“Father Schroth—Ray, as many of us knew him—was a towering figure at Fordham: he was a beloved professor, a treasured colleague, a lucid journalist and writer, and an insightful historian of the University and the Jesuits,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “He was wise, compassionate, and rigorous, and held his colleagues and students to his own very high standards. We will miss him greatly, and we will keep him and his loved ones in our prayers.”

Father Schroth received a bachelor’s degree from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1955. In 1969, he returned to his alma mater as an associate professor who taught journalism in the communications department. During that time, he became the first person in University history to be granted tenure by the Faculty Senate, after initially being denied tenure by his department. The tense battle was covered by The New York Times, which referred to him as “probably the most popular teacher on campus.” He did earn tenure, thanks to a majority vote, student support, and the intervention of James C. Finlay, S.J., president of Fordham at the time. 

“Many of us on the Faculty Senate at the time, including myself, felt that a rejection by his tenured faculty in his department was not an appropriate decision. He was known by us to be a good teacher and a popular teacher,” recalled Robert Himmelberg, Ph.D., professor emeritus of history. 

For decades, Father Schroth taught American literature and journalism and/or served as academic dean at at least six universities. In 1979, Father Schroth left Fordham to become academic dean at Rockhurst University (formerly known as Rockhurst College) in Kansas City, Missouri. But almost two decades later, he returned to Fordham, where he served as assistant dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill from 1996 to 1999. 

In August 2016, he moved to Murray-Weigel Hall for health reasons. After experiencing a bad fall in 2017, he was confined to a wheelchair and “accepted reluctantly, but with faith, his disabilities,” read his obituary from the Jesuits USA Northeast Province. 

“I think of the different seasons of Ray’s life on that campus, from a young man in the ’50s to a young priest just beginning his work in the late ’60s, to this robust and storied presence in the ’90s. And now, in his last couple of years, a man who really suffered under the weight of age and infirmity,” said journalist Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98, past student and friend of Father Schroth’s who has served as an adjunct professor at Fordham. “All of those seasons on this campus really defined his life.”

‘At Heart Ray Is a Reporter’

Raymond Augustine Schroth was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on November 8, 1933, to Raymond Schroth, a journalist and U.S. Army veteran who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in World War I, and Mildred (née Murphy) Schroth, a teacher in the Trenton public and Catholic schools.

“Somehow I had made the basic decision inspired by both my parents’ lives: I wanted to write and teach, and that’s what Jesuits do,” he wrote in a 2007 story for the NJVoices column that reflected on his life. 

Father Schroth served for two years as an officer in the U.S. Army with an anti-aircraft battalion in West Germany, where he found his two vocations: the priesthood and journalism. In 1957, he joined the Society of Jesus and was ordained as a priest a decade later. He went on to earn two degrees in addition to his Fordham degree: a bachelor of sacred theology degree from Woodstock College, Maryland, in 1968, and a Ph.D. in American thought and culture from George Washington University in 1971. 

Journalism ran in his blood. His father served as an editorial writer for the Trenton Times, Brooklyn Eagle, and Philadelphia Record. His uncle, Frank D. Schroth, was the last publisher of The Brooklyn Eagle, according to a 1977 obit from The New York Times. 

For most of his life, Father Schroth followed in his family’s footsteps. He reported from 14 countries, including Syria and Russia, according to America magazine. In the U.S., he covered the aftermath of the Detroit riots and the 1968 Democratic National Convention, among other historic events.

Throughout his lifetime, Father Schroth authored eight books, including Fordham: A History and Memoir (Fordham University Press, 2008), a 300-page document that chronicles 137 years of the institution’s history. Other titles include The American Jesuits: A History (NYU Press, 2007) and Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress (Fordham University Press, 2010). He published more than 300 articles and reviews that have appeared in multiple publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, and Newsday. In 2010, he joined the editorial staff of America, where he served as literary and books editor until he retired in 2017 and received the title editor emeritus. 

