USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 3
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In 1933 Dr. Alfred E. Stearns, for thirty years headmaster, who more than any other had built up the school's present position and reputation, was forced through ill health to resign. Professor Charles H. Forbes, who for over forty years had been one of Andover's most beloved teachers, assumed the duties of acting head- master. With the death of Dr. Forbes on March 12, 1933, the trustees appointed Dr. Claude M. Fuess acting headmaster, and on May 29 of the same year elected him headmaster of the school.
Established in the very first years of the Republic, Phillips Acad- emy has shared in the Nation's history, and the school is notable for the names of great Americans in every walk of life who have been associated with it. The Act of Incorporation was the last measure
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passed by the old Great and General Court, and it was duly signed by John Hancock, the presiding officer, with that flourish of the pen familiar to every American schoolboy.12 The official seal of the school, in use until a few years ago, was engraved by Paul Revere in 1782, and for it payment of £2 8s. was made. It is a disk of silver, one inch and three-eighths in diameter and approximately one-eighth of an inch thick. During the siege of Boston, Samuel Phillips, Jr., had met George Washington, and on November 5, 1789, the first President of the United States visited the school, was entertained by Judge Phillips, and addressed the students assembled on the Old Training Field. Through his influence one of his nephews and eight of his grandnephews attended the school in the years 1785-1803. Bulfinch Hall and Pearson Hall were built from designs by Charles Bulfinch, architect of the Boston State House, and one of the great- est American architects. It was Bulfinch Hall which Oliver Wendell Holmes, a student in the class of 1825, later described in his poem "The School-Boy":
"How all comes back ! The upward-slanting floor, The masters' thrones that flank the central door,
The large outstretching alleys that divide
The rows of desks that stand on either side, The staring boys, a face to every desk, Bright, dull, pale, blooming, common, picturesque.
Grave is the master's look, his forehead wears Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares.
Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule; He most of all whose kingdom is a school.
Supreme he sits. Before the awful frown That bends his brows the boldest eye goes down."
Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was a mem- ber of the class of 1805, and among other graduates internationally famous in scientific field were William Henry Rowland, one of the world's greatest physicists; Othniel C. Marsh, the paleontologist; and George B. Clark, maker of telescopes.
During the Civil War the academy maintained a military com- pany composed of students known as the "Ellsworth Guards," and
12. "Men of Andover," Claude M. Fuess, p. 15. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1928.
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ANDOVER-PHILLIPS ACADEMY Interior of the New Chapel
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at least six generals in the Northern Army were Andover graduates, among the most famous being General William F. Bartlett, General David B. Birney, and General Isaac I. Stevens, who was at one time first Territorial Governor of Washington. During the World War the ambulance unit of Phillips Academy, which sailed overseas in April, 1917, was the first to be organized by any American school. Of the alumni two thousand three hundred were enrolled in the mili- tary or naval service of the United States or its allies. The Memo- rial Tower, with a carillon of bells, commemorates the loyalty of the eighty-seven who gave their lives for their country.
Among Andover graduates who have been prominent in political life are William Henry Moody, Secretary of the Navy, Attorney- General of the United States, and Justice of the Supreme Court, who played an important rôle in President Theodore Roosevelt's cam- paign against the trusts, and Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Governor of the Philippines.
It is a far cry from the Andover of the last century, where the boys lived in the Latin and English Commons, two rows of ugly wooden buildings designed on the "packing-box" style of architec- ture, or boarded with landladies, whose prices went up as the degree of supervision she exercised over her lodgers went down, to the present beautiful and carefully administered school. A few examples from the life of the past will suffice to show anyone familiar with conditions in the modern school the contrast between the present and the crude conditions of an earlier time.
A graduate of the class of 1811 presents a gloomy picture of the curriculum in his day :
"I well remember that the general object sought was to grind into us and gerund us in a knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages. All other knowledge was of minor con- sequence, this being attained by a severe course of the most persistent gerund-grinding; an exclusive memorizing, first of all, of the entire Greek and Latin Grammar before entering upon any practical application of its forms or rules. The whole business, and it was the same all over the land, was a melancholy misunderstanding of the function of education."
