USA > Vermont > Vermonters : a book of biographies > Part 18
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In 1764, he had been married to Hester (or Esther) Hurd, who, with three children, survived him.
Seth Warner had been so long occupied in defense of the New Hampshire Grants, prior to the war, and of his country during the war, that his private concerns had been wholly neglected. What lands he had acquired had been sold for taxes, and his last days were saddened by the knowledge that all was gone. He died insolvent, leaving his family destitute.
Subsequently his widow applied to Congress for some remuneration in recognition of her husband's services, but the relief afforded her was small. In 1787, the Legislature of Vermont granted Mrs. Warner two thousand acres of land in Essex County. At the time it was expected that this land would become valuable as settlements increased, and it was thought to be a generous gift, but it proved to be of little
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value and doubtless furnished her small assistance for her immediate needs.
Thus passed Seth Warner, citizen, patriot, soldier, Ver- mont's great hero, to whose memory is owed a debt of eternal gratitude which we reverently acknowledge, but can never adequately repay.
LUCY WHEELOCK
By Bertha M. Terrill
N an enumeration of Vermont men and women who have found their way out of the state to positions of distinction, the name of Miss Lucy Wheelock readily commends itself. Born, in 1859, in Cambridge, Vermont, one queries how she learned of larger educational advantages in Massachusetts, or how, at the age of seventeen, she found her way to Chauncy Hall School, Boston, to prepare for Wellesley College. What, too, were the decisive influences, while there, which turned her decision from a college education to a life of service in kindergarten fields? No doubt her home life in a New Eng- land minister's family of the time was a no small factor in shaping the character of her life.
The attractiveness of pioneering may have lured so brave and eager a spirit as Miss Wheelock's, for the revolutionary principles of Froebel were just taking root in America at this time, the first private kindergarten having been opened in Wisconsin in 1855 by Mrs. Carl Schuntz for her own chil- dren, and the second, also private, in Boston in 1869 by Miss Elizabeth Peabody. Miss Wheelock must have heard the new ideas discussed in educational circles, and one can picture how such progressive but novel changes must have kindled the
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imagination of one of Miss Wheelock's nature, with desire to have a part in the new movement.
It was to this eastern kindergarten movement that she trans- ferred, therefore, but not without leaving behind favorable impressions of the days of Chauncy Hall School, as is evi- denced by the fact that she was persuaded, as soon as she was prepared, to return to the school to carry on kindergarten work there and it is here that her first training school was started.
In Miss Wheelock's preparation there seems to have been repeated the oft-recurring "passing of the torch" from inspir- ing teacher to apt pupil, for she listened to TALKS TO KIN- DERGARTNERS by Miss Peabody, and it has been recorded as a life-long satisfaction to her that when she finished her studies at the school Miss Peabody presented the diplomas "signed with her name." A knowledge of Miss Peabody makes it easy to read between the lines the inspiration which this contact must have brought to her pupils, for Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was an eminent person in her time. Horace Mann, the organizer of public schools in America, was her brother-in-law, as was also Nathaniel Hawthorne. Through Miss Peabody's influence the first public kindergarten in this country was opened in Boston in 1870. In this pioneering educational atmosphere, throbbing with zeal to extend the new advantages throughout our democracy, Miss Wheelock found herself and proved worthy of the vision thus trans- mitted to her.
After ten years of teaching, the demand having become sufficiently apparent, in 1889, for a suitable training school for kindergarten teachers, Miss Wheelock started her school. , This is now located at Riverway, Boston, and has a course of study three years in length and about four hundred students with always a waiting list. That it has had no serious competition is glowing testimony of the high ideals, progressive spirit, and leadership of its founder and director during these years.
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Of a retiring, modest nature, Miss Wheelock has hidden herself behind her school. It is through her devoted pupils that one learns of the nobility of her life and the great inspira- tion that she imparts to those who come under her influence. One has characterized her as:
Little but oh my! Short of stature but great of soul. She has a keen . eye that looks one through and through, but a kindly spirit that judges with wisdom and mercy. She is a gracious hostess, with a memory not only for faces but for the correct name of those whom she may not have seen in years. She possesses a keen sense of humor. There was more inspiration in sitting at her feet during her lectures than is often found in many sermons.
