History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 77

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 77

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That, it stated, would " afford an immediate and ef- fectual relief for many years." Accordingly, after two years of " deliberate consideration," the town, in 1829, voted to build three new school-houses, one at Yet even then the teaching in the public schools had little to commend it. It was almost wholly con- fined to verbal memorizing, and that singular mental exercise known as parsing, or the mechanical applica- tion of certain rules of grammar to words and sen- tences. These rules never had any meaning to the scholars, nor did the knowing how to parse in any way affect the scholar's mode of speaking or writing his mother-tongue. It was the same with arithmetic. It was taught by rule. This was that old-fashioned schooling, so called, which is still commonly supposed to have been simple, but, in some unexplained way, peculiarly thorough. Accordingly there are not a few who lose no opportunity to refer to it with respectful regret. In point of fact, in no true sense of the word was it either simple or thorough. By force of constant iteration, emphasized by occasional whippings, the child did indeed have certain rules and formulas so impressed on the memory that they never afterwards the North, or Farms District, one at the East, or Oldfields District, and one at the South, or Penn's Hill and Woods .District ; the last, being a combined arrangement, was to be of stone and cost as much as the other two together. In the spring of 1830 the new buildings were finished, and the committee re- ported that, including the land on which they stood, they had cost respectively $1142.59 for that of stone, | and $523 and $422.02 for the others of wood. This failed to satisfy the town. A pernicious idea had gained footing that it was desirable " to bring the school to every man's door;" and instead of concen- trating children so that they might be divided ac- cording to age and taught by several teachers in graded schools, the mistaken policy of neighborhood schools of all ages under one teacher was adopted. Accordingly, the next year, after a sharp struggle, in which the town divided by a vote of eighty-four to seventy-eight, it was decided to build two more ' faded from it; but so did the horse, the dog, and the

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parrot. One and the same method of instruction was | They included the schools of twenty-four towns, re- , applied to all, human and brute. It was purely a turning five thousand scholars. The tests, of the simplest and most ordinary description, were confined to showing the results actually obtained in reading, writing, and ciphering. There was no escape from the conclusions reached, for the fac-similes of the ex- amination papers spoke for themselves.1 matter of memorizing and imitation ; the observing and reasoning faculties, it was supposed,-if, indeed, any thought was given to them,-would develop themselves. Since the days of the " Learned School- master," Benjamin Tompson, school methods in Quincy had become more elaborate and far more ex- pensive ; the child learned more, such as it was, be- cause it went to school more hours, and there were more teachers and better text-books. But, so far as intelligence of method and system was concerned, there had been little change and no considerable im- provement. Nor were the results anything to be proud of. The average graduate of the grammar school could not read with ease, nor could he write an ordinary letter in a legible hand and with words cor- rectly spelled.

