USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > South Hadley > History of the sesqui-centennial anniversary celebration of the town of South Hadley, Mass., July 29-30, 1903 > Part 2
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At spring's return a bloom so fair That our unwilling hearts may know.
'Tis time that stays, 'tis ave who go.
And who shall say those heroes old Could find no prototypes'e'en now ? Events had trained them to be bold, And mounting courage decked each brow.
Yet had we lived in other days,
We, too, perchance had dared to die,
For distance lends a golden haze, And so, dear Town, Good-Bye, Good-Bye.
Hon. Frederick II. Gillett, Representative in Congress from the Second District of Massachusetts, spoke as follows :
I wish I could boast of being a son of South Hadley. As I see it today in its decorated loveliness, it seems to me the ideal New England town, beautiful in situation, enterprising,' thrifty, comfortable; the center of a great educational movement-it represents to the eye and to the mind what our state most prides itself on. Do any hills of equal height compare in beauty with our Holyoke range? I passed four of the pleasantest years of my life just the other side of them at Amherst, and as I remember,
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I occasionally used to come over to South Hadley to admire them from this side-and admire other beauties, too, and I shall never tire in my affection for the notched picturesqueness of these guardians of the valley.
But, though not a son, I am glad that my father's birth here has given me a claim to be a grandson, and I am very confident that your acquaintance and knowledge of him will give you a kindly and indulgent feeling toward his son. We, in this country, recognize no claims of birth or descent. We endeavor to measure every man by his own merit. Yet, I suspect, we all consciously, or unconsciously, have some regard for pedigree ; have more con- fidence in a man in whose father we have confided, are always glad at the success of the sons of men we have honored, and I think it is not over-modesty on my part to have always believed that one of the strong factors that first recommended me to the favor of this congressional distriet was the character and popu- larity of my father. I have been told by one who was present some years ago, when he visited his native town and made an address here, that he commeneed by quoting the familiar lines of HIood :-
I remember, I remember the house where I was born, The little window where the sun came peeping in at morn. He never came a wink too soon, nor brought too long a day ; But now I often wish the night had borne my breath away.
I think all of us, as we advance in life, as we see the future growing shorter and the past stretching out longer behind us, indulge more and more in retrospect and turn back far more often and more fondly to the childhood days and to the old home. And it is doubtless to this tendency that we owe this old home week, which has become so common and so delightful a feature of the New England summer.
We are becoming older as a nation and are beginning to enjoy in retrospect. We have been thus far a nation of pioneers, restlessly pushing on and on as long as there were fresh lands to explore and exploit, and now when that phase of our national life seems almost ended, when there is no longer any farther West to aspire to, we turn back to the old again and focus for a moment upon the old home the energy and vigor and warm sentiment we have been lavishing on the new. This is not only personally and selfishly agreeable, it is philosophically wise.
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It is wise to have the young West come back to old New England and let the differences which the diverse climates and conditions have created survey each other, and act and react on each other, and mollify and moderate each other. It is wise to have those who have been fortunate and unfortunate, those who in the struggle for life have drawn prizes and those who have drawn blanks come back and meet again in the old level of boy- hood associations, and solace and help each other. Certainly to meet on the footing of childhood is to meet again on the truest equality there is. A boyhood in a New England town is the purest education in democracy. I look back on my own with pleasure. Never, I believe, was there a happier one, and I see with satis- faction what an absolute democratie equality there was, without even a thought or suspicion of difference because of wealth, or occupation, or race, or creed. The qualities of the boy himself were the only elements of popularity or leadership.
It is in this that the town surpasses the city today, and I have thought that in the few minutes I have been asked to fill today, as we are celebrating the founding of a town, it would be appropriate to confine myself to this one thought-the potent and strengthening influence of the town compared with the city.
