USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Brunswick > General catalogue of Bowdoin College and the Medical School of Maine, 1794-1894 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36
1 Travels in New England and New York, vol. ii., p. 212.
xvi
BOWDOIN COLLEGE
public seminary can never become prosperous, unless by accident, or by the peculiarly meritorious labours of a wise and vigorous Faculty ; overcoming many disadvantages, and preventing with uncommon pru- dence, and felicity, the mischievous effects of indigested, desultory regulations."
The evils foreseen and described above have been realized on several occasions. Fortunately, during the decades in which they were most noticeable, they were more than neutralized by the loyal and efficient group of men who then formed the teaching force and whose customary title for many years was "the executive government."
At the outset, what might seem to be a lack of interest in the infant institution was displayed in the lower Board. Of its forty- two members, one-third never attended a meeting. A few of these absentees were men whose names were included in the charter solely on the ground of official station. Most of them were kept away by the expense and difficulty of traveling or by the infirmities of age. In subsequent years, however, the number of overseers who have kept themselves informed as to the interests of the institution has been so large, and the assistance they have rendered so material, that a proposal made by a prominent alumnus in 1884 to do away with this Board received comparatively little approval.1
Slow progress was made in the task of organizing the college. Eight years elapsed between the granting of the charter and the beginning of instruction. The two governing Boards had different theories as to the cause of this. The Overseers claimed that the Trustees were old and dilatory. The Trustees maintained that the lack of money was the root of all the evils under which the institution labored. Furthermore, if they were slow, the Overseers were obstinate.2 The records seem to indicate that the latter were over-anxious to have their own way in the matter of
1 See Bowdoin Orient, vol. xiii., p. 239; vol. xiv., pp. 5, 7, 22, 38, 70.
2 The dissatisfaction of the Overseers went so far as to lead them to petition the General Court to increase the number of Trustees. That body made a formal reply to the legislature, an abstract of which is given in Cleaveland's History of Bowdoin College (p. 6), and the matter was apparently dropped.
xvii
HISTORICAL SKETCH
the size and cost of the first building to be erected. For this purpose they were willing to dispose of two of the five townships granted by the state, and their repeated vetoes of the more cautious proposals of the Trustees delayed action. Again, some time was lost by the failure of each Board to obtain a quorum for one impor- tant special meeting to be held 25 August, 1795, at Brunswick.
The chief reason for this delay in organization was inability to realize a sufficient amount of money from the unproductive lands granted by the state. "There was much land in the market selling at twenty cents (an acre) and even lower, and it was difficult to sell at any price."1 To sell the college townships for a lower price than such property had obtained in the past and was likely to secure in the future seemed an unwise course to the committee having the matter in charge. Fortunately, as the sequel proved, these conservative counsels prevailed. The five townships, the gift of the Commonwealth, were surveyed and formally transferred to the college, 25 February, 1796. They are now known as Dixmont, Sebec, Foxcroft, Guilford, and Abbot. The value of this amount of wild land, if estimated at the average price per acre received by the Commonwealth for other land sold in 1794, was $21,441.12.2 The expenses of surveying and settling were considerable, and the losses from unfulfilled contracts not a few during a long series of years, yet the net amount realized from this charter endowment may be conservatively estimated at twenty-five thousand dollars, with interest at six per cent. from the very first.
.
In 1798, a beginning was made upon a "House for the use of the College." This house is now known as Massachusetts Hall. It was to be completed as soon as the Treasurer could pay the $2,400 appropriated for its erection. The site had been chosen two years before, when, on the 19 July, 1796, the Boards had held their first meeting at Brunswick and walked through the pine-covered plain just south of the village at Pejepscot Falls.
1 Letter of Hon. Alden Bradford to Nehemiah Cleveland, dated 3 February, 1835.
2 It may be of interest to note that the state valuation in 1894 of these five towns is $1,525,120.
xviii
BOWDOIN COLLEGE
The thirty acres of land they selected for the campus had been given by Col. William Stanwood, John Dunlap, Esq., and Gen. Samuel Thompson, and two hundred acres additional had been transferred to the college by vote of the town. Unfortunately the market for wild land was even duller during the two following than it had been in the preceding years. The College Treasurer could not procure the cash needed to finish the hall "after the finishing of Hollis Hall in Cambridge." The walls erected in 1799 of brick brought from Portland, were provided with a temporary roof, and the building stood with its windows boarded up for two years. Repeated circulation of subscription papers had brought to the college only $800, and a considerable portion of this was in books. Discouraged, the Boards voted in 1800 to apply to the General Court for a grant of money to enable them to carry out the pur- poses of their organization. Nothing resulted from this.
