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 ALEXANDER^ 
 
 
 
GEN. T. J. SKINNER, 
 Born 1754; died 1809. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAMS COLLEGE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR LATHAM ERRY, LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY, WILLIAMS COLLEGE, 
 
 MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AND 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE BERKSHIRE HISTORICAL 
 
 AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 1899 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 " Origins in Williamstown," a book of much the form and size of 
 the one now in the reader's hands, was published in 1894, and in 
 a second edition with addenda in 1896. The present book is in 
 continuation and completion of that, but it has not been thought 
 best to denominate this as volume second. Each book has its own 
 title, and in a sense its own subject-matter capable of a unified 
 treatment ; while in the broadest view the theme is but one through- 
 out, and the two volumes halves of one whole. The early story 
 of the valleys of the upper Hoosac and the upper Deerfield, and of 
 the water-shed between them, links itself inextricably with the great 
 European wars of England and France falling at intervals between 
 1689 and 1759, the latter the date of Wolfe's definitive battle on 
 the Plains of Abraham. These sustained relations of the general 
 course of the " Origins " to the flow of world-history of the highest 
 significance, gave to that volume a sort of backbone, which is of 
 necessity wanting to this book now in hand. Fortunately, the 
 reader will probably find, as the writer thinks he has already found, 
 a kind of inferior substitute for that in the gradual unfolding, in 
 the way of historical results, of the personal purpose of Colonel 
 Ephraim Williams, the founder alike (and by one pregnant stroke 
 of his pen) of both Williamstown and Williams College. Never- 
 theless, as there has been some consciousness in the composition, so 
 there may be in the perusal of the present volume, of a somewhat 
 lower series than before of supports and attachments and concatena- 
 tions. There is here more of what is personal, and less of what is 
 strictly historical. 
 
 And this leads to the important question often lifted, What is 
 History ? Perhaps I cannot give a satisfactory answer to this great 
 question ; but I can certainly describe my own conception of what 
 the answer should be, and that, too, under which these books have 
 been written. History is not a record of mere happenings, nor even 
 of those happenings which have had a tangible and describable, and 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 in one sense important series of results. History must indeed be 
 happenings with all three of those characteristics, but also further- 
 more with this distinctive characteristic, namely, that they be seen 
 to contribute to the social progress of mankind. History may be 
 local, or national, or universal, while the happenings must all be in 
 their nature recordable, and in their perceived issue also of social 
 benefit to mankind. May an illustration be pardoned here ? Israel 
 Putnam pulled the wolf out of the den at midnight by its ears. 
 This happening became and continued extraordinarily famous ; but 
 it was in no proper sense of the word historical ; the same man in 
 1775 was the first to advise the fortifying of Bunker Hill, and dis- 
 played great courage and energy throughout that battle ; and those 
 happenings on that June day were every whit historical. It has 
 been often said of late years, that Biography is History. Some of 
 it is, but most of it is not. I regard these two books as mainly his- 
 torical under this conception and definition of History ; but much 
 of each of them is rather biographical and descriptive. I have 
 aimed in general to give pictures of places and persons and succes^ 
 sive events, believing that these might prove interesting and profit- 
 able at least to the local generations to come. Some inquisitive and 
 reflective minds elsewhere may be drawn to the true story of begin- 
 nings and their progress, whether civic or educational, when those 
 have become prominent and promise to continue useful as organisms. 
 Even the gross mistakes of some of the past actors may serve the 
 useful purpose of guiding future ones into safer and pleasanter 
 paths. At any rate, I have not written for the mere pleasure of 
 writing, though much of it has proven a pleasure and none of it an 
 onerous task. Still less have I written with any expectation of 
 pecuniary gain ; knowing full well that such books as these are apt 
 to cost their authors five dollars to one dollar ever returned. 
 
 Some readers are very properly curious about the sources of the 
 information communicated by historical and biographical writers. 
 In these two books, for the most part, the sources are indicated in 
 the text itself rather than in any array of footnotes. The sources 
 may truly be called original sources. For the first half of the 
 period covered by my special story, the written sources (largely 
 manuscripts) were found in such copious public repositories as the 
 State Secretary's Office in Boston, the State Library there, the 
 Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Registries of 
 Deeds and of Wills scattered over the State, and in various private 
 quarters throughout New England. For the second half of the 
 period, in addition to researches diligently continued in all these 
 
PREFACE. VII 
 
 and other similar directions, I have had the advantage of a con- 
 tinuous town and college residence of more than fifty years, com- 
 mencing in September, 1848. From first to last I seem to myself 
 to have been remarkably well placed for knowing the real state 
 of things, for understanding the character and purpose of all the 
 chief actors, and for seeing and testing the action and reaction of 
 causes and effects. My -interest in what was going on was sharp 
 from the beginning ; my observation of men and things was unin- 
 termitted ; and through no direct agency of my own I was thrown 
 for twenty years into what proved to be the storm-centre of the 
 chief contact of the college with the outer world. This last circum- 
 stance justified and even necessitated, if a true and clear record were 
 to be drawn, much more reference to myself as an individual actor 
 and a consequent public target, than would otherwise have been 
 proper for me as an author. I have tried to keep throughout to the 
 law of moral proportion. I have not encountered in my researches 
 or in my associations any perfect men, and but very few essentially 
 superior in their public virtues to the general average of those of 
 their class ; and I have been too conscious of my own imperfections 
 in insight and judgment, to suppose that my comparative estimates 
 of the men who have constantly confronted me as a narrator, were in 
 any sense perfect. All I can say is, that I have endeavored to hold 
 the scales even, and to be just when it was impossible to be com- 
 mendatory. In all cases I have based my judgments on historical 
 evidence, chiefly of course on the testimony of eye- and ear-witnesses, 
 which evidence I have been at large pains and expense to accumu- 
 late ; and the very fact that I have at no time expected that any 
 future and competent inquirer would go over the same ground with 
 equal patience and minuteness, made me the more cautious and con- 
 scientious in order that the present results might be, and be thought 
 worthy to be final. 
 
 A single further explanatory word will, I hope, put me on a fair 
 footing with all my readers. I and I alone am responsible for the 
 construction of the facts, the inferences drawn from them, and the 
 opinions occasionally expressed, in this present volume. In these 
 matters I have counselled with no one, not even with him to whom 
 the volume is affectionately inscribed, to whom, if to any one, I 
 should certainly have gone. To him, indeed, I read casually a few 
 pages of the text of the last chapter, relating to Professor Bascom ; 
 but I did not ask, neither did he proffer, any the least criticism of 
 matter or style. I also read to my long-time colleague and neigh- 
 bor, Professor Spring, a few pages from the manuscript of the 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 initial chapter, simply for the purpose of gaining his current impres- 
 sion of the rhetorical style, whether it were sufficiently clear and 
 flowing. Otherwise than this, no person has known or now knows 
 what or why or how I have written. This is stated explicitly in 
 order to clear the skirts of anybody and everybody, who might per- 
 haps be supposed by some to have influenced the tone of the text in 
 one way or another. A subordinate to this point and yet a part 
 of it should be explained, that many persons and families charac- 
 terized in these pages stand in general as examples and representa- 
 tives of others, who could not be named at any length, if at all. 
 The book is too large, as it is; and some readers may be disap- 
 pointed, that they or their ancestors find no place in the record, and 
 may be inclined to say that those who do find place owe it to special 
 relations to the writer of modern members of the families favored. 
 For example, a more copious recital of the ancestors and deeds and 
 descendants of Zebediah Sabin and Nehemiah Smedley is given than 
 of those of other early settlers in every way as meritorious as these. 
 The reason of such discrimination was twofold : first, their record 
 was fuller and more accessible than that of others ; and second, it 
 was intended so far as possible, to make these samples and repre- 
 sentatives of their class, in substantial accordance with the ancient 
 principle, Ex uno disce omnes. 
 
 While thus exonerating all my friends and associates from respon- 
 sibility which is not theirs, I have here publicly to express my thanks 
 to innumerable helpers in all the walks of life, official and private, 
 for information courteously and untiringly given by word of 
 mouth and by way of written message, without which help and 
 encouragement these books could never have been written. 
 
 ARTHUR LATHAM PERRY. 
 
 WILLIAMS COLLEGE, 
 December 3, 1898. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 WlLLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WlLLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL 151 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL .... 227 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL 555 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 BACKWARD AND FORWARD . .... , 763 
 
LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 OPPOSITE PAGE 
 
 GEN. T. J. SKINNER. Born 1754 ; died 1809 . . Frontispiece 
 
 COL. SIMONDS 249 
 
 WILLIAM HYDE 494 
 
 ORRIN SAGE. Founder of Professorship 708 
 
 AMOS EATON. W. C., 1799 766 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. W. C., 1813 775 
 
 MARK HOPKINS. W. C., 1824 780 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. W. C., 1825 786 
 
 WILLIAM DWIGHT AVHITNEY. W. C., 1845 796 
 
 JOHN BASCOM. W. C., 1849 801 
 
 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. W. C., 1856 824 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 
 
 The Hampshire Grants, in particular, a country unpeopled and almost un- 
 known in the last war, now abounds in the most active and most rebellious race 
 of the continent, and hangs like a gathering storm on my left. 
 
 GENERAL BURGOYNE, in August, 1777. 
 
 THE elements of the " town " or " ton " of the Anglo-Saxon times 
 in England were the most peculiar and precious freightage that the 
 founders of New England brought with them across the sea. The 
 German tribes, who conquered and settled in England between the 
 years of our Lord 450 and 600, were always fond of self-government ; 
 and every free man thought it both natural and needful that he 
 should take part in public affairs. The smallest self-governing di- 
 vision of these people, and the one of all by much the dearest to 
 them, was the township so-called. This was originally at once an 
 agricultural community of quite limited extent, holding certain parts 
 of its land as a common pasture, and cultivating certain other parts 
 in common under by-laws of its own making ; and at the same time, 
 also, it was the lowest unit in the civil administration of their affairs, 
 holding statedly a general meeting or gemote, as it was called, in 
 which the townsmen made their local laws and elected their petty 
 officers, namely, the reeve and the beadle; and, furthermore, after 
 the conversion of England to Christianity, and the organization of 
 the local churches, the parish or lowest unit of ecclesiastical division 
 usually covered the same ground as the township, and in process of 
 time came in many cases to supersede it. Whether these little 
 centres of land, and of rule, were in the first place seized by arms 
 and so held on the part of a small body of kinsfolk and acquaintance, 
 or had been allotted out to them by the military chief whom they 
 B 1 
 
2 \\ILL1AMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 had chosen to follow, they became in either case the most pregnant 
 and enduring points of English government, both at home and in all 
 their colonies later. The Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of 
 the Bay, and the earliest settlers in New Hampshire, and Khode 
 Island and Connecticut, almost without knowing it, placed these 
 simple principles at the foundation of the organization of their new 
 homes in New England. 
 
 In the course of natural development in Old England the towns- 
 men came to elect in their common gemote persons to represent 
 them in the assemblies of the larger civil divisions of the Hun- 
 dred and the Shire; and in New England, under a similar devel- 
 opment, the town-meetings came to choose their representatives in 
 the judicial and other business of the County, and at length also 
 in the General Court of the Colony. Thus the town was the origi- 
 nal unit of civil and ecclesiastical administration in Massachusetts ; 
 and in time became the radical and essential organ of political 
 opinion and action. The General Court, however, or Legislature, 
 has always been relatively strong in Massachusetts, and has perhaps 
 been steadily growing stronger, in something the same way as the 
 Parliament, the original Witenagemote, of England has come to 
 absorb or at least to regulate most of the original local functions 
 there. Since the organization of the government of the United 
 States in 1789, there has been probably no State in the Union which 
 has maintained a stronger doctrine of State Eights, as over against 
 the Union of the States, than has Massachusetts. An indestructible 
 Union of indestructible States, is a phrase that has constantly ex- 
 pressed the prevailing political sentiment of the Bay State. 
 
 As organized under its two royal charters in succession, Massa- 
 chusetts had control of all unoccupied lands within the chartered 
 limits, but these limits themselves were not definitely settled until 
 late in the eighteenth century. The line between Massachusetts and 
 New Hampshire was not finally drawn until 1741 ; and the far more 
 troublesome western line separating it from New York was not 
 marked for good and all until 1787. The entire western end of 
 Massachusetts, embracing all the land comprised in the County of 
 Berkshire, which is nearly one-half of the territory within the State 
 west of the Connecticut River, the western half of which, or Berk- 
 shire county, being just fifty miles long as measured north and south, 
 and averaging nineteen miles wide east and west, was settled by 
 white inhabitants much later than the other counties of the Common- 
 wealth. The tie of connections between land as such, and the civil 
 government having jurisdiction over it, has always been very close 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNLNGTON. 3 
 
 in all English-speaking countries. Indeed, it has been and still re- 
 mains closer than the bottom facts will logically warrant. There is 
 a sort of sacredness attached to land in relation to public authority, 
 and also in other relations, which vanishes under any strict analysis 
 and comparison. Separate from any efforts 011 the part of the 
 alleged government to improve them, or any expenditures to defeSd 
 them, unoccupied lands have no more value than so much space 
 measured off in the air above them. That is to say, they cannot be 
 sold for anything to anybody. Anything whatever that cannot be 
 sold is not then and there a Valuable. Lands become valuable only 
 under the labors of human hands to improve them for human uses, 
 in strict connection with the desires of other men to come into 
 possession of them by purchase; and when these labors are inter- 
 mitted and become futile, or these desires for any reason cease their 
 action, the value of even once valuable lands disappears, of necessity. 1 
 In other words, the value of land-parcels comes into existence, 
 increases, diminishes, and sometimes fades out altogether, under 
 precisely the same principles as that of all other material commodi- 
 ties. The land-parcel itself is economically a commodity. 
 
 The General Court of Massachusetts had had its eye on these 
 western lands for a long time, and had wished them well settled, 
 primarily for military reasons, and secondarily for political and 
 pecuniary reasons. But the obstacles to their peaceful settlement 
 were great. (1) their boundary lines were not yet fixed; (2) the 
 Dutch from Albany were creeping up the Hoosac and its tributaries, 
 and were hateful even when not hostile to their English rivals ; (3) 
 the French from Canada and Indians under their influence to say 
 nothing of the local Indians had long been making and were liable 
 at any time to make hostile incursions of one sort and another through 
 this bit of territory, Nature having marked it out as a part of a 
 grand route of migrations, warlike campaigns, travel and transporta- 
 tion between north and south and between east and west ; (4) from 
 the eastward the strip was somewhat removed from the other English 
 settlements, and was certainly difficult of access on account of the 
 Hoosac and other mountains ; and (5) the whole was covered with 
 thick and almost impenetrable forests, much of the land being 
 broken and mountainous. 
 
 Under all these discouragements it is not strange that the first 
 
 technical township within the present limits of Berkshire County 
 
 that of Sheffield on the Housatonic River was only incorporated 
 
 and established as such in 1733. The land-parcels there, however, 
 
 1 See author's Political Economy, pp. 276 et seq. 
 
4 WILL1AMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 on which everything at first turned, had been generally divided and 
 distributed to purchasers, mostly from Westfield, eight years before 
 this, by a committee of the General Court. The settlers upon these 
 lands came in gradually after 1725, and constituted until 1733 what 
 was called in those times a " Propriety " in distinction from a Town- 
 ship. This was a loose political organization under the control of the 
 General Court, or rather of committees thereof appointed for that 
 purpose. About sixty families settled in the "lower Housatonic" 
 Propriety before it was incorporated as a town under its present 
 name. From two of these original families in particular, the Deweys 
 and the Nobles, there came long afterward members from Sheffield 
 to Williamstown, who became very prominent citizens here. 
 
 The course of development was somewhat different in the " upper 
 Housatonic" district, parts of what are now Stockbridge and Bar- 
 rington. Religious motives mingled with political in the action of 
 the Governor and Court in relation to this interesting settlement. 
 In 1734 John Sergeant and Timothy Woodbridge commenced a 
 mission among the Housatonic Indians, about one-half of them then 
 living on the "upper" and the other half on the "lower" river. 
 The mission was located in the " upper " precinct, and was strongly 
 patronized in official and other circles in Boston; and it became a 
 serious and pressing object to bring these Indians together in one 
 place for easier and more effective instruction in Christianity and 
 civilization. With this end in view, the Legislature granted to these 
 Indians a township of land six miles square just above Monument 
 Mountain ; and a year later a committee, of which Colonel John Stod- 
 dard was chairman, laid out the town, which, including the present 
 West Stockbridge, was in form an exact square ; a year later still, the 
 lower Indians having mostly moved up the river, the Legislature 
 ordered a meeting-house and schoolhouse to be built for them at the 
 charge of the Province, Colonel Stoddard becoming chairman of a 
 new committee raised for that purpose ; and in May, 1739, the town 
 was regularly incorporated, and often called the " Indian Town." 
 Stockbridge was its name by act of incorporation. 
 
 With the further view of instructing the Indians in the arts of 
 civilized life by way of example, liberal grants of land within the 
 town were made by the Court to the heads of four white families 
 to induce their residence, namely, to Ephraim Williams of Newton, 
 Josiah Jones of Weston, Joseph Woodbridge (brother of the mis- 
 sionary teacher) of West Springfield, and Ephraim Brown of a place 
 now named Spencer. The first mentioned was the first to arrive 
 with his family in June, 1739, and he exerted an extraordinary 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. > 
 
 influence, much of it apparently for evil, in Stockbridge and its 
 vicinity, for fifteen years, when he died in Deerfield. His grave- 
 stone is still legible in the " old bury ing-ground " there. 
 
 Governor Jonathan Belcher, then of Massachusetts and afterward 
 occupying a similar position in New Jersey, was a patron and corre- 
 spondent of this Ephraim Williams as well as of the Indian Mission 
 in Stockbridge. A considerable number of letters are extant from 
 the one man to the other, of no great historical consequence, and 
 exhibiting neither of them in a specially favorable light ; but there 
 was one commission received by Williams shortly after he removed 
 to Stockbridge, from the Governor and Council at Boston, of very 
 considerable historical importance. It was this : he was directed to 
 proceed with a sworn surveyor and chairman, and to lay out two 
 townships of land in the name of the Province on what proved to be 
 the head waters of the Hoosac River, and to unite the two townships 
 together in a form favorable to future mutual assistance and protec- 
 tion. The first white man ever to perambulate within the limits of 
 the present Williamstown and North Adams were those comprised 
 in this party. That there were some Indians also accompanying the 
 surveyors from Stockbridge is almost certain, because the report of 
 their work to the Governor and Council gives the Indian names of 
 the two branches of the Hoosac, of the Hoosac itself, and a correct 
 drawing of the junction of the two and of the general running direc- 
 tion of all three. The Indians called the north branch Mayunsook, 
 the south branch Ashuwillticook, and New England ears then doubt- 
 less heard for the first time the ever euphonious and since famous 
 designation HOOSAC. 
 
 This was in the autumn of 1739. For some reason the Williams' 
 survey of the townships was not quite completed. The surveyors 
 complained in their report of the opposition they had met with by 
 " sundry gentlemen from Albany." Then the two townships were 
 not as compactly joined together for the reciprocal encouragement 
 and defence of the prospective settlers as had probably been designed 
 at the official headquarters in Boston. At any rate, nothing ever 
 came of this survey as a permanent lay-out. Just ten years later, 
 however, that is, in 1749, the old French war having been brought 
 to a temporary close by the Peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748, another 
 committee of the General Court under better auspices made a new 
 survey throughout, and laid down the permanent lines of two town- 
 ships parallel with and touching each other throughout the greater 
 part of their length north and south. They then very properly 
 denominated the townships East Hoosac and West Hoosac. The 
 
"A Plan of 23,040 acres of Land lying on the East Side of Ashuwilticook River and South Branch 
 of Hoosuck River, beg'ing at a Hemlock Tree mark'd O+. 
 
 "Surveyed, May 1739, by the Needle of the surveying instrument, 
 
 By Mr. NATH. KELLOGG, 
 
 Surueyor," 
 
 6 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 7 
 
 former was the one first reached by the then only path of access, 
 namely, the immemorial Mohawk trail from the Hoosac to the Deer- 
 field over the Hoosac Mountain, and it also embraced the rude 
 military work built by the Province in 1745 and rebuilt in 1747 
 after its destruction by French and Indians the year before, and 
 made famous both previous and subsequent to the Peace as " Fort 
 Massachusetts " ; but nevertheless the Court's committee of 1749 
 found on examination and expressly reported to their masters at 
 Boston that the latter, or West Hoosac, was by much the better 
 situation for a new settlement, " the committee do deem the west 
 township the most valuable." 
 
 Even this survey of 1749 settled only the exterior lines and the 
 common line dividing the two townships. The next spring still 
 another committee came over the mountain from the eastward to 
 lay out for the west town sixty-three house-lots of "ten or twelve 
 acres each contiguous to each other in the best of the land," to be 
 offered for sale to individual proprietors wherever these could be 
 found, the ownership of any one of which to carry along with it in 
 addition the gradual ownership of one sixty-third part of all the 
 rest of the land in the town outside the house-lots, as that land 
 should be successively divided by vote of the proprietors themselves 
 into other lots, like Pine lots and Oak lots and Meadow lots and 
 50-acre lots and 100-acre lots and so on. The chief conditions of the 
 sale of the house-lots were as follows : 
 
 That each settler pay the Committee upon his being admitted 6 13s. 6d. law- 
 ful money for the use of the Government, and that he shall within the space of 
 two years from the time of his being admitted build a house eighteen feet long, 
 fifteen feet wide and seven stud, and shall fence five acres of his said house lot 
 and bring the same to English grass, or fit it for plowing and raising of wheat or 
 other corn, and shall actually by themselves or assigns reside on said house lot 
 five years in seven from the time of their being admitted, and that they do 
 settle a learned Orthodox minister in said town within the term of five years 
 from the time of their being admitted. 
 
 In harmony with the last of these conditions, one house-lot (with 
 the same after-privileges as the rest) was to be reserved for the first 
 settled minister, and another as toward the annual support of the 
 ministry, and a third for the support of a school ; and then the re- 
 maining sixty portions were to be offered for sale by lot wherever a 
 market for them could be found. The three lots thus reserved for 
 public purposes were among the most eligible of the whole series, 
 all of them in close proximity to the Square, as it was then called, 
 that is, the junction at right angles of the very wide main street 
 
8 WILLIAMSTOWK AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 running east and west with the wide intersecting street running 
 north and south. On the Square itself stood the two first meeting- 
 houses of the town in succession, from 1768 to 1866 ; and on the 
 first pastor's lot, No. 36, sold by him shortly after his induction, 
 stood during the whole of the nineteenth century the principal 
 tavern of the town. 
 
 In September, 1752, the committee charged with the sale of the 
 house-lots reported themselves as having completed the service as 
 directed by the order of the Court. They had spent fourteen days 
 " in lotting " several of them at Fort Massachusetts, three of them 
 at Concord, three at Worcester, and one at Watertown. Captain 
 Ephraiin Williams, then the commander at Fort Massachusetts, eldest 
 
 PRESENT SITE OF FORT MASSACHUSETTS. 
 Perry's elm set in 1859. 
 
 son of that Ephraim W T illiams already briefly characterized, bought 
 in this way two of the lots, Nos. 8 and 10, and fifteen more of the 
 lots were bought at the same time and in the same way by other 
 officers and soldiers of the fort. About fifteen additional lots, mak- 
 ing a majority of the sixty, were bought by parties who had had to 
 do in some civil capacity or other with the two new towns or with 
 Fort Massachusetts. On the renewal of the French and Indian War 
 in 1754 nearly all of the men and officers previously in the military 
 service, who in the meantime had been " subduing " their house-lots 
 and erecting their " regulation " houses, resumed their places in the 
 military service of the Province, either in Fort Massachusetts or in 
 the West Hoosac Fort then first built and garrisoned. Young men 
 from Connecticut mingled in about equal numbers with the young 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BEKNTNGTON. 9 
 
 men of Massachusetts both in the labors of the so-called Peace, and 
 in the stir and hazards of the war that followed. William stown, 
 accordingly, had a very distinctive military origin. The purpose of 
 the Province in the civil establishment of the two towns, as well as 
 in the erection and maintenance of the two forts, was predominantly 
 military. In the lull of active arms between the Peace of Aix la 
 Chapelle and the renewal of the war, some twenty of these proprie- 
 tors had made the legally required beginnings upon their little home- 
 steads. The committee had laid out the house-lots along both sides 
 of a broad street fifteen rods in width, and stretching from Green 
 River on the east to Buxton Brook on the west, a distance of about 
 one mile and a half. On account of a relative facility in getting at 
 water, the earliest houses, corresponding in size and height to the 
 conditions prescribed by the General Court in selling the lots, were 
 built on both sides of the Hemlock Brook and on both sides of the 
 main street toward its western end. To these few resident proprie- 
 tors, struggling under local difficulties of every kind, it became imper- 
 atively needful that they should have a civil organization authoriz- 
 ing them to hold legal meetings for the purpose of taxing themselves 
 and all other owners of the house-lots, whether resident or not, to 
 sell at public auction after proper advertisement the lots of any 
 delinquents in paying these rates, to open roads and other needed 
 conveniences demanded by the major voice, to proceed further to 
 divide among themselves the common lands of the township, and to 
 defray all expenses connected therewith, to determine upon a method 
 of holding legal meetings to choose such officers as a proprietors' 
 clerk and treasurer and assessors and collectors, to hire a minister 
 and build a meeting-house, and provide for a school in short, to 
 perform all these functions in the way of local self-government pecul- 
 iar to a Propriety. 
 
 Accordingly, on the 10th of September, 1753, the House of Rep- 
 resentatives at Boston voted that William Williams, "one of his 
 Majesty's justices of the peace for the County of Hampshire [it was 
 eight years later when Berkshire County was set off], issue his 
 warrant for calling a meeting of the proprietors of the west township 
 of Hoosac so-called, directed to one of the principal proprietors of 
 said township requiring him " and so on. This vote was concurred 
 in by Governor Shirley and the Council the same day; and on 
 Nov. 15, 1753, William Williams of Pittsfield issued his warrant 
 to Isaac Wyman of West Hoosac, requiring him " to notify and warn 
 the proprietors of said township that they assemble at the house of 
 Mr. Seth Hudson in said township on Wednesday, the fifth day of 
 
10 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 December next at nine of the clock in the forenoon to act " and 
 so on. Such meeting was accordingly holden at that time and place, 
 and inaugurated a successful local self-government, which continued 
 for twelve years the sole authority within "the west township of 
 Hoosac." In 1765 the town was regularly incorporated by the Prov- 
 ince authorities at Boston, and received the usual accession of pow- 
 ers, including the right to send a representative to the General 
 Court. The town-meetings holden regularly thereafter superseded 
 for many purposes the previous proprietors' meetings ; nevertheless 
 the latter continued to assemble at intervals throughout that century 
 to care for the special functions originally confided to them. The 
 proprietors and not the townsmen called and settled the first minis- 
 ter, Rev. Whitman Welch, in 1765, and paid all the expenses of his 
 ordination ; they built and paid for the first framed meeting-house 
 in 1768, and they continued to regulate all matters concerning the 
 still undivided lands. Of course the town grew relatively stronger 
 and the proprietors weaker, especially after the Revolutionary War, 
 during which the functions of both were pretty much suspended. 
 Before the second meeting-house was erected in 1796 the College 
 had come in with its needs for seating on Sundays and public use 
 for Commencements, and that was built by subscriptions taken up 
 irrespective of the old civil division. The last entries in the old 
 Proprietors' Book, which is still preserved in the original, and com- 
 plete in a fair copy taken at the instance of the present writer in 
 1878, bear the dates " 1801," "1802," and "1803." 
 
 The proprietors mentioned by name in the record of their first 
 meeting, Dec. 5, 1753, are : Allen Curtis, Seth Hudson, Isaac 
 Wyman, Jonathan Meacham, Ezekiel Foster, Jabez Warren, Sam- 
 uel Taylor, Gideon Warren, Thomas Train, Josiah Dean, Ebenezer 
 Graves, eleven men. With the exception of Allen Curtis, who 
 was the moderator of the meeting, and who not very long after re- 
 turned to his former prominent position as a citizen in Canaan, 
 Connecticut, all these had been soldiers in Fort Massachusetts be- 
 fore and all took military service in some form when the French 
 War broke out again in 1754. Seth Hudson's house, in which this 
 first proprietors' meeting was had, is still standing in a modified 
 form less than half a mile down Hemlock Brook from its original 
 site, and on the west side of the brook. The second proprietors' 
 meeting was had April 18, 1754, in the house of Allen Curtis, which 
 stood directly across the brook from Hudson's house and on the 
 west side of it. At this meeting it was voted to set off out of the 
 common land not yet divided "two acres and a half for a burial- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 11 
 
 place," on what is now called " Johnson Hill," near the present resi- 
 dence of Mr. Eugene Jerome. This land, however, was not long 
 used for this object. It proved to be too far from the then dwelling- 
 places of the people. Another parcel was set off adjoining the main 
 street on its north side just west of Hemlock Brook, which, with its 
 enlargements, has ever since been the chief " God's acre " of the 
 town. 
 
 One month later, namely, May 15, 1754, the third proprietors' 
 meeting was had " at the house of Captain Allen Curtis," and the 
 names of three proprietors additional to the former eleven appear in 
 the record of it, to wit, Captain Elisha Chapin (who was chosen the 
 moderator), Oliver Avery, and John Crawford. The chief business 
 of this meeting was to draw for the second division of 50-acre lots, 
 the Meadow lots and the first division of 50-acre lots having been 
 drawn for at the previous meeting in April. Fair as was this open- 
 ing of local government in West Hoosac, both as to the division and 
 partial subjugation of lands, the beginning of roads "to convean" 
 the same, and the laying and gathering in of taxes for these and 
 other common purposes, the prospects of the hamlet were suddenly 
 clouded over by the furious outbreak of the final French war in 
 America. There were no further proprietors' meetings in West 
 Hoosac for six years and a half. The next one, and the fourth in 
 order of time, assembled Oct. 1, 1760. It is significant of the storms 
 of the interval that this meeting was warned to be held " at the West 
 Hoosac Fort." Although there were no developments of civil sig- 
 nificance within the township, great things had taken place else- 
 where in that interval of time. The most consequential single battle 
 ever fought in America was that between Generals Wolfe and Mont- 
 calm 011 the Heights of Abraham, Sept. 13, 1759. It settled the 
 question of French domination on this Continent. The formal con- 
 ditions of peace were not entered into by treaty between England 
 and France until 1763; but there was not a village, nor scarcely a. 
 home in New England, but understood perfectly before New Year's 
 of 1760, that it was all over with New France. The old routes to 
 the northward from Massachusetts and Connecticut, which for half 
 a century had been paths of Indian ambush, fierce hand-to-hand 
 battle and sudden death, became all at once open and safe and 
 extraordinarily attractive to white settlers. West Hoosac lay right 
 in the road of each warlike expedition from those two Provinces to 
 Ticonderoga and Crown Point ; and many an officer and soldier in 
 passing through, cast their eyes about upon the well-wooded and 
 well-watered fields, and remembered them after the war, and turned 
 
12 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 their faces thitherward again to find a home. A military company 
 from Hardwick, Massachusetts, in returning southward from Ticon- 
 deroga, made the mistake at what we call Hoosac Junction of follow- 
 ing the path up the Walloomsac instead of that up the Hoosac, and 
 were so impressed with the site of what is now Bennington, that, in 
 the spring of 1761, a large part of them, with others, returned over 
 the Hoosac Mountain and through West Hoosac to make the first 
 permanent settlement there within the present limits of Vermont. 
 
 Another military company from northwestern Connecticut, com- 
 posed in part of young men who had previously been in West Hoosac 
 to look for a life-location, left these and several others besides, when 
 the company as such returned to the Colony that sent them at the 
 instance of Massachusetts to help defend an access common to both 
 Colonies, threatened by hostile French and Indians. The news of 
 Wolfe's victory at Quebec brought many new settlers to West 
 Hoosac. Traffic in the house-lots and in the out-lots drawn by these 
 became very brisk in the years 1760-65. There were eight sup- 
 plementary divisions in all, and these were made in the following 
 order: (1) meadow lots; (2) 1st division 50-acre lots; (3) 2d division 
 50-acre lots ; (4) 100-acre lots ; (5) Pine lots ; (6) Oak lots ; (7) 60- 
 acre lots ; and (8) Pitches. Excepting those who had been officers 
 or soldiers either in Fort Massachusetts or the West Hoosac Fort, 
 comparatively few of the actual settlers prior to the incorporation 
 of the town in 1765 came from the eastward over the Hoosac Moun- 
 tain. Most of the rest came from Connecticut. If we extend the 
 view till the end of the century, it is noteworthy from first to last 
 that nearly all of the comers into William stown from Connecticut 
 came from three sections of that Colony: (1) from the northwest- 
 ern corner, with Litchfield as a centre ; (2) from the northeastern 
 corner, with Killingly for a centre ; and (3) from Colchester and its 
 immediate vicinity. From Colchester alone came at least twenty- 
 -five families, who possessed staying qualities, and who left posterity 
 here. As for sporadic families from Connecticut, the Corbens were 
 from New Haven, the Whitmans from Hartford, and a part of the 
 Kelloggs from what is now Vernon. 
 
 An important consequence of this large infusion of Connecticut 
 families into a Massachusetts township, in connection with the huge 
 barrier of the Hoosac Mountain on the east and the easy route down 
 the Hoosac into the Dutch country and the North Biver to the west- 
 ward, was and is some pretty sharp differences in the social and 
 religious conditions of Williamstown as compared with those of the 
 typical Massachusetts town. What these differences consist in might 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 13 
 
 prove difficult to express in exact language, but they have always 
 been felt by dwellers here who have also had a considerable experi- 
 ence there. The first pastor of the church was a Connecticut man 
 and a Yale graduate. When the College came in, in 1793, the same 
 was true of President Fitch and the early tutors. The relations of 
 the College to that in New Haven have been down to the present 
 day more abundant and intimate than to that at Cambridge. It is 
 possible that the Dutch and other New York influences, blown over 
 the Taconics and wafted up the Hoosac Eiver in the ever cool breezes 
 from the northwest, have been even more penetrating and pervasive 
 than those from the southward. New York, at any rate, has always 
 been a very strong patron of the College, both as to funds given and 
 the number of students sent. The annual catalogue for the present 
 year (1893-94) shows 138 students from New York and 88 from 
 Massachusetts. It is scarcely needful to relate, so consonant was it 
 to human nature in general, that, in the early settlement of West 
 Hoosac, and in the inevitable jealousies between the Massachusetts 
 Eort and the later fort in the west township, the transient disputes 
 and quarrels took on a form of bitterness drawn in part from the 
 prejudices of the men of the two rival Colonies. 1 
 
 Colonel Ephraim Williams, Jr., long the commander at Eort Massa- 
 chusetts, had made it in his last will and testament, drawn at Albany 
 in 1755, a condition of a small bequest to found a free school in West 
 Hoosac, that the town, when incorporated as such, should be named 
 Williamstown. Ten years later the seal of the General Court was 
 expressly put upon the new and every way appropriate designation 
 of the town. The new name and the reason for it, and the additional 
 privileges of a Town over those of a Propriety, tended to increase and 
 did increase the population of the town. The increased population 
 demanded better facilities for public worship ; and the first framed 
 meeting-house, built in 1768, answered to this demand. A log struc- 
 ture thrown up on No. 36, the house-lot designated for the first settled 
 pastor, had accommodated the desultory preaching until the settle- 
 ment of Mr. W'elch in 1765, and his own also for three years longer. 
 This rude building continued as a schoolhouse and as a place for 
 social worship till long after the ^Revolutionary War. The good 
 women of the town held a prayer-meeting within its walls (such as 
 they were) on the battle day of Bennington till after the sun went 
 down and the news of the victory was brought. 
 
 1 For a copious account of these two forts with their officers and men, of the set- 
 tlement of West Hoosac, and particularly of Colonel Ephraim Williams, the founder, 
 see the author's Origins in Williamstown. 
 
14 WILLIAMSTOWX AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 The decennium between the completion of the local meeting-house 
 in 1768 and the surrender of Burgoyne on the upper Hudson in 1777 
 were probably the most prosperous, and certainly the most stirring, 
 years in the history of Williamstown. The population rapidly in- 
 creased. The colonial census of 1776 showed 1083 inhabitants in 
 Williamstown. The fertile lands of the town found a quick market 
 on the part of purchasers, still mainly from Connecticut. Farms and 
 homes swiftly changed hands in that decade, as the registry of deeds 
 bears abundant witness to this day. This was the result partly of 
 Yankee speculation, and partly of a determination of some of the 
 more enterprising owners of the house-lots to secure each a farm 
 made up of contiguous lands, instead of the original idea (found 
 ineligible on trial) of a home-lot of ten acres in a village and scat- 
 tered out-lots drawn successively in virtue of that. For example, 
 Nehemiah Smedley sold his already well- 
 tilled and well-orcharded house-lot No. 1 
 (on the Square), to aggregate for himself a 
 compact farm on the lower Green River, still 
 owned and occupied by one of his descend- 
 ants ; and Benjamin Simonds sold his home- 
 lot next west of Smedley's, on which he had 
 already opened the first tavern in the ham- 
 SEAL OF THE FREE let, No. 3, to gradually put together what 
 was then the best farm in the township, now 
 
 Here impressed from the orig- ,, , , -,-> . T ^ -i -n i ,1 r> ,1 
 
 inai die cast in 1790 called the "River Bend Farm," north ot the 
 
 Hoosac, and to erect on it a substantial farm- 
 house and tavern-stand still doing duty in the former capacity. In 
 the same interval of time there settled in the town a dozen or 
 more young men destined to distinguish themselves in the Revo- 
 lutionary War and otherwise, most or all of whom will be particularly 
 characterized in the following pages. 
 
 Before that war broke out in 1775, a few, but not many, of the 
 earlier settlers in Williamstown had passed on into Vermont, follow- 
 ing in the steps of the first party ever migrating in a body into the 
 territory now constituting that State, namely, six families, four of 
 them from Hardwick and two from Amherst. They were the fami- 
 lies of Peter Harwood, Ebenezer Harwood, Leonard Robinson, Samuel 
 Robinson, Jr., Samuel Pratt, and Timothy Pratt. They came on 
 horseback, twenty-two persons in all including women and children, 
 over the Hoosac Mountain by the old Mohawk trail, passed Fort 
 Massachusetts and the West Hoosac Fort, in all probability spent 
 one night in the little hamlet here, and arrived on Bennington Hill 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 15 
 
 June 18, 1761. Mary Harwood, sister of Peter Harwood, just then 
 entering her seventeenth year, was of this party, and in about two 
 years she became the wife of Nehemiah Smedley of Williamstown, 
 who was twelve years her senior. In this and many other similar 
 ways a firm connection was knit between West Hoosac and Benning- 
 ton. The former had nearly ten years the start of the latter as a 
 settlement, and it continued for many years the nearest strong set- 
 tlement, because Pownal, lying between the two along the Hoosac, 
 was only sporadically occupied, at first by a few Dutch farmers and 
 later by a few English families. When Smedley lifted the heavy 
 timbers of his new farmhouse on Green River into place, Oct. 8, 
 1772, strong hands from Bennington, Harwoods and others, assisted 
 at the raising. Five years later, as we shall shortly see, the two 
 towns reached each other the hand in the double battle along the 
 Walloomsac in a most remarkable and effective fashion. From the 
 very outset the growth of Bennington was phenomenal. During 
 the summer and fall of 1761, besides the six families that came 
 in June, at least twenty-five families, all purchasers under the 
 original grantees, made permanent settlement. There is extant 
 an original muster-roll of a military company formed only three 
 years after the first families arrived, the heading of which runs as 
 follows : 
 
 " Muster Koll of the first company of Militia in the town of Ben- 
 nington, organized Oct. 24, 1764." 
 
 This roll holds sixty-six names and may fairly be supposed to 
 embrace all the able-bodied men then in town between the ages of 
 eighteen and sixty. The name of Samuel Robinson, Senior, is not 
 upon this roll, partly, perhaps, because he was then in his sixtieth 
 year ; but more probably because as a Justice of the Peace commis- 
 sioned by Governor Benning Wentworth in February, 1762, and so 
 the first judicial officer within the present limits of Vermont, he had 
 fallen that summer into official controversy with the officers of New 
 York who claimed the jurisdiction as against New Hampshire, and 
 was under arrest and indictment for defending claimants under the 
 latter, and spent some time in the Albany jail. He had had his mili- 
 tary day during the last French War ; had served as Captain in the 
 troops of Massachusetts through several campaigns, and was at the 
 head of his company in the battle of Lake George, September, 1755, 
 in which Colonel Ephraim Williams was killed. In returning from 
 the north with his company in the next campaign by the usual route 
 to Fort Massachusetts, he mistook at what is now Hoosac Junction 
 the Walloomsac River for the Hoosac, and marched up the former 
 
16 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 till nightfall, when he perceived his mistake, but spent the night on 
 the banks of the stream which was to be immortalized twenty years 
 later by the battle of Bennington. He and his men from Hardwick 
 looked around in the morning as they retraced their steps, and con- 
 cluded that that would be a good region to settle in when peace 
 should come in. This plan was carried out to the letter. Captain 
 Eobinson repaired to New Hampshire and made purchases of a con- 
 siderable portion of the township rights under the original charter 
 of 1749, and sought among his friends and acquaintances for asso- 
 ciate emigrants to the new country. He was the acknowledged 
 leader of the resolute band of pioneers in the settlement of Benning- 
 ton, and he continued to exercise almost a controlling authority in 
 the affairs of the town during the remainder of his life. 
 
 In December, 1765, when it was ascertained by the settlers under 
 the New Hampshire grants that their lands were being granted over 
 again from under them by the executive authorities of New York, 
 Captain Robinson was deputed by those of Bennington and the three 
 or four neighboring towns already partially settled to go down to 
 New York for the purpose of trying to persuade them to save the 
 legal possessions of the first settlers from the grasp of the city and 
 other speculators ; but his efforts proved to be unavailing. The next 
 year he was appointed by the whole body of the settlers and lawful 
 claimants of the lands granted by New Hampshire to repair to Eng- 
 land and to present their petitions for relief to the King in Council. 
 He reached London early in February, 1767 ; and in conjunction 
 with William S. Johnson, then in London as an agent of the Colony 
 of Connecticut, afterward prominent in the convention that framed 
 the Constitution of the United States, and with the aid also of the 
 " Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," he so 
 far procured the ear of the Crown that Lord Shelburne addressed a 
 letter to the Governor of New York, forbidding him in the most posi- 
 tive terms from making any new grants of lands in the disputed 
 territory, and from molesting any person in possession under a New 
 Hampshire title. Upon a later hearing before the King in Council, 
 an Order in Council was passed prohibiting the Governor of the Prov- 
 ince of New York in the most positive terms, "under pain of his 
 Majesty's highest displeasure," from making any such new grants. 
 While Captain Robinson was still prosecuting the business of his 
 mission, he unfortunately took the small-pox and died in London, 
 Oct. 27, 1767. In communicating the intelligence of his decease to 
 the widow a few days later, Mr. Johnson wrote: 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 17 
 
 He is much lamented by his friends and acquaintances, which were many. 
 You may rest assured no care or expense was spared for his comfort and to save 
 his life, had it been consistent with the designs of Providence. After his death 
 as the last act of friendship to his memory, I took care to furnish him a decent 
 funeral, at which General Lyrnan (who knew him at the battle of Lake George) 
 and other gentlemen from America attended with me as mourners. He is in- 
 terred in the burial ground belonging to Mr. Whitefield's church, where he 
 usually attended public worship. 
 
 " Bunhill burial Fields " holds much human dust dear to the hearts 
 of Americans. John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, and George Whitefield 
 are the most famous names whose relics mingle with common earth 
 in that particular section of God's sown field. But the name of 
 Samuel Robinson, the true-hearted in war and peace, founder of 
 Bennington, will be forever associated in some minds with these 
 men of genius and of world-wide fame, and many another American, 
 like the present writer in 1861, will seek within that sacred enclosure 
 for an unmarked grave, and say with him, What matters it ? His 
 record is on high. 
 
 It was not so much the number as the nature of the rapidly 
 increasing population of Bennington during the sixteen years prior 
 to the one great event in its history that has made and will ever 
 make that name memorable. Scotch-Irish people of the great emi- 
 gration into Massachusetts of 1718 had in the sixty years next 
 following diffused themselves widely and largely over central and 
 western Massachusetts, all over New Hampshire, and into the dis- 
 puted New Hampshire " Grants." An eye skilled in New England 
 history since that date can usually tell on sight of the name the 
 men of that heroic blood, in distinction from the more common Eng- 
 lish names derived from the Pilgrims and the Puritans and the later 
 English immigrations ; there is hanging in the State House at Con- 
 cord. New Hampshire, an ancient parchment, dating from 1718, 
 holding the names of 313 Scotch-Irish people professing their readi- 
 ness to emigrate to Massachusetts in case proper encouragement were 
 given to that end by Governor Shute ; extended lists of later dates of 
 the names of these people may be found in the appendix of Parker's 
 "History of Londonderry, New Hampshire," and in Lincoln's 
 "History of Worcester, Massachusetts," and in the town histories 
 of Coleraine, Blandford, and many more ; so that men of that strain 
 of blood with their pretty uniform traits of push and pugnacity, 
 conjoined with an obstinate conservatism, may be pretty certainly 
 picked out in contemporary muster-rolls and petitions and deeds of 
 real estate. As specimens, merely, there may be culled out of the 
 
18 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 earliest records of Bennington, James Breakenridge, Eobert Cochran, 
 Isaac Clark, Thomas Henderson, Josiah Fuller, Brotherton Dagget, 
 Joseph Barber, William Henry. 
 
 There can be no question that the Bennington people fought their 
 battle against the New York claimants of their lands all the better 
 and more bravely for the strong presence among them of the ever 
 good-haters of this peculiar stock. Lieutenant James Breakenridge 
 took the first brunt of the fight against the " Yorkers." The Scotch- 
 Irish, however, never became the social and political leaders there 
 like the Robinsons, and Saffords, and Deweys, and Harwoods. If 
 this influence be plain in secular things, still more evident is the 
 pervading and persistent, even if not predominent, control of these 
 Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in and over the first church in Benning- 
 ton, continuing in effect more or less down till the present day. 
 When the settlers on the " Grants " had occasion to call for the help 
 of New Hampshire in their greater struggle against General Bur- 
 goyne when he was boring his military way down the Hudson in 
 1777, John Stark, a Scotch-Irishman, was appointed by that colony 
 to head the succors freely sent, more than half of whose forces, vol- 
 unteer militiamen of New Hampshire, were of that same strain of 
 blood. Colonel Baum on his way to the Walloomsac reported the 
 names of five prisoners he had taken on the 13th of August, George 
 Duncan, David Starrow, Samuel Bell, Matthew Bell, and Hugh 
 Moore. He calls them "rebels." Every one of these was a Scotch- 
 Irishman. It must not be supposed, however, that the whole of 
 these people then dwelling in New England took sides with the 
 " rebels " in the Revolutionary War ; on the contrary, their natural 
 and sometimes unreasonable adherence to the status quo led some of 
 them to cleave to the cause of the King ; there were desertions from 
 Stark's brigade as the different detachments crossed the Green Moun- 
 tains to the westward ; its nominal strength when mustered at Ben- 
 nington on the 14th of August (Thursday) was 1332 privates, but one 
 company had been left at the general rendezvous, No. 4, now Charles- 
 town, New Hampshire, two companies on the mountains crossed, and 
 all three of the detachments were weakened by sickness and desertion, 
 so that General Schuyler estimated Stark's own force at Bennington 
 " at 700 or 800 men." He was joined by two full companies of Ben- 
 nington men, whose names are happily extant on official muster- 
 rolls, and by at least 500 men from northern Berkshire, all whose 
 names are on appropriate rolls in the archives at Boston, except the 
 men from North Williamstown, who, as defending in the battle of 
 Bennington their own homes directly with their beloved Colonel,, 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 19 
 
 who commanded all the men from Berkshire in the battle, put in 
 no claim for pay as militiamen of the Colony, and so honorably 
 missed the chance of honorable mention by name to posterity. 
 Scarcely a roll in all this series in which the present writer cannot 
 confidently detect the names of one or more Scotch-Irishmen of New 
 England. 
 
 At the dedication of the Bennington Battle Monument on the 19th 
 of August, 1891, the orator of the occasion, Edward J. Phelps, said 
 of the battle, " Its story, imperfectly preserved, comes down to us 
 only in flashes, but they are flashes of glorious light." The con- 
 temporary records are indeed comparatively meagre, though they 
 contain everything that is central and essential in the story ; while 
 it is certainly characteristic of the battle that interesting and even 
 important details came to light from time to time for more than a 
 century after the battle was fought. As one example of this, James 
 D. Butler, then a minister in Vermont and since a distinguished an- 
 tiquarian in Madison, Wisconsin, as preparatory to an address he 
 had been selected to give on one of the anniversaries of the battle 
 many years ago at Bennington, sought personal interviews with sev- 
 eral of the then surviving participators in the fight, whose memories 
 were clear, and who thus contributed personal and important facts 
 to make Butler's address the most significant one out of a long series 
 of excellent ones. As another example of the same feature of this 
 battle, it has only been generally known since its Centennial, that 
 one of the detachments of Stark's New Hampshire troops started 
 from Lebanon directly opposite what is now White River Junction, 
 from the homestead of Captain Richard Kimball, still standing intact 
 in this year of Grace, 1894. For some reason the Kimball family 
 kept the fact sacred from type or manuscript that their house, over- 
 looking at once the flowing Connecticut and the mouths of the White 
 and Mascoma rivers, was the rendezvous of Stark's volunteers from 
 all northern New Hampshire ; and that these did not start to cross 
 the river in order to cross the mountains till some time after Stark 
 himself, getting impatient at the next main rendezvous four towns 
 below, namely, at old No. 4, now Charlestown, had gone fuming 
 on before to Manchester, Vermont, where he consulted with and 
 reenforced Colonel Seth Warner, then in command of a Conti- 
 nental regiment, and hastened on to Bennington, which he reached 
 August 9th. 
 
 Bennington had been named by Stark at the outset of the cam- 
 paign as the general mustering-place of all parts of his brigade,, 
 which he enlisted and commanded, under the direct authority of the 
 
20 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Colony of New Hampshire, and not at all under Continental author- 
 ity. General Schuyler, then commanding the Northern Department 
 with headquarters at Stillwater, sent an officer to conduct Stark and 
 his levy to headquarters. Stark very properly refused to budge an 
 inch, alleging that he had been appointed Brigadier-General by New 
 Hampshire for the purpose of defending New Hampshire people 
 then settled on the Grants, and that his men had been enlisted and 
 rendezvoused under those express terms, which left it, however, 
 discretionary with himself to act independently or subordinately. 
 Schuyler was annoyed at Stark's decision, and complained to Con- 
 gress of what the latter immediately resolved was " insubordination 
 and highly prejudicial to the common cause at this crisis " ; but 
 Schuyler was too good a patriot and too good a soldier not to avail 
 himself of every possible cooperation, .under whatever terms prof- 
 fered, and he soon opened a cordial correspondence with Stark, who 
 detailed to him his local plan of operations, which the General 
 approved, and for which Burgoyne himself soon furnished the 
 desired opportunity. 
 
 Three rude routes through the woods had been opened during the 
 last French and Indian wars, from the Connecticut River over the 
 Green Mountains to Ticonderoga and Crown Point. All three of 
 these came handy to General Stark. After Fort Dummer was built 
 in 1724, Massachusetts sold goods there cheaper than the French 
 sold corresponding goods in Canada, and hence a brisk Indian trade 
 across the highlands of Vermont, the Indians crossing and recrossing 
 Otter Creek at what is now Centre Rutland, from and back to Lake 
 Champlain. Three times in the course of 1759 brave sights were 
 seen at the same ford of the Creek : (1) Eight hundred New Hamp- 
 shire troops, with axes and shovels and hoes, cutting down trees and 
 levelling hummocks, and making a military road from Charlestown 
 (old No. 4) to Crown Point, the better to cooperate with General Am- 
 herst, then on his way to the conquest of Canada ; (2) soon after, 
 four hundred fat cattle in five droves, passing over this new road 
 to diminish (if possible) the scurvy in the great garrison at Crown 
 Point; and (3) Major Robert Rogers, ranger and forester, on his 
 return from the exploit of destroying the Indian village of St. Fran- 
 cis on the St. Lawrence, and now on his way to rejoin Amherst at 
 Crown Point. Over this road eighteen years later passed Stark him- 
 self and one detachment of his brigade, from Charlestown to Rut- 
 land and thence south to Manchester and Bennington. We know 
 less about the origin and conditions in 1777 of the more northern 
 path from Lebanon up the White River and one of its branches, and 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 21 
 
 so over the watershed to Otter Creek. Lebanon and Rutland are 
 on the same parallel of latitude. Indeed, it is not certain that the 
 Lebanon contingent passed over the mountains in that way. It is 
 perhaps probable, but it is by no means certain. The remarkable tra- 
 dition in the family of Captain Richard Kimball of Lebanon, already 
 referred to, is to the effect that that contingent went down the valley 
 on the east side of the mountains, and crossed over them not far from 
 Bennington, having tramped more than a hundred miles with scarcely 
 any rest, and having arrived just in the nick of time. If this were 
 so, they must have availed themselves, in part at least, of the old 
 Indian path from Fort Dummer up the West River and over the 
 ridge to the head waters of the Batten Kill or of the Walloomsac. 
 The first of these passes would have brought this detachment directly 
 to Manchester, where Stark first mustered his men, he himself with 
 a part of his levy having just come up the Otter Creek from what is 
 now Centre Rutland. What is certain is this, that Stark left two 
 of his companies of New Hampshire men on the Green Mountain 
 summit, presumably at two different places on the ridge, as a guard 
 and reserve ; and what is altogether probable is that one of these 
 detached companies was left on the central route and old military 
 road from Charlestown to the Otter Creek over which the General 
 himself passed, and that the other company was detached from the 
 men starting from Lebanon, whether they crossed the watershed by 
 the more northern or more southern pass. One interesting fact, at 
 any rate, in relation to this Lebanon contingent is perfectly authen- 
 tic. " Old Priest Potter," as he was popularly known up and down 
 the middle Connecticut, a graduate of Harvard College, standing six 
 feet two in his stockings, in 1777 pastor of the church in Lebanon, 
 which was the first town settled on the Connecticut above old No. 4, 
 or Charlestown, volunteered to become chaplain of the contingent 
 gathered there and to accompany it to Bennington, on condition that 
 he be allowed to carry a musket and to fight as well as preach and 
 pray. He was present at one or more of the councils of war preced- 
 ing the battle and reported them to Captain Richard Kimball, who, 
 though with a company, was on duty elsewhere just before the battle, 
 perhaps in command of the reserve left upon the ridge above. 
 A successor in Potter's church at Lebanon was Rev. Phineas 
 Cooke, a graduate of Williams in 1803, who stood six feet six inches 
 high, and who was commonly called in that region, within the writer's 
 remembrance, the " high priest of New Hampshire." 
 
 We must go back now in place from Bennington and its vicinity to 
 Williamstown and its vicinity, and in time from the late summer of 
 
22 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 1777 to the early spring of 1775; we are not giving ourselves in 
 these pages to general history, nor shall we, but only to local events 
 in their direct bearing upon what is broader and more national ; and 
 the writer is mistaken, unless we find more and more, that the com- 
 paratively restricted area between the head waters of the Deerfield 
 River on the eastern slopes of the Hoosac and Green mountains and 
 the stretch of the North River corresponding in latitude, enclosing 
 the entire valleys of the Hoosac and Walloomsac and the Batten Kill 
 with the basins as well of Lake George and of Champlain from 
 Whitehall to Crown Point, exhibits foresight and courage and per- 
 sistence, plans and deeds as well in peace as in war, well worthy 
 of the pen of the historical chronicler. 
 
 What were the causes of the American Re volution ? And why 
 did these so simultaneously and effectively act upon the men of 
 Berkshire particularly of William stown, the men of southern Ver- 
 mont particularly of Bennington, and the men of New Hampshire 
 particularly of the Scotch-Irish region where dwelt John Stark and 
 most of his enlisted men? Bancroft says, "The American Revo- 
 lution, like the great rivers of the country, had many sources, but 
 the head spring which colored all the stream was the Navigation 
 Act." The Navigation Act had long forbidden the English colonists 
 in America to import or export or carry British or foreign or colonial 
 merchandise upon other than English-built bottoms, whereof the 
 master and three-fourths of the crew were English subjects (not 
 colonists). Some few relaxations in the strenuousness of this 
 abominable law, which embodied every feature of " Protectionism " 
 whenever and wherever applied ; and later an ignoring of its stricter 
 terms by British officials through bribery direct or indirect, and a 
 persistent disregard of them by colonial merchants and carriers; 
 had enabled the New England colonists (always fond of the sea) to 
 develop a very considerable and profitable commerce with Europe, 
 and particularly with the West Indies. The year 1765, which was 
 the year df the incorporation of Williamstown, witnessed on the part 
 of the Parliament of Great Britain a determination to reapply to the 
 commercial colonists of America in all their original stringency 
 the terms of the Navigation Act, and also witnessed the passage of 
 the Stamp Act, the principle of which was the same as that of the 
 other, namely, to get something for nothing under the disguise of a 
 true trade, whose principle is something for something to the mutual 
 advantage of both parties. The pretence of Britain in both cases was 
 to compel the colonists, who had been admittedly benefited by the 
 great Peace of 1763, to pay a part through taxation by Parliament of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 23 
 
 the immense expenses of the great War that had led up to that Peace. 
 The Americans justly retorted in effect, that, if they had not already 
 borne their full share of the costs of the War, as, for example, by 
 the capture of Louisburg and in the battle of Lake George, the best 
 and only way for them to contribute further to the prosperity of 
 Britain and to their own prosperity, was by an unrestricted com- 
 merce with Britain and with the rest of the world as they might 
 choose, a commerce enriching both parties to it by the very neces- 
 sities of its nature ! " No taxation without representation " was the 
 form the dispute took on, but the substance of it from first to last 
 was the "self-evident" and inalienable Eight of men to buy and 
 sell and get gain ! When Jefferson came to voice the American view 
 in the Declaration of Independence, he held, and the whole country 
 unanimously held with him, that the Eight of all men to Life, Lib- 
 erty, and the Pursuit of Happiness was Self-Evident. It did not need 
 to be proved, it was self-evident. The cause of the American Revo- 
 lution was the ever blessed cause of Free Trade. That cause united 
 the Colonies without an exception in the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence. It united a very considerable majority of the colonists in a 
 long and costly war ; and when that war was ended in an indestruc- 
 tible Union of indestructible States, absolute Free Trade prevailed 
 as between them and all the rest of the world, save Great Britain 
 only. 
 
 It was scarcely a process of reasoning that brought our fathers 
 into the Revolutionary War, and kept them in it through enormous 
 deprivations and sufferings till its glorious ending; it was a direct 
 sense of wrong suffered at the hands of the mother country, in for- 
 bidding them to build their own ships and to sail them for a profit 
 wherever in their judgment a profit was to be found, and also in put- 
 ting huge obstacles through the Stamp Act to the free buying and 
 selling of lands, and all other valuables as between localities and in- 
 dividuals at home. "No taxation without representation," while it 
 was a sound political truth and had a wide discussion on both sides 
 the ocean, was such a generalization from particulars as never moves 
 the masses of men to prompt and perilous and persistent action. It 
 was the particulars themselves, namely, that they were losing every 
 day and liable to lose altogether through artificial and parliamentary 
 prohibitions, the best markets for their own products of every kind ; 
 their most natural and therefore the most profitable fields of activity 
 in ship-building and all other arts of navigation; and even their 
 domestic buyings and sellings also through the legal necessity of 
 purchasing expensive stamps, in order to make valid the ordinary 
 
24 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 contracts of sale and delivery, of loans and collections. There were 
 other Acts of Parliament grievous to the colonist in the decade 
 1765-75, but these were the central ones, that came home to every- 
 body's sense of injustice, and to a loss in every man's pocket actual 
 and prospective. It was felt grievances, and not merely high-handed 
 violations of well-grounded political and economical principles, that 
 drove our fathers into revolution and independence. 
 
 This point is of great importance as explaining the readiness of 
 the farmers and artisans of New England to enlist as patriots in the 
 military service against Great Britain. They entered largely into 
 combinations also to go without the use of tea and other foreign 
 products, of which the mother country insisted on being the sole 
 carriers, to the artificial and considerable enhancement of their price 
 to the colonists ; and they agreed too with one another to go without 
 the use of British manufactures so far as they could, because the 
 British policy of Protectionism as applied in the colonies, was so 
 deadly hostile to the incipient manufactures of the latter, and, 
 indeed, to their every commercial exportable. In short, Protection- 
 ism wrought then its usual and universal mischiefs, just as it has 
 wrought them on a prodigious scale in the United States during the 
 last thirty years, 1864-1894; namely, enhanced in price almost 
 everything the people have had to buy, and at the same time dimin- 
 ished in price almost everything they have had to sell. Without 
 some such palpable and widespread and impoverishing cause as this, 
 the peaceable and industrious and previously prosperous colonists in 
 New England would not have abandoned their farms and shops 
 and stores to go into a seemingly desperate contest with England, 
 which, with their help, had just before put an end to New France in 
 America. 
 
 The first offensive and successful military movement against 
 England in the Revolutionary War had, in a certain sense, its seat 
 and centre in Williamstown and Bennington. John Brown, a young 
 lawyer of Pittsfield, had been appointed by Samuel Adams and 
 Joseph Warren, the Boston Committee of Safety, in February, 1775, 
 an emissary to Canada to obtain information of the state of that 
 province, and to endeavor to counteract any unfriendly efforts in 
 that quarter. Brown passed through Williamstown and Benning- 
 ton, and held consultations with the patriots in both places, espe- 
 cially in the latter, which furnished him for his journey northward 
 a guide and assistant in the experienced person of Peleg Sunderland. 
 Brown wrote from Montreal on March 29, to Adams and Warren a 
 letter, which closed as follows : 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 25 
 
 One thing I must mention to be kept a profound secret. The fort at Ticon- 
 deroga must be seized as soon as possible should hostilities be committed by the 
 king's troops. The people on the New Hampshire Grants have engaged to do 
 the business, and in my opinion are the most proper persons for this job. This 
 will effectually curb this province [Canada], and all the troops that may be 
 sent here. 
 
 Benedict Arnold, then of New Haven, had in the meantime 
 spoken to Samuel H. Parsons, then a member of the Connecticut 
 Assembly, of the importance and feasibility of the capture of the 
 fortress and of his own desire to attempt it. Shortly after, Mr. 
 Parsons and five other gentlemen of Hartford, for the sake of 
 secrecy and despatch and without communicating their purpose to 
 the Assembly then in session, obtained from the colony treasury, on 
 their personal obligations, 300 to be used in the undertaking. 
 This was on Friday, the 28th of April. The same day two Hart- 
 ford men were despatched with the money to the northward, and 
 the next day six others to accompany them. At Pittsfield those 
 were joined by John Brown (just returned from Canada) and Colonel 
 James Easton, and messengers were sent thence to Bennington to 
 engage Colonel Ethan Allen in the enterprise with his easily to be 
 enlisted men on the Grants. Money makes the mare go; and the 
 300 in the hands of the Connecticut men, now increased to sixteen 
 in number, so pushed on the enterprise from behind that Colonel Eas- 
 ton had little difficulty in enlisting forty-one men in Williamstown 
 and Hancock, and Colonel Allen a much larger number on the Grants. 
 On Wednesday, the 3d of May, all these enrolled men were in Ben- 
 nington, amounting to nearly two hundred ; when it was agreed that 
 Colonel Allen should be in command of the entire party. On Sunday 
 evening, the 7th of May, all were at Castleton, the place of rendez- 
 vous, only a little more than twenty miles from Ticonderoga. On 
 Monday a council of war was held, of which Captain Mott of Con- 
 necticut was chairman, at which it was decided that Captain Her- 
 rick of the Grants with thirty men should take Major Skene of 
 Skenesborough (now Whitehall) into custody as a well-known Tory, 
 and that the remainder should proceed to the lake shore opposite 
 Ticonderoga, cross over in boats prearranged to be brought there, 
 and attack the fort by surprise. Allen was to be and was first in 
 command, Easton second, and Captain Seth Warner the third, they 
 ranking according to the number of men they had respectively 
 raised for the exploit. 
 
 In the meantime Benedict Arnold, intelligent and patriotic and 
 ambitious and restless, had taken a commission from the Massa- 
 
26 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 chusetts Committee of Safety, dated the 3d of May, in terms as 
 follows : 
 
 To Benedict Arnold Esq. Commander of a body of Troops on an Expedition to 
 subdue and take possession of the Fort of Ticonderoga. 
 
 Sir : Confiding in your Judgment, fidelity and Valor, we do by these Presents 
 constitute and appoint you Colonel and Commander in Chief over a Body of 
 Men not exceeding four hundred, to proceed with all expedition to the Western 
 parts of this and the neighboring Colonies, where you are directed to enlist 
 those Men and with them forthwith to march to -the Fort at Ticonderoga and 
 use your best endeavors to reduce the same, taking possession of the Cannon, 
 Mortars, Stores, and also the vessel and other Cannon and Stores upon the 
 Lake ; you are to bring back with you such of the Cannon and Mortars, Stores, 
 &c., as you shall judge may be serviceable to the Army here [Cambridge], leav- 
 ing behind what may be necessary to secure the Post with a sufficient Garrison. 
 You are to secure suitable Provisions and Stores for the Army, and draw upon 
 the Committee of Safety for the amount thereof, and to act in every exigence 
 according to your best skill and discretion for the publick Interest for which 
 this shall be your sufficient Warrant. 
 
 BENJA CHURCH Jun'r, 
 
 By Order, Chairman Com'tee of Safety. 
 
 WILLIAM COOPER, Setfy. 
 
 It is said in Sparks's " Biography of Ethan Allen," and also in his 
 " Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold," in Hall's " Early History of 
 Vermont," and in many another good book of History, as these are, 
 that Arnold, in accordance with these instructions, proceeded to Stock- 
 bridge, where he had but just begun to enlist men for his enterprise, 
 when he heard that a party from Connecticut and from Berkshire had 
 already preceded him upon the same errand, whereupon he started at 
 once to overtake them. This is a very considerable error in statement. 
 Arnold did not go within forty miles of Stockbridge upon this occa- 
 sion. There lies open before the writer at the present moment an 
 exact transcript of the original Bill of Expenses presented by Arnold 
 to the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts for what he calls his 
 " Disbursements from Cambridge to Ticonderoga." This document 
 has never before the present time been used for historical purposes. 
 It was rendered by Arnold in connection with several letters to the 
 same authorities, the first of which was sent on the llth of May, 
 the day after the capture of the fortress, " per express," as Arnold 
 says in a later letter dated the 14th. This bill of items from the 
 4th to the 20th of May is here given entire, because it settles forever 
 the question of the route he took, and involves the settlement of 
 several other subordinate questions. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 27 
 
 THE HONORABLE PROVINCIAL CONGRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY 
 
 To B. ARNOLD, Dr. 
 Disbursements from Cambridge to Ticonderoga. 
 
 1775 s. d. 
 
 May 4 To shoeing horses on the road - 8 - 
 
 To dinner, horse keeping &c at Concord - 15 3 
 
 To shoeing horse 4s. Qd. ; liquor, 2s. 8d. -74 
 
 To supper and lodging at Shrewsbury - 17 9 
 
 5 _ To breakfast &c. at Hold en 10s. Wd. ; dinners, 3s. 4d. ; 
 
 suppers and lodging, 5s. Qd. - 19 8 
 
 6 To ferrage at Deerfield, Is. d. breakfast 2s. 2d. 3 8 
 
 To shoeing horse, 5s. 5c?. ; ferrage, Is. 4d. - 6 9 
 
 To cash paid Capt. Oswald at Shrewsbury, expenses, 18 17 9 
 
 To cash paid Thomas W. Dickenson, expenses of cattle, 6 
 
 To Captain Brown's bill of expence, 147 
 To dinner arid lodging, 4s. Wd. ; paid Nehemiah Smed- 
 
 ley 60s. 3 4 10 
 
 7 To dinners, suppers and lodging - 7 8 
 
 8 To dinners &c. - 6 - 
 10 To cash paid Captain Warner, expenses to Crown Point, - 18 - 
 
 To of horses 5s., paid the Commissary 3s. 8 
 
 13 TO cash paid Sergt. Anderson 12 gallons rum for people 28- 
 
 14 TO ditto paid Mr. Romans for expenses to Albany and 
 
 Hartford 2 16 
 
 To ditto paid William Nichols express to Hartford 44- 
 To ditto paid Lewis, expenses 6s. baking bread 6s. 4d. 12 4 
 
 To ditto paid spy for intelligence to St. Johns 18- 
 To expenses on the road to St. Johns 10 
 
 To Donihue's bill at St. Johns 219 6 
 
 To cash paid Lieut. Lyman's expenses - 1 6 
 
 To Walson's bills 8s., Lyman's bill of expenses 8s. 3d. - 16 3 
 20 To cash paid Capt. Brown's expenses to Cambridge and 
 
 back 8 18 8 
 To ditto paid Capt Nineham, an Indian Ambassador 
 
 from Stockbridge to Caunawauga 3 12 
 
 When Colonel Arnold turned his horse's head at Concord toward 
 Deerfield, along the present line of the Fitchburg Railroad, and so 
 toward the present Hoosac Tunnel and the river of the same name 
 beyond, he demonstrated that his immediate objective was Williams- 
 town and not Stockbridge. He reached Williamstown by the old 
 Indian Trail over the Hoosac Mountain on the evening of the third 
 day from Cambridge. 
 
 Besides paying for dinner and lodging for himself and single 
 companion, he also paid Nehemiah Smedley at the same time for 
 "expenses," 60s. What were those expenses? Looking back over 
 
28 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the bill, we find that he had paid cash to "Captain Oswald at 
 Shrewsbury expenses" 18 17s. 9d. Captain Oswald figured a little 
 later at Ticonderoga. Little or no doubt remains that Arnold, not 
 stopping in his haste to enlist men himself in accordance with his 
 instructions, paid money to others to enlist them and bring or send 
 them northward as soon as possible. Provision was made at Deer- 
 field to have men enlisted, and Arnold bought there (see bill) 6 
 worth of cattle of Thomas W. Dickenson ; and we know from other 
 sources that T. W. Dickenson and his younger brother, Consider 
 Dickenson, started the next morning to drive the cattle to Ticon- 
 deroga. This little transaction was well known and well remem- 
 bered at Deerfield; for more than one hundred years afterward the 
 north room of the house, which was then an old-fashioned tavern 
 kept by Talah Barnard, was shown to strangers as the place where 
 the cattle-bargain was made, and whence Arnold, after taking a glass 
 of spirit (the usual accompaniment of bargains completed), mounted 
 his horse and rode on up the Deerfield Elver through Charlemont to 
 and over the mountain. Joseph White, late Treasurer of the Col- 
 lege, a native of Charlemont, told the writer more than once that his 
 grandfather White, who was at Ticonderoga as a soldier in less than 
 a week from this time and witnessed some of the unseemly disputes 
 there between Arnold and Allen, used to tell him in his boyhood 
 that Allen was no match for Arnold in these contests, " he hadn't 
 got no grit, Joe ! " It is certain, accordingly, that Colonel Arnold took 
 such steps along his route as brought many Massachusetts soldiers 
 to Ticonderoga almost as soon as he got there himself. Indeed, the 
 Connecticut committee present there reported to the Massachusetts 
 Provincial Congress the next day after the capture, that is, May 11, 
 that there were then at Ticonderoga 16 men from Connecticut, 60 
 from Massachusetts, and 140 from the New Hampshire Grants. As 
 Colonel Easton admittedly took up to Castleton but 41 men from Wil- 
 liamstown and Hancock, some 20 must have been added to these 
 before Thursday, the llth. Where did they come from? The 
 present writer does not know for certain. 
 
 Only two conjectures are plausible scarcely even possible to 
 account for the 60 shillings paid to Nehemiah Smedley in the lat- 
 ter's own house on the evening of the 6th of May "for expenses" 
 over and above the "dinner and lodging" 4s. 10d. Smedley was 
 then an officer in the Williamstown militia, probably captain, a rank 
 he certainly held a few months after ; and with one or two excep- 
 tions, he was the most prominent and influential citizen of the place. 
 The precedent of Captain Oswald at Shrewsbury makes it most 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 29 
 
 likely that the " expenses " in both cases were the furnishing and 
 forwarding of volunteers to Ticonderoga. It is true, a good many 
 had already gone from Williamstown, but it is also true that that 
 place is the nearest and quickest in Massachusetts to the then objec- 
 tive point. This supposition also best accounts for the increase there 
 of twenty Massachusetts volunteers by the following Thursday, 
 although it is clearly possible that men might have reached there 
 from Deerfield and Charlemont through Williamstown in the inter- 
 val between Saturday and Thursday. 
 
 But the only other reasonable conjecture must not be passed over 
 in silence. Smedley had raised the house in which he then lived, 
 in which he died in 1789, in his fifty-seventh year, and which is still 
 owned and occupied by one of his lineal descendants (B. F. Bridges), 
 Oct. 8, 1772. It was the second two-story house ever lifted in 
 Williamstown; and it is somewhat remarkable that both of these 
 are still standing in good condition as the nineteenth century is 
 wearing close to its end. Smedley covered his frame and rafters in 
 a substantial manner, finished off a cellar-kitchen into which he 
 built a huge stone oven, a sight to behold till this day, and 
 then, as the war clouds began to lower, said to his children, who in 
 turn reported it to theirs, " We will wait now and see who is going 
 to own it." When Benedict Arnold lodged and dealt under that 
 roof, the big oven in the basement was the most striking thing 
 beneath it. Arnold had bought live cattle at Deerfield to help feed 
 his troops, moving and in garrison; but how about bread for the 
 same ? Two years later, to our certain knowledge, large quantities 
 of bread were baked in that oven and sent to Bennington by the 
 hand of the eldest son, Levi Smedley, who lived to old age to repeat 
 the tale, to feed Captain Smedley and his military company the day 
 after the battle of Bennington. What was there to hinder the sug- 
 gestion and completion of the contract, that bread should be baked 
 in that oven and sent to the northward ? Smedley's broad acres on 
 Green River were by that time growing an abundance of wheat. He 
 was a thrifty and forehanded man. The relatively small sum of 
 3 is perhaps more consonant with a trade of this sort than with 
 one like that with Captain Oswald at Shrewsbury. No matter. 
 Williamstown contributed in men and other means liberally to the 
 capture of Ticonderoga and the holding of Lake Champlain. It 
 must have been at Williamstown that Arnold first heard of the 
 party from Connecticut gone on before ; and without any doubt he 
 showed his commission from Massachusetts to Captain Smedley, 
 which seemed at any rate to give him a right to command any volun- 
 
30 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 teers raised in " the western parts of this and the neighboring Colo- 
 nies." The detailed information received here would naturally 
 quicken his pace, if that were possible. It had been rapid riding 
 before, involving a good deal of horse-shoeing " on the road," as is 
 clearly shown on the bill. 
 
 Smedley's folks kept " Saturday night" in accordance with the 
 old Connecticut custom, whence he had come some twenty years 
 before, but that did not keep the parties from business, nor from 
 conning busily all the circumstances of the case. Smedley's wife 
 was Mary Harwood from Bennington. Arnold would naturally want 
 to know all about the roads thither and beyond. He himself cer- 
 tainly made good time that Sunday and the next day, for before 
 Monday evening he had overtaken the advance party at Castleton, 
 less than twenty-five miles short of Ticonderoga. His coming was 
 the signal for great confusion in Colonel Alien's camp. Arnold im- 
 mediately and stoutly claimed the chief command by virtue of his 
 commission from the Committee of Safety of Massachusetts, which 
 he promptly exhibited, and which, while indeed it directed him to 
 enlist his men in "the western parts of this and the neighboring 
 Colonies," directed him also "to act in every exigence according to 
 your best skill and discretion for the publick Interest, for which 
 this shall be your sufficient Warrant." Particularly it authorized 
 him to take " possession of the Cannon, Mortars, Stores, and also the 
 Vessel and other Cannon and Stores upon the Lake; you are to 
 bring back with you such of the Cannon and Mortars, Stores, &c., 
 as you shall judge may be serviceable to the Army here [Cam- 
 bridge], leaving behind what may be necessary to secure the Post 
 with a sufficieiit garrison. You are to secure suitable Provisions 
 and Stores for the Army, and draw upon the Committee of Safety 
 for the amount thereof." It was not a clear military question by 
 any means as between Colonel Allen and Colonel Arnold at Castleton; 
 and it is a wonder that, with such disputed claims to the leader- 
 ship, the fortress of Ticonderoga with all its artillery and stores 
 surrendered at discretion thirty-six hours later. 
 
 On the other hand, it is no wonder that the men already raised for 
 the special expedition of reducing the fortress under the auspices of 
 Connecticut men and money, accompanied by prominent men from 
 that colony who styled themselves the " Committee of War," officered 
 by those well known to them, who had actually enlisted them for a 
 definite purpose, and now already near to the fort to be attacked, 
 should refuse to be placed under an entire stranger coming with a 
 commission from another colony, and should threaten to abandon the 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 31 
 
 Expedition in a body and return to their homes, in case the com- 
 mand were to be transferred to Colonel Arnold. The point of mili- 
 tary rank was not wholly clear ; colonial jealousy as to authority and 
 precedence came into the question ; Arnold insisted on his claims 
 with warmth and pertinacity, and Massachusetts, whose commission 
 he bore, was coming to be recognized by all as head and front in the 
 present quarrel with Britain ; nevertheless, by the determined atti- 
 tude of the rank and file already gathered at Castleton, Arnold was 
 forced to yield for the time being. Allen himself was more or less 
 concessive both then and later, and it was agreed that Arnold should 
 be allowed to serve as a volunteer, but without any special command. 
 So the march was resumed. The party arrived late on the 9th of 
 May at Shoreham, nearly opposite the fort across Lake Champlain. 
 The prearrangements made for boats to concentre there sufficient to 
 carry the whole party across had failed. A few boats were gotten 
 together with great difficulty, and largely through the efficiency of 
 Arnold, who was well acquainted with water transportation, and 
 with all the arts of navigation as then practised. Eighty-three men 
 crossed over with Allen and Arnold. The boats were to be and were 
 sent back for the rest, left under the command of Captain Seth War- 
 ner, but the day was already beginning to dawn when the first party 
 landed just below the fort ; and Allen and Arnold agreed, that if the 
 reserve were waited for, the fortress could not be taken by surprise. 
 There are several contemporary written accounts of what imme- 
 diately followed, resulting in the bloodless capture of a renowned 
 fortress by a mere handful of determined men on the early morning 
 of May 10, 1775. One of these and the first one printed, the data 
 for which were furnished by Colonel Easton of Pittsfield, is so mani- 
 festly distorted by the egregious egotism of Easton himself, and is 
 so flatly contradicted by eye-witnesses, and by the subsequent state- 
 ments of Captain Delaplace, the British commander of the garrison at 
 the time, as to be historically worthless. Easton's good name went 
 down forever under his lack of veracity upon this occasion. Ac- 
 counts by the respective partisans of Arnold and Allen are of course 
 somewhat colored by that circumstance, while the following contem- 
 porary narration signed by " Veritas," which was written indeed with 
 the purpose of taking the wind out of poor Easton, and which does 
 not probably do full justice to Colonel Allen in the premises, is yet 
 corroborated in all its main particulars by eye-witnesses favorable to 
 him. The simple truth of history is, that Allen and Arnold both 
 performed their parts exceedingly well in this critical transaction, 
 and neither of them can be safely praised or blamed at the expense 
 
32 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of the other. Long afterwards, both of them came into great odium, 
 Arnold especially, for downright treason to his country ; but so far 
 as the capture of the forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point is con- 
 cerned, and the maintenance for the then present of the new power 
 over the whole of Lake Champlain, there is abundant credit for both 
 of them, and no good ground for the disparagement of either of them. 
 
 As the above account of the reduction of Ticonderoga, which from its com- 
 plexion, I suppose originated with that very modest gentleman (Colonel Easton} 
 himself, is so replete with falsehood, and is so great an imposition on the pub- 
 lick, that I think it my duty, in order to undeceive the publick, and to do justice 
 to modest merit, to give you a candid detail of the whole matter, for the truth 
 of which I appeal to every officer and private who were present, which is as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 Some gentlemen arrived in the New Hampshire Grants from Connecticut, 
 with a design of seizing on the fortress of Ticonderoga ; were there joined by a 
 number of men, among whom were Colonels Allen and Easton; the former 
 with the assistance of Captain Warner, collected about one hundred and fifty 
 men, with whom they marched to Castletown, twenty miles from Ticonderoga, 
 where they left Colonel Easton, and proceeded ten miles towards Shoreham. 
 The next day Colonel Arnold arrived at Castletown from Cambridge. Having 
 concerted in a similar plan, and being commissioned by the Massachusetts Con- 
 gress to raise a regiment, he proceeded on to the party commanded by Colonel 
 Allen. When Colonel Arnold make known his commission, &c. it was voted by 
 the officers present that he should take a joint command with Colonel Allen, 
 (Colonel Easton not presuming to take any command.) When the party had 
 marched to Shoreham, ten miles on the lake below Ticonderoga, where they 
 waited for batteaus to cross the lake, until midnight, and none arriving, Colonel 
 Arnold, with much difficulty, persuaded about forty men to embark with him in 
 a batteau accidentally taken there, and landed about half a mile from the fort, 
 and immediately sent back the batteau, which, by reason of a violent storm of 
 wind and rain, did not return till break of day, with a small boat, and near fifty 
 men in both. It was then proposed by some gentlemen to wait open day and 
 the arrival of the remainder of the men, which amounted at that time to near 
 one hundred. This Colonel Arnold strenuously opposed, and urged to storm the 
 fort immediately, declaring he would enter it alone, if no man had courage 
 enough to follow him. This had the desired effect ; he, with Colonel Allen, 
 headed the party, and proceeded directly to the fort. When they came within 
 about ten yards of the gate, the sentry discovered them, and made a precipitate 
 retreat. He was pursued closely by Colonel Arnold, who was the first person 
 that entered the fort, and Colonel Allen about five yards behind him. This I 
 was an eye-witness of, being only a few yards distant. Colonel Arnold imme- 
 diately ordered the men to secure the doors of the barracks, and went himself 
 with Colonel Allen to the commanding officer, Captain Delaplace, and desired 
 him to deliver up his arms, and he might expect to be treated like a gentleman ; 
 which he immediately complied with, as did the whole garrison. 
 
 I do not recollect seeing Colonel Easton until nine o'clock, and was told he 
 was the last man that entered the fort, and that not till the soldiers and their 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 33 
 
 anus were secured, he having secured himself in an old barrack near the re- 
 doubt, under the pretence of wiping and drying his gun, which he said had got 
 wet in crossing the lake ; since which I have often heard Colonel Easton, in a 
 base and cowardly manner, abuse Colonel Arnold behind his back, though 
 always very complaisant before his face. Colonel Arnold was soon made ac- 
 quainted with the liberty he had taken with his character ; and upon his refus- 
 ing to give proper satisfaction, I had the pleasure of seeing him heartily kicked 
 by Colonel Arnold, to the great satisfaction of a number of gentlemen present, 
 although he (Easton) was armed with a cutlass, and a pair of loaded pistols in 
 his pocket. I am your humble servant, 
 
 VERITAS. 1 
 
 Who was this " Veritas " ? The perfect clearness and the tone 
 of candor that pervade his communication from start to finish 
 demonstrate that he did not belie himself in his signature. If he 
 were a subordinate officer in Colonel Easton's command, there were 
 military and other reasons sufficient to justify the withholding his 
 own proper name. All he says about himself is in a preparatory 
 note to John Holt, then publishing a patriot newspaper in Norfolk, 
 Virginia, to whom he sends under date of June 25, 1775, " the fol- 
 lowing erroneous account of the reduction of Ticonderoga, which was 
 published in Mr. Thomas' Oracle of Liberty, the 24th of May last ; 
 and as the writer of the account which follows it [the clipping sent] 
 had no opportunity of seeing it till very lately, he being up at the 
 forts ever since they were taken, he could not contradict it sooner. 
 I beg, therefore, you will republish it in your next journal, together 
 with the account that follows it, which may be depended on." 
 
 The present writer has some slight reasons (which he will now 
 share with the reader) for concluding that the writer of the above 
 account may have been Israel Harris of Williamstown. At any 
 rate, the account squares in general and also in several minute par- 
 ticulars with what Israel Harris in his old age (he applied for a 
 revolutionary pension in 1832) was accustomed to relate to two of 
 his grandsons, Professor James D. Butler, of the Wisconsin Univer- 
 sity, and Eev. Dr. Jonathan Harris Noble, long of Schaghticoke, New 
 York, Williams College, 1826, both of whom told the present writer 
 directly what they had often heard from him. His detailed applica- 
 tion for a pension is now on file at Washington, and is in general 
 corroborative at once both of the account and of these conversations. 
 "One of his most interesting oral statements was that he himself was 
 the third man in the single file to enter the gate at Ticonderoga, and 
 that only Allen and Arnold were before him. Compare with this 
 what the writer of the above account says : " The sentry was pur- 
 1 See American Archives, Fourth Series, 2d Vol. p. 1086. 
 
34 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 sued closely by Colonel Arnold, who was the first person that entered 
 the fort, and Colonel Allen about five yards behind him. This I was 
 an eye-witness of, being only a few yards distant." 
 
 It is almost certain from the account above given, that the writer 
 of it was a Berkshire man and well acquainted with Colonel Easton, 
 who would naturally have been among the first to enter the fort, and 
 whose own false account, the first published, pretended that he was 
 among the first. Captain Delaplace, the British commandant of the 
 fort, when he saw afterwards Easton's account of its capture, pro- 
 nounced its particulars " to be totally devoid of truth ; for I sol- 
 emnly declare I never saw Colonel Easton at the time the fort was 
 surprised, nor had he and I any conversation whatever relative 
 thereto, then, nor at any other time since." The author of our 
 account, whoever he was, knew Easton well, and believed him to 
 be a coward and a braggart and a liar. No Green Mountain Boy 
 would have had occasion to know him so well. We are not depen- 
 dent alone on the testimony of Israel Harris's grandsons that Harris 
 was among those who " entered the fortress at Ticonderoga on the 
 morning of May 10." He himself uses those very words in his 
 application for a pension. It is plain from all the accounts that 
 Allen arranged his men at the landing-place in three files, he head- 
 ing the central one, and Arnold at his left heading another, and the 
 Berkshire men making up the right-hand file ; the road up from the 
 landing would then, and will now, take three men abreast ; but when 
 they had almost reached the narrow gateway of the fortress, whose 
 single sentry snapped his fusee at them and ran, the files necessarily 
 would break up and the men would no longer stand upon the order 
 of their going. They were all alike individual volunteers, nor were 
 they arranged in any strict military subordination under officers. 
 The rank and file had determined at Castleton that Ethan Allen 
 should be their leader ; Allen and the Connecticut civilians present 
 had also agreed that Arnold should have the rank of Colonel in the 
 enterprise, but without a separate command. It is credible and 
 probable and as nearly certain as that sort of historical statements 
 can generally be made, (1) that Colonel Arnold entered the fortress 
 first and foremost ; (2) that Colonel Allen entered next, in. conscious 
 and conceded command of the party ; (3) that Israel Harris of Wil- 
 liamstown and the author of the above-quoted account (if indeed they 
 be not the same person) were at least the third and fourth of the 
 party to follow. So much rests securely on the contemporaneous 
 testimony of eye-witnesses. 
 
