USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 23
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A constant source of trouble to the teachers. The pupils become more expert in steering a handsled than in solving problems in arith- metic. They learn more of the profane and vulgar dialect of the street than of the chaste and virtuous language of the school room. They spend more time in amusement than in study ... others actually fail to reach the school on the day of their departure from home.
In those early and unrecorded years the school in District 1 had its School Committee and Prudential Committee; that was the traditional administration. Then in 1808, because state funds for education were involved, the Legislature required a further gov- erning body: the "Superintending School Committee," composed of two or three citizens who were to oversee the work of all of the districts. They were commissioned to visit each school during the year, account for expenditures, and write the annual reports.
Their largest task, however, was with District No. 1. It must be admitted that the local schools, for more than a century and de- spite their close relation with the College, by any other standard
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than indifference were poor and scratching things. The annual reports, written by conservative and respected members of the community, are replete with comments on the condition of build- ings, noise, overcrowding, truancy, insubordination, and disin- terest of parents. Occasionally the words "dilapidated," "a la- mentable fact," "disgrace" creep in; yet even these epithets tell not so accurate a story as:
1889: We are sorry to hear that none of our teachers are to return next year.
1896: It is a lamentable fact, but nevertheless true, that in this college town there is no school where a young man may prepare for college.
For more than a hundred years (until the advent of the modern Superintendent and School Board) the Superintending School Committee served the town as best it could and moved ahead as rapidly as the town would allow. They had to make do in the mat- ter of buildings; common indeed were such entries as this of 1874: "Voted-$4,500 to repair the old house," rescinded at a later meeting, and "$500 raised to build a new privy."
And they had to make do in the matter of studies. Of necessity they had to experiment, proving, incidentally, the cyclic nature of change. They experimented with sizes of classes (up to sixty pu- pils!); length of high school (four or five years); one- or two-session systems; a 6-6 system, a Junior High, and an 8-4 system, and sim- ilar attempts at solving educational problems.
In spite of their year-by-year frustrations, these voluntary guardians of the schools were largely successful; what they hoped for in time came to pass. If the town failed at first to see their needs, at least the town acted when the need became unavoidable. Meanwhile we cannot doubt the great pride the Committee felt when, at the end of the spring term, with the families assembled, all could read the real accomplishments of the year at the exercises of graduation.
The history of school buildings in District No. 1 may be sum- marized briefly. The first separate school building was a one-room wooden structure, erected in 1807 at the 1 School Street site, at a cost of $432. It was superseded at a later but unrecorded date by a larger, two story house on the same spot. In 1839 the brick building still standing on that site was built; its cost is no longer known. Agitation begun in 1869 for a new schoolhouse resulted
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in 1877 in a three story, four room brick schoolhouse built on Allen Street to accommodate four "departments," at a cost of $10,933. After six years of complaint against overcrowding in this building an additional wing was attached to it in 1896; cost $7,795. Demands for a separate high school begun in 1911 cul- minated in 1914 in a new building also on Allen Street, costing $30,048. But "enlarged school facilities" were called for as soon as 1918, the clamor increased, and in 1924 the grade school on Lebanon Street was erected for $98,500. Five years later the first agitation for a new high school began, and the new building just south of the grade school was put up in 1934 for $203,849. The addition to the high school in 1956 cost $707,000, and that to the grade school in 1959 $214,000, each the result of several years of discussion and deliberation.
If government is indeed the art of the possible, then school buildings are a fair test of local government. The above brief history of school building in Hanover reveals that the town meet- ing type of government, as might be expected, provides a calm hand in a crisis and very little capacity to plan ahead. In the nineteenth century congestion in the classrooms was chronic and crises came only periodically. But since 1890-with rising costs, in- creased demands for better education, and the popularity and population of Hanover always exceeding the measured expecta- tions-the building of classrooms seems to be almost an eternal problem. On an average it took almost five years for a "crisis" to reach effective action. On an average the "relief" provided by ad- ditions or new buildings lasted no longer.
So the record runs for the two extant buildings in Hanover. The grade school has been added to twice, the high school doubled in size. The struggle for "a new high school" in the mid- 1950's was not different in any significant way from those of the thirties, twenties, 1914, 1896, 1877. The generation of the 1960's will not be exempt.