In 1873 doubts as to the value of the results ob- tained through the methods then in use had for some time been forcing themselves on the minds of those then composing the Quincy school committee. They : referred in their reports to the condition of " immo- bility" which seemed to prevail. There were now twenty-seven schools in the town, in which thirty-two teachers were at work on twelve hundred scholars. The annual cost of teaching each scholar exceeded fourteen dollars. Since 1830 the number of those taught had thus increased much less than three-fold, Nor in these respects were the schools of Quincy worse than those of its sister-towns. This was at one time confidently asserted, and the friends of every system which breaks down under investigation always assert that such system was notoriously defective at the precise point where the investigation took place. In | the case of the Quincy schools it was nothing of the | schools had been humanized. Boys were no longer sort. They were quite as good as the average of Massachusetts town schools. This appeared very while the cost of teaching them had increased over fifteen-fold. Under these circumstances it was ob- vious that a great waste of public money was steadily going on. The cost of the article purchased had been immensely increased, without any corresponding im- provement in its quality. It was perfectly true the forced as a punishment to clasp hands across the top of an over-heated stove until holes burned in their clearly as the result of careful inquiries made by clothes ; nor were they made to whip each other, agents of the State Board of Education in 1879. | while the master stood over them and himself whipped It was then found that in a very large proportion of that one who seemed to slacken in his blows.2 Scenes like these, worthy of Dotheboys Hall, were remi- niscences of the past. But there was no reason to suppose that the children when they left school read more fluently, or wrote more legibly, or computed with more facility than had their fathers and mothers before them. Under these circumstances the com- mittee came to the conclusion that if the town was not spending an undue amount on its schools, yet certainly spent effectively. The whole thing needed to be re- formed ; but the members of the committee did not feel themselves qualified to reform it. They therefore stated the case to the town, and asked for authority to employ a specialist as a superintendent. the towns in Norfolk County the educational methods in use in the schools were the same that had been immemorially in use. They were quaintly primitive. Children were still taught to spell orally and in classes, and the writing was limited to what was done in the copy-books. Accordingly, when told to write a letter of a few lines, many pupils showed at once that they had never been taught even the mechanical part of a written exercise, while certain of the | not more than fifty per cent. of what it did spend was teachers actually would not permit their schools to be subjected to so unheard-of a test. Their scholars were taught to parse, and say the multiplication table. Writing letters was no part of school work. Out of eleven hundred scholars in two hundred and twelve schools who used in composition the adverb "too," In the spring of 1875 the desired authority was given. The result was that reform in school methods which, known as the "Quincy system," within the next few years excited far and wide an almost unpre- cedented interest and discussion. It was the work of no less than eight hundred and fifty-nine spelt the word incorrectly. The three words "whose," " which," and " scholar" were given out for written spelling, and while there were fifty-eight different wrong spellings of " which," there were one hundred and eight of " whose," and two hundred and twenty- 1 See Report of Examination of Scholars in Norfolk County, in the Forty-third Annual Report (1880) of the Massachusetts Board of Education. one of " scholar." For thoroughness and magnitude these examinations were probably never surpassed. 2 Quincy Patriot, Feb. 21, 1874.

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the superintendent then employed, F. W. Parker. Mr. Parker was by birth a New Hampshire man, who had taught school in Ohio before the war of the Re- bellion, and during it served in the army, attaining the rank of colonel. He had then gone to Germany in order to study the most improved educational methods. Returning to America, he fell in with James H. Slade, then one of the Quincy school com- mittee, and was by him suggested as superintendent. The choice was a most fortunate one. There were many qualifications of a superintendent which Mr. Parker did not possess. He lacked business method. He could not always accommodate himself to circum- stances in dealing with men. His practical judgment was often bad. He was apt to try to do the right thing at the wrong time. He was impatient of oppo- sition. But, on the other hand, he was possessed with an idea, and he was indefatigable in his efforts to put it in practice. He knew how to infuse his own spirit into his teachers, and he possessed in a marked degree the indescribable quality of attracting public notice to what he was doing. The essence of his sys- tem was simple, nor was it in any respect new. It was a protest against the old mechanical methods. There was to be something in the schools besides memorizing and the application of formulas. The child was no longer to be taught on the same princi- ples that dogs and parrots were taught. The reason- ing and observing faculties were to be appealed to. The object always to be kept in view was a practical one. A race of men and women were to be produced who might indeed not be able readily to commit things to memory or to repeat rules out of a grammar ; they would not be disciplined in the ancient way, but they would be accustomed to observe and think for themselves, and at least to read and write English with ease and decently.1

Mr. Parker's labors attracted almost at once the notice of educators. He was, of course, severely criticised by the adherents of the old system, who vigorously asserted that what was good in his methods was not new, and that what was new was not good. The assertion that the results produced | establishment of a free public library, provided an by the old system were not satisfactory was angrily denounced as a slur on the well-earned fame of Mas- sachusetts. Even if such things were true, it was said, they ought not to be published to the world, for they gave comfort to the enemies of common schools.

! The leading features of the so-called Quincy system were set forth at the time in a paper entitled "The New Departure in the Common Schools of Quincy," which was printed in pamphlet form, and passed rapidly through six editions, ex- citing much public discussion.