 But posterity is indebted to Israel Harris alone for a much more 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTCXN". 35 
 
 interesting and suggestive piece of intelligence in connection with 
 the taking of Ticonderoga than that which he transmitted as to the 
 manner and order of entering the fortress. Ethan Allen was known 
 in his day and generation as a very profane and rough-speaking man ; 
 and many persons in the generations since have wondered that such 
 a man, on the spur of such a moment of excitement and personal 
 triumph, should have used such a rotund and solemn form of expres- 
 sion as his demanding the surrender of the fort, " In the name of 
 the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress ! " especially as 
 the Congress had not then assembled, and was only appointed to 
 assemble upon that very day. The authenticity of the formal 
 expression, however, is confirmed, and the consistency of the man's 
 speech and manner at the same time maintained, by what both of 
 Harris's grandsons have told the writer directly from him ; namely, 
 that Allen's first exclamation when he reached the stairs that led 
 to the apartment of Delaplace, the commandant, was, "Get out of 
 here, you damned old rat!" Later, when Delaplace appeared half- 
 dressed at his door and demanded the authority for such an astound- 
 ing interruption, and Allen had had time to sober down to realities, 
 then he employed the famous phrase that has immortalized his name. 
 Israel Harris was born in Cornwall, Connecticut, Feb. 27, 1747. 
 His wife was Sarah Morse. Both were members of the church here 
 in 1779, when the first extant list of members was made out. Joseph 
 Morse was a brother of Mrs. Harris, and so probably was Clark 
 Morse, who lived and wrought as a 'hatter on North West Hill. 
 Harris's military record as a soldier and officer from Williamstown 
 throughout the Revolutionary War was a good one and, more than 
 that, he passed through all the ranks from private to captain, and 
 possessed the confidence of Colonel Simonds, who was throughout 
 his military superior, and at whose order in 1779 he commenced to 
 recruit soldiers here for the regular army. When the war was over 
 he removed to Rutland, Vermont, where he became one of the original 
 founders and members of the church, Oct. 5, 1788, and was chosen 
 deacon in 1800. He removed from Rutland to South Hartford, 
 Washington Co., New York, about 1808, and died there Nov. 28, 
 1836, in his ninetieth year. Joseph Morse, also a constant soldier 
 here during the Revolution, migrated to Rutland and died there at 
 the house of one of Harris's daughters, not far from the time of his 
 own death. Clark Morse's old hatter's shop on North West Hill 
 was moved down by oxen, about 1815, to become part of a fulling- 
 mill on Hemlock Brook. The late Deputy Sheriff John R. Bulkley, 
 then a little boy, whose father's oxen were in the line, ran alongside 
 
36 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 with the rest of the boys, and being persuaded by Collins Tallmadge 
 to take quite too much of the rum (always liberally provided on 
 such occasions), was carried home to be cured by a method which 
 now seems queer enough, as administered by a woman who then 
 worked for his mother. 
 
 Israel Harris together with most of those first enlisted from Han- 
 cock and Williamstown and Pownal were dismissed from Ticonde- 
 roga to their homes a few days after the capture, as Harris himself 
 tells us. Captain Seth Warner with a small party took Crown 
 Point also by surprise two days after Ticonderoga. The unseemly 
 but not unnatural disputes between Arnold and Allen, renewed and 
 continued at the latter place, were quieted down for the time by a 
 virtual agreement that Arnold should command at Crown Point for 
 his important and successful operations to the northward by water 
 (because he understood navigation), while Allen continued in com- 
 mand at Ticonderoga until he was superseded by Colonel Hinman 
 of Connecticut, which colony assumed control on the lake until the 
 Continental Congress tardily inaugurated the disastrous expedition 
 against Canada. Israel Harris, however, almost as soon as he got 
 home enlisted as orderly sergeant into the Williamstown company 
 commanded by Captain Lemuel Stewart, Lieutenant Ezekiel Blair, 
 and Second Lieutenant Nathan Smith. This company was enlisted 
 for six months and was attached to the regiment of Massachusetts 
 state troops commanded by Colonel James Easton and Major John 
 Brown as field officers. Easton had not yet lost the confidence of 
 his contemporaries at Boston and Pittsfield, and John Brown, Berk- 
 shire born and bred, was always a first-class officer till he was killed 
 in the Mohawk Valley in one of the last campaigns of the war. 
 This regiment promptly marched from Berkshire to Ticonderoga, 
 and with three other regiments, all under the command of Brigadier 
 General Bichard Montgomery, commenced building boats there to 
 carry this small army against St. Johns as a part of the expedition 
 against Canada. In August the regiments embarked for St. Johns, 
 besieged it for three months and four days, and Montgomery re- 
 ceived its surrender Dec. 4, 1775, and was commissioned major gen- 
 eral by Congress five days later. Easton's regiment, their time of 
 service having expired, returned home. In the meantime Benjamin 
 Simonds of Williamstown was appointed colonel of the Berkshire 
 regiment, Aug. 30, 1775. This commission covering the levies of the 
 entire county, Simonds held in honorable activity at Ticonderoga 
 and elsewhere until April 4, 1777, when two regiments were organ- 
 ized in Berkshire in place of the single one, and he received a new 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 37 
 
 eommission as colonel of the Second Regiment of Berkshire County, 
 the First now covering the southern half of the county. 
 
 Captain Lemuel Stewart, under whom Israel Harris enlisted for 
 Ticonderoga the second time, bears a praiseworthy record and mem- 
 ory in Williamstown. He lived near the Square, in the first house 
 on South Street, east side, where Stephen Hosford long afterwards 
 kept a tavern and a store. It is extremely probable that Captain 
 Stewart kept a tavern there. The place was called, at any rate, 
 11 the old red tavern." It was probably the second tavern opened in 
 the hamlet, Simonds having removed his stand from the Square 
 across the Hoosac River a mile to the northwards, about the time 
 that Stewart came here, say 1770, in which year the eldest of his 
 five children, whose births are registered here, was born. Stewart 
 held the military command in the town previous to and subsequent 
 to the battle of Bennington, posting guards certainly at the Green 
 Elver bridge at the east end of the village, and probably also at the 
 Hoosac River bridge near Simonds's second tavern-stand. Ezekiel 
 Blair, who was lieutenant of the company, enlisted for Ticonderoga 
 and Canada in the spring of 1775, was of Scotch-Irish parentage, 
 and came here from Western (now Warren) in 1764, and bought a 
 good farm for 40 of Samuel Kellogg and Chloe his wife, about 
 midway between the two villages. His wife's name was Elisabeth, 
 and they had four children whose births are registered here. After 
 about twenty years of residence he passed on to fresh fields and 
 pastures new, a characteristic of the men of his race in New Eng- 
 land, who generally had very large families and consequently soon 
 became straitened in any location first pitched upon. Probably also 
 a spirit more restless and enterprising than that of English settlers 
 in New England at about the same periods of time was inherited by 
 the Scotch-Irish from their migrating ancestors, who landed at Bos- 
 ton in August, 1718, five shiploads of them from Londonderry 
 and its neighborhood in the north of Ireland, themselves descended 
 from Scotchmen colonized there in Cromwell's time. Notwithstand- 
 ing this tendency in general, there were many families of this 
 remarkable stock who exhibited in all parts of New England unu- 
 sual staying qualities from generation to generation. For one 
 example, Absalom Blair, a near kinsman of Ezekiel Blair, coming 
 here from the same town and at about the same time with the latter, 
 transmitted his fine farm on the Green River to his son William, and 
 he to his son Edwin in due succession, so that one family cultivated 
 the same acres all held in fee simple for considerably more than a 
 century. So too Moses Young, whose migrating ancestor, John 
 
38 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Young, died in Worcester in 1830, bought lands in South Williams- 
 town in the sixties of the last century, which have never yet been 
 out of the ownership of his direct descendants and do not at the 
 present writing seem likely to be for a long time to come. 
 
 Only a word or two is here due to the memory of Nathan Smith, 
 the second lieutenant of this company destined for Canada in 1775. 
 He came here very early from Western, the town of the Blairs and 
 very likely in company with them. He lived in several parts of the 
 town, bearing in his old age the honorary title of " Govenor Smith," 
 died in 1820 aged 102 years, a person of greater well-authenticated 
 age than any other citizen of the town down to the present time. 
 He was born in 1718, the very year of the principal Scotch-Irish 
 immigration, although he was not of that lineage at all. He pos- 
 sessed staying qualities of another sort. The late Dr. Sabin remem- 
 bered the " Govenor " well. He fell into extreme poverty in his 
 old age, and desired to marry again, in order, as he said, " to have 
 some body to convarse with." 
 
 When Colonel Arnold reported in person in July as well as in 
 writing previously to the Massachusetts body that had employed and 
 commissioned him, his doings and difficulties on Lake Champlain, 
 it was seen and recognized that they had every reason to be satisfied 
 with his services in general. He had accomplished with very little 
 means and amid incessant animosities (for which he himself was 
 partly to blame) great things in the way of preparation for General 
 Montgomery's advance on that side toward the conquest of Quebec, 
 which was the grand objective in the first* offensive campaign of the 
 Colonies against the mother country. While Quebec still remained 
 the principal French fortress in America, it was talked over around 
 many an English camp-fire during the last French war, and distinctly 
 proposed by Governor Shirley to a military council in New York in 
 1755, that Quebec was most vulnerable on its easterly side by means 
 of the Kennebec and Chaudiere rivers. Twenty years later General 
 Washington at his camp in Cambridge, in conference with several 
 members of the Continental Congress, revived this scheme, which 
 Arnold himself may have proposed at that time, of a cooperative 
 force ascending the Kennebec and descending the Chaudiere, to meet 
 under the walls of Quebec General Montgomery and his army de- 
 scending the St. Lawrence. The enterprise was bold and perilous, 
 encompassed with untried difficulties, requiring in the leader dexter- 
 ity and audacity and pertinacity to the last degree. Arnold was 
 then the only man in Cambridge fitted or willing to head a party 
 in such perils. He was commissioned by Washington a colonel in 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 
 
 39 
 
 the Continental service and given a body of about eleven hundred 
 effective men, consisting of ten companies of New England musket- 
 men and three companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania and Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 It is no part of our present task to tell the story of this winter 
 expedition, except so far as men from Williamstown took a hand in 
 it. The musket-men for Arnold's force seem to have been drafted 
 out of companies then present in the army at Cambridge. Such a 
 company, holding 29 men from Williamstown, 12 from East Hoosac, 
 9 from Lanesboro, 4 from New Providence, 1 from Gageborough 
 [Windsor], 2 from New Ashford, 1 from Sheffield, a drummer, 
 and 1 from Boston, 59 in all, yielded 2 officers and 6 privates to the 
 body under Arnold. A muster-roll of this company, made out after 
 Arnold had started in September, is fortunately extant, and the reader 
 may like to see an exact copy of it, which is herewith appended : 
 
 Samuel Sloan Capt. Williamstown 
 
 Zebediah Sabin 1 st Lt. " 
 
 Enos Parker 2 d Lt. E. Hoosuck 
 
 Asaph Cook Sergt. " 
 
 David Johnson " 
 
 Bartholomew Woodcock " " 
 
 Alexander Sloan " " 
 
 Barachiah Johnson Corp. " 
 
 Thaddeus Munson " Lanesborough 
 
 William May hew " New Providence 
 
 James McMaster " Williamstown 
 
 Charles King Drummer Sheffield 
 
 Ichabod Parker E. Hoosuck 
 
 Ezra Church Williamstown 
 
 William Spencer " 
 
 Jesse Jewell E. Hoosuck 
 
 Edward Bailey Lanesborough 
 
 Daniel Johnson Williamstown 
 
 Charles Sabin " 
 
 Foard Bass E. Hoosuck 
 
 James Andrews Williamstown 
 David Parkhill 
 Elijah Flynt 
 Starling Daniels 
 
 Joshua Smedley " 
 
 Jonathan Hall " 
 
 Henry Wilcox " 
 
 Nathaniel Parker E. Hoosuck 
 
 Samuel Pettebone Lanesborough 
 
 William Bennett E. Hoosuck 
 
 Jere. Osburn Williamstown 
 
 On command to Quebec 
 
 Williamstown On command to Quebec 
 
 On command to Quebec 
 
 On command to Quebec 
 
 On command to Quebec 
 
40 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Anthony Lamb 
 Eliphalet White 
 Benjamin Dibble 
 Samuel Wilcox 
 Israel Mead 
 William Bates 
 Joites Barns 
 Samuel Clark 
 Andrew Hinman 
 Thomas Whitney 
 Isaiah Honeywell 
 John Hall 
 Joseph Lawrence 
 Thomas Pall 
 Seth Pettebone 
 Jeremiah Collins 
 James Holden 
 Moses Rich 
 Ebenezer Hutchinson 
 Timothy Sherwood 
 William Young 
 Absalom Baker 
 Michael Watkins 
 Duncan Dunn 
 William Popkins 
 Alexander Spencer 
 Alexander Spencer, Jr. 
 Ahasuel Turret 
 
 Williamstown 
 E. Hoosuck 
 fi 
 
 Williamstown 
 
 New Ashford 
 (i 
 
 E. Hoosuck 
 Lanesborough 
 u 
 
 u 
 
 Gageborough 
 New Providence 
 Lanesborough 
 New Providence 
 E. Hoosuck 
 Williamstown 
 
 New Providence 
 E. Hoosuck 
 Boston 
 Williamstown 
 
 On command to Quebec 
 On command to Quebec 
 
 In the train 1 July 
 Discharged 1 Oct. 
 On command to Quebec 
 Discharged 20 Sept. 
 
 This company was evidently one of the companies of minute-men 
 summoned from all parts of the State to the seaboard previously to 
 or about the time of the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. They 
 were quartered in Charlestown. Washington assumed the command 
 of what was then first called the Continental Army fifteen days later 
 under the old elm at Cambridge. This company became a part of 
 the 26th Kegiment, then commanded by Colonel John Paterson, of 
 Lenox. The news of the battle of Lexington had reached Berkshire 
 at noon of the day following it ; Paterson himself, with parts of his 
 regiment of minute-men, had started at sunrise the next morning , 
 other parts followed a little later ; and the United States began to 
 commission for the national service officers of this and other regi- 
 ments even before Washington took command of the army. It will 
 be in order now to give a brief account of some of the officers and men 
 of this northern Berkshire company at Charlestown, eight of whom 
 started with Arnold in September for the Kennebec and Canada. 
 About one-half of these reached Quebec with him. The field officers 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 41 
 
 in this famous expedition, besides the chief in command, were Lieu- 
 tenant Colonel Christopher Greene, Lieutenant Colonel Roger Enos, 
 and Majors Bigelow and Meigs. At the head of the riflemen was 
 Captain Daniel Morgan, who became renowned before the war was 
 over. Colonel John Paterson of the 26th Regiment Continental, of 
 which our Berkshire company was a part, although he did not go up 
 the Kennebec with Arnold, was a little afterwards ordered to Canada 
 on the side of Lake Champlain, and took part with him in the disas- 
 trous battle of the Cedars. Paterson was a graduate of Yale College 
 in 1762, was advanced to brigadier general in February, 1777, and 
 later to major general, and continued in honorable service till the 
 close of the war. He was the youngest of all the Revolutionary 
 major generals, excepting only the Marquis La Fayette. No other 
 citizen of Berkshire attained the eminence, during the Revolution, 
 of John Paterson, and he closed his military career by heading a 
 detachment of the Berkshire militia to put down, in 1786, what was 
 called " Shays's Rebellion " in western Massachusetts. 
 
 1. Samuel Sloan. As he was the captain of the minute-men in 
 1775, and after the war a major general of the militia, and a very 
 prominent citizen of Williamstown until his death in 1813, it is fit 
 that he should be first in this list to be characterized. He was born 
 in Nor walk, Connecticut, in 1740, and removed to Canaan in the same 
 State, where he practised the blacksmith's trade. Becoming asso- 
 ciated here with Asa Douglas and marrying into his family, who had 
 been unsuccessfully engaged in trade at Canaan, and had acquired 
 by purchase of Josiah Dean and others, some 630 acres of good land 
 in what is now Hancock, and had settled on it in 1766, and after- 
 wards built the large and fine house often called " the palace " in 
 those days, now owned and occupied by the heirs of the late Daniel 
 Gardner; Sloan bought in 1764 for 60, two hundred and fifty 
 acres of this land, but sold a part of it again in 1766, having in the 
 meantime appeared as " blacksmith " in South Williamstown. He 
 bought first of Samuel Clark for 47, second-division 50-acre lot 52 
 overlooking the south village on the north. He commenced for a 
 home there, but soon quitted it in favor of his brother Alexander 
 Sloan, who afterwards built the gambrel-roof house on the place, 
 which, after more than a century of constant service, has been but 
 lately burned down. Alexander Sloan was one in his brother's mili- 
 tary company at Charlestown in 1775. This house stood at the top 
 of a pretty steep hill above what then promised to become a consid- 
 erable village, and was on the county road indeed leading from Pitts- 
 field to Bennington; but Samuel Sloan probably surmised that it 
 
42 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 would not prove a favorable spot for a blacksmith's stand. At any 
 rate, he quitted it to his brother, and temporarily established himself 
 by the brookside on the next lot south, at the opening of what came 
 to be a pretty little village. About six years before Isaac Stratton 
 had sat down there, and was the sole dweller on that level for three 
 or four years, two children having been born to him and his wife 
 Mary Fox while they still dwelt north of the brook. In August, 
 1767, Stratton sold this lot 53 to Sloan, and moved his own home 
 across the brook south to a low knoll on lot 54, on which he built in 
 1785 the large house still standing there. Sloan continued to enter- 
 tain the few passing travellers, as Stratton himself had done, and 
 the stand has ever since been practically kept as a tavern. But 
 Sloan was evidently desirous to aggregate for himself a large farm, 
 which he could not do to advantage in his present location; and 
 so we find him buying 50-acre lots about half a mile to the west on 
 the straight road laid out by the surveyor between two tiers of 
 these lots " to covean" them. This road is now legally denomi- 
 nated the "Sloan road" in perpetual memory of his enterprise 
 and success. It stretches straight from the tavern-stand nearly 
 a mile to the " Sabin farm," owned and occupied by Captain Sloan's 
 first lieutenant, Zebediah Sabin, of the company in Charlestown in 
 1775. 
 
 Sloan ultimately purchased ten of these 50-acre lots opposite 
 each other on both sides of the road. He placed his own long and 
 large log-house near the junction of the south ends of lots 41 and 43 
 on the north side of the road. This house, primitive in its construc- 
 tion, stood well into the present century ; and the writer heard 
 Dr. H. L. Sabin say (he died Feb. 24, 1884) that he had danced 
 many a night, nearly all night long, when he was young, under the 
 rafters of that old log-house. Sloan prospered in every way. He 
 came to have the most extensive and productive farm of his day in 
 Williamstown. It was sold not long after Sloan moved to the North 
 Part to Ambrose Hall, and Hall sold it in March, 1818, to Griffin 
 Eldredge for $16,930. It is reckoned in this deed to Eldredge at 
 507 acres. A strict survey would undoubtedly have made its area 
 considerably more. No farm, considered merely as such, ever 
 brought on sale in Williamstown so much money as that. In this 
 deed, Clarissa Hall yields her right of dower, and Nathan Eossiter 
 and Thomas E. Hall sign as witnesses. This Ambrose Hall built 
 the two-story house at the South Part, which has had an interesting 
 history. In it were born his two daughters, who married the famous 
 brothers, Leonard and Lawrence Jerome. A daughter of Leonard 
 
W1LLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 43 
 
 Jerome became Lady Randolph. Churchill of the English peerage, 
 House of Marlborough. She is known to prize highly the photo- 
 graph, herewith reproduced, of the modest country house in which 
 her mother was born. He became in due order a general in the Mas- 
 sachusetts militia; and in accordance with a custom of those times, 
 was privileged to ride on parade in his old age at trainings and mus- 
 ters of the militia. So likewise rode General Towner. James Smed- 
 ley remembered to have seen them both mounted on such occasions. 
 Both died within a few weeks of each other in the spring of 1813, 
 though Towner was by fourteen years the younger man. Sloan was a 
 short and thick-set man with much gray hair upon his head in his old 
 age. In the second meeting-house built here in 1797, General Sloan 
 occupied the front pew on the right-hand side of the broad aisle dur- 
 
 ing all the opening years of the century ; Judge Noble occupied the 
 corresponding pew on the left-hand side of the aisle ; these were the 
 posts of honor in a New England meeting-house at that time, although 
 the second house here was not " seated " by authority after the man- 
 ner of the first one. 
 
 The successful establishment of the free school in the North Vil- 
 lage in 1790, and its transformation into a college in 1793, together 
 with many other signs that that was to become thereafter the chief 
 place of residence and influence in Williamstown, was what natu- 
 rally led General Sloan, in his then affluent circumstances, to leave 
 the South Part and to plant himself in the North Village. He pur- 
 chased accordingly House-lot No. 46, originally improved and built 
 
44 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 on by William Horsford, directly opposite on the north side to the 
 West College, which stood and stands on a fine eminence within the 
 limits of the main street. There was then a house of considerable 
 size and in good condition upon that house-lot, and Sloan caused it 
 to be taken down, and the timbers to be erected into a commodious 
 dwelling still standing in South Street. Obadiah Bardwell chanced 
 to come into town as a permanent resident in the year 1800, just at 
 the time to avail himself of this removal and upbuilding for a home 
 for his family, which he occupied as such for many years; while 
 Sloan proceeded to erect for himself upon the old site in 1801 a 
 house that surpassed in size and elegance any other one built in the 
 village for more than a hundred years from its beginning. The 
 place has been owned by the college for a long time now, and three 
 successive presidents Mark Hopkins, Paul A. Chadbourne, and 
 Franklin Carter have made it their official residence. 
 
 The only son of General Sloan was Douglas Wheeler Sloan, born 
 May 9, 1784. He was graduated at the college in 1803, and for the 
 three years next following was in attendance at the famous Law 
 School in Litchfield, Connecticut. No other native of Williamstown 
 in those times had any such opportunities for educational training as 
 this single scion of a fortunate family. Taller than his father, he is 
 said to have been a remarkably handsome man, especially on horse- 
 back, and when caparisoned as a major in the militia regiment once 
 commanded by his father. Young Dwight of Stockbridge, a con- 
 temporary mounted officer of the militia with Sloan, was often 
 mentioned in conjunction with him, as if the two were the hand- 
 somest men in Berkshire. Douglas Sloan continued to live with his 
 mother in the new mansion until her death in 1828, but his law 
 office here was in a building which disappeared from the spot a long 
 time ago on the eastern edge of the present Kappa Alpha lot nearly 
 opposite the old Mansion House. He had a boys' school in the 
 Sloan house after his mother's death, and the late Dr. Alonzo Clark 
 was principal of it for a time after his graduation from college in 
 '28, and Nelson E. Spencer of '32 was an assistant, and afterwards 
 engaged to be married to the Major's third daughter, Harriet Doug- 
 las, who, however, died at eighteen years of age. Besides his law 
 practice, which was of course small in such a place as this, the 
 Major busied himself with merino sheep and other agricultural ven- 
 tures on a large scale, none of which, however, proved remunerative. 
 The large farm at the South Part was sold to Griffin Eldredge of 
 Hancock, and two of the latter's family, James and Norman E., 
 built each for himself a house on separate parts of the farm, one on 
 
WILLIAMSTOWX AXD BEXXIXGTOX. 45 
 
 the south side of the road nearly opposite the old log-house, and the 
 other 011 the north side somewhat further west and on higher 
 ground. 
 
 The cellar of the old log-house is still partly visible immediately 
 in front of a good farmhouse recently built for one of his sons by 
 Erastus Young, who came into possession of the eastern portions of 
 the Sloan farm and settled two of his sons upon them on opposite 
 sides of the road. Aug. 11, 1884, the present writer had a peculiar 
 experience in guiding a party of strangers and of direct descend- 
 ants of Samuel Sloan to visit this cellar around which gathers so 
 much interesting history. The party consisted of Mrs. Cornelia 
 
 GENERAL SLOAN'S HOUSE. 
 Built in 1801. 
 
 Sloan Handy, youngest daughter of Douglas Sloan, with her hus- 
 band, Mr. Parker Handy, who had first married Maria, the eldest 
 sister of Cornelia, Mrs. Maria Handy Bliss, a daughter of these, and 
 Miss Grace Bliss, a daughter of the last; that is to say, a grand- 
 daughter (Mrs. Handy), a great-granddaughter (Mrs. Bliss), and a 
 great-great-granddaughter (Miss Bliss) of Samuel Sloan, who had 
 built the cellar and the house over it, in which in all probability 
 Douglas Sloan was born just one hundred years before ! 
 
 In or about 1830 Major Douglas Sloan disposed of all the large 
 property interests in Williamstown left to him by each of his 
 parents, and removed to New Albany, Indiana, where he died in 
 1839, aged thirty-five. His wife was Miss Cogswell, step-daughter 
 to Ebenezer Fitch, first principal of the free school and first presi- 
 
46 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 dent of the college in "Williamstown. There was more of wealth 
 and of what may perhaps be called rural aristocracy in the family 
 of General Sloan after they moved into the North Village than in 
 any other family in town at that time. There were five daughters 
 and but one son, the youngest. Tradition has it that, in the muddy 
 walking and crossing of the springtime (there were no good side- 
 walks in those days as at present), General Sloan would send out his 
 hired man with two long boards for the girls to walk on, laying 
 down one in front while they were walking on the other in the rear ! 
 The circumstances of the family were not so stimulating and hard- 
 ening for the only son as fitted him best for the part he was called 
 on to play in after life. For obvious reasons the father, with all his 
 limitations in the way of education and opportunity, led a more suc- 
 cessful and influential life than his son. The mother, Hannah 
 Douglas, was daughter to Asa Douglas, first settler in Hancock in 
 1766, and at times a very considerable landowner in Williamstown. 
 He was born in 1715, and died in Hancock in 1792. His remains 
 were first interred on the hill south of his own fine house, but in 
 1809, on the death of his widow, Rebeckah, were reburied in the 
 cemetery at Stephentown, where his son William erected a monu- 
 ment to their memory. This Captain William Douglas, with a con- 
 siderable number of other Hancock men, was in the battle of Ben- 
 nington on the patriot side, and three men out of his company were 
 killed in the battle, Vaughn and Gardner and Sweet, and it was 
 vehemently alleged at the time that one or more of these were 
 killed by townsmen from Hancock fighting in the Tory breastwork 
 for king and Parliament. Even Asa Douglas, though an old man 
 born in 1715, was several times out with this and other sons in the 
 Revolutionary service. This Captain William was much trusted by 
 Colonel Simonds, who was constantly his superior officer. Once his 
 fleet mare brought him safely home from hazardous service at 
 Ticonderoga (spy service, it is said), and when he took off her saddle 
 at his own door, he said with emphasis, "She shall never do another 
 stroke of work as long as she lives I" She was called "Old Ti " ever 
 after. Captain Douglas's farm adjoined that of his father. When 
 the captain died in "1811 in the 69th year of his age" (epitaph), the 
 farm went to his son William Douglas, Jr., who was the first child 
 born in Hancock, and "who died Professing his entire Belief in the 
 Christian Eeligion and its Divine author" (epitaph). He died in 
 December, 1821, aged fifty-four years. The farm in due time was 
 transmitted to his daughter, the late Mrs. Hubbard. 
 
 These facts in relation to the Douglas family, of Hancock, have 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 47 
 
 been given here partly for their own sake, but mainly for the sake 
 of a certain light cast thereby on the Sloan family of Williamstown. 
 While the Sloans still lived at the South Part the Douglases were 
 comparatively neighbors, as well as near relatives. Hannah Douglas 
 Sloan was the daughter of Asa. 'He had six sons, also, besides Cap- 
 tain William, most, if not all of whom settled around their father in 
 the northern parts of Hancock, adjoining upon Williamstown. There 
 was apparently good blood in all these families. One of these sons 
 of Asa Douglas, not otherwise remarkable, had married a daughter 
 of Stephen Arnold of Stephentown, near by, and naturally named 
 his son Stephen Arnold Douglas. This branch of the family mi- 
 grated to Brandon, Vermont, where in April, 1813, the justly cele- 
 brated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was born. He was thus a 
 great-grandson of Asa Douglas of Hancock. That Samuel Sloan 
 should have built in Williamstown a private house by far surpassing 
 any other house then and there is made easier by the fact that his 
 own father-in-law had already built in Hancock a private dwelling 
 so much superior to all others then and there that it was commonly 
 called " the palace," that many persons came from a distance to see 
 it, and that the fresco in the front hall was so well done that the 
 remains of it were exhibited as a curiosity a full century after it was 
 done. The military careers in war and peace of Samuel Sloan and 
 of Douglas, his son, were undoubtedly facilitated by the martial 
 spirits of Captain William Douglas and of other members of the 
 Hancock family. 
 
 2. Zebediah Sabin. When Captain Samuel Sloan and his first 
 lieutenant, Zebediah Sabin, started to head their company of minute- 
 men on the road to Boston in the summer of 1775, they started from 
 adjoining farms in South Williamstown. Not even yet has the Sabin 
 farm passed out of the hands of his direct descendants. Within 
 about five years after Sabin himself settled upon this rough farm to 
 subdue it, he left the town on this very occasion, never again to 
 return to it ; but he also left here a memory for prompt and unflag- 
 ging patriotism, which has ever since honored the town and for which 
 the town will ever be prompt to honor his name. Moreover, he left 
 behind him here a widow with five children, and her energy and 
 excellence of character were such, and their individuality and that 
 of their descendants down to the present time have made them so 
 much a part of the town, that we shall find both a justification and 
 a reward in tracing carefully the ancestry of this Williamstown 
 farmer and that of his wife, too. 
 
 William Sabin, a citizen of Rehoboth as early as 1643, a signer of 
 
48 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the original combination and compact of government there in 1644, 
 and who was often thereafter a selectman and representative to the 
 General Court from that town, was the first American ancestor of 
 Zebediah Sabin. There is a contemporary record of twenty children 
 born to William Sabin by two wives, of whom the first had twelve 
 and the second eight. Two of these only need come under our pres- 
 ent notice, Benjamin of the first wife, born in May, 1646, and 
 John of the second wife, born in August, 1666. They were thus 
 half-brothers, with a disparity of twenty years in their ages. Ben- 
 jamin removed from Rehoboth to Roxbury in 1675, and living there 
 about ten years became the first-mentioned of a band of thirteen 
 pioneers to emigrate from Roxbury to the Nipmuck country, and 
 to settle in what is now Woodstock, Connecticut, in the spring of 
 1686. The town of Roxbury, as such, had made a purchase of wild 
 lands on the river Quinebaug, before it was certain where the line 
 would run between Massachusetts and Connecticut, and there was 
 a profound interest in the old town in the proposed settlement of 
 the new, for it is said that all the people of Roxbury were then 
 divided into the two classes of " stayers " and " goers " ; and there 
 is no doubt that the benediction of the venerable John Eliot of 
 blessed memory, pastor of the Roxbury church, then eighty-three 
 years old and long a consecrated apostle to the Indians, rested be- 
 nignantly on the heads of the men of this emigration, for infants 
 are recorded as having been baptized by him "in the same week 
 that we sent out our youth to make the new plantation," and the 
 region of country into which these men pushed had been the scene 
 in part of Eliot's former missionary labors. 
 
 Benjamin Sabin became very prominent in the settlement of 
 Woodstock, being deacon in the church and selectman in the town 
 and otherwise often in official position, until, in 1705, he moved a 
 little south into what is now Pomfret, retaining, however, his rela- 
 tions to the church in Woodstock till 1715, when he was chosen first 
 deacon of the church in Pomfret, first selectman, and later first rep- 
 resentative of the town to the General Assembly of the colony in 
 May, 1719. His son, Benjamin, born in Rehoboth, Dec. 2, 1673, 
 succeeded his father, who died in 1725, as deacon of the church in 
 Pomfret. He was also an innholder there for a great many years ; 
 and four of his brothers, who with himself had moved with their 
 father from Woodstock to Pomfret in 1705, became landholders and 
 influential citizens in that neighborhood, and some of the large 
 posterity of the Sabin family occupied for more than a century the 
 lands of their fathers situated on both sides of the Quinebaug River. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 49 
 
 The names of the original William, and of his three 'sons, Benjamin, 
 Noah, and Nehemiah, repeatedly recurred in the later generations ; 
 and the Williamstown names of Zebediah, Hezekiah, Timothy, Jesse, 
 and Charles are all found in the earlier records of the two branches 
 of the family on the banks- of the Quinebaug. 
 
 John Sabin, son of William, continued in Rehoboth till 1691, 
 when he followed his half-brother, Benjamin, into the wilderness of 
 the Wabbaquassets. He bought one hundred acres of land, a little 
 to the south of his brother's land and a little south of the present 
 south line of Woodstock, of James Fitch for 9, June 22, 1691. 
 Here he built a house for his family, and thus became the first set- 
 tler of Pomfret ; and in this house his son, Hezekiah, was born Nov. 
 5, 1692. John Sabin was no chicken. Prior to the Indian disturb- 
 ances of 1696, he had fortified his house, and gained much influence 
 and authority over the Indians. By standing his ground, protecting 
 the frontier, and engaging his Indian neighbors in the military ser- 
 vice of the English, he rendered most timely and efficient aid to the 
 people of Woodstock and to the Colonies of Connecticut and Massa- 
 chusetts both. The hunted and timid tribe of the Wabbaquassets 
 " would not be ordered by any but by virtue of authority from Con- 
 necticut," and consequently John Sabin being a resident of that 
 Colony was placed in command over them as Captain, and also 
 left in command of the military forces (such as they were) in 
 Woodstock. An interesting letter from the Earl of Bellemont, 
 Governor of Massachusetts, to John Winthrop, Governor of Con- 
 necticut, dated "Boston, 1700," brings out so fully the position 
 and services of this fearless pioneer that it is herewith quoted 
 entire : 
 
 " I have been made sensible of the good service done by Mr. John Sabin, an 
 inhabitant within your government, refering to the Indian affairs, he having 
 created that confidence in them of his friendship as to be trusted with their 
 /secrecy, and that during the late troubles and war he did, at his own great 
 charge and expense to the almost ruining of his estate, subsist and succor a con- 
 siderable number of the Wabbaquassets within a fortification about his own 
 house, whereby, he not only prevented their defection but also rendered them 
 serviceable to the English, and has since made discovery of the combination and 
 consults had among the Indians to make a new resurrection and rebellion and to 
 commit fresh hostilities upon his Majesty's English subjects. I understand, he 
 was encouraged by your Government to hold his part in the war and that he 
 should have allowance for his charge and expense upon the Indians, which not 
 being adjusted and paid before the peace, he is now neglected. I cannot but 
 account it very impolitic to lose so useful and public-spirited a man, or that he 
 be discouraged by ingratitude, much more by injustice. I pray in his favor, 
 that you will effectually recommend his services and expenses to the considera- 
 
50 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 tion of your General Assembly for a suitable recompense to be made him. I 
 shall not fail to endeavor some gratification for him from this Government. 
 Your humble and faithful servant, 
 
 BELLEMONT, Govenor of Massachusetts. 
 
 GOVENOB WlNTHROP." 
 
 Captain John Sabin was sent in October, 1720, and for several 
 years afterward, to the General Assembly of Connecticut from the 
 township he had founded and bravely defended. An old and rough 
 bridle-path, such as that which led through this same region from 
 Boston to Hartford called the " Bay Path," had long led from Pom- 
 fret to Providence, the most accessible market-town for the new 
 settlements in northeastern Connecticut ; arid in 1721 a better and 
 broader road was opened in the same direction between the two 
 points ; and this new road, like the path that preceded it, crossed the 
 Quin ebaug just below the falls of that river (in the present village 
 of Williamsville) at an old fording-place now greatly needing a 
 bridge. After several failures of others in attempts to bridge this 
 formidable stream at this point, Captain Sabin took the matter in 
 hand, and with the aid of his son constructed a substantial bridge 
 " over the Quinebaug at if falls near Pomfret in 1722" A Com- 
 mittee of the General Assembly was sent out to view the bridge 
 officially, who reported it " built in a suitable place, out of danger of 
 being carried away by fioods or ice, the higkth of the bridge being above 
 any flood yet known by any man living there, and think it will be very 
 serviceable to a great part of the government in travelling to Boston, 
 being at least ten miles the nearest way according to their judgement." 
 The cost of the bridge was 120, and for his service in building it 
 three hundred acres of land in the common lands on the east side of 
 the Connecticut River were allowed to Captain Sabin, " on condition 
 he keep the same in repair for the fourteen years next coming." 
 
 Captain Sabin was always a church-goer and an earnest Christian. 
 He kept his church relations together with his brother in Wood- 
 stock till 1715, when the two, with others, organized the original 
 church in Pomfret. He was appointed Justice of the Peace in 
 1724 ; as the leading citizen and chief military authority in the 
 northeastern corner of Connecticut, he was appointed by the Gen- 
 eral Assembly in October, 1726, the Major of the Regiment of the 
 County of Windham at its first organization ; and after fifty-two 
 years of varied usefulness in Pomfret, Major John Sabin died in 
 1743, leaving a large estate to be divided among his four children : 
 John, a respected physician in Franklin ; Hezekiah, a widely known 
 innkeeper in Thompson; Noah, who remained a farmer in Pomfret;. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENN1NGTON. 51 
 
 and Judith, wife of Justice Joseph Leavens of Killingly. An inven- 
 tory of the Major's estate showed sundry items, as follows : armor, 
 valued 15; books, 4; brass and iron, 35; husbandry utensils, 
 64; stock, 306; six horses, 90; one Indian girl, 20. 
 
 In this Hezekiah Sabin, son of John and first child born in Pom- 
 fret, we are particularly interested, partly because he was an interest- 
 ing personage in himself, and mainly because he was the father of our 
 Williamstown Lieutenant Zebediah Sabin. Directly east of Wood- 
 stock and Pomfret was the long town of Killingly, near the north 
 end of which was Quinnatisset Hill, whose summit is now occupied 
 by the beautiful village and common of Thompson. This township 
 is in the very corner of Connecticut, between Massachusetts and 
 Rhode Island. In John Sabin's day the boundaries of the Colonies 
 in this region were indistinct and disputed, and the rights in land 
 and the limits in authority of several tribes of Indians in the neigh- 
 borhood were also a source of trouble and contention, in all of which 
 the Sabins became more or less involved. During the terrible 
 Pequot War in 1637, the Mohegan Indians, whose earlier council- 
 fires had been at Albany and Schodack, on the North River, but 
 who were then mainly localized in the valley of the Housatonic, 
 were in faithful alliance with Connecticut and Massachusetts ; arid 
 when these two Colonies divided the conquered Pequot territory 
 between themselves, the whole Wabbaquasset country was yielded 
 by Massachusetts to the claim of Uncas, chief of the Mohegan s, 
 who, favored by the government and encouraged by interested ad- 
 visers, assumed to himself quite a share of eastern Connecticut also. 
 A large tract of this land was given over by Uncas to his son, 
 Owaneco, and the two exercised a wavering authority for many 
 years over the Wabbaquassets, Quinebaugs, Nipmucks, and other 
 remnants of tribes, until, in 1679, Connecticut adjudged that Uncas 
 and Owaneco should pass over their Indian right of six hundred 
 acres of land in satisfaction for their Indians burning the New 
 London County prison in a drunken outbreak, and ordered James 
 Fitch as treasurer of the county to dispose of the land at his dis- 
 cretion for that purpose. Fitch selected six hundred acres lying on 
 both sides of the Quinebaug. This was in his official position of 
 county treasurer; but in his personal capacity as land speculator 
 arid fast friend of the Mohegan chieftains, his operations were on 
 a much bigger scale. Uncas was already in his dotage ; Owaneco 
 was sottish and worthless; their chief patrons and advisers were 
 the sons of Major John Mason, the hero of the Pequot War, and 
 Rev. James Fitch, long the minister of Norwich, whose second wife 
 
52 WILLIAMSTOWIST AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was sister of these Masons, and Major James Fitch, the eldest and 
 enterprising son of the minister. Connecticut had ordered in May, 
 1680, that, " if Uncas hath right to any land about Quinebaug he may 
 make it out and dispose of it to Owaneco, and such gentlemen as he 
 shall see cause" This was an open invitation to swarms of greedy 
 land seekers to fasten on Owaneco, but conscious of his own weak- 
 ness he yielded to the personal ascendency of Major James Fitch, 
 and formally acknowledged him as guardian in the following curious 
 document : 
 
 " Whereas, at a General Court in Hartford, May 13, 1680, my father, Uncas, 
 had liberty to dispose unto me his land upon Quinebaug River, and the Court at 
 the same time granting me liberty to dispose of it unto gentlemen among them, 
 as I should see cause to do, and a good part thereof I have disposed of already ; 
 but finding that some, through their great importunity, and others taking advan- 
 tage of me when I am in drink, by causing me to sign deeds, not only wronging 
 myself but may spoil it ever being a plantation for these and other reasons, 
 I make over all my right and title of any and of all my lands and meadows unto 
 my loving friend James Fitch, Jun. , for him to dispose of as he shall see cause. 
 
 " OWANECO, 
 
 " Dec. 22, 1680. his mark." 
 
 Four years later a deed of conveyance executed by Owaneco and 
 confirmed by the Court of Connecticut made over in fee simple to 
 Fitch, a man of much shrewdness and energy and business capacity, 
 nearly the whole of the territory now embraced in Windham 
 County. It was from him that the town of Koxbury made its land 
 purchase of Woodstock in 1685 ; and we have already seen that the 
 same hand signed the deed of land to John Sabin in Pomfret in 
 1691. This James Fitch, lord of the Quinebaug, special patriarch 
 of Canterbury, brave participator in King Philip's War, was the 
 great-grandfather of Ebenezer Fitch, first Preceptor of the Williams- 
 town Free School and first President of Williams College. A firmer 
 ground of perpetual distinction is laid for him in the fact that he 
 was the first public donor to Yale College aside from the trustees, 
 endowing it in 1701 with 637 acres of land in Killingly, and pledg- 
 ing at the same time all the glass and nails needed in building the 
 proposed college edifice. This timely benefaction is said to have 
 exerted much influence in procuring the charter of the college from 
 the Colony of Connecticut, and in stimulating its former friends to 
 labor on in its behalf. 
 
 There were land troubles of other sorts in this quarter. Quinna- 
 tisset Hill, over whose summit passed the famous " Bay Path" from 
 Boston tb Hartford an immemorial Indian track from the Charles 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTOJST. 53 
 
 River to the Connecticut, and the line followed in general by the 
 earliest emigrants from Massachusetts in 1635 had been a seat of 
 some of Eliot's " Praying Indians " of about twenty families and one 
 hundred souls, whom Eliot himself had visited in 1674, though the 
 meeting-place was a few miles distant more convenient to all the 
 bands of Praying Indians in that region. The Apostle, however, 
 and his assistant, Gookin, " saw and spake with some of the principal 
 people of Quinnatisset, and appointed a sober and pious young man of 
 Natick, catted Daniel, to be their minister, whom they accepted in the 
 Lord." Nine years after this, and three years before the Eoxbury peo- 
 ple came into Woodstock, two thousand acres of forest land, including 
 the whole of this hill, were conveyed to Thomas Freak of Hamington, 
 England, for 250, and as much more in upland and meadow ad- 
 joining it to Robert Thompson of Newington, England, for 200. 
 Thompson was a very noted personage, president of the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and a devoted 
 friend of the Colonies. His own name is now borne by the town- 
 ship within which his land was located, and the name of his own 
 English town in Middlesex is borne by another in Connecticut near 
 to Hartford. The jurisdiction over the Quinnatisset region was not 
 only in dispute as between Massachusetts and Connecticut, to which 
 latter Colony it belonged without a doubt and was much later reluc- 
 tantly yielded, but also the township of Killingly being persuaded 
 that these Massachusetts grants of land to Freak, Thompson, and 
 others were within her lawful limits, assumed a threatening attitude 
 to these proprietors, and menaced forcible seizure of the farms 
 already settled by those who had purchased from them. Under 
 these circumstances Josiah Wolcott of Salem and Mary his wife, 
 niece of Thomas Freak, who had come into possession of Freak's land, 
 sold in 1716 to Captain John Sabin of Pom fret four hundred acres 
 on the summit of Quinnatisset Hill for 200, the sellers agreeing (( to 
 defend said Sabin in quiet and peaceable possession of the premises so 
 that he be not forcibly ejected" The experienced John Sabin, backed 
 by Wolcott, proved too strong to be molested, and he soon made 
 over his purchase to his son, Hezekiah Sabin, who put up a house 
 there and settled down with his family, the first resident propriet6r, 
 and for a long time the sole inhabitant of what is now Thompson 
 Hill. This house was built directly on the old Boston path to Hart- 
 ford, which before long became enough improved to be dignified by 
 the designation of the "Connecticut Road," and was much fre- 
 quented by land grabbers and other travellers both ways; and in 
 accordance with the custom of niou so situated in those days, Sabin 
 
54 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 soon opened his house as a tavern, and continued to keep it as such 
 certainly till about the time of Wolfe's great victory at Quebec in 
 1759. This house was about seventy miles from Boston and about 
 fifty from Hartford as the old road went, and it became in time as 
 "Sabin's red tavern" one of the most noted way-marks between 
 those two important points, and to it came no end of dignitaries in 
 Church and State, no end of land-hungry speculators from the east- 
 ward, and no end of poor families from the seaboard seeking a better 
 home in the newer valleys of Connecticut. We can easily imagine, 
 though no one can accurately describe the stirring scenes amid 
 which Zebediah Sabin, the youngest child of the landlord, baptized 
 Jan. 23, 1736, grew up to manhood. All the news that was agoing 
 in New England throughout the French and Indian wars of the 
 period came sooner or later to the old red tavern-stand. Mine host 
 himself was appointed Major in 1739 of the Eleventh Connecticut 
 Eegiment, when it was first constituted from the militia companies 
 of the five new towns in the northeastern corner of the Colony. To 
 the famous hostelry on the hilltop travelled in due time the tidings 
 of the taking of Fort Massachusetts by the French and Indians in 
 1746; the tidings of the hastily patched-up Peace of Aix la Chapelle 
 in 1748 ; news of the defeat of Braddock, and very shortly after of 
 the dearly bought victory of Lake George in 1755; and we know 
 that the alarm following the capture of Fort William Henry by 
 Montcalm in 1757 swept young Zebediah Sabin into the ranks as a 
 private in one of the four volunteer companies that marched from 
 Windham County. His father had been Colonel of the Eleventh 
 Regiment, and bore the title till his death, but was now too old to 
 take the field. 
 
 In the meantime young Sabin was taking an education in a quite 
 different line from that of arms. Before he was born his father's 
 house was the rally ing-place for the first public meeting of the 
 inhabitants north of the old parish of Killingly. They now wanted 
 a new religious society of their own. Eude bridle-paths led up 
 from various neighborhoods to the windy and still heavily wooded 
 heights of Quinnatisset, a place that had long had an odor of sanc- 
 tity about it, though Sabin was then its sole inhabitant, because the 
 ruins of the old wigwam of Quinnatisset's Praying Indians were 
 visible on its summit. A public meeting was warned " at the dwell- 
 ing-house of Hezekiah Sabin in said precinct " for July 9, 1728. The 
 society was organized then and there; Sampson Howe, a name 
 familiar in Williamstown thirty years later, was chosen clerk; a 
 divine service was shortly after held in Sabin's house, and it was 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 55 
 
 soon voted successively that the meeting-house should be fifty feet 
 long and forty feet wide and twenty-four feet stud, arid that it 
 should stand " right before the door of the house of Hezekiah SaUn 
 about twenty rods from said house, near where was an old wigwam.'' 
 Sabin gave to the new society an acre of land including the 
 appointed site of the meeting-house, which was near the centre of 
 the present Thompson common, and was chosen with others to take 
 care to provide for the "raising" of the building; and when it was 
 completed, and a good "training-place" provided in proximity with 
 it for the new militia company, a marvellous zeal was manifested in 
 the region round about to open up roads from all quarters to the 
 new Hill of Zion. Accordingly in all the associations and training 
 of the son, the practical religion of the father and grandfather 
 mingled in with the local attachments and the military ardor and 
 the hatred of the French and the strong love of country, and the 
 breezy zest for novelty that hovered round the country tavern of 
 New England about the middle of the last century. In 1754 Colo- 
 nel Sabin sold for 160 "eight acres northeast from Thompson 
 meeting-house on the Boston road ; " and in 1757 Sabin bought of 
 John Corbin, who occupied the southern extremity of the hill, his 
 homestead with thirty acres of land. Here we leave the good Colo- 
 nel. He had eight children and a handsome property. His wife 
 was Zerviah Hosmer, and he had a daughter Zerviah next older than 
 Zebediah ; his eldest son was Hezekiah, who died in New Haven in 
 1791, and he had also a son Jesse, baptized in January, 1727 ; and 
 we shall find that all these names reappear in Williamstown in the 
 next two generations. 
 
 It is doubtful whether Zebediah Sabin married Anna Dwight, 
 then living in New Haven, before or after he marched as a private 
 to the northward on the alarm over the capture of Fort William 
 Henry, Aug. 9, 1757. It was probably after, as the marriage took 
 place at any rate October 12th of that year ; and as Montcalm and 
 his motley forces, satisfied with the terror they had caused and the 
 ruin they had wrought, shortly retired again to Canada, after caus- 
 ing the demolition of the fort at the hands of twelve hundred men, 
 and after lading on boats by about a thousand more the vast stores 
 of plunder acquired, the militiamen who had mustered to the num- 
 ber of twenty thousand dispersed also to their homes, and Sabin 
 may have claimed his bride on his return to Connecticut. She was 
 three years older than he, and had been brought up with him within 
 the limits of Thompson Parish. Her father, John Dwight, was 
 prominently concerned in the building of the meeting-house and 
 
56 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was ensign of the military company that first trained under its 
 shadow, although his home was on the west side of the Quinebaug, 
 over which he and a neighbor had managed to throw a cart-bridge 
 without any public help, so that they, too, might reach the meeting- 
 house of their choice. In 1750, Dwight, in the meantime, become 
 a captain, lost his l^ouse by fire, a negro servant perished in the 
 flames, and all his "household goods, clothes, corn, meat, books, 
 bonds, and notes of hand" were destroyed. When he died, three 
 years later, his estate was in consequence so heavily encumbered 
 that his widow removed to New Haven, where some of his children 
 had previously settled. The Dwight lineage, intertwined by this 
 marriage and otherwise with that of the Sabins, a pleasant memorial 
 of which connection was the name of Dwight Sabin, United States 
 Senator from Minnesota in the last decade but one of the nineteenth 
 century, was a remarkable lineage. John Dwight, ancestor of all 
 the Dwights in this country, came from England in middle life in 
 or about 1635, and was one of the first settlers of Dedham, which 
 is said to have been named by him from his resident hamlet in the 
 old country. His son, Timothy, was also born in England and died 
 in Dedham in 1718, aged eighty-eight. The site of the old Dwight 
 mansion in Dedham was pointed out to the writer in 1885, just 
 where the old carriage road to Boston passes under the railroad 
 bridge, only a few rods from the station. Eev. Josiah Dwight, the 
 first minister of Woodstock, who was settled there in 1690 and who 
 died in Thompson in 1748, was one son of this Timothy of Ded- 
 ham, and John Dwight, father of Anna Sabin, was the minister's 
 son. Another son of Captain Timothy of Dedham was Captain 
 Henry of Hatfield, whose son, General Joseph Dwight of Great Bar- 
 rington, played so large a part in the early history of our Berkshire 
 County. 
 
 Zebediah Sabin took the freeman's oath in Thompson, April 7, 
 1760. The* greatest question of that century in America having 
 been settled the autumn before on the Heights of Abraham above 
 Quebec, the world to the northwest along the Hoosac and the upper 
 Hudson lay open to the young men who had traversed the region in 
 the various campaigns against the French, " where to choose." We 
 do not know the reasons that led Sabin and his wife, with one or 
 more children in the family already, to leave Connecticut as a home. 
 We only know that he was the youngest of eight children, and it is 
 probable that an older brother had already assumed to himself the 
 " good will " of the old red tavern and the ownership of the adjacent 
 acres. He had a brother nine years older than himself, named Jesse. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 57 
 
 At any rate, we find him and his growing family in New Providence, 
 now a part of the township of Cheshire, about a dozen miles south- 
 east of Williamstown, amid settlers mostly from Ehode Island, of 
 whom the chief was Colonel Joab Stafford, in the spring of 1768. 
 The place was commonly called, and is locally known still, as " Staf- 
 ford's Hill." An old deed reveals the fact that Zebediah Sabin 
 bought, on the 25th of June, 1768, for 65 sixty-five acres in New 
 Providence, " a part of Lot No. 6, as is to be seen on the plan drawn 
 by Colonel Joab Stafford." One son, Timothy, was born to the Sabins 
 at New Providence, June 1, 1770. But Stafford's Hill did not sat- 
 isfy them. Williamstown, on the Hoosac, was at that time growing 
 rapidly; its first framed meeting-house had just then been fin- 
 ished on the " Square," and the Kev. Whitman Welch, a native of 
 Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, was then a settled minister 
 giving much satisfaction to his people. Before the boy Timothy 
 could toddle, the family was in Williamstown, two 100-acre lots had 
 been bought in succession, the first on what is now the Potter road, 
 No. 22, and the other the home-lot, No. 41, bordering on what was 
 already the Sloan farm. About four years of unremitting la,bor 
 there on the part of both father and mother, assisted by the two 
 older boys, John and Charles, had made good beginnings as toward 
 a permanent home, when the affairs of Lexington and Concord and 
 Bunker Hill sent westward a ringing summons to the brave men 
 and true. 
 
 Sabin's commission by the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay as 
 first lieutenant in Captain Sloan's company is dated the 19th of 
 May, 1775, his commission to the same rank by the United Colonies 
 in Congress assembled is dated July 1, 1775, and both are here 
 appended in full as copied verbatim from the original commissions. 
 
 THE CONGRESS OF THE COLONY OF THE MASSACHUSETT BAY. 
 To ZEBEDIAH SABINS, GENTLEMAN. GREETING : 
 
 We, reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Courage and good 
 Conduct, 
 
 Do, by these Presents, constitute and appoint you the said Zebediah Sabins 
 to be Lieutenant of the Foot Company in the Regiment of Foot Whereof John 
 Patterson Esq. is Colonel raised by the Congress aforesaid, for the Defence of 
 said Colony. 
 
 You are, therefore, carefully and diligently to discharge the Duty of a Lieu- 
 tenant in leading, ordering and exercising the said Company in Arms, both 
 inferior Officers and Soldiers, and to keep them in good Order and Discipline ; 
 and they are hereby commanded to obey you as their Lieutenant, and you are 
 yourself to observe and follow such Orders and Instructions as you shall, from 
 
58 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Time to Time, receive from the General and Commander in Chief of the Forces 
 raised in the Colony aforesaid, for the Defence of the same, or any other your 
 superior Officers, according to Military Rules and Discipline in War, in Pursu- 
 ance of the Trust reposed in you. 
 
 By Order of the Congress. 
 
 Jos. WARREN, President P. T. 
 Dated, the 19 th of May A.D. 1775. 
 
 SAM. FREEMAN, Secretary P. T. 
 
 IN CONGRESS. 
 
 The delegates of the United Colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, 
 Rhode-Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Counties 
 of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Caro- 
 lina, and South Carolina, to Zebediah Sabins, Gent 
 
 We reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Patriotism, Valour, Con- 
 duct and Fidelity, 
 
 Do by these Presents, Constitute and appoint you to be Lieutenant of Capt. 
 Sloan's Company in the 26 th Regiment, Commanded by Col. Paterson in The 
 Army of the United Colonies, raised for the Defense of American Liberty, and 
 for repelling every hostile Invasion thereof. You are therefore carefully and 
 diligently to discharge the Duty of Lieutenant by doing and performing all 
 Manner of Things there unto belonging. And we do strictly charge and require 
 all Officers and Soldiers under your command, to be obedient to your Orders as 
 Lieutenant. And you are to observe and follow such Orders and Directions 
 from Time to Time, as you shall receive from this or a future Congress of the 
 United Colonies, or Committee of Congress for that Purpose appointed, or Com- 
 mander-in Chief for the Time being of the Army of the United Colonies, or any 
 other your superior Officer, according to the Rules and Discipline of War, in 
 Pursuance of the Trust reposed in you. This Commission to continue in Force 
 until revoked by this or a future Congress. 
 
 July 1 st , 1775 By Order of the Congress. 
 
 JOHN HANCOCK, President. 
 Attest. CHAS. THOMSON, Secy. 
 
 Captain Sloan's company went into camp at Charlestown. When 
 the draft was made from it for Arnold's Expedition up the Kenne- 
 bec, Lieutenant Sabin and Sergeant David Johnson, both from South 
 Williarnstown, were the officers taken, and six privates, of whom 
 one only, Alexander Spencer, was from Williamstown. The sword 
 that Sabin carried with him to Quebec, the powder-horn also en- 
 graved while he was still at Charlestown, are extant and carefully 
 preserved here in town. The powder-horn bears this inscription : 
 
 "LIKUT ZEBADIAH SABEN 
 His horn Charles Town 
 Camp No. 3, Dec r ye 
 
 3d; A.D. 1775 I M." 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 59 
 
 Lieutenant Sabin took with him to Quebec his two sons, John and 
 Charles. Charles was a private in Sloan's company at the time, 
 although he was but sixteen years old ; but he was not drafted with 
 the others. Probably he volunteered at his father's request. Cer- 
 tainly he went and returned, and brought back with him the sword 
 and powder-horn just referred to ; and he lived to become seventy 
 years old, in South Williamstown. The good pastor here, at any 
 rate, Rev. Whitman Welch, a young man in whose bones the 
 fire burned, volunteered to accompany the party from Chaiiestown, 
 paying his life as the forfeit, dying of small-pox near Quebec, the 
 following March. The Lieutenant himself, with his eldest son 
 John, after enduring the incredible hardships of the winter's march 
 through the unbroken wilderness, and so enrolling his name forever 
 among the famine-proof veterans of the Quebec and the Chaudiere, 
 both succumbed to the small-pox on the retreat of the survivors of 
 both divisions of the army up the St. Lawrence and Lake Cham- 
 plain, probably at what is now Whitehall. 
 
 3. Charles Sabin. Two soldiers who had enlisted from Pownal, 
 Caleb Morgan and John Potter, certainly went with the Sabins to 
 Quebec, and are believed to have accompanied Charles Sabin from 
 Whitehall to their respective homes in this neighborhood. We 
 happen to know also the military experiences of another Pownal 
 man, Josiah Dunning, during the first two years of the war, who 
 served with Williamstown men, and whose story, as told by him- 
 self, in an application for a pension long afterward, throws light 
 upon our records of Williamstown men, his neighbors and associates. 
 Michael Dunning, born in Newtown, Connecticut, in 1730, was one 
 of the very first settlers in Pownal, locating his home on the 
 Hoosac at the northern foot of Northwest Hill. He was own 
 cousin of Deacon Matthew Dunning of South Williamstown, born 
 in Newtown, in 1714, and becoming as an old man the principal 
 founder of the Baptist Church in South Williamstown. His son 
 Matthew, at the time of his father's death in 1807, was a citizen of 
 Lanesboro. But Michael Dunning left a large posterity in Pownal. 
 His son Josiah, born in Newtown in October, 1755, was seven years 
 old when the father came northward, presumably to Pownal. 
 Josiah Dunning continued to live in Pownal till 1827. He gave 
 substantially the following account of his war service in his appli- 
 cation for a pension, which is on record in the Pension Office at 
 Washington : 
 
 Some time in April, 1775, while living in Pownal, Vermont, he, 
 as a private, assisted in organizing a volunteer company to capture 
 
60 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Fort Ticonderoga, that elected Samuel Wright as captain, and part 
 of the company marched to Castleton, Vermont, where Colonel 
 Ethan Allen took the command and crossed over Lake Champlain 
 in boats. The other portion of the company, including Dunning, 
 marched to Skenesboro, now Whitehall, where they joined the forces 
 under Colonel Benedict Arnold, and sailed in a schooner down the 
 lake, arriving at Ticonderoga in the morning after the surrender of 
 the garrison. He witnessed the exciting dispute between Colonel 
 Allen and Colonel Arnold, relative to which one of them was en- 
 titled to the command of the. troops ; the former claiming the right 
 in consequence of having taken the fort with volunteers, and the 
 latter in virtue of his commission. Both had drawn their swords, 
 and the men under their respective commands had raised and cocked 
 their muskets, and presented their bayonets, when a private named 
 Edward Kichards, stepping forward with great tirmness, commanded 
 both officers to put up their swords, and to the soldiers of both 
 parties to arrest them if they did not immediately desist. The 
 angry officers then abandoned the dispute, with a stipulation for a 
 duel to take place between them after the war, and Dunning thinks 
 that Colonel Arnold then assumed the command. 
 
 In a few days Colonel Arnold, with a body of soldiers, proceeded 
 in the before-mentioned schooner, and in batteaux, to Crown Point 
 and then to St. Johns, in Canada, where a British vessel was cap- 
 tured ; and the troops, including Dunning, returned to Crown Point 
 and were employed on the lake and forts until the following 
 September, when his company was dismissed. 
 
 About the 1st of April, 1776, he ran away from his father's to 
 Albany, where he entered the service under Captain John Hunn r 
 who a part of that year was in the Quarter-master Department, and 
 Dunning was employed as a waiter to Captain Hunn, and going 
 express to Fort George, at the head of Lake George, to Whitehall,, 
 to Stillwater and other places, as well as in other duties, until the 
 end of December, 1776. In 1776 he served about two months as one 
 of the guards to the public stores in Sunderland, Bennington County,. 
 Vermont, under the command of Samuel Robinson of Bennington,. 
 who is mentioned, later in the year, as Colonel. 
 
 About July 1, 1777, when he was Orderly Sergeant of a company 
 of militia in Pownal, Vermont, under Captain Eli Noble, the news 
 was received of the arrival of General Burgoyne from Canada, at 
 Ticonderoga, and he was ordered to warn out his company, who 
 volunteered to go to Bennington, where was "headquarters." They 
 were employed in guarding the public stores, in scouting parties 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 61 
 
 after the British and Tories, until the battle of Aug. 16, 1777, at 
 Bennington; but it seems that Dunning had been previously de- 
 spatched with others on a reconnoitring expedition, to ascertain the 
 position of the reinforcements (under Colonel Breyman), which were 
 known to be several miles in the rear of the advance of the main 
 body under General Batim, and did not return until the close of the 
 day of the battle. After caring for the wounded and prisoners, 
 Dunning with his company proceeded toward the State of New 
 York, and near Tull's Mills they were fired upon by an ambuscade 
 of a small body of Indians, which killed two men. They crossed 
 the North River at Stillwater, and were stationed as garrison at 
 Fort George for a time, but were present at the operations of the 
 army at Saratoga, prior to and at the surrender of General Burgoyne 
 in October; after which he was discharged in November at Ben- 
 nington. 
 
 The mother of Charles Sabin, while she must have welcomed with 
 rejoicing the survivor of the three whom she had sent out in the 
 autumn to take the risks for their country, must also have been 
 overwhelmed for the moment by the magnitude of her losses. But 
 she was made of too stern a stuff to bate a jot of heart or hope. She 
 had four little children around her knees, now fatherless, besides the 
 son who had now come home from paths of peril and camps of con- 
 tagion and death-scenes of terror. She rose to the occasion. She 
 took possession of her slender opportunities. She did not scorn 
 hard labors in the field. She directed what she could not personally 
 perform. She lived for more than thirty years after her distressful 
 widowhood, carrying on her farm and bringing up her children in 
 the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Her grandson, the late 
 Dr. H. L. Sabin, remembered to have ridden with her to religious 
 meetings, and remembered particularly her funeral, as conducted 
 in her own and her old farmhouse. Charles Sabin married in due 
 time the sister of two of his comrades in the company of minute- 
 men who marched from here to Charlestown in the summer of 1775, 
 namely, David and Barechiah Johnson. She bore him two sons, 
 Zebediah and Hezekiah (commonly called Zeb and Kiah), who came 
 in time to inherit the old homestead, and both lived upon it and 
 died there. 
 
 In the meantime, or rather a.t some time, Charles Sabin became 
 possessed of a smaller farm about half a mile south upon the same 
 road, and lived there with his second wife, Mehitable Skinner, who 
 bore to him three daughters, Maria and Betsey and Alice. The 
 father was a character in South Williamstown so long as he lived, 
 
62 WILLIAMSTOWK AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 honorable-minded and sharp-witted and much too much given to 
 strong drink and a capital story-teller. His wife was much dis- 
 turbed by the bills constantly run up at the village store then kept 
 by Lyman Hubbell, bills contracted a good deal faster than they 
 were paid off. One day he went home in a hilarious mood with his 
 word of comfort for her, " I've settled with Hubbell ! He gave me 
 credit for jugs returned!" Sometimes his sallies of hilarity were 
 directed to inappropriate parties. Lyman Hubbell had the name of 
 being a penurious man, and doubtless the neighbors often joked 
 among themselves over this peculiarity of their respected store- 
 keeper. At that time all the heavy freights from New York des- 
 tined for this part of the country were brought up the North River 
 by sloop as far as Schodack, and then hauled overland up the 
 Kinderhook and over the slight and short water-shed to the Han- 
 cock Brook. Hubbell bought his goods in New York and they were 
 brought up along this route. One time he was delayed considerably 
 beyond the time of his expected return, and his family and even the 
 neighbors became more or less anxious about him. But Charles 
 Sabin, after having refreshed himself as usual at the store, felt no 
 anxiety at all. He climbed the short hill, and rapped loudly at the 
 door of the storekeeper's house. Mrs. Hubbell came much perturbed, 
 when she was accosted as follows: "We've lieerd from Hubbell! 
 When he was coming off the plank at Schodack, he saw a sixpence in 
 the ivater and he dove for it and he hain't come up yit ! " It is per- 
 haps needless to add, that in the store itself and in a well-known 
 shoemaker's shop nearer to his own home and in other little places 
 of public resort within an isolated community, Sabin was a frequent 
 visitor and a fluent political debater and a welcome teller of stories 
 of his Kennebec and other Revolutionary campaigns, which last nat- 
 urally accumulated in point and piquancy as he told them o'er and 
 o'er. His nearest neighbor from his second home and his brother- 
 in-law through his first marriage, was a comrade of his during the 
 first part of the campaign up the Kennebec, but was unluckily en- 
 rolled in the rear-guard under Lieutenant Colonel Enos, which officer 
 misinterpreted, or rather under the pressure of his own officers and 
 of the circumstances failed to carry out an order from Colonel 
 Arnold in the front, and was forced to order his men to retreat 
 down the Kennebec and back to Cambridge. They came as near 
 starving to death on the retreat as those did who persisted in the 
 advance to Quebec ; but Enos was court-martialled at Washington's 
 camp and honorably acquitted, though he continued to bear un- 
 merited odium, and left the army shortly afterward, either knowing 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 63 
 
 or suspecting that his retreat was disapproved of by the Comman- 
 der-in-chief. Charles Sabin died June 25, 1829, aged seventy years. 
 
 4. David Johnson. He was commonly called " Black David " to 
 distinguish him from a well-to-do contemporary "White David 
 Johnson " who lived on Stone Hill. This Black David was a ser- 
 geant in the rear division on the Kennebec in special charge of five 
 or six soldiers, and retreated of course under the orders of his supe- 
 rior officer. He had his own stories to tell of mishap and starvation 
 on the retreat, particularly one of a chance-caught moose divided up 
 among the whole detachment. A portion of the entrails fell to the 
 sergeant and to his own little squad : "It was the sweetest morsel I 
 ever tasted in my life ! " But Charles Sabin had the moral advantage 
 over David Johnson in debate and retort, in that the former saw 
 Quebec and Montreal, the St. Lawrence River and Lake Champlain, 
 in short, saw the Canada campaign through to the end ; so, when 
 these two brothers-in-law and near neighbors chanced to meet in 
 Deacon Dickinson's shoemaker's shop close by or other such place, 
 especially if there were two or three auditors in close quarters, or a 
 boy or two such as the one who long afterward informed the writer 
 about this, Sabin was apt to gibe the other about what happened 
 in the woods of Maine. " What do you think has become of them guns 
 that you stacked up there in the woods f " " They are there yit for all I 
 know or care ! " Johnson was a Federalist in politics, and though 
 he probably never analyzed the matter to the bottom, he felt no ob- 
 jection to some little privileges accorded under the law to those then 
 called in common parlance the " better class " ; Sabin, on the other 
 hand, was a Jeffersonian democrat, believed in equalities under the 
 law, as did then the majority of his townsmen ; and in these little 
 half-accidental, half-designed conclaves in South Williamstown, 
 which broke up somewhat the isolation and monotony of life there, 
 Sabin and Johnson had it out in hand-to-hand contests that amused, 
 even if they did not enlighten, their fellow-citizens. 
 
 It is no more than due to the memory of Colonel Enos and to that 
 of his in some respects unfortunate rear-guard, to insert here ver- 
 batim Arnold's last orders to him, and one or two other documents 
 relative to the court-martial at Cambridge after their return. 
 
 ON THE DEAD RIVER, 20 MILES ABOVE THE PORTAGE, 
 
 Oct. 17, 1775. 
 
 DEAR SIR : I arrived here last night, late, and find Col. Greene's division very 
 short of provisions the whole having only four barrels of flour and ten of Pork. 
 I have therefore ordered Major Bigelow, and a Lieutenant and thirty-one men 
 out of each Company, to return and meet your division, and bring up as much 
 
64 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 provision as you can spare, which is to be divided equally among the three ; in 
 particular, of flour. This will lighten the rear, and they will be able to make 
 greater despatch, and will be no hindrance, as I shall keep the men here making 
 up cartriges. I make no doubt you will hurry on as fast as possible. 
 I am, with esteem, Dear Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 B. ARNOLD. 
 
 N. B. If you find your men much fatigued, and this party can bring on more 
 of your provision than their sharle, let them have it ; you shall have it again 
 when you come up, and it will forward the whole. The carpenters of Colburn's 
 Company have more than they can bring up. 
 
 The same day from the same place Arnold gave the following 
 orders to Major Bigelow : 
 
 SIR : You are, as soon as possible, to go back until you meet Colonel Enos'-s 
 division, and take from him as much provision as he can spare, which you will 
 return with as soon as you can. Leave your batteaus this side the carrying 
 place, and one man to take care of the whole. 
 
 I am, Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 B. ARNOLD. 
 MAJOR BIGELOW. 
 
 A Court of Inquiry to examine into the conduct of Lieutenant 
 Colonel Enos, charged with " quitting his Commanding Officer with- 
 out leave," was ordered at headquarters in Cambridge, Nov. 27, 
 1775, and convened two days later, and reported "that it is neces- 
 sary for the satisfaction of this world and for his own honour, that 
 a Court-Martial should immediately hold for his trial." Such Court 
 under the express orders of the Commander-in-chief, consisting of 
 General Sullivan, president, three colonels, five lieutenant colonels, 
 four majors, and a judge advocate, convened at headquarters Decem- 
 ber 1 ; and being duly sworn, heard the Colonel's own testimony and 
 that of his officers, and took into consideration all the circumstances 
 of the case. The verdict was as follows : 
 
 The Court being cleared, after mature consideration, are unanimously of 
 opinion, that Colonel Enos was under a necessity of returning with the division 
 under his command, and therefore acquit him with honor. 
 
 JOHN SULLIVAN, President. 
 
 This should have settled the whole matter in the Colonel's favor. 
 But it did not. Murmurs and hostile criticisms continued to stir 
 and spread throughout the army and the general public. Five 
 months later, therefore, after the army headquarters had been shifted 
 to New York, General Sullivan published the following voluntary 
 statement : 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 65 
 
 I hereby certify that I was President of a Court-Martial in Cambridge, when 
 Colonel Enos was tried for leaving Colonel Arnold, with the rear division of the 
 detachment under his command, bound for Quebeck ; and up the trial it clearly 
 appeared to me, as well as to all the other members of the Court, that Colonel 
 Enos was perfectly justifiable in returning with the division, being clearly proved 
 by witnesses of undoubted veracity (some of whom I have been personally ac- 
 quainted with for a number of years, and know them to be persons of truth) 
 that so much provision had been sent forward, to support the other divisions, as 
 lef them so small a quantity that their men were almost famished with hunger 
 on their return ; and some would undoubtedly have starved, had they not, by 
 accident, come across and killed a large moose. Upon their evidence, there re- 
 mained no dought in the mind of myself, or any of the members, that the return 
 of the division was prudent and reasonable ; being well convinced that they had 
 not provision sufficient to carry them half way to Quebeck; and that their going 
 forward would only have deprived the other division of a part of theirs, which, 
 as the event has since shown, was not enough to keep them all from perishing ; 
 we therefore acquitted Colonel Enos with honour. 
 
 I further testify, that by a strict inquiry into the matter since, from persons 
 that were in the division, that went forward, I am convinced that had Colonel 
 Enos, with his division, proceeded, it would have been the means of causing the 
 whole detachment to have perished in the woods, for want of sustenance. 
 
 I further add that I have been well informed, by persons acquainted with 
 Colonel Enos, that he has ever conducted as a good and faithful officer. 
 
 JOHN SULLIVAN. 
 
 One month later Enos himself, impatient of undesired odium, pub- 
 lished an appeal " To the Impartial Publick," in the form of a signed 
 testimonial given to him by his fellow-officers in the army. General 
 Heath, eleven colonels (among them John Stark), six lieutenant colo- 
 nels, and seven majors. It was of no use. Whether he did protest 
 too much, or there were something real back of Washington's dis- 
 trust, he soon quitted the army to become one of the founders of 
 Vermont, and the father-in-law of Ira Allen. He died at Colchester, 
 Vermont, in October, 1808, aged seventy-two years. 
 
 Sabin and Johnson heartily cooperated in practical efforts for the 
 improvement of their neighborhood. They were the two leading 
 men in the construction of the road over the Taconics to the west- 
 ward in 1814, that has now long gone by the name of the Johnson 
 Pass. Dr. Porter, the physician and surgeon, who then lived on the 
 southern slope of Stone Hill, and who had a considerable prac- 
 tice in the valley of the Little Hoosac over the mountain, sent his 
 hired man to help in the work of making the road. Henry Green 
 also, a vigorous farmer, father of many children, who lived in what 
 is still called the " Green Hollow " on the Gore, where Erastus Young 
 afterward lived, put his muscle into the mountain highway; and 
 the writer himself has heard the late Henry L. Sabin, who lived in 
 
66 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 his boyhood a good deal with his Uncle Charles, relate that he car- 
 ried the baiting or dinner many a time to the men cutting and dig- 
 ging on the Johnson Pass. Beside working his own farm in the 
 ordinary way, Johnson built stone walls for his neighbors, and was 
 more than a common man, and left more than a common impress 
 on the community in which he lived and died. He died Dec. 7, 
 1836, aged eighty-nine years. He came hither from this same lo- 
 cality with the Sabin family, that is, the very northeastern corner of 
 Connecticut, a section illuminated as to its settlement and early 
 families by Miss Lamb's " History of Windham County," to which 
 the writer is indebted for many particulars chronicled in the present 
 chapter. The Johnson family came certainly from Thompson, and 
 perhaps from Thompson Hill, the immediate vicinity of the Sabin 
 red tavern on the old Bay Path. Uriah Johnson, the father of David 
 and Barechiah and Daniel and the first wife of Charles Sabin, lies 
 buried here, having died in 1787 in his seventy-seventh year. He 
 was thus older than Zebediah Sabin, though their sons were contem- 
 poraries here. Barechiah Johnson made a home for himself on 
 100-acre lot, No. 22, near the south end of the Potter road, where the 
 remains of his cellar wall are still visible ; but he moved away to 
 Otsego County, New York, and his house was moved down across 
 the Ashford Brook to the Roe place, where it stood till lately as a 
 shed or wagon-house. The other son of Uriah, Daniel, studied 
 medicine here with Dr. Samuel Porter, and removed also to Otsego 
 County to practise his profession. Of Uriah's sons, David alone re- 
 mained in William stown. He lived to a good old age. He survived 
 his wife Sarah Eaton for twenty-five years, and also his compeer and 
 comrade Sabin for seven years, and he was cared for in his old age by 
 his own sons, Warren and Oran, and by his daughter the first Harty 
 Johnson, who became the wife of Ebenezer Foster. These last hav- 
 ing no children of their own, practically brought up her nephew, 
 William Eaton Johnson, named from his grandmother, and the son 
 of Warren Johnson. Eaton Johnson, as he was usually called by 
 his townsmen, passed a long life in South Williamstown in conjunc- 
 tion and neighborhood harmony with Benjamin F. Mills, a grandson 
 of Captain Samuel Mills, who was always a near neighbor of Black 
 David Johnson. Of the third generation from the original settlers 
 there, no other two men than these were uniformly held in such high 
 estimation by their neighbors and contemporaries, led such useful 
 and influential lives from youth to age, and did so much to hold up 
 all things that are good in politics and education and temperance 
 and religion in the small hamlet in which Providence had cast 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 67 
 
 their lives. Eaton Johnson was buried at the South Part, Jan. 18, 
 1889. 
 
 5. Moses Rich. In Captain Sloan's company of niinute-men en- 
 camped at Charlestown during the summer and autumn of 1775 was 
 another South Williamstown farmer, whose name ought not to be 
 passed by in the .present connection. This was Moses Rich from 
 Western or its immediate neighborhood, who came in 1763 in com- 
 pany with Robert McMaster and his brother John McMaster, all 
 three from the same neighborhood in central Massachusetts, and the 
 three families becoming the earliest settled in South Williamstown 
 excepting only Isaac Stratton at the junction of the Ashford and 
 Hancock brooks. Moses Rich and Robert McMaster took up adjoin- 
 ing farms on what is now the Woodcock road, the lands of both 
 being mostly on the south side of that road among the 50-acre lots 
 of the second division, although McMaster's house stood and is still 
 standing on the north side of the road as it now runs bending to the 
 southwest toward its speedy junction with the Oblong road. For 
 the sake of easy access to running water, both placed their hearth- 
 stones near to the Sweet Brook that comes trickling and twinkling 
 down from the Kidder Pass Rich putting his down the stream 
 further east and considerably further from the road to the south. 
 All other traces of a human habitation long ago disappeared from 
 that spot on the brook side, but the hearthstone itself that has never 
 been stirred from its original position still gives token strong to the 
 sturdy volunteer of 1775. The writer questions whether any other 
 person than himself knows the location of the old hearth and home 
 of Moses Rich. He returned to it from the first Revolutionary camp 
 in Charlestown, and time and again from other military service, 
 though he had two sons of full military age while the war was still 
 going on. Moses Rich was an original member of the Williamstown 
 Church. He lived well into the present century. Sedgwick Mills, 
 who was born on the Oblong road in 1795, told the present writer in 
 1877 that he remembered Moses Rich perfectly throughout his own 
 boyhood. He also remembered John McMaster and his house on 
 the Sloan road, very near to the spot where afterward was built the 
 house of Norman E. Eldredge. 
 
 Elijah Rich, son of Moses, and Hannah his wife had thirteen 
 children, all but one of them born in the substantial house still 
 standing on the Torrey road, which he built in 1786, about a quarter 
 of a mile north of his father's. Asenath Torrey, daughter of John 
 Torrey, a near neighbor, born in 1772, and consequently fourteen 
 years old at that time, lived with the Rich family when the new 
 
68 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 house was built ; and she saw from that house the first schoolhouse 
 built in South Williamstown burn down in the night-time. When 
 Asenath Torrey married Walter Converse, Jan. 30, 1791, there were 
 probably more school children within a radius of one mile from that 
 schoolhouse than within any similar circle in the whole town. The 
 two Torrey families, the two Rich families (for the father had five 
 children born here 1767-77), the two McMaster families, and the 
 families of Samuel Sloan and Zebediah Sabin were full of children of 
 school age at that time. Asenath Torrey herself had taught a school 
 one summer before her marriage in the Young neighborhood, or what 
 was afterward called the Sherwood district. After a useful life, 
 lacking but five days of ninety-seven years, Asenath Torrey Converse 
 passed away, Sept. 25, 1869. The last time the writer was privileged 
 to see her was at a funeral at the original Robert McMaster house, 
 which was but a short distance from her birth-spot on 50-acre lot, 
 No. 20, near to the Elijah Rich house where she spent a part of her 
 youth ; in short, not distant from the several places where her very 
 long life had been spent. Phillip Rich, a younger brother of Elijah, 
 built his house (still standing, but now for many years unoccupied) 
 011 a rise of ground north of the brook and close by his father's. 
 Mary Rich, a daughter of Moses, married Elnathan Holmes in 1785, 
 a couple of months before she was sixteen, and they spent their 
 lives in the same immediate neighborhood just a little way off from 
 the Torrey road. 
 
 6. William Young. Perhaps it will help the reader the better 
 to put himself back in imagination into the primitive state of things 
 existing in 1775 in Williamstown, to be reminded at this point that 
 there was no Post Office here then nor until twenty-two years later. 
 At that time there were but four mail routes in the entire country : 
 (1) the great seaboard route from Portland to Savannah ; (2) the route 
 from New York via Albany and Montreal to Quebec ; (3) the incep- 
 tion of the route from Philadelphia to Pittsburg ; and (4) the ocean 
 route from New York to Falrnouth, England. It is surprising how 
 information was borne from the seaboard to such a sequestered place 
 as Williamstown then was with its mountains roundabout it ; how 
 quickly military companies were made up from time to time through- 
 out the war from every part of the town then settled; and how gen- 
 eral and well sustained were the heart-beats here in response to the 
 throbs at the great vital centres at Boston and New York. As an 
 illustration of the quickened intelligence and activity and patriotism 
 that came from local exigencies and experience as well as from the 
 more distant calls to counsel and action to certain young men of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 69 
 
 scarcely more than ordinary original gifts, and even to some belong- 
 ing to families whose racial and personal characteristics were rather 
 sluggish than otherwise, William Young may serve us a good pur- 
 pose. He was born in 1754, in or near Western, Worcester County, 
 which county was full at that time of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, 
 who had migrated in 1718 from Londonderry and its neighborhood 
 to Massachusetts, a considerable part of whom had passed in the 
 autumn of that year from Boston into the then new township of 
 Worcester. Among those thus passing was a Celtic family by the 
 name of Young, who had become attached to their Protestant-Scotch 
 neighbors in the north of Ireland, and who migrated with these to 
 Massachusetts. The patriarch of this clan, John Young, ninety 
 years old at the time of the immigration, died in Worcester, June 30, 
 1730, aged one hundred and seven years, and was buried on Worces- 
 ter common. His son David, thirty-six years old at the time of the 
 coming-in, died in Worcester in 1776, aged ninety-four, and was 
 buried by the side of his father. Nearly all these Scotch-Irish im- 
 migrants and their immediate descendants had very large families 
 and a remarkable longevity. The Worcester branch of them in a few 
 years colonized bodily the towns of Blandford, Coleraine, and Pel- 
 ham, and in part many other towns also, particularly Western (now 
 Warren), Brim field, Palmer, Ware, and New Salem. Moses Young, 
 a son of the David above-mentioned, moved from Worcester and 
 made a home near the boundary line between Brimfield and Western. 
 He became a constable in Brimfield, and among his papers are 
 receipts from Harrison Gray, Treasurer of the Province of Massa- 
 chusetts, for moneys thus paid in by him in 1764 and 1765. This 
 first Moses Young did not come to Williamstown, but three of his 
 sons and two of his daughters had made permanent homes here 
 before the father's death, which fell in September, 1781. The 
 youngest of these three sons was William, and his name is on the 
 muster-roll of the minute-men of Sloan's company encamped at 
 Charlestown in 1775. He was then but twenty-one years old. His 
 powder-horn is still extant in the hands of his grandson, George 
 Smith, and bears date " ye 4 th of May, 1775, Charleston." This shows 
 that some of the minute-men from Williamstown were in camp at 
 Charlestown in less than fifteen days from the affair at Lexington 
 and Concord, and about forty days before the battle of Bunker Hill. 
 Young carried the same powder-horn into the battle of Benning- 
 ton, Aug. 16, 1777. He was out at various times in the military ser- 
 vice of the Colonies during the Eevolutionary War, and reached the 
 rank of " Major " in the Massachusetts militia after that war was 
 
70 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 over. His first wife was a daughter of Lieutenant Zebediah Sabin. 
 There were no children of that union. 
 
 But it is rather as a civilian and politician and legislator and man 
 of general influence in the community, that William Young calls 
 for notice in this place. His usual title was "Esquire," and not 
 " Major." This and various epitaphs and other records demonstrate 
 that in general the civil titles were held in higher esteem than the 
 military, when both rested upon the same person. His brother, 
 Moses Young, who was seven years older, and came first and " went 
 to chopping " on the original 100-acre lot, No. 34, which became and 
 remains the centre of all the Young properties in that neighborhood, 
 
 * 
 
 WILLIAM YOUNG'S HOUSE. 
 
 and which is still owned and carried on (never a break) by the great- 
 grandson of this Moses, showed indeed activity and foresight and 
 acquisitiveness, and provided well for a large family, the ancestors 
 of all who have borne the name of Young in Williamstown since, 
 with a single exception ; but neither he displayed, nor any one of 
 his descendants, any such enterprise and sagacity and sustained 
 vigor and widely extended influence as marked the life of the 
 younger brother, William. Andrew also, two years older than 
 William, who fixed his homestead on the Ashford Koad, and spent 
 a long life there, having no children, was in nowise remarkable 
 above and beyond his average neighbor. But William Young, per- 
 haps in part because he began his majority amid the stirring and 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 71 
 
 uplifting scenes around Boston during that first revolutionary sum- 
 mer, and beneath the eye of Washington himself, whose assumption 
 of the chief command under the old elm at Cambridge he may very 
 likely have witnessed, developed into one of the most prominent 
 and influential men of his time in the town. Captain Samuel Clarke 
 from Woodbury, Connecticut, where his first two children were born, 
 the next two having been born in Williamstown in 1766 and 1768 
 respectively, bought the 50-acre lot, No. 36, near the east end of the 
 Sloan Eoad for 20, and built on it the commodious house herewith 
 figured, which passed in a few years into the hands of William 
 Young, who lived and died in it, and which is now owned and occu- 
 pied by his grandson, George Smith. Aside from his homestead, 
 apparently augmented by the next 50-acre lot east, Young soon 
 began to buy lands on a large scale. For instance, in September, 
 1778, he bought seven 100-acre lots and a 50-acre lot adjoining on 
 "Trees Grant," as it was called, that is, on the "Gore," which 
 became annexed to Williamstown in 1837. He paid for this prop- 
 erty 300. John McMaster and Isaac Stratton sign the deed as 
 witnesses. They were then his nearest neighbors, if he had already 
 purchased the Clarke house and lived in it. Isaac Stratton was 
 already Justice of the Peace in South Williamstown, and this deed 
 was acknowledged before him. Caleb Tree, John Tree, and Elijah 
 Cunningham had obtained from the Governor and Council a large 
 grant of this unattached land, and it was of these parties that 
 Young purchased. John Tree was at this time a resident of Lanes- 
 boro. Ten years later Young bought of Michael Dunning of Pownal 
 for 1500 "current money of Massachusetts," that is, silver money 
 one quarter depreciated from sterling, lands which Stephen Davis 
 had sold to " said Dunning." This deed was acknowledged before 
 W 7 illiam Towner, J. P. of the north village. Davis had married 
 Young's sister. 
 
 Free Masonry flourished in Williamstown at the close of the last 
 century and at the beginning of this. William Young set off one 
 of the chambers of his house as a place of meeting for the South 
 Williamstown body of that famous secret society, and became a 
 prominent official in tha,t organization, which circumstance con- 
 tributed indirectly to the chief disasters of his career. Probably 
 also his connection with the masonic body paid indirectly a con- 
 siderable tribute to his remarkable political successes. He repre- 
 sented the town in the Legislature of the State in 1792, 1793, and 
 in 1795. After an interval of five years, during which politics ran 
 very high in Berkshire as between the Federalists and the Demo- 
 
72 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 crats, Theodore Sedgwick of Stockbridge specially representing the 
 former, and Tompson J. Skinner of Williamstown the latter, Young 
 as a prominent Democrat resumed his annual place in the House of 
 Representatives at Boston for nine successive years, 1800-1808 in- 
 clusive. In the meantime, after a length and variety of political 
 offices hoi den which has never since been paralleled in Massachu- 
 setts, Skinner was appointed for 1806 and 1807 Treasurer of the 
 Commonwealth. The Treasurer was not then chosen as now by the 
 people at large, but was appointed by " the Honorable the Senate 
 and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth." William 
 Young was one of the sureties both times on Skinner's bond as 
 
 Treasurer for $100,000. As will be 
 related at length on a future page, 
 Skinner as Treasurer proved a de- 
 faulter to the State, and his bonds- 
 men were prosecuted at law to recover 
 the deficit. The State took tempo- 
 rary possession of all property held 
 by William Young in South Wil- 
 liamstown ; and after his death, 
 which soon followed this catas- 
 trophe, it set off twenty-six acres 
 with the homestead for the use of 
 his widow, arid afterwards gave back 
 that part to her in fee simple. Cap- 
 tain Ebenezer Foster from Hancock 
 bought most of the rest of the land, 
 and erected on it the fine house still 
 WILLIAM YOUNG standing a little to the southwest of 
 
 the meeting-house. Dr. Alanson Por- 
 ter bought a portion of the confiscated land, and built a good brick 
 house upon it a little to the east of the meeting-house. The meet- 
 ing-house itself stands presumably on that part of the farm given 
 back by the State to the Widow Young. Captain Foster repre- 
 sented this town in the Legislature of the State in 1830 and 1831. 
 His wife was Harty Johnson, a daughter of Black David Johnson, 
 and they gave a home for some years in his boyhood to their 
 nephew, the late William Eaton Johnson. The first wife of William 
 Young was a daughter of Zebediah Sabin. She died early and with- 
 out children. His second wife was Currence Meack, daughter of 
 the first physician at the North Part, Jacob Meack ; and she bore 
 to her husband one son and several daughters. The son was a ne'er- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 73 
 
 do-weel, passing under the designation of " Wicked Bill," and clos- 
 ing a dishonorable career in Canada. The widow lived during the 
 first third of this century in her own house, and it came later into 
 the possession of Lorin Smith, an excellent man, who had married 
 one of the daughters. 
 
