Welcome to Saint Vincent Archabbey

By Jerome Oetgen, author of "An American Abbot; Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., 1809-1887" and a forthcoming "History of Saint Vincent."
The end of the war issued in a new prosperity for the college, which began to develop its resources and receive renewed support from America and Europe. Gifts and donations from benefactors in Munich and Rome brought the library collection to more than 12,000 volumes. The art collection was expanded, and in 1864 an abbey press was established which published monastic and theological works through the 1860s and 1870s.
The college had in fact progressed to such a stage that in 1869 the administration petitioned the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to allow it to grant academic degrees. On April 18, 1870, the legislature issued Saint Vincent a charter empowering the college faculty "to grant and confer such degrees in the arts and sciences . . . as they deem proper or as are granted in other colleges or universities in the United States." It was a sweeping charter which permitted the college to grant any degree it cared to. And in 1871 Saint Vincent awarded its first academic degrees when Maximilian Betzel of Staten Island, New York, and Martin Bergrath of Westphalia, Michigan, received the bachelor of arts, and William Sweeney of Wilbur, New York, received the "master of accounts" degree.
The years which followed witnessed the steady growth of the college's three departments. By 1884 there were 286 students, who had the advantage of a "large library" as well as modern chemistry and physics laboratories. there were 36 students in the Seminary, 156 in the Classical Department, and 94 in the Commercial Department (including 8 "post-graduates," students who had finished the commercial course but who wished to prepare more thoroughly for professional studies in law and medicine). The annual cost for tuition, room and board was $180.00.

Click to Enlarge
Building the Basilica in 1895
In 1884 there were 37 faculty members, all of whom were members of the Benedictine community. Students preparing for the legal profession took courses in law, civil government, and political economy; those preparing for medical school in physiology, chemistry, and botany; and those for the engineering profession, in algebra, geometry, and mechanical drawing. All students were required to take a core curriculum which included logic, English, rhetoric and literature, history, Latin, German, elocution, and composition. An elementary school "for beginners" had been attached to the college, where in 1885 there were 61 young boys between the ages of ten and fourteen registered, preparing to enter the classical and commercial departments. The students throughout the college came from twenty American states and five foreign countries, and at the end of the 1885-85 academic year, twenty degrees were conferred: two bachelors of arts and eighteen masters of accounts.

A New Prosperity