USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 30
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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 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
Most recent of these books using Andover as a setting is Mary Mian's Young Men See Visions, in which the town appears as Wendover. This is a novel with a considerable amount of local color. According to one of its reviewers the time is New Eng- land about 1890, "stiff-necked, cooly cruel, piously perfect to the point of suffocation." The plot concerns the love affair of the young clergyman of the South Church, Mark Deming, with the daughter of one of the old families, the Chatfields. Many of the characters are almost exact replicas of former residents of the community. For example, the description of James Chatfield, the bachelor banker, is based even in small details on Alfred L. Ripley, one of the town's most eminent citizens. Mrs. Mian has used several of her relatives and many of her acquaintances in creating this picture of village narrow-mindedness and bigotry. The analyses are often bitter, as if her own childhood had not
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been remembered too pleasantly. One portrayal of Mr. Gutter- son, the head deacon, will give an idea of the mood and tone of the novel:
Mr. Gutterson's orneriness stuck out all over him, like the monster potted fern on his porch, bristling in battle array. It has earned him the post of head deacon. ... Mr. Guterson was squat, hacked out of tough wood, and never painted but left to weather. Deafness had lent a crabapple pucker to his tongue, but had left unimpaired his eye for parish affairs and his zeal for thrashing them out in meeting. His voice grated, his denunciations rivaled Jeremiah's, but Jeremiah was a major prophet,-no one slept when he spoke.
Quite naturally, authors writing about the town have selected the unconventional, the bizarre, and those who were "different." Routine performers do not make salable books. But Andover deserves to be remembered for those of its citizens who were use- ful as well as for those who were picturesque and "queer."
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CHAPTER XXII
To the End of the Century
T [T has already been noted that Andover philanthropies were by no means all confined to the Hill. The three private educa- tional institutions needed, indeed relied on, the support and confidence of the town. But the town also had its own far from negligible enterprises, not only industrial but educational and cultural. The Phillipses and the Smiths, Samuel Farrar and Warren F. Draper, had set a fine example to their fellow citizens. Still another figure in the same generous mold was Benjamin Hanover Punchard. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he had been compelled to go to work at an early age and by diligence and fidelity had become a partner when he was only twenty in a firm engaged in the West Indian trade. His health broke down un- der the strain, however, and at twenty-eight, having acquired a competence, he moved to Andover, where he married a daugh- ter of the wealthy manufacturer, Abraham Marland, thus fol- lowing the pattern given literary credence by Horatio Alger, Jr. In 1828, he became a stockholder in the new Andover National Bank, and a year later, with his brother-in-law, John Derby, he opened a store. For a time he joined the Marland Manufactur- ing Company, but his infirmities compelled him to seek a fre- quent change of scene and climate. He died on April 4, 1850, leaving a testamentary bequest of 50,000 dollars, with a further reversion of 20,000 dollars on the death of his widow, for the purpose of founding a public free school in Andover. This was indeed a munificent gift, the largest in the town's history for any specific purpose.
In his carefully drawn will, Punchard provided for eight trus-
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tees, of whom the Rector of Christ Church and the ministers of the South and West Parish Congregational Societies should al- ways be members. The other five were to be chosen by the voters in town meeting. In the school no sectarianism of any kind was to be allowed, but the Bible was to be in daily use and the Lord's Prayer was to be recited each morning. In due course a school building was erected on Bartlet Street, of brick with trimmings of freestone, seventy-five feet long, forty-five wide, and two storeys high. This was dedicated, with appropriate ceremonies, on September 2, 1856, in time for the opening of the school year. Like Memorial Hall later, it was designed at a banal architec- tural period, but it was commodious and comfortable. Destroyed by fire on December 15, 1868, it was shortly replaced by a some- what similar structure at the expense of the taxpayers.