 Besides these six soldiers in Captain Sloan's company at Charles- 
 town, now characterized particularly and at length, there were in 
 that company then and there from Williamstown these additional 
 men as given on the contemporary muster-roll : 
 
 Absalom Baker Ahasuel Turret 
 
 Alexander Spencer Alexander Spencer, Jr. 
 
 Timothy Sherwood Ebenezer Hutchinson 
 
 Anthony Lamb Jeremiah Osborn 
 
 Henry Wilcox Jonathan Hall 
 
 Joshua Smedley Starling Daniels 
 
 Elijah Flynt David Parkhill 
 
 James Andrews Daniel Johnson 
 
 William Spencer Ezra Church 
 
 James McMaster Barachiah Johnson 
 
 Alexander Sloan Bartholomew Woodcock 
 
 The first aggressive campaign in the Revolutionary War, 1775-76, 
 began with the frustrated attempt to surprise and capture Quebec, 
 and was ended by the expulsion of the British from their stronghold 
 around and in Boston under the immediate command of Washington 
 himself. We have now seen something of the important military 
 service rendered by the men of this town in both parts of this cam- 
 paign. Benjamin Simonds was commissioned colonel of the Berk- 
 shire regiment of militia, Aug. 30, 1775. There wak but one regiment 
 in Berkshire till April, 1777, when Simonds was commissioned colo- 
 nel of the second or northern regiment, while the southern regiment 
 was at the same time similarly officered, both in addition to the 
 Berkshire regiment raised by Colonel John Paterson of Lenox and 
 enrolled as a part of the Continental army soon after the affairs of 
 Lexington and Concord. Simonds was a soldier in one of the earli- 
 est garrisons in Fort Massachusetts, was among those captured there 
 by the French arid Indians in 1746, and carried captive to Canada 
 for a year, became one of the very earliest of the actual settlers in 
 Williamstown, served at intervals and on occasion for several years 
 both at Fort Massachusetts and the West Hoosac Fort, and after 
 the close of the French wars rose steadily in rank in the Provincial 
 militia until the Revolution broke out. He was in commission as 
 colonel from 1775 until 1781. Owing in part to his well-known 
 
74 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 alertness and capacity, and in part to the isolation and distance of 
 northern Berkshire from Boston and the directness of the route by 
 the Hoosac to the North River and Lake Cham plain, he enjoyed at 
 times the remarkable distinction of receiving at home his orders 
 direct from Generals Sclmyler and Gates, in command to the west- 
 ward, without the intervention of the Massachusetts authorities. 
 
 The second campaign of the war, 1776-77, began on the part of 
 the Americans with the baffled attempt to keep the British out of 
 the city of New York, and ended by the masterly manoeuvres and 
 retreats of Washington in New Jersey before he went into winter 
 quarters at Morristown. Colonel Simonds with his regiment from 
 Berkshire was in the unfortunate battle of White Plains, which was 
 fought on October 28, and soon after was ordered to Ticonderoga, 
 where it passed the winter in garrison from December 16 to March 
 22, ninety-seven days. There lies before the writer at this moment 
 a copy of the complete roster of the regiment while doing duty that 
 winter at " old Fort Ti." The regimental officers stand as follows : 
 
 Colonel, Benjamin Simonds, Williamstown 
 
 Major, Caleb Hyde, Lenox 
 
 Adjutant, Daniel Horsford, Williamstown 
 
 Surgeon, Erastus Sargent, Stockbridge 
 
 Surgeon's Mate, Eldad Lewis, Lenox 
 
 Quarter Master, Phineas Brown, Not known. 
 
 The surgeon of the regiment, in accordance with a custom not 
 then unusual, was also the captain of a company. Doctor and Cap- 
 tain Sargeant was the only son of the Indian missionary, Rev. John 
 Sargeant of Stockbridge ; his mother was Abigail Williams, half- 
 sister to the founder of the college. His company at Ticonderoga 
 consisted of forty-three officers and men. Captain Amos Rathburn's 
 company consisted of fifty-eight officers and men. Captain William 
 Douglas of Hancock had seventy-seven in his company, of whom 
 more than half were from Williamstown and Lanesboro. Captain 
 Ephraim Fitch's company held on its roll sixty-three names. In 
 Captain David Wheeler's company were forty-five men, several of 
 them from Williamstown. Captain George King, who died in gar- 
 rison, Jan. 20, 1777, enrolled in his company fifty-seven men, some 
 of them from Cheshire and its neighborhood. Captain William 
 Watkins commanded forty-four officers and soldiers. There were 
 thus seven companies, aggregating three hundred and eighty-seven 
 men, apparently all of them from Berkshire, in Simonds's regiment 
 at Ticonderoga. On one of these muster-rolls, among other "pri- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 75 
 
 vates," is found the name of Joseph. Simonds, and opposite to the 
 name is written, " on duty with the Colonel." Joseph was not then 
 quite fifteen years old, but it was in accordance with a custom of 
 those times for officers to enrol the names of their boys as privates 
 in one of their companies, and then to assign to these duties at head- 
 quarters as servants or otherwise to themselves. It was in this way 
 that Lieutenant Zebediah Sabin took with him to Quebec his son 
 John, as has been already related. 
 
 Before following further the fortunes of Colonel Simonds and his 
 regiment in the campaign of 1777, particularly of the Williamstown 
 men under his command, we must go back a little to the revolution- 
 ary action of the town itself in its corporate capacity, and consider 
 the three or four men who may be properly designated as a Commit- 
 tee of Safety for the town throughout the Revolutionary War, even 
 if they did not bear that distinctive appellation. The following 
 original document is of the highest interest: 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, BERKSHIRE COUNTY, 
 June 24, 1776. 
 
 At a legal Town-meeting of this town, held on this day, for the following 
 purposes, the following motion was made and put to vote, viz. : Whether, should 
 the honorable Congress, for the safety of the Colonies, declare them indepen- 
 dent of Great Britain, the inhabitants of this town will solemnly engage with 
 their lives and fortunes to support them in a measure ? 
 
 Passed in the affirmative, nem. con. 
 
 In all the writer's search for original materials of the book now 
 in hand, a search that has continued at intervals during more than 
 half a lifetime now no longer short, he has found no distinct traces 
 of a single citizen of the town, who maintained Tory sentiments and 
 Tory action. There is abundant contemporary evidence even upon 
 the official records of the towns themselves, that Pownal and Ben- 
 nington and Hancock and Lanesboro, the towns with which Wil- 
 liamstown was then most intimately connected in all ways, had each 
 considerable numbers among the citizens of even prominent Tories ; 
 but so far as now appears, Williamstown had none whatever ; and 
 as regards all the early landowners and leaders in the town, the 
 evidence is positive through contemporary muster-rolls as well as 
 universal tradition, that all the men and women here were of one 
 mind in relation to the war. Of course, as always happens under 
 such circumstances, there were leaders and followers, men who 
 understood the grounds of the colonial quarrel with the mother- 
 country and those who did not understand them, but who acted as 
 
76 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 by instinct and under impulses of various kinds, better felt than 
 easily explained. So far as the taking up of arms was concerned, 
 the men of Williamstown had become singularly familiar with them 
 through the old French and Indian wars. It is questionable whether 
 any other town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had such a 
 purely military beginning and such a constant military training as 
 Williamstown had had. The pitch for the revolutionary song was 
 given here very early by the prompt action of the minute-men, 
 and by the extraordinary self-devotion of the first pastor, Rev. 
 Whitman Welch ; and the song itself appears to have kept up to 
 the keynote until the very end. The extraordinary execution of the 
 extraordinary plan of Burgoyne's campaign on the part of the British 
 brought home the war to the hearts and households of the people 
 here in an extraordinary manner. Burgoyne was coming down from 
 Canada to unite his army at Albany with another British army 
 brought up the North River from New York by Clinton, and so 
 intended to cut off New England completely from the rest of the 
 colonies. Old Ti and Crown Point were household words in every 
 framed dwelling and in every log cabin in Williamstown ; Burgoyne 
 had captured them both as he slowly moved forward towards his 
 hoped-for junction with General Clinton. He commanded Lake 
 Champlain and Lake George, and it was now but a toss to the waters 
 of the upper Hudson. Those lakes and waters in their entire 
 stretches were perfectly well known to scores of men in Williams- 
 town. They had heard, too, about the hireling Hessians and Brims- 
 wickers in Burgoyne's army. They did not relish that kind of 
 means employed by Britain for the subjugation of colonists, who 
 had loyally fought side by side with English-born soldiers against 
 the French on many a colonial battle-field. Hired Hessians ? Not 
 a man of these colonists but had read in his Bible about " putting 
 to flight the armies of the aliens." If they could not stop Burgoyne 
 and his mongrels before a junction was made at Albany, they knew 
 well enough that the war would come to their own doors, and that 
 the hated Hessians would feed from their own corn-cribs. 
 
 Nevertheless, some suspicions of the more ardent patriots had 
 attached themselves early in 1775 to David Noble, a native of Con- 
 necticut and a graduate of Yale College in 1764, and who came to 
 Williamstown as a young lawyer in 1770. The following declara- 
 tion, and the action of the Committee of Correspondence upon it, 
 explain themselves and throw a clear light on the state of feeling in 
 the town at the time : 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 77 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Oct. 24, 1775. 
 
 Whereas the Committee of Correspondence for this Town have informed me, 
 that some suspicions have been conceived of me, respecting my principles and 
 conduct in regard to our publick affairs ; and in particular when I was Repre- 
 sentative for this Town at the General Court held at Boston, in A.D. 1773 ; that 
 I then acted in opposition to the measures pursued for the defense of our com- 
 mon rights and privileges, in that I voted against the petition and remonstrance 
 to the King, for the removal of the then Govenour Hutchinson : Now, impressed 
 with a sense of my duty to myself and the publick, I sincerely declare that al- 
 though at the time above referred to, and for some time before then, I had con- 
 ceived too good an opinion of that arch traitor to his Country, T. Hutchinson, 
 and, for want of a thorough knowledge of my duty at that time, I inconsiderately 
 opposed the abovesaid petition and remonstrance, and thereby justly incurred 
 the displeasure of my constituents, and that by anything whereby I have given 
 any persons reason to suspect me to be unfriendly to my Country, I have so far 
 deservedly forfeited their good esteem. Yet, to do justice to myself, I must de- 
 clare, that although I have committed errors, and been liable to mistakes, in the 
 little part I have been called to act, I have ever been a cordial friend to the 
 liberties and true interest of America so far as I understood it, and have ever 
 conformed myself to the advice and directions of our several Congresses, and 
 am determined for the future to unite, according to my abilities, in defence of 
 our common rights and privileges. 
 
 DAVID NOBLE. 
 
 The Committee of Correspondence being convened on the 26th of October, 
 1775, the abovenamed David Noble voluntarily presented the above declara- 
 tion ; which, being examined and accepted by the Committee, was presented to 
 the Town, in a publick Town-meeting, for concurrence, which being twice read, 
 was put to vote, w r hether the same be satisfactory to the Town. Passed in the 
 affirmative. Attest : 
 
 ISAAC STRATTON, Clerk of the com. 
 
 Just six months before the above town meeting was convened, 
 and only five days after the affairs of Lexington and Concord on the 
 19th of April, there assembled another town meeting in Williams- 
 town, in response to a call from the Central Committee of Safety for 
 a Provincial Congress to assemble in the meeting-house in Water- 
 town on the 31st day of May, 1775. The official record of this 
 town meeting is interesting and stands in terms following : 
 
 At a meeting of the Inhabitants of the Town of Williamstown on the 25th of 
 April, A.IX 1775, the Selectmen being Moderators of the meeting, and Ensign 
 Samuel Kellogg was unanimously chosen a Delegate to represent this Town in 
 Provincial Congress ; and the sense of the Town was communicated to him for 
 his instruction, as follows, viz.: 
 
 That it is the sense of this Town, that we are at all times ready, as far as our 
 circumstances will allow, to join in the common cause of American liberty, and 
 to assist with our lives and fortu'nes, as occasion may require, to maintain our 
 rights and liberties against all the hostile attempts to deprive us of our rights 
 
78 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and liberties, made by the cruel and oppressive Acts of the British Parlia- 
 ment ; and are always ready to bear our proportion to defend our countrymen, 
 and to assist in repelling force by force in such manner as the collective wisdom 
 of the Province in Provincial Congress convened, shall judge most expedient. 
 
 The Town Clerk being absent, the meeting ordered the Selectmen to sign in 
 behalf of the Town. . 
 
 NEHEMIAH SMEDLEY ) 
 
 x , ,, T > Selectmen. 
 
 NEHEMIAH WOODCOCK J 
 
 It is worth noting here, that when this congress gathered a month 
 later at Watertown, and the delegates presented their credentials, 
 only nine other towns in Berkshire County besides Williamstown 
 had sent any delegates. Pittsfield sent none, nor Lanesboro, nor 
 Jericho. These towns were certainly dominated at that time by 
 the Tory sentiments of some of their leading men. Sheffield, Great 
 Barriugton, Egremont, and Alford had united in despatching William 
 Whiting; Tyringham sent Major Giles Jackson, John Chad wick, 
 and Elijah Warren; Sandisfield sent Deacon Samuel Smith; Stock- 
 bridge had chosen Timothy Edwards and J. Woodbridge; Lenox 
 was represented by Captain Caleb Hyde ; and Richmond by Captain 
 Elijah Brown. On the contrary, it should in justice be said, that 
 nine other towns in the county besides these ten just mentioned, 
 including the three specially named, were well represented in the 
 county congress meeting in July, 1774, at Stockbridge. The action 
 of this county congress was patriotic throughout, but by no means 
 revolutionary. The lines of demarkation among the citizens were 
 not yet tightly drawn in 1774 so far as the leading men in civil life 
 were concerned; as a rule the officers and men in the colonial mili- 
 tia moved quicker and went further toward actual war and later 
 toward independence. The first Provincial Congress of Massachu- 
 setts Bay had convened at Cambridge in February, 1775. This was 
 before any overt action on the part of the British forces in and 
 around Boston had taken place. Berkshire was about as fully repre- 
 sented at Cambridge in February as at Watertown in May, although 
 blood had been shed in the interval. Fourteen towns had been 
 heard from at Cambridge, as represented by ten delegates ; ten 
 delegates appeared also at Watertown as representing ten towns. 
 Lanesboro did not put in an appearance at either place ; in all prob- 
 ability because the influence of Rev. Daniel Collins tinged with 
 decided Toryism predominated there. Williamstown sent Samuel 
 Kellogg both in February and May, while to the county congress at 
 Stockbridge in 1774, she sent Robert Hawkins, Elisha Baker, and 
 Jacob Meack. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 79 
 
 To intermit now for a little the busy note and bustling prepara- 
 tion of actual war with the mother country, it will perhaps be good 
 form to characterize in some detail a few of the leading men in 
 Williamstown who distinguished themselves in this decade of the 
 seventies rather in civil life than in military action. Almost every 
 one of them, however, bore the brunt of arms more or less as officers 
 or privates as well as the burdens of local government in a critical 
 time. The shock of prospective and actual war practically put an 
 end to the civil administration of the proprietors as such, which 
 had lasted full twenty years, from 1754 to 1774, and the town 
 government which had come into being in 1765 came slowly into 
 exclusive control in the course of ten years' time. We hear now of 
 selectmen, of representatives of the town to the General Court, and 
 of delegates from the town to the Provincial Congresses. We have 
 already learned incidentally that David Noble was the representa- 
 tive to the General Court in 1773, and incurred the suspicions and 
 censure of his fellow-townsmen by his conservative conduct in that 
 capacity. We shall hear a good deal more of this man in the sequel, 
 but not anything at all of him in a military way. It is doubtful 
 whether he ever recovered the full confidence of his fellow-citizens 
 until the war was over, even if he did then. Of these prominent 
 civilians who rose to the occasion here, showing no lack either in 
 intelligence or in activity, there were at least six who deserve a 
 special mention in this connection. 
 
 1. Samuel Kellogg. The Kelloggs are of Scotch origin, as they 
 have always believed and still believe. They have exhibited in every 
 generation since their incoming hither about 1660, and their settling 
 on the Connecticut Eiver in Massachusetts in Hadley and Hatfield, 
 certain peculiar traits adapted to strengthen in us all the belief in 
 hereditary transmission. Like the Sabins and Johnsons and Smed- 
 leys and Mills, and several other strong families in Williamstown, 
 the Kelloggs too came of a thoroughly good stock and were capable 
 of perpetuating it from generation to generation. Samuel Kellogg's 
 father was Benjamin, born in Old Hadley and married to a Sedg- 
 wick, a relative to those of that name settled afterward in Stock- 
 bridge. Samuel was born in Hadley in 1734, and about the time of 
 his majority seems to have come to Williamstown with several other 
 young men from northwestern Connecticut, at first scatteringly and 
 afterwards as a part of a military company sent up by that colony, 
 to look out for new homes for themselves and their families. 
 Four at least, and probably some others of that military company, 
 came to be among the earliest and firmest of the permanent settlers 
 
80 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 here, all of them serving at intervals for a number of years to help 
 garrison both Fort Massachusetts and the West Hoosac Fort. The 
 most enterprising and far-seeing of the original proprietors of the 
 house-lots, constituting the village of Williamstown, early perceived 
 that they could aggregate for themselves by purchase or exchange bet- 
 ter farms on the outlets successively drawn by the owners of the vil- 
 lage house-lots. Kellogg accordingly bought three or four of the 
 first division fifty -acre lots about a mile east of the east end of the 
 hamlet, bounded on the north by the Hoosac River and on the south 
 by the base of Saddle Mountain, and bisected near the middle by the 
 old military path from Fort Massachusetts to the West Hoosac Fort. 
 When he built his log house on the south side of this path, the whole 
 tract was covered by a dense forest, and the northerly part next the 
 river by a spruce swamp so low and wet that one could only pass 
 through by jumping from one fallen log to another. This tract lay 
 to the east of and adjoining to the farm of Nehemiah Smedley, one 
 of his old comrades from Connecticut, who had been moved by the 
 same impulse to sell his house-lots with their improvements in order 
 to get a compact farm with a variety of soils. 
 
 On the 4th of March, 1764, Samuel Kellogg married Chloe Bacon, 
 daughter of Daniel Bacon, whose farm was a mile or two south of 
 Kellogg's. The Bacon families came from Middletown, Connecticut. 
 Daniel Bacon, Jr., a brother of Chloe Bacon Kellogg, was killed in 
 the battle of Bennington, while fighting in company with his brother- 
 in-law Kellogg and with Absalom Blair, the father of the second 
 Samuel Kellogg's wife. This young couple prospered in every way. 
 They were Puritans .from a Puritan stock. The blood of Major- 
 General Sedgwick of Cromwell's army had come down into the veins 
 of Samuel Kellogg. The names of the husband and wife are found 
 side by side in the earliest list (1779) of the Williamstown church 
 members. They had seven children in course of time. The fresh 
 farm, both upland and intervale, proved to be very productive. By 
 and by another upland farm adjoining on the southeast was added 
 to the lowland one for orchards and sugar-bush and pasture. Kel- 
 logg had the confidence of his fellow-proprietors from the very first, 
 partly perhaps because he had been better educated than the most 
 of them, and certainly because he already showed more capacity for 
 civil affairs. Three times he was moderator of important proprie- 
 tors' meetings under the earlier plan of government. He was the 
 first Justice of the Peace in the little propriety, bearing a commis- 
 sion as such from King George the Third, and there is some evidence 
 still remaining that he tried in that capacity certain alleged wrong- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENN1NGTON. 81 
 
 doers. As the Revolution began to impend in a really threatening 
 way, and committees of Correspondence and Safety were appointed in 
 the country towns, and the need of consultation and association was 
 felt throughout the colony, Kellogg was twice sent to Boston by his 
 townsmen within six months' time to Provincial Congresses there. 
 He was the fittest man to go. He was, indeed, formally instructed 
 in town meeting what general measures to favor ; but his own pro- 
 nounced opinions gave color to those of his neighbors as well as took 
 color from their opinions. There was in general a remarkable unanim- 
 ity. Nemine contradicente is the note appended to the town's vote of 
 approval to the proposed Declaration of Independence, about a month 
 before it passed the Continental Congress. The writer has not yet 
 found, and probably never will find, a list of the names constituting 
 the Williamstown Committee of " Correspondence " or of " Safety," 
 as it was indifferently called ; probably there was some reason for 
 keeping the names of the members more or less concealed from the 
 community at large. He only knows for certain that Isaac Stratton 
 was the clerk and mouthpiece of the Committee, for that appears 
 repeatedly in official documents of the time ; nevertheless, he feels 
 sure that Samuel Kellogg was one of the Committee from first to 
 last, and that he never shirked any patriotic responsibility that 
 fairly came upon him as a citizen. He shouldered his musket for 
 the battle of Bennington and on various other occasions during the 
 Revolution. 
 
 He died Sept. 2, 1788, aged fifty-four years. His epitaph reads, 
 " A kind father, a patriotic and useful citizen, and a good man." His 
 hands were certainly busy with the foundation-stones, both military 
 and civil, of this fair borough of Williamstown. While it was still 
 a Propriety, there was no place of service and honor that he did not 
 fulfil. After it became a town in 1765, the same may be said. When 
 his town took up arms against the King, who had commissioned him 
 a Justice of the Peace, he knew all the grounds of the quarrel and 
 took all the risks of it. He lived to witness the formation of the 
 National Constitution of 1787, but not the organization of the gov- 
 ernment under it. He left, as the possessor of the commodious house 
 he had built and of the fertile farm he had subdued and tilled, a 
 son, Samuel Kellogg, born in 1766, who lived till 1829 to illustrate 
 in his own person those principles of heredity above mentioned. 
 He was a man of great physical strength and of more than ordinary 
 intellectual activity. Williamstown gave few advantages for educa- 
 tion in his boyhood, for the Free School did not open until 1791, 
 when young Kellogg was twenty-five years old and had been married 
 
82 WILLIAMSTOWN AND AVILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 four years ; but he always had a fondness for books, and qualified 
 himself by the industrious study of them for stations above those 
 ordinarily held by farmers. Throughout the greater part of his life 
 he filled one public station or another in his town and county. Like 
 his father, he was Justice of the Peace, often selectman and town 
 assessor, and represented his town in the Legislature of the State. 
 Eor eight consecutive years, 1809-16 inclusive, and once again in 
 1819, he fulfilled the duties of such a representative. He was a 
 Democrat of the Jeffersonian school, as was also a steady majority 
 of his townsmen in those days. Indeed, his two predecessors in the 
 House of Representatives at Boston from William stown, and him- 
 self, all three Democrats, filled up the time there as follows : T. J. 
 Skinner, 1781, '82, '83, '84, '88, '99, 1800 ; William Young, 1792, '93, 
 '95, 1801-1808 inclusive ; and Samuel Kellogg (as above), 1809-16 
 inclusive, and in 1819. These and other public interests of his town 
 and county, such as the cavalry company of the former, said to have 
 been the best militia company in the State, of which he was long 
 captain, did not seem to lessen his devotion to and success in the 
 occupation of his life. He prided himself on being a model farmer. 
 He was one of the principal founders of the Berkshire Agricultural 
 Society under the general auspices of the celebrated Elkanah Wat- 
 son, then a citizen of Pittsfield, and Kellogg received in 1823 the 
 diploma and the premium of the Society for the best cultivated farm 
 exhibited in the county. His livestock was usually fifteen to twenty 
 horses, four yoke of oxen, sixty cows, a thousand sheep, not to men- 
 tion hogs and hens and geese and ducks ; and lastly, to gratify a 
 neighbor, who said they were " good to meditate on." he bought a 
 pair of peacocks ! The early out-farm of his father, on what we now 
 call Slope Hawks, had become, as it were, a part of the home-farm, 
 and a large and new out-farm was purchased and pastured in Clarks- 
 burg, four miles from the homestead. Undoubtedly, after Samuel 
 Sloan sold his farm in South Williamstown and moved up to the 
 village, Samuel Kellogg was the largest and most successful farmer 
 in town. During the latter part of his service in the Legislature he 
 obtained the charter of the Agricultural Bank of Pittsfield ; which 
 goes to show (1) the opposition of the people of Pittsfield to a new 
 bank in competition with the old one, and (2) the general influence 
 of Captain Kellogg over the Legislature itself. But a truthful pic- 
 ture of the strong-shouldered captain requires the addition of an 
 unpleasant line. As he grew older, he became much addicted to 
 strong drink ; and it was on this account and no other that his name 
 bears on the church record the ominous symbol of "x," which in 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 83 
 
 algebra denotes an unknown quantity, but ecclesiastically in New 
 England meant " excommunicated." 
 
 2. Elisha Baker. As was usual in the settlement and develop- 
 ment of the towns in New England, young men did the most of the 
 hard work, and took the worst of the risks, so it was in Williams- 
 town ; yet there were two quite elderly men with large families who 
 left deep and lasting marks of their character and influence here. 
 One of these was Eichard Stratton, characterized at some length in 
 the volume on "Origins in William stown," and the other was Elisha 
 Baker, who was born in Woodbury, Connecticut, in October, 1724, 
 and who died in Williamstown, May 22, 1797, in the seventy-third 
 year of his age. When just turned of twenty-two he married in 
 Woodbury, Phebe Nichols, and the twain had eleven children, all 
 born in Woodbury. Like other families from Connecticut they 
 moved northwards by degrees. In 1768 Elisha Baker was represen- 
 tative of the town of New Hartford in the General Court of Connec- 
 ticut ; the next year the same man represented in the same the town 
 of Canaan ; and it was in May of the former year that he bought of 
 the Down family in Woodbury several parcels of land in Williams- 
 town, all of them the afterdrafts of the original house-lot No. 60. 
 The most important of these lots, and the one that afterward became 
 his home, was the first division 50-acre lot 26, which skirts along the 
 main road to North Adams and strikes the westerly line of that 
 town just south of the Hoosac Eiver. The easternmost bridge that 
 crosses the Hoosac in this town has always been called the " Baker 
 Bridge," because the crossroad connecting by means of this bridge 
 the two parallel roads to North Adams, the one south and the other 
 north of the river, turned by his house to the left and crossed his 
 lot to the bridge. The town has recently voted to call the bridge 
 by his name in perpetuity. His house stood on the north side of the 
 main road, on a lift of land rising up from the low ground of the 
 immemorial brickyard, just at the turn towards the bridge, where 
 there has long been and is still a good house. 
 
 "Mr. Elisha Baker" (to quote from his epitaph) had five sons, 
 Absalom and Eli and Ezra and Elisha and Ira. All of these with 
 their father were in the battle of Bennington together from Williams- 
 town. The father was then fifty-three years old, and he lived twenty 
 years longer till 1797. His name and that of his wife stand together 
 upon the original roll of church members. His political abilities are 
 evidenced in several ways, particularly by his being chosen one of 
 the three delegates to the Berkshire Provincial Congress at Great 
 Barrington in 1774. The other two were Kobert Hawkins and Dr. 
 
84 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Jacob Meack, the earliest settled physician in town. When the Revo- 
 lution was practically over, and Massachusetts wished to formulate 
 her principles of government in a permanent State constitution in 
 1780, Williamstown sent as her representative to that end Elislia 
 Baker, who seems with this honorable service to have completed 
 his public and political career. His sons, Ezra and Elisha, were 
 both physicians here for a time, and became prominent men else- 
 where. The former buried his first wife, Sarah Tucker, in the old 
 graveyard on Hemlock Brook " in her 36 th year " in July, 1796, and 
 afterwards married her sister. He became a member of the Four- 
 teenth Congress from New Jersey, evidently inheriting political 
 tastes from his father. He died in 1841, and is said to have been 
 a donor of money to Williams College. Dr. Elisha Baker migrated 
 from Williamstown to Benson, Vermont, taking his widowed mother 
 along with him, where she died. Benson was chartered in May, 
 1780, to James Meacham and Ezekiel Blair, both leading citizens, 
 and became thereafter a sort of secondary Williamstown, as did 
 several other early Vermont towns, particularly the one bearing to 
 this day the old name. Mr. E. H, Baker, of Rockford, Illinois, who 
 is very intelligent in the genealogy of the whole family, is a grand- 
 son of Dr. Elisha Baker. Ira Baker, another son of Elisha, Sr., mar- 
 ried Mary Burbank, of South Williamstown, in 1786. Her father 
 was in the battle of Bennington from there with the six Bakers from 
 the north part. No wonder marriage alliances and many children 
 followed. There was an earlier Mary Baker, sister of the first 
 Elisha, who became the mother of General Ethan Allen and Ira 
 Allen, and other Aliens well known in the early history of Vermont. 
 Remember Baker, brother of Elisha and Mary, was the father of the 
 Remember Baker so closely associated with the Aliens and with 
 Colonel Seth Warner in the famous struggles of the Green Mountain 
 Boys. Indeed, Remember Baker, 2d, was own cousin to Ethan 
 Allen and Seth Warner, and these were own cousins to each other. 
 This Baker was killed by the Indians near St. Johns, under General 
 Montgomery, in 1775. He was then a captain, and was thirty-five 
 years old. Nabby Warner, a daughter of Colonel Seth Warner, mar- 
 ried James H. Meacham of Williamstown. She died in April, 1862. 
 Thus was the family of Deacon James Meacham, one of the sturdy 
 originals of Williamstown, intimately associated with the founders 
 and fighters of Vermont. It is a pleasant reminder of our Elisha 
 Baker and of his official relations with this town, that a living great- 
 grandson of his, E. H. Baker, of Illinois, has now in his possession 
 the original receipt for 60 paid to Pardon Stark for services 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 85 
 
 rendered to the town of Williamstowu by Elisha Baker under date 
 of Jan. 17, 1781. 
 
 3. Nehemiah Woodcock. In August, 1766, Barnabas Woodcock, 
 Jr., of Milford, Connecticut, seaman, bought of Ephraim Seely, 
 landgrabber, for 30, the 100-acre lot No. 24, the last lot but one on 
 the Ashford Road going south. By this purchase far inland Barna- 
 bas evidently did not intend to abandon the sea, nor his home on the 
 Sound near the mouth of the Housatonic, but he did intend in all 
 probability to assist his two brothers Bartholomew and Nehemiah to 
 keep comfortable in his old age their honored father. The following 
 epitaph in the cemetery at the South Part is significant of much : 
 " Here lies interred the body of Mr. Barnabas Woodcock, who was 
 born in Dedham 25 Sept. 1710, and departed this life March 14, 
 1786, aged 76 years 5 months and 18 days." About the same time 
 that this brother of the sea bought lot 24, Bartholomew bought for 
 himself the adjoining 100-acre lot 26, and settled on it, dwelling 
 there a very respectable farmer till 1820, when he sold the farm to 
 Andrew Beers, his foster-son (he had no children), and bought the 
 Isaac Stratton place in the South Village, where he died. Bartholo- 
 mew, always called " Thol," was in the battle of Bennington with 
 all his neighbors, and his name is borne on several other muster- 
 rolls of the Revolutionary times ; but he did not rise, like his brother 
 Nehemiah, into influential civil positions in the town and the State. 
 Neither name, moreover, is to be found on the records of the church, 
 at least in Williamstown. 
 
 Nehemiah Woodcock early established himself on the county 
 road about a mile north of the south hamlet at a point where that 
 road is crossed at right angles by an east and west road now legally 
 denominated the " Woodcock Road." The spot has been popularly 
 called for a century "Woodcock's Corner." It is a sightly place. 
 The house disappeared not far from 1850, but the cellar is still 
 rudely open, and some one has lately trimmed up a chance young 
 tree growing within it. Woodcock was five years younger than 
 Nehemiah Smedley at the North Part ; and the two were very much 
 associated together officially in the town affairs both peaceful and 
 warlike. We have already had occasion to notice that both were 
 selectmen in 1773, and did not hesitate to take responsibility in re 
 David Noble. In civil capacity and opportunity throughout the 
 Revolution and afterwards, Woodcock undoubtedly surpassed Smed- 
 ley ; while the latter kept his hand more firmly grasping the 
 military chances of influence and efficiency in his country's cause. 
 While Smedley was captain in command at Bennington under 
 
86 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Colonel Simonds and General Stark, Woodcock was sergeant in Cap- 
 tain Samuel Clark's company under General Lincoln a month later in 
 the rear of Burgoyne's army at Pawlet. In the Committee of Cor- 
 respondence, in needful journeys to Boston and elsewhere, and in 
 civil services generally, Woodcock was more like Samuel Kellogg 
 and Isaac Stratton than was Smedley. His epitaph was not over- 
 charged. " Erected to the memory of Nehemiah Woodcock : he was 
 one of the first settlers of William stown, a firm supporter of his 
 Country's Eights and Independence." He died March 10, 1816, in 
 his seventy-ninth year. 
 
 Heredity in the line of transmission has its word of illustration as 
 to the civil abilities of Nehemiah Woodcock. His son David Wood- 
 cock, born in August, 1784, for a time a member of Williams College 
 in the class of 1807, became a distinguished lawyer in Ithaca, New 
 York, was a member of Congress from that district, and received the 
 honorary degree of Master of Arts from the college in 1830. Two 
 years later his son Don Carlos Woodcock was graduated from the 
 college, became district attorney of Chemung County, New York, 
 from 1841 to 1844, and later removed to practise his profession in 
 Troy, where he died in 1884, aged seventy years. It is pleasant to 
 be able to add, in reference to a man so devoted to public duty in 
 rude times as was Nehemiah Woodcock, that one of his grand- 
 daughters married Stephen Booth Gushing, Williams College, 1832, 
 and Attorney General of the State of New York, and another of 
 them married Mr. Ferris, sometime Secretary of the Territory of 
 Utah; and that one of his great-grandsons, Fenn Woodcock, was a 
 useful and prominent citizen of the new State of Washington, while 
 his sister, Mary Woodcock, became the wife of Dr. F. W. Chamber- 
 lain, a practising physician in the city of New York. 
 
 4. Robert Hawkins. Of the three delegates from William stown to 
 the County Convention convened at Stockbridge in July, 1774, to take 
 such action as might seem best as to the non-consumption of British 
 manufactures and as to resisting the raising and collecting of British 
 revenue in America, Robert Hawkins is named first in the official 
 minutes of the convention or congress, as it was then called. Very 
 little indeed can be ascertained about this man, who must have been 
 for a time in a position of considerable influence here. Whence he 
 came and whither he went are alike unknown. He built a good 
 house on Pine lot No. 1, at the junction of the North Hoosac Road 
 with the Simonds Road, a few rods north of the Moody bridge over 
 the Hoosac. This house is still standing and has always been occu- 
 pied by well-to-do families. It is herewith figured as it looked in 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 
 
 87 
 
 the decade of the eighties. Colonel Simonds owned it and lived in 
 it during the last ten years of his life (he died in 1807), and used 
 often in fine weather to sit in its front doorway in Continental cos- 
 tume greeting his acquaintances among the passers-by. The late 
 Dr. B. F. Morgan of Bennington told the present writer many years 
 ago, that when he was a small boy living with his father in Pownal, 
 the latter had frequent occasion to drive to Williamstown, and that 
 he himself had more than once seen the Colonel in full wig and regi- 
 mentals courteously receiving and giving greetings thus and there. 
 The doctor's mother was Abigail Thomas, who came when a child 
 
 THE HAWKINS HOUSE. 
 
 from New Hampshire to Bennington with her father, crossing the 
 Connecticut River from Lyme into Thetford, and so over the Green 
 Mountains. The father was a worker in iron, a "bloomer" so- 
 called, and had a shop in the north part of Bennington. The 
 daughter married Ezra Morgan of Pownal, who was a son of that 
 Caleb Morgan already referred to as one of the famine-proof and 
 pox-pitted veterans of the Kennebec and the St. Lawrence. Caleb 
 Morgan was originally from Milford, the home of the Woodcocks. 
 Dr. B. F. Morgan's son was Dr. E. N. S. Morgan, Williams College, 
 1844, and the latter's son Francis E. Morgan, Williams College, 1871. 
 This old Hawkins house became in 1825 the home of the Thomas 
 family, a family which brought to Williamstown quite distinctive 
 
88 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 features, and maintained them here more than fifty years in one 
 locality. A little space will not be wasted on the ancestry of 
 Dwight Thomas. William Thomas was probably the very earliest 
 white settler in the town of Hardwick, Massachusetts, for he is 
 known to have been living there in his own house in December, 1732. 
 His great-grandson of the same name migrated to Hardwick, Ver- 
 mont, where he became the first teacher, and where his son Dwight 
 was born Sept. 17, 1800. This father and son moved to Powrial in 
 1819, and to Williamstown in 1821. The father died in 1857, aged 
 eighty-two. The son, Dwight, died in the same house in 1878. Both 
 maintained similar lines of characteristics ; both were more intelli- 
 gent than the average of their neighbors; both were church mem- 
 bers, the father continuing in active church work till old age, always 
 speaking his mind and feelings in the annual church meetings, 
 while the son became somewhat alienated from his brethren before 
 his death ; both were very enterprising in adapting their business to 
 changed and changing conditions ; both were six feet high and very 
 erect, and both served frequently and successfully as chosen arbiters 
 in neighborhood disputes. Dwight, particularly, often balanced the 
 books and accounts of the neighbors, when these had gotten more or 
 less by the ears on account of mutual debts. Besides the " Seelye 
 farm" so-called, bought by the father in 1825, Dwight purchased 
 early for himself a sawmill and its appurtenances and lands at- 
 tached. These joined his father's lands, and were by mutual con- 
 sent merged with them into one property and management. Their 
 lands included several of the original "Pine lots" of the town. 
 They manufactured water-proof dry-goods boxes out of the abundant 
 pine. These were sold to the neighboring factories for shipping 
 calico by open conveyance to New York and Philadelphia. They 
 also entered into the home carrying trade from North Adams to the 
 Hudson and to New Haven. Thus the forest and the mill and the 
 workshop and the road and the farm and the orchard all contrib- 
 uted to occupy and reward their industry and enterprise. They 
 made a specialty of Baldwin apples. They also kept bees. Wil- 
 liam B. Thomas, a younger brother of Dwight, born in 1804, learned 
 the cabinetmaker's trade of Amasa Shattuck, and died in Williams- 
 town in 1891. It is from him that the new street at the east end 
 of the village is named "Thomas St." It is noteworthy that this 
 Thomas happened to be the last person to stand upon the "Table 
 Bock " at Niagara before it fell in 1863. He kept a small store on 
 the Canada side at some distance below the falls, and had passed 
 Table Rock scores of times without feeling any impulse to go upon 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 89 
 
 it. This day, however, as he passed it, he experienced a strong 
 desire to do as others did, as a family party were doing at the 
 moment. As they stepped off upon the highway, he took their 
 place, and remained for some time alone at his leisure examining 
 the Horseshoe Fall from 'the best point to observe it, and looking 
 down into the depths below the rock. He passed off and took his 
 way to the north towards his place of business, when he heard a 
 sort of rush and swash, and turning instantly round he saw a cloud 
 of dust rising up and filling the air where the Table Rock had been. 
 5. Jacob Meack. More than the usual mystery clouds the name 
 and memory of the first settled physician in Williamstown. Clear 
 tradition has it, that his contemporaries pronounced his name as if 
 it had been "Mick." This makes it seem probable that he was a 
 German, and that the vowel of his name bore in that shrift the 
 umlaut above it. But he may have been a Hollander, and have 
 crept up the Hoosac like scores of others from Albany or its neigh- 
 borhood. At any rate, he was no Yankee. He came very soon 
 after the town was incorporated in 1765. There is the official record 
 of five daughters born to him and his wife Betsey during the years 
 1768-1776. His wife survived him, for she is called "relict of 
 Doct. Jacob Meack,' 7 on her tombstone. She died in 1797. All of 
 the daughters lived to be married in town, and three of them, Mrs. 
 Hannah Kilborn, Mrs. Currence Young, Mrs. Sally Young, spent 
 their lives here. Whatever may have been the nationality of the 
 father, it is plain that neither he nor his family were regarded in 
 the light of " cussed f urriners " after the pattern of a hundred years 
 later in New England. In February, 1774, Jacob Meack was the 
 moderator of an important Proprietors' meeting held (as usual) in 
 the meeting-house, and in July of the same year he was chosen by 
 the town as one of their three representatives in the county con- 
 gress at Stockbridge. He was evidently much trusted in the civil 
 concerns of the town, as well as in the families to which his patients 
 belonged. Even the brook that flowed past his "regulation house" 
 on house-lot No. 12, was commonly called " Doctor's Brook " down to 
 a time within the memory of many still living. And the house 
 which he certainly occupied, even if he did not build it, is still stand- 
 ing intact by the brookside, as his daughter and granddaughter 
 owned and dwelled in it as an inheritance from him. Hannah 
 Meack Kilborn united with the church in the year 1800 ; her sisters 
 Currence and Sally in 1826, and her daughter Marcia in 1808, and 
 son Frederick in 1817. The last named was a non compos mentis 
 with certain religious tendencies and impulses, so that it was 
 
90 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 thought proper to admit him into the church at his own desire. 
 Naturally enough he did not prove to be a particularly exemplary 
 member. He heard of course a good deal of swearing in the street, 
 the significance of which he did not understand, and he sometimes 
 indulged himself in such language, which brought on him such 
 reproofs as the following : " Fred, you mustn't swear so, the min- 
 ister will be after you; and you never can get into heaven." " Well, 
 then, I'll bear it, and stay out ! " Marcia Hilborn, the last descend- 
 ant here of Dr. Jacob Meack, and the last representative of the 
 several Kilborn families from Litchfield, who purchased lots here 
 very early, John, James, Jonathan, lived poor and unmarried 
 and partially supported by the church till past the middle of the 
 century. 
 
 6. Isaac Stratton. It may perhaps be reasonably questioned 
 whether the civil services of Isaac Stratton to his time and locality 
 surpassed in importance his strictly military service to the same; 
 both were more than respectable, for both were entirely adequate to 
 the exigencies of the situation, but the writer is constrained in his 
 own judgment to reckon what may be fairly called the civil and 
 social merits of this admirable pioneer as first and foremost. Ac- 
 cordingly he is treated in the present list and connection. The 
 judgment of his family and contemporaries, when he died in April, 
 1789, aged fifty years, was consonant with our own ; for we may 
 still read on a substantial headstone at the South Part, "Isaac 
 Stratton, Esq." He was the eldest son of Richard Stratton of 
 Western (now Warren), and was coming of twenty-one when the 
 entire family moved to West Hoosac in 1760. Very shortly after 
 his coming the father bought three or four house-lots on the Hoosac 
 level, in the northeast quarter of the village plat, on one of which 
 (No. 56) he proceeded after a little to build for himself a home in 
 the first two-story house erected in the town, which is still standing 
 in good shape essentially as he built it, and in which he died a few 
 years later. He also bought at about the same time two fifty -acre lots 
 of the second division, lying at the junction of the Hancock and 
 Ashford brooks in the present hamlet of South Williamstown. These 
 lots, Nos. 53 and 55, Richard Stratton in September, 1766, both sells 
 and gives to Isaac, "both husbandmen," "for 7, together with that 
 parental love and affection which I have and do bair to him the 
 said Isaac Stratton, my well-beloved son." The son was twenty-six 
 years old when he thus took title to the first settled farm in South 
 Williamstown, but he had been there for three or four years, making 
 himself a home on the north side of the brook at a spot which has 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BEKNINGTON. 91 
 
 been ever since the only tavern-stand in the harnlet. For about two 
 years he was entirely alone there, so far as neighbors were con- 
 cerned ; but he soon thought best to sell that place to Samuel Sloan, 
 and to cross the brook and to put his house nearer to the bulk of his 
 land. Twenty years later, that is, in 1785, he built there the large 
 house herewith figured and still standing, in which he lived but 
 four years till his death. That house stands on No. 54. 
 
 During the last twenty-five years of his life, at first for his neigh- 
 bors at the South Part, now growing steadily in numbers and needs 
 for such services, and later for citizens of the whole town, more or 
 less, he drew their deeds of land and also certified them as a Justice 
 
 ISAAC STRATTON'S HOUSE. 
 Built 1785. 
 
 of the Peace ; he drew wills also, and other papers of various kinds, 
 and acted as arbiter in case of disputes ; he was in 1771 the chosen 
 moderator of the May Proprietors' meeting, held, as usual at that 
 time, in the meeting-house ; he was the town clerk most of the time 
 from the incorporation of the town in 1765 until his death ; he was 
 the clerk of the Committee of Safety, and therefore its most impor- 
 tant member, throughout the trying Eevolutionary years preceding 
 the battle of Bennington ; and he certified, as Justice of the Peace, 
 many of the Kevolutionary muster-rolls comprising the men of his 
 town and sometimes of neighboring towns also. These rolls were 
 usually made out in the first instance by the captains of the com- 
 panies, and sworn to by them before the justice; but corrections 
 and additions often needed to be made in them, and Mr. Justice 
 
92 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Stratton, with his relatively facile pen, seems to have been ready to 
 help everybody out in every good cause. 
 
 In the meantime, he was rising in rank, step by step, in the militia 
 of the town and county. In 1777 he was the major in Colonel Sim- 
 onds's regiment, and as such immortalized himself in the battle of 
 Bennington. Nevertheless, such side-occupations as those of Strat- 
 ton, and many more like him, during the Revolutionary period, were 
 not favorable to the accumulation of property. They came to inter- 
 fere decidedly with the profitable tilling of their farms. War took 
 the officers and men away from their homes in the seasons of seed- 
 time and harvest. The Continental currency, like all irredeemable 
 money, was impoverishing to all who were compelled to use it. The 
 so-called " Shays's Rebellion " of 1787, in Massachusetts, itself the 
 direct consequence of the points just made, found a good many ad- 
 herents in Berkshire and some in Williamstown, of whom the most 
 conspicuous was Deacon James Meacham, who passed the old Smed- 
 ley house of a Sunday morning, gun on his shoulder, horseback, to 
 join Shays's men to the eastward, to the great scandal of young Levi 
 Smedley, destined to become one of Meacham's successors in the dea- 
 conate, and whose views of the movement of Shays were exactly the 
 opposite to Meacham's. How Major Stratton felt on these matters 
 has not been recorded ; it is altogether likely that he sympathized 
 with the government side. It is nevertheless somewhat painful to 
 read in the old book of Berkshire Registry of Deeds a plain proof 
 that in the years before his death he fell into financial straits. He 
 finished his large new house, as the chimney-top testifies to this day r 
 in 1785. The registry record states that Isaac Stratton sold, on the 
 7th of June, 1788, for 105, "to Robert Kinney and Robert Kin- 
 ney, Jr., Merchants of Albany, State of New York, a part of second 
 division 50-acre lot No. 54." Now, 54 was Stratton's home-lot that 
 held his house. Albany was the market for Williamstown buyers. 
 The Kinneys were merchants who held many claims on W T illiams- 
 town farms. Stratton would not have sold a part of his home-lot 
 except under pinch and duress. Never mind. His final discharge 
 from the earthly army came in about six months. Whether he left 
 any property or not is of little consequence. He left an unstained 
 reputation and a splendid record of good deeds done. His widow, 
 Mary Fox Stratton, both of them members of the church here from 
 the beginning, married Rev. Clark Rogers, an itinerant Baptist min- 
 ister. When she died in 1812, her remains were brought hither and 
 interred by the side of those of her first husband. 
 
 We must now go back a little in point of time, in order to see the 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 93 
 
 military part played by Williamstown as a town, and by its alert 
 and patriotic citizens, in the campaign of 1776. The attack on 
 Quebec, the nub of the previous campaign, had totally failed, although 
 Colonel Arnold on his side and General Montgomery on his had done 
 all that mortal men could do to make it a success. About a month 
 before the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress 
 called on Massachusetts for five thousand of its militia to cooperate 
 with the Continental troops in Canada and at New York ; and nine 
 days before the Declaration the colony of Massachusetts passed a 
 resolve to raise the men immediately, and to apportion their quotas 
 among the several towns. To carry out the terms of this resolve 
 in the county of Berkshire, "Mr. Azariah Root,. Major Caleb Hyde, 
 and Captain Isaac Stratton " were appointed a committee by the 
 General Court, which itself at the same time made the apportion- 
 ment of quotas to the several towns. A century and a quarter has 
 made great changes in the relative strength and population of these 
 towns. There had been then no census in the colony ; the quotas 
 were estimated from the reported numbers in the trainbands of the 
 respective towns, of which twenty-four are enumerated. Sheffield 
 stands at the head of the list with 27, Lanesboro next with 19, 
 Pittsfield with 17, Great Barrington with 16, New Marlborough with 
 15, Stockbridge and Eichmond arid Sandisfield each 14, and Wil- 
 liamstown with 13. According to this rude count of 1776, Williams- 
 town was the ninth in rank of the county of Berkshire. The nine 
 towns were to furnish 149 of the 249 men demanded, while the re- 
 maining 15 small towns were to furnish the remaining 100 soldiers. 
 Williamstown has already exceeded in population all of the towns 
 then above her, except Pittsfield ; and as the nineteenth century goes 
 out, she reckons herself the fourth in the county in point of popula- 
 tion. East Hoosac was then called upon to furnish nine men, but 
 it has since been divided into two towns, North Adams and Adams, 
 each of which is now considerably more populous than is Williams- 
 town. This is on account of factories, early established and a good 
 deal extended along the two branches of the Hoosac River which 
 flow through those two towns. The excavation of the Hoosac Tun- 
 nel also, done by the State of Massachusetts directly, the. head- 
 quarters for which operation were in North Adams, gave to that 
 town an immense impulse both in property and in population. But 
 the remarkable topographical position of Williamstown, as the nar- 
 row pass through which the upper Hudson and Lake Champlain can 
 best (or only) be reached in a military way from New England, gave 
 to that an importance, as well in the old French wars as also during 
 
94 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the Revolution, altogether out of proportion to its population and 
 other material resources. 
 
 More than a month before the Declaration of Independence, the 
 subjoined letter to General Schuyler, then in command on the North 
 Eiver, written by Mark Hopkins as clerk of a meeting of the com- 
 bined committees of safety of the several Berkshire towns, gathered 
 at Richmond, which was pretty centrally located for the county 
 convenience and a much more important town relatively than now, 
 and already the home of David R/ossiter, marks the prompt patriot- 
 ism of those towns. 
 
 RICHMONT, May 20 : 1776. 
 
 SIR : We have just now (by some soldiers returned) heard that our Army at 
 Quebeck have obliged to decamp from before that city, that they are in want of 
 Provisions, and perhaps of other assistance. Therefore we a number of the 
 Committees of the County of Berkshire, and those parts of the Government of 
 New York adjacent have sent the bearer hereof Capt. Charles Dibble, an express 
 to yourself to know whether you do not want assistance which we can furnish, 
 by Waggons, Teams Provisions or men being willing to contribute all in our 
 Power for the Belief of our army aforesaid. We are Sir your 
 
 Humb le Servants 
 To by order of s d Committees, 
 
 The Hon : ble MARK HOPKINS, Clerk. 
 
 [outside] GENERAL SCHUYLER. 
 
 A resolve of the General Court of Massachusetts passed Sept. 14, 
 1776, will confirm what has just been said, and serve also to explain 
 the great prominence of Colonel Simonds during this campaign and 
 the next, particularly the fact, that General Schuyler and General 
 Gates commanding in the Northern Department send their orders 
 directly to him, and not through any superior officer, and he likewise 
 communicates directly with them. The movements of the militia in 
 Berkshire County are not, as a rule, ordered from Boston, owing 
 doubtless in part to the immense barrier of the Hoosac Mountain, 
 and in part also to the universal confidence felt in Simonds as their 
 natural and efficient head throughout the Revolution by the colony 
 and by the heads of the northern army. 
 
 Whereas it has been represented to this Court that there is now no Brigadier 
 in the County of Berkshire, to put in execution a late resolve of this Assembly 
 for raising and sending to New York a fifth part of the militia ; and as the first 
 Colonel of the Militia there [Paterson] is now in the service of the United States, 
 and the other chief Colonel [Fellows] is sick, and one Lieutenant-Colonel of the 
 Militia there [probably Rossiter] is also in the said service. Therefore, 
 
 Resolved, That Colonel Simonds of Williamstown, Colonel Root of Sheffield, 
 and Deacon Curtis of Stockbridge, be, and they hereby are empowered and di- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 95 
 
 rected to execute the late resolve of this Court above referred to, within the 
 County of Berkshire, in the same manner and observing the same directions that 
 are given to the Brigadiers or commanding officers in the several counties by the 
 said resolve. 
 
 The following letter from General Gates to Colonel Simonds will 
 probably interest general readers, and certainly the numerous de- 
 scendants of the Colonel, now scattered widely over the United 
 States. 
 
 TTONDEROGA, Sept. 15, 1776. 
 
 SIR: I this moment received your letter, dated Williamstown, 12 th instant. 
 As I did not send the orders for your march to camp, I could not take measures 
 more early to stop your proceeding. The last account from General Arnold con- 
 vinces me that there is no immediate necessity for the Militia coming forward 
 at this time. A copy of his last letter to me I send you enclosed. The alarm 
 was occasioned by some firing from our enemy on the shores opposite Isle aux 
 Tetes ; and I believe a great number of small arms and cannon fired that and 
 the succeeding days by brigades of the enemy at exercise at their post below, 
 all which deceived the Commanding Officer at Crown Point. 
 
 A good road will be finished by this day sennight, from Rutland through 
 Castletown to the east foot of Mount Independence, and an excellent bridge over 
 Otter Creek at Rutland will be finished in three days. For the future, any body 
 of men intended for our succor should march that way. 
 
 The United States are, in general, obliged to you for your alertness to succor 
 their army, and particularly, Sir, 
 
 Your &c. &c. 
 
 Ho. GATES. 
 
 To COLONEL BENJAMIN SIMONDS. 
 
 The letter to which General Gates refers is given herewith entire, 
 and may serve as a sample of many more passing from the same 
 party to his military superiors to the northwestward, especially to 
 General Schuyler. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Sept. 12, 1776. 
 
 SIR : Agreeable to an express from his Honour Major General Schuyler, I 
 have caused the Militia under my command to be on their march to Tyonderoga. 
 I thought proper to send this by express, so that in case the men should not be 
 wanted, they may have early orders for their return, that so expense of their 
 march further than necessary may be prevented. 
 
 I am your Honour's most obedient servant, 
 
 BENJ. SIMONDS, 
 
 Colonel. 
 To GENERAL GATES. 
 
 One month later than the above letter from Gates to Simonds, 
 General Schuyler, the real organizer and administrator of the North- 
 ern Department, and who deserves with Arnold almost the entire 
 
96 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 credit of the defeat and destruction of Burgoyne the next year, wrote 
 as follows to the Berkshire Committee of Safety. The reader will 
 notice that he dates his letter " Saratoga," but must not suppose the 
 place to be the modern watering-place of that name. The place 
 where Schuyler was encamped in 1776, and where Burgoyne sur- 
 rendered in 1777, was a good way to the north of the " Springs," and 
 on both sides of Fish Creek, a noisy brook tumbling into the Hud- 
 son at right angles on its west side. The land belonged to the Gen- 
 eral, and he had a good house there and mills on the creek. The 
 place is now very properly called Schuylerville. On the other side 
 of the river, nearly a mile north of the mouth of Fish Creek, another 
 much larger stream, called the Batten Kill, falls into the Hudson. 
 On a piece of high ground something over an acre in extent not far 
 from opposite the mouth of Fish Creek, there was built in 1709, dur- 
 ing the course of Queen Anne's War, by Colonel Schuyler, great- 
 uncle of the General, a stockaded fort, which came to be called Fort 
 Saratoga. The name soon extended itself to the Batten Kill, which 
 is repeatedly denominated "Saratoga Biver" in the documents of 
 the time even in its middle reaches. Chaplain Norton, who crossed 
 it in 1746 with the other captives from Fort Massachusetts, calls it 
 in his journal " Sarratogo Biver." The next year, in November, 
 Governor Clinton ordered the abandonment of the fort that had been 
 taken and burned by the French in June ; and the name " Saratoga," 
 gradually crept to the west side of the Hudson, and was lost to the 
 east. 1 The Schuyler family had long had six or seven farms on Fish 
 Creek, where the northern army was encamped in 1776, and whence 
 the General sent his letter to Berkshire. 
 
 SARATOGA, October 16, 1776. 
 
 GENTLEMEN : Our fleet, which suffered severely in an engagement on the 12 th 
 instant with the enemy, has been still more severely handled in a subsequent 
 one, in so much that the enemy are left masters of the lake, and are now com- 
 ing on to attack our army at Ticonderoga. 
 
 In this situation of our affairs, it is of the utmost importance that the Militia 
 of your State should immediately march to sustain the army ; and such as can 
 march expediously, come by way of Albany, should do so, and the others take 
 the route to Skenesborough. Each man should come provided with as much 
 provision and ammunition as possible. The commanding officer should send me 
 information of his numbers, and the progress in his march from time to time. I 
 shall be either at Fort George or at Skenesborough, but as I can not determine 
 which, it will be proper to send expresses to both places, and to forward copies 
 of this to Governour Trumbull, and to every Committee in your State in a situ- 
 ation of affording assistance, as also to the neighboring counties in the State of 
 
 1 See for a full account of these changes Origins in Williamstoivn, pp. 160-166. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 97 
 
 Connecticut. I must repeat, gentlemen, that it is of the utmost importance that 
 I should be duly furnished with an account of the movements and numbers of 
 the Militia. 
 
 From, gentlemen, your most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 PH. SCHUYLER. 
 
 To the Committee of the County of Berkshire. 
 
 As one result of this pressing letter from Schuyler, the county of 
 Berkshire was thoroughly rallied ; and the Committee of Safety in 
 Stockbridge thought it was incumbent on them to rally the adjoin- 
 ing county of Hampshire, as appears by the following note hurried 
 on to the eastward : 
 
 STOCKBRIDGE, October 19, 1776. 
 
 GENTLEMEN : The Militia of this County are rallied and on their march, and 
 we think it of the utmost importance that you comply with the General's request 
 immediately. 
 
 ERASTUS SERGEANT, 
 SAMUEL BROWN, JUN., 
 ASA BEMENT, 
 
 Committee of Stockbridge. 
 To the Committees in Hampshire County. 
 
 So intimately are the two first names on this Stockbridge Com- 
 mittee connected with William stown, and even with the military 
 events whose current story we are now trying to tell, that it is 
 scarcely a digression to say something of each of them in the pres- 
 ent connection. Erastus Sergeant was the elder son of John Ser- 
 geant, the justly famous missionary to the Indians in Stockbridge, 
 who was a native of Newark, New Jersey, a graduate of Yale College 
 in 1729, and a tutor there for four years, from 1731 to 1735, when he 
 took up his residence and missionary labors in Stockbridge, not to 
 intermit them till his death, in 1749. His wife was Abagail Wil- 
 liams, eldest daughter of Ephraim Williams, who brought his family 
 to Stockbridge in 1737, one of four families coming at the instance 
 of the General Court to be examples to the Indians in Christian 
 living, and helpmates to the missionary and missionary teacher, 
 Timothy Woodbridge. Two years after Ephraim Williams came to 
 Stockbridge, he made the first survey of the two towns on the upper 
 Hoosac, afterwards called East and West Hoosac, and much later 
 Adams and William stown ; and so became the first white man 
 known to perambulate these our hills and valleys. Although this 
 first survey of 1739 did not meet the views of the General Court, 
 and was laid aside till superseded by the survey of 1749, it is proba- 
 ble that the interest in the two townships of both the father and his 
 eldest son of the same name was deepened and continued so long as 
 
 H 
 
98 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 they lived by this original survey of them. Ephraim Williams was 
 grandfather to Erastus Sergeant. The latter studied medicine in 
 Deerfield with his uncle, Dr. Thomas Williams, only uterine brother 
 to Ephraim Williams, Jr., the founder of the college. He com- 
 menced to practice medicine and surgery in Stockbridge in 1768. 
 While the Revolution was drawing on and continued, he felt within 
 him the military impulse common in his family connections ; he 
 went through all the ranks till he became major in Colonel Simonds's 
 regiment in the campaign of 1777, at the same time acting as 
 surgeon in the same regiment, both at Ticonderoga and until the 
 surrender of Burgoyne. He was reputed a skilful surgeon and 
 physician. More than twenty young men were fitted for practice 
 under his instructions. He became the principal surgical operator 
 within a radius of thirty miles of Stockbridge, disputing in critical 
 cases with Dr. Samuel Porter of Williamstown. The latter, how- 
 ever, long survived Sergeant, and known cases in surgery were 
 brought from Stockbridge to Williamstown after Sergeant's death 
 in 1814. He was also a deacon in the Church, and a magistrate in 
 the town of Stockbridge. 
 
 Samuel Brown represented another of the four families coming 
 from the east to Stockbridge at the instance of the General Court, 
 to help in the Christianization of the Indians there. Josiah Jones 
 of Weston, and Joseph Woodbridge of West Springfield, brother of 
 the schoolmaster, were the heads of the other two of the four fami- 
 lies. Before the Williamstown village lots (laid out in 1750) were 
 offered for sale in Stockbridge, Ephraim Williams, the father, had 
 fallen into much disfavor there, and in 1752 sold out all his property 
 to his son Ephraim Williams, the founder, and moved to Deerfield, 
 where he died in 1754. Lieutenant Brown showed his interest in 
 the new "Propriety" on the Hoosac by purchasing three of the 
 original lots at the time of the drawing in Stockbridge. His sons, 
 Samuel Brown, Jr., and Elijah Brown, at the same time and in the 
 same way purchased each one of the lots, which made five lots going 
 to one family. Twelve other original buyers took two lots each, 
 one of the twelve being Captain Ephraim Williams. The remaining 
 thirty-one lots offered for sale by the colony went to scattered indi- 
 vidual proprietors, nine of them being private soldiers in Fort 
 Massachusetts. Lieutenant Isaac Wyman, Sergeant William Chi- 
 dester, and Corporal Samuel Calhoun, of the Fort, took each two 
 lots. Thus the Brown family of Stockbridge purchased at the out- 
 set one-twelfth of the entire area of Williamstown through the pur- 
 chase of five of the sixty house-lots. In one of the family deeds of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 99 
 
 land, dated in May, 1751, Samuel Brown the father, is put down as 
 "Gentleman," and Samuel Brown the son as "Husbandman." 
 Elijah Brown did not become so distinguished as his father and 
 brother. No one of the three ever came to Williamstown to live, 
 but each of the three took a very considerable interest in the new 
 settlement. As luck would have it, Samuel Jr. drew lot No. 1, the 
 most conspicuous and valuable of all the lots, inasmuch as it fronted 
 directly 011 the " Square " and stretched along the original and pres- 
 ent South Street for one hundred and twenty rods. Brown sold 
 the lot within a year to Ezekiel Hinds of Stockbridge and Fort 
 Massachusetts ; and Hinds sold it to Samuel Smedley of Litchfield, 
 October 31, 1752, for 27, husbandman to husbandman. Esther 
 Smedley, the widow of Samuel, and John, his eldest son, deeded this 
 lot over to Nehemiah Smedley, son and brother, March 21, 1758, for 
 27. This lot was one of the earliest in the hamlet to be cleared 
 up and built upon, and the very earliest to receive an apple orchard, 
 in 1754, which came into good bearing in 1765, when the new town 
 was incorporated. It is but fair to say that Stockbridge from first 
 to last has exerted a wider and deeper and more wholesome influence 
 over Williamstown and the college than any other town in the 
 county. Ephraim Williams, father and son ; Rev. John Ser- 
 geant and Deacon Samuel Brown; Rev. Dr. Stephen West and 
 Theodore Sedgwick ; David Dudley Field, father and son ; all four 
 of the first graduates of the College, in 1795, were from Stockbridge ; 
 Mark and Albert Hopkins, great-grandsons of John Sergeant and 
 great-great-grandsons of Ephraim Williams, all these, and many 
 more, have united the two places by powerful and lasting ties. 
 
 The general position of W T illiamstown as a narrow neck of land 
 early uniting south with north and east with west, is vividly illus- 
 trated by the following contemporary documents, which are inter- 
 esting on several other grounds as well : 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, August 4, 1776. 
 
 At a meeting of the Committee of Safety, etc., of this Town, 
 Resolved, That whereas we are informed that Captain Eddy, from Providence, 
 in the Colony of Rhode Island, with thirty-nine of his men, now in the Conti- 
 nental service, having been exposed to the small-pox, and having since then 
 taken it by inoculation, without our knowledge, and said men appearing to us 
 to be under necessity of immediate care taken, and provision made for their 
 sickness, we do hereby give orders that the house belonging to Ephraim Seelye, 
 which stands near said Seelye's sawmill, shall be repaired and made convenient 
 for their reception ; and that David Noble be appointed to put said house in 
 order, and to make provision and provide suitable diet for said company, from 
 the time they go into said house till they each of them obtain certificates from 
 
100 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 their Doctors of their being sufficiently cleansed from said disorder. And said 
 company to depart to said pest house next Wednesday morning, and not to 
 return into the town till after cleansing. 
 
 And for the further preventing all inconveniences which may arise, 
 It is Resolved, That Mr. Samuel Kellogg, and William Horsford, and Daniel 
 Stratton, be a Committee to give their attendance at the time of each man's 
 cleansing, and be fully satisfied that they are fully and well cured and cleaned, 
 and may safely depart. And this Committee strictly enjoin and order that no 
 one of the said infected persons shall come or go within thirty rods of any 
 dwelling-house, or town or country road. 
 
 Given under our hands, this 4th day of August, A.D. 1776. 
 
 Per order : ISAAC STRATTON, Committee's Clerk. 
 
 This house then belonged to Ephraim Seelye, and this and his saw- 
 mill near by it, were the original house and mill of John Smedley, 
 situated near the junction of Broad Brook and the Hoosac River. By 
 a special vote of the Proprietors passed in 1763, Smedley was allowed 
 to take the raceway for his mill from Broad Brook at the north end 
 of the present bridge over the brook, along by the public road and 
 then across that road around the foot of the hill to his millsite on 
 the Hoosac, some rods below the mouth of the brook. Persons are 
 still living in that neighborhood who remember to have seen in place 
 the timbers of that old sawmill. The present writer has himself 
 seen and examined the old house, which stood part way up the hill 
 toward the public road, and had been for a long time unoccupied, 
 when it was pulled down to make way for an excavation along the 
 roadbed of the Fitchburg Eailroad. The most striking thing about 
 the house, which was then a century old, was its exterior sheathing, 
 constructed of extremely wide pine boards free from knots. Smed- 
 ley sawed his own boards for his own house at his own mill, fed 
 with logs long and large off his own homestead, Pine Lots Nos. 7 and 
 8. Until he ran across the above order of the Committee of Safety, 
 the writer did not know the reason why some of the oldest inhab- 
 itants applied the term " pest-house " to this old building. John 
 Smedley was a "joiner" by trade. He began operations on Broad 
 Brook by buying lands there as early as 1762. Ephraim Seelye, who 
 came here from "Amenia Precinct," Duchess County, New York, 
 about 1763, and who is always denominated "Gentleman" in the 
 old deeds, evidently became the owner of John Smedley's lands, 
 and of many more in that neighborhood, as the Revolution drew on. 
 His son of the same name, both dwelling more or less at intervals in 
 Pownal next below, became later a very large landowner in town, 
 and incurred justly or unjustly the epithet of "land-grabber." It 
 was of him that his neighbors said, that if he had been shown " all 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 101 
 
 the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," his instant reply 
 would have been, " I'll take it, I will !" 
 
 The following letter from Williamstown to General Gates, written 
 at the dictation of Captain Eddy of the Rhode Island men detained 
 there, Dr. William Page being the amanuensis, the second in point of 
 time of the settled physicians in Williamstown, will explain itself. 
 It was written two weeks after the men were ordered to the " pest- 
 house": 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, August 17, 1776. 
 
 SIR : I am requested by Captain Eddy, commander of a company of ship 
 carpenters from Rhode-Island, to inform that said captain and company having 
 been exposed to take the small-pox on their march from Rhode-Island (as the 
 General will see by the enclosed), have since been inoculated, and are now sick 
 with said disorder in said Williamstown, and that he (Captain Eddy) being 
 taken with a violent dysentery, despairs of life ; but still anxious for the welfare 
 of his soldiers, desires the General to do something for them. They having 
 received but one month's advance pay, have not money sufficient for their 
 march to Skenesborough, in case the General, upon information, should give 
 orders for said march ; neither a sufficiency to return to Rhode- Island when 
 discounted with their doctoring and nursing. Said carpenters' utensils, being 
 their own property, are now at Skenesborough, they will be out of business in 
 case of return. Ten of said company, having formerly had the small-pox, are 
 gone forward ; the remainder may safely march in eight days. I send enclosed 
 the resolve of the Committee of Safety of Williamstown, as also a line Captain 
 Eddy received from Brigadier-General Waterbury. General Gates's orders for 
 the express, Mr. Joseph Skinner will lay a particular obligation on Captain 
 Eddy and company, and much oblige your humble servant, 
 
 W. PAGE, 
 Per order Captain Eddy. 
 
 N.B. The General will please inquire of the bearer for particulars. 
 
 The line referred to above as having been received by Captain 
 Eddy from General Waterbury, and enclosed, follows herewith : 
 
 SKENESBOROUGH, August 12, 1776. 
 
 I have received a line from General Gates concerning you who have been 
 inoculated, which I will communicate to you: "The companies of ship carpen- 
 ters from Rhode-Island, who have been inoculated at Williamstown, should be 
 discharged and not suffered to come forward." The foregoing are the words of 
 the General. I think as much as to say you are not to come in the service ; we 
 don't intend to let any one come into this place that has lately had the small- 
 pox, (for you know it has been the bane of our Northern Army), and we have 
 got it out of this place and Ticonderoga, and we are determined to use every 
 precaution to keep it clear ; and for men to go and inoculate, and presume to 
 coine here among fresh troops, we think it monstrous. 
 
 DAVID WATERBURY, JR., 
 
 Brigadier-General 
 
 To the Captain and Company of Carpenters at Williamstown. 
 
102 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 There is one other public document of the time relating to this 
 business of the inoculation here, which is a letter of Colonel Samuel 
 Brewer to General Gates, for whose insertion entire no apology 
 will be demanded by the intelligent reader. 
 
 BENNINGTON, August 23, 1776. 
 
 HONOURED SIR : I am now on my march from this place with part of my 
 regiment or battalion. The Council of this State, or the Committee appointed 
 to provide my regiment with camp utensils, have not yet sent them, by reason 
 of which my men are entirely destitute. My marching orders are urgent from 
 them ; likewise I find the same from you to the Commission here. I am deter- 
 mined to push as far as I can find any kind of a pot or kettle to look in. Have 
 sent my adjutant with this to your Honour, begging your advice and instruction 
 in that matter ; also where you would have me repair with my regiment. The 
 other part of my regiment will be on their march next week ; by them I expect 
 the camp utensils will come, as I have sent two expresses to Number Four, and 
 one to Watertown, now after them. Upon seeing a letter from you to Major 
 Hawley relative to the conduct of inoculation at Number Four, I find that a 
 damn'd puppy of a quack has carried on the diabolical practice at Williams- 
 town, about twelve miles from this. I have made bold to send your sentiment 
 in that matter to the Committee of that town this morning, and make no doubt 
 they will either do him justice, or send him to you to receive his reward. 
 
 I am, sir, your Honour's most obedient and very humble servant, 
 
 SAML. BREWER, Colonel. 
 To GENERAL GATES. 
 
 There are two or three relevant considerations in connection with 
 these Revolutionary documents in their intimate relations to men 
 and things here at that time, of which the first is the single gleam 
 of light thrown on Dr. William Page, always known to have been 
 a settled physician in town in the decade of the seventeen-seventies, 
 but of whom almost nothing more has ever been heretofore ascer- 
 tained. The name of William Page stands second (Jacob Meack 
 alone preceding it) upon a list of Williamstown physicians first 
 published in 1824, in Field's "Berkshire County." The contribu- 
 tion to this volume under the head of "Williamstown," made by 
 Professor Ebenezer Kellogg of the College, holds the only other 
 old-time reference to Dr. Page. Kellogg obtained most of his his- 
 torical information from Deacon Levi Smedley, born here in 1764. 
 Speaking of the old Smedley home on house-lot No. 1, Kellogg says 
 of Kehemiah Smedley : " Exchanging this place with Dr. Page, for 
 a lot purchased [by Page] of the Eev. Mr. W^elch, he built upon it 
 in 1772, the next oldest [two-story] house now remaining in town, 
 occupied by his oldest son [Deacon Levi], just across Green river." 
 Now at length, we may take one substantial glance of the old-time 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 103 
 
 doctor. He believed in inoculation at a time when public opinion, 
 as voiced both by the medical profession in general and by the 
 clergy universally, was virulently opposed to it. He wrote from 
 this town a very well-expressed letter to General Gates in behalf of 
 Captain Eddy of Providence, who then supposed himself to be 
 dying, the letter breathing strongly sympathetic feelings of both 
 captain and surgeon toward the thirty-nine men then sequestered 
 here in a well-known house for small-pox. In all human probability, 
 Dr. Page had inoculated these men himself ; at any rate, he was in 
 medical attendance upon them, and ready to render them any ser- 
 vice in his power. It is probable also that he had an associate in 
 all this business, and that this associate was Dr. Samuel Porter, 
 who, just a year later, certainly attended here upon large numbers 
 of wounded brought hither from the battle-field of Bennington ; for, 
 it is quite noticeable, that the Committee of Safety in giving orders 
 for the sequestration of these men, insist that "each of them obtain 
 certificates from their Doctors of their being sufficiently cleansed from 
 said disorder" It is remarkable, too, that this local Committee wash 
 their hands of all responsibility for this inoculation by saying that 
 it was done "without our knowledge." The fact that inoculation was 
 practised at about the same time on some soldiers at Number Four, 
 now Charlestown, New Hampshire, as well as at Williamstown, all 
 gathering for Ticonderoga, roused the fury of the northern army, 
 which had had the disease all the way of its retreat from Quebec to 
 Skenesborough, and had at last gotten rid of it both there and at 
 Ticonderoga. The emphatic prohibition against the inoculated men 
 coming forward into the service, and even the demand for the con- 
 dign punishment of " that damned puppy of a quack at Williamstown," 
 seem natural enough under the circumstances ; for the fact seems 
 to have been established, that while inoculation was invaluable for 
 the inoculated, it did not lessen in the least the liability of contagion 
 to others from them while the artificial disease was still current. 
 Whether the enmity excited by these events both local and general 
 had anything to do with the falling of Dr. Page's practice into 
 " innocuous desuetude,' 7 and his memory into an oblivion unusual to 
 such a man, the present deponent saith not. 
 
 In Dr. Page's letter to General Gates, there is another personal 
 reference very interesting at this late day, when taken in connection 
 with the prodigious influence which that then obscure person came 
 to exert for twenty years at least in the State of Massachusetts. 
 " General Gates's orders per the express, Mr. Joseph Skinner, will 
 lay a particular obligation on Captain Eddy and company." Who 
 
104 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was this so-called Joseph Skinner ? The annals of Williamstown 
 contain his name for the first time in this letter ; but these annals 
 are not vacant of his name for a single year thereafter, till his death 
 in Boston, January, 1809. During some of the intervening years, 
 the references to him in the annals of the State are profuse. His 
 name both in good and evil, both in prosperity and adversity, is cut 
 in the record in a more indelible and significant way than that of 
 any other citizen of the town ever has been. He wrote his own 
 name Tompson J. Skinner. He wrote it long very high, and at 
 last very low, on the scroll. In this place we will only just indicate 
 the beginnings of his career ; later pages will unfold it to the full 
 and bitter end. 
 
 Tompson Joseph Skinner, born May 24, 1752, and Benjamin Skin- 
 ner, born July 11, 1754, were both sons of Rev. Thomas Skinner, 
 1712-1762, pastor of a church in Colchester, and both came to Wil- 
 liamstown in 1775, the latter just turned of one and twenty, and 
 both having served their apprenticeship with a carpenter and joiner. 
 Thus the elder brother, when sent express in August, 1776, to the 
 headquarters of General Gates on Lake Champlain, was twenty-four 
 years old. This was obviously his first public employment. That 
 they who sent him had confidence in his intelligence and capacity 
 is evident from their Nota bene : " The General will please inquire 
 of the bearer for particulars." He was scarcely out of public em- 
 ployment, either military or civil, from that day till the day of his 
 death. He was eager, tireless, capable, quick-witted, ambitious, a 
 good speaker, able alike to do things and to get them done by 
 others. 
 
 The Continental military campaign of 1776, which was a desperate 
 struggle on both sides to gain and hold possession of the Hudson 
 River and its approaches, with the city of New York on the south and 
 Ticonderoga to the north for its principal centres, resulted in the loss 
 of New York to the Americans through the disastrous battles of 
 Long Island and White Plains, and ended with the strong occupation 
 of Ticonderoga for the winter under General Gates, and the retreat 
 of the British General Carleton from Crown Point to Canada. The 
 Berkshire militia would more naturally in such a campaign operate 
 to the northward, though there were Berkshire men in the battle of 
 White Plains, and Colonel Mark Hopkins of Barrington, in military 
 service and command there, died two days before the battle. While 
 Carleton was still at Crown Point, Arnold's flotilla after the bravest 
 kind of fighting having been twice beaten on the lower lake, Colonel 
 Simonds's regiment was summoned in October to Ticonderoga. Of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 105 
 
 the Williamstown company, Nehemiah Smedley was captain, Judah 
 Williams was first lieutenant, Timothy Bigelow second lieutenant, 
 and Israel Harris orderly sergeant. When the roster was made out 
 in November at Ticonderoga, there were six other companies in 
 Simonds's regiment with an aggregate of 333 officers and men. The 
 regiment wintered there. With three other regiments from Massa- 
 chusetts, they constituted General Lincoln's brigade, aggregating 
 1472 officers and men. The major of Simonds's regiment at this time 
 was Caleb Hyde of Lenox, afterward a prominent magistrate there; 
 the adjutant was Daniel Horsford of Williamstown ; the surgeon 
 and also captain of one of the companies was Erastus Seargent of 
 Stockbridge, brother-in-law of Colonel Mark Hopkins ; and the sur- 
 geon's mate was Eldad Lewis of Lenox, afterward the principal 
 founder of the Berkshire Medical Society, in 1787, and its first formal 
 orator the same year. 
 
 At old Fort Ti at this time Benjamin Simonds probably came into 
 renewed association with Isaac Wyman, his messmate in old Fort 
 Massachusetts, and his fellow-proprietor and near neighbor from the 
 first in West Hoosac. Wyman was Simonds's superior officer 
 throughout the whole period of the old French and Indian wars on 
 the upper Hoosac. The story entire may be found in the pages of 
 the "Origins in Williamstown." Simonds was one of the captives of 
 Fort Massachusetts, in 1746, and as such spent a year in Quebec. 
 Wyman was lieutenant at the fort under Captain Ephraim Williams 
 till the death of the latter in battle in 1755, and continued to com- 
 mand there with the overcommand at the West Hoosac fort so long 
 as either maintained a military attitude. Simonds served in either 
 fort according to contingencies. Wyman was naturally a stickler 
 for the precedence of the older and larger fort, and Simonds sympa- 
 thized with his fellow-soldiers and fellow-cultivators in the west 
 town; but there is no evidence of any personal rupture between 
 them, though there is proof in plenty of Wyman's unpopularity in 
 the west hamlet, in which he was an original proprietor and a con- 
 stant landowner. At last he sold out all his lots in West Hoosac 
 (1761) and migrated to Keene, New Hampshire, and when the first 
 Eevolutionary regiment of New Hampshire was organized in 1775, 
 we read that John Stark was appointed colonel and Isaac Wyman 
 lieutenant-colonel. July 11, 1776, the New Hampshire Committee 
 of Safety sent the following missive to him : 
 
 SIR : I send you by the bearer, your commission as Colonel of a Regiment of 
 our Militia in the Service ; also, thirty pounds, as two months' advance wages. 
 As the troops will be along in a few days, it is expected that you will go along 
 
106 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 with them to Crown-Point, and join the Army there. The Captains Drew, 
 Chandler, Shepard, Dearborn, Blanchard, Harper, Parker, and Weatherbee, 
 with their companies, are to make your regiment. As it is of great consequence 
 that the men are forwarded with speed, therefore expect you will do what is in 
 your power that they make no delay at No. 4. You will also receive thirty-two 
 pounds, advance wages, for your Surgeon, Adjutant, and Quartermaster, with 
 this, and blank commissions for those officers to be appointed by you. Implor- 
 ing the divine assistance on your endeavors to serve your country, and that you 
 may return in safety, with laurels of victory, is the sincere desire of him who, 
 in behalf of the Committee, subscribes himself your very humble servant. 
 To COLONEL WYMAN 
 
 Colonel Wyman reached Ticonderoga with his regiment in good 
 time ; but it was not written in the Book of the Fates, that he 
 should get on well in a Continental fortress who had long been 
 chief in authority in a sequestered valley. He fell into difficulties 
 almost at once, the nature of which we are not permitted to divine ; 
 but we read in General Orders as follows : 
 
 HEAD-QUARTERS, September 1, 1776. 
 
 A General Court-Martial to sit to-morrow morning, at ten o'clock, at the 
 President's tent, upon Mount Independence, for the trial of Colonel Wyman, 
 and such prisoners as shall be brought before them ; all evidences and persons 
 concerned to attend the Court. 
 
 Nor a single word further of public record have we been able to 
 glean concerning our old crony of Fort Massachusetts and of the 
 West Hoosac Propriety. That Isaac Wyman deserves well of the 
 two towns on the upper Hoosac to this day no one can doubt who 
 weighs well the ancient record; but no degree of service at one 
 period, under one set of circumstances, seems to become much more 
 than a hindrance in these short lives of ours, when we transfer 
 ourselves over, in mature life, into widely different sets of circum- 
 stances. Young men are plastic, mature men are rigid ; and happy 
 is he who may sing throughout his life the song of which his youth 
 took the initiatory pitch ! 
 
 So far as the northern army was concerned, the close of the cam- 
 paign of 1776 was marked by the withdrawal of General and Gov- 
 ernor Carletoii from his post at Crown Point into his province of 
 Canada for the winter, leaving a large force of American regulars 
 and militia in the fortress at Ticonderoga. It seems to have been 
 expected that this single fort at the junction of Lake George and 
 Lake Champlain would effectually stop the progress of any invading 
 army from Canada. At the same time the outlying Heights that 
 commanded the fort itself were not fortified, nor even occupied ; and 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 107 
 
 General Burgoyne found no difficulty at the opening of the next 
 campaign, which he confidently expected would be the last, in driv- 
 ing the Americans helter-skelter out of their so-thought impregnable 
 fortress, by throwing artillery upon Mount Hope, which commanded 
 Ticonderoga, and on Mount Defiance, which commanded the whole 
 point of the peninsula. Extraordinary pains had been taken in fit- 
 ting out Burgoyne's formidable invading force of 7902, rank and 
 file, all men seasoned in war, 4135 British veterans, 3116 hired 
 Germans, 148 Canadian militia, and 503 Indians. The artillery corps 
 and train were of the most serviceable character, " probably the finest 
 and most excellently supplied as to officers and private men that had 
 ever been allotted to second the operations of any army." 
 
 Burgoyne's plan of campaign had been made out for him in Eng- 
 land, and it was an admirable one on paper. A march of two hun- 
 dred miles straight down the Hudson River would bring him to 
 Albany, where a junction was to be made with General Howe, whose 
 fleet was in the harbor of New York, and to whose ships the Hudson 
 was open, loaded as they were to be with British soldiers. It was 
 also prescribed to Burgoyne from the English war office, that he 
 send out a strong detachment from his right flank by the St. Law- 
 rence and Lake Ontario to Fort Stanwix on the very upper waters 
 of the Mohawk River, occupying the site of the present Rome, New 
 York, and designed to hold the Indians of the Six Nations firm in 
 their somewhat wavering British allegiance. Fort Stanwix had been 
 built in 1758. It stood on the carrying-place of the Mohawk at 
 about equal distances from what is now Watertown by means of the 
 Black River and Oswego by the river of that name, both points on 
 Lake Ontario, and both on easy water communication with Montreal. 
 Barry St. Leger, though only lieutenant-colonel under Burgoyne, 
 was made nominally brigadier-general for this purpose, and with a 
 strong detachment of over 1000 men was ordered to Oswego and 
 Fort Stanwix, and from the latter to pass down the Mohawk to 
 Albany, there to make junction with Howe and with Burgoyne 
 himself. But in April, so soon as Burgoyne's general plan of inva- 
 sion became known to General Schuyler in command of the North- 
 ern Department with headquarters near Albany, Schuyler ordered 
 Colonel Peter Gansevoort to take possession of Fort Stanwix, and 
 to defend it at all hazards against attacks or a siege on the part of 
 St. Leger. In May, Colonel Marinas Willett, another brave and com- 
 petent New York citizen and soldier, was ordered to Fort Stanwix 
 as second in command to Gansevoort. Both of these made a splen- 
 did record for themselves in and near that post that summer. Their 
 
108 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 regular garrison was 550 men ; but on the 2d day of August, the 
 very day St. Leger arrived to invest the fort, a ree'nf orcement of 200 
 men, convoying ample supplies, was taken into the fort, which had 
 been partially repaired during the summer. Two days later, August 
 4, St. Leger completely invested the fort and began the siege. In- 
 stead of the unfinished work which he says he had been led to ex- 
 pect, he found it " a respectable fortress, strongly garrisoned with 
 700 men, and demanding for its speedy reduction a train of artillery 
 of which he was not master.' 7 
 
 In the meantime a body of militia from along the lower Mohawk 
 responded to the call of General Herkimer (pronounced Harkimer), 
 who slowly found himself at the head of about 700 men, among them 
 a small body of Oneida Indians ; and on the 4th of August, the 
 very day Fort Stanwix was invested, Herkimer moved his men from 
 German Flats up the river, and before night of the next day en- 
 camped near Oriskany, only two or three miles from St. Leger's line. 
 Herkimer sent notice of his approach to the besieged, and asked for 
 a signal so soon as they should get his message ; but his messengers 
 did not succeed in getting into Fort Stanwix until nearly noon on 
 the 6th, when the signal guns were fired ; but in the interval of time 
 Herkimer's impatient militia were unwilling to wait for the signal 
 to advance, and he could not restrain them, and rather than lose 
 their confidence allowed them to attack that segment of St. Leger's 
 circle nearest to them. Thus was brought on what is usually called 
 the battle of Oriskany. It was desultory and yet deadly on both 
 sides. The militia fell into an ambush but imperfectly formed be- 
 tween them and the fort, and their rear regiment fled before they 
 had fairly gotten into the fatal circle made up mostly of the Canada 
 Indians, and left their advanced companions to their fate. These 
 " took tree " and fought bravely. Several of the American officers 
 were^ killed, and General Herkimer was mortally wounded. The 
 saddle was removed from his horse and placed at the foot of a tree, 
 and on this the disabled general was seated by his men, and con- 
 tinued cool and observant for several hours, indifferent alike to pres- 
 ent suffering and future danger. The battle, such as it was, tem- 
 porarily interrupted by a heavy shower during which both sides were 
 rearranged and reenforced, was renewed for a little when the Indians, 
 having lost thirty-three killed and about as many wounded, quitted 
 the field, closely followed by the English troops. At nearly the 
 same time Colonel Willett made a sally from Fort Stanwix at the 
 head of 250 men, taking out with them a three-pound carronade, 
 penetrated the English camp, secured a large quantity of stores and 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 109 
 
 munitions of war of all kinds, captured nearly all the books and 
 papers of the expedition, and safely effected his return to the fort 
 without losing a man. The Indians were enormously discouraged 
 by this loss of their blankets, tents, and camp utensils. Herkimer 
 had indeed been defeated and killed, and his relieving force been 
 dispersed, and the fort was still besieged, and St. Leger demanded 
 capitulations from Gansevoort; but all that had been heard from 
 Albany by secret messengers from besieged and besiegers discouraged 
 the latter the most, and these suddenly abandoned their camp on the 
 23d, and rapidly retreated to Canada by the route they had come. 
 
