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 21
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the Brook Farm community, and that of Adin Ballou at Hopedale in Milford, but declined and instead, fell back for a while on plain living and manual labor at Concord, where he worked in field and garden, and in the winter of 1840-I chopped wood in the woodlands of that village.
Speaking of this period in Mr. Alcott's life, Dr. Chan- ning said in a letter to one of his friends, written in July, 1841 :- " Mr. Alcott little suspects how my heart goes out to him. One of my dearest ideas and hopes is the union of labor and culture. I wish to see la- bor honored, and united with the free development of the intellect and heart. Mr. Alcott, hiring himself out for day labor, and at the same time living in a re- gion of high thought, is, perhaps, the most interesting object in our Commonwealth. I do not care much for Orpheus in 'The Dial ;' but Orpheus at the plough is af- ter my own heart. There he teaches a grand lesson ; more than most of us teach by the pen."
Sailing for England in May, 1842, his experience there confirmed Mr. Alcott in his dream of an ideal community, and on his return in October, he began to prepare for found- ing such a paradise. Meanwhile he refused to comply with the requirements of civil society, and for declining to pay his tax was lodged in the Concord jail, January 16, 1843. The late Samuel Hoar, father of Judge Hoar, and Hon. George F. Hoar, paid the tax without Mr. Alcott's con- sent, and he was released the same day. During the fol- lowing spring, in company with one of his English friends, Charles Lane, he examined estates with a view to pur- chase one for the proposed community, and finally Lane bought the "Wyman Farm, in Harvard, consisting of 90 acres, with an old farm-house upon it, where Mr. Alcott and his family, with Mr. Lane and a few others, took up their abode in June, 1843, calling the new home "Fruit- lands."
This place, a picturesque farm, lying now along the Worcester and Nashua railroad, and bordering the Nash-
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ua river in Harvard, Mass., was not well adapted for such an experiment as Mr. Alcott and his friends undertook ; nor did their hopes and plans agree with the condition of things in the world. Their way of life was to be cheer- ful and religious, free from the falsehood and the cares that infested society ; it became, in fact, hard and dismal, and ended in bringing Mr. Alcott, almost with despair in his heart, to give up his hopes of initiating a better life among mankind by the example of such communities as he had planned Fruitlands to be. He finally abandoned the farm, in poverty and disappointment, about the mid- dle of January, 1844. The lesson thus taught, was a se- vere one, but Mr. Alcott looks back upon it as one of the turning points in his life. From that day forward, he has had less desire to change the outward condition of men upon earth than to modify and enlighten their inward life. He soon after returned to Concord, and in 1845 bought a small farm there with an old house upon it, which he re- built and christened "Hillside." A few years later when it passed into the hands of Nathaniel Hawthorne, he changed the name to "Wayside." It is the estate next east of that where Mr. Alcott now resides, in Con- cord. At " Hillside " Mr. Alcott gardened and gave con- versations, and in the year 1847, while living there, he built in Mr. Emerson's garden, not far off, the unique summer house which ornamented the grounds until with- in ten years past, when it decayed and fell into ruin. In 1848 he removed from Concord to Boston, and did not return until 1857. Since then he has lived constantly in that town.
It was a favorite theory of Mr. Alcott's, through all this period of agitation and outward activity, that he could propagate his ideas best by conversations. Accordingly, from 1839 to the present time, a quarter of a century, he has held conversations on his chosen subjects, and in many and widely separated parts of the country. He has not valued, as many reformers do, the opportunity of
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moving great numbers of people, at conventions and in churches, but has preferred the more quiet, and, as he esteems it, the more natural method of conversing. This period of his life may perhaps then be best described as the period of conversation ; although of later years he has often spoken from pulpits and platforms, on the same topics with which his conversations have to do. It is to be remembered, also, that Mr. Alcott was the first per- son in America, at least in modern times, to develop conversation as a means of public instruction, for which it was much employed in the period of Greek philosophy. An ingenious critic, Mr. Harris, of St. Louis, has lately argued that the philosophy of Mr. Alcott is rather that of Aristotle than of Plato ; but however this may be, it is certain that his conversational methods are more like those which Plato has made so familiar than like the sen- tentious disquisitions of Aristotle. In spirit, it must be said that from what we know of Pythagoras, he was more nearly the prototype of Mr. Alcott in philosophy than either Plato or Aristotle.