There were in addition to the public schools, many private schools in Hanover, generally small and run by strong-minded women for weak-minded girls. The rowdy elements, both native and imported, were deemed by many parents to offer not quite the proper environment for young ladies. Records of such "finish- ing schools" are scarce indeed; one finds little more than adver- tisements in the local papers. The first of such schools probably existed prior to 1800 and between then and 1865 they flourished.
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Boys too needed private schools. Those going on to college usually had to take an extra year or two away at a "college prep" school. At the end of the nineteenth century there was the Leyden Tutoring School in Hanover, and then "Clark School" which only recently (1953) merged with the Cardigan Mountain School and moved to Canaan, New Hampshire.
Two things in particular stand witness to the changes of the past two hundred years in Hanover. The first is that the rural schools are gone: Goss closed in 1951; Etna, after a brief revival, in 1957. Buses can be bought but teachers for such schools are no longer easily come by. The passing of such ancient and im- portant institutions of American education should serve to re- mind us, amid our annual concerns with cement block and glass brick, that it is still as Crito said in 1821 "more the manner of teaching than the things taught that constitutes a good educa- tion."
The second point is this: that in the last few decades (and measurably in the past ten years) Hanover's schools have im- proved to a point where "overcrowding" is only a relative term and the words "dilapidated" or "disgrace" no longer are appro- priate. The schools are excellent.
The growth of town pride in, and support of, its public schools can be read in a comparison of the annual expenditures in 1910 and 1960. The annual school budget rose from $7,482 in 1910 to $595,000 in 1960; the average attendance from 261 to 1,102; the cost per pupil from $29 to $541; and the average teachers' annual salaries from $507 to $5,194. In this comparison too abides the work of many School Board members and citizens' groups which, like that of earlier Superintending School Committees and Pru- dential "Committees" (of one), was never adequately recorded and is long since forgotten.
This history, gleaned from the brief records we have, tells only a small part of the two hundred years which have gone into the making of our schools. We have no way to measure or record the rest. In 1860 an anonymous member of the "School Committee" was trying to say the same thing in an annual report; it will serve as well now and doubtless still be true in 2060.
Such is the brief record of the year. As it appears on these pages it is of comparatively little worth and will soon be lost to view. Not so
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the actual record of which this is the faintest shadow. Could we have laid before us all the impressions which have been made upon the minds of the youth attending these schools-all the impulses given- all the feelings excited-all the thoughts awakened ... and could we see the bearing of these impressions ... upon the life of these youths in coming years ... the work would be felt a solemnly re- sponsible one. These beginnings are very far from being trifles.
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20 Printer's Ink by Charles E. Widmayer
I N a community of free citizens the printing press is honored as an essential of both enlightenment and freedom. Except for the earliest years of its history, Hanover has never been without its own local means of producing the printed word. The story of newspapers in the village is a sporadic one, with more gaps than continuity until the Hanover Gazette began in 1885; but local printing has made its contribution to community life continuously since 1793, and goes back, indeed, to 1778.
"I was greatly surprised, though much pleased, to find a print- ing-office established in this part of the world. This vehicle of learning, this liberty of liberties, is in the south end of the College; it is a small though neat printing-office, and where a vast deal of printing work is performed."
This entry in the journal of Sergeant Major John Hawkins, dated April 28, 1779, refers to the famous Dresden Press, which was established here in the period when the southwest district of Hanover had joined with the northwest district of Lebanon to form the new and separate town of Dresden. Whether Dresden was in Vermont or New Hampshire, or in no state at all, as it was at one point, was a fluctuating matter; but at the time the Dresden Press was established, Dresden was in Vermont. The press was in fact created primarily to serve as official printer to the general assembly of the new State of Vermont; and since the College also needed a good printer in the vicinity, Alden Spooner of Norwich, Conn., was persuaded to bring equipment to Dresden and set up a printing office in the fall of 1778. It was the first press in the western part of New Hampshire, preceded in the state only by those in Portsmouth and Exeter.
