USA > New York > Chautauqua County > History of Chautauqua County, New York > Part 55
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" Fools venture in where angels fear to tread."
The theory of American society is not that government is established to elevate a few and give them wealth, culture and position at the expense of the millions, but that "governments are instituted for the governed," that all alike are entitled to protection and to mental develop- ment, to make the most of life. If it is asked why government should provide from common resources for universal education, we would answer, because it is the source of individual happi- ness and national greatness, the guarantee of social order, the cheap defense of nations, The Saviour took little children in his arms and blessed them and said, " of such is the kingdom of Heaven." Shall society forget them ? They need protection from the rapacity of man. In the manufacturing centers of the old world are hundreds of thousands of children employed ; there are eyes in which the light of hope never shone, checks that the lines of health never visited, weary little hands that find their first rest in the grave. I know of no higher crime than robbing childhood of the joys of life and of all preparation for the great hereafter. Better is the pagan morality that murders the children outright, than that which coins their protracted sufferings into gold. The same use of childhood is beginning in this country. Let the State make it impossible by law, and by prescribing the years childhood shall have for education. Let it, like Prussia, make the education of every child compulsory. Our common schools should teach every child in the Republic obedience to authority, habits of systematic industry, the princi- ples of Christian morality, a patrotism fed by all the inspiration of our history, a knowledge of the principles of our government, and an appreciation of the sacred responsibilities of citizen- ship. Common schools scattered all over the Republic, and giving the same instruction, should be the great bond of national unity, the crucible in which all the varied elements which enter
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into our national life shall be fused into a common brotherhood with a common heart, so that
" The union of States, the union of lands, The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the flag of our Union forever,"
may be a glorious reality and not a poet's dream. When a child leaves the school-room at the proper age, the seeds have been sown that will ripen into destiny, the currents of being have taken their course, ( for weal or woe) as they will roll on to the bosom of eternity.
"A pebble in the streamlet scant Has changed the course of many a river, A dewdrop on the tiny plant Has warped the giant oak forever."
This building with its grounds, to cost $100,000 and to be vested in the state upon its pledge . to sustain such a school as it is prepared for, is the cheerful contribution of this beautiful village to local aud universal education. It is proper that I should speak in this connection of Hon. Victor M. Rice, an honored son of Chautauqua, who is now, for the third time, superintendent of public instruction in this state. It is in a great measure due to his zeal and indomitable per- severance that the new normal schools are established, and that the common schools of the Empire State are free to her 1.300,000 children. To accomplish so great a good seldom falls to the lot of any man.
We must not forget that the world with its material forces, its profusion of beauties, and all the necessities, joys, and sorrows that attend human life, is the Creator's school to develop the soul. Although no man was present when the Almighty architect " stretched the line upon the earth, and laid the corner-stone thereof," yet we know from the divine record that he dedicated this great temple to the spirit he was to breathe into the beings he was to create in his own image, and give dominion over the earth and every living thing. So, in humble imitation, we dedicate this perishable work of our own hands to the souls of childhood, that, like the great temple not made with hands, it may aid to warm hearts with divine love, and to unseal eyes to the beauty of holiness, All who now live will pass away as a shadow, and as large a throng will still crowd the shores of being to taste the same mixed cup of joy and sorrow which fate presses to all human lips, for generation follows generation as wave follows wave upon the sea. We are enjoying the ripened fruit of the toil and suffering of all the friends and martyrs of humanity in all the ages, and to-day we recognize our obligations to the future. We seek to place our landmark upon the sea of time, to make our contribution, humble though it may be, to those who are to succeed us. May this day's work, this scene of beauty, leave a pleasant memory in thousands of souls, and when we all rest in the grave may the happy faces of youth look from the windows of this temple upon the beauty which is no more for us, and may the voice of gladness long echo in its halls.
