USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Vol II > Part 6
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That something is gained by the separation of the college from an institution so different in purpose, in temper and atmosphere, as the university, seems to be generally conceded. The university pursues learning for its own sake, aims to make scholars, and to extend the boundaries of human knowledge. With the college, on the other hand, general culture is the paramount consideration. It proceeds upon the principle that students will secure, as a result of training in the liberal arts, not only a larger and richer life, but will be able to use their powers to better advantage.
In the ideals of the college there is, we suppose, nothing altogether peculiar. It has had a full share of intellectuality, manliness and high endeavor. After all, while other things may be important, the consid- eration of vital significance is the temper and quality of the instruction. Williams has been fortunate in its teaching staff. To the elect men who have been members of it from time to time it is indebted for whatever distinction it may have won in the educational world. What is more, these men largely create that illusive but potent something which we call atmosphere-a something which money cannot buy or founders bestow.
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Though of Congregational antecedents and affiliations, the college is undenominational. It requires attendance at the weekly morning prayers. at the college services or those of some local church Sunday morning, and at prayers Sunday evening. For the year 1904-05 the college preachers were thirty-two in number. The Young Men's Chris- tian Association, which has a permanent secretary and a membership of more than two hundred, conducts a service Sunday evening, as well as weekly Bible classes.
The college began, as we have seen, in the remoteness and isola- tion of the wilderness. President Zephaniah Swift Moore and his friends, who abandoned it as a hopeless enterprise in 1821, may be pardoned for not foreseeing that in a generation or two few traces of the primitive, border times would remain : that, to say nothing of the trolley, which makes communication with neighboring towns easy, twenty-four passenger trains should stop daily at the railroad station of Williamstown. Then, instead of the extinction which was freely predicted, the history of the college presents a creditable record of growth and progress. Since 1821 the number of professors and in- structors has increased from five to forty-six; of undergraduate students from eighty-four to four hundred and forty-three; of buildings, including the houses of Greek Letter fraternities, from four to forty- two; while the endowment has grown from $46,000 to $1,373,488.12; and the value of the plant from $25,000 to $1,227,091.57.
Among the graduates of the college during the one hundred and twelve years of its existence, the names of many Berkshire men are' to be found. At the outset the constituency of the college was mostly local. Three of the four members of the first graduating class-the class of 1795-came from Stockbridge, and the other member was a resident of Lenox. In subsequent years the relative proportion of stu-
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ERECTED .TO.THE. GLORY.OF .GOD .AND.IN-MEMORY.OF FREDERICK .FERRIS. THOMPSON ·ANNO DOMINI MONIII.
Tablet in Thompson Memorial Chapel.
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dents from the Berkshires to the whole number has varied considerably. They furnished two of the thirteen seniors in 1801 : six of the fourteen in 1802; seven of the thirteen in 1822; four of the seven in 1823. and five of the twenty in 1837. The area from which the college drew students gradually widened. Six states are represented in the cata- logue of 1800; thirteen in that of 1836; twenty-eight states and four foreign countries in that of 1905.
Many of the most distinguished alumni of the college were natives or residents of Berkshire county. The list, which cannot be reproduced here with anything like completeness, includes Mark Hopkins, fourth presi- dent of the college; David Dudley Field, lawyer and publicist ; Charles A. Dewey, justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; John Mor -. gan, professor in Oberlin College; Albert Hopkins, professor in Will- iams College: Daniel Noble, attorney for Williamstown in the contro- versy over the question of removal; John W. Yeomans, president of Lafayette College; Stephen J. Field, justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; James D. Colt, justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts; Henry M. Field, editor of The Evangelist; Martin I. Townsend, regent of the University of New York and member of Congress : Henry L. Sabin, physician; Francis H. Dewey, justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; William E. Merriman, president of Ripon College; Lucius E. Smith, editor of The Watchman; Henry S. Briggs, brigadier general of U. S. Volunteers; Henry Hopkins, seventh president of Williams College; James M. Barker, justice of the Su- preme Court of Massachusetts; Eben B. Parsons, secretary of the faculty of Williams College and vice-president of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa; Edward H. Griffin, dean of Johns Hopkins University; Edward W. Morley, professor in Adelbert University, and honorary member of the Royal Institute, London; George FF. Mills, professor in
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Massachusetts Agricultural College; James R. Dunbar, justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court ; Herbert R. Gibbs, editor: Charles B. Hubbell. president of the Board of Education, New York city; John H. Morley, president of Fargo College : Solomon B. Griffin, managing editor of The Springfield Republican; John H. Haynes, director of the Expedi- tion to Nipur; Albert H. Tolman, assistant professor and dean in the University of Chicago: Alfred T. Perry, president of Marietta College: Walter P. Bradley, professor in Wesleyan University, and Bliss Perry, editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
HENRY HOPKINS.
