USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > New London > A centennial history, 1837-1937, Colby Academy, Colby Junior College > Part 17
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They followed this with surprising victories over the Rockland Military Academy and Tilton Seminary, but they had to bow to the superior skill of Dartmouth "Medics." Colby boys years before had won a reputa- tion at Brown for their college athletics. Now with fourteen representatives in the college it seemed worth while to form a Colby Academy Club, with Chauncey E. Wheeler, Colby '05, as president. He was at that time the president of the senior class in college. The club strengthened the relations of college and academy. Many Brown men had been on the Colby faculty and many boys had gone to Providence from New London, but now the path between the two was paved with re- newed good intentions.
Henry J. Hall, a Brown alumnus and for several years a faculty member in the philosophical department there, came to the academy to take charge of the department of science, and restored the reputation of the department to the place it had occupied in the days of Professor Griffin. He remained for a term of eight years, long enough to establish scholastic standards. Julia M. Gay, Colby '90, after study at the University of Chicago and a school career in the Middle West, assumed the re- sponsibilities of preceptress at the academy, remaining a long term of years until her health failed. Florence E. Rich, a graduate of Bates College, taught French and German for four years. Maud N. Eaton, a graduate of Colby College, was responsible for mathematics and Greek for four years. These terms of service, lasting longer than usual, made possible a continuity of policy and the establishment of lasting personal friendships between pupils and teachers. It was no lack of appreci- ation of the qualities of their teachers that prompted such verses as these that appeared in the Colby Voice:
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UP FROM THE DEPRESSION. 1899-1912
THE FACULTY
Who is it greets us in the Fall, In altitude both short and tall, With kindly words and smile for all? The Faculty.
Who is it tells us what to do, And opens up some vista new, And counsels us to action true?
The Faculty.
Who is it heals our boyish hurts, And mends our mental pants and shirts, Yet scolds one if he ever flirts? The Faculty.
Who is it treats our girlish ills, Until each several bosom thrills,
Because it isn't on the bills?
The Faculty.
Who is it overlooks the rest, And entertains each just request, And to each effort addeth zest? The Principal.
Who is it lets with kindly eye, When laugh is loud and courage high, Our blissful spirits have their fly? The Principless.
'Tis they who teach us lines and things, And little circles round like rings, And awkward shaped trianglings. That Faculty.
And oh! the smudges that we make, With many a breath of quick intake. We do not know but life's at stake In Chemistry.
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And then around the wheels do go, While hydrostatics ebb and flow, There's many a thing we fain would know In Physics.
'Tis hurry here and hurry there, 'Tis be alert and have a care, Until we almost pluck our hair In sheer dismay.
Our nerves are frayed to frazzled ends, We do not know our foes from friends, And bless the day when father sends The price to pay.
Who is it stirs our deepest ire, And threatens us in accents dire, Whom, if we dared, we'd surely fire? The Faculty.
With the help of this abused faculty eleven boys and four girls graduated in the class of 1911 with the char- acteristic class yell,
"Don't you worry, don't you fret, Nineteen eleven will get there yet."
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Decker GEORGE W. GARDNER
EPHRAIM KNIGHT
HORACE WILLARD
A. W. SAWYER
LABAN E. WARREN
SOME PRESIDENTS AND PRINCIPALS
JAMES P. DIXON
Newell GEORGE W. GILE
White HORACE G. MCKEAN
JUSTIN O. WELLMAN
GAIUS BARRETT
SOME PRESIDENTS AND HEADMASTERS
X
IN WAR TIME. 1912-1922
I T IS customary to speak of the world before the Great War of 1914-18 as belonging to another age. It may be that the war will mark permanently in history the end of an era. Europeans speak of the days before the battle of the Marne as Southerners spoke lovingly of the days "befo' de war" after the surrender at Appoma- tox had been made. Much was different in America after the men in khaki returned from France. A new spirit pervaded society everywhere, a spirit of new free- dom, of relief from strain, of determination to make the most out of life, life that could be snuffed out so easily. New instruments were ready for use in industry and new means of enjoyment offered their inducements for hours of leisure. In spite of huge government expenditures the nation was prosperous and wealth increased, in strik- ing contrast to bleeding Europe.
