USA > Maine > York County > Parsonsfield > A history of the first century of the town of Parsonsfield, Maine > Part 7
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For this endowment, the school must look to the wealthy sons of Parsonsfield who are now citizens, or have gone out into other towns or states. Few country towns are more fortunate in this class of persons. Some of them are able to give ten thousand dollars apiece, and then have an abundance left for their chil- dren, if they have any, and for all their relatives or friends whom they may wish to remember. Perhaps one of the best ways to raise this fund would be to es- tablish scholarships, each scholarship being five hundred dollars, or a sum bearing interest sufficient to educate one scholar for a year. The scholarships should be called by the names of the donors, as the William Bradford scholarship, the John Winthrop scholarship, etc. The names of the benefactors should be re- corded in the records of the town and of the school, with the number of schol-
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arships which each founded. Some might found twenty, others ten, or one, according to their means or liberality. Perhaps it would not be altogether a childish idea to have the names, with the amounts contributed, engraved on a brass tablet, and put up in some place in the school building where all could read them, and see who have been the benefactors and truly great men and women of the town-great as they were good. Certificates might also be given to the schol- ars, on entering the school, showing on whose scholarships they were to be edu- cated. This course would keep the names of the benefactors in grateful remem- brance, and hold up their noble example for the imitation of others.
Would not the town also do something for the support of this school ? Perhaps it would be willing, now that it is able and needs such a school to complete its school sys- tem, to contribute henceforth the sixty dollars received annually from the thirteen hundred and thirty dollars for which the land given for the support of a grammar school was sold. It is the very kind of school which the proprietors of the town designed to establish when they gave the three lots of land for the support of a grammar school. The name grammar school did not then mean the same kind of a school that we understand it to mean now. It meant a school in which scholars were taught not in English branches only, but were also fitted for college. The name is of ancient origin, and dates back as far as the twelfth century. It was brought over to this country from England by the first settlers, and was used to distinguish this school from the common school, in which grammar was not then taught. "By free school and free grammar school, in the early records of towns and of the General Court of Connecticut and Massachusetts," says Mr. Henry Barnard, " was not intended the common or public school, as afterward developed, particularly in Massachusetts, supported by tax, and free of all charge to all scholars, rich and poor; neither was it a charity school exclusively for the poor. The term was applied here, as well as in the early acts of Virginia and other states, in the same sense in which it was used in England at the same and much earlier dates, to characterize a grammar school, unrestricted as to a class of children or scholars specified in the instrument by which it was founded, and so supported as not to depend on the fluctuating attendance and tuition of schol- ars for the maintenance of a master. In every instance in which we have traced their history, the free grammar schools of New England were endowed by grants of land, by gifts and bequests of individuals, or by allowance out of the common stock of the town, and were designed especially for instruction in Latin and Greek, and were supported in part by payments of tuition or rates by parents. These schools were the well-springs of classical education in the country, and were the predecessors of the incorporated academies, which do not appear under that name until a comparatively recent period." "The gradual development of the common school system in the United States, joined with the partial decline of Latin and Greek as instruments of education, and the demand for studies of a more practical character, that is, more in demand as a preparation for the ordi-
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nary duties of life, have led to a different application of the term grammar schools. The study of English grammar having taken the place of Latin grammar in schools of an elementary grade, such schools came to be designated grammar schools, and the former grammar or classical schools received the name of high schools or academies." *
Shakespeare was educated at the "Free Grammar School " at Stratford-upon- Avon, in which there was a course of study in mathematics, with some other English branches, and also in Latin and Greek; and students were fitted for the university. May not Parsonsfield produce a Shakespeare ? O, that it might one of his genius, but without his faults. This school was free only to a certain class of persons, not to all, as the Parsonsfield Free High School is.
Fourth, scholars from other towns should be admitted to the school by paying tuition, the price being such as would encourage their patronage. If the school should be of the high order contemplated, quite an income might be derived from this source, which might be appropriated to the payment of teachers and the pur- chase of apparatus, etc.
I have now traced the history of the schools of Parsonsfield for a hundred years, and I think it will be admitted that our fathers have made a good record- perhaps I ought to say an excellent one. It is now incumbent on us, who are entering on a second century, to make one as good. With all the experience and wealth accumulated since their time, we ought to make a better one. If we carry out the suggestions which have been made, and those which the wisdom of the town may adopt, I think we can; and that there is a bright prospect for the education of the town in the future. I do not suppose that all of them can be put in operation at once, but a beginning can be made immediately. When the High School has been located and courses of study formed for it and for the common schools, an ambition will be created in the scholars to obtain a higher education, and parents will be stimulated to greater efforts to help them along in their laudable undertaking, remembering that education is the best legacy that they can leave them. It is not expected, nor is it desirable, that parents should give their children much money. If they give them a good education, they will get their own money, and will keep it.