Henry Hopkins, president of Williams College, was born in Will- iamstown, Massachusetts, November 30, 1837, a son of the Rev. Mark and Mary (Hubbell) Hopkins. The Hopkins family is one of honor- able distinction in America from the earliest colonial days. The first of the name in this branch of the Hopkins family arrived, in 1634, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, whence he removed to Hartford. Connecti- cut. Members of both the Hopkins and Hubbell families were officers in the patriot army during the Revolutionary war. Colonel Mark Hop- kins, great-grandfather of the Rev. Henry Hopkins, served upon the staff of General Israel Putnam, and Colonel Mark Hopkins's brother, Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, Rhode Island, was a distinguished the- ologian and philanthropist.
Henry Hopkins graduated from Williams College in 1858, at the age of twenty years, and then went abroad for study and observation. Returning home he entered the Union Theological Seminary, New York, but after two years his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil war. In September, 1861, President Lincoln appointed him
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a hospital chaplain, and he was assigned to duty at Alexandria, Vir- ginia. While here, after the second battle of Bull Run, he was sent with a flag of truce in charge of the entire ambulance corps of the post into the lines of the enemy to bring away the wounded of the Union army who had been left on the fields of Chantilly and Bull Run. In 1864 Chaplain Hopkins resigned the post chaplaincy to accept commis- sion as chaplain of the One Hundred and Twentieth Regiment New York Volunteers, attached to the Third Corps. Army of the Potomac, from which it was subsequently transferred to the Third Division, Sec- ond Corps. He was with his regiment in the field and at the front in the campaigns and operations beginning in the Wilderness and culminating in the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. and he subsequently participated in the Grand Review at Washington city, just prior to the disbandment of the volunteer army, after which he was honorably discharged from service. During his service, in the report of his brigade commander he received honorable mention for gallantry under fire. His army experience and observation led him to make such representations to Henry L. Dawes, member of congress from Massachusetts, and others. as resulted in the legislation under which were established soldiers' national cemeteries in various parts of the country.
After his retirement from the army Mr. Hopkins returned to Will- iamstown, Massachusetts, where he resumed his theological training under his father, the Rev. Mark Hopkins, D. D., then president of Williams College. In 1866 he was called to the pastorate of the Second Congregational church in Westfield, Massachusetts, and which he oc- cupied until 1880, when he accepted a call to the pastorate of the First Congregational church of Kansas City, Missouri, and with which he remained until January, 1902, when he was called to the presidency of
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Williams College (his alma mater), a position which he has occupied to the present time.
Mr. Hopkins is a corporate member of the American Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions, of which he is vice-president ; is vice- president of the American Missionary Association: in 1899 was a member of the International Congregational Council, and in 1900 was a member of the Ecumenical Missionary Conference. He has for sev- eral years been a trustee of Williams College, and of Drury College, at Springfield, Missouri. He is a member of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution, and was chaplain of the Missouri Chapter: and of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, of which he was chaplain-in- chief. Numerous addresses of his on municipal and educational sub- jects and sermons have been published.
Mr. Hopkins married, in 1866, Miss Alice Knight, of Easthamp- ton, Massachusetts, who died in 1869. In 1876 he married Miss Jean- nette M. Southworth, of Bennington, Vermont.
LEVERETT WILSON SPRING.
