USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 19
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fatigable Miss Bailey collected from the recollections of Andover "old-timers" much interesting information regarding it.
Apparently the school was operated as a private enterprise, the profits, if any, being distributed among the trustees and the master. Under several unmemorialized and forgotten preceptors it struggled along from year to year, sending now and then a boy to college. Then in 1817 arrived a teacher-hero, Simeon Putnam, graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1811, a martinet and a scold, but a born drillmaster, who was almost as redoubtable as his con- temporary and neighbor, Principal John Adams, at Phillips Academy. Afflicted with acute neuralgia, he finally broke down under the strain and died, May 19, 1833, at the early age of forty-seven. Of the Franklin Academy of "Old Put's" time, Abiel Abbot, in his History of Andover, published in 1829, wrote:
The school has been highly beneficial to the North Parish and to those youth who have enjoyed its advantages. In 1827 the female de- partment was removed to another building and has been conducted with success. The Classical School, taught the eight preceding years by Mr. Simeon Putnam, has been constantly and deservedly rising in reputation for thorough instruction and moral discipline. The school is enlarged, and Rev. Cyrus Pierce, an experienced and faithful teach- er, is associated in the charge of it with Mr. Putnam. The reputation is inferior to none, and has never been more flourishing than at the present time.
The school thus lifted temporarily into distinction by a stimu- lating and dynamic personality fell back into mediocrity in the hands of his successors. Funds were lacking; pupils did not ap- pear; the right leadership was not available. While Phillips Academy, under the powerful "Uncle Sam" Taylor, flourished, Franklin Academy suffered from inanition. In 1853, after half a century, the end came, and the school building, degraded from its lofty function, was transformed into a stable. Such a fate as this was the destiny of many similar schools which, conceived in hope, had a few fruitful years and then vanished.
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Franklin Academy is chiefly significant because it offered an opportunity for local girls to get an education. The early An- dover town fathers spelled atrociously, and this historian cannot escape the conclusion that illiteracy was widespread. But the women were even worse off, and some ladies belonging to promi- nent families had to make their mark on legal documents instead of signing their names. For two or three years after its opening, Franklin Academy was fortunate in its preceptress, Elizabeth Palmer, who married Nathaniel Peabody, the preceptor, and became the mother of the brilliant Peabody sisters of Salem- Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mrs. Horace Mann. Her successors at Franklin Academy, although not of her quality, did at least teach pupils to read and write. By the time the Academy closed its doors, public grammar and high schools were well established in all sections of Andover, and the girls were being as well trained as the boys.
As the War of 1812 drew to a close and the Era of Good Feel- ings opened under President James Monroe, Andover was well known throughout the Commonwealth as a place of culture. But its chief claim to distinction in the field of scholarship was due to an institution of a new type, Andover Theological Seminary, which acquired a fame at one period hardly less than that of Harvard College. This Seminary, bound up in so many ways with the town, deserves a separate chapter.
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CHAPTER XVI
Citadel of Orthodoxy
T THE eminent position occupied by the town of Andover in education, literature, and religion was attributable in part to its Theological Seminary, an institution of higher learning dominating what came to be known as Zion's, or Brimstone, Hill. Which adjective you chose depended, in its Golden Days, on your attitude. In discussing the Seminary, we must deal with some "old, unhappy, faroff things," with many ideas now almost obsolete, with controversies which seem now quite futile. To those who created it, the Seminary was a lighthouse, throwing out into a benighted society the beams of eternal truth. Its critics changed the metaphor and called it a dam set up to block the flow of enlightened progress. Its announced purpose was to codi- fy and protect what were regarded as fundamental Calvinist doctrines; and its historian speaks of it as having been established "to breast the gales that beat against Puritan orthodoxy."
In operation, the Seminary was the declared enemy of numer- ous heresies and errors, not only of atheists and infidels, of pa- pists, Mohametans, and Jews, but also of Unitarians, Universal- ists, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Sabellians, and other sects difficult to identify today. In their consciousness of superiority, in their miscellaneous and undiscriminating ha- treds, the Right-Wing Calvinists were uninhibited. They were convinced that the truth was theirs alone, that they were indeed a Chosen People.
