USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover, Massachusetts : Proceedings at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 20, 1896 > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13
One of the oldest and best known of the smaller industries was started over sixty years ago by Wm. Poor, a native of the town, in Frye Village, who has just relinquished active business at the age of ninety years, in the full enjoyment of his health and faculties.
While these men were striving for success in their different branches of business, there was the same difference of opinion as there is today in regard to the legislation that would be necessary to enable this country to compete with other parts of the world, and give means of carrying on the government. One thing is sure, that the compe- tition among the different manufacturers, either textile or mechanical, has been of great benefit to the whole people of this country in giving them whatever they consume at the lowest possible price.
It is difficult to estimate the influence the men of Andover had in starting the development of different industries which have gone forward and made Massachusetts and New England truly manufacturing communities. Starting in a small way, giving their personal attention to every detail, their success encouraged men of capital to combine in corporations and carry on large establishments, which have been the pride of New England, and contributed largely to her wealth.
THE PRESIDENT : The Sons of Andover in the War for the Union: They carried into the struggle the lessons of purity, courage, and patriotism imbibed in the homes, the schools, and the churches of this New England town. Happily for us "Captain Jack Adams" is with us to-day ; he shall speak for himself and for his brave comrades of the days of '61. I present Captain John G. B. Adams.
134
ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
CAPT. JOHN G. B. ADAMS
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen : I really cannot understand why I am here, and yet, if any of you have received a note from Prof. Churchill, you will understand that the sweetness of that note will bring a man or a woman anywhere. I am glad to be here and say a word for the boys who served their country from Andover. I was not a resident or a citizen of this town, but born on the banks of the Merrimack a few miles from here, I feel that perhaps I can join with you in celebrating this day.
The record of Andover in the rebellion is an honorable one. I find that three hundred and eighty-six men enlisted and were accred- ited from this town, and that is said to be nearly a hundred less than really should have been accredited, for Andover responded to every call made by the President of the United States, and at the close of the war had nineteen to its credit over and above all demands. It also expended $30,650, exclusive of state aid, for the men engaged at the front and the families of those behind. The men of Andover were on every battle-field in the war. They fought with Sheridan, with Sher- man, with Grant ; they fought with Farragut and Porter in the navy. They were the boys of Andover, as they were of every town. They were not much interested in the war when it began. They had not done much of the talking on the issues before the war. Most of the men who had done the talking stayed at home and talked while we were gone, and we found them talking when we got back. But the men did a good deal of thinking. We remember that down on the Peninsula, when the colored man saw the old flag and came into our ranks, feeling that he would be safe, we had to say to him then that we were fighting this war to restore the Union as it was, and you must go back into slavery, for we cannot protect and receive you under the folds of the star spangled banner, and the boys talked it over and said we should not succeed in the war, and God knows we ought not to have succeeded, until Abraham Lincoln signed the eman- cipation proclamation and made every man free.
Well, then, we sometimes hear it said that the soldiers were a mercenary horde; and yet we remember that when the banker was dickering with the government and demanding two dollars and a half in greenbacks for one dollar in gold, the soldiers at the front were
I35
250TH ANNIVERSARY
receiving actually thirteen dollars a month in greenbacks, equal to six dollars in gold ; and the men didn't strike. They didn't form labor organizations or any unions. The only union they formed or belonged to was the Union of the United States of America.
Well, Lee finally surrendered to Grant, and every hat of the boys went high in air, and every voice joined in loud huzzas, for we didn't want to fight, we wanted peace ; and when peace was declared every Union soldier was delighted and happy. They heard him say to the rebels, "Take your horses and go home and till the soil ;" and the Union soldier did not murmur when he got down from his horse, turned it over to the government, and tramped home. He had no horse to till the soil furnished him by the government, but he came and rolled up his sleeves and entered into it with zest when he got back to the old town of Andover. We were not mercenary then. If we wanted the old musket we had to point out to our children when we talked about the war, we paid the government six dollars for it. We came, as I say, marching home ; we felt that we had done our duty well, and it can truly be said that we had been as good citizens as we were good soldiers. In proof of this story I looked up the official record from the town of Andover, and find in 1865 the following from the chairman of your selectmen ; " I am glad, as an official, to declare that the men as a body are better citizens than they were before enlistingin the service. Some three hundred and more of our citizens have returned, and I can hardly point to a single crime since their return."-William S. Jenkins, Chairman of the Selectmen.
