USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 11
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In the new vigor that came to Auburndale with the land development and the growth of population, it was natural that certain of the people should be ambitious to have a church of their own in the village. Many of the residents were identified with the Congregational Church at West Newton, and others who were moving into the village were affiliated with the same denomination. Sev- eral Congregational ministers without pastoral charge were living there, and were willing to supply the preaching for a
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time. The Evangelical Congregational Church of Auburn- dale was organized late in the year 1850 by thirty-four persons. They met for worship in a hall until they were ready to buy land and erect a meetinghouse in 1857, which cost them about twelve thousand dollars. A severe storm blew down the spire and the bell five years later, and the congregation was forced to resort temporarily to the hall of Lasell Seminary, but the damage was repaired and it was fifteen years before an enlargement of the church edi- fice was attempted, and a chapel added. Upon the dedica- tion of the building Reverend Edward Clark became pastor. He remained four years, and then an interim of three years followed before Reverend Augustus H. Carrier was called, to remain only two years. Reverend Calvin Cutler in 1867 commenced a long pastorate of more than twenty years.
Starting from neighborhood meetings and a Sunday school, a Methodist church came into existence in Auburn- dale in 1862, the year of the great storm. Reverend J. Emery Round was the first pastor. The burning of the hall in which the Methodists met hastened the construc- tion of a church building which was dedicated in 1867. The Auburndale church was called the Centenary Meth- odist Church. According to the practice of the denomina- tion the rotation of ministers was frequent, but the church enjoyed the services as choirmaster and organist of Eben Tourgée, the founder of the New England Conservatory of Music.
As yet no Episcopal church existed in Auburndale or West Newton. Services were attempted first in Auburn- dale and then in West Newton, but they had no deter- mined location until the Church of the Messiah of West Newton and Auburndale was formed and the corner of Auburn Street and Commonwealth Avenue became the eventual location of the beautiful stone building now in use.
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Church life in Newton Centre continued to run in the old channels. The resources of the village did not yet justify new churches. The First Church rejoiced in the coming of Reverend Daniel Furber, D.D., in 1847 fresh from the theological seminary at Andover. The one hun- dred members who remained after the loss of so many to the Eliot Church two years before were in a despondent state of mind, and the old meetinghouse was small and needed renovation. Under new leadership they recovered their courage, completed a new house of worship, put in a new organ, and resolutely faced the future. The sequel justified their courage. As the village grew the church strengthened. Nine members withdrew in 1868 to help form the Central Congregational Church at Newtonville, and four years later twenty-four transferred their member- ship to the new Congregational church at Newton High- lands. Yet in 1869 those who remained ventured to en- large the meetinghouse to twice its size, and when Dr. Furber celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as pastor there were two hundred and eighty-five members of the church.
Dr. Furber proved a worthy leader, and in the thirty- five years of his pastorate he welcomed five hundred and thirty-six new members into the church. It was said that he relied on Deacon Paul as interpreter of the divine law and on Deacon Cook as an exponent of the gospel. He induced the church to replace the leadership of the choir with congregational singing. His reputation was such that he became co-editor with Professors Park and Phelps of Andover in issuing a book of hymns and tunes. He retired from the active pastorate in 1882, residing in town as pastor emeritus until his death in 1899. Four years before that event his neighbors and friends celebrated his sev- enty-fifth birthday, and two years later he preached in the church on the fiftieth anniversary of his installation.
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Shortly before his death he contributed ten thousand dol- lars towards the building of the present church home. His long residence had made him well known in town, and schools and business houses closed for the funeral, while flags hung at half mast.
In the autumn of 1841 the Baptist church unani- mously invited Reverend Samuel Francis Smith to become its minister. He was to become nationally famous as the author of "America," which he had written about a dozen years earlier. He came from Waterville, Maine, to be min- ister in Newton Centre and to edit the Christian Review in Boston. These two tasks he continued for twelve years, when he resigned the church to give himself wholly to religious writing. Dr. Smith was beloved for his friendli- ness, and he welcomed about a hundred persons into church membership. He continued to reside in Newton Centre for many years. He was succeeded in the pastorate of the church by Reverend Oakman S. Stearns for another ten years. At the time of his coming the meetinghouse was being renovated. Henceforth a tower with a bell adver- tised the church by sight and sound. Five years later the chapel was added. Two hundred more persons came into the church, half of them by profession of faith and half by the influx of new people into the village. Sunday schools were started at Oak Hill and at Thompsonville. That hamlet was named after a hermit who lived in the woods, and was inhabited by a number of families, most of whom were Germans. The church at the Centre maintained the Sunday school, and presently they were building a chapel for religious services, but after a time an Irish Catholic and then an Italian population changed the character of the people to such an extent that the school seemed no longer needed. Oak Hill came to have also a chapel of its own. Dr. Stearns resigned to accept a professorship on the hill. In 1869 a baptistery and a new organ were installed, and
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Reverend William Newton Clarke came from Keene, New Hampshire, to be the minister. Dr. Clarke was later to become professor of theology at Colgate University, and to gain international fame as a theologian. While in New- ton Centre he matured his religious convictions, and became deeply loved for his winsome qualities. Hereceived a large number of young people into the church as a result of religious revivals. The church gave a number of mis- sionaries to Burma, who achieved an unusual reputation. These were Reverend D. A. W. Smith, the son of Rev- erend S. F. Smith, Reverend Edward O. Stevens, and Misses Harriet Rice and Sarah B. Barrows. Reverend Henry F. Colby, son of Gardner Colby, became a promi- nent minister in Ohio.