How this method of teaching worked in practice is described by Dr. William Goodell, who graduated in 1813:
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"We would decline any noun in any declension, naming it in every case from the nominative singular to the ablative plural, going through the whole at one breath. Then we would go backward at one breath from the ablative plural to the nominative singular. To us this was real fun, and to Mr. Adams it seemed real fun to hear us."
While today the boys live a carefully regulated life of combined study, physical exercise, and recreation, a letter from John B. Smith, written October 6, 1850, shows the monotonous routine of a student of that day :
"My work and study hours are something as follows : rise in the morning at about 5.30 o'clock, build two fires (prob- ably more when it is colder), work around the barn, such as milk one cow, take care of the horses, and saw wood until 7.30, when I eat my breakfast; then, if there is anything in particular to do, if a man has stopped here over night, he usually starts away about this time, I put his horse in, etc .; if not, I prepare for school and look over my lesson, if I have time, till 8.30, when I attend prayers in the Academy. My recitations commence at 9 o'clock, continue till 10.30, then go to my room and study till 12 o'clock, chore around till about I o'clock. Afternoon recitations, 1.30 to 3, study till 4.30, prayers at the Academy till 5, work till dark, supper. I study some in the evening and read some."
A full account of the famous Andover Theological Seminary, which for a hundred years dominated Phillips Academy and was a leading influence in the religious and intellectual life of the country, will be found in the chapter on religion.
On May 18 and 19, 1928, Phillips Academy observed its sesqui- centennial anniversary, at which the principal address was made by Calvin Coolidge, the President of the United States. That year ushered in the greatest period of physical expansion in the school's history, and today with its Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, its Addi- son Gallery of American Art, its new Academy Chapel, its Archao- logical Department, its modern dormitories and athletic fields, it has become not only one of the most beautiful schools in America, but it possesses unequalled facilities for stimulating the intellectual and cultural interests of its six hundred and fifty students.
ANDOVER-June, 1928. THE PRESIDENTIAL PARTY AT THE HEAD OF THE ACADEMIC PROCESSION President Coolidge was the chief speaker at the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Phillips Academy
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BRADFORD ACADEMY-Of the many academies founded in Essex County, that at Bradford13 was among the small number destined to live and prosper: An old record states: "At a meeting of a num- ber of the inhabitants of the First Parish in Bradford, March 7, 1 803, it was mutually agreed upon that a building should be erected for an academy, and the following persons became subscribers to defray the charges of building said house." Among the signers were thirty heads of the families in the parish. So prompt was their action that in three months, on the first of June, a building had been erected, a preceptor and a preceptress engaged, and a school of fifty-one pupils had been assembled. Like many academies of the day Brad- ford began on a co-educational basis, and of the first pupils thirty- seven were girls and fourteen were boys.
In its first dozen years Bradford Academy had fourteen pre- ceptors. As none of them expected to make school teaching his profession, there was a distinct lack of system and continuity in the administration of the school. Then, in 1814, came Benjamin Green- leaf, one of the great names in Bradford's history. Jean Sarah Pond describes him thus :
"His own students remember him nervously pacing back and forth in the schoolroom, his black hair either covering his forehead and temples or rumpled by his hands, while in the back it was braided into a queue of respectable length, and tied with a broad black ribbon. The queue he was constantly tossing back over his shoulder. One of his 1816 students has described him: 'Sit or stand he could not; in him experi- menters for perpetual motion would have found a solution. So impatient were his thoughts for utterance they set in motion his hands, arms-his whole body.'"
Greenleaf's restless ambition and boundless energy were utilized not only in bettering the instruction at Bradford, but in publish- ing a variety of textbooks, in performing calculation for numerous almanacs, especially those which had some philanthropic mission, and in surveying and mapping the neighborhood. When Mr. Green- leaf left Bradford in 1836, the boys' department was discontinued.
13. "Bradford, a New England Academy," by Jean Sarah Pond. See also "Old Bradford School Days," by Arthur Howard Hall. Norwood, Massachusetts, 1910.
