USA > Vermont > Caledonia County > St Johnsbury > The town of St. Johnsbury, Vt. ; a review of one hundred twenty-five years to the anniversary pageant 1912 > Part 20
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Bingham's American Preceptor, 1813, was a book of Reading Lessons ; with it, is Lindley Murray's English Reader, a celebrated book in its day ; the name of the owner has been cut from the fly leaf, but there is reason to think that John H. Paddock used to have to toe the mark with it. Another copy of this Reader belonged to a boy, Alvin Flint by name; in the summer of 1832 he raised chickens to pay for it, then bought soft leather enough to cover it ; this he paid for with hogs' bristles combed out and tied in bunches to be used for shoemaker's wax ends.
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BOOKS AND LIBRARIES
History of New England for Children and Youth, by Lam- bert Lilly, Schoolmaster. This was the property of Horace Fairbanks while he was yet a lad under schoolmasters; learning something about the value of books, in unconscious training for becoming the founder of a Public Library.
Robertson's History of America, 1788. These old volumes, standard in their time, carry the autograph in bold hand of E. Sanger ; whether Eleazer Sanger of 1790, or his son Ezra Sanger, is not clear ; the next owner was Hezekiah Martin.
Adam. Latin Grammar and Ainsworth's Lexicon, 1808 -- J. P. Fairbanks-Bought of R. H. Deming, Postmaster 1823-1827, for $5.50.
Noah Webster's Spelling Book, 1829, the famous elementary classic, which certifies that "a cat can eat a rat," and out of which more than 80,000,000 American boys and girls learned how to joint the alphabet in to words small and great-from p-i-g to met-a-phys-ics, from ba-ker to va-le-tu-de-na-ri-an-ism and then to in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty.
The Vermont Repository, Rutland, 1795.
Gazetteer of the State of Vermont, Montpelier, 1824; the property of John and Luther Clark. In this book we learn that St. Johnsbury has "a decent meetinghouse near the center of the township."
CIRCULATING LIBRARIES
The Ide Library. Hiram Hall Ide of the Center Village who died in 1839, had a private library which he put in to general cir- culation. The books were numbered and catalogued in an old account book, with names of the borrowers. At that time he was proprietor of the Center Village grist mill, saw mill and starch factory; this brought him in constant contact with the farmers ; when these men came to the mills he would put books in their hands to carry back to their homes. Most of these books and the old catalogue were subsequently destroyed by fire.
Mr. Ide distributed material as well as intellectual light in his day. It was his custom to put a light in his front window on dark evenings for the benefit of people returning from church
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meetings. At that date there were strained relations between the churches, but the Ide light was set in place for the Universalists as regularly as for the established order.
The Anti-Slavery Library. The abolitionist propaganda was active during the thirties, and an Anti-Slavery Circulating Library was established in the town. No definite information can be had about it; the books perhaps were kept in the house of Dr. Morrill Stevens.
Library of the St. Johnsbury Academy Union Club-1844. This apparently was not restricted to the use of the school. There was quite a collection of miscellaneous books; many of which are still preserved, some at the Academy, some at the Athenaeum. They are bound in leather, furnished with a printed book plate, on which is entered the number, the price if a purchased book, or the name of the donor. It is interesting to read on the fly leaves of these books the autographs of their former owners, in- cluding many well known citizens.
The Mechanics Library. The proprietors of the scale works established this library July 7, 1855, with 800 volumes. These formed a superior collection of well chosen books in good bind- ings, and they were in constant circulation among the factory. men for a good many years.
The Passumpsic Railroad Library Association was formed in February 1856, with 631 volumes for the use of the railroad men and their families.
The Firemans Library Association, February 1860, had an inter- esting library which was kept at first in Union Hall, afterward at the Engine room of Deluge Co .- 404 volumes.
The St. Johnsbury Agricultural Library Association, organized February 4, 1864, had 300 volumes on Agriculture and kindred arts, E. A. Parks, Pres; E. Jewett, Treas.
The Farmers and Mechanics Library of about 500 volumes, 200 of which were on history and literature, was started in 1864 and held by stockholders.
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BOOKS AND LIBRARIES
In 1880 the Young Mens Catholic Library Association was formed with 30 members. There were 450 volumes and periodi- cals, which within two years had increased to about 800.