The significance of this Punchard Free School, as it was called, must not be overlooked. Horace Mann, secretary of the state board of education from 1837 to 1848, had revived the High School Law of 1827 and made it effective in many communities. But until Mr. Punchard's donation, the town boys and girls had attended regional schools very uneven in quality. Punchard's act in making a high school available for Andover children was a deliberate attempt to raise scholastic standards in his community. The trustees, in choosing Peter Smith Byers to start the new project, had picked the best man available, and his death was a serious blow to the enterprise. Other disasters followed. The sec- ond principal, Nathan W. Belden, elected on January 1, 1856, before the school was actually opened, resigned on February 27, 1857, having already shown himself unfitted for the position; and his successor, the Reverend Charles H. Seymour, lasted only until October, 1858. Not until William G. Goldsmith took charge in November, 1858, did the school have a competent ad- ministrator and get under way.
Born on November 28, 1832, in Andover, Goldsmith was a graduate of Phillips Academy and Harvard, and shortly after re- ceiving his degree accepted the offer from Punchard Free School,
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where he remained twelve years. In 1870, he transferred to Phil- lips Academy as Peabody Instructor. When "Uncle Sam" Tay- lor died suddenly in 1871, Goldsmith became acting principal of the Academy and if he had been a classicist, would probably have been made its head. But the ancient language tradition was still strong, and Frederick W. Tilton, a less gifted man, was pre- ferred. Goldsmith, not unnaturally disappointed, returned to Punchard, where he remained until 1886, when he resigned to become postmaster of Andover. He continued in that office un- til 1895, being also a selectman from 1898 until 1901. He died on October 7, 1910, having been for some years an important link between the old days and the new. Goldsmith was a quiet, studious gentleman, a believer in strict discipline, who gave the Punchard School a well-deserved reputation for scholarship.
The Punchard Free School is an excellent example of the town's continuing desire for intelligence and good taste. Vernon L. Parrington, commenting on this post-Civil War period with characteristic pungency, has written:
A world of triumphant and unabashed vulgarity without its like in our history, it was not aware of its plight, but accounted its man- ners genteel and boasted of ways that were a parody on sober good sense.
This description certainly does not apply to conservative An- dover, which was not vulgar and which had a serious interest in what we vaguely call culture. The citizens had few marble- topped tables or haircloth sofas, perhaps because they had in- herited something better; and they read good books, liked good pictures, and, except perhaps in architecture, cherished the ma- terials of civilization.
The Andover Advertiser, after struggling along for thirteen years, was sold by Warren F. Draper to the Lawrence American, its last issue appearing on February 10, 1866. Andover was thus left for more than two decades without a newspaper of its own. During this period the Lawrence paper carried Andover news
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under a special heading, and the town, thus subordinated, was threatened with becoming merely a suburb of the rapidly ex- panding city. Fortunately, like Brookline and other Boston sub- urbs, Andover had proud citizens who had no intention of be- ing swallowed up by a municipality, no matter how close by.
In the summer of 1887, an aggressive young man named John Newton Cole, recognizing the potentialities of journalism, per- suaded some older and financially responsible citizens to sponsor a project for a new and independent newspaper. The group of incorporators included several influential townspeople-George W. W. Dove, Joseph W. and Peter D. Smith, Horace H. Tyer, and George Ripley-and also some residents of North Andover -Samuel D. Stevens, Moses T. Stevens, and George L. Davis. This venture, planned to meet an urgent need and initiated un- der such reliable auspices, met with almost immediate success. The first editor, the Reverend Charles C. Carpenter, was a re- tired clergyman, a well-known antiquarian and genealogist, then living in Andover and quite willing to be drafted for the position.
The issue of the Andover Townsman which its subscribers scanned on October 14, 1887, had an original picture heading showing seven of the town's buildings, including the South Church, two mills, the town hall, the Phillips Academy main building, and the Punchard School. Across the top was the fa- miliar quotation from Phillips Brooks, "Andover, everywhere and always, first and last, she has been the manly, straightfor- ward, sober, patriotic New England town." The five-columned front page contained advertisements of S. G. Bean, Licensed Auc- tioneer; Mrs. L. S. Waterman, High Street Greenhouse; Can- non's Commercial College (in Lawrence); C. W. Scott, M.D., Surgeon and Homeopathic Physician; and O. Chapman, Dining Rooms, Main Street, Andover. Several of these names have pic- turesque connotations for residents still living.
Obviously too much of a cloistered scholar for such a practi- cal enterprise, Mr. Carpenter was succeeded in 1889 by John N.