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A contemporary of Mr. Greenleaf was Abigail Carleton Hassel- tine, who became preceptress in 1815. Of her Miss Pond says :
"The main question which a history of Bradford Academy should answer is-how did it happen that a co-educational academy became a school for the higher education of young women? The answer can be reduced to one name-Abigail Hasseltine. Her growth to womanhood coincided with the early development of the Academy, and her maturity happily synchronized with the great movement for the education of women in the second quarter of the nineteenth century."
The remarkable development of the school under her guidance is well summarized by Miss Pond :
"In 1815 her position was nominally subordinate to the preceptor, though she was practically free. She taught with- out assistance seventy-seven girls, packed into one small room, the common English subjects, with history, needlework and drawing. There was no grading of classes, no planned course of study, no graduation. This teaching she must confine to two summer terms, April to August, and August to Novem- ber, while in the winter she assisted the preceptor if he needed her. In 1853 she was the sole head of a school of two hun- dred and thirty-nine girls with a faculty of twelve, occupying the new academy building erected largely by her efforts, where were eight rooms and an assembly hall, and nearby a boarding house already inadequate for the housing of stu- dents. A regular course of study of four years leading to the diploma included considerable work of collegiate grade."
At her death Miss Hasseltine had devoted as preceptress, as principal, and as honorary principal a total of fifty-eight years to furthering the interests of Bradford Academy.
Under later devoted headmistresses, Miss Abby H. Johnson and Miss Annie E. Johnson, the school continued to advance in intel- lectual and material ways. It was in 1902, during the principalship of Miss Laura A. Knott, that a course of study definitely designed for high school graduates was differentiated from the older "general course" and from the strictly college preparatory course. This was
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the natural foundation of the present Junior College. The material equipment and the curricula were further improved under the leader- ship of Miss Marion Coats, principal from 1918 to 1927. In 1927 Dr. Katharine M. Denworth, a professionally trained administrator and supervisor of junior colleges and secondary schools, became president of Bradford Academy. She has reorganized the Junior College in accordance with the methods approved by nationally recognized educators and has strengthened the faculty and improved the physical facilities. 14
Today Bradford Academy is surrounded by an area of thirty- seven acres, where wide lawns, walks, drives, and natural woodland scenery have been skilfully combined to make a beautiful campus and adequate athletic fields. There are eighteen regular members of the faculty, eleven instructors in special departments, and a student body of one hundred and eighty-eight drawn from twenty-three states, the District of Columbia, Alaska, and Greece.
ABBOT ACADEMY-At a time when there was so much interest in the education of women, it was natural that the idea of establishing a "Female Seminary" near the flourishing Phillips Academy and Andover Theological Seminary should arise. On February 15, 1828, the following notice appeared :
"Those persons who feel favorably disposed towards the estab- lishment of a Female High School in the South Parish of Andover are requested to meet at Mr. James Locke's, on Thursday evening next, the 19th inst., at 6 o'clock P. M." Then and there the school was determined upon, seven trustees, Mark Newman, Milton Bad- ger, Samuel C. Jackson, Samuel Farrar, Amos Blanchard, Hobart Clark, and Amos Abbot, were appointed, and the constitution drawn up. The lofty motives of the founders are shown by a passage from that document :
"The primary objects to be arrived at in this school shall ever be to regulate the tempers, to improve the taste, to dis- cipline and enlarge the minds and form the morals of the youth who may be members of it. To form the immortal mind to habits suited to an immortal being, and to instil principles
14. The above paragraph is based upon statements in "The Bradford Academy Catalogue, 1933."
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of conduct and form the character for an immortal destiny, shall be subordinate to no other care. Solid acquirements shall always have precedence of those which are merely showy, and the useful of those which are merely ornamental."
