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 22
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Besides carrying out and perfecting the approved method of
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teaching the elementary branches, which he had for several years been applying with so much success, he added to them several others, particularly in defining grammar and geography. He introduced, also, what he called his silent, or Quaker, exercises. This consisted in requiring his pupils, at a certain time every morning, usually immediately after the opening of the school and devotional exercises, to lay aside everything else, and give them- selves up to reflection on the events, duties, and privileges of the twenty-four hours next preceding. At the close of this unbroken silence, which usually lasted five minutes, any pupil was liable to be called upon to relate the recitations and events of the preceding day, in their proper order and sequence.
In commencing this school in his native town, Dr. Alcott had other and very exalted ulterior aims. His warm heart embraced no less than the whole of his townsmen. These he meant to en- lighten, elevate, and change, until Wolcott should become a miniature Switzerland. But his pulmonary difficulties, which had been for ten years increasing upon him, aggravated, no doubt, by hard study, improper diet, and other irregularities of the pre- ceding winter, now became threatening in the extreme. Besides a severe cough and great emaciation, he was followed by hectic fever, and the most exhausting and discouraging perspirations. He fought bravely to the last moment, but was compelled to quit the field and relinquish for the present all hopes of accomplishing his mission.
For a short time he followed the soundest medical advice he could obtain ; keeping quiet, taking a little medicine, eating nu- tritious food, and when his strength would permit, breathing pure air. This course was at length changed for one of greater activ- ity, and less stimulous. He abandoned medicine, adopted, for a time, the "starvation system," or nearly that, and threw himself by such aids as he could obtain, into the fields and woods, and wandered among the hills and mountains. In the autumn he was evidently better and was able to perform light horticultural labors a few hours of the day, and to ride on horseback. For six months he continued the horseback exercise, almost daily, as a sort of journeyman physician; at the end of which period he commenced the practice of medicine on his own responsibility, at
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DR. WILLIAM A. ALCOTT.
Wolcott Centre, continuing to make his professional visits on horseback. His hopes of inspiring the people of his native town with a spirit of improvement now revived. He not only practiced medicine but took a deep interest in the moral and intellectual condition of the people. He superintended a Sabbath school ; aided in the examination of the public school teachers, and held teachers meetings in his own hired house. Not Oberlin himself, in his beloved Ban de La Roche, had purer or more benevolent or more exalted purposes."
Dr. Alcott's application to become a member of the Congregational Society is still preserved among the pa- pers of the Society, and corroborates the above extracts.
DR. ALCOTT'S LETTER.
" Clerk of the Congregational Society in Wolcott :
SIR :- Believing that regular public preaching of the Gospel useful to Society in general and a means of training up children in the way they should go, as well as of affording instruction to the ignorant and those that are out of the way even in later life ;- and furthermore despairing of seeing any other Society in town do any thing at present, I have come to a conclusion to make request that my name be entered among the names of those who belong to your Society, until such a state of things shall arise as may seem to justify the withdrawing of my support. Should a tax be laid this day suffer me to be considered a member of the Society and taxed accordingly. Yours, &c.
WOLCOTT, April 16, 1827.
WM. A. ALCOTT.
The Sabbath school which the Doctor inaugurated was the first one in the parish superintended by a layman, and was a successful school, being remembered with great pleasure by a number of people still living .* One feature of the school was the books which the superin- tendent contrived (some way, no one knows how,) to obtain for the children to read. It was a marvel of joy
* See page 109 of this History.
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then, and as such is still very distinctly remembered. Not content with this effort to furnish books for the Sab- bath School, "he began to collect a library for the town." These volumes were loaned from time to time, but the plan was so troublesome that he abandoned it, and pre- vailed with his friends and townsmen to establish a pub- lic town library on the ruins of the old one, to which ref- erence has been made. This library continued a few years, and then was distributed among the original con- tributors.
He had already begun to write for the newspapers, on various subjects, particularly on common school education. A series of papers had been contributed and published in the Columbian Register, of New Haven, as early as 1823, and several shorter se- ries on the same subject appeared in this and other papers during the years 1826 and 1827. Another series appeared from his pen between the years 1826 and 1829, in the Boston Journal of Edu- cation, then under the care of William Russell.