“At heart Ray is a reporter. … [H]e has never forgotten that an important part of a reporter’s job—especially for a Catholic journalist—is to tell the stories of ordinary people, the folks in the pews or on the streets,” Matt Malone, S.J., editor in chief of America: The Jesuit Review and president of America Media, wrote in a 2017 story. 

In that piece, Father Malone quoted something Father Schroth wrote on teaching: “The first step in teaching moral values to young journalists is to get them to feel pain—not their pain, the pain of others. From that, other virtues—compassion, skepticism, courage and the like—might follow.”

Mentor to Students ‘From All Eras’

Father Schroth loved to tell stories. That was clear in the ’70s, if you entered his room and studied the walls, and even two years ago, in his room at Murray-Weigel Hall. 

“You could come into his living room and see posters about strikes or political events that were going on, or you could see these very of-the-moment nonfiction books,” recalled Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes for The New York Times. “For an 18- or 19-year-old, it was a portal from the protected world of the campus to the wider world beyond.” He shared that passion with his students, too. 

“There’s this fraternity of Ray’s students from all eras, people ranging from their mid-sixties down to those of us in our forties or thirties, and people at all kinds of publications all over the country,” said Markey.

Father Schroth urged students to fact-check official statements from powerful figures, past students recalled. He was a writer who despised the phrase “the fact that” and emphasized the importance of writing concisely. He taught young journalists to set high standards for themselves and their work, and he stressed the importance of using their stories as “a force for change,” said another alumna. 

“In the early ’70s, the thinking in journalism was that a reporter had to report both sides of the story and be this impartial person … He understood that view, but he also presented the view that journalism was a force for change and a voice for the underdog and the underprivileged,” said Loretta Tofani, FCRH ’75, a retired investigative journalist. 

Father Schroth introduced Tofani to the work of several investigative journalists who played a role in her Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé of prison rape for The Washington Post, she said. 

Exposing students to important works and history was a priority for Father Schroth. He convinced his colleagues to come up with an annotated list of the most significant 10 books they had read, which he shared with his students as a guide to life, said Roger Wines, Ph.D., professor emeritus of history. He spearheaded the “Great Walk,” an annual student trek between the Battery in Manhattan and the Rose Hill campus—a way to explore the city and show students parts of New York that they might not otherwise see, said past students. Father Schroth also refused to become a “stale” professor.

Dwyer recalled one summer when he returned to campus and found Father Schroth in his room in Martyrs’ Court, shredding sheets of handwritten looseleaf notes. 

“I’m tearing up my notes for the books I’m teaching this semester,” Father Schroth explained. 

“Why on Earth would you do that if you’re going to be teaching them in a couple weeks?” Dwyer asked. 

“To force myself to read the books anew, so I don’t become stale,” Father Schroth replied. 

Connecting Students ‘to a Wider World’

In phone interviews, past students and colleagues described “Ray” as a stellar journalist and stalwart friend. He occasionally clashed with students, faculty, and his more conservative Jesuit brethren, but stood up for what he thought was right and inspired scores of students to do the same, they said. 

“One of the things that was really singular about Ray is his combination of intense rigor, high expectations, and personal standards, mixed with a tremendous sweetness and warmth,” said Markey. “Sometimes we think of those as two different things … But Ray did both.” 

Father Schroth was a tall, lean man who stood so straight that it made you want to stand up straighter, said Markey. He was also an avid runner, bicyclist, and swimmer. At age 83, he walked for miles along the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage trail in Spain, as he recounted three years ago. He loved show tunes, especially songs sung by Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, and persuaded his fellow pilgrims to sing with him as they trekked the Spanish countryside, said Dwyer. He also took his friendships very seriously. 

“On Holy Thursday every year, he would send an email to many of us, saying, ‘This is when Jesus gathered his friends together and said, do this in memory of me, and this is a ritual of friendship and community, and that’s what we are to each other.’” said Markey. 

Over the years, he created a box filled with index cards that listed the names of hundreds of friends and family members. Every time there was a birth, move, divorce, job change, or marriage, Father Schroth updated the cards. 

