that on his own return in 1856 he was urged by "Porter and Gilman" to remain in New Haven, where they "virtually pledged" him a position in the school of art about to be established.³⁸

He held the Yale Corporation's appointment as professor of physical and political geography at the Sheffield Scientific School from 1863, and in September 1866 the governing board of the school elected him its secretary.³⁹ In February 1871 Professors Brush, Gilman and Trowbridge and Messrs. John S. Beach, William Walter Phelps and Charles J. Sheffield associated themselves as a body corporate for the school, with a board of nine in which the Governor of Connecticut, the President of Yale and the chairman of the trustees of the Peabody Museum sat ex officio and the six incorporators filled the remaining seats.¹⁹ Millegan wrote that three of the six were members of the Order, that Gilman's report on the reorganization of the school was prepared while members of the Order obtained Connecticut's share of the federal land scrip under the Morrill Act, and that Gilman was rewarded with the professorship.⁴⁰

University of California

Gilman was offered the presidency of the University of California on its opening in 1870 and declined; the Regents elected Professor Henry Durant, and after Durant insisted in the summer of 1872 that they find a successor, Gilman accepted.⁴¹ A letter of April 5, 1874 to White, written during a legislative contest with the Granges over the university, says: "I could not conclude on any new proposition without conferring upon it with some of my family friends; and I have not felt at liberty to do so. I confess that the Baltimore scheme has ofttimes suggested itself to me, but I have no personal relations in that quarter."⁴² Sutton wrote that the board of the Johns Hopkins trust did not adopt by-laws until March 7, 1874, and that Gilman "knew what was happening over in Baltimore BEFORE HIS NAME HAD BEEN PRESENTED TO THE TRUSTEES."⁴³ He resigned in 1875 after three years.⁴⁴

Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins died on December 24, 1873. His will divided seven million dollars between a university and a hospital: to the university he gave his estate at Clifton and the shares he owned in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, fifteen thousand of them.⁴⁵ The founder, a director of the railroad for many years, directed the trustees "to watch over and protect the interests of the road."⁴⁶ Gilman later wrote that when the board was organized, "the chairman of the finance committee of the railroad, Mr. Galloway Cheston, was made president of the trustees of the University, and Mr. John W. Garrett, the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was made chairman of the finance committee in the University board," and that "Originally nine of the twelve trustees were trustees in both corporations," the university and the hospital. Of the combination he wrote: "The combination was most unfortunate. It was likewise a misfortune that so many eggs were placed in one basket, and that the founder explicitly advised that they be so carried."⁴⁷ The original board had seven members in business, two judges, two other lawyers and one physician; seven were Quakers.⁴⁸

In the summer of 1874 the trustees invited Presidents Eliot of Harvard, White of Cornell and Angell of Michigan to Baltimore, and afterward asked each whom they would recommend. James B. Angell later recalled that "without the least conference between us three, we all wrote letters, telling them that the one man was Daniel C. Gilman, of California."⁴⁹ Sutton wrote that only White of the three was in the Order.⁴³

Gilman toured the universities of Europe in 1875 and 1877, began as president in May 1875 and gave his inaugural address on February 22, 1876.⁵⁰ In his own account of the founding he wrote: "So we did not undertake to establish a German university, nor an English university, but an American university, based upon and applied to the existing institutions of this country."⁵¹ Francis T. King, president of the hospital board, chose as one of his counsellors Dr. John S. Billings of the United States Army, who was for a long time associated with the university professors studying medical education.⁵² In 1884 the trustees chose William H. Welch, a Yale graduate, as professor of pathology, the first appointment in the medical school; William Osler, William Halsted and Howard Kelly followed.⁵³ The medical school opened in the fall of 1893, after Miss Mary Elizabeth Garrett and other women formed a committee asking for contributions "provided that women should be admitted to its privileges"; the subscription came to somewhat less than $100,000, and she added a sum sufficient to make up $500,000 "with certain funds which the Trustees controlled."⁵⁴