Miss Wheelock has never sought recognition for herself, but she held the presidency of the International Kindergarten Union in the first years of its existence, 1895-99, the longest term of office of any president. She was also elected second vice president of the Department of Superintendence in 1916. She was the first to have the privilege of presenting the kinder- garten at an evening session, at the meeting at St. Louis. She has also extended her influence through the printed page in a helpful book, TALKS TO MOTHERS. As editor of PIONEERS OF KINDERGARTENS in America she contributed a beautiful tribute to Miss Peabody.
Miss Wheelock has had the advantage of having a more in- timate knowledge of the kindergarten movement in all its phases, probably, than anyone else engaged in the work. Who shall dare to set bounds to the influence that has radiated through the years from such a teacher? Henry Wyman Holmes, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has expressed the value of such lives most happily. I venture to quote at some length.
Pioneers-the great men and women of history, even if they were not greatly known to fame-have played their part. Individual de- votion and individual effort count for much in social progress. They count for more, perhaps, in the inspiration they give to institutions and causes beyond their initial stages. .
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The kindergarten movement was a part of an educational and social revolution and its leaders must be grouped with those who developed an education new in its outlook, purpose, content and spirit. . . .
In religion and education and in other forms of social effort many voices were raised to protest against the inspiration of rules, laws, confinements and restrictions, and to plead for the development of powers and purposes to take their place. The fundamental doctrine of the kindergarten education as development, stood in accord with the whole trend of the times. To work out in America an education for the youngest children that should start them self-actively, as grow- ing organisms, moving toward purposive command of their own lives -this was the problem of the leaders of the kindergarten movement.
Miss Wheelock has been such a leader, and her insight, coupled with enthusiasm and a genius for work, has made her a great educator. She has had the good fortune to be possessed not only of large intellectual powers but also of a warm, winning personality which has made the familiar char- acterization, "One of Miss Wheelock's girls," an expression of pride, and the admiration and endearment of all.
The University of Vermont gave recognition to Miss Wheelock's achievements in June, 1925, by conferring upon her the highest honorary degree conferred upon a woman, that of Doctor of Letters. In presenting Miss Wheelock for the degree Professor Tupper summarized her attainments as follows :
Lucy Wheelock of Boston, born at Cambridge, Vermont, daughter of a graduate of this University; founder and head of the Wheelock Kin- dergarten Training School; cherishing the precepts of Froebel and the traditions of Elizabeth Peabody; revered at home and honored abroad as a teacher of little children and their teachers; zealous champion of woman's work for women.
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DANIEL WILLARD
By Walter H. Crockett
D ANIEL WILLARD, one of the most famous railroad presidents of America, was born on a farm in North Hartland, Vermont, January 28, 1861, which he now owns. Here he performed the various chores and duties that formed the regular routine of farmers' sons in the sixties. He lived at home and attended the district school until he was sixteen years old. He attended the High School at Windsor, from which he was graduated in June, 1878, at the age of eighteen. He also taught in a district school in his home town. He entered the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst in the fall of 1878, but was compelled to leave college the fol- lowing March on account of serious eye trouble.
Soon after leaving college, Daniel Willard entered the em- ploy of the Central Vermont Railroad as a track laborer. For several years he served the Connecticut and Passumpsic River Railroad as fireman and locomotive engineer. In October, 1883, he went to Indiana, and secured employment as a locomotive engineer on the Lake Shore and Michigan South- ern. He was laid off for a time on account of business de- pression and in July, 1884, was employed on what is now known as the "Soo" line as brakeman on a construction train. For fourteen years he served this railroad line, successively as conductor, locomotive engineer, foreman in the mechani- cal department, trainmaster, assistant superintendent and su- perintendent. He resigned in 1899 to accept the position of assistant general manager of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- road. Company. When the office of general manager became vacant in 1901, Mr. Willard was offered the position but de- clined it and accepted the task of assistant to the president of the Erie Railroad Company. Later, he was appointed first
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vice president and general manager of the Erie system. He resigned in 1904 to take the position of second vice president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company, which he held for six years. During a part of this time he also held the positions of vice president of the Denver, Texas and Fort Worth Railroad Company and president of the Colorado and Midland Railway Company. He resigned from the Burlington Company in 1910 to accept the presidency of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and in this re- sponsible position has become one of the most influential leaders the American railroad world has known.