The orthodox Calvinists, inheritors of the Puritan theologi- cal tradition as expounded by Cotton Mather and Jonathan Ed- wards, were generally agreed that the Holy Scriptures were "a
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fixed deposit of truth" rather than a "progressive revelation"; that man was handicapped from the start and saved only by the Grace of God, mediated through the Cross; that Jesus Christ died voluntarily to satisfy divine justice and was Very God Him- self. Within this frame of basic ideas, however, they had many disputes and jealousies. The so-called Catechism Calvinists were ready to accept without further elucidation the Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of 1649; but the Hopkinsians, followers of the disputatious Dr. Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), desired a separate creed which would explain the Catechism. Into these and other similar subtleties it would be unprofitable for a lay- man to penetrate too deeply.
These internal quarrels offered a futile opportunity for logi- cians to display their talents and did no great harm. At the opening of the nineteenth century, however, a movement was under way which threatened all Congregationalists and forced the various factions to make common cause against an imminent peril. In 1785 trinitarian doctrines were removed from the lit- urgy at the famous King's Chapel in Boston, and soon Unitari- anism was spreading even into Harvard Yard. The new liberal religion could not be ignored, even though Congregationalism was still virtually a state church in Massachusetts and was to re- main so until 1833.
The controversy centered around the dogmatic, contentious Eliphalet Pearson, who, as Hancock Professor, had become not only a powerful personage on the Harvard faculty but also a Fel- low of Harvard College. In September, 1804, following the death of President Joseph Willard, Pearson assumed for more than a year the duties of Acting President. When Dr. David Tappan, the Hollis Professor of Divinity, died in August, 1803, Dr. Pear- son brought on a bitter quarrel in the corporation by insisting that the next incumbent of the distinguished chair should be "of sound orthodox faith," that is, a strict Calvinist. Notwith- standing Pearson's very vocal opposition, the Reverend Henry Ware (1764-1845), well known as an ardent Unitarian, was elect-
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ed to the vacant professorship. As a climax, Pearson, an avowed candidate for the presidency, was rejected in favor of Professor Joseph Warren. Humiliated and, in addition, annoyed because his salary had not been increased during his period as Acting President, Pearson resigned, left Cambridge, and returned to Andover, where the board of trustees of Phillips Academy, of which he had been president since August 17, 1802, voted him a house rent-free. In his letter to the corporation, the arrogant Pearson stated that, after twenty years of endeavor to improve the literary and religious condition of Harvard, he could see no hope of accomplishing any reformation. It was not a tactful let- ter, but Pearson was never a tactful man. The clash at Cam- bridge was a dramatic phase of the conflict between Unitarian- ism and Congregationalism, with Pearson as the self-constituted advocate of conservative theology.
Back in Andover and among allies, Pearson thought and talked and soon became the leader of a group of laymen and cler- gymen interested in opening a theological seminary. His con- nection with Phillips Academy proved to be of great help, for that school's constitution, which he had aided in composing, naturally gave authority to what seemed to him correct doctrine. Furthermore, since 1796, the Reverend Jonathan French, using the income of a bequest from Dr. John Phillips, had acted as a provisional professor of Divinity in the Academy; and at least twenty candidates for the ministry had already been trained un- der his direction. It would be easier to secure from the General Court a further extension of powers for Phillips Academy, a school already in successful operation, than to create a new in- stitution. Under such an arrangement, Pearson, as president of the board of trustees, would have much control over policies. Obviously, as he saw it, conditions favored such a device for ac- complishing the results which he desired.
Nothing could be started, however, without financial back- ing, and here also Pearson was fortunate. Madame Phoebe Fox- croft Phillips, widow of Judge Phillips, and her son, Colonel
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John Phillips, were well-to-do and favorably disposed towards Pearson's plan. A retired Boston merchant, Samuel Abbot (1732- 1812), a second cousin once removed of Judge Phillips, was liv- ing in Andover and had been elected a trustee of Phillips Acad- emy. A man of generous impulses, he had already made a will providing for the support of a professor of Theology in the Acad- emy; and Pearson persuaded him to give 20,000 dollars at once instead of waiting until after his death. With this assurance, the necessary legal formalities were quickly arranged. On June 19, 1807, the General Court passed a bill empowering the trustees of Phillips Academy to hold additional real and personal prop- erty with an income not exceeding 5,000 dollars. Dr. Pearson, the Reverend Jonathan French, and Squire Samuel Farrar, the board's treasurer, prepared a constitution for the proposed sem- inary and this was submitted to the trustees and approved on September 2. All the omens were good, and everything indicated that Pearson's carefully drawn plan for grafting a school of Di- vinity on to the thirty-year-old Academy would be carried out.