The Baltimore and Ohio suspended dividends on its common stock for several years. In 1889 an emergency fund of somewhat more than one hundred thousand dollars was subscribed by twenty persons at five thousand dollars each, with Gilman the first subscriber; the university's holdings of the stock were ultimately sold "for an amount far below their value at the time of its foundation."⁵⁵ In 1896 his name was proposed for the superintendency of the public schools of New York City, and a relief fund of $250,000 was subscribed in Baltimore.⁵⁶ Gilman retired in 1901 (the Yale finding aid says 1902) and became president emeritus.⁵⁷ Sutton wrote that Welch, "a fellow member of The Order, was brought in by Gilman to head up the Hopkins medical school," and that Gilman's offer of a chair to G. Stanley Hall after a course of lectures in 1881 carried the experimental psychology of Wilhelm Wundt into American education.⁵⁸ Millegan wrote that Gilman was "founding president of Johns Hopkins University as a great center for the racialist eugenics movement."⁵⁹

In Baltimore he also founded the Charity Organization Society, the Baltimore Reform League, the Municipal Art Society and the New Mercantile Library, and was a member of the commission that drafted the 1897 charter of the city; the Yale record credits him with organizing the Walter Reed Memorial Association.⁶⁰

American Social Science Association

In 1879 Gilman was made president of the American Social Science Association; its presidents were W. B. Rogers, Samuel Eliot, George William Curtis, President Woolsey, David A. Wells, "President Gilman, of Baltimore," and Francis Wayland.⁶¹⁶² His annual address, "American Education, 1869-1879," was printed in the Journal of Social Science in December 1879.⁶³ Franklin B. Sanborn and Henry Villard appear among its secretaries.⁶² At its Albany meeting in 1881 Gilman heard an account of the London Charity Organization Society; on his return to Baltimore he called a few gentlemen to his office, which led to the Charity Organization Society of Baltimore, of which he was president from 1891 to 1901.⁶⁴

Venezuela Boundary Commission

On December 21, 1895 Congress passed an act for a commission to investigate the boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana. The commissioners were appointed on January 1, 1896, and on January 4 they organized at the office of the Secretary of State with David J. Brewer as president and Severo Mallet-Prevost as secretary. Their report of February 27, 1897 bears the names of Brewer, R. H. Alvey, Frederic R. Coudert, Gilman and White.⁶⁵ White listed the commissioners "in the order named by the President" as Brewer, Alvey, White, Coudert and Gilman, and wrote that Gilman "was given charge of the whole matter of map-seeking and -making."⁶⁶ Their charge was "to investigate and report upon the true divisional line between the Republic of Venezuela and British Guiana."⁶⁵ Justice Brewer wrote that he had been "associated with Dr. Gilman on the Venezuelan Commission appointed by President Cleveland," and that the range and accuracy of Gilman's knowledge were soon manifest.⁶⁷

Carnegie Institution of Washington

A letter from Andrew D. White at the American Embassy in Berlin, dated May 20, 1901, asked Gilman's views on the endowment of "a great American university" at Washington and in a postscript named the prospective donor. Gilman's first interview with Andrew Carnegie took place in November 1901 at Carnegie's house in New York, with John S. Billings the only other person present; Carnegie asked the two to prepare a paper on what should be done and said to Gilman, "You must be President."⁶⁸ Gilman told the first meeting of the trustees that he had heard Carnegie say "he was prepared to give $10,000,000."⁶⁹ White wrote of the same period: "Going thence to America, I found time to co-operate with my old friend, President Gilman, in securing data for Mr. Carnegie, especially at Washington, in view of his plan of a national institution for the higher scientific research."⁷⁰

The articles of incorporation of the Carnegie Institution were signed on January 4, 1902 by John Hay, Edward D. White, Billings, Gilman, Charles D. Walcott and Carroll D. Wright before a notary in the District of Columbia.⁷¹ At the first meeting of the trustees on January 29, 1902, Gilman was elected President of the Institution; he also served as chairman of the Executive Committee, with Walcott as secretary.⁶⁹⁷² The act of Congress named Gilman, Billings, Walcott, S. Weir Mitchell, Hay, Elihu Root and Wright as the trustees who would call the first meeting.⁷³ The trustees listed in the second Year Book included Cleveland H. Dodge, Lyman J. Gage, Henry L. Higginson, D. O. Mills, Seth Low, Wayne MacVeagh, John C. Spooner and White.⁷⁴

