USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Wolcott > History of the town of Wolcott (Connecticut) from 1731 to 1874, with an account of the centenary meeting, September 10th and 11th, 1873 and with the genealogies of the families of the town > Part 20
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In November, 1819, Mr. Alcott and his brother Chat- field went to Virginia and both engaged in peddling. They succeeded well, and carried home their earnings to their father in the summer of 1820. The following autumn, when Bronson Alcott was one-and-twenty, he went South again, this time as far as South Carolina, and with his cousin, afterwards Dr. Alcott, for a companion. Their plan was tote ach school in the Carolinas, but that failed,
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and after making the journey on foot, from Charleston to Norfolk, they betook themselves, in the winter of 1820- 21, to peddling again. During this winter Bronson Al- cott suffered from a severe typhus fever, and William Al- cott took care of him. The profits of the season were not so much as before, owing to this illness and other un- favorable circumstances. On his way home in June, Mr. Alcott, visited for the first time, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. In the following Septem- ber, the now experienced adventurer set forth from home, and after settling his affairs in Norfolk, he gave up mer- chandise and began teaching. His first school was a writing class in Warrenton, N. C. With the money thus earned he paid his way back to Wolcott in June, walking most of the distance. Not quite willing to abandon the hope of retrieving his fortune, he set forth again for the South with his cousin, Thomas Alcox, in October, 1822, and spent the winter in North Carolina, among the Qua- kers of Chowan and Perquimons counties, returning in the spring of 1823. Here he saw much of the Quakers and read their books, such as William Penn's No Cross, no Crown ; Barclay's Apology; Fox's Journal ; and other works of like spirit. The moral sentiment, as Mr. Al- cott has since said, now superceded peddling, clearly and finally.
The next stage in his career was school keeping,-an occupation that he pursued for more than fifteen years, after once taking it up. His first school was in a district of Bristol, the adjoining town, and only three miles from Spindle Hill. Here he taught for three months, his wa- ges being $10 a month besides board, and was so good a teacher as to make the school-committee desirous to engage him again. He did indeed teach school in Bris- tol the next winter (1824-5), but not in the same district, and for a part of the year he gave writing lessons at Wolcott. In the spring and summer of 1825 he resided in Cheshire with his uncle, Dr. Bronson, who then edited
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the Churchmans Magazine, for which Mr. Alcott procured subscribers and copied his uncle's manuscript for the printer. While residing with Dr. Bronson this season he read Butler's Analogy, Reid and Stewart's Metaphysics, Watts's Logic, Vattel's Law of Nations, and Dwight's Theology, his readings being to some extent directed by his uncle, with whom he continued to live after begin- ning to teach school in Cheshire, in November, 1825. This school occupied Mr. Alcott from that time until June, 1827, nearly two years, when he closed it and re- turned to Wolcott. He wrote a brief account of it and of his method in it, which was published in Mr. William Russell's "Journal of Education," in January, 1828, and attracted much notice, as the school itself had done. It was in Cheshire, in fact, that Mr. Alcott began to de- velope his peculiar system of instruction, which after- wards received so much praise and blame in Boston. He continued this system in a similar school in Bristol in the winter of 1827-8, and then removed to Boston to take charge of an infant school in Salem street, in June, 1828. In the following April, he opened a private school near St. Paul's church on Tremont street, in which he remained until November 5, 1830, when he gave it up to open a school in Germantown, near Philadelphia, where with his associate, Mr. W. Russell, he remained a little more than two years. On the 22d of April, 1833, he opened a school in Philadelphia, which continued until July, 1834, soon after which, September 22, 1834, Mr. Alcott return- ed to Boston and there began his famous Temple school, concerning which so much has been written and pub- lished. This was nearly eleven years after his first win- ter's school keeping in Bristol. Mr. Alcott had now reached the 35th year of his life, and the fifth of his mar- ried life.
