History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 20

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 20

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meut of one of the acsidians, while among the fishes the papers of G. B. Goode and T. H. Bean and of F. W. Putman upon the species, and the investigations of J. S. Kingsley, H. W. Conn and B. H. Vantleck upon the development, should not be omitted. F. W. Putman has studied the reptiles and birds, furnishing the list of county species published in the proceedings of the Essex Institute previously referred to. The birds have also been investigated by Dr. Elliot Coues.

In spite of the work above referred to, and the ex- cellence, even eminence, of many of the workers, the field is so large and the supply of materials so great that there still remains an enormous amount of work to be accomplished before a knowledge which may be termed exact is obtained of the animals of the county.

ARCHEOLOGY .- In archæology, a study but re- cently given its proper position among the sciences, considerable work has been done in the county. The surface relics of the race which formerly occupied this territory have long been observed, and, in a few instances, preserved specimens of the so-called axes, celts and arrow-heads were placed in the East India Museum in Salem as early as 1802, and examples were figured in the first volume of the American Academy, published in 1785, from the cabinet of that institution. But it is only in comparatively recent years that any scientific observations have been made in relation to the graves, village sites and shell-heaps of this early race. Much has been writ- ten of late, speculative and otherwise, in relation to the pre-historic people, which may be read by those desiring to form opinions as to the correctness of the various theories advanced, but it is sufficient here to say that the most reasonable theories point to the Algonquin Indians of the region at the time of the settlement of this country, and their direct ancestors, as the people who fashioned the implements of stone, bone and clay which are daily turned up by the plough and occasionally met with in graves and shell-heaps. Yet it is reasonable to accept the theory that another and earlier race once occupied the country, perhaps the ancestors of the Esquimaux, even ruder in their way than the Indians, and who, being driven to the North by a more aggressive race, left their relics behind, which are now found con- fused with those of later date. It was supposed formerly that the shell-heaps found all along our coast were natural deposits, and not until recently

were they connected with the early inhabitants of the county. Professor Jeffrys Wyman, of Cam- bridge, investigated the shell-heaps at Ipswich, with Putnam, Cooke and Morse, and later these investi- gations have been continued by many others.

The most interesting result of the study of these shell-heaps is perhaps that learned from the ex- amination of a very old deposit at Ipswich, composed of shells of the oyster, a species now practically extinct along our shore, but which at the time of the deposit of this shell-heap must have been very abundant. From the relics there found, it was clearly shown that cannibalism was practiced by the people who left us this record of their existence. In 1867 Mr. J. F. Le Baron prepared a map of the shell- heaps on Castle Neck, Ipswich, and throughout the county are numerous collections of so-called " Indian relics," most of which may be classed as " surface- finds," owned by private individuals and public institutions. The largest collection of pre-historic relics is that of the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem, which numbers several thousand speci- mens and includes many objects from graves and shell-heaps, besides skeletons and crania.

Besides the work of Wyman, Putnam and others and the articles published by the Essex Institute on this subject, Dr. Abbott, of New Jersey, has made some field observations here and has published in his work entitled " Primitive Industry " much of interest in relation to the local archæology, besides giving fig- ures of specimens collected in Essex County. Pro- fessor Morse, of the Peabody Academy, during his visit to Japan, made several explorations in connec- tion with the archaeology of that country, the results of his work being published in the memoirs of the University of Tokio, Japan.

Archæology is now one of the most progressive among the sciences, and one of Essex County's gifted sons, Professor Frederick W. Putnam, formerly of Salem, now Peabody Professor of Archaeology and di- rector of the Archaeological Museum at Cambridge, profiting by his early training as a zoologist, is for the first time teaching the country the proper and only way of exploring the mysterious mounds of the West.

It will be seen by this sketch that a large portion of the scientific work has centered in and around Salem. This is undoubtedly due to the facilities there offered for study. Museums and scientific institutions had early become established in Salem, and many society and private libraries and microscopes were available. But with the interest in these subjects and the estab- lishment of good lecture courses and libraries in nearly every city and town, natural history and scientific clubs and societies have sprung up in vari- parts of the county, and students of natural history may now be found at every hand, both collectors and those who are pursuing their studies of the minerals, the fauna or the flora, without forming collections.

