George Colby Chase, the second president of Bates College, was born March 15, 1844 in Unity, Maine to Freewill Baptist parents. In 1862, at the age of eighteen, he entered the Maine State Seminary and, despite having his studies interrupted by periods of country school teaching and helping his father on the farm, he graduated in 1864. In the fall of 1864, with the encouragement of his mother, he enrolled in Bates College, graduating in 1868. Chase then spent the next two years teaching Latin, Greek and Philosophy at the New Hampton Literary Institute.
Several years later, Chase returned to Bates in 1872 to join the Bates faculty as Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. He taught for 22 years and during that time his administrative skills were also being developed. President Cheney and the Trustees came to depend on his acumen, so that in 1894, upon President Cheney's resignation, George C. Chase became the second President of Bates College. During Chase's 25 years as president, the College grew in many areas-the endowment, the number of buildings and the number of faculty and students. However, what he strove to see realized were the ideals that he felt Bates stood for: scholarship, democracy, a spirit of service and most of all, Christian character.