USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Amherst > Around a village green; sketches of life in Amherst > Part 5
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MRS. LUCIUS BOLTWOOD A leader in Amherst society for half a century
HON. LUCIUS MANLIUS BOLTWOOD Her son, College Librarian from 1852 to 1863
Photo by Lovell
THE BOLTWOOD MANSION
A center of Amherst town and college social life for over fifty years, it became college property after 1892 and was rechristened Hitchcock Hall. In 1916 it was torn down to make room for the Converse Memorial Library.
THE BOLTWOOD HOUSE
Y EARS ago I heard my father say that a beacon fire was lighted one dark evening on the hill near College Hall, and by its gleam a straight line of road was surveyed from Hadley to Amherst. (The underpass of the Boston & Maine Railroad has trespassed upon this straight line in recent years.) My father, as a selectman of the town, stood with the surveyors on a slight elevation at Dexter Hunter's in Hadley and watched them lay the road straight to the luminous bonfire, through the stretch of dark woods beyond East Hadley settlement, through frog ponds, and over seven different kinds of clay. These clay deposits beneath the wide, breeze-rippled meadows of later days proved good for the growing of roses, but they made a road that in the season of spring mud turned into quaking mire under the weight of the old Northampton stage as it toiled slowly past the half- mile stretch of woods. As the stage loaded with passengers sank farther and farther down, those sitting outside on the top of the coach were terrified and Professor W. S. Tyler, the revered teacher of Greek to generations of Amherst College students, began to quote from the eleventh book of the " Odyssey " the words that greeted Odysseus as he descended to Tartarus: " Rash as you are, how dared you come down hither to the house of Hades?" I verily believe that the venerable professor would have adventured to go down to Hades too for the joy of meeting Socrates in the world below. It was not long since his son John Tyler had sent him word that he could not expect to find Soc- rates in the heaven of the theologians.
The thought of the old Northampton Road always gives me a long detour in memory as I pass over the route from College Hall to the long-since-vanished covered bridge over the Connecticut. Along that sightly thoroughfare nothing is left the same now, save the panorama of the Holyoke Range with its Seven Sisters clothed in azure. But in those days the Range was a far-off, everyday vision not counted in by us children as one of the thrilling interests incident to a ride. Our great adventure was the journey home in the early twilight of an autumn night, when we passed along the stretch of dark woods and the swamp filled with old, half-submerged, blackened tree stumps, from which arose the dismal croaking of what seemed like millions of frogs. The steady beat of the horse's hoofs echoed on the hard clay road as the carryall bore us safely past. Many a student on horseback rode daily from home over this road to Amherst College.
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The spacious Shepard house stood at the head of Northampton Road, directly opposite College Hall, where the Chi Psi Lodge now stands. It was built for Mrs. Deborah Haskins Shepard by her two sons in 1822, after death of her husband, Reverend Mase Shepard of Little Compton, R. I. The sons had been freshmen at Brown, but when their father died they transferred to Amherst and were graduated in the class of 1824. It is of passing interest to note that Henry Ward Beecher, as an undergraduate at Amherst, also lived in this house.
We hear of Mrs. Shepard's two sons later, the elder as Reverend George Champlin Shepard, D.D., who was instrumental in founding Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst and became one of its earliest benefactors; the younger as Charles Upham Shepard, LL.D., for forty years professor and professor emeritus of chemistry and natural history at Amherst College and the collector of its first mineral cabinet. He also lectured at Yale and held a professorship at Charleston Medical College. As an undergraduate he started his mineral collection in the cellar of his mother's house, fitted up a laboratory there, and discoursed on mineralogy to fellow students. Years later he was complimented by Sir Robert Peel, at a public dinner in England, as the first author- ity in the world upon meteorites.
Mrs. Shepard died in 1841, and the house was bought by Gideon Delano of New Braintree. It remained the Delano house until 1861, when it was sold to the First Congregational Church to serve as a parsonage. Even before it became the parsonage it had been used for religious gatherings, for Mrs. Eliza Parkman Delano Stoddard, my great-great-aunt by marriage, writes in a family letter as follows: " Remember me in sympathy to Mrs. Leland. The dear old Deacon has gone home to glory without doubt. I remember years ago the Deacon used to hold prayer meetings at my father's, one evening every week. It was always in our great dining-room, and the sitting-room and kitchen doors would open into it, so there was room enough for the few Christians who would attend them." Tradition says that Mrs. Stoddard wrote anonymously for Godey's Lady's Book and other magazines. She had a vigorous intellect and keen sensibilities. Her brother, Charles Delano, later the distinguished judge of Northamp- ton, also lived in the Delano house.