The Ladies Library Association, 1855-1872, had an interesting history. In 1853 The Ladies Reading Society was formed with 23 members, in the house of Judge Paddock. There was also The Society for Literary Inquiry. These two had in 1855 books valued at $13.73 and fifty-five cents in money. It was voted to combine with this capital; and on May 31, 1855, The Ladies Li- brary Association was organized, its constitution fixing admission at half a dollar and an annual fee of the same amount. Begin- ning with 44 members the Association attained a maximum membership of 142, and for nearly seventeen years contributed much to the literary life of the village. At the semi-annual meet- ings valuable papers were presented and the Blue Bag opened up its store of anonymous contributions. Several lecture courses for the public were provided ; in one of these Dr. Chapin of New York gave his famous lecture entitled, The Roll of Honor ; most of the lecturers however were resident here.
In January 1872, the Athenæum having just been opened, this Association disbanded. There were then on its shelves about 400 volumes ; these were by vote donated, one half to Barnet and one half to Burke, as nucleus for similar libraries in those towns.
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EDUCATIONAL
"Education consists in the fitting of the individual for life in society on the basis of morality and reason." Milton's Tractate.
ARRIVAL OF THE STAGE COACH-WOODCHUCK AND A LETTER- A MAN WHO WAS REAL ESTATE-STARTING AN ACADEMY-A DORIC STRUCTURE-INSIDE VIEW-WIDENING HORIZONS- ACADEMIC BUILDINGS-FIFTY YEARS-QUELPH TO MAGO- GRADED SCHOOLS-CONSOLIDATION-A HIGH SCHOOL-THE TOWN SYSTEM-VACATION SCHOOLS-SCHOOL NOTES.
THE ST. JOHNSBURY ACADEMY
"How dear is the name of THE ACADEMY; adorned with Grecian art, beautiful with its atmosphere of repose and study; immortal for its teach- ings ; its impress felt on the intellectual life of all generations since Plato and Zenocrates." University Magazine.
One evening in the summer of 1842, the four-horse stage from Concord was coming up the long hill at the foot of the street. It was enough at that time to say "the street," inasmuch as there was only one. Under the stage driver's box was the evening mail which had left Boston the day before-brought by the new railroad as far as Concord, and from that terminus staged across to Haverhill and all points north.
As the stage began rolling across the Plain, a lad living at the south end was let loose to keep pace with it as far as the
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post office and get the evening mail. Dashing up the street he - was presently at the steep pitch just above the grave yard, about where one would now turn down Eastern Avenue. It happened that at this point two boys were making their way up thro the tangle of plum trees and lilacs-one having a steel trap and the other a woodchuck which they had just brought up over the long pasture slope from the meadow. The stump under which they had caught their game is probably mouldering somewhere under the concrete of Railroad Street. The field mice and marmots of that wild tract had, as I distinctly remember, the choice of several hundred charred stumps and logs to burrow under; and when, somewhile later, pupils of the Academy were on the platform de- claiming of a place where "the rank thistle nodded in the wind and the wild fox dug his hole unscared," we could appropriately direct our gesture toward the spot now covered by the blocks of the Avenue House or Merchants Bank.
It must not however be supposed that at that date St. Johns- bury Plain was a wilderness. Besides the twenty-nine houses more or less, in which people lived, there were some important institutions, such as a meeting house, printing office, drug shop, a district school house, hotel, and a post office quartered in Moses Kittredge's old yellow store.
To this rendezvous that evening three boys came instead of one, and if the other two got no mail to brag about, they made such demonstrations of what they had in hand already, that the packet of mail carried down to the south end seemed an inconsid- erable trophy. But time holds in store its sweet revenges. What spoils of a trapper, tho brandished in the hand of a future judge of the supreme bench of the city of New York, George P. Andrews, would have survived in story all these years, except for a thing of consequence in that evening's bunch of mail? For, on its delivery to my father's hand, a letter post marked New Ipswich, was eagerly taken up-it was a square sheet folded ac- cording to the good form of that day, red-wafered, marked "paid, eighteen and three-fourths cents;" for this was before the cheap postage era, prior to the use of envelopes, and five years before such a device as a postage stamp was brought out in
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America. The letter being opened announcement was made with emphasis of satisfaction-"Mr. Colby has decided to come!" This was the man who had been invited to come and take charge of the new school that would soon be known as the St. Johnsbury Academy ; founded by the Fairbanks Brothers to be a school of good learning and of wholesome ideals.
