USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 32
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Massachusetts led in the first crusade for the establishment of manual training in the elementary schools, in 1870, when Charles Francis Adams brought Colonel Francis W. Parker, who devoted five hard years of work to Quincy along lines which he had studied abroad. His slogan, "Learn to do by doing" not only was the base of his activities, but it also was adopted by several newer types of schools which have since become a part of our educa- tional system. The manual training of the 'eighties and after, was followed by domestic science, and still later the broad development of vocational edu- cation. Milton P. Higgins was the inspiration and the leader of the move- ment in Worcester that led to the establishment of the Boys' Trade School, in 1909. This institution was not only the first of its kind in the Common- wealth, but grew so rapidly that it was reputed to be the largest in the State. The school was authorized by the city on December 31, 1908, and opened its doors to students on February 9, 1910. The curriculum and methods of instruction are similar to those of like institutions. The Girls' Trade School created in September, 1911, was patterned after the New York Trade School
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for Girls. The full course of the school covers two years while that of the boys' is four years to graduation.
Attention has already been drawn to the awakening to the educational needs of communities in the early years of the 1820's, which was marked by numerous reforms and innovations during the middle decades of the last century. John G. Carter, associate of Horace Mann, was one of the great champions of the professional training of teachers. In 1827 he asked the Legislature for an appropriation for setting up a State Normal school. Refused, he opened a private normal school in Lancaster, Worcester County. In 1835 he drafted the bill that created two State Normal schools. Not until 1871 was the Worcester State Normal School authorized, and it was first ready to receive students on September 15, 1874. A number of buildings have been added to the old greystone structure of that period, and several thousand teachers have been graduated during the last six decades. In 1915 the institution was given over entirely to female students.
As we have seen, the public school system from the very first has been flanked by private and endowed schools, "grammar, Latin, classical, semi- nary, academy," open to pupils from fourteen to nineteen years of age, although this limit was in nowise fixed. Often they were short-lived and merely filled in a gap between what the selectmen would appropriate for education, and what was really needed. Worcester Academy, of splendid reputation and record, can fairly celebrate its hundredth anniversary. In 1834 certain Worcester cities of the Baptist faith, contributed $5,000 "to found a school whose advantages for elementary education should be of the first order ; under good moral and decidedly religious influence ; where every possible advantage should be afforded for productive manual labor, so that the instruction, while good, should not be expensive." In simpler language it was a school where a poor boy could get food and education at a small or no cost. The original title of the school was the Worcester County Manual Labor High School. A farm of sixty acres, on what is now Main Street and Hammond Avenue, was the site of this not unique school for its day and generation. Tuition was free; room rent cost two dollars a term; while the board bill was one dollar and a half a week, with twenty cents off if one drank no liquids. Work was provided at the rate of eight cents an hour to the big boys, with less to the small. In 1847 the name was changed to Worcester Academy, and conditions altered, but it never ceased from being a school in which the poor youth had his opportunity.
The Academy had many ups and downs, times like in 1844 when it had to close for a year because of lack of funds. During the Civil War, what later became its property, was used as a Union hospital for convalescing soldiers. The academy has often shifted its location, buildings and alliances. Part of
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its original site was leased to Oread Institute, 1852; and in 1867 the trustees were sufficiently discouraged to plan to turn the assets of the school over to Newton Theological Seminary, but were prevented by the State. In 1869 the property of the defunct Ladies' Collegiate Institute was purchased by Isaac Davis, president of the original board of trustees, and Worcester Academy was made co-educational. The old Administration Building, which was a part of the purchase in 1869 had a history which throws quite some light upon the grandiose educational aspirations of that period as compared with results attained.
