Class of 1865 
GEORGE LEWIS WESTGATE 

The Methodist Church and the cause of higher education met with a great loss when PROFESSOR WESTGATE died, just, at the opening maturity of his powers, June 28, 1885.

Professor Westgate was born in Fall River, Mass., April 12, 1844.  After his graduation he studied two years in Union Theological Seminary, New York, and joined the New England Southern Conference in 1867.  He was actively and successfully engaged in the work of the ministry from this time until 1880.

The first seven years of his ministerial life were spent in some of the most important positions in the New England Southern Conference. In 1874 he was transferred to the New York, East Conference, within which he served one pastoral term in Brooklyn and another, and very successful one, in Middletown, Conn.  In 1879 he was transferred to the New England Conference, and had preached with great acceptance one year in Lowell, Mass., when he was called, in the summer of 1880, to assume the chair of History and Political Economy in his Alma Mater.

As a preacher he was remarkably lucid, earnest, and convincing.  His style was severely plain:  but there was a full thoughtfulness, a fresh and unhackneyed quality in his speech that was delightful.  No sermons were ever more free from what may be called the theological dialect of the pulpit; more uniformly clear, practical and helpful. But his sermons were often singularly persuasive as well as instructive. There was such candor and earnestness in his manner, he seemed to have such a confidence in the power of the simple truth to convince and persuade, that his hearers often felt the strong drawings of that preference for goodness, that fascination of the truth itself, which are the best motives for a righteous life.

When Professor Westgate took his chair in the Wesleyan University, there were some who doubted the wisdom of calling to the place a man who had enjoyed no special training for it, and whose previous work had been done in the ministry.  But the wisdom of the choice was soon justified.  He was well read in history before he came here, and entered upon his work with intelligence and enthusiasm.  Up to that time there had been scarcely any modern history taught here.  He created the department.  He studied methods; he worked night and day to make his instruction thorough and helpful.  And he succeeded.  Before he died there was no department in the college more popular or valuable, none in which the instruction was more intelligent and thorough. The same intellectual keenness which had marked his sermons was seen in his class-room work.  The acuteness of his discrimination and the clearness of his exposition were matters of constant praise among his pupils. His historical knowledge, especially on American subjects, was wide and accurate; if he could have had ten years more, he would almost certainly have made himself known, not only as a teacher, but as an original writer on historical matters.

Although Professor Westgate’s temperament was so decidedly intellectual, it must not be supposed that it was lacking in warmth and cordiality. ‘On the contrary, he was one of the most kindly and genial of men.  He had a hearty dislike of all emotion entertained for its own sake, and a manly dislike of much outward expression of it; but very few men knew how to be so genuinely helpful to others, so uniformly thoughtful and unselfish. 

The prominent traits in Professor Westgate’s character were a love of truth and a devotion to duty. He was open, frank, noble—the soul of honor. He could not endure the appearance of indirection or subterfuge. And his determined fidelity to duty in the closing months of his life—that was heroic. No one who saw him then can ever forget the calm courage with which for months he faced the inevitable end, without ever once swerving from the regular course of daily duty. His ambitions, naturally strong and eager, he had already resigned; but he kept resolutely at his work, because it seemed to him his religious duty— the thing providentially given him to do. Men held their breath in reverent admiration to see this slight, worn man present himself day after day at his post, without a word of complaint or even any reference to himself at all. Hi pupils have told the present writer that his discussions of political questions were never more subtle and discriminating, than in the last days, when his only utterance was a husky whisper, and the marks of death were already in his face. He finished his year’s college work; and at the last it was only when his examinations had been held, his classes dismissed, that he consented to go away to the hills of, Norfolk—to die. He lived but little more than a week after reaching there. Almost his last utterance was, “Let us do the duty of the hour, and leave the rest to God.” That was the watchword of all his noble life. That life seems to us too short: but it was filled with good works, and rounded to a calm and perfect ending.

Source:  Obituary Record of Alumni of Wesleyan University for the Academic Year Ending June 24, 1886, Middletown, Conn. 1886