For those who fought in the trenches life never could be quite the same again, and scarcely a hamlet in the country lacked a returned soldier. Yet, though the world had changed for them, most of them came back to find little outward change in the appearance of the com- munities from which they had gone out and they soon adjusted themselves industrially and socially. New London in 1919, when most of them returned, was little different from what it had been less than two years before. The year of their going was marked by the erec- tion of Whipple Memorial Town Hall, a gift of Sher- man Whipple in memory of his brother Amos, but the monument that bears the names of those who served on
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their country's battlefields was not yet erected or the machine gun placed which now stands as a gaunt re- minder of the destructiveness of modern war. Modern- ized New London, with its college, its high school, its hospital, its library, its water and fire and sewer depart- ments, had not yet come, nor was it contemporaneous with the war. But a change had come in the fortunes of Colby Academy, upon whose prosperity much of the welfare of New London depended.
For twenty years the ruins of the old brick building on the hill had been crumbling slowly into dust. The traces of the fire on the campus had been obliterated by nature, but nothing could make the school forget its misfortune as long as activities must be confined to cramped and altogether inadequate quarters. The morale of the school was high. Students were loyal. Mr. Wellman had been long enough in his position as principal to give confidence in his leadership and a willingness on the part of the trustees to follow where he led.
For twenty years the trustees had remained hopeful of a new academy building, but they had been unable to finance it. The architect's plans of 1893 had gone into the discard; such a structure as had been planned then would have ben unsuitable after two decades. The old debts, which so long hung as a millstone around the neck of the academy, had to be cleared away first and the annual deficits brought to an end. But the trustees never lost sight of the goal. As soon as the treasurer was able to report that the books were balanced and the school was living within its income, the trustees ap- pointed a committee on plans for building and a com- mittee on ways and means. In due time the first of these committees reported that the present buildings were unsatisfactory, and recommended that a girls' dormi- tory and administration building be erected at or near the ruins of the old brick structure, that the raising of
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IN WAR TIME. 1912-1922
funds be undertaken in the near future, and that a com- mittee be appointed to obtain a financial agent at a small salary. Except for the agent, the recommendations were adopted. Incidentally it was voted to return the Presi- dent's House to its former owners with thanks, since it was so out of repair that it could not be used.
Miss Mary Colgate of New York continued her mother's interest in the academy at New London. She was disposed to help in the new enterprise, but not un- til the depleted scholarship funds were fully restored. She offered to give two thousand dollars for that purpose, if the school would raise the balance of about three hun- dred and fifty dollars. This was accomplished, and then Miss Colgate expressed her willingness to build a new administration building if other friends would secure money for a girl's dormitory. This would have meant an almost impossible undertaking, and subsequently she agreed to erect a single large building that would take care of both needs. The donor stipulated that funds should be in hand for the heating and water systems be- fore building should commence. Bequests of five thou- sand dollars were timely, thirty-five hundred and fifty dollars were raised towards the water system, and it was voted to apply any additional proceeds from the Jubilee Fund to that end. With these obstacles out of the way building was started as soon as the frost was out of the ground in the spring of 1911.
The corner-stone of the new building was laid on Tuesday of Commencement week with appropriate ex- ercises, presided over by Mr. Wellman. President Ben- jamin Ide Wheeler of the University of California wielded the trowel with suitable remarks, and Reverend C. L. Page of Boston offered prayer. Addresses were made by Dr. Wheeler and Dr. Samuel T. Dutton, Presi- dent of Teachers' College, Columbia University, both Colby alumni.
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The dedication of the new building came a year later. At that time President E. B. Bryan of Colgate University delivered the address, and Governor Robert P. Bass brought the greetings of the State of New Hampshire. It was felt to be highly appropriate that Miss Colgate should make an address on the occasion. This she de- clined to do, but in delivering the keys of the building to Mr. Wellman she yielded to the general wish suf- ficiently to make a few remarks. Holding in her hand a copy of the first catalogue, she repeated what Susan Colby's father had said to her when she expressed a wish to teach school: "My daughter, if you must teach, you shall teach at home in New London." She spoke of the opportunity for a Christian academy at a time when Puritan ideals were losing their influence, and the need of preserving the Baptist principle of freedom from state control. Referring to the work of Mary Lyon at Mount Holyoke, she pleaded for the same spirit of de- votion to something better than bricks and mortar. "The strength of the hills is here; sacred memories of the past are here; holy influences from the lives of those who have been sleeping on the hillside across the valley are here. With such inspiration and with the blessing of God to what heights of devotion and usefulness may not the graduates of this school attain." The trustees fittingly named the new building Colgate Hall.
