USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 31
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How Sam managed to care for the two girls, neither of whom was of sehool age, and at the same time work for the railroad for the six months before Maria joined him, has not been explained. In an account of Sam's life, published in the Colby Echo some dozen years before he finished his long service as the col- lege janitor, it was stated that "he rented the college house which later served as a boarding house and stood at the north end of the campus."1 The account suggests that Sam rented that house immediately after his arrival, because the preceding sentence reads, "Sam arrived on May 22, 1865." Perhaps Colonel and Mrs. Fletcher kept Sam and his daughters in their own home longer than has been supposed. Certainly some woman must have cared for the two little ones while Sam was at work. Anyhow, in November, 1865, Baptist friends con- tributed the necessary funds for Sam to return to Virginia and bring Maria and the baby daughter back with him to Waterville. He did more than that, for accompanying Sam on that November journey to Maine was his father who had been a slave for seventy-two years.
It was the father, not the son, who was first employed as janitor by the College. The old man served in that capacity for two years, until his death.
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All that time he had almost daily help from Sam, during the hours when the younger man was not on duty with the railroad. In 1867 Sam left the Maine Central and took over his father's job as college janitor.
Before Sam came to Waterville, he was already a member of a Baptist church-a colored church at Culpepper, Virginia. Perhaps that is one point that attracted Colonel Fletcher to him, because the Colonel was a staunch Baptist. Of course, immediately upon his arrival in Waterville Sam attended the old col- lege church that had been founded in 1818 by Jeremiah Chaplin. After Sam had been in Waterville a year, the Waterville Baptist Church spread upon its records the following vote:
June 30, 1866
Samuel Osborne is a colored brother who was baptized and for several years was a member of a Baptist church in Culpepper, Va. But the scattered state of the church, together with the unhappy state of feel- ing existing in the South toward their brothers in the North, rendering it impracticable to obtain a letter of dismission, it was voted to receive Samuel Osborne into membership on his experience.
Except for a few very aged persons, too infirm to submit to baptism by immersion, the first person ever to be accepted into the Waterville Baptist Church by any method except baptism or letter of dismissal from another church was a former Negro slave, Samuel Osborne.
When Sam took up his janitorial duties the College had only three build- ings, only sixty students, and only four persons on the faculty. In the very next year Memorial Hall was built, and a few years later came Coburn Hall, then the Gymnasium, and in 1889 the Shannon Laboratory and Observatory. When Sam ended his service in 1903, those seven buildings comprised his janitorial do- main, for he had no duties connected with Ladies Hall or any of the other buildings owned by the College on the avenue between the campus and the Elm- wood Hotel. At first Sam could easily do all the work, assisted by one or two students. As the number of buildings increased, and as central heating was in- troduced, there was more than Sam and a couple of students could do, but until after his death the College employed no second janitor. It simply increased the number of student sweepers and fire tenders. As late as President Roberts' time, in the second decade of the century, one janitor and a plumber comprised the entire full-time maintenance staff on the campus, although others were employed for buildings in the Women's Division down the street.
Soon after Sam's arrival a State Sunday School Convention was held in Waterville. As an added attraction the host church persuaded Sam to sing a solo. Like so many Negroes, he had a fine, rich voice; and he was a novelty, for most of the Maine folk who attended the convention had never seen a Negro, and even fewer had ever seen a Negro slave. To give full effect to the program, Sam was wrapped in an American flag before his voice burst forth in song. So thoroughly did he capture the audience that right on the spot a collection was taken to start a fund to bring his wife Maria to Waterville.
Negro marriages in slave days did not always have the benefit of clergy, and the strait-laced Waterville Baptists were suspicious about the validity of Sam's and Maria's marriage, though both husband and wife insisted it had been performed by a regular minister. Of course the Civil War had erased all of- ficial record of the event. So Sam and Maria agreed to have another ceremony
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performed in Waterville, in the presence of President and Mrs. Champlin, Pro- fessor and Mrs. Charles Hamlin, Professor and Mrs. Samuel K. Smith, and other prominent citizens. It was soon afterward, as has been related in an earlier chapter, that the Hamlins legally adopted little Lulu, the baby whom Sam had left in Virginia with Maria when he first came to Waterville.