And now we hear to-day many of the people of the younger generation talking about war with the foreign nations. Mr. Chairman, you don't hear the boys that know what war means talk about war. We hear those who sent substitutes issue proclamations and talk about a war with foreign nations. But God knows we want no more war in this land. Have arbitration, talk, talk forever, but don't fight unless the honor of the nation requires it. Don't fight about Con- gress ; don't fight about a little piece of land that we can buy for $1.50. We don't want to see our children pass through what we passed through in the early days.
On the thirtieth of May you will see the little remnant of the army and navy march through your streets. They will not attract your attention by their imposing appearance. Their forms will be bent, their
I36
ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
step slow and tottering. As you see them, don't forget, sir, that when this nation wanted men to march, to fight, to die if need be, they responded to the call. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, that they gave the best years of their lives and the strength and vigor of their young manhood for the country, and remember them for what they did and all they dared, remember them to-day.
I love to appear for the comrades on occasions like this. I feel that every soldier has been honored by the chairman of this meeting, in giving the soldiers of Andover a place in this program, and I ask you, as citizens of this dear old town, to be just as true and loyal to them in their declining years as you have always been in the past. God knows what the ordeal has been to the men who defended this nation. I know from testimony in many ways, and I urge you, as the old boys are going down the vale of life, to love them just as tenderly until the last man is mustered out.
THE PRESIDENT : I give you as our next sentiment,- The Orator of the Day: He has laid his fellow citizens under lasting obligation for his brilllant and valuable service.
ALBERT POOR, ESQ.
Mr. Chairman and friends : I am the victim of oppression. When I received the kindly invitation of the selectmen or the citizens of Andover, something over fourteen months ago, to be their orator upon this occasion, I immediately applied myself to several dozens of dusty old volumes which are safely stored away down here in the town house safe. I read them through with a great deal of care and a great deal of pleasure, and finally the days of fall came on, when I began to write, and then apace grew the pages, day after day, until they reached the somewhat portentous proportions that you have seen upon the pulpit of the Old South Church to-day and within my hands now. My impression of them is that of all the stuff I have prepared for this occasion I read about one-half. I supposed I should have the opportu- nity of talking to you an indefinite length of time there in the Old South Church, but last night I happened to meet the gentleman who presided, and with a knowing twinkle in his eye he said, " Poor, is it going to be more than an hour ?" That is my first oppression ; and then I have still another one. About a month ago, one Sunday night Prof. Churchill and myself were returning, I suppose from our various
137
250TH ANNIVERSARY
pulpits, and I met him on the train. Said he, "Poor, we shall expect you to say something after the dinner." "Yes, yes, of course," I said, " of course." And immediately I tossed aside these valuable manu- scripts which I had partly finished at that time, and began to apply myself to the production of an after dinner speech. Last night, I met Prof. Churchill, and with a very knowing wink in his eye, he said to me, " Poor, the poetess is going to respond in about a minute and a half. She has it written out." Oppression number two. And that is my condition to-day.
But there were really two or three things that I desired to speak about. First, I wanted to go somewhat more carefully into the cause of complaint between the two parishes in 1700. They were divided in about 1709, and the great division came upon the building of a new church here. I desired also to go somewhat more fully into the gen- eral topic of this sweet aspect of nature that surrounds us everywhere. But all that I have passed by. I hoped also to make some suggestions to you this afternoon in regard to perpetuating the historic sites with which we are favored. All that I have passed by.
I am very grateful to you all, and now I am coming to the point where I am going to obey your instructions and in less than a minute and a half I am going to thank these people for all their references to my work of to-day. That work was to me one of the most fascinating in which I have engaged. I have found it so engaging that it was a pleasure to sit down and write it up. You can imagine how these sheets grew from one to another with rapid succession, until finally the tale was told. If there was any merit in that address of this fore- noon, that merit, like the orator of this occasion, is due to Andover herself. She herself is her best orator, and that, ladies and gentlemen who have listened to me this afternoon, is all I have to say. Be hers the glory and the honor forever, for hers is the source of all the goods we are enjoying to-day.