The building was completed in 1868, and the writer was then authorized by the board of trustees to present to the state the deed of the property. Hon. George Barker (representing the state superintendent) received it for the state. A few extracts from the presentation address tells the story better than I can now :
I have been authorized by the corporate authorities of the village of Fredonia iu their behalf and in the behalf of its citizens, to tender to you as the representative of the State of New York, the conveyance which vests the title of the Normal School in the State. I need not say that we feel some measure of honest pride in these beautiful grounds, and in this imposing and durable edifice, which is today dedicated to popular education, and accepted by the State under its sol- emn pledge to sustain a school within its walls from generation to generation. Our citizens have invested in this school $100,000, a sin equal to one-tenth the assessed value of all the property upon the corporation. We say without fear of contradiction that so cheerful and munificent a contribution to the cause of education by any such community is without a parallel. The old academy was reverenced here as the work of our fathers. It was interwoven with the whole
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social life of the community. It had added to its material wealth. It had given it character abroad. Upon a circle as broad as the spirit of adventure has led men in this restless age, in every field for honorable achievement its students were bearing a manly part. Honor clustered around the memory of its dead. It was under the inspiration of these facts that this community, with a spirit as noble as that of our fathers, resolved to do something for local and general education worthy of its prosperity and resources, worthy of this beautiful and fruitful region worthy of the enterprise and taste of this wonderful age, something that should endure forever as a memorial of the interest felt in popular education by this generation ; and this elegant edi- fice, in which we are this day assembled, is the result of this resolution. The school established here is upon a novel and comprehensive plan. The "normal department," which is ample for the accommodation of 300 students, is designed to give them in its four years' course of study a thorough scientific and classical education, and to perfect them in the theory and practice of teaching. Its doors are open to students from all parts of the state, and books and instruction are free. As auxiliary to this department, is the " model or training school," which furnishes the material upon which it acts. This is designed for the children of the village, and to be as perfect a school as the largest learning, ripest experience, and the highest art can furnish.
After the great pecuniary sacrifices our citizens have made, they ask for a thorough school, one in which earnest work shall be done. With the ample compensation the state is able to afford teachers, they demand in every department the fullest measure of zeal, learning, ability, and experience. They realize fully that a school to command success must deserve it. The gloss and glitter and pretension which in some places pass for education will not satisfy them. They want the substance and not the shadow. They do not believe that truth, pure and simple, ever kills children. If this school is properly conducted no human intellect can measure its influence ; it will be as extended as the world, as enduring as the soul. In the convulsions of nature, or in the slow process of decay, or in the mysterious social changes in which nations and languages disappear, the work of our hands and the treasures of civilization may leave no trace upon the earth, but ever the impress of this school, for weal or woe, will live in the souls of every one educated within its walls. The completion of an enterprise like this is surely an occasion for a common joy. Childhood rejoices in this fair temple dedicated to its use forever ; manhood rejoices in an achievement that is to attest its energy and public spirit to all coming time. A few of the aged pioneers who are present, who have helped to build log schoolhouses in the wilderness, and who have been spared to see this noble structure arise crowned with all graces of modern art, may almost say with Simeon of old, "Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."
And now to the Empire State of which we are all proud, a state no more distinguished for its commerce and its magnificent physical resources than for its liberal provisions for education and for the support of all the charities that give relief to every form of human infinity and suffering, the village of Fredonia delivers this property with the fullest confidence that the state will sustain it by its bounty and make it a public blessing to all generations.
The Fredonia Normal School has been wonderfully successful, and dur- ing its 28 years of existence its graduates have filled leading places in the schools in 39 states.
