George Washington Gale (December 13, 1789 – September 13, 1861)[1] was a Presbyterian minister who founded the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry.

A graduate with honors from Union College in 1814, he attended Princeton Theological Seminary, but he withdrew because of poor health (dyspepsia).

Among the students there was Charles Finney, a lawyer who, through Gale's efforts, found a new faith in Christ and undertook to become a Christian minister.

[6][7][8] In 1827, Gale founded the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry in Whitesboro, New York, an institution with a strong religious component, incorporating manual labor as a means by which students could pay for their education and simultaneously receive the spiritual (psychological) and physical benefits of exercise.

The philanthropist brothers and benefactors of Oneida Lewis and Arthur Tappan sought a new manual labor school to support, hiring in 1832 one of Gale's students, Theodore Weld, to find a suitable location.

In a highly public incident Gale never refers to, a group of about 24 students, led by Weld, moved there from Oneida, complaining mysteriously about "the lack of theological classes".

From 1833 to 1834, while in Whitesboro, the unemployed Gale drew up the plans and recruited supporters for yet another manual labor college, further west.

He issued a circular setting forth his plan and soliciting subscribers from the Utica–Troy Mohawk River region of upstate New York.

[11] John C. Smith, of Oneida County, New York, one of the subscribers to Gale's labor college, owned a number of boats used on the Erie canal.

They dispatched one rider to contact the first group of settlers, who returned with a rescue party with teams, blankets, and supplies to help the invalids.