The educational journals referred to the arguments of Mr. Parker's friends as " monumental displays of ignorance," and it required the unanswerable facts of the Norfolk County investigation to sat- isfy them that the earlier condition of affairs in the Quincy schools was both correctly stated and not exceptional. All this noisy discussion did but spread far and wide the fame of Mr. Parker's efforts, and strangers soon began to come to Quincy to see what the thing amounted to. Then they came to study it. Finally, the town schools became an educational cu- riosity for the display to the world of the new system. Visitors trooped to Quincy by hundreds, and at times they crowded the school-rooms. It became, indeed, a serious hindrance to instruction, and had to be regu- lated by the committee.

For five years Mr. Parker held the position of super- intendent. In the spring of 1880 he was chosen one of the school supervisors of Boston, and subsequently he became the head of the Cook County Normal School of Illinois. But he did not leave Quincy until the reforms he had instituted there had become firmly established. He was succeeded by one of the grammar-school teachers whom he had himself educated in his system. The schools of Quincy were then full of life and promise, and the educational ad- vantages of the town were considerable. A high school had been established in 1852, and the Adams Academy had been opened in 1872. The last was the institution endowed by John Adams half a cen- tury before. During the intermediate time funds had been slowly accumulating, and the academy building was placed, as the founder directed it should be, on the exact site of the house in which John Hancock was born.

Nor were the means of acquiring a higher education in Quincy now limited to its schools and academies. The way to self-culture had been thrown wide open to every one who wished to tread it, for a free access to books was no longer the exclusive privilege of the rich or the educated. In 1871 the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars was voted towards the

equal sum could be raised by private subscription. At that time the town practically had no collection of books in it which was open to all. The Quincy [ Lyceum, which dated from 1829, and after it the Adams Literary Association, had, to a limited extent, supplied the need ; but their means were small and their organization incomplete. Accordingly, as it had been in the beginning so it remained down to the year 1846, when, for those who could afford to buy, the railroad made the bookstores of the city

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accessible. But, so far as the bulk of inhabitants were concerned, they neither had any books within their reach, nor did they know how to use them. The purpose of John Adams in giving his library to the town had wholly failed of accomplishment. When he did it he had his own youth in mind. He had been brought up in the Braintree of former days, a country lad wholly cut off from the means of a larger education. He had thus been compelled to break out his own way to success, and his wish in old age was to remove the obstacles which had impeded him from the path of future generations of his townsmen. Out of narrow means he accordingly endowed an academy, and he gave to it his own library, the col- lection of a lifetime. His motives were generous, but he could not foresee the changes of the future. The books were, many of them, most rare and valu- able; but students were few, and they found what they wanted more easily elsewhere. For popular use the collection was almost ludicrously inappropriate. The scholar and the public man would feel at home in it, but to the average frequenter of the modern public library it was much what a rare edition of Shakespeare or of Milton is to one as yet untaught to read.

This the town did not realize at the time the gift was made, and votes were passed for the appointment of a librarian, and the arrangement of the books so that all who wished so to do might consult them. The collection then remained uncared for, and accessi- ble to every one for nearly thirty years. During that time it suffered irreparable injury. Not only were many volumes taken from it and never returned, but it was freely robbed of the autographs which gave a peculiar value to it. Whole title-pages were torn out ; and that copies of some of the choicest works ever issued from the press remained unmutilated was pure good fortune only.

Such was the situation in 1871 when the move in behalf of a modern public library was made. The two thousand five hundred dollars from private sub- scription necessary to secure the town endowment was soon raised, and in the autumn of 1871 there was opened in Quincy one of those institutions, undreamed of in former times, which may without exaggeration be called the universities of the poor. The crying need which existed for something of the kind at once became apparent. The public library was thronged with young people, and during the next twelve months nearly forty-five thousand volumes were borrowed. Accordingly, it at once assumed a foremost place among the educational influences of the town. For over two years a room was provided for it in the Adams

Academy, but in 1874 the rapid growth of the school under Dr. Dimmock's management made a removal necessary. The Second Congregational so- ciety had some years before outgrown that first church building of theirs which stood close to the site of the original stone meeting-house of 1666, and being vacant it was now leased by the town. To it the library was removed, and there it remained until the Crane Memorial Hall was ready to receive it in 1882.