These papers brought him into association with the best minds in his native State, on the subject of edu- cational improvement, particularly the Rev. Samuel J. May, of Brooklyn, Conn., and others in Hartford.
Dr. Alcott's labors in Wolcott, in his profession as phy- sician and his connection with the Sabbath school and the Ecclesiastical Society, are spoken of in the highest terms of praise, though it is acknowledged that his opin- ions and ideas were regarded at the time, by some of the people, as radical and a little visionary. To-day his memory is honored by all the people, and at the late Centenary meeting no descendant of Wolcott's sons was received with greater cordiality by the people than Rev. William P. Alcott, the only son of the Doctor.
In the Autumn of the year 1829, he resigned his med- ical practice and engaged in teaching a school in the town of Southington. In this school he followed suc- cessfully some of his new ideas of teaching, so far that a decided impression was made by them, but the effort im-
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paired his health so that he gave up for a time all hope of teaching and concluded to labor on a farm near New Haven. Just as he was settling on the farm he had oc- casion to be in Hartford, where, to his surprise, he met Rev. Wm. C. Woodbridge, who had returned from Eu- rope, and, though in feeble health, was endeavoring to rouse the attention of a few friends of education to the necessity of forming a school for teachers, on the plan of Mr. Fellenberg's school, in Hofwyl, which he had been studying for some time. Mr. Woodbridge inquired of Dr. Alcott what he considered the capital error of mod- ern education. "The custom of pushing the cultivation of the intellect at the expense of health and morals," was the reply. This question and reply laid the founda- tion for an acquaintance and friendship that was as last- ing as the life of the parties. He engaged as an assist- ant to Mr. Woodbridge in a "miniature Fellenberg school" in the vicinity of Hartford, for the moderate compensation of twelve dollars a month, and such was his enthusiasm in trying to elevate the common schools, that when offered three hundred dollars a year as teach- er he only required Mr. Woodbridge to raise his wages to fifteen dollars a month.
During this engagement with Mr. Woodbridge the press teemed with his articles ; especially the Connecti- cut Observer and Hartford Courant. One very substan- tial and elaborate review of a report on the Manual La- bor School of Pennsylvania, the product of his pen, ap- peared and met with much favor, and was quoted by for- eign writers. At this time he conceived the idea of es- tablishing a journal of education, but for several reasons was under the necessity of delaying the enterprise.
It was during the years 1830 and 1831 that he prepared, and on several occasions delivered, his essay on the con- struction of school houses, to which the American Insti- tute of Instruction, in the Autumn of 1831, awarded a premium, and which led the way to that large and thor-
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ough improvement in this department, which is now go- ing on in this country and elsewhere.
At this time, also, he engaged with Mr. Gallaudet, Hon. Roger W. Sherman, Hon. Hawley Olmstead, Mr. Wood- bridge, and others in forming a state society for the im- provement of common schools, and he did much to sus- tain it.
A History of the first public school of Hartford, in which some recent advances had been made, a volume of a hundred pages or more, was written by him about this time, and also a volume of nearly the same size, en- titled " A Word to Teachers." It is believed that his es- says, in conjunction with the labors of others, had much influence, not only in New England, but throughout the United States. The most important of all his numerous labors at this period was his travels for the purpose of collecting facts concerning schools. Reports of these travels were made in various ways, and enlisted much interest and tended to awaken the public mind to the subject of common schools. In 1831, Mr. Woodbridge removed to Boston to edit the Journal of Education, and induced the Doctor to follow him. On his arrival in Bos- ton, through a severe storm, he was attacked with a pulmonary difficulty, from which he but slowly recovered, but from which difficulty, thereafter, for nearly twenty- five years, he was surprisingly free ; nor did he often have so much as a common cold.
Doctor Alcott had formed many valuable acquaint- ances in Connecticut ; among them were Dr. John L. Comstock, Rev. Horace Hooker, Rev. C. A. Goodrich, Noah Webster, A. F. Wilcox, and Josiah Holbrook, and therefore he left the state with regret.