Of the value of an education it seems hardly necessary to say anything fur- ther. All, I think, are agreed as to its importance. It adorns every position. It brings to its possessor usefulness, influence, honor, and generally a competence and happiness. Every star that twinkles in the vault of heaven, every flower that expands its delicate petals to drink in the dews of the morning, every insect that sports in the noonday sun, and every grain of sand, however insignificant, that we tread under our feet, opens volumes to the educated person for his study and delight, and leads him up to the great Creator of all things, whose greatness. can be fully comprehended only by studying His works. It is the strong pillar of * Cyclopædia of Education-under grammar schools.
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liberty, and no free government can long exist without it. It is a great civilizer of mankind, and has swept away the superstitions and speculations of past ages, and placed our knowledge on the firm basis of inductive reasoning and mathematical demonstration.
Notwithstanding this agreement on the main question of the importance of an education, there is often a grave mistake made by young persons, and sometimes by older ones, as to the amount necessary to the highest success. Some person is selected by them of great natural abilities, who, with only a common school education, has attained to great eminence, and then he is compared with another of less abilities-perhaps a college graduate, who has been highly educated, but has not attained to distinction; and then the conclusion is drawn that a thorough education is of no value, and that the time and money spent in acquiring it are thrown away. The comparison is not just. Take two persons of the same natural abilities in every respect, and place them in similar circumstances, and it will certainly be found that he who has been the more thoroughly educated will rise to greater distinction and usefulness than the other. Natural abilities must be developed by culture and education before they can be made in the highest de- gree available. There are things which must be learned by previous study from books before they can be known. A person of the greatest abilities could not solve a problemi in algebra or geometry before he had learned the principles on which the solution depended, although it might be of the greatest utility in its practical application. In this respect, the person who has received a thorough education evidently has a great advantage over him who has an inferior one. It is often forgotten, also, that those persons who have succeeded with little educa- tion, at the beginning of their career, have been diligent students all their lives, and by degrees have acquired an education which has made them masters of their professions. Of such was Franklin. It is a noteworthy fact, also, that such per- sons have almost invariably regretted that they did not pursue a thorough course of study in their youth, and thus relieve themselves of the embarrassment and labor of acquiring an education at a later period of life.
Cicero, in his oration for Archias, the poet, has finely illustrated this subject. After speaking of the eminent men of Greece and Rome who had become dis- tinguished in history for their great deeds and success in life, he says: "But were those great men, it will be asked, who are celebrated in history, distinguished for that kind of learning which you extol so highly ? It would be difficult to prove this of all, but yet what I shall answer is certain. I admit that there have been many men of excellent mind and distinguished for nobleness of character, who, without learning and by the almost divine force of nature itself, have been wise and judicious; and also that natural abilities without learning are more effectual in attaining distinction and nobleness than learning without natural abilities; but then I affirm that, when to excellent natural abilities the discipline and culture of learning are added, then something very great and extraordinary will gener- ally result."
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The argument is here summed up in a few words, showing that great natural abilities without learning will accomplish much, but when they are improved by learning, much more. Education will not make natural abilities, but it will de- velop them and adapt them to the various vocations of life. It is not, there- fore, safe to rely too much on the idea of great natural abilities; for, when a person measures his own with those of others in the school-room, in the college- hall, or in the great arena of life, he will generally find some one who has greater abilities than himself, and that he will be obliged to use all his energy, and cultivate all the abilities which he may possess, in order to make a creditable record with his competitors.
A higher education is now demanded than ever before. All professional men know that an education which would give them success forty years ago would not be sufficient for them now. A great portion of our young men and young women, when of sufficient age, now leave their native town, and go into other states to seek their fortunes, and they must be qualified to compete with those whom they meet there, or they will be obliged to take inferior positions. In some of the states young women are taking the same college course as the young men, and the professors say that they are quite as good scholars. In Illinois University there were, the present year (1885), two hundred and ninety-two young men and seventy young women; in the University of Minnesota, two hundred and twenty-seven young men and eighty-three young women; in Bates College, in our own state, one hundred and six young men and eighteen young women. Nineteen young women have graduated from Bates College since it was first opened. This is the first college in New England from which a young woman has graduated. England has caught the American spirit, and has recently established four female colleges, Newnham and Girton at Cambridge, and Somerville and Lady Margaret's at Oxford, a thing which it never did before until within a few years. Miss Helen Gladstone is at the head of one of those at Cambridge, and Miss Lefevre, sister of the postmaster-general, presides over one of those at Oxford. Seeing the great efforts which others are making in other states and other countries to provide a thorough education for the people, we should emu- late their example, and take care that they may not surpass us in knowledge and literary culture.
