USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Haverhill > Haverhill Academy, Haverhill, N. H. Centennial Anniversary and Reunion, also dedication of new building, August 4, 5, 1897 > Part 4
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Mr. Peter Thatcher Washburn, well known in later years as a distinguished army officer during the war, and afterward gov- ernor of Vermont in time of peace, was the popular teacher in 1835. Mr. II. S. Benson followed me in 1838. He married Miss Royce, formerly of this place ; was a minister of the gos- pel, and died in Centre Harbor, where some of his family were living a few years since.
Mr. J. P. Humphrey followed in 1839 and '40, the latter part of his term being filled by Mr. Abel Merrill, a classmate. Then came Mr. Hazeltine for one or two years. Neither of those four who came after me are now living.
I would like to give some reminiscences of the time when I first became teacher of the academy, but sixty-one years, from 1836 to 1897, is a long gap to bridge over and attempt to bring out from the storehouse of memory the names and faces of those with whom I was associated so long ago. This I know, however; only the pleasantest recollections are connected with each and every one, and my two years here were among the pleasantest of my life.
Of the trustees who engaged me to take charge, Mr. Joseph Bell, having been a former teacher of the academy, took a more active interest in the management of affairs, and was the one to whom I always applied in an emergency. The tuition was 83.25 per quarter, and I was guaranteed $500.00 a year, with as much more as the attendance warranted.
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I well remember the old academy building with entrance into a large vestibule or " entry," as it was called, having stairways on either side leading up to the old court-room in the second story, used also for several years as a place of worship for the Methodist denomination. Opposite the front entrance below, were three doors, those on either side opening into narrow rooms used for the " town schools," and also for jury rooms during the sessions of court. These were often used for the evening week-day services of the Congregational church, the Sunday evening services being held on Ladd street.
The middle door opposite the front entrance led into a long, narrow hall, the length of the town school rooms. Another door at the end opened into a large, well-lighted room, the width of the whole building, with the teacher's desk upon a raised platform opposite the entrance. A large wood stove, with long, branching pipes, gave moderate warmth for the pupils, whose seats and desks were arranged in rows, rising from the floor to the wall on the north and south sides, with passages or aisles at intervals, allowing two persons at a desk, the girls on the south side and the boys on the north. The seats in front of the lowest desks were used for recitations for long classes in grammar, " parsing," botany, arithmetic, etc.
In a few years, however, the interior was completely changed, the court and belongings were removed to commodious buildings well suited to their purposes, and the Methodist church held services in a house of its own.
A part of every Wednesday afternoon was devoted to decla- mations and compositions, but the whole of Saturday afternoon was a holiday. One of the duties of the " preceptor " was the making of quill pens for the pupils, metal pens not being in use, and a part of his Saturday holiday was spent in that way.
Most of the families in the two or three villages were well represented in the school, and there were many from adjoining towns.
The list would be a long one if I should enumerate, and would include many well-known to us here, who hrie gone out from the school and their homes, made a name for themselves, and filled positions of honor and trust in other localities. Among
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those I would mention Miss Lydia Shattuck, so long a beloved and respected teacher at South Hadley. She also taught for several years with Agassiz in his summer school at Pennikese, and was a recognized anthority in her specialty of botany and natural science throughont New England. She boarded at the " Bank House " with Mrs. Royce, but was little known here. " Overgrown, shy and awkward in those days," she described herself, when I saw her in later years. Her labors have ceased on earth, but her useful and far-reaching influence, who can measure? For thirty years or more she helped to mould the character of many who have been scattered to the ends of the earth.
Miss Naney Johnson of Newbury, Vi., once so well-known as a teacher and organizer of schools in the West, with Miss Catherine Beecher, was another of the pupils at that time. She was one of the pioneers in female journalism, connected with one of the prominent New York papers under the names of Anna C. Johnson and Minnie Myrtle, but for many years before her death, her mental faculties were so clouded by dis- ease that her early brilliant prospects and active usefulness can hardly be realized by the present generation.