Mr. Spring was born January 5, 1840, in Grafton, Vermont. His father, Edward Spring, was of English ancestry, a descendant of John Spring, who settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1634; his mother was Martha Atwood, of Scotch-Irish forbears, who settled in London- derry, New Hampshire.
Leverett W. Spring spent his boyhood on a farm preempted by his great-grandfather, one of Grafton's pioneers. The family removed to Manchester, Vermont, in 1854, and two years later young Spring be- came a student in Burr and Burton Seminary. In 1858, he entered Williams College in the class of 1862, but about the middle of the
Leverett W. Spring.
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freshman year was obliged on account of failing eyesight to give up study. For about a year he was clerk in a country store. His eyes recovering in a measure, though troublesome throughout his college course, he resumed his studies and entered college some time in the early part of the freshman year, as his name is enrolled with the class in the autumn of 1859.
In college he was a member of the Equitable fraternity; of the 'Logian Literary Society ; was assigned the Latin oration on Junior ex- hibition, April, 1862; one of the disputants in the Adelphic Union De- bate, March, 1863; on the editorial board of Williams Quaterly, 1862- 63 ; orator on Class Day programme, July, 1863; and was assigned the philosophical oration on the commencement programme, and later, when a chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa was formed, with the other first and second honor men he was made a member.
After graduation he entered the theological seminary at East Wind- sor Hill, Connecticut, in the autumn of 1863, remained there two years and followed the seminary to Hartford, and was graduated in 1866 in the first class after the removal from East Windsor to Hartford. Then followed a few months at Andover as a graduate student until the spring of 1867. when he went to Castleton, Vermont, where he supplied a Congregational church for nine months while the pastor was on a leave of absence. After the return of the pastor to his post in the Castleton church, Mr. Spring accepted an invitation to supply the Congregational church at Middlebury, Vermont, and he there spent the winter of 1867-68. Before the conclusion of this engagement, he re- ceived overtures from a committee which had been appointed in Fitch- burg, Massachusetts, with the view of establishing a new Congrega- tional church in that city. The proposals of the committee were ac- cepted and he began to preach in the hall of a hotel. March 9, 1868.
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A little later a church was organized, Mr. Spring was ordained and installed as its first pastor, and continued in office between seven and eight years. During this pastorate a meeting house costing $85,000 was built, and a church membership of three hundred and fifty was attained.
On account of failing health, Mr. Spring resigned in 1875, and after spending a few months in Reading, Massachusetts, he became pastor of the Plymouth Congregational church, Lawrence, Kansas, He remained in this pastorate five years, and then resigned to accept the chair of English literature in the University of Kansas, about 1881. Here he found his position exceptionally agreeable, and he remained until 1886, when he accepted the Morris professorship of rhetoric in Williams College-a designation that is a misnomer, for Mr. Spring has never taught rhetoric, but has confined himself to English literature, particularly Elizabethan drama and the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fields which he has cultivated during these years since his return to his alma mater have been agreeable to himself and very satisfactory to his pupils and to the college authorities.
Mr. Spring's literary activity, aside from that connected with his college work, has been largely on historical lines. From the outset of his residence in Kansas he became interested in the history of the state, but he published nothing until after his connection with the uni- versity. His first ventures were two articles on certain phases of John Brown's career, printed in The Advance, of Chicago. In Lippincott's Magasine for January. 1883, he published a more elaborate article on the Pottawatomie massacre, entitled, " Old John Brown at Dutch Henry's Crossing," and a few months later one in the Overland Monthly on " Catching Old John Brown." These articles. because of their candid and impartial manner of treating the John Brown episode in Kansas
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history, attracted considerable attention, and not long after their ap- pearance, Mr. Spring was asked to prepare the history of Kansas for the " Commonwealth Series," published by Houghton, Mifflin and Com- pany, which was issued in 1885. Perhaps the best characterization of his book is that given by J. F. Rhodes, who without dispute is one of the best authorities on the slavery period of our national history ("History of the United States," vol. II, page 218). "But," writes Mr. Rhodes, "the story of Kansas, which in our own day Professor Spring, of Kansas, has told impartially and 'without a blur of theory,' is not the story that the truth-seeking voter of 1856 heard at Republican meetings and read in Republican newspapers."