THE PRESIDENT : You naturally anticipate the next sentiment, The Poet of the Day. The literary successor of Anne Bradstreet deserves and wins the admiration of her grateful fellow citizens. We miss the desired presence of our poet at this hour, but she has sent to the president of the Banquet her response in grateful prose.
138
ANDOVER MASSACHUSETTS
MRS. ANNIE SAWYER DOWNS
While I regret that I cannot join personally in the reminiscences and congratulations of this auspicious occasion, I am yet glad of an opportunity to thank the town for inviting me to write its anniversary poem.
I have greatly enjoyed doing so. Indeed so constantly during the last few months have I been associated with our first settlers, that I seem to have lived with them in their rude houses and shared their noble though laborious lives, their lofty aims, their self-sacrificing endeavors.
Dwelling thus upon the loftier aspects of our annals, and noting with pride how each succeeding generation has carried out the high purposes of its predecessors, there has grown up in mne a confident assurance, that, as it has been in the past, so it will be in the future ; that the Andover of the twentieth century, the Andover which a hundred years from today will be praised and sung by other lips than ours, will be honest, strong, fearless, and, above all, true to the prin- ciples of its founders, those principles which wear forever, " the dew of their youth."
THE PRESIDENT : A Son of Andover sitting in our presence is a graduate of Phillips Academy, an alumnus of the Theological Seminary and a member of its Faculty, and an efficient member of the Board of Trustees of Abbot Academy.
I will call upon Rev. Professor John Phelps Taylor to respond for The Three Institutions on Andover Hill: They embody and illustrate the spirit and watchword of Modern Culture,-Sweetness and Light.
PROFESSOR JOHN PHELPS TAYLOR.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : We have received a message from one, who represents sweetness and light, if any such there has been here, in that telegram from President Tucker of Dart- mouth College. May I be permitted to borrow a story, associated with him at a recent Dartmouth Commencement, and narrated by Hon. Mr. Marden, late State Treasurer ? A man was learning to ride a bicycle, as I learned last summer, and falling forward and backward, to the North and the South, the East and the West, till at last his
139
250TH ANNIVERSARY
wife, loving him no doubt as Anne Bradstreet her illustrious husband, sympathetically inquired " Dear, can't I hold you on ?" He stopped and he looked and he spoke and he said " If you are capable of holding anything, won't you please hold your tongue?" I will hold my tongue, Mr. President, after the eloquence, the poetry, the fascinating charm, the high fellowship, the thrilling motions, the heroic memories, the sacred inspirations of this golden day - but not till I have re- sponded to your compelling toast. " Sweetness and Light in Ando- ver's Three Great Schools."
Here Abbot Academy has the right of way. For the poet is Abbot's glory today and before me are the faces of its other teachers from the present Principal, who weds Holyoke and Abbot not less gracefully than Mrs. Downs and Mr. Downs wed Bradford and Abbot, like a strain of music, - to that illustrious one whom we all delight to honor for her character and curriculum, Miss McKeen, whose name is written on the hearts of a thousand pupils, as legibly as on the walls of the McKeen rooms in Draper Hall. Yesterday I went to a recita- tion in Dante. There in the old room sat a Marland, a Holt, a Jack- son, of the old Andover families. There too seemed to breathe again the sweetness and light of the Woods, the Stuarts, the Emersons, the Flaggs, the Goulds, the Fryes, the Abbots, who sat at the shining desks in the blossoming May almost seventy years ago. Listening I heard how the Florentines, even in heaven, had to remember their own splendid town, enflowered in her great deeds. Even so the tablets of Memorial Hall through Peter Smith the father, and the perfect pro- cession with Punchard Cadets and Phillips Seniors in cap and gown, and horse and foot and firemen and trades and bands and national airs marching after Peter Smith the son, make Andover remembered among the celestial hosts today. Smith Hall is speaking in the loan collection of the Daughters of the Revolution. Madame Phillips is lingering in the last of the tableaux of Alfred Ripley, as if loth to leave the town hall which has been the scene of her four-fold triumph through Emily Means. In the world of light I can almost see the sainted Stone and Farwell, there too are Badger and Jackson, Amos Blanchard, and Abbot, Elias Cornelius, Samuel Fuller, Lyman Coleman, Bela B. Edwards, Alpheus Hardy, Nathaniel Swift, Edward Buck, George L. Davis, Geo. W. Coburn, Rufus S. Frost, old trustees, rejoicing in the school, which to many a daughter of God and missionary of
140
ANDOVER MASSACHUSETTS
the Cross, was a Paradise below in foretaste of the Paradise above.
