USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 16
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An idea of the development of the city may be gained from a scrutiny of the city appropriations for the year 1883. Much of the largest amount of $19,600 was assigned to the schools. Evidently sentiment regarding the responsibility of the community to give the best kind of education to the children had improved since 1850. Newton had one hun- dred and forty miles of streets, so that highways and drain- age claimed $10,000, with an additional thousand for cul- verts and bridges, and street lighting was estimated to cost $3,700. The importance of the fire department ap- pears in its position as third on the list with $9,200. After $5,000 had been set aside towards the liquidation of the town debt, the sum of $4,000 was appropriated for the support of the poor, and a similar sum for the police depart- ment. The villages must have at least one patrolman each to suppress disorder and take care of citizens under the influence of liquor, though the city had voted not to license the sale of intoxicating liquors the year before by a major- ity of forty-five.
Interest, discounts and abatements took care of $6,000, and salaries required $2,975, a ridiculously small
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sum for a city of wealth and presumable appreciation of public service. As a part of a wise policy of durable side- walks the sum of $2,000 was appropriated for concrete construction which in those days meant tar. The sum of $1,600 was assigned to the public library, $1,600 for state and military aid, and $1,500 for fuel. A few hundred dol- lars went for the expenses of city hall, printing, insurance, disposal of ashes and garbage, the Grand Army Post, and the care of cemeteries. A contingent fund of $1,000 was voted. To meet these appropriations the city could count on a valuation of property amounting to $27,167,948. This made the tax rate $15.40.
The appropriation for schools indicated the impor- tance of that item in the city budget. An analysis of ex- penses revealed the fact that Newton was spending far more per pupil than most of the cities of the Common- wealth. Only Boston and Worcester were employing more men as teachers. The city was overcoming the earlier record of delinquency. Except at Lower Falls and Oak Hill the school attendance was increasing fast, and new buildings were needed. The Rice School at Newton Centre and the Eliot School at Nonantum were the most recent structures, and the school committee was resolved to keep up with the demand. One hundred teachers were instruct- ing more than four thousand pupils in 1887. In spite of the high cost of good schooling parents wished their chil- dren to have the advantages of the newest methods, and five hundred persons signed a petition for the introduction of sewing instruction into the grades. The city authorities responded by voting a trial appropriation of one thousand dollars for the purpose, designating the three highest grades of the grammar schools for the experiment.
The high school was proving itself a good investment. More pupils were continuing their schooling beyond the grammar grades, and were shaping their course in high
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school with college as their goal. Harvard naturally drew the most, but other New England colleges and the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology had their quota. Attend- ance at the high school was approaching four hundred fifty, and a new building was imperative. The alumni were organized in an Association, which published a high school review, and a high school battalion had initiated the cus- tom of holding an annual prize drill. The people of the city were proud of the position which the school held among city high schools.
Then it was that high school affairs were thrown into the arena of public discussion in 1887 when the head- master, E. H. Cutler, presented his resignation. He was popular among pupils and parents, but he was criticized by the school committee for lack of discipline and for cer- tain methods which he employed. The discussion in the local press was animated, and one member of the school committee resigned because of his sympathy with the head- master. At the next election the school committee was overturned, but it had accomplished its purpose. Friends of Cutler urged him to give private instruction to their children. He yielded to the extent of taking a few boys, and then he received girls as well until the capacity of his quarters limited the number of pupils to thirty-four.
Meantime other private schools were flourishing. Lasell Seminary and the Allen School were the best known of these still. The Allen School was expanding with a new agricultural department, for which two hundred acres were available. The School maintained a primary depart- ment for the youngest pupils, a training school for children between the ages of nine and thirteen, and the academic department for older pupils. Phineas Allen, the oldest teacher in the state and instructor in the languages, passed away. Schools for girls were at Newton, Newton Centre, Auburndale and Riverside. A school of horticulture had
NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION LIBRARY
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been opened near Crystal Lake by certain Boston people in 1870.