This history is a fine, impartial piece of work of first-class quality, and it was this book chiefly that secured Mr. Spring's election to mem- bership in the Massachusetts Historical Society, an honor that came to him unsolicited and unknown before he received notice of its bestow- ment. Since the publication of this book he has put forth occasional papers on Kansas history; one in The Western Historical Review, on "Kansas and the War of the Rebellion; " one in the American His- torical Review, on " The Career of a Kansas Politician; " and a paper read, in 1900, before the Massachusetts Historical Society, on " John Brown and the Destruction of Slavery." together with several reviews of Kansas books for the American Historical Review. Since returning to Massachusetts, Mr. Spring has given a little attention to Williams history. In 1888, he published a monograph, "Mark Hopkins, Teach- er :" an illustrated article in The New England Magazine for October, 1893, with the title, "Williams College." Also, the same year, he edited the " Williams Centennial Book " and " The Discourses of Pres- ident Hopkins and the Rev. Joseph Alden, D. D., at the Semi-Centen- nial in 1843." The readers of the present work are indebted to Mr.
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Spring for the very excellent history of Williams College contained therein. On educational topics Mr. Spring has printed little. The princi- pal titles are: "On Teaching English," "Shakespeare's Ideal King," " Shakespeare's 'Life Beyond Life' of Queen Margaret," "Milton on Education." In 1891 he delivered an address before the alumni of Hartford Theological Seminary, on "English Literature and the The- ological Seminaries," which was afterward published in the Atlantic Monthly.
Mr. Spring spent the summers of 1889 and 1890 and the year 1892, a vacation year, with his wife in Europe. After his resigna- tion of his chair in Kansas University, that institution conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, in 1886. In 1904 he preached the baccalaureate sermon at the State University during com- mencement week.
While in Castleton, Vermont, Mr. Spring married Elizabeth, the daughter of Professor William Thompson, of Hartford Theological Seminary. They have had two children: Mary Thompson Lord and Samuel Romney. The former died in the summer of 1887, at the age of seventeen ; the latter graduated at Williams in 1894 and at Harvard Law School in 1897. He is now a member of the law firm of Mat- thews. Thompson & Spring, with offices in Tremont Building, Boston.
PLUNKETT FAMILY.
None of Berkshire county's families of exceptional interest has been a more potent factor in its development, and none has included so many strong men contributory to progress along manufacturing lines, through rare business capacity and boldness of business conception. Although this story deals with but three generations since the founder
William C. Plunkett.
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of the American family of that name came from Ireland and settled in western Massachusetts, six of his immediate descendants, sons and grandsons, have been leaders in the thought and labor of the com- munity; several have been called to important political trusts ; and the family is generally recognized as of social distinction and moral worth.
Patrick Plunkett, who was born in Ireland, as was his wife, Mary Robinson, was located in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the closing years of the eighteenth century. That they were a couple of exceptional strength of character finds all sufficient attestation in the notably useful careers of their sons-William C., Charles H. and Thomas F. Plunk- ett ; and of the sons and grandsons of these.
WILLIAM C. PLUNKETT.
William C. Plunkett, eldest of the children of Patrick and Mary (Robinson) Plunkett, was born in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1799, and spent his early years in that village. While still a young boy he showed marked business ability, and was full of ideas which he was later en- abled to carry out. In 1830, with the small capital of two hundred and seventy dollars in his pocket, he left Lenox and moved to South Adams, where he began a long and remarkable career of financial. commercial, social and political success. This small amount of money was all the pecuniary capital he could bring to the copartnership which founded the old mill of Plunkett & Wheeler, which was one of the oldest and the most important woolen mills in that region. Mr. Plunkett. however, brought other capital into the copartnership, in the shape of such energy, business sagacity and excellent judgment as soon con- ducted the firm to success and wealth and maintained it on that road. He was the prime mover in every new plan that was suggested, and the
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leading spirit in carrying it out with distinction and credit to the firmn. Mr. Plunkett was prominently identified with every movement which tended to the benefit of the community at large, a few of which may be mentioned more in detail. It was through the efforts of Mr. Plunk- ett that North Adams now enjoys the benefits of a brisk railroad com- petition, thus effecting a marked change in the method of disposing of the products of the mills, including the storing of the goods here under the low insurance of the mill owners' association, and the selling of the goods to the trade direct, thus keeping the accounts but once. By the old method thesc goods were sent to a commission house, insured at high rates, with the possibility of a total loss in the case of a great fire. He was instrumental in making North AAdams the great railroad center that it is at present. Where, a few years ago, one or two mixed trains did all the business of a day, there are now many passenger ex- presses and other trains necessary to do the work. Five important railroads have a terminus here.
