Gambier

Gambier, a village of College township, Knox county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Kokosing river, 5 m. E. of Mount Vernon. Pop. (1900) 751; (1910) 537. It is served by the Cleveland, Akron & Columbus railway. The village is finely situated, and is the seat of Kenyon College and its theological seminary, Bexley Hall (Protestant Episcopal), and of Harcourt Place boarding school for girls (1889), also Protestant Episcopal. The college was incorporated in 1824 as the “Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio”; but in 1891 “Kenyon College,” the name by which the institution has always been known, became the official title. Its first exercises were held at Worthington, Ohio, in the home of Philander Chase (1775-1852), first Protestant Episcopal bishop in the North-west Territory, by whose efforts the funds for its endowment had been raised in England in 1823-1824, the chief donors being Lords Kenyon and Gambier. The first permanent building, “Old Kenyon” (still standing, and used as a dormitory), was erected on Gambier Hill in 1827 in the midst of a forest. In 1907-1908 the theological seminary had 18 students and the collegiate department 119.

Some account of the founding of the college may be found in Bishop Chase’s Reminiscences; an Autobiography, comprising a History of the Principal Events in the Author’s Life to 1847 (2 vols., New York, 1848).

* * *