The new equipment greatly improved the efficiency of the academy. Though bricks and mortar could not take the place of intellect and spirit they provided the setting in which mind and heart could operate. Instead of the cramped quarters of the old Academy and the Heidel- berg ample classrooms and living accommodations were available for all, except for the boys. The conditions of the earlier time which gave the girls all the advantages, and allowed to the boys access to the schoolrooms only, were renewed. It was the fond hope that provision for
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MISS MARY COLGATE
IN WAR TIME. 1912-1922
a new boys' dormitory would be made before many years, but meantime the boys must be content with Colby Hall and the Heidelberg renovated for their use. Colgate Hall stood commandingly on the crown of the hill. Towering three stories high it made a land- mark for all the countryside, and from Mount Kearsarge it was conspicuous among the buildings to be seen for many miles around. Constructed of brick with granite trimmings, like its predecessor, it was less ornate, and in its plain colonial architecture it did not seem out of place among the unpretentious buildings of the town. It measured nearly two hundred feet in length and more than one hundred feet wide. It was made as nearly fire- proof as possible, by frequent cross and longitudinal walls of brick and concrete, and an interior brick-walled fire escape provided means of easy exit.
On the ground floor were offices and parlors, a beau- tiful chapel capable of seating several hundred persons, and classrooms. At one end of the building were a large dining-room and kitchen facilities. The upper floors provided more classrooms, laboratories, and studios, with dormitory accommodations and accessories. For a time the library found quarters on the lower floor. A powerful heating plant and a laundry occupied the basement. Outside of the structure a brick power house was erected, covering the artesian well, which provided the water supply, the pumps, the dynamo for lighting purposes, and the sixty-horse-power engine.
The heavy expense of operating the new building, especially the electricity required, soon renewed the former anxiety of the trustees. An annual deficit of five thousand dollars was not pleasant to contemplate. It became necessary to appeal again to Miss Colgate for assistance. This she was willing to render and with the aid of others the immediate needs were met. New gifts were coming to the school, two thousand dollars from
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Mrs. Frank Jones of Portsmouth, three thousand as a bequest from G. C. Whipple formerly of Lebanon, and four thousand given as a fund for assisting students who expected to become doctors and nurses. Dr. J. Everett Herrick of New York left a memorial fund of ten thou- sand dollars, and Dr. Ebenezer Dodge of Hamilton, New York, made the academy his residuary legatee. The trus- tees voted to use the income only of the Herrick Fund, and to appropriate the sum realized from the Dodge be- quest to buildings and expenses for an agricultural de- partment. It was not necessary to borrow much to bal- ance accounts, and the trustees contributed two hundred and fifty dollars in personal pledges of ten dollars each towards a storage battery. The cost of electricity was excessive until the academy connected with the power system installed by the town. The water system also, which included artesian wells and a reservoir into which the water was pumped, was less satisfactory than connec- tion with the town water system which was installed later.
The trustees did not neglect any avenue of approach to financial assistance. They asked the New Hampshire Baptist Convention to aid ministerial students. Mrs. Gula Plummer, acting as financial agent, was able to obtain eight hundred dollars for agricultural and domes- tic science courses. The tuition fee for Colby students was increased to fifty dollars a year. A committee of five was appointed to raise a loyalty fund among the alumni.
In spite of all the effort made financial stringency re- curred. It became necessary to use half of the Herrick Fund for current expense, but the trustees safeguarded the other half by including it in the endowment fund. The trustees voted a self-denying ordinance to the effect that each member of the Board should get or give twenty- five dollars annually to help meet current expenses. Miss Colgate gave three thousand dollars for pressing needs,
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IN WAR TIME. 1912-1922
and Mr. Wellman contributed one hundred dollars of his salary for the emergency.