Besides assisting Mr. Woodbridge in conducting the Journal of Education, by writing a large proportion of the articles on physical education, methods of instruction, and book notices, he was for two years, 1832 and 1833, the practical editor of a children's weekly paper, started
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by Mr. Woodbridge and his aged father. The paper was called the " Juvenile Rambler," and was perhaps the first paper of the kind ever issued in this country. He also engaged in labors in various forms in the cause of edu- cation, never losing sight for a moment of the public schools. During 1832 and 1833 he wrote " The Young Man's Guide," a book which found an extensive sale, and proved remunerative to its author, as well as accomplish- ing a great amount of good. At the end of the year 1833, he was engaged by S. G. Goodrich as the editor of a monthly journal entitled "Parley's Magazine," which he edited four successive years, continuing his relation with the " Annals of Education," which he did to the end of his career, sometimes with pay, and sometimes without. His contributions to the periodical press, many of them to the Recorder, Watchman, and Traveler, of Boston, and to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, have been almost innumerable. He preserved copies of more than a thousand. Probably no individual up to his time ever devoted more hours during forty years to edu- cation, especially that of the common school and the family, than Doctor Alcott. It is difficult to imagine any mode in which more beneficial results could be se- cured to the schools than by the varied and instructive lectures which he delivered to schools, teachers, parents, and pupils, during many years of travel for this purpose, and the innumerable hints and suggestions which his con- versation would supply, on the subjects of hygiene, ele- mentary instruction, and physical and moral training, to all, whether old or young. The labor of such a life is not easily summed up or described, but one conclusion is inevitable : it was a life of immense work, and is very fittingly represented by a remark written by the sister of the Doctor's wife, in a letter to the author of this book : "He was an earnest worker for humanity; the great purpose and aim of his life being to make men better,- to raise them physically, intellectually, and morally."
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HISTORY OF WOLCOTT.
Dr. Alcott married (January 14th, 1836,) Miss Phebe L. Bronson, daughter of Deacon Irad Bronson, of Bris- tol, and grand-daughter of Deacon Isaac Bronson, of Wolcott, who still survives him. His children are Wil- liam P., now a successful Congregational minister, and Phebe A., married and residing in Alabama.
Dr. Alcott's home, for the last fifteen years of his life, was in the town of Newton near Boston, and the last seven on a place of his own in Auburndale, a village of that town, where he died of pleurisy, March 29, 1859. His remains were buried in the Newton cemetery. His last illness lasted but one week, and he seemed to be con- valescent on the day before his death, so much so that he dictated several letters, and as a member of the School Committee gave some directions concerning the grading of the school grounds. During the night his suffering returned in great severity, he being unable to lie down. He was conscious that his end was near, and made such final arrangements as were necessary. In the morning his pain was less but his breath grew shorter and he be- came unable to speak. Towards noon, while sitting in an easy chair, he suddenly looked up, extending his hands in the same direction, while an expression of delight passed over his face, as if he beheld a vision of glory, · and fell asleep. His wife and daughter were with him in · his last sickness and received his last expressions of con- fidence and devotion, and to his son, then in college and for whom it was thought unnecessary to send until it was too late, he sent this message: "Tell William to live for others, not for himself." He died, as he had always hoped to die, "with his harness on." It was his desire that a post mortem examination should be made, which revealed such a variety of morbid conditions of the lungs " as to make it surprising that he had lived so long. He was accustomed to say that " through the Divine bless- ings on his simple diet and healthful modes of living, his life had been lengthened twice as long as King Hez- ekiah's."
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DR. WILLIAM A. ALCOTT.
In the life and labors of Dr. Alcott, as well as in many others, the people of Wolcott have much reason to feel greatly honored.
Dr. Alcott's published volumes are classified as follows :
I. Works designed particularly for schools and teach- ers, and friends of education,-nineteen volumes,-nine of them containing over three hundred pages each.
II. Physiology, physical education, and health,-thirty- one volumes,-twelve of which contain over three hun- dred pages ; several of which had passed through twelve editions each, two fifteen, and one twenty-one, in 1858.
III. Books for the family and school library,-fourteen volumes,-one of which had passed through twelve edi- tions, one through seventeen, and one through twenty- two editions in 1858.