It was erected in 1845 by Dr. Calvin Newton, who in that year conducted therein a Botanico-Medical College. This enterprise took corporate form in 1849 as the Worcester Medical College. In 1852 in Aesculapian Hall (later the chapel) ten graduates, including one woman, were given the degree of Doctor of Medicine. In 1853 Dr. Newton died, and the property passed to the Ladies' Collegiate Institute, which had been founded by the Baptists of Worcester who planned to develop a seminary like that at Holyoke. Wings were added to the main building before the institute failed; and during the emergency of the Civil War these were used for hospital purposes by the Union forces. Soon after the war the temporary buildings were sold and removed, with the exception of the central barrack, which was used by the academy as a gymnasium until 1890. Isaac Davis, who was president for thirty-nine years, was honored in the naming of Davis Hall, the first dormi- tory built; Walker Hall was built in 1889, and was named to honor Hon. Joseph H. Walker, LL. D., who succeeded Mr. Davis as president in 1873, and held that office until his death. Adams and Dexter halls were both built in 1892, the latter in recognition of one of the most generous benefactors of the academy, William H. Dexter. The Kingsley Laboratories were erected and equipped in 1897-98. The new gymnasium was erected in 1915 at a cost of $100,000.
Notable among the principals of the academy was Dr. Daniel W. Aber- crombie, its head from 1882 to 1918, and the chief factor in the development of the fine scholastic reputation the institution bears.
In the biographical volumes of this history, one will find repeated refer- ences to the Highland Military Academy. This famous school, during the last half of the past century, was even better known than Worcester Acad- emy and held a high place in the affections of the residents of the city. It was founded October 5, 1856 and closed its doors in 1912, when the property was sold. George L. Clark was its business manager for more than a half- century, and Caleb B. Metcalf, Colonel John M. Goodhue and Joseph Alden Shaw were others who made the career of the school possible. Caleb Metcalf was the sole owner of the Highland Military Academy, and it remained as a part of his estate until its disposal in 1912. The Bancroft School, reputed to be the largest private school in New England, outside of Boston, was founded
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in 1902 by Frank H. Robson. Professor Robson was its principal until 1914, and while the school included elementary and high school grades, the higher grades were confined to girls after 1913.
The short-lived Ladies' Collegiate Institute of the 1850's; the Female High School, established in 1831 by Dr. John Park; the Robert Phipps Classical School of 1836; the Misses Stearns' and other "Dames'" schools of a slightly later period, were all noble experiments in the education of girls when this was not customary or popular. Not one survived more than a few years. In the chapter on the Woman's Movement, the story of Oread Col- legiate Institute has been related. It is worthy of repetition here that it was the national pioneer in colleges established exclusively for women at the time of its opening on May 14, 1849. Eli Thayer was its founder and, for the third of a century it existed, it was wholly in the hands of the Thayer family. Mr. Thayer outlined his plans for a college of six hundred students, or more than there were students in any American college of that day. Of the Col- legiate Institute he said: "Oread Castle was founded in good faith under the honest conviction that it might serve the country and the world by advancing in some degree the able cause to which it is devoted." Oread Castle later housed the Worcester Domestic Science School, founded in 1898 by Henry D. Perky. This invaluable institution gave promise of great usefulness, but closed with the death of Mr. Perky seven years later. The more modern Worcester Domestic Science School was started by Frank M. Weathered, one of the teachers in the older school.
Among the private schools of Worcester by far the largest and most important group in the extensive system of parochial schools, maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, now leading without a break from the elemen- tary grades to the two men's Catholic colleges, are Holy Cross and Assump- tion, and the Regis College for Women. There are probably forty parochial schools in the county and in Worcester there are the schools: St. John's, St. Anne's, Ascension, Notre Dame, St. Paul's, St. Joseph's, Holy Name of Jesus, St. Mary's, and St. Anthony's, which serve six thousand children of school age. Assumption College is the only French college of its kind in the United States. It was founded in 1904, and twice outgrew its dormitory space prior to 1911, when its large present central building was begun. Under the charge of the Augustinian Fathers of the Assumption, the work has been carried on with unflagging zeal and efficiency. Never has the institution had financial support in proportion to the number of applicants for admission.