By 1914 student attendance reached one hundred and eighty. Graduating classes were averaging twenty-five. The new building was an attraction, the faculty mem- bers were popular, and school activities were at high tide. Several changes took place in faculty personnel during the war years. George W. Parker, '95, came to teach English and history in 1914 and remained three years; Raymond C. Goodfellow was in charge of the Commercial Department for two years; in 1917 the name of M. Roy London appeared for the first time in the faculty list. May L. Harlow, a graduate of Oberlin College, took over English and mathematics, and Alice Hampson of Radcliffe assumed responsibility for French and German. Mrs. Wellman taught Latin and history.
In 1916 the trustees took the necessary action to make the school and its faculty conform to the Code of Pro- fessional Ethics of the New Hampshire Teachers' Asso- ciation. Mr. Wellman was given the title of Headmaster, and the faculty was to be called the staff. The headmaster must visit each class regularly and confer with the teach- ers regarding his findings. It was voted that one of the staff should keep the records of teachers' meetings. A gift of one hundred and fifty dollars towards the salary of a physical director made it possible to add such a member to the staff.
The programme of studies included more than the usual number of departments, or curricula, as they were called. The Academic Curriculum prepared for college in the traditional method. Latin and Greek con- tinued to be taught until 1919, when the small number of students who desired to present Greek for entrance to college made it seem advisable to drop the Greek courses from the curriculum unless the demand in- creased. A curious incident of the war was the substitu-
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tion of Spanish for German, as happened in so many schools as a result of the distaste for everything German.
The Commercial Curriculum provided thorough business training, with its courses in bookkeeping and business practice, commercial law, commercial arith- metic, stenography, typewriting, and penmanship. Eco- nomics was required of all juniors in the Commerce Curriculum and was elective for seniors in the Agricul- tural Curriculum as long as that department existed.
An Agricultural Department was organized in 1913. It was not forgotten that plans had been made previously to create an agricultural foundation but had gone awry. It was felt that boys from farm homes should have op- portunity to study theory to add to their practical ex- perience and make it possible to go to the State College or to return to the farm better equipped for the struggle with nature. Students in this department studied ele- mentary agronomy and zoology, as classical students pored over elementary Latin or Greek. Animal hus- bandry and dairying gave them new angles of vision over the barnyard. They learned the technique of poultry raising, studied the place of birds in the economy of nature, and probed the secrets of horticulture. The Department failed to develop a Luther Burbank, but doubtless certain flower gardens were the more beauti- ful for the course in the academy. The business admin- istration was not omitted. Rural economy and farm management were a part of the course, with marketing, farm accounting, and the elements of rural law. Pre- sumably graduates of the Agricultural Course at Colby no longer figured out their gains and losses on the barn door.
Kurt von Schenck, a graduate of Harvard University, gave part time instruction in this department, though at first blush it would not seem that the classic shades of Cambridge would prepare a man to instruct in potato
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IN WAR TIME. 1912-1922
culture. Perhaps it was from Bussey Institute that he took a degree in horticulture. He was succeeded by Howard W. Sanborn, an alumnus of New Hampshire State College. In 1917 the department was staffed more adequately. Archelaus L. Hamblen of the University of Maine, Levoy D. Jesseman of New Hampshire College, and Carl L. Coleman of Rhode Island College were on the faculty with duties in the Agricultural Department. Although corn and potatoes flourished on the side cam- pus and instructors were faithful in teaching both theory and practice the number of students applying for instruction was disappointingly small. Fourteen were enrolled in 1918, but they hardly seemed to justify the continuance of the department, and after a brave at- tempt to make agriculture an integral part of the academy curriculum the experiment was abandoned.
The Curriculum of Domestic Arts was intended to give an intelligent understanding of home management and the practical arts. The department was arranged in the same year as the agricultural course. It was the de- sire of faculty and trustees that girls who came out of rural homes should have vocational opportunity to pre- pare themselves for the actual work of life. The curricu- lum included household science, cooking, dressmaking, hygiene and dietetics. Specialists on the faculty in that department attracted new students, but time was to prove whether the course would be worth maintaining. The academy could not provide all the equipment that such a department needed.