 Thus was Burgoyne's much-vaunted right wing completely clipped 
 within the same August days of 1777 that witnessed the entangling 
 and encountering and discomfiture of his but slightly less important 
 left wing by the Green Mountain Boys on the head waters of the 
 Wallooinsac. It was on the 12th, six days after the battle of Oris- 
 kany, that Burgoyne detached from his army, then stationed at what 
 is now called Schuylerville on the upper Hudson, the Hessian officer, 
 Colonel Baum, in command of about five hundred regular German 
 troops, with perhaps one hundred and fifty irregulars, mostly Ind- 
 ians, and with two light pieces of artillery, to his left, with their 
 objective at Bennington. To facilitate the operations of this corps, 
 and to take advantage of their expected success, they were supported 
 by another body of British advanced to the east bank of the Hudson 
 and posted on or near the site of old Fort Saratoga, and also by 
 another movable column constituted like Baum's and about as large, 
 pitched for the present on the middle Batten Kill, at a point now 
 termed Battenville, ready to act as a reserve and second line to 
 Baum, and, of course, placed under his orders. Colonel Breimann 
 commanded this second line. This good military disposition having 
 been made on the part of the British, Baum started on the morning 
 of the 12th of August, and arrived that day at Cambridge, or North 
 White Creek, since so called, which is about twelve miles northwest 
 from Bennington. This now considerable village lies on both sides 
 of Owl Kill, a tributary of the Hoosac, dropping into it from almost 
 straight north at Eagle Bridge. It is perhaps worth notice in pass- 
 ing, that precisely at that point of the Owl Kill now spanned by the 
 bridge in the village of Cambridge, the path of both these Hessian 
 columns on their way to the battle of Bennington crossed the weary 
 path of the captive soldiers from Fort Massachusetts, in 1746, on 
 their way up the Owl Kill to their far distant objective at Quebec. 1 
 Curiously enough, one of those captive soldiers, then twenty years 
 1 See Origin* in Williamstown, pp. 152 et seq. 
 
110 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 old, so weak in body as to stir the pity of the savages that guarded 
 him and to call out their practical help, lived to return from Quebec 
 to West Hoosac, and to rise to the rank of colonel in the Berkshire 
 militia, and on the day when Bauni crossed the Owl Kill headed 
 toward Bennington, was in council at that place in the Catamount 
 Tavern with the Council of Safety, and two days later with portions 
 of his regiment was in fierce battle with Baum and Briemann. This 
 was Benjamin Simoiids. 
 
 The general plan of our present story now requires a brief trans- 
 ference of local scene from the region northwest of Bennington to 
 another about as far to the southeast of that now memorable place. 
 As soon as Burgoyne's movements in the spring and early summer 
 of 1777 had fairly developed his plan of campaign, which was to 
 completely cut off New England from military cooperation with 
 New York and the other middle colonies, the interest of Massa- 
 chusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and the then so-called " New 
 Hampshire Grants " (now Vermont), was fully roused to operate on 
 Burgoyne's left flank and rear as he slowly descended the Hudson. 
 Benjamin Lincoln, of Massachusetts, who was a major-general of 
 militia at the opening of the war, and appointed by Congress a 
 major-general in the regular army, Feb. 19, 1777, was sent in July 
 to join Schuyler in opposing Burgoyne. He rallied the New Eng- 
 land militia in large numbers ; and Williamstown comes back again 
 under our close observation in this connection. Captain Samuel 
 Clark of South Williamstown, with his company of forty men at- 
 tached to the Berkshire regiment of Colonel John Brown, operated 
 under General Lincoln at Fort Ann from the latter part of June till 
 the last of July. Captain Nehemiah Smedley, of Colonel Simonds's 
 regiment, with a pretty full company of North Williamstown men, 
 went with a number of other companies belonging to the same regi- 
 ment and made up from nearly all the Berkshire towns, to Pawlet, 
 to be used against Burgoyne's flank or not at the discretion of 
 Schuyler, who lay in Burgoyne's front, and of Lincoln and Gates, 
 who hung on his left. The military cue of the Americans was not 
 only to allow, but also in a sense to entice, the whole British army 
 as far away as possible from its base of supplies in Canada, and not 
 to fight the main body until it reached ground of Schuyler's own 
 choosing, well down the Hudson, wearied with a long march and 
 impoverished as to supplies. Accordingly, it was not good strategy 
 to make any considerable attack on the enemy's flank in motion 
 down the river ; and, therefore, bodies of New England militia in 
 very considerable numbers were dismissed the last of July to their 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. Ill 
 
 homes, and more of them again about two weeks later. We have 
 already given, a few pages back, a letter entire from General Gates 
 to Colonel Simonds, implying the military grounds of their tem- 
 porary dismissal. Food was also very scarce in the American camps 
 as well as in the British camps to the west of the river, and most 
 of the militia were farmers, and their harvests at home needed their 
 strong hands; so that the general dismissal of the militiamen on 
 the one hand, and the sending out of Burgoyne's strong columns to 
 his left ordered to gather food wherever they could find it, and aim- 
 ing at supposed large " stores " at Bennington, were, to a considerable 
 degree, brought about by the selfsame cause, a scarcity of supplies 
 in both armies. Moreover, Burgoyne had been made to believe that 
 a majority of the people on the "New Hampshire Grants and in that 
 quarter generally were friendly to the royal cause, and were ready 
 to join it whenever an opportunity should be given. There was a 
 good deal of basis in fact for this supposition of the British com- 
 mander. 
 
 General Stark with about eight hundred New Hampshire troops 
 had united at Manchester with the Vermont militia under the com- 
 mand of Colonel Seth Warner, to the number of about six hundred ; 
 and on the 9th of August had moved forward to Bennington with 
 his full force, excepting Warner's own regiment. On the 13th 
 Stark received express intelligence that a large party of the enemy, 
 with some artillery and Indians, had just left Cambridge and were 
 advancing toward Bennington. He immediately rallied what forces 
 he had, sent orders back to Manchester for Warner's regiment, and 
 united with the Committee of Safety then in session at the Cata- 
 mount Tavern in an animated call upon the neighboring Berkshire 
 militia. As most if not all of the companies of his regiment had 
 recently been dismissed from the front to their homes, Colonel 
 Simonds had remained in Bennington in constant counsel with 
 General Stark and with the Committee of Safety. Fortunately we 
 possess the contemporary and official evidence of all these facts. 
 
 The military call of Stark and Simonds was so emphatic and 
 effective as to bring within forty-eight hours into the former's camp, 
 now moved forward about five miles to the west of the Bennington 
 meeting-house, at least five hundred fighting men from the Berkshire 
 towns, of whom one hundred and sixty certainly were from Wil- 
 liamstown, sixty-five of them under Captain Samuel Clark of South 
 Williamstown, and the rest under Captain Nehemiah Smedley of the 
 North Part. For militia purposes the town had been for some time 
 divided into two sections by a line running east and west over Stone 
 
112 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Hill, placing about two-fifths of the then population south of the 
 line. None of Captain Clark's men, as the names appear on the 
 official muster-roll still extant in the archives at Boston, seemed to 
 have lived north of this line. Captain Smedley's men, all of whom 
 probably had their homes north of the line, sent in no claim for pay 
 for their services at Bennington; and consequently there is no 
 muster-roll of their names, as there is of all the rest of the compa- 
 nies from Berkshire ; but the proof is conclusive on other grounds 
 and from tradition, that there were at least one hundred of them. 
 The lack most felt, at Bennington, was of lead from which to mould 
 bullets for the impending battle. The official Journal of the Com- 
 mittee of Safety commences on the 15th of August, the day before 
 the fighting took place ; and its very first entries, which will be 
 quoted verbally in a moment, relate to a pressing message sent to 
 Williamstown and to Lanesboro by a mounted express to obtain, 
 lead, and to a personal order sent through the same messenger by 
 Colonel Simonds to his wife at their tavern-stand in Williamstown,. 
 for the same purpose of securing lead to melt up into bullets. 
 
 STATE OF VERMONT. 
 Bennington. In Council of Safety, August 15, 1777. 
 
 SIR : You are hereby desired to forward to this place, by express, all the 
 lead you can possibly collect in your vicinity ; as it is expected, every minute, 
 an action will commence between our troops and the enemies, within four or 
 five miles of this place, and the lead will be positively wanted. 
 
 By order of Council, 
 
 PAUL SPOONER, 
 
 D. Setfy. 
 THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY, WILLIAMSTOWN. 
 
 The same request sent to the Chairman of the Committee, Lanes- 
 boro, the same date, sent by Jedediah Eeed, Pawlet. 
 
 MADAM : Please to send by the bearer, Jedediah Reed, 6 or 7 pounds of lead, 
 by Col. Simonds' order. 
 
 By order of Council, 
 
 PAUL SPOONER, 
 
 MRS. SIMONDS. D. Setfy. 
 
 Whether this formal messenger got back to Bennington with bits 
 of unmolten lead in time to have them made into missiles before 
 the two fights on the Walloomsac, the afternoon of the next day, 
 may well be questioned; but something much better than these 
 from Lanesboro and Williamstown certainly reached that point of 
 conflict in ample season. These towns, as such, had their own 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 113 
 
 stocks of powder and lead, to tap which this messenger rode forth, 
 and with which their own militia men were furnished in time. Cap- 
 tain Daniel Brown took up from Lanesboro a fine company of forty- 
 six men, mustered in on the 14th and six days in service, of which 
 the two lieutenants, Isaac Nash and Abel Prindle, were killed in 
 battle, and these two names are inscribed in the town records as 
 those of patriots and martyrs, while the General Court afterwards 
 reimbursed the town of Lanesboro in 160 pounds of powder and 580 
 pounds of lead and 240 flints, expended at Bennington from their 
 own stock. The small and hilly town of New Ashford, through 
 
 SIMONDS TAVERN-STAND IN 1777, 
 PRINDLE FARMHOUSE IN 1897. 
 
 which both special messenger Reed and the Lanesboro militia com- 
 pany passed twice, sent Captain Amariah Babbitt and nineteen men, 
 sworn to before Jedediah Hubbell, chairman of the Committee of 
 Safety in Lanesboro. New Ashford has since become almost depopu- 
 lated; but here are twenty names Captain Babbitt and company 
 on its contemporary muster-roll who are likely to remain known 
 citizens of that little borough till the end of Time ! Hancock, though 
 there were many Tories there and some in Lanesboro also, responded 
 to Stark's call in Captain William Douglas and forty-six rank and 
 file, whose names are on the pay-roll in Boston ; and besides, the 
 same captain, son to Asa Douglas, the first settler in that region and 
 ancestor to Stephen A. Douglas, took the same company in less than 
 i 
 
114 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 a month after the battle to Pawlet, Vermont, seventy-six miles. 
 Captain Samuel Low took forty-four soldiers from Cheshire to the 
 Bennington battle, not indeed going over the whole distance in a 
 day or two before, for the same captain and company had been doing 
 duty from the last day of June to the 14th day of August at a place 
 called " Sancoik " [St. Croix], on the Walloomsac, on which last date 
 they were summoned to Bennington, over the very road along which 
 fell the fighting but two days later. An independent company of 
 volunteers from New Providence, then a new settlement of Rhode 
 Island men on the northwestern edge of Cheshire, now called " Staf- 
 ford's Hill," though it is bare of people, rallied to the number of 
 forty-one under Colonel Joab Stafford, consisting also of some men 
 from Lanesboro and East Hoosac (now Adams) and Gageborough 
 (now Windsor), on the 14th of August, and did their share in the 
 battle of the 16th, where Colonel Stafford was severely wounded 
 in the foot while helping to storm the Tory breastwork ; and it was 
 this same Joab Stafford of New Providence and Stephen Davis of 
 "William stown who conjointly petitioned the General Court for re- 
 imbursement for powder and balls and flints expended from the 
 stocks of the several towns, and in response there was voted to New 
 Providence 40 Ibs. of powder and 120 Ibs. of lead and 72 flints, in 
 addition to the respective amounts voted to Lanesboro and Williams- 
 town. Though Colonel Stafford picked up some volunteers for his 
 company in those parts of East Hoosac nearest to his " Hill," Cap- 
 tain Enos Parker's regular company of Colonel Simonds's regiment, 
 fifty-one men, marched from East Hoosac to Bennington, August 
 14-19, as that roll says, twenty miles from home. Jericho, baptized 
 only the year before into the patriotic name of Hancock, besides 
 Captain Douglas's company of twenty-six, sent also to Bennington, 
 August 14-20, Captain Stephen Smith's company of thirty-one militia- 
 men of Colonel Simonds's regiment; and we must remember that, 
 if Williamstown had in 1777 two separate companies of its militia, 
 Hancock was more likely to have them ; because Hancock is still 
 sixteen miles long, and was then much wider than now, for the final 
 New York boundary line sheared off in 1787 a considerable part of 
 Hancock into that State. All these companies, except Stafford's, 
 are enrolled as belonging to Colonel Benj. Simonds's regiment. These 
 men amount in round numbers to four hundred and forty. 
 
 But this was not the whole of Berkshire's contribution to the 
 battle of Bennington. There were two other organized regiments in 
 the county at that time, Colonel Brown's and Colonel Ashley's. 
 From Pittsfield marched in haste Lieutenant William Ford of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTOK. 115 
 
 Brown's regiment with twenty-two men, but there were individuals 
 in that number who counted for ten in the fight that followed. Par- 
 son Allen, the chaplain of that little detachment, is the most pic- 
 turesque figure in the whole movement to and on the Walloomsac on 
 either side. It was raining furiously when these men reached 
 Stark's camp some time in the evening or night of the 15th, and it 
 continued to x rain during most of the next forenoon. Allen was 
 sore, as was many another Berkshire officer, over the recent dismis- 
 sals and return from the front of so many companies, in conjunction 
 with this sudden and most urgent call on them to double on their 
 tracks. In his first interview with Stark he let fly the common dis- 
 content, and added the threat that, if they were not given fight this 
 time, they would never turn out again ! The story goes, that the 
 general asked the parson if he wanted to turn out then in the dark 
 and in the rain; and promised that, if daylight and fair weather 
 should ever come again, the Berkshire men should have the fighting 
 to their hearts' content. Parson Allen did brave duty as a common 
 soldier with his musket at the Tory breastworks that afternoon. 
 What is even better than that, he left on record as an eye-witness 
 three or four of its most telling incidents. From Richmond marched 
 Captain Aaron Rowley with twenty-six men, also of Colonel Brown's 
 regiment, and with them went Lieutenant-Colonel David Rossiter of 
 Richmond, no common man. He fought on the Walloomsac like 
 a born soldier as he was. A single line of Parson Allen's hasty 
 sketch has immortalized him. Captain Enoch Noble of Colonel 
 Ashley's regiment was in service twenty days, August 1-20, at Ben- 
 nington, "at request of General Stark, and order of General Fellows 
 and ye Committee of Safety, forty miles from home." These were 
 Stockbridge men. There is another roll from Colonel Ashley's regi- 
 ment, Lieutenant Samuel Warner, twenty-nine men, August 15-24, 
 ten days. There may be other rolls extant of Berkshire men in the 
 battle of Bennington, but at any rate these were found in a single 
 search among the archives, which, in such matters, is rarely ex- 
 haustive. No reference is here made to Captain Solomon and his 
 Stockbridge Indians, who are known to have been there, nor to vol- 
 unteers from Lenox, who are believed to have been there. Linus 
 Parker of Lenox, a sharp-shooter in war-time and a hunter in time 
 of peace, was certainly there, and used to tell of one phase of the 
 fight, vivid but horrible, not mentioned by any other eye-witness. 
 Besides the militiamen from New Providence under Colonel Staf- 
 ford, Sepp Ives of that precinct was killed in the battle from out of 
 Colonel Warner's Continental regiment. Isaac Cummings of Wil- 
 
116 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 liamstown was also in that regiment at the time of the battle. The 
 evidence, accordingly, is direct and irrefragable, that something over 
 five hundred armed men from Berkshire County were in the two 
 fights on the Walloomsac on the 16th of August. 
 
 On the other hand, Colonel Baum with his Hessians and Tories, 
 and with Indians in his front, advanced on the morning of the 14th 
 along the road, which ran then just as it runs now, toward what is 
 now called the village of North Hoosac, where Colonel Gregg with 
 two hundred New Hampshire men, sent by Stark the day before, 
 stood guard over a grist-mill which then contained considerable sup- 
 plies of grain and flour. As Gregg had been sent out only to recon- 
 noitre and report, he of course retreated before the enemy, who 
 were only one mile in his rear, until he met Stark advancing also 
 with his whole force, which he immediately drew up in order of 
 battle. Baum, who had stopped long enough at the grist-mill to 
 write back to General Burgoyne using a flour-barrel as a desk 
 a buoyant despatch announcing Gregg's retreat as a sort of victory, 
 soon perceived the Americans to be too strong to be attacked with 
 his present force in their position, halted, and commenced to in- 
 trench himself on a commanding hill to his left on the north of the 
 road, and close up to the bridge over the Walloomsac, which here 
 runs nearly due south. He also sent back an express to Colonel 
 Breimann to hasten to his support. Naturally failing to draw them 
 from their strong position, Stark fell back about a mile on the road 
 toward Bennington to or just over the line bounding New York and 
 Vermont with his main force, but leaving a small party to watch the 
 enemy and skirmish with them. The next day and night and the 
 following morning were too rainy for a general engagement with 
 firelocks, and this unavoidable delay not only permitted the enemy 
 to strengthen their fortifications on the hill north of the road and 
 west of the bridge, but also to throw up a pretty strong breastwork 
 on the side-hill east of the stream and south of the road. This has 
 always been called the "Tory Breastwork." Baum's choice of 
 ground for a defensive battle was not so bad as it would seem to be, 
 if we did not remember that the Walloomsac here was small and 
 fordable at all places, and that the two works were in plain sight of 
 each other. The grist-mill at North Hoosac, from which Gregg had 
 hastened, and which Baum too had left about three miles behind 
 him to take up his defensive positions near the bridge, at which mill 
 it may fairly be said the battle began on Thursday, and near which 
 it certainly ended on Saturday, remained a long time an object of 
 much curiosity. It was built the year before the battle, and the 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 117 
 
 writer himself has seen on different parts of the old frame two 
 scratch-awl marks "1776" such as carpenters in those days 
 used to leave behind them in their building. A tumbling stream, 
 called Little White Creek, falling from the north into the Walloom- 
 sac at right angles, carried and still carries the mill-wheel. In 
 some sense the ground from this point to that where the Walloomsac 
 itself drops into the Hoosac also at right angles is holy ground. At 
 any rate it has borne more or less for a couple of centuries a holy 
 name, St. Croix blessed cross. Written proof, even clear tradi- 
 tion, is wanting to the writer's firm belief, that some Jesuit priest 
 or priests from Canada, such as those who founded mission stations 
 among the Indians all along the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, 
 from the Kennebec to the waters of the upper Mississippi, like 
 Father Jogues himself, who named our Lake George "St. Sacra- 
 ment" in 1646, may have at some time visited the region of the 
 Walloomsac with a missionary intent, and have left upon it a sweet 
 name corresponding to its own natural beauty, which two centuries 
 have not yet effaced. French missionaries from Canada discovered 
 and described Lake George long before Father Jogues christened it 
 so well. How otherwise came that name to attach itself, and to 
 attach itself so as to stick, to that particular strip of territory ? 
 The term was sometimes loosely applied to land as far west as Tya- 
 shoke or Buskirk's bridge; but it showed its most persistent grip 
 on the valley soil between the Egyptian cross at what is now Hoosac 
 Junction and that other similar cross at North Hoosac. More than 
 half of the contemporary references to the battle of Bennington, 
 whether these be British or German or Yankee, bring in as a local 
 designation some corruption or other of St. Croix, Sancoik being 
 perhaps the most common form. 
 
 The old grist-mill burned down on the 24th of October, 1896, and 
 so excellent was its construction and so large were the timbers that 
 the building burned fully two hours before it fell. It served as a 
 grist-mill just 120 years, 1776-1896. The following is an exact copy 
 of Colonel Baum's despatch to General Burgoyne, written in the 
 mill during his brief occupancy of it. The mill was then owned by 
 one Van Schaick, and the story goes that he turned over to the 
 British side in the hope of getting his pay for the contents of his 
 mill. Two days later the British were defeated, and Baum was 
 killed, and the quandam owner had to flee, leaving the mill and all 
 it contained behind him. 
 
118 WILL1AMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 SANCROICK, 14 Aug. 1777. 
 9 o'clock. 
 
 Col. Baum to General Burgoyne 
 
 Sir: 
 
 I have the honor to inform your excellency that I arrived here at eight 
 in the morning. 
 
 Having had intelligence of a party of the enemy being in possession of a mill 
 which they abandoned, but in their usual way fired from the bushes, and took 
 their road to Bennington, a savage was slightly wounded : they broke down the 
 bridge which retarded our march above an hour. 
 
 They left in the mill 1000 bushels of wheat, 20 bbl of salt and about 78 bbls 
 of very fine flour and 1000 worth of pearl and potash. I have ordered 30 pro- 
 vincials and an officer to gard the provisions and the pass of the bridge. 
 
 By five prisoners taken there that agree that 1500 to 1800 men are in Ben- 
 nington but are supposed to leave it on our approach. 
 
 I will proceed as far today as to fall on the enemy tomorrow early, and make 
 such disposition as I think necessary from the intelligence I receive. 
 
 The people are flecking in hourly but want to be armed. The savages cannot 
 be controlled they ruin and take everything they please. 
 
 I am your excellency's most obedient humble servant. 
 
 F. BAUM. 
 
 Beg your excellency to pardon the hurry of this letter it is wrote on the head 
 of a barrel. 
 
 GEN. BURGOYNE. 
 
 The 16th of August was a Saturday, and it was hot. So far as 
 the American militiamen were concerned, the battle was fought for 
 the most part in their shirt-sleeves. The long rain was over. The 
 contrast between dark and bright was strong and exhilarating, as 
 was also the contrast a few hours later between the dusk of evening 
 and the glow of victory. The central authority for the actual battle 
 on the Walloomsac is the copious letter of General Stark to General 
 Gates, written from Bennington six days after. In the intervening 
 time Stark had been sick and unable to write, but General Lincoln 
 had hurried down from the rear of Burgoyne to Bennington, as it 
 were, at the sound of the Hessian cannon, and he, though not an 
 eye-witness, had written to Gates, "and I," says Stark, "joined with 
 him in opinion on the subject of- his letter." Stark's own letter of 
 the 22d is a military letter from subordinate to superior, and lacks 
 of course all picturesque details, many of which have been supplied, 
 however, from equally well-authenticated sources. General Gates 
 had written to General Stark a congratulatory letter on the 19th, 
 "which," writes Stark on the 22d, "gave me great pleasure." The 
 plan of the battle, as it was actually fought, had been matured in a 
 council of war, to which Stark refers in his letter, at which Colonel 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 119 
 
 Seth Warner, whose residence was in Bennington and who knew all 
 the ground thoroughly in the region round about, was the chief 
 councillor. On him Stark relied implicitly both in council and in 
 action. " Colonel Warner's superior skill in the action was of extraor- 
 dinary service to me." The plan was to deceive Baum by sending 
 two detachments on a pretty wide circuit round his right and left to 
 unite in his rear, and to attack at a given signal, while there was 
 " sent one hundred men in their front to draw away their attention 
 that way." The Tory breastwork east of the river was to be sur- 
 rounded and attacked at the same time, while the small reserve 
 under Stark himself was to act in front of Baum and to the left of 
 the breastwork, though on lower ground. " I pursued my plan, de- 
 tached Colonel Nichols with two hundred men to attack them in the 
 rear; I also sent Colonel Herrick with three hundred men in the 
 rear of their right, both to join, and when joined to attack" Baum's 
 intrenchment. Colonels Hubbard and Stickney in command of two 
 of the three New Hampshire regiments, with Colonel Simonds and 
 his Berkshire men, were designated to surround and to attack the 
 Tory breastwork, in command of which was Francis Pfister, a retired 
 British officer of the last French war, who resided at what is now 
 known as the "Tibbetts place," about half a mile west of Hoosac 
 Four Corners. In the fight that followed, Pfister was mortally 
 wounded, and among his effects was found his commission on parch- 
 ment as "Lieutenant in His Majesty's Sixtieth or Royal American 
 Regiment of Foot," dated Sept. 18, 1760, and signed by Sir Jeffrey 
 Amherst. He was commonly called by his neighbors Colonel Pfister. 
 It was to be noted, however, that this commission was signed a year 
 after General Wolfe's final battle at Quebec. 
 
 "About three o'clock we got all ready for the attack. Colonel 
 Nichols begun the same which was followed by all the rest. The 
 remainder of my little army I pushed up in the front, and in a few 
 minutes the action begun in general, it lasted two hours, the hottest 
 I ever saw in my life [Stark was in the thick of the battle of Bunker 
 Hill] ; it represented one continual clap of thunder, however, the 
 enemy was obliged to give way, and leave their field pieces and all 
 their baggage behind them. They were all environed with two 
 breast works with their artillery, but our martial courage proved 
 too hard for them." The Tory breastwork was three-quarters of a 
 mile southeast of Baum's hill intrenchment, and the bridge over the 
 river was halfway between the two, and the two brass field-pieces 
 were placed on the brow of Baum's hill, high enough to command 
 the road and the bridge and the plain to the east of the bridge, 
 
120 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 which Stark in his letter twice calls " the front." The two intrench- 
 ments seem to have given way at just about the same time ; never- 
 theless, Linus Parker of Lenox, who was an eye-witness, used to tell 
 the tale of Tories trying to escape from their breastwork and to 
 clamber up the opposite hill toward Baum's men, being shot in 
 numbers by the Americans and their bodies rolling down the steep 
 into the Walloomsac. Captain Ebenezer Webster of Salisbury, New 
 Hampshire, father of the great orator and statesman, is said to have 
 been the first to leap over the barrier of earth and logs at the Tory 
 breastwork. Stories have been rife in Berkshire for a century of 
 the handy way in which Parson Allen of Pittsfield handled his 
 musket that afternoon at the same post. Joab Stafford of Stafford's 
 Hill carried away from that place a lame foot, to become to him for 
 life, and to others as well, a reminder of that struggle between 
 opposing countrymen. It is probable that most of the Berkshire 
 soldiers killed that day in battle were killed there ; and here is a 
 partial explanation of the greater bitterness felt toward the Tories, 
 and the far worse treatment accorded to them as prisoners of war, 
 than fell to the lot of the hired Hessians. Baum's men were driven 
 down the hill toward the northeast, and easily fell as prisoners of 
 war into the clutches of the Americans. Dr. Oliver Partridge of 
 Stockbridge, the surgeon of Berkshire, professionally examined the 
 wound of Colonel Baum, and pronounced it mortal, as it proved to 
 be in a few hours ; Colonel Pfister also died at about the same time 
 and in the same house, to which they were separately brought, a 
 mile and a half east of the battle-ground, and both were buried 
 together, the German and the Briton, on the bank of the little 
 river a few rods below where stood, in 1861, the paper-mill of 
 Hunter & Co., but no man knoweth the exact place of their sepul- 
 ture unto this day. The sword that Baum wore in the battle is 
 well preserved in the Eobinson family at Bennington ; and the com- 
 mission and other relics of Pfister have been preserved in the 
 Armstrong family at Dorset, Jonathan Armstrong of that place 
 being one of the two captors of the wounded man. 
 
 Very wisely indeed, as only fully appeared in connection with the 
 building of the battle monument at Bennington a century after- 
 ward, the militiamen from the three States concerned were much 
 intermixed in the several detachments as they fought in the field. 
 No one part of the two fights could be truthfully exalted at the 
 expense of the others, and no one of the three States could at any 
 time boast itself over either of the other two. Colonel Herrick, with 
 his three hundred men, mentioned by Stark as having been sent to 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 121 
 
 the rear of Baum's right, was a Vermonter and so were his men. 
 Colonel Nichols and his two hundred men sent to the rear of Baum's 
 left were from New Hampshire. The two parties when united were 
 to cooperate under Nichols in chief command at that point. Two 
 full companies from the single town of Bennington, one under Cap- 
 tain Samuel Robinson and the other under Captain Elijah Dewey, 
 the original muster-rolls of both companies being extant to this day, 
 Robinson's holding seventy-seven names and Dewey's eighty 
 names, made up about half of Colonel Herrick's soldiers that 
 day, the rest being Herrick's own volunteer Rangers and a portion 
 of Colonel Brush's Vermont regiment (a part of these being also 
 from Bennington). So at the Tory breastwork. Colonels Hubbard 
 and Stickney with their two hundred men were from New Hamp- 
 shire, but Colonel Simonds and most of his Berkshire companies 
 certainly were there too. Who constituted the one hundred men 
 used as a feint in Baum's " front to draw away their attention that 
 way " will never be known to a certainty. They may well have 
 been Berkshire men in part. Stark kept a small reserve besides 
 these one hundred men, who in all probability fell back to him when 
 the fighting began in earnest, for they were of no use any longer as 
 a feint, or it may be that it was to them as a nucleus, that Stark 
 "pushed up the remainder of my little army in the front." It is 
 almost certain that Stark's reserve, both before and after it was thus 
 pushed up to the front, held forces from all three of the States. 
 Where is boasting then ? It is excluded. Colonel Seth Warner of 
 Vermont, holding a Continental commission, the only national officer 
 on the ground, was personally with Stark in this first action, and 
 rendered, as Stark says, " extraordinary service to me." The nature 
 of this extraordinary service, or at least the most essential parts of 
 it, we shall shortly see. 
 
 When Baum and his troops were crowded off the hill and were 
 taken prisoners, and Pfister and his Tories were driven out of their 
 breastwork into a similar welcome, Stark and all hands supposed 
 that the battle was over. The men largely broke ranks and dis- 
 persed to gather their plunder, "as I promised in my order that the 
 soldiers should have all the plunder taken in the enemy's camp " ; which 
 included, of course, several casks of inspiring liquids, without which 
 German officers and troops would not have gone off on such a cam- 
 paign as this was ; there were shown at the centennial of the battle 
 some staves of one of these supposed casks; Stark himself would 
 not have come so far without a full supply of what was then re- 
 garded in New Hampshire as "the needful"; and tradition has 
 
122 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 always been firm in asserting, that the victorious officers and troops 
 were more or less demoralized in these ways very shortly after the 
 hostile camps had surrendered. The prisoners, however, were now 
 collected together and sent off under a strong guard to the meeting- 
 house in Bennington. The late Governor Hiland Hall, the historian 
 of Vermont, writes of these critical moments, " and Stark, unsuspi- 
 cious of danger, suffered his men to scatter in search of refreshments 
 and plunder." Just then word came to headquarters that Baum's 
 second line, under Colonel Breimann, was rapidly approaching, and 
 only two miles off. Parson Allen, an eye-witness, says, " Even Stark 
 was confused at the news of Breimann's approach with six hundred 
 and fifty fresh troops after he supposed the battle was all over." 
 There is evidence, that Stark thought it best to pull his men back in 
 the presence of this new danger from the scene of the recent action, 
 and reorganize them in a better battle order; but Warner was his 
 good angel and the wiser military leader, and rendered now that 
 " extraordinary service" of which Stark speaks in his letter to 
 Gates ; the substance of his counsel and action was, Let's hold the 
 ground here and now. On came Breimann with two brass field-pieces, 
 quite similar to those of Baum, just captured, and opened a sharp 
 fire from these and from small arms, so that after a little the rela- 
 tively few Americans that had been rallied with difficulty to meet 
 this new attack began slowly to fall back. Just at this time, when 
 the Germans had begun to exult in the prospect of an easy victory, 
 the remnant of Warner's Continental regiment, consisting of scarcely 
 more than one hundred men, but fresh and strong, and seeing their 
 chance to gain a good share yet in the glories of the day, marched 
 down the Walloomsac and through the more or less disorganized 
 masses of the militia to the front, and helped to bring the Germans 
 to a stand. Stark writes: "I pushed forward as many of the men 
 as I could to their assistance. The battle continued obstinate on 
 both sides till sunset ; the enemy was obliged to retreat ; we pursued 
 them till dark, but had daylight lasted one hour longer we should 
 have taken the whole body of them." 
 
 This was the Second Fight, commonly so called, lasting nearly 
 two hours, a running fight extending over about four miles along the 
 Walloomsac road and ending at the grist-mill on the Little White 
 Creek, whence Baum had sent back his despatch to Burgoyne, writ- 
 ten on the head of a flour-barrel. It is only just to say that Berk- 
 shire comes in for a full share of the honors of the Second Fight 
 also. Parson Allen's hasty and imperfect, but yet most interesting, 
 sketch of that fight, written for his neighbors and parishioners in 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 123 
 
 Pittsfield, has immortalized the names of two Berkshire men, and 
 indeed the whole regiment, in connection with that onset that turned 
 back the Hessian tide into defeat and rout. He says : " And being 
 collected and directed by Col. Eossiter, and reenforced by Major 
 Stratton, renewed the fight with redoubled fury." It is plain that 
 the younger men came into prominence at the close of the day. 
 Warner was sixteen years younger than Stark, and Eossiter was 
 eleven years younger than Simonds. Eossiter was but lieutenant- 
 colonel, a well-to-do farmer of Eichmond, and Stratton was but major, 
 the first settler of the small hamlet of South Williamstown, but 
 these two with their brave followers bore off the last honors for 
 Berkshire. Historical truth is always consistent with itself. Nearly 
 sixty years after the battle one of the New Hampshire participants 
 in this final push for victory, a veteran of between eighty and ninety 
 years, then dwelling on the upper Connecticut, in telling over his 
 recollections of it to an ear that listened, ascribed a chief efficiency 
 in it to " a major riding on a black horse" Here it comes out again. 
 That major, beyond a reasonable question, was Isaac Stratton ; and 
 local tradition, though its whispers are now faint and few, has busied 
 itself in one way or another with a horse that Major Stratton rode 
 in the battle of Bennington. 
 
 The children of Isaac Stratton and Mary Fox, his wife, all born 
 in South Williamstown where the parents lie buried, were as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 PHEBE, born April 9, 1762. 
 
 MOSES, born June 18, 1764 ; died Oct. 7, 1767. 
 
 MARY, born April 6, 1769. 
 
 HULDAH, born March 14, 1772. 
 
 RACHEL, born Sept. 1, 1775. 
 
 Phebe, the eldest child of Isaac Stratton, married at eighteen 
 years James Sloan, possibly a son, probably a brother, of General 
 Samuel Sloan, and the pair had born to them at South Williams- 
 town : 
 
 CLARA, Oct. 8, 1780. 
 
 OLIVE, Feb. 3, 1784. 
 
 ISAAC STRATTON, Dec. 6, 1785. 
 
 A remarkably noteworthy posterity sprung from these two mar- 
 riages ; and the writer's friend, George M. Elwood of Eochester, New 
 York, himself by no means least noteworthy among them, has gath- 
 ered memorials of many of them, covering the century now ending. 
 
 In finally dismissing from these pages the picturesque Parson 
 Allen of Pittsfield, the reader may be indulged with the following 
 
124 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 verses by Wallace Bruce, read by him at the centennial celebration 
 of the battle in 1877. 
 
 The " Catamount Tavern " is lively to-night ; 
 
 The " boys " of Vermont and New Hampshire are here, 
 Drawn up in line in the gloaming light 
 
 To greet Parson Allen with shout and with cheer. 
 
 Over mountain and valley from Pittsfield Green, 
 Through the driving rain of that August day, 
 
 The "flock" marched on with martial mien, 
 And the Parson rode in his " one-horse shay." 
 
 "Three cheers for old Berkshire ! " the Gen'ral said, 
 As the boys of New England drew up face to face, 
 
 " Baum bids us a dinner to-morrow to spread, 
 And the Parson is here to say us the grace." 
 
 " The lads who are with me have come here to fight, 
 And we know of no grace," was the Parson's reply, 
 
 " Save the name of Jehovah, our Country and right, 
 Which your own Ethan Allen pronounced at Fort Ti. n 
 
 " To-morrow," said Stark, " there'll be fighting to do, 
 If you think you can wait till the morning's light, 
 
 And, Parson, I'll conquer the British with you, 
 Or my Molly will be a widow to-night." 
 
 What the Parson dreamed in that Bennington camp, 
 Neither Yankee nor Prophet would dare to guess ; 
 
 A vision, perhaps, of the David stamp, 
 
 With a mixture of Cromwell and good Queen Bess. 
 
 But we know the result of that glorious day, 
 And the victory won ere the night came down, 
 
 How Warner charged in the bitter fray, 
 
 With Simonds and Hobart and old John Brown. 
 
 And how in a lull of the three hours' fight 
 
 The Parson harangued the Tory line, 
 As he stood on a stump with his musket bright, 
 
 And sprinkled his text with the powder fine. 
 
 " The sword of the Lord is our battle-cry ! 
 
 A refuge sure in the hour of need, 
 And Freedom and Faith can never die, 
 
 Is article first of the Puritan creed ! " 
 
 "Perhaps the occasion was rather rash," 
 
 He said to his comrades after the rout, 
 " For behind a bush I saw a flash, 
 
 But ' I fired that way and put it out.' " 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 125 
 
 And many the sayings, eccentric and queer, 
 
 That were handed about the country side, 
 Quoted in Berkshire for many a year, 
 
 Of the Pittsfield march and the Parson's ride. 
 
 Honor to Stark and his resolute men 
 To the mountain boys all honor and praise, 
 
 And with shout and cheer we welcome again 
 The Parson who came in his one-horse chaise. 
 
 Colonel Breimann's dismounted dragoons left the grist-mill behind 
 them, headed toward the Hudson, in greater haste than Colonel 
 Gregg had left it, headed the other way, in the forenoon of the 
 14th. They could not even get away with their two brass field- 
 pieces. The traces attaching the horses to the guns were cut by 
 rapid sabre-strokes, the horses were mounted, and the two cannon 
 left in the road. Stark writes : " We recovered [in the two actions] 
 four pieces of brass cannon, seven hundred stand of arms, and brass- 
 barrelled drums, several Hessian swords, about seven hundred pris- 
 oners, two hundred and seven dead on the spot, the number of 
 wounded is yet unknown. That part of the enemy that made their 
 escape marched all night and we returned to our camp." The flour 
 and grain captured by Baum in the then new but late very old grist- 
 mill of course fell back into American hands on Breimann's sudden 
 retreat. But they did not think it safe to leave those provisions 
 there in the mill. Two heavy detachments, and the second one 
 quite unexpectedly, had already come over the good road through 
 Cambridge from Burgoyne's camp on the Hudson River, hardly more 
 than twenty miles away ; what was there to hinder another and a 
 larger corps out of the same army from thundering over the same 
 road to retrieve the losses of Baum and Breimann ? There is proof 
 in plenty that this query was in the minds of the Yankees, and con- 
 tinued there for a number of days. In the first place, the grain and 
 flour in the mill must be removed to Pittsfield. We learn this solely 
 from the heading on the muster-roll of the company from South 
 Williamstown. This heading reads as follows: "A pay roll of 
 Capt. Sam. Clark's Co. in Col. B. Simonds Keg. Militia County Berk- 
 shire, who were in the battle of Walloomsack near Bennington on 
 16 th August, who marched by order of Col. Simonds including time 
 to return home after they were dismissed from guarding provisions 
 to Pittsfield being 20 miles from home. Aug. 14-21 8 days." These 
 provisions guarded to Pittsfield by the South Williamstown men can 
 have been no other than those in the grist-mill. There were indeed 
 certain public " Stores " in Bennington, or at least Burgoyne sup- 
 
126 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 posed there were, and his original orders to Baum imply their 
 existence and importance ; but Bennington is on a high and easily 
 defended hill, is fully ten miles farther into the country than the 
 grist-mill was, and there would have been rationally no thought of 
 removing " stores " from such a stronghold to Pittsfield. The " Pay- 
 roll " referred to will now be given in full, as carefully copied from 
 the original one in the archives at Boston : 
 
 Sam. Clark Capt. 
 
 David Johnson 1 st Lt. 
 Timothy Johnson 2 d Lt. 
 Will Spencer Serg. 
 Joshua Smedley Serg. 
 Nathan Wood Serg. 
 Jonathan Hull 
 Jonathan Sherwood 
 James M c Master 
 Ezekiel Porter 
 Stephen Sherwood 
 Samuel Dunning 
 Jason Wood 
 Zadock Clark 
 Ez. Hawes 
 Dudley Hamilton 
 John Murphy 
 Jesse Saxton 
 John Eaymond 
 William Young 
 Andrew Young 
 Charles Sabin 
 Josiah Williams 
 John M c Master 
 Thomas Howe 
 Aaron Deming 
 Timothy Sherwood 
 John Torrey 
 Samuel Mills 
 Thomas Morrison 
 Daniel Foot 
 Jon th Hall (or Hull) 
 Daniel Brewster 
 
 Elias Wright 
 Justice Wright 
 Elijah Lamb 
 Daniel Brewster 
 John Stratton 
 Abner Eaton 
 Jacob Galusha 
 Joseph Thayer 
 Mark Crofoot 
 Ard Roberts 
 Lemuel Lewis 
 Matthew Dunning 
 David Dunning 
 Seth Holmes 
 Sam 1 Holmes 
 Capt. Samuel Sloan 
 Lt. Elijah Thomas 
 Lt. David Johnson 
 Lt. Daniel Burbank 
 Joseph Crofoot 
 Isaac Meacham 
 Charles Hamilton 
 Elijah Rich 
 Eli Cowles 
 
 Bartholomew Woodcock 
 Jonathan Giles 
 Hezekiah Brown 
 Ichabod Tuttle 
 Aaron Wood 
 Silas Hamilton 
 Isaac Holmes 
 Isaac Sexton 
 
 Here are sixty-five names. Nothing is known to throw suspicion 
 on the correctness of this roll. Nevertheless, certain regrets will 
 start that it was not made up and sworn to in the ways then usual. 
 The list seems to have been made out from memory nearly four 
 months after the service was rendered, as appears from the following 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 127 
 
 note at the end, which is unusual in that class of papers at that 
 time : " Williamstown, 6 Dec. 1777. This may certify that the men 
 named in this pay-roll continued in service till discharged by the 
 general, per Isaac Stratton, Major." These men were all neighbors 
 of Stratton at South Williamstown. He had long been accustomed, 
 as one of the chief men there, to draw their deeds and make out 
 other papers for them, and they naturally desired him to certify their 
 identity and fidelity, especially as they had been under his eye in 
 the last rush of the second fight on the Walloomsac. The roll, 
 however, was not sworn to till nearly three months later; for it 
 bears a second addendum dated March 23, 1778, "Sworn to by 
 Capt. Clark before Charles Goodrich, J. P., Pittsfield." 
 
 This old muster-roll with its two postscripts yields several inter- 
 esting items of information. (1) They left South Williamstown 
 Thursday the 14th, and got back home again from Pittsfield, after 
 guarding the provisions thither, on the next Friday, the 21st, 
 eight days. Good, and even great, service rendered in a short time. 
 (2) Major Stratton says that they "continued in service till dis- 
 charged by the general." This can mean no other than General John 
 Stark, unless General Benj. Lincoln had gotten down to Bennington 
 from the rear of Burgoyne as early as Wednesday, the 19th. This 
 is more likely than the other supposition ; for Stark, as a general of 
 New Hampshire militia only, would hardly have felt competent to 
 dismiss to their homes Massachusetts militia. On the other hand, 
 Lincoln was a Massachusetts major-general at the opening of the 
 war, and was appointed by Congress a Continental major-general in 
 February, 1777. In September he joined General Gates in front of 
 Burgoyne as second in command. (3) We may note in this muster- 
 roll, and in many later ones, that militia officers of considerable rank 
 had no objection to serving as privates in companies commanded 
 by their juniors. Captain Sloan, Lieutenant Johnson, Lieutenant 
 Thomas, Lieutenant Burbank, are down in the list as privates. 
 Lieutenant Johnson and Charles Sabin of this roll were among the 
 "famine-proof veterans" that went up the Kennebec with Arnold a 
 year and a half before. (4) This roll does not contain the name of 
 a single man who is now known to have lived north of a military 
 line dividing the town for militia purposes into two nearly equal 
 parts. There had been, accordingly, two militia companies in the 
 town for a good while. Of course the north part, as the first settled 
 and as containing more arable land, was more densely populated in 
 1777. If the south part sent sixty-five men to Bennington battle in 
 Captain Clark's militia company, the north part, where the colonel 
 
128 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 lived and where the only meeting-house stood, and which lay right 
 along the old military road down the Hoosac, would naturally have 
 sent certainly a hundred in Captain Smedley's larger company. Prob- 
 ably there were one-quarter more than that number. The tradition 
 is firm and explicit, that there were not men enough left at home 
 that day " to put out a fire." There were no known Tories here then, 
 nor at any other time. Elisha Baker, from whom our " Baker 
 Bridge" on the edge of Blackinton is named, was surely in the 
 fight, together with four of his own sons. (5) This list is called in 
 its heading a " pay-roll." It was made out and certified and sworn 
 to for the sake of drawing pay for the men from the Commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts. Similar pay-rolls were made out and sent to Bos- 
 ton in behalf of all of the other Berkshire companies engaged, ex- 
 cepting only the company from Williamstown North Part. Why 
 did not they send down such a roll for the same purpose ? To the 
 writer's knowledge, the answer to this question is not anywhere on 
 contemporary or other record. Yet he ventures to think the true 
 answer is not far to seek. Williamstown and Bennington were 
 almost one during the last third of the eighteenth century, in their 
 hopes and in their hazards and in their social life. There were many 
 intermarriages and other relationships. Ten years before the battle, 
 from Bennington men are known to have come to Williamstown to 
 a house-raising. The two towns seemed, then, to each other to be 
 very near together. Going to Bennington to fight in 1777 seemed 
 to the Williamstown people to be fighting for their own firesides a 
 little farther off. They knew that Burgoyne's toplofty orders to 
 Baum, if successful at Bennington, were to push on east as far as 
 the Connecticut River, either going or returning through Williams- 
 town. It did not seem the right thing to those neighbors and friends 
 to send in a claim for pay for doing just what the two Bennington 
 militia companies had done without a thought or chance, either then 
 or afterward, of any pecuniary reward. There was then no State gov- 
 ernment in Vermont, such as existed in Massachusetts. These men 
 from North Williamstown went because they wanted to go. They 
 went in the direct interest of their farms and families. Probably 
 one-half of them were pure volunteers, not being at that time en- 
 rolled in the militia company as too young or too old. Other proofs 
 of this oneness of feeling and interest will meet us as we go on. 
 
 The men of South Williamstown whose names adorn the muster- 
 roll but just now copied, were for the most part men of substance 
 and of good position. As to the majority of them, the present writer 
 knows where they lived, the boundaries of their farms, and the 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 129 
 
 towns in Connecticut or in the central and eastern parts of the Bay 
 State whence they came hither. The houses that some of them 
 dwelt in then are standing substantially intact now as the nineteenth 
 century is going out, and the original cellars of still more of them 
 can be certainly pointed out. A peculiar interest attaches to one 
 name of the list, that of Jonathan Giles. He had been a sea-cap- 
 tain. He had lived in Danvers with his wife Elisabeth, where four 
 of his nine children were born. The remaining five were born in 
 Williamstown, 1771-84. He lived in perhaps he built the gam- 
 brel-roofed house on the Sloan road, which was long occupied by Dr. 
 Young. He was well thought of by his neighbors, who often noticed 
 for themselves and transmitted to their children by a lively tradition 
 how restless he became when a brisk wind started up in a new 
 quarter, how he paced the road back and forth at such times from 
 his house past the store to the tavern, 
 
 In that habitual restlessness of foot 
 
 That haunts the sailor measuring o'er and o'er 
 
 His short domain upon the vessel's deck 
 
 While she pursues her course through the dreary sea. 
 
 Captain Giles died Oct. 18, 1805, aged 67, and left a large pos- 
 terity at the South Part. One of his daughters married Joseph 
 Torrey, son to that sturdy John Torrey who jogged along to the 
 Bennington battle in the same company with Jonathan Giles. The' 
 late Giles Torrey of excellent memory as farmer and citizen was 
 grandson to them both. The name Giles as a surname did not tarry 
 long in Williamstown after the death of the good Captain. His son 
 Daniel, born here in 1774, became a hard drinker, and migrated with 
 his family into St. Lawrence County, New York. Benjamin F. 
 Mills, himself a grandson to Samuel Mills, another prominent name 
 upon this same muster-roll, relates this incident of Daniel Giles, 
 while the latter was still a denizen at the South Part. The question 
 of temperance, or rather of total abstinence, thoroughly agitated every 
 part of New England in the decade of 1820-30. In Williamstown 
 the cider-brandy stills had wrought a work of desolation in many 
 families, and Professor Chester Dewey of the college became from 
 the best of motives an eloquent lecturer in the cause of total absti- 
 nence from all intoxicating drinks. In that capacity he lectured 
 one evening in the meeting-house at the South Part. Daniel Giles 
 and Eeuben Young occupied a pew together, while Professor Dewey 
 among other firm strokes described the feelings of a drunkard when 
 he was recovering from the effects of a drunken debauch. When 
 
130 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the lecture was over, Young asked Giles, in the hearing of Mills, 
 what he thought of it. " / swear he has been there ! " 
 
 A sonnet in memory of Jonathan Giles was written by Bliss Perry, 
 the writer's eldest son, and is herewith printed from the original 
 copy : 
 
 JONATHAN GILES. 
 
 Our Berkshire hills were able to beguile 
 
 An old sea-captain to desert the main 
 
 And settle down upon a farm again. 
 
 The sheltered peaceful vales could reconcile 
 
 His wandering mood to quiet for a while, 
 
 But when the west wind rustled in his grain, 
 
 He grew distraught, and eyed the weather-vane, 
 
 And paced his yard and made the neighbors smile. 
 
 We live in peace the narrow life of sense, 
 
 With common tasks content, but lest we grow 
 
 Too wedded to our fields, the free winds fall 
 
 Upon our foreheads, blown we know not whence, 
 
 Horizons fade, life widens, and we know 
 
 The narrow world around us is not all. 
 
 Statements of possible interest to posterity might still be made in 
 relation to a majority of these sixty -five names individually ; but it 
 is best to pass on to more general matters, after calling attention to 
 some distinctions between the two men, both of whom are placed 
 exactly alike on this list as " Lt. David Johnson." The only way 
 their contemporary townsmen could distinguish between them was 
 to call the one already characterized in these pages as one of 
 the party going up the Kennebec with Arnold in 1775 "Black 
 David," and the other, whose large farm lay on the southern half 
 of Stone Hill, "White David." The name of the Johnson Pass, 
 which lifts itself up over the Taconics in the rear of his home, will 
 perhaps long commemorate the former; the memory of the latter 
 may be pleasantly perpetuated by the fact, that his marriage with 
 Phebe Cole from Canaan, Connecticut, was the first celebrated here 
 by the Rev. Mr. Welch, the first pastor, and presumably the first in 
 town. White David was the first to begin to clear up in 1764 what 
 has long been known as the " Bulkley Farm." Both Johnsons left 
 a large posterity both here and elsewhere. Black David lived till 
 1836, when he was eighty-nine years old. " In memory of Mr. Uriah 
 Johnson, who died August the 1 st A.D. 1787 in the 77 th year of his 
 age." This is the epitaph on the tombstone at the South Part, of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 131 
 
 Black David's father. Barachiah Johnson, a brother of David, whose 
 farm lay near the south end of the Potter road, and Daniel Johnson, 
 another brother, who studied medicine here with Dr. Samuel Porter, 
 both removed to Otsego County, New York, where William Eaton 
 Johnson, a grandson of David, saw them in their old age. White 
 David Johnson became a very portly man in his old age, and moved 
 with many more from Wllliamstown to Granville, New York. A 
 son of his second wife, Mary Brewster, was Harry Johnson, who was 
 a member of the Massachusetts Legislature from Williamstown in 
 1839 and in 1840, was a hatter by trade, but abandoned it, as did 
 many others here, for example the Bulkleys, when machinery came 
 to be applied to felting. He was lively, jocose, and popular, but not 
 prosperous. He became a clerk in the store of Julius Porter at South 
 Williamstown, in that of B. F. Mather at the North Part, and for 
 many years in that of General Potter in Pownal. Thence he re- 
 moved to Albany and later to western New York. His son, W. H. 
 Johnson, was in 1889 Deputy Collector of Internal Eevenue in Louis- 
 ville, Kentucky ; and the next year, in passing through Williams- 
 town on his way to the Encampment of the Grand Army of the 
 Republic at Boston, he got out of the car for a moment to look around 
 on what had been the home of his ancestors for several generations. 
 His son, Sidney E. Johnson, then a lad of eighteen years in the high 
 school at Louisville, wrote a pleasant letter to Deacon James Smed- 
 ley of Williamstown on the occasion of his reading in the New York 
 Tribune an account of the latter 's celebration of the sixtieth anniver- 
 sary of his marriage. 
 
 As further illustrating the proximity in point of place, and the 
 kindly fellowship in point of feeling, as between Williamstown and 
 Bennington on the great battle-day of the latter, the direct testi- 
 mony of two of the grandsons of Captain Israel Harris, who fought 
 in the battle, may here be adduced, to the effect that they had often 
 heard their grandmother say, that a prayer-meeting at which she was 
 present was held by the women of Williamstown in the log school- 
 house (till 1768 the first meeting-house in the hamlet), on that Sat- 
 urday afternoon when their husbands and fathers and sons were 
 fighting in behalf of homes and families. There was no pastor in 
 the town from the death of Mr. Welch near Quebec in 1776, till the 
 ordination of Mr. Swift in 1779 ; but the women assembled for prayer 
 in as much accord as the men shouldered their muskets. Their 
 meeting continued until after the going down of the sun, when a 
 swift horseman from the north, who must have started at the close 
 of the first fight, in passing the open door of the assemblage an- 
 
132 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 nounced a great victory, whereupon supplication was turned into 
 thanksgiving. It appears from the "Rudd letter," which will be 
 shortly quoted at large, and from other evidence independent of that, 
 that many groups of women and children from Bennington and its 
 neighborhood made their way to Williamstown during the two days 
 preceding the battle, as to a temporary place of refuge. A consider- 
 able number are known to have lodged in the old Smedley barn near 
 Green River, and to have left behind them on their hasty return at 
 good news many little articles of no great value, but which they had 
 deemed precious enough to take along with them, such as copies of 
 the Assembly's Catechism and other trinkets long preserved in the old 
 house. Levi Smedley, then fifteen years old, carried to Bennington 
 on Sunday, to his father and company, loaves of bread baked in the 
 old oven while the battle was still raging on Saturday. He lived 
 till 1849 ; and used to tell to ears that still hear, the home experi- 
 ences of those August days. More than that : many of those on the 
 patriot side, wounded in the battle, reckoned in all at forty-five in 
 number, were brought down on Sunday to Williamstown to be treated 
 by Dr. Samuel Porter, already come into considerable vogue as a 
 surgeon. Among other women from the northward known to be in 
 Williamstown as fugitives on the day after the battle was Mrs. John 
 Williams of White Creek, now Salem, one of a party of women com- 
 ing hither on horseback from the line of road over which Baum and 
 Breimann had passed to their defeats. There is still extant among 
 the papers of Dr. and Colonel John Williams, her husband, the fol- 
 lowing receipt : 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, August y e 17, 1777. 
 
 Received of Mrs. Williams the whole of Doct Williams Amputating instru- 
 ments. 
 
 I say received by me. 
 
 SAML. PORTER. 
 
 By the recent discovery in Bennington of the original muster-roll 
 of Captain Elijah Dewey's company engaged in the battle, it is made 
 certain that Joseph Rudd was lieutenant in that company, which 
 makes doubly interesting the following letter written by him to his 
 father just ten days after the battle. 
 
 Bennington August the 26 AD 1777 Honoured father after my Duty I take 
 this opertunity to Rite to you Hoping these lines will find you well as through 
 the goodness of god they leave me and my family we meat a great Deal of 
 trouble on the 16 instant my self and Brother John was preserved through a very 
 hot baUel we kild ami LOOK according to the best account we can git about one 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 133 
 
 thousand of the Enemy our loss was about thirty or forty we marcht Rite 
 against there brest work with our Small armes where they fired with there field 
 peases when they fired upon us every half a minut yet they never tought a man 
 with them we drove them out of there brest work and took there field peases 
 and presed and kild great numbers of them we lost four or five of my Neighbors 
 two Sniders and two hornbeck the bigger part of Dutch Hosack was in the bat- 
 tel against us they went to the Reglers a Day or two before the fight Samuel 
 Anderson a Captain amonst the Reglers and was in the battel against us while 
 I was gon my wife and children went of and got Down to williarnstown after I 
 got home I went after them and found them to landlord Simons I have got them 
 home again my wife was very much wrred out she had four children with her 
 and Selinday was forst to Run on foot we som Exspect the Enemy will com upon 
 us again and what I shall Dew with my family I know not I would inform you 
 that I Received your letter dated August 18 which you tell me you was well 
 which I am glad to hear of it I want to com and see you very much but when I 
 shall I no not if the enemy dont com upon us again this fall I intend to com 
 down and see you we remember our love to all brothers and sisters Respects to 
 all inquiring friend so no more at preasent but I remain your Dutyful son until 
 Death 
 
 JOSEPH RUDD 
 
 John Remembers his Duty to you And has laid out All your Money and 
 Baught About 40 acres of land with A log hous and has a dead of it Joining the 
 seventeen acres Cleared the Rest is wild land I have Indorsed forty shilling upon 
 the Note If you have the Rest you May send it if you Pleas. 
 
 [Superscribed] 
 Mr To 
 
 JOSEPH RUDD 
 att 
 
 Norwich. 
 
 Four men of Bennington's most respected citizens fell on the field 
 of battle. They were John Fay, Henry Walbridge, Daniel Warner 
 (a cousin of Colonel Seth Warner), and Nathan Clark. "They were 
 all in the prime of life, and all heads of families, leaving widows 
 and children to mourn their sudden bereavement:" thus writes 
 Governor Hiland Hall. Three men out of the two Williamstown 
 companies were also killed in the battle ; but they were not so promi- 
 nent as citizens and soldiers as were the four Bennington men, nor 
 as were most of those killed in the battle from Lanesboro and Han- 
 cock. Daniel Bacon, son of Daniel Bacon, blacksmith, from Middle- 
 town, Connecticut, and brother-in-law of Samuel Kellogg, whose first 
 wife was Chloe Bacon, perhaps standing by the side of that brother- 
 in-law and by the side of his own nearest neighbor also, Absalom 
 Blair, was one of the three victims. Austin Hickcox was another, 
 a member of that family which has been prominent on Bee Hill for 
 
134 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 more than a century. Captain Stephen Hickcox, originally from 
 Durham, Connecticut, and later from Bedford, Massachusetts, settled 
 in Williamstown in 1781, when his son Stephen was three years old. 
 The Captain's wife, Rebekah, died Oct. 8, 1807, aged sixty-one. 
 Other sons besides Stephen were Henry and John. All three were 
 harmed in the prevalence of the cider-brandy habit during the first 
 quarter of the century, but all reformed, and all left reputable pos- 
 terity. Sarah Northam from Bedford, the wife of Stephen Hickcox, 
 an admirable woman, died in 1854, aged seventy-two. " If you will 
 give up your tea, I'll give up my cider and cider-brandy." " I'll do 
 it," said the good wife, and both started in in good faith along the 
 path of abstinence. The original Hickcox acres on Bee Hill are still 
 in the hands of the family. Little is known of Johnson, not even 
 his Christian name, the third man from Williamstown killed on the 
 Walloomsac; but his name has come down in firm tradition asso- 
 ciated with the two others ; and so far as these words of the writer 
 can reach, his and theirs shall be perpetuated together. The old cellar 
 of Daniel Bacon, dug in all probability in 1768, on the first division 
 fifty-acre lot 63, was identified by the writer in 1893, after all knowl- 
 edge of its location had passed out of the minds of this generation. 
 A little spring bubbles up out of the ground close by, which was 
 doubtless the original inducement to locate the house in that precise 
 spot, and a few stunted and superannuated cherry trees are the 
 only other tokens present, that human life and human love, ardent 
 patriotism, and mournings as for an only son, once marked the now 
 distant and desolate spot. 
 
 " The Heart of the Commonwealth," as the city of Worcester and 
 its close surrounding country is now proud to call itself, was not 
 unresponsive to the call of General Lincoln for militiamen to operate 
 on the eastern flank of Burgoyne's army in August, 1777. Captain 
 Nathaniel Carter's company of Colonel Abijah Stearns's regiment, 
 forty-five men, came as far as Williamstown, and learning there 
 that there was no probability of Burgoyne's sending out any more 
 detachments to his left, returned to Worcester, having been out 
 twelve days, and calling the distance (one way) 111 miles. Wil- 
 liamstown heard the last echoes of the battle of Bennington as such 
 from the eastward. General Lincoln perceived that all danger 
 of offensive operations from the British left was now over, and 
 commenced immediately those vigorous operations upon Burgoyne's 
 rear that cut off his retreat toward Canada, penned him in, and 
 shortly flung him as prisoner into the hands of Schuyler's army in 
 front. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 
 
 135 
 
 The following is the caption to a muster-roll of Williamstown 
 militiamen called into further service in less than a month after 
 that upon the Walloomsac. This roll was sworn to before Charles 
 Goodrich, J. P., of Pittsfield, its form having been made out and 
 the names written by Major Isaac Stratton. 
 
 Capt. Samuel Clark's Company, Col. Simond's Regiment, marched to Paw- 
 let by order of Gen. Lincoln, 24 days in service, Sept. 7-30, 1777, 60 miles from 
 home. 
 
 Samuel Clark, 
 Timothy Johnson, 
 Joseph Tallmadge, 
 Eliakim Sheldon, 
 Joshua Perry, 
 Jonathan Sherwood 
 William Foster, 
 John Smedley 
 Eli Baker 
 Elihu Ketcham 
 Gideon Wright 
 Elias Newbre 
 John Foot 
 Rufus Cole 
 Moses Jefferds 
 Jonathan Wright 
 Isaac Holmes 
 Charles Sabin 
 Rhoderick Messenger 
 David Southwick 
 Matthew Dunning 
 John Murphy 
 Elisha Baker, Jr. 
 Simeon Hines 
 David Deming 
 Jesse Sexton 
 
 Capt. Israel Harris, Lt. 
 
 Lt. Nehemiah Woodcock, Serg. 
 
 Serg. James McMaster, Serg. Maj. 
 
 Serg. Jeremiah Foster, Serg. 
 
 Corp. John Torrey, Corp. 
 
 Corp. Elisha Higgins, Corp. 
 
 Drummer John Stratton 
 
 David Stratton 
 Elijah Thomas 
 Ezekiel Porter 
 David Cutter 
 Starling Daniels 
 Simeon Allen 
 Stephen Olmstead 
 Uriah Messenger 
 Almond Harrison 
 Levi Smith 
 Thomas Standish 
 Elnathan Holmes 
 William P. Meacham 
 David Tuttle 
 John Crofoot 
 Lemuel Lewis 
 John Hoke 
 Capt. Neh. Smedley 
 [51 men] 
 
 These names hail about equally from the two divisions of the 
 town. Captain Clark is the same who led the South Part company 
 to Bennington in August, while Captain Smedley, who then com- 
 manded the North Part company, serves now as a private. Military 
 matters were daily thickening in the Northern Department. Before 
 these Williamstown men reached their homes, September 30, Bur- 
 goyne's army was completely surrounded on the North River. He 
 could not stir right or left, backward or forward. Sixteen days 
 later he capitulated with his whole army, Hessians and all. The 
 
136 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 campaign of 1777 was over in the north. Everybody then saw the 
 vital connection between the two successive defeats of his left wing 
 and the total collapse of the entire army. Bennington and Schuyler- 
 ville reached each other their hands. From one or both of these, 
 over the same roads traversed in part by Baum and Breimann, came 
 Hessian prisoners en route for Boston. The best view had of them 
 in their march from any one house in Williamstown was that offered 
 by Nehemiah William s's house near the big rock on the northern 
 slope of North West Hill, as they filed up and filed down what is 
 now the "middle road" from Pownal Center to the Hoosac bridge 
 near "Landlord Simonds's." We are not told, and shall not know, 
 whether these weary pedestrians in their' soiled regimentals of a 
 foreign cut received any refreshments of any sort as they passed 
 by the door of the dignified colonel and landlord, who had con- 
 tributed so much to their downfall ; but that day must have been a 
 sort of holiday in Williamstown, especially if it were known before- 
 hand that the Hessians were coming through. It is probable, but 
 not certain, that they crossed the bridge over the Hoosac near the 
 colonel's, and passed up the county road, opened in 1765, through 
 South Williamstown to Pittsfield. Otherwise, they must have kept 
 along the old Mohawk trail north of the Hoosac through what is 
 now North Adams, and so on over the Hoosac Mountain, under 
 which now passes the tunnel, to the valleys of the Deerfield and the 
 Connecticut. There were three old roads from the North River 
 through Berkshire to Boston, the northern one just described, the 
 middle one through Kinderhook to Pittsfield, and the southern one 
 through Sheffield to Westfield. All three appear to have been used 
 in conducting parts of Burgoyne's surrendered army to Boston. As 
 prisoners of war, the Hessians were not guarded very carefully on 
 the march by their captors, particularly as a dead or strayed Ger- 
 man was to cost the British government in payments to the petty 
 principalities much more than a returned one. Accordingly, some 
 one or more of these foreigners fell out of the ranks in many of the 
 towns through which they passed toward the seaboard. Johann 
 Hintersass, or John Henderson, as he came to be called, and perhaps 
 others also, tarried in Williamstown and became a well-known deni- 
 zen under that designation, and his descendants of the same name 
 are with us to this day. He built a log cabin for himself on the east 
 side of what was then a wood road running north from the river to 
 the roots of Mount Hazen, and is now named in memory of him the 
 " Henderson Koad." The chimney of his hut was built of stones and 
 sticks, and it and everything in it was rude and poor. But he had 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 137 
 
 been a gardener in the "Fatherland," and those who remembered his 
 own garden as it was about 1812, have told the writer that it was an 
 unusually good garden for the times, having flowers as well as vege- 
 tables. The garden extended from the cabin down to the North 
 Hoosac road, and is to-day a smooth piece of meadow-land about a 
 quarter of an acre in extent. Here he lived and died. He married 
 a woman by the name of Wright from Pownal, and had one son, 
 George, and four daughters. George lived all his life on the same 
 road but farther north, where the present writer officiated at his 
 funeral in 1860. John Henderson had, as was natural, a bad German 
 brogue, but was not for those times a hard drinker. He used to take 
 care of his garden for President Fitch, and worked a good deal for 
 the Smedleys and for others in the street. This story is told of him 
 in connection with the first president of the college. One day while 
 working for him, John came stealthily out of the cellar with a large 
 jpiece of side-pork in his hand, and, looking around cautiously, lifted 
 up a half hogshead that stood bottom upward near the house, and 
 dropped the pork under it. The president chanced to see him do it, 
 and, after mulling over the method to be pursued with the best moral 
 results, he called John and told him to take away that hogshead to 
 the cellar. John obeyed, the president standing by, and the pork 
 was at once disclosed. " What is that ? " asked the master. Very 
 slowly answered the man, "It is pork!" "Where did it come 
 from?" "From your pork-barrel." "Who put it there?" "I 
 did." "How could you do such a thing, John ? " "I needed it, my 
 folks needed it, but you have been so very good to me always, I could 
 not bear to ask you for it ! " 
 
 The incidents connected with the battle of Bennington and with 
 the surrender of Burgoyne, together with the feelings and prospects 
 ministered unto by those incidents, constitute the heroic age of 
 Williamstown. Thereby came in to the rugged settlers on their 
 scattered farms a new consciousness of a vital connection with other 
 communities, in place of the old sense of isolation. If the Hoosac 
 Mountain still barred much intercourse with the rest of their own 
 commonwealth, the Hoosac Eiver certainly opened up substantial 
 communications with the new State of Vermont, baptized in the 
 battle of Bennington, and with the broad and fertile regions to the 
 east and northeast of the Hudson. There came an accession of 
 self-consciousness, and a new sense of importance in the world. 
 There were some leaders, as well as many rank and file, and the 
 latter were proud of the former. Colonel Simonds figured hand- 
 somely in the correspondence of General Schuyler, General Gates, 
 
138 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and General Lincoln ; Major Isaac Stratton was a well-known name 
 in the council-chamber at Boston as the principal scribe, both civil 
 and military, in northern Berkshire ; and Captain Samuel Sloan, who 
 had taken the minute-men to Boston in the summer of 1775, was 
 constantly adding to his military and civil influence, as well as 
 broadening his acres and increasing his pecuniary resources. More 
 than this, in the light and zest of that glowing time several young 
 officers and citizens were coming forward into experience and influ- 
 ence, some of whom were destined to eclipse altogether in political 
 influence their honored predecessors. Tomson J. Skinner in par- 
 ticular, who only came to Williamstown in 1775, a young man of 
 twenty-three, a mechanic fresh from his apprenticeship, rose to be 
 captain of the North Williamstown company before the war was 
 over, and went out with them into actual service in that capacity. 
 Afterward he became a general in the Massachusetts militia, as 
 did also Samuel Sloan. Skinner played also a truly remarkable 
 part in the civil functions of his time. There were many others 
 also, Israel Harris and Samuel Kellogg and Absalom Blair, who 
 under the varied stimulus of 1777 came to be broader and more 
 influential men than would otherwise have been possible for them. 
 The events of that year were extremely picturesque, as well as 
 consequential ; they appealed to the imagination and led to inquiry 
 and reading and to political reasoning, and tradition fastened 
 upon the events themselves and the men who acted in them with 
 a firmness not at all characteristic of the rest of the years of the 
 war. 
 
 STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY 
 In the House of Represent" Feby 13 th 1779 
 
 On the petition of Joab Stafford & Stephen Davis, representing to this Court 
 the Expenditures of the several Towns Stocks of Powder Ball and Flints at the 
 Battle at Bennington in the year 1777 as set forth in their Petition praying 
 for relief 
 
 Resolved, that the prayer of said Petition be granted and that the Board of 
 War be and hereby are directed, to deliver to the Committee of New Providence 
 or their Order, forty Pounds of Powder, one Hundred and twenty Pound of 
 Lead, and Sixty Flints. 
 
 And to the Selectmen of the Town of Lanesborough or to their Order One 
 Hundred and Sixty Pound of Powder, four Hundred and Eighty Pounds of 
 Lead, and two Hundred and forty Flints. Likewise to the Selectmen of East 
 Hoosock or to their Order Fifty Pound of Powder, one Hundred and fifty Pounds 
 of Lead, and seventy two Flints. 
 
 And to the Selectmen of the Town of Williamstown or to their Order One 
 Hundred and Sixty Pounds of Powder, four Hundred and eighty Pounds of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 
 
 Lead, and two Hundred and forty Flints, in full for what Powder Balls and 
 Flints those Places Expended at the Battle at Bennington. 
 
 Sent up for Concurrence 
 
 JOHN PICKERING Spk r . 
 In Council, February 15 th 1779 
 Read and Concurred 
 
 JOHN AVERT D S*. 
 Consented to by the Major Part of the Council. 
 
 A true Copy 
 
 Attest 
 
 JOHN AVERT D Secy. 
 
 (endorsed) 
 
 del d to Lanesb? Resolve of Court to 
 
 & New Providence ] deliver Ammunition to 
 
 & Williamstown Several Towns in lieu 
 
 & East Hoosack of what they expended 
 
 in y e Action at Benington. 
 
 Feby 13. 1779. 
 
 Williamstown men still went out to fight in large numbers both 
 in the colony and in the Continental service, so long as there was 
 any fighting to be done in the north ; but only rare and single inci- 
 dents in relation to these have come down to posterity clear and 
 strong. For example, William Pratt, the first male child born in West 
 Hoosac, was a drummer in the Eevolution, and witnessed the execu- 
 tion of Major Andre, Oct. 2, 1780. He lived till 1846, and told his 
 own story to numbers, who still live to remember and to repeat it. 
 In a page or two we shall print the muster-roll of a large company 
 of Williamstown militiamen, who were ordered out ten days after 
 that execution, 1780, and were kept in service eleven days. For the 
 most part, the last years of the war are relatively a blank in the 
 annals of New England. Schuylerville was the pivot on which 
 the Eevolutionary War turned, very much as Gettysburg was the 
 pivot on which turned the Civil War for the Union. Both fell very 
 near the middle point of time in those wars, 1777 and 1863. On 
 the contrary, when the agitation began a century after the events 
 for the building of the Bennington Battle Monument, and continued 
 till its completion and celebration in 1891, there were comparatively 
 few towns in New Hampshire and Vermont and in the county of 
 Berkshire, that did not have their well-authenticated record or relic, 
 or at least their reliable family tradition, in relation to those events. 
 All this helped to make it comparatively easy to raise the money 
 from individuals, and to secure the liberal appropriations from the 
 
140 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 three States concerned, to erect the lofty and impressive monument. 
 Facts long kept private became more or less public. Names and 
 localities long forgotten in the minds of living men were resuscitated 
 and given a new lease of living power. Genealogical records were 
 sought out, and even societies formed to ascertain the facts and to 
 hand down the word. Most of Stark's men were from southern 
 New Hampshire, but many of them inarched north as far as Leba- 
 non to cross the Connecticut, and all of them traversed the well- 
 wooded hills and forded the beautiful streams of Vermont. The 
 war over, lively emigrations began both north and west. Both 
 banks of the Connecticut to its upper reaches were gradually settled 
 from " below." Some New Hampshire families crept over the Green 
 Mountains. More from Massachusetts and Connecticut worked their 
 way up from the south into the fresh and fertile valleys, that they 
 had taken a glimpse of while serving under General Lincoln, for 
 example, on the flank or in the rear of General Burgoyne. 
 
 Numerous illustrations of all this are at hand, two or three of 
 which the reader will pardon even if he do not applaud. William 
 Moore was a drummer or other musician in one of Stark's New 
 Hampshire companies in the battle of Bennington. Later he 
 moved into the "Coos country" on the upper Connecticut. One 
 of his daughters there married a Mr. White. The White family 
 moved in course of time to Beloit, Wisconsin ; and Horace White, 
 their son, was graduated at Beloit College. Becoming a journalist 
 in connection with the Chicago Tribune, young White was fortunate 
 enough to be sent by his paper to report the joint debates between 
 Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the famous Illinois 
 Senatorial contest, in which Douglas won. White showed such a 
 judicial impartiality and penetrating ability in these reports, that 
 they added directly to the public reputation of both the contestants, 
 and indirectly made a reputation for himself. For many years at 
 this present writing Horace White has been editor of the New York 
 Evening Post, and is generally regarded as one of the most compe- 
 tent and comprehensive writers on economical and especially finan- 
 cial topics in the United States. The fate of Lieutenant Isaac Nash, 
 who commanded the Lanesboro company in the battle of Benning- 
 ton, and was mortally wounded, and died during the night following 
 in a barn near the battle-field, was tenderly recorded in the old 
 records of that town. The renovated interest of a century later has 
 gathered that Reuben Nash, his son, was a citizen of Benson, Ver- 
 mont, and married there Abigail Woodward. But the township of 
 Benson was chartered to James Meacham and Ezekiel Blair of Wil- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 141 
 
 liamstown, May 5, 1780. The name was given to the town by 
 Meacham in honor of a certain Revolutionary officer for whom he 
 had great personal respect, but who is not otherwise known to pos- 
 terity. Doubtless because both were too well planted in Williams- 
 town, where Meacham had one of the very best farms and was 
 besides one of the original deacons of the church, neither Meacham 
 nor Blair ever migrated to Benson ; but other families went from 
 here, particularly Jonathan Woodward and Delight Williams, his 
 wife, both of whom united with the church here in 1780, and both 
 removed to Benson in 1785. He was originally from Plainfield, Con- 
 necticut, and died in Benson in 1802 in the 76th year of his age. 
 It has often been said that Woodward was a deacon in Williams- 
 town, but this is a mistake. He became a deacon in Benson, and 
 was an influential citizen of a town that became extraordinarily 
 influential, particularly in religious matters. It lay on the shore of 
 Lake Champlain where the lake was narrow, opposite to Putnam, 
 New York, and not far from Champlain and Plattsburg, with all 
 which New York towns commercial intercourse and intermarriages 
 were frequent. Reuben Nash's family of Benson intermarried with 
 that of Joseph Corbin of Plattsburg ; and here again we strike into 
 the roots of two prominent Williamstown families. Clement Corbin, 
 born in 1616, was the father of Lieutenant Jabez Corbin, and he the 
 father of John Corbin, who became the first settler of Woodstock, 
 Connecticut. John's three sons, Asa and Amasa and Joseph, were 
 all in the Revolutionary service in the Eleventh Regiment of Con- 
 necticut during the campaign of 1776 in New York. Not long after, 
 Joseph in 1778, all three came to Williamstown, as several of their 
 neighbors in Connecticut had previously done, and all settled at the 
 South Part near some of those neighbors, as David Johnson and 
 Samuel Mills. Joseph Corbin had seven children born here in the 
 years 1779-93, and moved to Plattsburg, New York, in 1799, where 
 some of his posterity still reside. . William G. Bosworth, Williams 
 College, 1889, is in the direct line of Joseph, son of John, born in 
 Killingly in 1751 and moved to Williamstown in 1778. He is also 
 in the direct line of Isaac Nash of Lanesboro, commissioned lieuten- 
 ant May 3, 1776, and killed on the Walloomsac; and too of Deacon 
 Jonathan Woodward, of Williamstown and Benson. Joseph Cor- 
 bin's son, Josiah, born in Williamstown, 1791, died in Champlain in 
 1872. His daughter Eliza was married to Harvey Bosworth, a son 
 of another early settler of Champlain. Under the heading " Inten- 
 tions of marriage," in the old proprietor's book of Williamstown, is 
 found the following entry : " William Corbin of Champlain New 
 
142 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 York and Sally Mills, November 25, 1801." This William Corbin 
 was an older brother of Josiah. Sally Mills was the eldest child of 
 Samuel Mills (himself in the battle of Bennington), born September 
 24, 1782. Thus was woven still another tie between families start- 
 ing from Woodstock and Killingly, tarrying for a time in South 
 William stown, and then passing on to the battle-scarred regions of 
 Lake Champlain, battle-scarred in the old French wars and in the 
 last war with Great Britain. 
 
 A pay-roll of Capt. Israel Harris Co. Col. B. Simonds Regiment, who 
 marched to the northern frontier by order of Gen. Fellows Oct. 12-19, 11 days, 
 1780. Capt. 12 per month, Lt. 8, Sergts. 3, Musicians and Corporals 
 2..4..0, and Privates 2. Sworn to before Gideon Wheeler J.P. 
 
 Israel Harris 
 Seth Luce 
 Will. Wells 
 Abel Russel 
 Will Foster 
 Truman Harison 
 Theodore Boardman 
 Elias Newbre 
 Noah Harison 
 Nathaniel Wheeler 
 Ezra Baker 
 Enos Wells 
 Elisha Williams 
 Elijah Lamb 
 Stephen Olmstead 
 Reuben Hicock 
 Benedick Alford 
 William Dunton 
 Josiah Higgins 
 Joseph Morse 
 Samuel Tyler 
 Will. Foresids 
 Thomas Hewston 
 Solomon Morse 
 Lemuel Steward 
 Job Harrington 
 Ezekiel Blair 
 David Noble 
 William Horsford 
 Nicolas Vanear 
 
 Capt. 
 
 Lt. 
 
 Sergt. 
 
 Sergt. 
 
 Drum. 
 
 Fife 
 
 Corp. 
 
 Corp. 
 
 Aaron Noble 
 Nathaniel Kellogg 
 Asel Hurlburt 
 Almond Harrison 
 Stephen Stickling 
 Elisha Baker 
 Timothy Hurlburt 
 Ephraim Sanford 
 Levi Smith 
 Ozias Johnson 
 Perley How 
 Josiah Brown 
 Asaph Nichols 
 Stephen Davis 
 Neh. Smedley 
 Jonathan Meacham 
 Will. Harrington 
 James Meacham 
 Nathan Wheeler 
 Joseph Fuller 
 Caleb Calkins 
 Joel Baldwin 
 Robert Williams 
 Edmond Lamb 
 Lemuel Smith 
 Joseph Levens 
 George Lamb 
 Joshua Perry 
 Lewis Wilkeson 
 Ainasa Morse 
 
 This Captain Israel Harris, when he was eighty-five years old, 
 and then for twenty-five years a citizen of Hartford, Washington 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 143 
 
 County, New York, in his application for a pension, gives his recol- 
 lections of the year before this in his own words : " About the mid- 
 dle of May, 1779, was appointed captain of the second company of 
 militia, in Colonel Simonds's regiment, and commenced recruiting 
 the next day, by order of Colonel Simonds, to supply deficiencies in 
 the regular army. Was thus employed, with the rank of captain, 
 and in actual service, with command upon the frontiers of Vermont, 
 in the latter part of November, three months." Such a trifle as these 
 eleven days of service the next autumn with sixty of the best men of 
 North Williamstown, his own company, seems to have escaped the 
 old man's memory entirely. The two first deacons of the church, of 
 which he was a member, Nathan Wheeler and James Meacham, were 
 both with him ; David Noble, a Yale graduate and the first of the 
 lawyers of the town in point of time ; Nehemiah Smedley went too 
 as a private, though he was the captain of this very company in the 
 earlier years of the war ; the name of Ezekiel Blair, co-grantee with 
 Deacon Meacham of the new town of Benson, is on this list ; so is the 
 name of William Horsford, one of the first band of settlers; of Joshua 
 Perry also, cousin of the writer's grandfather ; Joel Baldwin, father of 
 the settlement on North West Hill ; and many more of the best estab- 
 lished and most enterprising men of the place. The war was draw- 
 ing to a close. The faith of the people of the North was established 
 in the coming independence of the States. The whole length of 
 Vermont was now open through its southern valleys. Williamstown 
 became a gate through which emigration passed into the new land 
 of promise. The population, steadily increasing up to this time, 
 became more or less mobile from the influence of relatives and 
 old neighbors, and even of strangers pressing through and onward 
 toward a goal exaggerated by imaginations heated in the old French 
 wars and in the recent successful conflicts with the mother country. 
 The Continental paper money, irredeemable and depreciated and 
 soon worthless, brought along with it the usual and inevitable con- 
 comitants and sequels of such so-called money. Whenever the 
 money of any country consists of nothing but promises-to-pay, all 
 other forms of promises-to-pay are naturally multiplied in number 
 and of course swelled in their terms. Such debts contracted in hope 
 could not be paid in reality. Farms were mortgaged, and by and by 
 foreclosures were either made or threatened. Society came to be 
 more or less by the ears. Virtually free lands were offered at 
 the northward. Grantees were urgent to fill up their towns with 
 good and experienced settlers. Now that the contest between New 
 Hampshire and New York was ended, good land titles could be 
 
144 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 given, and the rush from all sides to the new State became remark- 
 able, and a transient depletion of Williamstowii considerable. Derick 
 Webb, one of the earliest settlers in Williamstowii, whose house stood 
 on the west side of Green River near its junction with the Hoosac, 
 was probably the very first citizen of the town to attempt a perma- 
 nent settlement on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain. He went 
 alone to what is now Charlotte, the southwest corner of Chittenden 
 County, directly on the lake, and made a beginning in March, 1776, 
 but soon went away, presumably back to Williamstown ; he renewed 
 his attempt the next March, and stayed but two months; and not 
 until seven years later, 1784, after the definitive signature of peace, 
 did he make the third and successful pitch. This time Elijah 
 Woolcot was with him, and Williamstown then lost sight of him. 
 The township of Williamstown in Vermont is own child and god- 
 child of Williamstown in Massachusetts. This township is directly 
 on the watershed of the Green Mountains. It lies also on the height 
 of land between the Winooski and White rivers. It is said in 
 Thompson's " Vermont," that " a brook which here runs down a steep 
 hill toward the west, divides naturally, and while one part runs 
 to the north, forming Stevens's branch of Winooski River, the other 
 runs to the south, forming the second branch of White River." The 
 Winooski drops into Lake Champlain at Burlington, fifty miles 
 away, and the White strikes the Connecticut opposite to Lebanon, 
 New Hampshire, at about the same distance. 
 
 Thomas Chittenden, Governor of Vermont, in August, 1781, 
 granted in form following the new township to persons, a large 
 majority of whom were then residents here. Besides the usual 
 reservation of lots for ministerial and school purposes, this grant 
 of mountain land, and presumably other grants of the early Vermont 
 Governors, copies from the old charters of the king, the reservation 
 of all the pine trees growing in the town " Suitable for a Navy." 
 
 THE GOVERNOR COUNCIL AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FREEMEN OF VER- 
 MONT. 
 
 To all People to whom these Presents shall come. 
 
 GREETING. 
 
 Know ye that whereas Capt. Samuel Clark and W? Absalom Baker and 
 their assoiates our worthey friends have by petition requested a grant of a tract of 
 unappropriated land within this State in order for setling a new plantation to be 
 erected into a township. We have therefore thought fit for the due encourage- 
 ment of their laudable designs and for other valuable considerations as there- 
 unto moving. And do by these presents in the name and by the Authority of 
 the freemen of Vermont give and grant the tract of land hereafter described 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 
 
 145 
 
 and bounded unto the said Samuel Clark, Absalom Baker and their associates, 
 viz: 
 
 Elisha Baker 
 
 William Wells 
 
 Kuben Horseford 
 
 Isaac Stratton 
 
 Aaron Noble 
 
 Anthony Farr 
 
 Samuel Kellogg 
 
 Zadoch Clark 
 
 Joseph Dunham 
 
 John Winchester Dana 
 
 Israel Dana 
 
 Judah Williams 
 
 Thomas Green 
 
 Perley How 
 
 Ezra Baker 
 
 John Tracy 
 
 Mathew Lyon 
 
 Peter Bewdish 
 
 David Bixby 
 
 Benjamin Sherwood 
 
 Ethan Allen 
 
 Oliver Hungerfoot 
 
 The Heirs of Thos. Wheeler, deceased 
 
 Moses Jeffords 
 
 Elijah Thomas 
 
 Ruben Post 
 
 Jonas Galusha 
 
 William Dure 
 
 John Fasset Jr. 
 
 John Smith 
 
 Henry Green 
 
 Elijah Galusha 
 
 Joseph Osborn 
 
 David Johnson Jr. 
 
 Thomas Roe 
 
 Eusebius Bushnel 
 
 Asa Farrend 
 
 Ebenezer Kellogg 
 Josiah Gregory 
 Ira Rude 
 Daniel Burbank 
 Bildad Noble 
 Elisha Welch 
 Samuel Kellogg Jr. 
 Stephen Davis 
 Cornelus Lynes 
 Judah Dana 
 Daniel Davis 
 Joseph Jones 
 Israel Harris 
 Elisha Baker Jr. 
 Ira Baker 
 
 Jonathan Woodward 
 James Lyon 
 John Tibbel 
 Martin Chittenden 
 John Porter 
 Isaac Kellogg 
 David Johnson t 
 Christopher Whitney 
 Ruben Hurlbut 
 Asa Burnham 
 Simeon Hine 
 Noble Everett 
 Thomas Chittenden 
 Chester Darby 
 Alexander Huling 
 Mary Lyon 
 Stephan Dunning 
 Samuel Sherman 
 Nathaniel Johnson 
 David Galusha 
 Elizabeth Chittenden 
 
 In consequence of this grant, and of the prominent position 
 and influence of many of the grantees, there was a good deal of a 
 movement, direct and indirect, from the old Williamstown to the 
 new, the settlement of which was commenced in 1784. At its formal 
 organization in 1787, it not only took the name of the borough on 
 the Hoosac, but it also enrolled among its first citizens a consider- 
 able number of the former citizens of that borough, the most promi- 
 
146 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 nent of whom was Lieutenant Sampson Howe, whose home here 
 occupied the site of the old West Hoosac block-house fort. In his 
 own qualities and personal influence. Lieutenant Howe was much 
 more than a common man. He was a direct ancestor also of the late 
 General Alfred H. Terry, who greatly distinguished himself in the 
 Civil War. Perley Howe, a brother of the lieutenant, transferred his 
 residence also from the one Williamstown to the other; and it is 
 interesting to note, as an instance of the mobility of the men of 
 those times and conditions, the name of Elijah Woolcot, the com- 
 rade of Derick Webb in the settlement of Charlotte, in the list of 
 the citizens of the northern Williamstown in 1788. 
 
 These new interests to the northward and the consequent migra- 
 tions thither, made it, of course, more difficult for the towns in 
 Berkshire County to fully answer to the requisitions made on them 
 for men to recruit the Continental army. They offered accordingly 
 a bounty of "sixty pounds lawful money" for each three years' 
 enlistment into that army. The number of men raised in Berkshire 
 in 1781 was 221, leaving a deficit in the quota of 13. The following 
 receipt for their bounty-money on the part of some of those three 
 years' men received of Williamstown tells its own story. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, March 15, 1781. 
 
 Keceived of the Town of Williamstown the sum of Sixty pounds lawful money 
 Each at the Rate of Silver at Six shillings and eight pence per ounce as a bounty 
 for Engaging in the service of the United States for three years agreeable to a 
 Kesolve of the Genl. Court of December last. Reed, severally by us. 
 
