The history of Colby College, Part 30

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716

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Professor Rogers himself stated that his reason for leaving Harvard to ac- cept a position in a little fresh-water college in Maine was his desire to be free from the night work demanded by astronomical observation. This historian is nevertheless of the firm belief that Colonel Shannon had a part in that decision.

So far as this writer has been able to aseertain, William A. Rogers was the only Seventh Day Baptist who ever held a place on the Colby faculty. That sect, which insisted upon the observance of Saturday as the proper Sabbath, had few followers in Maine, although their theological kinsmen, the Seventh Day Ad- ventists, had many adherents. Rogers seems to have attended the Waterville Bap- tist Church on at least an occasional Sunday, but he was one of the few faculty members in Dr. Pepper's time who was not an avowed Calvinist Baptist.

Professor Bayley's important contribution to Colby came under Presidents who succeeded Dr. Pepper, and the same was true of the work of Professor War- ren. We therefore reserve extended comment on those two men for a later chapter.

Reference to the revised curriculum which we have described in this chapter will show at once that, however much a student might be inclined toward the languages, he could not escape an introduction to several of the sciences. In 1887 the Echo protested vigorously against such a requirement.

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We wish to make no attack on the sciences, nor shall we discuss the relative value of the scientific and classical courses. We would indeed al- low the sciences a prominent place in our college curriculum. But if, in common with present educational trends, the student be allowed to emancipate himself from Latin and Greek, let him also decide, if science is to be thrust upon him, exactly which science it shall be. We protest against the compulsory introduction of zoology into the classical course, and we hope another year will see it out.

A picture of any era in Colby history is often best secured from a kind of kaleidoscope-what may at first appear as a bewildering assortment of insignifi- cant details. But if one lingers a moment with each such detail, he is likely in the end to come up with a rather unified picture of life in a small college in a New England town. In the 1880's Colby was still a small college, and the town was just turning from an agricultural into an industrial community.

For one thing, there were the growing willows, which stretched in two straight lines from near the south end of South College to the bank of the Ken- nebec. Tradition had it that they had been planted in the spring of 1822 by George Dana Boardman. When the Echo, in 1884, sought information on the old days from distinguished alumni, it received from Albert Paine of the Class of 1832 a statement which blasted the old tradition. Paine wrote: "The planting of willows on either side of the path leading from South College to the river was done in the spring of 1832, and consisted of sticking into the earth at short dis- tances from each other, small willow twigs, the whole row forming little more than a mere handful. The credit given to Boardman as the originator of those scraggy old trees is all wrong, because in his day the locality had not been cleared of its original forest growth. The men who were freshmen and sopho- mores in 1832 were the men entitled to the credit."

As the college population increased, water became more and more impor- tant. It was necessary to sink additional wells besides the old faithful pump be- tween Champlin Hall and North College, but at times those new wells ran dry, and for a college student to take an all-over bath, except when he could swim in the river, was a rare luxury. In 1884, the Echo said: "There are plenty of things to be improved, the most noticeable of which is the water supply. Experience has taught that the use of the water at present furnished for drinking purposes is almost invariably followed by disastrous results. A new well is much needed."

Then, in 1887, Waterville decided to bring into the city a supply of water from the Messalonskee stream. The College at once arranged to have a line connect with the College Street main to bring water into the college buildings. When College opened in the fall of 1887, the promised line had not been in- stalled, but the Echo eagerly awaited the installation. "In another month the longed-for water works will be in full operation. Then a supply of decently pure water will be brought into the College, and the slimy old well can be filled up. We also need bath rooms, and now we see no reason why they should not be built. The best apology we can now make for a bath room is to stand on the carpet and do the best we can with a towel moistened in the drainings from the old well." The spring of 1888 saw the city water flowing into the dormitories amid great rejoicing.