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Cole himself, who, in the words of Calvin Coolidge, "thought he could swing it." And swing it he did, building the Townsman into a journal of far more than local prestige and influence. Cole was a forthright, courageous editor, in the style of William Al- len White of the Emporia Gazette, who spoke out on controversial issues with vigor and frankness and sometimes with no attention to tact. But even those who disliked him-and like all strong men he had his enemies-had to concede his fearlessness and persistence. He used his newspaper, quite legitimately, to fur- ther his own political advancement. In him the town came to have a leader such as it had not had for many years.
After his retirement as editor, Mr. Carpenter continued to reside in the town. Born in Bernardston, Massachusetts, July 9, 1836, he had been graduated from Andover Theological Semi- nary in 1875, and then had become successively a missionary to Labrador, superintendent of the Lookout Mountain (Tennes- see) Educational Institution, and a minister in Peabody, Massa- chusetts, and Mount Vernon, New Hampshire. After settling in Andover in 1886, he was inevitably and by universal consent the necrologist for its institutions. He could have said, in the words of Robert Southey:
My days among the Dead are spent. .. . My thoughts are with the Dead, with them I live in long-past years.
With flowing snow-white hair and beard, Mr. Carpenter, even in middle life, looked venerable. All day long he sat at his crowd- ed desk in a room packed with piles of catalogues and pamphlets which always seemed about to topple over on him. His study was a masterpiece of disorder the mysteries of which he alone could solve. But when dates and titles and locations were required, he knew where to find them.
Another researcher of the same indefatigable type was Miss Charlotte Helen Abbott-always referred to by her full sonorous name-a commanding woman with an inextinguishable curi-
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osity. A genealogist by profession, she helped to fill the pages of the Boston Evening Transcript with the ramifications of family relationships. No problem was too abstruse, no quest too com- plicated, no item too insignificant for her inquisitorial zeal. Her files, if they could be called such, were bulging with information which only she could identify and interpret but which substan- tiated history with a vast amount of detail, valuable in spite of its lack of organization. Mr. Carpenter and Miss Abbott usually labored in different areas, but they supplemented one another. Between them over the years they left little Andoveriana un- traced, and they were pertinacious in pursuing even the most trivial reference to its source. They furnished the raw material for the chronicler.
I should be ungrateful indeed if I did not mention Miss Sarah Loring Bailey, of North Andover, who in 1880 published her Historical Sketches of Andover, Massachusetts. The only previous volume on the subject had been Abiel Abbot's History of Andover from Its Settlement to 1829. Born in Wilton, New Hampshire, in 1765, Abbot was a direct descendant of the first settler in An- dover, George Abbot. He graduated from Harvard in the Class of 1787, taught for a time in Phillips Academy, and then as pas- tor of a church in Coventry, Connecticut, was deposed in 1811 for heretical doctrines. He turned again to teaching at Byfield Academy, but resigned and came to Andover in 1819, where he became interested in the town's past. While his thin volume of two hundred and four pages contained a considerable amount of miscellaneous detail, it was badly arranged, and has no great im- portance for us today.
Miss Bailey, on the other hand, was a competent historian who went back to sources, consulted the town, county, and state Records, and checked nearly all the available material. Further- more, she did this with a commendable attention to accuracy, with the result that hers is not only one of the earliest but also one of the best of New England local histories. Her original pur- pose was "simply to make a collection of sketches of the romance
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and poetry of old Andover history," but subsequently she en- larged this plan and undertook a continuous narrative of town affairs. So extensive did her project become that she was able to cover the nineteenth century only in cursory fashion, leaving this period to some possible successor. At it was, the book in pub- lished form comprised more than six hundred pages of text. Thirty-four sponsors, ranging alphabetically from John Abbot, of Andover, to John A. Wiley, of North Andover, pledged sub- scriptions for copies to the amount of at least twenty-five dollars; and Mr. Joseph W. Smith in addition assumed a large part of the financial risks of publication.
