USA > Connecticut > New London County > A modern history of New London County, Connecticut, Volume I > Part 34
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The counsel, suggestion, and experience of faculty and administration is always available, and is frequently sought, and in all more vital matters is always requested.
In managing their own affairs as a real democracy, students are trained in responsibility, cooperation, initiative, in forming judgments, in making choices, in creating policies, in establishing tradition, and maintaining college morale, and in official duties and committee work learn valuable lessons in tact, appreciation, discrimination and in administration and execution.
8. The Spirit of the College-Loyalty, Enthusiasm, Cooperation, Con- fidence. The undoubted effect of this organization of the students has been to develop a spirit of true democracy, without religious or social or class prejudices; to stimulate respect for work in all its forms, particularly with reference to students working their way through; there is tolerance and good will and sympathy; the bases of the organization are work, responsibility, liberty, solidarity, and a type of girl is being developed who is entirely free from pedantry and cant; she is open, sincere, unselfish and of sound judg- ment and initiative, able to deal with people and with situations, yet without conceit or assumption.
Through all the activities of the college, both in its academic and social side, there breathes an intense spirit of loyalty and of enthusiasm. From the beginning the students were made, by the administration and the faculty, to realize how much the morale and spirit of the college were in their keeping, and they have grown in intensity of appreciation and responsibility for the highest character in college life.
The spirit of cooperation is cultivated in the fact that the college does things together. It meets every day for Chapel, every Sunday for Vespers, every Tuesday for Convocation, as a college body, faculty and students merg- ing; and it undertakes an interest and a support of outside activities in college-wide fashion. When called upon to give, as for instance during the war, to the Students' Friendship War Fund, to the United War Campaign, and more recently in aid of the students and professors of the colleges in central Europe, it organizes its efforts as an all-college affair, pours its energy, its enthusiasm, its zeal, its gifts, into one common effort, and the result is issued with the seal and endorsement of the entire college upon it.
There is in all the life of the college great confidence in the institution, a splendid satisfaction in its work, great happiness in its fellowship, and a fine sense of challenge in the richness, variety and wholesomeness of its entire comradeship, student and faculty alike.
1.1
ABOVE, WINTHROP HOUSE, IN CENTER, THAMES HALL, REFECTORY. BELOW. GYMNASIUM.
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The spirit of cooperation, understanding, unanimity, which prevails, may be expressed when we say that in the four years of the present administration there has not been in the board of trustees a single divided vote; and in the faculty, on no vital point, anything but practical unanimity.
9. Favorable and appreciative attitude of educators and institutions to- ward Connecticut College. The attitude and favor and good-will, confidence and commendation on the part of educators and of presidents of other women's colleges has been very cheering. Without exception, the older colleges have welcomed Connecticut College into the sisterhood, have declared that it was greatly needed ; that the kind of work it is doing is essential and is well done, and that its future is bright and challenging. The comment of President MacCracken of Vassar is perhaps as significant as any, when, after speaking of several forward steps in the education of women in America in recent years, he says:
Among these steps the most important is undoubtedly the founding of Connecticut College at New London, and all friends of higher education for women have welcomed its entrance into the field, because it is clear from the general trend of registration that women will in increasing numbers seek the college degree.
Visitors to the campus, representing other colleges, presidents, deans, registrars, official committees of visitation with specific errands, have spoken uniformly of their pleasure in the visit, of the distinct impression of industry, vigor and worth in which the college work is done, and congratulated the college on its site, on its work, and on its prospects. Organizations, whose representatives have come to give counsel to the students with reference to future occupation, representatives of social organizations seeking superior material, for graduate study in schools of social service, have expressed them- selves in such language as this :
"In conference, the students ask most intelligent questions."
"Know what they want."
"Have a knowledge of the factors in social and industrial situations more than students of other colleges visited."
The college has freely been granted the counsel of the Russell Sage Foundation, whose aid in planning various lines of community work under the auspices of the sociology department has been offered.
Graduates of the college have gone forth to social work or to advanced study on the basis of the work done here, and have been given practically a year's credit in advance over the graduates of other institutions, whether in graduate study or in active positions on the staff of charity or social organ- izations.
IO. Record of Graduates : Variety in activity and service, and gratifying success. All that precedes, which is an effort to justify the existence of the college, finds its concrete, and we believe unanswerable justification in the quality of the product of the college in its graduates and in the nature and quality of the service they are rendering in their present fields.
There are 180 alumnae of the college, graduates in the first three classes,
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1919, 1920 and 1921. The director of the college appointment bureau reports that these graduates are largely engaged in the work toward which their major work in college particularly fitted them.
The success and gratifying service of such graduates, from whom we have received definite returns, is due, not alone to the careful and able training by a competent faculty, but also to that spirit of enthusiasm, of loyalty and cooperation which has characterized the college since its inception, a passion to do whatever they do worthily, and to count constructively by rendering a specific service to society.
