Background
He was born in Goshen, Connecticut on July 21, 1801, the son of Elisha and Clarissa (Judd) Baldwin.
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He was born in Goshen, Connecticut on July 21, 1801, the son of Elisha and Clarissa (Judd) Baldwin.
He entered college comparatively late, being well over twenty-two when he matriculated as a freshman at Yale. The exacting duties of life on a New England farm and the difficulty of finding a well equipped tutor in the neighborhood, had delayed his preparation but could not quench his ambition.
Upon graduation from Yale, he entered the theological department of that institution and became one of the leaders of a small group of students who had banded themselves together as the "Illinois Association, " or as it is now known in the history of higher education in the Middle West, the "Yale Band. " The members of the Association pledged their lives to the cause of education and religion in the West and, in co"peration with a local group in Illinois led by John M. Ellis, became the founders of Illinois College. Baldwin and his intimate friend, Julian M. Sturtevant, led the way to the West, leaving New England in the fall of 1829, going by way of the Erie Canal, Lake Erie, overland across Ohio, by boat down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to St. Louis and finally overland again to Jacksonville, Ill. While his friend became the first instructor in the pioneer college, Baldwin himself settled as a home-missionary in Vandalia, then the capital of the state. Here he not only preached, but exerted a strong influence upon early movements for the improvement of public education in Illinois and was instrumental in securing from the legislature the charter (1835) under which the three oldest colleges of the state (Illinois, Shurtleff, McKendree) are still operating. Like other members of the "Yale Band, " Baldwin became a trustee of Illinois College, and his advice was frequently sought and followed by Edward Beecher, the first president, and Sturtevant, his successor.
When Benjamin Godfrey, a Cape Cod sailor and merchant of means, who had settled in Illinois, determined to establish a seminary for girls, or "females" as they were usually called in those days, he turned to Baldwin for help. The result was the establishment of Monticello Seminary at Godfrey, Ill. , in 1838. Baldwin became the first principal of the school, helping to select its site and determining its course of study and general plan of operation. Before instruction began in the spring of 1838, he made an extensive tour of the East, visiting practically all the "female seminaries" in that section and conferring particularly with Mary Lyon, who was just then supervising the beginnings of Mount Holyoke at South Hadley.
Baldwin continued as principal of Monticello Seminary until the fall of 1843, when he became the so-called corresponding secretary, or in reality, the executive head of the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West. As secretary of this society, with headquarters in New York City, he performed, perhaps, his most significant service for the cause of higher education in the Middle West. Many of the present strong colleges of that part of the country, such as Western Reserve, Oberlin, Illinois, Wabash, Marietta, Knox, Grinnell, and Beloit, were then in their precarious infancy, and it was due in no small measure to the energy and self-sacrificing work of Baldwin that these institutions survived the financial perils of those years. He remained secretary of the Society until his death, and its twenty-six published annual reports, which he wrote, constitute an interesting record of his labors. He died at his home in Orange, New Jersey.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
In 1831 while on a trip to the East for funds, he married Caroline Wilder of Burlington.