At this point difficulties appeared. By an unusual coincidence, Dr. Samuel Spring, a Newburyport clergyman, had raised in the autumn of 1806 funds for an independent divinity school repre- senting what were called the Hopkinsian Calvinists. He had been able to interest three wealthy Essex County philanthro- pists: William Bartlet (1747-1841), a Newburyport shipowner; Moses Brown (1742-1827), an importer of the same town; and John Norris (1748-1808), a Salem merchant. Although Dr. Spring and Dr. Pearson held divergent views on certain creedal matters, they were joined in their hatred and dread of Unitari- anism. The Reverend Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826), editor of the Calvinist monthly magazine, The Panoplist, and an influential trustee of Phillips Academy since 1795, heard of what was going on in Newburyport and at once perceived the advantages of a merger. Some preliminary proposals by Morse and Pearson were rejected, but the latter was persistent, and it was soon apparent that Messrs. Bartlet and Brown were not unwilling to join with
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the Andoverians. When this stage was reached, only details re- mained to be adjusted.
On December 1, 1807, Pearson and Morse, meeting with Spring at Newburyport, agreed that the Newburyporters could join the enterprise as associate donors and that each professor un- der the associate foundation should, on the day of his inaugura- tion, subscribe publicly to his belief in a creed composed by Dr. Spring and Dr. Leonard Woods, based on the Hopkinsian the- ology as it was then understood. Dr. Spring also evolved the un- usual idea of a board of three "visitors," two clergymen and one layman, one to be chosen by the Andover founders, one by the associate founders, and the third to be agreed upon by both parties. It is hard to understand why Pearson and his fellow trus- tees, men of common sense and practical experience, even con- sidered such an extraordinary arrangement, limiting their of- ficial powers. Certainly the consequences proved to be unfortu- nate. But the Newburyport group would accept under no other conditions, and the weary Pearson had reached a point where he could not or would not draw back.
When the decisive vote was taken on May 4, 1808, only eight of the Academy trustees were present. After discussion of the proposed "statutes" item by item, seven gave their formal assent, the eighth, the Reverend Daniel Dana, a professional obstruc- tionist, remaining silent. An earlier step towards union had been taken when Dr. Leonard Woods, of Newbury, a moderate but unmistakable Hopkinsian, was nominated by Samuel Abbot as the first professor of Christian Theology; and this courtesy was reciprocated by the appointment of Dr. Pearson as the first pro- fessor of Natural Theology under the associate endowment.
All was now prepared for the birth of Andover Theological Seminary. It was formally opened on September 22, 1808, in the South Parish Church, with appropriate exercises, including a prayer by the Reverend Mr. French, the reading of the constitu- tion of the Seminary and of the associated statutes, and an his- torical summary by the proud Dr. Pearson, in which he declared
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that the Seminary was a logical outgrowth of Phillips Academy and that the two institutions, although on different levels, should work in harmonious cooperation. He had a right to speak, for he helped to create them both. In the afternoon a sermon was preached by the conservative President Timothy Dwight of Yale, as if to symbolize the breach with Harvard. Dr. Pearson, hitherto a layman, was then regularly ordained, and the two professors, Pearson and Woods, were installed in office. Profes- sor Woods then delivered an inaugural address on "The Glory and Excellence of the Gospel." Nineteen students were at once admitted, and thirty-six had registered before the close of the first year. Dr. Pearson, who had accepted a professorship only with great reluctance, found the position little to his taste and resigned in 1809, after some bitter disagreements with his col- leagues. He continued as president of the board, however, until August 20, 1821, keeping in close touch with everything which concerned the Academy and the Seminary and never losing his skill in the gentle art of making enemies.