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

CHAPTER V.

THE SPIRIT OF THE EARLY LYCEUMS.

BY ROBERT S. RANTOUL.

TIMOTHY CLAXTON was born in Norfolk, England, August 22, 1790. His father was a gardener, in the service of the Windham family, at Earsham Hall. Neither his father nor his mother could read or write, but, with the generous aid of the Honorable Mrs. Windham, the mistress of the house, they were en- abled to educate their children. Timothy was from boyhood a marked character, and, as a young man, identified himself with the great movement for the general diffusion of knowledge, which, under the lead of Henry Brougham and other less conspicuous and comprehensive minds, swept over England and Scot- land in the third decade of the present century. It was in the year 1823 that the so called " Mechanics' Insti- tutes " began to attract the attention of all classes in Great Britain by their marked success. In that year, Claxton, who had spent some time in Russia, engaged in the introduction of [gas-works, sailed from St. Petersburg and landed at Boston, whence, in Septem- ber, he removed to Methuen, in this County, and con- nected himself with the machine-shop of a cotton- mill established by Stephen Minot, of Haverhill, at Spicket Falls, and at that time operated under the supervision and agency of the afterwards well-known political economist and writer, Amasa Walker.

In detailing, in his autobiography entitled the " Me- moir of a Mechanic," the years passed in Methuen, this remarkable man says :

" In the spring of 1824 an opportunity offered itself for me to attempt the formation of a society for mutual improvement. A small society, for reading and general inquiry, had existed for about five years in the village, aud was at a very low ebb at that time. I Attended it and found a respectable number of both sexes, assembled at the house of one of the members. They were engaged in reading by turns, and the president put questions to them as they proceeded. I inquired what other exercises they bad. lle told me that was all, except an annual ad- dress by the president. I asked if it would not be well to try the debat- ing of questions and familiar lectures on science and the arts. He thought well of it. 1 told him I thought they need not be afraid, for I had seen persons engaged in such exercises whose opportunities were in- ferior to theirs. 1 was asked if I could give them a lecture. I said I would try, and prepared myself accordingly. I had brought a small bir-pump with me from Russia, which I made from n piece of gas-tubing, with a ground brass plate, on u mahogany stand. I bought a few glass articles, which I ground to fit the pump-plate, with a little sand and wa- tor, ou the hearth-stone of my room. I procured a small wash tub and fitted a shelf to it, for a pneumatic cistern. Io this way I succeeded, with a very simple apparatus, in explaining the mechanical aud some of tho chemical properties of nir. This put new life into the society. Their constitution was revised, to make provision for n library and ap- paratus. Debating was introduced with success, and the ladies handed in compositions which were rond nt the meetings. Several members were prevailed upon to give lectures on subjects connected with their professions or enllings, 1 served ns vice-president' for the remainder of my stay In the town, and took an active purt. The society became too large for the members' henses. It tried the School-Ilouse and then the Tavern Hall, but, not satisfied with either, built a two-story building for Its own nsc, and continued to prosper. It held weekly meetings, with a routine of exercises for the mouth, comprising, for the first week, Read- ing by all ; for the second, Rending by one member specially designated ; for the third, Original Lectures, and for the fourth, Discussion."