As so much of our pioneer history centers around Zattu Cushing I will give a brief history of his life. He was born in Plymouth, Mass., in 1770. Being away from home he heard of the surrender of Burgoyne and ran seven miles to carry the news to Plymouth. His father lost his estate by the depreciation of colonial money, and Zattu was bound out at Boston to learn the trade of a ship carpenter. After serving his term he moved first to Saratoga county and then to Oneida county. He cleared a large farin, and, in 1799, was employed to build a vessel at Presque Isle, now Erie. On his return he stopped over night in the wilderness at Fredonia and was so pleased
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that he resolved to make the place his home. In February, 1805, he left Oneida county for this purpose with his wife and children. Two sleds, each drawn by a yoke of oxen, carried his family and worldly goods. They were three weeks performing the journey which now is, by the flyer on the rail- road, performed in seven hours. They started from Buffalo on the ice to go up the lake. At night a terrible tempest came unexpectedly. They feared to move as there were points where the ice was broken. The judge blew an old-fashioned dimmer-horn at intervals, thinking it might attract some settlers. Two men heard it, taking it for a signal of distress, came with lanterns and piloted them ashore near the month of Eighteen-mile creek. Before daylight the ice had receded miles from the shore. When he reached Canadaway he found the lot he designed for a home had been taken up by Thomas McClin- tock, but fortunately found a partly-built log house, which made them a home for the winter. He drove four cows, and brought a barrel of salt, a half- bushel of apple seeds, and two men to assist in chopping. His apple seeds were the germ of the oldest orchards in Chautauqua. He procured potatoes for planting from the Indians. He with nine others organized the Baptist church in Fredonia in 1807. He was licensed to preach, and in all the log school houses for miles around he found a pulpit and attentive listeners.
Up to 1807 all of the county was the township of Chautauqua, with the town meetings at the Cross roads, now Westfield. Judge Cushing rallied all the voters of his part of the county to go to Westfield, and they voted the town meeting here. This caused the creation of Pomfret. At its first town meeting he was elected overseer of the poor. In 1808 he was appointed one of the judges of Niagara county, of which Erie county was a part, and tried and sentenced to prison the first convict from Buffalo. At the organization of Chautauqua county, in ISI, he was appointed judge. Lawyers from Buffalo would come and stay with him over Sunday, and on Monday they would go on horseback through the woods to Mayville. He served as a pri- vate in the War of 1812. He was delivering a Fourth of July oration when news came of the landing of some British soldiers at the mouth of the Cana- daway. For a wonder the orator hastened to the scene of danger more rapidly than his audience. James Mullett and Daniel W. Douglas, in their haste, undertook to ride one horse, which fell with them and left them helpless at the roadside. Seldom in the history of war has the whole cavalry of an army been rendered useless by a single accident. The two heroes were cov- ered with mud instead of glory. At that time two men could not ride one horse, but since Chautauqua has produced politicians who could ride half-a- dozen at a time. In 1817 a law was passed to aid agricultural societies, which were to be organized at the court houses in the respective counties. Two or three days before the time the judge rode from house to house as far as Cattaraugus creek, and notified every man to rally for Mayville. The
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judge headed the procession of several hundred. There were not as many horses as men, so some would ride a certain distance and tie the horse to give the footman behind a chance. At the appointed hour they emerged from the forest, filled the court house, organized with Judge Cushing as chairman, and voted the "Fair" to Fredonia. Premiums remitted for the purpose formed the nucleus for the Fredonia Academy library. In 1826, just after the opening of the Erie canal, Judge Cushing built in company with others a canal boat within the limits of Fredonia, using the tools he used to build the "Good Intent " at Erie 30 years before. The boat, named " The Fredonia Enterprise," was drawn to Dunkirk by 100 " yoke " of oxen, loaded with wheat by Todd & Douglas, and towed to Buffalo by the steamer "Lake Superior." This was the first wheat ever shipped from Chautauqua to the New York market.
In 1816 the wife of Judge Cushing died. Up to that time so many had never attended a funeral in Chautauqua county. They came on foot and on horse-back and with ox-teams from the remotest towns to pay the last tribute of respect to the dead. There were none of the arts by which grief is now fashionably expressed, but it was to be seen in the tearful eyes of youth and age.
In the hard season of 1816, blessed with ample means, Judge Cushing would not sell his grain but loaned it to be returned when harvests should come to the borrower. When his family remonstrated with him for indis- criminate benevolence, he told them it was better to aid ten hypocrites than to turn away one that was needy. He was a peacemaker. Men gathered around his death bed for counsel. His influence was not in his words as a preacher, but in the heroic Christian life back of it. He died in 1839. 600 acres of land converted from the wilderness to cultivated fields attested his energy. He was an ardent patriot, but to him the vision of the great strug- gle to be waged for the life of the Republic and in which the heroism of his grandson was to make the name of Cushing immortal in history did not come.