As society grows older and larger it tends to drift into elasses. That is natural and I suppose inevitable. In a large community all cannot know each other-therefore associates have to be selected, and in the process of selection it is natural that those of kindred tastes, those who live on about the same scale of expense should flock together, and so society classifies itself natu- rally by lines of taste, and by lines of culture, and by lines of wealth. There is nothing to condemn or criticize in such asso- ciation if one class will recognize the equality of every other, and will not allow the fondness for their associates to make them unjust to others. But there human nature seems weak, or rather the tendeney of human nature to associate and be selfish and partisan and emulous is strong, and so each class comes soon to be ambitious for itself, and regardless and envious of others, and we see those jealousies which are harmful to all, and if persisted in must prove dangerous to the state. I have been surprised to see how in large cities formalities and distinctions have grown, and how educated, intellectual men come under their sway.
I heard in Washington where the quantity of officials and the presence of foreign diplomats makes, I presume, more punetil-
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iousness than elsewhere, an incident for whose authenticity I will by no means vouch, but which so well illustrates the tendency I alluded to, that I will quote it, though I trust it was not founded on faet. At formal dinners the guests are seated as far as possible in the order of their official rank, the greatest dignitary escorting the hostess in to dinner. Of course, the United States supreme court are of the highest rank, and one evening, the story goes, a judge arriving at a dinner party discovered that he was not to take the hostess in to dinner, as he had expected. He inquired of the servant if the chief justice was to be there-the only person whose rank he admitted to be superior. The response was No. "Then," said the judge, in high dudgeon, because someone else was to have the honor of taking out the hostess, which he conceived belonged to him, "Then tell the hostess that it will be impossible for me and my wife to dine here tonight," and he instantly departed, allowing indignation at an infringement of his social position to overcome politeness and courtesy. If in the supreme court of the United States, where we suppose is condensed our greatest intellectual power and culture, there is found such pride of caste, such sensitiveness to class distinctions, how can we wonder if in society, where want of brains is supplied by surplus of wealth, we shall find snobbishness and pride rampant, or how can we wonder if class feeling often engenders bitterness and riot !
Now here is the great superiority, social and moral and political, of the town over the city. In the one the impossibility of knowing every one compels selection, and that produces classes, and that creates competition, rivalry, ill-will, hatred, lawlessness; in the other, universal acquaintance produces comparative equal- ity and good feeling. For men are so much alike; the common human strain is so strong, that it is not between individuals as a rule that disagreements exist; it is bodies, and masses, and classes of men that dislike and hate each other. When they come to know each other as individuals they generally find sufficient community of feeling to make a basis for mutual understanding. Individuals as a rule are reasonable and will hear and recognize reason. It is where they act in numbers as mobs that they become brutish and inflame each other to atrocities which they would shudder from alone. Crowds are vastly more unreasonable than individuals. And so the town has a great advantage over the city. The mutnal acquaintance begets toleration and respeet.
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And I sometimes think it is more creditable, it is a surer dis- tinction to be the foremost citizen of a town than of a great city. For in the town you are completely known ; your reputa- tion is not second-hand; you cannot be a stalking horse for some other person or party and be accepted as great because they affirm it, but your character, your habits, your ability, your peculiarities are known through and through, and nothing can succeed but sheer merit. In the city, genius and talent may remain obseure and undetected for years, while fortunate medioc- rity flourishes. But in the country, merit is surely recognized, and makes its way, and though the prizes are small they go un- erringly to those who earn them. And so the town is the great conservative and conserving force of the nation. And as one hundred and fifty years ago there were in this broad continent nothing but towns, so today it seems to me that celebrating that distant and different era, we can appropriately and truthfully glorify the town. If today the great city, with its wondrous developments, is the perfect flower of our civilization, still the town is the sturdy root on whose health and vigor depends, the life of the whole organism.