But difficulties were encountered. The first site chosen was not endorsed by some of the mothers or prospective students, since it was on "the street most frequented by the 'Theologues and Acad- emy boys.'" And money was not forthcoming. But these problems were solved when Deacon Newman gave an acre of land on the present side of Abbot Academy, and when Madame Sarah Abbot contributed $1,000. The story runs that this lady, who had been a lifelong friend of Madame Phillips, wife of the founder of Phillips Academy, approached 'Squire Farrar and asked: "What shall I do with my surplus funds?" He answered: "Found an academy in Andover for the education of women." With these slender resources the academy was incorporated on February 26, 1829, the first incor- porated school for girls in New England. 1140284
For its first twenty-four years the school had seven principals, all young men recently graduated from the theological seminary or still pursuing their theological studies. Their compensation at best being only the income from tuition, and their main interest, no doubt, fixed upon securing a parish, their terms of service varied from one to three years with the exception of the Reverend Asa Farwell, who held office from 1842 to 1852. "Very gradually, but naturally," the trustees began to feel that the school might safely be entrusted to a woman, and from 1853 to 1859 Miss Nancy Hasseltine, Miss Maria J. B. Browne, and Miss Emma L. Taylor served as principals. In 1859 Miss Philena McKeen was elected principal, and for thirty- three years gave the best of her life to the school. She was a woman of almost masculine strength of mind as is shown by her successful efforts to replace the dreary discomforts of Abbot Hall with the . modern improvements of Draper Hall. She was a woman of wide and accurate scholarship, of great will power, and of aggressive Christianity, but withal she did not lack feminine subtlety. She had found that the school possessed not a single silver teaspoon, and she knew that a request to the trustees would only result in renewed explanations of the poverty of the institution. Consequently, she invited the board to tea and served their cups with the cheap clumsy
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tablespoons which were all she had. A few days later Mr. Davis sent a package containing five dozen teaspoons, a dozen dessert spoons, and another dozen of tablespoons, all of solid silver and nicely marked.
Miss Laura Sophia Watson was principal from September, 1892, to June, 1898, and under her guidance the curriculum was enlarged, a college preparatory course was developed, and improvements were made in Abbot and Draper Halls. At her resignation Miss Emily Adams Means assumed the duties of principal. Although her work, hitherto, had been that of an artist and writer, she showed that she had the creative power and the sense of discipline to govern a school, to exact faithful work from faculty and students, and to preserve and increase the property entrusted to her care. In her thirteen years as principal she was influential in the erection of McKeen Memorial and Davis Hall, made over old Abbot Hall into an excel- lent science building, built the John-Esther Art Gallery, improved the interior of Draper Hall, and planned a new laundry and central heating unit.
In 1912 Miss Bertha Bailey succeeded Miss Means as principal, and has continued to govern the school wisely and well, weighing with care the traditions of the past, keeping those of value and cast- ing aside those that have outlived their usefulness, maintaining in our restless, uncertain world the dignity and charm which are part of Abbot Academy.
Abbot Academy now has a faculty of seventeen and a student body of one hundred and seventeen drawn from fourteen different states and from four foreign countries.
CATHOLIC EDUCATION-For many years Catholic schools15 in Essex County were few in number and poor in equipment. The pioneer Catholics of the county possessed little of this world's goods. They had for the most part been deprived of educational advantages in their own lands. Their efforts to establish and maintain schools met with bitter opposition. Yet in spite of painful and not always successful effort Catholic education grew and developed until today
15. The material for the section on Catholic schools is drawn from an article, "A Century of Catholic Education," by the Reverend Richard J. Quinlan, S. T. L., in "The Pilot, Centenary Edition," 1929, and from "Historical Sketch of the Catholic Parochial Schools in the Archdiocese of Boston and Chronological Statement of Schools, 1820- 1900." very kindly loaned by Father Richard J. Quinlan, Diocesan Supervisor of Schools.
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thirteen towns in the county have flourishing parochial schools, the total of such schools is forty, and 19,397 children are enrolled in them.16
Catholic education here may be said to have begun in the days of Bishop Cheverus ( 1808-23), and Father Matignon, who main- tained a day school in the tower of their church on Franklin Street, Boston. The first real Catholic school in New England, if a school for the Indians which was in existence at an earlier period be excepted, was the Ursuline school which was opened in Boston in 1820.