IV. Books for Sabbath School library,-forty-four vol- umes.
Whole number of volumes, one hundred and eight.
REV. WILLIAM P. ALCOTT.
Rev. William P. Alcott, son of Dr. William A. Alcott, was born in Dorchester, Mass., July 11th, 1842. He grad- uated at Williams College in 1861, and at Andover Theo- logical Seminary in 1865. After preaching for a short time in Heath and Cohasset, Mass., and giving a course of lectures on chemistry in Williams College, he was set- tled over the Congregational church, in North Greenwich, Conn., Feb. 18, 1868, where he still remains. He was married Aug. 26, 1868, to Sarah Jane, daughter of the late Rev. David Merrill, of Peacham, Vt. He has been very successful in his parish and is rising in influence and esteem in his own denomination, and wherever known. He was moderator this year (1873) of Fairfield West Consociation. His intellectual character is of the scien- tific-philosophic type, yet he holds firmly to revealed truths as such, and is reliable in his convictions and judg- ments. His mother being a Bronson (grand-daughter of Dea. Isaac) he has an inheritance of ancestry in which many would find great satisfaction.
While in college he accompanied, by appointment, a scientific expedition to Greenland,-an honor and an ad- vantage quite important. He has given much attention to science, and especially to botany. As might be ex- pected, he cherishes many of the thoughts and principles of moral and physical culture, so forcibly and practically given to the world by his honored father.
JOSEPH ATKINS.
Joseph Atkins came from Hartford to Bristol about 1752, where he owned a dwelling and several pieces of land, and the half of a grist mill. He removed to Wolcott in 1758 or 1759, where he purchased several pieces of land. Not long after his settlement here, he built a grist mill on Mad River, a little below the Great Falls. He afterwards owned a saw mill near his grist mill. In 1770 he resided with his son Joseph, and it is thought that the house in which they lived stood half a mile east of the mill, on a lot lying south of the highway, a little east of Mr. Ira H. Hough's present dwelling house, but it possi- bly may have stood near the mill. Mr. Atkins was a very energetic, successful business man, and was an im- portant man in the organization of Farmingbury Society, and in building the first Meeting house. He gave two acres of earth surface for the use of the Society for a church site, and other purposes. It could not be said to be land, for much of it is rock, but yet it is very good upon which to build a church, and has served that end as well as any portion of the town could. His name, and that of his wife, Abigail, stand seventh and eighth on the list among the first members of the church. He died in 1782, as given on the church record,-there being no inscrip- tion on grave stones to mark his grave. He was sev- enty-one years of age. His wife, Abigail, died in 1796, and was probably over eighty years of age.
DEACON JOSEPH ATKINS.
Deacon Joseph Atkins, the son of Joseph, senior, who came from Bristol, was elected second deacon of the church April 19, 1786, or four years after the death of his father, and when the church was prosperous, and had a large number of men that, we should judge, might have served acceptably as deacons. He is said to have been a polemical deacon, always ready to go through with the argument of the decrees without hesitancy, and without a shadow of doubt as to the interpretation of the Scrip- tures thereby given. He was a very faithful, diligent Christian man, always at his place in church, and in visit- ing and comforting the flock, as an under shepherd. On a Sabbath, once, a bear came from the wood and took a pig from the deacon's pen and made a dinner of him, but it is not asserted that the reason of his taking the deacon's pig was that he was sure the deacon would be at church on that day ; nor do we learn that the deacon staid at home on Sunday afterward in order to shoot that old bruin ; but we are quite certain that if the peo- ple at church in those days had heard the report of a gun on Sunday (a thing we do not mind now-a-days), they would have rallied to a man for a fight with the Indians, not dreaming that any other occurrence could be suffi- cient cause for such a desecration of that day.
