"In the year 1806 when our grandparents were young, a group
of students in Williams College in a historic meeting for
prayer under a haystack during a thunderstorm, talked of
vast Asia with its needs and sins and sorrows, and "while
the dark clouds were going and the clear sky was coming",
these five young men consecrated themselves to endeavors
in the field of the foreign missionary effort, with special
reference to India. Four years later, in 1810, the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, A. B. C. F. M.,
was organized by older men and with headquarters in Boston.
The leaders were largely Congregationalists but representatives
of other denominations were cordially welcomed if they were
willing to cooperate in the movement. Mark Hopkins, the great
President of Williams College a little later, came to represent
a whole series of outstanding college educators who fitted and
inspired their students to go over-seas as missionaries of the
cross. So the movement grew from small beginnings to send out
its scouts and then its hosts to the far parts of all the earth."
[From: George E. White's "Adventuring With Anatolia College", p. 7
(Herald-Register Publishing Company, Grinnell, Iowa, March 1940)]
******************************************************************************************
"Dr. George E. White in his book, "Adventuring With Anatolia
College" (Grinnell, Iowa: Herald-Register Publishing Co., 1940),
told the story of the school from its beginning in 1840 in Bebek,
a suburb of Constantinople, to its reestablishment in Greece in
1924. The original school was started by an American missionary,
Cyrus Hamlin, to train young men to become pastors and teachers
among the Greeks and Armenians then living in Turkey. The high
quality of the academic program and the increasing desire to
learn English attracted a growing number who were not interested
in theological training but wanted a general education. So, in
1864, the school divided into two separate institutions. The
liberal arts section remained in Bebek and became Robert College.
The theological seminary moved to Merzifon (Marsovan) in the
interior of Turkey.
In Merzifon history repeated itself. More and more of the
students wanted a general education; in 1886 the program was
expanded to include a four-year liberal arts college named
"Anatolia College". The name Anatolia refers not only to the
area in Asia Minor where the school was located but also to
the ancient Greek word meaning the dawn. The phrase "The
Morning Cometh" was adopted as the school motto. The college
seal is patterned after the view from the campus of the sun
rising over lofty Akdag at the eastern end of the Merzifon
Plain.
The pages which follow are not a continuation of Dr. White's
history of the college. They are simply a narrative, drawn
largely from memory, of my experiences from the time I began
teaching at the college in 1913 until my retirement in 1958."
[Foreword by Carl. C. Compton (Anatolia College's President
from 1950 to 1958) to his "The Morning Cometh: 45 years with
Anatolia College", edited by John O. Iatrides and William R.
Compton, Caratzas Publishing Co., 1986, ISBN 0-89241-422-7.]