Catholic efforts to establish schools continued, and eventually schoolmasters from Ireland came to New England and settled wherever Catholics were gathered. At times they opened schools on their own responsibility and trusted to the parents for their pay. Salem, Lawrence, and other places saw the rise and fall of several Catholic schools under the discipline and educational methods of these schoolmasters, who were assisted by young and elderly ladies of the various parishes.
The lack of means and scarcity of religious teachers made prog- ress difficult, but in 1849 a more systematic and very successful movement was begun by the introduction of the Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur. These sisters confined their teaching to girls and small boys. The education of older boys was looked out for by the Sisters of St. Joseph, introduced into the Diocese in 1873, who opened schools for boys and girls of all ages, by several other religious com- munities of women, and by four Orders of Christian Brothers to teach large boys.
As early as 1831 a school was opened at Salem by the Reverend William Wiley, a convert from Protestantism, and was taught by a Miss Sharpe. There are now five parochial schools in Salem: St. James, founded in 1852; St. Mary's, founded in 1855; St. Joseph's, founded in 1886; St. John the Baptist's, founded in 1908; and St. Ann's, founded in 1908. A school opened at Lawrence by the Rev- erend Father French, "for young Irishmen out of employment," was continued with more or less interruption until 1868. There are now twelve parochial schools in that city. Lynn supports seven schools, Beverly and Haverhill three each, Amesbury and Newburyport two each, while Peabody, Methuen, Andover, Swampscott, and Ipswich have each one.
16. The figures given are those of 1934.
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Lawrence has two Catholic institutional schools, The Protectory of Mary Immaculate, and the St. John Baptist School. The House of the Angel Guardian is supported at West Newbury.
Ste. Chretienne Academy was opened in 1917 by the French Order of Sisters of Ste. Chretienne, who came to the United States in 1904 for the purpose of establishing the congregation in this coun- try and were welcomed to the Archdiocese of Boston. The Sisters were able teachers, and as they had long desired to conduct a board- ing and day school for girls, after the fashion of the schools in their native France, they appealed to His Eminence, the Cardinal, who heartily approved and sanctioned their plan. When the epidemic of influenza swept the country in 1917, the Sisters of Ste. Chretienne lost no time in closing their school for academic purposes and converting it into a temporary hospital. Thus, these nuns, who were primarily teachers, found themselves nurses through necessity. After the epi- demic had passed, the academy was opened once again. Since that time it has flourished to a remarkable extent and has more than doubled the number of its pupils in both grammar and high school since 1922. The enrollment is more than one hundred.
The present year, 1935, will mark the twenty-eighth successful year of St. John's Preparatory School, at Danvers. Founded in 1907, under the patronage of His Eminence William Cardinal O'Connell, the school is at present one of the most flourishing of Archdiocesan institutions. Before becoming a preparatory school for boys, St. John's was a private training school for members of the Xaverian Congregation. The Xaverian Brothers are familiar throughout New England, for they have been engaged in parochial work here for many years. When it was decided that a preparatory school for Catholic boys was needed, the Danvers training school was converted into the academy as it is known today. The school is well equipped with a chapel, administration building, dormitories and classrooms for older and younger boys, gymnasium, dining hall, and athletic fields. The boys receive a thorough training in the regular four- year high school courses. They are prepared to enter any college in the country, and to this is added comprehensive religious training and sound moral instruction. The enrollment at St. John's is four hundred.
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THE STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE AT SALEM17-A full century has passed since the beginning of the revival of education in Massa- chusetts, which a decade later gave birth to the first normal school in America. Then followed, for the remainder of the first quarter of that century, a period of storm and stress in which the professional schools of this type were constantly attacked by the public press, plat- form, and pulpit and, most bitterly of all, by organized groups of alleged educators, who, in 1840, carried their fight into the State Legislature. The answer to this attack was the opening of the nor- mal school at Bridgewater in September of that year; later, increased capacity and more generous provision for this school and the two other already existing schools; and, in 1846, the erection at Bridge- water of the first normal school building in America. The enrollment in these three schools steadily increased, and the question of the establishment of a fourth school soon received serious consideration.
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