While churches were multiplying the school system was being transformed. In such a town as Newton was coming to be it was inexcusable to permit the old district arrangement to continue. With a population of more than five thousand in 1850 there was demand for a graded sys- tem and a good high school. The private schools could take care of the few who were able to afford it, but the children of the town had a right to as good an education as any town in the state provided. When the annual town meeting was held in 1852, a discussion of the school situ- ation resulted in the appointment of a committee of eight- een to make recommendations for school improvement. Dr. Barnas Sears, successor of Horace Mann as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, was chairman of the committee.
The town was spending five thousand dollars a year on eleven districts. The committee made radical suggestions, recommending that the district system be abolished, except at Oak Hill, where the attendance was small, and that new schoolhouses be erected at Newton Centre and Newton- ville, which should be larger than the conventional one-
SMITH HOUSE, HOME OF DR. SAMUEL F SMITH, AUTHOR OF "AMERICA"
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story buildings. The committee proposed the consolida- tion of districts into six, in each of which should be a grammar and a primary school, and a lengthening of the school year to forty-two weeks of three terms.
No less important was the recommendation regarding higher education. The state law required some method of high school instruction in towns which had a population of as much as four thousand, but did not require a separate high school building. The committee in Newton felt that it was wise to try the experiment of organizing high school instruction first in the new grammar school at Newton Centre, open to pupils from the whole town. John W. Hunt, principal of the high school at Plymouth, was in- vited to assume the position as head of the high school department in Newton, and to plan the studies so that students might fit themselves for college. The experiment was a decided success. Sixty pupils were enrolled shortly, and an assistant teacher was necessary. So pleased were the people of Newton that they contributed six hundred dollars for books and apparatus for the school. Next year similar departments were organized at Newton Corner and West Newton. The graded system was equally satis- factory, more than nine hundred pupils being enrolled.
It was soon evident that a single high school was pref- erable to the department plan, though many persons were strongly opposed to it, and there was the usual rivalry be- tween villages over its location. But the march of prog- ress is not easily blocked when its sponsors have the influ- ence and ability to clear the way. In 1859 the town was willing to vote for the construction of a new building at Newtonville, and in September the high school opened there with seventy-five pupils and with J. N. Beals as principal and Amy Breck as assistant. The first graduating class contained but four, all girls, but soon the demand more than justified the expenditures, for within ten years
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more than one hundred and fifty pupils were in attend- ance, and it was necessary to employ more teachers and even to think of enlarging the school building. The cur- riculum was expanded, and citizens had the satisfaction of knowing that their school was on a par with the best schools in the state. Vocal music was introduced into the cur- riculum in 1862, and next year into the grammar and inter- mediate grades. Pianos were placed in the schools in 1869- 70. Drawing was made a regular subject of grammar study a year later. Art rooms were fitted up in the high school. Presently sewing was provided for in the grades. Evening schools were tried just before the Civil War, and in later years were revived. Physical exercise received early atten- tion, and military drill was introduced into the high school in 1877. These were growing evidences of modernity.
The principal handicap to education was the brief tenure of the teachers. It was therefore a cause of satis- faction that Francis A. Waterhouse, who came from Augusta, Maine, in 1868 to be principal at the high school, should remain for twelve years. During that time four courses of study were arranged with many options, a clas- sical course for those wishing to enter college, a business course for those who cared less for academic instruction than for vocational studies, a general course for those who had neither college nor business in view, and a limited course of three years for those who could not take the time to complete the full course. In 1861 a High School Association was formed by the alumni to cement the friend- ship of those who had studied together and a paper was published in the interest of the school.
Five years after the Association was organized the town voted to employ a school superintendent, unless the school committee seriously objected. The committee favored such action, but the appropriation made was too small to attract a satisfactory candidate. The town
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yielded and assigned three thousand dollars as the salary, and Thomas Emerson of Woburn became the first super- intendent. A few years later women members were elected to serve with men on the school committee, at first as an experiment but later with regularity. In 1873, the last year under town government, Newton had over seventy teachers, and was appropriating seventy-three thousand dollars for school purposes.
