USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 4
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Apparently the first suggestion that this proposed school should be located in Salem was made in August, 1852, by the Honorable Charles W. Upham, then mayor of the city, following the examina- tion by the Governor and the State Board of Education of the site offered by the town of Framingham for the normal school which was first established at Lexington and later removed to West Newton. Later in the year, at the same meeting at which the proposals from Framingham were accepted, the Board resolved to recommend to the Legislature the establishment of a normal school in Essex County. This recommendation was adopted, and the board was authorized to expend "the sum of six thousand dollars, from the proceeds of the public lands or the school fund, to defray the expense of providing a site, of erecting or purchasing a suitable building and furnishing the necessary appurtenances and apparatus for said school." This resolve received the signature of Governor George S. Boutwell on April 16, 1853.
Proposals were received by the State Board of Education from North Andover, Groveland, Chelsea, and Salem. At a meeting held June 2, 1853, after a comparison of the advantages offered by the several localities, the Board decided on Salem as "the most accessible, nearly central as to population, and offering facilities for the improve-
17. This sketch has been kindly contributed by Dr. J. Asbury Pitman, president of the State Teachers College.
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ment of the pupils by its school and its literary and scientific advan- tages surpassed by those of few towns in the commonwealth."
The building was dedicated and the school opened on September 14, 1854. Addresses were delivered by the Honorable George S. Boutwell, then a member of the State Board of Education, and one who, as Governor, had been interested in the establishment of the school and in its location at Salem; Barnas Sears, secretary of the board; and others. The building was formally presented to the State by Mayor Joseph Andrews and accepted by Governor Emory Washburn.
The school opened with a faculty consisting of the principal and one assistant teacher and with seventy-two students, of whom forty- eight were subsequently graduated.
Since the establishment of the school, there have been enrolled nearly ten thousand students, of whom more than six thousand have been graduated. During its history there have been five principals and about two hundred and fifty teachers, including those who have taught in the training school.
In consequence of the steadily increasing enrollment, the original building which served the needs of the school until 1870, was enlarged at an expense of $25,000. This building, now owned by the city of Salem and occupied by the administration offices of the school depart- ment, continued to serve the purposes of the State until the present building was completed and occupied in September, 1896. From that time until 1912, when the training school building was erected, the elementary school occupied the first floor of the normal school building.
History and biography are inseparable. Not only had this school the advantage of the experience of the earlier normal schools and of a much larger measure of popular support, but it was extremely fortu- nate in its early leaders. Dr. Richard Edwards, the first principal, was of Welsh stock, coming to this country with his parents at an early age. His educational opportunities in Ohio were limited, but at the age of twenty-one he had taught for a limited time in country schools in that State. It was at about that time that he became acquainted with two Harvard graduates, who induced him to migrate to Massachusetts and to become a student in the State Normal School at Bridgewater, where he came under the influence of Nicholas Till-
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inghast, the able first principal of that school. Later he earned degrees in science and in engineering in Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti- tute. He was a teacher at Bridgewater from 1848 to 1853, when he came to Salem as principal of the Bowditch High School for Boys. In the same year he was appointed agent of the State Board of Edu- cation, and less than a year later he was promoted to the principal- ship of the new normal school.
His vigorous and constructive administration attracted wide atten- tion; and, after but three years of service in this position, he became, on the recommendation of Horace Mann, the first principal of the city normal school at St. Louis, now Harris Teachers College. In the early days of the Civil War he was called to succeed the first principal of the Illinois State Normal University, which was then in its infancy. In his later years, after having practically established three normal schools, he was successively State Superintendent of Schools of Illinois and president of Blackburn College.
In 1857, Alpheus Crosby, for many years professor of Greek in Dartmouth College, became the successor of Dr. Edwards. He had long been conscious of the need of greatly increased educational opportunities for women, and it was doubtless this interest that led him to accept an appointment somewhat foreign to his previous edu- cational experience. It was only natural that he should place less emphasis on the professional aspects of his work than did his predeces- sor, but he not only magnified the importance of scholarship but did much to keep the fires of patriotism burning during the four dark years of the Civil War.
For many years Professor Crosby had been actively interested in the abolition of slavery. At the end of the war, feeling that the freedmen needed his services more than did the school, he resigned the principalship to become the editor of a paper devoted to the inter- ests of a race which was wholly unprepared to discharge the responsi- bilities of citizenship and whose rights were in grave danger.
Professor Crosby was succeeded by Dr. Daniel B. Hagar, a scholarly man already widely known in educational circles as the efficient principal of the Jamaica Plain High School, who served the State as principal from 1865 to 1896. Under his efficient leadership, high standards of scholarship and culture were maintained.