The gift of this building to Quincy was one of those incidents, both interesting and peculiar, which are somewhat characteristic of New England. It came in a wholly unexpected way. In one of their annual reports the Library trustees had called atten- tion to the fact that of the several modern divisions of the original town, Holbrook, Randolph, and Brain- tree each had buildings for their libraries given to them as memorials, and a hope was expressed that sooner or later "private munificence may supply a public need," and Quincy would enjoy the same good fortune. This was in February, 1879, and there was then no reason to look for such a gift either imme- diately, or, indeed, from any particular quarter. No one had intimated a disposition to do anything of the kind.

A few months later, but within the year, a gentle- man with whom he then had no acquaintance came into the Boston office of the chairman of the trustees, and, after introducing himself, opened the conversa- tion by asking if Quincy would like to have a public library building. Very much surprised, the chairman turned to his visitor and asked if any one thought of giving the town such a building. The other replied that he was not authorized to say who he represented, further than that it was the family of one Quincy born, but now dead, who many years before had moved away from Massachusetts. Nothing further was then said, nor was anything more heard of the matter for several months. Meanwhile some reports of the Library and its catalogue were sent to the repre- sentative of the unknown family, and early in the following winter he again came to the office of the chairman of the trustees. He now said that the fam- ily in question lived in New York, but that they dis- liked to have the matter discussed, or to be mentioned in connection with it, until their minds were fully made up as to what they proposed to do. In reply Mr. Otis, the gentleman who appeared for them, was assured that the matter should not be mentioned, but the chairman, Mr. Adams, said that business often called him to New York, and he would be glad to meet there the parties in question, if they cared to see

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him. No name had yet been given. At length, in February, 1880, a gentleman called on Mr. Adams in New York, and, giving his name as Crane, said that he had come to see him in relation to the proposed memorial building in Quincy. He then explained the connection of his father's family with Quincy, and the desire his widow and children had, though they had never lived in the town, to there erect some last- ing memorial to him. The result of the interview was that Mr. Adams the next day carried back to Quincy the formal offer of a memorial library hall, which a fortnight later was acted upon and accepted at the annual town-meeting.

Steps were at once taken to secure as a site for the proposed building that lot of ground which Mr. Crane had pointed out as in his opinion best adapted for it. During the following summer plans were matured, and the corner-stone of the new edifice was laid on the 22d of February, 1881. It was formally dedicated on the 30th of May, 1882. It commemo- rates in a typical way a man who was himself singularly typical of New England and of Quincy. Born of old Braintree stock, Thomas Crane had gone to the centre grammar school, and worshiped in the old North Precinct meeting-house until he became a man. He had then in the year 1827 gone away, as so many others went then and later, seeking his fortune. A stone-cutter by trade, he settled in New York City, and there married and had children. A plain, straight- forward, energetic man, he gradually amassed a for- tune, and at last died in New York, April 1, 1875, in his seventy-second year. Though he often came back to Quincy as a visitor, he never was an inhabi- tant of the town from the time he left it in 1827. The members of his family had few associations with it. Yet when the husband and father died, their thoughts turned. to Quincy as the place where he would most have desired to have his memorial stand. | nificance. The old and new elements were always at It seemed proper also that it should stand there. Of all the many young men who early and late had gone out from the town, Thomas Crane had been the most successful. Dealing all his life in the granite which underlaid Quincy, his success had been due to the pos- session of those qualities which made New England. He was honest, he was religious, he was energetic and enterprising and patient. His life was wholly unas- suming, and when he died few in Quincy remembered that such an one had ever lived there. His name is now and will long be a household word in the place where he passed his youth, and from which he went forth ; nor could a better example of native strength and homely virtues be held up before its children for imitation.

