George Washington Gale was born on December 3, 1789, at Stanford, Dutchess County, New York. His father was Josiah Gale, a son of emigrants who came from Yorkshire, according to family tradition; his mother, Rachel Mead, whose family came from Connecticut.
After a varied experience of study and teaching, including a year in the Academy of Middlebury College, Gale was graduated from Union College in 1814.
Five years later, after an interruption due to ill health, he completed the course at Princeton Theological Seminary and became pastor of a church in Adams, Jefferson County, New York. While here he was the theological instructor of Charles G. Finney, the famous evangelist.
Teacher and student did not agree in their theological views, but they remained good friends.
In 1824, because of another break in health, Gale resigned his pastorate and a year later settled on a small farm in Western, Oneida County, New York. Here he developed a plan for making manual labor an essential feature in education. Impressed by the need of an educated ministry and by the lack of means of many who desired schooling, he took several young men into his family and gave them books and instruction in return for a few hours’ work each day.
This principle he also applied at the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, which was founded mainly by his efforts and of which he was the head from 1827 to 1834. During this time, he formed the more ambitious purpose of establishing a college on the same principle, for both men and women, in what was then known as the West.
His plan was to organize a company, purchase a tract of government land, sell part of it to individual members at an advanced price, and give the profits to the college. The result was the founding of Knox College and the town of Galesburg in Knox County, Illinois.
The college was chartered February 15, 1837, as the Knox Manual Labor College. The manual labor feature, however, was apparently not a success, and after a few years, the name of the institution was shortened to Knox College.
Gale was the first pastor of the local church, a trustee of the college until his death, president of the board for a few years, acting professor of languages until 1842, and from 1843 to 1857 professor of moral philosophy and belles-lettres. He founded the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, 1827, one of the earliest and most widely known of the 'manual labor' schools.
A man of intense religious convictions, Gale was chiefly concerned with the spiritual welfare of his fellow men and his greatest ambition was to bring about their salvation. His theological views were characterized by Finney as hyper- Calvinism.
Gale was married three times: in 1820, at Troy, New York, to Harriet Selden: in 1841, at Galesburg, to Mrs. Esther (Williams) Coon; and in 1844, at New Haven, Connecticut, to Lucy Merriam.
1800 - 1840
1803 - 1870
8 December 1809 - 11 December 1842
1824 - 1913
1836 - 1906
1831 - 1914
1828 - 1863
1841 - 1842
15 February 1822 - 1 September 1900
1838 - 1856
1826 - 1871