Mr. Willard was elected president of the American Rail- way Association in 1911, holding the position two years. In 1912, he was chosen by the Eastern railroads their represen- tative on the board of arbitration in a controversy between fifty-two roads and their engineers. In 1913, he was elected by the same roads, chairman of the presidents' committee, having charge of the so-called Eastern Five Per Cent Rate case. President Wilson, in 1910, appointed Mr. Willard a member of the advisory commission of the Council of Na- tional Defense; when the commission was organized, he was made chairman and served in this capacity during the World War. As chairman of the sub-committee on transportation and communication he brought about the organization of the Railroad War Board and the co-ordination of the steam rail- roads for war purposes, which arrangement continued until the railroads were taken over by the United States government. In November, 1917, President Wilson appointed Mr. Willard chairman of the War Industries Board, but pressure of rail- road business compelled him to resign this chairmanship early in 1918. At the request of General Pershing, Mr. Willard ·was commissioned a colonel of engineers in the United States army in October, 1918, with an assignment to service in the transportation section in France, but the war ended soon, and he did not go overseas.
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Mr. Willard was elected a trustee of Johns Hopkins Uni- versity in 1914, and president of the Board in 1926. He has honorary degrees from the University of Maryland, Dart- mouth College, West Virginia University, Ohio University, Syracuse University and Pennsylvania Military College. On the twentieth anniversary of his election as president of the company, January 13, 1930, a testimonial dinner was given him by the labor organizations operating on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which was attended by 1,600 guests. On this occasion the labor groups represented conferred upon Mr. Willard the complimentary degree of "Doctor of Hu- manity." Mr. Willard was awarded a gold medal by the Na- tional Institute of Social Sciences, April 30, 1929, this honor being granted, as set forth in the presentation address, "recog- nizing the distinguished social services rendered through wise and farseeing management of great corporate interests com- mitted to your care." In 1926, Mr. Willard was elected a member of the board of the American Telephone and Tele- graph Company, and in 1929 he was chosen a director of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. President Coolidge appointed him a member of the board of visitors to the United States Naval Academy. In 1928 he was elected to the directorate of the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore. He is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, a di- rector of the American Arbitration Association, and a member of the Chicago World's Fair (1933) general committee.
Daniel Willard has travelled far since his boyhood on a Vermont farm and his early labors as a section hand on the Central Vermont Railroad. His career is an example of the opportunities that await the American boy who practices the fundamental virtues and possesses the energy to compel suc- cess.".
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EMMA WILLARD
By Beth Bradford Gilchrist
E MMA WILLARD, pioneer in education, was, in point of time, the first outstanding figure in America in that movement for the higher education of women, itself part of a world-wide readjustment of human relations and realign- ment of human forces, whose end is not yet and whose implica- tions are only dimly described. A new-found land acting on old racial stocks, with the power of change resident in a new society, gave the movement its opportunity. Vermont con- tributed to its beginnings, a part of America peculiarly de- voted to independence, individuality, and the passion for hu- man rights. Vermont nurtured it on a conjunction of pioneer virtues with the satisfactions of civilization. It is not fan- tastic to assume that the blend of life found in Middlebury at the opening of the nineteenth century, so near in time to the wilderness, yet joining the pursuit and veneration of learn- ing with a practice of the graces of life, had bearing on the development of the young Connecticut schoolmistress who passed the early years of her career within the state.