Station for Experimental Evolution

On May 5, 1902 Charles Davenport, then of the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Chicago, submitted to the trustees a proposal for "a Biological Experiment Station for the study of evolution," whose aims would be "the analytic and experimental study of the causes of specific differentiation." It called for cross-breeding of animals and plants "to find the laws of commingling of qualities," for a staff of "a director and two assistants; also two or more laborers," and for a station at Cold Spring Harbor. It stated: "The Carnegie fund offers the opportunity for which the world has so long been waiting."⁷⁵ The first Year Book printed it with a second scheme, by Roswell P. Johnson, favoring a protected marine shore.⁷⁶

The Executive Committee, of which Gilman was chairman, took nearly two years to consider the subject. Its report to the Board of Trustees for 1903 stated that "the best mode of dealing with this important field of research was to organize a Biological Experimental Department, to which could be referred all questions and problems of evolution, specific differentiation, heredity, etc.," including "the establishment of an investigating station at Cold Spring Harbor, where ground and some buildings were offered." The Board of Trustees approved the recommendations.⁷⁶ At the annual meeting of December 8, 1903 the Board appropriated $70,000 for the Department of Experimental Biology, with $30,000 for a Department of Economics and Sociology and $8,500 for a Bureau of Historical Research among the same group of appropriations.⁷⁷ "A grant of $34,250 was made to the station at Cold Spring Harbor, and of $20,000 to the Marine Biological Laboratory at the Dry Tortugas," and Davenport was appointed Director of the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.⁷⁶

At the opening on June 11, 1904, Davenport thanked "Gentlemen of the Wawepex Society" for the land "intrusted to you by the late John D. Jones." John S. Billings, as chairman of the Board of Trustees, said for the Institution: "We also found that there was a man who was willing and anxious to take charge of the work."⁷⁸

Gilman's letter resigning the presidency, dated December 1904, recalled his notice of December 8, 1903 that "having passed the age of seventy years, I was looking forward to a release from serious official responsibilities," and stated that he was "not a candidate for reappointment under any other designation." The Board accepted it with a resolution on "the prestige that the retiring officer has brought to the Carnegie Institution of Washington by his presidency," and elected Robert S. Woodward of Columbia University as his successor.⁷⁹

John F. Slater Fund and Peabody Education Fund

In 1882 Gilman became one of the original trustees of the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen, and in 1893 he succeeded Rutherford B. Hayes as its president, an office he held until his death.⁶¹ The 1901 roster lists him as president; the trustees were Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller (vice president), J. L. M. Curry (secretary), Morris K. Jesup (treasurer), John A. Stewart, William A. Slater, William E. Dodge, Bishop Henry C. Potter, Bishop C. B. Galloway, Alexander E. Orr and William H. Baldwin Jr.; the clerk was Benjamin Strong, the name of the later governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who worked in New York trust banking in 1901; the Slater proceedings give no other details of the clerk. Gilman chaired the Executive Committee and sat on the Educational Committee. The annual meeting of April 3, 1901 was held at the office of the United States Trust Company on Wall Street.⁸⁰

At the Peabody Education Fund, the trustees at their meeting of October 1893 filled four vacancies by electing Joseph H. Choate, Charles E. Fenner, "President Daniel C. Gilman of Maryland" and George W. Childs. At the meeting of October 4, 1894 the members present included William M. Evarts, J. P. Morgan, Chief Justice Fuller, Choate and Gilman.⁸¹ The standing committees named on September 25, 1895 put Gilman on the Executive Committee with Fuller, Courtenay, Endicott and Fenner, Evarts as chairman ex officio, and named a Finance Committee of Evarts, President Grover Cleveland, William Wirt Henry, Choate and George Peabody Wetmore, with the treasurer, Mr. Morgan, ex officio.⁸² Sutton and Millegan place Evarts in the Order in 1837.⁸³