“He married students. He buried their parents and baptized their children. And he did all that for me,” said Dwyer. “But he did that for hundreds of people.” 

“He connected me to the world of journalism, which has been my life for the last 40 years,” Dwyer continued. “But the bigger thing that Ray did for me and thousands of others is connect us to a wider world. He taught us that friendship has to be looked after—that it has to be cultivated and nurtured.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the wake and funeral Mass for Father Schroth at Murray-Weigel Hall will be private. He will also have a private burial at the Jesuit Cemetery in Auriesville, New York. His family will have a public memorial Mass when it is possible. Notes of condolence may be sent to his nephew, Kevin Schroth, at 79 Bingham Avenue, Rumson, NJ  07760.

“Dr. C,” as students and colleagues knew him, served as a professor of economics, the University’s first faculty senate president, and an executive vice president during his 60-year-plus tenure.

“Joe was the beating heart of Fordham. He was supremely competent, tough-minded, and unfailingly kind and generous. He cared for the Fordham community deeply and was intensely loyal to the institution and its faculty, students, and staff,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Until the end, he was deeply involved in University life, and kept in touch with us as much as possible in his gentle but forceful way. We will all miss his sage advice and goodwill.”

Over many years and many leadership roles, Cammarosano contributed to major changes in the University’s finances, governance, and physical expansion.

He enrolled at Fordham as a freshman in 1941 and used to joke that he “only missed the first 100 years” of the University’s history. In 1975, on the occasion of his stepping down as executive vice president to return to teaching, James Finlay, S.J., then the University’s president, said, “If Fordham is alive and flourishing today, it is due to no one more than to Joe.”

Cammarosano was born on March 12, 1923, and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. Although he enrolled at Fordham in 1941, World War II interrupted his studies, and he served as a member of the Army Signal Corps until 1945, when he returned to Fordham. He graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1947 with a degree in economics and went to work as a U.S. customs inspector. After getting a master’s degree at NYU, he returned to Fordham, where he began teaching economics in 1955. He earned a doctorate from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the subject in 1956.

Leadership During Turbulent Years

In 1961, he joined the Kennedy administration as an economist in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, then moved on to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. When he returned to Fordham a few years later, he was elected as the first president of the newly formed faculty senate in 1965.

In 1968—a period of financial turmoil for the University—he was named executive vice president. He was one of the key figures in bringing Fordham back from the brink of bankruptcy. That year, the University was operating at $2 million deficit; by 1970, it had been transformed into a $2 million surplus, thanks in part to the advent of Bundy Aid (support for private colleges from New York state), the opening of what became Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and Cammarosano’s fiscal discipline.

Roger Wines, Ph.D., FCRH ’54, a professor emeritus of history at Fordham, served on Cammarosano’s budget committee at the time and worked with him as a member of the faculty senate.

“His committee … was told to cut the University budget 20% in three weeks,” Wines said at a 2015 dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Faculty Senate. “He succeeded in meeting that goal, freezing salaries and hiring, slashing administrative costs and a number of positions. Not one classroom teacher was fired. Financial crisis was averted.”

Wines said Cammarosano also played a central role in helping the University make the difficult transition from Jesuit oversight to governance by a board of trustees with several lay members.

“Joe played an effective central role, because he gained the trust of the faculty, of the Jesuit community, and the lay adviser members of the Board of Trustees,” he said.

“That trust was vital in guiding the University through the tumultuous years 1968 to 70, years when the University faced financial bankruptcy, student unrest, religious reform currents relating to the Vatican II Council, and protests against the Vietnam War.”

In an interview with Fordham Magazine in 2015, Cammarosano recalled how his office was occupied by students several times in 1969 and 1970 as protests against the Vietnam War roiled the country.

“The students took over the switchboard at one point, and when someone called for me, they said, ‘No, he’s no longer with us, we fired him.’ I almost wished they had fired me!” he said, laughing.

Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley, Ph.D., professor emeritus of theology and the author of Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016), noted that Father Finlay was not engaging in hyperbole when he told the Jesuits’ Superior General, Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J., in 1975 that Cammarosano was “the person mainly responsible for the survival of the University.”

“At a time when we had so much trouble with finances and campus demonstrations, he was a rock of strength,” he said.

“I think it’s true that was the worst financial crisis the University ever experienced. It was a time when the South Bronx was burning, and it had made it up to Fordham Road, so that was another factor.”

A Dynamic Teacher with Boundless Energy

In 1976, Cammarosano was honored at the University’s faculty convocation as an “exacting taskmaster” who earned his students’ appreciation by preparing “meticulously” and lecturing “dynamically.” Cammarosano served as executive vice president twice; the second time was to assist the newly appointed president of the University, Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., who took office in 1984. But he returned to teaching once again.

E. Gerald Corrigan, GSAS ’65, ’71, a managing director of Goldman Sachs and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, studied with Cammarosano during the 1960s, helping him produce economic studies of the Bronx and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“He’s a dynamo,” Corrigan told Fordham Magazine, recalling how his mentor would deliver “two-hour lectures nonstop at a fevered pitch.”

In 2017, when Cammarosano—then in his 62nd year as a member of the faculty—received an honorary degree at the University’s 172nd Commencement, his citation noted “the personal attention that he gives his students in the classical Jesuit model of cura personalis.”

Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of economics who first met Cammarosano when he joined the economics faculty in 1971, remembered him as a gentleman, scholar, and all-around wonderful human being.

“The greatest compliment that students could pay to me was for them to tell me I reminded them of Joe Cammarosano,” he said.

“The students loved him and he was a rigorous teacher. He demanded things but was always jovial. I’m no young spring chicken myself, but very often I had to remind myself that I was talking to an over-90-year-old person because it was so easy to assume he was 65 or 70,” he said.

Mary Burke, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of economics, said that when one spoke to Cammarosano, he was so full of life and energy, one could be forgiven for assuming he’d be around forever.

“His office is next to mine, and every day he had classes, his office door would be open. He would be there until 5, 6, or 7 p.m. As long as there was a student who wanted to ask a question or just talk, he would be there for them,” she said, noting that conversations related to the Yankees could go on especially long.

“I met Dr. Cammarosano when I was a student. Now, I have known him as a mentor, advisor, and a dear friend.”

Cammarosano continued to teach well after many peers had retired, most recently in the fall of 2018. He submitted his formal letter of retirement in February. Matthew McCrane, GABELLI ’19, took Introduction to Macroeconomics with him, and recalled the boundless energy that belied his age.

“It was a privilege to have been taught by someone who has taught so many alumni before me. It was like I was experiencing a staple part of Fordham. In a way, it’s like I can connect with much older alumni as a result of having had him in class,” he said.

Making a Mark as an Administrator

Stephie Mukherjee, assistant dean and director of Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program at Rose Hill (HEOP), called Cammarosano a “giant” and “Father of Fordham” for his outsized influence on the University. He was responsible for bringing HEOP to Fordham when the state program was created in 1969, and on numerous occasions, he stepped in to save it when funding was threatened, she said.

“He believed in the students, he believed in the underprivileged, he believed in people, and I’m grateful that he believed in me. He knew that this job is my passion, it’s not just a job,” she said.

“He was such a kindhearted, warm, wonderful person. He touched so many people’s lives.”

Sheldon Marcus, Ed.D., professor of educational leadership at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), recalls trying to get funds approved by Cammarosano in the 1970s to reimburse an administrator for weekend hours spent working. The paperwork for the request came back with Cammarosano’s bold script: “Rejected.”

When he went to see Cammarosano in his office, Marcus was greeted with more colorful language that seemed to indicate his case was lost. But then Cammarosano asked for the papers back, scratched out “rejected,” and added, “approved.”

Marcus said he started to leave, “happy to walk out of his office with my head still on.” But Cammarosano said, “Wait a minute.” He put his arm around Marcus and said, “Shelly, you’ve been working too hard, go home this weekend and don’t do another thing; get some rest.”