To refer again to the teachers of the period, many of them impressed the school more by the ruler and birch whip than by any lessons from the books.
" There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school. A man severe he was and stern to view. I knew him well, and every truant knew. Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face. Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he. Full well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned."
The rude discipline of the schools was much better than disorder, as a preparation for the battle of life. In too many schools now Young America must be humored, and amused, and flattered, and fed on sunbeams and rain-
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bows, and truth in homeopathic doses, and the two-hundredth attenuation at that. It must be learned without study, wise without reflection, obedient without discipline, hardy without exercise, and venerable without age. Some one tells of seeing a boy seven years old in a hotel smoking a cigar ; he said that his father had used disrespectful language to him, and that he should not go home until he had made a proper apology. I know that there are in this age many children properly governed and educated and thoroughly prepared for usefulness. But I fear that there is a larger class being educated in the streets and in the contagion of bad examples, without any respect for age, or virtue, or authority, human or divine, and that there is a disposition to applaud pert- ness, insolence, profanity, in short, the adoption by childhood of the worst vices of age as evidence of spirit and smartness. I tell you that such children, like premature fruit, promise rottenness before ripeness. I know deluded parents who take pride and see promise in careers thus commenced, but at the end of them I see stone structures with barred windows, scaffolds with dangling ropes, the potter's field with unmarked graves.
The pioneers were intensely sectarian. This came from earnestness of 'conviction. Every part of the Bible, as each understood it, was vital. There was no non-essentials. Each sect saw the way to the House of " Many Man- sions " as clearly as they did the way to the neighbor's cabin by the marked trees. Each wondered how others with the marks so plain should not see them and be cast away forever. Sympathy was almost lost in indignation. The preaching was mostly doctrinal but terribly earnest. The terrors of the law were dwelt upon more than charity or love to God, and few then realized,
.. That earthly power doth then show likest God's When merey seasons justice."
The sermons, which are now delivered by the greatest modern divines, and which tend to make all men akin and to bring them into unity, would not have been tolerated.
The women of the period not only had the burden of the honse-keeping, but the wool to spin and weave, and to make clothes for the family. The sound of the wheel. was the monotonous music of every home, and the prin- cipal outside concerts were by the various birds from a thousand trees, some- times intermingled with the growl of the bear and the scream of the panther. The wild flowers in many hines decked the forest in spring. The rose, the holly-hock, the peony, the poppy, the marigolds, the bachelor-button, violets, and sweet-william, bloomed around the home in summer. The ripened leaves of autumn presented a wide scene of grandenr and beauty in colors which no modern garden can present, or artist copy. This was a free exhi- bition in God's auditorium and it came every year under the management of the forces of nature.
I cannot omit to mention Mrs. Sophia Williams, who was one of the first
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members of the Fredonia Baptist church. She will illustrate the character of the women of that day. During the year 1813 her husband carried the mail weekly between Erie and Buffalo. Once he arrived with it from Erie, sick and unable to sit upon his horse. She gathered hemlock boughs and gave him a sweat, then took the mail and set out on horseback with it for Buffalo. It was in the breaking up in the spring, when all the streams were swollen by the freshet far beyond their natural limits. She plunged her horse into the angry flood, swam it across the Cattaraugus, the Eighteen- mile, and the Buffalo creeks, holding the mail above the water, and delivered it in Buffalo in time. She passed through the territory of two tribes of Indians suspected of hostility. Wild beasts' still hovered around the path she travelled. A few years later her daughter, who had married a Dr. Wha- ley and had emigrated to southern Indiana, wrote home that she and her husband and her children were all sick ; that there was no chance for them there but death. This brave woman took a span of horses and a Inmber wagon and set out alone to rescue them. Her journey was hundreds of miles through an almost unbroken wilderness. Sometimes she found a house at night, sometimes she slept in the wilderness with no shelter but the heavens, with no protector but the God who always watches over his saints. She crossed rivers where the horses had to swim and draw the wagon after them, but she returned in safety with her idols. When the names of the heroines of history are collected and assigned their places, high on the roll, justice, with a pencil of light, will write the name of Sophia Williams, the Chau- tauqua heroine. Some of our modern female equestrians, were she to appear in our streets now with the same attire and surroundings as when she set out with the mail for Buffalo, might ridicule her appearance, but her energy and heroism were worth more than a great deal of modern finery.