The opening of Andover Theological Seminary took place at a moment when Massachusetts commerce, damaged by Jeffer- son's various acts in restraint of foreign trade, had almost van- ished, except for smuggling, and wharves in the coastal towns were deserted. Disgusted Federalist leaders in New England were plotting a separate Northeast Confederacy, as the South was to do in the years before the Civil War; and an open breach with England seemed inevitable. Like the Academy before it, the Seminary was inaugurated in a time of economic and politi- cal gloom. But nobody visiting Andover Hill in 1809 would have thought that the Union was in danger or that prosperity was waning. The Academy had thus far occupied only one building. The Seminary was shortly to include several, all of them in ex- cellent taste. Within a few years no town in the Commonwealth, with the exception of Cambridge, had such a cluster of impres- sive institutional edifices.
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The first and most essential structure was the brick Phillips Hall, a dormitory erected in 1809, under Pearson's personal su- pervision, on the ridge to the east of the Woburn Road. The total cost of 16,000 dollars, a large sum in those days, was de- frayed by Madame Phoebe Foxcroft Phillips and her son, Colo- nel John. Today, rechristened appropriately Foxcroft Hall and with its top storey removed, it stands on its original site and houses Phillips Academy upperclassmen. By December, 1809, workmen were excavating for what was to be called the Presi- dent's House, the gift of William Bartlet as a home for the Bart- let Professor of Sacred Rhetoric. This was the first building in Andover to be designed by a professional architect, the distin- guished Charles Bulfinch. It was intended for Dr. Edward D. Griffin, the first incumbent of the chair, but he resigned before the residence was completed and it was soon occupied by Dr. Ebenezer Porter.
In 1809, Elias Boudinot, of Philadelphia, paid a visit to New England and left a Diary which was not published until 1955. On Saturday, August 5, he arrived in Andover, where he was promptly waited on by Dr. Pearson and his "lady." The entry for Sunday, August 6, reads in part as follows:
This morning went to the Parish Church and heard an excellent, evangelical & impressive sermon from the Revd. Mr Wood Professor of Theology in the College. He also administered the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to a large number of serious Communicants about 250; we were invited to unite with band of Brethren & Sisters in the Lord. The Audience was very numerous. It was a solemn day. Mr. Wood is a preacher of the first rate, and supplied the Pulpit this day on account of the Vacancy occasioned by the Sudden death of the late Pastor, Mr. French, who suddenly departed about 10 days ago. He was a pious Minister, much beloved & greatly lamented. Mr. Wood preached again in the Afternoon and Improved on our hands. He promises to be a burning & shining light in the Church.
Further entries relating to this visit supply interesting details:
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August 7, Monday. Spent this day at Andover. Dr. Griffin re- turned about one oClock. We spent our time with great chearfulness and were highly entertained by the hospitality & agreeable Conver- sation of the Dr & his Lady, with the young students. Drank tea at Mrs. Phillips with Dr Pearson, Professor Wood & their Ladies, and our Host & Hostess, Mr. Farrar &c Mrs Phillips is a very agreeable old Lady, and seems to be rejoicing, in the last Stage of life, in the prosperity of her Labours.
August 8 Tuesday. This Morning, Mrs. Bradford went with Dr Pearson, Professor Wood & their Ladies to view an extraordinary prospect from a very high Hill or Mountain about 11/2 Miles from the College. On their return they gave a very captivating Account of this Prospect. The Eye takes in a view of about 300 miles in Cir- cumference, by turning the Head, and affords a full View, inexpres- sibly delightful, of a distant range of Hills, with very large intervals of Land covered with Houses & highly cultivated Fields, large For- ests & meandering Waters, that, as Mrs B. observed, far surpassed anything we had seen. On a bright day, 28 Steeples appear in sight. The weather being Hazy, they saw but a few of them. At 2 oClock left our hospitable Friends, being escorted a few Miles by Dr Griffin & Lady. We called on Mr Abbot, one of the founders of the Institu- tion, on our Way, who received us with great politeness. The Turn- pike from Andover to Boston (about 20 Miles) is as fine as the One from New Ark to Brunswick.
For many months carpenters and masons were kept busy, un- til the once bare eminence, with its alder bushes and protruding rocks, was dotted with attractive residences, dominated by the huge Mansion House, where Madame Phillips had so often and so generously dispensed hospitality. Some unfortunate invest- ments made by her son depleted her resources, and in 1810 she was glad to accept an invitation to make her home with Esquire Farrar, in his fine new house on the corner of Main and Phillips streets. There she died in 1812, and her funeral sermon was preached by her old family friend, Dr. Pearson.