 Benjamin Davis Thomas Gaige 
 
 Cyrus Hills Joseph Bowles 
 
 Amos P. Sherman James Sloan 
 
 Joel Begam Jonathan Sweet 
 
 Ira Rood Jonathan Morey 
 
 Barnabas Staines Pardon Mack 
 
 A brief record of Captain Judah Williams may fitly close this 
 branch of the current chapter. He was born Dec. 14, 1741, 
 at Colchester, Connecticut, a son of Nathan and Elizabeth Lewis 
 Williams. His wife was Mary Skinner, a daughter of the well- 
 known pastor of that place, and an older sister of the two Skinner 
 brothers, Tomson J. and Benjamin, of whom we have already 
 heard something and shall hear much more, as prominent citizens 
 of Williamstown. Judah Williams and his wife came here about 
 1770, five years before her brothers came. He located on House-lot 
 63, on Green Eiver, at the easternmost edge of the village plat, and 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 147 
 
 became a large owner of some of the best lands in the valley and of 
 the out lots beyond. He kept and dealt in cattle; and when the 
 war broke out in those parts, he became a commissary with the rank 
 of captain, and collected hundreds of cattle at his own place and 
 elsewhere for the use of the army. His accounts of course were 
 kept in the Continental money, which was constantly depreciating, 
 and when his settlement was made with the Revolutionary govern- 
 ment, he received stacks of this money, which shortly afterward 
 became worthless. This ruined his fortune. In his prosperous 
 time he had built a fine brick house of two stories on the front line 
 of his house-lot, which is still standing erect and intact after a 
 century and a quarter. It must have been when built the best 
 house in the town. His farms must have been then the best within 
 the hamlet proper. His money, though a plenty in quantity, was 
 not such that he could pay his debts with it. His fine house and 
 large farm were sold under the hammer in order to pay his debts ; 
 the whole estate passed into the hands of David Noble, who occu- 
 pied the house so long as he lived ; Captain Williams conspicuously 
 destroyed his piles of Continental money, and in 1788 removed to 
 Troy. Eight years after the family moved to Utica. The Captain 
 was much broken down by his pecuniary misfortunes. Although 
 remaining remarkably active in body, always a great walker, 
 his disposition became melancholy, and he died in Utica, at the 
 house of his son, Judge Nathan Williams, of whose family he 
 formed a part, in March, 1807, aged sixty-five years. 
 
 It was during these times of financial trouble caused by the 
 increasing depreciation of the Continental money, times of unrest 
 and excitement caused by the incoming of many new settlers and 
 the exit northward of many old ones, times also of religious declen- 
 sion and even of positive immoralities owing to the total lack of 
 pastoral supervision and of regular preaching since the sudden 
 departure of Rev. Whitman Welch for Quebec in 1775, that Rev. 
 Seth Swift took up his labors as a pastor and preacher. He was 
 a native of Kent, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College in 
 1774, twelve years after the graduation of Mr. Welch at the same 
 institution. Mr. Welch was a native of Milford, but his family 
 moved early to New Milford, whence he came hither, a township 
 adjoining to Kent, which is another illustration of the much more 
 intimate relations in the early times between Williamstown and 
 Connecticut and Yale, than those with Massachusetts and Harvard. 
 This was the result of the topography of the country. The Housa- 
 tonic Eiver, the water of whose head spring almost laps the southern 
 
148 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 line of Williamstown, flows down through Kent and New Milford 
 to find a home in the Sound at Milford^ much as the people and the 
 preachers from those older towns slowly passed up the stream to find 
 a home in the beautiful region drained in opposite directions by the 
 Hoosac and other streams. Indeed, we are told by J. H. Trumbull, 
 the great master of the Indian languages of New England, that 
 these names Housac and Housatonic originally belonged to the 
 territory, and were later transferred to the rivers : both mean much 
 the same, the first the " beyond-place," and the second the " beyond- 
 mountain-place." Mr. Welch was much mourned in New Milford, 
 whither his widow and two children returned after his death. How 
 natural, then, that Mr. Swift, born and bred in the next town north, 
 should have been willing to take up the fallen mantle of the young 
 prophet departed ! 
 
 We know but little about the second minister. He was ordained 
 in May, 1779, three years after the death of .his predecessor, and 
 continued in his ministry till February, 1807, almost twenty-eight 
 years. Rev. Daniel Collins of Lanesboro preached his funeral ser- 
 mon. One of the professors in the college wrote of him some years 
 after his death: "Mr. Swift was a little above the medium stature, 
 with a strong frame and large features ; not at all studious of the 
 graces of dress, manners, or conversation, warm and open in his 
 temper, serious in the general tone of his intercourse with his peo- 
 ple, zealous in the labors of the ministry, decided in his opinions, 
 and prudent and energetic in his measures." The following entry 
 on the extant records of the church, which begin only at his ordina- 
 tion in 1779, testifies to the esteem and affection of the people for 
 their long-time pastor. "At about 9 o'clock, A.M., the Rev. Seth 
 Swift, our much esteemed, dearly beloved, and very faithful and 
 laborious pastor, died, in the midst of great usefulness, while God 
 was pouring out his Spirit here, and giving him many seals of his 
 ministry." There were sixty-one members of the church when he 
 came, and five more were added in 1779 ; and these sixty-six may be 
 regarded as the founders of the Williamstown church, and their 
 names should be perpetuated in that capacity. 
 
 ELISHA BAKER ELISABETH DOWNS DOWNING 
 
 PHEBE NICHOLS BAKER THOMAS DUNTON 
 
 MARTHA YOUNG BLAIR MARY DAVIS DDNTON 
 
 DANIEL BURBANK ELISABETH EGLESTON 
 
 MARY MARKS BURBANK NATHAN FOOT 
 
 SAMUEL BURCHARD MARIANNE FOOT 
 ELISABETH HAMILTON BURCHARD ISRAEL HARRIS 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN AND BENNINGTON. 
 
 149 
 
 SARAH LUCE BYAM 
 HANNAH DAVIS 
 SAMPSON HOWE 
 HANNAH FOOT HOWE 
 DANIEL HORSFORD 
 DAVID JOHNSON 
 PHEBE COLE JOHNSON 
 HENRY JOHNSON 
 ABIAH JOHNSON 
 PERSIS JOHNSON 
 ISAAC OVITS 
 MOSES RICH 
 THOMAS ROE 
 MARY WELLS ROE 
 CATHERINE DAVIS SMITH 
 DEBORAH SPENCER 
 ISAAC STRATTON 
 MARY Fox STRATTON 
 RUTH TYRREL TORREY 
 HANNAH WHEELER TORREY 
 HANNAH TORREY HATFIELD 
 ELISABETH LEWIS WILLIAMS 
 DBA. NATHAN WHEELER 
 SARAH WHEELER 
 NATHAN WHEELER, JR. 
 GIDEON WRIGHT 
 
 SARAH MORSE HARRIS 
 RACHEL BALDWIN HAWKINS 
 SAMUEL KELLOGG 
 CHLOE BACON KELLOGG 
 DBA. JAMES MEACHAM 
 LUCY RUGG MEACHAM 
 JONATHAN MEACHAM 
 THANKFUL RUGG MEACHAM 
 DAVID NOBLE 
 ABIGAIL BENNET NOBLE 
 ESTHER WILSON OVITS 
 MARY ROBERTS 
 ANNA DWIGHT SABIN 
 NATHANIEL SANFORD 
 DAVID SOUTHWICK 
 THANKFUL DAVIS SOUTHWICK 
 MARY DORMER STRATTON 
 MARTHA MARKS TALLMADGB 
 MARVIN GAYLORD WELCH 
 WILLIAM WELLS 
 REBECCA STODDARD WELLS 
 MARY WILSON 
 
 HANNAH BRISTER WOODCOCK 
 JOSIAH WRIGHT 
 ABIGAIL WRIGHT 
 SARAH WRIGHT 
 
 During the next year, 1780, twenty-three more persons united 
 with the church, and during the following year the same number ; 
 then followed twenty-one years of relative dearth, only an average of 
 five accessions a year; then for the two years preceding the pastor's 
 death, fifty-four and fifty-two each, and thirty-five for that year, 
 1807. During the long ministry of Mr. Swift 273 were added to the 
 original sixty-six ; but during those years the population of the town 
 was very changeful, and the number of admissions to the church by 
 letter, and of dismissions with recommendation, was remarkably 
 large, so that in 1803 the whole number was but eighty-four, while 
 in 1807 it became 195. The first four ministers of the Williams- 
 town church were all graduates of Yale. A little table will exhibit 
 to the eye their names, the year of their graduation, and the year of 
 their exit from service. 
 
 Whitman Welch 
 Seth Swift 
 Walter King 
 Ralph Wells Gridley 
 
 1762 
 1774 
 
 1782 
 1814 
 
 1775 
 1807 
 1815 
 1834 
 
150 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 After the death of Mr. Swift, the church remained without a pas- 
 tor more than six years, and the pulpit was partially supplied by the 
 president of the college, while the visiting and other pastoral work 
 was mostly performed by Deacon Ebenezer Stratton, who succeeded 
 Deacon Wheeler in 1784, and who, though a farmer, gave up his time 
 very largely to this work till his death in 1814, aged sixty-eight. 
 This incidental reference to a president of the college, now brings 
 both writer and reader naturally, and perhaps none too soon, to 
 another chapter of our book and to a treatment of fresh topics. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 
 
 For backward as I cast my eyes, 
 I see what was, and is, and will abide ; 
 Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide ; 
 The form remains, the function never dies ; 
 While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, 
 We men, who in our morn of youth defied 
 The elements, must vanish ; be it so ! 
 Enough, if something from our hands have power 
 To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; 
 And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, 
 Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, 
 We feel that we are greater than we know. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 SELDOM or never has the early history and the line of develop- 
 ment of a New England town turned so predominantly on the 
 choices and actions of a single individual, as has proven to be the 
 case with Williarnstown. Ephraim Williams was a bachelor. For 
 a considerable portion of his early manhood he followed the seas, 
 having certainly visited in his voyages Holland, Spain, and England. 
 Neither before nor after this seafaring portion of his life had he an 
 agreeable and settled home of his own. He lost his mother when 
 just turned of four years; and, with his uterine younger brother 
 Thomas, found such a home and schooling as his grandfather Jack- 
 son could furnish in his native hamlet of Newton, on the Charles 
 River., By his will Jackson left two hundred pounds each to these 
 boys, saying in connection with that that he had already spent con- 
 siderable sums upon their " education." So far as the older brother 
 was concerned, it is evident from his letters and other papers still 
 extant that this education was neither considerable in itself nor 
 satisfactory to the recipient. Mr. Fitch, the first preceptor of the 
 free school, had this to say on that point forty-five years after the 
 Colonel's death: "He had a taste for books, and often lamented 
 his want of a liberal education ; he witnessed with humane and 
 painful sensations the dangers and difficulties and hardships which 
 
 151 
 
152 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the first settlers had to encounter ; and, to encourage them, he inti- 
 mated his intention of doing something liberal and handsome for 
 them." 
 
 During the last eleven years of his life, 1744-55, he was almost 
 constantly in the military service of his native colony. He com- 
 manded the line of forts in the northwest quarter of the colony, at 
 first in Fort Shirley and later in Fort Massachusetts. When the 
 house-lots in West Hoosac were opened up for settlement, he encour- 
 aged the common soldiers then in the latter fort to buy lots and to 
 settle on them, by purchasing himself two of the lots, Nos. 8 and 10, 
 and further assisted fifteen of these soldiers at one time to pay for 
 their lots by a negotiation in their behalf with the General Court at 
 Boston. He was as much the father of the hamlet as he became the 
 founder of the free school. He made temporary homes at different 
 times during these years with his father at Stockbridge, with his 
 cousin, Israel Williams, at Hatfield, and with his own brother 
 Thomas at Deerfield. He was also a good deal in Boston, and 
 acquired under the circumstances a remarkable influence over the 
 General Court. The prevalent custom of the times, and the exam- 
 ple of his father, led him into the buying and selling of lands in 
 several of the towns of the colony ; and thus and otherwise he came 
 by the time he was forty years old to possess what was deemed in 
 those days "a competence." The alternatives of marriage and no 
 educational bequest, or an educational bequest and no marriage, were 
 certainly before his mind that summer and particularly the next, 
 when the Crown Point expedition was impending, in which he was 
 to command a Massachusetts regiment. The issue of this mental 
 and moral balancing, the incidents and determinants of which we 
 are almost wholly ignorant of, was in the last degree fortunate to 
 his memory, to his contemporaries, and to untold generations of 
 succeeding men. 
 
 In passing through Albany on his way to the battle at Lake 
 George, in which he was killed, Sept. 8, 1755, he caused his last 
 will and testament to be drawn up by a scrivener of that city, 
 and signed it in the presence of Noah Belding and Eichard Cart- 
 wright, in which the vital clause ran as follows: 
 
 Item. It is my will and pleasure and desire that the remaining part of lands 
 not yet disposed of shall be sold at the direction of my executors, within five 
 years of an established peace, and the interest of the money, and also the inter- 
 est of my money, arising by my bonds and notes, shall be appropriated towards 
 the support and maintenance of a free school (in a township west of Fort Mas- 
 sachusetts, commonly called the West Township), forever, provided the said 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 153 
 
 township fall within the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay, and provided 
 also that the Governor and General Court give the said township the name of 
 Williamstown. 
 
 The will nominated and appointed " my trusty and well-beloved 
 friends," Israel Williams of Hatfield and John Worthington of 
 Springfield, to be the executors ; and in sending a copy of the will 
 to the former the day on which it was drawn, the Colonel showed in 
 a letter accompanying it on which of its clauses his own heart lay, 
 " You will perceive I have given something for the benefit of those 
 unborn, and for the sake of those poor creatures I am mostly concerned, 
 for fear my will should be broke." This letter had also two post- 
 scripts, both of which are significant ; the first : " In my will you ivill 
 find I ordered some money for the benefit of the East town. I don't 
 know that it will be enough for the will, but so far as it goes will pay 
 
 well, and then some good will come out of it" And the second : 
 
 " Let no one but yourself and John Worthington know what my will 
 contains" 
 
 Those two "trusty and well-beloved friends," both of them promi- 
 nent among the so-called " river-gods," as the most influential of the 
 then political leaders on the Connecticut were styled in Boston cir- 
 cles, became faithful executors and patient administrators under the 
 will of Colonel Williams. For thirty years from its date they 
 nursed the little properties, such as they were, lands and notes and 
 bonds ; they paid oif from time to time the numerous small bequests 
 in money, distributed the books and other personal items as the will 
 directed ; and they cared sagaciously for the remainder of the prop- 
 erty, adding interest to principal and reinvesting as occasion re- 
 quired. Early in 1785, four years previous to the death of Williams 
 and while the odium that attached to both of them as Tories in the 
 Revolution was still smouldering, they reported the condition of their 
 trust to the General Court of Massachusetts, and applied for the pas- 
 sage of a legislative Act to enable them to fulfil, so far as they were 
 concerned, the benevolent intention of the testator. Accordingly, 
 on the 8th of March, 1785, an Act was passed by what we may call 
 the State of Massachusetts creating a body politic, a non-terminable 
 corporation, under the name of " The Trustees of the Donation of 
 Ephraim Williams, Esq., for maintaining a Free School in Williams- 
 town." The Act itself appointed the original nine trustees, em- 
 powered them to receive from the executors of the will the proceeds 
 of their trust, which at that time amounted to $ 9157, and to go on 
 and erect a building and to manage in all things the Free School 
 
154 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 under the visitation and direction of the Supreme Judicial Court of 
 the Commonwealth. 
 
 It is probably due to the reader, at least to the reader of the 
 twentieth century, that the original charter of the Free School be 
 printed in this place in full ; as it will perhaps be due to the same 
 character to print on a later page the original charter of the college 
 granted eight years later. In connection with the charter of the 
 Free School will also here be printed part of an " Act for granting a 
 lottery for the purpose of erecting a suitable building for the use of 
 the Free School in Williamstown." 
 
 An act for directing the use and appropriation of a charitable donation, made in 
 a certain clause in the last will and testament of EPHRAIM WILLIAMS, ESQ., 
 for the support and maintenance of a Free School in Williamstown, in the 
 County of Berkshire ; and for incorporating certain persons as trustees, in 
 order more effectually to execute the intention of the testator, expressed in 
 the same. 
 
 Whereas, Israel Williams, Esq., and John Worthington, Esq., executors of 
 the last will and testament of Ephraim Williams, Esq., deceased, have repre- 
 sented to this court that the said Ephraim Williams, on the twenty-second day 
 of July, Anno Domino one thousand seven hundred and fifty-five, made his last 
 will and testament ; in which, after divers bequests, devises and dispositions, is 
 contained the following clause, viz. : 
 
 Item: "It is my will, desire and pleasure that the remaining part of the 
 lauds, not yet disposed of, shall be sold at the discretion of my executors, within 
 five years after an established peace ; and the interest of the money arid also the 
 interest arising from my bonds and notes, shall be appropriated towards the sup- 
 port and maintenance of a Free School, in a township west of Fort Massachu- 
 setts, commonly called the West Township, forever ; provided, the said township 
 shall fall within the jurisdiction of the province of Massachusetts Bay ; and pro- 
 vided, also, the Governor and General Court give the said township the name of 
 Williamstown ; and it is my further will and desire, that if there should remain 
 any monies of the above donation for the school, it be given towards the support 
 of a school in the East Township, where the fort now stands ; but in case the 
 above provisos are not complied with, then it is my will and choice that the in- 
 terest of the above-mentioned monies be appropriated to some pious and chari- 
 table uses, in manner and form as above directed in the former part of this my 
 last will and testament." 
 
 And, whereas the said executors have further represented, that it may be a 
 matter of doubt and uncertainty whether the township mentioned in the above 
 recited clause (which is now incorporated by the name of Williamstown), has so 
 far fallen within the jurisdiction of the province of Massachusetts, now Com- 
 monwealth of Massachusetts, in the sense of the testator, as that they might be 
 justified in appropriating the said donation to the support and maintenance of a 
 Free School in the same town ; and have submitted their duty herein to the de- 
 termination of this court praying that an act may be passed to declare their 
 duty, and to indemnify them in the execution of the same. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 155 
 
 SECTION 1 . Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in 
 General Court assembled, and by authority of the same, that the donation made 
 in the clause before recited, ought to be presently applied and appropriated to 
 the use and maintenance of a Free School in the town of Williamstown, in the 
 County of Berkshire, and that in case the said donation shall afford an annual 
 interest more than sufficient for the supporting and maintaining such school in 
 Williamstown, then the surplusage be appropriated to the use and maintenance 
 of a Free School in the tract of land called by the testator the East Township, 
 now incorporated by the name of Adams, with other lands adjoining, and that 
 the said executors be, and hereby are indemnified in applying and appropriating 
 the said donation to the uses above expressed, and shall be liable to no action or 
 suit in law or equity, on account of such appropriations. 
 
 And, whereas the said executors have further prayed that for carrying into 
 complete execution the intention of the testator, a corporation may be created 
 and vested with such powers as may be necessary for that purpose. 
 
 SECTION 2. Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, that William 
 Williams of Dalton, Theodore Sedgwick, Woodbridge Little, John Bacon, Thom- 
 son Joseph Skinner, Esquires, the Reverend Seth Swift and Daniel Collins, Mr. 
 Israel Jones and Mr. David Noble, and their successors, to be elected and ap- 
 pointed as hereinafter directed and provided, be, and hereby are incorporated, 
 and shall be a corporation forever, by the name of " The Trustees of the donation 
 of Ephraim Williams, Esq., for maintaining a Free School in Williamstown ; " 
 and that the said trustees and their successors be, and hereby are vested with 
 all the powers, rights and immunities, which are by law incident to aggregate 
 eleemosynary corporations. 
 
 SECTION 3. And be it further enacted, that the said corporation shall always 
 consist of a number of not less than seven, nor more than nine persons, excepting 
 only that whenever a vacancy shall happen by the death, removal, refusal or res- 
 ignation of any member or members, so that the number be reduced to less than 
 the aforesaid number of seven, then the remaining or surviving trustees shall 
 have full power to perform all corporate acts until such vacancy be supplied ; 
 and the said trustees shall elect and appoint a clerk of the corporation, who shall 
 fairly enter and record all votes, acts, orders and proceedings, made, done or 
 passed by the trustees ; and shall also elect a proper person to be their treasurer, 
 who shall receive into his hands all monies belonging to the corporation, and pay 
 out the same pursuant to the order of the trustees, and shall always keep a fair 
 account of all receipts and payments. 
 
 SECTION 4. And be it further enacted, that the power of electing and appoint- 
 ing successors in case of the death, removal, refusal or resignation of any of the 
 trustees, be, and hereby is vested solely in the Supreme Judicial Court of this 
 Commonwealth ; and whenever any of the above mentioned cases shall happen, 
 the trustees shall, as soon as conveniently may be, certify the same to the Jus- 
 tices of the said court, that a successor may be appointed ; and the Justices of 
 the same court are hereby empowered to remove from office and trust any mem- 
 ber of the corporation who shall, in their judgment, be unfit to hold the same, 
 by reason of incapacity, misdemeanor, negligence, or breach of trust. 
 
 And to the intent that the said donation may not be wasted, mismanaged, or 
 perverted from its original intention. 
 
 SECTION 5. Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the said 
 
156 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 corporation, and the donation itself, shall always be under the visitation and 
 direction of the Supreme Judicial Court, who are hereby empowered to visit the 
 said corporation to rectify all abuses, to determine all matters of doubt or dis- 
 pute touching the duty of the trustees, and the use, application or appropriation 
 of monies or interests to the same donation belonging ; and to make all such 
 orders and regulations with respect to the use, management and appropriation 
 of the same donation and every part thereof, as they shall judge necessary or 
 useful in order to promote the best interest of the school, according to the true 
 meaning and intention of the testator and such laws of this commonwealth as 
 may be in force respecting the same ; and the said court, whenever they shall 
 judge necessary, shall cause the said trustees to come before them, either to ren- 
 der an account of expenditures and dispositions of monies, or to answer for any 
 mismanagement or breach of trust ; and the trustees shall appear and lay their 
 accounts, papers, records and corporation books before the said court for in- 
 spection, whenever they shall be required thereto. 
 
 SECTION 6. And be it further enacted, that the said trustees and their suc- 
 cessors forever, shall have the possession, management and disposition of the 
 whole interest and estate, real and personal, which is contained in and given, 
 bequeathed, devised or disposed of by the above recited clause in the will afore- 
 said ; and they are hereby empowered and directed, as soon as conveniently 
 may be, to erect and maintain a Free School within the said town of Williams- 
 town, for the instruction of youth, in such manner as most effectually to answer 
 the pious, generous and charitable intention of the testator, and agreeable to 
 such orders and directions as they may, from time to time, receive from the Su- 
 preme Judicial Court ; and they are hereby empowered to appoint and employ 
 instructors, masters and officers as shall be necessary for that purpose. 
 
 And to the intent that the said trustees may be enabled, in the most easy and 
 expeditious manner, to receive into their own possession and management the 
 whole estate, property and interest contained in the aforesaid donation. 
 
 SECTION 7. Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the said 
 executors shall, at the request of the trustees, make and execute to the said trus- 
 tees a deed or deeds of conveyance of all such lands or real estate as belong to 
 said donation, arid yet remain unfold in which deed or deeds it shall be expressed 
 that the executors do grant to the trustees the right, estate and interest of the 
 testator, and of themselves, in and to the described lands or tenements to the 
 trustees and their successors forever ; and the said executors shall deliver over 
 into the hands of the trustees, at their request, all such personal securities or 
 mortgages as the executors now have in their own hands, and which are a part 
 of the same donation ; all which securities, whether bonds, promissory notes, 
 mortgage, deeds, or of what name or description soever, being endorsed with the 
 name of the said executors, or one of them, and delivered as aforesaid, shall be- 
 come the property of the trustees to all intents and purposes ; and they are 
 hereby empowered, in the name of the corporation, to bring any action or 
 actions against the obligors, promissors, mortgagors or tenants, for recovering 
 the contents of the same securities or possession of mortgaged estates, which 
 action or actions shall be holden to be good and valid in law for that purpose, 
 as if the securities or mortgage deeds had been originally made to the trustees by 
 their corporate names. 
 
 And, whereas the testator has directed, that in case his principal donation 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 157 
 
 should afford an interest more than sufficient for the support and maintenance of 
 the school in Williamstown, the surplusage should be improved to the use of a 
 school in the East Township, now called Adams, in the said County of Berk- 
 shire ; and whereas questions and disputes may arise touching the meaning and 
 extent of this part of the will, and when there may be said to be a surplusage be- 
 yond what should be necessary, according to the intent of the testator, for the 
 support of the school in Williamstown. 
 
 SECTION 8. Be it further enacted, that in case of such surplusage, the said 
 trustees are hereby empowered and directed to use and employ the same for 
 erecting and supporting a Free School in the said town of Adams, in the same 
 manner as has been in this act before provided in respect of the school in Wil- 
 liamstown ; and that all questions and disputes that may arise concerning such 
 surplusage, and the duty of the trustees in respect of the several schools, shall 
 be determined by the Supreme Judicial Court ; and the trustees shall always 
 conform their conduct and administration herein, to such orders and determina- 
 tions as shall, from time to time, be made by the same court. 
 
 SECTION 9. And be it further enacted, that the Supreme Judicial Court may, 
 at their discretion, exercise all the powers vested in them by virtue of this act, 
 at any of their sessions holden within the counties of Berkshire or Hampshire ; 
 and in all trials at law, the court ex-officio shall take notice of this act to all in- 
 tents and purposes whatsoever, and the same shall be given in evidence under 
 any general issue. 
 
 [This act passed March 8, 1785.] 
 
 Part of an " act for granting a lottery for the purpose of erecting a suitable 
 building for the use of the Free School in Williamstown." 
 
 Whereas it appears that it would promote the education of youth to erect a 
 suitable building for the accommodation of the Free School in Williamstown, 
 and the trustees of said school have represented their inability to accomplish the 
 same without the aid of the Legislature, and have requested that a lottery may 
 be granted for that purpose : 
 
 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court 
 assembled, and by the authority of the same, that there be, and hereby is granted 
 a lottery, for raising a sum not exceeding twelve hundred pounds, the profits of 
 which, after paying the necessary expenses of managing the same, shall be ap- 
 plied for the purpose of erecting the aforesaid building. 
 
 [This act passed February 11, 1789.] 
 
 Before entering upon the successive votes and action of this 
 short-lived corporation as such, it will be well briefly to characterize 
 the distinct individuals that composed it, especially as all of them, 
 with four others, came to be the original trustees of Williams College, 
 which was chartered June 22, 1793. 
 
 1. THEODORE SEDGWICK, of Sheffield and Stockbridge. He was 
 in the straight line of descent from Kobert Sedgwick, one of the 
 major-generals in the army of Oliver Cromwell. He was born at 
 Hartford in May, 1746 ; studied for a while at Yale College with 
 
158 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the class of 1765 ; pursued his legal studies with Colonel Mark Hop- 
 kins at Great Barrington, and was admitted to the bar in 1766, and 
 in 1785 took up as a lawyer his permanent residence in Stockbridge, 
 where he lived thereafter till his death in January, 1813. He was 
 a monarchist in feeling throughout his life ; but at the outbreak of 
 the Revolution he took the side of his country, and served as aide- 
 de-camp to General Thomas in the unfortunate Canada expedition in 
 1776. He became influential in suppressing what is called Shays's 
 Rebellion in Massachusetts, a worthy service indeed, but one that 
 had much bearing on politics in Berkshire for many years thereafter. 
 In the Convention called by the State of Massachusetts for the pur- 
 pose of ratifying or rejecting the Constitution of the United States 
 as framed at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, Theodore Sedg- 
 wick was prominent and patriotic, while his influence was not felt 
 by and over that portion of the delegates consisting of farmers and 
 artisans in anything like the degree of that of Jonathan Smith of 
 Lanesboro. Both favored the adoption of the Constitution; both 
 debated warmly in its behalf ; and the names of these two Berkshire 
 delegates stand together in the list of 187 who voted Yea on the final 
 question. But a list of 168, who voted Nay, exhibits not only the 
 narrow majority in a time of crisis for a national Union, but also 
 the great and recognized service of Smith in winning so many as he 
 did from the less titled and more yeomanly part of the Convention. 
 
 The service by which Sedgwick will be longest remembered oc- 
 curred in the ordinary practice of his profession in southern Berk- 
 shire. A neighbor of his, a very prominent man, Colonel John 
 Ashley, one of the richest men in the county, held as a part of his 
 property a number of negro slaves, one of whom, a woman of extraor- 
 dinary character and intelligence, has become more famous and is 
 likely to continue so than any other woman of her race in the coun- 
 try. She ran away from her master on the ground of alleged ill- 
 treatment, and declared she would never return to him. Ashley 
 sued to recover his property, and retained David Noble of Williams- 
 town as his lawyer in the case. All the steps of the legal process 
 are not a matter of record ; but Sedgwick interested himself in her 
 case particularly, and in that of another of Ashley's slaves named 
 Brom. In August, 1781, the issue was joined in the Court of Com- 
 mon Pleas for Berkshire County, in the form of "Brom and Bet 
 versus Ashley." The defendant pleaded that the plaintiffs were his 
 negro servants for life. Sedgwick was associated in the case with 
 Tapping Reeve, the distinguished lawyer of Litchfield, and David 
 Noble was assisted by John Canfield of Sharon. The case was tried 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FKEE SCHOOL. 159 
 
 before a Berkshire jury, and a verdict was returned for the plaintiffs. 
 The defendant appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court of the State, 
 but the appeal was not prosecuted there, and the judgment of the 
 court below was affirmed. If the arguments in this case pro and con 
 had been preserved, they would have made most interesting reading 
 to this day ; but unfortunately they have not been preserved even in 
 outline, and we do not know even the principles 011 which the case 
 was decided, whether the court in its charge to the jury laid down 
 certain legal principles derived from the Bill of Eights of the then 
 recently adopted Constitution of Massachusetts (as it is believed that 
 Sedgwick and Reeve argued), or whether the jury decided from 
 the special circumstances of the case. It has often been claimed, 
 that this single judgment of the Berkshire court, as affirmed by the 
 court above, abolished slavery in Massachusetts. One thing is certain, 
 that thereafter a number of slaves in various parts of the Common- 
 wealth sued out their freedom, and were in every case successful. 
 
 The grateful Bet, which is only the shortening of Betsey, the com- 
 mon synonym in New England of Elizabeth, her real name being 
 Elizabeth Freeman, became a lifelong inmate of Sedg wick's house, 
 and lies buried with the family with appropriate headstone and epi- 
 taph in the beautiful Stockbridge cemetery. The other servants, out 
 of respect to her character, called her Madam Bet, which soon 
 degenerated into Marm Bet, and then the children of the family 
 to whom she was nurse contracted it to Mum Bet. Just before 
 she died she gave her necklace of gold beads to Catherine Sedgwick, 
 the youngest daughter of the family, who valued it highly, and had 
 the beads formed into a bracelet, as more convenient for her own 
 wear. Before her death she gave the bracelet to her niece, Mrs. 
 Minot, and she to her own daughter, at whose decease Mr. Minot 
 presented the relic to the Massachusetts Historical Society, January, 
 1884, which thereupon passed the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be returned to William Minot, Esq., 
 for the very interesting relic which he has presented for our Cabinet, and that 
 we shall gladly give it a place among our most precious memorials. 
 
 On whatever principle Sedgwick may have argued this case before 
 the county court in 1781. after he was appointed a judge of the 
 Supreme Judicial Court in 1802, he gave a judicial opinion in the 
 case of Greenwood vs. Curtis, in which, maintaining the principles 
 declared by Lord Mansfield in the case of the negro Somerset, Judge 
 Sedgwick broadly argued, that by the law of Nature, which on this 
 question remained the law of Massachusetts, one man cannot have a 
 
160 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 legitimate property in another, and that any contract involving such 
 property was therefore malum in se and void. 
 
 When the present Constitution of the United States went into 
 practical operation in April, 1789, as between the eleven States that 
 had then ratified it, and it became necessary for these States to 
 choose their Representatives in Congress, Theodore Sedgwick was by 
 much the most prominent political character in the western end of 
 Massachusetts, which constituted one of the congressional districts. 
 Shays's Rebellion of 1787 had left behind it a deal of ill feeling in 
 Berkshire from Williamstown to Sheffield, and those who sympa- 
 thized with Shays felt particularly aggrieved at Sedgwick, for he had 
 openly scorned their political demands and been largely instrumental 
 in putting them down in the field. The outbreak was occasioned by 
 general popular dissatisfaction at the pressure of taxation, the bur- 
 densome salaries of state officials, and the scarcity of money after 
 the universal collapse of the Continental bills. The usual effects 
 had followed the protracted use of irredeemable paper money now 
 become worthless. Debts had been incurred in the terms of a grossly 
 depreciated money, and farms and homes had been mortgaged by 
 many of the soldiers for the sustenance of their families while they 
 were away fighting the battles of their country. With peace re- 
 turned, the old courts were opened for the collection of debts and 
 foreclosures of farms. The yeomanry in many places were mad- 
 dened. Eiotous action took place at several of the county-seats in 
 Massachusetts in order to stop the sessions of the courts, particularly 
 at Worcester and Springfield. Of 150 who were captured, 14 were 
 tried and sentenced to death; but such was the state of public 
 opinion and the general sympathy with Shays's men, that all the con- 
 victed were pardoned, and all the prisoners released, and no one was 
 ever penally punished for any participation. Shays himself was also 
 pardoned, and retired to Sparta, New York, where he died in 1825, 
 with a pension from the United States for Revolutionary services of 
 high character. 
 
 The odium always attaching to just beaten combinations of men, 
 together with the feeling of many excellent citizens that Shays's 
 men had sought to enforce their demands in a wrong way and at a 
 wrong time, enabled Sedgwick to be chosen to the national House 
 of Representatives to the first and second and third and fourth Con- 
 gresses by the popular vote. He had previously been appointed by 
 the Legislature to serve in the old Congress of the Confederation in 
 1785 and 1786, and had accepted the position both times. The gen- 
 eral trend of his politics, however, during the last decade of the last 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 161 
 
 century, made him more popular in the Legislature at Boston than 
 among his own constituents in Berkshire. A vacancy fell to the 
 State in the national Senate in March, 1796, and Sedgwick was 
 chosen to fill out the vacancy of three years, covering the last part 
 of the fourth Congress and the whole of the fifth. This of course 
 made a gap in the House from the Berkshire district, which was 
 twice filled in the interval by popular election and by a man 
 extremely different from Sedgwick in training and in political 
 tendencies, and who will be pretty soon characterized at length. 
 Nevertheless, Sedgwick was again chosen by the people of Berk- 
 shire a member of the House for the sixth Congress and was elected 
 its speaker. This service completed, he was appointed a judge of 
 the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1802, and died 
 highly honored in that position in 1813. By temperament \and 
 political conviction he was a Federalist, in contradistinction to those 
 both North and South who adhered to the principles of Jefferson, 
 and who were called at first Republicans and afterward Democrats. 
 While in Congress he was intimately associated with Alexander 
 Hamilton, Fisher Ames, John Jay, Rufus King, Edward Rutledge, 
 and the other leaders of the old Federal party. This was not a 
 party destined to survive in a free country, because its corner-stone 
 was privilege secured by law to the relatively few at the expense 
 of the relatively many. After the accession of Jefferson to .the 
 presidency in 1801, the old Federal party disappeared, as every 
 party of privilege, however prompt to put in an appearance from 
 time to time, must disappear before equal rights and opportunities. 
 The point to note here is that Theodore Sedgwick, one of the lead- 
 ing men of the country both privately and officially, was willing to 
 give of his time and strength assiduously to the interests of a little 
 free school in Williamstown ; and when the school became a college, 
 so called, he continued to give it the benefit of his attendance and 
 counsel so long as he lived. 
 
 2. TOMPSON JOSEPH SKINNER of Williamstown. This man, so 
 prominent in state and nation as the eighteenth century went out 
 into the next, is now almost everywhere forgotten as the nineteenth 
 is passing into the twentieth century. But his is a name that will 
 last as long as town records have interest and instruction for mortal 
 men. No other citizen of Williamstown during its first three half 
 centuries has ever had so remarkable a career as within the town ; 
 and it has been said by some, most likely to know the truth, that 
 no other citizen of Massachusetts up to the present time has ever 
 held the number and variety of high official positions as this man 
 
162 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 held in the twenty-five years, 1781-1807. With his younger brother, 
 Benjamin Skinner, Tompson J. came to Williamstown to settle in 
 1775. They were sons of Rev. Thomas Skinner, pastor in West 
 Chester, one of the parishes of Colchester, from 1740 to 1762, the 
 year of his death. Their mother was Mary Thomson, second wife 
 of the minister. She had five children, three daughters and these 
 two sons, of whom Tompson Joseph was born in May, 1752, and 
 Benjamin in July, 1754. The elder was only ten years old when 
 the father died, and the younger but eight, and at the proper time 
 they were both put apprentice by their mother to a carpenter and 
 builder. When the younger brother was just turned of twenty-one, 
 both came to Williamstown together, and settled to their trade in 
 commercial company, " T. J. & B. Skinner." The Eevolution was 
 then just opening on the Hoosac, but there was a plenty of work 
 to be done, though amid many interruptions. The brothers certainly 
 operated in company, and appear to have prospered together. By 
 the time Massachusetts had adopted her new constitution of 1780, 
 Tompson J. had become a captain of the military company of North 
 Williamstown, and gradually rose in rank to become a major-general 
 of the militia of the State. During the four next winters, 1781-84 
 inclusive, he represented the town in the new popular branch of the 
 Legislature at Boston ; in 1785, '86, '87, he represented his county 
 in the Senate of the State ; in 1798, '99, and 1800, he went back into 
 the popular branch, as well as served in the Massachusetts Conven- 
 tion called to adopt the Constitution of the United States ; then for 
 eight successive years, 1789-96, he served again in the Senate of his 
 State, when he was elected to succeed Theodore Sedgwick in the 
 national House of Representatives throughout the fifth Congress; 
 he served again during the short session of the eighth Congress in 
 the national House ; he was chosen presidential elector in 1792 ; he 
 was later appointed by Jefferson United States Marshal for the dis- 
 trict of Massachusetts ; he was a judge in the Court of Common Pleas 
 for Berkshire County from 1788 to 1807, and presiding judge for the 
 greater part of this time ; he became treasurer of the college when 
 it was chartered in 1793, but was succeeded in that capacity by 
 Daniel Dewey in 1798, when Skinner was serving in the national 
 Congress ; and during the two years, 1806 and 1807, he was treasurer 
 of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. What a record of public 
 service ! It was all the more remarkable because his home was in 
 the extreme northwestern corner of the Commonwealth, separated 
 from all the rest by a very considerable watershed on the south and 
 by a lofty mountain wall on the east. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 163 
 
 Professor Ebenezer Kellogg, of the college, in writing of General 
 Skinner twenty years after his death, uses the following language : 
 " He bore a very active part in the political contentions of the period 
 of his public life, and was much distinguished for his spirited and 
 happy efforts in extemporaneous and interrupted debate." Party feel- 
 ing ran very high at the opening of the nineteenth century through- 
 out the country, and particularly in New England ; and those young 
 men, like Tompson Skinner in Massachusetts and Samuel Smedley 
 in Connecticut, who saw their way clear and strong to those equali- 
 ties of natural rights and civil opportunities which were best formu- 
 lated in this country by Thomas Jefferson, had a great opening 
 before them, as have had their genuine successors to this day. 
 Political privileges to certain classes, in contradistinction to the 
 normal equalities of opportunity, were native to New England, were 
 also native to the South for other reasons, and these have always 
 been the radical bone of contention as between the great successive 
 political parties, howsoever designated ; but those bright young men 
 of every section and of every generation, who have seen clearly the 
 beauty and power of democracy, who have played fair and square, 
 who have claimed nothing for themselves or their " set " in the way 
 of political privileges over all others like circumstanced, have had 
 the real and lasting influence as statesmen and have governed the 
 country for the most part. Theodore Sedgwick was of a type of 
 men who have had great influence in many political conjunctures in 
 this country, and have given great dignity to affairs from time to 
 time; while men of the type of Tompson J. Skinner, both in the 
 states and in the nation, have been, as a rule, the safer guides to 
 the people, the more conformable to the universal doctrines of 
 democracy, and have the longest kept their personal hold on the 
 hearts of the governing masses. Neither type is complete of itself 
 for political ends in a popular government. No individual of either 
 kind was ever personally or politically perfect. These two men, 
 Sedgwick and Skinner, were brought together into close juxtaposi- 
 tion in the governing boards of the Free School and of the College, 
 in the courts of the county of Berkshire, in constitutional and politi- 
 cal conventions, in both branches of the state legislatures, and in the 
 halls of the national Congress ; but they were politically the antipodes 
 of each other. Sedgwick rested back more than is safe upon privi- 
 lege and distrusted the masses of the people ; Skinner distrusted 
 himself too little as an imperfect individual, conscious of an abiding 
 faith in all the rest, and his personal light accordingly grew dim 
 and went out in darkness, as we shall later see and sorrow over, 
 
164 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 while Sedgwick kept to the end his faith in himself as one of the 
 better and privileged class, and his personal light grew brighter and 
 brighter. 
 
 3. WILLIAM WILLIAMS of Dalton. We strike back in this man, 
 who was elected president of the Free School board at their first 
 meeting held in Pittsfield in April, 1785, into the radical qualities 
 and characteristics of the Williams family looked at in their en- 
 tirety. (1) Strong political conservatism ; (2) a pervasive personal 
 and family ambition; and (3) a peculiar foresight and moral control 
 penetrated and permeated by religious principle. Colonel Israel 
 Williams of Hatfield, 1709-89, was perhaps as representative a 
 man of his family in all these respects as ever presented himself. 
 He was the son of Rev. William Williams of Hatfield, the minister 
 there for fifty-six years, dying in 1741. Israel was half-cousin to 
 Ephraim the Founder, and own cousin to Colonel John Stoddard, 
 whom he succeeded in 1748 as the colonel of the Hampshire regi- 
 ment. Later, he became "ye monarch of Hampshire," chief among 
 the " river-gods." He continued irreconciled to the American Revo- 
 lution till his dea,th, and was roughly rabbled as a Tory by his Whig 
 neighbors a circumstance referred to in a couple of lines of the 
 contemporary satirical poem, Trumbull's " McFingal." Deacon Wil- 
 liam Williams of Dalton was this Colonel Israel's son. He was just 
 turned of twenty-one, and had just been graduated at Yale College, 
 when the words of the Founder's will were penned at Albany, and 
 among those words were these, " 'in case my brother Elijah dies with- 
 out issue, then his part to be given to my cousins, William and Israel 
 Williams [sons of Colonel Israel] to be equally divided between them, 
 and it is my will and desire further that my cousin William Williams, 
 above mentioned, shall have the perusal of the books hereby given to my 
 brothers, Thomas and Elijah, any reasonable time, upon his desire." 
 This William Williams, commonly referred to as Deacon William 
 Williams of Dalton, lived to become (perhaps) as efficient an agent 
 in the carrying out of the central clause of his kinsman's will as any 
 other individual, in that as one of the original trustees of the Free 
 School, and the first and only president of that incorporated board, 
 and also as one of the original trustees of the College from 1793 till 
 his death in 1808, he was in position to know better than any other 
 one of the governing board what the Founder's wishes had in reality 
 been, and was in position and reputation to see those personal and 
 family wishes practically carried out in action. 
 
 The way in which the people of Hatfield in general, and the Wil- 
 liams family in particular, became interested in the Berkshire town 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 165 
 
 of Dalton, so as to color it in its entire history, is to be explained as 
 follows. A township of land on the Ashuelot Eiver had been 
 granted to Oliver Partridge and others of Hatfield, under the im- 
 pression that it would fall in Massachusetts when the boundary line 
 was settled between that colony and New Hampshire ; but " Hazen's 
 line," as determined on in 1741, threw the tract into the latter colony ; 
 and so the General Court of Massachusetts granted the Hatfield par- 
 ties what was then called the " Ashuelot Equivalent," or what was 
 named Dalton on the incorporation of the tract in March, 1784. The 
 settlements began on it in 1755. Dr. Perez Marsh, surgeon's mate 
 to Dr. Thomas Williams of the Founder's regiment in the battle of 
 Lake George, a son-in-law of Colonel Israel Williams, a graduate of 
 Yale in 1748, was the most prominent early settler in Dalton. He 
 was appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1765, and 
 virtually retired from public life in 1774, because he did not sym- 
 pathize with the popular party, and died in 1784. It was about the 
 time of Dr. Marsh's death that his brother-in-law, Deacon William 
 Williams, removed from Hatfield to Dalton. He had been for twenty 
 years clerk of the Court of Hampshire County, and was a deacon in 
 the Hatfield church when the Revolutionary War broke out, in the 
 propriety of which he did not coincide with the majority of the 
 people. He was left out of office in consequence, yet such was the 
 general esteem in which he was held that he suffered but few other 
 trials on account of his political views. In removing to Dalton he 
 found himself in harmony politically with most of the people, and 
 also in position to help to organize a strong Congregational church, 
 which was formed in February, 1785. He was chosen one of its 
 deacons. He used his influence successfully with his father and 
 with Deacon Obadiah Dickinson to secure from them a donation of 
 285 acres of land in the south part of Dalton for the support of the 
 Congregational ministry. By the permission of the Legislature, the 
 land has been sold, and a part of the proceeds invested in a parson- 
 age, convenient to their meeting-house. Deacon Williams gained 
 the confidence of all associated with him in the administration and 
 control of the Free School and of the College in a remarkable degree. 
 He gained the confidence of the people of Berkshire County, as is 
 evidenced by the unanimity with which they sent him to the Senate 
 of the State in 1797, 1799, and 1800. His body lies interred in the 
 beautiful cemetery in Pittsfield, with which town Dalton has been 
 from the first socially, and in all other good ways, intimate. Colonel 
 William Williams, the patriarch of Pittsfield, and Deacon William 
 Williams, the father of Dalton, were kinsmen and friends. In a 
 
166 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 commemorative sermon preached in Dalton by the Rev. Dr. West, 
 one of his colleagues in the board of trustees, which was published, 
 occur these words : " He was a leader and guide to the people for many 
 years, an ornament and glory to the town as a wise citizen and active 
 Christian" In further illustration of that decidedly Christian char- 
 acter borne by the Williams family as such, it may be properly 
 stated here, that Rev. William Williams preached a half-century 
 sermon from his ordination at Hatfield, as did also his son Solomon 
 at Lebanon, his grandson Eliphalet at Hartford, and his great-grand- 
 son Solomon at Northhampton. 
 
 4. WOODBRIDGE LITTLE of Pittsfield. He was born in Col- 
 chester in 1741, was graduated at Yale in 1760, did his theological 
 reading and received his ministerial training with Rev. Dr. Bellamy,, 
 and at the latter's instance, as the result of correspondence between 
 him and the little handful of settlers in what is now Lanesboro early 
 in 1762, Little appeared there as a candidate for settlement in the 
 ministry. Not long after an article in these words was exhibited in 
 the warrant for a town-meeting, " To see if the town will give Mr. 
 Woodbridge Little a call to be our Gospel minister." What action, 
 if any, was taken at that meeting on that article, does not now ap- 
 pear, but the same article was reviewed in the warrant for a meeting 
 called for February, 1763, when, for some reasons, the article was- 
 reconsidered and negatived. As a probationer, he had shown much 
 ability, talents even brilliant, and a character fitted to inspire con- 
 fidence ; but his own mind does not seem to have been fully made up. 
 In purpose he abandoned the ministry, commenced the study of law, 
 removed to Pittsfield, built in 1767 a house near the spot where the 
 Boston and Albany railroad crosses the present Beaver Street, started 
 in as the first lawyer of the town in 1770, and kept both dwelling 
 and profession until his death in 1813. 
 
 He became one of the most public-spirited and ultimately honored 
 of the early citizens of Pittsfield. He was very conservative in his- 
 political opinions and action, probably as much so as was Theodore 
 Sedgwick, and became the recognized leader of the old Federal party 
 in his town. He was naturally selected in 1785 as one of the nine 
 trustees of the Free School in Williamstown. He interested himself 
 practically and effectively from the beginning in the new enterprise 
 on the Hoosac, and continued the manifestation of such interest even 
 in his last will and testament. He interested himself also in all the 
 civil and educational and religious welfare of Berkshire County. It 
 so happened that, one morning in the college year of 1811, John 
 Woods of the junior class went to President Fitch and requested a. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 167 
 
 dismission from College on the sole ground of pecuniary embarrass- 
 ment. "Why," exclaimed the president, "I have this very morning 
 received a letter from Mr. Woodbridge Little of Pittsfield pledging 
 the College a donation of $ 2500 for the purpose of aiding indigent 
 young men in their preparation for the ministry ! " Young Woods 
 did not leave College, but took the valedictory the next year, and be- 
 came a useful minister for a lifetime in the State of New Hampshire. 
 Woodbridge Little added $3200 in his will to the timely gift of two 
 years before with the same intent. 
 
 5. DANIEL COLLINS of Lanesboro. He was a native of Guilford 
 in 1738, and so was three years older than his college classmate and 
 personal friend and lifelong neighbor, Woodbridge Little. They 
 were reading theology together with Dr. Bellamy at Bethlehem when 
 the earnest request for a pastor came from the little hamlet of Lanes- 
 boro. It was perhaps one of the factors of Little's ultimate declina- 
 tion of the place, that he knew that Collins was ready and willing to 
 become a candidate there. At any rate, as early as October, 1763, 
 Collins was on the ground as a probationer, two months later was 
 formally called, and in the following April was solemnly ordained 
 by the laying on of hands. Samuel Hopkins was moderator of the 
 local council, and Stephen West scribe. What was thus begun in 
 unusual solemnity and interest was carried forward in the same place 
 with dignity and moral power for fifty-six years. The young pastor 
 came into a town but just organized, and into a church still inchoate 
 with a large reputation as a classical scholar and as a well-trained 
 theologian. He was impressive in his tall person, quick in his bodily 
 and mental movements, dignified and exacting in his manners, par- 
 ticularly with children, Continental from the first to the last in the 
 style of his garb, conservative in all of his political opinions, affable 
 in counsel and sound in judgment, a peacemaker near and far in 
 matters both social and churchly, hospitable in his household, benevo- 
 lent in his temper, exemplary in his piety, he became and continued 
 in all the relations of an extended pastorate at once beloved and hon- 
 ored. He was influential as a trustee in the Free School, and then 
 in the College from the very beginning of each. He served on the 
 important committees of both in* succession, not sparing himself in 
 time and travel and counsel and patience in their interest and up- 
 building. He is believed to have influenced Woodbridge Little in 
 both parts of his timely donation to the College. He is known to 
 have looked (and naturally) to the College as a nursery for Christian 
 ministers in a newly settled region of country. 
 
 During the entire life of the first pastor Lanesboro was more 
 
168 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 populous and prominent relatively to the other towns in Berkshire 
 County than it has been most of the time since. The pastor's house 
 stood on the site of the elegant mansion built and occupied by 
 Hon. Henry Shaw, which has always been and is now by much the 
 finest house in the village. Henry Clay was entertained in this 
 house by his friend Mr. Shaw, during his only political visit to New 
 England ; and in it also was spent a part of the boyhood of Henry 
 W. Shaw, the humorous writer, who made his assumed name of 
 "Josh. Billings 77 famous for comic originality and a deep insight 
 into human nature. Gideon Wheeler, for fifty years a farmer and 
 for long an innholder in Lanesboro at the north end of the village, 
 and otherwise also an uncommonly influential man in town, was 
 chosen deacon in 1809, and died the same year with his pastor, 1822. 
 One of his daughters married Henry Shaw, Lanesboro's most distin- 
 guished citizen in civil life, and another of them married Hon. John 
 Savage, chief justice of the State of New York. The grave of 
 Eev. Daniel Collins is still visible, and the lines of its headstone 
 legible, in the original and beautiful " God's acre " of the township 
 he did so much to honor in his lifetime and to cause to be remem- 
 bered with pleasure since his death. 
 
 6. ISRAEL JONES of North Adams. Although the two new 
 townships of East Hoosac and West Hoosac, later Adams and Wil- 
 liamstown, were laid out at the same time by a committee of the 
 General Court in 1749, their subsequent fortunes in the way of set- 
 tlement and development were very distinct and even diverse. West 
 Hoosac, by much the better town agriculturally, began almost at 
 once to be settled up by soldiers garrisoned at Fort Massachusetts 
 and by parties from Connecticut and elsewhere, and had thereafter 
 a slow but uninterrupted development; while East Hoosac, rela- 
 tively late in starting at all, stopped, changed hands, altered the 
 character of the population, allowed the original church to become 
 extinct, and only by extremely zigzag paths did it reach at length 
 a congruous and stable unfolding. In 1762 the General Court sold 
 this township by auction, making no reservations (so far as ap- 
 pears) within its limits. It was purchased by Nathan Jones for 
 3200. He admitted shortly after Elisha Jones and John Murray 
 as joint proprietors with himself. The father of Elisha Jones, 
 an English immigrant, settled in 1665 at Weston, Middlesex 
 County, Massachusetts. Elisha Jones held many public and respon- 
 sible offices in Weston, and was eminent in the church there for his 
 piety and enterprise. His pastor at Weston was the Rev. William 
 Williams, eldest son of the Rev. William Williams of Hatfield. The 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 169 
 
 Weston Williams was bom in Hatfield in 1688, was graduated at 
 Harvard in 1705, and ordained at Weston in 1709. Colonel Israel 
 Williams was his youngest brother, born in Hatfield the very year 
 of this ordination in W'eston. It was in this circuitous, though ulti- 
 mately most effective, way that the Jones family of Middlesex ' be- 
 came intimately associated in religious sympathies and in practical 
 good works with the Williams family of Hampshire and Berkshire. 
 Elisha Jones, who was a colonel in the militia of Middlesex and 
 the father of fourteen sons, of whom the fourth was Israel Jones, 
 born in 1738, purchased several lots in the centre of Pittsfield, about 
 the same time he became one-third proprietor of the township of 
 East Hoosac, or Adams. But Jones's minister, William Williams, 
 whose wife was a sister of Colonel John Stoddard, who came to own 
 in 1740 a third part of the promising town of Pittsfield, became in- 
 terested in the westward through his wife and particularly through 
 his eldest son, William Williams, born in 1713, who received from 
 his uncle in 1743 a central lot of one hundred acres, and became 
 from that time the foremost settler in Pittsfield. This was Colonel 
 William Williams, a renowned soldier at Louisburg and at Ticon- 
 deroga, and on several other grounds also an extraordinary man. It 
 was owing to him that the venerable elm, which has so long adorned 
 the centre of the common in Pittsfield, was preserved. He owned 
 the land on which it stands. His workmen were clearing the ground, 
 and one of them was just raising his axe to cut the staddle down by 
 a stroke, when the colonel rode up and halted him. His relations 
 to the Stoddard family were remarkable. His mother was the eldest 
 daughter of Eev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton ; his grand- 
 father, Eev. William Williams of Hatfield, married for his second 
 wife his mother's younger sister, and she became the mother of Colo- 
 nel Israel Williams. Another of his mother's sisters became the 
 mother of Jonathan Edwards ; still another of his Stoddard aunts 
 became the mother of the celebrated Joseph Hawley. 
 
 But where does our Israel Jones, the trustee of the Free School, 
 come in amid these endless but interesting genealogies ? We shall 
 discover in a moment. Colonel Elisha Jones, according to a plan of 
 Pittsfield lots dating from 1759, owned about one thousand acres of 
 land there in four or five patches. He evidently did not wish him- 
 self to leave his old home and his own pastor in Weston. But he 
 certainly sent his son Israel, who was twenty-one years old in 1759, 
 and probably two or three more of his sons, to occupy or appro- 
 priate some or all of these noble Pittsfield lots. We have no special 
 interest in them or their owners. More dominating by this time 
 
170 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 had become the local interests of Colonel Jones jn East Hoosac. 
 Israel Jones removed thither from Pittsfield in 1766, was authorized 
 by the three proprietors to survey a further number of lots of one 
 hundred acres each in addition to the forty-eight of the same dimen- 
 sions surveyed out in October, 1762, and to superintend their sale, 
 admitting actual settlers to the number of sixty. A previous vote 
 of the General Court had required the settlers, when their number 
 amounted to sixty, to build a meeting-house and settle a learned 
 protestant minister. Mr. Jones took up his own residence upon the 
 tract of two hundred acres granted by the Court in 1750 to Colonel 
 Ephraim Williams in consideration that he build and maintain for 
 twenty years a grist-mill and a sawmill near the junction of the two 
 branches of the Hoosac. The house site to this still memorable 
 estate has never been changed to this day. It was and is on the 
 higher ground a few rods to the north of the meadow site of Fort 
 Massachusetts. The old Mohawk trail from the North River to the 
 Deerfield ran between these two sites very near to the former, just 
 where the present road north of the Hoosac has run for a century 
 and a half. Colonel Ephraim Williams, the founder, built nothing 
 upon this his grant in the way of a dwelling, though he built the 
 stipulated mills on the South Branch in the centre of the present 
 city of North Adams. The old fort, however, afforded shelter to 
 some who partially cultivated the farm until its rude timbers had 
 rotted away. The first to build a house on the present site overlook- 
 ing the meadow was Charles Wright, a native of Northfield and 
 later the most prominent settler in Pownal five miles lower down 
 the river. We should not have known of his tarrying here by the 
 fort, were it not for an application he made to the colony of Massa- 
 chusetts for a license to open and maintain a public tavern at this 
 place. From the epitaph on the headstone of his grave in the 
 Lovat burial ground, we may learn that he was born Jan. 5, 
 1719 ; that " he was one of the first English settlers in this town ; " 
 and that he died Dec. 23, 1793. The adjoining stone yields the 
 fact that his wife, Ruth Boltwood of Amherst, born in 1721, lived 
 on in Pownal till April 15, 1806, in her eighty-fifth year. Both 
 stones are declared to have been " erected by Hon. Solomon Wright," 
 one of their sons. Charles Wright was of the same lineage as Gov- 
 ernor Silas W T right of New York. His original tavern-stand in 
 Pownal, where he has posterity still, is yet designated by his name. 
 When Israel Jones came to East Hoosac to organize settlements 
 and civilization, he took up his dwelling on the " fort farm," where 
 Charles Wright had transiently lived; and he occupied the house 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FKEE SCHOOL. 171 
 
 and cultivated the farm, both as his own, till his death in 1828. 
 From the Jones heirs the entire estate soon passed into the hands 
 of Clement Harrison of Williamstown, by whose heirs it is still 
 owned and occupied in this year of Grace 1895. The coming of the 
 Jones family into Berkshire out of an impulse derived from the 
 Williams and Stoddard families, which were practically one, proved 
 to be of lasting significance and of Christian usefulness. The 
 Weston minister, William Williams, although he did not preach his 
 half-century-f rom-ordination sermon in Weston, as his father William 
 did in Hatfield, as his brother Solomon did in Lebanon, as his nephew 
 Eliphalet did in Hartford, and as his grand-nephew Solomon did in 
 Northampton, yet he lived there fifty-one years from his ordination, 
 and after his dismission was a peaceable parishioner, and treated 
 his successor with kindness and respect, contrary to the too frequent 
 practice of clergymen that are removed from office, and continue 
 their residence in town. His influence over the Jones families in 
 Weston was pervasive and persistent. Not only did Colonel Elisha 
 and his son Israel feel this influence in their movements and migra- 
 tion to Berkshire, but long before this time Josiah Jones of Weston 
 brought his family to Stockbridge in conjunction with that of Colonel 
 Ephraim Williams, the father, at the instance of the General Court, 
 in order that the missionary Indians there, under the direct instruc- 
 tion of John Sergeant and Timothy Woodbridge, might see the 
 orderly life of Christian families exemplified before their eyes. 
 The Williams and Jones families both settled on Stockbridge Hill 
 in 1737. The sites of both these houses are still pointed out by 
 residents of the " Hill," particularly by Henry M. Field, a native 
 of Stockbridge and a graduate of Williams in 1838 ; the site of the 
 Jones house was that occupied long into this century by his grand- 
 son, Deacon Josiah Jones. 
 
 The next year after he became a permanent resident of East 
 Hoosac, Israel Jones married Alithea, a daughter of the Rev. 
 Samuel Todd, and lived with her in the "fort house" just referred 
 to for fifty-nine years. Mr. Todd was the first settled minister in 
 East Hoosac, coming there to reside and preach at the same time 
 Mr. Jones came, namely, in 1766, and as such received the lands 
 to which he was entitled under the terms of the settlement of the 
 town. But there was soon trouble with the minister, owing to 
 marked changes in the population. Settlers from Rhode Island, 
 many of them Quakers and many of them Baptists, bought up freely 
 the farm-lots offered for sale by the Jones interest and by the earlier 
 corners, and soon constituted a decided majority. A vote of the inhab- 
 
172 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 itants was taken in January, 1778, the year the town was incorpo- 
 rated, proposing in form to the Rev. Mr. Todd to take his dismission 
 from their ministry, and to relinquish his claim to the ministerial 
 lands. The dismission followed of course, but not the relinquish- 
 ment at all. Mr. Todd received his first degree from Yale College 
 in 1734, at the early age of fifteen, and five years later was settled 
 in the ministry in one of the villages of Woodbury. He removed 
 from North Adams to Orford, New Hampshire, the second town 
 above Hanover on the Connecticut River, where he and his wife 
 were received as members of the church in June, 1782. He preached 
 occasionally thereafter to that congregation until his death. His 
 character and talents stand highly commended, and especially is 
 recognized his fervent advocacy of the Whitefield revivals of 1740, 
 which many pastors and churches opposed. 
 
 Todd's summary removal from his crude pulpit in North Adams 
 resulted later in the entire extinction of the Congregational church. 
 In 1803 Israel Jones and his wife removed their church relations to 
 William stown, and continued their regular attendance there until 
 
 1827, when the present Congregational church in North Adams was 
 instituted. "Esquire Jones," as he was uniformly called, was the 
 most prominent and influential citizen in his township from 1766 to 
 
 1828, when he died near the opening of his ninety-first year. Indeed, 
 no other citizen of that township has ever reached and maintained 
 his well-deserved eminence. He did the landed and most of the 
 other legal business for his fellow-citizens throughout his long and 
 thoroughly trusted life. He was often a member of the General 
 Court at Boston, and gained such a position in that connection 
 that he was appointed by President John Adams a commissioner to 
 aid in adjusting, if possible, the northeast boundary line between 
 Britain and the United States a controversy, however, which was 
 not finally settled until the famous and fortunate Webster- Ashburton 
 Treaty of 1842. As a trustee of the Free School and then continu- 
 ously of the College until 1822, Israel Jones was interested and 
 assiduous and influential. Owing to his personal training under 
 Rev. William Williams of Weston, and to the intimate relations 
 between the Jones and Williams families throughout, in an indi- 
 rect though penetrative way he represented in the college board the 
 feelings and tendencies of the Williams family, as did Deacon Wil- 
 liam Williams of Dalton in (perhaps) a more direct manner. In the 
 Berkshire American, a county newspaper, there appeared a notice of 
 Mr. Jones the week after his death, of which the following para- 
 graph is the most significant : 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 173 
 
 The character of Esquire Jones was formed by a vigorous intellect, ardent 
 feelings, and religion. His mind was furnished with extensive intelligence from 
 observation and reading, and his memory gave him a command of his knowledge 
 which seldom accompanies extreme age. His bodily health and activity, pre- 
 served by temperance and wholesome exercise, were like the health and activity 
 of youth. He was decidedly generous and kind, though possessed of a quick and 
 ardent temperament. To those who were acquainted with his religious experi- 
 ence, he manifested the uniform spirit of a Christian. He cherished a constant 
 sense of sin, and looked for salvation to the atonement of Christ. For a long 
 time previous to his death, his hope of heaven sustained him above the fear of 
 death, and rendered his expected dissolution an agreeable subject of contempla- 
 tion. He often said that he dreaded nothing from death but the pain of dying, 
 and he was spared even that. 
 
 7. DAVID NOBLE of Williamstown. The attentive reader may 
 have noticed in the foregoing chapter the statement that David 
 Noble, a native of New Milford in 1744, a graduate of Yale in 1764, 
 an incomer to Williamstown in 1770, came into some odium with his 
 fellow-townsmen and under some discipline by the Committee of 
 Safety on account of alleged infidelity to the Revolutionary cause in 
 earlier stages. Whether it were further in the way of discipline that 
 he was later put in charge of the " pest house," near the Pownal line 
 by the same committee, does not clearly appear ; at any rate he was 
 out in the military service of the town more than once before the 
 war was over, and he seems to have acquired in most respects the 
 confidence of his fellow-citizens in his after life. He became a mem- 
 ber of the church before 1779, as did also his wife, Abigail Benriet 
 Noble. He was a lawyer, and had legal practice more or less in all 
 parts of the county. It will always be remembered that he was the 
 opposing counsel to Theodore Sedgwick in the justly celebrated case of 
 the alleged slave woman, Mum Bet. But he gradually withdrew from 
 legal practice, and engaged in mercantile pursuits, and acquired in 
 this manner a handsome fortune for those times. His first home in 
 town was on the Hoosac Eiver, near to the present Noble bridge, so 
 named after him. His first house stood on the site of the present 
 large cotton mill near the railroad station. Access to it from the 
 main street was at first by a road running north along the bank of 
 the Green Eiver to its junction with the Hoosac. Afterward Noble 
 bought of Judah Williams, who had built it, the large two-story 
 brick house on the main street near the Green Eiver, which is still 
 standing in good repair. As he then owned the whole of the broad 
 meadow between the brick house and the Hoosac Eiver, he closed 
 up the old road (such as it was) down the Green Eiver to the junc- 
 tion, on which Derrick Webb and Thomas Dunton of the original 
 
174 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 householders had dwelt, and opened a new farm road from his first 
 house on the river to the main street at right angles, which farm 
 road became a public highway in 1854, and has recently been named 
 by the town as " Cole Avenue." 
 
 The Revolutionary times in New England were hostile in many 
 respects to the good morals of the people, and particularly to their 
 fidelity in marital relations. Nothing is gained, and something good 
 may be lost, in the delineation of prominent characters in the past by 
 the suppression of well-founded evidence that such persons were de- 
 linquent in moral behavior. As, " Lawyers excel in the percep- 
 tion rather than in the practice of virtue." A young man born in 
 Williamstown was graduated at Williams College in 1799. His 
 name was William Boardman. Some of the best people in town at 
 that time believed arid said that he was the son of David Noble, 
 although always reckoned and recorded among the other children of 
 Theodore Boardman, a near neighbor of the Nobles. Sixty years 
 afterward two or three among the best people of Williamstown 
 believed and said the same thing. On their direct and specific 
 authority the statement is repeated here. There is nothing covered 
 that shall not be revealed. This world is constructed on the princi- 
 ple of exposure, and it is a part of the punishment of wrong-doing 
 that lapse of time is often powerless to wipe out the record that 
 once stood against the wrong-doer. In 1797 David Noble was 
 appointed a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the county of 
 Berkshire as the Court was then constituted, and he continued to sit 
 in it till his death in 1803. He was the first trustee of the School 
 and of the College to drop out of the earthly ranks at the inexorable 
 call. He displayed a steady interest in the welfare of the incipient, 
 yet growing, institution, personally donating the bell in 1793 that 
 first hung in the belfry of the Free School building, now the old but 
 still well-preserved West College, and he gave also to the College a 
 fine strip of land on Main Street as a site for the first president's 
 house, a site now occupied by the Hopkins Memorial Hall, while the 
 original house removed is still standing a few rods to the north and 
 has been tenanted for many years by Professor T. H. Safford. A 
 portrait of Judge Dftvid Noble, presented to the college by one of 
 his grandsons, Charles Noble of Detroit, is now hanging among other 
 portraits in the Alumni Hall. 
 
 An eccentric and in some respects memorable settler and citizen 
 of Williamstown, Jared Leet, a grandson of old Governor Leet of 
 Connecticut, had early squatted and made a home for himself on 
 the lower slope of what is now called in his memory " Leet Hill." 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FEEE SCHOOL. 175 
 
 Parts of Leet Hill were on the " Gore," which did not legally become 
 a part of Williarastown till 1838 ; but the original Leet clearing and 
 house seem to be upon one of the 60-acre lots of the town. Four 
 or five poor families further south, where the Gore became much 
 wider, paid of course no taxes to the town, for they had no legal 
 title to their lands. The Leet lands seem to have been in dispute 
 and controversy of some sort, whether as to titles or taxes does 
 not now appear, and David Noble in some legal or representative 
 capacity excited the bitter enmity of Jared Leet, the verse-maker. 
 The latter's lines on the former are not quoted in this place because 
 it is supposed that they present a candid or any way truthful 
 phase of the lawyer's character ; but they doubtless present a very 
 truthful phase of the poetaster's moral makeup. Jared Leet had 
 degenerated in many ways from his grandfather, good old William 
 Leet, Governor of Connecticut and the hospitable friend of the Eng- 
 lish regicides when they came to Connecticut in 1661. Jared was 
 too poor to have an annual almanac of his own, but he used to go 
 often to his near neighbors, the Torreys or Fosters, to find out from 
 their almanac who was the Governor of Connecticut for that year. 
 He early planted an orchard on his southern-sloped side-hill, where 
 now is standing a better and larger one ; but his own cider and that 
 of his neighbors far and near (for he wandered a good deal in his 
 old age, and was generally welcomed) befogged rather than clarified 
 his intellectuals. A pleasant picture of the old gentleman, however, 
 was given to the writer many years ago by one whose childhood's 
 recollection of him thus was distinct, as standing sometimes for an 
 hour at dusk of a springtime day near a frog-pond, listening to the 
 then usual sounds from thence, " which make me think of old Con- 
 necticut, ivhen I was a boy in Guilford." The following are the 
 lines : 
 
 There was an old man lived in a brick house, 
 
 He had no more conscience than a louse, 
 
 Seventy dollars he did cheat 
 
 Out of poor old Jared Leet. 
 
 Now he's dead I wish him well, 
 No other than the gates of hell, 
 There to roast and burn and fry 
 With devils to etarnity. 
 
 8. JOHN BACON of Stockbridge. Here we have a man of very 
 remarkable characteristics, a man who brought to the body of 
 his colleagues, the trustees of the Free School, all of them remark- 
 able men, qualities unique and distinguishing him from them all. 
 
176 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 He was born in Canterbury, Connecticut, and was graduated at 
 Princeton College in 1765, at an age considerably advanced beyond 
 that of the average graduate of those times, namely, twenty-eight 
 years. During the six years subsequent to his graduation he studied 
 theology, and preached for some time to two vacant churches in 
 Somerset County, Maryland. In 1771 he was called to the Old 
 South Church in Boston, and was settled there in September. In 
 the absence of contemporary evidence two points may be assumed 
 as certain : (1) that he would not at that time have been called to 
 the Old South if he had not had conspicuous talents and a very con- 
 siderable reputation; and (2) that he would not have been there 
 broken up after a four years' settlement had there not been devel- 
 oped uncommon grounds of difference between him and his people. 
 He went almost directly to Stockbridge in 1775, bought him a farm, 
 practically abandoned the ministry, and entered upon civil life at 
 once, although he occasionally preached thereafter. What could 
 have caused such a turn in the life of such a man? The date of 
 the turn throws the only accessible light on the nature of the hinge. 
 The minds of the people of Boston in 1775 were very much absorbed 
 in thoughts and movements hostile to the Crown or at least to the 
 ministers of Great Britain. But men trained when and where and 
 how John Bacon had been, were extremely likely to take the con- 
 servative and status quo view of political matters, as we historically 
 know that many such men actually did. Upon this general suppo- 
 sition it was as natural for John Bacon to leave Boston for Stock- 
 bridge as it was for Deacon William Williams to leave Hatfield for 
 Dal ton. Berkshire was a hospitable refuge for such men from the 
 eastward at that time, because the tone of things here had already 
 been given a Toryish key by the Williams family and others like- 
 minded with them. On this supposition also, as well as on general 
 grounds of character and eminence, it was natural that he should be 
 selected as one of the original trustees of the William stown Free 
 School. 
 
 The rise of John Bacon in civil life after he moved to Stockbridge 
 was steady and rapid. He first became a justice of the peace, an 
 office then of much higher consideration than now, and soon a repre- 
 sentative to the General Court ; later, he was elected a state senator 
 in ten different years and the president of that body at least one 
 year; he was appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 
 1779, but it does not appear that he ever undertook to perform any 
 of the duties of that office, for the reason that during the Revolu- 
 tion, that is, from 1774 to 1781, practically no courts were holden 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 177 
 
 in Berkshire ; in 1789 and onward, however, he sat as a justice in 
 the reorganized Court, and in 1807 he was expressly appointed chief 
 judge of it and presided till the abolition of the Court in 1811, when 
 a Circuit Court of Common Pleas was established, and his son, Eze- 
 kiel Bacon, then of Pittsfield, was seated as chief judge of the new 
 Court till 1814. Ezekiel Bacon was previously for some time a citi- 
 zen and lawyer of Williamstown, and a full characterization of him 
 will perhaps be in order upon a later page of this book. Both John 
 Bacon and his son were prominent in the politics of the county in 
 the opening years of the new century. Both were Democrats. Both 
 became members of Congress, the father in 1801-03, and the son 
 in 1807-13. Ezekiel Bacon was very influential in Washington ; he 
 was chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and he was 
 instrumental in securing the nomination and confirmation of Joseph 
 Story, later our most distinguished jurist, as a justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States in 1811, before the latter was even aware 
 that he was a candidate. Eev. Dr. Field, in his " Stockbridge," says 
 of John Bacon, "He had a strong mind, was fond of debate and 
 tenacious of his opinions, but decided in prosecuting what he es- 
 teemed his duty." He, with all his colleague trustees of the Free 
 School, petitioned the Legislature in 1793 for the College charter, 
 and was with all of them continued as trustees of the College. He 
 resigned this position, however, in 1804, the second in the file of 
 nine to fall out, David Noble having died the previous year. Bacon 
 died in 1820 in his eighty-third yew. 
 
 9. SETH SWIFT of Williamstown was a native of Kent, and a 
 graduate of Yale in 1774. Kent, with its neighboring towns of 
 Canaan and Cornwall and Litchfield, had already sent to Williams- 
 town many of its early settlers and church-members; and it was 
 but natural for the young graduate to look northward up the 
 Housatonic toward its sources for a settlement. He read his the- 
 ology in part with Eev. Dr. West in Stockbridge, and was ordained 
 in Williamstown in May, 1779. The church had become considera- 
 bly demoralized during the four years after Eev. Whitman Welch, 
 its first pastor, had left it, never to return, in order to accompany 
 Colonel Benedict Arnold from Boston to Quebec in the winter of 
 1775-76. But sixty-one members welcomed Mr. Swift in 1779, 
 while two hundred and seventy-three were added in the twenty- 
 eight years of his faithful ministry. No list of Mr. Welch's mem- 
 bers has ever been found ; but it is more than probable that they 
 were the same as greeted the new pastor four years later, and the 
 following are the names : 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Elisha Baker 
 
 Phebe Nichols Baker 
 
 Martha Young Blair 
 
 Daniel Burbank 
 
 Mary Marks Burbank 
 
 Samuel Burchard 
 
 Elisabeth Hamilton Burchard 
 
 Sarah Luce Byam 
 
 Hannah Davis 
 
 Elisabeth Downs Downing 
 
 Thomas Dunton 
 
 Mary Davis Dunton 
 
 Nathan Foot 
 
 Mariann Foot 
 
 Israel Harris 
 Sarah Morse Harris 
 Hannah Torrey Hatfield 
 Rachel Baldwin Hawkins 
 Sampson Howe 
 Hannah Foot Howe 
 Henry Johnson 
 
 Abiah Johnson 
 
 Persis Johnson 
 
 Samuel Kellogg 
 Chloe Bacon Kellogg 
 Dea. James Meacham 
 Lucy Rugg Meacham 
 Jonathan Meacham 
 Thankful Eugg Meacham 
 David Noble 
 Abigail Sennet Noble 
 
 Isaac Ovits 
 Esther Wilson Ovits 
 Moses Rich 
 Mary Roberts 
 Thomas Roe 
 Mary Wells Roe 
 Anna Dwight Sabin 
 Nathaniel Sanford 
 Catherine Davis Smith 
 David Southwick 
 Thankful Davis Southwick 
 Deborah Spencer 
 Isaac Stratton 
 Mary Fox Stratton 
 Mary Dormer Stratton 
 Ruth Tyrrel Torrey 
 Hannah Wheeler Torrey 
 Marvin Gaylord Welch 
 William Wells 
 Rebecca Stoddard Wells 
 Elisabeth Lewis Williams 
 
 Mary Wilson 
 
 Dea. Nathan Wheeler 
 
 Sarah Wheeler 
 
 Nathan Wheeler, Jr. 
 Hannah Brister Woodcock 
 Josiah Wright 
 
 Abigail Wright 
 
 Gideon Wright 
 Sarah Wright 
 
 Forty-two of these sixty-one persons were husbands and wives ; 
 thirteen of them were wives without their husbands, two of whom, 
 Mrs. Welch and Mrs. Sabin, were widows of victims in the expedi- 
 tion to Quebec ; three of them were husbands without their wives ; 
 and the remaining three were apparently unmarried women. In the 
 course of this year, 1779, five additional members were received; 
 namely, Daniel Horsford, Martha Marks Talmadge, Elisabeth Egles- 
 ton, David Johnson, and Phebe Cole Johnson, the last two being 
 also the first couple married by Mr. Swift, and the first known to be 
 married in Williamstown. In each of the two following years 
 twenty-three persons were admitted to the church, most of them 
 from the families of the more prominent local settlers. After this 
 for twenty-one years the yearly additions to membership averaged 
 but five ; then in 1805 there was an accession of fifty-four persons ; 
 in 1806 an addition of fifty-two persons ; and in 1807, the pastor 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 179 
 
 dying in February, the additions amounted to thirty-five persons. 
 The following entry on the records of the church testifies to the 
 affection and esteem of the people for their pastor : 
 
 At about 9 o'clock A.M. [Feb. 15, 1807] the Rev. Seth Swift, our much 
 esteemed, dearly beloved and very faithful and laborious pastor, died, in the 
 midst of great usefulness, while God was pouring out his Spirit here, and giving 
 him many seals of his ministry. 
 
 Professor Ebenezer Kellogg of the College, though not strictly 
 contemporary with Mr. Swift, wrote of him as follows in the " His- 
 tory of the County of Berkshire " : " He was warm and open in his 
 temper, evangelical in his religious views, serious in the general tone 
 of his intercourse with his people, zealous in the labors of the min- 
 istry, decided in his opinions, and prudent and energetic in his 
 measures." 
 
 As the Free School was to be established in Williamstown, as its 
 teachers and pupils would, as a matter of course, attend upon the 
 preaching and other religious services of the pastor there, it was 
 almost a matter of course that Mr. Swift should be included in the 
 charter as one of the original trustees of the school. He was in no 
 sense an eminent man, as was each of his eight colleagues. He left 
 nothing in print save an ordination sermon, preached in Rupert, 
 Vermont. But he was a good man ; and what was more, he was on 
 the ground. All the rest of the trustees were, indeed, from within 
 the limits of Berkshire County; but Williamstown was to be the 
 seat of their operations and the centre of supervision and counsel. 
 Accordingly there were three trustees from Williamstown, and only 
 one from any other place in the county. At the first meeting of the 
 trustees, held at Pittsfield, April 24, 1785, William Williams of 
 Dalton was chosen the president of the body, and Seth Swift of 
 Williamstown treasurer. On the organization of the College eight 
 years later, and at the first meeting of the new and enlarged board 
 of trustees, four new members having been added to the original 
 nine of the Free School, it was resolved that Messrs. Swift and 
 Skinner and Noble (all of Williamstown) be a committee to counsel 
 the president. 
 
 No personal likeness of Seth Swift is believed to be extant ; but it 
 is known that he was of uncouth features and of powerful frame. 
 Credible traditions concerning him have come down to the present 
 time. The two successive houses which he occupied during his long 
 pastorate are still standing near each other on the Green River 
 Road about one mile south of the village. Tradition has it that the 
 
180 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 two evergreen trees standing for three quarters of a century in front 
 of the southernmost of these two houses were set in succession by 
 his two sons, Ephraim Griswold, who was graduated from College 
 in 1804, and Elisha Pope, likewise graduated in 1813. The other 
 house of two stories, a few rods to the north and on the other side 
 of the road, is said to have been built by the pastor for the sake of 
 more commodious quarters. The older house, which has gone by the 
 name of the " Stevens house " for fifty years, is by much the more 
 interesting of the two. What now follows, though not of much con- 
 sequence to posterity, does not depend on the uncertain cord of tra- 
 dition, but has all the evidence that can be given to facts by eye and 
 ear witnesses of the highest credibility. In the summer of 1852 
 these two sons of the early pastor, both graduates of the College, 
 both clergymen and one of them a doctor of divinity, both large in 
 person and uncomely in features, and the elder one with extremely 
 prominent eyes and an uncommonly loud voice, came back to revisit 
 the scenes of their childhood and of their college life. It so hap- 
 pened that they were to spend a Sunday. Eev. Dr. Absalom Peters, 
 then pastor of the Congregational church, an old man, was much 
 interested in antiquarian matters relating to the town, and was never 
 averse to being relieved from pulpit duties in the general interest of 
 his " barrel " of old sermons, not only secured the two visiting clergy- 
 men to preach for him that Sunday, the elder in the morning and the 
 younger in the afternoon, but also at the opening of the morning 
 service made effusive reference to the interesting fact of their pres- 
 ence (both of them in the pulpit), and announced with very consid- 
 erable unction that the one would preach the morning sermon and 
 the other the sermon of the afternoon. At that time, and for many 
 years before and afterward, the college students worshipped on Sun- 
 days with the people of the town, the seniors and freshmen occupy- 
 ing the gallery on the south side of the meeting-house and the jun- 
 iors and sophomores the corresponding gallery on the north. All 
 went tolerably well until the elder Swift began to warm up with his 
 theme, whatever it was, when his loud voice became thunderous, 
 and his bulging eyes still more brilliant and protuberant. The titter- 
 ing at intervals ran round the entire gallery, and became more pro- 
 nounced among the seniors, of whom the present writer was one, 
 mainly because they were nearer and could see better ! All above, 
 below, and around could hear equally well ! As the " application " 
 approached the peroration, what was designed to be ponderable and 
 solemn became to the auditors and beholders irresistibly ludicrous. 
 The close of each hortatory sentence was greeted with a guffaw, in 
 
. WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 181 
 
 which, the most serious student could not help but join. At last the 
 preacher in sheer despair turned full round to the right where the 
 seniors sat, and rolling his blazing orbits in that direction, rebuked 
 them for their irreverence in the house of God in tones that were 
 sonorous if not wrathful. It is scarcely needful to add that the Rev. 
 Dr. Swift, the younger brother, did not preach that afternoon, and 
 that neither of the two venerable men worshipped with the students, 
 and that Dr. Peters commenced the afternoon service himself in a 
 noticeably more subdued manner than he had used in the morning. 
 Some wicked seniors thought in their hearts that the pastor's hum- 
 bleness of manner was due to the unwelcome reflections (1) that he 
 had promised in the morning more than he was able to fulfil, and 
 (2) that he had one less sermon in his barrel in hopeful reserve as a 
 consequence of the fiasco of the morning ! 
 
 These nine, then, were the original trustees of the Free School, 
 and no other person ever served in that capacity, because these all 
 lived to petition the General Court in a body to transform the school 
 into a college, which took place in 1793 ; and all these became then 
 trustees of the College with four other men added, and with a pro- 
 vision that thereafter the trustees might be seventeen and must be 
 at least eleven. Let us here and now tabulate these men, and take a 
 good look at them. No other nine trustees taken together at any 
 one time during the full century now past can equal these original 
 nine in individual and moral power, in position and reputation in 
 their day. 
 
 Seth Swift Williamstown Yale 1774 
 
 John Bacon Stockbridge Princeton 1765 
 
 David Noble Williamstown Yale 1764 
 
 Israel Jones North Adams Not graduated 
 
 Daniel Collins Lanesboro Yale 1760 
 
 Tompson Joseph Skinner Williamstown Not graduated 
 
 William Williams Dalton Yale 1755 
 
 Woodbridge Little Pittsfield Yale 1760 
 
 Theodore Sedgwick Sheffield Not graduated 
 
 Besides organizing at their first meeting in Pittsfield, 1785, under 
 Williams as president and Swift as treasurer, the board appointed 
 what might have been called a financial committee, consisting of 
 Noble and Jones and Skinner. The trustees found that the funds 
 now transferred to their care from the executors of Colonel William s's 
 will, $9157, were insufficient even to erect a suitable building for 
 the school, to say nothing of other impending expenses. This com- 
 mittee was appointed primarily to procure such assistance in mate- 
 
182 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 rials and funds as they might be able to obtain from the people of 
 Williamstown and elsewhere for the erection of the building. Fur- 
 thermore, at this first meeting the board passed four resolutions as 
 follows : 
 
 That as the present fund of the Corporation will be insufficient to effect an 
 object of extensive usefulness in instructing the rising generation, and as it is 
 probable that many persons may be disposed generously to contribute to the 
 execution of the intention of the donor, it is therefore ordered that the Said Com- 
 mittee receive such contributions as may be made for that purpose, and that 
 they prepare and circulate subscriptions therefor. 
 
 That it is the sense of this Committee that the intention of Ephraim Williams, 
 Esq. , in that clause of his last will and testament which respects the maintenance 
 of a Free School in Williamstown, and the trust reposed in them by the Legisla- 
 ture, will be most fully and properly executed by employing the whole donation 
 in that town. 
 
 That it is the sense of the Corporation that the Free School in Williamstown 
 be open and free for the use and benefit of the inhabitants of that town, and the 
 free citizens of the American States indiscriminately, under such rules and 
 orders as may hereafter be established. 
 
 That it is the sense of the Corporation that it will best coincide with the liberal 
 views of the donor, and the intention of the Legislature, to admit no pupil into the 
 Free School in Williamstown not having been previously taught to read English 
 well. 
 
 This was in April, 1785. In August, at the second meeting of the 
 board, held in Williamstown, two alternative sites for the school 
 building were sought out and selected, and the size of the building to 
 be erected prescribed by resolution to the same committee raised in 
 April for general financial management, only the names were placed 
 in a different order. Skinner was put chairman of the building 
 committee, no doubt because he was by trade a carpenter and builder. 
 He was then but thirty-three years old, had been in Williamstown 
 but ten years, but he had put himself ahead in matters both military 
 and civil with unprecedented facility. He was a young man of 
 remarkable talents, and he had an extraordinary career. 
 
 It is not needful to suppose that any special committee selected 
 the alternative sites for the school building. It is more natural and 
 pleasant to think of the entire body of nine as walking together along 
 the broad Main Street and canvassing pro and con the advantages of 
 this or that comely height on either side of the fifteen-rods-wide road. 
 Then, as now, to one entering the hamlet from the east over the 
 Green River bridge and up the slight bank to the level Hoosac 
 intervale, which is here three quarters of a mile broad to the north, 
 and immediately passing on the right the then new, and now old, 
 brick house of two stories built by Captain Judah Williams, 150 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 183 
 
 rods over the level to the west brings one to the first village emi- 
 nence across the Main Street at right angles about seventy feet above 
 the level. On the right-hand slope or summit of this eminence, 
 long called "Consumption Hill," the board found on that August 
 day in 1785 what they designated as " the old lime-kiln." That was 
 a good place for their building; nearly forty years later the first 
 College chapel was located there, now called Griffin Hall ; but the 
 limestone rocks protruded themselves high above ground over much 
 of the surface of the hill; and it would be expensive to clear the 
 ground for a building, as had actually to be done in 1828. Directly 
 to the south of this site across the Main Street, however, there was an 
 open space free from rocks upon the same general eminence. Here 
 was accordingly fixed one of the two alternative sites, "in the northwest 
 corner of Captain Isaac Searle?s lot, opposite the old lime-kiln, as the 
 Corporation shall hereafter determine" 
 
 The other site then selected, and the one actually preferred and 
 occupied for the Free School later, was upon the next eminence 
 toward the west, "south of Mr. William Horsford's house." William 
 Horsford's house stood on the site of General Sloan's house, after- 
 ward built, now occupied by the president of the College ; and the 
 site chosen for the building was wholly within the limits of the 
 Main Street, and has been crowned for eleven decades by what has 
 been called for a century "West College." The reason why this 
 site was put wholly on the public highway was, that the second 
 eminence, unlike the first, slopes suddenly and steadily down to the 
 south from the line dividing highway from house-lot. This was, 
 perhaps, a disadvantage of the second eminence, although, as the 
 Free School was to be for the town as such, and the town as such 
 owned the Main Street, and not in any sense the owners of the land 
 adjoining it, this particular objection was then unfelt, and is not 
 even now of any legal validity. Countervailing this objection (if it 
 were one), was the fact that the location chosen and used was nearer 
 the middle of the Main Street, east and west, than any other good 
 one available. Ever after 1768 the third eminence, which is almost 
 precisely in this middle, was occupied by the first two meeting- 
 houses of the town, which stood successively on " the Square," and 
 almost in the middle of the Main Street, north and south. The 
 earliest dwelling-houses in the hamlet stood, for the most part, 
 either on this third eminence, or else in the valley between this and 
 the fourth and last one. But by 1785 the population had worked 
 decidedly toward the east, so that it is probable nearly as many 
 people lived on the Main Street east of the second eminence where 
 
]84 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the West College stands, as west of it toward and beyond the 
 Square. At any rate, when, in 1797, a second college building was 
 needed, the trustees without hesitation put the new " East College " 
 on the alternative place of 1785 and on private ground; namely, 
 " in the northwest corner of Captain Isaac Searle's lot, opposite the 
 old lime-kiln." 
 