The dawn of a brighter day was, however, close at hand. In 1801 the committee in charge of the college townships sold Dix- mont for upwards of $20,000. In the same year they disposed of Foxcroft, which was smaller and much less favorably situated, for $7,940. Work was at once resumed upon Massachusetts Hall, and "by the spring of 1802, all the external conditions for opening the College,-accommodations for a president and family, rooms for students, for a chapel and hall, for lectures and recita- tions, for library and apparatus-were snugly and economically provided for within this single edifice."1
1 President Wood's Address on the Opening of the New Hall of the Medical School, p. 8.
CHAPTER II.
THE BOWDOINS.
The Huguenot ancestor-James Bowdoin, the merchant-Governor Bowdoin-His scientific and literary attainments-His political services- Hon. James Bowdoin, the patron of the College-His benefactions-His will-The contingent remainder-The Bowdoin Art Collections-Bene- factions from other members of the family.
When Louis XIV signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he little thought he thus indirectly provided a name for a Protestant college to be established across the water a full century later. Pierre Baudouin, one of the Huguenot subjects of Le Grand Monarque, preferred a few acres of wild land on the shores of Casco Bay to his ancestral estate in the valley of the Sèvre when the latter could be retained only by the recantation of his religious beliefs. He is said to have been a physician by profession, and, on the testimony of his great-grandson, was the owner of landed property near Rochelle, which in 1685 " yielded the considerable income of 700 louis d'ors per annum." 1
Driven from France by religious persecution, after a short sojourn in Dublin, he landed at Casco, homeless and almost pen- niless, with his wife and four children in 1687. In that year he petitioned Sir Edmund Andros, then Governor-in-Chief of New England, for a grant of one hundred acres of unoccupied land at the point of Barbary Creek "to the end that he might have the means of supporting his family." The request was favorably considered, but before a warrant for its execution was issued, he had settled near what is now the corner of Emery and Spring streets in the city of Portland, and curiously enough within a few rods of the spot selected one hundred years later by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Deane for the site of the college that was to perpetuate
1 This is equivalent to $3,500, but was relatively a much larger amount then than now. The main authority for this account of the Bowdoins is Hon. Robert C. Winthrop's Address before the Maine Historical Society, 5 September, 1849.
XX
BOWDOIN COLLEGE
his name. Here he remained for two years and a half, removing to Boston just in time to escape the capture of Falmouth by the French and Indians in May, 1690, and the subsequent massacre of the settlers. The remainder of his life was spent at Boston, where he was a prominent member of a French Protestant church, composed of fellow-refugees.
His son, James Bowdoin, became a merchant, and by his industry, integrity, and ability accumulated the largest fortune that had at that time been held by one person in Massachusetts. For several years before his death, which occurred in 1747, he occupied a seat in the Colonial Council. With him the family name assumed the English form now so familiar.
His son, Governor James Bowdoin, was born in Boston, August 7, 1726, received his early education under Master Lovell at the South Grammar School, and after the usual college course of that day took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Harvard in 1745. His interest in scientific investigation early manifested itself. At the age of twenty-four he made the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, and began both a correspondence and a friend- ship that closed only with their lives. The American philosopher was then in the midst of his famous experiments in electricity. His estimate of the young man's ability is shown by his request for observations on the copy of "his electrical papers, fairly tran- scribed," which he sent him, and a few years later by withdrawing one of his hypotheses and writing, "I grow more doubtful of my former supposition, and more ready to allow weight to that objec- tion which you have indeed stated with great strength and clear- ness." Many of Bowdoin's scientific letters were sent by Franklin to London, read before the Royal Society, and published with his own. Of them he writes : "It gives me great pleasure that my book afforded any to my friends. I esteem those letters of yours among its brightest ornaments, and have the satisfaction to find that they add greatly to the reputation of American philosophy."