Sam had not been long in Maine when he became an enthusiastic member of the Waterville Lodge of Good Templars, the national society made up of men who crusaded for temperance and total abstinence in regard to intoxicating liquor, during the latter years of the nineteenth century as ardently as the women of the W.C.T.U. crusaded for it in the early years of the twentieth. In 1887 Sam was elected a delegate to the national convention of Good Templars in Rich- mond, Virginia. What a glorious day it must have been when Sam Osborne returned to the Old Dominion where he had once been a slave, now not only a free man, but a respected delegate from a state where white persons outnumbered those of his race by more than a thousand to one. The crowning event of Sam's career as a Good Templar came in 1902, when he was a delegate to the inter- national convention of the order at Stockholm, Sweden. Sam was given the honor of being color-bearer of the American delegation, and he proudly carried the Stars and Stripes through the streets of the Swedish capital.
That same summer saw Dr. Frederick Padelford again in Waterville. He encountered Sam on the campus and conversed with him about the trip to Sweden. Knowing that Sam had been one of six Good Templars from six different races presented to the Swedish royal family, Dr. Padelford asked Sam if he had any conversation with those royal persons. "O, yes sah," replied Sam, "I talked to de princess." "What did she say to you, Sam?" "She say to me, 'Sam, how old be you?'" "What did you tell her?" "I said, 'Princess, dat's for you to find out. How ole be you?' "2
It has generally been believed that when Sam first came to Waterville he could neither read nor write. Dr. Padelford found reason to doubt that state- ment, although he agreed that Sam's learning could not have been very exten- sive. Dr. Padelford wrote: "Sam found warm friends in Dr. Welford's sons, and with them enjoyed some of the sports of boyhood. When the boys were old enough to be sent to school, Sam was moved with the desire to learn to read and write, and in pursuance of this end bought an old spelling book, which was purchased with money saved from selling rags. Many a long evening, after the other slaves had gone to bed, Sam pored over the mysteries of that book, stretched out before the cabin fire. It was slow work and Sam did not make much progress."3
It is probably that same spelling book that a writer in the Colby Echo had in mind when he stated that, after Sam's arrival in Waterville, he went to Sunday School with his spelling book in hand. However he learned, Sam certainly could read simple English and could write considerably more than his name before Dr. Padelford's own class of 1896 first knew the Negro janitor in their freshman year.
Sam had been only a short time in Waterville when he was encouraged to buy a house on Ash Street, the College taking a substantial mortgage on the prop- erty. At their annual meeting in 1881, the Trustees voted to add one hundred dollars a year to Sam's salary, "the same to be endorsed on the note held by the College against him." At that time Sam was paid the princely wage of $300 a year. While Sam never saw any of the added $100, it did help gradually to re- duce his mortgage. When Sam died in 1904, the College paid the funeral ex- penses, and a month before his death the Trustees, expressing deep regret at his serious illness, canceled the mortgage note on his home.
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Incidents connected with Sam's long tenure as janitor are numerous. The Echo gave the following account of Sam's annual entertainment of students at Thanksgiving dinner in 1890.
Sam gave his usual Thanksgiving dinner to the students who remained in town and were not otherwise provided for. The feast, like all that had preceded it, was a royal one. Sam was in his best mood. His jokes were good and his confidential remarks about professors and classes were well timed. He does not understand how Professor Rogers can swell a piece of steel by keeping it in an awful hot room. Sam says all his experience in machine shops shows him that the action of heat on steel is extremely slow. He says Professor Rogers burns more wood than all the other professors together.