Concerning the Cheshire school-keeping, which Mr. Alcott has always regarded as one of the most fruitful of his experiences, his brother-in-law, Rev. Samuel J. May,
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himself distinguished as a teacher and friend of education, says in his autobiography, under the year 1827 : "Dr. William A. Alcott, then living in Wolcott, a philosopher and a philanthropist, wrote to give us some account of a remarkable school, kept on a very original plan, in the adjoining town of Cheshire, by his kinsman, Mr. A. B. Al- cott. His account excited so much my curiosity to know more of the American Pestalozzi, as he has since been called, that I wrote immediately to Mr. Alcott, begging him to send me a detailed statement of his principles and method of training children. In due time came to me a full account of the school of Cheshire, which revealed such a depth of insight into the nature of man, such a true sympathy with children, such profound appreciation of the work of education, and was, withal, so philosophi- cally arranged and exquisitely written, that I at once felt assured the man must be a genius, and that I must know him more intimately. So I wrote, inviting him ur- gently to visit me (in Brooklyn, Connecticut, where Mr. May then had a parish). He came and passed a week with me before the end of the summer. I have never, but in one instance, been so immediately taken possession of by any man I have ever met in life. He seemed to me like a born sage and saint. He was a radical in all mat- ters of reform ; went to the root of all theories, especially the subjects of education, mental and moral culture."*
At this time the Cheshire school was just coming to an end, in consequence, partly in opposition to the radical ideas of its teacher, who had now reached that point in his experience as a teacher where he had confidence in his own ideas and methods, and began to make them dis- tinctly felt, not only by pupils, but by their parents, and by the community. Previous to 1827 the district schools of Connecticut, and of all New England, were at a low degree of discipline, instruction, and comfort, and in all these matters Mr. Alcott set the example of improve-
* Life of Samuel J. May, pp. 121-2. Boston : ] Roberts Brothers. 1873.
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ment. He first gave his pupils single desks, now so com- mon, instead of the long benches and double or three- seated desks, still in use in some sections. He gave his youthful pupils slates and pencils, and blackboards. He established a school library, and taught them to enjoy the benefits of careful reading ; he broke away from the old rule of severe and indiscriminate punishments, and substituted therefor appeals to the affections and the moral sentiment of children, so that he was able almost wholly to dispense with corporeal punishment. He intro- duced, also, light gymnastic exercises, evening amuse- ments at the school-room, the keeping of diaries by young children, and, in general, an affectionate and rev- erent mode of drawing out the child's mind towards knowledge, rather than the pouring in of instruction by mechanical or compulsory processes. Familiar as this natural method of teaching has since become, it was an innovation five and forty years ago, -as much so as Pes- talozzi's method had been in Europe when he began the instruction of poor children in Switzerland a hundred years ago. Mr. Alcott followed in the course pointed out by Pestalozzi, and may be said to have been his im- mediate successor and continuator, for Pestalozzi died, (February 1827) while Mr. Alcott was in the midst of his Cheshire school. It has been remarked that the plan of communicating all instruction by immediate address to the child's sensations and conceptions, and effecting the formation of his mind by constantly calling his powers into exercise, instead of making him a mere passive re- cipient, was original with Pestalozzi,- and so it was with Mr. Alcott. Our townsman added also a Platonic and mystic tinge to his system, which, although found in Pes- talozzi's was not so marked. The most devoted of Pes- talozzi's personal friends and followers in England, Mr. James Pierrpont Greaves, who first learned of Mr. Alcott's experiments in education from Miss Harriet Martineau, after her return from America in 1837, at once recognized
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the right of our townsman to the mantle of Pestalozzi. Afterwards, in founding a school near London, on the principles of his beloved master Pestalozzi, he gave it the name of " Alcott House." He was even meditating a voyage to Boston for the sake of making Mr. Alcott's acquaintance, when he was prevented by the illness which preceded his death in 1842. Mr. Alcott's own visit to England happening later in the same year, he never met Mr. Greaves.