Faith ran in grooves in those days, and one groove was politics (not allowable now-a-days), and when Mr. Thomas Jefferson came up in politics against the great Washington, it is said the deacon was terrible on poor
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Thomas. The argument ran thus: "If Jefferson (sup- posed to be an infidel) were made President of the Uni- ted States, the Meeting houses would be burned to the ground, and Christians would be burned at the stake." To us this is amusing, knowing as we do how perfectly innocent Mr. Jefferson was of all this kind of argument. However, it shows how diligent the deacon was to watch over the faith and liberty of the church, even though he might not watch the bears of the woods sufficiently on Sunday to save his pigs. After the death of the deacon's father, in 1782, he resided near the mill, east side of the river, in a house built, perhaps, by his father, or by Mr. James Barrett, who resided in that vicinity as one of the first settlers in that part of the town. It was near this house that the deacon's great apple tree stood, from which he is said to have taken apples in such quantity that he made nineteen barrels of cider from one harvest- ing. The tree was cut down by Mr. Ira H. Hough a few years since, it being over four feet in diameter at the place where it was cut off. The Deacon maintained his integrity of character and faithfulness to the church until 1805, when he resigned his office of deacon and removed west, being among the first settlers (it is said) in the town of Smyrna, Chenango county, N. Y., where he died.
REV. AARON C. BEACH.
Rev. Aaron C. Beach was born in South Orange, N, J., and was graduated at Yale College, in 1835, and in the autumn of the same year entered Yale Theological Semi- nary, with greatly impaired health. He was licensed to preach by the New Haven West Association, at Water- bury, in 1838, and continued in the seminary about two years after. Late in the year 1841, while visiting in Southington, he was invited to preach in Wolcott, ac- cepted the invitation, and preached in the school-house December 19th, the Meeting house not being completed. He then engaged to preach for the people of Wolcott six months, at the end of which time he received a unani- mous call to become their pastor, accepted it, and was ordained to that office June 22d, 1842. It was no small work to engage as pastor of a church and parish where there had been so much division and violent feeling as had been in Wolcott during three years previous to 1841 ; but Mr. Beach was, as far as now can be seen, " the right man in the right place." The house of worship was com- pleted during the fall and winter, and dedicated January 19th, 1843, when the old difficulties seem to have been buried forever, and the people with one heart fol- lowed their leader into the harvest-field to gather the harvest. During his fifteen years of labor here forty-four were added to the membership of the 'church, twenty- seven of whom by profession ; and the dwelling-house (now the parsonage) was built by himself, as his house, and was afterwards sold to the Society. His labors seem
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to have been of the quiet, steady, every-day-life sort, without great excitement, and without days of complain- ing and discouragement. Such a life-work of faithful- ness is not always appreciated by those to whom it is de- voted. In a letter, received from Mr. Beach since this book was commenced, he speaks, as also he did at the Centenary meeting, in the highest terms, of the kindness and sympathy which he received during the whole time of his labors in the parish, and the feeling of kindness is reciprocated from this parish toward him.
Mr. Beach married Lucy Walkley, of Southington, December 28th, 1840. She died in Wolcott, April 2d, 1853. He married, 2d, Jane Talcott, of Portland, Conn., May 6th, 1856. His children are as follows :
David Frame, born in Southington, Conn., October 5th, 1841, and was in the army against the late rebellion, and died of a mortal wound in Louisville, Ky., May 2d, 1862, aged 21.
John Wickliffe, born in Wolcott, January 5th, 1843, and is now settled pastor of the Congregational church at Windsor Locks, Conn.
Lucinda Clark, born in Wolcott, May Ist, 1845, and died in Portland, Conn., May 2d, 1860, aged 15 years, and was buried in Wolcott.
Olive Huldah, born in Wolcott, October 9th, 1847, and died in New Jersey, October 3d, 1848, and was buried there.
Roger Sherman, born in Wolcott, January 5th, 1850, and died in Wolcott, January 30th, 1852.
Since leaving Wolcott two daughters have been added to his family ; Laura, the latter of which, died Septem- ber 28th, 1873, in the sixteenth year of her age.
It will be seen by this record that Wolcott was a place of trial and many sorrows, as well as patient toil, to this good minister of the Lord, and that the graveyard at Wolcott Center has some monuments upon which, when he looks, there will come thrilling remembrances of the past.
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And how peculiar the fact that, after having visited Wol- cott at the Centenary meeting, and seeing many familiar. and friendly faces, and visiting the beautiful little monu- ment in the graveyard that marks the sleeping dust of those once treasured ones of his own household, he should find the waves of sorrow flowing over his home again within fifteen days.
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