The cap, with its big letters spelling out Janitor-Colby, was not the only bit of wearing apparel given to Sam Osborne by his "boys." In the early winter of 1890, a particular freshman became adept at defying the regulations laid down by the sophomores. Furthermore he led bands of freshmen in attacks on their supposed rulers of the Class of 1893. One night a barrage of rather aged eggs came through open sophomore windows. The sophomores, spotting a well- known freshman as chief perpetrator, kidnapped the fellow and spirited him off to a hideaway in Fairfield Center. After his captors finally dumped him into a snowbank and left him, the humiliated freshman made his early morning way back to the dormitory. Then, to the great surprise of the sophomores, the kid- nap victim filed complaint with the Conference Board (the faculty-student com- mittee set up to handle such matters), demanding payment for his torn over- coat. He exhibited the garment to the Board, pointing to a long rip in the back and a torn sleeve. The sophomores retorted that the Board, charged with con- trol of campus and dormitories, had no jurisdiction in Fairfield Center. Their spokesman, who came from a town on the Maine coast, even applied the rule of sea, declaring that Fairfield Center was outside the three-mile limit. The Board held for the plaintiff, and every member of the sophomore class was charged 60 cents on his term bill. On the basis of that decision, the sophomores claimed possession of the overcoat, and the Board agreed. With great solemnity, in ap- propriate ceremony, the damaged coat was then presented to Janitor Sam, who wore it for a few weeks, despite the fact that he was a foot shorter than the original owner and the skirts of the coat dragged on the ground.
One of the most delightful recollections of Sam was held by Colby's dis- tinguished woman graduate, Miss Louise Coburn of the Class of 1877, for she knew of Sam's activities and characteristics in his younger days. Sam had been in Waterville only eight years when Miss Coburn entered the College, and she had seen the jovial darkie even earlier, during her preparatory years at Coburn Classical Institute. Here is Miss Coburn's story.
The College authorities assigned to the women a room on the lower floor of Champlin Hall, where we could spend the forenoon study pe- riod. Here we could leave our heavy wraps and overshoes when we went to class. Here too we kept our Latin and Greek lexicons and grammars. Sam Osborne, the faithful janitor, kept the room clean and, in winter, saw that we had a fire in the little, air-tight stove. He often came when we were there, to feed the fire with another stick of wood. One morning he noticed a chair slumped down with two broken legs.
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He asked us who had broken the chair. Of course we did not know. Sam then pompously informed us that, if he couldn't find the culprit, the expense of mending the chair would be charged on our own term bills as 'gin'ral repairs to ladies' chairs'. Thereupon one of our number confessed that she had broken the chair, and Sam departed in exulting satisfaction. So, whenever I think of Sam, I remember him as he stood waving his arms and shaking his head, and uttering repeated threats of 'gin'ral repairs on ladies' chairs.'
Because the students always called him "Professor Sam," the colored janitor came to consider himself quite on a par with the faculty, although he never altered his deferential attitude toward the legal members of that august body. At each commencement season, immediately after the senior ceremony known as "Last Chapel," it was necessary for "Professor Sam" to say goodbye to the departing seniors. Although there was always an element of burlesque about it and the seniors were still having fun with Sam, as they had through all their college days, many a hardened senior's eyes were moist as they listened to the little Negro.
On one spring day a freshman saw the colored janitor burning over the campus grass. "Sam," said the freshman, "that fire makes the ground almost as black as you are." Sam quickly replied, "Yes sah, an' in a few weeks the sun an' rain will make it as green as you are."
One day a senior asked Sam what he expected to do when he got to heaven. His reply was honest and genuine: "Ah'll just go on takin' care o' my Colby boys." "But suppose you don't get to heaven, Sam?" "Den I'll just take care ob a lot more o' my Colby boys."
One day a vagrant who had imbibed freely appeared on the campus near Coburn Hall. A student audience quickly assembled, while the stranger held forth on politics. The presidential election of 1888 was about to be held, and the inebriated fellow kept shouting again and again, "Rah for Grover Cleveland." Sam, who was a staunch Republican, heard the racket and ran wildly to the railroad station calling for "Mister Hill," the local constable. Before that worthy could be summoned, the fellow took warning and departed. When Sam was asked about it later, "What did I do with that Democrat? Why, I druv him off."