The principles which guided Mr. Alcott in his long course of school-teaching, in so many places, being fully set forth in the "Record of a School," lately republished in Boston, need not here be dwelt upon in detail. They were Pathagorean, Platonic, Pestalozzian, and we may add, Christian ; for though the forms of belief which he for sometime held varied widely from the standard of doctrine most commonly upheld in Connecticut, the spir- it in which he acted was always that of reverent and self- sacrificing love,-the true spirit of Christianity. He was in advance of his age, and his ideas in education, now al- most universally received, were slow in making their way among the plain and practical people of New England. Like Pestalozzi, he was continually at a disadvantage in dealing with affairs, and he was not so fortunate as to find a coadjutor in his schools who could supply the prac- tical ability to match and complete his own idealism. Hence the brief period of his success in each place where he taught, and his frequent removals from town to town, and city to city. Everywhere he impressed the best men and women with the depth and worth of his character, the fervor of his philanthropy, the delicacy and penetra- tion of his genius, and they spoke of him as Mr. May did, in the passage quoted above. They sought his fellowship, aided his plans, rejoiced in his successes, and knew how to pardon his failures. During the period from 1826 to 1836 he made the acquaintance and enjoyed the friend- ship of some of the most eminent persons in Connecti-
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cut, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania ; among them Drs. Gallaudet and Henry Barnard, of Hartford, Dr. Channing and Mr. Garrison, of Boston, Mr. R. W. Emerson, of Concord, Messrs. Matthew Carey, Roberts Vaux, and Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia ; and many of the most esteemed Boston families,-the Mays, Phillipses, Savages, Shaws, Quincys, etc. Among the eminent wo- men who took an interest in his school may be named, (besides Miss Martineau), Miss Margaret Fuller, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, her sister, the late Mrs. Hawthorne, Miss Elizabeth Hoar, and others. Both Miss Fuller and Miss Peabody were assistant teachers in the Temple school at Boston, and Miss Peabody compiled the ac- counts of it which were published under the title of " Re- cord of a School." and " Conversations with Children. on the Gospels." Mr. Emerson, who had become intimate with Mr. Alcott in 1835, saluted him with high expecta- tion in this part of his career and said to him what Burke said to John Howard, "Your plan is original, and as full of genius as of humanity ; so do not let it sleep or stop a day." To his friend at Concord Mr. Alcott seemed in his work as a teacher, a man in earnest, and of rare pow- er to awaken the highest faculties,-" to awaken the ap- prehension of the Absolute," as he said. And this was the general verdict of those persons who visited the Bos- ton school in the Masonic Temple, on Tremont Street, during the years 1834-5-6. The conversation with pupils on the New Testament, in the winter of 1835-6, excited some opposition, however, and the lectures of Dr. Gra- ham, the vegetarian, in 1836, also gave offense. The publication of the "Conversations" in the winter of 1836-7 was the occasion of a fierce attack in the newspa- pers of 1837.
The hostile criticism poured out upon Mr. Alcott and his school after the publication of this book was singu- larly varied in its nature. The Boston Advertiser com- plained that "on the most important and difficult ques-
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tions this teacher, while he endeavors to extract from his pupils every thought which may come uppermost in their minds, takes care studiously to conceal his own opinions." But this was not all : "In some cases he gives opinions, and sometimes opinions of very questionable soundness." He supposes, we are told, "that a new era in philosophy is dawning upon us in the discovery that childhood is a type of the divinity ; and the Advertiser sneeringly adds that "these conversations appear to be the first fruits of the new attempt to draw wisdom from babes and suck- lings,"-as if, forsooth, there were anything unchristian or unscriptural in such an attempt. The Courier, a paper justly celebrated afterwards for standing firmly by the unpopular cause, was more abusive than the Advertiser, -compared Mr. A. with Kneeland, who had been indicted for blasphemy, and suggested that this teacher also should be brought before the "honorable judge of our municipal court." The indignation of Mr. Emerson was aroused at this injustice, and he wrote a note which was published in the Courier, the Advertiser having declined to publish it. It appeared in March or April, 1837, and said, among other things : "In behalf of this book I have but one plea to make -this, namely : Let it be read. Any reasonable man will perceive that fragments out of a new theory of Christian instruction are not quite in the best place for examination betwixt the price current and the shipping list. Try the effect of a passage from Plato's Phædo, or the Confessions of St. Augustine, in the same place. Mr. Alcott has given proof of a strong mind and a pure heart. A practical teacher, he has dedi- cated for years his rare gifts to the science of education. He aims to make children think, and, in every question of a moral nature, to send them back on themselves for an answer. He is making an experiment in which all the friends of education are interested. I ask whether it be wise or just to add to the anxieties of his enterprise a a public clamor against some detached sentences of a
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book which, as a whole, is pervaded with original thought and sincere piety ?" But this protest had no effect on Mr. Buckingham, who soon after quoted in his Courier the opinion of a distinguished professor of Harvard Col- lege, to the effect that "one-third of Mr. Alcott's book was absurd, one-third was blasphemous, and one-third was obscene." "Such," remarked Mr. Buckingham, "will be the deliberate opinion of those who diligently read and soberly reflect."
