The history of Colby College, Part 8

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

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As was uniformly true of most American education of that day, students studied specific books rather than subjects, and the usual method of recitation was to give to the instructor the text of the book verbatim, except in foreign languages, where translation was combined with laborious parsing. Chaplin there- fore informed Williams that, in the two-year course, the first year was devoted to Murray's Grammar, Kinney's Arithmetic, Cummings' Geography, Blair's Lectures abridged, and Hedge's Logic. The second year covered Fuller's Gospel Its Own Witness, Paley's Evidences of Christianity, Paley's Philosophy, Edwards' History of Redemption, Norton on the Prophecies, and Milner's Church History. Chaplin added, "During the first year the students are required to write weekly on some theological subject. In the second year they commence writing on a series of theological questions embracing the leading subjects of divinity, then go on to the composition of sermons, being encouraged to consult the most celebrated writers in the English language for information on their subjects."

President Chaplin showed both concern and energetic action in seeing that men were prepared to enter the college. Not only did he set up the Latin Gram- mar School under direct supervision of the college, but he encouraged many early graduates to take charge of the small academies which were springing up in the vicinity. He had let Henry Stanwood take over the academy at China even before that young man was ready to graduate. There Stanwood at once built up such a following that Chaplin let Hadley Procter go to assist the dynamic youth who, in that very year, was to be responsible for Elijah Parish Lovejoy's attendance at the college.

In a college where so many students were receiving financial aid, from the Education Society or from remissions specified in the grants from the State, it behooved those young men to maintain behavior above any suspicion of ex- travagance. Evidently John Hovey was one of the few students who fell under that suspicion, and the young man valiantly insisted that the charges were false. Later he became a leader in the teaching profession in Michigan and may him- self have encountered some "improvident scholars." But in 1823, he was in- dignant to be under such suspicion. Although he could have talked with President Chaplin easily, it was customary in those days to put such things in writing.

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

So the aggrieved John Hovey sat down with inkpot and quill and wrote to his college president the following letter:

I am charged with imprudence in respect to my expenses and the man- ner in which I use my clothes. It is true that, when I came to this place, I did purchase some clothing and a watch. If I can show that I was in absolute need of those things, my crime will not appear very great. I certainly needed a watch, as I then roomed at some distance from the place of recitation and was obliged to be there at the appointed time. As for my clothing, I appeal to you, sir, to judge whether, when I arrived, I had any in which I could appear abroad with decency. If I did not purchase these things on credit, how could I obtain them? I had not a cent of money. I had very encouraging prospect of being able to pay for the articles in the spring. I was requested to teach a school in Palermo, for which and for preaching I was offered $22 a month. I concluded to take the school and sent a letter to the agent. The letter miscarried, and of course I lost the school, and with it all my prospects of getting money during the winter.

I am charged with imprudence because I have some ornaments attached to my watch. The key and seal were given to me, and all I have ever expended on the watch is thirty cents. Perhaps I did make a foolish bargain last summer. I sold the watch I then had because it was not a good one, paid some of my debts with the money, and finding it dif- ficult to be without a watch, I purchased another, for which I am to pay next spring.

My debts total $65.65. I owe Mr. Balkam $16 for the watch; a Water- ville society $15 for cash advanced to me; to Mr. Burleigh eight dollars for cloth, trimmings and books; to Mr. Richards three dollars for shovel and tongs, slate and linen cloth; to Mr. Esty $2.25 for candles and a book; eight dollars to Mr. Sanborn for shoes; $1.25 to Mr. Dalton for cloth; one dollar for room rent to Mr. Dunbar and $1.90 to Mr. Foster for a book and cash. That all makes $55.65 which I owe in Waterville. I also owe Mr. Wilber of Boston ten dollars for books, so my total debts are $65.65.

I am further charged with imprudence because I wear my best clothes everyday. I had no other garments when I first came here that I could wear unless I clothed myself in rags. But within the past year I certainly have not worn my best clothes everyday.

You doubtless desire to know whether I have means sufficient to pay my debts. I wish I could answer in the affirmative. But I am under the painful necessity of informing you that at present I have no money at all. Whether I shall be able to obtain a school this winter I cannot tell. I can have a school for two months at fourteen dollars a month, and I have not much hope of doing better.