It was the life of the town that naturally stimulated those qualities which have made the greatness of America-self-reli- anee, enterprise, equality and respect for law. These were the great Anglo-Saxon characteristics which our ancestors brought here. These are the qualities that founded South Hadley one hundred and fifty years ago, and the great marvel of America is that these qualities have not been submerged in the repeated waves of immigration that have swept over them, but today rise struggling and choked, but still dominant, as the saving factors of our progress. Our great contribution to Europe, to the world, to history and civilization has been the declaration of the rights and equality of mankind, which naturally developed from the primitive, democratie and religious life of such towns as South Hadley one hundred and fifty years ago, and which we may well hope still finds its permanent abiding place and its most con- genial home in such towns as the South Hadley of today, which are scattering their descendants, their missionaries, over the whole broad land, and leavening with their spirit seventy millions of people.
The Schumann Quartet sang "Sunset," by Van de Water.
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Miss Mary E. Woolley, president of Mt. Holyoke College, was the next speaker, taking as her theme, "The Educational Interests of the Town."
It is my pleasant duty to bring you greeting from the college. I wish that she were here to speak for herself, to have a part in the hospitality of this significant "home coming." The freedom of the campus is yours, but I do not need to tell you that the college, in the real, and, may I not add, most interesting sense, is something more than buildings and grounds, however beautiful they may be. The old New York farmer, visiting Cornell University for the first time in vacation, and being shown an imposing array of laboratories and workshops and classrooms and equipment, was right when he said, "But where is the uni- versity ?" I can only invite you to see the "college" in the future, and today to visit its home !
The "educational interests of the town" is a large subject for a short talk, for the educational interests of South Hadley have been neither few nor insignificant. The town records tell us that as early as 1738, "At a meeting of ye inhabitants of ve second precinct in Hadley, on the second day in February, 1738, voted that we will build a Scool House 23 foots long and 18 foots broad and 7 foots between joints," and "That ve Committe abovesaid shall discourse with ye Committe of ye scool in ye first precinet of this town & desire their help about seting up a seool in this precinet." The next year the location was decided upon -"'ye most convenient place between ye Meeting House & the House that Moses White now lives in"-but evidently the plan was not carried out, for in January, 1747, it was voted to finish the schoolhouse and to raise £8 for the purpose, and in 1754 the "care of finishing the schoolhouse is assigned to the selectmen, and they are to hire what schooling they think proper for the summer."
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It would be interesting to follow the history of the common schools of the town during the one hundred and fifty years, but the result would not be unlike that of other townships in this old commonwealth, justly famons throughout the country and the world for its interest in education and development of the public school system. The educational activity of South Hadley has not been confined to the common schools. Abont 1802 Miss Abby Wright opened a private school for young ladies, which continued
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for several years, and the Woodbridge school for boys was well known from 1827 to 1834.
President Jordan of Leland Stanford, Jr., University once said: "The higher education of women means more for the future than all conceivable legislative reforms. Its influence does not stop with the home." In the light of this estimate, South Hadley has played a unique part in the history of the country.
It is always difficult to realize the extent of changes in con- ditions and public opinion, however clearly it may seem to us that we apprehend them. Today with five large women's colleges in New England and the middle states, aggregating more than four thousand students; with most of the universities, such as Harvard, Columbia and Cornell, providing undergraduate in- struction for women in the form of the annex, the affiliated college or co-education pure and simple; with conservative insti- tutions like Yale University opening their graduate courses to women on the same footing as to men; with the great state universities, ahnost without exception, co-educational; with women holding fellowships in foreign universities, and winning doctorates in constantly increasing numbers -- it seems incredible that in 1836, the year that a charter was granted to Mount Holyoke Seminary, there were one hundred and twenty colleges in the United States for young men, and not one for young women !
