Plymouth Magazine-Fall26-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 17
Our Church’s Link with
Talladega College
By David Elbert (he/him)
Plymouth has two unique connections
with one of the nation’s earliest
historically Black colleges and universities,
Talladega College, founded in 1866 by
two formerly enslaved men in Alabama.
The Rev. Henry Swift DeForest, pastor
at Plymouth (1866-1870) was president
of Talladega College from 1879 to 1896,
and Plymouth member James Callanan
left a significant gift to the school when
he died in 1904.
Talladega College was
started with assistance
from the Freedmen’s
Bureau and the
American Missionary
Association, an arm of
the Congregational Church, of which
Plymouth is a denominational member.
The college expanded and began offering
college degrees in 1879 when DeForest was
hired as Talladega College’s first president.
DeForest was born in South Edmeston,
N.Y., and attended Yale College. He
was ordained at New Haven, Conn., in
1863 and commissioned as a chaplain in
the Eleventh Connecticut Volunteers.
Following the Civil War, DeForest was
pastor in Des Moines for four years and
in Council Bluffs for seven years before
moving to Alabama.
In 1869 while in Des Moines, DeForest
married Anna Robbins, the daughter of
a Muscatine minister. Four years later in
1873, their son Lee DeForest was born in
Council Bluffs. Years later Lee DeForest’s
pioneering work in electronics would
earn him the title “father of the radio.”
Lee spent his early years in Alabama
isolated from Talladega’s white citizens
who resented his father’s school. Before
18-year-old Lee left for prep school in
Massachusetts, his closest friends and
schoolmates were the town’s Black children.
DeForest suffered a stroke and died
unexpectedly at the age of 62 in 1896.
At the time, his son Lee was a graduate
student at Yale University. Year’s later Lee
DeForest returned to Talladega to pay for
most of the campus chapel that bears his
father’s name.
Callanan’s connection with DeForest,
when the minister was in Des Moines,
may have been the reason. Both
Callanan and his estate’s lead executor,
Henry Rollins, would have attended
many services at Plymouth when
DeForest was pastor. Both were longtime members of Plymouth. In fact,
Rollins’ brother Alonza is listed in early
documents among the 23 individuals
who contributed money in 1858 to hire
Plymouth’s first minister.
When Plymouth member James Callanan
died in 1904, he was said to be the richest
man in Iowa with a net worth of more
than $2 million. A Plymouth member for
decades, Callanan’s will benefited many
charities, but his largest single gift of
$100,000 went to Talladega College. (In
inflated-adjusted dollars, the gift would
amount to about $3.5 million today.)
Callanan’s business interests included
banking and insurance. He helped
Rollins’ create the Des Moines Hosiery
Mill, which later became the Rollins
Hosiery Mill. The eastside factory was
a significant source of wealth for the
Rollins family. That wealth was shared
with Plymouth before and after Henry
died in 1915. When Plymouth Church
relocated to Ingersoll Avenue at 42nd
Street in the late 1920s, and an 82foot bell tower was added in 1931, the
structure was dedicated as the Henry
Martyn Rollins Memorial Tower.
There was no public explanation for the
Talladega gift, which came as a surprise to
many, including Callanan’s nephews, who
were his closest relatives. The Des Moines
Register reported shortly after his death:
“The gift of $100,000 to Talladega
college was expected to go to Tuskegee
Institute, Booker T. Washington’s famous
school for negroes.”
David Elbert a former business
editor and columnist at the Des Moines
Register, writes history-related articles
for local publications.
Plymouth Magazine 17