The history of the oldest Catholic college in New England, as summarized by an institution publication is as follows :
The College of the Holy Cross was founded in the year 1843 by the Rt. Rev. Benedict Joseph Fenwick, second Bishop of Boston, and is the oldest
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Catholic college in New England. It had long been a cherished desire of Bishop Fenwick to establish in his diocese, which then included the city of Worcester, an institution for the higher education of Catholic young men. In bringing about the realization of this desire he was aided by the Rev. James Fitton, who had, as early as 1838, established the seminary of Mt. St. James on the hill which now bears that name, but was then known as Paka- choag, "Hill of Pleasant Springs." This institution, Father Fitton presented to the bishop in 1843, and on this site the distinguished prelate determined to build his college. He gave it the name of his Cathedral, with the motto and emblem of the Boston Diocese-a cross in the heavens, as it appeared to the Emperor Constantine, with its historic legend.
In order to secure for New England students the benefits of that unique plan of collegiate instruction, the Ratio Studiorum, which had been for two centuries the invigorating pattern of continental education, Bishop Fenwick invited the founders of that system, the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, whose missionary and educational activities on the North American Continent began as early as 1610, to organize the course of study according to the curricula of their college at Georgetown in the District of Columbia, and to take entire charge of the teaching. On the second day of November, 1843, the first classes were organized, and were held in the seminary structure until the completion of the first college building in January, 1844.
l'he generous patronage and zealous interest of Bishop Fenwick continued unfailingly, and a few days before his death on the 6th of August, 1846, he ceded to the Fathers full possession of the institution, land and buildings unencumbered.
A disaster that threatened its existence visited the young college in July, 1852, when the whole of the central building was destroyed by fire. Through the sympathetic cooperation of Rt. Rev. John B. Fitzpatrick, who had suc- ceeded to Bishop Fenwick's see, only a single scholastic year was lost, for the college, enlarged and remodeled, reopened on the 3d of October, 1853.
The college campus contains sixty acres on the southern end of the city of Worcester, nearly two miles from the business district, at an elevation of 693 feet above the sea. During the last decade there have been added to the campus three fine structures, St. Joseph's Chapel, Dinand Library, and Loyola Hall. Plans are now being drawn for a new dining hall which is to be erected, probably before the end of 1934, on the northern border of the terrace between Alumni and Loyola halls.
The following is a list of the college buildings with the years of erection :
Fenwick Hall is the oldest of the college buildings. In the spring of 1875 the remnant spared by the fire of 1852 was raised and extended toward the
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east. The central span houses the offices of the administration on the first floor, faculty living quarters on the second, and student dormitories on the third.
O'Kane Hall, named for a former beloved rector of Holy Cross, stands at the summit of Linden Lane facing the campus. It was built in 1895 and is a lively center of undergraduate activity.
Alumni Hall, which the generosity of former students made it possible to erect in 1905, is a thoroughly modern, fireproof building, the upper floors of which contain nearly one hundred private living rooms available for resi- dence to members of the sophomore class. The rest of the building is devoted to purposes of the Physics Department.
Bevan Hall is the first of the college buildings encountered by the visitor to Holy Cross. The gift of the late Rt. Rev. Thomas D. Beaven, D. D., and the clergy of the Springfield diocese, it opened to its first occupants in Sep- tember, 1913. Modern in every detail, the three upper floors provide com- fortable living quarters for the members of the junior class, while the Biology Department has the entire lower floors for its quarters.
Loyola Hall is the newest of the dormitory buildings, having opened its doors for the first time in 1922. Its location and design make it an archi- tectural companion of Alumni Hall.
Dinand Library situated on the terraced slope between O'Kane and Beaven halls, exemplifies the best tradition of the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. Dedicated in November, 1927, it is already accorded a promi- nent place among establishments of its kind. The number of volumes owned and available approximate 100,000 and they represent to a satisfactory degree, every major classification of the Library of Congress.
St. Joseph Memorial Chapel, the center of the student's spiritual life, rears its colonnaded façade above the scene at the eastern extremity of the campus. Known for its architectural beauty and purity of design, it is a fitting symbol of the ideals that permeate and dominate the culture of Holy Cross.