The society in Haverhill in those days was of the best, hos- pitable, cultivated and refined, recognized as such both far and near. If time permitted, I would like to speak more at length of the delightful gatherings in those pleasant homes, shared alike by both pupils and teachers, but I have already trespassed too long upon your time and patience in these " pictures from the past," and will give place to those who can tell us of later years.
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
REV. J. L. MERRILL.
You do not need to be informed that during the first half of this century Haverhill Corner was one of the most important communities in northern New Hampshire.
When, however, the academy went into operation, in 1793, there were scarcely homes enough to warrant a distinctive name. Upon the court records of that year, it is mentioned as " Haverhill corner so called," significantly writing " corner " with a small "c". The "corner" was evidently the angle formed by the junction. of the Plymouth and River roads. In the northern angle of these roads stood the house and store of Samuel Brooks. This "corner" he had purchased of Colonel Johnston two years before. Mr. Leith's present residence was then Captain Bliss's tavern. He had purchased it of Isaac Moore, its builder, the previous year. In Mrs. Nathaniel Bailey's present residence Colonel Johnston was spending the evening of his days.
The names of these men appear in the charter of the academy, which was obtained in 1794. John Page and Rev. Ethan Smith were associated with them in the charter as trustees. They were their neighbors, the first living on the River road, and the minister in the Henry Merrill house on the Plymouth road. These incorporators, with others, had erected a large and com- modious building of wood, to be used as a courthouse and academy. . They had placed it in Colonel Johnston's field, ou the ground between Pearson hall and the new academy. The lawn in front of it, down to the River road between Colonel Johnston's and Samuel Brooks's, was the incipient common. Before Colonel JJohnston's death, however, Sammel Brooks was living and trading on the west side of Main street, and his
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buildings on the "corner" had been moved up the Plymouth road to the sites the Westgates and Barstows now occupy.
In a copy of the Universal Advertiser of September 16, 1789, now in the possession of C. H. Day, Esq., of Concord, we read the following advertisement :
"Just received by Samnel Brooks, Haverhill, N. H., a quan- tity of dry goods, which will be sold cheap for present pay in flaxseed, beef cattle, salts of ashes, beeswax (or cash )."
The public-spirited citizens of Haverhill not only built an academy and courthouse, but also a "goal and goal house," at their own expense, and were successful about this time in es- tablishing a United States postal route to Haverhill.
These efforts were rewarded by the rapid growth of the vil- lage, house lots selling as in a booming Western town. This we see that the academy and the village came into existence substantially at the same time, and the same people were their sponsors. And from that time until the present, very few of the prominent citizens of the village have not served as trus- tees of the academy. Indeed, to be a resident of Haverhill, and not to be interested in the academy, has always been to live ont of harmony with one's environment. Only a few non- residents have been among the trustees. Moses P. Payson, Ira Goodall, and Rev. Mr. Sutherland, all of Bath, Joseph Sawyer of Piermont, and Abiathar G. Britton of Orford, are among those that occur to us.
The inhabitants of the "lower part of Haverhill" were mainly thrown upon their own resources in building up the town. They not only erected the courthouse, academy, and county jail by voluntary subscription, but also the Ladd Street meeting-house in the same way, despairing of obtaining a vote of the town to build a meeting-honse and settle a minister, or to divide the town into two parishes.
They tried in vain for a hundred years to obtain an endow- ment for the academy. In 1808, Charles Johnson and others obtained the privilege of instituting a lottery, for the benefit of Haverhill academy, from the legislature of New Hampshire Tickets were issued by William Tarleton, and later on by
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Stephen P. Webster. Very little, if any, of the modest sum of $3,000, to which they were limited by act of the General Court, appears to have been realized.
During the century they have seen one and another of the alunni accumulating wealth, and have hoped that some of it might fall to the academy, but none came until Samnel F. Sonthard remembered the institution generously in his will. A little nest egg of $500 was once given by Mrs. Mary P. Web- ster and Dr. Phineas Spalding, but no more was added to it, and it is gone, probably having been spent in some of the numerous crises, to keep the institution alive. But the trustees and other residents have been true to the example set them at the very beginning.