In 1824 Mrs. Shepard's daughter, Fanny Haskins Shepard, at the age of seventeen wedded Lucius Boltwood, Esq. The couple passed their early married life in this same old house, until in 1835 Mr. Bolt- wood built the house which for over fifty years remained the home of the Boltwood family. It stood high up across the village green adjoining the college grounds, guarding, as it were, old traditions for
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over seventy-five years. When the classic columns of the dignified mansion were superseded by the portico of Converse Library, there was demolished both a college and a village landmark. For not only was the house a grand old mansion in itself, but it was associated with many prominent visitors to the campus, and within its portals had lived those who had furthered Amherst College from its earliest be- ginnings.
Lucius Boltwood was a leading man of affairs, a gentleman of the old school, distinguished for his courtly bearing and for the ruffled shirt he wore even in my day. He was a benevolent man, interested all his life in the cause of education. After graduating from Williams College, where he took highest rank as a scholar, he read law in the office of Samuel Fowler Dickinson of Amherst, and on being admitted to the bar in 1817 became a partner in the firm. Like everyone else associated with Squire Dickinson, Lucius Boltwood was called upon to foster the projected Charity Institution in Amherst and he gave to the enterprise all the fire of his youthful enthusiasm.
He was also associated with Noah Webster in establishing a Sunday school at the First Congregational Church in 1820. This was an achievement, for Sunday schools were then a novelty in New England. The school ran for twenty-two weeks during the more livable part of the year, and among its pupils were adults as well as children. The curriculum consisted chiefly of large portions of the Bible to be learned, but definitions and spelling were taught as well as religious truths. Noah Webster was chosen chairman of the board of manage- ment of this school, and Lucius Boltwood was made secretary.
The first honorary degree (Master of Arts) given by Amherst College was conferred upon Mr. Boltwood in 1825 at the first Com- mencement under the charter. He faithfully performed the duties of secretary of the Corporation for thirty-six years (1828-64) without compensation. He was also commissioner of the Charity Fund from 1833 to 1866, having previously acted as auditor of the Fund. In these varying capacities he remained an officer of the College for forty- four years. At the age of eighty he had the satisfaction of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the College whose foundations he had helped to lay. At that time he was senior member of the Board of Trustees.
Mr. Boltwood was one of the originators of the Liberty Party (Free-soil Whigs) and its first candidate for Governor in the cam- paign of 1841. In his letter accepting the nomination of the State Central Committee he speaks of " regarding it a greater honor to be defeated in a good than to succeed in a bad cause." The expected defeat took place, but he lived to see his cause triumph.
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Lucius Boltwood's wife was one of the most entertaining women in Amherst. She was a fluent and fascinating talker. When you chanced to meet her on the street, she would greet you with a cordial smile and plunge immediately into conversation. She knew all about your family, and incidents connected with them would remind her about famous people she knew. The sparkling and never-ending stream of her talk rolled on. When a student was late to a recitation, he had only to say to the professor, "I met Mrs. Boltwood on the street." The professor would put up one hand in a gesture of under- standing and exclaim, " Say no more. You are excused." Her nimble wit was ever ready. She once said about the small sums given to foreign missions, her favorite charity, that the situation reminded her of a maple sugar orchard where the spiles (sap-spouts) were length- ened to the sugar house. All the sap was absorbed in passage and none of it reached the house. On another occasion when a dignified college divine and his wife were going to see the animals at the circus, they met Mrs. Boltwood on the way. They apologized to her, thinking that it was hardly respectable for them to attend a circus. Mrs. Bolt- wood replied, "Then let us go and make it respectable." So they all attended and had a most enjoyable time.
The circus grounds in those days were near the house of H. D. Fearing where the Mount Pleasant Inn (late the Davenport) stands today. My father took my brother and me to see the colorful sight, and after the performance in the main tent to one of the side-shows. The sleight-of-hand man we thought would be more respectable than the freaks. To my astonishment I won as a door prize a silver-plated cake basket. It went home and was put in disgrace at the bottom of the pile of tin pans in the pantry. Though of doubtful origin, it proved in the light of future scrutiny to deserve a better fate.