The Athletic Fields contain the football gridiron, the baseball diamond, the quarter-mile track, tennis courts, handball courts, basketball courts, and facilities for other outdoor sports. The baseball diamond on Fitton Field is bounded on the east by the football gridiron which is surrounded on three sides by stadia seating nearly 20,000. Freshman Field and Alumni Field are suitable for practice and for the games of the junior teams. The plateau that crowns the hill south of the college buildings is laid out in diamonds and gridirons for intra-mural contests, in which the majority of undergraduates participate.
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The system of education is the one common to all the colleges of the Society of Jesus and is guided by the principles outlined in the famous Ratio Studiorum. It is a system based on studied experience and centuries of observation. In this system the principle of unity in education is of prime importance. It makes the education of a youth from his entrance into college to the completion of his course a graded, related and systematic unit directed not to the mere accumulation of facts, but to the development of his faculties and the training of his character. This system invests education with all the sanctity and serious responsibility of religion itself.
During the Civil War lull in education Holy Cross received its charter as a college, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute was born. It would seem that the latter institution, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a reply to the agricultural challenge from the West in its land-grant college pro- motions. The war had taught many of the cities of the Commonwealth that their future lay in industrial development rather than in a dependence upon its farm productions ; the drift of agriculture was definitely away from the East. If the coastal States must henceforth make it a practice to supply the farming regions with manufactured goods, supremacy along this line must be won and retained, skilled technicians and leaders must be trained. Worcester Polytechnic Institute was one of the first recognitions of the industrial-service spirit in education, and helped to make history in this departure from the general trend of higher education.
The founders of the institute were John Boynton, Ichabod Washburn, Stephen Salisbury II, and David Whitcomb, aided by Dr. Seth Sweetser and Milton P. Higgins. Only one was a college graduate, and all but two were born on farms. All save three were mechanically inclined, and practically all of them, except Dr. Sweetser were successful manufacturers and finan- ciers, as has been shown in the chapter on Industries, in this work. John Boynton, on May 1, 1865, gave anonymously $100,000 "for the service of the youth of Worcester County." It was hardly the time to launch any educational program in view of the Civil War and financial depression. Icha- bod Washburn had realized this, and had put aside his project for a school where ambitious apprentices could be trained in industrial science. When David Whitcomb came to Dr. Sweetser, then the pastor of the Calvinist Church, with the money and the proposal of Boynton, he was impressed with the opportunity it gave him to propose a scheme he had been revolving in his mind for years. Diplomatically he persuaded Washburn to blend his idea with the Boynton project and fund. Ichabod Washburn not only gave up his pet idea but agreed to build the Washburn shops and contribute $50,000 towards their endowment. Stephen Salisbury is credited with doing more
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than any other one man to bring the Polytechnic Institute to Worcester, although Whitcomb was the one who persuaded Boynton to establish a school in Worcester rather than in New Hampshire, his native State, or to endow an academy in Templeton. Salisbury gave the five and a half acres on the hill where Boynton Hall and the Washburn shops have stood for more than six decades, and besides donated $22,000 for buildings, and $60,000 to the endowment fund.
The Polytechnic was opened in 1868, very generously equipped under the name, The Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science. This name was retained until 1887, when the present title was assumed. Incident- ally it should be recorded that when, in 1917, a law was passed requiring all privately managed institutions receiving State aid, to accept full State control, the condition was not accepted by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The first president was Charles O. Thompson, Dartmouth graduate and chemical expert, who had spent five years in Europe fitting himself for his position. Homer T. Fuller, Ph. D., was chosen president in 1883; Dr. T. C. Menden- hall succeeded him in 1894; then followed Dr. Edmund A. Engler, in 1901, and Dr. Ira N. Hollis, in 1911. The number of students has varied with the times, from eighty in the 1870's to 564 in 1930. After the World War, which proved both the value of the institution, and its need of larger support, a campaign inaugurated for a two million dollar endowment was begun and completed. Most of the gifts were in small amounts.