Another liquid valued by college students along with water was cider. In the fall of 1883 the Echo announced: "By the erection of a new cider mill, the dis- tance to the nearest of those edifices has been shortened by two miles. Parties in-

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terested in the location can obtain full particulars from Perkins, '87." Four years later, in the autumn of 1887, the Echo related: "Cider has been just as free as water this fall. It only required a stolen wagon, a hired horse and a dark night for the sophomores to import a 43 gallon cask of the apple juice. It was sampled on the afternoon of the freshman-sophomore ball game, and was found to be potent. Certain seniors showed they know how to drink cider, even if they are members of the Good Templars. Cider drunks and Indian war dances were in order for a number of nights, till at last the cask ran dry and consumed itself in a bonfire."

Believe it or not, college boys carried umbrellas in the 1880's. In 1883 the Echo called for umbrella stands in Champlin and Memorial halls. When they were installed that autumn, the Echo proudly announced, "Now the solemn umbrella can stand on its head and weep complacently while its owner goes into recitation for his customary flunk or drowses away a half hour at chapel."

In 1884 a grandstand was at last erected beside the baseball field. Previously the only seats at games had been provided by taking settees from the classrooms and returning them after the game. The new grandstand not only provided a better view of the playing field but also saved considerable wear and tear on the settees.

One of the student customs of the 1880's was the annual peanut drunk. In 1884 the Echo carried this story about the annual occasion. "It was this year a somewhat insipid affair as far as the drunk proper was concerned. About the time the peanuts arrived, the sophs also put in an appearance. It is said that barrels of Colby water were wasted on both parties. The freshmen strove valiantly to hold the fort and the peanuts. Although they succeeded in retaining the pea- nuts, they found there was not sufficient space in one room for both themselves and the sophs, so they kindly vacated the room, ably assisted by the sophs. The next morning all trace that remained was a light dampness about North College."

The sport known as "false orders," that had begun many years earlier, was flourishing during the Pepper administration. These "false orders" were usually burlesque programs of such college events as the speaking exhibitions. In the early 1900's they reached their scandalous apogee in the description of the an- nual Freshman Reading. One such sheet, which appeared early in Dr. Pep- per's presidency was entitled "Pepper and His Devils." Attached to all sorts of uncomplimentary epithets were such afterwards distinguished members of the Class of 1888 as Solomon Gallert, Albert F. Drummond, Emery B. Gibbs, Ad- dison B. Lorimer, and John F. Tilton. In 1887 there appeared another such publication called "The Devil's Auction," which made fun of such distinguished members of the Class of 1891 as Edward Mathews, Albert Caldwell, William Ab- bott Smith, Norman L. Bassett, and Franklin W. Johnson.

Very much to its credit, the Echo led a campaign against these scurrilous sheets, which as time went on grew worse and worse, extending from lambasting the freshmen to lampooning the faculty. In 1885 the Echo said: "Are there not some customs that had better disappear? Foremost among them is the custom of 'false orders'. No one respects a class for having anything to do with those productions, which are too often a disgrace to their authors and a scandal to the College." Two years later, in 1887, a different Echo editor had this to say: "Contrary to the expectations of a majority of the students, the ancient custom of distributing bad literature about the time of the Freshman Reading has been revived. In our opinion, it would have been much better if the members of '89

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had not resurrected this lost art, but we must admit their recent publication is comparatively a high moral sheet and, in that respect at least, is commendable."

What had happened was that, on the afternoon when the Freshman Read- ing was to be held in the evening, fliers appeared stating that the exhibition had been postponed for a week. The reason could not be determined until it was learned that the hand bills were wholly unauthorized. The reading exhibition took place and passed off without incident or disturbance. It was rumored that, in certain parts of the church, the olfactory nerves were somewhat affected, but if that was true it had no effect on the speakers.

For some time there had been student dissatisfaction with the method of se- lecting commencement speakers. During the first half century classes had been so small that every senior could have a speaking part in the graduation program, but by Dr. Pepper's time the increase in enrollment necessitated that a limited number of commencement speakers be selected from the graduating class. Until 1883 the speakers, except for the valedictorian, had been chosen by lot, with the result that sometimes the best speakers, as well as excellent scholars, were omitted from the program. Dr. Pepper suggested and received both faculty and student approval of a new plan, which the Echo described in its issue of June, 1883.