 At the same meeting the board voted that the free schoolhouse 
 "be constructed of brick, and be of the following dimensions; 
 namely, fifty-six feet in length, and forty-two in breadth from out- 
 side to outside, and twenty-one feet in height, with a bevel roof." 
 Skinner and Jones and Noble, their committee, were directed to 
 "provide the materials and erect the building as soon as may be." 
 But when did ever any individual or corporation organize and get 
 into working shape any considerable institution of any kind designed 
 for the public welfare, without delays and hindrances and positive 
 obstructions ? The very next meeting of our board, held in Pittsfield 
 in April, 1786, passed a resolve of considerable sinister significance, 
 as follows : 
 
 That Theodore Sedgwick and Simeon Strong and Caleb Strong, Esquires 
 [all three noted lawyers], be requested to appear at the Supreme Judicial Court, 
 to be holden at Northampton within and for the County of Hampshire, on the 
 last Monday of April current, to make answer to the memorials of the towns 
 of Williamstown and Adams, presented by their respective agents at the last 
 Supreme Judicial Court, holden at Great Harrington in the County of Berkshire 
 on the first day of October last, respecting the proceedings of this Corporation. 
 
 It will be remembered that the charter of the Free School expressly 
 placed its trustees and their official doings under the supervision of 
 the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth. Complainants 
 could only enter their grievances in due legal form before this court. 
 Such doubtless were these "memorials" of the two towns, which 
 are not now extant, nor is there any evidence that the legal gentle- 
 men appointed " made answer " to them in court. It is probable 
 that the case was postponed in April, and never afterward resumed. 
 It is certain that the records of the trustees make no further refer- 
 ences to these particular complaints. But it is easy enough to sur- 
 mise the substance of this memorial from the town of Adams, 
 because Colonel Williams had mentioned in his will the possible use 
 of a part of his legacy " for the benefit of the East town " : and the 
 trustees at their first meeting had voted that "the whole dona- 
 tion " should be employed in " the maintenance of a Free School 
 in Williamstown." What the burden of grievance borne by this 
 Williamstown memorial of 1786 may have been, it is not easy even 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 185 
 
 to conjecture, although some years later local opposition to the pro- 
 ceedings of the trustees took more definite form. There is no record 
 of any meeting of the corporation throughout the year 1787. There 
 was evidently difficulty and delay attending the erection of the 
 school building. There is a significant hint in the vote passed at 
 the next meeting in May, 1788, that local jealousies among the 
 people had arisen respecting the location of the proposed edifice. 
 
 Voted, that the subscriptions already had and obtained for the purpose of 
 erecting the house for the use of the Free School in Williamstown be vacated 
 and of no effect ; and that at their next meeting the Corporation will attend to 
 any subscriptions or proposals which may be then offered and made respecting 
 the erecting said house, on one of the two eminences mentioned in their resolve 
 passed at their meeting held in August, 1785, or any other place in the town of 
 Williamstown. 
 
 Conscious that they were being blamed for delay, for which they 
 were not really responsible, the trustees voted at this meeting, in 
 May, that Messrs. Swift and Noble be a committee "to provide a 
 convenient house for the school for the time being " ; and that 
 Messrs. Williams and Skinner and Collins be a committee for pro- 
 curing a master for the time being. Nothing came of this attempt 
 to start the School before it could be permanently housed. This 
 May meeting was holden at the house of Charles Kellogg, and the 
 expenses of the meeting are set down at 3 4s. 9d How much was 
 that ? It is to be remembered that the old silver money of Massa- 
 chusetts after 1672 was just twenty-five per cent in discount of the 
 English pound sterling; while, in 1749, Massachusetts determined 
 to have no other silver money circulate in the colony but the sterling 
 silver sent to her in coin (138,649) as her share of the ransom- 
 money for the conquest of Louisburg. She thus became the " silver 
 colony," and demonstrated in her increasing trade and prosperity 
 how better it is in both domestic and foreign trade to employ the 
 dearer money rather than any one of its cheaper substitutes, which 
 can never become a steady standard. But as the Revolution drew 
 on, Massachusetts of necessity fell back from sterling to colony bills 
 again, her own and those of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and of 
 course also upon the " Continental " bills of credit, so-called, whose 
 steady depreciation and ultimate extinguishment in value wrought 
 wide havoc, both political and pecuniary, throughout New England. 
 It is very difficult, if not impossible, to tell the value in sterling of 
 the colony paper in Massachusetts in 1788, or to tell as to any one 
 payment whether it were made in paper or in the Spanish-Mexican 
 coins which slipped into large circulation in New England and New 
 
186 W1LLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 York, and continued in circulation in spite of the national minting, 
 after 1794, of the halves and quarters and dimes and half-dimes of 
 our own silver money. The cost of the entertainment of the Free 
 School trustees, whether at Williamstown or at Pittsfield, was, at all 
 events, extremely small. In one instance its payment by Wood- 
 bridge Little is recorded ; that is, by him personally. Its amount 
 is, in nearly every instance, set down at the close of the minutes 
 of that meeting; and when the meeting was at Williamstown, the 
 house of its holding is a matter of this record. 
 
 One of these meetings is said to have been holden at the house of 
 one of their own number, Tompson J. Skinner. The site of this 
 house, which he continued to occupy till his failure in 1807, was the 
 site of the present fine house of Mr. Henry Sabin, and was bought 
 by the Skinner brothers about 1775 of Colonel Benjamin Simonds, 
 who had built it and kept it as a tavern (the first one in the village) 
 for at least twelve years, when he moved north of the river and 
 built the large tavern-stand figured on a preceding page. It is likely, 
 but not proven, that the Skinners kept their house also as a tavern 
 for a few years, until the late " Mansion House " was erected diag- 
 onally across the Square. Charles Kellogg is known to have been 
 the first landlord of the Mansion House, although the date of the 
 erection of the house is not known. In May, 1788, the meeting was 
 at the house of Charles Kellogg, as two years before it was at the 
 house of Tompson J. Skinner. The inference is only moderately 
 secure, that the Mansion House was already erected in 1788. The 
 date of its destruction by fire was October, 1871 ; and in the long 
 interval the building played a large rdle in the ongoings of the town 
 and the College also. 
 
 A very important meeting of the trustees was holden August 19, 
 1788, at which, among several other less consequential acts and 
 resolves, it was voted : 
 
 That the house for the use of the Free School in Williamstown be con- 
 structed of brick, and be of the following dimensions, namely, seventy-two feet 
 in length and forty feet in breadth, from inside to inside, three stories in height, 
 with four stacks of chimneys and a bevel roof ; that said house be erected on 
 the eminence east of the meeting-house, and south of Mr. William Horsford's 
 dwelling-house, on the south side of the highway ; provided the sum of five 
 hundred pounds be paid or secured to be paid, to the said Corporation for the 
 use of the said School, by Tompson J. Skinner, Esq. and others, as expressed in 
 a certain instrument subscribed by the said Skinner and others bearing date 
 August 16, 1788, now in the hands of the clerk of said Corporation, reference 
 thereto being had ; and also provided that the said subscribers shall level and 
 prepare the ground on the said eminence, in such a manner as the said Corpora- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 187 
 
 tion shall judge proper for the accommodation of the said house; provided 
 also, that Captain Lemuel Stewart shall make and execute to the said Corpora- 
 tion a good and sufficient deed of the whole of a certain piece of land [fully 
 described in the record as hollow-ground to the west of the eminence] the hol- 
 low above mentioned being in the same place where was formerly a well belong- 
 ing to Jonathan Meacham ; provided also, the said subscribers shall by the 
 fifteenth day of November next procure a good well, which shall at all times 
 afford a sufficient quantity of water for all necessary uses. 
 
 In these votes, read cautiously between the lines, come out into 
 broad daylight the chief causes of the long delays experienced and 
 yet to be experienced by the trustees in the erecting of the school 
 building. In the first place, the height now finally selected as the 
 site for the school was a huge swell of limestone rock covered in its 
 highest parts by sundry projections of the same above the general 
 surface ; and it was the opinion of the trustees, since the place 
 selected was in the main highway belonging to the town, the towns- 
 men themselves should be at the expense of levelling off the ground 
 and getting it ready for the building ; this they had agreed, and yet 
 neglected to do ; and now, headed by their most enterprising fellow- 
 citizen, they had put themselves under pecuniary bonds, signed and 
 sealed, to have this preliminary preparation accomplished without 
 further delay. In the second place, it had been foreseen, that there 
 would need to be a good well of water in close proximity to the 
 building for the uses of the school. Could such a well be had on or 
 near such a limestone ledge ? It was only reasonable to suppose 
 such a well could be sunk there, because Mr. William Horsford 
 certainly had a well on his houselot not many rods to the north, and 
 that well is still in existence, although not in use, to this day ; and 
 the vote of the trustees above quoted proves, that " there was for- 
 merly a well belonging to Jonathan Meacham " in a "hollow" about 
 the same distance to the west of the site as Horsford's was to the 
 north. Whether Captain Lemuel Stewart made and executed to 
 the corporation a good and sufficient deed of this hollow for pos- 
 sible well-purposes at or about that time, or not, cannot now be 
 determined ; but at all events, the College has owned that particular 
 strip from a time whereto the memory of living men runneth not 
 back to the contrary; and in 1886, 126 years after Meacham 
 bought that House-lot No. 43 of Seth Hudson for 5, October 2, 1760, 
 the College gave permission to the Chi Psi fraternity to cut and use 
 a tennis court, which happened to be laid out on the western edge 
 (north end) of the original House-lot No. 43, in the very "hollow" 
 coveted by the trustees in 1788, and perhaps conveyed to them at 
 
188 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 that time. Here were then uncovered the distinct remains of Jona- 
 than Meacham's house, some of the bricks being entire or nearly so, 
 and many more in fragments. It is a matter of trustworthy record, 
 that in 1766, Meacham lived in a house near the "College Spring" 
 on House-lot No. 49, a lot which he certainly owned, and on which he 
 probably built himself, and the cellar of this second house remained 
 open and visible as such till past the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. The writer has seen it a hundred times just to the west of a 
 big rock still reclining there. Notwithstanding this phrase of the 
 trustees in 1788, "where was formerly a well belonging to Jona- 
 than Meacham," it is still a fair conjecture that Meacham found 
 difficulties of some sort in getting good water and a plenty of it 
 near his first house, and that the College Spring, long so-called, fur- 
 nished at least a part of his motive for his move from No. 43 to 
 No. 49. 
 
 Another vote of the trustees at this meeting in August, 1788, was 
 couched in the words following, to wit : " That a kitchen 25 feet 
 square be erected for the use of the said school one story high, and 
 be annexed to the House above-mentioned, and that there be a cellar 
 under the kitchen." The need of any such unsightly annex to the 
 main building as this would have proved to be, if ever built, was 
 neatly obviated through a change of plan on the part of the Com- 
 mittee of Erection, as we shall see in a few moments. Still another 
 vote at this same meeting needs to be quoted, to the effect, that the 
 " Corporation prefer a petition to the General Court for the grant of 
 a Lottery to enable them to raise the sum of 1200 to be applied to 
 the purpose of erecting the Building." Williams and Bacon and 
 Little were appointed to present this petition with the signature of 
 Williams as president ; Sedgwick and Skinner and Little were ap- 
 pointed a committee to prepare the scheme for the said lottery, and 
 procure the tickets to be printed, provided the lottery be granted. 
 February 11, 1789, the following preamble and essential clause passed 
 the Legislature at Boston : 
 
 WHEREAS, it appears that it would promote the education of youth to erect a, 
 suitable building for the accommodation of the Free School in Williamstown, 
 and the trustees of said school have represented their inability to accomplish the 
 same without the aid of the legislature, and have requested that a lottery may 
 be granted for that purpose : 
 
 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court 
 assembled, and by the authority of the same, that there be, and hereby is granted 
 a lottery, for raising a sum not exceeding twelve hundred pounds, the profits of 
 which, after paying the necessary expenses of managing the same, shall be applied 
 for the purpose of erecting the aforesaid building. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 189 
 
 In the newspaper called the Massachusetts Centinel of May 22, 
 1790, appear what we should call nowadays an advertisement of and 
 an editorial in behalf of this lottery, as follows : 
 
 WlLLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL LOTTERY. 
 
 The 7th class of WILLIAMS-TOWN FREE SCHOOL LOTTERY, will positively com- 
 mence drawing on MONDAY next (being the 24th inst.) and will be completed 
 early on the next day ; a list of Prizes will be published the same week in the 
 CENTINEL. The publick may depend on punctuality. 
 
 The FREE SCHOOL has hitherto experienced the Friendship of the Citizens of 
 Boston, and the neighboring Towns and it is hoped that it will once more receive 
 the same benevolent Assistance. 
 
 MAY 22, 1790. 
 
 WlLLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL LOTTERY. 
 
 We are authorized to assure the Publick, and we do assure them that the 
 7th class of this Lottery will not only commence drawing on Monday next, but 
 will positively be completed on Tuesday morning and a list of Prizes will be 
 published in the Centinel the same week. 
 
 The metropolis of Massachusetts hath ever been celebrated for the attention 
 it hath paid to the education of its youth. In the elder world, a FRANKLIN hath 
 been a living testimony of it, as well as in the younger. But not confined to 
 the youth of the town, is this benevolent disposition it extends to the remotest 
 parts of the Commonwealth ; and hath been abundantly manifested in the liberal 
 encouragement given to the Williamstown Free School Lottery. The class to be 
 drawn on Monday next, will perhaps be the last opportunity our citizens may 
 have to gratify their humane wishes which they will not let pass unimproved, 
 especially as great pecuniary profit may attend the gratification. 
 
 MAY 22, 1790. 
 
 Charles A. Dewey, a native of Williamstown, and an alumnus 
 of 1811, in an argument before the Legislature in 1819 against 
 the removal of the College to Northampton, stated that the profits 
 of the lottery were realized almost solely by the sale of the tickets 
 in this and the adjoining towns ; so that, the lottery in its practical 
 operation proved to be a tax upon the local inhabitants ; so that also, 
 the above editorial exhortations to humanity and the cupidity of the 
 people of Boston fell practically upon their ears pretty flat. The 
 corporation gained from the lottery scheme $3459.68/ or as then 
 reckoned, 1037 18s. 2d. 
 
 i The writing of the present paragraphs happens to fall in March, 1895 ; and it gives 
 a queer sensation to be historically recording the fact that lottery-ticket money lies 
 in the very earliest foundations of Williams College, at the time when the newspapers 
 are full of graphic accounts of the passing by Congress and the signature by President 
 Cleveland on the 4th of March just passed of a sweeping anti-lottery law, outlawing 
 throughout the jurisdiction of the United States, the sale and transportation, in and 
 every form, of lottery tickets; and especially to read that this triumph of morals 
 was largely achieved by the vigilance and persistence of a Williams alumnus, Pro- 
 fessor S. H. Woodbridge of the class of 1873. 
 
190 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 In the interval of time, during which the Trustees of the Free 
 School were apparently doing their best to bring the same into liv- 
 ing effect and operation, but before a single stone of the foundation 
 of the building had been laid, the greatest political achievements that 
 this country has ever witnessed or is ever likely to witness again, 
 had taken place in the city of Philadelphia : during the summer of 
 1787 the Federal Convention had framed the present Constitution of 
 the United States, and had sent it out knocking for admission at the 
 doors of the several States ; during a little more than a year follow- 
 ing, eleven of the thirteen States had ratified the Constitution and 
 set its proposed machinery in motion as between themselves ; and 
 on the 30th of April, 1789, Washington took the oath of office as 
 the first President of the United States. The institution of a new 
 national government, and the new hopes kindled in the hearts of the 
 States by their own efforts as .toward that great end, doubtless more 
 or less stimulated the trustees of the Free School to bring their own 
 work forward so far as possible contemporaneously. At any rate, 
 May 26, 1790, at a meeting at Williamstown, they took the following 
 conclusive action : 
 
 Taking into consideration the importance and necessity of erecting without 
 delay the building intended for the use of said school ; and Colonel Skinner 
 having this day engaged to sink the well already begun, and partly dug, on the 
 western eminence where the house was ordered (on certain conditions) to be 
 placed, and to level the said western eminence sufficient to accommodate the 
 building, do resolve, that the committee appointed to superintend and direct 
 in the erection of said building shall proceed to set up said building, on said 
 eminence, without delay, the conditions mentioned in the former vote of the 
 Corporation not having been performed notwithstanding. 
 
 Skinner and Noble and Jones, all young business men, and all 
 "peers of the vicinage," were the building committee. The trus- 
 tees had also " Resolved, that Colonel Benjamin Simonds be requested to 
 join said committee in the discharge of their appointment, and that the 
 President be desired to inform ttfe gentleman of this request" Simonds 
 was not a member of the Board of Trustees, nor was he in any tech- 
 nical sense an educated man. The compliment paid to him in this 
 resolution, considering the usual conceit and exclusiveness of cor- 
 porations, is very remarkable; and honorable alike to the board, 
 its building committee, and the "gentleman" so punctiliously in- 
 vited to cooperate with them. Simonds was sixty-four years old in 
 1790, when the order from the board to its committee became im- 
 perative to level the chosen eminence, and "to set up said building 
 on said eminence without delay." He had spent his entire life from 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 191 
 
 twenty years of age in the valley of the upper Hoosac : first, as a 
 common sentinel in the garrison of Fort Massachusetts ; then, as an 
 original house-lot proprietor and house-builder in the little hamlet 
 of West Hoosac, laid out in 1750 ; then serving repeatedly and 
 during considerable intervals of time in defence of his own as one in 
 the local garrison of the West Hoosac Fort; when a settled peace 
 came between England and France in 1763, he prosecuted with more 
 than the common zest and success his part in the life of the little 
 town, becoming perhaps the wealthiest, certainly the most prominent 
 and influential, of the early citizens. He was colonel of a regiment 
 of Berkshire militia from the beginning to the end of the Revolu- 
 tionary War. He possessed the military confidence of and had a 
 soldierly correspondence with General Schuyler and General Lincoln 
 and General Gates, as well as with the highest officials at Boston 
 both military and civil. As the Free School was* conceived of by 
 Colonel Ephraim Williams and described in terms in his will drawn 
 and probated in 1755, it was designed for the direct benefit of the 
 children of the soldiers, who had served under him in one or other of 
 the forts of the old French line. Simonds had two children born to 
 him in West Hoosac while Colonel W'illiams was still in command 
 of the line of forts, and before he had set his face toward the fatal 
 field of Lake George. It is perhaps more than likely that Colonel 
 Williams had spoken at one time or another to his well-known 
 subordinate and fellow-proprietor in West Hoosac (their house-lots 
 were in plain sight of each other on either side of Hemlock Brook) 
 of his intention to Ho something handsome for the children of the 
 hamlet, inasmuch as he himself was a barren stock. At all events, 
 now that Colonel Williams had been thirty-five years in his grave 
 by the lakeside, and his benefaction was just coming into efficacy in 
 behalf of somebody's children, how natural it was for the trustees to 
 put themselves into practical consultation with the only man then 
 living in Williamstown who had known the donor personally and 
 perhaps even intimately. 
 
 Aside from the fact that Colonel Simonds seemed to represent 
 directly and personally those whom Colonel Williams had in mind 
 to benefit a whole generation before, he seemed also to represent 
 better than anybody else present the entire inhabitants of the bor- 
 ough, as the benevolence of the founder was beginning to be dis- 
 played before their eyes. It was primarily a local benefaction ; it 
 should therefore be adapted to the local wants and habits, as they 
 should judge these to be who were most familiar with the past and 
 present of the little village and with the prejudices and opinions 
 
192 WILLIAMSTOWK AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of the people. Moreover, it had been already determined that the 
 school building should be constructed of brick, and there was at that 
 time but one brick house within the entire limits, and that the house 
 on Green River recently built by Captain Judah Williams, and there 
 was then almost certainly no permanent brickyard in the town. 
 Who of the inhabitants would be most likely to know where lay the 
 bed of the best and most accessible clay, in closest proximity to a 
 bed of proper sand, and whence the burnt bricks could be easiest 
 hauled to the predetermined site of the new building? Simonds 
 then lived in his tavern stand just north of the Hoosac River, on 
 what we now call the " Simonds road," stretching straight from the 
 bridge to the Pownal line, and in that part of the town have always 
 been and are now the principal deposits of building sand ; and be- 
 sides this, Simonds had been a busy buyer and seller of lots in all 
 parts of the town for nearly forty years, and he was presumed to 
 have the most intimate local knowledge of both lands and people. 
 The road was then almost perfectly straight north from the meet- 
 ing-house on the Square up hill and down to the Colonel's tavern 
 just over the river, and so on to the Pownal that is, the Vermont 
 line. At the foot of what has been called for more than a cen- 
 tury the " Mansion House Hill," on the west side of this road and 
 close up to it, the building committee selected in the spring of 1790 
 a bed of clay suitable to furnish the material for the brick with 
 which to build their Free School. Where the sand came from to 
 mix with this clay for the burning is not now certainly known ; but 
 both banks of the river a little farther along the same road, and 
 both banks of Broad Brook, soon struck still farther on, undoubtedly 
 held sand in even greater plenty than they hold it now. It had 
 passed out of the memories of living men and out of records accessi- 
 ble to them whereabouts the brickyard lay that furnished the brick 
 for the first two college edifices, West College in 1790 and (presum- 
 ably) East College in 1797, when in 1890 the owner of the level 
 patch at the foot of the hill, Mr. H. T. Procter, ordered it to be 
 ploughed up in connection with more adjacent land of the same 
 owner. To the surprise of the oldest inhabitants and for the infor- 
 mation of the most careful antiquarians, the plough threw out over 
 the whole level innumerable bits of brick of all shapes and sizes, 
 many entire bricks that looked and were a century old, and other 
 unmistakable evidences of a primal brickyard distinct from any 
 building ever erected near it. 
 
 The limestone swell in the Main Street, on which the committee 
 had been ordered by the trustees to put up their building of certain 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 193 
 
 prescribed dimensions, was first levelled down and rounded off into 
 its present handsome proportions, and Colonel Skinner is known 
 to have persistently busied himself amid constant discouragements 
 to carry out his engagement, entered upon May 26, 1790, " to sink 
 the well already begun and partly dug on the western eminence" when 
 the question practically confronted the committee, whether they 
 should follow their instructions to the letter, and build a kitchen 
 twenty-five feet square and one story high, separate from the main 
 building, or whether they should now follow their own judgment, 
 as reenforced by the larger experience of Colonel Simonds, and so 
 put all that they felt would be needed by the Free School under one 
 roof, at the risk of making a larger and a higher building than they 
 had been specifically ordered to construct. The four men, only 
 three of them trustees, wisely took the liberty of the second alterna- 
 tive, as we learn from a vote of the trustees at their next meeting, 
 October 26, 1790, as follows : 
 
 Whereas the Trustees on the 19th of Aug. 1788, did vote, order, and direct 
 that the house for the use of the Free School should be built and erected of the 
 following dimensions, namely, 72 feet in length and 40 in breadth and 3 stories 
 high, with four stacks of chimneys and bevel roof ; and Whereas the committee 
 appointed for that purpose, by advice of several Trustees and from considera- 
 tions of utility, have erected the said building of the following dimensions, 
 namely, 82 feet in length, 42 in width, 4 stories high with a bevel roof; the 
 Trustees do approve of the conduct of the committee in the premises, and do 
 hereby ratify and confirm the same to all intents and purposes, so that it shall 
 have the same effect as if the said building had been erected of the dimensions 
 prescribed by the previous order and vote. 
 
 Everything seems to have gone forward successfully during that 
 summer and autumn, except the sinking of the proposed well. 
 Water was not struck, notwithstanding the most persistent efforts, 
 varied both as to the place arid mode of excavation. It would seem 
 that Jonathan Meacham had formerly had a well a few rods to the 
 west of the school site, and that the trustees had tried to gain a fee 
 simple of the little hollow occupied by his house and well, but had 
 desisted after a time, perhaps for the same reason (whatever that 
 was) that had led Meacham himself to abandon his first homestead 
 on the Main Street, and it is certain at any rate that William Hors- 
 ford had had no great difficulty in excavating his well just across 
 the Main Street to the north ; and so Skinner kept on for a good 
 while, spending much money and more patience in vain, pitting as 
 it were his own " grit " against the grit of the limestone rock with 
 which he had to deal, and failed utterly and at every point. West 
 
194 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 College never had a well of its own, and never enjoyed a legal right 
 of access to any neighboring well, although the Whitmans (suc- 
 cessors to William Horsford) by courtesy allowed its roomers for 
 considerable stretches of time to use the old well. There are two 
 copious natural springs not very far apart from each other on the 
 low ground to the southeast of the West College, from one or other 
 of which the students supplied themselves for the most part till the 
 middle of the nineteenth century. When the writer as a freshman 
 became a roomer in West College in 1848, there was a well-worn 
 path diagonally across what was then called " Deacon Skinner's 
 meadow." on which there was not then a building of any kind, lead- 
 ing to what has now long been called the " Wai den Spring." At the 
 same time there was opened a new and narrow street directly down 
 to this spring southerly from Main Street, and consequently named 
 " Spring Street." This is now and always will remain the principal 
 business street of the town, on which are the bank and postoffice 
 and town school and the largest stores. When the old East College 
 came to be erected in 1797, there was no attempt to sink a well into 
 that limestone ledge, though a good well was shortly after dug on 
 its eastern slope and called for half a century " Professor Hopkins's 
 well." Attention was called to what has ever since been named 
 the " College Spring." A straight path led to this, also directly 
 south from East College. About the middle of the century an 
 hydraulic ram was set in this spring, and the water thrown up to 
 the East College level. A couple of decades later an aqueduct com- 
 pany brought water from the "Cold Spring" to the village resi- 
 dences and near to the college buildings. In 1881 the aqueduct 
 water was introduced into the West College and into most of the 
 other college edifices, both the older and newer ones. 
 
 The delay attending the attempt to discover home water for the 
 use of the Free School proved to be a delay in the opening of the 
 school itself for practical instruction. The building was essen- 
 tially completed in 1790. It was very thoroughly and strongly 
 done. The stairways and much of the woodwork within were of 
 seasoned white oak of native growth and of the very best quality. 
 Each window-frame on all of the four stories was made of four 
 solid pieces of oak, two uprights and two horizontals, and the 
 four were pinned together immensely strong by white-oak pins of 
 the same texture with the solid sticks. Set in place story above 
 story, these frames were then bricked into the exterior wall of the 
 building, which wall was and is very thick. Considering that the 
 foundation of the house itself rests in the living limestone every 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 
 
 195 
 
 inch around its four walls, and that the underpinning below the 
 brick is throughout of cut and hammered limestone laid in the best 
 of mortar, it is not likely that any one of these about one hundred 
 original window-frames of solid oak ever stirred appreciably in their 
 places, till they were bodily taken out in the thorough reconstruc- 
 tion of 1854. Storms without and storms within, though they broke 
 probably fifty generations of fragile glass within the frames during 
 the sixty-four years, could not have stirred a hair's breadth the 
 
 WEST COLLEGE. 
 Built, 1790 ; Reconstructed, 1854. 
 
 frames themselves. The straight arch of upright brick resting on 
 each upper horizontal of each frame is in perfect place to-day, and 
 will be till the walls themselves are taken down by human hands. 
 The original twelve windows on the south end of the building were 
 wider than the corresponding sixteen on the northern end, partly 
 because the kitchen and dining-room were on the first floor of the 
 south end, and especially because the chapel occupied the second 
 and third floors directly above these, while the northern end on all 
 the stories was cut wholly into dormitories. In long process of 
 
196 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 time, chapel and kitchen and dining-room and recitation-rooms dis- 
 appeared, and were replaced by dormitories similar to the original 
 ones ; so that in 1847, when Kellogg Hall was built with two good 
 recitation-rooms, one for each of the two lower classes, West College 
 thereafter held nothing but dormitories, thirty-two in all, sixteen of 
 them " corner-rooms " with three windows each, and sixteen " middle- 
 rooms " with two windows each. 
 
 Originally the broad hallway passed through the middle of the 
 building east and west. The lower hall was wide enough for two 
 stairways ascending to the second floor in opposite directions from 
 either outer opening or doorway, still leaving ample room for two 
 men to walk abreast from side to side. After 1828, when the new 
 chapel was completed on the eastern eminence, the students and 
 alumni assembled there on Commencement morning, and forming 
 in procession marched to the meeting-house on the " Square," always 
 passing through this hallway of the old West College with unbroken 
 ranks and with military music. In those good old days there were 
 always more who claimed that they had been "through college," 
 than those whose names were printed on the alumni list. No one, 
 who ever saw those huge and long stair-rails of beaten oak, which 
 the tugging strength of an hundred men could not stir in their 
 socket ends; or scanned those broad oak treads, which more than 
 sixty generations of scurrying feet did not very much wear down, 
 could ever easily forget them in their rugged defiance of usage fair 
 and foul. More than once did some disgruntled owner find his cow 
 of a summer morning with her head protruding from a hall window, 
 perhaps even of the third or fourth story of the college, and hear 
 from afar as well as from above a reiterated bellow that sounded at 
 once domestic and forlorn. 
 
 From the second to the third stories, and from the third to the 
 fourth, there was but one staircase each. These were on the south 
 side of the hall. So much space was accordingly left on the north 
 side, that the first library of the College was kept there on the third 
 floor, close by the door of entrance to the dormitory room No. 11, in 
 which room William Cullen Bryant slept and studied while he was 
 a member of College. For many years, and down to the time in 1854 
 when the interior of the building was taken out, and the arrange- 
 ment of the rooms was altered throughout, the tutor's room was on 
 the fourth floor southeast corner. On the southern end of the 
 building may still be seen a memorial of the original five-feet-wide 
 windows there, in the form of upright bricks placed horizontally to 
 fill out to that width above each window of the twelve the space of 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 197 
 
 eighteen inches of new wall by which each window was shortened 
 up on its west side. Those originally wide windows on the southern 
 end of the building were to admit light to what the trustees de- 
 scribed in a petition to the General Court in 1792, as "a hall for 
 public academical purposes," that is to say, the chapel, which was 
 used at first for Commencement exercises also; "a dining-room, 
 that will accommodate a hundred persons;" "a common schoolroom 
 sufficient for sixty scholars ; " and adding a significant reference to 
 another room in that end of the building, as follows, " about six ' 
 months have elapsed since we opened an English and grammar 
 school in said building, and since then have had from this and some 
 of the neighboring States upwards of sixty young gentlemen who 
 have entered the grammar school, and the number is almost daily 
 increasing." In the same petition, and in reference mainly to the 
 northern end of the building, the trustees claim that they are pro- 
 vided "with lodging and study rooms sufficient to accommodate one 
 hundred students." It ought perhaps to have been said, while de- 
 scribing the construction of the original chapel, which occupied the 
 second and third stories of the south end of the building, that in 
 the upper half there was a gallery which was accessible from the 
 third floor, while the lower body of the chapel was reached from the 
 second story. It had on the west side a stage, and the desk rose a 
 little above this and stood against the west wall, very much as the 
 stage and desk did in the Griffin Chapel of 1828, while the professors 
 and tutors occupied elevated seats upon the same side, looking down 
 upon the students sitting upon long, hard benches across the centre 
 and eastern end of the room. The trustees seem to have been well 
 satisfied with their new building on the whole. But nothing is per- 
 fect in a world like this. The four stacks of chimneys amply sup- 
 plied with fireplaces on each of the four floors required from the 
 builders more science and more patience from the roomers than 
 either set of men possessed. After the school became a college 
 in 1793, the trustees raised a committee "to prevent the rooms from 
 smoking." The same committee was also charged (what had already 
 become by iteration a very sore place), "to procure a well." 
 
 Until the new chapel built in 1828, and now for many years 
 appropriately named "Griffin Hall," released the space on the 
 second and third floors of the southern end of West College, which 
 was the original chapel, there were no rooms permanently set apart 
 in that building for recitation-rooms, but these were moved about for 
 convenience, all of them, however, being on the ground floor ; but at 
 that time this old chapel space was converted into two stated recita- 
 
198 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 tion-rooms, the one for the Sophomore class taking room on the third 
 floor, and the one for the Freshman on the second floor directly 
 beneath the other ; and this arrangement continued without change 
 for twenty years, when Kellogg Hall was built with two good recita- 
 tion-rooms on the first floor, the Sophomores generally occupying the 
 east room and the Freshmen the west one. The two upper floors of 
 Kellogg Hall were exclusively dormitories. So long as the Sopho- 
 mores and Freshmen continued to have their recitations in the West 
 College, the furniture of these rooms, that is, the needful chairs and 
 benches, were owned by the classes respectively, and regularly sold 
 out at the year's end to the class next succeeding. The belfry of 
 the West College has never been substantially altered from the first 
 day until now, surmounting the bevel roof of the building between 
 its " four stacks of chimneys " in a symmetrical, one may almost say 
 ornamental, manner. A vote of thanks was passed in August, 1793, 
 by the trustees to David Noble, one of their own number, for the gift 
 of a suitable bell, which did musical duty in this belfry till long after 
 the decease of the donor. The bellman (always a student) roomed 
 on the upper floor of the college, and was an important functionary 
 and reckoned next to the tutor, and guarded by night and day the 
 single stairway from the interior of his room to the belfry and the 
 bell-rope in particular, and was scarcely able to leave his room at all 
 except for meals and prayers and recitations for fear he might be 
 caught and imprisoned and detained by force over some important 
 bell-hour by roguish students ever on the watch for college mischief. 
 Consequently he was apt to lead for the most part a dog's life of it, 
 unless he chanced to be a stalwart athlete, capable of handling four 
 or five ordinary mischief-makers, whose best and most conspicuous- 
 target for fun was this bell and its environs. 
 
 Now we must go back for a little time from our primal building,, 
 completed large and strong, and from the inevitable frictions and 
 trials of organization and inchoate action, to some persons and pre- 
 liminaries requisite to the opening of the Free School. Nothing else 
 can be so essential a factor in any school at any time as the living 
 teacher thereof. Other things become needful to the successful on- 
 going of school education anywhere, but this is by eminence the one 
 thing needful. It is, accordingly, pleasant and prophetic to notice 
 in the early minutes of the trustees the emphasis they put upon the 
 judicious selection and pecuniary maintenance and collateral moral 
 support of their chief teacher. The president of their body, Deacon 
 William Williams, of Dalton, the minister of Williamstown, Setk 
 Swift, and the minister-lawyer of Stockbridge, John Bacon, were 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 199 
 
 selected by the board as their committee to find and hire the pre- 
 ceptor ; and the committee was instructed in so many words, that 
 their choice must fall on " a man of good moral character ; of the 
 Protestant religion ; well acquainted with the English and learned 
 languages, the liberal arts, and the sciences; apt to teach; with 
 talents to command the respect of his pupils ; of mild disposition ; 
 and of elegant and accomplished manners." To such a man the 
 committee was authorized to offer a yearly salary of 120. It is 
 perfectly plain from these qualifications required of their preceptor, 
 that the trustees had already gotten by some means way beyond the 
 original ideas of Colonel Ephraim Williams, the donor, and way 
 beyond any ideas entertained by the two executors of his will, Israel 
 Williams and John Worthington, and certainly beyond the concep- 
 tions of the trustees themselves when they were first designated in 
 1785 by the incorporating act of the Legislature. It is impossible 
 to trace the steps of this progress one by one from the original out- 
 line of a common school for the children of garrison soldiers and 
 pioneer settlers, to the broad conception of a college to rest on the 
 general plane of Harvard and Yale as those were at that time. Two 
 or three points only about this singular transition of purpose are 
 clear at this late day. The first one is, that the Williams family in 
 the western half of the State had become considerably embittered 
 against Harvard, particularly Colonel Israel Williams of Hatfield, 
 who under the influence of this feeling had futilely started a college 
 in Hatfield, and who died in 1787 while this transition of purpose 
 was taking place ; and Deacon William Williams, Colonel Israel's 
 son, a native of Hatfield and long a resident there and fully sharing 
 in all the peculiar prejudices of his father and the family, was 
 then the president of the Board of Trustees of the Free School. The 
 second point is, that the General Court at Boston, in which the 
 Williams family had long had a great (and sometimes a predomi- 
 nant) influence, seemed very favorable to the School in the language 
 of the act incorporating it in 1785, and thus gave promise to the 
 trustees of what actually happened at their instance in 1793, namely, 
 a favorable charter procured without difficulty incorporating and 
 subsidizing the College ; and add to this the fact, that Tompson J. 
 Skinner of Williamstown, one of the trustees, a pushing and popular 
 man, was a member of the State senate in the years 1785-87 inclu- 
 sive, and was thus and otherwise in working touch with the public 
 opinion of Boston. The third point is, that, in gradually shifting 
 their views from School to College, the nine trustees, five of whom 
 were graduates of Yale and seven of whom were natives of Connect- 
 
200 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 icut, felt sure that they should have the sympathy and help of 
 Yale, in which they were not at all disappointed ; moreover, Elisha 
 Williams, president of Yale in the years 1726-39, was a brother of 
 Colonel Israel, and later members of the Williams family were 
 graduates of Yale out of the general impulse to pay no more tribute 
 to Harvard ; and besides all this, the upper valleys of the Housa- 
 tonic and the Hoosac are connected by a very low and very short 
 watershed, while the immense local barrier of the Hoosac Mountain 
 separated William stown from the rest of Massachusetts to the east- 
 ward, and goes far to account for the always intimate relations between 
 Yale and Williams, and for the large patronage always received by 
 the latter from the valley of the Housatonic in Connecticut. 
 
 At the same time and in connection with this pronounced aspira- 
 tion for a college of their own, the trustees naturally felt constrained 
 in accordance with the terms of the will to provide for a school, in 
 which the common English branches should be taught. The fons 
 et origo of the whole movement was the benevolent determination 
 arising in the mind of Colonel Williams, that there should be at his 
 instance and through his agency "a free school " opened and main- 
 tained in Williamstown for the sons of his old soldiers. Accor- 
 dingly, two departments of instruction were established at the very 
 first : an English free school recruited from the higher classes in the 
 town schools such as these then were; and a grammar school or 
 academy, for the privilege of attendance on which a yearly tuition 
 of thirty-five shillings was charged. The common schoolroom could 
 accommodate sixty scholars, but it is not likely that one-half of that 
 number were ever in attendance there at any one time. Only two 
 teachers were provided at first for both schools, a preceptor and his 
 assistant; an usher was afterward added. When the school be- 
 came a college by an act of the Legislature in 1793, the common 
 department, which was entirely free, fell at once into " innocuous 
 desuetude " ; but the tuitioned grammar department continued for a 
 few years as a sort of preparatory school, when it went out like the 
 other. No list is extant, even if one were ever made out, which is 
 doubtful, of the scholars in attendance upon these two transient 
 departments of instruction ; but the higher one of the two became 
 prosperous from the start ; and the trustees were able to say officially 
 of themselves, " About six months have elapsed since they opened an 
 English and Grammar school in said building, and since that period 
 they have had from this and the neighboring States upwards of sixty 
 young gentlemen who have entered the Grammar school and the number 
 is almost daily increasing" 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 201 
 
 Only two Williamstown boys are positively known to have been 
 trained in the local Free School, and both of these became distin- 
 guished men, though neither of them was graduated at the College. 
 These were Daniel Kellogg and Billy J. Clark. The former was 
 born here April 19, 1780, and was a son of that Samuel Kellogg 
 who became a landed proprietor here in 1761, and later a very prom- 
 inent and influential citizen of the town. 1 Daniel Kellogg was 
 certainly for two years in attendance upon the grammar or prepara- 
 tory school kept up for some years in connection with the college 
 proper. Chloe Kellogg, ten years older than her brother Daniel, had 
 married John Campbell, a prosperous merchant in Albany, and 
 offered to board her brother while he should study law in the office 
 of Abraham Van Vechten, then one of the oldest and ablest of the 
 Dutch lawyers of that city. In this way, and probably for other 
 reasons also, especially as many of the citizens of Williamstown 
 deprecated the action of the General Court in transforming the 
 school into a college to the utter loss of its original gratuitous fea- 
 ture, young Kellogg was deflected from the new college course. As 
 soon as he was admitted to the bar, his older brother Samuel, who 
 had inherited their father's broad acres on the Hoosac and its tribu- 
 taries, fitted him out with a horse, saddle, saddle-bags, and a copy of 
 Blackstone's Commentaries, and the young lawyer started for the 
 West to seek his fortune. And he found it ! The western portions 
 of the State of New York were then a wilderness. Daniel Kellogg 
 made his way through the woods on horseback to Skaneateles Lake, 
 in what is now Onondaga County. At the head of the lake he found 
 a shoemaker, who had built a log hut for his shop ; and Kellogg, 
 liking the nature of the soil and the lay of the land, concluded to 
 stop there ; and he accordingly hired one end of the log hut, and 
 opened a law office. Settlements were beginning to be made in 
 different parts of that region. The Holland Land Company owned 
 an immense tract of the territory ; and there was a prospect of a 
 good deal of litigation in acquiring and settling the titles to land, 
 and of routine and important work to be done in the way of making 
 conveyances. He soon found enough to do. He settled in what 
 became the beautiful village of Skaneateles. Other families from 
 Williamstown settled around him in that village, and in the sur- 
 rounding country, particularly in Auburn and its environs. After 
 the death of her husband in Albany, Mrs. Campbell moved to 
 Skaneateles, and later to Auburn, where one of her daughters 
 
 i In Origins in Williamstown this Samuel Kellogg is characterized at length, 
 and so is his family both in the upward and downward lines. 
 
202 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 married a Mr. Beach, whose brand of flour, manufactured extensively 
 at Auburn (Port Byron) and Rochester, became celebrated over New 
 York and New England. Mr. Kellogg never removed from the 
 region within which he first fixed his stakes. No man was so well 
 acquainted as he with the titles to land in western New York ; and 
 partly in consequence of that fact, and partly in virtue of native 
 abilities of a high order, he became the best real estate lawyer in 
 that part of the State ; he was in position to make investments for 
 himself that bore quick returns, and for others who were never 
 deceived as to his sagacity and integrity ; he established the " Bank 
 of Auburn," of which he was president so long as he lived, and 
 which for years paid dividends to its stockholders of thirty-five 
 per cent annually. Daniel Kellogg, besides being very useful to the 
 community in which he lived, naturally and easily became a very 
 rich man. At the semi-centennial of the College in 1843 he was 
 present as an enthusiastic son of Williamstown, and as one who had 
 probably been under instruction in the old West College at an 
 earlier date than any other person present. Lucius E. Smith, a 
 graduate of that year, wrote as follows fifty years later. " I re- 
 member as they [the alumni] were gathering on Wednesday morn- 
 ing Honorable Daniel Kellogg was walking up, when a friend 
 accosted him, ' Why, Kellogg, did you graduate here ? ' ' That I did, 
 sir,' he replied, with an emphatic thump of the cane and a kindling 
 of the eyes that even now flashes on my memory." He did indeed 
 " graduate " in his sense of the word as used at that time, before 
 anybody else had "graduated" in the ordinary sense of the word. 
 
 Billy J. Clark, the only other Williamstown boy now ascertained 
 to have been a pupil in the original Free School, was born in North- 
 ampton in January, 1778. His parents soon removed to Williams- 
 town, of which his mother was a native, and the second daughter of 
 Colonel Benjamin Simonds. After some years here, during which 
 the principal schooling of the boy took place, the Clark family 
 moved a few miles down the Hoosac, and opened a public house in 
 what is now called Centre Pownal. In accordance with the univer- 
 sal custom of those times liquors were sold at every tavern, and 
 taverns were thickly strewn along every public highway in New 
 England. This boy was set by his father to sell intoxicants to 
 travellers and others over his bar in Pownal. Perhaps owing in 
 part to precept and example lately received in the Williamstown 
 Free School, young Clark conceived an invincible repugnance to the 
 traffic in which he was employed, and to the drinking of intoxicants 
 generally ; and passing shortly from the country tavern to the study 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 
 
 203 
 
 of medicine as it was then taught by country doctors in northern 
 New York, he became a practitioner himself, and settled down to 
 forty years of most successful practice in the new and small town 
 of Moreau, but closed his career in the neighboring town of Glens 
 Falls as an apothecary, and as a temperance lecturer and organizer. 
 Appleton's Cyclopedia has this to say of Dr. Billy J. Clark : " The 
 earliest organization to stem the tide of intemperance in this Ee- 
 public would seem to have been that of < The Temperate Society of 
 Moreau and Northumberland,' which was instigated by Dr. B. J. 
 Clark, of Moreau, in March, 
 in 1808, and constituted by 
 the signatures of forty-three 
 members, mainly substan- 
 tial farmers of the two towns 
 named. Their constitution 
 stipulated, that ' no member 
 shall drink rum, gin, whis- 
 key, wine, or any distilled 
 spirits, or composition of 
 the same, or any of them, 
 except by the advice of a 
 physician, or in case of actual 
 disease (also excepting wine 
 at public dinners), under 
 penalty of twenty-five cents. 
 Provided that this article 
 shall not infringe on any 
 religious ordinance.' And 
 further, that 'no member 
 shall be intoxicated under 
 penalty of fifty cents. 7 And again: <no member shall offer any 
 of said liquors to any other member, or urge any other person to 
 drink thereof under penalty of twenty-five cents for each offence.' " 
 Through Dr. Clark's energy and perseverance, a special act of the 
 New York Legislature was obtained incorporating "The Saratoga 
 Medical Society," the first organization of the kind in the State. 
 He was also a member of the New York Electoral College in 1848. 
 He was seventeen years old when he began his medical studies in 
 Pownal with Dr. Gibbs, and he continued them with Dr. Wicker, 
 in Easton, New York, till he commenced practice in Moreau in 1799. 
 He died in''Glens Falls, greatly honored, in September, 1866, in his 
 eighty-ninth year. 
 
204 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 At the same meeting of the corporation of the Free School in 
 October, 1790, that raised the committee to procure a preceptor, and 
 wisely instructed them as toward that end, adopted also a seal, 
 which was used for some years after the school 
 became a college. Its device was a teacher sur- 
 rounded by three pupils with books in their 
 hands and the legend (which is still continued 
 unchanged), "E LIBERALITATE E. WILLIAMS 
 ARMIGERI." The original seal is still extant 
 in good order, and the accompanying impression 
 is printed from it. The new device for the 
 
 FREE SCHOOL SEAL. * 
 
 college seal was a globe, a telescope, a pile of 
 books surmounted by an inkstand, what is apparently a study-table 
 with a cloth cover, and a sprig of the inevitable ivy or laurel. 
 
 We come now to attempt to delineate the leading features of a 
 personage directly and deeply concerned in the establishment of 
 Williams College, who will always remain an object of interest to 
 any who for any reason become thoroughly interested in the past 
 of the town and the College. His hands laid deep and strong the 
 foundations here. Not that they were extraordinarily skilful hands, 
 nor were they guided by any extraordinary gifts of intelligence or 
 prescience ; but they were faithful and patient hands, guided by a 
 firm confidence in an ever-present and overruling Providence, and 
 guided also by an innate courtesy toward his colleagues of the 
 board and the faculty as well as by a spirit of willingness to serve 
 as toward the community both of the town and of the College. This 
 was the first preceptor and president, EBENEZER FITCH. He was 
 born Sept. 26, 1756, at Norwich, although it is stated on his 
 tombstone at West Bloomfield, New York, that his birth was at 
 Canterbury, where he was certainly brought up. He belonged to a 
 prominent family in Connecticut, which came to be widely diffused 
 also in the other New England States, particularly in Vermont, and 
 which was descended from Rev. James Fitch, born in Essex County, 
 England, in 1622, coming to this country when sixteen years old, 
 and spending seven years in preparation for the ministry under the 
 private instruction at Hartford of Messrs. Hooker and Stone, its 
 primitive and famous ministers of the Gospel. Of Major James 
 Fitch, his son, born in 1649, and active as a soldier in the Pequot 
 War, under the famous John Mason, whose daughter was his father's 
 second wife, it has been said, "He was the first donor to Yale College 
 who was not of the board of trustees. In October, 1701, he gave 
 the College 637 acres of land in the town of Killingly, and all the 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 205 
 
 glass and nails which should be necessary to build the college 
 edifice. This benefaction had a great influence in procuring the 
 charter, and in encouraging the friends of the College in promoting 
 its interests, and on this account is deserving of particular considera- 
 tion." One son of this generous donor to Yale in its earliest infancy, 
 thereby illustrating the German proverb, " He doubly gives who 
 quickly gives," was Colonel Jabez Fitch, born in 1703 and departed 
 in 1784, who was a man of unbounded influence in his native town of 
 Canterbury, held pretty much all the offices in succession both mili- 
 tary and civil, and was for many years a Judge of Probate. His son, 
 Dr. Jabez Fitch, was less eminent than his direct ancestors in this 
 country, although he became a physician of considerable influence, 
 and instructed after the style of the time medical students in large 
 numbers. He removed from Canterbury to Norwich. Three of his 
 sons became prominent citizens of Vermont; five of his daughters 
 married men of a college education ; and the only other member 
 of his family who reached a mature age was Ebenezer Fitch, the 
 preceptor and president. 
 
 These genealogical details are here given on account of the light 
 they may easily be made to throw upon some peculiarities of the 
 life of the man we are now particularly interested in. These 
 Connecticut families in long sequence of time were deeply religious 
 people. They were as a rule well-to-do, and accustomed to a mode 
 of expenditure that could have been supported only by liberal 
 incomes from some source. They were well-educated people, and 
 unusually familiar with college-bred associates. They belonged to 
 the politically privileged class in Connecticut, and after the adop- 
 tion of the Constitution of the United States naturally ranged 
 themselves with the political party that believed in and sought for 
 special privileges under the law for the relatively few as against 
 the relatively many. In other words, they became followers of the 
 political principles of Alexander Hamilton, as these came to be 
 embodied in the Federalist party, rather than the principles of 
 Thomas Jefferson as these were set forth by the adherents of the 
 Democratic party. All three of the brothers of the preceptor were 
 Vermont Federalists during the early years of the national govern- 
 ment, while the popular majorities in that State were more com- 
 monly registered for the opposite party. The preceptor himself 
 was no friend to Jefferson or to his rock-based principles of the 
 equality of all citizens before the law, while his fellow-citizens 
 of Williamstown by large and constant majorities favored them. 
 Important local consequences followed these radical differences 
 
206 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of opinion and action, as we may see more fully in the sequel of 
 our researches. 
 
 The college education of Ebenezer Fitch was gained at Yale in 
 regular course from 1773 to 1777. He passed two years immedi- 
 ately thereafter at New Haven as a resident graduate. All these 
 years were more or less disturbed by the opening and progressing 
 scenes of the American Eevolution as these were observed and 
 experienced in New England. He notes in his diary under date 
 of April 21, 1775: "To-day tidings of the battle of Lexington, 
 which is the first engagement with the British troops, arrived at 
 New Haven. This filled the country with alarm, and rendered it 
 impossible for us to pursue our studies with any profit." Young 
 Fitch went home, then visited Providence, and then went to see the 
 colonial camp at Cambridge and Roxbury; but the military life did 
 not appeal to him as personally attractive either then or later, for 
 on being enrolled at Canterbury and drafted as a soldier to go to 
 the army, he objected on the ground that he was a member of 
 college, and therefore not liable to do military duty; on the other 
 hand it was contended, that resident graduates were not members 
 of college ; Fitch wrote from Canterbury to President Stiles for his 
 official opinion on that question, and received reply that resident 
 graduates were considered members of college. So Fitch got off. 
 Both of these letters are preserved among the records of Yale 
 College. A year or two after this, that is, in the winter of 1780, 
 while teaching a select school in New Jersey not far from Morris- 
 town, he wrote: "Week before last I visited the camp, and had 
 the pleasure of seeing some old and some dear friends. I found 
 the log-house city on the declivity of a high hill three miles south 
 of Morristown. There the Connecticut line dwells in tabernacles 
 like Israel of old. And there the troops of the other States lie, 
 some at a greater and some at a less distance, among the hills, in 
 similar habitations." 
 
 On the morning of March 22, 1777, about the middle of Fitch's 
 senior year, President Daggett made an address to the Yale students, 
 informing them that on account of the impossibility of supplying 
 the college with provisions, it would in a few days be dismissed, 
 and also that he had fully made up his mind to resign the presi- 
 dency of the college. The students accordingly left New Haven, 
 and pursued their studies during the summer under their respective 
 tutors in places less exposed to the sudden incursions of the British 
 enemy. The Freshman class went to Farmington under their tutor 
 Lewis ; the Sophomore and Junior classes under tutors Baldwin and 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 207 
 
 Buckminster, respectively, were in Glastonbury; and the Seniors 
 spent the summer in Wethersfield, fortunate in the tuition of tutor 
 Timothy Dwight, then twenty-five years old. The relations thus 
 commenced between Pupil Fitch and Tutor Dwight continued on a 
 pleasant plane till the death of the latter in 1817. Fitch became 
 a college president in 1793, and Dwight in 1795, and the two came 
 together repeatedly thereafter in Williamstown certainly as appears 
 in the interesting "Travels of Dwight," and it is to be presumed 
 in New Haven also, for in addition to Fitch's six years there as a 
 " member of college," he was in all about eight years a tutor there, 
 1780-83 and 1785-91. As the college had dispersed from New 
 Haven in the spring of 1777 on Revolutionary grounds, there were 
 no public exercises of Commencement there that year, but the grad- 
 uating class consisting of fifty-four, a much larger number than 
 had previously been graduated at Yale, the class had quasi com- 
 mencement exercises at Wethersfield, and then returned to New 
 Haven to receive their diplomas privately. Tutor Dwight preached 
 two sermons before them at Wethersfield on Sunday, and on Tues- 
 day following the exercises fell, of which Fitch speaks thus in his 
 journal : " July 22. This has been quarter day. I spoke my dialogue 
 and the Valedictory Oration before a very large and splendid audi- 
 ence. I trust I did myself credit. Indeed all the parts were 
 performed to the entire approbation of the audience." As a con- 
 temporary and so far forth trustworthy evidence that Tutor Fitch 
 was well thought of by his pupils at Yale, the late General Charles 
 F. Sedgewick of Sharon, Connecticut, a graduate of Williams in 
 1813, informed the writer, that when he was in college here, there 
 was in the College library a classical map or atlas of some kind, 
 which the students at Yale had presented to Tutor Fitch as a token 
 of their special esteem. Undoubtedly the president had deposited 
 this in the incredibly small library for the use of the students here, 
 and took it away with him as his personal property when he left 
 in 1815. Shortly after his death, in 1833, his own library and 
 numerous and valuable manuscripts came into the hands of his son, 
 Rev. Charles Fitch, then of Batavia, New York, whose house and 
 all its contents was soon after consumed by fire. 
 
 An incident in the life of young Fitch, that occurred in the interval 
 of his two tutorships in New Haven, illumines a marked charac- 
 teristic of the man throughout his life, and explains in a measure 
 the nature of his troubles and failures in Williamstown, and later in 
 West Bloomfield. In 1783, the year of the settled peace with Great 
 Britain, he turned merchant and entered into a partnership with 
 
208 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Henry Daggett of New Haven. In June of that year he went to 
 London to buy goods for the firm, and returned in the following 
 winter with a large invoice of them, which proved to be, many of 
 them, of a quality and price much above the wants and habits of the 
 citizens of Connecticut. He did not know the state of the markets 
 at either end of the route. He ^could not have been rationally ex- 
 pected to know. He ought to have known himself better than to 
 have supposed that he knew. He made consequently most unfortu- 
 nate purchases. The goods were not salable at any price. He em- 
 barrassed his firm, and embarrassed himself irretrievably. He went 
 back to his books, and to his tutorship. Ne sutor ultra crepidam. 
 Fourteen years subsequent to going to London awooling, and six 
 years after he came to Williamstown to be preceptor, he wrote in a 
 letter : " By the assistance of my brother Jabez, I last winter effected 
 a settlement of my old debt with Mr. Daggett. The debt is now 
 reduced to a little more than six hundred dollars, which I can pay 
 in a few years, if my life and health are continued." These few 
 facts and these few words exhibit a man, (1) destitute of the financial 
 instinct, and without any adequate sense of proportion as between 
 outgo and income ; (2) oversanguine as respects future ability to 
 pay debts and at the same time provide for current wants ; and (3) 
 as beginning early to rely on the pecuniary " assistance " of others. 
 Till the very end of a long life, many others were induced by hope 
 or impelled by pity to come into the place of " my brother Jabez. 57 
 The late William Hyde, a graduate of 1826, told the writer that his 
 father, long one of the early trustees, was once invited by President 
 Fitch to go out to his pen to see his two fattening hogs. " It does 
 not cost hardly anything to keep them,' 7 said the head of the College ; 
 " they live mostly on what comes off from my table." " There does 
 not come off enough from my table," retorted the trustee, " to keep 
 alive one pig ! " 
 
 The committee appointed to select a preceptor reported favorably 
 on Ebenezer Fitch to the entire board, who elected him to the post 
 in October, 1790. It was not without considerable hesitation and 
 continued inquiry, that the candidate concluded to accept the ap- 
 pointment. Whatever else may be said about this selection, this 
 admirable feature about it obtained, he did not run until he was 
 called. " Therefore came I without gainsaying as soon as I was sent 
 for." He had one brother certainly (Jabez), and probably two more 
 (Chauncy and Samuel), already prominent citizens in Vermont. 
 The first was United States Marshal for the District of Vermont 
 during the entire administrations of Washington and John Adams. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 209 
 
 Without doubt this must have exerted some attractive influence to 
 draw the scholar from the seaboard to the northern country. At 
 any rate he signified his acceptance of the preceptorship early in the 
 year 1791, and in October he commenced his teaching labors, that 
 were not to be intermitted till near Commencement, 1815. He came 
 here as a bachelor ; and thereby and thereafter hangs an interesting 
 and instructive tale. Rev. Dr. James Cogswell, who was graduated 
 at Yale in 1742, and who was a minister in Canterbury, married 
 Alice Fitch, an aunt of Ebenezer. Their son, Samuel Cogswell, was 
 about the same age with him. They were own cousins. Both were 
 fitted for college by Dr. Cogswell, became college classmates in 1773, 
 were graduated together in 1777, and were always very intimate 
 friends and companions. Each, unknown to the other, fell in love 
 with the same Connecticut girl, namely, Mary Backus, a daughter of 
 Major Ebenezer Backus of Windham ; and each, unbeknown to the 
 other, made to her matrimonial offers at about the same time. She 
 chose Cogswell, and married him. They lived in Lansingburg, New 
 York, twenty-one miles as the crow flies due west from Williams- 
 town. There were two children born to the Cogswells, Maria and 
 James, when the father was accidentally shot dead, on a gunning 
 party, by a friend and fellow-graduate of Yale, about the time that 
 Fitch went to Williamstown. In May, 1792, Mrs. Cogswell was 
 united in marriage with Preceptor Fitch, her children were treated 
 by him as his own, and eleven others were added in the new family, 
 ten of whom were sons, and three of these were born at a birth in 
 May, 1807. Maria Cogswell married Major Douglass Sloan, only 
 son of General Sloan here, and a graduate of the College in 1803. 
 James Fitch Cogswell (a name that bears a meaning within it) was 
 given a public education by his step-father, graduating in 1808. 
 Two of the Fitch sons were also graduates of the College, Mason 
 Cogswell Fitch in 1815, and Charles Fitch in 1818. Mrs. Fitch bore 
 in her lifetime and afterward the reputation of a highly intelligent 
 and amiable woman. She died in the family of her only daughter, 
 Mrs. Lucy Fitch Folsom, in Cleveland, in November, 1834, about a 
 year and a half after the death of her second husband in West 
 Bloomfield. Her only words of present record are these, spoken 
 shortly after his death, " A kinder husband the world never 
 furnished, woman never had.' 7 
 
 The Free School was opened for scholars Oct. 20, 1791. Very 
 shortly it became unexpectedly popular, especially in its higher 
 department for instruction in which a small tuition was charged, 
 and in which the branches then usually taught in the New England 
 
210 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 colleges were ostensibly professed. Preceptor Fitch was the only 
 teacher at first in these higher branches ; but then, he had been for 
 several years senior tutor and librarian at Yale, and modestly con- 
 sidered himself and was properly considered by others competent to 
 give such instruction. The locality with its adjoining regions in 
 New York and Vermont was remote from any then existing higher 
 institutions than the common school, the tuition was small, the 
 means of living in Williamstown cheap, the hopefulness (one may 
 even say buoyancy) of feeling in the whole country at the middle of 
 Washington's first administration, and the strong reactions from 
 war and a worthless paper money to peace and to a speedy prospect 
 of gold and silver money from an independent mint of the people's 
 own, all these things conspired to give a spurt to the new school 
 now housed in a commodious building and furnished with a compe- 
 tent head. For a couple of years or so something had been singing 
 to some at least of the nine trustees, and something had been saying 
 to Ebenezer Fitch, that the goal of all these counsels and strivings 
 and aspirations was to be a college, and not a school, as the words 
 were used in those days. Accordingly, whether previously and 
 formally instructed thereto by the trustees or not, Preceptor Fitch 
 presented to them at their meeting at Williamstown, May 22, 1792, 
 for their approval and signature, the following petition to the Gen- 
 eral Court of Massachusetts. The hand of Fitch is very visible in 
 and between the lines of this petition, and so is the hand of Daniel 
 Dewey, then, and since 1787, and onwards till his death in 1815, a 
 settled and able lawyer in Williamstown, and extremely serviceable 
 to the College at all times and in many ways. Each one of the nine 
 trustees signed this petition, and so authenticated its statements. 
 
 The Trustees of the donation of Ephraim Williams Esq. , for maintaining a 
 Free School in Williamstown, humbly show, that, . partly out of the said dona- 
 tion, and partly by private subscriptions, and partly from the aid of a lottery, 
 they have erected a large and convenient building within the said town of 
 Williamstown, with lodging and study rooms sufficient to accommodate 100 
 students, besides a common school-room sufficient for 60 scholars, a dining-room 
 that will accommodate 100 persons, a hall for public academical purposes [the 
 Chapel], a room for a library, apparatus, &c., the whole being nearly finished. 
 About six months have elapsed since they opened an English and Grammar 
 school in said building, and the number is almost daily increasing. Your me- 
 morialists further show, that there are several circumstances attending the Free 
 School in Williamstown, that are peculiarly favorable to a seminary of a more 
 public and important nature. It is in a part of the country that abounds with a 
 variety of the most substantial articles of provision, and, being remote from any 
 public market, such articles of provision may always be afforded at a low price. 
 This will naturally tend to lessen the expenses of instruction, and to render the 
 
WILLTAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 211 
 
 means of a liberal education more easy, and bring them more within the power 
 of the middling and lower classes of citizens. Williamstown, being an enclosed 
 place, will not be exposed to those temptations and allurements which are 
 peculiarly incident to seaport towns : a rational hope may therefore be indulged 
 that it will prove favorable to the morals and literary improvement of youth 
 who may reside there. Your memorialists ask leave further to observe, that 
 Yale and Dartmouth Colleges are both of them nearer to the County of Berk- 
 shire than Cambridge. Most of the youths in the counties of Hampshire and 
 Berkshire who obtain a liberal education are sent to one or the other of those 
 colleges, by means of which large sums of money are annually sent out of this 
 Commonwealth for the purposes of education. The southerly part of Berkshire 
 is contiguous to Connecticut. The town of Williamstown is bordering upon the 
 most fertile parts of the States of New York and Vermont. If, therefore, a 
 college was instituted in that town, such is its local position that great numbers 
 of youth would probably resort there from the adjacent States, for the purpose 
 of obtaining a liberal education. This would furnish an opportunity to extend 
 culture and manners among the citizens of our sister States. It would, at the 
 same time, be a resource of wealth, and add to the influence and wealth of 
 Massachusetts. There being already two colleges within the Commonwealth 
 [Maine was then a part of Massachusetts, but Bowdoin College did not receive 
 its charter till 1794] cannot, as we humbly conceive, be a reasonable objection 
 against the addition of a third, especially as the interest of the last, from its 
 local situation, cannot interfere with either of the former. The interests of the 
 whole will perfectly coincide, and like a threefold cord, mutually confirm and 
 strengthen each other. 
 
 The University of Cambridge will always be considered as the parent of the 
 other two, and from them will derive an additional degree of lustre and renown. 
 We hope that it is a laudable wish we indulge of seeing Massachusetts the Athens 
 of the United States of America, to which young gentlemen from any part of the 
 Union may resort for instruction in all the branches of useful and polite litera- 
 ture ; and we cannot entertain the least doubt but that the object of our present 
 memorial perfectly coincides with the object of such a wish. Your memorialists, 
 therefore, humbly pray your Honors, that the Free School in Williamstown may 
 be incorporated into a College by the name of WILLIAMS HALL, and that the 
 nurturing, liberal hand of the Legislature may be extended to it by a grant of 
 lands in the easterly part of the Commonwealth, or in such other way as to 
 your Honors may seem fit. 
 
 WILLIAM WILLIAMS TOMPSON J. SKINNER 
 
 THEDORE SEDGWICK JOHN BACON 
 
 WOODBRIDGE LITTLE DANIEL COLLINS 
 
 SETH SWIFT 
 ISRAEL JONES 
 DAVID NOBLE 
 
 Just thirteen months to a day after this petition was signed at 
 Williamstown, an Act of Incorporation changing the free school 
 into a college, under the name of Williams College, was passed by 
 the Legislature of the State. This act made all the trustees of the 
 
212 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 school trustees of the new college, and added to their number Stephen 
 West and Elijah Williams and Henry van Schaack and the president 
 of the College for the time being. The Act allowed the board of 
 trustees to consist thereafter of seventeen members, a limit that has 
 never since been exceeded ; empowered the body to fill all vacancies 
 in their own ranks, that is to say, to become a self-perpetuating 
 body; authorized them to confer the usual academic degrees and 
 doctorates; and permitted them to hold corporate property, the 
 annual income of which should not exceed the sum of $20,000. The 
 next year after their incorporation the trustees completed their 
 own number by choosing Philip Schuyler, Job Swift, Stephen van 
 Kensselaer and Ammi Ruhamah Bobbins as fellow-members. Gen- 
 eral Schuyler was not popular in New England throughout the 
 Revolutionary War, but he had a firm friend and occasional corre- 
 spondent in Colonel Simonds of W T illiamstown, and there can be but 
 little doubt that his influence was felt in this election, added to the 
 obvious interest of the College to secure friends and patrons in 
 Albany and its vicinity. The same general influences brought about 
 the election of Van Rensselaer, the patroon son-in-law to Schuyler, 
 a man liberal to all learning, of remarkable personal merit, and of 
 vast influence, local and political and military. Swift was then the 
 pastor in Bennington, a near relative of the Williamstown pastor, a 
 graduate of Yale in 1765, a trustee also of Dartmouth and Middlebury, 
 a man of whom Dwight writes in his Travels, " he was one of the 
 best and most useful men whom we knew ; good men loved him and 
 delighted in his society, and the worst men acknowledged his worth : 
 to the churches and ministers of Vermont he was a patriarch." 
 Bobbins was the minister in Norfolk, Connecticut, for fifty-two 
 years, a graduate of Yale in 1760, father of Thomas Robbins, who 
 was graduated both here and at Yale in 1796, and father of two 
 other sons, who were graduated here in 1802 and 1808 respectively. 
 The connection thus knit in 1794 between Norfolk and the College 
 has continued in a way pleasant and profitable to both from that 
 day to this. 
 
 Had the Legislature of Massachusetts a legal and constitutional 
 right to change in 1793 in so radical a way the charter granted by 
 the General Court in 1785 ? This question has but little interest to 
 anybody now, and perhaps never would have had a general interest, 
 had it not been for the famous "Dartmouth College case," argued 
 before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1818 by Daniel 
 Webster and William Wirt and others. That case turned on the 
 action of the Legislature of New Hampshire in 1816, changing the 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 213 
 
 charter of the College as it had been granted in 1769 by King 
 George III., in a way in essential respects similar to this of 1793. 
 The decision of Chief Justice Marshall hinged on a clause of the 
 Constitution of the United States, forbidding the States to " pass any 
 law impairing the obligation of contracts." The definition of the 
 term " contract " was legally made to include the understanding had 
 between public donors and public trustees receiving their benefac- 
 tions. This decision has been of enormous benefit to public institu- 
 tions of all kinds ever since, because rich men and all men have seen 
 that gifts to public institutions, whether posthumous or living gifts, 
 are under the shield of the Constitution of the United States. 
 Nevertheless, perhaps it may be truly said, that the best legal ability 
 of this country at present does not affix its seal of validity to the 
 plea of Mr. Webster or the dictum of Judge Marshall. It is almost 
 certain that, if those had been applied in their strictness to the pro- 
 ceedings here in 1793, the proceedings would have been overturned 
 as thoroughly as those at Hanover were in 1819. Precisely how far 
 the new charter for Williams College was legally questioned at that 
 time does not now appear. That it was so questioned more or less, 
 is made certain by arguments in rebuttal furnished by those who 
 favored and brought about the change. " This act of the Legislature 
 did not change the destination of the fund of the Free School (for 
 that would necessarily imply an illegal exercise of power on the part 
 of the Legislature), but it only extended the power and increased the 
 capacity of the fund, so that it was still promotive of the views of 
 the beneficent testator respecting his general object, namely, the dis- 
 semination of learning ; and the particular one, the location at Wil- 
 liamstown. The Williamstown Free School Fund was at all times to 
 be considered as the STOCK, planted and rooted in Williamstown, on 
 which public and private munificence might, from time to time, be 
 engrafted. This construction of the will of Colonel Williams har- 
 monizes with the views of the original trustees of the fund, and is 
 strengthened and confirmed by the fact, that none of the residuary 
 legatees of Colonel Williams ever claimed those funds or considered 
 them as forfeited by any supposed illegal interference of the Legis- 
 lature by the act of 1793." In the judgment of the present writer, 
 a layman, it would not take an extraordinarily well-trained lawyer, 
 nor even any man more than fairly acquainted with Mill's System of 
 Logic, to pick in pieces this volunteered piece of reasoning. 
 
 But the objections popularly raised to the new charter for a college 
 were instant and long-continued. The instinct of the survivors of 
 Colonel Williams old compatriots and of the common farmers and 
 
214 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 artisans of the place was quick and clear, that their children were 
 practically thrown out from the benefits of the fund provided for 
 them ostensibly and verbally by the will of the good colonel departed 
 killed in battle for his country. Copies of the will were sent for 
 to Northampton, paid for, and carefully conned over and over, by 
 these people. Their conviction became deep settled, that they and 
 their children and children's children had been wronged in this 
 matter by the manipulations of men more fortunate in life than 
 themselves, and belonging to a class more privileged under the law 
 than themselves. This popular sense of having been wronged in this 
 matter soon mingled in with the politics of the times and place, and 
 helped to make them bitter. It was not altogether without influence 
 also on the theological controversies that raged throughout the Com- 
 monwealth in the last decade of the last century and in the first two 
 decades of the present. The great case of the Classes versus the 
 Masses was very thoroughly argued out in Massachusetts in those 
 thirty years, to the manifest though gradual benefit of the defend- 
 ants. The first one hundred years of the life of the College may be 
 truly said to have been colored more or less by these early contro- 
 versies between town and gown, between the always numerically 
 small classes privileged under the law and the many robbed and 
 wronged by such privileges ; and it may be truly said also, that, so 
 far as local disputes go from these causes, the close of that century 
 has witnessed their decay and death. The old matters in contro- 
 versy have died out. The relations between town arid College are for 
 the most part conciliatory and wholesome. The causes of present 
 differences of opinion and action are mostly transient, and largely 
 personal on the one side or the other. Good feeling prevails, as it 
 ought to. The interests of the two are practically identical. The 
 two started together, as it were, in the mind and prescient action of 
 one man ; they have grown up together, each leaning upon the other, 
 and while their relations, of course, are by no means so intimate as 
 formerly, the grounds of possible friction between them are dimin- 
 ished in a still greater ratio. The charter of 1793 will now be given 
 in its entirety, together with the Act of 1883 amendatory thereto. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. An act to establish a college in the County of Berkshire, within 
 this Commonwealth, by the name of Williams College. 
 
 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court 
 assembled, and by the authority of the same, that there be erected and estab- 
 lished in the town of Williamstown, in the County of Berkshire, a college, for 
 the purpose of educating youth, to be called and known by the name of Williams 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 215 
 
 College, to be under the government and regulation of a body politic and corpo- 
 rate, as hereafter in this act is provided. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that John Bacon, Esq., 
 Rev. Daniel Collins, Israel Jones, Woodbridge Little, David Noble, Theodore 
 Sedgwick, Tompson J. Skinner, Esquires, Rev. Seth Swift, Henry Vanscaak, 
 Esq., Rev. Stephen West, D.D., William Williams and Elijah Williams, Esquires, 
 together with the president of the said college for the time being, to be chosen as 
 in this act is hereafter directed, be, and hereby are created a body politic and 
 corporate, by the name of the "President and Trustees of Williams College," 
 and that they and their successors, and such others as shall be duly elected mem- 
 bers of the said corporation, shall be and remain a body politic and corporate, by 
 that name forever. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that for the more orderly 
 conducting the business of the said corporation, the president and trustees shall 
 have full power and authority, from time to time, as they shall determine, to 
 elect a vice-president and secretary of the said corporation, and to declare the 
 tenures and duties of their respective offices, and also to remove any trustee from 
 the said corporation, when, in their judgment, he shall be rendered incapable, 
 by age or otherwise, of discharging the duties of his office, or shall neglect or re- 
 fuse to perform the same, and to fill up all vacancies in the said corporation, by 
 electing such persons for trustees as they shall judge best. Provided, neverthe- 
 less, that the number of the said trustees, including the president of the said col- 
 lege, for the time being, shall never be greater than seventeen nor less than 
 eleven. 
 
 And be it further enacted, that the said corporation may have one common 
 seal, which they may change, break or renew at their pleasure ; and that all 
 deeds signed and delivered by the treasurer, and sealed with their seal, by order 
 of the president and trustees, shall, when made in their corporate name, be 
 considered in law as the deed of the said corporation ; and that the said corpora- 
 tion may sue and be sued in all actions, real, personal or mixed, and may 
 prosecute and defend the same to final judgment and execution, by the name of 
 the president and trustees of Williams College ; and that the said corporation 
 shall be capable of having, holding and taking in fee simple, or any less estate 
 by gift, grant, devise or otherwise, any lands, tenements or other estate, real or 
 personal. Provided, nevertheless, that the annual clear income of the same 
 shall not exceed the sum of six thousand pounds. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the said corpora- 
 tion shall have full power and authority to determine at what times and places 
 their meetings shall be holden, and on the manner of notifying the trustees to 
 convene at such meetings ; and also, from time to time, elect a president and 
 treasurer of said college, and such professors, tutors, instructors and other 
 officers of the said college as they shall judge most for the interest thereof, and 
 to determine the duties, salaries, emoluments and tenures of their several offices 
 aforesaid : the said president, for the time being, when elected and inducted 
 into his office, to be, ex-officio, president of the said corporation. And the said 
 corporation are further empowered to purchase or erect, and keep in repair, 
 such houses and other buildings as they shall judge necessary for the said 
 college ; and also to make and ordain, as occasion may require, reasonable 
 rales, orders and by-laws, not repugnant to the laws of this Commonwealth, 
 
216 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 with reasonable penalties, for the good government of the said college ; and also 
 to determine and prescribe the mode of ascertaining the qualifications of the 
 students, requisite to their admission ; and also to confer such degrees as are 
 usually conferred by universities established for the education of youth. Pro- 
 vided, nevertheless, that no corporate business shall be transacted at any meet- 
 ing, unless seven, at least, of the trustees are present ; and provided further, 
 that the said corporation shall confer no degree other than those of Bachelor 
 of Arts and Master of Arts, until after the first day of January, which shall be 
 in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the clear rents, 
 issues and profits of all the estate, real and personal, of which the said corpora- 
 tion shall be seized or possessed, shall be appropriated to the endowment of the 
 said college, in such manner as shall most effectually promote virtue and piety, 
 and the knowledge of such of the languages, and of the liberal arts and sciences 
 as shall hereafter be directed, from time to time, by the said corporation. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the Hon. Tompson 
 J. Skinner, Esq. , be, and he is hereby authorized and empowered to fix the time 
 and place for holding the first meeting of the said corporation, of which he shall 
 give notice by an advertisement in the Stockbridge newspapers, at least fourteen 
 days previous thereto. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the treasurer of the 
 said college shall, before he enter upon the execution of the duties of his office, 
 give bonds to the said corporation, with such sums, and with such sureties as 
 they shall approve of, conditioned for the faithful discharge of the said office, 
 and for rendering a just and true account of his doings therein, when required. 
 And that all the money, securities and other property of the president and 
 trustees of Williams College, together with all the books in which his accounts 
 and proceedings as treasurer were entered and kept, that shall be in his hands at 
 the expiration of his office, shall, upon demand made upon him, his executors or 
 administrators, be paid and delivered over to his successor in that office. And 
 all monies recovered by virtue of any suit at law, upon said bond, shall be paid 
 over to the president and trustees aforesaid, and subjected to the appropriation 
 above directed in this act. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the Legislature 
 of this Commonwealth may grant any further powers to, or alter, limit, annul 
 or restrain any of the powers by this act vested in the said corporation, as shall 
 be judged necessary to promote the best interests of the said college ; and, more 
 especially, may appoint and establish overseers or visitors, of the said college, 
 with all necessary powers and authorities for the better aid, preservation and 
 government thereof. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that all the property, 
 real and personal, belonging to the trustees of Williamstown Free School, 
 be, and the same hereby is vested in the corporation, which by this act is 
 created. 
 
 And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that there be, and 
 hereby is granted to the trustees of Williams College, for the use, benefit and 
 purpose of supporting said college, twelve hundred pounds, to be paid out of the 
 treasury of this Commonwealth ; three hundred pounds of the same to be paid 
 the first day of September, one thousand seven hundred ninety-three, and three 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 
 
 217 
 
 hundred pounds annually, on the first day of September, for the three succeed- 
 ing years. 
 
 [This act passed June 22, 1793.] 
 
 ACT OF 1883. An act to authorize the president and trustees of Williams 
 College to hold additional real and personal estate. 
 
 [Be it enacted, etc., as follows :] 
 
 SECTION 1. The proviso in section 4 of the act establishing Williams College, 
 passed on the twenty-second day of June in the year seventeen hundred and 
 ninety-three, is hereby amended so as to read: "Provided, nevertheless, that 
 the clear annual income of the same shall not exceed two hundred thousand 
 dollars." 
 
 SECTION 2. This act shall take effect upon its passage. 
 
 [Approved March 9, 1883.] 
 
 By this charter, the Legislature, by its own authority, added three 
 ordinary trustees to the old board of the Free School ; namely, Elijah 
 Williams, and Stephen West, and Henry 
 Van Schaack; and one ex-officio member, 
 namely, the president of the College for 
 the time being. 
 
 Elijah Williams was a half-brother 'to 
 the Founder, being the youngest of the 
 second brood of children, as the Founder 
 was the eldest of the first. He was born 
 Nov. 15, 1732, the same year with Wash- 
 ington, spent all but the first five years 
 of his life in Stockbridge, and died there 
 June 9, 1815. He ultimately came into 
 possession of much of the father's real 
 estate in Stockbridge, most of which had 
 passed through the ownership of the 
 Founder. He was not quite twenty-three 
 years old when the Founder was killed at 
 Lake George; and his only own brother, Josiah, two years older, 
 was desperately wounded in the same action. Twenty years later, 
 at the opening of the Eevolution, Elijah Williams sold the old 
 Williams farm in Stockbridge, and made a large purchase of land in 
 what became under his enterprise West Stockbridge village, where 
 he built for himself a fine house, still standing, and married, rather 
 late in life, Sophia Partridge of Dalton, by whom he had one son, 
 who deceased without issue. He acquired a large property, was 
 colonel in the militia, the first sheriff of the county of Berkshire, an 
 
 COLONEL ELIJAH WILLIAMS. 
 Deceased June, 1815, aged 83. 
 
218 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 office which he resigned in 1774, probably on account of the well- 
 known toryism of the entire Williams family. He continued, how- 
 ever, to hold in a high degree the respect of his Berkshire neighbors, 
 as did also, under similar circumstances, his cousin William Wil- 
 liams of Dalton. The two served usefully together upon the board 
 of trustees until, in 1802, becoming seventy years old, Elijah Wil- 
 liams resigned. William Williams continued a member till his death 
 in 1808. In the meantime, in 1804, another member of the same 
 general family, John Williams of Deerfield, a grandson of the Re- 
 deemed Captive, was chosen a trustee and served for ten years. 
 Elijah Williams may have kept in his own possession a part or the 
 whole of his father's fine homestead on Stockbridge Hill about half 
 a mile north of the present meeting-house. At any rate, about a 
 dozen years before his death, he moved thither, and lived nearest 
 neighbor to his brother-in-law, Stephen West, who certainly lived on 
 the old plot of ground on the hill given to Ephraim Williams, Senior, 
 by the General Court in 1737, and on which he built his Stockbridge 
 house. 
 
 Stephen West, the second of the State appointees of 1793, became 
 very prominent in the impulse and management of the College till 
 his resignation in 1812. At the first meeting of the new board, 
 Aug. 6, 1793, all the trustees being present, West was unanimously 
 chosen vice-president, an office (not a sinecure) which he held for 
 nineteen years. Connecticut born, a graduate of Yale in 1755, con- 
 nected as a chaplain with Fort Massachusetts for about a year in its 
 decline, he was summoned to Stockbridge as preacher and pastor in 
 November, 1758, and continued in those relations till his dismission in 
 August, 1818, a period of a little less than sixty years. He succeeded 
 Jonathan Edwards in the pastoral relation both to Indians and the 
 whites. There were then forty-two Indian families and eighteen white 
 families in Stockbridge. Calvin Durfee in his " Annals " says proudly 
 of Stephen West : " A few years after his settlement in Stockbridge 
 a very essential change took place in his religious opinions and feel- 
 ings : from being an Arminian he became a thorough Hopkinsian : 
 he was now distinguished for his spirituality." The same author 
 speaks further in the same connection : " He was a man of such 
 uncommon intellectual powers that he was at home in the depths of 
 metaphysical discussions, or when analyzing and unfolding the most 
 difficult passages in the writings of Isaiah or Paul." Another ac- 
 count of th ; s same change is more intelligible, and therefore some- 
 what more rational. In Field's " History of Berkshire," under the 
 sub-title, Stockbridge, it is said in substance, that when Stephen 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 219 
 
 West was settled in Stockbridge, there were but four other settled 
 ministers in the county ; namely, Hubbard of Sheffield, Strong of New 
 Marlborough, Bidwell of Tyringham, and Samuel Hopkins of Great 
 Barrington. Hopkins was the nearest, and with him West con- 
 tracted an early and intimate and (as the result shows) a very happy 
 friendship. The structure of their minds was somewhat similar. 
 Both were fond of discussion and research. West was dissatisfied 
 with what his predecessor, Edwards, had written on the Freedom of 
 the Will, and on many points relative to the distinguishing doctrines 
 of Grace. These became the topics of free and repeated conversa- 
 tion, and of profound metaphysical discussion between them. The 
 effect was that W T est gave up his hope of a personal interest in Christ, 
 which he had long entertained, and which he had professed before 
 men ; and was convinced that while he had undertaken the charge 
 of souls, his own soul had been neglected. 
 
 The truth about this whole proceeding and its subsequents, which 
 both Field and Durfee regard as peculiarly Christian and divine, 
 seems to be, that Samuel Hopkins was a more subtle metaphysician 
 than Stephen West, and was able to perplex and finally to silence 
 his friend in discussions on matters of which neither knew anything ; 
 namely, " fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." Both were 
 intensely interested in devising and determining what they were 
 pleased to call the "Divine Plan of Salvation," a subject of which 
 our blessed Lord, as reported in the Gospels, said nothing; and 
 which weak and changing human language in its best estate would 
 be unable to bear the weight of, even if the weak and limited powers 
 of man were able to grapple with it. What men needed at that 
 time and what they need at all times, is, to find and embrace and 
 cling to and take the risks with a personal Saviour. One of the last 
 texts which these constructive New England theologians with Ed- 
 wards at their head would naturally have dwelt on in their teaching, 
 is this, " God so loved the world that he gave the only begotten Son, that 
 every one who believeth in him may not perish, but may have everlasting 
 life ; " and another is this, (( This is the work of God, that ye believe in 
 him ivhom he sent" Happily there is not a man in Berkshire County 
 to-day who can tell what it was to be a " Hopkinsian," or who cares 
 a copper to find out. More Christian and more Scriptural, and hence 
 more practical and religious, inquiries occupy the thought and impel 
 the action of this generation. 
 
 Samuel Hopkins and Stephen West were, nevertheless, conscien- 
 tious and useful men in their day. Through the influence of the 
 latter, the former's "System of Divinity" was read for a time as 
 
220 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 one of the text-books for the Senior class in the new college. In 
 March, 1797, President Fitch wrote: "In future we shall read 
 Doddridge's Lectures in lieu of Hopkins's System." What brought 
 about that change? The following letter from West to Hopkins, 
 dated Stockbridge, Sept. 19, 1797, gives a penetrative view into 
 the theological views of that time and locality. 
 
 You spoke in your last of our having prohibited your System being recited in 
 Williams College. It is true, the trustees have prohibited it. It was introduced 
 as a classical study without the order of the Corporation. The President intro- 
 duced it because, as he told me, he thought it much exceeded anything of the 
 kind he had seen. But the civilian part of the board, it seems, were of another 
 opinion. They judged that it being recited would be injurious to the reputation 
 of our new Institution. The matter was considerably discussed. The clerical 
 part of the board [Fitch, West, Collins, Seth Swift, Job Swift, Bobbins] were 
 all of one mind ; and were greatly opposed to its being rejected. But when 
 the vote for its rejection was taken, every hand was up [Bacon, Jones, Noble r 
 Little, Skinner, Van Schaak, William Williams, Elijah Williams, Van Kensse- 
 laer] excepting those of the ministers. Though the world seems to be made 
 for Caesar, yet we know that Zion's God reigns. The time is not yet come for 
 truth to prevail. But in God's good time it surely will come. The Evil One 
 intends to hold the college, but the Lord will support his own cause. 
 
 Although this was a private and confidential letter between inti- 
 mate friends, one cannot let it pass even at this late day without 
 remarking the uncharitableness of judgment of those who claimed 
 " disinterested benevolence " as their distinctive principle, towards 
 those who differed from them theologically or otherwise. Two- 
 thirds of his colleagues on the board of trustees, men of high 
 character and intelligence, thought it best to change the text-book 
 in theology; and after open and full discussion, voted to sub- 
 stitute Doddridge for Hopkins, whereupon their vice-president 
 writes the latter, an interested outsider, "The world seems to 
 be made for Caesar, yet we know that Zion's God reigns." The 
 same individual admits in the same letter, that these his colleagues 
 "judged that it being recited would be injurious to the reputation 
 of our new Institution." What better motive than that could the 
 trustees of any institution act under ? Yet this charitable colleague 
 writes of their open action, " The time is not yet come for truth 
 to prevail." And more, even, than this flows from the same pen at 
 the same time on the same ground of judgment, "The Evil One 
 intends to hold the college, but the Lord will support his own 
 cause." The principle of Protestantism is the right of private 
 judgment in matters religious. Hopkins and West and all the high 
 Orthodox in New England called themselves Protestants, and be- 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 221 
 
 lieved themselves to be such to the core, but practically they were 
 unwilling to tolerate any man's "private judgment" that differed 
 from their own. They virtually claimed infallibility for them- 
 selves, and easily passed over the other fellows to the " Evil One." 
 " Orthodoxy " was their particular " doxy," and the " doxy " of the 
 others was Heterodoxy and Heresy. It was this abominable re- 
 ligious intolerance coupled with an equally abominable coveting of 
 special privileges under the Law for themselves and their "set," 
 that caused the downfall in New England of the "old Order" so- 
 called. They lost in good time and to the benefit of all parties both 
 their religious and political precedence. 
 