Here we have germinating, in the spring of 1824, in Essex County, the root-idea of the American Ly- ceum. The society, which Claxton left behind him well-established in Methuen, when, in October, 1826, he removed to Boston, possessed every characteristic feature of the novel organization now to be described, and which, under the new name of "Lyceum," soon to be applied to it by another, was about to challenge the approval and enlist the interest, and even the en- thusiasm of the best minds in the country. I have been thus minute in describing Claxton's enterprise, because no earlier date than this can be assigned to the origin of "the Lyceum system in America. On his removal to Boston, he became well known for his mechanical ingenuity, his large scientific attainments and his whole-souled devotion to the diffusion of use- ful knowledge. He at once associated himself with Josiah Holbrook, who had just come there from Con- necticut, and with other kindred spirits and before the end of the year 1826 had established the "Boston Mechanics' Institution." In 1829 he bore an active part in the formation of the first Boston Lyceum, and in 1831, with Holbrook and others, established the " Boston Mechanics' Lyceum," of which, for the next five years, Claxton was chosen president. Finally, having inherited an estate in England, he returned thither to enjoy it, and there closed his life. In 1839 he issued, from the London press, a book of "Hints on Self-Education," of which the London Civil En- gineer and Architects' Journal remarked, in a strain of high commendation, that "it had all the ease and simplicity of De Foe, and the exemplary utility of Franklin."

Dr. George A. Perkins, of Salem, who passed his early years in Boston, well remembers Claxton as a valued friend of his boyhood, always genial, gracious and kind, who would interrupt his work, not for hours merely, but for days, in order that some willing- minded youth might not go unenlightened.

Attention was first publicly called to the general practicability of organizations like this in an anony- mous article which appeared in the October number of the American Journal of Education for 1826. It proved to have been written by one Josiah Holbrook, an alumnus of Yale College and a native of Derby, Conn., born in 1788. Mr. Holbrook afterwards he- came well known as an enthusiastic devotee of popu- lar education in all its phases. At different periods of his career he was a lecturer upon science, a maker of school apparatus, and a compiler of school text- books, and in 1824 was conducting at Derby an agri- cultural and manual-labor school, in which he had, in some measure, anticipated the modern theory of object-teaching. His scheme for " Associations of Adults for Mutual Education," as he called them, the name "Lyceum" being only applied a little later, was introduced to public notice in a guarded editorial indorsement as "of uncommon interest," as "impor- tant in a political point of view," as "intimately con-

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THE SPIRIT OF THE EARLY LYCEUMS.

nected with the diffusion of intelligence and with the elevation of character among the agricultural and mechanic classes," as " a sure preventive of those in- sidious inroads of vice which are ever ready to be made on hours of leisure and relaxation." With such high hopes, prompted by motives so unmistakably humane, ingenuous and noble, did the pioneers in this unique undertaking make their modest, thoughi con- fident appeal to public favor !

On January 7, 1879, the Concord Lyceum com- memorated its fiftieth anniversary. The first name on its original roll and its first president had been the venerable and Reverend Dr. Ripley, the Revolu- tionary sage who had, from his study window in the Old Manse, watched his parishioners defending the bridge on that fateful day when there

" The embattled farmers stood And fired the shot haard round the world !"

The last of the original signers of its constitution had been Judge Hoar, then a lad of twelve, now be- come a personage of the first distinction, introduced in 1870 by Emerson to Carlyle, as "a friend whom you saw in his youth, now an inestimable citizen in this State, and lately in President Grant's Cabinet, Attorney-General of the United States. He lives in this town and carries it in his hand."

Naturally called on to speak on such an occasion, Judge Hoar remarked :-

" The Lyceum began, as most things do that are good, by the gratui- tous labors of an enthusiast, Mr. Josiah Holbrook, of Boston, a man who was interested in geology and mineralogy, and went about the State de- livering lectures upon these subjects, and urging the people of the cities and towns to form Lyceums for popular education. His scheme embraced a good deal. He persuaded the people of various towns and cities, of Boston, and Charlestown, and Salen, and Worcester, and many of the smaller towns of the commonwealth to start hia Lyceums. There has been bnt one, however, that has grown up into anything like the pro- portions of the institution which he contemplated and recommended, and that 'is the Essex Institute at Salem. It has, as he proposed each Lyceum should have, a large library, an extensive collection of objects in natural history, cabinets of mineralogy, having courses of lectures, and the members dividing themselves into sactions for the prosecution of the study of history, science and art."