Phillips Academy next unveils the scroll of her preceptors. I recall first the erudite Pearson, and the courtly Pemberton and then Mark Newman, Exeter's gift to Andover through John Phillips and Benjamin Abbot, a Greek in personal beauty, sleeping at the Mansion House, we are told with his pupil, that darling son of Judge and Madame Phillips, who was torn in the flower of youth from his fond parents, just as he was about to begin the study of Greek.
Next came John Adams, a Roman of the Romans. He was great as well as good. Who can forget that keen eye that looked into the consciences of over one thousand pupils and trained two hundred preachers of righteousness from 1810 to 1833, not the least of whom was his own son the golden-mouthed wide-cultured pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York. His tablet is on our Chapel walls and his portrait in our Academy Hall. Thanks to him we had Osgood Johnson. £ He was Phillips fifth principal and the only principal before or since of Andover birth. The peerless orator of this morning has made us proud to link him with the Johnson House and the Johnson School. The exquisite sobriety of the inscription on his tomb from the hand of Prof. Park informs me of Kingsley of Y'ale, attests the symmetry of his character and the finish of his scholarship. And Osgood Johnson discovered, in a student of Andover Theological Seminary, the great Educator, compact of Roman law and Hellenic learning, whom Hon. Moses T. Stevens and six thousand other pupils called Master and for thirty-four years was venerated not the less under the name of " Uncle Sam." How he would have fought the forest fires had he been alive on Monday last !
" I understood the structure of the Parthenon because Dr. Taylor explained it in Andover," said a missionary on Mars Hill. And when he fell on the threshold of the Academy with the Greek New Testament in his hand, that snowy Sunday morn of 1871, a hero of the light, his torch was taken by his successor. Alas that we cannot welcome Frederic Tilton here today in person. He, who adorned whatever he touched, has spoken to us this afternoon, how- ever, from the lips of his pupil, the fit and felicitous delineator of Simon Bradstreet, Andover's Founder, Magistrate, Ambassador and Governor. He has spoken to us also in Abbot, through another scholar, like-minded with himself, whom he so trained in Newport's
141
250TH ANNIVERSARY
Rogers School that her pupils have won marks unsurpassed by any in the land at the Harvard entrance examinations. Tilton found Phillips classical. Tilton left Phillips classical and mathematical. The eighth principal, long may he be the last, I dare not praise. Let me exult with you in the fact that my honored father helped select and elcct him to his great office. Will not Dr. Fiske, President, and Dr. Well- man, Trustee of the Board of Guardians of Phillips Academy, who have brought to this celebration the quintessence of the Puritan culture and the Puritan spirit, accept the thanks of every citizen of Andover for furnishing the school with a head who is a man of affairs as well as a man of books, who is a golden clasp between town and gown, who is the school-boy's ideal of the fire of youth and the wisdom of age. Not even in Dr. Taylor has Dartmouth made to Andover a nobler gift than in him who presided as felicitously over the exercises of this morning as William G. Goldsmith presided over Phillips and Punchard both, and as Peter Smith Byers would have presided had he not been called up higher-our Chairman of the Committee of Fifteen, Dr. Cecil Bancroft.