Just then the outlook was not altogether encouraging. A financial stringency was on. Doubts arose as to patronage. Some twelve or fifteen pupils only could be counted on. During the en- forced delay other teachers well recommended were ready for the principalship at a $500 salary. The projectors however, feeling the importance of a strong personality in their first Principal, had offered Mr. Colby $700; and he in turn, impressed with the moral earnestness of the men who were calling him, had mailed his ac- ceptance in the letter above referred to.
Late in the fall of 1842, a large-framed, grave-faced farmer's son, mature in mind and in years, of whom a shrewd observer of the time remarked, "That man is real estate," got into the old farm wagon in Derry, N. H., and rode to meet the nearest stage that would take him to St. Johnsbury, a place that nobody knew much about except that it was somewhere up in Vermont. A few days later he went into a small house fixed over for the pur- pose, and there opened "a school for instruction in the higher branches," the first session of the St. Johnsbury Academy, over which for three and twenty years he was to preside; upon which he impressed a dignity, rank and character that soon commanded respect and wide recognition.
In the summer of 1843 the first Academy building was erected ; a graceful structure which introduced a new and classic type amongst the cottages around it. Its low roof of shapely slope, its front adorned with Doric pillars suggested to young eyes a little Greek temple crowning the swell of land with its quiet dignity. Access was had to the tightly fenced enclosure by twisting one's self thro the clump of rounded posts at the front ; on the south side was a space for the feminine recreations of promenading or playing tag; on the north, the whole spacious
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tract where the South Church now is, was the boys' arena for heroic games of pull-away, snap-the-whip and three-year-old cat.
Inside the building one is aware of a well defined atmosphere of order and attention. The master is in the high chair, behind which is seen on the east wall the lettering : "Order is Heaven's first Law." After devotions and a few quiet words about self- respect and truthfulness, the classes are called off. Mental Philos- ophy to the east room, Comstock's Chemistry to the basement, Virgil or Cicero to the high rear platform between the west ves- tibules. On this platform, over-looking all from behind, the master holds each one in his class to the point, and each pupil in the school to his eye ; the occasional tap, tap of his pencil re- minds a thoughtless pupil that that grey eye is upon him, and maybe there will be a silent tour some little way around and the characteristic mandate of a long fore-finger enforcing attention.
It was not long before the Academy came to be cherished with pride and honor in the town ; its wholesome influence was impressed on the young life of the community; it was never much advertised but its fame went abroad and pupils came to it from distant places. "It was there," said a Philadelphia banker, "that I acquired a fondness for study which was a solace and safeguard during my youth, and better still, those examples and refining influences which made my stay at St. Johnsbury the most memorable and significant period of my life." The like ex- perience was shared by hundreds of others. The enrolment for the first year was 61, for the second 164, for the fifth year 257 ; about 2000 pupils in all were under the administration of Principal Colby. On August 13, 1886, he died at the age of fifty-four, uni- versally honored and lamented. The tall granite shaft that marks his resting place at Mount Pleasant was erected by the Trustees and his former pupils at an expense of $550.
1
Mr. Colby's immediate successor was Henry C. Ide, one of his own pupils, a recent graduate of Dartmouth College, United States Minister to Spain under President Taft. He took the `position for two years only; Elmer E. Phillips and Chas. H. Chandler each held it a brief period. With the coming of Rev. Homer T. Fuller in 1871, the new era was inaugurated. The
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confidence which his superior character and accomplishments in- spired in the Trustees led up to the erection of the new brick buildings, the securing of a generous endowment, enlargement of the equipment and curriculum, and a steady growth in efficiency and patronage. During his administration of ten years the num- ber of pupils rose to 350 and more, representing many different states and exceptional grades of scholarship and character.