The literary period of Mr. Alcott's life has been subsequent to his greatest activity as a teacher by con- versation, and it is only of late years that he has ap- peared as the author of volumes. The "Record of a School," and the "Conversations on the Gospels," were compiled by other persons, reporting what was said. During the publication of the Dial, from 1840 to 1844, when it was the organ of the Transcendentalists, Mr. Alcott contributed some pages, among them his "Orphic Sayings," which attracted much notice, not always of the most respectful kind. Other writings of that period and earlier, for the most part, remained in manuscript. After a long period in which he published little or nothing, Mr. Alcott, about 1858, became the superintendent of schools in Concord, and in this capacity printed several long re- ports, which are noticeable publications. He published some essays, poems, and conversations in the Boston
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Commonwealth and The Radical, between 1863 and 1868, and in the last-named year brought out a modest volume of essays entitled " Tablets." This was followed, in 1872, by another volume styled "Concord Days," and still other volumes are said to be in preparation. Mr. Alcott has been pressed to write his autobiography, for which his journals and other collections would give him ample material, and it is to be hoped he will apply him -. self to this task. Should the work include his corres- pondence with contemporaries, it would be of ample bulk and of great value.
At all times he was enamored of rural pursuits, and has practiced gardening with zeal and success. His pres- ent Concord estate, of a few acres only, was laid out and for years cultivated by himself. His connection with the public schools of Concord continued for some years and was of much service to them. In later times he has visited and spoken in the schools wherever he hap- pened to be lecturing or conversing, particularly at the West, where he has been warmly welcomed in his annual tours. His home has been at all times a center of hos- pitality, and a resort for persons with ideas and aspira- tions. Not unfrequently his formal conversations have been held there ; at other times in the parlors of his friends, at public halls or college rooms, or in the cham- bers of some club. A list of the towns and cities in which these conversations have taken place, with the names of those who have had part in them, would indi- cate how wide has been the influence, for thought and culture, exercised by Mr. Alcott in this peculiar manner. .
Mr. Alcott is in person tall and fair, of kindly and dig- nified bearing, resembling somewhat the portraits of Wordsworth, but of a more elegant mien and a more pol- ished manner than Wordsworth seems to have possessed. There are several portraits of Mr. Alcott, at different ages,- one a crayon sketch by Mrs. Richard Hildreth, taken in 1855, and another by Seth Cheney the Con-
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necticut-born crayon artist, taken about 1855. This is not a crayon, however, but a medallion in plaster, and perhaps the best representation of Mr. Alcott's features yet made. A bust modelled by the sculptor, Thomas R. Gould, in the autumn of 1873, when cut in marble, will give his features and expression at the age of seventy- four. At this period, though touched by time, he is still youthful in spirit and capable of much travel and fatigue and of assiduous mental labor. It is not, however, so much by intellectual efforts that he has distinguished himself, as by a "wise passivity," and a natural intuition, or as Mr. Emerson has said of him, in the sketch which the New American Cyclopedia contains, by "subtle and deep science of that which actually passes in thought." Mr. Emerson adds : "Thought is ever seen by him in its relation to life and morals. Those persons who are best prepared by their own habit of thought set the highest value on his subtle perception and facile generalization." No person of our time seems to have valued them more highly than Mr. Emerson himself, and the long and con- stant friendship between these two founders of a school of philosophy in New England deserves mention in any memoir of either. Mr. Alcott has sought to pay a tribute to his friend by the writing of an essay concerning his genius, which was privately printed in Cambridge in 1865.