To Governor Bowdoin was due, in great measure, the foun- dation of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was chosen its first president, an office which he held to his death, contributed to its proceedings, and bequeathed to it his private
xxi
HISTORICAL SKETCH
library of twelve hundred volumes, covering all branches of science then known .. His attainments were recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. He received an election to the Royal Society of Great Britain, the degree of doctor of laws from the University of Edinburgh, and also from his Alma Mater and the University of Pennsylvania.
While his natural bent was unquestionably towards physical science, he showed a fondness for literature. Three of the pieces in the elaborate "Pietas et Gratulatio," sent by Harvard College to George III on his accession to the throne, came from his pen. A more successful courting of the muse of poetry was his " Paraphrase on a part of the (Economy of Human Life," published anonymously in 1759.
It is natural to find him a patron of education. When Harvard lost its library by fire, in 1764, he contributed liberally to its restoration ; he added to its scientific apparatus " an elegant and valuable orrery"; he served as a fellow of the corporation for several years ; and by his will he established a fund for the encouragement of polite literature. Upon this foundation, now amounting to upwards of $13,000, the Bowdoin Prizes for English Dissertations have been regularly awarded for a long series of years. He was active in organizing the Massachusetts Humane Society, and served as its president for a long period.
It was not, however, by his scientific attainments and philan- thropic disposition that Governor Bowdoin won the high place he held in the estimation of his generation. It was his fortune to live at a period when political affairs demanded thought and action on the part of every true-hearted citizen. It is to his honor that his study of the political situation, carried on thoroughly, conscientiously, and boldly, led him to choose the party of American independence, a party which, though possessed of several leaders of equal ability, had none of his wealth and social standing. He entered political life as a representative from Boston at the age of twenty-seven, and took an active part in preparing measures to resist the encroachments of the French. He was especially interested in the union of the colonies proposed by his friend, Franklin, at the Albany Convention of 1754. In
....
xxii
BOWDOIN COLLEGE
the rough draft of a speech, delivered by him in the colonial leg- islature, occur these words : "If the Colonies were united, they could easily drive the French out of this part of America ; but, in a disunited state, the French, though not a tenth part so numerous, are an overmatch for them all. They are under one head and one direction, and all pull one way ; whereas the Colonies have no head, some of them are under no direction in military matters, and all pull different ways. Join or die must be their motto."
In 1757 he was chosen a member of the Council, or upper house of the colonial legislature, and was annually re-elected for the next seventeen years. Here he took part in all the discussions of the prolonged controversy between the British Ministry and the Colony, and drafted a large part of those state papers which, as a distinguished descendant has said, "originally and gradually pre- pared the popular heart for the great issue of independence." He was styled the leader and manager of the Council, as Samuel Adams was of the House. The royal governor writes of him : "Bowdoin greatly encouraged, if he did not first propose (as a measure of retaliation for the arbitrary taxes imposed by Great Britain) the association for leaving off the custom of mourning dress for the loss of deceased friends ; and for wearing, on all occasions, the common manufactures of the country." In 1774 his election to the Council, which had once before been vetoed by the royal governor, was again negatived by General Gage, acting in accordance with express orders from His Majesty George III. The same year he was chosen first on the list of delegates to represent Massachusetts at the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia. Had not the serious illness of his wife and the partial failure of his own health hept him at home, his name would probably have held the prominent place on the Declaration of Independence now occupied by that of his substitute, John Hancock. In 1775 he was elected a member and chosen presi- dent of the Provincial Council, a body which exercised supreme authority in the colony. This position brought him into personal relations with Washington, which resulted in an intimate acquaint- ance and a lasting friendship. In 1779 he served as presiding officer of the convention that framed the constitution of the
- --
xxiii
HISTORICAL SKETCH
commonwealth, and also as chairman of the select committee that framed the first draft. Under this constitution he was offered by the first legislature the position of lieutenant-governor and also that of senator. He declined each, but accepted, a few months later, membership on the commission to revise and codify the laws of the state.
