Messer, Asa

Asa Messer (1769-1836), third president of Brown University, was born in Methuen, Massachusetts on May 31, 1769. He prepared for college under Reverend Hezekiah Smith of Haverhill, Massachusetts, came to Rhode Island College as a sophomore, and graduated in 1790. He was named tutor in the College in 1791, professor of learned languages in 1796, and professor of natural philosophy in 1799. He was also librarian from 1792 to 1799. In 1802 he succeeded Jonathan Maxcy as president pro tempore for two years before being named president in 1804. He was licensed to preach by the First Baptist Church in Providence in 1792 and ordained in 1801, but was never a pastor. In 1818 he was appointed a justice of the state supreme court, but declined, finding the appointment incompatible with his college office. He patented two inventions, “Flume for a Mill” (1822) and “Water-wheel and Flume” (1824). He owned a farm in Fishersfield, New Hampshire, and an interest in a cotton-mill in Wrentham, Massachusetts.

The style of Messer’s administration was described in Brown University under the Presidency of Asa Messer, S.T.D., LL.D., a pamphlet published anonymously in Boston in 1867, but known to be written by Silas Axtell Crane 1823.

“His policy was that of demand and supply. He offered the country such a college education as it could pay for; and such, too, as the necessities of its condition then compelled it gladly to accept. Here we have the rule by which he fixed the requirements for matriculation, and the whole subsequent course of undergraduate studies. Here, too, we see the reason for that system of rigid economy, which under his management pervaded every department of the institution. It was to bring the benefits of college life and instruction within the reach of as many as possible, and we may add, in passing, that this was then in full harmony with the spirit of the times. President Messer did all he could to invite and encourage young men of literary aspirations. For all such he had the tenderness of a father. Hence the plan of college commons. Hence, too, the disposition of the vacations, assigning the long one to the winter, that the students might help out their scanty means by teaching the common schools of the country, then taught almost only in that season of the year. ... hundreds of young men who had otherwise been doomed to a life of comparative ignorance and inefficiency were able to lay the foundations of intellectual culture and future usefulness.”

“No one who has ever seen him can ever forget him. His individuality was made unmistakable by his physical frame. This, while it was above the average height, was also in breadth an emblem of the expansiveness of his mental capacity. A “long head” was vulgarly ascribed to him, but it was breadth that marked his forehead; there was an expressive breadth in his maxillary bones; his broad shoulders were a sign of the weight which he was able to bear; his manner of walking was a noticeable symbol of the reach of his mind; he swung his cane far and wide as he walked, and no observer would doubt that he was an independent man; he gesticulated broadly as he preached; his enunciation was forcible, and now and then overwhelming, sometimes shrill, but was characterized by a breadth of tone and a prolonged emphasis which added to its momentum, and made an indelible impress on the memory. His pupils, when they had been unfaithful, trembled before his expansive frown, as it portended a rebuke which would well-nigh devour them; and they felt a dilating of the whole soul, when they were greeted with his good and honest and broad smile.”