Spooner was given a half-acre of land on what is now the east side of Main Street, south of the Inn, but since there was no building there, he set up shop "in the south end of the College," near the southeast corner of the present Green. The printing press that Spooner brought with him is believed to have been the his- toric Stephen Daye press, the first one used in Colonial America.
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It was brought from England to Massachusetts in 1638, with Stephen Daye accompanying it as printer, and was set up in Cam- bridge that year or early in 1639. Among the rarities printed on it were the Bay Psalm Book and Eliot's Indian New Testament. Coming into the possession of the Green family of Cambridge, the press was moved to Connecticut and there was eventually ac- quired by Spooner. After its short stay in Hanover, the Stephen Daye press traveled to Windsor and other Vermont towns and now belongs to the Vermont Historical Society in Montpelier.
Dresden Press imprints are extremely rare today and are prized by collectors. The late Harold G. Rugg of Hanover prepared a list of thirty-four known titles, fourteen of which do not exist in any known copy. Among the items printed in Hanover in 1779 was A Compend of English Grammar by Abel Curtis, Dartmouth 1776, which was probably the earliest purely English grammar written and published in America. It appeared five years before Noah Webster's grammar. The Dresden Press printed the first Dartmouth College catalogue in 1779, and also Ethan Allen's 172- page Vindication of the Opposition of the Inhabitants of Vermont to the Government of New York, and of their Right to form into an Independent State.
Sergeant Major Hawkins, who made the journal entry about the Dresden Press, marched north with his regiment, and upon reaching Piermont he made another entry of historic interest to Hanover. Into his hands had come, he reported, Volume 1, Num- ber 1 of the Dresden Mercury, dated May 4, 1779. This weekly newspaper, edited by Alden Spooner, was the first paper in the upper Connecticut Valley. Only five copies are known to exist; one of them, the issue of September 27, 1779, is in the archives of Baker Library. The paper did not have a very long life, and it probably came to an end with its twenty-second number in the fall of 1779.
Baker Library's copy of The Dresden Mercury and the Univer- sal Intelligencer, a four-page paper of medium size, shows that the weekly gave little space to local news. Featured is a long report from London, five months old, of a House of Commons debate about the conduct of the American war. News items deal with events in Philadelphia, Providence, Hartford and New London. The editor announces that sheepskins are wanted at the printing office, and that rum, tea, coffee, sugar, nails, tobacco, spices, pins, stockings and shoes will be taken in barter for the paper. Delin-
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quent taxpayers are warned, a sorrel mare and a black satin cloak are reported lost, and a Plainfield subscriber advises all and sun- dry that his wife Eunis has left his bed and board, "contrary to my mind," and has taken all the household furniture with her. The Dresden Mercury testifies that human beings in this region were busy being human.
Alden Spooner returned to Connecticut in 1780, and for the next thirteen years Hanover was without a printer or a newspa- per. In 1793, Josiah Dunham, who graduated from Dartmouth in 1789 and served as preceptor in Moor's School for the next four years, established a printing office "at the Northwest Corner of College-Square." In addition to setting up a book store, he promptly began publication of a weekly newspaper, and on July 22, 1793, the first issue of The Eagle or Dartmouth Centinel ap- peared.
The Eagle continued for six years, until June 1799. In a much truer sense than did the short-lived Dresden paper, it launched the long succession of local newspapers that have served the Han- over community during the past 168 years. Immediately after the Eagle came the Dartmouth Gazette, 1799-1820, which enjoyed the only existence of any decent length until the present Gazette be- gan publication in 1885. During the sixty-five years between the two Gazettes the dozen or so papers that tried to make a go of it were out of business more years than they were in. The financial difficulty of keeping a weekly paper going was great, and only job printing in the same shop made it at all possible. The early week- lies cost $1.00 or $1.50 a year, paid supposedly in advance. But a constant refrain over the years is the editor's plea for subscription arrears to be paid. In the People's Advocate, which managed less than three years of life in the early 1840's, the editor writes that he will be "happy to receive payment in corn, rye, oats, wheat, potatoes, hay, wood, butter and cheese, delivered at this office . . . whatever will pay the board of workmen, keep a family, or feed a horse will be acceptable." The editor of The Iris boldly an- nounced that orders "without the money . . . will receive no at- tention whatever," but this monthly had one of the shortest lives of all-ten months.