The Faculty has at last decided upon a method of choosing commence- ment speakers which is to be permanent. Three are to be chosen for excellence in general standing, three for excellence in rhetoric and com- position, and three by a faculty committee for excellence of a submitted article. The new rule gives all a chance. It does not restrict the choice to those who have merely attained excellence in studies, nor does it en- courage those who have done no work at all, as a choice by lot surely does.

By the time this historian entered the College in 1909, the narrow duck- board walks, so familiar to students of the '10's and '20's, offered some relief from the slush and mud of the 1880's.

We have already noted that, almost from the opening days of the College, students had partially met their expenses by teaching in rural schools during the long winter vacation. A new college calendar, adopted in 1884, caused dif- ficulty for those student-teachers. The winter vacation, which had formerly ex- tended from just before Christmas to the end of February, now did not begin until January 27, and the spring term opened on March 10. The college authori- ties evidently thought that student teaching had become less important. Yet the Echo pointed out that twenty-one sophomores and nine freshmen were doing such teaching in the spring of 1884, scattered in Maine communities from Tenants Harbor to Lebanon, and from Presque Isle to Scarborough. The Echo said:

The large number of students who leave college during the winter term indicates a mistake somewhere. The fault lies in the inconsistent and almost insane arrangement of terms. There are thirty-six weeks in the college year. This leaves sixteen weeks which a self-supporting student can use for earnings. If it were possible to have at least twelve of those weeks in one continuous vacation, he could use the time at infinitely better advantage. A return to the old arrangement would be appre- ciated, and fewer students would then be obliged to go through the farce of making up.

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Despite student protests, the long winter vacation did not return to the col- lege calendar. Within a few years the old district system in the common schools was abandoned for town supervision. No longer was each of some twenty school districts in a small Maine town an autonomous unit, deciding when and for how many weeks it would operate its school and selecting its own teacher by its own standards. Furthermore, the state normal schools were turning out more and more trained teachers, and under state laws requiring a school year of uniform length in all towns, teachers began to be hired on a year basis, not for a single term. By 1900 there was little demand for college students as teachers in the winter schools.

Electric lighting reached the College in the fall of 1887. In July, 1886, the Echo had said: "An immense amount of enthusiasm is being aroused by the scheme to light the college by electricity. The plan is at present only partially developed, but the probability is that eventually arc lights will be distributed over the campus and in the halls, while the incandescent variety will be installed in the students' rooms." A year later the paper announced, "Professor Elder has just put an electric light of the arc pattern in his recitation room. It will not be used for lighting purposes, however, but in his lecture work for projection on the screen." Three months later electric lights were in all the buildings.

Interest in sprucing up the grounds spread to the college lot in Pine Grove Cemetery. Many Colby people had forgotten that the College owned such a lot until some one informed President Pepper that it had long been neglected. A lot had originally been purchased in the old cemetery on Elm Street, now Monument Park, when in 1832 Frederic William Blish, a sophomore from Barn- stable, Massachusetts, had been drowned in the Kennebec. In the following year another drowning had taken the life of George Stevens of Bluehill, who was buried beside Blish. In 1836 the college community was shocked by the death of Jonathan Furbush, a student who had developed the Baptist mission on the "Plains," and who contracted pneumonia while on an errand of mercy among the poverty-stricken people of that area. In 1840 a fourth body was interred, that of Benjamin F. Preble of Camden. Why no relatives claimed any of these four bodies and took them home for burial, we do not know.

When the old cemetery was abandoned just before the Civil War, the bodies were removed to the new Pine Grove Cemetery at the south end of Waterville. There a lot was assigned to the College, and in it were placed the bodies of the four students. The place saw no other student burial until 1923, when a Chinese student, Li Fu Chi, died several thousand miles from his homeland a few months after his arrival at the College. Thanks to President Pepper's attention to the matter in 1886, the lot was afterwards kept in good condition.