Dr. Bancroft is an alumnus of Andover Theological Seminary, under Prof. Park. So, too, are my colleagues of to-day, my fellow- students of yesterday, Harris, Ryder, Hincks. Together we enjoycd the sweetness and light of one whose Lexicon of New Testament Greek is no fairer monument than the honesty, the courtesy, the mag- nanimity he carried from Andover to Harvard-Professor Thayer. The acute philosophical mind of Charles Mead wc have lost to Hart. ford. In return Hartford has loaned to us the brilliant Williston Walker as our Southworth Lecturer on Congregationalism. Selah Merrill, explorer, author, consul, patriot is still the Curator of our museum. William Ropes, after having bestowed a son and a fellow on the Harvard Divinity School, almost as urbane and accomplished as himself, remains our Librarian. The old carpenter's shop is gone ; but the "Carpenter " building, with historic tablet, the old houses over again, and from the study of Mr. Martin making the Congregationalist a school-house of sweetness and light to the children of America, is our Necrologist of immortal youth. A Mckenzie has been our Lec- turer on Pastoral Theology, a Blodget, his affluent and inspiring peer, our Hyde Lecturer on Foreign Missions. Dr. Alden, late Secretary of the American Board, but once our trustee and professor elect, and
142
ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
pastor of a church bearing Phillips' name, has gone to the Mount Zion above, sealing in his will that consecration of wealth to Christian edu- cation and Christian missions which his friend and ours, Professor Gulliver, converted in Andover a Phillips boy, and dying in Andover a seminary professor, signalized no less when he brought with him one hundred and fifty thousand dollars into our treasury.
With him then, and with us now, is the honored President of our Faculty, who has fought a battle for intellectual and religious freedom as heroically and as successfully as any Bradstreet in the witchcraft or Frye in the revolutionary days of Andover. And then comes up before me Samuel Farrar with his rosy cheeks and silvery locks, a Harvard scholar and tutor, the trustee of Abbot and Phillips alike, teacher, treasurer, lawyer, librarian, the first president of the Andover Bank before John Flint, John Taylor, Edward Taylor and Moses Stevens, the builder of the dormitories of the house from whose win- dow Madame Phillips could survey the seminary she founded till her eyes were closed in death. I recall him as a clock of punctuality and a mirror of courtliness. Also how he was present, a venerable man of eighty-four, at the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Andover Theological Seminary in 1858, when the news of the laying of the Atlantic cable came and he was addressed almost as Samuel Phillips' son-six years before he had his wish and lay down to sleep and wake with God. And shall not posterity remember how it has been granted us to-day to rise and applaud the Nestor of New England Congrega- tionalism, the grand old man of our Puritan theology, the Emeritus Abbot Professor, Professor Park, once a youthful bearer of the culture of Brown and Amherst to this holy hill, now that his fount of sacred learning is seven-mouthed like the Nile, Farrar's senior by three years, and Gladstone's by one, standing as of old in the pulpit which was his throne to three schools and three generations, a very benediction of Heaven on the high noon of his beloved Andover.
And you, Mr. President, my classmate in the Seminary, a son of Andover by adoption, an alumnus of Phillips, residing on the site of the first Academy, most accomplished of toast-masters, I cannot wish a purer honor or more of sweetness and light than to be Professor elect of Sacred Rhetoric in that chair of the Theological Seminary for which Professor Phelps held you his favorite candidate, and which
143
250TH ANNIVERSARY
Professor Park illustrated long after vacating it, by his inimitable addresses to the girls of Abbot Academy.
Long live these three schools and all the schools of the good old town, mother and daughter, North Andover and Andover. For this is the spirit of kindred, this is the spirit of beauty, this is the spirit of righteousness and of God. Amen.
PROF. CHURCHILL, IN CLOSING
As we part, thinking perhaps of the three hundredth anniversary, when the sons and daughters of Andover shall assemble on a similar occasion to this, happy is the thought that many of the boys and girls present to-day will participate in that far distant scene. Then, as now, may the sons and daughters of Andover look backward with exultation and thanksgiving, and forward with confidence and antici- pation. Let us remind ourselves, as we separate, of the words of one of Andover's most illustrious kinsmen, Wendell Phillips : "To be as good as our fathers, we must be better." Imitation is not discipleship. Let us part, as we began the festivities of the afternoon, by singing a song : " Auld Lang Syne."
144
ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
LOAN COLLECTION AND HISTORIC SITES
The following interesting report of this remarkable feature of the celebration is submitted for the committee by Mrs. Salome J. Marland, the secretary of the Loan Collection Com- mittee. An interesting supplement to this report will be found in the complete catalogue of the collection issued and sold at the time of the celebration, in which is published a full list of articles exhibited, except as noted in this report.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.