Miss Bailey was the great-great-granddaughter of Samuel Bailey, who in 1733 bought a quarter section of land in what is now the West Parish, near the borders of Tewksbury; and her great-grandfather, Samuel Bailey, Jr., was shot dead by a cannon ball as he was leading his men at Bunker Hill. The town was in- deed fortunate in having as its historian a scholar not only thor- ough and conscientious but also so closely identified by family inheritance with local traditions. It was fortunate also in having citizens willing to sponsor the publication of the book. When the author needed patrons, they were not lacking. Everybody apparently was satisfied, including her readers.
The researches of Miss Bailey, Dr. Carpenter, and others un- doubtedly made the ancient town conscious of its history. Fur- thermore the Academy celebration of 1878 had been so success- ful and profitable to everybody concerned that most of the tax- payers were glad to have an excuse for another. Hence, as the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of An- dover drew near, public opinion demanded some observance of the event. At the annual town meeting in March, 1894, well in advance, a committee of fifteen was appointed; and when, on March 17, 1894, it met for organization, Principal Cecil F. P. Bancroft, of Phillips Academy, became chairman and John N. Cole its secretary.
Although Andover took the initiative, it was careful to ob-
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serve fraternal courtesies, and the committee at its third meet- ing made a polite recommendation:
That the town of Andover invite the town of North Andover, and the citizens thereof, to participate in such a way as may be conven- ient and agreeable to them in the celebration of the incorporation of the original township in which they have a common pride and in- heritance.
To this invitation North Andover made a heartening and gen- erous response; and a "Committee of Cooperation from North Andover," composed of the Honorable William J. Dale, Jr., Miss Sarah Kittredge, Mrs. Moses T. Stevens, and Mr. John O. Loring, contributed much to the program. When he was later called upon for "remarks," Hollis R. Bailey said:
I am asked to come here on this occasion as representing the daugh- ter town of North Andover, my native town. And, in speaking on my own behalf and on behalf of the many citizens of North Andover whom I see before me, I am sure I am right in saying that we have all come with willing feet and joyful hearts to join in this glad anniver- sary celebration. When I was born in 1852, there was but one An- dover; and, ladies and gentlemen, there is but one Andover today. North, South, and West are here joined in one under the glad in- fluence of this anniversary occasion. A common tradition, a com- mon ancestry, make us one in thought, in feeling, and in brotherly affection.
In such cheerful spirit and with the support of all the An- dovers the Committee of Fifteen undertook its task. Its make-up is of sociological interest. Dr. Bancroft, of course, represented Phillips Academy and Professor John Phelps Taylor, famous for his orotund and all-embracing eloquence, the Seminary. William Marland, Joseph W. Smith, and Howell Wilson were manufacturers, the last named being the manager of the Ballard Vale Mills. The Reverend Frederick W. Greene was pastor of the West Parish Church, but when he resigned, his place was taken by another industrialist, Peter D. Smith. Alfred L. Ripley
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was a young Boston banker with a brilliant future ahead of him; indeed he was to be not only president of the Merchants Bank of Boston but also president of the board of trustees of Phillips Academy and town moderator. Ballard Holt bore the names of two of the first settlers; and both George H. Poor and George W. Foster traced their lineage back to original proprietors. Samuel H. Boutwell, Joseph H. Bradley, William S. Donald, and George Gould bore good Andover names, but of a more recent date. Most remarkable of all, no Abbott, or Abbot, was among the members.
A study of meteorological conditions over a period of years led the committee to choose May 20 as the focal date instead of the more strictly accurate May 3-a wise decision, as it turned out, for the weather was perfect. It next appointed several sub- committees, until one hundred and seventeen men and women were enlisted actively in the planning. It was an avowed objec- tive to get as many people as possible interested, until "every- body within our borders feels that the celebration is unselfishly his." The committee was given from the town an appropria- tion of 4,500 dollars for what the chairman called, with proper classical terminology, the "Quarter-Millennial." This was a sum which, to quote his own felicitous words, "would meet the re- quirements of a dignified and comprehensive celebration, while not large enough to warrant any ostentation."