There is a profound confidence in the college on the part of the trustees, faculty, students and friends of the college alike. They take pride in its genuine, though modest accomplishment, and they feel confident of its future and hopeful and zealous of its maintenance and expansion along the lines projected from the beginning and faithfully followed to this moment, so far as years of war and relatively unincreased endowment have permitted.
The preceding paragraphs, we trust, constitute a sufficient and genuine justification of the existence of the college. Our conviction is that the college was opened to meet both a general and a specific need, that it estab- lished for itself a splendid purpose and a high ideal, and it set itself vigorously and conscientiously to the practical fulfillment of that purpose. It has offered a broad and balanced curriculum of soundness, practicability, undoubted values and of high promise. It has summoned to itself superior students in large numbers from a wide area. It has cultivated in them a passion to do whatever they do worthily, and to count constructively, whether by helping to brighten a home and elevate the life of a family, or by rendering some more specific service to society at large.
It has already developed a peculiar, significant and exalted spirit, which is recognized as distinctive, strong and exceptional. It has won from the beginning and in increasing measure, the welcome, the appreciation, the regard and commendation of its sister colleges, their leaders and all educators who have come to know it; and chiefly, and above all, it has contributed in its graduates a group of women who are undertaking specific tasks toward which the college unmistakably directed them, following their natural bent, ambition and equipment, and they are doing, each in her own place, the world's work in a way that is worthy, noble and commendable, to the credit of the college they love, to the honor of their own lives, and as a rare and distinctive contribution to the life of America.
NORWICH FREE ACADEMY
This historical sketch of the Norwich Free Academy is by Rev. Lewellyn Pratt, D.D., formerly president of the corporation.
The next oldest of the private schools of the county is the Norwich Free Academy. The following account of its early days was delivered by Dr. Lewellyn Pratt, its president, in 1906, on the fiftieth anniversary of its opening :
FEEEE
ORIGINAL BUILDING, NORWICH FREE ACADEMY. DEDICATED IN 1856: DEMOLISHED IN 191G; SITE OCCUPIED BY PRESENT ACADEMY BUILDING. ( From an old engraving ).
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The story of the fifty years of the Norwich Free Academy is very simple compared with that of Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow and other great schools of Europe, with their five and six centuries of achievement, and yet the history of these fifty years, given in any fair completeness, would require more time than I can take today. I must content myeslf with a mere intro- duction to what is to follow in the addresses of these two days.
For many years before 1856 the need of improvement in the schools of Norwich had been keenly felt, and various attempts had been made to bring them together into some system and to establish schools of a higher grade. The discussions that immediately preceded the organization of the Academy aroused much opposition, but they directed attention to the need and strength- ened the determination to find some way by which an advance could be made. The opposition was so decided that it did not seem feasible to wait for a vote of the town to make that advance, nor altogether safe to trust to that to maintain it, if by chance it could be made. Under the leadership of the Rev. John P. Gulliver-to whom as the organizer more credit is due than to any other one-the plan of an endowed academy, which should be so correlated with the grammar schools that it should take the place of the high schools, then being formed and developed in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and at the same time so independent of political control and free to accept all approved methods of education as to bring and keep it in close connection with the higher institutions of learning, was adopted. A group of men was found in Norwich far-sighted and public-spirited enough to grasp and wel- come the idea, and with singular generosity to furnish the means by which it could be realized. All honor to those men of faith and self-sacrifice who, without expectation of pecuniary return for themselves, gave freely of their wealth for that which the public would soon have been almost compelled to do by increased taxation, devised the plan which has stood the test of time and bestowed a benefaction which is to bless many generations!
Some of you may recall the verses with which Mrs. Sigourney celebrated the spirit of this benefaction, which were read at the opening of the school :
There's many kinds of stocks, they say, That tempt the speculators; But what is safest held, and best, Might tax the shrewdest natures. Sage Franklin said in earlier days,- And now the wisest bless him,- "Who pours his purse into his brains, No man can dispossess him."
And so, the people of my love His theory have tested, And for their children and themselves A glorious sum invested .- And by this dome, for knowledge rear'd, Which no dark mortgage fetters, Have nobly made a race unborn Their everlasting debtors.
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And as in old historic times, Though exiled and unnoted, The Roman citizen with pride His honored birth-place quoted: So I, with quickened heart this day, Warm orisons addressing
Ask, for these native rocks and dales Our Father's richest blessing.
The aims of the founders, as set forth by them when they applied for their charter in 1854, were: I. To excite in the minds of parents, guardians and children a deeper interest in education. 2. To stimulate scholars in primary, intermediate and grammar schools to higher attainments in the elementary branches. 3. To elevate the standard of education in the town and vicinity. 4. To furnish the facilities for a higher education for our sons and daughters so cheaply that the poorest can enjoy them, and so amply that the richest shall be grateful for the privilege of receiving their benefits.