“He was just the most humane guy behind that tough rough exterior,” said Marcus. “It has been a pleasure to be at Fordham because of people like him; he just made it family.”

Family Above All

Cammarosano’s daughter Nancy Hartzband, FCRH ’77, LAW ’83, said her father was very connected to his own family, including his five grandchildren.

“I think it was such a good relationship because he dealt with young people his whole life, which he loved. He knew them one on one, he guided them, he was a very important figure in each of their lives,” she said.

“He set the bar really high for all of us in terms of morals. Whenever I’m in doubt, I ask, ‘What would my dad do?”

She too marveled at his stamina, noting that two years ago he published An Overview of the Development of Economic Thought (Lexington Books, 2018), the last of his three books about the ideas of economist John Maynard Kenyes.

“I mean, who does that? At that age, I’ll be happy to be sitting in my rocking chair,” she said laughing.

“But that was him. He always wanted to learn, he always wanted to do something new.”

Cammarosano still had an apartment in his native Mount Vernon, she said, but had recently moved in with his son in Island Park, New York.

She said her father was a devout Catholic who maintained his connection to Fordham for eight decades because he believed strongly in its Jesuit mission.

“We always knew we were very special because of the person he was at the University,” she said.

“He was just an incredible presence in our lives. He was almost larger than life.”

Cammarosano is survived by Hartzband and her three children as well as his son, Joseph R. Cammarosano, FCRH ’78, LAW ’81, Joseph’s wife, Mary, and their two children. Two of his grandchildren are alumni as well: Danielle Cammarosano, GABELLI ’19, and Alex Hartzband, LAW ’15. Cammarosano’s wife, Rosalie, died in 1991 and his son Louis T. Cammarosano, FCRH ’74, LAW ’78, died in 2014.

He was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, after a private funeral service. The University will also hold a memorial mass in his honor at a date in the future.

To hear Cammarosano talk about working and living in the Bronx over the years, listen to his interview with the Bronx Italian American History Initiative.

—Tom Stoeker contributed reporting.

Last November, Wines found the image in an 1840 article about the then-new college while he was “systematically” sifting through periodicals at the Catholic Historical Research Center of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He came across an issue of the Catholic newspaper the Truth Teller with a headline “New Catholic College, at Rose Hill, Westchester County, New-York.” The article appeared a year before the institution, which would become Fordham, was founded as St. John’s College. It was also a time when Westchester still held jurisdiction over the area, and when New-York was still hyphenated.

“I think it’s probably the only copy in the world and this was probably included as part of the original fundraising campaign to get the college started,” Wines said. “These are newspapers that are not indexed on Google. You have to actually just go page by page.”

Wines said that historians like himself have to go where the material is. In many cases, Fordham’s history is spread out among several libraries, from O’Hare Special Collections at Fordham’s Walsh Family Library to Columbia University’s Avery Library to the Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame.

“The fact is we can’t bring everything to Fordham, so we bring the information and then we tell people where we found the information,” said Wines.

The woodcut print reveals many lost details of the original building, and the accompanying article brings to light information about the building’s interiors as well as the heretofore unknown, if somewhat repetitive, name of the architect: Thomas Thomas (1781-1871), a well-established architect who was also working on St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street in Manhattan.

The new building’s entrance opened onto a central hall with a spiral staircase that swept up to the second floor and a rooftop lantern, providing light and ventilation. A southern room of the house—now the president’s office—was, fittingly, a chapel. Just off the chapel was a working greenhouse. The northern wing served as a refectory. A back porch overlooked a pasture that is now Edwards Parade, and the marble Greek Revival front steps, still in use today, looked out on Martyrs’ Lawn.