The executive committee and its various subcommittees held numerous meetings preparing the program for the great event. On Saturday, May 16, in the town hall, occurred the first presen- tation of the historical tableaux, intended especially for chil- dren. These were described as "A Spectacle of Moral and Pleas- ing Pictures," beginning with "Ye Passing of Ye Red Men" and concluding with "Ye Reception of Gen Washington by Madam Phillips at Ye Mansion House." On Sunday, May 17, services were held in all the meeting houses, and the local preachers, dis- cussing various features of the town's life and growth, reminded their congregations of the virtues of Puritanism.
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In describing the happenings of Wednesday, May 20, the of- ficial chronicler, while indulging an evident fondness for rhet- oric, apparently did not stray too far from the truth:
Andover in all her glory, under fair skies and in a bright array of flags and bunting, was all prepared for this eventful day in her his- tory. All roads led to Andover on this fair May morning, and the gaily bedecked streets were early full of life. At the stroke of the clock that tolled off the hour of 9 A.M. the day's pleasure had begun, and one event after another in order and precision told how well the preliminary arrangements had been made. Something for every- body to enjoy, and some event to make the day memorable to each attendant had been provided, and from the morning salute to the boom of the good night rocket, not an accident occurred, nor a detail of the program miscarried, in the making of Andover's two hundred and fiftieth birthday a glorious success.
The long and colorful procession was headed by Chief Mar- shal Peter D. Smith. In the line were several brass bands, Post Number 99 of the G.A.R. (forty men), the Andover Fire Depart- ment, nine hundred school children, Phillips Academy Seniors in caps and gowns (what fun they must have had!), dignitaries in carriages (no automobiles then available!), and a long array of decorated floats furnished by Andover businessmen. The route covered the principal streets, proceeding along Central to Phil- lips, then up the Hill and back down School Street to the South Church, being reviewed by the chief marshal and the town fa- thers from a stand on Punchard Avenue. In the church, after the customary preliminaries, Dr. Bancroft introduced Albert Poor, Esq., who delivered an "Historical Oration," and Professor John W. Churchill, who read an "Historical Poem," composed for the occasion by Annie Sawyer Downs. When these exercises were concluded, everybody adjourned to a huge tent which had been erected on the playstead. Here a "collation" was served, after which the guests listened to the customary succession of speeches by the Great and Not-so-Great. The program closed with an im- pressive display of fireworks.
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Albert Poor, the orator of the day, was a Boston attorney of scholarly tastes and traits, a direct descendant of one of the orig- inal proprietors, Thomas Poor. In printed form his address filled forty-two pages, but Poor was merciful to his audience and did some judicious "skipping" as he went along, perhaps as a concession to the presiding officer, Dr. Bancroft, who said to him casually, but significantly, as they sat on the platform, "Poor, is it going to be more than an hour?" Poor had read the early Records with care and discrimination and was careful to mention everybody. For example, when he spoke of the Grand Army of the Republic, he turned to Major William Marland and said to him and his fellow veterans:
The orator of 1946 will miss the inspiration of your presence, but he will tell to ears unfamiliar with the story the full detail of your duteous service to your town and country, and will pay to your mem- ory the tribute that a faithful allegiance to a good cause must ever call forth.
Poor could not have dreamed that in 1946 our country, and Andover, would just have completed the second of two global wars which had engaged the town's young men in battles on far- off Pacific islands and on foreign soil around the world.
Poor's oration, over which he had worked with so much care and affection, was a model of its kind and at some points became genuinely inspiring. Of several eloquent passages, perhaps the most moving came towards the close, in a formal apostrophe reminiscent of Webster and Choate:
Such, fellow citizens, in partial outline is Andover, and out of the manifold delights of this hour, there rises to the vision, not a vener- able matron whose life is in the past, but a mother of maturing beau- ty, confident of the future, regnant, imperial. In classic dignity, in the repose of conscious worth, she sits upon her hill top, and as the generations of her children and her students come to do her honor, she rises up to meet them, and, pointing with becoming pride to the band of men and women who surround her seat, she says: "These are
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they of Puritan mould, who felled my forests; who fought my ene- mies; who founded my schools; who gained my independence; who have made my name one with the blessed name of Freedom. What- ever of sovereignty I have, I owe to them. If you would have me to abide with you, the bright flower of that Puritan development from which I had my origin, cultivate their virtues and their character, and my reign among you will be secure."
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