In 1785 he was chosen Governor, and re-elected the following year. His administration was rendered noteworthy by his efforts to secure an increase of the powers of the Continental Congress, so that it might regulate trade with foreign nations and raise a revenue for the public credit, a measure he had advocated thirty years before in the Albany Convention. Among the many steps that terminated in the formation of the federal constitution, few were more important than the strong resolutions passed by Massa- chusetts in 1785 at the suggestion and earnest recommendation of Governor Bowdoin. Still more noteworthy was his action at the time of Shays' rebellion. The firmness and the wisdom he dis- played in putting down this insurrection at the cost of much personal unpopularity have established with posterity his reputa- tion as a far-sighted and unselfish patriot. It was a critical period. Debt and discontent were everywhere rife, and the triumph of law and order in Massachusetts meant the triumph of the same princi- ples in the other states.
After retiring from the chief magistracy, Governor Bowdoin was again called to exert his influence in the convention assembled in 1788 to ratify the constitution of the United States, in which he served as a delegate from Boston as did his son from Dor- chester. With the following words, with which he closed his formal speech for its adoption, this sketch of his political career can well close :
" If the constitution should be finally accepted and established, it will complete the temple of American liberty, and, like the key- stone of a grand and magnificent arch, be the bond of union to keep all the parts firm and compacted together. May this temple, sacred to liberty and virtue,-sacred to justice, the first and greatest political virtue, and built upon the broad and solid foundation of perfect union-be dissoluble only by the dissolution of nature !
xxiv
BOWDOIN COLLEGE
and may this convention have the distinguished honor of erecting one of its pillars on that lasting foundation."
Governor Bowdoin's health, never robust, failed rapidly in the fall of 1790, and he died on November sixth of that year. Of his many eulogists one has described his character as truthfully as forcefully, in the sentence : "It may be said that our country has produced many men of as much genius ; many men of as much learning and knowledge; many of as much zeal for the liberties of their country ; and many of as much piety and virtue ; but is it not rare indeed to find those in whom they have all combined and been adorned with his other accomplishments ?"
The death of this man amid wide-spread sorrow on the part of the people, seems to have brought the friends of the proposed college in the District of Maine to a decision as to its name. With genuine New England shrewdness, however, one of them procured an introduction to the only son of the late governor, mentioned the proposed action, and made natural suggestions as to the interest shown in learning by the family in the past, and the many needs of a new institution. Mr. James Bowdoin, as a descendant of the interviewer writes, heard him through without objection, but made no promises. Subsequently, however, assur- ance was given that the new college should have aid from the family, though the assurance was coupled with the caution that too much must not be expected.
Hon. James Bowdoin, the third to bear this name, and the patron of the college, was graduated at Harvard in 1771, studied law ten months at the University at Oxford, and spent nearly the same time in travel in England. After a short stay at home, he again crossed the Atlantic, mainly on account of his health, which was always delicate, spent some time in Italy, and was on his way to England when the news of the Battle of Lexington called him home. He was anxious to enter the army, but his parents' health, not to mention his own, seemed to forbid. He was with General Washington, however, when the latter entered Boston in March, 1776, and took his commander to dine at his grandfather Erving's, where the best the town could afford was placed before them in a piece of salted beef. Mr. Bowdoin entered political life as a
THE BOWDOIN GALLERY-WALKER ART BUILDING.
1
-
-
L
---
XXV
HISTORICAL SKETCH
representative to the legislature from Dorchester in 1786. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1788, and also served in the state senate and the governor's council. In 1804 he received a commission from President Jefferson as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Spain. He was subsequently made associate minister with General Armstrong to the Court of France. His stay abroad, though not successful in the object especially before him-compensation for repeated spoliations of American commerce-was indirectly of the greatest benefit to the college, the needs of which he seems constantly to have had in mind. Ill health caused his return in 1808, and three years later, October 11, 1811, he died suddenly at his favorite residence on the island of Naushon in Buzzard's Bay.