During all these years the Newton Theological Insti- tution at Newton Centre, which had been founded in 1825, was pursuing its task of preparing men for the Baptist ministry. It had been fortunate in the quality of its fac- ulty in the first decades, but it was difficult to maintain a uniformly strong body of instructors with the limited resources of the Institution. In the early days the Man- sion House and Farwell Hall met the need for lecture rooms and dormitory, but by 1860 there was grave need of new buildings. It was inconvenient to lecture under an um- brella when the roof leaked, and students vainly tried to sleep in the "Crow's Nest" when it rocked in the blasts which sometimes swept over Institution Hill. The trustees undertook to supply the financial lack. In 1866 Colby Hall was dedicated and named after Gardner Colby, the munificent patron of the school and president of the board of trustees. The occasion was observed with fitting exer- cises, including an historical address by Professor Hovey. In 1871 Farwell Hall was refitted, and a fourth floor added for dormitory accommodations. Still another modern building was needed to meet increasing demands, and Sturtevant Hall was erected, in time for eager sightseers to climb its unfinished stairways and watch the progress of the great Boston fire of 1872. This addition made possible the demolition of the Mansion House, and some of its materials were appropriated to a gymnasium. This com- pleted a group of modern buildings on the summit of the hill. Meantime a drive for an enlarged endowment brought into the treasury the sum of two hundred thousand dol- lars, and for a time the heavy burden of the trustees was lifted. Individual gifts made possible a considerable num- ber of scholarships, the Library fund was more than doubled, and lectures by distinguished visitors added to the attraction of the regular courses of instruction.
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The year 1868 was marked by the appointment of Prof. Alvah Hovey as the second president of the Institu- tion. No other man in the whole history of the school has so built himself into it as did he. For more than fifty years he gave the strength of his manhood to instruction and administration. He was author as well as teacher, active member of important denominational organizations, and mentor of a generation or more of Baptist ministers. Seconded by Mrs. Hovey, who made possible the scholarly pursuits of her husband, mothered the boys, and oiled the machinery of the Seminary, the president guided the for- tunes of the school, now approaching its jubilee.
In 1875 the Institution celebrated its semi-centennial. The last decade of the nineteenth century brought the construction of an adequate library building on the site of the Mansion House. With well-lighted reading room and ample stack space it became a laboratory for students and professors. Improvements in Colby and Farwell halls and the erection of a central heating plant were due largely to the wise counsel and superintendence of Stephen Greene.
Among prominent graduates of the Institution be- tween 1875 and 1890 were Charles Rufus Brown and George E. Horr, who became professors in the school in later years, Richard Montague who at the time of his death was minister to the Baptist church in Newton Centre, Albion W. Small who became president of Colby College and subsequently became widely known as head of the department of sociology in the University of Chi- cago, all in the class of 1879; William H. P. Faunce, long time president of Brown University, John E. Cummings and John L. Dearing, who became missionaries in the Far East and were honored by the governments of India and Japan, and Shailer Mathews, who became dean of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.
On the faculty in the thirty years between 1865 and
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1895 were six men who became college presidents. These were George D. B. Pepper, who was elected president of Colby College; Galusha Anderson, who subsequently was president of the University of Chicago and later of Deni- son University; Samuel L. Caldwell, who was promoted to the presidency of Vassar College; E. Benjamin Andrews, who went from Newton to become the head of Brown Uni- versity and later of the University of Nebraska; Ernest D. Burton, who late in life was made president of the Univer- sity of Chicago after a service there as professor of more than forty years; and Rush Rhees, who since 1900 has been president of the University of Rochester.
John Mahan English graduated from the Institution in 1875. Seven years later he returned to become professor of homiletics. For the long space of forty-five years he won an ever-increasing affection from his pupils and of esteem from the people of the community. He died quietly in the chapel of the Institution, while waiting for the gath- ering of his class, in the spring of 1927.