In 1882 Mr. Fuller accepted a call to the Worcester Polytecnic and later to the presidency of Drury College. His first assistant, Charles E. Putney, took the helm and shaped the course of the school for the next fifteen years with skill and efficiency. From 1896 to 1906, David Y. Comstock was in command. His policy was broad and energetic ; during this period the charter deeds were forfeited and made more liberal, the Alumni Committee was established to co-operate with the Trustees, the "Business Col- lege" on Railroad street was annexed, the Girls Cottage was ac- quired by gift, the new endowment was secured ; a strong forward impetus resulted. The next Principal for two years was C. P. Howland, and after him Martin G. Benedict, the present incum- bent.
The New Academy, which with its attendant building, South Hall, was two years in process of construction was dedicated Oct. 31, 1872. Twelve hundred people were in the hall. Statements were made by Principal Fuller and reminiscences of past years by Edward T. Fairbanks ; the rank and opportunity of the Academy in the educational system of the future was set forth in finished and forceful style by President Buckham of the University of Vermont.
The semi-centennial of the Academy was observed in June 1892, at Music Hall. Wendell P. Stafford Esq., President of the Alumni Association, presided. There were historical papers by Edward T. Fairbanks and Mrs. Walter P. Smith ; the address of the day by Charles A. Prouty Esq., music, songs and odes, and a banquet at the old skating rink with abundant and varied post prandial felicities. Charles E. Putney was Principal at this time. Recollections of non-resident graduates voiced in many letters were all of one strain :-
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W. I hope St. Johnsbury, as well as we who live far away from that beautiful spot, appreciates what was done by the founders of the Academy, who, under God, builded better than they knew.
H. My recollections of the Academy are most distinct and pleasant. Especially of that man so small in his own esteem, so great in the confidence of all, who gave to the Academy its character, fulfilling the hopes of its founders, whose name will always be conspicuous in its history.
J. One aim always governed our instructors in that school, viz., to train up Christian men and women, symmetrical in character, having high purpose, pure thoughts and true culture of soul. And so, go where you will, you find that most who got their training at that Academy have been true to the principles there taught and exemplified.
P. My mind is busy with memories of the dear old Academy. How ma- jestic those columns above the front used to look to us ; how well I remember the faces of those who used to gather on that broad piazza. To me, and I am sure to you, the central figure round which all else revolved was that self-poised, princely man, and rarely gifted teacher, of whom I stood in awe at first, then loved and honored as I have few men ever-Principal Colby.
During the first forty years, E. and T. Fairbanks and Co. as a private firm or as individuals met all expenses incurred for real estate, buildings, equipment and annual arrears. In 1867 these obligations were assumed by Mr. Thaddeus Fairbanks, who also erected the new brick buildings which cost $110,000. In 1881, a permanent endowment was established, mostly from the same original sources, of $100,000. It was not many years before depre- ciation of values, failure of returns and the increasing cost of main- taining such a school resulted in deficits which were annually made up by the Trustees and some friends ; until in 1904 the Alumni and others interested replenished the endowment with $666,666.66. In 1912 some citizens contributed $6000 for the establishment of an industrial department which went into operation the following year. The tuition rate of $46 a year covers less than one third the cost of education per pupil, which approximates $76 a year.
THE NEW ACADEMY OF 1873
Letter from Quelph to Mago-his seatmate in 1846:
DEAR MAGO :-
I've been to visit the old Academy, and I find it all new ; nothing as it was in the days when you and I marched up to
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school in our brass-buttoned jackets. The old white Academy of Doric pillars and big round chimney has disappeared. The clump of gate posts we used to wriggle in and out of is pulled up by the roots. The two tamaracks, down one of which you remember I had the pleasure of making a public descent one recess, when it was said unto me, "You may come down," are both down them- selves. In the midst of our old play-ground, where you and John were leaping frog that May morning when the ground was slip- pery, as you had occasion to remember, is a big church, from the tower of which the village clock gives out the time of day. The old tavern stand is converted into a Club House and moved back to make room for South Hall with its tenements and dormitories, and between that and the Church is the imposing front of the New Academy-brick, on high granite basement, and topped with a bevy of towers and pinnacles. As I went up the granite steps Principal Fuller took my hand with immense cordiality and en- thusiasm, ushered me into his office, one of the modern requisites, though I saw nothing of a ferule therein, and thence into No. 2, the Senior class room. This is a fine room, well lighted, decorat- ed with Kiepert's maps and diagrams, and going to have a min- eralogical cabinet sometime. But what do you think, Mago, of this notion of luxurious arm-chairs as a means of training boys to endure hardness? It seemed a little odd to me when I thought of the hard birch benches you and I grew up on.