I have given some attention to the study of the different races of mankind. The Teutonic race, of which we, the Anglo-Saxon race, are a branch, is unsur- passed, if equaled, by any other in physical development, energy of character, and intellectual capacity. It is the great race which is now leading the world in science, literature and the useful arts, which invented the art of printing * and the printing-press, the steam engine, the magnetic telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, and the spectroscope, which has brought down the sun, moon, and
* According to the best authorities, the art of printing with movable types or letters was invented by Johann Gutenberg about 1436. The Chinese printed books from blocks of wood, with the writing engraved upon them, as far back as the sixth century, and perhaps much farther.
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stars to us for our inspection, and made us almost as well acquainted with the elements of which they are composed as we are with those of the earth on which we live. I am proud to say that the people of Parsonsfield belong to this race. We have a foundation, then, to build upon, and if we are willing to work and cultivate the faculties which God has given us, we can compete with any people on the face of the globe. Let, then, the people of this old and venerable town set their standard of education high, and lay it down as a fixed principle that they will not be surpassed, that no ignorant person shall go out of Parsonsfield, but that all, if possible, shall have the trade-mark stamped upon them, " Educated at the Parsonsfield Free High School;" therefore, fitted for all business, for all posi- tions, and worthy to be admitted into any society in this or any other country.
GRO.M .WALKER & Co. LITH. BOSTON
Joseph Ricker REV.JOSEPH RICKER, D.D.
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THE COLLEGE GRADUATES OF PARSONSFIELD.
BY JOSEPH RICKER, D. D., OF AUGUSTA.
College training is by no means indispensable to distinguished success in the various callings of life. For ample proof of this, we need not go beyond the limits of this goodly town whose founding it is our joy to celebrate to-day. In the realm of teaching, many of us will readily recall to mind such names as Jon- athan Piper, David Garland, Samuel Wiggin, and Ira C. Doe; in the realm of professional life, James Bradbury, Moses Sweat and Gilman L. Bennett; in the realm of business pursuits, Bartlett, John and Charles Doe, John and Edwin Sanborn, G. M. Wentworth, J. J. Merrill, and the Ames brothers; and in the realm of official trust and service, Luther Sanborn, Alvah Doe, and John Ben- nett. Not one of all these or of hosts of others who are equally deserving of mention, ever sojourned in college halls, or enjoyed, in the technical sense, a college training. Their opportunities, on the contrary, were mostly limited to the common school and the Academy. And yet with what credit to themselves, and advantage to the public have they exercised the callings to which they sev- erally addicted themselves.
All this, of course, is not saying that the severe and wholesome discipline which comes from a brave and worthy encounter with the tough problems that stud the college curriculum, might not have made these men more potent factors in society. On the contrary, it is certain that such a discipline would have greatly augmented their power to mould others to their methods of thought and action. But the fact still remains that they succeeded, and succeeded grandly, without the college-succeeded because they had that, without which the college is of little worth, viz .: brains, and brains that were re-enforced with moral stamina, purpose, persistence, and steadiness of aim. Without brains, the very gods would be unvictorious in the battle of life. If one be a dunce at the start, a dunce he will continue to be, no matter how classic the ground he may tread, or rigid the discipline to which he may be subjected. The grindstone may give the steel its edge, but never its temper. And so of the college. Its mission is not so much to put anything into a man, as to draw out and make effective what is already there,-not so much to store the mind with a knowledge of mere facts as to broaden its horizon, sharpen its powers of observation, and give it skill to grasp, judgment to classify, and capacity to use the wealth of resources that lie in profusion on every side of it. It is only as it makes one stronger and better for the race of life, that it is of any worth. Brought to this test, what must be the conclusion with respect to the somewhat large group of our brothers who have gone into and through college, from this town ? As far as the writer has been able to ascertain, their names are as follows:
James Ware Bradbury, John Usher Parsons, Edmund Garland, Amos Tuck, Thomas Parsons Emerson, William B. Wedgwood, Moses Mighels Smart, Zenas
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Paine Wentworth, Moses Erastus Sweat, Lorenzo DeM. Sweat, Isaac Newton Felch, Horace Piper, George Benson, Joseph Ricker, Joseph Garland, Charles Henry Emerson, Burleigh Pease, William D. Knapp, Malcolm McIntire, Cyrus Fogg Brackett, William Ricker Thompson, Horace Rundlette Cheney, John Holmes Rand, Melville C. Towle, Andrew Jackson Eastman, Isaiah F. Pray, Edwin James Cram, John Arthur Cram, Oliver Libbey, Franklin Pierce Moul- ton, Alvah Pray Moulton, Edward John Colcord, Alanson Bean Merrill, Harry L. Staples, Frank Herbert Pease.
