Slide 17
Bishop Chase's Reminiscences
First edition, 1841-4
Second edition, 1847-8
Once the site had been selected and the land purchased, Bishop Chase immediately began the construction of his college and seminary. He describes the very first structure in his Reminiscences, which he first published in 1841-4.
On the south end or promontory of this hill (near to which, below, ran the road used by the first settlers) grew some tall oak trees, which evidently had escaped the hurricanes in days of yore. Under the shelter of these, some boards in a light wagon were taken nearly to the top of the hill; there they were dropped, and it was with these the writer’s house was built, after the brush was with great difficulty cleared away. Two crotched sticks were driven in to the ground, and on them a transverse pole was placed, an don this pole were placed the boards, inclining to the ground each way. The ends, or gables, to this room, or roof shelter, were but slightly closed by some clap-boards rived on the spot from a fallen tree. The beds to sleep on were thrown on bundles of straw, kept up from the damp ground by a kind of temporary platform, resting on stakes driven deeply into the earth. This was the first habitation on Gambier Hill, and it stood very nearly on the site where now rises the noble edifice of Kenyon College.