The great aim of the plan was the betterment of all the schools, and its immediate result was the consolidation of two of the districts and the build- ing and equipment of larger and more commodious schoolhouses, and since that time there has been steady advance of the standard in the schools of the town and vicinity. Starting in 1856, a small school, we mark some tokens of steady growth. At its opening there were eighty scholars with five teachers. The present enrollment, including those in the Art and Domestic Science departments, is about four hundred and fifty, with twenty-three teachers. The original endowment was $50,000, with $36,000 more invested in building and equipment. In spite of the fears expressed that an endowed school would suffer by the decline of interest after the original donors should pass away, the endowment, through the same self-sacrifice and public spirit that characterized them animating their descendants, has increased to ten times the original amount, and the investment in lands and buildings and apparatus to more than eight times what it was at first. In the first years there were only the Classical and English departments. To these have been added the Art, the Manual Training and the Domestic Science departments, while the two original divisions have been enlarged and enriched, keeping pace on the one hand with the advanced requirements of our leading colleges and on the other with the need of more thorough scientific and practical courses for those who finish their school life in the Academy and enter upon the duties of domestic and business life. A notable part of the equipment, to which attention was called by speakers at the opening of the school, was the establishment of the Peck Library. This has been steadily increased by the income of its separate endowment till it now numbers thirteen thousand nine hundred and eighteen volumes of carefully selected books, which are in constant use by the school. A promising and most important department of Normal Training was projected and carried on for seven years, giving to the public schools a number of well trained teachers who have by their successful work and the high positions they have attained vindicated the plan that was proposed. This, because of difficulties of adjustment that were encountered, was abandoned in 1896. During these fifty years there have been graduated
FREE ACADEMY-ABOVE, AT LEFT. SLATER HALL, LIBRARY AND MUSEUM; WITH ART DEPARTMENT IN REAR; IN CENTER, MAIN ACADEMY BUILDING. BELOW, REAR VIEW; AT LEFT, MANUAL TRAINING BUILDING; CENTER, MAIN ACAD EMY BUILDING; AT RIGHT, SLATER HALL, SHOWING ART BUILDING.
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from the academy 1,310, and from the normal department 81. As many more have taken a partial course in the school. These twenty-six or twenty-seven hundred are now scattered in almost every State of the Union, and many are in foreign countries.
From the first the school has not been restricted to narrow town limits. The original donors, while primarily aiming to benefit the schools of the town, took a large view of the position of Norwich in its relation to the sur- rounding community, and, regarding it as a commercial center for the towns around, they planned that it might become an educational center for the vicin- ity, and on condition of a moderate payment opened its doors to those from other places who could successfully pass its examinations. One of the first scholarships established was specially designated by its giver as for the benefit of scholars from his native town, many miles distant. Later, when an addition of $50,000 was added to the endowment, one of the conditions made by the donors was that "the academy should be open to scholars from any quarter." And several of the scholarships given since were to be offered to out-of-town pupils on equal terms with those of the town. "Greater Norwich"-and Norwich once included greater territory-has been considered as sharing the benefit : and well has that expectation been justified not only by the numbers that have been attracted hither-some to become permanent residents-but by the character of those who came and the credit they have reflected upon the school. The amount received for tuition the last year from these out-of- town pupils was nearly equal to the whole income of the first year. As a high school for Norwich, the academy has been a great gift to the town, relieving it of a vast amount of taxation during these fifty years; and as something more than a high school, an academy, it has been a great gift to Eastern Connecticut. In its present enrollment, seventy-five are from beyond the narrow limits of present Norwich.
The school was fortunate in the large and liberal views of the founders and in their wise purpose to keep it free for all time from the contingencies of politics and to give it a stable character by placing its control in the hands of a self-perpetuating board of corporators who might be free to study its interests and make far-reaching plans without fear of sudden displacement or reversal.
It was fortunate in its location in this beautiful spot in historic Norwich. Here, in the midst of homes of wealth and culture, it has found a wholesome atmosphere and congenial soil. The questioning of early days has given place to pride in its possession, and the generosity of its early friends has been well sustained by their successors.
It has been specially fortunate in the character and ability and work of its chosen leaders to whom the great task of development has been committed.
It has had four principals :
I. Professor Elbridge Smith, a man trained in the best schools of Massa- chusetts at that time, from 1856 to 1865. The work of the beginning from almost chaos was in his hands. He proved himself a good organizer and disciplinarian, and amid the discouragement of the day of small things and of the period of formation, and then of almost disbanding because of the
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drafts made by the spirit of patriotism in the time of the Civil War (from the small numbers then connected with the school, fifty-six enlisted in the army), he carried the work through its early stages wisely and well.