Madame Phillips left her huge residence to the trustees, who
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refurnished it as a tavern, called the Mansion House, where vis- itors to the Seminary, more numerous each year, found bed and board. Here the stage on its way to and from Boston drew up with a mighty flourish of trumpets and gave the passengers a respite on their journey. Here too, according to reminiscent "old-timers," facetious travelers, recognizing "Brimstone Hill," famous for its Calvinistic tenets of sulphur and "everlasting bon- fire," used to hold out their hands on cold mornings for warmth.
The South Parish was now a very busy place. Not only on the Hill but around it, and along School and Central streets, new buildings were rising. Far out on Salem Street, David Gray had the lumber for his six-bedroom farmhouse cut and sawed in Wil- ton, New Hampshire, and transported by oxen to Andover. The walls for this house, according to Kay Noyes, were made of great wooden planks about two and one-half inches thick and from two to three feet wide, and were neatly fitted together before being plastered over. The original Robert Gray, David's ancestor, mar- ried Hannah Holt and in 1699 purchased from Dudley Brad- street the one hundred acres of land now constituting the farm. The building boom did indeed extend in all directions giving employment to many.
So prosperous was the Seminary that the trustees in 1814 pe- titioned for and secured the right to hold property with an in- come up to 20,000 dollars. On September 22, 1818, a large crowd assembled to hear Dr. Ebenezer Porter's sermon dedicating Bartlet Chapel, another Bulfinch masterpiece, which at once became the center of the Seminary's intellectual and spiritual life. The large auditorium at the right of the front door was used for prayer meetings, public lectures, sermons, commencement exercises, and similar gatherings. Here through the week the walls resounded with the voices of "theologues" practicing their sermons. On the north side were three lecture rooms, and above was the rapidly growing library. The total original cost of this central building was about 24,000 dollars. Later in the century,
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when American architecture was in its most decadent period, a monstrosity in the shape of a clock tower was attached to the front, destroying completely the Bulfinch simplicity. When, in 1908, it was bought by Phillips Academy, it was renamed Pear- son Hall, and eventually in the 1920's it was moved around to face the north so that the present broad vista running east and west could be opened up.
One dormitory was not sufficient for the expanding student body; and in 1821 the philanthropic Mr. Bartlet furnished the money for Bartlet Hall, south of Bartlet Chapel, matching Phil- lips Hall on the north. In his dedicatory sermon, preached on September 13, Professor Moses Stuart said, with truth:
We can look back to little more than a period of ten years, when the whole ground upon which we are assembled, and most of the vicinity, was but an uncultivated wild. Now we are furnished, in a most ample fashion, with all the edifices that are essential to the great object of this Seminary.
When Professor Stuart spoke, the three central buildings of Andover Theological Seminary, together with the Brick Acad- emy erected in 1818, were new and most impressive, standing in a row on a slight elevation facing towards the west. From the second storey of Bartlet Chapel one could, on a clear day, see Mount Monadnock, some sixty miles to the northwest. In the period of bizarre and rococco elegance following the Civil War, the simplicity and proportions of these structures were not al- ways appreciated. Indeed Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, talented daughter of the distinguished Professor Phelps, wrote of them, with unconscious superciliousness:
All of brick, red, rectangular, and unrelieved; as barren of orna- ment and broken lines as a packing box, and yet curiously possessed of a dignity of their own; such as we see in aged country folk un- fashionably dressed but sure of their local position.
By the 1920's, when good architectural taste was beginning to
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reassert itself in the United States, these buildings were recog- nized as fine specimens of Georgian-Colonial style, preferable to the grotesque deformities of the 1860's and 1870's of which the town had its full share. The Seminary was fortunate indeed to have been conceived and created at a time before pseudo-Gothic did its deadly work.
Writing in 1823, John Todd described his living quarters in one of the dormitories:
Here you will find my chum and myself each bending over a com- fortable writing desk laid upon two marble-covered tables. You see our room ornamented with four pretty chairs, a beautiful mahogany bureau, large mirror,-all furnished by the munificent Mr. Bartlet. All the rooms in this building are furnished alike. Nothing could add to our convenience if we had a carpet. But this is of little consequence.
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