In 1896, Dr. Walter P. Beckwith, a favorite son of Tufts Col- lege, became principal of the school. His ten years of service was
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STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE AT SALEM
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EDUCATION
conspicuous for a highly practical administration, which was the logical sequence of his long experience as a teacher and city superin- tendent of schools at Adams, Massachusetts. His administration was marked by the occupancy of a thoroughly new building in South Salem and by the establishment within that building of a well-equipped ele- mentary school of observation and practice.
The present incumbent, Dr. J. Asbury Pitman, has held the posi- tion of principal of the normal school and president of the State Teachers College at Salem since 1906. He is a native of Maine, where his professional training began in the State Normal School at Castine. His studies were continued at Clark, Harvard, and Columbia universities and he holds the degree of Doctor of Educa- tion from the Rhode Island College of Education.
Following his early experience in Maine as a teacher in rural schools and as the principal of high schools, he came to Massachu- setts, where he served as principal of elementary schools for a short time, after which he engaged in supervision, first in a district in Worcester County and later, for several years, as city superintendent at Marlborough.
Dr. Pitman has served as president of important educational asso- ciations, including the Massachusetts Superintendents Association, the Massachusetts Schoolmasters Club, the American Institute of Instruction, and the Association of Teachers Colleges. He has also been active in various forms of community service, having been presi- dent of the Salem City Planning Board and of the Salem Chamber of Commerce. His professional preparation has also included an extensive study of education in the leading countries of Europe.
During the present administration the school has continued to make substantial progress. The training school has been enlarged and completely reorganized and transferred to a new building on the campus, one-half of the cost of which was contributed by the city of Salem. This is one of the best buildings for its purpose in New Eng- land, if not in the entire country. The membership of this school is drawn from an entire school district, and the work of instruction is carried on under the direction of the college, but subject to the approval of the local school department.
The preparation of teachers for junior high schools has also formed an important part of the work for several years. In 1914,
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this course, leading to a diploma upon the completion of three years of work, was established. Since 1931 it has been maintained as a full college course leading to a degree. The practice in teaching is begun in the campus training school and is continued in approved junior high schools in the towns and cities in the area which the college serves.
The department for training teachers of commercial subjects was established in 1908, and it has the distinction of being the first in the country to provide in a normal school for the training of commercial teachers in the full sense of the word. This department draws students from all parts of the State and supplies a large proportion of the teachers of these subjects employed in the high schools in Massachusetts.
The course was soon prolonged from two to three years; then to four years, including a half year of supervised practice in approved business offices, and now the degree of Bachelor of Science in Educa- tion is conferred only upon students who have had this amount of business experience in addition to a full four-year course, which includes cultural, technical, and professional training, of which actual experience in teaching under supervision is an important part.
In 1919 the Legislature enacted a law requiring school commit- tees of every town and city in the State in which there are in attend- ance at the public schools at least ten children three years or more retarded in mental development to establish special classes for their instruction according to their mental attainments. This law has been amended from time to time and a reasonably satisfactory system, including the professional preparation of teachers of mentally retarded children at the State Teachers College at Salem, has been established. There are now in the Commonwealth nearly nine thou- sand such children, taught in about six hundred classes in one hun- dred twenty-four different towns and cities. This department was established in 1927 and is rendering useful service in providing teachers who are doing much to help the children under their charge to become self-respecting and useful members of society.
Through an arrangement with the Clark School for the Deaf at Northampton, the college is able to provide the foundation of the training for a limited number of teachers who complete their prepara- tion at that school and who receive their degree from this institution.
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In all of these fields and also in the elementary course students may now continue their studies for four years and upon the comple- tion of this work receive the degree of Bachelor of Science in Education.
During the present administration the membership in the school which by an act of the Legislature became a college in 1932, has increased more than three fold, and each year it is necessary to reject large numbers of students because of limited accommodations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY-Among the books of value in the story of Essex County education are the following :
"A History of Dummer Academy, being the centennial discourse delivered by Nehemiah Cleaveland on August 12, 1863, together with an "Account of the Proceedings in Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the School," Newburyport, 1914.
"Bradford, a New England Academy," by Jean Sarah Pond, Bradford, 1930.
"Old Bradford School Days," by Arthur Howard Hall, Nor- wood, 1910.
"An Old New England School, a History of Phillips Academy, Andover," by Claude M. Fuess, Boston and New York, 1917.
"Old Andover Days, Memories of a Puritan Childhood," by Sarah Stuart Robbins, Boston, 1908.
"Annals of Fifty Years : A History of Abbot Academy, Andover, Mass., 1829-1879," by Philena McKeen and Phebe F. McKeen, Andover, 1880.
"Sequel to Annals of Fifty Years : A History of Abbot Academy, Andover, Mass., 1879-1892," by Philena McKeen, Andover, 1897.
"Abbot Academy Sketches, 1892-1912," by Katherine R. Kelsey, Boston and New York, 1929.
"Addresses Delivered During the Celebration of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of Abbot Academy, Andover, 1929."