When it came Mrs. Boltwood's turn to entertain the Grace Church Sewing Society, which met at various houses, she would often ask three girls of the parish, born in the same month of the same year, to serve. One was very fair, one very dark, and one a color between. They were considered quite attractive as they served the tables, replacing the hostess's regular servants. The girls enjoyed it because, after the ladies left the tables, they were allowed to eat what they liked. There were in Amherst, it may be hinted, families that frugally chose the Lenten season for their entertaining, but Mrs. Boltwood never enter- tained in Lent. Hers was always a lavish table. The youthful servers were particularly fond of escalloped oysters, a popular dish; and when it came to cakes of innumerable variety there could be no choosing - every kind had to be tasted.
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Squire Boltwood had a large farm extending back of his house and including a large part of the present campus. Many a pat of delicious butter was sent to friends in the village by Mrs. Boltwood, though she was not always aware of what was happening on the farm. One day she was calling on a friend who lived far down "Faculty Street," almost to the hat factory. She glanced out of her hostess's window and said, "What luxuriant vegetables you grow. I wish we could grow some like these." The friend said laughingly, "Why, they are yours." A narrow strip of land had been sold off the Boltwood farm for this friend's house. Her back yard adjoined the Boltwood vegetable garden.
Mrs. Boltwood frequently called upon my grandmother, always arriving about four in the afternoon. She would ask for a footstool as soon as she was seated. Whenever I could I used to slip into the room to hear her conversation, for few people I have known have had so much personal magnetism. Her nature was devout and joyous, and she possessed what was called in those days Christian zeal. To her the unseen and the eternal were a reality. She sailed no uncharted seas to her heavenly home, as is shown by an extract from one of her letters: " I saw in the paper Uncle Robert was dismissed from the pilgrimage of life and has joined the departed household of his father on the other side of the River of Death." She gave a tempered clime to conversation, for there was a kindness and friendliness for all in what she said, and she talked about things that were worthy of atten- tion and thought. Her reminiscences of famous men were most enter- taining as were also her anecdotes about her own family connections. Rufus Choate, Henry Ward Beecher, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John B. Gough, and many successive Governors of the Commonwealth had experienced her choice hospitality. Once when she was calling on us and heard the clock striking six, she said, " I must be hastening home. Ralph is coming to supper." She referred to Ralph Waldo Emerson, her first cousin, who was to speak that evening in College Hall. It was not quite right to agree with Mr. Emerson or to hear him in those days.
The Boltwood house was also hospitable to children. Eight sons and one daughter grew up there. Eugene Field, who spent his boy- hood days in Amherst at his aunt's house on Amity Street, had a theatrical company of village playmates who held performances in the Boltwood barn. In the company were several sons of the family.
I recall a day that I spent as a girl with Mrs. Boltwood in her home - the richly decorative wall-paper in the broad hall, the wide stair- way, the stately mahogany in the high-ceiled rooms, and the beautiful
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paneling. The house was full of many things as was the fashion of the day: what-nots - many of them - and ottomans with elaborate cross-stitched covers, marble-topped tables, and dried grasses in elegant vases. Mrs. Boltwood was knitting an afghan, a broad stripe of bur- gundy and then a stripe of all colors of gayest worsted, but she laid aside her work to show me her treasures, laughingly quoting a remark made by Professor Park of Andover on one of his frequent visits. He had said, " If there is anything I am proud of, it is my humility." She showed me her scrapbooks - one filled with clippings on doctrines, science, biography. No wonder she could talk on any subject with intelligence. She took me through the rooms and pointed out the family portraits: one by Bullard of her mother, Deborah Haskins Shepard, with three of her children, painted in 1839; portraits of her brother, Reverend George C. Shepard, and his beautiful wife, Sally Inman Kast; a silhouette of Miss Kast and another of John Haskins Shepard. She paused as she came to these last to tell me that just at the time of the death of Sally Inman Kast Shepard the newly estab- lished Grace Church was seeking funds for a bell-tower to complete the church building. Mr. Shepard built the tower as a memorial to his wife, shortly before his own death. You will see in the church tablets in memory of the Shepard family and a bust of George C. Shepard carved from rarest marble. Continuing on our way, Mrs.