Some of the other writings of Mr. Alcott have already been mentioned, and all of them will be found in the Wolcott Centenary Library. They are compiled in part from the journals which he has been in the habit of keeping for many years, and which, along with his " Autobiographical Collections " now form a long series of volumes in his library, of great personal and historical interest. They have been freely used in the preparation of this sketch. But however much or little he may write in the serene years of age which still remain to him, he will probably point to his children, as the old poet did to his early lost son, -
" Ben Jonson, his best piece of poetry."
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MISS LOUISA M. ALCOTT.
Miss Louisa May Alcott, the popular writer of humorous and pathetic tales, owes her training, and thus her success in writing, to her father and mother more than to all the world beside. Her instruction for many years came almost wholly from them, and though her genius has taken a direction quite other than that of Mr. Alcott (guided strongly by her mother's social humor and practical be- nevolence), it still has many traits of resemblance ; while the material on which it works is largely drawn from the idyllic actual life of the Alcott family. It can scarcely be remembered when Louisa Alcott did not display the story-telling talent, either with her voice or with her pen. Her first book was published nineteen years ago, and had been written several years before that. For a long period afterward she contributed copiously to news- papers and periodicals of no permanent renown, though some of the pieces then written have since appeared in her collection of tales. Her first great success as a wri- ter was in 1863, when, after a brief experience as an army nurse, followed by a long and almost fatal illness, she contributed to the Boston Commonwealth those remark- able papers called "Hospital Sketches." These were made up from her letters written home during her army life, and bore the stamp of reality so strongly upon them, that they caught at once the popular heart. They were re-printed in many newspapers, and in a small volume, and made her name known and beloved all over the North. From that time forward she has been a popular writer for the periodicals, but her great success as an author of books did not begin until she found a publisher of the right quality in Mr. Thomas Niles, of the Boston firm of Roberts Brothers, who have now published all her
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works for six years. Within that time the "Little Women " and their successors have been published, and the sale of all her books has exceeded a quarter of a million copies. Her earliest novel, "Moods," published in 1864, by A. K. Loring, of Boston, did not at first com- mand much attention, but has since sold many thousand copies. Her second novel, "Work," was published by Roberts, in the summer of 1873, and at once had a great sale, both in America and in Europe. Many of her books have been translated into French and German, and there are now few living authors whose works are so universally read.
MISS MAY ALCOTT.
Mr. Alcott's youngest daughter, now pursuing her art in England, has been known for some years as a grace- ful artist, and art teacher. She has studied in London and in Rome, as well as in her own New England, and though she has attempted few original pictures or sketch- es, she has shown an appreciation for drawing and model- ling and coloring, which give promise of excellent work hereafter. It is interesting to know that the best por- traits of her mother in existence are the work of her hands-one a crayon sketch, and the other a medallion modelled by Miss May Alcott quite early in her course as an art student. She has also had some practice of late, as a writer, and several of her letters from Europe have been published in the journals of the day.
The town of Wolcott can point with pride to the career of the Alcott family in all its branches, as one of its glories. Those who have remained within the town limits have been diligent and virtuous citizens, while of those who have gone forth into the great world, more
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than one have distinguished themselves and become illus- trious without wandering from the ancestral path of vir- tue and fidelity. Mr. Bronson Alcott has held opinions and engaged in enterprises, during his lifetime, which would not have commanded the entire approbation of his townsmen, had they been called to pass judgment upon them ; but with the general result of his long and varied life, neither they nor he can have reason to be dis- satisfied. He has not accumulated riches, nor attained political power, nor made labor superfluous and comfort cheaper by ingenious mechanical inventions. But he has maintained, at all times and amid many discouragements, the Christian doctrine that the life is more than meat, and that the perishing things of this world are of small moment compared with things spiritual and eternal. He has devoted himself, in youth with ardor, in mature and advancing years with serene benevolence, to the task of improving the hearts and lives of men, by drawing their attention to the sweetness of philosophy and the charms of a religion at once contemplative and practical. There is no higher work than this, and none that leaves so plainly its impress on the character and aspect of him who spends a lifetime in it. Those who had the pleas- ure of seeing and hearing Mr. Alcott, at the Centenary gathering will remember how much his words and his presence added to the interest of that occasion. And we are confident the reader will not regret the space allotted to his biography in this collection.