Josiah Dunham, however, when he began the Eagle on July 22, 1793, was off on a relatively successful six years of publication. Like many of the Hanover papers to come later, the Eagle had a certain literary tone and regularly printed a poetry column, in
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its case called "Aonian Rill." Baker Library has twenty-two com- plete issues of the Eagle, and in the paper of September 9, 1793 we find what might be Hanover's first real estate advertisement: "For Sale-Building spot, handsomely and conveniently situated, in the vicinity of Dartmouth College, about twenty rods from College-Square, on the road to the Rope Ferry." A prescient vil- lager would have snapped it up.
Dunham's nephew, John M. Dunham, joined in the printing enterprise in February 1795, and about a month later he and Benjamin True became the publishers of the Eagle, with Josiah Dunham continuing as editor. True became sole publisher in March 1797 but died the following year, whereupon Moses Fiske, a former tutor in the College, managed the paper until it ceased publication in June 1799.
Hanover's journalistic hiatus lasted only two months, for Moses Davis, an energetic printer from Concord, purchased the business from True's heirs and had a new weekly paper, the Dartmouth Gazette, going by August 27, 1799. Davis was a talented editor, with a head for business, and his many attractive qualities made him a popular citizen of the town. His friendship with Daniel Webster, then a Dartmouth undergraduate, adds special interest to the early years of the Gazette, for Webster served as an assistant editor in his junior year and, under the pen name "Icarus," was a regular contributor of poems, moral essays, and political articles. Like the Eagle before it, the Dartmouth Gazette was strongly Federalist in its politics.
Not only in its concern with politics but in its printing of moral and philosophical essays, poetry, and a great deal of "foreign in- telligence," while local news got relatively scant treatment, the Gazette was no doubt representative of the rural weeklies of its time. News from abroad, brought back by ship captains along with tales about gigantic sea monsters encountered at sea, was given a great deal of space; and reports from Congress, usually one month old, were also run at length. There was none of the present-day importance attached to page one. In the Gazette of February 10, 1819, for example, the front page is given over to a Congressional debate on the Seminole War, and a story of intense local interest-the Dartmouth College Case-appears on page three, although there is an especially large head (18 point!) pro- claiming "Good News From Washington !! "
The Dartmouth Gazette provides a distinctive chapter in the
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history of Hanover journalism, and its yellowed pages make fas- cinating reading today. Imagine reading the black-bordered issue of December 30, 1799, which tells of the death of George Wash- ington two weeks earlier, and then reading in succeeding issues how the whole nation mourned him-"the College bell tolled from 12 o'clock until sunset." We learn of Daniel Webster's de- livering Hanover's Fourth of July oration in 1800, while still a student, and doing so in a manner that "would have done honor to grey-headed patriotism, and crowned with new laurels the most celebrated orator of our country"-a judgment that shows more than a tinge of the editor's close friendship with young Dan'l.
"Melancholy News" is almost a standard heading for stories of human tragedy, and more of the human story, some of it intrigu- ing, is to be found in the personal notices and the little advertise- ments about possessions lost or stolen, livestock strayed, and pana- ceas offered. Picture the repentant sinner behind this notice in the issue of January 5, 1814: "Take Notice! The man who sold fruit some years ago to a member of College, and received coun- terfeit money in return, is requested to call on Professor Shurtleff, who is authorized to settle with him in behalf of the PENITENT CRIMINAL."
Moses Davis, once he had the Dartmouth Gazette firmly estab- lished, started a bi-weekly publication of four pages, quarto, called the Literary Tablet. Volume 1, Number 1 appeared on August 6, 1803. Both Daniel Webster and his brother Ezekiel were occasional contributors to this well-intentioned little paper. By Volume 4 it had descended a notch to become "A General Re- pository of Useful Entertainment." In May 1807 the Literary Tablet began coming out weekly, but the financial road was too rocky and it died with the issue of August 5, 1807, in which ap- pears: "Our expenditures have been considerable, our income but small; and we do humbly wish that what is honestly our due may no longer be withheld."