At an early period there were eighteen distilleries in this town. The use of whiskey was almost universal. It found its way to every home, store, workshop, and harvest field, and even to the grand jury room. The strongest illustration of meanness was being "too stingy to furnish whiskey" for laborers in haying and harvesting. This was looked upon as the unpardon- able sin. The price of whiskey was 20 cents per gallon, and it was pure compared with the modern article upon which avarice has exhausted science in mingling poisons to increase profits of manufacture. In the Washing- tonian movement in 1840 men awakened as from a dream to the ravages of intemperance. In every community some were snatched as brands from the burning. Since then it has been a subject for agitation everywhere, but the friends of temperance have labored in vain to close the flood-gates through which it has carried sorrow and desolation over the carth. It is the skeleton in the closet of millions of homes. Like death it goes alike to the hovel and the palace. It changes the bread of life into poison. Under inexorable laws
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it makes life a curse to millions, and hands the curse down from generation to generation. The means it furnishes government by paying taxes are thrice dissipated in relieving the suffering and punishing the crime it engen- ders. Its record is as old and as broad as the world in wrecking lives, with- out any corresponding good to its credit. Goverment quarantines the pes- tilence and has stopped it in its usual sweep around the world, but it gathers toll from the desolation of alcohol which it never stays. In this republic whiskey largely rules the caucus, and enables demagogues to shape state and national policy. We cease to wonder why public men do not grapple with it until we see the number of its victims clinging to it with a death grasp, the perfection of its organization, the hundreds of millons of its capital reap- ing harvests of gold in every place a man reaches in a journey around the world. Abroad it is stronger than thrones. This evil may never be entirely overcome any more than incendiarism or murder. Vet society should not light the torch or poison the dagger, or coin the blood of the innocent into gold, or gild an open gateway to hell, on both sides of every highway. Let us hope that when the history of the second century of Pomfret shall be written that better education, moral suasion, the spirit of Christianity, and more perfect laws will have so modified this evil and so enlightened human- ity, that the liquor traffic, as it is now carried on, will be looked upon as a relic of barbarism, as Christainized India will sometime look upon the car of Juggernaut. It was in Pomfret that for good or bad the woman's crusade against intemperance was inaugurated. This is true, although a persistent effort has sought to claim it for a place in Ohio, which was a week later.
With the love of excitement which characterizes our people, all are mov- ing to cities who can possibly eke out an existence in them. Wealth, that elsewhere prefers a home in the country, where the charms of nature and art can be blended, here chooses the maddening excitement and whirl of city life. This is a wrong state of things. It can only be prevented by farmers discouraging instead of encouraging boys in going from home. This can be done by making home pleasant, by so educating them that work on a farm shall not be mere drudgery, but an intelligent use of the resources of nature. Nowhere else do intelligence and taste so nearly wield creative power, and so readily and so surely ripen the conceptions of the mind into utility and beauty. There is no stronger affection in the human heart than the love of nature and rural pursuits. It has been the passion of all great souls. It is the first love of childhood, and, after man has tasted all the vicissitudes of life, in his old age he would again seek the farm and be buried under the shadow of the great trees. But there is a period in the restlessness of youth when the world is tinged with romantic colors, and the desire to go abroad into the excitement which exists where the great masses of men are congre- gated is controlling. I wish that both sides of the picture could be seen by
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