DR. WILLIAM A. ALCOTT.
Dr. William A. Alcott was born in Wolcott, Connecti- cut, on the 6th of August, 1798. His father was a hard working farmer, in moderate circumstances, being a lin- eal descendant of the third generation of Mr. John Al- cock, the first settler in the territory which became Wol- cott. His mother, Anna Andrus Alcott, was descended from Abraham Andrus, one of the original settlers of Waterbury, and was a woman of practical good sense, having been a teacher in the public schools, which was regarded, in those days, as more than an ordinary accom- plishment. His opportunites for education were confined to the district school, for three or four months in the summer, and four months in the winter, until he was eight years old, and after that age, to the winter term for four or five years. After this he attended for about six months the select school taught by Rev. Mr. Keys, the minister of the parish, in which school he acted fre- quently as tutor, and where he first began to develop a genius and pleasure in teaching, which afterwards formed a large part of his life work. He possessed from his early years a taste for the reading of books, which was prob- ably inculcated by his mother, and continued to be fos- tered by his associations with his cousin, A. Bronson Alcott, who was also of the same mind. In addition to the books in his father's house, and those which he could borrow from the neighbors, he had access to the parish library, after he was fourteen years of age, which library, though not in a flourishing condition, furnished a
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number of very valuable books, and some of them ex- erted a most marked influence upon his character in after years.
When a little more than eighteen years of age he com- menced teaching school in his native district, the school house standing but a few rods west of his father's dwell- ing house, and in the district where the larger part of the pupils and inhabitants were his relatives. The wages were ten dollars per month for three months, and seemed doubtless quite a sum for a lad to bring into his father's treasury, even though the father boarded him during the time ; especially when the work performed out of school hours was equal in value to the board. In those days the son had no right to money for his labor while under twenty-one years of age, for the law said the son should serve the father until twenty-one, and to obey the law was one part of Christian life, whether the law was Christian or not. His labor in the school and that for his father consumed every moment not occupied in sleep, and divided his efforts to such an extent that the success of the school was not what it would have been if the time out of school could have been given to plans and appli- ances for the forwarding of the work of teaching.
We make the following extracts from a Memoir of Dr. Alcott, published in Barnard's Journal of Education, for March, 1858 :
For six successive winters, with the single interruption of one year (when he went to teach), he continued to be employed in different parts of Hartford and Litchfield counties, with a grad- ually increasing compensation. By a few he was valued because they thought him a smart master, who would make the pupils know their places; by others, for his reputation as a scholar ; and by others still, because he was valued highly by the children. It was in those days very much as it is now ; parents would not visit schools where their children were if they could help it; and what they knew about the school they had to take at second-hand. Two things he certainly did as a teacher : he labored incessantly,
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" both in season and out of season." No man was ever more punctual or more faithful to his employers. And then he gov- erned his school with that kind of martial law which secured a silence, that in the common schools of that day had been little known, which fact secured for him one species of reputation that extended far and wide, so that his services were by a particular class much sought after.
In a teacher's life under the influences, and surrounded by the difficulties that existed in those days, it could not be expected but that some mistakes would be made, yet with all these, he was pre-eminently a suc- cessful teacher and was very greatly attached to his em- ployment, and began to entertain the hope that he could one day make teaching his one permanent occupation though there were serious difficulties in the way. The scanty wages, twelve dollars a month, gave little encour- agement to such an object, besides male teachers were usually hired for only three or four months in the year, and if he concluded on this life work his chosen profes- sion, that of a printer, must be abandoned, which he was not fully reconciled to do.