Nor was this lack of opportunity confined to the college. The pages of Mrs. Stowe's "Semi-Centennial Sketch of Mount Holyoke Seminary" read like a romance, so unreal do the edu- cational conditions of the early part of the 19th century appear to our 20th century eyes. Girls were not generally in the public schools, since they could learn to read and sew-the only neces- sary accomplishments-at home or in private schools kept by "dames." It is said that it was not uncommon for women of property to sign the wills which they made with a cross, and that many who could read were unable to write. In 1790 Boston allowed them to attend the public schools during the summer months-"when there were not enough boys to fill them!" In Northampton in 1788 "the question was before the town," and "it was voted not to be at any expense for schooling girls," but in 1792 it "was voted by a large majority to admit girls between the ages of eight and fifteen to the schools from May 1 to October 31. One of the Hatfield maidens, according to the story, was
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THE ARCH AT THE CORNER OF BRIDGE AND MAIN STREETS
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so athirst for knowledge that she resorted to the somewhat doubt- ful expedient of sitting on the schoolhouse doorsteps to hear the boys recite !
But a new age had begun and before the close of the 18th century several academies were established, admitting girls as well as boys. Bradford, which has just celebrated its centennial, was originally of this character-although a quarter of a century later it established a separate department for girls, and eight years after that closed the boys' department. Academies for girls only followed toward the close of the first quarter of the 19th century-Adams Academy at Derry, N. H., in 1823; Ipswich Academy in 1828, and Abbot Academy in 1829, while efforts for training in the higher branches began in the same period. A certain William Woodbridge, graduating from Yale in 1780 and taking for the theme of his essay, "Improvement in Female Education," is said to have been the father of the first school in New England "designed exclusively for the instruction of girls in branches not tanght in the common schools." . His efforts took the form of an evening school, where he taught grammar, geography and composition, but even this modest curriculum was considered impracticable and its promoter "visionary."
It would be interesting to trace the development of the new idea and the work of its advocates-Emma Willard founding Troy Seminary in 1821, Catharine Beecher beginning a seminary in Hartford in 1822 in the upper room of a store, and Rev. Joseph Emerson laying the foundation of an even greater work in his seminary at Byfield.
Among the pupils of the last was the girl whose longing for knowledge was so great that during her student days she often gave herself only four hours of sleep in twenty-four, "counting study time too precious to be taken for sleep"; who mastered the English grammar in four days and the Latin in three; who calculated eclipses and made an almanac; improved her vacations by studying the natural sciences and drawing and painting; and in every study upon which she entered showed extraordinary mental grasp as well as zeal and earnestness. The story of Mount Holyoke is the story of Mary Lyon, but it belongs also to the history of South Hadley. The town may well lay claim to her by birth, her great-grandfather being one of the first settlers, although later, on account of religious differences, he withdrew to begin the settlement of Huntstown, now Ashfield.
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It was South Hadley's good fortune to be selected as the site of the new school, and the fact that a "handsome subscription" was raised says much for the liberality and progressiveness of the town. It has been well said that Miss Lyon "could not describe the literary standard by comparing it with established institutions of the kind anywhere known as one could do in founding a new college for men. There was no school to which she could point as an example in this respect." That the new institution should be a college in name was not to be thought of in that age of suspicion, ridicule and actual antagonism to higher education for women; "but she proceeded with all the energy and wisdom of the great woman that she was to make it as much of a college as was possible in her day." The prelim- inary circular, issued in 1835, stated that the seminary would furnish "every advantage that the state of education in this country will allow," and the "First Ammal Catalog" of 1837-38 includes in the curriculum ancient and modern history, botany, rhetoric, Euclid, physiology, algebra, natural philosophy, philos- ophy of natural history, intellectual philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, geology, ecclesiastieal history, evidences of Christian- ity, logie, moral philosophy, natural theology and Butler's anal- ogy. Certainly some progress had been made since Mr. Wood- bridge was considered eceentrie because he believed that women should not be denied the privilege of studying grammar, geog- raphy and composition !
Attention has often been called to the widespread influence of South Hadley in the academic world. When the serious question of carpeting the seminary hall was under discussion in 1842, one of the trustees decided the matter by saying: "The times demand it. The education of the world is being carried on here." Truly the education of the world was being carried on here. And in southern Africa and the far East, as well as on our own Pacific coast and in the middle West, are institutions modeled after her plan and graduates making her name a familiar household word.