Relations between town and gown were not always cordial, especially among the youth of college age. In the 1880's a slang phrase for certain groups of town boys was "yaggers." Reporting on a "Sociable" at the Congregational Church, the Echo said in 1884, "We were crowded and walked over by elderly parties, pelted with cakes by yaggers, and all the eligible young ladies went home with their parents. A freshman found his Bible in the possession of a yaggerine [a female yagger] who was loath to give it up."

Clashes between yaggers and college students became frequent. The Echo warned the students to avoid such encounters. "Do not demean yourselves by having anything to do with those whom you should regard as beneath your no- tice." To urge the students to "high hat" the town boys wasn't exactly the way to bring peace. Perhaps more to the point was a regulation of the Trustees,

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posting the grounds with warnings against loafers. But flouting such notices, yaggers, according to the Echo, continued "to perambulate the campus, hang about the gym, and assemble on the baseball field, where they hoot insults at our players."

The first inkling of student government at Colby appeared in an Echo edi- torial on November 12, 1886, soon after the campus newspaper had changed from monthly to bi-weekly publication.

The tendency of the times is toward liberalism, which manifests itself not only in a widening curriculum with increased electives, but also in making the college government more of, by, and for the students, rather than against them. The college administration is no longer a despotic oligarchy, terrorizing by blind injustice, wholly irresponsible. Rather, it seeks to secure peace by consultation with and approval of the stu- dents. To make such consultations more efficient, college juries, senates, and conference committees have been established. Something of this sort is needed at Colby, to create better understanding between the gov- ernors and the governed.

This and other pleas bore fruit in 1888, when President Pepper proposed a Board of Conference as a step toward student participation in the internal gov- ernment of the College. In July, 1889, the Trustees voted to set up such a board, consisting of a faculty committee made up of the President and two other members, and a student committee of ten members, of whom four were seniors, three juniors, two sophomores, and one a freshman. Each class elected its own representa- tives. The two committees met as a Conference Board. Their first act was to entrust the Student Committee with the maintenance of order in the dormitories and on the campus. The Conference Board proved an important asset in the administration of Dr. Pepper's successor, Albion Woodbury Small.

When Dr. Pepper left the presidency in 1889 he saw the College in much better circumstances than when he had assumed the office. The faculty had in- creased from nine to twelve members; the student body had grown from 124 to 153; and two generous benefactors, Gardner Colby and Abner Coburn, had each bequeathed more than $100,000 to the College endowment. George Dana Board- man Pepper handed over a sound and vigorous college to his successor, Albion Woodbury Small.

When he left the presidential chair, Dr. Pepper had not seen the last of Colby. After a year of travel abroad, he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist Church at Saco, but in 1892 he was called back to Colby to head the new de- partment of Biblical Literature. Dr. Pepper called the position a "Professor- ship of Holes," since its occupancy involved classes in Philosophy and Hebrew, as well as in Bible, and required the incumbent to direct administrative affairs in the absence of the President. His son-in-law, Professor Frederick Padelford, says that Dr. Pepper was thus Colby's first dean, although he never officially car- ried the title.5

In 1900, failing health made it necessary for him to leave his beloved task of teaching at the College. But that did not mean his abandonment of all teach- ing. Continuing their home in Waterville, both Dr. and Mrs. Pepper taught for another decade large classes of college students in the Baptist Sunday School. Feeling that his own constructive work was done, Dr. Pepper turned his atten- tion to helping his wife with her many religious and civic interests. His last pub-

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lic appearance was at the Colby Commencement dinner in 1912, when he was given a rising ovation. He died at his Waterville home on January 30, 1913.

He had been an able president, an inspiring teacher, a forceful preacher, a loving pastor and an exemplary friend of his fellow men. George Dana Board- man Pepper was a man decidedly worth his salt.