To one who reads the two volumes thus severely con- demned, after the changes of the last thirty or forty years, such bitterness only provokes a smile. They would now be admitted with little hesitation to Sunday School libra- ries, and to use in the Sunday Schools of most Protest- ant churches. But the effect of such denunciation then was crushing. The school at the Temple, which began in 1834 with thirty pupils, and had received as many as forty, fell to ten pupils in the spring of 1837, and after lingering along for a year or two, with one or two changes of place, was finally given up in 1839. The immediate occasion of closing it then was the unwillingness of Mr. Alcott's patrons to have their children educated in the same room with a colored child whom he had admitted, and when the protesting parents found Mr. Alcott deter- mined not to dismiss the colored child, they with- drew their own children-leaving him with only five pu- pils,-his own three daughters, a child of Mr. William Rus- sell, and young Robinson, the cause of offense. Up to this time (June, 1839) the receipts of Mr. Alcott for tui- tion since he began his school at the Temple, five years before, had been $5,730 ; namely, in the first year, $1,794, the second, $1,649, the third $1,395, the fourth, (after the attack in the newspapers), $549, and in the last year only $343. The expenses of rent, furniture, assistant teachers, and the maintenance of family had been much more than this,-and in April, 1837, the costly furniture, school library, and other apparatus of the Temple school
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were sold at auction. The city press and the city mob had their way with Mr. Alcott's school, just as two years before they had their way with Mr. Garrison's anti-slav- ery meeting. The poor and unpopular schoolmaster from Connecticut was hooted down, and his generous ex- periments in education were frustrated in Boston, in spite of the protests and appeals of such champions as Dr. Al- cott, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Russell, James Freeman Clarke, Rev. Chandler Robbins, Miss Fuller, Dr. Furness, Dr. Hedge, and other friends of culture and philosophy.
During this period, as at all times since his marriage in 1830, Mr. Alcott found great sympathy and encourage- ment at his own fireside. Mrs. Alcott was a daughter of Col. Joseph May, of Boston, and was born in that city, October 8, 1800. The Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, whose memoir has been quoted, was her elder brother, born in 1793. It was at his parsonage house in Brook- lyn that she first met Mr. Alcott, in 1827, when he was teaching school in Cheshire, and it was largely on her account and through the efforts of her family and friends that he went to Boston, in 1828, and took charge of the Salem street infant school. They were married May 23, 1830, and resided in Boston until their removal to Ger- mantown in the following winter. Their oldest daughter Anna Bronson, now Mrs. Pratt, (the mother of Miss Al- cott's "Little Men") was born at Germantown, March 16, 1831, and Miss Alcott herself (Louisa May) was born at Germantown, Nov. 29, 1832. A third daughter, Eliz- abeth Sewall, was born in Boston, June 24, 1835, and died in Concord, March 14, 1858. Miss May Alcott, the youngest of the four daughters, now a well-known artist, was born in Concord, July 26, 1840. The eldest of the four, Anna Bronson Alcott, named for her grandmother, was married May 23, 1860, the anniversary of her moth- er's wedding day, to Mr. John B. Pratt, of Concord, a son of Minot Pratt, one of the Brook Farm community in former years, and of late an esteemed citizen of Concord.
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Their children are the famous "Little Men,"- Frederick Alcott Pratt, born March 28, 1863, and John Sewall Pratt, born June 24, 1866. Mrs. Pratt was left a widow by the sudden death of her husband Nov. 27, 1870, and has since resided much of the time, with her two sons, at her father's house in Concord.
It will be seen then that Miss Alcott, the authoress, was old enough to be a pupil, and in fact she was a pupil in her father's Boston school. She received her education mainly at home, after work, from her father and mother, both very competent to instruct her, and to lay the foundation of mind and character that her books display. Mrs. Alcott inherited from her ancestors, the Mays, Sew- als, Quincys, of Boston, a vigorous constitution, a robust mind, and the kindliest and most comprehensive affec- tions. In a domestic life interrupted by frequent changes of residence and of fortune, she was the stay of the house- hold, a model wife and mother, and had a reserve force of philanthropy which expended itself freely on the good works of her husband, of her friends, or such as naturally fell to her own share. Many of her marked traits reap- pear, it is said, in her daughter Louisa, in whose books, also, much of the fireside history of the Alcott, May, Sewall, and Pratt families reappears in the guise of fiction.