In the attempt to broaden the usefulness of academy instruction new courses were introduced in carpentry, blacksmithing, road building and forestry. Music was the only relic of the earlier "ornamental branches." It included the history and biography of music, instruction in both vocal and instrumental music, and chorus work.
In science pupils studied biology the first year. Stu-
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dents learned laboratory methods, and made notes on a dissection or plant study. During the winter term each student read before the class an abstract or essay on a monograph or government report. The second year in science was given to physiography, with laboratory and field study and a growing acquaintance with the basic principles of physics and chemistry. These subjects claimed attention during the last two years.
New London and its vicinity provided an unusually good environment for scientific field study and for the cultivation of an appreciation of nature. There was much of geological interest from the potholes of Scythe- ville to the glacial striated rocks of Mount Kearsarge. Colby Hill was a glacial terminal moraine. Springfield was rich in minerals. In New London or near it were graphite, garnet and tourmaline. Large crystals of beryl were to be found on the shores of Pleasant Lake. At King Hill was a quarry of gneiss from which the stone was taken which still supplies the sidewalk along part of Main Street. The Indians knew of a vein of galena on Sunapee Mountain, and they obtained ore from it which they smelted into bullets. The tradition is that a white man was held captive at Lake Sunapee during the French and Indian War, and at a later time, after the Penacooks had gone permanently to Canada, he returned to Sunapee on a camping trip and found the vein, but he died without disclosing it and it never has been found since.
New London was specially good territory for botaniz- ing, and at times students were actively engaged in making herbariums, either for class use or for their own satisfaction. Some of them knew where to look for rare specimens from the time of the skunk cabbage to that of the witch hazel. The hepatica grew in Burpee's pasture, the spring beauty at Otterville, and the twisted stalk in the valley of the brook north of Pleasant Street.
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IN WAR TIME. 1912-1922
Bellwort, dogtooth violet, and ground-nut grew bounti- fully on the Burpee Hill road near the Gay sugar house, and the pitcher plant could be found in a bog in the same region. Clintonia and rhodora and twin flower were new to the students who came from southern New England. They found abundance of arbutus on their mayflower excursions to the Sutton woods and they saw clumps of pink azalea when they visited Lake Sunapee.
The country was no less rich ornithologically. Dr. John L. Quackenbos of Columbia, who promoted the development of Soo-nipi Park, used to tell audiences of academy students that Sunapee Lake was the meeting- place of the Alleghanian and Canadian faunas and that therefore it was possible to hear all but one of the species of thrushes singing in the woods of Sunapee. The hermit soothed tired nerves at twilight, the veery voiced his throaty warble, the wood thrush breathed his leisurely cadences in daylight hours, and the olive-backed thrush called "whit-whit" from bush and tree. Ornithologists have recorded three hundred and seventy different species in the fields and forests of the region.
The piscatorial expert and the amateur angler with home-cut pole and angle worm could find equal satis- faction. There were hornpout and suckers for the small boy, trout in the brooks for the sportsman, and the sal- mon of the big lake for the patient waiter. The expert was intrigued by the Sunapee saibling, which was found elsewhere only in two small lakes, one in the Ossipee region and the other near Mount Desert. To spear a ten pound saibling was the objective of many a visit to the lake; if that did not happen there were other game fishes to be tempted from their watery lair. If fishing became tiresome there was the state hatchery at Sunapee to furnish entertainment, where many thousands of specimens were bred to supply the ponds and streams of the region.
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If none of these means of study and entertainment offered attraction, one could lie on his back and watch the shifting clouds move in battalions across the sky, or sit in one's study and read Quackenbos's eulogy of Lake Sunapee. He wrote: "The lake itself is a ten-mile reach of crystal water, winding among the hills - its surface diversified with wooded islands; its shores, now sheer and heavily timbered; now moss-streaked ledges with red pine crown; now stretching in long crescents of beach, or sloping upward in brilliant pasture lands to ridges crested with dusky spruce; anon opening into meadows sentineled by elms, and running back into forest glades or miniature canyons, whose streams recall 'romantic Deepdale's splendid rill.' "
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