One Sunday afternoon in 1890 Sam's cow, which at the time was grazing back of Recitation Hall, somehow got into an empty room in North College. It was obvious that Bossy hadn't found that sanctuary without guidance. At the end of the afternoon Sam came down from his Ash Street home to take the cow up home, and nowhere on the campus was that cow. Gradually a crowd gathered about the bewildered janitor. Suspicion dawned upon him, but re- membering that the day was Sunday, he felt called upon to mingle pious admoni- tion with his plea for student sympathy. He said: "All you Christians better dis- perse to your rooms. I wouldn't sacrifice my character by being out in this crowd on a Sabbath afternoon. You seniors and juniors jes' set an example for the younger gemmen. Remember I am your frien'. I do not sleep if I think you will suffer. An' what do you do? I was settin' in my room to get a nap o' sleep when I hear you yellin'. I come right over, and now, gemmen, I wan' to know, where is my cow? That cow is the mos' val'ble thing I own. She is worth seventy-five dollars. You jes' show me where is my cow an' I won't tell President Small." After further extolling of his own virtues and reiterated assurance of his love for the boys, Sam was at last guided to the room where his cow stood
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in silent, ruminating contemplation, and amid applause of the assembled students Sam led her triumphantly home.
Despite his gullibility, Sam was almost uncannily alert to the kind of pranks students were likely to repeat year after year. A group of boys would work into the small hours of the morning doing such things as spreading molasses on the chapel seats, removing all furniture from a classroom, or putting a load of hay into the library, only to their complete amazement go to the place just before chapel or class hour to find everything cleaned up and no evidence that any- thing unusual had happened.
Sam had a prodigious memory. He never failed to recognize a returning alumnus, regardless of how long the man had been graduated. Once some campus wag taught Sam to memorize a literal translation of the Funeral Oration of Pericles. That oration always caused trouble for students of freshman Greek when they encountered it each spring. So, year after year, Sam would at first sympathize with the struggling freshmen, then offer to help them. Since even freshmen had then been in college long enough to know that Sam's ability to read and write in English, to say nothing of Greek, was decidedly limited, one can imagine the surprise of such students when they saw Sam take the book and reel off a perfect translation. Sometimes a class was less surprised when one of them noticed that Sam was holding the book upside down.
During the college year of 1903-1904 Sam became seriously ill and at Com- mencement in late June it was apparent that the end was near. On the first day of July, in the little house on Ash Street, there sat beside Sam's bed the mem- bers of his family, the President of the College, and the Pastor of the Baptist Church. To his only son, Eddie, Sam committed the care of Maria in her de- clining years. Then with his dimming eyes sweeping around the room to all of them, family, President and pastor, Sam said his last "Good Night."
Years before, when Maria once asked Sam to attend to some work around the house, he agreed to do it but insisted there were things he must do at the College first. Maria said to him, "I s'pose if you were dead, you'ld have to go to the College." Little did the kindly Negro woman know how prophetic were her words. In death Sam was indeed taken to the College, into the college chapel, where he was given a memorable funeral. Every newspaper in New England reported it. Every seat in the room was taken; chairs were placed in the aisles, and persons stood all around the room. President White and Pastor Whittemore paid simple, yet eloquent tributes to the old Negro. Said the Portland Press, "Perhaps no other man who was born a slave ever had the tribute paid to him which was paid by President White of Colby, who said, 'He was one whom we respected and loved. We respected him for his faithfulness and devotion to the College; we loved him for his gentle, warm and confiding nature. He has cared for the sick, chided the erring, and encouraged us all by his simple, pure, unaffected Christian character.' Probably no other black man born in slavery ever had a college president watch at his bedside and minister to him in his last moments. Probably none other was ever buried from a college chapel with the same president officiating, and with not only college students and faculty, but also a whole concourse of leading citizens attending to testify their appreciation of this simple, genuine colored gentleman."