I assure you my debts occasion me great anxiety, and rather than go into debt again I would beg from door to door. If I have not been prudent, I think what I have suffered has taught me the necessity of prudence. Rather than not obtain a finished education to prepare me for more extensive usefulness in the gospel field, I would submit to any difficulties. I would feed upon the coarsest fare and lie on straw. I sub- scribe myself, your unworthy pupil,

John Hovey15

THE FIRST DECADE

What activities filled the college day in the 1820's? From the accounts that have come down to us in letters and memoirs, checked against the early college regulations, we can get a good picture of the students' daily tasks. In those years classes were held six days a week, straight through each day. No Saturday after- noon athletics-in fact no planned recreation of any kind interfered with the strict academic regime.

Students rose at five o'clock, long before daybreak in the winter months, dressed in cold rooms, then went outdoors to the college pump, where they filled buckets or pitchers for their morning ablutions. Then, donning jackets or sur- touts, they rushed off to morning chapel, at six o'clock in the long daylight hours, and in the winter as early as one could see to read without artificial light. The morning chapel and the first recitation of the day both came before breakfast, which consisted often of mush and molasses, usually with tea. Milk, which is consumed in unbelievable quantities by the modern college student, was scorned by those of the 1820's as fit only for infants and cats. After breakfast came a study period followed by a second recitation, then dinner. A third recitation in the afternoon was followed by prayers at early candlelight. In the evening all were expected to study, and checking up on them was the unmarried tutor who lived in the dormitory. On Sunday each student was expected to attend both morning and afternoon church services at either the Baptist or the Universalist church. The rules made exception in case a preacher of some other denomination held services in the town meetinghouse on the common. In that case, the stu- dent had a third choice for church attendance. But go to some service he must, and the requirement was rigidly enforced.

The college grounds looked much different when South and North Colleges were first built than they looked 120 years later, when they were about to be abandoned for the new site on Mayflower Hill. The whole area was covered with hard-wood growth and was especially noted for its numerous clusters of white birch. The slope between buildings and river was still thick with under- brush. There were no lawns between buildings and street, no straight rows of planted trees. At first there was no regular path to the highway, except one trod out by students who pushed the underbrush aside as they walked. In 1902, when Albert Paine of the Class of 1832 was a very old man, he told President Charles L. White how the first paths were made.

No such word as campus was used in our day. In my sophomore year there were no paths from the college to the public highway, nor any other noticeable feature of improvement, no ornamental trees or shrub- bery. Our small class being dissatisfied with the appearance of things as they were, went to work forming the path to the road, with a triangle in front of the space between the two doors of South College. The triangle was handsomely finished with a tree in its center and certain other embellishments. The tree stood and grew there for years, and may still be there.

In our junior year we lived in North College, where we found ourselves equally in want of a path to the road. Our class consisted of only four members, one of whom, Quimby, was a married man who lived in a rented house down town. That left only three of us to do the work. But being determined that the North should have equally with the South the benefit of our labors, and the seniors refusing their aid, we three went to work and completed the path and its semicircle green plot as it now is, save only that the latter has been much reduced in size by

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

subsequent widening of the paths along the front of the building. After completing the path we attended to the sodding of the green plot, Thomas cutting the sods, Ropes wheeling them in, and the hands that now hold this pen and paper laying them down.16

Elijah Foster, who obtained his degree in the second graduating class in 1823, had entered the Maine Literary and Theological Institution in the fall of 1820 and was one of those who followed Chaplin's advice to continue on for his college degree after the Maine Legislature gave the institution that authority and changed the name to Waterville College. On September 16, 1820, young Foster wrote a long letter to his father in Pembroke, Mass. After telling of the voyage from Boston to Augusta, which cost him ten dollars for transportation and one dollar for provisions purchased at Boston and at Dresden, the letter continues:

At Augusta I engaged passage to Waterville, and about noon went on board of a flat-bottomed boat which was fitted with a mast and two sails like the topsail of a ship. In that boat I sailed ten miles to Sidney, where I lodged on board, with the boat tied to the bank. We reached Waterville about ten o'clock the next morning. I was courteously re- ceived by Professor Briggs, to whom I first went. He took me to the house of Dr. Chaplin, where I tendered the papers I had received from the church and Mr. Torrey. He read them and told me they were sufficient, then asked me how far I had proceeded in my studies. I discovered that in the sophomore class is a man 27 years old, two years older than I shall be when I graduate. So, although I am now 22, I did not hesitate to enter the institution.