From Teacups to a Manor House, Excavating Rose Hill

Gilbert and Wines have spent a good portion of their careers researching Fordham’s history.  Gilbert is the editor of Digging the Bronx: Recent Archeology in the Borough (The Bronx County Historical Society, 2018), which includes a chapter written with Wines titled “Seventeen Years Excavating at Rose Hill Manor.” The book takes a practical look at archeology in the Bronx, including a chapter on the business of archeology to specific cases, as well as case examples of excavations in Van Cortland Park, Riverdale, as well as Rose Hill.

Gilbert said the 70-page chapter on Rose Hill is just an overview of the 17-year excavation. The excavations, which began in 1985, allowed scores of students from history and archeology classes to uncover everything from teacups to religious medals to the foundations of the original buildings, including Rose Hill Manor, which was razed in 1896 to make way for Collins Hall. Much of the material that was excavated fills rooms in Dealy Hall and in the basement of Cunniffe.

“If you look at the college’s history from 1890, the original Manor House was said to have been [George] Washington’s headquarters. That is romantic, but he probably just rode by on a horse,” said Wines, before adding, “We discovered in Washington’s papers that during 1776, a detachment of colonial troops was on campus. They were camped in the orchard. We found him coming back again in 1781.”

Dispelling campus lore is a necessary part of the job, said Gilbert.

“In our business, we’re trying to uncover as much new information as possible about what this place was like. Decades, centuries ago, before the college came here,” Gilbert said. “Ultimately, what we discovered, and what we probably knew subconsciously anyway, is that when local histories are put together, they’re frequently put together very quickly with very little information and that once those narratives form, they become fossilized.”

Staying Power

The drawing of Cunniffe House depicts the early days of an institution whose students would go on to bear witness to a civil war, two world wars, Vietnam, 9/11, as well as the current coronavirus crisis, which, with the recent wholesale shift from face-to-face interaction to online interaction, is unique in Fordham’s history.

The college held classes throughout the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The 9/11 tragedy caused disruptions, but there was not any notice to vacate campus, said Gilbert. Wines said that campus protests during the Vietnam War are the closest parallel. The upheaval forced the administration to send students home and faculty were instructed to grade them on the basis of work completed for the semester—but this was well before laptops and Zoom allowed for instruction to continue, he said.

While Gilbert and Wines agreed that many romanticize the past, sometimes Fordham’s history can be quite, well, romantic. On reading the 1840 description of today’s Cunniffe House in the Truth Teller article, it’s hard not to be taken in by purple prose, some of which holds to this day.

“It is located in a beautiful situation remote enough from the city to make it in the country, enjoying all the advantages, and yet so near the city as to afford it all the conveniences attainable in town,” reads the text accompanying the image.

The article continues on to delve into the architectural details of the “blue free-stone building,” mentions the new railroad that was being built a short distance from the college, and waxes poetically about how the “river Bronx meanders not far from the college, amongst undulating fields, and magnificent forests.”

When the image of Fordham appeared in the Truth Teller, University founder Archbishop John Hughes was still 13 years away from announcing the construction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. For the newspaper’s Catholic readership, the new college represented hope and staying power for the future. One particular phrase in the text accompanying the image, still resonates, particularly now:

“…[I]t will stand a perineal monument of zeal and success to the admiring eye of posterity.”

“This was a working farm from colonial times all the way down to about 1907 or so,” said Roger Wines, Ph.D., FCRH ’54, professor emeritus of history, who has written about Fordham history in partnership with anthropology professor Allan Gilbert, Ph.D.

The food was produced within sight of the building—today’s Cunniffe House—where the students studied, slept, and ate. On the site of the Rose Hill Gym was an orchard that produced apples, pears, and cherries, according to the professors’ research. Potatoes, corn, and other crops were also grown on campus. A vineyard on the site of today’s college cemetery yielded two or three barrels of wine per year, and the field at present-day Fordham Prep was a pasture populated by 30 to 40 cows.

The farm produced “a good percentage” of the food and milk for the college, according to a new history of Fordham by Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, GSAS ’66, professor emeritus of theology. Wines and Gilbert said the college also purchased meat and groceries from New York merchants, and Fordham’s first Jesuits, Frenchmen who liked to drink wine with dinner, imported wine from Bordeaux to supplement what was produced on campus.