The Worcester Polytechnic Institute owns fifty-three acres of land, the buildings being on an eminence on Salisbury Street. Boynton Hall, which has always been the Administration Building, houses the library and the Department of Engineering. The other departments have buildings of their own. The Washburn shops date from 1866 and the Washburn foundry was erected in 1902. The Stephen Salisbury Building is a four-story fireproof structure, wherein are the chemical and physical laboratories. The Depart- ment of Mechanical Engineering has a three-story building. The Electrical Engineering Department has a building which cost $250,000 to erect, and which is said to be "one of the finest buildings devoted solely to its use of any technical school or college." There are also laboratories, dormitories, power plant, and other necessary structures, the whole evidencing the pros- perous state of the institution. The Athletic Field, opened in 1914, was founded by the Alumni. The gymnasium, which was dedicated in 1916, is another evidence of the strength of the Alumni Association. More than twenty-five hundred graduates of Worcester Polytechnic Institute have been granted their Bachelor of Science degrees, and large numbers have taken post-graduate degrees. The main courses provided are: Mechanical, Elec- trical, and Civil Engineering, Chemistry and General Science. One has but
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to turn to Who's Who in Engineering to realize how many graduates of W. P. I. have been eminently successful in their professions.
One of the most interesting experiments in higher education along the lines of a university built upon restricted foundation is Clark University, of which Clark College is now a part. Both were started from gifts made by Jonas Gilman Clark who, in 1887, placed in the hands of a group of men one million dollars for this purpose, or rather for the establishment of the university. At the time this was the "largest single charitable gift ever made by a private person in New England and, with very few exceptions, the largest ever made by a private person in his lifetime anywhere in the world." The donor chose the head of this university as he would the highest official in his business, and that choice fell upon Granville Stanley Hall. G. Stanley Hall was sent on an eight months' tour of Europe "to see everything and every institution possible, collect building plans, budgets, and administration methods of every kind." Dr. Hall came back filled with the ambition to create in Worcester, "a university without an undergraduate department, one in which all the resources of the plant, and all the energies of the staff should be devoted exclusively to university purposes." More definitely, G. Stanley Hall desired to develop a school of like eminence in the fields of physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, anthropology and psychology, to the universities from which he had graduated, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. He persuaded Jonas Clark to make the university of this limited type. He also gathered together a remarkable faculty of young men, such as Nef in chemistry, Mall in anatomy, Story and Taber in mathematics, and Michelson and Webster in physics. The president was best known for his professional work in psychology, philosophy and education-subjects which he taught.
Of the million dollar gift, $300,000 was set aside for plant and equip- ment ; $100,000 as a library fund ; and $600,000 as an endowment fund. On October 2, 1889, the first university building opened its doors to students, and the notables attending the opening exercises offered congratulations and prophesied great things for the unique institution. All went well for a few years, but for 1893-94 only one-fourth of the amount of money that had been available for carrying on the work of Clark University previously was in the treasury. According to Dr. Hall, "In the seven years that followed down to the founder's death in 1900, we had for all purposes only less than $30,000." From the very first, with inadequate means at his command, the doctor had to hold his faculty against the very potent attractions of the wealthy young University of Chicago, to make Clark University live within its small income, and to please the founder. It is indicative of the many- sided abilities of Dr. Hall that he accomplished all these in good measure,
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and that he held the loyalty of his faculty for the twenty-one years, from 1892, while he was its head.
The bequests of Mr. Clark brought the total of his benefactions up to $4,000,000. A codicil to his will charged the trustees of the university to found "a Collegiate Department where young men, who have graduated from high schools and other preparatory schools and have not the means to enable them to attend universities where the expenses are large, may obtain at a moderate cost and in a three-year course a practical education which shall fit them for useful citizenship and their work in life." Some of the unusual features of the Clark College program were: its admission of students upon trial instead of scholastic examinations, a three-year course of study instead of four, group system of studies, close personal supervision of student activi- ties, and the prohibition of intercollegiate athletics. In 1902 Colonel Carroll D. Wright, former United States Commissioner of Labor, was called to the presidency of the college. Upon his death in 1909, he was succeeded by the last separate president of the school, Dr. Edmund C. Sanford.
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