Emma Hart was born in Berlin, Connecticut, February 23, 1787. Her father, a liberal and independent man, made a mental companion of his young daughter. At twelve Emma was teaching herself geometry, an unheard of thing for a girl to study. From district school, local academy, and a few terms at private schools in Hartford, she emerged a teacher in a day when women teachers were few and scantily equipped.
The summer she was twenty, Emma Hart became preceptress of a "female academy" in Middlebury, Vermont. Middlebury College had been founded in 1800, and at the same time the townspeople had looked out for girls, with energy and enthu- siasm providing one of the first schools in the country built
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especially for girls. Failure of the teacher's health closed it for a time. This school Emma Hart was asked to reopen. She taught for two years and then married Doctor John Willard, also a native of Connecticut, twenty-eight years older than she, a man of property, education, liberal ideas and political promi- nence in the state, being United States Marshal of Vermont, 1801-11. She had one son.
In Middlebury the young preceptress had found a gay and brilliant social life. She wrote her mother: "I find society in a high state of cultivation-much more than any place I was ever in. The beaux here are, the greater part of them, men of collegiate education. ... Among the older ladies, there are some whose manners and conversation would dignify duchesses." Her first biographer, Doctor John Lord, supports her enthusiasm. "The vivid impression made upon my own mind, when in college, by society in Rutland, where I also
kept school, can never pass away . . . . the soft blandness of some, the elegance of others, the intellectual brightness of a few, the general culture of all, the intelligence, life, and fasci- nation of the belles, the aristocratic style which leading fami- lies assumed, the fine horses, the parties, the well furnished dwellings, the air of comfort and wealth-these filled me with admiration and excited my imagination."
In Middlebury, the former teacher, living in the doctor's dignified brick house opposite the college, her step-nephew a college student, had a chance to study a close-up of a man's college, to see what women lacked and were not expected to have. With the approval of her husband she began again to study, to teach herself mathematics and philosophy, to read his medical books. In her husband, as in her father before him, she always had a background of active encouragement and support.
Ill fortune brought her opportunity. Financial troubles be- fell Doctor Willard. In 1814, Emma Willard opened in her own house Middlebury Female Seminary. "I heard Doctor
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Merrill pray for 'our seminaries of learning.' I will call it a Female Seminary. That word ... high as the highest . . . low as the lowest . .. will not create a jealousy that we mean to intrude upon the province of men." Among light subjects wonted to girls she began to introduce higher studies. In Mid- dlebury, as she said, "the stream of lady-mathematicians took its rise." But how should she teach who had not been taught? Ap- peals to Middlebury College to allow girls to attend classes as listeners were refused as was a similar request for herself. She could not afford to hire college professors. Perforce, she had to develop her own methods, teach herself, train her teachers. At Middlebury she initiated her system of public examinations, with professors and citizens in attendance. At Middlebury she origi- nated and wrote her famous PLAN FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF FEMALE EDUCATION and began to broadcast it through the coun- try. The "Plan" advocated, besides religious and moral instruc- tion, studies to give understanding of the human mind, the teaching of housewifery and of "ornamental" branches. For the sake of the Republic, she said, women must be educated.
Governor Van Ness suggested she go to Burlington as prin- cipal of a female seminary to be opened in the college build- ings, but nothing came of the suggestion. The "Plan" inter- ested Governor Clinton of New York. On his invitation Doctor and Mrs. Willard went to Albany to meet the legisla- tors and discuss the subject. Miss Lutz, her latest biographer, describes the event: "Well-dressed, handsome, with the bear- ing of a queen, intelligent and yet womanly, she impressed them . . . as a noble woman inspired by a great ideal. And yet, Mrs. Willard in Albany, disseminating her views on edu- cation, was probably the first woman lobbyist."
The New York legislators incorporated for her an academy "and gave it a share in the "literary fund" heretofore divided only among boys' schools, but refused endowment. In the spring of 1819, she moved her school from Middlebury to Waterford. Vermont had finished its conditioning. It had
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groomed and launched her and presented her with an in- valuable husband.
