34. GAMMON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,

McDonough Rd. and Capitol Ave., SW., occupies four red-brick buildings on a campus of 25 acres. Near by are six frame residences for members of the faculty and ten small cottages for married students. The brick buildings to the left of the driveway, now leased by the Atlanta Board of Education and used by the Federal Government for NYA projects, formerly were occupied by Clark College, which moved to its new site on Chestnut Street in 1941.

Gammon is one of nine theological schools maintained by the Methodist Church and private contributions. With an endowment of $500,000, it is one of two Negro seminaries approved by the American Association of Theological Schools. In 1941 the enrollment of full-time students was 64 and there was a faculty of nine, augmented by visiting lecturers from other schools The curriculum is broad for so small a school, and the students have the further advantage of being permitted to register for special courses at any of the schools affiliated with the Atlanta University System.

A department for training women workers accepts students with two years of college credits and prepares them to become lay leaders, pastors assistants, religious education directors, and social workers. This course, established through co-operation with the Woman's Home Missionary Society, is particularly popular with the wives of the theological students. The Department of Christian Missions is supported by the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa, which was established here in 1894 by the Reverend William Fletcher Stewart with an endowment of $100,000. This corporation also maintainscontact with active missionaries and publishes the Foundation, a quarterly religious magazine.

The seminary was founded by Bishop Henry White Warren, who made Atlanta his official residence in 1880 and became interested in the welfare of Clark University (now Clark College). Enlisting the aid of Elijah H. Gammon, a retired Methodist clergyman who had become wealthy through his manufacturing interests, Warren induced him to give $200,000 to endow a chair of theology at Clark University and to pledge $5,000 for a theological building. This donation was made on the condition that Warren raise an equal amount for the building. The bishop was quickly successful; a building was constructed on a nineteen-acre campus adjoining the university, and the first classes were held on October 3, 1883.

In order that the department of theology might be expanded to serve all the schools of the Freedmen's Aid Society in Atlanta, Gammon offered to give the Methodist Episcopal Church an endowment of $200,000 to establish a separate theological school. The donation was accepted, and a charter for the Gammon School of Theology was granted on March 24, 1888. The institution was given its present name the following December. Through subsequent years Gammon gave additional help by building the residences for faculty members and frequently by paying their salaries. Upon his death the endowment was more than doubled by provisions of his will.

The Gilbert Haven Library, situated on the left of the campus at the head of the walkway, is a small red-brick structure with a front bay window and an arched entrance portico. Its 26,000 volumes are listed in the Union Catalogue being compiled at Emory University (1942). In the African collection, which relates to Negro slavery and to African history, missions, and languages, are Bibles and hymn-books in native African dialects. There are also several English Bibles and scriptural tests, some published as early as the seventeenth century. On the walls are framed letters from Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Greenleaf Whittier, as well as several manuscripts of Whit-tier, who wrote a motto for the library.

The library opened in 1887, when Elijah Gammon purchased many books from H. Bannister, of Garrett Biblical Institute. During the following year, D.P. Kidder, secretary of the Methodist Board of Education, offered to give his personal collection when a library building should be completed. Construction was soon begun and the completed building was dedicated on May 26, 1889. The number of volumes has been increased from time to time by other donors. 

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