When the original courthouse and academy was ruined by fire in 1814, a new brick building was promptly erected. This is the building which all the living alummi knew as the academy of their day. The name of Edmund Stevens, who laid up its walls of brick so true and handsomely, should be embalmed in these annals.
Not a dozen years elapsed before the trustees grew dissatis- fied with sharing the building with the county courts and dis- triet schools, and attempted repeatedly to buy or sell. From 1818 to 1833, a preceptress was employed, who was usually compelled to find a school-room outside the academy building. In 1833, a preceptress was dispensed with, for lack of funds and appropriate accommodations. However, a hope was ex- pressed that an edifice well fitted for a female seminary would be forthcoming before another season. In 1811, a committee was appointed to try to obtain from the state the land on which the powder-house stood. This effort for a new building seems to have failed, and it was not until 1845 that satisfactory terms were made with the county court.
They then bought out its claim, and fitted it up for the two departments which they had so long desired to maintain. Be- fore this time, the academy only occupied one room, covering the eastern half of the lower floor of the edifice, the only access to which was through a long, narrow hall, between the two dis- triet school-rooms. From this time, for nearly a score of years,
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the whole building was devoted to the uses of the academy. But when the interior of the brick church was refitted, and the pulpit and pews reversed, the village lost the privilege of using it as freely as they had been accustomed, whereupon the trus- tees of the academy allowed the village to fit up an assembly hall ou the lower floor of the building.
This was the last change in the interior of the edifice until the public school system was united with the academy, when a thousand dollars were expended upon repairs.
The position of trustee has never been merely a place of honor, but also a position of pecuniary responsibility, which has been nobly accepted and faithfully discharged. With other public-spirited citizens, they have met the expense of repairs and changes made necessary by the lapse of time and the development of the institution, and they have also supplied. as best they could, the lack of income from a permanent fund. The assessments were comparatively small at first, when rival institutions were far away. Phillips, Exeter, had been in opera- tion ten years in 1793. Appleton academy, in New Ipswich, was incorporated in 1789, and Atkinson in 1790; Gilmanton academy, the same year as Haverhill, 1791; Peacham, 1797; Bradford, 1821; and Newbury seminary, in 1833.
As these rivals multiplied and drew nearer, an addition to the current income became more urgent, and the trustees and others were obliged to contribute more liberally.
During Rev. J. V. Beane's administration, $200 a year were pledged. For a period of five years, beginning with Mr. Charl- ton's principalship, the sum of $500 annually was subscribed. The competition of well-endowed academies became gradually so sharp that it was apparent that the institution could only be kept alive by an ample endowment. or by a union with the pub- lie school system. As no endowment was in sight, the latter alternative was accepted in 1880.
In this change, Haverhill has only followed the example of a majority of New England academies. The few blessed with a munificent endowment have compelled the others to unite their fortunes with the town high schools. These high schools have an important mission, but it is not exactly that of the old acade- =
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mies, which originated in the religious instincts of the people, and largely had for their pupils those most hungry for an edu- cation.
Haverhill academy was not an exception. Rev. Ethan Smith, whose name stands among the incorporators, was a man distin- guished for learning and piety, and we doubtless see his influ- ence in the charter itself, which reads : " The design of said institution shall be to promote religion, piety, virtue, and moral- ity." It was early, if not at the beginning, a rule of the school that the " preceptor should open his school in the morning with prayer, and it was recommended to close the school with prayer when the labors of the instruction are such as to make it conven- ient." The following was another rule : " It shall be the duty of every student to attend publie worship every Sunday, and except to attend public worship, each student shall remain in his lodgings upon the Sabbath unless circumstances of necessity or mercy require that they should go from home."
There was no fund to aid students in narrow circumstances, but they were by no means forgotten. One dollar a week, in Mr. Kingsbury's time, would pay all necessary expenses, tui- tion and books excepted, and there were always those earning their board by doing chores. The most distinguished of these in after years was Nathan Clifford, justice of the United States supreme court. As an illustration of the enconragement af- forded sometimes, we might mention that when B. Frank Palmer had been accidentally disabled for life. a home was freely given him by the leading families of the community until he had pre- pared himself to earn a livelihood. He passed the blessing on to others, unfortunate like himself, by inventing the first artiti- cial limb worthy to take the place of the natural one.