 In another connection altogether, Dr. West appears to better 
 advantage, in describing the argumentative method of his friend 
 and spiritual guide, Dr. Hopkins. "His manner in dispute was 
 unusually mild, fair and moderate ; far from being overbearing, he 1 
 gave every just advantage to his opponent, patiently hearing 
 whatever he advanced in favor of his opinions, and giving him full 
 opportunity to vindicate them by every argument he thought favor- 
 able. The doctor often by these means convinced and gained over 
 his opposers ; when, had his manner been austere and overbearing, 
 however conclusive his argument, the opposing party would have 
 remained unconvinced, and received no benefit." 
 
 There were some special reasons, however, why some of these 
 trustees were personally opposed to the furtherance of the theology 
 of Hopkins, which was presumed to be only a modification of that 
 of Jonathan Edwards, whom the Williams family as such had 
 sturdily opposed in his pastoral and theological struggles at North- 
 ampton, and later and more face to face in the same at Stockbridge. 
 Hopkins had succeeded Edwards in a sort of theological leadership 
 in southern Berkshire ; while it was rightly understood at the time 
 that West had come to Stockbridge as an opponent of the stringent 
 tenets of his predecessor. Now West had become the champion of 
 all that had been most offensive to the Williams influence on the 
 Connecticut, and later on the upper Housatonic. Should, accord- 
 ingly, that influence, now directly represented in the board of 
 trustees by Deacon William Williams of Dalton and Colonel Elijah 
 Williams of Stockbridge, and indirectly by several more, give their 
 consent that the hated doctrines should be enthroned in a school 
 founded by one of their own number in a town called by their own 
 name ? Whether " the Evil One intended to hold the college," or 
 not, it is very plain that those who had been chiefly instrumental in 
 establishing it "intended to hold" it clear from special theologic 
 
222 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 views, which they had stiffly opposed for a whole generation. And 
 they very properly did so. And they did so in such a degree and 
 for such a length of time as makes the statement of Durfee and 
 others, that " Williams College was early and intimately associated 
 with those views of theology which were advocated and defended by 
 Dr. Samuel Hopkins," untrue ; and still more untrue the further 
 statement in the same connection, 1 that " its early missionary zeal 
 was the result or fruit of its [this] theology : the one was the pre- 
 cursor of the other : they stood related as cause and effect." 
 
 The third, and only remaining, charter-appointee to the Board of 
 Trustees was Henry van Schaack, at that time of Pittsfield. He was 
 a Dutchman, born in Kinderhook in 1733. He was a brave soldier 
 and officer in the last French War ; and is said to have been in 
 three bloody conflicts in one day. He was a man of remarkable 
 fearlessness and of great physical endurance. The French W^ar well 
 over, he engaged in the fur trade, first at Niagara and then at 
 Detroit, where he lived many years in the beginnings of that now 
 beautiful city, and became like others of his class very rich. About 
 1770 he came back into his native region and settled in Pittsfield, 
 where he resided more than twenty years. As he was rich and had 
 no children, some of the trustees fondly indulged the hope that he 
 would endow the College with at least a portion of his property. 
 " In vain is the snare set in the sight of any bird." He continued 
 till 1816 to be nominally at least a member of the board. Whether 
 he attended their sessions or not does not appear. Certainly he 
 endowed the College with no portion of his estate. About 1806, he 
 returned to his native place, and died there in 1823, aged 90 years. 
 President Martin van Buren, a native and resident of the same 
 place, knew him well in his later years, and communicated to the 
 College some of above-mentioned facts in relation to him. 
 
 The charter for the College was obtained in the early summer of 
 1793 ; and in October, just two years from the opening of the Free 
 School, the formal organization for college instruction was begun by 
 the admission of three small classes out of the more advanced pupils 
 of the Free School, and probably a few others who came then for 
 the first time to enter. This beginning of college instruction and 
 other cognate beginnings had been prepared for by a meeting at 
 William stown, August 6, of the new and enlarged board, all the 
 trustees being present. The charter itself had prescribed to Colonel 
 Skinner of William stown the duty of calling this meeting, and of 
 advertising the date of it beforehand in the Stockbridge newspaper. 
 1 See Durfee's Sketch of Rev. Ebenezer Fitch, D.D., p. 46. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 223 
 
 This appears to be the first official mention of Stockbridge in the 
 records of the College ; but from that time till the close of its first 
 century, in one intimate relation or another, that town has been 
 prominently associated with the College and its town. It has often 
 been said, that all four of the first class of graduates (1795) were 
 from Stockbridge ; but closer local research reveals the fact that one 
 of the four lived in Lenox, but just on the border of Stockbridge. 
 The principal votes passed by the board at this its initial meeting, 
 and recorded by their secretary, Daniel Dewey, are the following: 
 
 Voted, 
 
 That Commencement be on the first Wednesday in September. 
 
 That a grammar school be connected with the college. 
 
 That the salary of the President be 140, and the corporation provide him 
 with a house. 
 
 That Messrs. Skinner, Swift, and Noble, be a committee to counsel the 
 President. 
 
 That Mr. Noah Linsley be appointed Tutor with a salary of 65 per annum, 
 and Mr. Nathaniel Steel Master of the grammar school with a salary of 60. 
 
 That each person who applies for admission [as a Freshman] be able to 
 accurately read, parse, and construe to the satisfaction of the President and 
 Tutor, Virgil's ^Eneid, Tully's Orations, and the Evangelists in Greek ; or, if he 
 prefers to become acquainted with French, he must be able to read and pro- 
 nounce with a tolerable degree of accuracy and fluency, Hudson's French 
 Scholar's Guide, Telemachus, or some other approved French author. 
 
 Fitch and Linsley, the latter a graduate of Yale in 1791, thus con- 
 stituted the faculty for the first year. For the next two years 
 (1794-96), there were three tutors, Elijah Dunbar and Dan Hunting- 
 ton and Daniel Dunbar, the first being senior tutor, and the others 
 graduates of Yale in 1794. The next two years, Henry Davis (Yale, 
 1794), afterward president both of Middlebury and Hamilton, and 
 Jeremiah Day (Yale, 1795), afterward the very distinguished presi- 
 dent of Yale, were tutors. During a part of those two years, 
 Chauncy Lusk (Williams, 1795), was also a tutor, in sole charge of 
 the Sophomore class, giving instruction the first term of his service 
 in Horace, Guthrie's Geography, and Pike's Arithmetic. He became 
 a lawyer, settled in Lanesboro, and died there of consumption in 
 1803. 
 
 It is certain that some students from Canada came hither at the 
 opening of the Free School in 1791. The vote of the trustees in 1793, 
 offering to all the option of French in lieu of Greek, shows the drift 
 of public opinion at that time. Along the same line lies the ap- 
 pointment in 1795 of the first professor in the College, Samuel 
 Mackay, Professor of the French Language. French was his native 
 
224 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 tongue, and the testimony is concurrent that he excelled in the teach- 
 ing of it in College. He was born in Chambly, Canada, in 1764, and 
 died in Sullivan, Maine, in 1831. He held his professorship but 
 four years, and it was discontinued thereafter. The circumstances 
 under which Professor Mackay left the College in 1799, although 
 they are imperfectly understood, have never reflected any discredit 
 upon him, but rather the reverse : the number of pupils in the Col- 
 lege naturally desirous of taking French, and the degree of their 
 preparation to receive instruction at the hands of an accomplished 
 vernacular scholar, were necessarily meagre at the outset; there 
 seems to have been a certain lack of dignity in his manner in con- 
 junction with an unwonted enthusiasm in teaching, as is illustrated 
 by the story of the late Professor Kingsley of Yale College, who was 
 a student here from 1795 to 1797, who used to say that Professor 
 Mackay once undertook to examine the seniors in Paley's " Moral Phi- 
 losophy," and his first sudden question was, " Vat is the vite lie f " 
 This question at that point raised so much laughter, that he had dif- 
 ficulty in proceeding with the incongruous exercise. In his own 
 language, however, he was a successful instructor, and much re- 
 spected. His gentlemanly manners were of much service to the Col- 
 lege in its crude beginnings. His wife was the daughter of the 
 right honorable Chartier, Marquis de Lotbiniere, who died in New 
 York, Oct. 7, 1798, and was buried there in the Potter's Field. 
 When Mrs. Mackay lay upon her own deathbed here about four 
 years later, she requested that her father's name and title, and the 
 time and place of his death, might be inscribed upon her own tomb- 
 stone in the then new cemetery on Hemlock Brook, and it was so 
 inscribed ; and already for almost a century, townspeople and stran- 
 gers have read the touching filial line in connection with the daugh- 
 ter's own still perfectly legible epitaph, which runs in elegance as 
 follows : 
 
 ERECTED IN MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 MARIA LOUISA CHARTIER DE LOTBINIERE, 
 
 WIFE OF 
 CAPT. SAMUEL MACKAY, 
 
 U. S. INFANTRY. v 
 
 SHE DIED JULY 10, 1802, 
 AGED 41. 
 
 On another side of this marble monument is another tender epi- 
 taph, which, in connection with the two others, helps makes this stone 
 perhaps the most memorable within the valley. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN FREE SCHOOL. 225 
 
 THE LAST PLEDGE OF PARENTAL TENDERNESS, 
 ERECTED JULY 14, 1796, 
 
 BY HER DISCONSOLATE PARENTS 
 
 TO THEIR INFANT DAUGHTER, 
 
 NOW MOULDERING IN THIS DUST, 
 
 LOUISA MACKAY. 
 
 These parents had a son named Samuel Metcalf Mackay, born in 
 Bennington, April 3, 1793, before their coming to Williamstown, who 
 himself came to have afterward intimate relations with the College 
 and the county. He was educated in the College, but for some rea- 
 son was not graduated with his class. The College, however, be- 
 stowed on him the honorary degree of M. A. in 1823. He was a law 
 student in Boston, but entered (like his father) the regular army of 
 the United States in the war of 1812, and rose from the rank of lieu- 
 tenant to that of major. At the close of the war, he became a citizen 
 of Pittsfield, and colonel in the militia. He became also prominent 
 in civil life, and represented his town and district repeatedly in 
 both branches of the State Legislature. He was appointed by Gov- 
 ernor Lincoln Commissioner of Education, and in 1827, a mem- 
 ber of the first board of Massachusetts Railroad Commissioners. He 
 was a man of pronounced opinions, of definite aims, and of great 
 energy. He died in 1834 of consumption, doubtless the mortal dis- 
 ease of his mother. 
 
 In the journal of Thomas Robbins, then a senior in College, are 
 found two references to this little Louisa Mackay. " The professor 
 lost his youngest child. Very pretty. Attended the funeral of Mr. 
 Mackay 's child." This language displays the fact that the father 
 was the only person then in College who bore the title of " Pro- 
 fessor " ; and that all the rest of the instruction was given by the 
 president and tutors. We like to linger a little longer before closing 
 the earthly record of the first professor in Williams College. He 
 was chosen professor of the French language September 2, 1795, and 
 resigned the post Sept. 3, 1799. The thanks of the corporation 
 were presented to him and are on record, " for his faithful service." 
 At the same time and without any reasons given for their votes, the 
 corporation repealed the proviso in the laws of the College adopted 
 Oct. 20, 1794, permitting the substitution of French for Greek at 
 the option of the student entering, and further " resolved, that the 
 professorship for the instruction of the French language heretofore 
 established be and hereby is abolished." Can a guess be safely haz- 
 arded, or an inference be logically drawn, that shall at once explain 
 this action of the trustees and their silence as to the grounds of it ? 
 Q 
 
226 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 During the years 1797 and 1798, owing to outrageous spoliations on 
 American commerce authorized by the French Directory and com- 
 mitted on the seas by French privateers, the United States was on 
 the eve of a war with France. Public opinion turned very much 
 against that country. A special house-tax, to help meet the cost of 
 a war that was imminent, was levied by Congress and apportioned 
 among the States in accordance with the Constitution. The assess- 
 ment for this purpose on the houses in Williamstown was made to 
 take effect on Oct. 1, 1798. Under such circumstances as these, 
 could it be regarded as a proper thing to emphasize instruction in 
 the French language, and to maintain a professor for that purpose, 
 in a new and struggling college, every man connected with the con- 
 trol of which being specially and heavily taxed to go to war with the 
 French nation ? If this conjecture may be allowed, another and a 
 cognate one is made easier, namely, that Samuel Mackay enlisted 
 into the regular army under the war fever that pervaded New Eng- 
 land at the close of his professorship, for we certainly find him as 
 captain, United States Infantry, in 1802. He continued his legal 
 residence in Williamstown till 1804; for among the "Intentions of 
 Marriage " published in that year is found " Captain Samuel Mackay 
 of Williamstown and Mrs. Eunice Seaman of Gouldsborough, Han- 
 cock County " (Maine). 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 The egg unquickened and the futile bloom 
 Are types repeated there f orevermore : 
 Unfinished is the fabric in the loom ; 
 Uproofed to heaven the palace built in yore, 
 Unmatched the gleaming marbles of its floor. 
 And as wide Nature and the works of man, 
 So is the man unto his bosom's core : 
 His words die off that with warm speech began, 
 His thoughts defile away, a visionary clan. 
 
 EDITH M. THOMAS. 
 
 THE writer has now reached in the detailed composition of his text 
 the beginnings of the third chapter in his book to be entitled " Wil- 
 liamstown and Williams College." The book that paved the way for 
 this, of which this is but the continuation and the completion, is en- 
 titled " Origins in Williamstown." That book has been in the hands 
 of the public an entire year. The interest excited in its pages has 
 been confined for the most part to those who have been connected 
 with the town in the way of residence or ancestry, and to those who 
 have been connected in some way with the College as a flourishing 
 educational institution. These two factors of interest have been 
 blended from the first, the civil and the educational, and there has 
 been no motive to separate the two into distinct strands of construc- 
 tion. Ephraim Williams conceived of the township as one to be 
 called after his own name, at the same time that he conceived of the 
 Free School to be maintained out of funds of his own provision for 
 the benefit of 'the sons of those men with whom he himself had taken 
 civil risks in land purchases and bodily risks in siege and battle. 
 The executors of his last will and testament, Israel Williams of Hat- 
 field and John Worthington of Springfield, held themselves bound 
 to but one general charge in faithfully caring for the township and 
 its name in 1765, and for the Free School and its permanent organi- 
 zation in 1785. Town and school influenced each other more and 
 more in every attempted lift of each from the very beginning ; and 
 coalesced more and more into one movement, and, as it were, into 
 
 227 
 
228 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 one existence. The town cannot be truly and graphically depicted 
 in its civil and social relations without delineating, at the same time, 
 the shifting features of that institution of learning that has drawn 
 so much attention to its own local environment ; and the lines of the 
 College would be necessarily awry if drawn without constant and 
 sympathetic reference to the kindred growths, both political and ec- 
 clesiastical, going on at once around it and by means of it. It does 
 not make much difference whether we begin now with town or gown ; 
 there must be a vital passing and repassing from one to the other, 
 and the action and reaction of each upon the other must be made 
 visible and striking, if either is to appear as it was, and both as they 
 have come to be. 
 
 From the day when Ebenezer Fitch, then thirty-five years old, 
 entered the little hamlet in October, 1791, to become the bachelor 
 preceptor of the inchoate Free School; and particularly from the 
 day when, six months later, he brought into town as his wife Mrs. 
 Mary Cogswell, the widow of his college classmate and most intimate 
 friend, and adopted as his own her two children, Maria and James, 
 he began to exert an influence personal and official and social 
 and political and ecclesiastical at once, in the way of leadership, 
 as toward a part of the small community just coming into a conscious 
 life, and at the same time in the way of opposition to another vital 
 part of the same community. The principal cleavage was along 
 political lines. The Federal Convention of 1787 had formed at 
 Philadelphia a national Constitution, which was full of compromises 
 as between individual States and the aggregate people of the thirteen 
 States, as between slavery and its alleged interests and the growing 
 demands of human rights as such, as between commerce and 
 restrictions upon it, and between property and personality as 
 having each its respective weight in the practical administration of 
 affairs. The party calling itself Federalist had carried on the 
 national government from 1789 to 1801, and no very sharp, at least 
 no thoroughly consistent, lines could be maintained between that 
 party as such, and the party calling itself Republican o'r Democratic, 
 that had been aligning itself in opposition in all these years under 
 the masterful leadership of Thomas Jefferson. In his own inaugural 
 address as President in 1801, Jefferson states what he deems the 
 fundamental principles of government in this country, and while 
 claiming them as his own and those of his party, he ascribes them 
 also with astonishing facility and liberality to his fellow-citizens as 
 a whole. " We have called by different names brethren of the same 
 principle. We are all Republicans ; we are all Federalists. Equal 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 229 
 
 and exact justice to all men, of whatever State or persuasion, religious 
 or political ; peace, commercial and honest friendship with all nations, 
 entangling alliances with none ; the support of the State governments in 
 all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic 
 concerns, and the surest bulwarks against antirrepiiblican tendencies ; 
 the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional 
 vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad ; 
 a jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and safe 
 corrective of abuses which are lopped off by the sword of revolution 
 where peaceable remedies are unprovided ; absolute acquiescence in the 
 decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is 
 no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of 
 despotism; all will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the 
 will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, 
 must be reasonable, that is, the minority must still hold their equal 
 rights ; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace, and for the 
 first moments in war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of 
 the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, 
 that labor may be lightly burdened ; the honest payment of our debts, 
 and sacred preservation of the public faith ; encouragement of agricul- 
 ture, and of commerce as its handmaid ; the diffusion of information, 
 and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom 
 of religion ; freedom of the press ; and freedom of the person, under 
 the protection of the HABEAS CORPUS; and trial by juries impartially 
 selected" 
 
 At the close of the last, and the opening of the present century, 
 the clergy in Massachusetts and Connecticut were virtually settled 
 for life, and naturally took on themselves some of the functions of 
 an aristocracy, and roused themselves in some opposition to a claim, 
 then indeed but timidly urged, but long ago everywhere triumph- 
 ant, namely, a change that should leave the appointment and 
 maintenance of the ministers to the direct order of the congregations. 
 To remove Jonathan Edwards from his church in Northampton in 
 1750, contrary to the views of the hierarchy that had ordained him 
 there in 1727, caused a tremendous upheaval of the central valley of 
 the Connecticut Eiver. A very large majority of the ministers and 
 lawyers of New England naturally allied themselves with the 
 Federalist party ; indeed, they became and continued the leaders of 
 it. On the other hand, the opposers of the system which maintained 
 the ministers in a position of public privilege, a system clearly in 
 opposition to the general drift of Democratic institutions, naturally 
 allied themselves with the followers of Jefferson, that is, with the 
 
230 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Kepublican party. In its wide and influential ramifications along 
 the Connecticut and to the west of it, the Williams family had come to 
 be opposed to the hierarchical view in the churches, and considerably 
 to the political views of the Federalists. But it was more especially 
 the young men, the young farmers and artisans and doctors, who 
 became the strength of the Democratic party in western Massa- 
 chusetts and who imbibed from the wholesome writings of Jefferson 
 (more wholesome by much than his suspicious intrigues), those 
 doctrines of the equality of privilege before the law of all classes of 
 men, which have given the prevailing political and ecclesiastical tone 
 to New England. Generalizations are not easy here; sharp lines 
 cannot be confidently drawn ; the New England clergy were slandered 
 beyond, as well as truthfully exhibited within, their aristocratical 
 tendencies; while Jefferson was caricatured in New England to 
 ridiculous extremes, religiously and politically and socially, as well 
 as at the same time held up by others to admiration as a scientist, 
 a political economist, and a philosophical statesman. 
 
 When Ebenezer Fitch came to Williamstown to open his School, 
 the French Revolution had been for two years in full career, all 
 the more imperfectly understood on this side the water because it 
 came largely in direct consequence of the American Revolution and 
 its influences of the decade preceding. The political lines were not 
 very quickly and never very sharply drawn as between the trustees 
 of the School and the College in their relations with each other and 
 with the town as such. But the lines were there, hazy and shifting 
 perhaps, from the very beginning. Fitch was a Federalist in every 
 fibre of the man. So was Swift, the pastor of the village church. 
 So particularly and emphatically was Theodore Sedgwick of Sheffield. 
 On the other hand, T. J. Skinner of Williamstown, a young mechanic 
 and Freemason, gifted beyond his peers with the powers of effective 
 speech, was the most pronounced and consequently promoted Demo- 
 crat in the county of Berkshire. With him stood, particularly in 
 all the religious aspects of the division, William Williams of Dal ton 
 and Elijah Williams of Stockbridge. Rather with Fitch and Sedg- 
 wick, than with Skinner and Williams, would naturally have gone 
 Collins of Lanesboro, and Swift of Bennington, and Robbins of 
 Norfolk, while Bacon of Stockbridge, Little of Pittsfield, and Noble 
 of Williamstown, more perhaps as laymen than otherwise, would 
 have swerved against the ministers. 
 
 The political strifes in the town waxed extremely warm, and 
 proved themselves uncommonly persistent, and issued with only 
 occasional intermissions in favor of the Democratic party. Skinner 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 231 
 
 was a natural leader of the masses of men, and specifically a leader 
 of men working their way out from under what they thought and 
 what really was a sort of priestly domination. His personal rise in 
 politics was phenomenal, and has never yet been repeated in Massa- 
 chusetts. It is never likely to be. One might almost say, it is 
 impossible that it ever should be. Several of the young farmers and 
 artisans and professionals here, who served with him as subaltern 
 officers in the Revolution, took substantially the same political views 
 with Skinner, and both helped him forward and found occasion 
 thereby to raise themselves. Samuel Kellogg and Absalom Blair 
 and William Towner may stand as representative of scores of these 
 intelligent and pushing young Democrats. The author of the 
 Declaration of Independence had become a favorite writer and an 
 acknowledged guide in statesmanship to considerable classes of men 
 in New England, who of course know nothing about his feminine 
 and culpable and contemptible operations in partisanship. President 
 Fitch and Pastor Swift and Judge Sedgwick looked with extreme 
 disfavor upon the political opinions and combinations and official 
 elevations of these men. It was not then so well understood as it is 
 now, and it is not now so well known as it ought to be, that natural 
 temperament and historical training and local tendencies have so 
 much to do with political predilections and persistences. President 
 Fitch and his Federalist neighbors did not know how to meet these 
 young men with proper concessions and conservative arguments. 
 They did not themselves fully understand (classes privileged under 
 the law rarely do understand) the grievances complained of under 
 the plea of God-given equalities. It was much easier and more 
 self-righteous for them to dilate on the excesses of the French 
 Revolution, on the fact that Jefferson had been much French- 
 domiciled and largely French-educated, and on these devilish 
 falsehoods then busily circulated in New England that he was 
 himself an infidel in respect to Christianity and a wanton in prac- 
 tical morals. 
 
 There is a curious and yet credible statement that has come down 
 to posterity through Giles B. Kellogg, a graduate of the College in 
 1829, as to what occurred at dinner at the table of President Fitch 
 on the day that Thomas Jefferson was first inaugurated President of 
 the United States. That day was March 4, 1801. Dr. Fitch's 
 house was of course the social centre in Williamstown ever after 
 his marriage in May, 1792, with Mrs. Cogswell. David Noble gave 
 the College an acre of land fronting on the Main Street where Hop- 
 kins Hall now stands for the president's house, and it was soon 
 
232 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 erected by the College for the use of Fitch and his successors, and 
 is still standing on another part of the same acre, and is constantly 
 occupied by a professor as a tenant of the College. President Fitch 
 was hospitable, and entertained beyond his pecuniary means. On 
 the day in question he had two or three gentlemen as guests, each 
 of whom was a Federalist, one or two of these college teachers, and 
 a chance guest also in the person of Isabella Blair, afterward the 
 second wife of Samuel Kellogg, 2d. The Blairs were Scotch-Irish 
 people, as a rule quicker in their wits than their average neighbors, 
 and more likely than they to be readers of books. The Blairs here 
 intermarried with the Bacons and also with the Kelloggs. All three 
 families were Republicans so-called, and all were able on occasion to 
 hold their own in argument or retort with Federalists, a part of 
 whose outfit was a sense of superiority in some ways over their 
 political opponents. Mrs. Fitch and Isabella Blair were the only 
 ladies at the table. The latter was no common woman. She had 
 the faculty of conversation and anecdote ; and used to keep a sort 
 of record or diary of talks heard or had with President Fitch or 
 other notable persons. This record was burned with the Kellogg 
 law office in Troy in 1883 ; but Mr. Kellogg remembers hearing her 
 describe orally what occurred at this dinner in 1801. The gentle- 
 men deemed it proper to retail to each other in the presence of the 
 two ladies some of the vile and foul scandals and slanders of the 
 late campaign, as these had been made current in New England, in 
 relation to the private life of Jefferson, for political ends. Isabella 
 Blair was better informed, as well as more pure-minded. She stood 
 the talk as long as she could in silence, and then, fixing sharp eyes 
 upon them, said, " You may be good scholars, but you are no gentle- 
 men /" This story exhibits some of the limitations of Ebenezer 
 Fitch as a public man and as a private host. He was not broadly 
 intelligent enough to understand the bearings of the great questions 
 on which parties were divided at first during the last decade of the 
 eighteenth century, on which or some of which they have remained 
 substantially divided for one hundred years (only acting under differ- 
 ent names which are always superficial under such circumstances), 
 and on which also they are divided in some substantial part now as 
 the nineteenth century is going out. To suppose, as Fitch did, that 
 more than one-half of the citizens of the United States, including 
 more than one-half of the citizens of Williamstown, were impelled 
 by unworthy motives and had insufficient grounds for political action 
 in the memorable campaign of 1800, was to make plain his own 
 incapacity to penetrate the real drift of public men and measures in 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMT-CENTENNIAL. 233 
 
 that important interval of time between Independence and the second 
 war with Great Britain. As always happens under such circum- 
 stances, the truth lay between the great political leaders. Both par- 
 ties were largely right, and partly wrong ; otherwise there could not 
 have arisen, and been long maintained, two great popular parties. 
 
 This dinner incident of 1801 makes it plain also, what was abun- 
 dantly proven otherwise, that Fitch was too reserved and diffident a 
 man to make a good host, or even to guide in a dominant way the 
 conversation at his own table so as to protect the ladies of his family 
 from unpleasant and indecent remarks and sallies. One who knew 
 him well wrote of him, "His appearance and deportment were 
 always gentlemanly and dignified ; though sometimes, through his 
 great modesty, not marked with perfect ease and elegance." An- 
 other, a graduate of the College in 1802, and some time a boarder in 
 his family, wrote, " Perhaps the most prominent qualities of his 
 heart and disposition were purity and benevolence. As a natural 
 consequence of the purity of his own intentions, he was very seldom 
 suspicious of others ; and his benevolent feelings were awakened 
 whenever an object was presented adapted to their excitement ; and 
 his benevolence, when carried out in acts of kindness and charity, 
 was limited only by the extent of his ability. As a scholar, his 
 literary acquirements were highly respectable. His official duties in 
 connection with the College, and the many cares necessarily incident 
 to the management of a numerous and dependent family, did not 
 leave him sufficient leisure for extensive scientific investigations, 
 or for becoming acquainted with the whole circle of general litera- 
 ture." 
 
 The first Commencement at Williams College was held on Sept. 
 2, 1795, in the old meeting-house on the "Square" erected in 
 1768. It was felt that the place was unsuitable; and the follow- 
 ing letter from President Fitch to Van Schaack, a member of the 
 corporation, exhibits a local device in order to avoid the necessity 
 of going there. Probably Fitch thought that Van Schaack would 
 furnish the $50 required for the temporary building. But he was 
 not that sort of a man, although he was a rich man. Before the 
 next Commencement there was a stronger and more varied opposi- 
 tion to going into the old meeting-house. Young Bobbins, who was 
 to speak, entered this and much more like it in his journal: "A 
 scandal to have Commencement in such an old meeting-house." This 
 letter of the president, for a copy of which these pages and their 
 writer are gratefully indebted to Fisher Howe, also exhibits the 
 intense federalism of certain members of the corporation. 
 
234 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, August 18, 1795. 
 
 Dear Sir, I have only time to thank you for your last letters and the papers 
 
 that accompanied them. The Defence of the Treaty, so far must give satisfac- 
 tion to every candid mind, but the Democrats are many of them incapable of 
 
 conviction Nothing will satisfy them. The Charge is excellent. I return all 
 
 the papers. We have Mr. Webster's Paper every week from New York. The 
 plan of accommodation for Commencement, which we talk of, is a slight building 
 covered with boards, in the easiest and cheapest manner, of 80 or 90 feet in 
 length and proportionally wide, with seats of boards, a stage &c. We have not 
 chosen the place to erect it. I expect it will cost the Corporation at least 50 
 Dollars : but the expense appears to me unavoidable. 
 
 Mrs. Fitch joins me in respects to yourself and Lady. 
 I am, Dear Sir, 
 
 Your cordial friend 
 
 & obliged, humble serv*. 
 
 HENRY VAN SCHAACK, Esq. EBEN B FITCH. 
 
 A true copy. FISHER HOWE, JR., Boston, May 25, 1892. 
 
 Four young men then became Bachelors of Arts. All four were 
 from the county of Berkshire, illustrating the strictly local origins 
 of the College. Two of the four became lawyers, and the other two 
 physicians. One of the four, Chauncy Lusk, was chosen a tutor in 
 the College in the fall of 1796, and had the sole instruction of the 
 Sophomore class during the first term, teaching them in Horace, in 
 Guthrie's Geography, and in Pike's Arithmetic. He died (a lawyer) 
 of consumption in Lanesboro in the year 1803. The next Commence- 
 ment witnessed the graduation of six Bachelors of Arts. One of 
 these was a Williamstown boy born and bred, Daniel Noble, son of 
 David Noble of the original Board of Trustees, and he himself was 
 the first alumnus of the College to become a trustee. He was born 
 the third day after the Declaration of Independence, was a trustee 
 from 1809 till 1830, and treasurer of the College from 1814 till 
 his death in 1830. In the deepest exigency through which the 
 College passed in the first century of its existence, he rendered per- 
 haps the most vital service that has ever yet been rendered by a 
 single individual, a service that will be depicted at some length 
 farther on. Another of the six graduates of 1796 somewhat dis- 
 tinguished in his long day and generation, to whom the College at 
 any rate is under large and varied obligation, was Thomas Bobbins. 
 He was just thirteen months younger than Daniel Noble, and had 
 the advantage of being trained till his senior year in Yale College, 
 of which his father was an alumnus in 1760, and later a trustee. 
 The father became a trustee at Williams also in 1794, and was 
 pleased with the distinction conferred. As a sort of recognition of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 235 
 
 this, and as he was a pastor in Norfolk, just halfway between New 
 Haven and Williamstown, he made arrangements for his son Thomas 
 to spend the bulk of his senior year under instruction here, and to 
 take his degree here with the class of 1796, and the next week to 
 take the corresponding degree with his old class at New Haven. 
 This all happened according to plan. Bobbins himself became a 
 trustee here in 1844 and continued till 1853, and died in 1856 aged 
 79 years. 
 
 The chief of several features that will always make Thomas 
 Eobbins an attractive figure to those interested in Williamstown 
 and Williams College, is the diary he began Jan. 1, 1796, and 
 continued without the intermission of a day till Sept. 9, when 
 he left Williamstown for New Haven. These entries throw a clear 
 light upon the general state of things both in College and town for 
 nearly nine months at a time when other sources of information are 
 quite deficient. The diary thus commenced was kept up with very 
 slight interruptions by reason of sickness, for fifty-eight years. It 
 was printed in full at the expense of his nephew, Bobbins Battell, 
 in 1886, edited in two very large and elegant volumes by Increase 
 N. Tarbox, and is a priceless thesaurus of almost endless details 
 useful to the curious, and particularly the religious antiquarians. 
 Dr. Bobbins continued to wear the old " Continental " and clerical 
 costume, the knee-breeches and shoe-buckles, so long as he 
 lived. He was an object at once of curiosity and veneration when- 
 ever he came to Williamstown in his old age as one of the trustees. 
 The last time he came was in 1852, when the present writer was 
 graduated. " 16. Took the cars and went on to Springfield, to Litch- 
 field, to Adams, and dined. Met friends and rode to Williamstoicn. 
 Find many acquaintance. TJie corporation mostly present. 17. Quite 
 unwell. Had a poor night. Well accommodated. The corporation had 
 a good deal of business. The college increases. I have never seen its 
 prospects as favorable. 18. I am too umvell to attend the Commence- 
 ment exercises. Rode to Adams and took the cars and came to Pitts- 
 field, Springfield, and home about middle of the afternoon." When the 
 Semi-centennial of the College was kept in August, 1843, Dr. Bobbins 
 delivered one of the two formal addresses before the Society of 
 Alumni, Dr. Mark Hopkins delivering the other. These addresses 
 were reprinted by the College in full for the Centennial in 1893, 
 under the editorship of Professor L. W. Spring, in a handsome 
 pamphlet. Dr. Bobbins made the following entries in relation 
 to his experiences at the Semi-centennial. "15. In the morning 
 rainy. Took cars and rode to Pittsfield. Dined at Springfield. Got 
 
236 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 acquainted with Bishop Onderdonk. TJie scenery and the work of the 
 railroad between Westfield and Pittsfield are astonishing. Took a 
 stage and rode to Williamstown. Very kindly entertained at Pres. 
 Hopkins' 's. Had a pleasant day. 16. Attended an interesting meeting 
 of the alumni. I am the senior president. Attended the public services. 
 The president delivered a very good address respecting the college. I 
 delivered mine. Too long an hour and forty-Jive minutes but 
 kindly heard. The alumni had a long public dinner. A very numerous 
 and highly respectable collection. Gov. [Marcus] Morton is present. 
 At evening attended speaking of undergraduates. Brothers James and 
 Francis [each of them an alumnus] arrived in the evening. Not 
 greatly fatigued. 17. Met with the corporation. We voted two divinity 
 doctorates. Attended the Commencement exercises; good, but want of 
 variety. It is said* that there has never been so great a collection of 
 people on a like occasion. See many a former acquaintance. Feel a 
 want of rest. The alumni voted to publish the president's address and 
 mine. Left Williamstown towards evening. Tarried at a private 
 house in Hancock." 
 
 On the 17th of June previous to the first Commencement, President 
 Fitch had been ordained in Williamstown to, the gospel ministry, 
 having been licensed to preach while a tutor at Yale in May, 1787. 
 The ordination was performed by the Berkshire Association of 
 ministers ; Judson of Sheffield, with whom he had studied divinity 
 previous to his license, preached the ordination sermon; West of 
 Stockbridge, whose relations to the College were to become extremely 
 intimate and influential, gave the usual charge ; and Swift of Wil- 
 liamstown offered the right hand of fellowship, in the course of 
 which he remarked, "We rejoice at your readiness to engage in 
 the great work of the gospel ministry, and to make preaching 
 your business at College and other places, so far as your study and 
 business at College will permit." Harvard College bestowed on him 
 in September, 1800, the honorary degree of Doctor in Divinity. But 
 it proved that he had neither the natural aptitudes for a good 
 preacher, nor the leisure in the midst of all his college and family 
 cares for the study and other pains needful to write and deliver 
 impressive sermons. He seems to have understood all this himself. 
 A copy of his baccalaureate sermon of 1799 was " reluctantly fur- 
 nished to the press " at the request of the graduating class. The 
 subject of this discourse was " Useful Knowledge and Religion rec- 
 ommended to the Pursuit and Improvement of the Young." The 
 poet Bryant, who was a member of College in 1811, wrote of the 
 then president in 1859: "He often preached to us on Sundays, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 237 
 
 but Ms style of sermonizing was not such as to compel our attention. 
 We listened with more interest to Professor Chester Dewey, then in 
 his early manhood, the teacher of the Junior class, who was the 
 most popular of those who were called the Faculty of the College." 
 Besides the baccalaureate just mentioned, a funeral sermon preached 
 at Bennington under extraordinary circumstances (to which reference 
 will be had hereafter), and a missionary sermon preached at Hudson 
 in 1814, were all of his discourses printed in his lifetime and with 
 his consent. Calvin Durfee, Williams College, 1825, in a useful 
 sketch of the life of President Fitch, published in 1865, printed 
 entire for the first time the farewell discourse to his people in West 
 Bloomfield preached by their aged pastor in November, 1827. 
 
 The first president of the College took hold of his duties as such 
 with conscientious fidelity and with a good degree of skill and 
 success. Practically he assumed the sole instruction of the Senior 
 class. He taught Locke as his text-book in Mental Science, Paley 
 in Moral Philosophy, and Vattel on the Law of Nations. The 
 extant testimony of his pupils is uniform to the effect, that he had 
 a fair mastery of these great subjects, that he was possessed of 
 a good fund of historical illustration and relevant anecdote, and 
 that his manners as a teacher were dignified and yet communica- 
 tive and conciliatory. Something about the College, at any rate, 
 and it must have been chiefly about the president himself, proved 
 decidedly attractive to students. A catalogue of the College, the 
 first ever issued in this country, was printed in the fall of 1795, and 
 held the names of seventy-five students. The following note was 
 appended, " Besides the above members of College, there are about 
 forty students in the Academy connected with the College." The 
 names of the faculty were not printed at first in connection with the 
 names of the students on the small single sheet, which continued the 
 style for some years. Yale issued a similar sheet the year following, 
 that is, 1796. This is recorded on the explicit testimony of Thomas 
 Bobbins, who was graduated at both the colleges the last-named 
 year. In 1799, a catalogue of the graduates of this College was 
 published containing the names of the faculty, and this custom has 
 been continued triennially ever since. The tutors of the College 
 gave all the instruction to the members of the academy also, 
 academy recruited the College, so long as the former continued, but 
 of course it made perplexities, as all the operations of both went 
 forward within a single building. 
 
 Two letters of President Fitch to Isaac Beers of New Haven, 
 evidently a bookseller there, are herewith given entire, because they 
 
238 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 cast a clear and contemporary light upon, (1) the nature of some of 
 the practical difficulties encountered by him in organizing and admin- 
 istering the young college, particularly as to books and apparatus ; 
 (2) his own qualities and deficiencies in relation to pecuniary 
 matters, which caused him and others troubles and losses, from 
 the time of his youthful mercantile venture with Daggett of New 
 Haven till his death in debt in 1833 ; (3) his personal devotion to 
 the political party of the Federalists, and his implied prejudices 
 against the opposing party called Republicans, or by their adversa- 
 ries Democrats, of which last a large majority of the people of 
 Williamstown were composed. General Skinner, the most active 
 and prominent member of the Board of Trustees as such, a Republi- 
 can, was elected a member of Congress from the Berkshire district 
 in 1796, receiving a great majority of the votes of the people of 
 Williamstown, aggregating 296 votes for Skinner and Sedgwick 
 both. Fitch had, of course, a perfect right to his own political 
 opinions and action, and so, fortunately, had Skinner and those 
 who went with him; one trouble was that neither party properly 
 respected the deliberate conclusions of the other : but it was not 
 simply a difference of political opinion; the more radical difficulty 
 was that the Federalists wanted and were bound to get, if possible, 
 certain political privileges for themselves at the cost of the rest of 
 the people, and contrary to the sound doctrine of equality of citizens 
 under the law equality, that is, not of condition, but of RIGHTS. 
 In the struggle on this point the Federalists were beaten out of 
 sight and sound. The inauguration of Jefferson as President of the 
 United States in 1801 marked the final demise of our first national 
 party of privilege. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN Jaitf 15 th 1798. 
 
 Dear #*>, Your favor of Oct r 7 th , with the Books by Mr. Tutor Deriison, 
 came safely to hand. I designed to remit you the amount by him, but our 
 treasury is empty. Large arrearages are due to it from College, and a payment 
 of 800 Dollars due last June for a township of land which we sold, is positively 
 promised this month. About 150 Dollars of our Library Fund which our Laws 
 impowered me to draw from the treasury last September is not yet paid me. I 
 am considerably in advance on the Library account. However I think I may 
 depend on having some money for myself and you in three or four weeks. I 
 shall then take the earliest opportunity to send you by a private hand or by the 
 Mail the balance of your Ace 1 and also payment for the books you may send me 
 by Mr. Denison on his return. 
 
 The following I wish to have : 
 
 1 Dissertations respecting India 
 
 2 Doddridge's Lectures, (8 VO if you have them) 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 239 
 
 1 Hunter's Biographical Lectures, 6 vol. in 3 
 
 1 Cavallo on Atmospheric and Animal Electricity. If you have not this book, 
 I wish you to import it for me. 
 
 Have you Henry's History of England, and Bradshaw's Josephus in 8 VO , and 
 at what price ? Please to inform me, and also the statement of my acct. When 
 Mr. Day made you the last payment, you had not leisure, he told me, to state 
 the Ace 1 . 1 do myself the pleasure to enclose you our last Catalogue. As we 
 have been a College but four years last Sept r , you will see that we have had a 
 pretty rapid increase. Please to present my cordial respects to Mrs. Beers and 
 to your brothers and their families. I retain a great affection for many friends 
 in New Haven. With cordial esteem and friendship, I am, Dear Sir, 
 
 Your very humble Serv* 
 
 MR. ISAAC BEERS. EBEN B FITCH. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN July 20 th 1798. 
 
 MR. ISAAC BEERS 
 
 Dear Sir, Your two favors of June 22 d from New Haven and June 29 th from 
 New York came duly to hand. And a few days since I received from Troy the 
 Box of Books in good order. I thank you for the Pamphlets you sent me as a 
 present. They are very acceptable. 
 
 Till this afternoon, I knew not that the bearer, Mr. Aspenwall, was going to 
 New Haven. As you said nothing in your letters about my sending the money 
 till Mr. Denison goes to New Haven about six weeks hence, I had calculated to 
 send the money by him. I know our Treasury is nearly empty at present, or I 
 should apply for money to send by this conveyance. If however you wish for 
 the money before Mr. Denison goes, and will please to inform me, I will send 
 by the Stage, if no other conveyance presents. I am a little surprised that 
 D r Cogswell had not sent you the 30 Dollars. He told me in his letter that he 
 would send it soon, and has ever before been punctual in answering my orders. 
 I shall write him next monday, and will remind him of it. 
 
 I find there is to be a Supplementary Volume to the Encyclopedia. I must 
 have it, and wish you to get it for me when it comes out. I know not on what 
 conditions it is to be published. 
 
 Your celebration of Independence was, I find, very splendid, and in a superior 
 style. We had two Orations and two separate entertainments here. College 
 was wholly with the Federal Class of our Citizens, and breathe the pure spirit 
 of Independence and attachment to our Government and our Country. 
 
 Mr. Denison's class will want in the fall as many of Enfield's Philosophy 
 as you can spare. Do reserve all you can for them. He will treat with you 
 about the Books in vacation. 
 
 Please to present my respects to your family and to inquiring friends. I am 
 
 Your obliged, humble Serv* 
 EBEN B FITCH. 
 
 Fitch's letter to Van Schaack in 1795, already quoted entire, shows 
 the sense of the College as the first Commencement was approaching 
 in that year, of the unfitness of the old meeting-house of the Pro- 
 prietors, built by them in 1768 and still owned and controlled by 
 
240 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 them, for the exercises of the Commencement which were held there, 
 nevertheless, because there was no other possible place. As the 
 next Commencement approached, the old dissatisfaction renewed 
 itself in vigorous expression on the part of the class who were to 
 speak, " It is a scandal," cried Bobbins, " to have Commencement 
 in such an old meeting-house." Another entry in his diary under 
 the loth of July, "Great disturbance in town on account of the 
 meeting-house being set on fire last night : l it was happily extin- 
 guished: various conjectures about the perpetrators." When the 
 trustees came together they voted, September 6, " to hold the next 
 Commencement in the town of Pittsfield or Lanesboro unless a 
 suitable place should be provided in William stown," and appointed 
 a committee to carry their vote into effect. But nothing was then 
 accomplished, doubtless owing to much ill-feeling then prevalent as 
 between town and college on political and other grounds, and the 
 Commencement of 1797 also was held in the small and dark build- 
 ing. The new meeting-house erected on the site of the old one (this 
 having been removed a short distance) was so far advanced toward 
 completion at the time of the Commencement .of 1798, that its exer- 
 cises were held within it, and thereafter uniformly until its destruc- 
 tion by fire in 1866. 
 
 The state of things and of feelings both in town and college 
 directly after the Commencement of 1796, afforded President Fitch 
 an opportunity which he nobly improved, not only to secure a larger 
 and better and much-needed meeting-house for all parties, but also 
 by personal conversation and solicitation with everybody to bring 
 about, so far as possible, a better understanding between neighbors 
 and neighborhoods, and a sense of a community of interests as 
 between all classes. He wrote out with his own hand a subscription- 
 paper for a new edifice, and personally circulated it from house to 
 house over most parts of the town, himself entering the name of 
 each individual subscriber and the sum subscribed in his own hand. 
 The paper is dated Sept. 26, 1796. The amount thus secured 
 by him under sixty-five names entered in his handwriting was 
 1143 12s. Od The paper was afterward circulated by another in 
 the parts of the town more distant in general from the centre, and 
 224 02s. 9d. was secured from twenty -four additional names, mak- 
 ing in all 1367 14s. 9d. from eighty-nine persons. This sum 
 amounted in dollars, just then coming into vogue for the first time 
 as a standard of value, to $ 4525.79. This original subscription paper 
 
 1 See Origins in Williamstown, p. 530, for the final conflagration of the old shell 
 in 1828. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 241 
 
 is the property of the present writer, and now lies open before him 
 on his desk. He believes that there will be those in the future for a 
 long time to come, who will like to read Fitch's heading to this im- 
 portant document, and to look over these eighty-nine names and the 
 sums respectively which they felt called upon to give for a new and 
 better place of worship. 
 
 We whose names are hereunto subscribed do severally promise and agree to 
 pay unto such person or persons as a majority of the subscribers shall appoint a 
 committee to receive the same the several sums set against our names respec- 
 tively, to be applied to the purpose of erecting a House of public Worship on the 
 eminence where the old Meetinghouse now stands in Williamstown ; the money 
 so subscribed to be paid at such time or times and the house to be built of such 
 dimensions and upon such a model as the majority of the subscribers shall 
 direct. 
 
 September 26th, 
 
 T. J. & B. Skinner 
 William Hamilton 
 Eli Cotton 
 0. Barrit 
 
 Shubael Wilmarth 
 Samuel Sloan 
 R. Sheldon 
 Daniel Day 
 Elisha Baker 
 A. Harrison 
 C. Sabin 
 E. Cotton, Jr. 
 Abram Starks 
 S., Kellogg 
 j. Day 
 
 L. & E. Smedley 
 H. Richardson 
 E. Mather 
 Corporation 
 Dan'l Dewey 
 Aaron Foote 
 Stephen Patchen 
 Barney McMan 
 Tim'y Northam 
 Dan'l Foote 
 Lemuel Stewart 
 Ebenezer Stratton 
 William Young 
 W. Starkweather 
 David Johnson 
 Isaac Miller 
 Samuel Higgins 
 
 s. d. 
 100-0-0 
 25-0-0 
 4-10-0 
 20-0-0 
 
 9-0-0 
 60-0-0 
 15-0-0 
 40-0-0 
 25-0-0 
 12-0-0 
 15-0-0 
 
 3-0-0 
 1-10-0 
 25-0-0 
 12-0-0 
 50-0-0 
 
 5-0-0 
 
 15-0-0 
 
 100-0-0 
 
 15-0-0 
 
 3-0-0 
 1-10-0 
 2-10-0 
 
 9-0-0 
 
 2-0-0 
 75-0-0 
 20-0-0 
 20-0-0 
 20-0-0 
 20-0-0 
 0-12-0 
 15-0-0 
 
 James Greene 
 William Turner 
 Asa Russell 
 Josiah Wright 3d 
 Stephen Hickox 
 N. Chamberlain 
 D. & Deo. Noble 
 Z. Ford 
 
 Josiah Wright, Jr. 
 J. & H. Meacham 
 Wm. Foster 
 Wm. Wells 
 Wm. Smith 
 T. Boardman 
 Sam'l Satterlee 
 Ezekiel Burk 
 T. & D. Smith 
 Jacob Bacon 
 Chas. Bulkley, Jr. 
 Rev. Seth Swift 
 Jas. Meacham 
 Earth. Woodcock 
 Absalom Blair 
 Warren Roberts 
 John Sweet 
 Isaac Sherwood 
 Wm. Sloan 
 Dan'l Burbank 
 Joseph Osborn 
 John Douning 
 Amza Smith 
 Thomas Bishop 
 
 s. d. 
 
 3-0-0 
 
 15-0-0 
 
 10-0-0 
 
 3-0-0 
 
 10-0-0 
 
 15-0-0 
 
 80-0-0 
 
 12-0-0 
 
 5-0-0 
 
 24-0-0 
 
 15-0-0 
 
 20-0-0 
 
 9-0-0 
 
 600 
 
 300 
 
 1 10 
 12 
 12 
 
 900 
 
 15 
 
 600 
 
 30 
 
 12 
 
 200 
 
 600 
 
 10 
 
 300 
 
 400 
 
 7 10 
 
 5 10 
 
 2 10 9 
 12 
 
242 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Tiin'y Balch 9-0-0 
 
 Perly Putnam 20-0-0 
 
 Jos'h Balch 8-0-0 
 
 Jona. Danforth 22-0-0 
 
 Stephen Scott 5-0-0 
 
 Pardon Starks 1-10-0 
 
 Benj'n Simonds 6-0-0 
 
 Elijah Thomas 8-0-0 
 
 Sol oman Woolcot 7-0-0 
 
 Elisha Williams 15-0-0 
 
 Nathaniel Kellogg 10-0-0 
 
 Nathan Smith 6-0-0 
 Amount, 1,367 14 9. 
 
 s. d, 
 
 Jedidiah Stone 140 
 
 Jeremiah Smith 140 
 
 Jos'h Talmage & Son 20 
 
 Constant Williams 10 
 
 Sam'l Tyler 15 
 
 Reuben Sealey 10 
 
 Jonathan Bridges 15 
 
 Lewis Tousant 140 
 
 Jas. Fowler 10 
 
 Abial Hawkins 10 
 
 Nehemiah Woodcock 10 
 
 Joel Baldwin 20 
 
 In addition to these eighty-nine names, there are two others written 
 on the margin of this venerable paper, Solomon Wright and William 
 Young, both of them well-known citizens at the time, who seem to 
 have subscribed in materials or personal services; but the words 
 cannot now be fully made out a hundred years after they were 
 written. Doubtless there were some further subscriptions made 
 afterward and by other persons resident in the town, for the $4526 
 would hardly have been sufficient to erect and complete so large and 
 good a building. The extraordinarily interesting national house-tax 
 assessed in Williamstown while this meeting-house was in process of 
 construction, gives the names of only 107 householders occupying 
 homesteads worth $100 and upward. Some of these were farm- 
 tenants. It would seem, accordingly, that nearly all the house- 
 owners in town subscribed something toward the erection of this 
 House of God. There were certainly some exceptions ; and one of 
 these is curiously connected with the meeting-house in another 
 very different way. William Bissell Sherman was born in North 
 Kingston, Rhode Island, Oct. 13, 1759, the very day that the news of 
 General Wolfe's great victory over the French at Quebec, September 
 13, reached the place of his nativity. In other words, it then took a 
 whole month for a great piece of news to travel from Quebec to 
 Providence. The boy grew up in extreme poverty, and without 
 schooling of any kind. Before the time of his majority he found 
 his way to Pownal, and worked for hire seven days in the week on 
 the farm of " Tory Gardner " there, a man notoriously underwitted, 
 who perhaps for that reason, in part, lived to be 104 years old. 
 When Sherman was twenty-one, that is, in 1780, he married a daugh- 
 ter of his employer, then fifteen years of age, who never learned to 
 read or write, and never cared for anything except to gain arid keep 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 243 
 
 the things of this world. He was naturally somewhat brighter, and 
 would have been less acquisitive than she, had he married a decently 
 intelligent woman. He had had no more instruction than she, but 
 he came to be able to keep accounts in some hidden way, so that they 
 were never questioned by others, and he was never cheated himself. 
 As prospectively affording a better place to make, money than Pow- 
 nal, the pair, upon marriage, came immediately to Williamstown, 
 and extemporized a primitive dwelling in the woods west of the 
 village, out of which wilderness, together with some purchases of 
 adjoining lands from Stewart and Baldwin, they brought under in 
 ten years' time what is still called the " red-house farm," and which 
 remained in the Sherman family for one hundred years. All days 
 of the week were alike in that family ; work and gain were the only 
 objects in life; they had planted an orchard as soon as possible, and 
 the woman made and vended dried apples, and the man made and 
 vended cider, as well as other farm products, often carrying them to 
 Troy in exchange for groceries, which in turn he came to vend at 
 home ; he soon came to be able to buy and sell lands in a small way 
 uniformly at a profit, and later on loaned money on bond and mort- 
 gage, always promptly foreclosing on default; and before many 
 years had passed, both came to think that they could carry out their 
 ends in life better in the village proper. Accordingly, they settled 
 for good in the east end of the village on original House-lot No. 57, 
 much of which their descendants own and derive an income from to 
 this day. They lived for a time in the original " regulation house " 
 on the middle of that lot ; when they determined to build a large, 
 two-story house there, making the old house an L to the new one. 
 It was characteristic of Bis sell Sherman, who always seized the 
 main chance, that, while the new meeting-house was in process of 
 building in 1797, 1 and the carpenters on it came short of lumber and 
 had to stop temporarily, he hired them all off in a body to work on 
 his own new house. Under the circumstances he got them cheaply. 
 But they built for him a strong front, securely tying it to the north 
 end of the one-story house, which was then at least thirty years old, 
 and front and L united have not been vacant of occupants from that 
 day to this. 
 
 The new front held four large square rooms, two below and two 
 above ; and in the east room below, the owner opened a grocery store, 
 which then meant substantially a place where sugar and molasses 
 and tobacco and spirits were sold. Sherman himself never became 
 a drunkard, though he took his " bitters " regularly three times a 
 i In Origins in Williamstown, p. 441, the year is wrongly given as 1796. 
 
244 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 day before eating ; while several members of his family were ruined 
 by drink, and one of them certainly died in delirium tremens. It 
 hardly needs to be said, that Bissell Sherman had none of the 
 natural qualities of a good merchant. He gave up the store after a 
 while, and rented that room to other parties, and sometimes rented 
 the room above it for a school for " down street," since the regular 
 public schoolhouse stood on the " Square," and it was too far for 
 the Green River children to go to that in all seasons. The late 
 James Smedley, born in 1804, often told the writer, that he attended 
 a district school in that room in his childhood. He was also heard 
 to say, that he saw as a guest the marriage of Sarah Sherman to 
 
 GENERAL SLOAN'S HOUSE. 
 Built in 1801. 
 
 Samuel Duncan in the west room below. Duncan belonged by 
 descent to the Scotch-Irish people of central Massachusetts, was a 
 wheelwright by trade, a very intelligent and ingenious man, but 
 became addicted to drink to his utter downfall. Their son, the late 
 Dr. Samuel Duncan, was one of the most intellectually gifted boys 
 ever born and bred in this town, and became correspondingly accom- 
 plished in the medical profession. He had, however, in early life 
 the roving trait, that carried him to sea in the service of the United 
 States Navy. His only son, at about the same age and under cir- 
 cumstances in many respects similar, but with much less in the way 
 of excuse, manifested the same trait and was led transiently into 
 gross wrong-doing. Bissell Sherman went steadily on from day to 
 day and year to year in his real estate operations, investing and re- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 245 
 
 investing his gains as they came in, until he became the richest man 
 in the town. He continued to eat from a wooden trencher so long 
 as he lived. He had few of the decencies and conveniences of life 
 in his own house, when he came into possession, by foreclosure of 
 mortgage, of by far the finest house in the town, General Sloan's 
 house, mortgaged and lost by his son, Major Douglas Sloan, now 
 belonging to the College and occupied by successive presidents. He 
 was transiently tempted to move " up street," and to live himself in 
 this handsome house directly opposite to the West College ; but he 
 became very shortly sensible of the incongruity and even absurdity 
 of Mrs. Sherman's becoming the mistress and he the master of such 
 a residence. 
 
 " Old Bissell Sherman " was not generally regarded by his neigh- 
 bors as a dishonest man, though close-fisted to the last degree, and 
 though lacking in moral discriminations and all high ideals. The 
 late Professor John Tatlock once heard him in one of the stores re- 
 tailing in his own rough way the old lingo about everybody having his 
 price, and nobody being strictly honest, and so on, when Tatlock, in 
 his blunt British manner, struck in : " That shows that you are not 
 honest yourself ; for if you were, you ivould know that there is at least 
 one honest man in the world, that there is one man in this store this 
 minute who can't be bought at any price ! Your talk shows you up as 
 dishonest anyhow!" The old man had wit enough to see himself for 
 once in a very tight place. He paid the homage of silence to a piece 
 of unanswerable logic. Sherman was an inflexible Democrat all his 
 life. He could not, probably, have given any rational reasons for 
 his becoming and remaining so. But that has no tendency to prove 
 that there were not such reasons and a plenty of them. He left 
 behind him, at any rate, a pleasant memorial of his political faith. 
 When Andrew Jackson became the idol of the Democratic party, 
 and the epithet " Old Hickory " came to be attached to his name, he 
 planted a tree of that denomination in his front yard, which shows 
 as yet no sign of decay. He died in 1846 in the older part of his 
 own house, Mrs. Sherman having preceded him three years before. 
 She was seventy-nine, and he eighty-seven. 
 
 The corporation of the College subscribed 100 as toward the 
 new meeting-house in the fall of 1796. Their chief motive, of course, 
 was to secure, as soon as might be, a suitable place for the public 
 exercises of their Commencements. It was not probably then ex- 
 pected that the new building could be in readiness for the class of 
 1797 to graduate in ; and in point of fact, this class was the last to 
 hold their Commencement in the small and dark old meeting-house of 
 
246 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 1768. This class was the third to be graduated, and it numbered 
 ten men. Four of the ten were Williamstown boys. Two of the 
 ten became distinguished men. These were Asa Burbank and Elijah 
 H. Mills. The former was a son of Lt. Daniel Burbank, one of the 
 first settlers at the South Park, coming from what is now Warren, 
 and buying his farm here in 1763. Asa was born in 1772. He 
 served in the College as a tutor two full years after his graduation, 
 and then studied medicine with Dr. William Towner, a distinguished 
 practitioner in Williamstown. He then attended medical lectures 
 in New York, and settled in his profession at Lanesboro, and there 
 acquired a good and wide reputation. He was thrown from a horse 
 when he was about fifteen years old, and injured his head in a way 
 that did not seem at first to aifect his mind, although it ultimately 
 did so, and shortened his life. He told the physicians in Albany 
 that there was water on his brain, but they did not believe it. 
 He said he could hear it ; and it was found to be so after his death. 
 He married a Hubbell of Lanesboro, and both are buried in the 
 cemetery there. When the Society of Alumni was formed, in 1821, 
 the first organization of its kind in this country, Asa Burbank was 
 chosen its first president. A year or two later the Berkshire Medi- 
 cal Institution was established in Pittsfield, and placed under the 
 care and supervision of the College, the medical degrees being con- 
 ferred at Commencement by the president in connection with the 
 academical degrees, and Burbank was appointed professor of Materia 
 Medica and Obstetrics. He afterward lectured and practised in 
 Albany for four years, but returned to Williamstown in a feeble 
 state of health, and died in 1829. One of his colleagues at Pittsfield, 
 Dr. Williams, wrote of him : " I was intimately acquainted with 
 him in this institution where I was a fellow-laborer with him in the 
 department of medical jurisprudence, and I can bear ample testi- 
 mony to his worth and usefulness. He was one of the most com- 
 panionable and facetious of men, and his happy turn of relating 
 anecdotes, of which an abundance was stored in his capacious mind, 
 often kept an assemblage of his friends in a roar of laughter. He 
 had a most happy and enviable faculty of cheering the minds of 
 his patients, even in the most desponding cases, and often of sooth- 
 ing their pillows in their descent to the grave. No one can doubt 
 that he was both a moral and a highly religious man." His daughter 
 wrote of him : " My father was tall, six feet, and well proportioned, 
 with an eye that seemed to read character at once, retiring in his 
 manner, but could indulge in severe satire when he thought he was 
 not honestly dealt with. In his profession his love for doing good 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 247 
 
 seemed to be the governing principle of his life. I think he braved 
 the winter storms of old Berkshire with more readiness to visit the 
 very poor than those who had ample means to reward him for so 
 doing. To benefit the town in which he lived he was willing to and 
 did make great sacrifices, both to encourage education and in many 
 other ways to improve society." Burbank was a great talker, and a 
 great Federalist, too. When the neighboring town of Cheshire in its 
 naming zeal for Jefferson and democracy manufactured its huge and 
 famous cheese in 1801, and sent Elder John Leland with it to 
 Washington as a present to the president, Asa Burbank wrote some 
 satirical and witty verses on the cheese and the journey and the 
 presentation. These verses became very popular in Federalist 
 circles, and are still extant. If he had known at the time, what has 
 indeed only recently come to light from the publication of the great 
 president's private-purse book, that Leland received $200 clean cash 
 for his ostentatious gift, the verses would doubtless have been still 
 more stinging. 
 
 Dr. Burbank's classmate, Elijah Hunt Mills, became as notable in 
 the field of law and politics as Burbank did in that of medicine. 
 Mills spent his whole life in Northampton. When the Society of 
 Alumni was formed here in 1821, and Burbank was chosen its first 
 president, Mills was selected at the same time as its first orator. He 
 was then a senator of the United States, and was reflected to that 
 position. He had previously served three terms in the national 
 House of Kepresentatives. But he did not fulfil his appointment 
 as Alumni orator. Why not ? Because his town of Northampton 
 was then strenuously contending for the removal of Williams College 
 thither, or to some other town near by on the Connecticut River. 
 The Society of Alumni had been formed with the design to strengthen 
 the College in its low estate and in its present position. Whatever 
 may have been his own opinion in this much-disputed matter, Mills 
 would have compromised his town and locality by appearing here as 
 Alumni orator at that time; therefore he did not come. But the 
 College got on and stayed where it had been placed, though the 
 struggle was desperate and long continued, as we shall learn later. 
 
 President Fitch drew up his subscription paper for a new meeting- 
 house, and the first party to whom he presented it was the firm of 
 T. J. & B. Skinner. They put down 100. They were carpenters 
 and builders. They had built the West College five years before. 
 Their present subscription may have been somewhat more liberal 
 than it otherwise would have been, because they expected to do the 
 work of putting up the meeting-house. Again, the talk was then 
 
248 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 getting strong of the pressing need of another college building. 
 Still again, T. J. Skinner was a candidate for Congress that fall. 
 The election fell on September 5 : whether the Skinner subscription 
 was actually promised before or after that date, there was a special 
 motive in either case for a generous pledge, because Skinner was 
 elected. The subscription paper from which we are quoting is dated 
 September 26 ; but a preliminary had been going its rounds more or 
 less, as we know from the diary of Thomas Bobbins under date of 
 February 19, " The President has started a subscription for a meeting- 
 house : it is circulating." This diary of Bobbins in and relating to 
 Williamstown, covering almost nine full months, beginning Jan. 1, 
 1796, together with this invaluable subscription paper, illuminates 
 that year of town and college history more than any other year of 
 that century is lightened up for us from all sources combined. 
 Especially do these entries exhibit facts and points of character 
 manifested by these Skinner brothers and members of their fami- 
 lies, two of the prominent families of the town at that juncture. 
 We have already made the acquaintance at several points of Tomp- 
 son J. Skinner, and he will cross our path repeatedly in the time to 
 come ; but Benjamin Skinner, a brother two years younger, born in 
 1754, while walking in general a less commanding path, escaped 
 perhaps for that reason the dismal pitfall into which the other fell. 
 The brothers owned their real estate in common, and naturally made 
 this subscription to the meeting-house in common. They owned 
 together at that time, and had undoubtedly built together a few 
 years before, the original Mansion House, which stood on the Square 
 at the junction of North and Main Streets, where the principal hotel 
 of the town has stood ever since. The United States assessed the 
 Mansion House in 1798 at $3220, and put down its " owners " as 
 T. J. & Benj. Skinner, and George Beab as its "occupier" or tenant. 
 Another house is put down in the same document to the same owners 
 with Tompson J. Skinner as the occupier, and is assessed at $575. 
 This was the house diagonally across the Square from the Mansion 
 House, built by Benjamin Simonds and kept as a tavern by him 
 before he moved north of the Hoosac and built the tavern still stand- 
 ing, now owned and occupied by Sheriff George H. Prindle. The 
 United States regarded this house north of the river as worth for 
 taxing purposes $977.50, and Simonds's old house on the Square (then 
 owned by the Skinners) as worth $575. This last house was occupied 
 by T. J. Skinner so long as he lived. Very likely Benjamin Skinner 
 had at first lived with him in this house, which was a house of con- 
 siderable size, and occupied the site of the present fine house of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 249 
 
 Henry Sabin ; but we are able to locate him first certainly as a house- 
 holder in the Simonds house across the river, by the following entry 
 in Eobbins's journal under date of Feb. 17, 1796, "Employed in 
 settling my affairs to live at Mr. Skinner's." 
 
 By his marriage with the oldest daughter of Colonel Simonds, 
 Benjamin Skinner was knitted into the oldest family in Williams- 
 town, since his wife was the first child born in the town, April 8, 
 1753, and there were three other Simonds children born here before 
 the birth of Esther Hosford, May 19, 1760, daughter to William 
 Hosford and Esther Smedley, the second pair of parents to welcome 
 the birth of a child in Williamstown. But Eachel Simonds, Skinner's 
 wife, had been previously married when twenty years of age to 
 Thomas Train, and had given birth to Sally Train, when her husband 
 died suddenly in Virginia, and after two or three years of widowhood 
 she married Skinner, and Sally Train was brought up with the Skinner 
 children. Sally Train was thus the first grandchild of Colonel 
 Simonds, and the first grandchild of the town. When eighteen she 
 became Mrs. William Blair, July 17, 1792, and died universally re- 
 spected and beloved in 1864. Colonel Simonds kept his tavern and 
 carried on his large farm north of the Hobsac till he was about seventy 
 years of age, when he had his portrait painted bearing on the back 
 of it " W. Jennys pinx* 1796 " which is herewith figured in steel, 
 and made arrangements with his son-in-law, Skinner, to come into 
 the tavern and to carry on the farm. Here we find him in February, 
 1796. Here Thomas Robbins, a senior in college, found at the same 
 time Alice Skinner the oldest daughter of the house, then about 
 eighteen years of age. He was nineteen, and both of them in the 
 eye of prudence were foolish and inflammable. The diary begins 
 to bristle with references (some of them enigmatical) to "Miss A. 
 Skinner." Within ten days after the new boarder had settled his 
 " affairs to live at Mr. Skinner's," there is an entry which the editor 
 of the diary (Dr. Tarbox) thinks extremely significant, " Settled the 
 matter"; because the next day there is an entry, "May it never 
 be an occasion of grief." The underscoring is in the manuscript. 
 During the summer there are four distinct dates of " evening spent 
 at General Skinner's." He did not go alone. The references to 
 rides, and visits here and there, and evenings spent in social company 
 both at home, at the public house, and elsewhere, are recurrent and 
 unintelligible, except on the hypothesis that he and Miss Alice had 
 "settled the matter." The next day after Commencement, which 
 fell that year September 7, "my mamma made a visit to Mr. 
 Skinner's." 
 
250 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Nevertheless this long avenue (short in point of time) led to 
 nothing. The two never really and finally " settled the matter." 
 Thomas Bobbins lived a tremendous bachelor life in knee breeches 
 and shoe buckles till his death in 1856, leaving behind him a marvel- 
 lous manuscript, which, when printed thirty years later by his nephew, 
 Bobbins Battell, filled two hug6 volumes of about 1100 pages each. 
 The why and when and how of the dislocation of these young hearts 
 does not appear in either of these immense volumes. Plenty of room 
 for it, and it might well have taken the place of some of the entries 
 about the weather, and the state of his salt-rheum. Posterity is not 
 curious as to such matters as these ; but there are those living one 
 hundred years after those times, who would willingly exchange five 
 hundred of the average entries in 1797 and 1798 for one good honest 
 statement of what it was that separated these young people. Under 
 date of April 20, 1796, there is this entry, " In the afternoon visited 
 the President with Alice." This appears to be the last reference to 
 her by name. He taught school, studied theology, and preached the 
 Gospel as he understood it, in various places, made missionary tours 
 through Vermont and western New York, until 1808, when he was 
 settled in the ministry for nineteen years in what is now South 
 Windsor, Connecticut. Here he really began what proved to be the 
 great enterprise of his life, namely, to collect a library which was 
 destined to become one of the great private libraries of his genera- 
 tion. This collection of books, mostly of an historical and theological 
 cast, went on through several j^ears of miscellaneous preaching here 
 and there, and especially through the thirteen years of pretty steady 
 preaching in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, when in 1844 an arrange- 
 ment was made with the Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford, 
 by which his library was to become the property of that institution, 
 and he himself was to become the society's librarian at a stipulated 
 salary through the remaining years of his active life. This service 
 he gracefully and honorably rendered for ten years; and two years 
 later the end came to him. 
 
 As to Alice Skinner, after a couple of years or so, she married 
 Jonathan Edwards Robinson of Bennington, a graduate in the class 
 of 1797, and thus became the first of the long line of Williamstown 
 girls, who have married graduates of the College, coming from places 
 other than Williamstown. From a list of such marriages made out 
 with great care by some old people here, whose lives nearly covered 
 the nineteenth century, it is probable that on an average during the 
 first century of the College, one such graduate a year took away a 
 bride from the town sooner or later. The same list makes it pretty 
 
TOWN" AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 251 
 
 certain, that about half as many brides more were found here by 
 students of the College not graduating. A catalogue of the marital 
 engagements made and broken as between students and young resi- 
 dents of the other sex, whether any hearts were broken in the pro- 
 cess or not (there were certainly some), has never been attempted 
 and could never have been ascertained. The Eobinson family of 
 Bennington, by much the most prominent family there from the 
 beginning of the town, has sent many of its members to the College. 
 There were two in the class of 1797, David and Jonathan Edwards. 
 The latter was the one who married Alice Skinner. His father was 
 a chief justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont, and from 1807 to 
 1815 a member of the Senate of the United States. The Robinsons 
 were influential politicians of the Jefferson school, which fact easily 
 brought them into touch with the Skinners here of the same polit- 
 ical faith and practice. Alice Skinner Robinson bore to her hus- 
 band two daughters and two sons, and died in Bennington in 1811. 
 Quite intimate were the relations between the two towns during the 
 first half-century of their existence as such, much more so than 
 since. Mary Harwood from Hardwick, one out of the very first 
 company that settled on Bennington Hill, became the wife of Nehe- 
 miah Smedley in 1763: relatives and neighbors from Bennington 
 came down to help him "raise" into place the heavy white-oak 
 timbers of his second house in October, 1772 : the battle of Benning- 
 ton was almost common so far as concerned the citizens of these two 
 towns. When Mrs. Alice Skinner Robinson died, members of the 
 Smedley family attended the funeral and burial ; and although it is 
 between eighty and ninety years ago, the tradition in that family 
 is distinct and certain, coming down through only one person born 
 in 1804, that the two little Robinson girls, Mary Alice and Julia, 
 respectively eleven and nine years old, stood by the open grave and 
 protested with burning tears and piercing cries of " Don't put my 
 mamma into the ground ! " against what is in some aspects of it the 
 most dismal feature of death. Stephen C. Foster, song-writer and 
 musical composer, considered to be the best and most moving of all 
 his negro melodies, "Masstfs in the Cold, Cold Ground." 
 
 Benjamin Skinner and Rachel Simonds had two other daughters 
 besides Alice, Rachel, and Harriet, both of whom married graduates 
 of the College and distinguished men; and also five sons, Benja- 
 min, Samuel, John Burr, William, and Harry. The first three of 
 these became graduates of the College and influential men. The 
 father was chosen deacon of the church in 1806, was postmaster in 
 1819, and lived in all these later years on the Main Street, south side. 
 
252 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 a little to the west of West College. " Deacon Skinner's meadow," 
 as it was called for fifty years, comprised all the land between what 
 is now Hoxie Street and Spring Street, and between Main Street and 
 Latham Street in its more western stretch. His first wife died in 
 1802. A year later he married Deodama Noble ; and George Noble 
 Skinner, Williams College 1827, was the only child of the second 
 union. The good deacon was caught in his old age, like many 
 another, by what was then called the " western fever," and removed 
 into the southeastern corner of Michigan by the river Eaisin and 
 died there in 1828. The widow returned to Williamstown after the 
 death of her son in Michigan in 1850, and lived many years on 
 South Street with her near relatives, also widows, Mrs. Buckley and 
 Mrs. Brewster. Rev. Mason Noble in a centennial discourse deliv- 
 ered here in 1865 uses of her the following language : 
 
 "And there was Mrs. Deacon Skinner whose house was the home of 
 a bright and cheerful hospitality, where the young people met such a. 
 cordial welcome and the old people found their spirits quickened by 
 her genial wit and hearty good will. How quick was her step, and 
 how full of grace her manners, and how unvarying her faith in God 
 her Saviour though suffering so many years the bereavement of 
 widowhood and though left childless amid the infirmities of ex- 
 treme old age; and how hard it was to believe that we could get 
 on as well without her, even when the Lord called her in her 
 ninety-fifth year to Himself." 
 
 Benjamin Skinner was a Free Mason, as were many (if not 
 most) of the prominent men in Williamstown at the close of the 
 eighteenth and at the begining of the nineteenth century. He 
 long served as a chaplain at the lodge here, and at the funerals of 
 deceased members when they were buried with Masonic honors. 
 Thomas Robbins entered in his diary under date of July 27, while 
 he was living with Skinner at the Simonds house, "This evening 
 Free Masons meet here : noisy." Two days later there is this- en- 
 try, "A man dies with the dysentery in the prime of life : large con- 
 course at the funeral : the Free Masons have great formality." He 
 doubtless meant, that the dead man was interred with Masonic rites. 
 The brick house at the east end of the village, built by Judah Wil- 
 liams and long owned and occupied by David Noble, had also a 
 secret chamber for Masonic meetings. So also had the house of 
 William Young at the South Part. All three of these houses are 
 still standing at the present writing. But it was scarcely at all as 
 a tavern-keeper in the house of his father-in-law north of the river,. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 253 
 
 and certainly not a great deal more as a chaplain of the Free Masons 
 on their public occasions, that Benjamin Skinner made a permanent 
 impression upon his contemporaries, but chiefly as a fervent Chris- 
 tian man in daily life and as a faithful church official. On this 
 point hear Mason Noble again, a younger contemporary : 
 
 "And Deacon Skinner ! Is there one of those who once knew him 
 who cannot now see him as he stood up to pray for Zion ? his voice 
 gradually rising to a shrill and trembling note and then breaking 
 into tenderness while the tears came coursing down his venerable 
 cheeks ! How clear and strong were his views of Christian truth, and 
 how firmly he stood here as a pillar in the temple of God. How 
 pleasant it is to know to-day that while his three younger sons at- 
 tained to honorable positions in the profession of law and were all 
 like himself officers in the church of Christ, his three eldest sons also 
 around whom his deepest anxieties were gathered, did for many 
 years before their death exhibit a character unstained by vice, and 
 proved to the world the blessings of that covenant which secures 
 the favor of God to the children of good men after them." 
 
 The subscription to the new meeting-house in 1796 next largest to 
 this of the Skinner brothers, is that of the Noble brothers, Daniel 
 and Deodatus, "D. & Deo. Noble, 80." Various things had hap- 
 pened during the preceding summer, that continued to press home 
 upon College and citizens alike, the necessity of a better house of 
 worship, and doubtless contributed to more liberal subscriptions than 
 could otherwise have been had. Our contemporary diary gives 
 repeated notices to this effect. " The President has started a sub- 
 scription for a meeting-house." " The meeting-house foundation is 
 begun." " How scandalous that we must have Commencement in this 
 old meeting-house: almost discouraged about its being destroyed." 
 "The meeting-house assaulted more or less every night." "Great 
 disturbance in town on account of the meeting-house being set on fire 
 last night." Under all the circumstances it was more natural that 
 the contribution to the meeting-house from the Noble family should 
 come rather from the sons, as it did, than from the father, David 
 Noble, who, though a member of the church, never showed so warm 
 an interest in religious things as did his sons, nor did he bear so 
 good a reputation as they for consistent Christian conduct. David 
 Noble became a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1797, which 
 took him a good deal away from home until his death in 1803. The 
 brick house, which had long been his home, fell to be occupied by 
 his son Deodatus, who was chosen to be deacon in 1814, and who 
 
254 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 faithfully served in this relation till 1833, when he, too, removed to 
 Monroe, Michigan. Mason Noble was one of his several sons, and 
 in the centennial discourse already twice quoted from we are for- 
 tunate to find the following filial words : 
 
 " And is it proper for me to omit in this record of the past my 
 own venerable father ? He always seemed to me to have many 
 thoughts and cares for the kingdom of God to one for himself and 
 his more immediate temporal interests. Living in comparative in- 
 dependence and leisure on the estate inherited from his father, he 
 spent much of his time in reading Edwards and Emmons and Baxter 
 and William Mason and Doddridge and Thomas Scott, and in watch- 
 ing over the interests of the church and the town using the office 
 of a deacon well in guiding the erring and stirring up the good, and 
 proving himself a useful citizen and an upright Justice by turning 
 lawsuits into arbitrations, while he himself set the example of kind 
 forbearance toward unfortunate debtors by making it a rule during 
 his long Christian life never to sue a man for debt. His children all 
 knew and deeply felt that he was a holy man living not for this but 
 a better world, and that what he most desired for them was not 
 wealth or position but character and usefulness." 
 
 Mason Noble himself was a graduate of the College in 1827, as 
 well as a native of the village, and led a long and useful life termina- 
 ting in 1881, as a pastor of Presbyterian churches in New York and 
 Washington, and as a chaplain in the navy of the United States. 
 His own four sons (to continue the record for a little), all became 
 graduates of the College in succession, and all useful ministers of the 
 Gospel; Franklin in 1856, Mason in 1862, George in 1865, and 
 Charles in 1866. So far of Deacon Deodatus Noble, one of the sub- 
 scribers in 1796, and of some of his posterity. Of Daniel Noble, his 
 brother, born here in 1776 and graduated in 1796, the record is full, 
 and highly gratifying to all friends of the College. He was a light- 
 complexioned, quick-motioned man, of good abilities as a lawyer, a 
 profession which he carried on in his native place after 1811, be- 
 coming treasurer of the College in 1814, and throwing all his weight 
 as a private citizen and as a member of the State legislature in both 
 branches and of the Governor's council against the removal of the 
 College from Williamstown. During the six years when President 
 Moore was at the head of the College, the president himself and a 
 large majority of the trustees were in favor of removing the 
 institution to Northampton. But for the powerful and concen- 
 trated influence and efforts of Daniel Noble, the College would 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 255 
 
 unquestionably have been removed. In this influence and in these 
 efforts, he had a few strenuous coadjutors, particularly his cousin, 
 Charles A. Dewey, also a native of the town, and a fellow-alumnus. 
 In November, 1830, it became necessary for Treasurer Noble to visit 
 Portland on business connected with the College. On his way 
 thither he took a severe cold, and died after a short sickness in the 
 chamber he had first entered on reaching that city. His remains 
 were brought home for interment. He left two daughters, Mary and 
 Juliette, and several sons, four of whom became graduates of the 
 College. Not all of his sons did credit to the family name. When 
 did ever a stream starting from ever so pure a spring flow far with- 
 out becoming more or less muddy and defiled ? Daniel Noble built, 
 not long before he died, the fine house on East Main Street, north side, 
 not very far west from his father's and brother's, the brick house. 
 There were then but two really spacious and elegant private houses 
 in town; the Day house, on the same level with this and on the 
 same side of the street farther west, and the Sloan house on the 
 eminence just north of the West College. The tradition is still 
 lively in town, likely enough to have been passed on by the young 
 ladies themselves, that they, having been absent from home during 
 the construction or at least the completion of the new house, cried 
 when they entered it on their return, because it was so low between 
 joints and otherwise less ample than they had expected. After the 
 death of Miss Juliette Noble, this house and the broad meadow 
 extending north from it to the river, was purchased by the late 
 Joseph White, when he became treasurer of the College in 1859, 
 was thoroughly renovated by him, and at the present writing is 
 owned and occupied by his widow, Hannah Danforth White. 
 
 The family of Noble we find located in Westfield in 1667. David 
 Noble, the father of Deodatus and Daniel Noble, after about two 
 years' residence in Yale College, came north through New Milford 
 to Williamstown. Erastus Noble, the progenitor of the other fami- 
 lies of that name in Williamstown, though from the same original 
 stock, diverged before the movement of either in this direction. 
 
 The next largest subscriber to the Nobles on our century-old and 
 time-stained slip for the new meeting-house is "Lemuel Stewart, 
 75." We know but little of this man, but what we do know is 
 much to his credit. This is the largest individual subscription to 
 the meeting-house. But Stewart was not a member of the church; 
 neither was his wife, Lydia. A Jerusha Stewart, however, was ad- 
 mitted in 1794; and a Rhoda Stewart was a member as early as 1781. 
 These were probably members of the family of Samuel Stewart, 
 
256 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 a brother of Lemuel, who lived on a part of the " red house " farm, 
 already mentioned as originally cleared up by old Bissell Sherman. 
 There was also in the last decade of the last century a Lemuel Scovil 
 Stewart, a well-to-do landowner and householder. Besides these, 
 there was a little later, at any rate, an Ethel Stewart, unrelated to 
 the others, no church-goer, a drinking man, and profane, who lived 
 in the angle between the Berlin and Treadwell Hollow roads, near 
 John Brookman's, and whose land is now owned by Brookman. It 
 was he who, when Mr. Gridley announced himself at the door as the 
 minister, retorted: <k TJie devil you be! Take a cJieer!" The min- 
 ister himself enjoyed reporting the cordiality of his own reception. 
 Five children were born here to Lemuel and Lydia Stewart between 
 the dates 1770 and 1784. It is known that during the Revolution- 
 ary War, Lemuel Stewart was a captain, and was left here in com- 
 mand of a few men and boys at the time of the battle of Bennington ; 
 and that in that capacity he placed guards at the Simonds bridge 
 to the north of the village, and also at the Green River bridge at its 
 east end. He lived at that time in a house either directly on the 
 corner of South Street and Main, or in another house a little to the 
 south of this, long kept as a tavern, and well remembered by many 
 now living.. Both of these houses were only separated from the 
 Square by the width of the South Street, and our liberal householder 
 may have had a strong personal and family motive in having substi- 
 tuted for the old shell of 1768 right before his front windows a 
 sightly structure like that actually built on the same general site in 
 1797. The gambrel-roofed house then standing on the corner fronted 
 to the west toward the Square, unlike the present house, long owned 
 and occupied by Thomas McMahon. Both houses stood on the 
 original House-lot No. 36, set apart by the proprietors when the 
 village was laid out in 1750 in the behoof of a school, to be thereby 
 maintained for their children. This proposed " school " had nothing 
 in common with the one mentioned and foundationed by Colonel 
 Ephraim Williams in his will five years later. This house-lot, 
 lying along the east side of South Street for 120 rods from Main, is 
 exactly parallel to House-lot No. 1, laid out on the west side of the 
 same street to the same distance. The lot itself was soon sold by 
 the proprietors, and the proceeds put to the prescribed uses by 
 building a schoolhouse on the line between Nos. 1 and 3, on the 
 south side of the Square, under the lea of the old meeting-house. 
 For some reason, not known to the writer, No. 36 was not built on 
 so soon or so much as the other house-lots equally near to the original 
 Square. Besides the corner house but just now mentioned and the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 257 
 
 tavern stand a few rods to the south of it, in one or other of which 
 lived Captain Lemuel Stewart, no other house was built on No. 36 
 in the last century, except a very small and poor one on the site of 
 the present fine house of Colonel Archibald Hopkins, and that was 
 built by Betty Hubbell Cox, the mother of the late Thomas Cox of 
 blessed memory. There is some, and perhaps sufficient, evidence, 
 that the large landed property of Captain Stewart lay upon Bee 
 Hill, and comprised the Hickox farms of that locality. 
 
 Samuel Sloan subscribed 60 toward the new building. We have 
 learned a good deal about this man already. He came from Canaan, 
 Connecticut. His wife was daughter to Asa Douglas, the first set- 
 
 NEHEMIAH SMEDLEY'S HOUSE ON GREEN RIVER. 
 Its frame was lifted 8 Oct., 1772. He was born in Litchfield in 1732, and died in this house, 1789. 
 
 tier of Hancock, in 1762, from the same place. Sloan was a black- 
 smith by trade, and was one of the very earliest settlers in South 
 Williamstown, where he became after a little the largest landholder 
 and the richest man, and where the town has since commemorated 
 him in naming by vote the road from the early tavern, which he 
 first opened, running straight west to the Oblong through his farm 
 of over five hundred acres, the "Sloan Road." In 1796, when this 
 subscription was made, Sloan was still living on this farm, as we 
 learn from the Bobbins diary, "In the afternoon rode down to 
 Colonel Sloan's on a visit." When the meeting-house was opened 
 for public worship, and so long thereafter as he lived (he died in 
 
258 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 1813), General Sloan occupied the front pew on the right-hand side 
 of the broad aisle. Judge David Noble, who died in 1803, occupied 
 the pew opposite on the left hand. General Sloan was a short and 
 thick-set man, highly honored by his townsmen, and used to ride 
 emeritus at the military trainings here so long as he was able to 
 mount his horse. So did General William Towner, a later graduate 
 of the Militia, who, by the way, subscribed 15 for the new place 
 of public worship. 
 
 No other subscription than these already noted reached 50 in 
 amount, except that of the brothers " L. and E. Smedley," which, 
 was precisely that. These sons of Captain Nehemiah Smedley 
 jointly inherited his farm, married cousins by the name of Gibbs 
 from Litchfield (now Morris), brought up large families under the 
 same roof and all eating at one table in harmony, and at length, 
 concluding to divide the large farm between themselves, agreed 
 beforehand to ask no man's advice as to the division and to make 
 no complaint to anybody subsequent to it. Levi, the older brother, 
 who by agreement kept the homestead, in 1828 was chosen deacon 
 of the church, which he had joined in 1792, and continued in office 
 till his death in 1849. The house in which he lived and died was 
 raised by his father on his eighth birthday, Oct. 8, 1772 and is still 
 owned and occupied by the great-great-grandson of the builder. It 
 is figured below. 
 
 The other brother, Elijah, made his home in plain sight, a few 
 rods south of the other, where the main road turns east. Both had 
 large families, and both have left a large and reputable posterity. 
 
 "E. Mather, 15," may properly delay us a moment. A branch 
 from a great stock was this Elias Mather. He was in the eighth gene- 
 ration from John Mather of England, whose grandson, Rev. Richard 
 Mather, emigrated to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1635, and became 
 the ancestor of a long line of eminent clergymen and civilians down to 
 our own day. This Elias Mather, born at Colchester, Connecticut, 
 Oct. 25, 1770, probably brought more " blood " to Williamstown than 
 any other man who ever settled in it. He was a hatter by trade, 
 became intemperate and poor, moved down the river to Pownal, 
 where his son, Benjamin F. Mather, was born, July 6, 1810. The 
 father died Sept. 3, 1839. The son, long the principal merchant in 
 Williamstown, died May 22, 1888. 
 
 It is not worth while to follow further at present these subscribers 
 to the old meeting-house either by name or amount. Many of them 
 will be referred to later in other connections. It is enough to say 
 now, that these subscriptions constituted a heavy tax upon the com- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 259 
 
 paratively few inhabitants of the hamlet, and also that they built a 
 strong and large and handsome house of worship, which stood plumb 
 and sound for the most part for about eighty years, when it was 
 destroyed by fire. The site, though high relatively to the surround- 
 ing lands, was clayey and somewhat wet toward the rear. The rear 
 timbers, accordingly, were heaved by the frost and slowly thrown 
 out of plumb, when about 1850 a successful device was hit on to 
 strengthen the building in that quarter by means of an annex of 
 
 MEETING-HOUSE OF 1796. 
 
 strong timbers so attached to the rear of the building as to hold the 
 entire frame in place. The present writer cannot explain this 
 mechanically, but he knows that it was effective as toward the end 
 in view. Mr. and Mrs. Hoisington, returned missionaries from 
 India, lived for some time in a house back of the church and in full 
 view of this insignificant-looking appendage, which Mrs. Hoisington 
 once wittily characterized as "the native helper." 
 