Her "Plan" in pamphlet form traveled throughout the country, acquainting prominent people with the idea of edu- cation for women. Her school made her famous and was a business success. In its incarnation at Troy it demonstrated the value of what she preached and sent teachers far and wide. Though it never secured endowment or permanence in her lifetime, it has now happily been revived under the name of The Emma Willard School.
A brilliant, ambitious, enterprising, and ingenious woman, where no way was blazed she cut one-for her solid geometry classes carved cones and pyramids out of potatoes and tur- nips; studied trigonometry, conic sections, "natural philoso- phy," and taught them; wrote text books in geography, his- tory, and astronomy, not to mention a treatise on the circula- tion of the blood; made a trip to Europe where she found much to enjoy, much to shock, and nothing to equal her Troy Seminary; was entertained by Lafayette and presented at court; habitually relieved her feelings in verse; was prime- mover in starting a training school for teachers in Athens; and everywhere and always remained herself convincing proof that a passion for mathematics or even physiology did not defeminize-a woman might be both intelligent and orna- mental.
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SAMUEL WILLIAMS
By Walter H. Crockett
B EFORE the pioneer stage in Vermont history had ended, at a time when this frontier state attracted more often men noted for physical prowess rather than profound learn- ing, one of the great scholars of New England, the Rev. Samuel Williams, became a citizen of this commonwealth. His achievements were notable during the quarter of a cen- tury that followed his coming, and he exerted a profound in- fluence upon the life of the state.
Author of the first history of Vermont, editor of one of its first newspapers, publisher of its first successful magazine, preacher, teacher, orator, scientist, he was the embodiment of education and culture among a people many of whom lacked the training given by school and society.
Samuel Williams was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, April 23, 1743. He was a grandson of the Rev. John Williams of Deerfield, Massachusetts, whose capture in an Indian raid in 1704 is a well-known fact in American colonial history. Wareham, a son of the Deerfield pastor, a lad of eleven years, also taken prisoner at the time, was the father of Samuel Wil- liams. Entering Harvard College at an early age, the young man was graduated when only eighteen years old. His repu- tation as a scientist was so great that soon after graduation he was chosen by Professor Winthrop to accompany him to New- foundland for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus. During the next two years he taught school, studied theology, and was licensed to preach at the age of twenty years. He was ordained minister of the Congregational Church at Bradford, Massachusetts, November 20, 1765. He was appointed Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard College in 1780. In recognition of his scholarship he was
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given the degree of doctor of laws by the University of Edin- burgh, in 1785, and by Yale College in 1786. He was made a member of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Meteorolog- ical Society of Mannheim, Germany, indicating that his scien- tific attainments were recognized both in America and in Europe at a time when honors of this kind were rare on this side of the Atlantic. He was chosen in 1786 as one of the agents to adjust a boundary dispute between Massachusetts and New York.
Samuel Williams, in 1788, resigned his position as a mem- ber of the Harvard faculty and removed to Rutland, Vermont, either the same year or early in 1789. An air of mystery sur- rounds the removal to a frontier village of this talented and cultured man from a post, apparently as pleasant and congenial as an American scholar could hope to obtain. It is known that on May 22, 1788, the Overseers of Harvard College passed a vote beginning: "Whereas sundry reports greatly to the disad- vantage of Professor Williams have been circulated through the State, which, if true, will reflect great dishonor on the Univer- sity;" and proceeding to appoint a committee "to make inquiry into the truth of said reports, more especially relative to a settle- ment of accounts between him and the Administrator of the Rev. Joshua Paine deceased." The same day the President and Fel- lows passed a similar vete. A month later, namely June 25, there was laid before the President and Fellows a letter from Williams tendering his resignation, which was accepted. What- ever may have been the cause of the transfer, Vermont benefited largely as a result of this emigration. The record of Doctor Williams' activities for the first years of his residence in Vermont are meagre, but he soon established himself as one of the leaders in the new state. His services, not un- naturally, have been confused with those of another Samuel Williams, also a citizen of Rutland at that time, who was a member of the Vermont Assembly, the Governor's Council, and
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