Many have been in attendance at this institution from neigh- boring towns, some from other states, and even from foreign countries. The majority of the pupils, however, have boarded at home in Haverhill, or in the adjacent towns of Piermont and Newbury. All these homes have not been within easy walking distance, by any means. From beyond Ladd street and South Newbury, out on the turnpike, and down as far as Piermont village, have pupils wended their way to the academy. One of
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Dr. Wellman's daughters once remarked to me that she often walked, when a girl, from her father's house to Haverhill acad- emy. But it was not these long-distance walkers that filled the academy to overflowing with pupils and crowded the public schools. There were families in the carly days of Haverhill which in number, as well as quality, did credit to the town. At one time, in two families that had a common yard and were almost as much together as one family, there were nineteen young people, every one of them pupils in the academy. Either of these families could be paralleled by quite a number of others.
The village of Haverhill owes its early reputation for culture and refinement largely to the academy. The fact that the courts sat here and were frequented by the most able lawyers in New Hampshire, when Ezekiel Webster, Jeremiah Smith, and John Sullivan were members of its bar, was no small advan- tage to the place. Neither was it any slight thing that the Congregational church of the village was one of the strongest and most intelligent in this vicinity, and Rev. Ethan Smith lifted high the standard of ministerial requirements for this church. The travelers also that passed through here from North, South, East, and West were not, of course, an unmixed blessing, but they gave the citizens of Haverhill the opportu- nity of meeting a great variety of people, and the intermingling of divers characters helps to polish the mass. More potent, however, than all things else was the academy, to keep high the standard of intellectual attainment.
Few families felt that they had done their duty if they had not given their children a taste of academic culture, continuing them in this school from one term to several years, according to the appetite of the pupil and the financial ability of the parents. Parents who were not self-moved to do this felt the contagion of their environment. It was the thing to do in Haverhill, and consequently people who might not have thought of it in some places, gave their children academic advantages here. In the early days, when there were no other academies near, the whole country side sought for public school teachers among the stu- dents of Haverhill Academy, feeling that the fountain ought to
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be higher than the cistern to be filled, the teacher ought to know more than the pupil is expected to learn. All that de- sired and were competent in other respects, besides education, had no difficulty in obtaining schools, the young men in winter, and the young ladies in the summer. Therefore the fall and spring terms of the Academy were much the fullest. Eighty per cent of the young men in attendance in the fall term, eighty years ago, went ont to teach school in the winter.
One consequence of the Academy's domicile in Haverhill has been the mimber of graduates it has furnished for Dartmouth College. Not many towns have sent more men to Dartmouth. Hlad the lists of pupils which the preceptor was required to fur- nish the trustees yearly, been preserved in the archives, as they ought to have been, a comparison with the general catalogne of the college might prove Haverhill to be the banner town in the number of its graduates from Dartmouth. Taking the cata- logue of 1819, the earliest accessible, thirty per cent of the names of the young men on its roll, occur in the Dartmouth General Catalogue.
Many names of considerable reputation can be found in these catalogues of Haverhill Academy.
It might be invidious for me to select a few out of the many for honorable mention. But to go back to the date last men- tioned, 1819, let us quote what the sole surviving pupil of that year - Arthur Livermore, Esq., -says of his contemporaries : " Jesse Kimball was the preceptor, and among his scholars were Benjamin West Bonney, who gained distinction and wealth at the bar in New York, where he died fifty years later ; Andrew S. Wood, who became Chief Justice of New Hamp- shire ; Nathan Clifford, who gained a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States; Everett Wheeler and Warren D. Gookin, who both became rich and died in New York; Anthony W. Morse, who was distinguished in the New York Stock Exchange by rushing speculations, and the attend- ant vicissitudes of fortune; Josiah and Levi Bartlett, brothers, who made their lives useful in the practice of medicine; Hor- ace Soper, who became respectable in the law, and a number of others whose names I might mention, and whom I knew in the
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sequel of their lives, as worthy, perhaps, of a distinction which they never reached or perhaps aspired to.