SALLY INMAN (KAST) SHEPARD From a silhouette that once hung in the Boltwood House
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Boltwood showed me a portrait of her husband and herself painted by Bullard. I was fascinated by a painting on light-colored velvet of a fruit-basket ; this she said was painted by her sister, Mary Shep- ard. I also remember the "English Fox Hunt " in bright colors that hung on the wall, and an old print called, I think, " Age and Infancy." Many of these portraits and family heirlooms are now in the home of Mrs. Boltwood's granddaughters, Miss Fanny Haskins Boltwood and Miss Elvira Wright Boltwood, who live in their maternal grand- mother's house in Goshen, Mass.
Mrs. Boltwood impressed on me that day the fact that it was never necessary to tell a lie. In proof thereof she told me an incident about the time when she was a schoolgirl and lived in the Haskins house in Boston. At that period roughs were ringing doorbells and forcing their way past butler or maid-servant if no responsible member of the family was there to oppose them. One night about six, in the early dusk of a winter's evening when she chanced to be alone in the house, she heard the doorbell ring. She opened the door. There stood a rough- looking man. He asked, " Is the master of the house in? " What was she to say? She could not tell a lie to save her life. She said, "Will you come in, or see him at the door?" The man fled.
The Haskins house stood on what was then known as Rainsford's Lane, which ran from Essex Street to Beach Street and so down to the harbor. Mrs. Boltwood showed me a drawing of it that she her- self had made as a schoolgirl. It was the home of her grandfather, who was also the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She and Ralph played there together as children. It may not be inappropriate to quote here a poem written by Emerson at the age of eleven, and so dating from the time when he was the playmate of Fanny Haskins Shepard in their grandfather's house.
See the calm exit of the aged saint,
Without a murmur and without complaint ;
While round him gathered, all his children stand,
And some one holds his withered, pallid hand. He bids them trust in God, nor mourn nor weep; He breathes religion, and then falls asleep. Then on Angelic Wings he soars to God, Rejoiced to leave his earthly, mortal load ; His head is covered with a crown of gold, His hands renewed a harp immortal hold ; Thus clothed with light, the tuneful spirit sings - He sings of mercy and of Heavenly things.
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Less than a decade later, Emerson, his mind for the moment on more mundane things, wrote to George Shepard a letter asking for the return of a missing shirt. This was after he had visited his Shep- ard cousins in Providence.
Boston, Sept. 3d, 1821.
Dear Sir :
I am sorry to be obliged to trouble your politeness again, but when I returned home, I discovered that I had left a linen shirt at Chappolins,- and my mother, who is an excellent economist, and fortunately knows the value of shirts better than I, says that her careless son must write a note to his cousins, and ask them to call at the hotel and send article by Mr. Ladd if he comes through the town, or by stage. It was marked with my name and left I think in No. 23. I am very sorry to give you any trouble, if you do not find it readily, do not look any farther.
Your affectionate cousin,
R. WALDO EMERSON
Mr. George C. Shepard.
Mrs. Boltwood's granddaughter, Miss Fanny Haskins Boltwood, listened to my reminiscences by the open fire one afternoon, and after- wards sent me these three unpublished notes from Emily Dickinson to her grandmother to place beside Emerson's letter. With the cordial permission of my friend, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, I give them here. The first two came with neighborly gifts, the third was sent to Mrs. Boltwood on the death of her son.
Will dear Mrs. Boltwood taste a little loaf of " Federal Cake " and a few Wild Roses, which are not so aboriginal as I could wish ? Affly,
EMILY.
The Spring of which dear Mrs. Boltwood speaks, is not so brave as herself, and should bring her of right, its first flower.
Though a Pie is far from a flower, Mr. Howells implies in his " Undiscovered Country," that " our relation to Pie " will unfold in proportion to finer relations.
With sweet thoughts from us all, and thanks for the charming Butter, and the gallant notes.
Very faithfully, EMILY.
To thank my dear Mrs. Boltwood would be impossible. That is a paltry debt we are able to pay.
It is sweet to be under obligation to my School Mate's Mother.
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I thought the flowers might please him, though he made, like Birds, the exchange of Latitudes.
It is proud to believe that his privilege as far surpasses our's. Let me congratulate his Mother.