At the first meeting of the Trustees of the college at Portland, December 3, 1794, a letter was read from Mr. Bowdoin, express- ing his appreciation of the respect shown his father's memory in the name chosen for the college, and announcing a gift of one thousand dollars in specie and one thousand acres of land in Bowdoinham. The land was valued by the recipients at $3,000. The next year another communication was received, transferring to the college a well-secured mortgage for nearly three thousand dollars, and asking that it might be employed for the endowment of a professorship of mathematics and natural and experimental philosophy, the interest being added to the principal until a professor was chosen. Mr. Bowdoin was urged to accept the position of President of the Board of Overseers, but declined owing to the difficulty of regularly attending the meetings at Brunswick. His interest, as well as his confidence in the insti- tution, appears from the fact that his grand-nephew and heir, James (Winthrop) Bowdoin, was sent to the "down-east" college rather than to Cambridge. Shortly before his death, Mr. Bowdoin transferred to the college a large tract of land in the town of Lisbon, embracing about six thousand acres.
Though these gifts, made during his life-time, may not seem large at the present day, their importance to the infant institution can hardly be over-estimated. By his will there came to the college at once several valuable collections and, eventually, a
3
xxvi
BOWDOIN COLLEGE
considerable sum of money. Two clauses of this will are here printed in order to show the ground for the peculiar, but unques- tionably just, claim the college advanced thirty years later :
Fifthly. I give and devise unto my nephew James Temple Bow- doin for and during the term of his natural life my Mansion House in Beacon Street in said Boston and the furniture of the drawing-room therein with the Stables and Land unto said Mansion House belonging, Also all my Islands Lands Farms & Estate in Chilmark in the County of Dukes County in said Commonwealth with the Houses, buildings, Stores, Salt works and appurtenances, farming Tools and Stock of every kind on said Lands & estate with the furniture in the Houses on said Lands, also my right and estate in a piece of land held in common with Joseph Parker containing about three Acres more or less lying within Woods hole neck, To hold what I have thus given and devised to said James Temple Bowdoin for and during the term of his natural life and from and after the determination of that estate by forfeiture or otherwise I give the same to Thomas Lindall Winthrop and Richard Sullivan of said Boston Esquires and to their heirs in trust only to preserve and support the contingent remainders and uses herein after limited from being defeated barred or destroyed; and for that purpose from time to time and at all times to make entries and bring Actions as occasion may require nevertheless to permit and suffer the said James Temple Bowdoin to receive the rents issues and profits thereof. for and during the term of his natural life, and from and immediately after his decease, I give and devise all the foregoing estates so given to him for life, unto and to the use and behoof of the first son lawfully begotten or to be begotten of the said James Temple Bowdoin, and the heirs male of the Body of such first son lawfully issuing; and for default of such issue to the use and behoof of the second, third, and all other son and sons of said James Temple Bowdoin and the heirs male of the body or bodies of such second third and other son or sons lawfully begotten or to be begotten severally and successively as they shall be in seniority of age and priority of birth that is to say, the oldest of such son and sons and the heirs male of his and their body and bodies being always to be preferred before the youngest of such son and sons and the heirs male of his and their body and bodies lawfully to be begotten and for default of such issue then I give and devise said estates so given to said James Temple Bowdoin for life unto my other nephew James Bowdoin Winthrop now of Harvard College1 in
1 The proper correction, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, is made at the close of the document before it was signed.
xxvii
HISTORICAL SKETCH
Cambridge, he dropping the name of Winthrop, for and during the term of lis natural Life and from and immediately after the determina- tion of that his estate by forfeiture or otherwise, I give and devise the same unto said Thomas Lindal Winthrop and Richard Sullivan and to their heirs in trust only to preserve and support the contingent remainders and uses herein after limited from being defeated, barred or destroyed, and for that purpose from time to time to make entries, but to suffer said James Bowdoin Winthrop to receive the rents and profits thereof during the term of his natural life and at his decease I give and devise the same Mansion House and lands in Boston and Islands and estates (described in the devise to said James Temple) unto and to the use and behoof of the first son lawfully begotten of said James Bowdoin Winthrop and the heirs male of the body of such first son lawfully issuing and for default of such issue to the use of the second third and other sons of said James Bowdoin Winthrop and the heirs male of the body of each of them in succession & manner as before limited to the male issue of said James Temple, and for default of any such male issue of said James Temple and of said James Bowdoin Winthrop then I give and devise the said Estates in Boston and in the County of Dukes County and Woods hole, with their Stock furniture and appurtenances before described unto the aforesaid Bowdoin College in fee simple forever.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.