In the city where educational institutions bulked so largely there was need of a large and efficient library for public use. But the city budget was small, and there was the ever-present difficulty of satisfying the needs of sepa- rate villages. The contributions of local book collections to the central library at Newton added to the literary wealth of the collection there and made natural the estab- lishment of branch places of distribution in the villages from which the contributions had come. But duplicates of many copies were in demand which left less money avail- able for purchases of new books at Newton. The Library cooperated with the teachers in the schools, and was indis- pensable, because it was not practicable to build up large school libraries. Hannah P. James, who had done most to establish the Library on solid foundations during her seventeen years as librarian, gave way to Elizabeth P.
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Thurston. Twenty thousand volumes were on the shelves, and more space was provided soon by an addition to the building. John S. Farlow added $5,000 to the resources for reference purposes. After the reconstruction of the build- ing was completed the reference room was called the Farlow Reference Room, the delivery room was named Edmands Hall, and the stack was designated as Jones Hall. The Library enjoyed a special income of $344 from the Read Fund, of $315 from the Jewett Fund, of $70 from the Speare Art Fund, and a gift of $5,000 bequeathed by Mrs. Lydia M. Jewett. In common with other public libraries the largest circulation was of fiction and juvenile books. Then in the order of circulation were geography and travel, essays and poetry, natural science, history and biography, and theology.
The West Newton Athenaeum had a circulating li- brary of nearly five thousand volumes and a good refer- ence library. It provided daily and weekly papers in its reading room. In 1875 it found itself in so flourishing a condition that it was able to move into better quarters and give better facilities for the public which it had admitted to library privileges eight years before. Now it made daily delivery of books from its shelves, and to aid it in this public service the city made a small appropriation. In 1890 the Library had an annual circulation of about ten thousand books. It was glad to become an agent of the city library and eventually to turn over to it its valu- able collection.
In Newton Centre the former chapel of the Baptist church was adopted for library, reading room and debat- ing room. The auditorium became Associates Hall after it had been remodelled at a cost to its new owners of fourteen thousand four hundred dollars.
A unique gift to the city for educational and philan- thropic purposes was the bequest of Charles A. Read of
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forty thousand dollars. At a time when the welfare of children was of less concern than now he designated that the income of the fund up to four hundred dollars a year was to be spent for an annual sleigh ride or picnic for New- ton children. When that provision had been taken care of, not more than eight hundred dollars was to be used for lectures on science at Newton Corner, and not more than six hundred dollars was to be expended for books for the Newton Free Library. The balance was to be devoted to the aid of poor widows in any part of the city. A gift of a different character made to the city was the Bigelow Memorial Chapel in the Newton Cemetery, which was dedi- cated September 27, 1885. A new receiving tomb was prepared near by, with thirty-six cells. The cemetery was undergoing continual improvement under the direction of the efficient superintendent, Henry Ross, who was in charge from 1861 to 1899. Twin ponds north of the Chapel were made out of the swamp by digging down to under- ground springs, and the black muck which was taken out proved valuable as a fertilizer. On the slope above the second pond was once the chemical factory of Dr. Samuel Clarke, a hill now transformed into one of the fairest spots in the cemetery.
The cemetery was visited frequently during these years for the burial of men and women whose lives had cast lustre on the city. Among those who died, not all of whom were buried there, were Dr. W. H. Prince, a physi- cian in the village of Newton, and Dr. William F. Teulon, of Huguenot ancestry and long a practicing physician at Upper Falls, West Newton and Newton. For a time he had been preacher to a Universalist society. Erastus W. Moore was a resident of Newton during the Civil War period, and died in 1888. He was an ardent opponent of slavery. He was Boston reporter for The Evangelist for a quarter of a century, edited a cyclopedia of missions, and
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compiled the "Bay State Records." He had a large Bible class in the Eliot Church. Judge William S. Gardner, who died in May, 1888, was prominent in Grace Church.