Dietary staples at Rose Hill included beef and pork; pigs as well as cows were raised at the farm, Wines and Gilbert said. On special occasions, students dined on oysters and other shellfish. Bread was probably baked on campus, and vegetables may have been grown in a greenhouse east of the University Church. Jesuit brothers oversaw food production.

(In recent years, Fordham students have made a modest return to Rose Hill’s farming roots by maintaining St. Rose’s Garden on one edge of campus and organizing a weekly Fordham Farmer’s Market in front of the McGinley Center.)

After a few decades, the students’ dining area was moved from today’s Cunniffe House to a newly completed space in Dealy Hall. Eating was a solemn affair, far removed from the freewheeling atmosphere of today’s campus dining venues. It was strictly regulated by the college’s Rules and Customs Book, according to a chapter by Gilbert and Wines in Fordham: The Early Years (Fordham University Press, 1998), edited by Thomas C. Hennessy, S.J.

A student read aloud from literature or history during meals, and No. 5 in the Rules for the Refectory section of the customs book required students to eat in silence so they could “give an account of what is read, if called upon.” Students stopped eating at the ringing of a bell and then rose to face the prefect, answer a prayer, and make the sign of the cross before turning to silently leave in single file with their arms folded.

Indeed, students were expected to keep quiet during most of their daily routine, which was akin to the rigors of a “medieval monastic regime,” according to Msgr. Shelley’s book, Fordham, A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841-2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016). But they still found moments for food-related levity, he wrote: “God sent food; the devil sent cooks,” the students would gripe, echoing a longstanding complaint of college students everywhere.

“An unfinished house in a field” is how Archbishop John Hughes would later describe the state of Fordham’s property at the time he bought it in 1839. The first Jesuits wouldn’t arrive until 1846, five years after the small college was up and running. Meanwhile, going south into New York City was a tougher trek in those days before cars and commuter trains—and that’s just how the college fathers liked it.

“They didn’t let the students go down to the city. The city was considered ‘sinful,’” said Roger Wines, PhD, professor emeritus of history.

He and anthropology professor Allan Gilbert, PhD, have researched and written about early life at Fordham for years, drawing on the meticulous records kept by Fordham’s early Jesuits as well as their own excavations at the Rose Hill campus. Their archaeological work, part of which they write about in a soon-to-be-published book, helps illustrate just how different life was in the early years of Fordham, which was founded as St. John’s College 175 years ago on June 24, 1841.

For one thing, the small, rustic college was also a working farm, Wines noted. “The students lived here in an atmosphere where the grape jelly came from the grapes [and]the milk came from the cows,” courtesy of the live-in Jesuit brothers who also shoveled the coal, tended the grounds, and staffed the infirmary, among other labors, he said.

Water came from wells, baths were once-a-week, and recreation tended to get the blood pumping, according to Wines and Gilbert. In the summer, it was swimming in the Bronx River or cross-country hikes to the Harlem River or Pelham Bay, led by Jesuits who believed in physical exertion. In the fall,  college elders would block the flow of a stream to create a pond where the campus’ large parking lot and garage sit today, and students skated on the pond when it froze over in the winter, Gilbert and Wines said.

In fact, ice skate fragments were among the many artifacts they found buried in the earth at the heart of the Rose Hill campus.

The Excavations

In 1985, Wines and Gilbert sought permission from Fordham’s then-new president—Joseph A. O’Hare, SJ—to excavate the foundations of Rose Hill Manor, the colonial-era farmhouse that served as one of the original campus buildings. They won over Father O’Hare by taking him to the spot where they wanted to dig: “We said to him, ‘Six feet down is the 18^th century.’ He said, ‘Okay, go for it,’” Wines recalled.

For the next 17 years, they mobilized students from their history and archaeology classes for the digging, covering the crumbly innards of the site with tarps in the off-hours to protect them from the elements. Within a few years they had cleared out one corner of the manor’s cellar, finding a wood floor, brick cisterns, impressions of floral-patterned wallpaper, a bin full of anthracite coal, and many fragmentary objects.