"Standard History of Essex County," C. F. Jewett & Co., Bos- ton, 1878.
"History of Essex County," J. W. Lewis & Co., Philadelphia, 1888.
Museums and Libraries
CHAPTER XV
Museums and Libraries
By Roy E. Spencer
The early settlers of Essex County were neither antiquarians nor collectors of curiosities, for they were very thoroughly occupied in supporting their families and defending them from pioneer dangers. Although they were the history makers of their epoch and the resi- dents of a wonderful new country very different from England and the western part of continental Europe, they gave little thought to pre- serving in the form of documents or articles of current usage the characteristics of their own life or of that of their Indian neighbors. As new generations arrived in the pioneer society, they ruthlessly and happily discarded or destroyed their old documents, furniture, house- hold furnishings, portraits, and other objects of art and utility as fast as they could replace them with the more "modern" duplicates. Paul Revere silver was melted and transformed into newer models; glass, china, and furniture were thrown aside; and ancestral portraits were carelessly ruined or allowed to deteriorate through improper storing.
Legends are even current in certain old Essex County families that during the early nineteenth century small boys occasionally succeeded in securing old family portraits as targets for bow and arrow practice. In any case, priceless portraits by famous colonial artists have in recent years been rescued from dusty corners of old attics, where they had been stored as "rubbish." For instance, an original portrait of Governor John Endecott, painted in Boston in 1665, was scrubbed with soap and sand about the time of the Revolution, and then the badly defaced picture was attached to a board and used as a screen
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for the fireplace during the summer. After serving in this ignominious situation for more than sixty years, the picture was rescued in 1840 and was carefully restored. It is now a priceless possession of the Endicott family.1
After being dormant for one hundred and fifty years, the col- lector's spirit was, however, galvanized into life in Essex County by that wonderful world of the Orient which was being so frequently visited by Salem navigators. A chance meeting of sea captains on a Salem wharf one day in 1799 gave rise to the formation of a unique organization with the name of "The Salem East India Marine Society" and with the following qualifications for membership: "Any persons who shall have navigated the seas near the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn either as Masters or Commanders or (being of the age of twenty-one years) as Factors or Supercargoes of any ves- sels belonging to Salem." The objects of the organization were : "First, to assist the widows and children of deceased members who need it; second, to collect such facts and observations as tend to the improvement and security of navigation; and third, to form a mus- eum of natural and artificial curiosities, particularly such as are to be found beyond the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn."
The first gift to the museum came from Captain Jonathan Carnes and consisted of articles from Sumatra, several of which are still preserved. Other contributions came in so rapidly that the society had twice to seek larger quarters, and in 1824 they built the East India Marine Hall, an edifice which was destined for many years to play an interesting rôle in the life of Salem. The dedication of the new building, which occurred on October 14, 1825, was a great event, John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, delivering the opening address. The building became at once an important busi- ness and social center, as the ground floor was occupied by the Asiatic Bank, the Oriental Insurance Company, and the United States Post Office, while the second floor, a hall one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, was used for the museum and for the social events of the society, the latter including elaborate dinners served at a huge cresent- shaped table in the center of the hall. During the years of successful navigation by the Salem ships many valuable accessions were made
I. Though Governor Endecott spelt his name with an e the family now spells it as above.
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to the ethnological department of the museum, most of them coming from China, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and South America. In 1821 the society began printing a catalogue of its col- lections, which even then were both interesting and valuable, and which still stand with many additions in Marine Hall, although under the direction of a newer organization, as the old East India Marine Society now functions only as a dispenser of charity, the first of its original purposes.
While the Salem sea captains were gathering curiosities from the orient and depositing them in the first public museum of Essex County, an eminent clergyman of Salem, the Reverend William Bentley, D. D., was industriously assembling in his home a mass of documents and articles bearing on the historical events and the daily life of Essex County. For forty years he followed this avocation, with the result that on his death, in 1819, he left a collection which possessed such obvious historical value that the executors of his estate realized that it should be adequately housed and protected. News of the situation spreading about Salem, a group of influential citizens headed by George A. Ward offered to form an association to assume permanent charge of the Bentley collection. What actually took place between its trustees and the citizens is difficult to determine, but at any rate, on April 21, 1821, the Essex Historical Society was founded with Dr. Edward A. Holyoke as first president, and on June II the request of the twenty-six petitioners was granted and the society was formally incorporated. Optimistically voting to hold their annual meetings on the anniversary of Endecott's first landing in Salem, they applied as a matter of routine to the Bentley estate for the custody of the collec- tion. To their amazement and disappointment the executors refused the request, clinching their action by giving the coveted articles to the Worcester Historical Association, which had been founded in 1812 and was consequently a going concern. Thus at one blow the Essex Historical Society was deprived of its reason for existence, and Essex County lost forever, or at least until the present time, its first collection of local historical material.