There is a degree of individuality in the business history of Quincy since the year 1830, and conse- quently a certain interest attaches to it, owing to the fact that it centred mainly in that granite which un- derlaid the soil. The town dealt in its native stone. The religious development had also a certain char- acter of its own. It was liberal. Indeed, the utter absence of Calvinism, or strong orthodoxy, in the tenets of those inhabiting the North Precinct and Quincy is so marked, and so unusual for a Massachu- setts community, that it cannot escape notice. When the Unitarian movement took place under Channing's lead, it has already been seen that it excited no sur- prise among those who recalled the teachings of Lem- uel Briant. On the contrary, the tendency in Quincy then was towards Universalism. Thomas Crane, for instance, feeling a strong religious craving which the teachings of Mr. Whitney did not satisfy, found what he needed, not in the Braintree church, where Dr. Storrs still held up the rigid belief of the fathers, but in the broader Christianity of " Father" Hosea Bal- lou. The young stone-cutter would walk twenty miles of a Sunday to listen to his favorite preacher. No orthodox church ever struck root in Quincy. In mat- ters of education the individuality of the town was less marked. The schools were much like the schools elsewhere, and the sudden development of the " Quincy system" came from without, and was largely a matter of chance. None the less, it was something that such a movement was possible. It showed a men- tal receptiveness, a faculty of accepting new ideas and responding to them, which was in keeping with the whole religious and political record of the community which John Wheelwright had first taught. The soil was kindly to the reformer, and his labors brought forth speedy fruits. Politically, also, the later history of Quincy was not without its individuality and sig- work in it. Sometimes the one would attain a mas- tery, and its influence would forthwith appear unmis- takably in town-meeting, and stamp itself on the rec- ords ; then the other would by degrees assert itself, and the ancient order of things would, to a certain extent, be restored. The old political habits and traditions could not be destroyed ; and yet the rapid | infusion of foreign elements would through long periods of time seem to obliterate them. Absorption and education went on continually ; the new affected the old, and the old gradually influenced the new. In- deed, the process which upon the large scale was working itself out all over the continent, might in Quincy be studied in detail. Here was one of the in- dividual units of which the other was the aggregate.

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After the formation of the United States govern- ment, all through the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, including the war of 1812, it has been seen that Quincy politically was a strong Federalist town. Down even to the year 1824 it stood firmly out. In 1823, Dr. Eustis was elected Governor over Harrison Gray Otis, the candidate of the old Feder- alists ; but Quincy none the less gave Mr. Otis a ma- jority of sixty-six in a total vote of two hundred and four. Nor did it change under defeat, for the next year it gave sixty-three majority against Governor Eustis, though his election in the State was a fore- gone conclusion. Then came the Presidential cam- paign of 1825, and the Federal party disappeared for- ever. In Quincy all were Adams men, and they so re- mained until long after the election of Gen. Jackson. Then the Jackson democracy began to make its pres- ence felt. Its growth at first was very slow. In November, 1830, ex-President J. Q. Adams was brought forward as a candidate for Congress in the Plymouth district to succeed Mr. Richardson, of Hing- ham, who declined re-election. In Quincy Mr. Adams received seventy-six votes to ten cast for the Jackson candidate. At the next State election Marcus Morton, the Democratic candidate for Governor, had fourteen votes, while Governor Lincoln received two hundred and eleven. Then gradually a change came. A new element had found its way into the town. The old agricultural interest was no longer the only interest. In 1837 more than five hundred hands were em- ployed in the quarries. The greater portion of these were not Quincy born. Many of them were foreign- ers, especially Irish, and Catholics. More yet were Americans, from New Hampshire. These last were a sturdy, rough, floating population, with no knowl- edge of town traditions, and a strong general disposi- tion to vote the Democratic ticket. They did not live in Quincy, but came down from the North in the spring to get a summer's work ; and at the season of their coming stage-coach after stage-coach from Boston would be loaded down with them and their baggage. In March they voted for Isaac Hill, or his Democratic nominee, in New Hampshire, and in November they voted for Marcus Morton in Quincy. They were a foreign voting element; but there was also a new domestic voting element which had now to be taken into account. The shoemaking population had greatly increased. This was of a wholly different type from the stone-working population. The day of great shoe-factories and machine-made work was yet distant. The men and women who made shoes as a trade worked mainly at their homes. As an occupa- tion this lacked the manliness and robust, out-door

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 77

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534