New private schools were opened from time to time as rivals or supplanters of older schools. Dr. Carl Siedhof managed a Classical Institute on the German model near Crystal Lake, Newton Centre, and about the close of the Civil War a girls' school was located in the same neighbor- hood. After 1865 Miss Spear's English and Classical School was situated on Washington Street in West New- ton. There fifty girls ranging in age from six to twenty were instructed by five regular and special teachers. The school had three departments, and the courses of study were arranged for three and four years. An attempt had been made by Moses Burbank in the year after Marshall Rice closed his school to hold a school for boys in the base- ment of the Baptist church in Newton Centre, but it lasted only four years.
Two schools were so successful as to become renowned throughout the United States. One of these was Lasell Seminary, which opened its doors to girls at Auburndale in 1851. Edward Lasell, professor of chemistry at Wil- liams College, purchased six and a half acres of land as the site of a boarding school for girls. He had in mind to pro- vide a practical as well as literary training, and was ambi- tious to establish a school of the highest class. Cut off by death within a few months, he was succeeded in the pro- motion of the task by his brother Josiah and his brother- in-law, George E. Briggs. A structure about half the size of the later building was erected, and the school began to
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function. The rules of the Seminary were strict. The pupils were required to attend church twice on Sunday. They were reminded that other days must be given to study, and not to eating and drinking. "Young ladies will not be allowed to eat confectionery" was one of the rules. The total charge for boarding pupils was only two hundred dollars a year. In 1862 Reverend George W. Cushing pur- chased the school, assuming the principalship, and car- ried on his task for ten years. In 1873 its character was changed. It ceased to be a private business venture, and became a denominational school under Methodist control. Ten leading men of Boston consented to serve as trustees, Charles C. Bragdon, then a young man, was made prin- cipal, and with twenty girls as a nucleus the school began to grow to the proportions which have given it high stand- ing among institutions of its kind.
It was three years later than the inauguration of Lasell when Nathaniel T. Allen, who had been the principal of the model school of the Normal School for six years, asso- ciated with himself the former head of the Normal School, Reverend Cyrus Peirce, in the establishment of a new private school for both boys and girls at West Newton. It was named the West Newton English and Classical School, but was known locally as the Allen School during much of its history. Both Allen and Peirce were trained teachers, liberal in outlook, and progressive in method. Allen was interested in community welfare and devoted to temper- ance and slavery reform, even when its advocacy seemed likely to injure the school.
The Normal School building, the old Fuller Academy, was bought for the use of the school, and pupils from out of town were given a family home. The school enjoyed the backing of prominent men, like Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, and President Thomas Hill of Harvard. Two of Allen's brothers, George and James, were associated with
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the enterprise as teachers, and the school prospered from the first. It soon won a national reputation and attracted students from all parts of the country. It was unendowed and it never was a denominational school. It admitted both girls and boys, which was not liked by some parents, but the high grade of instruction recommended it. The first kindergarten in the United States was started in the school as an experiment during the years of the Civil War. Hundreds of pupils were graduated from the Allen School within forty years.
Newton became the choice for the location of two reform schools, established by the Children's Aid Society of Boston. The Society was composed of persons who shared the kindlier feelings towards social offenders, which characterized the second part of the century. Under the same auspices of the Children's Aid Society the Pine Farm School for Boys found a location on twenty acres in West Newton at the corner of Homer and Chestnut Streets in the year 1864. It became a training school for about thirty street waifs who needed reform, where for a term varying from six months to two years they learned to study and to work until correct principles of living were well established.
Not far north of the Marshall Rice estate on Centre Street in Newton Centre a house was bought for ten thou- sand dollars which was well adapted for a school, as it had served for a time as a private school. There the Home for Orphan and Destitute Girls was opened in 1866. Mrs. Rebecca R. Pomroy, who had won plaudits for her nursing of soldiers in the Civil War, was made matron of the Home. Thirty girls were living there presently, but before two years had passed fire destroyed the house and a new loca- tion was found on the south side of Institution Hill, but by 1872 it was apparent that girls needing reformation were not numerous to justify such a place of residence, and four
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orphan girls were transferred to a new orphan's home, which finally found a location on Hovey Street, Newton Corner, with Mrs. Pomroy as its head.