Challenged by their anomalous situation and probably also by inquiring glances from their fellow-townsmen, the members of the new organization announced that they would establish their own col- lection and place it in their own museum. Accordingly, they secured
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a room in Essex Place and began vigorously to fill it with documents and objects illustrating the social and civic life of former days. They were so successful that they were soon forced to move to larger quar- ters in the Salem Bank Building and later to Lawrence Place. On September 18, 1828, they celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of John Endecott at Salem, holding public exercises with a military and civic procession, speeches at North Church, and a banquet at Hamilton Hall. The society was now generally recog- nized as a valuable public institution, although less spectacular than the East India Marine Society, and it was generously aided in its search for historical material.
Encouraged by the success of Marine Hall and the Essex Histori- cal Society, the devotees of natural history in Salem founded, in 1833, the Essex County Natural History Society, with Dr. Andrew Nichols, of Danvers, as president, and John M. Ives, of Salem, as secretary. The new organization immediately manifested great activity in col- lecting material and holding meetings for the promotion of agricul- ture, and they were so successful in securing public support that on February 12, 1836, they were incorporated with a capital of $10,000 real and $20,000 personal property. The society gradually widened the scope of their work, sponsoring elaborate horticultural exhibi- tions that attracted great attention throughout the county and editing and printing speeches in their "Journal of the Essex County Natural History Society," which appeared in one volume of three numbers, dated, respectively, 1836, 1838, and 1841.
In 1848 the trustees of the Natural History Society and the His- torical Society decided to combine their activities and resources, the organizations merging under the title of The Essex Institute. For nineteen years the two groups worked together, but with a growing sense that their interests were divergent, until in 1867 a satisfactory solution of their problem became possible through the generosity of George Peabody, a native of South Danvers, later named Peabody in his honor, who had become a famous banker and philanthropist of London. A man of more than seventy years and with no children, Mr. Peabody had decided to give the bulk of his estate to charity, and one of his projects was the formation of a society for the "Pro- motion of Science and Useful Knowlege in the County of Essex." Accordingly, under date of February 26, 1867, he sent an instrument
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MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
of trust, a check for $140,000, and a letter of explanation to the fol- lowing group of distinguished men, whom he asked to serve as a board of trustees for the proposed institution : Francis Peabody, Esq., Hon- orable William C. Endicott, George Peabody Russell, Esq., Dr. Henry Wheatland, Abner C. Goodell, Jr., Esq., all of Salem; Professor Asa Gray, of Cambridge; Professor Othniel C. Marsh, of New Haven, Connecticut; Dr. James R. Nichols, of Haverhill; and Dr. Henry C. Perkins, of Newburyport.
Under the name of The Peabody Academy of Science, the society was incorporated April 13, 1868, with Professor F. W. Putnam as its first director. With the approval of Mr. Peabody the trustees set aside $100,000 of their capital as a permanent endowment and with the remaining $40,000 they purchased the East India Marine Hall and its famous collection, the once illustrious East India Marine Society having gradually lost its activity and vitality through the death of the older members and the decline of Salem shipping. By an agreement with The Essex Institute approved by Mr. Peabody, the Peabody Academy of Science took over as a permanent possession the natural history material of the institute and received as a loan the institute's natural history library. The institute thus found itself once more an uncomplicated historical society, while the Peabody Academy of Science was launched under the happy circumstances of a generous endowment, a valuable collection, and a very satisfactory library. The academy engaged four curators from the former natural history department of the institute: Dr. A. S. Packard, Jr., Professor Alpheus Hyatt, Professor Edward S. Morse, and Caleb Cooke, to reclassify and rearrange their natural history collection, and they began the publication of a journal, "The American Naturalist," which they continued for nine years. The success of the new society was immediate and has continued uninterruptedly for more than sixty-five years.
Under the simplified name of the Peabody Museum of Salem, a change effected in 1915, the institution now occupies the East India Marine Hall, the Ethnological building, erected in 1885, and Weld Hall, built in 1906 with funds given by Dr. Charles G. Weld. The museum plays an active part in disseminating knowlege of natural history, as it publishes memoirs, reports, pocket handbooks, and cata- logues, and conducts classes, gives lectures, and furnishes information
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on many phases of natural history. The present director is Lawrence W. Jenkins, a well-known scientist and a prolific writer. The other officers are: Albert P. Morse, curator of Natural History; Stephen W. Phillips, honorary curator of Pacific Ethnology; William E. Northey, honorary curator of Marine Collections; Shepard G. Emilio, honorary curator of Ornithology; and George A. Vickery, treasurer. The trustees are: Elihu Thomson, president; W. C. Endicott, Richard Wheatland, F. H. Appleton, D. L. Pickman, J. C. Phillips, F. W. Benson, Ward Thoron, and W. K. Moorehead.
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