And this reminds me of a pleasant little surprise that seems to have been arranged for the pupils of long ago, who may come back to re-visit their old mother. For when you step into the large east room up stairs, there you are amongst those same ven- erable seats just as we had them in 1846, only turned around to face the other way, and I would not be surprised to see you peer- ing around the edge of one of them as if expecting to find trace of certain artistic wood-carving that you were aware of once.
For the old Academy, as you must know, has been literally swallowed up some fifteen feet above its original level by the new brick edifice, and lies therein as serenely as Jonah in a whale. So in the going up, the red birch benches went to, and I had the pleasure of sitting down in my old place, only wishing you were here to occupy the other half.
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Another thing I enjoyed was down in the philosophical chamber. This apartment is nicely planned with seats on a grade, and across half the west side, glass doors, behind which is housed the apparatus, quite a good deal of it being the same that aston- ished our boyish eyes years ago. The great plate of the electrical machine still continues to go around giving off its fluid, though I am not sure that they call it "fluid" nowadays ; and I laughed out- right to see the old insulating stool, remembering how Jesse stood on it ready to burst with mingled laughter and electricity while we measured the distances of his white hairs, each particu- lar hair standing on end. Then, too, the sight of the air pump re- called to me the happy fate of the mouse I caught in the school- room, and which for a scientific study was put under the pneu- matic bell jar. I never shall forget the tender regard that Prof. Colby had for that poor mouse, on which he was experimenting a little for our entertainment ; he just pumped air enough out to show that the mouse was uncomfortable, then lifted the bell jar and let him bounce off.
Adjoining the apparatus room is the laboratory. By simply throwing back the doors, the class has everything in view, run- ning water, gas, implements, chemicals, pneumatic trough, and all. I don't know why it should have come into my mind, but a private door from the desk into the laboratory, which I suppose is for the operator, together with the mysteries that may be suppos- ed to be performed behind the closed doors, suggested to me on the spot that part of the Aedes Isidis at Pompeii where a side door gave secret entrance for Calenus the priest into the Adytum. On the walls of the Adytum also, as here, were symbols of the mysteries wrought therein, and even the feature of running water was not wanting, for there you know went Fontana's aqueduct. If there was only a figure here corresponding to that of Harpo- crates with his finger on his lip enjoining silence, I think we could make a very tolerable Isaeon of this laboratory.
You know going up to our rooms in college we used to sing :
"Away from the world and its toils and its cares,
I've a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs."
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Well, up the long flights of the New Academy stairs I mounted, and instead of a snuggery, a spacious hall to seat the multitude ; windows all around, open timber work overhead, and broad stage across the west end, above which hangs a life size portrait of Sir Thaddeus Fairbanks, the donor of this building, painted by Mr. Matthew Wilson of New York. This is the exhi- bition hall, and I can tell you, Mago, it will take more voice to fill it than you expended one Saturday forenoon when you told us something about the condition of the snow
"On Linden when the sun was low."
While I was standing there on the stage surveying an imagi- nary audience of 1142 people, the bell sounded from the tower, and, a sudden inspiration coming upon me, I proceeded to "speak my piece," which went off in ringing verse and some sort of prose about as follows :-
"Ring out wild bell to the wild sky, Ring, happy bell."
If we boys in the forties could have heard your stroke instead of the big dinner bell that used to ring us into school, perhaps we might have saved some "tardy marks." The sound of that old hand-bell shaking its peremptory call once more out of the north-east window, and a sight again of the stalwart form behind. it, would delight us, but undoubtedly the new style is better for today than the old, therefore
"Ring, happy bell : Ring out the old, ring in the new"
and keep on ringing for a thousand years.
GRADED VILLAGE SCHOOLS
Early in 1854 the discussion relating to improved methods resulted in a proposition for a high or intermediate school on the Plain to include advanced pupils from Paddock and Fairbanks Villages. A plan was approved for a brick building costing $5000 to be erected on the site of the old Clark Brothers' store, afterward the Col. Fletcher property. Another plan called for a
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