The social and educational advantages of Newton attracted directors of church missionary organizations as reasons for locating in the town homes for the children of missionaries. At most missionary stations in the Orient the environment is unsuited to the development of American children, and parents are compelled to leave them in America. Relatives and friends are not always able to give them proper care, and the women's missionary societies have felt that the children were theirs in trust, and have accepted the responsibility of their care. The first home of the kind in Newton was the Home for Missionaries' Chil- dren started in 1868 by Mrs. Eliza H. Walker, the widow of a Congregational missionary in Turkey. Her big heart induced her to open her home in Auburndale to the chil- dren of missionaries to the far Pacific Islands. She moth- ered them with her own children, bearing the burden alone until the American Board came to her assistance. That organization made a small contribution to the support of the children, besides what their parents could furnish. A similar missionary home was opened at Newton Centre in 1880 by the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society under the fostering care of Mrs. Jean McKinley, who re- mained matron for many years. It was arranged that par- ents should pay two hundred dollars a year for the expenses of each child, the Society agreeing to make up any defi- ciency in the balancing of accounts. In 1884 Alden Speare gave a building in Newton near the Methodist church to equip the Wesleyan Home for the Orphan Children of Missionaries who were Methodists. Jacob Sleeper of Bos- ton endowed it with twenty thousand dollars.
Alongside the schools sprang up libraries for club members and even for the public. Professional men had
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their collections of literary tools and gentlemen of good standing, if of questionable taste, had their bookcases properly adorned with sets of morocco-bound volumes, but libraries for the free circulation of books were a modern invention. Several of the villages had acquired subscrip- tion libraries in the course of the years. The Adelphian Library and the Athenaeum were at West Newton. After 1848 the Newton Book Club had made provision for the residents of the Corner.
In 1859 a similar Library Association was organized in Newton Centre, principally through the initiative of James F. C. Hyde, a leading citizen living on the south side of the city. The shares of the Association were valued at ten dollars, but any one who was willing to pay a small fee was permitted once a week to borrow books from the library. By 1873, when it turned its collection over to the recently established public library, the Association had accumulated fourteen hundred volumes. The North Vil- lage Library Association was brought into existence in 1866, and functioned similarly, though on a smaller scale. Three years later still the Newton Lower Falls Free Library was organized. It grew out of an original plan for a parish library for St. Mary's Church, but it broadened its service to include not only the villagers but the people of Wellesley as well. After the town library made it unnecessary the Free Library at Lower Falls was turned over to Wellesley for a time, until the Hunnewell Library served that town so well that the collection was returned and became a parish library according to the original intention.
The immediate sponsor of the town library was the Newton Debating Society, which came into existence at Newton Corner because of the intellectual interest of a considerable number of persons in that village. Gathering periodically in Middlesex Hall until that building was demolished, the Society met afterward at the home of Dr.
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David K. Hitchcock, where discussions on current ques- tions went on for several years. Dr. Hitchcock was one of the committee charged with occasional examination of the Harvard College Library, and he became dissatisfied with the lack of facilities at Newton. He expressed his feelings in the matter frequently at the meetings of the Society, and at length in March, 1865, he offered a resolution that a free library be organized for the whole town. Accord- ingly he was appointed as chairman of a committee to remind the Society of its duty.
The financing of the proposal received its first impulse from Dr. Hitchcock. He made a contribution of one hun- dred dollars to start an endowment fund. It seemed obvi- ous that the town could not appropriate the necessary amount from its liquid assets. This offer aroused the inter- est of other citizens and funds were solicited sufficient to undertake the enterprise. Three thousand three hundred twenty dollars were raised to buy land for a building. J. Wiley Edmands gave ten thousand dollars towards a building and five thousand dollars for books on condition that the trustees, whom the subscribers had appointed, should raise as much more and erect a building satisfactory to himself to house a free library. After more than thirty- three thousand dollars had been subscribed, ground was broken for the building in June, 1868. It was constructed in the popular Gothic style, built mostly of native stone, and was dedicated two years from the time of the begin- ning of the work.
The Newton Free Library was organized in 1869 as a holding company, since the Newton Library Association had declined to assume the responsibility. The village libraries generally turned over their collections promptly to the central library, and later on the Library graciously returned the compliment by establishing branch libraries in the several villages. In 1894 the West Newton Athe-
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naeum gave its collection of fifty-five hundred volumes to the city library, and a branch of the main library was opened in that village. In 1900 a reading room at Auburn- dale was incorporated into the system. During the same year Newton Centre was taken care of similarly, and Upper Falls the next year.
The Library was opened with about seven thousand volumes acquired through purchase and gifts. It was logical that the building and its contents should become the property of the community, and after Newton had been transformed from a town into a city the transfer was made from the Library to the city. Control was vested in seven trustees. Subsequently the quarters were made more commodious, and special privileges were granted to the schools. The building was completed by the gifts of gener- ous citizens and the library became a magnet for those who loved books and delighted to browse among the shelves and explore the recesses of the alcoves. The building was one more evidence of a healthy town spirit and a growing consciousness of the responsibility of the town for the cul- ture of its people.
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