Tenderly,
EMILY.
Another son of the family, Lucius Manlius Boltwood, made the first card catalogue of the Amherst College Library. It is a coincidence that he should have spent his boyhood on the spot where the Converse Memorial Library now stands. At the age of eighteen he graduated from Amherst College with the class of 1843. Undergraduates of today might well be interested in the subjects that he discussed while in college. At a spring exhibition in 1842 he gave a disputation on " Does the poet exert a greater influence in forming the intellectual and moral character of a nation than the orator? " His graduating oration was on " Times of excitement favorable for eloquence." Brought up with the New England feeling that an eldest son must enter the min- istry, he studied theology at Andover and was licensed to preach. He did in fact preach acceptably in the towns near Amherst, and when only twenty-two years old conducted services in Amherst College Chapel at President Hitchcock's request. But "Squire Boltwood's son," as he was called, was by nature a classifier and cataloguer, and he eventually followed the bent of his nature. As College Librarian from 1852 to 1863 he took meticulous care of a collection of 20,000 books without assistance of any kind. It was his insistence that an orderly record be kept of the books borrowed from the library that led to his withdrawal from his position after an incident in which Puritan steel met Puritan flint. In 1860 he was elected a State Senator, serving as a member of the committee on education and as chairman of the committee on libraries. Some one remarked that not being one of the talking mem- bers he made a good legislator. In 1876 Mr. Boltwood was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain. Two years later he published his most notable work, " The History and Genealogy of the Noble Family in America," a volume of 870 pages to which he had devoted more than thirty years of painstaking research. When his lifelong friend Sylvester Judd died while Judd's " History of Hadley " was in press, Mr. Boltwood completed the work. The genealogical appendix dealing with Hadley families and also with the early settlers of the towns of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby, was his contribution.
In his quiet and austere way Lucius Manlius Boltwood was a great man. His daughters have created a fitting memorial to him by placing
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in the Jones Library at Amherst, as the most available center for gen- eral use, his remarkable collection of manuscripts, letters, maps, and other material dealing with the history of this section of the Connecti- cut Valley. This is a largely unworked mine of historical records. Also in the Jones Library is the Boltwood collection of genealogies and town histories, an excellent working library of family and local history. He rarely met a New Englander about whose ancestors he could not recall some interesting fact or anecdote. What stories he could have written of the brilliant men and women who since 1835 had passed in and out of his own door!
College Hall, with its pillared portico happily restored, alone re- mains to remind us dwellers of an earlier day of enchanting memories. The landmarks which bordered the old road have passed away. The spacious fair old houses have disappeared one by one. How little the undergraduates of today, reading " Boltwood Avenue " on the street corner, can realize what that name meant to us! How little they can comprehend its spell !
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SCHOOL DAYS IN AMHERST
S OMETIMES on Sunday afternoons my father and brother and I would walk to Baker's Grove, now named Hallock Park in memory of Leavitt Hallock who gave it to the college. Here we gathered " youngsters " and full-grown checkerberries and autumn leaves for pressing or for doing " spatter work." And in this grove we would beg to hear again the old tradition of how Helen Fiske, the Helen Hunt Jackson of later days, ran away one morning to this grove with a small girl companion, both resolved on errancy. When the bell of the academy rang out for school, the other girl succumbed to habit and went back, but Helen ran on to Hadley village. She later gave a graphic chronicle of her sensations as a truant in the sketch entitled " The Naughtiest Day of My Life." A reviewer in the Springfield Republican roguishly asked for assurances that this was really truly the naughtiest day of her life.
My father, a contemporary of Helen's, had a pleasant acquaintance with her in the family life of the village and could tell us interesting stories about her. The scene of her first novel, " Mercy Philbrick's Choice," published in the No Name Series, was laid in Amherst and many of her unacknowledged " Saxe Holm's Stories " then appearing in the old Scribner's Monthly recalled persons and incidents connected with the region. Helen Hunt lived on as a legendary figure in the hearts of Amherst people after she married and moved away from town. She took much of Amherst with her. Its friendliness with youth was perfectly embodied in a sentence from her " Bits of Talk about Home Matters ": " Men know that safe through all the wear and tear of life, they keep far greener the memory of some woman or man who was kind to them in their boyhood than of the friend who helped or cheered them yesterday."
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