CHAPTER XXIII

Janitor Sam

N the many issues of the Colby Echo published between its origin in 1874 and the summer of 1903 no name appears so often as does that of Samuel Os- borne, the college janitor. During those twenty-nine years the college newspaper published more than three hundred items about Janitor Sam. Of the many men connected with Colby College during the last third of the nineteenth century, Sam Osborne was the best known, the best remembered and the best loved by students of that time. Presidents came and went, but Sam stayed on. Professors could dominate the classrooms, but Sam ruled the campus. When the students presented him with a gaudy cap, inscribed with the word "Janitor," Sam glee- fully accepted it as a jeweled crown of regal status, although he needed no crown to wield his authority.

Samuel Osborne was more than a janitor. He was campus policeman, un- official guidance officer, advisor alike to students and faculty, and above all a man of touching kindliness. Although always paid only meager wages, scarcely sufficient to support his family, Sam was always doing something for others. As late as 1896, when he had been employed by the College for nearly thirty years, his annual income amounted to only $480. For many years, on Thanks- giving Day, he and Mrs. Osborne had as dinner guests those Colby boys who could not go home for the holiday or were not invited to the homes of class- mates.

Combining gullibility with a certain primitive shrewdness, Sam was the butt of many a student prank, but equally quick to detect the prankster. With a sense of humor that was jovial rather than witty, he was often dumbfounded when a listener couldn't see anything funny in one of his stories. Of course the stu- dents egged him on to pompous speeches filled with amusing malaprops. Of course they played jokes on him and hustled him over the campus on many a wild goose chase. But they relished his good nature, appreciated his personal sympathy, and respected his complete loyalty to the College. Sam could him- self castigate the students for misdemeanors, but let any outsider criticize them and Sam would rise indignantly to their defense. They were his boys and no one outside the college family could say a word against them without hearing from Sam.

Samuel Osborne was a Negro slave whom the Civil War set free. He was never quite sure of his birthday. The Union officer who was his benefactor de- cided that Sam had been born on a plantation in King and Queen County, Vir- ginia, some time in 1833. Though Sam's father and mother belonged to dif- ferent masters, they were permitted to live and bring up their children in their

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own cabin. When Sam was a small boy his master, Dr. William Welford, moved to Fredericksburg, at the same time buying Sam's mother so that the slave family might not be separated.

Sam's babyhood playmate was another slave child, Maria Iverson, whom the doctor had secured in an exchange for another slave baby. Both Sam and Maria were favorites of Dr. and Mrs. Welford, and both were allowed to play constantly with the Welford's two sons. When, at the age of twenty, Sam again moved with his master to Culpepper, Virginia, he married his childhood play- mate Maria.

When the Civil War came, Dr. Welford felt he must disperse some of his slaves to prevent their capture by approaching Union troops. Sam's mother was sent farther south to the household of the Welford's married daughter, and Sam did not see her again until two years after the close of the war. Sam and Maria were kept on the Welford place in Culpepper, not only because the family was fond of both Negroes, but also because their service was valuable. Sam had been trained as a cook and Maria as a house maid. Neither ever worked as a field hand, and both had always been kindly treated. Though slaves, Sam and Maria Osborne never encountered a Simon Legree. For a time during the war Sam was placed as an overseer on the big Farley plantation near Danville, Virginia, close to the North Carolina border. There the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, was a frequent guest.

When the Union Army invaded Danville, Sam was freed. On the recom- mendation of Mrs. Robert Withers, wife of the prominent Virginia Unionist who later served in the United States Senate, Sam was given a job as a servant in the office of the United States Provost Marshal in Danville. That officer was Colonel Stephen Fletcher, a graduate of Waterville College in the Class of 1859.

Colonel Fletcher took a liking to Sam and saw in the jovial Negro possibili- ties that ought to be given a chance not possible in the South. He therefore pro- posed to take Sam to New England. To find an opportunity for the colored man to settle and be gainfully employed, Colonel Fletcher turned to his college president, James T. Champlin. With the help of the Waterville Baptist Church arrangements were made for Sam to work on a section erew of the Maine Cen- tral Railroad, and Colonel Fletcher personally paid expenses of the Negro and two daughters to Waterville.

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The history of Colby College, Part 30

Author: Colby College Publication date: 1963 Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press Number of Pages: 716

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716