Among the clergy who passed on about this time were Reverend Rufus P. Stebbins, who for twelve years was president of the Meadville Theological Seminary, and then a promoter of Unitarianism in Boston and vicinity. He was pastor of the Unitarian church in Newton Centre for seven years before his death. Father Michael M. Green was for ten years pastor of the Church of our Lady at Newton. He founded the church as a mission of the Watertown Catholic church. At the time of his death more than four thousand persons were included in his parish. More than one hundred priests attended his funeral. Father Christopher McGrath died at West Newton after a five-year pastorate of St. Bernard's Church. Dr. Jonah G. Warren, the corresponding secre- tary of the American Baptist Missionary Union with headquarters in Boston, was for seventeen years a resident of Newton Centre, and Prof. Heman Lincoln was professor of church history at the Newton Theological Institution for eleven years. A death much mourned was that of Reverend Samuel E. Lowry, founder and pastor of the North Congregational Church at Nonantum. Similarly beloved was Rebecca R. Pomroy, matron of the Pomroy Home for girls. At her death in 1884 a military funeral was held in Eliot Church in honor of her service as nurse in the Civil War, and the occasion was observed by the whole community, with several of the ministers partici- pating.
All these events were recorded duly week by week in the city press. Henry H. Boardman bought the Graphic in 1885. He announced on the editorial page that he would print Newton locals on the front page of his paper, New- tonville and Nonantum items on the fourth, West Newton,
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Auburndale and Riverside news on the fifth, and reports from Newton Centre, Newton Highlands, and Newton Upper Falls on the eighth, while "the other pages will contain general and miscellaneous matters-largely fresh and original." The new adventurer in journalism also purchased the Newton Transcript, edited at West Newton by Henry Lemon, Jr. But within a year the Graphic was sold to Edward D. Baldwin, a graduate of Harvard and for ten years editor of the Daily Republican of Meriden, Connecticut.
The Pomroy Home at Newton was a local charity which enlisted the time and money of many women. After some delay about its location it had been established on Hovey Street, and Mrs. Rebecca Pomroy, who had been the efficient superintendent of the home at Newton Centre, was placed in charge in 1872. The board of incorporation was composed of one woman from each of the Protestant churches of the city, who annually elected the directors of the enterprise. Gifts from the churches have been the principal means of support. The Rebecca Pomroy Newton Home for Orphan Girls, as it was entitled legally, became a refuge for destitute Newton girls, where the children were taught to share in the work of the household, and from which they went to foster homes, usually about the age of seventeen. They attended the public schools through the grammar grades, and were given further education in high school, with musical education if they showed special abil- ity. Each of the older girls was given the responsibility of a big sister to a younger girl, learning kindness and good judgment in that way. Although lacking an endowment on which it could depend, the Home made and kept many friends who gladly met its various needs.
Newton mercantile trade was flourishing, with new stores and markets opening their doors as the demand of custom seemed to warrant. Not all succeeded, though
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competition was far less keen than now. Certain business houses at that time laid the foundations of a prosperous career that has continued until the inroads of chain and department stores have lessened their profits. It was in 1887 that the First National Bank of West Newton opened its doors, promoted by James H. Nickerson of that village, and in the same year five men were incorporated as the West Newton Savings Bank, with Austin R. Mitchell as the first president. In spite of the growing prominence of Boston as a banking centre, local banks were most con- venient for both commercial transactions and investment.
Manufacturing industries were relatively less promi- nent than they had been when Upper and Lower Falls were the liveliest parts of town, but they were by no means negligible. Nonantum continued to be a thriving manu- facturing village with a population of about three thou- sand, made up chiefly of Irish, English and French Cana- dians. The Silver Lake Company, manufacturing braided cord and steam packing, doubled its capacity by making extensive additions, and in 1890 had an annual business valued at three hundred thousand dollars. In similar fashion the Nonantum Worsted Company made additions to its plant for the manufacture of its famous "Starlight" worsteds, and the Company bought a controlling interest in the Newton Machine Company, which manufactured woolen machinery close by.