From birth to 1823, a period of twenty-four years, we may consider Mr. Alcott as preparing himself for the work of life. From 1823 to 1839, nearly sixteen years, he was zealously occupied in the business of education. For the last thirty years and more he has stood forth as an ideal reformer, and the representative of a school of thought and ethics, of which he was one of the founders in New England. During the years from 1834 to 1840, the so-called Transcendental Movement was making pro- gress among the New England people, and particularly in the neighborhood of Boston. Dr. Channing was one of its originators, and so, less directly, were Coleridge, Carlyle, and the Germans whom they make known to the
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English-speaking races. Mr. Alcott was a Transcenden- talist by birth, and early imbibed a relish for speculation and sentiments such as the Transcendentalists were famil- iar with. He first heard Dr. Channing preach (on the "Dignity of the Intellect ") in April, 1828, and in Octo- ber of the same year he listened to a sermon from R. W. Emerson, at the Chauncey Place church, Boston, on "The Universality of the Notion of a Deity." In Philadelphia, between the years 1830 and 1834, he read many meta- physical and mystical books, and speculated deeply on the nature of the soul and on human perfectability, so that he was well prepared, upon his return to New England in the autumn of 1834, to join in the then nascent Trans- cendental movement, which went forward rapidly to its culmination about 1840, after which it ebbed away, and gave its strength to other and more special agitations. In 1837, when the Philistines were in full cry against the Temple School and its heretical teacher, Mr. Alcott was spoken of as the leader of the Transcendentalists,-a dis- tinction now generally given to his friend Mr. Emerson, with whom he became intimate in 1835-6. They joined in many activities of the time ; were members and originators of the somewhat famous Transcendental club, which met under various names, from 1836 to 1850. It was first called "The Symposium," and met originally on the 19th of September, 1836, at the house of George Ripley, then a minister in Boston. In the October following, it met at Mr. Alcott's house (26 Front street), and there were present Mr. Emerson, George Ripley, Frederic H. Hedge, O. A. Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, and C. A. Bar- tol. The subject of conversation that day was "Ameri- can genius ; causes which hinder its growth." Two years' later, in 1838, we find it meeting at Dr. Bartol's, in Chest- nut street, Boston, where of late years the "Radical Club" has often gathered ; there were then present Mr. Emerson, Mr. Alcott, Dr. Follan, Dr. C. Francis, Theo- dore Parker, Caleb Stetson, William Russell, James Free-
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man Clarke, and John S. Dwight, the famous musical critic. The topic discussed was "Pantheism." In Sep- tember, 1839, there is record of a meeting at the house of Dr. Francis, in Watertown, where, besides those already mentioned, Margaret Fuller, William Henry Channing, Robert Bartlett, and Samuel J. May, were present. In December, 1839, at George Ripley's, Dr. Channing, George Bancroft, the sculptor Clevenger, the artist-poet C. P. Cranch, and Samuel G. Ward, were among the company. These names will give some notion of the nature of the club, and the attraction it had for thinking and aspiring persons. In October, 1840, we find Mr. Alcott in consul- tation with George Ripley and Margaret Fuller, at Mr. Emerson's house, in Concord, concerning the proposed community, which was afterwards established at Brook Farm. In 1848, the Transcendental club became the "Town and County Club," on a wider basis, and in a year or two came to an end, having done its work.
During this period of Transcendental agitation, from 1835 to 1850, Mr. Alcott gradually passed through the various degrees of his progress as a reformer. In 1835, he gave up the use of animal food, and the next year want- ed Dr. Sylvester Graham to lecture in his school. Still earlier he had joined the anti-slavery society, when found- ed by William Lloyd Garrison, and he was present at many of the celebrated gatherings of abolitionists,-for instance at the Lovejoy meeting in Faneuil Hall, in 1837, . when Wendell Phillips made his first appearance as an anti-slavery orator. In 1840, he met at Chardon Street chapel, with the ".Friends of Universal Reform," among whom were Garrison, Edmund Quincy, Henry C. Wright, Theodore Parker, W. H. Channing, Mrs. Maria Chapman, Abby Kelly, Christopher Greene, and others of the same school of thought. Soon after this, plans for life in com- inunities began to be much talked about, and Mr. Alcott indulged in the hope that something might thus be done to reform the evils of the time. He was invited to join
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