The large expectations entertained of Holbrook's novel scheme will appear from the contemporary ex- pressions of its prime mover and his coadjutors, and from the sympathetic utterances of the journals of the day. There was nothing new in the Debating Club, the Social Library, the Literary Circle, the Union for General Inquiry and for Scientific Research. These had long been known, and in one form or an- other had sprung into a sporadic life in all the active centres of the world. Paris and London had not been without them for centuries, and Franklin had, just a hundred years before, established his "Junto," where the select coterie of a dozen friends, picked from his "ingenious acquaintance," who spent Fri- day evenings at the Ale House in Philadelphia in 1727, discussed curious qneries on points of morals, politics or natural philosophy, propounded a week in advance of their consideration, heard original essays

from each member in turn, and finally established a "lending library,"-the germ of the American Philo- sophical Society. But the idea of combining the functions of libraries and literary, scientific and de- bating clubs all in one body-of throwing the doors wide open and inviting in all who would assume their share of the work-of systematically organizing such clubs in every village and hamlet and then, for mu- tual encouragement and help, joining them all in a common league together, was indeed a new conceit, and if impracticable in its details, was not unworthy of that formative period which preceded Boards of Education, Normal Schools and Teachers' Institutes and Conventions,-the day of slow mails, stage-coach travel, rare newspapers, scant amusements and un- systematic teaching, before the cylinder-press, the electric telegraph, the locomotive engine, the subma- rine cable and the ocean steamer had made the world one family,-the day which ushered in our " revival of learning," when the depressions resulting from two wars waged to effect our independence of Great. Bri- tain were happily over, when a distinctly American literature was beginning to show itself in the writings of Dana, Bryant, Irving, Cooper and Halleck, when Mann and his co-workers were just extorting from the close-locked Teutonic intelligence the secrets of the Prussian school system for the advantage of our new republic, when Bancroft, Everett, Ticknor and Hedge were just returning from their first taste of German University culture, burthened like honey-hees with their delicious store, and when the English speaking peoples on both sides of the water seemed suddenly waking up to the consciousness as of newly discov- ered truthı in the now familiar postulate that demo- cratic government, while it is the safest and most sta- ble of all if it rest on generally diffused intelligence, becomes, when hased on prevailing ignorance, the . most intolerable of despotisms.

Holbrook's confidence in his scheme was contagious because it was enthusiastic and exuberant. He sup- posed the Lyceum system would rapidly pervade the country and ultimately the world at large. " It seems to me," he said in his original prospectus, "that if associations for mutual instruction in the sciences and other branches of useful knowledge could once be started in our villages, and upon a general plan, they would increase with great rapidity and do more for the general diffusion of knowledge and for raising the moral and intellectual taste of our countrymen than any other expedient which can possibly be de- vised. And it may be questioned if there is any other way to check the progress of that monster, in- temperance, which is making such havoc with talents, morals and everything that raises man above the brute, but by presenting some object of sufficient in- terest to divert the attention of the young from places and practices which lead to dissipation and to ruin."

In this initial article and in the subsequent allus- ions to the subject with which the public press and