Sam Osborne was such a thorough extrovert that it is easy for the historian to overlook the more shy and retiring Maria, his wife. But students of the time neither overlooked nor forgot the wonderfully kind woman whom they called "Mother Osborne." Her doughnut and cookie jars had their covers constantly
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lifted in behalf of hungry boys, who often found their way from the campus to the Ash Street home. Dr. Padelford testified, "Maria was the very duchess of doughnuts and the princess of pies, and we hungry boys were always glad to pay homage to her cooking. Sam and Maria had raised a large family of affectionate, interesting children, and it was a pleasant sight to see them before the cheerful fire of an evening, with their happy children grouped about them. Many an evening did we spend there, listening to Sam's stories of his boyhood, or to reminiscences of the college days of men now grown gray and famous."4
Sam and Maria Osborne had eight children, six of them girls. One boy had died an infant in Virginia. Amelia was for several years the beloved and deeply respected housemother of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. Marion, the only one of the children to receive a college degree, graduated from Colby in 1900, mar- ried D. G. Mathieson after serving several years as teacher and bookkeeper, then after her husband's death in Brooklyn, N. Y., returned to Waterville to live with her brother and sisters, her mother having died in 1913. Marion was a talented singer. Alice, the only child of the Osborne's still living when this chapter was written, was for many years office receptionist and secretary to Dr. Percy Merrill. Since Dr. Merrill was a prominent DU alumnus, Alice, like her sister Amelia, felt close to the Delta Upsilon Fraternity.
The one boy in the Osborne family was Edward S., born in 1873, eight years after his father and mother had come to Waterville. Every citizen of Waterville who frequented the Maine Central station knew and liked Eddie Os- borne. For more than half a century Eddie was employed as an Express Mes- senger on Maine Central trains.
In the fall of 1893 Eddie Osborne entered Colby College, but decided he must leave and go to work after he had attended only one year. At Waterville High School, where he graduated in 1893, Eddie had been prominent on the baseball team, getting a state-wide reputation as a heavy hitter. He played on the championship Colby nine in the spring of 1894, and on the old diamond near Shannon Hall, in the home game against Bowdoin, Eddie hit the longest home run ever seen on those grounds.
It was when he left college in 1894 that Eddie at once went to work for the express company. In 1944, he was honored as the first Railway Express Mes- senger in the nation to receive the company's fifty-year medal, a gold pin studded with four diamonds. Edward S. Osborne died in 1956 at the age of 83, faithful and honored son of a faithful and honored father.
In all the annals of Colby history, one of its best remembered persons is an unschooled, naive colored man who was once a Southern slave. He deserves the fond remembrance, for Samuel Osborne was more than a faithful servant, more than a jolly teller of stories, more than a devout worshipper at the Baptist Church. Samuel Osborne was the Abou Ben Adhem of Colby-a friend to his fellow men.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Great Coordinator
C ONVINCED that his health would not permit him to continue the heavy duties of the presidency, Dr. Pepper offered his resignation in 1889. In their statement of reluctant acceptance the Board said: "He leaves the College with a broader reputation and a grander equipment than when he entered the office. In his efforts to bring the College and the denomination into closer sympathy, he performed a work which was most fruitful. We note with pleasure the state- ment of a senior member of this Board, that of the several administrations he has known during his official connection with the College for forty years, none has been more satisfactory to the friends of Colby than has that of Dr. Pepper."
Again, as they had done in 1857 when they called James Champlin to the presidency, the Trustees turned to a member of the faculty. Dr. Pepper especially had been watching the intellectual growth of that man with interest and approval. The Lincolnesque clergyman felt easier in his decision to withdraw because he could confidently recommend as his successor the Professor of History, Albion Woodbury Small.
When he became Colby's ninth president, Small won several "firsts." He was the first Colby graduate to preside over the College. He was also the first son of a Colby graduate to be its president, his father being the noted Baptist leader, Dr. A. K. P. Small of the Class of 1849. He was also the first Colby president to hold the earned degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Finally, he was, up to that time, the youngest man to enter the presidential office, being but thirty- five years old in 1889.
Like his father, Albion Small had intended to make the ministry his career. Graduating from Colby as valedictorian of the Class of 1876, he had entered Newton Theological Institution and had earned then the B.D. degree in 1879. Even in college he had become interested in history and philosophy, although opportunity to study those subjects in depth was notoriously lacking. At Newton, despite the emphasis on theological studies, Small became increasingly interested in history, especially in its relation to political science. At that time, any man who sought advanced scholarly pursuits turned to the German universities. There a number of Colby teachers, including Professor Hall, had already preceded Small, when he sat at the feet of Europe's leading scholars at the universities of Berlin and Leipsic for more than a year. After traveling through several European countries and studying political economy at the Sorbonne, Small returned to the United States, having been absent for two years.
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