General Education Board

The General Education Board began informally on the evening of January 15, 1902 when some of its later members met to discuss "the probable scope and methods of an educational organization, the creation of which Mr. Rockefeller was then contemplating"; at a second meeting the following month, attended by John D. Rockefeller Jr., Frederick T. Gates, Baldwin, Curry, Robert C. Ogden, Gilman, Walter Hines Page, Albert Shaw and Wallace Buttrick, the counsel, Edward M. Shepard, submitted articles of association.⁸⁴ On March 8, 1902 the trustees wrote to Rockefeller Jr. to acknowledge a pledge of one million dollars on behalf of John D. Rockefeller to be spent over ten years, and confirmed that Baldwin, Curry, Gates, Gilman, Jesup, Ogden, Page, George Foster Peabody and Shaw "have formed themselves into an Association to be called the 'General Education Board.'" The letter added that "immediate attention is to be given to the promotion of the educational needs of the people in the Southern States" and that the charter was "in the hands of United States Senator Aldrich, to be presented to Congress."⁸⁵

The act of incorporation, of January 12, 1903, constituted the nine named persons, Gilman among them, "a body corporate of the District of Columbia" with the object of "the promotion of education within the United States of America, without distinction of race, sex, or creed."⁸⁶ The Southern Education Board, "organized by the late Robert C. Ogden, was an outgrowth of the Annual Conference for Education in the South," and that the support of rural school supervisors was undertaken by the Southern Education Board "in cooperation with the Peabody Fund."⁸⁷ His biographer, Fabian Franklin, wrote that Gilman's share in shaping the work of the Slater and Peabody boards "was of great importance, but cannot be explicitly traced."⁸⁸

Russell Sage Foundation and civil service reform

On October 29, 1906 Gilman answered a request from Robert W. de Forest for advice on the use of a prospective ten-million-dollar endowment. His enclosure proposed "an institution for encouraging inquiry and publication in respect to the best methods of promoting Philanthropy, Popular Education, and Social Improvements; the study of the causes of Ignorance, Poverty, Vice and Crime," to be "an independent establishment like those founded by Peabody, Smithson, Lowell, Peter Cooper, Rockefeller, Carnegie and others," with a paid secretary or executive officer, "A central office and library for the accumulation of printed and manuscript information, akin to the well equipped index-bureau of the General Education Board," annual or occasional grants to societies and institutions "on certain prescribed conditions," and publications and lectures.⁸⁹ In 1904 White wrote that he had more than once talked over with Gilman "the idea of our working together in the production of a pamphlet or volume with some such title as, 'What Rich Americans have Done and can Do with their Money.'"⁹⁰ He was named a trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation on its establishment in 1907, in his seventy-sixth year.⁹¹

Gilman was president of the National Civil Service Reform League from 1901 to 1907, succeeding Carl Schurz, and delivered the League's address "Successful Progress" at Philadelphia on December 11, 1902.⁹²⁹³ He was a vice president of the American Bible Society from 1896 and its president from 1903, and president of the American Oriental Society from 1893 to 1905 or 1906.⁶¹⁹²

Death and papers

Gilman returned from Europe on October 7, 1908 and died suddenly of heart disease on October 13 at the home of his sister in Norwich, Connecticut, and was buried in Yantic Cemetery. He married Mary Ketcham of New York on December 4, 1861; she died on October 25, 1869. On June 13, 1877 he married at Newport Elizabeth Dwight Woolsey, a niece of the Yale president Theodore Dwight Woolsey, who survived him. A service in his memory was held at Johns Hopkins University on November 8, 1908.⁹⁴

In the memorial volume of the class of 1852, Andrew D. White described how he and Gilman were cabin mates on their first voyage and roommates for some weeks in London and Paris, and that they were "especially thrown together" on the Venezuela Commission; Charles W. Eliot and William Osler contributed letters, and John C. Thomas, treasurer of Johns Hopkins University, wrote that in the early days of the Baltimore and Ohio, when its credit was exhausted, "Johns Hopkins bought largely, loaned it money, and helped to reform the management."⁹⁵⁹⁶

His papers at Yale University Library are catalogued as MS 582 in a finding aid compiled in 1971; its biographical note says that the university's "mode of graduate studies became the model for American universities."⁹⁷