They also dug in various other places around the Rose Hill campus, including, in 1986, the construction site for two residence halls–Loschert Hall and Alumni Court South–after work crews discovered two pits containing pre-1877 refuse from the college. They explored cisterns, drainage basins, and ditches around campus, compiling a list of archaeologically valuable locations.

Their collection of artifacts includes pipe stems, patent medicine bottles, the college’s first set of dishes, rods of lead for writing on slate, and the remains of a toothbrush made from bone and hog bristles. They found dice, combs, pottery, and religious medals, and a remnant of one of the era’s advances in communications field: the nib of a steel pen, a device that allowed for easier writing than did the goose-quill pen that came before.

Studies at St. John’s College

Writing—or, more to the point, penmanship—was a key part of the curriculum, and was especially important for finding a job. “Employers judged your character and fitness for the job on how clearly you could write,” Wines said. Students also studied Greek, Latin, history, literature, and other classic subjects in a custodial, highly structured setting. Students lived barracks-style in wings that were added to what is today Cunniffe House (the “unfinished house in a field” Hughes referred to), the same building in which they attended class. Rose Hill Manor had various occupants over the years, including Jesuits-in-training.

Students followed a six-year curriculum—modeled on a European lycee—that the Jesuits brought with them in 1846. It comprised three years of grammar (corresponding to an American secondary school) and three years of college-level humanities. After six years, students received a bachelor’s degree, and those who stayed for one more year could earn a master’s in philosophy.

The students numbered anywhere from 100 to 200 for the first few decades, and some were adolescents, possibly as young as 10.

Unlike the College of St. Francis Xavier, the companion college founded in Manhattan by Fordham’s first Jesuits, the college at Rose Hill could draw students from beyond the New York area because it was a boarding school. About a third of the students were Latin American boys from merchant-class parents who wanted them to be able to speak English and do business in New York while also maintaining their faith.

“This was a good place to send them because they would be in a safe Catholic environment,” Wines said. “Nothing bad was going to happen to them.”

The Jesuit Approach

Vice wasn’t the only worry in the city to the south; hostility to Catholics in New York led Hughes—named the first archbishop of New York in 1850—to buy the college’s land through an intermediary, Gilbert said. Hughes also made sure the charter for the school was approved before announcing it was being taken over by Jesuits, whom critics considered to be “political priests,” Wines said.

The Jesuits brought a rigorous system with them in 1846. Students cycled through a regimen of prayers, study halls, classes, meals, and occasional recreation that stretched out across six-and-a-half days a week. (The weekend hadn’t been invented yet.) They began the day by washing their faces in sinks filled by a servant who’d drawn water from the well outside, and everyone went to bed at the same time every night when the candles or whale oil lamps were snuffed out.

The students stayed in this closely supervised setting for a longer school year, one that lasted until mid-July. One principal teacher taught all major subjects to each class, paying close attention to the moral as well as intellectual formation of students. “They really took care of you for a whole year” and found out everything, including “things you probably wish they didn’t,” Wines said.

Recreation consisted of ball games or indoor games played with plain objects like marbles or dominoes—which Gilbert and Wines found during their excavations—or, simply, words and imagination. “There was nothing to buy; you just made it up,” Gilbert said.

Preserving the Past

He and Wines have put much of the relics into safe storage in Dealy Hall and are exploring the possibilities for finding them a new space. Wines is working on a book about the early history of Rose Hill and the Bronx, and he and Gilbert wrote a chapter about their excavation of Rose Hill Manor for a forthcoming book, impishly titled Digging the Bronx.

In its pages, readers will see the many ways in which schools, colleges, and other institutions are exploring the history of an area that has been transformed from countryside into a major metropolis, all within the lifespan of Fordham.

“It’s a range of different kinds of applications, so that people get a sense for how many sorts of people are out there digging in the ground,” Gilbert said.