" Nathan Wilson, a lawyer, at or near Bangor, if now living (1888), is the sole survivor of the group I could name."
Having the catalogue before us, we see that he might have mentioned others, but it is remarkable that so many with whom he attended school so young, presented themselves to his mem- ory as worthy of note. As much as this might be written of any period sufficiently remote, by one with his facile pen and vivid memory.
Reminiscences are in order from the alumni present, and they can better speak of periods they represent, than one whose task is to traverse the whole fickl.
The lack of a large income from invested finds has made it often impossible to secure men of large experience in teaching, or generally to retain the best teachers for any length of time. While mention is made of principals whose names can be readily obtained, you will notice that the fame and success so many afterwards obtained, proves that they were selected with care and does credit to the judgment of the trustees.
Moses P. Payson, the first preceptor, became famous as a presiding officer, presiding over various deliberative bodies, from the Bath Town Meeting to the Senate of New Hampshire. Arthur Livermore writes " that he presided over everything he belonged to, and when the whole world met at Windsor to vote the Connecticut river a navigable stream, Mr. Payson was placed in the chair."
Thomas Snell was preceptor in 1796. He afterwards be- came a clergyman and received the degree of D. D. from Am- herst College. He died in 1862 at the advanced age of 87 years.
Sebastian Cabot became preceptor immediately upon gradu- ating from Dartmouth College in 1797. He was not the dis- coverer of North America, but a clergyman. He died in 1853.
Stephen P. Webster, a stray Harvard graduate, in a preserve that was ahnost exclusively enjoyed by Dartmouth men, taught the school for several years. His fellow citizens honored him with every possible office in their gift up to State Senator, and
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in that position he delivered the address of welcome when La Fayette visited Concord. He was long remembered by the worshippers in the old Ladd Street meeting house as the leader of the singing, and his peculiar gestures in marking the time made a deep impression upon some of the young people of that day.
Next, William Lambert occupied the chair of principal from 1800 until 1805. He afterwards became a lawyer.
Abner Emerson taught in 1805. David Sloan. D. C., 1806, was principal in 1806. He afterwards was trustee, taking much interest in the welfare of the Academy during his long career as one of the leading lawyers in Haverhill. Ilis son, David S. Sloan, is put down in the catalogne as assistant pre- ceptor in 1836.
Joseph Bell came from graduation at Dartmouth, and taught in 1807. He afterwards practised law in Haverhill, being ad- mitted to the bar in 1811, and easily rose to be the peer of the most famous New Hampshire lawyers in legal knowledge and ability, though his manner before a jury was not so pleasing as some of his tivals. He appears as counsel in one hundred and seventy-six cases at the Grafton County Court, ont of the two hundred and sixty-four cases, as reported in the first ten vol- mes of the New Hampshire reports.
Ephraim Kingsbury was preceptor from 1807 until 1811. He began with a salary of $300, which seems to have been the compensation from the beginning until 1811, when it was raised to $450. In 1836 Mr. D. F. Merrill received $500. Isaac Patterson taught a year after his graduation in 1812. He was for many years a conspicuous character upon our streets at court time. He remained a gallant and chivalrous bachelor until he died, at the advanced age of eighty-nine. The Charles Johnston who was preceptor from 1813 to 1815, must have been the Rev. Charles Johnston, grandson of Colonel Johns- ton, who gradnated in the class of 1813 of Dartmouth College. He studied Theology with Rev. Grant Powers and Dr. Lyman Beecher, and became a Presbyterian minister.
Joseph Merrill graduated from Dartmouth College in 1814. and taught in the Academy eighteen months while studying law
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with Joseph Bell, He afterwards became a Congregational minister, and was pastor of the church in Dracut, Mass., where it accommodated all in Lowell who cared to attend relig- ions worship.
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