2. Professor William Hutchison, who succeeded him from 1865 to 1885, who brought to the school a large and inspiring spirit, and by his sympathetic relation with his pupils, his broad common sense and wide interest in all that concerned the town, gave to the school an acknowledged place in the affections of the people. What tributes were paid to his memory at our Fortieth Anniversary! Any school is fortunate in such a memory.
3. Professor Robert Porter Keep, who came in 1886 and whose term in office was next to the longest in its history, ending in 1903. Professor Keep was a scholar of great attainment, worthy of a place in university work, who with singular and untiring devotion gave himself to the cause of secondary education, and saw here opportunities for development and growth that had scarcely been dreamed of before. To him we owe in large measure the Art department, the Normal, the Manual Training and Domestic Science depart- ments, and a position among educational institutions recognized by scholars throughout the country. His rank among scholars, his acquaintance with the best schools of this country and Europe, and his belief in this school and its possibilities, were guarantees of its worth and constantly reflected credit upon its name. A large debt of gratitude is ever due to him from the Norwich Free Academy.
4. It is not proper that I should speak here today as I would like of him who now holds the office of principal, Mr. Henry A. Tirrell.
With these principals have been associated a long list of faithful teachers, who, for a longer or shorter time, have given their best work to the school and wrought themselves into the lives of the pupils. So well chosen have many of these been, that the academy has proved a favorite recruiting station for instructors and professors for many of our colleges and universities.
The school has been fortunate, too, in its scholars. While, unlike some academies which draw their pupils from a wide field and who have largely those of wealth and position, we draw our pupils alsomst exclusively from the immediate neighborhood and offer its privileges alike to rich and poor, yet we claim for the academy that in good order, in the development of character, in training for life's work, in actual attainment, the graduates here will compare favorably with any school in the land, and in loyalty no high school can equal it, and few if any academies surpass it. The cabalistic "N. F. A." inspires many a heart and wins everywhere a loud acclaim.
It was with sublime faith that the founders of this academy entered upon their great undertaking; and the work that was done by them, the extent of the grounds, the scale of the building, the endowment of the library, indi- cated that they were planning for a large future. Nobly has their confidence been justified and sustained. The academy has always held a high place in the thought and affection of the people of this city. Ministering to the growth and reputation of the town, it has been the constant recipient of gifts for its enlargement and expansion. Notable among these was the gift of this building with its Museum of Art, unsurpassed in the country except in the great cities,
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and the creation of the unique and excellent Art Department, through the filial love, the loyalty to his Alma Mater and the pride in native place of William A. Slater. Besides this, the bequests of Hon. Jeremiah Halsey, of Hon. Lafayette S. Foster, W. W. Backus and of Col. Charles A. Converse, with the special additions of $31,000 in 1867, of $50,000 in 1876, made by many of the most influential citizens of Norwich, and of $50,000 by an unnamed donor, with many other contributions of money, scholarships, prizes and col- lections, show the appreciation in which it has always been held. We believe that this interest does not flag, and that the committal of the academy in the opening address of 1856 to the future generations for their support will be honored by the residents of the city and the alumni of the school, and that the plans for enlargement now imperatively demanded by the success of the past and the increasing needs of the present will meet with hearty response.
I close with the words of Dr. Gulliver in 1886 at the dedication of the Slater Memorial Building. He said, "I close, citizens of Norwich, by com- mending this noble school to your love, to your constant care, to your bene- factions, to the possession of your estates when you and yours have ceased to need them, and to your prayers for that Divine blessing in which the insti- tution began and with which it shall continue and increase until in the holy words oft uttered on this very spot, 'she sends out her boughs unto the sea and her branches unto the river, so that the hills are covered with the shadow of it and the branches thereof are like goodly cedars.'"
The foregoing summary by Dr. Pratt takes the school to the year 1906. Since that date more than a thousand pupils have been graduated, making a total of about twenty-five hundred. More than twice that number have attended the school for a part of the regular four-year course. Although the academy is a local school, its graduates are found scattered over the world, only about a third of them now remaining in Norwich. The list of alumnae is slightly larger than the alumni list. Among the names are many honored for success in the professions, and many more who have become useful and influential citizens in other lines of work. During the Civil War 58 boys served the Union when the school numbered not more than 85 boys. In the World War over three hundred graduates entered the service, of whom eleven made the Supreme Sacrifice.
The school at present numbers over six hundred, and offers various academic courses, in addition to special courses in practical arts and in craft work. In its Slater Museum and Peck Library it has an equipment hardly equalled in any other secondary school. In addition to its valuable plant, the school has an endowment of about three-quarters of a million dollars, the income of which is available for the various needs of the academy.
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