Moses Davis handled a goodly volume of miscellaneous print- ing in his shop, and some small books, sermons and pamphlets, to- gether with the annual Dartmouth catalogues of officers and stu- dents started in 1802, remain as examples of his competent work. One of these pieces is S. Dewey's "Account of a hail storm which fell on part of the towns of Lebanon, Bozrah and Franklin on the 15th of July, 1799; perhaps never equalled by any other ever known, not even in Egypt."
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Never in robust health, Davis died July 24, 1808, at the age of thirty-one. For a few months the Dartmouth Gazette was managed by Colburn and Day, about whom nothing is known, and then Mrs. Davis sold the paper and printing business to two brothers, Charles and William Spear, in October 1808. In the fall of 1810 the Spears were joined by a third brother, Henry, who left with William in April 1811 to publish the Concord Gazette. Charles Spear remained in Hanover and continued to publish the local paper until June 1820, changing its name for a period, 1813 to 1816, to the Dartmouth Gazette and Grafton and Coos Advertiser and then reverting to the original title.
Since the whole of the controversy leading to the Dartmouth College Case fell within the period of the Dartmouth Gazette's existence, 1799-1820, stories of the fight between the College and the University, juxtaposed in the town, are particularly interest- ing. Just one sample: The University in 1818, expecting a Su- preme Court decision in its favor rather than a delay until the next Court term, was primed for celebration. Reports the Gazette in its issue of March 25, 1818: "On Saturday evening last the Uni- versity gentry prepared themselves, on the arrival of the Mail, to greet the expected News from Washington. We learn that the old French six-pounder was to be loaded for the purpose, and every- thing ripe for a fine frolick, in true University style. The Mail arrived ;- and lo! the information received occasioned the tolling of the University bell!"
In the fight between the College and the University the Gazette after an initial period of impartiality gave ardent support to the College trustees. John Wheelock had the backing of Josiah Dun- ham, the former Eagle editor, who published a paper in Windsor, but in order to have a journalistic ally right in Hanover he was instrumental in establishing the American as a new weekly paper, with David Watson Jr. as editor. The first Wednesday issue ap- peared February 7, 1816. On page one Watson denied that the paper had been created in opposition to the Gazette, but from the beginning there was much bickering back and forth between the two Hanover weeklies. There was also a steady stream of letters to the editor, most of which bore no name but were signed "Truth," "Light," "Caution," "X" and "XX." President Wheelock died April 5, 1817, and the American did not survive him. In its final issue, April 2, 1817, it went down with its guns still blazing away at the Gazette.
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The American had its office in the "Tontine," a large and ram- bling four-storied brick building on the east side of Main Street. The Gazette had preceded it there by a year, having left the north- west corner of the Green in 1801 for Main Street, after which it moved in 1809 to a spot near the present College Hall, and finally took up quarters in the newly erected Tontine in 1815.
Charles Spear brought his newspaper and printing business to a close in June 1820, and disposed of both to Ridley Bannister and Lyman Thurston. These two gentlemen brought out on June 21, 1820, the first issue of the weekly Dartmouth Herald, which as suc- cessor to the Gazette promised "accounts of our national and state legislatures, and the most interesting articles of news, foreign and domestic; notices of improvements in the arts and sciences, espe- cially agriculture and the mechanic arts most practiced in our country; and essays, original and selected, upon the mechanical and liberal arts, literature, politics, morals and religion. The orig- inal articles will be furnished by a society of gentlemen."
In addition to its moral homilies, the Herald was much given to "anecdotes," of which this is a fair sample: A talkative young man, upon being asked his name, replied, "Tis Scarlet." Which led the Duchess of Devonshire to say, "That may be, and yet he is not deep read." But neither anecdotes nor essays original and selected, nor the Society of Gentlemen, could make the Herald the success- ful paper the Gazette had been, and when Bannister and Thurs- ton dissolved their partnership on July 25, 1821, the Herald at the same time suspended "for the present" but never reappeared. Bannister continued the printing business for six more years.
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