Foster then carefully listed for his father's inspection all expenses he had incurred during the four weeks since his arrival in Waterville. Board at $1.50 a week had come to $6.00. A lamp and a bottle of oil had cost him 50 cents. He had paid 10 cents for half a quire of letter paper, 50 cents for a pair of boots, $2.66 for a desk and chair, 12 cents for an inkstand, and 25 cents for a bunch of quills. He decided that one last item, a bottle of wine, 33 cents, called for explanation. He wrote:

My health was good during the first two weeks, but then I grew feeble on account of intense study. So I bought a quart of wine, which I think has helped me greatly so that I expect to begin next week with as much strength as usual.

Elijah Foster informed his father he had decided not to augment his income by occasional preaching.

In the vicinity of this town there are vacant churches supplied by the students. Yesterday I was invited to preach next Sabbath in Fairfield, eight miles distant, but I had this excuse to make: I have no authority --- no license. At present I think it best not to have a license, for then I should be called upon more than I ought.

Foster had formed an attachment to Thomas Merrill and Joshua Goodridge.

THE FIRST DECADE

I admire them for their piety and devotion, which like a flame enkindles the heart of the coldest Christian and discovers itself to the world in a thousand ways.17

Not all students in the 1820's were so favorably impressed by the religious atmosphere as was Elijah Foster. Into the college, which had already opened its doors to students of all religious faiths, there came in 1824 an Episcopalian from Newburyport, Massachusetts, named James Tappan. What is even more in- teresting, in view of the solid Baptist character of the teaching, Tappan was a student, not in the college, but in the already declining theological department. How did an Episcopal candidate for the ministry get along in that Baptist en- vironment in 1825? We have the answer in Tappan's own words, written to an unidentified member of the Kennebec Valley's most prominent Episcopal church of the time, the church founded by the Gardiner family at Gardiner, Maine. Tappan told his correspondent that he was getting along very well on ten shil- lings sixpence a week. Board cost eight shillings, and he was making two shillings sixpence meet all other expenses. Then he got to the subject which was really on his mind.

You doubtless recollect that yourself, Mrs. Gardiner and Mr. Olney thought proper to advise me to spend three years in studying here. But perhaps when you again contemplate the manner in which I was to spend the third year, which was to devote it wholly to writing upon theological subjects; and when you consider how I am situated, deprived of attending the church to which I am strongly attached, without one friend of my own sentiments with whom I can freely converse; and when you con- sider that the third year may be much better improved by study and writing with an Episcopal clergyman, I think you will agree with my other friends, that I had better not remain here. My situation here is as good as can be expected. I am used fairly and no one treats me with hostility. But I shall not be fully content until I am with my own brethren.18

Tappan mentions having received financial assistance from several Episco- palians in Portland and other places. At the end of his letter we learn the identity of one of these patrons. "Please express my sincerest thanks to R. H. Gardiner, Esq., for the favour received 27th inst." Worthy of historical comment is the fact thus revealed. The great land owner of the Kennebec, heir of the founder of Gardinertown, owner of mills and ships and shops --- the very man who had sold to the Trustees of Waterville College the land on which they had erected two imposing buildings-that staunch Episcopalian Federalist actually helped finance an Episcopal student in Jeremiah Chaplin's Baptist classes.

If the college grounds were rough and untended, if students had to make the only paths, if chapel was held at six in the morning and there were three recitations every day six days a week, in what sort of a town did these things take place? What was Waterville like in the 1820's?