In the spring of 1822, when he was nearly twenty-four years of age, after he had closed his sixth annual winter term, he engaged in a school for one year. It was a new thing in the place, but re- lying on his fame, which had long since reached them, and anxious to obtain his services, even at extra cost, it was agreed to employ him for the time above mentioned, including a vacation of one month, at nine dollars a month, or ninety-nine dollars a year and his board. To this was added, by a liberal individual, one dollar, making the sum one hundred dollars, upon which the offer was accepted, and he began his school early in May. He boarded in the families, which, to a person of a missionary spirit, such as he possessed, had its advantages, and Dr. Alcott endeavored to im- prove these opportunities to raise the standard of education among the people. One of the first things he urged upon the at- tention of his employers was an improvement of the school-room, and after much effort and patience in urging upon parents the
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physical benefits of some reforms, he secured seats in the school- room with backs to them in the place of the old slab benches. Heating and ventilating came next, but the most he could accom- plish in this respect was to open the doors and windows at every recess, and let the pure air of heaven sweep through for a few moments. His largest improvements, however, were in regard to methods of teaching, particularly for the youngest pupils, and for these he substituted the employment of drawing on slates as an amusement as well as improvement, which was a new idea in the schools of those days. He procured a dozen or two of small slates and one large one, which latter answered for a blackboard, upon which were pictured birds, dogs, cats, houses, trees, and many other things, and proceeding from these to the making of letters in the printed form, then to words and their arrangement into sentences, and compositions. He delighted, also, to get around him a group of children, and by telling stories of history thus secured their cheerful and punctual attendance rather than by way of flogging. To these exercises he added some extra recitations out of school hours which he was not allowed to hear in the formal six hours. His zeal and labors were as untiring as they were unheard of before in that region, for he not only gave up his mornings and evenings to the children and their parents, but he would not permit himself to sit in the school room, and was literally on his feet from morning until night, or, as more com- monly expressed, was "always on the jump."
The severities of his self-denials and exertions, joined to oth- er causes, especially a feeble and delicate constitution, brought on him, toward the end of the summer, a violent attack of ery- sipelas, from the effects of which, though he escaped with his life, he never entirely recovered.
At the close of the year for which he had engaged, although the district did not feel able to continue him by the year, they unanimously engaged him for the term of six months the ensuing winter, at the price of thirteen dollars a month. This was deem- ed a compensation quite in advance of those times, and was ac- cepted as entirely satisfactory." During the winter of 1824-5, Mr. A. Bronson Alcott succeeded him in this district while Dr. Alcott was engaged in the central school of Bristol, a district ad-
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joining the scene of his former labors. Here he took upon him- self the additional work of the study of medicine, restricting himself to four hours of sleep, which brought on him a severe ill- ness, from which causes he did not add to his reputation as a teacher. In studying medicine he had no intention to relinquish teaching but the better to prepare himself for this profession, and also, should his health fail, of which there were increasing signs, he might have another method of doing good and securing a com- petency for life.
During the winter of 1825-6, he attended a regular course of medical lectures at New Haven, and in the following March re- ceived a Diploma to practice medicine and surgery. At this time his health was far from good and he began to have apprehensions of fatal results of lung difficulty.
Leaving the college at a season of the year when it was not customary to hire male teachers, he, after some hesitation made application for the central school in his native town at a dollar and a half a week and "board around," that being the usual rate paid to female teachers. This offer, though unexpected and not a little mysterious, was accepted by the district ; and in May, 1826, he commenced his work.
It was his settled determination, and he did not hesitate to make it fully known, to have a model school, on his own favorite plan, although the pecuniary means were wanting. He had not ten dollars in the world. All his resources, after paying for his medical education and a few books, and after remunerating his father, as he was proud to believe he did, for the expense of bringing him up, were soon exhausted in fitting up his school- room, - in the purchase of maps, designs, vessels for flowers and plants, and such fixtures as in his judgment would conduce to the proper cultivation of the mind and heart and taste of his pupils. He rightly judged that a plain and unpretentious people, who knew him well, would not seriously object to innovations which cost them nothing in dollars and cents. He was, indeed, regarded as a little visionary, but was allowed to go on uninterrupted in his plans ; and in his missionary lite, going from house to house for his board, he had opportunity for making, from time to time, such explanations as were quite satisfactory.
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