It surely is not strange that the town should have been forty years old ere she could claim among her sons a single college graduate. Her pioneer settlers were a hardy race, full of stalwart pluck and vigor, but almost to a man, dependent upon their daily toil for their daily bread. Her hills were many and precipitous, her primeval forests yielded slowly, and after incredible toil, to the woodman's axe, her highways were difficult of construction, and her homes were made com- fortable and attractive, only by long years of waiting, and watching, and work. Her sons wrought amid scenery of almost peerless grandeur, but they were forced to battle bravely and persistently for whatever they acquired. Their labors were manifold, their luxuries few. Every member of each particular human hive had to make his or her contribution to the common store, or want, if not suffering, would be the consequence. The boys were many, but could be spared from field and shop only for a few weeks in the winter when the district school was in session, and not always, even then. The Academy was a luxury not to be thought of save by the families of the half dozen professional men and merchants of the town. And so it chanced that, from the birth of the munici- pality in 1785 until many years beyond the date of its majority, it had no son to represent it at any college in the land. In 1825, however, there came a change. In that year
JAMES WARE BRADBURY,
Who honors us with his presence today, and who, both by age and position, is entitled to be regarded as the Nestor of the occasion, stepped forth from Bowdoin's halls upon the stage of active life, with the warm benediction of his Alma Mater upon him. For classmates, he had such men as Henry W. Long- fellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Geo. B. Cheever, Josiah Stover Little, and the like. At Commencement, of the three English orations assigned, Little had one, with the Valedictory Addresses, and Longfellow and Bradbury the other two. After devoting one year to teaching, Mr. Bradbury read law successively with Hon. Rufus McIntire of this town and Hon. Ether Shepley, at a later day a dis- tinguished Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine. Upon the completion of his law studies, he devoted an interval of a few months that must elapse ere there would be any opportunity for his admission to the bar, to teach- ing in Effingham, N. H., what is believed to have been the first Normal School in
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New England. He would take the school only on condition that it should be for the instruction and training of teachers. The idea was his own, and at the time, entirely novel. No such school is known to have antedated it, and few have been more successful. The incident is noteworthy.
In 1830, Mr. Bradbury opened a law office in Augusta, then recently made the capital of the state. This step brought him into professional contact and com- petition with such men as George Evans, Peleg Sprague, Reuel Williams, Timo- thy Boutelle and others of like eminence. To obtain foothold in a field so occu- pied, called for labor that knew little pause, and ability that could not be lightly challenged. But the then youthful aspirant proved equal to the emergency. In no long time, his clientage grew to very large proportions.
This tide of prosperity continued without check until 1846, when he was elected to the United States Senate. And here again he was signally fortunate in the character of his associates, including, as they did, such men as Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Cass, Seward, and other great names, not a few. His Senatorial career of six years embraced the somewhat stormy period of the Mex- ican war. He enjoyed the rare honor of serving upon the Judiciary Committee throughout his entire term of office. He was also made chairman of the com- mittee on Printing, and a member of several other committees. Declining to be a candidate for re-election, he returned to the city of his adoption, and resumed the practice of law.
His service, first as an Overseer, and since 1860 as a Trustee of Bowdoin Col- lege, has been as marked for its efficiency as for its length. In 1872 his Alma Mater conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, an honor well and worth- ily bestowed. He has been an active member of the Maine Historical Society, and since 1873, its President.
He has, moreover, for years, counted it both a privilege and an honor to be reckoned as a worker among fellow-workers in the Christian church. With such a life of exemplary industry and conspicuous success behind him, he is here at the summons of his mother and ours, to aid in the glad celebration of her one hundredth birthday.
JOHN USHER PARSONS,
The next graduate in the order of time, was a grandson of Thomas Parsons, the original proprietor of the town. He was born in 1806, and completed his college.course at Bowdoin in 1828, and his theological course at Andover, in 1831. His life and labors were singularly versatile. He preached in more than half of the then States of the Union, and served through several pastorates, besides giving himself to the work of an Evangelist at different times and for considera- ble periods. He was active in establishing a Seminary in Indiana, and a college in Wisconsin, to say nothing of his labors as a teacher in Indiana, Georgia, and New Hampshire. He published elementary text books which were widely circu- lated. Two of the issues of the American Tract Society were from his pen. The
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more important of his works are " A Biblical Analysis," "The Philanthropies and Practical Workings of Christianity," and "The Gospel of Christ, the only Gospel of Humanity." Ecclesiastically, he affiliated with the Congregationalists. To good scholarship he added earnestness, energy and aggressiveness, and had he confined his efforts to a single sphere of activity, he must have achieved eminent success. He died of paralysis at Wellesley, Mass., in 1874.
EDMUND GARLAND.
Of this alumnus of Dartmouth, the writer only knows that he was the third son of Dea. Samuel Garland, one of the strong and stable pillars of the town in the olden time, and that, after his college and seminary course, he entered the ministry of the Congregationalist church, and during most of his long life, exer- cised his sacred calling with zeal and efficiency in the State of Ohio. At the time of his death, which occurred in the near past, he must have been upwards of four score.
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