Fortunately several descriptions of the place, written by men who knew it well, are preserved. One such man was William Mathews of the Class of 1835, who was born in Waterville and had been a schoolboy in the town during the first decade of Colby history. He became a prominent author of inspirational books, of which the best known was Getting on in the World, published in Canadian and British, as well as American editions, and translated into German,

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

Magyar, and all the Scandinavian languages. When Dr. Edwin Whittemore edited the Centennial History of Waterville in 1902, William Mathews was still living, and he contributed a notable chapter to that history.19 From that and from other sources, such as the Stackpole diaries, the records of the Moor and Gilman fam- ilies, letters of Dr. Moses Appleton, and memoirs of various citizens of Water- ville and Winslow, one can get a picture of the college town in the 1820's.

A quarter of a century would yet elapse before the railroad reached Central Maine. There was a daily stage into town from Augusta, but it came, not by the present more common route through Vassalboro, but up the west side of the river through Sidney. William Mathews described the coming of that daily stage.

The arrival of the mail stage from Augusta, which was at 11 A.M. daily, was in my boyish days an important event. As it rounded the bend in Silver Street, just north of my father's house, the driver drew forth his long horn and blew a loud and vigorous blast. As the stage stopped at Levi Dow's tavern on Main Street opposite the head of Silver, all the quidnuncs and loafers of the village flocked to learn the latest news.

Not until 1827 were bridges built across the Kennebec and the Sebasticook. Anyone who wanted to cross the rivers had to do so by boat. Between the Winslow shore of the Kennebec near the mouth of the Sebasticook and the Water- ville side down on "the Plains," there was regular ferry service. Mathews re- called that "in the winter, as soon as the water had frozen on both sides of the river, it was customary to cut a huge cake of ice and swing one end of it to the other side of the rapid current, thus forming a bridge."

Not all arrivals in Waterville came by stagecoach or longboat. It was a memorable day on June 1, 1832, when the stern-wheel steamer Ticonic came all the way to Waterville from Hallowell. It was followed by other steamers, in- cluding the ill-fated Halifax, on which six persons lost their lives when her boiler exploded in the lock at Augusta in 1848.

William Mathews tells of one incident which reveals both the slowness of transportation and the methods of transporting funds in the 1820's.

I once spent six days going from Waterville to Boston. As we left Gardiner, a furious snowstorm developed so that we were obliged to tarry two days at a small country inn, which was overcrowded with Americans and Canadians of all ages. As I had in a capacious outside pocket of my overcoat a package, five or six inches thick, of bank bills, amounting to $4000, entrusted to me by the Waterville Bank, to be de- livered to the Suffolk Bank in Boston, the situation was not very pleasant. Fortunately, as no one could have a bed to himself, I found a student of Waterville College among the guests, and had him and my package for bedfellows. After two days' delay, we waded through huge drifts to Brunswick, and next morning rode on the crust of the deep snow, which covered all the fences on the way to Portland. On the next day a ride of seventeen hours in the mail stage took us to the Eastern Stage Tavern on Ann Street in Boston. Once on the way we were upset in the darkness and a fat man rolled down upon me, but fortunately no bones were broken and no bank bills were missing.

On Silver Street, as early as 1825, there was a dancing hall, but it is doubt- ful if it received much patronage from the Baptist students at Waterville College.

THE FIRST DECADE

The hall was also used for theatrical exhibitions, and James Stackpole, Jr. re- membered that the stage had a drop curtain on which was painted a scene of the Battle of Waterloo, fought only a few years earlier. Another reminiscence concerned a lecture in that hall, where the speaker exhibited a miniature railway car, to show a curious audience the new kind of travel that had just come to far- away Baltimore.

Waterville in the 1820's was the trading center of a growing agricultural community. Industry, especially in the form of large corporations, had not yet come to Maine. In fact, as late as 1848, when Dr. Valorus Coolidge was tried for Waterville's first murder, ten of the twelve jurors from the Kennebec towns were farmers. Even the wealthy owners of Waterville real estate spent part of their time raising crops. The farms of Nathaniel Gilman the merchant and Timothy Boutelle the lawyer carted vast quantities of wheat, corn and oats to the Moor and Mathews wharves for shipment down the river. The Mathews wharf was the point of departure for the ship of Simeon Mathews, father of William. Simeon once made the proud statement that he had shipped 40,000 bushels of potatoes to Boston in a single year.