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

educational periodicals fairly teemed, the general mechanism of the proposed organization is sufficient- ly disclosed. Each " Association of Adults for Mu- tual Improvement " was to have its president, secre- taries, treasurer, curators and other needful function- aries and also three delegates to meet, twice a year, delegates from other branches of the organization in the same county, for the furthering of its various ob- jects, especially " for qualifying teachers." And this board of delegates for the county, duly organized, shall appoint a representative to meet representatives from other like boards, who shall be styled the " Board of Mutual Education for the State." These State boards are to organize in turn, to meet annually for certain prescribed functions, and to send delegates to a general conclave embracing the whole country, whose permanent headquarters were ultimately to be established at Washington. The society was to be open to all adults of both sexes who were willing to share its labors and its cost, and the monies accruing from fees for admittance or from the generosity of patrons were to be applied to the purchase of books, cabinets, philosophical and scientific apparatus, the collection and exchange among the Lyceums of the country of specimens in botany mineralogy and natural history, the preparation and publication of town and county maps and histories and the observing and communicating through publication and correspond- ence of atmospheric, meteorological and climatic phe- nomena, the chemical analysis of soils, the character of quarries, minerals and mines, and such other facts of importance as might from time to time come to the knowledge of the corresponding secretaries. Funds inight also be applied to the aid of institutions for " practical instruction," and even to the help of de- serving aspirants in pursuing the higher branches of study. In science " classes " were to be formed, each choosing its "foreman," and conducting its investiga- tions in its own way, and each in turn occupying the floor on its allotted night and claiming the attention of the whole Lyceum, be it in geology, astronomy, nat- ural philosophy, chemistry or mechanics. The plan of itinerant, migratory or perambulating libraries was commended to the attention of counties and towns. This plan consisted in combining the funds devoted by several neighboring towns to the purchase of books for general circulation, so that more books should be obtained for the money expended and no duplicates bought. Thus each town in a group, say of five towns for instance, would take possession of one fifth of the books purchased, keep them for an agreed period and pass them on to the next town of the group, receiving a second fifth at the expiration of the stipulated term. But in the estimation of the projectors of the Lyceum the library in all its forms had failed as a stimulant to independent thinking amongst the mass of the people. Some more pungent flavor must be imparted to general education. This was to be effected through the immediate contact and clashing

of mind with mind in neighborly bouts over issues of real, living, dominating importance. Questions upon which all the townspeople had finally to pass were to be debated before all the town by friends and neigh- bors who had serious convictions, pro and contra, as to how these questions ought to be determined. Moreover, scholarship was seen to possess intrinsic and inherent values of its own, quite aside from the consideration it buys. Why, it was asked, may not all men enjoy these in equitable measure? The locking up of learning in cloisters and colleges had been denounced by our forefathers from the first, as among the "wiles of Satan." Why not seize, per- force, upon the cherished heir-loom of the schools? If eloquence and culture, if the gifts of tongue and pen and the power of deep thinking were precious boons, entitling the possessor to the deference they claimed, why, it was impatiently asked, might they not be more evenly distributed ? If science and the arts really conduced to the amelioration of mankind, why be longer indebted for their blessings to a few favored devotees? Why not snatch them for our- selves? Was it the spirit of the Renaissance and the Reformation abroad again? Or was it rather the error of the French Encyclopædists masquerading in a new disguise ? It was no spirit of hostility or jeal- ousy towards the higher learning, for it assumed that happiness was possible in the ratio of the learning attained. It was not proposed to raze the citadel, but only to assault its keep and divide its hoarded treas- ure. It was an uprising in behalf of more light. Perhaps it was the socialistic principle applied to culture. Perhaps it was communism in brain-food and brain products. It wandered far away from its English prototype,-so far that we find Sir Thomas Weise, a British member of Parliament, discussing the doings of the National Lyceum of America in 1831, with a view to adapt its methods to the needs of the Mechanics' Institutes of England. Holbrook claimed it as a thoroughly American product, and it certainly seemed well suited to the genius of the country, for it was democratic in spirit and republican in form; it was free and voluntary and spontaneous in its origin ; it was elastic and self-adapting in its organization ; it was social and humanizing in its aims, and kept before it the great and dignified cause of self-culture and mutual improvement, while it cer- tainly might claim continental scope and dimensions, after its first national meeting in 1831, when no less than eight or nine hundred town Lyceums were re- ported in different parts of the country, with fifty or sixty county Lyceums, as well as several State organ- izations. The end showed that vitality resided in the town Lyceums and not in the attempted confedera- tions of them.

The reader who finds it hard to recognize in all these anticipations the lyceum of actual fact as we have known it for the last half-century, may easily reconcile himself to the truthfulness of the picture I

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THE SPIRIT OF THE EARLY LYCEUMS.

have drawn by a little study of the journals of the day,-by an examination of the score of articles which appeared in the first five volumes of the American Journal of Education,-and by a passing glance at the state of opinion and conditions of life which prevailed in the New England of 1820-30.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 20

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1 Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1538

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538