The significant part which South Hadley has played in higher education is seen quite as plainly in the line of educational theories. Ideas accepted today as fundamental were as strongly emphasized here sixty-six years ago-for example, the necessity of physical training, the value of education as a preparation for service, the development of mental power rather than mere
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2.
3.
4.
5.
1. The Town Seal
2. The Old Shad Boat
TOWN FLOATS IN THE PARADE
3. Indian Float
4. Fairy Float
5. An Old Canal Foat
acquisition, the democratic and patriotic ideal, the idea that the school is only the beginning of an education which is never finished-all these conceptions, both in theory and practice, were characteristic of Miss Lyon's plan.
One brief paragraph of the preliminary circular outlines the functions of the woman's college: "Its main features are an elevated standard of science, literature and refinement * ** * all to be controlled by the spirit of the gospel." It is a simple statement, but a very comprehensive one. The threefold aim of the woman's college today-expressed differently but with the same meaning-is sound scholarship, true culture, Christian character. Higher education for women is no longer an experi- ment, but in these days of broader opportunities and almost boundless possibilities, let us not forget our tribute of honor and appreciation to the town that dared to be the pioneer.
The Schumann Quartet sang the American Hymn by Kellar.
His Excellency, John L. Bates, Governor of the Common- wealth, spoke as follows:
Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens: There has been so much said, and it has been so well said, that even though I come to bring the congratulations of the commonwealth, I could not excuse myself if I should prolong words and detain you much longer. I have been contracting the old home habit. I think there is danger of my being confirmed in it because I find these occasions so very interesting. I find it is not necessary to be a very keen observer to see that there is a value in it for those who celebrate ; a value that is far richer than many imagine, for everything is of value that tends to open the heart or broaden the mind and lift up the soul. I know of nothing that so warms the heart as does the grasp of the hand of an old friend; the talking of days of long ago, while the old memory plays its tune upon the heart. I know of nothing that will so brighten the days as talking with those who come from far away ; who come to tell us of what they have seen and what they are doing wherever they have cast their lots. Such things do us more good than lectures. I know of nothing that is so inspiring to the soul as to turn back the records of the towns of the old Bay State and study the plans and ideas that directed and led them. So there is a value in such annual gatherings as this of today. I have been interested to discover that there is not a town in Massachusetts that is not more beau- tiful than any other town in the state. This pride is something
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not to be regretted or deplored, but admired, because I recognize that pride for locality tends to the betterment of state and nation. What a time this would be if all South Hadley had to celebrate was what Nature has done for it in the one hundred and fifty years gone by. I have noticed that most towns pick out some leader who, though a native, has gone and won success outside, as though the town was represented by such a man. All honor to those towns that can celebrate for those who have made their successes at home. Poor indeed would be the commity that had but one or two great men to whom to do honor.
I have noticed there is a disposition in some places to dwell on the past. But poor is the town that has only the past to celebrate. There must be a live, active present, and the town must live today for what it sees in the future. If the town exercises no influence beyond its own borders then that town has nothing to celebrate. But it is the town that has influence outside that does not depend on what it is doing within itself; the town that calculates its influence in the outside world-that is the town that can celebrate. As I go through the Connecticut Valley I see that beauty which the artists have despaired of portraying, and I see also the elms that the fathers have planted. I recognize that they were willing to sow that others might gather the harv- est; that it did not deter them that they might not see the fruits of their work. I see the influence of South Hadley, not only in the sons and daughters that have gone forth, but I see it also in the influences that have gone forth from their lives, and in that host of young men and women who have received their in- spiration from living here. I congratulate her, not only for your rugged lives, but for the rugged citizenship. I could not con- gratulate her because of the rugged stream that winds along one side of her borders, but for the men who have been able to curb and use that stream. I congratulate you on the rugged men who have done so much for the world, men who are shadows indeed may be by the shadows of earth, but who revel in the lights and influences of heaven and who represent what South Hadley has been, is now, and will be.
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