When Jeremiah Chaplin began his classes in Waterville, the Augusta dam had not yet obstructed the annual run of fish up the river. Salmon weighing as much as twenty pounds were frequent catches, and the take of shad and herring was enormous. Asa Burnham, an early resident of Winslow, said he had seen alewives so plentiful that they sold for ten cents a hundred, and Asa asserted that the Sebasticook had been known for its superior fishing ever since Indian times.

Those first Colby students, 140 years ago, must have had plenty of oppor- tunity to see the Maine militia in action. Waterville had three companies: light infantry, artillery, and a kind of nondescript company without uniform, but equipped with bayonet-belt and knapsack. That last company was derisively called the "String Beans." The annual muster was a great occasion, and since it was always held in the summer, college was probably in session, because there was only an interval of two weeks between Commencement in mid-August and the opening of the fall term in early September. So the students at Waterville College probably saw more than one of those boisterous musters. Peddlers of gingerbread and rum, of horns and whistles, were all over the grounds, just as they were at the college commencements. The day always closed with a sham fight, and among a lot of the militiamen, inspirited physically as well as emo- tionally, there sprang up plenty of fights that were not sham. The usual drill field was on the west side of upper Main Street between what are now Center and North Streets, but it was not large enough for the musters. Those gala events were held on the more spacious acres of "The Plains."

Concerning the beverages of the time William Mathews wrote:

Alcoholic liquors were sold in those ante-Neal Dow days in nearly all the stores in Waterville, and there were comparatively few abstainers. Punctually, as the clock struck 11 A.M. and 4 P.M., the dry-throated citi- zens thronged to the barrooms and quenched their thirst with brandy, gin, or New England rum. In the dwelling houses of the well-to-do citizens, sideboards with bottles of brandy and wine were ready for the entertainment of all guests, including the minister.

We should not be surprised therefore, at the discovery in the account book of a Waterville store, that during the summer of 1819, when local citizens helped

HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE

erect the President's house, the College was charged for 33 gallons of New Eng- land rum.

As for the kind of people who inhabited Waterville in those days when the college was young, let us again leave it to William Mathews to tell us.

Waterville could never boast of many wealthy citizens, even in the days when a man possessing ten thousand dollars was regarded as independent, and one with twenty-five thousand was definitely rich. The citizens of the town were generally prudent and thrifty, spending less than they earned. The few persons who flew their financial kites high were looked upon with suspicion. Nathaniel Gilman, for many years the richest man in town, made the bulk of his fortune in the leather business in New York City. The richest man ever born in Waterville did not make his money here, for Daniel Wells went in his youth to Wisconsin, where he became a multimillionaire. But the majority of Waterville people, in my boyhood and college days, were just honest, hard-working, frugal citi- zens of whom any community can be proud.

In the summer of 1824, Dr. Chaplin was asked to state definitely what it would cost for a young man to attend Waterville College, since everyone knew the erection of two buildings and the addition of a tutor must have increased the charges from the rock-bottom figures of the original theological department. Chap- lin replied that tuition and room rent for the college year of thirty-eight weeks was now $22.00; board at nine shillings a week was $50.57, wood $2.25, oil $2.00, use of classical books $6.00, tax for commencement dinner $1.00, and general re- pairs 50 cents. The total was $84.32. When he was asked how the charge for tuition and room rent was divided, Chaplin said that tuition was $16 a year. His reply meant that the college charge for a room in South College or North College was only $6.00 a year, or $2.00 a term.

In 1823, when George Dana Boardman decided to prepare himself for mis- sionary work in Burma, he resigned as a tutor at the college, and his place was taken by his only classmate, Ephraim Tripp, to whom the Trustees agreed to pay "a sum equal to $200 per annum," but in what commodity the equivalent was to be paid the record sayeth not. Tripp was joined by a second tutor, Elijah Foster, so that the college might have an instructor on duty in each of the dormitories, and many are the student anecdotes, factual and legendary, concerning Tripp, Foster, and the latter's successor, Addison Parker.

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The history of Colby College, Part 8

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