Mr. Plunkett was possessed of great natural and acquired force cf character, and a remarkable degree of executive ability, and to these traits we must attribute his success and prosperity. He was of a commanding figure, and would attract attention wherever he appeared. At the age of eighty-four his form was as erect as ever, and there was scarcely a thread of white in his thick, black hair, and his face was as bright and pleasant as it had been at fifty. He was a man of strong convictions, slow to make up his mind, weighing well all the pros and cons of a question, but, his opinion once formed, was unalterable. Mr. Plunkett was frequently called upon to make addresses in behalf of various objects, and it was while responding to one of these calls, and making an address in the town hall at the reunion of the Forty-ninth regiment, that he contracted a cold which, after a lingering illness, re-
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sulted in his death January 21, 1884, at the advanced age of eighty- four years. It is probable that no community ever had from any one man more diverse efficient public service covering a period of forty years, than was given to Adams by General Plunkett. The records show his services in constant requisition. As early as 1831 he appears as moderator, and with scarcely a year's exception up to his decease, he occupied one or more local offices. He was apparently willing to put his shoulder to the wheel whenever and wherever it would be helpful. The records reveal him as selectman, measurer, highway surveyor, fence viewer. bridge commissioner, fire warden, field driver, tithing man, and cach of these many times repeated. He was of the com- mittee which laid out the cemetery, and of that which matured plans for a free high school in Adams. In 1840 he was elected as Whig candidate for state senator. He was elected as one of the governor's council in 1852. He was elected delegate to the constitutional con- vention in 1853, and lieutenant governor in the following year with Governor Emory Washburn.
He married Achsal Brown, of New York; of their children the career of William B. Plunkett is taken up in detail in this publication.
HON. CHARLES H. PLUNKETT.
Charles H. Plunkett, an early manufacturer, and a man of great excellence of character, was born in Lenox, Massachusetts, September 16. 1801, second of the sons of Patrick and Mary ( Robinson) Plunkett.
He entered upon the duties of life sadly handicapped. Crippled by a fever sore, his early school days were less than sufficient, yet he acquired the rudiments of an education, and his indomitable spirit was manifested in his beginning of a life of self-support at the age of
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eighteen years, on a peddler's cart, though at the time and for long before he was unable to walk without the aid of crutches. Notwith- standing his disadvantages he was entirely successful, and found a reward for his effort, not alone in business experience and reasonable compensation, but also in health. In 1825 he became a partner in the store of Durant & Company. in Hinsdale, and was so occupied for a period of five years. In 1831 he purchased a water privilege of Cap- tain Merriman, and built a woolen mill, and a notable evidence of his independence and deep-seated moral principle is discernible in the fact that this was the first instance of the raising of a building frame in the town unaccompanied with the providing of liquor for those en- gaged. Taking into company with himself his brother, Thomas F. Plunkett, of Pittsfield, and Mr. Durant, he devoted himself with un- flagging industry to every department of the business, and made it gratifyingly remunerative. In 1851 he began the building of the Lower Valley mill. taking as a partner his brother-in-law, Charles J. Kitt- redge. Prosperity attended them in this venture, and in 1855 Mr. Plunkett bought the Aaron Sawyer tannery, where he built the middle mill to establish in business his son Henry, as a member of the firm of C. H. Plunkett & Son. In 1860 his factories furnished employment to some two hundred and fifty people, and were the principal industry of the village. After his death (in 1860) the business was incorporated under the title of the Plunkett Woolen Company.
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