At Upper Falls industry was not uniformly prosper- ous. The Newton Mills were closed in 1884, and the prop- erty was thrown on the market. Two years later it was sold to a silk manufacturing company from New Jersey, and then one hundred and thirty operatives were set to work turning the raw materials which came from foreign lands into silk goods. Other industries were finding loca- tion in the village. The United States Fireworks Com- pany moved its manufacturing business from Portland,
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Maine, to Upper Falls, and produced a high-grade prod- uct which won a choice clientele because of its display at Washington in the national military drill of that year. The Company employed more than fifty men during the busy season. In 1888 the Newton Rubber Company built its factory on Boylston Street, equipping it with the best modern machinery. It made a specialty of manufactur- ing springs for all kinds of machinery and insulating ma- terial for electric batteries. But the demon of fire wrecked the plant within a few short years. Shortly before that event the Gamewell Fire Alarm Telegraph Company moved from Newton Highlands into a larger plant at Upper Falls. The Pettee Machine Works had been incor- porated in 1880, and was in a flourishing condition as a manufacturer of cotton machinery.
Among personal events of general interest was the appointment of several Newton men to positions of public responsibility. Leverett Saltonstall was appointed col- lector of the port of Boston. Charles P. Clark was elected president of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Judge R. R. Bishop was made chairman of the Civil Service Commission. Other prominent men in the city included John Davis, an eminent lawyer and associate justice of the United States Court of Claims; William C. Strong, a real estate operator and the owner of extensive nurseries in Waban, a writer on fruit culture and president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society; Edwin P. Seaver, superintendent of the Boston schools, lived in Waban, a fellow villager with Louis K. Harlow, the etcher. A notorious character of Waban was Moffat, the hermit, a squatter on the hill.
Seth Davis enjoyed the unusual distinction of living to celebrate his one hundredth birthday. He had come to West Newton in 1802 with twenty-five cents in his pocket. He had farmed and taught school, and after 1820 had a
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private school of his own in the West Parish. He was a member of the Baptist church at Newton Centre. One of the useful contributions which he made to the community was the setting out of many trees, both ornamental and fruit trees. Up to his ninetieth birthday he was accus- tomed to celebrate the event by walking into Boston. His one hundredth anniversary was welcomed as an oppor- tunity to show him the esteem of his fellow citizens. At his home on Watertown Street, West Newton, he held open house. Forty of his former pupils were present, and fifteen thousand people gathered to do him honor. Formal exer- cises were held while Davis and his wife sat on the plat- form. Addresses were made by Mayor Kimball, by Alex- ander H. Rice, who had sat under the instruction of the old man and had attained to the distinction of the gover- norship, and I. B. Hagar of Salem, another pupil who had given himself to education in his turn. Remarks were made by L. Allen Kingsbury of Wellesley and Nathaniel T. Allen, his long-time friend and fellow villager. Dr. S. F. Smith contributed an original poem to the occasion, and a choir of children from the Davis School sang. The aged man who was the recipient of all these attentions survived less than a year afterward, and his funeral was held in West Newton on the twenty-seventh of June in 1888.
While Seth Davis was receiving the congratulations of his friends, another resident of Newton was reaching the end of her life. Mary C. Shannon was beloved for her philanthropies and respected for her personal worth. She had been living in Newton forty years, a radiant spirit in the home of her niece on Centre Street. She had a dis- tinguished carriage, was fond of gardening and of nature, delighted in many children as her friends, and made her- self friendly with all kinds of people with whom she might be thrown. Her broadmindedness, wide sympathy, and interest in all who chanced to be in need, added to the pos-
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session of means for giving aid, endeared her to the com- munity. The city was the poorer when she went. Her name remains cherished by those who have known of her life story.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the newer period into which the people of Newton were moving was a more discriminating appreciation of music. Among events of a musical interest was the presentation of the new oratorio "Emmanuel," written by J. Eliot Trow- bridge, which was given in Eliot Hall by the West Newton Choral Union, of which the composer was conductor. It was so well received that the concert was repeated three months later. A series of similar events was the rehearsals and concerts of the musical club of about forty persons, which had been organized by J. P. Cobb.
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