 As the College, through its president and otherwise, had urged 
 forward the erection of the edifice for their own accommodation in 
 
260 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 part, so the first public use of it was for the Commencement of 1798. 
 It was not then quite finished, but was adequate for the joyful 
 occasion. In the meantime the College itself had become much 
 engaged as toward the erection of a new building for its own exclu- 
 sive uses. Hear President Fitch : 
 
 "January, 1796. The number of students is increasing so rapidly that we 
 are already in want of another college edifice. We hope to obtain from the 
 State a grant of a township of land in the Province of Maine, which, if obtained, 
 will enable us to erect another building. At present we have a very likely 
 collection of young men. They are very studious and orderly, and give us 
 scarcely any trouble." 
 
 Four months later (May 6, 1796) young Eobbins entered in his 
 diary, " Considerable talk in town about the situation of the new 
 college." It will be remembered that the trustees hesitated at first 
 whether to erect their first building where they actually placed it, 
 or on the parallel eminence to the east, " opposite to the old lime- 
 kiln." When a new building became a necessity, they naturally 
 reverted to their original alternative, and placed there what as 
 naturally came to be called "East College." Its erection went for- 
 ward simultaneously with the building of the new meeting-house. 
 Both were finished at about the same time in 1798. It is to be 
 presumed that "T. J. and B. Skinner" who subscribed 100 toward 
 the meeting-house, the same sum as the " Corporation " subscribed, 
 and who certainly built the West College, were also the builders of 
 both the meeting-house and the East College. The same enterpris- 
 ing parties owned, certainly in 1798, the Mansion House, the first 
 considerable tavern in the village, for they are put down as the 
 owners in the United States house-tax assessment for that year; 
 and that they themselves had built it not long before is almost as 
 certain as the fact of their ownership of it then. It is, indeed, 
 remarkable that these three quite large buildings were in process 
 of erection in this small village at just about the same time, and it 
 is at least as remarkable that all were destroyed by fire, the East 
 College in 1841, the meeting-house in 1866, and the Mansion House 
 in 1870. 
 
 President Fitch estimated that the East College cost $12,400. 
 On petition of the trustees, the Legislature had passed an act, Feb. 4, 
 1796, granting the College two townships of land in Maine, of the 
 contents of six miles square each, for the purpose of building the 
 new East College. These lands were sold for about $10,000, and 
 the proceeds devoted thereto. It was of brick, and of much the 
 same style of architecture as the West College. Both were four 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 261 
 
 stories high, and very strongly built. The rude picture figured 
 below, in which the building to the right represents the East Col- 
 
 lege, the considerable one next it Griffin Hall, West College in the 
 centre, and the president's house near it, the Mansion House mid- 
 
262 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 way between that and the meeting-house at the extreme left, is poor 
 enough in its perspective and in the relative position of the build- 
 ings, but is invaluable as furnishing the only known pictorial rep- 
 resentation of the East College. The meeting-house never had 
 anything corresponding to a tower, but at different times three dif- 
 fering finials, one a wooden cone of large size, and another the four- 
 posted top of the belfry as given in the picture a few pages back. 
 
 The East College was in many respects a copy of the West College, 
 the main differences being that in the former there were two halls 
 running through it east and west, instead of the original one through 
 "West College in the same direction; and then there were two bed- 
 rooms to each study-room, while in the older building there were 
 originally no distinct bedrooms at all. The Chapel remained in 
 West College, as did also the recitation rooms for the Freshmen and 
 Sophomore classes, which were on the ground floor (moving 'about 
 for convenience), the rooms themselves being nowise different from 
 the dormitory rooms in that building, until in 1828 the new Chapel 
 was dedicated (Griffin Hall), when the space thus released in West 
 College on the second and third floors was given to two permanent 
 recitation rooms, one for the Sophomores on the south end of the 
 third floor, and one for the Freshmen directly below it, of the same 
 size and lighting from windows. This arrangement continued until 
 Kellogg Hall was built in 1847. Thereafter for many years the 
 Sophomores recited in general in the east room (ground floor) of 
 the new Hall, and the Freshmen in the west room corresponding. 
 These new rooms were nicely and strongly fitted up by the College 
 with permanent benches for seats around the walls, and long and 
 strong (though movable) benches in the middle. Up to that time 
 the Freshmen and Sophomores owned as classes the seats and other 
 furniture in the recitation rooms in West College, and regularly 
 sold these out to the next entering class, while they proudly migrated 
 to the eastward. 
 
 The new East College held the recitation rooms of the Senior and 
 Junior classes, and this of itself gave its location some prestige over 
 the older building, which was decidedly increased when the new 
 Chapel was placed on the same eminence directly across the Main 
 Street. The West College grounds relatively waned from that time 
 on, for Kellogg Hall was an insignificant building in itself, and 
 stood on comparatively low ground. The later building of the 
 present East and South colleges on what was practically the site of 
 the old East College consumed, although the north line of the present 
 and smaller East College is twelve feet farther south than the cor- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 263 
 
 responding line of the old building, and the still smaller South 
 College stands entirely south of the old site, together with the later 
 erection of the Library and stone Chapel upon the same eminence, 
 to say nothing of Clark Hall and the Soldiers' Monument still later 
 placed still further east, seemed to settle the question of compara- 
 tive dignity for all time against the originally selected foundations. 
 But Time often has its silent and unexpected revenges. The final 
 placing in 1867 of the Congregational meeting-house, after sharp 
 disputes, on the slope of the more westerly hill, and then the putting 
 of the lordly Morgan Hall directly opposite that across the street, 
 and the three magnificent Thompson Laboratories still further west, 
 one of them wholly west of even West College itself, not only 
 fully restored the balance as between the hills, but also promises for 
 the future some compensation in the way of extra, though always 
 sober, brilliance for the partial eclipse of the western height, which 
 the fathers on the whole preferred. 
 
 Student E-obbins entered in his diary under date of July 5, 1796, 
 "Saw a man making brick to make 300,000 for a new college." 
 Eobbins passed every day from his boarding-place at Deacon Skin- 
 ner's north of the river to his duties at the College by the clay pits 
 at the northern foot of the Mansion House Hill, where the brick for 
 the West and old East College were certainly burnt. The owner of 
 that field at the present time lately had occasion to plough it over 
 for the purpose of seeding it down, when there were displayed to the 
 incurious eyes of the present generation (a couple of them curious 
 enough) bits of old brick to an immense number scattered over an 
 half acre of ground, and coming up to the surface under the push of 
 the ploughshare from a sleep of a century. Out of these 300,000 
 whole brick the old East College walls were constructed. When 
 the building burned down in 1841, it became a part of the contract 
 in the erection of the present East and South colleges that the brick 
 of the burnt building should be used in the walls of the new ones so 
 far as they could be made available. There they have been for more 
 than fifty years, and there they are now mostly out of sight, it is 
 true in the inner walls and in the chimneys. This contractor, 
 Henry B. Curtis, is yet living and in Williamstown, and told the 
 writer these facts but a few days ago. 
 
 A casual incident of some interest to all graduates of the College 
 and dwellers in the town who remember the late Thomas Cox, the 
 pious and faithful " professor of dust and ashes," who for about forty 
 years swept the colleges and made the student's beds, and who for 
 all that time and much longer bore constant testimony in his life 
 
264 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and words to his divine Master in such a way as to secure the respect 
 of everybody, both in College and town, so connects his name with 
 the building of the old East College as to make the writer desire to 
 help perpetuate the memory of both so long as possible and in con- 
 nection each with each. The old prpprietors' book holds this among 
 its early records of births, " John E. Cox and Betty his wife their 
 offspring Thomas their son born August 14th, 1787." Betty Cox 
 was the daughter of Jedediah Hubbell of Lanesboro, the rude, and 
 consequently not always accurate, land-surveyor of Williamstown's 
 original lots and farms. He was a good man, and possessed so good 
 a conscience, that he lived well into his hundredth year, as one may 
 still read on his headstone in the south cemetery at Lanesboro. 
 He came early to Lanesboro from "ancient Woodbury," was one of 
 the Committee of Safety and Correspondence appointed by that town 
 in 1774, and continued useful in that capacity throughout the Revo- 
 lution; and became so poor in his old age that the only present he 
 could make to his new minister, Rev. Noah Sheldon, on his settle- 
 ment, was a wooden " piggin " made by his own hands when he was 
 ninety-eight years old. Poverty and piety descended to his daughter, 
 Betty Cox, and to his grandson, Thomas Cox. The latter was ten 
 years old while the old East College was going up. His mother 
 had recently secured a small piece of cheap land on South Street, 
 where now stands the house of Colonel Archie Hopkins, and had 
 given her " chintz gown " in wages to a poor mason who had put up 
 for her there a rude stone chimney to her ruder hovel. House and 
 land were not esteemed as worth $100 in 1798, as we learn nega- 
 tively from the national assessment of the house-tax in that year. 
 She had previously lived with her children further south on the 
 same road, at the foot of Stone Hill, in a wet pasture now belonging 
 to Mrs. Lucy B. Smedley, where are still growing roses transplanted 
 by her from the garden of her first pastor, deceased, Rev. Whitman 
 Welch. Cox used to say, and there are many persons now living 
 who have heard him say, that while playing around his mother's 
 door he heard the bricklayers on the new College shouting " Mort ! 
 Mort!" to the hod-heavers below. The distance must be fully half 
 a mile or more, with a shallow valley lying between the two points, 
 in which there was not then a single house or other building of any 
 sort, but in which now lies the most populous part of the town, both 
 in dwellings and business places, including the post-office and the 
 two banks and the spacious houses in Grace Court and the entire 
 Spring Street, which is and will always remain the business street 
 of Williamstown. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 265 
 
 The appended picture of Thomas Cox, which shows him faithfully 
 as he looked about 1860, indicates indeed that deficiency of mental 
 powers which was obvious to all his contemporaries, but which 
 proved to be no essential barrier to a long life of usefulness. Several 
 of the worthies of the first century of Williamstown, who will be 
 remembered perhaps as long as any of their more gifted contem- 
 poraries, such as Thomas Cox and Bill Pratt l and Charity Boot, 
 were more or less wanting in intellect, but in God's wide world 
 there is opportunity for all in a varied usefulness, and all that can 
 be gotten out of life by high or low is USEFULNESS. 
 
 THOMAS COX, 
 Professor of Dust and Ashes. 
 
 The Senior recitation room in the new East College was in the 
 north end of the third story, the middle room. The Junior recita- 
 tion room was in the south end of the second story, the middle room. 
 The students owned the seats in both rooms, on the theory that they 
 would be likely to complain less and take more care; which theory 
 was confirmed on the change of plan in the new Kellogg Hall when 
 i See Bill Pratt, the Saw- Buck Philosopher, by Zelie and Perry, 1895. 
 
266 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the Sophomores tore up with crowbars and split with axes the per- 
 manent oak seats in their room in the fall of 1848. The Philologian 
 and Philotechnian societies held their weekly meetings for debates 
 and other literary exercises for more than forty years in these Junior 
 and Senior recitation rooms in East College. The origin of these 
 societies, which are still extant and still in a sense distinct, is found 
 in the Adelphic Union Society, almost coeval with the College itself. 
 This consisted of all the members of College and a few of the more 
 advanced students of the Academy. In 1795 this society had a 
 library which numbered about one hundred volumes, and which 
 was kept in the southwest corner room of the fourth story of West 
 College, opposite to what was afterward and for a long while the 
 tutor's room. In the fall of the year just mentioned all the mem- 
 bers of the Freshman class, and all those newly entered the upper 
 classes, were admitted into this Adelphic Union Society, which held 
 its meetings in the fourth story of West College, in the northeast 
 corner room, diagonally across the hall from their small library. 
 The accessions to College that autumn, together with all the old 
 members, made up so many that they could not all be accommodated 
 well in their place of meeting, and a committee was appointed to 
 report a plan of division. Knapp and Mason of the class of '96 and 
 Towner of the class of '97 were probably that committee; at any 
 rate, it has long been understood that these three were the indi- 
 viduals most active in bringing about the pending changes in the 
 society, which were important and proved to be far-reaching. A 
 plan of division was reported by the committee. It was discussed 
 for several evenings, and the result was the formation of the Philo- 
 logian and Philotechnian societies, the two together to be known by 
 the old name of the Adelphic Union, and the library to be held in 
 common. After the East College was built, the weekly meeting of 
 these societies were held in the Senior and Junior recitation rooms, 
 respectively, and the library was kept thereafter for many years on 
 the third floor of the West College in the room over the east entry- 
 way. These societies have continued with names unchanged and 
 their principal reciprocal relations maintained till the present time ; 
 and they have been subject almost as a matter of course to alternate 
 seasons of prosperity and decline, some of the causes and conse- 
 quences of which may probably come up for comment on a future 
 page of this book. 
 
 On a Sunday afternoon in October, 1841, while the students were 
 at church on the Square, a sudden alarm of fire was given in the 
 meeting-house, and the students rushed out, to find the north end 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 267 
 
 of the East College all in a blaze. It was supposed to have been 
 communicated from a stick of wood falling from the fireplace to the 
 floor in a room directly over the Senior recitation room, that is, in 
 a room situated on the fourth floor and west side and north hall. 
 The students, as they always do under such circumstances, showed 
 the greatest pluck and persistency in saving whatever was possible 
 to be saved. The building was forty- five years old; the wooden 
 interior dried by the fires of so many winters ; no water nearer than 
 the College spring, and of that only enough to wet the blankets, 
 with which the combustible parts of the Astronomical Observa- 
 tory were covered, and so was saved that building with all its valu- 
 able instruments ; so that the fire spread with great rapidity from 
 floor to floor, and from end to end, and soon the noble edifice was a 
 smouldering ruin. The students, however, were enabled to save 
 most of their furniture and books, excepting those which were in the 
 immediate vicinity of the room in which the fire at first broke out. 
 The small theological library was entirely destroyed. The rooms 
 belonging to the Philologiari and Philotechnian societies, which had 
 been recently fitted up anew by the students, were of course de- 
 stroyed also, but the major part of their libraries and furniture was 
 removed, though not without great injury, and only in consequence 
 of the utmost exertions of the students. Some of those who will 
 give their attention to these pages of record in the time to come will 
 probably have noted already that, so far as we know and believe, 
 the very first subject of general interest and discussion to the 
 students of this College was a Literary Society of their own, the 
 Adelphic Union, and a library of their own in connection with that; 
 and there will be opportunity of observing, from time to time, how 
 earnestly and generously and almost constantly during the first 
 century of the College the students gave time and thought and money 
 and an honest rivalry to the interests generally and to the libraries 
 in particular of their respective literary societies, the Philologian 
 and the Philotechnian. Many an Alumni meeting at Commence- 
 ment time has been enlivened by the reminiscences of old graduates, 
 how one society or the other was supposed to have gotten the advan- 
 tage by some stroke of policy or embellishment. 
 
 Thomas Bobbins entered in his diary under the date of May 14, 
 1796, "The scholars clean the ground around college thoroughly." 
 That is, around the West College. From the very beginning, until 
 after 1850, the woodpiles for the fall and winter fuel of "the 
 scholars," each pile by itself for the occupants of one room, rarely 
 more in a pile than one cord of four-foot wood, were laid up for the 
 
268 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 most part against the outer four walls of the building. The sawing 
 of the wood was mostly done out of doors and at these piles, and 
 almost exclusively by the students themselves. About Thanks- 
 giving time each year some of the farmers from the hills around 
 would drive into the College yard with what purported to be a cord 
 of "body" wood, and offered it for sale at a given price to some 
 student. " There's a cord, just about, but you'll take it for just what 
 there is!" If the cautious student proposed to help unload, and 
 pile it up to measure it, there were insuperable objections of all 
 sorts, the most common one being, " / tell you, I can't wait, I've got 
 to get home t' chore time take it or leave it." The present writer has 
 roomed in West College as a student, and witnessed even more than 
 he experienced, and it is no far-off distant tale that he is telling 
 now. By the judgment of charity in general, and by the subsequent 
 measurement of many a load in particular, the average quantum of 
 these loads may have been three-fourths of a cord. Even at a just 
 measurement of the cords, however, wood for fuel was cheap in 
 Williamstown up to 1850, owing to the abounding forests on all the 
 encircling hills. But whether full cords or short, body wood or top, 
 beech or birch, the yard itself was always well littered by spring- 
 time with the inevitable chips and bits of bark and sawdust and 
 whatnot. It seems from our matter-of-fact diarist that the students 
 from the very first deemed it to be their proper function to clean up 
 the yard in the springtime "thoroughly." In this prime instance 
 of 1796, it was done May 14. The same custom undoubtedly estab- 
 lished itself at once in connection with the new East College. Un- 
 doubtedly, also, there came to be some rivalry as to which of the 
 two grounds should present the "slickest" appearance after the 
 annual cleaning. Precisely when the holiday from immemorial 
 time denominated here " Chip Day " originated, there are no means 
 of determining; but that it was in full operation throughout the 
 first half of the century there are no grounds to question. It cer- 
 tainly went out of usage in the way following, to wit : the students 
 came to enjoy the spring holiday better by making excursions in the 
 neighborhood, or by going out of town, than by working themselves 
 at the chips with rake and shovel and wheelbarrow ; and so it came 
 about that a committee appointed in each class undertook to collect 
 a small subscription, say ten cents on the average, from the body 
 of the class, with which to hire some outside hangers-on to do the 
 work, while the thereby relieved principals went their ways to enjoy 
 the holiday as best they might. Several conspiring principles of 
 our common human nature inevitably brought it about that work 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 269 
 
 done under such circumstances was ill done, and increasingly so, so 
 that the College authorities came to take the care of the grounds 
 into their own hands. 
 
 The class of 1798, which was the first to hold its Commencement 
 exercises in the new meeting-house, which was not even then quite 
 finished, was at its graduation just three times as large as the class 
 preceding, and just five times as large as the class of 1796. As we 
 say nowadays under like conditions, the College was "booming." 
 The East College was nearly or quite finished, and presented, espe- 
 cially to those approaching the town from the east, a really fine 
 appearance. The interest of every part of Berkshire County in the 
 new institution in its northwestern corner is evidenced by a personal 
 representation of each part in this relatively large class. Levi 
 Glezen and Amasa Jerome and Oliver Partridge Sergeant were from 
 Stockbridge; William Henry Williams was from West Stockbridge, 
 son of Colonel Elijah Williams, half-brother of the Founder; Simeon 
 Ford and David Lord Perry were from Richmond; William P. 
 Walker was from Lenox; William Williams was from Dalton; Silas 
 Hubbell was from Lanesboro; Daniel Jones from North Adams; 
 and Benjamin Skinner, son of Deacon Benjamin Skinner, from 
 Williamstown. This class exhibits also the first considerable in- 
 coming for educational purposes into the upper valley of the Hoosac 
 from all portions of the country contiguous to Berkshire County, 
 an incoming, of course, with temporary fluctuations, that has never 
 ceased to this day. Williams College is happily situated topographi- 
 cally and otherwise in relation to a constituency from New York 
 and Connecticut and Vermont. The Hoosac Mountain always has 
 been, and in some sense will continue to be, notwithstanding the 
 Hoosac Tunnel, some obstacle to patronage from the central parts 
 of Massachusetts and from southern New Hampshire. The class 
 of 1798 had at graduation eight members from Connecticut, five 
 from Massachusetts outside of Berkshire County, three from eastern 
 New York, and two from southern Vermont. Two of its members, 
 Levi Glezen and William P. Walker, were the second and third 
 graduates of the College to become members of the Board of Trustees, 
 the former in 1813 and the latter in 1824; and these two, on other 
 grounds also, may properly be considered the most distinguished 
 members of that class. 
 
 They were graduated amid unusual political excitements. John 
 Adams was chosen President of the United States by a small majority 
 over Jefferson for the term beginning March 4, 1797; and the main 
 point of the vehement disputes as between the two parties, called 
 
270 WILLIAMSTOWIST AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 respectively Federalists and Kepublicans, was the attitude to be 
 assumed by the new republic toward the French Revolution and the 
 successive governments in France to which that gave rise. The 
 Federalists were in general opposed to the French, and were deter- 
 mined at all events to maintain a neutral position as between Euro- 
 pean combatants and complications; while the Republicans, in 
 general, took opposite grounds. The French Directory issued decrees 
 and orders virtually authorizing privateering, and other measures 
 highly injurious to American commerce; and public opinion on 
 this side becoming, in consequence, substantially united against the 
 French, a small navy was set on foot, an army partly levied, with 
 Washington for commander-in-chief, and a state of quasi war with 
 France ensued. There was much excitement. The students here 
 wrote a patriotic letter to President Adams, offering their services 
 to the country, which brought back from him a handsome letter, a 
 copy of which ought to be in the archives of the College, but the 
 present writer has never been able to find it. In the pretty certain 
 prospect of this war with France, Congress passed a house-tax, which 
 was assessed in due form, and is on record so far as Massachusetts 
 is concerned, but was never collected, because war itself was averted 
 by means of three special commissions sent over by our Government, 
 who fortunately succeeded in arranging peacefully all the matters 
 in dispute with Bonaparte, then just elected First Consul. But the 
 house-taxes assessed in the towns of Massachusetts remain on record 
 in the Secretary's office at Boston, and are of great historical sig- 
 nificance, and go far to compensate, in the information they impart 
 to later generations of the relative condition of their ancestors, for 
 all the excitements and pecuniary losses of an impending war with 
 France. The knowledge of the existence even of these assessments, 
 so far as Williamstown is concerned, was first learned by the writer 
 a few years ago, and were carefully copied by him for the present 
 purpose and use. They were never before this printed. They will 
 be here given entire, with absolute fidelity to the originals in every 
 particular. The penetrating reader will perceive their value. 
 
 "I* Oct. 1798. 
 
 Dwelling-Houses with the Out-houses appurtenant thereto and the Lots not 
 exceeding two Acres in any case [which] were owned, possessed, or occupied, 
 within the assessment District No. 8 in the 9 th Division of the State of Massa- 
 chusetts, exceeding in Value the sum of 100 Dollars. 
 
 Perches 
 
 Aaron Deming 25 $264.50 
 
 Matthew Dunning Jr. 25 116.15 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 271 
 
 Perches 
 
 Jonathan Danforth 25 
 
 Col Danforth 25 
 
 John Day 25 
 
 Daniel Dewey 40 
 
 Daniel Day 25 
 
 Daniel Day 25 
 
 Jared Foster 80 
 
 William Foster 25 
 
 Zadock Ford 25 
 
 James Fowler 25 
 
 Jonathan Giles 25 
 
 James Greene 40 
 
 Robert Hawkins 25 
 
 Isaac Holmes 25 
 
 Calvin Holmes 25 
 
 Joseph Hand 25 
 
 Stephen Hickox 25 
 
 William Hamilton 25 
 
 Lemuel Higgins 40 
 
 David Haydon 40 
 
 John Joslin 40 
 
 Oliver Barrett 25 
 
 Reuben Judd 25 
 
 David Johnson 1 st 25 
 
 Daniel Kinny 25 
 (heirs of Daniel Kinny deceased) 
 
 Elizabeth Krigger 25 
 (heirs of John Krigger deceased) 
 
 Samuel Kellogg 25 
 
 Nathaniel Kellogg 25 
 
 Richard Kinny 25 
 
 James Meacham 40 
 
 Samuel Mills 25 
 
 Samuel M c Kay 40 
 
 Thomas Malady 40 
 
 Elias Marther 40 
 
 Timothy Northum 40 
 
 Elias Newbre 25 
 
 David Noble 40 
 
 James and Willard Morse 25 
 (David Noble owner) 
 
 Deodatus Noble 40 
 
 Ebenezer Blin 40 
 (Deodatus Noble owner) 
 
 Samuel Porter 40 
 
 Thomas Roe 25 
 
 Warren Roberts 25 
 
 Elijah Rich 25 
 
 $132.25 
 120.75 
 747.50 
 977.50 
 172.50 
 
 1495.00 
 287.50 
 264.50 
 120.75 
 116.15 
 345.00 
 207.00 
 184.00 
 116.15 
 116.15 
 116.15 
 287.50 
 125.35 
 862.50 
 690.00 
 391.00 
 138.00 
 384.10 
 132.25 
 116.15 
 
 116.15 
 
 862.50 
 116.15 
 172.50 
 
 1150.00 
 207.50 
 805.00 
 132.25 
 747.50 
 172.50 
 143.75 
 
 1265.00 
 287.50 
 
 977.50 
 1380.00 
 
 460.00 
 116.15 
 143.75 
 172.50 
 
272 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Perches 
 
 Benjamin Reed 25 
 
 Pratt 25 
 
 (Geo. Reab owner) 
 
 Ard Roberts 25 
 
 William Sloan 40 
 
 Isaac Sherwood 25 
 
 Daniel Smith 25 
 
 Asa Standish 350 sq. ft. 
 
 Benjamin Skinner 25 
 (Benj. Simonds owner) 
 
 Abraham Starke 25 
 (Benj. Simonds owner) 
 
 Ephraim Seelye 25 
 
 Reuben Seelye 25 
 
 Constant Williams 25 
 
 Seth Swift untaxed 
 
 Jesse Spencer 25 
 
 Smedley Levi and Elijah 25 
 
 Elihu Shearman 25 
 
 Samuel Sloan 25 
 
 Samuel Sloan 25 
 
 Elnathan Holmes 25 
 
 Samuel Stewart 25 
 
 Charles Sabin 25 
 
 Timothy Sabin 25 
 (Charles Sabin owner) 
 
 Samuel Satterlee 2 acres 
 
 Higgins 36 
 
 (Samuel Satterlee owner) 
 
 W m Bissell Shearman 40 
 
 Peruda Isbell 25 
 (W. B. Shearman owner) 
 
 William Smith 40 
 
 Lemuel Stewart 25 
 
 Lemuel Scovil Stewart 30 
 
 Burral Sutton 40 
 
 Joseph Tallmadge 1 acre 
 (Lem. Scovil Stewart owner) 
 
 Stephen Scott 2 acres 
 (Tompson J. Skinner owner) 
 
 Lewis Stebbins 40 
 
 South'^ Munn 25 
 (Lewis Stebbins owner) 
 
 William Starkweather 40 
 
 Remembrance Sheldon 40 
 
 Ebenezer Stratton 25 
 
 Tompson J. Skinner 40 
 (T. J. and Benj. Skinner owner) 
 
 $161.00 
 120.75 
 
 184.00 
 207.50 
 116.15 
 149.50 
 103.50 
 977.50 
 
 126.50 
 
 632.50 
 149.50 
 264.50 
 
 116.15 
 977.50 
 287.50 
 287.50 
 575.00 
 1265.00 
 149.50 
 287.50 
 129.37 
 
 460.00 
 230.00 
 
 977.50 
 264.50 
 
 805.00 
 
 1205.00 
 
 1035.00 
 
 402.50 
 
 316.25 
 
 287.50 
 
 517.50 
 120.75 
 
 1840.00 
 977.50 
 345.00 
 575.00 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 273 
 
 Perches 
 
 George Reab 40 
 (T. J. and Benj. Skinner owners) 
 
 Samuel Tyler 25 
 
 Elijah Thomas 25 
 
 Joseph Thurston 40 
 
 William Towner 25 
 
 William Torrey 25 
 
 Zebedee Turner 25 
 
 Joseph Tallmadge 25 
 
 James Walker 25 
 
 Nehemiah Woodcock 25 
 
 Bartholomew Woodcock 25 
 Joseph Corbin 650 sq. ft. 
 
 Solomon Wolcott 25 
 
 Solomon Wright 30 
 
 Elisha Williams 30 
 
 William Wells 30 
 
 Stephen Wilcox 25 
 
 Shubael Wilmarth 25 
 
 Whitman Tim. and J. P. 40 
 
 Andrew Young 40 
 
 William Young 40 
 
 John Snow 25 
 (William Young owner) 
 
 Moses Young 25 
 
 $3220.00 
 
 172.50 
 116.15 
 345.00 
 287.50 
 287.50 
 172.50 
 247.25 
 172.50 
 230.00 
 920.00 
 103.50 
 575.00 
 690.00 
 287.50 
 116.15 
 130.00 
 143.75 
 575.00 
 120.75 
 690.00 
 120.75 
 
 120.75 
 
 Rate prescribed by the Commissions 15 per centum. Daniel Dewey was 
 Principal Assessor, and signs the return as such. 
 
 Assistant assessors for 8 th District 9 th Division of Massachusetts : 
 
 Israel Jones 
 Samuel Sloan 
 Deodatus Noble 
 George Lapham 
 Joseph Williams 
 Jesse King 
 
 Nicolas Clark 
 
 North Adams 
 
 Williamstown 
 
 Williamstown 
 
 Hancock 
 
 Savoy 
 
 ' Unincorporated Land on 
 
 Hoosac Mountain ' 
 Clarksburg 
 
 Taxes assessed on higher Values than the valuation of Principle Assessor 
 10 or 12 per centum.''' 1 
 
 Here, then, in the autumn of 1798, were 107 houses with their 
 immediate premises officially assessed as of a value exceeding $100. 
 There were probably twice as many more houses, say 214, which 
 fell below the legally required valuation, or 321 in all the town. 
 The proof of this probability is this : by the first national census, 
 in 1790, there were 1769 inhabitants in Williamstown ; and by the 
 next census, in 1800, there were 2086, an increase in the ten years 
 
274 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of 317 persons. If we may assume that this increase were uniform 
 throughout the decade, that would be an increment of nearly 32 per- 
 sons a year, or a population of 2015 in 1798. It was at any rate 
 2086 in 1800. Now, if we may safely assume further that there 
 were on the average six heads in every house in town, then were 
 there 642 people lodged in the taxed houses, leaving 1373 people in 
 the untaxed, or six heads at least in each of the 214 thus exempted 
 from the national tax assessment. This is of course only approxi- 
 mate, but it cannot be very far away from the exact truth. The 
 majority of the people of Williamstown in 1798 must have been 
 very poor. 
 
 Only eight houses in town were then valued at over $1000 each, 
 namely: the Mansion House, $3220; William Starkweather's, 
 $1840; Daniel Day's, $1495; Deodatus Noble's, $1380; Lemuel 
 Stewart's, $1265; David Noble's, $1265; James Meacham's, $1150; 
 and Scovil Stewart's, $1035. 
 
 Only twenty-two homestead premises more were then valued 
 at over $500 each, namely: Daniel Dewey's, $977.50; Deodatus 
 Noble's, $977.50; Benjamin Simonds's, $977.50; L. and E. Smed- 
 ley's, $977.50; Remembrance Sheldon's, $977.50; Bissell Sher- 
 man's, $977.50 (six thus assessed at the same figure) ; Bartholomew 
 Woodcock's, $920; Lemuel Higgins's, $862.50; Samuel Kellogg's, 
 $862.50; Samuel McKay's, $805; William Smith's, $805; John 
 Day's, $747.50; Elias Mather's, $747.50; David Haydon's, $690; 
 Solomon Wright's, $690; William Young's, $690; Ephraim Seelye's, 
 $632.50; Solomon Wolcott's, $575; T. J. Skinner's, $575; T. and 
 J. P. Whitman's, $575; Samuel Sloan's, $575; and Lewis Steb- 
 bins's, $517.50. The rest of the taxed homesteads as such, seventy- 
 seven in number, were assessed below $500, the lowest one, that 
 of Joseph Corbin, being put at $103.50. Joseph Corbin had two 
 brothers, Asa and Amasa, also settled here with their families at 
 that time, but neither of these had a house that came up to the 
 national scratch in 1798. Indeed, Joseph Corbin, who had seven 
 children born here 1779-93, removed from here to Plattsburg, 
 New York, in 1799, where he still has posterity. William G. Bos- 
 worth, Williams College, '89, is a direct descendant of his; and so 
 is Austin Corbin of New York, a man who has been prominent in 
 financial and other honorable circles in his day and generation. 
 Clement Corbin, born in 1616, was the father of James Corbin, who 
 became the first settler of Woodstock, Connecticut. James's three 
 sons, Asa and Amasa and Joseph, were in military service in the 
 Eleventh Eegiment of Connecticut in 1776 in the campaign around 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 275 
 
 New York. Not long after, all three came to Williamstown, and 
 settled at the South Part, one or more of them on the Gore. In 
 the line of Asa Corbin is the second wife of Deacon Henry Blair 
 of South Williamstown, both husband and wife still living, much 
 thought of by their neighbors, in this year of Grace, 1895. 
 
 About a score of the houses assessed in 1798 are still standing at 
 the present time, most of them a good deal changed in their external 
 appearance; but some of them certainly, and among these William 
 Young's and Bartholomew Woodcock's at the South Part, and Re- 
 membrance Sheldon's and Benjamin Simonds's at the North Part, 
 look very much as they did then. One who has been longer a pro- 
 fessor in Williams College than any one else during the first century 
 of its existence, marks with pleasure that the very first professor in 
 the College, Samuel McKay, lived in and owned one of the best 
 houses then in town, assessed at a valuation of $805. Seth Swift, 
 the first minister, also lived in a good house still standing, but as it 
 could not be taxed under Massachusetts laws, it was courteously 
 non-assessed by the United States. 
 
 Nearly half a score of the unassessed dwellings in 1798, including 
 all of the still existing "regulation houses," may be identified at the 
 present time. If we compare carefully the subscription list for the 
 new meeting-house in 1796 with this assessment list of two years 
 later, we shall be gratified to find that fully one-half of those eighty- 
 eight subscribers dwelled in houses not deemed worth while by the 
 United States to tax, on account of their not being adjudged as 
 worth $100 each. Some of these subscriptions made by ill-lodged 
 residents were quite large, as many as five subscribing 20 each, 
 seven 15 each, six 12 each, eight 10 each, and Elisha Baker, 
 who died in the interval between the subscription and the assess- 
 ment, put down and paid for the new meeting-house 25. The 
 smallest subscription was that of Isaac Miller, 12s., and there were 
 four others less than 2 each. Unmistakable is the inference from 
 this comparison of the two almost contemporary lists, namely, that 
 the majority of the people of Williamstown at the close of the 
 eighteenth century, though poor, were liberal up to their means and 
 beyond their means as toward the house of God. 
 
 And what of their politics? Here again the diary of Thomas 
 Eobbins lets in several streaks of welcome light. Under different 
 dates during April, 1796, occur the following significant entries. 
 " A great deal of electioneering in the papers for a Governor of this 
 State." "Freemen's Meeting, full and disorderly." "Almost all 
 voted for the old Governor." "Great noise about the President of 
 
276 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the U. S. refusing to give up the papers respecting the treaty with 
 Great Britain." "Political difficulties run high." The Governor, 
 for whom "almost all voted," was Samuel Adams, a cousin of John 
 Adams, and four years older. The two virtually framed the first 
 Constitution of Massachusetts, that of 1780, and also the address 
 of the issuing Convention to the people called on to ratify and adopt 
 their work. He was lieutenant-governor of the State, 1789-94, 
 and governor 1794-97. At the election in April, 1796, the can- 
 didate being then seventy-four years old, some thought a younger 
 man should be chosen, and one more favorable to the political privi- 
 leges of the leading classes in Massachusetts. Neither of these 
 reasons appealed with much force to the citizens of Williamstown. 
 "Almost all voted for the old Governor." Samuel Adams was not 
 only a personal friend of Jefferson, who attributed to him a greater 
 share than any other member of the old revolutionary Congress in 
 devising and directing its measures in the Northern Department, 
 but also the two men agreed in their radical political principles, and 
 in the general interpretation of the new national Constitution. The 
 two were alike jealous of all delegated power, even in the hands of 
 a Washington. The fundamental Jeffersonian principle in our 
 national politics, which has continued from that day to this to be 
 the ever-recurring and dividing line for the most part as between 
 our so-called great national parties, is the principle of construing 
 as strictly as may be possible to the language employed in the Con- 
 stitution and its Amendments, the clauses both granting to and 
 withholding from the three great departments of the national Gov- 
 ernment the powers ultimately residing in the people themselves, 
 and by much the larger part of which they have intrusted to their 
 more immediate agents in the State governments through their State 
 Constitutions. 
 
 Closely allied with this first political principle of the country, 
 and this criterion of two great parties ever since, was another and 
 one usually inseparable from the defence of the first in practice, 
 namely, that Government exists for the greatest good of the greatest 
 number, who support it in peace and fight for it in war-time. A 
 strong temptation and opportunity has always existed, and perhaps 
 always will exist in some degree, for those intrusted by the Consti- 
 tution and laws with powers to use for the general good only, to 
 actually use a portion of those powers for the special good of a few 
 at the cost and expense of the masses of the people. Colonial 
 Massachusetts had a considerable number of special privileges for 
 the few and well-to-do, partly social and partly ecclesiastical, which 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 277 
 
 were against the rational and republican liberty of the many. The 
 Common Law, for one thing, was partial and aristocratic in its appli- 
 cation through the courts of the colony to the common people. As 
 we have seen already on a preceding page, the famous "Shays's 
 Eebellion " of 1787 was specifically directed to breaking up the ses- 
 sions of the courts in the western counties, because there was a 
 popular conviction, with which the rioters were willing to take the 
 risks, that the laws were discriminating and unjust as toward the 
 less privileged classes of the people. We know there were many 
 Shays men in Williamstown; and when, ten years later, the lines 
 came to be drawn between the Federalists and Republicans (as the 
 later Democrats were then called, Alexander Hamilton being even 
 then regarded as the leader of the former and Thomas Jefferson the 
 leader of the latter), a large majority of the Williamstown people 
 ranged themselves decidedly among the Jeffersonians, not only for 
 the election of Samuel Adams as Governor of Massachusetts in 1796, 
 but also steadily thereafter to both elections of Jefferson as Presi- 
 dent of the United States. Their local leader was the carpenter 
 and builder, T. J. Skinner, who became extremely popular in the 
 county and the State, and whom his varied constituents carried 
 through almost every civil office within their gift up to the Treas- 
 urership of the State of Massachusetts in 1806 and 1807. He is said 
 to have held more grades of civil office in Massachusetts than any 
 other citizen of the State has ever done since. 
 
 When the Federalist party began to show its hand in the first 
 Congress of the United States under the Constitution, Fisher Ames 
 of Massachusetts and one Hartley of Pennsylvania were the very 
 first members to lift up their voices, while the first tariff bill was 
 being slowly constructed for revenue to the new Government, in 
 favor of any other end than revenue to be reached through the taxes 
 then being laid on the people. This was significant of after times, 
 when these two States became the leading champions of what was 
 long fondly called for deception's sake "Protection." "Protection," 
 in every degree of it and in every phase of it everywhere, is Privi- 
 lege to the few and Plunder to the many. The Federalist party, 
 while it performed many excellent and patriotic duties of other 
 sorts, gave itself over to Privilege contrary to the equal Eights of 
 the masses of the people, and so lost its hold upon them and its lease 
 of party life. The election of Jefferson as President in 1801 was 
 the death-knell of the old party of Privilege. Alexander Hamilton, 
 Fisher Ames, and Theodore Sedgwick, the three great lights of the 
 national party, saw political power slip out of their fingers never 
 
278 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 to return, a good while before their respective deaths in 1804, 1808, 
 and 1813. The large Democratic majority in Williainstown con- 
 tinued unbroken until the defalcation of their great leader, General 
 Skinner, as Treasurer of the Commonwealth in 1807. The people 
 of the town were in no sense to blame for this great blow to their 
 party and its head. But they suffered almost the same as if they 
 had been wholly to blame for it. 
 
 The president and the majority of the trustees of the College 
 were strong Federalists, which was a matter of personal tempera- 
 ment and training more than of unbiased judgment on broad grounds 
 of political principle and tendency. In a certain sense the College 
 stood over against the town politically, and thought itself wiser, 
 when, as a matter of fact, it was only narrower and more selfish. 
 The pastors and the churches in New England at the close of the 
 eighteenth century were overwhelmingly Federalist, and were at 
 once bigoted and self-righteous in their federalism as well as in 
 their Calvinism. Seth Swift, who was the pastor here from 1779 
 till 1807, was somewhat separated from his people all the time and 
 considerably separated some of the time on grounds of his federal- 
 ism, which was in substance Partiality and Privilege. President 
 D wight of Yale College, in the second volume of his "Travels," 
 giving an account of a visit made in Williamstown in September, 
 1806, has these interesting words to offer on a subject about which 
 he could not have been very well informed : 
 
 The inhabitants of Williamstown have been injured heretofore by political 
 contentions. Their minister, the Rev. Mr. Swift, a gentleman highly respectable 
 for his good sense and piety, who died February, 1807, labored long, and faith- 
 fully, here, under many discouragements, both for the want of a sufficient sup- 
 port for his family, and from a disheartening insensibility of his hearers to the 
 requisitions of the Gospel. But towards the close of his life he had the peculiar 
 satisfaction' to see an extensive revival of Religion in his congregation, and a 
 very interesting change wrought in their character." 
 
 From an annual average admission to the church of eight per- 
 sons in the five years 1800-4, there passed to an annual average 
 admission of forty-seven in the three years, 1805-7. The 
 " political contentions " referred to by President Dwight were not 
 by any means altogether to the credit of the pastor and the particular 
 families of his flock who, with him, emphasized Federalist politics. 
 Politics were carried into social life, and became bitter and divisive 
 in church and town in proportion as they were superficially and 
 socially conceived of. President Fitch demonstrated his own in- 
 capacity for political discussion, or even comprehension, by the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 279 
 
 wretched caricatures of Jefferson that he believed in and socially 
 circulated. Seth Swift was much such a sort of man as Ebenezer 
 Fitch. It may be asserted with confidence that neither of them ever 
 preached from, or meditated long on, or was capable of expounding, 
 such a text as St Paul's "Honor all men" With these two heads of 
 families, with their proper official precedence, were associated as 
 the heads of the Federalist party in town Samuel Sloan, David 
 Noble, Daniel Dewey, Levi Smedley, Nehemiah Woodcock, and 
 Asa Burbank. On the other hand, both of the Skinner brothers, 
 the General and the Deacon, were leading Democrats, as were also 
 William Towner, a celebrated physician, William Young, a chief 
 man at the South Part, and Keyes Danforth, the elder, equally 
 prominent at the North Part. So strong was the social prejudice 
 against Democrats, both professionally and -otherwise, in town and 
 College, that it was deemed best to make a special effort to bring in 
 a Federalist doctor to make headway against the extensive practice 
 of Dr. William Towner. Under precisely these auspictes, as is said, 
 came over the mountain from Northampton Dr. Remembrance 
 Sheldon. He married Olive, the eldest daughter of Samuel Sloan, 
 and was thus happily introduced into Federalist circles. It is also 
 said that when members of Federalist families were very sick 
 indeed, Dr. Towner was apt to be called in to them after all. 
 Towner was surgeon's mate in Colonel Simonds's regiment in 1781. 
 He had certain exterior advantages, which rarely fail to tell pro- 
 fessionally, when the solid basis of purely professional merit is 
 present. He was a large and well-proportioned man, of pleasing 
 manners, fond of society, readily lending his attention to subjects 
 outside his profession, especially to politics, an all-engrossing 
 concern of those times. He was strictly temperate, even totally 
 abstinent, at a day when physicians were expected (whenever called) 
 to help themselves from the decanters of the sideboard. He was 
 found to be a hard man to' be run out by Federalist doctors as such. 
 Indeed, all the evidence points to his remarkably successful medical 
 career. He practised as far as Troy on the west, and to Pittsfield 
 on the south. What was strange in those days, he never bled his 
 fever patients, and he had other specialties of his own, particularly 
 a cure for the "mad-dog bite," which never transpired to his fellow- 
 practitioners. He died in Pownal in January, 1813, exhausted by 
 his incessant labors in a local epidemic of pneumonia during the 
 years 1812-14. 
 
 His son-in-law, Dr. Samuel Smith, who had been practising with 
 him only a short time, reached his bedside there in time to be 
 
280 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 charged on no account to bleed him as it would be his death ; but in 
 the absence of Dr. Smith, Dr. Porter, his contemporary in Williams- 
 towri, called on him in a friendly way, and although his symptoms 
 were already more favorable, insisted on bleeding him, after which 
 he failed rapidly, and died at the age of fifty-eight. He came into this 
 region from New Fairfield, Connecticut, and settled at Stafford's Hill, 
 where he was the first physician. When he first moved to Williams- 
 town, he lived in the " pine-tree house " on Green Eiver, in which he 
 was preceded by Eev. Seth Swift. Afterward till the time of his 
 death he lived in the oldest house on Water Street, still standing 
 opposite the Green River Mills. He had reached such a rank in the 
 militia, that his commission as brigadier-general arrived only a few 
 days after his death. He was also high up in Freemasonry, and was 
 buried under ceremonies- of both Masonic and military orders. But 
 no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. Although the 
 Masons procured for him a monument, it was never erected ; and by 
 a shameful nqfclect the place of his grave was not marked and is now 
 unknown. Dr. Towner is known to have been strenuous in his 
 efforts to forward the interests of the Free School on its opening in 
 October, 1791 ; and not to have intermitted such efforts when the 
 school became a college two years later. We may have noticed a few 
 pages back, that he made a liberal subscription to the new meeting- 
 house of 15; but he was a churchman by preference, and as often 
 as possible attended service at Lanesboro, then the nearest place of 
 Episcopal worship ; and he was a warm admirer of President Nott of 
 Schenectady, who occasionally preached in Williamstown in times 
 of religious interest. In the house-tax assessment of 1798, Dr. 
 Towner's house was put down at $287.50 in value; but he died 
 insolvent, having been one of the bondsmen of General Skinner, 
 who defaulted as Treasurer of the State in 1807, and carried down .a 
 number of his bondsmen with himself. The late Dr. James Smedley 
 remembered as a boy seeing Dr. and General Towner well mounted 
 on the parade ground, "a splendid looking man in regimentals." 
 The same boy witnessed the complex military and Masonic cere- 
 monies at the funeral. Deacon Benjamin Skinner was the Masonic 
 chaplain on that occasion, and carried the open Bible in the proces- 
 sion, that was still impressive, notwithstanding the strong reaction 
 that had taken place in town against Democrats and Freemasons in 
 consequence of the terrible fall of General Skinner, and of the 
 signal troubles of his bondsmen. 
 
 The two eldest sons of Dr. Towner were already enlisted 
 soldiers in the War of 1812, when the father died; and it was 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 281 
 
 supposed by his family, that, had his general's commission but 
 found him alive and in fair health, he would have taken the field 
 at once under General Dearborn, who had himself also been a physi- 
 cian before he became soldier. One of Towner's sons, whose name 
 was Charles Fox, was killed by a cannon-ball in the battle of Bridge- 
 water. Another, whose name was William Cullen, lived to return 
 home to Williamstown from the war, but never to distinguish him- 
 self in any way. The father gave names to his boys, that later stood 
 in stark contrast with their own achievements. One of them, Harry 
 Brown by name, after the popular sheriff of the county, peddled 
 candy in college. Other sons in succession were Thomas Jefferson, 
 James Madison, John Hancock, and Erasmus Darwin. The last 
 became a respectable Baptist minister, in whose family lived the 
 youngest sister, Mary. Another sister, Sophia, spent her life un- 
 married in the family of her brother-in-law, Dr. Samuel Smith, who 
 married Betsey Towner when he was eighteen years old, a black- 
 smith, and had six children when, at twenty-nine, he entered into 
 partnership in the practice of medicine with Dr. Towner in 1809. 
 Louisa Towner married Nathaniel Kellogg, Jr., Sally married Civil 
 Boardman and spent her life here, and Fanny married a Mr. Mc- 
 Millen. Dr. Towner was in succession a representative and a 
 senator in the General Court at Boston, and was an active Justice 
 of the Peace here. He was in the House of Representatives in 
 1790, 1791, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1801, 1807, 1808, and 1809 ; and in the 
 State Senate, in the years 1811 and 1812. In the time of Shays's 
 Rebellion he took up strong ground in behalf of the State, notwith- 
 standing his personal sympathies and political predilections with 
 those wronged under the law, as it then stood ; and as a result he 
 became very obnoxious to his own neighbors who were also Shays's 
 adherents, the most prominent of whom was James Meacham, and 
 was on one occasion shot at by them, some of their buck shot lodging 
 in his boot. Remembrance Sheldon and Asa Burbank, who had been 
 his comparatively harmless Federalist rivals in medicine throughout 
 the town and county, were no longer encountered as such in his 
 later years, because Sheldon died in 1809, and Burbank, who had 
 been one of his own medical students and afterward attended medi- 
 cal lectures in New York, moved to Lanesboro near the beginning of 
 the new century. 
 
 Neither records nor traditions yield to posterity much matter in 
 relation to the politics of Dr. Samuel Porter, who became famous 
 here on other grounds, though contemporary with both Sheldon and 
 Towner, and survived them both, dying in 1822, aged sixty-six. 
 
282 WILLTAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Like Sheldon, he came from Northampton, being a native there, 
 son to Dr. Hezekiah and Hannah Porter, born in 1756, and coming 
 here in or near 1780, since his mother died here in 1781, and is 
 buried at the South Part, as are also three of the doctor's own 
 wives, and an unusual number of children dying young. While 
 tradition is silent as to Dr. Porter's politics, it is verbose enough 
 about him as a "bone-setter" and a fast driver. He devoted him- 
 self especially to surgery, while his compeers practised much medi- 
 cine and some politics. He was certainly fearless and probably 
 reckless, both in his clinical operations and in his Jehu-like driving. 
 When asked why he never put breeching on his horses, he replied, 
 using an epithet somewhat out of fashion in polite society, "that 
 he didn't want any horses that couldn't keep out of the way of his 
 sulky!" Reducing dislocated joints was pastime to him. Ordinary 
 doctors in those days shunned that kind of practice as beyond their 
 skill; and this usage brought grist from far and near to Dr. Porter's 
 bone-mill. In his college lectures on anatomy the late Mark Hop- 
 kins used to show his class just how this skilled manipulator tricked 
 back into its place in an instant one of the bones of his brother 
 Albert's fore-arm, whom his father had brought to Williamstown 
 all the way from Stockbridge in his wagon, because there was nobody 
 down the county who could be trusted to set it back right! There 
 have been a plenty of apocryphal stories afloat about Dr. Porter's 
 skill in surgery, but this is well known, that he once went to New 
 York City to reduce a hip dislocation which had baffled the efforts 
 of the faculty there, and was successful. This patient was a lady. 
 The doctors called in had failed to replace the bone, and Porter was 
 sent for. He started in his sulky, and went down. The city doc- 
 tors were in the house when he arrived. "I will see the patient," 
 said he, "but these doctors cannot be present." In a very short 
 time the bone went into its place with a snap heard by the brethren 
 in the outer room. "What shall I pay you?" asked the gratified 
 husband. " Fifty dollars ! " And the country surgeon returned as 
 he went. A case more locally famous was that of the patroon of the 
 Rensselaer Manor, whom he so treated surgically as to extend his 
 own fame to long distances on the upper Hudson. There are four 
 natural passes over the Taconics into that valley from Williams- 
 town, and a rude public road over each pass ; and it is certain that 
 the southernmost of these roads, the one over the "Johnson 
 pass," so-called, owed construction in 1813 largely to the de- 
 mand for Dr. Porter's services in the region between the Taconics 
 and the North Kiver. The writer himself has heard this from the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 283 
 
 lips of one who was personally concerned in the building of that 
 road. 
 
 Dr. Porter does not seem to have subscribed to the new meeting- 
 house in 1796. Two years later, his own house, then on Stone Hill, 
 was assessed at $460. He moved a number of times during his 
 professional life here; but his last home, the one in which he died 
 in 1822, stood on Main Street, near the Square, a little to the west 
 of the present A. D. Phi house. Subsequently, several doctors, 
 among them Dr. Eli Adams (Porter's son-in-law), Dr. Lyndon 
 A. Smith (who married Louisa Griffin), Dr. H. L. Sabin, and Dr. 
 C. L. Hubbel lived for longer or shorter times in the same house. 
 It was later kept for many years as a public house, usually called 
 the "Kellogg House." It was said of Dr. Porter by an intelligent 
 contemporary, that he died " after a long and severe illness, which 
 he bore with great patience and resignation. He was an active and 
 useful man, and esteemed for his benevolent and social qualities." 
 His activity as a surgeon at the battle of Bennington is proven by 
 his receipt, given the next day, for an additional case of amputating 
 instruments, quoted at length in the preceding chapter. Alonson, 
 Samuel, and James were sons of Dr. Samuel Porter, and the two 
 former certainly were trained by him as physicians and surgeons. 
 Alonson practised at the South Part, and built and occupied there 
 the brick house still standing on a part of the original estate of 
 William Young, confiscated for a time by the State of Massachu- 
 setts, the house and lot now owned and occupied by the heirs of 
 Justin Torrey. Dr. Alonson Porter survived his father only four 
 years. He was a skilful physician but an intemperate man, and 
 died when but forty-eight. Julius Porter, a son of Dr. Alonson, 
 married a daughter of Nehemiah Woodcock, and kept a store at the 
 South Part for many years, and left posterity there. Dr. Samuel 
 Porter, Jr., made his home at Skaneateles, New York, where was 
 born in 1812 his son Mortimer Porter, Williams College, 1831, long 
 a diligent and successful lawyer in New York City. 
 
 If we turn back now for a little to the state of the College during 
 the very last years of the century, and to the classes graduated in 
 those years, we may be able to glean something worth while to those 
 that read one hundred years later. It has already been noted that 
 the class of 1798 numbered ten more than the aggregate of the three 
 preceding classes, that is to say, fifty per cent more than the entire 
 body of graduates from the beginning. It held also two men who 
 early became trustees of the College, Levi Glezen (1813-26) and 
 William P. Walker (1824-46). Glezen was a Scotch-Irish bee 
 
284 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 out of the Worcester hive of 1718. He was a fine linguist for those 
 times, became the first preceptor of Lenox Academy, and continued 
 the same relation to a similar institution in Kinderhook. As a 
 trustee he distinguished himself by firm and judicious efforts in with- 
 standing the persistent attempts to remove the College to Northamp- 
 ton. Walker, a native of Lenox, succeeded his father in 1824 as 
 the Judge of Probate for Berkshire County, and the two alike 
 illumined and exalted the position from 1795 till 1848. The son 
 served at once his Alma Mater and his generation with distinguished 
 ability and painstaking fidelity. 
 
 There is adequate evidence that the students during the first 
 decade of the College, speaking generally, chose subjects for their 
 discussions and books for their reading and jaunts for their vaca- 
 tions which became intelligent and earnest young men looking for- 
 ward toward playing significant parts in Church and State. The 
 times were every way inspiring. The new national Government 
 had just gone into operation, amid many hopes and many fears. 
 The States were jealous of the nation, and the nation hardly yet 
 strong enough in its new powers to go on alone. Washington died 
 in 1799. Jefferson became President in 1801. The existence of 
 slavery in many of the States was already clearly seen by the 
 students here to be a menace and a contradiction. The class of 
 1796, in the middle of their Senior year, "disputed the necessity of 
 the immediate manumission of our slaves; settled affirmatively.^ 
 Members of that class are known to have been reading diligently 
 during that year such books as Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," 
 and Miller's "Histories," alongside of their regular text-books, like 
 Yattel and Paley. Fisher Ames's great speech in Congress of that 
 year on the British Treaty was sharply handled pro and con on this 
 college ground. This knowledge we owe to Thomas Robbins's 
 diary. Paine's " Age of Reason " was first published in 1793, hav- 
 ing been written in a French prison. In less than three years there- 
 after, its influence over the people of Vermont, as well as its intrinsic 
 character, was popularly discussed by the students here. Though 
 foreign and domestic news came late and zigzag, for there was no 
 post-office here till 1798, it was eagerly devoured and thoroughly 
 digested, and had no small influence in gauging opinions and con- 
 duct. The students were by no means obsequious to the judgment 
 of their teachers. Most of them had opportunity in their vacations 
 for converse and association with other prominent men and minis- 
 ters, by whom in many cases they had been fitted for college, and 
 whom in turn they were able to serve in one way or another. The 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 285 
 
 relations between Williamstown and New Haven were varied and 
 constant and intimate. The newer and smaller college seems to 
 have been then regarded as on a practically equal footing with the 
 older and larger one. Both had the inevitable frictions and con- 
 flicts of their times and positions. 
 
 The diary of President Fitch throws more or less light on the 
 state of things in college for several years. We quote a number of 
 entries entire. They give the truth, but of course not the whole 
 truth. Certain modifications and some amplifications will be pre- 
 sented on a later page. 
 
 "January, 1799. Things go well in our infant seminary. Our number is 
 hardly as large as it was last year. The scarcity of money is one cause of this 
 decrease. Some leave us through mere poverty. But our ambition is to make 
 good scholars, rather than to add to our numbers ; and in this we mean not to 
 be outdone by any college in New England. Perseverance in the system we 
 have adopted will eventually give reputation to this institution in the view of all 
 who prefer the useful to the showy." 
 
 "Dec. 1799. The college is in a prosperous state. The students continue 
 to be diligent and orderly. We admitted twenty-four freshmen, and have in all 
 eighty-one members of college." 
 
 "June, 1801. Our college is prospering. We have admitted forty-five fresh- 
 men and nine sophomores this year, and expect to make the number up to sixty 
 before commencement." 
 
 "January, 1802. Our freshman class this year is not as large as usual, but 
 we expect it will increase to twenty-five or more. A larger number of them 
 than usual are professors of religion ; and I hope will make pious and useful 
 ministers. Notwithstanding the cruel and malicious slanders thrown so pro- 
 fusely of late on the clergy, serious young men, who have the ministry in view, 
 appear not to be disheartened. The great Head of the church will still, I trust, 
 continue a succession of learned and evangelical ministers in his churches in this 
 land. He appears to be interposing remarkably for the increase and encourage- 
 ment of his church in one place and another ; and for the support of the great 
 cause of truth and piety. Amidst all the present dark and threatening appear- 
 ances, some light shines to console and animate the friends of order, govern- 
 ment, and religion. The clergy are now experiencing the trial of ' cruel 
 mocking ; ' and it will not be surprising if ' scourgings, bonds, imprisonments ' 
 and other persecutions should follow, for the trial of their faith and patience. 
 It has been usual for God to suffer his church to sink very low before he appears 
 to deliver and enlarge it. This will probably be eminently the case previously to 
 its last great deliverance and enlargement. I trust that ministers and Christians 
 in general will have grace and strength in proportion to their trials ; and have 
 no doubt that true religion will ultimately triumph." 
 
 " April, 1802. We have lately had trouble in college. The judgments which 
 we drew up and published to the classes respecting their examination in March, 
 gave offence. Three classes in succession were in a state of insurrection against 
 government. For ten days we had a good deal of difficulty. But the govern- 
 
286 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ment stood firm, and determined to give up no right. At last, without the loss 
 of a member, we reduced all to due obedience and subordination. Never before 
 had I occasion for so much prudence and firmness ; not even in the grand rebel- 
 lion of 1782 at Yale. Most of the students are now very much ashamed of their 
 late conduct. The present generation of them will not, I apprehend, burn their 
 fingers again. They have found that we will support our authority." 
 
 "March, 1803. We have both of our college buildings full of students. 
 Nearly thirty of them are serious professors ; and many more of them are such 
 amiable and moral young men that we have strong hopes that they will become 
 truly pious, and make useful and devoted ministers of the gospel. This is truly 
 encouraging, though there is at present no special attention to religion among us." 
 
 The class of 1799 had but just half the numbers of the class 
 graduating the year before, only fifteen in all; but it held one name, 
 that practically counted ten in the work of life, and in work for the 
 College. This name was that of Amos Eaton, who came to have 
 such a radical influence upon the early curriculum of the College, 
 and also upon the popular studies of all New England and New York 
 that a full account must here be given of the man, and of the means, 
 by which such great and lasting changes were wrought, not indeed 
 by him alone, but by him as the leader in cooperation and conjunc- 
 tion with able and successful coadjutors during the opening years 
 of the nineteenth century. Williams College was greatly distin- 
 guished by successively pushing into prominence beyond its college 
 compeers at the time in New England, three classes of studies, each 
 class of which in turn maintaining some preeminence for about its 
 third of a century, both over the other studies at home and also as 
 well over even the corresponding studies at the other colleges. 
 The first class of these studies to take and maintain the lead at 
 Williams were the natural sciences. Amos Eaton, Chester Dewey, 
 and Ebenezer Emmons, all graduates of the College, and all long- 
 time teaches in her halls, were the " first three " in this impulse 
 and progress. 
 
 "So far as it may be convenient," runs the original Law of the 
 College, adopted by the trustees in respect to the curriculum : " In 
 the first year, the English, Latin, Greek, and French languages. 
 In the second, the several languages in part, Arithmetic, Geog- 
 raphy, Algebra, Geometry, Mensurations, Conic Sections, Rhetoric, 
 and Logic. In the third, Trigonometry, Navigation, Surveying, 
 Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, and Chemistry. In the fourth 
 year, Metaphysics, Ethics, History, National Law, Civil Polity, 
 and Theology." We have already learned the peculiar circumstances 
 under which French slipped out of the course in 1799. Geography 
 was formally dropped out by vote of the trustees in 1831, Arithmetic 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 287 
 
 in 1837, and English Grammar in 1839. It is not by any means to 
 be supposed that all the rest of these two dozen branches of study 
 originally enumerated had any adequate presentation to the students 
 at first, if ever. The original trustees were most of them well-educated 
 men. Eight of the thirteen were graduates of Yale. It was their in- 
 tention from the first to have here a college of a high order, one that 
 should keep step with Yale itself to the music of a thorough and 
 comprehensive education. But their pecuniary means were scanty. 
 The numbers of their teachers were necessarily few, and for the most 
 part tutors untrained except by the discipline gained in their own 
 limited college course. The library was very small, the text-books 
 wretchedly inadequate, and the apparatus for illustration almost nil. 
 Each teacher taught many subjects, so far as they were taught at all. 
 The students in general had small preparation for college, and their 
 work on the ground was much interrupted by the necessity they were 
 under of doing teaching or other labor in term time in order to help 
 themselves along. For nearly twenty years no one class of studies, 
 whether languages or mathematics or natural sciences or mental and 
 moral sciences, seem to have taken precedence in interest over any 
 other class of subjects taught. But it was written, and it came to 
 pass, that the natural sciences, particularly Botany and Geology 
 and Mineralogy and Chemistry, through the living agency of Eaton 
 and Dewey and Emmons and others, got the first strong grip on the 
 College students, and held it for their appointed time. 
 
 In May, 1776, was born in Chatham, Amos Eaton, the son of a 
 highly respected farmer there, who was also a deacon of the church. 
 The boy was gifted and precocious and ambitious. During his whole 
 life he possessed a remarkable power of fluent and agreeable speech. 
 In 1790, when he was but fourteen years old, he was selected to 
 deliver a public oration on the 4th of July, which was said to be a 
 creditable performance in every point of view, and very surprising 
 in a boy but just entered on his teens. A year or two later, having 
 carried the chain for a local surveyor in plotting some land parcel, 
 he resolved to become a surveyor himself. But how was he to 
 obtain a set of surveyor's instruments. He must have an accurate 
 chain, a good working needle, and a compass-case properly graduated. 
 The chain came first in his mind. He soon interested a skilful black- 
 smith of the neighborhood in his plan, who agreed to work for the 
 boy by night if he would " blow and strike " for him by day. This 
 circumstance is probably the only basis for the remark made in 
 Silliman's Journal, that young Eaton was in 1791 apprenticed to a 
 blacksmith. A needle was next constructed, and magnetized after 
 
288 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 a primitive method from a pair of kitchen tongs. A pretty fair 
 compass-case was then made from the flat bottom of an old pewter 
 plate, smoothed and polished and graduated in an exterior circle. 
 Sixteen years old, and thus armed and equipped, Eaton was soon in 
 the field doing little jobs of surveying for the farmers in the neigh- 
 borhood. But he was not satisfied. He wanted a better education. 
 Encouraged by his parents, and also by the Rev. Dr. David Porter, 
 then of Spencertown, later of Catskill, the boy fitted for college, and 
 was graduated at Williams in 1799, with a good reputation for his 
 scientific attainments, but he had no glimmer at that time of what 
 his future career in life would be. 
 
 He studied law, first in Spencertown, and afterward in New York, 
 in the office of Alexander Hamilton, where accidentally and for- 
 tunately he fell under the scientific instruction of David Hosack and 
 Samuel L. Mitchill, and became, almost unknown to himself, con- 
 siderably interested in the study of Botany and some of the other 
 natural sciences. In 1802 he borrowed a copy of Kirwan's " Miner- 
 alogy," then a scarce book, and made a manuscript copy of the book 
 from preface to finis. Soon after he settled in Catskill as a lawyer 
 and land agent, where he remained for several years, and where 
 occurred a combination of circumstances connected with his pro- 
 fession, not altogether creditable to him, which in their result 
 diminished his practical devotion to his calling and led to its aban- 
 donment, and to the adoption in its place of the now more congenial 
 pursuits of the natural sciences. He had already, in May, 1810, in 
 Catskill, made what is believed to have been the first attempt in 
 this country at a popular course of lectures on Botany, compiling 
 for this purpose for the use of his class a small elementary treatise. 
 On this he was highly complimented by his former teacher, Dr. 
 Hosack, who pronounced him the "first in the field," adding, "You 
 have adopted the true system of education, and very properly address 
 yourself to the senses and the memory." Under this and other 
 similar encouragement, Eaton resolved to prepare himself to become 
 an efficient promoter of the sciences after a natural method. 
 
 Accordingly, in 1815, he went to New Haven to put himself under 
 the instruction of Professor Silliman in particular, and others, if he 
 should find them available and competent instructors. He found a 
 warm welcome from Silliman, who threw open to him his lectures 
 on Geology, Mineralogy, and Chemistry, his library also, and the 
 then small cabinet belonging to Yale College. The Professor of 
 Botany and Materia Medica in the medical department of the Col- 
 lege, Dr. Eli Ives, was a good botanist and had a good library, and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 289 
 
 gave every facility in his power to Amos Eaton, who already prom- 
 ised to become a new force in science. Grateful to Yale for helping 
 him forward toward his now distinct goal, namely, to take the field 
 as an explorer and the desk as a teacher, Eaton in March, 1817, 
 turned his face toward his Alma Mater, desiring her indorsement of 
 himself as a competent teacher before he went forth into the world 
 in such a capacity. He was welcomed on the ground by the faculty 
 of the College, and particularly by Professor Chester Dewey, then 
 and for long the most influential member of the faculty. Eaton 
 was at once invited to give courses of lectures on Botany, Mineral- 
 ogy, and Geology to volunteer classes of the students. His influ- 
 ence in the College was immediate, and became remarkable. He 
 awakened a lively interest in the natural sciences, which held on, 
 and increased, and became a characteristic of the College, the lead- 
 ing educational interest here, certainly until after the Semi-cen- 
 tennial of 1843. 
 
 The students took hold of this matter with all the more vigor, be- 
 cause it was voluntary with themselves, and in no sense prescribed 
 by college authority. The following letter addressed to "The 
 Author of Richard's 'Botanical Dictionary, 7 " dated "Williams Col- 
 lege, 8th April, 1817," with its signatures as well as contents, is in 
 several respects the most notable document that the history of the 
 College during its first century presents to the careful historical 
 inquirer. 
 
 DEAR SIR 
 
 We consider ourselves happy in having an opportunity to express our 
 gratitude for the assiduity and care, which you have manifested for our im- 
 provement in Natural Science. As the course of lectures on Mineralogy, which 
 you have conducted so entirely to the satisfaction of the Faculty of this College, 
 and so much to the benefit of your class, is nearly completed, we are gratified 
 with the prospect of attending your course of Lectures on Botany, knowing that 
 our improvement in that branch of Natural Science would be greatly facilitated 
 "by a systematic description of vegetables, and being destitute of such a system, 
 we render you our thanks for the one, which you have been pleased, gratuitously, 
 to present to us for publication. 
 
 Accept, dear Sir, 
 
 The assurances of our respect and esteem. 
 H. Walker Bishop Luther Hamilton 
 
 Dorus L. Clark Lyman James 
 
 William Eastman Medad Pomeroy 
 
 Emory C. Washburn Charles Dillingham 
 
 Selah R. Arms William A. Hallock 
 
 Daniel Barnard Gerard H. Hallock 
 
 Homer Bartlett Anson T. Hooker 
 
290 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Chandler Bates Cyrus M. Lazell 
 
 Lucas Morgan Joseph P. Mosher 
 
 William Richards Hervey Smith 
 
 Thomas Spring B. Horace Starkweather 
 
 Lemuel P. Bates George W. Benedict 
 
 Daniel I. Betts David L. Coe 
 
 Joshua N. Danforth Parker L. Hall 
 
 Ebenezer Emmons Gardner Haydon 
 
 Joseph H. Estabrook Leicester Lloyd 
 
 Charles Fitch Thomas Peck 
 
 William A. Porter William Wells 
 
 John B. Skinner John Whiton 
 
 Royal W. Smith Samuel Dickenson 
 
 John C. Brigham Alvan Alvord 
 
 Nelson Brown Charles Baker 
 
 Elijah H. Burrit Johnson Baldwin 
 
 Dwight Baldwin Benjamin F. Clark 
 
 Andrew Burrham Jonathan Ely 
 
 Gardiner Dorrance Abner Forbes 
 
 Simon C. Ewers William Gildersleeve 
 
 Mason Fussell William W. Hunt 
 
 Edward Hooker William C. Kittredge 
 
 Royal Joy Elijah Thayer 
 
 John C. Morgan Alvan Wheeler 
 Isaac Oakes 
 
 This "Manual of Botany," so-called in its first edition, which 
 numbered about 500 copies, was printed in Albany by " Websters 
 and Skinners," bearing the date " 1817 ; " and just above this on the 
 title-page is the following : 
 
 "By the Members of the Botanical Class 
 
 in Williams College, (Mass.) 
 
 From a Manuscript System 
 
 Compiled by the Author of 
 
 Richard's Botanical Dictionary." 
 
 The first name of the sixty-three appended to this notable letter 
 to Professor Eaton is that of Henry W. Bishop, who, then a Senior 
 in college, probably composed the letter, who was born in Williams- 
 town in 1796 in a house standing on the site of the old West Hoosac 
 fort, who spent a long life as a lawyer and a judge in Lenox, who 
 was a valued trustee of the College, as was also his father before 
 him, and who was in 1854 Democratic candidate for Governor of 
 Massachusetts against another signer of this letter of 1817, Emory C. 
 Washburn, a classmate and lifelong friend of Bishop's. Washburn 
 became the governor. Bishop carried a light heart into his seventy- 
 sixth year. A Williamstown girl, Sarah Bulkley, became Bishop's 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 291 
 
 wife in 1822. Washburn was disappointed in love with another 
 Williamstown girl, who became successively Mrs. Porter and Mrs. 
 Stoddard. Governor Washburn made no bones of talking about 
 this with his friends in later life, and why should we in making up 
 the record? 
 
 Besides these two most prominent names among the sixty-three, 
 an uncommonly large proportion of the rest became useful and dis- 
 tinguished men, such as Daniel D. Barnard, the two Hallock 
 brothers, Ebenezer Emmons, William Eichards, Joshua N. Dan- 
 forth, William A. Porter, John B. Skinner, and John C. Brigham. 
 The last-named presented a copy of this "Manual of Botany," with 
 his autograph on the title-page, to the " Mineralogical Society," 
 which is the only evidence in existence known to the writer that 
 such a society ever existed in the College. It antedated the Linnsean 
 Society, and this in turn was merged into the Natural History 
 Society; and this particular volume (doubtless with others) passed 
 over into the library of the more comprehensive and long-lived 
 organization last named, whence it came at length into the College 
 Library, where it will always remain, as it is one of the most inter- 
 esting and historically valuable books in that constantly augmenting 
 collection. The work itself, improved by frequent additions and 
 revisions, became in the eighth edition, published in 1840, an octavo 
 volume of 625 pages, entitled "North American Botany," and con- 
 tained a description of 5267 species of plants. This "Manual of 
 Botany," widely circulated as it became, and the first popular text- 
 book on the subject published in the United States, brought its 
 author much honor, though but little money; still, he loved science 
 for its own sake, and he introduced into all the editions from the 
 fifth as a motto on the title-page the following sentence from Lin- 
 naeus, That existence is surely contemptible which regards only the grati- 
 fication of instinctive wants and the preservation of a body made to 
 perish. 
 
 Amos Eaton and Ebenezer Emmons began and carried on their 
 practical studies in Geology through field-work and stratification, 
 at the very time when Jonathan Otley and Professor Sedgwick were 
 doing the same things among the rocks of Cumberland in the English 
 Lake district. 1 In 1818, in compliance with a special invitation from 
 DeWitt Clinton, then Governor of New York, Eaton went to Albany, 
 and there gave a course of lectures before the members of the State 
 Legislature, emphasizing Geology in its application to agriculture, 
 and then and there put in train the causes that led up to "The 
 1 See Rawnsley's English Lakes, pp. 123 et seq. of Vol. I. 
 
292 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Natural History of New York," in the Introduction to which great 
 work Governor Seward said of Eaton's geological survey of the 
 region through which the Erie Canal afterward passed, and which 
 was published with a profile section of rock formations from the 
 Atlantic Ocean across the States of Massachusetts and New York to 
 Lake Erie in 1824: "This publication marked an era in the progress 
 of Geology in this country. It is in some respects, inaccurate, but 
 it must be remembered that its talented and indefatigable author 
 was without a guide in exploring the older formations, and that he 
 described rocks which no geologist had, at that time, attempted to 
 classify. Bocks were then classified chiefly by their mineralogical 
 characters and the aid which the science has since learned to derive 
 from fossils in determining the chronology and classification of rocks 
 was scarcely known here, and had only just begun to be appreciated 
 in Europe. We are indebted, nevertheless, to Professor Eaton for 
 the commencement of that independence of European classification 
 which has been found indispensable in describing the New York 
 system. After examining our rocks with as much care and accuracy 
 as I am capable of doing, I venture to say that we .have at least five 
 distinct and continuous strata, neither of which can with propriety 
 take any name hitherto given and defined in any European treatise 
 which has reached this country. Professor Eaton enumerated nearly 
 all the rocks in western New York in their order of succession, and 
 his enumeration has, with one or two exceptions, proved correct. 
 It is a matter of surprise that he recognized, at so early a period, 
 the old red sandstone on the Catskill Mountains, a discovery the 
 reality of which has since been proved by fossil tests." 
 
 Eaton had nearly the same priority of service in scientific Geology 
 as in scientific Botany, so far forth as this country is concerned. In 
 1818 he published the first edition of his " Index to the Geology of 
 the Northern States," which a competent authority pronounced "the 
 first attempt at a general arrangement of the geological strata in 
 North America." The same year he put out the second edition of 
 the "Manual of Botany," and inscribed it to the president and pro- 
 fessors of Williams College, saying in the inscription, " The science 
 of Botany is indebted to you for its first introduction into the interior 
 of the United States; and I am indebted to you for a passport into 
 the scientific world." Professor Silliman in his Journal remarked 
 of Eaton's Agricultural Survey of Albany and Kensselaer counties, 
 undertaken in 1820 under the patronage and expense of General Van 
 Eensselaer, " The attempt is novel in this country; we are not aware 
 of any attempt on so extensive and systematic a scale to make such 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 293 
 
 surveys subservient to the important interests of agriculture." In 
 the same year, 1820, Eaton was appointed Professor of Natural 
 History in the medical college at Castleton, Vermont, where he 
 delivered several courses of lectures; and when in 1824 General 
 Van Rensselaer established his famous School of Science in Troy, 
 he caused Amos Eaton to be appointed "Senior Professor," a place 
 which he filled with usefulness and reputation, both as author and 
 lecturer so long as he lived. He died in 1842, aged sixty-six years. 
 He was the first alumnus of Williams College to achieve a lasting 
 personal distinction in science. He was the first to give a great 
 and permanent impulse in his Alma Mater to the always Important 
 studies of Natural History. He was also the first teacher in the 
 College to gain and hold the warm admiration of his pupils. To 
 Professor Chester Dewey, who continued and intensified in the in- 
 stitution the influences and impulses but just referred to, Eaton was 
 warmly attached, and the two regarded each other as fellow-laborers 
 and earnest cooperators in science, and held one another in the 
 highest esteem as friends. 
 
 Major A. B. Eaton, who was graduated at West Point in 1826, 
 and who spent a reputable life in the army of the United States, 
 was a son of Amos Eaton. The late Professor Daniel Cady Eaton, 
 of Yale, was a son of Major Eaton, and very distinguished for his 
 attainments and impartations in that great department of science 
 which gave name and fame to his grandfather. 
 
 The stream runs easily away from its source. Yet the explorer 
 has need ever and anon for purposes of description to go back to its 
 head-spring, or at least to some upper stretch of his stream, to get a 
 new point of view, and in a sense to begin over again. We were 
 looking a little while ago to the tax list of the United States as 
 levied on the men of Williamstown in 1798. But it was never col- 
 lected, because a successful diplomacy instituted by bluff John Adams 
 staved off an impending war with France, to help pay for the expenses 
 of which the tax was imposed. But the people of Williamstown 
 got very late news' in those days of the events of war and peace at 
 home and abroad. The town is naturally extremely isolated. High 
 Hoosacs on the east with no tunnel under them, high Taconics on 
 the west with only four pretty high passes over them, lofty tumbles 
 of Vermont hills on the north dropping off into a narrow valley just 
 wide enough for the exit of the river, and from the south nothing 
 but two gorges between high hills uniting in the little opening of 
 South Williamstown, permitted only difficult access from any direc- 
 tion to our larger and more beautiful opening at the north village. 
 
294 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 No post-office was established here until 1798. William Stark- 
 weather was the first postmaster, appointed Jan. 1, 1798. Till then 
 letters were only brought and sent casually. The population in 1790 
 by the first national census was 1769, and in 1800 by the second was 
 2086. The people were numerous enough to be earlier entitled to 
 postal accommodations. But they were unaccessible. They were off 
 from any through route in any direction. It is to be presumed that 
 the first mails came into Williamstown horseback-wise over the 
 Hoosac Mountain by the old Mohawk trail from Greenfield. It is 
 possible, since Albany was at the beginning a prominent distributing 
 point, and'has always continued such, that a weekly mail came up the 
 Hoosac from the North River so far as Williamstown. At any rate, 
 there was an early postal route from Albany through Hancock to 
 Williamstown; and Captain Caleb Gardner, or rather one of his sons, 
 kept a tavern in Hancock partly for its accommodation, which was 
 called the " Gardner tavern." About 1812, old Mr. Green, who lived 
 in Lanesboro, used to bring from Stockbridge to Williamstown once 
 a week the two newspapers of the county, namely, the Western Star 
 and the Pittsfield Sun. He took in subscriptions for the papers as- 
 well as delivered them. He circulated also " Wild's Almanac " in. 
 its yearly season. His whipstock was a tin horn covered with 
 leather, to which the lash was attached, and on which he blew a 
 sound blast at every house where either of his papers was taken. 
 The main route for letters certainly continued to be the weekly 
 horseback service over the mountain to and from Greenfield. The 
 Smedleys used to send open, that is, unsealed, letters by this postal 
 rider to their friends and relatives, the Hawks families, in Charle- 
 mont. Postage was very high in those days, but the law allowed 
 the postman to carry unsealed letters on any terms he chose ta 
 impose. Within certain prescribed circuits the legal postal rates 
 increased as the distance increased within the country itself. When 
 a boy in New Hampshire the writer well remembers that his mother 
 had to pay twenty-five cents each on letters to or from her brother 
 in Ohio. About 1820, however, much rejoicing was felt and ex- 
 pressed here, when a new mail route was opened through Williams- 
 town from Greenfield to Troy, a hack service to run twice a week, 
 good for passengers also. A turnpike had in the meantime been 
 built over the Hoosac Mountain, following so far as possible the 
 line of the Indian trail. This route continued substantially un- 
 changed till the opening of the Troy and Boston Railroad in 1853. 
 Very early in the present century a turnpike had been carried over 
 the Taconics also by the Berlin pass to Troy; and old Mr. Whelden 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 295 
 
 drove a stage thither for passengers and bundles every other week-day 
 for many years. Of course the railroad put a stop to that convey- 
 ance also. Lasting much longer, indeed until about 1890, was a 
 stage route for both passengers and mail from Williamstown over 
 the southern watershed through Lanesboro to Pittsfield. 
 
 But what about our first postmaster, William Starkweather? He 
 served from January, 1798, till July, 1803. He was not among the 
 early comers hither, but he married the daughter, Polly Sloan, of 
 one of the very early comers, Samuel Sloan. Because he was a 
 Justice of the Peace, and tried petty local causes, as did also his 
 son Augustus in the same place a generation later, he was commonly 
 called " Squire " Starkweather, and appears to have been the first 
 citizen of the town to carry that coveted prefix to his name, unless 
 David Noble may have popularly preceded him in this. The mili- 
 tary origin and subsequent circumstances of Williamstown made the 
 military titles to be much desired and very common. Starkweather's 
 father-in-law was General Sloan. General Skinner was a contem- 
 porary. Colonels were thick, and majors still more so. Captains 
 and lieutenants were so numerous as to have but little distinction 
 on account of their titles. Scarce is ever costly. But Squire Stark- 
 weather, though he bore a coveted civil title, and became the first 
 postmaster (doubtless more through General Sloan's influence than 
 his own), did not bear a very good reputation, and neither did his 
 petty court of justice. Two very old ladies of the village, both 
 natives, and both of sound mind and memory, concur in this state- 
 ment. 1 Particulars of the transgressions, whether personal or civil, 
 have not come down from that, the first decade of the century, to 
 this the last. Still it is worth noting that priority in a recognized 
 title of honor, and in the possession of an important public office, 
 confers no exemption from the operation of a universal moral law. 
 As a man soweth so shall he also reap. 
 
 Two of Squire Starkweather's sons became alumni of the College, 
 William in 1809 and Henry in 1825. Both of these young men. 
 studied law, and the older of them practised at times before his 
 father as a justice; and as Kobbins Bulkley, the elder, sometimes 
 appeared there as a deputy sheriff of the county, and Erastus Noble 
 as a constable, the court was shadowed by the shadowy reputation 
 of its officials, and the epithet " den of thieves " is known to have 
 been sometimes popularly applied to it. What has chiefly caused 
 the Starkweather family to be remembered and honored is the mar- 
 
 1 Mrs. Mary Talmadge Hosford in her ninety-second, and Mrs. Lucy Bridges 
 Smedley in her eighty-eighth year. 
 
296 W1LLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 riage of three of the daughters to three of the graduates of the Col- 
 lege, each of them all remarkable men and women. Homer Bartlett 
 of the class of 1818, and one of the signers of the already quoted 
 letter to Amos Eaton, and later for eleven years one of the faithful 
 trustees of the College, married Mary Starkweather in 1823. Tn 
 the town record of births, Sept. 11, 1794, her Christian name, as 
 well as that of her mother, Feb. 12, 1766, is put down as " Polly," 
 showing that while Mary and Polly were regarded as identical names, 
 the latter was often used by preference of the parents at the begin- 
 ning of the child's life. Parsons Cooke of the class of 1822, doctor 
 of divinity, preacher, and editor, "defender of the faith" in both 
 capacities, married Hannah Sloan Starkweather, whose birth is 
 recorded March 18, 1800. She was exactly one month younger than 
 her husband, and was named from her grandmother, Hannah Doug- 
 las Sloan. A classmate of Cooke's, and later for ten years joint 
 editor with him of the New England Puritan, was J. E. Woodbridge, 
 a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, after whom he was named, and 
 upon whom in some sense his mantle was supposed to have rested, 
 though there was certainly a vast difference between the two men; he 
 married Catherine Starkweather in 1834. Augustus Starkweather, 
 born in 1796, continued to a good old age as the sole representative 
 of his family in town. 
 
 Squire Starkweather was well-to-do in this world's goods, and he 
 owed much of his position to this circumstance. He subscribed 20 
 to the new meeting-house in 1796, though he was never a member 
 of the church, nor did his wife become such till 1801. His house 
 was assessed by the United States in 1798 as worth $1840, nor was 
 there any other private dwelling valued then at so high a figure. 
 The Mansion House, built and kept as a tavern, alone surpassed it 
 in estimation on that list, fortunately preserved, namely, $3220. 
 Daniel Day's house at the foot of Consumption Hill, comes next 
 below Starkweather's, namely, $1495. Both of these houses are 
 still standing, considerably transformed, and the Starkweather one 
 slightly transferred in place; but it is plain that the Day house was 
 finer, and much more ornamented externally; why, then, should it 
 have been taxed at a smaller sum? Obviously because at that time 
 a situation on or near the " Square " enhanced values very much in 
 comparison with one on the lower and alluvial level at the east end 
 of the village. The Square was designed to be the centre of life and 
 business and worship from the original survey of the town in the 
 spring of 1750; because the broad Main Street at its rectangular 
 bisection by the North and South streets at once constituted and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 297 
 
 was named the " Square " ; because also the original house-lots were 
 numbered from this bisection, and the lots reserved to the ministry 
 and school were located there; and because, further, without any 
 real or lasting dispute, the first meeting-house of 1766 was placed 
 there. The four corners thus constituted, with their natural exten- 
 sions in both directions, continued to be the practical centre of 
 things in the village till the second meeting-house burned down in 
 1866; and, consequently, land-parcels in that neighborhood tended 
 to bear a higher price than corresponding lots in other parts of the 
 village. All this was changed by the erection of the third meeting- 
 
 "DAY HOUSE"; THEN DEWEY HOUSE; NOW " D. U." HOUSE. 
 
 house in the intervale between the first and second village eminences, 
 as those are -reckoned from the east. 
 
 William Starkweather built his house on House-lot No. 2, near 
 the junction of North Street with Main, and built his store of two 
 stories nearly in line with his house a few rods nearer the Square, 
 that is, to the south of the house. Both house and store fronted 
 the east, and stood directly opposite the Mansion House across 
 North Street. The house was a large two-story one, double, with 
 a hall running through the middle east and west, and the two tene- 
 ments quite distinct both below and above. It was a handsome 
 house when built, painted white, with immensely strong white oak 
 timbers, and perhaps relatively deserved its tax of 1798 ; but, situ- 
 
298 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ated on the clay, for which the entire house-lot was famous, the 
 walls gradually fell out of plumb, the exterior became weather- 
 beaten and wood-colored, and the two tenements were rented at low 
 rates to relatively poor families. Henry Starkweather, the young- 
 est son, settled in mercantile business in New York, where his 
 daughter married John T. Hoffman, afterward mayor of the city 
 and Governor of the State. These political successes of the son-in- 
 law indirectly enriched the father-in-law, and the latter purchased 
 the homestead, moved the house several rods nearer to the store, 
 turned it round endwise to the street, and fitted it up in its present 
 location. A fire in 1853 made considerable changes necessary in 
 the rear part of the building; Morton Gavitt made further changes 
 and additions while he owned the premises; and the Kappa Alpha 
 Society now own and occupy it, as shown in the wood-cut, as an 
 annex to their own fine establishment. 
 
 The old store was moved away to the west on Main Street many 
 years ago, to become for a time the home of Rev. H. E. Hoisington, 
 an alumnus of Williams in 1828, a returned missionary from Ceylon, 
 and later the home of " Uncle Jerry " Hosford of delightful memory, 
 and of his wife, still living with her two daughters in the neighbor- 
 hood. When it became necessary to take down in 1892 this old 
 store and dwelling, in order to make room for Mr. Proctor's palatial 
 residence, its timbers were so sound as to make it worth while to 
 carry them a mile or more to the north, and to put them partly into 
 a new barn and partly into a new house near the Hoosac Eiver, 
 owned and occupied by Mr. Russell. Besides this House-lot No. 2, 
 on the northern end of which was the bed of clay that yielded the 
 bricks for both the West College and the (original) East College, 
 burned down in 1841, Starkweather and his heirs owned a good 
 farm adjoining the Prindle place, and not far from the Petersburg 
 Pass, both of which farms have lately passed into one, and are now 
 under the skilful tillage of their owner, George Brookman. 
 
 William Starkweather kept the post-office in his store on the 
 corner so long as he was postmaster, that is, till July 1, 1803, when 
 Ezekiel Bacon, son of Judge John Bacon of Stockbridge, became 
 our second postmaster. John Bacon, a graduate of Princeton Col- 
 lege in 1765, was pastor of the Old South church in Boston from 
 1771 to 1775, where his son, Ezekiel Bacon, was born in 1776, and 
 the family moved that year to Stockbridge. The father entered 
 upon civil life, both legislative and judicial, though he still occa- 
 sionally preached, and became very prominent and influential. The 
 son was graduated at Yale in 1794, and commenced the practice of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 299 
 
 law in 1798 in Williamstown, but moved to Pittsfield in 1806. In 
 that year he was chosen State Senator from Berkshire, as his father 
 had been before him; and like his father also, a few years earlier, 
 in 1807 he was elected a member of Congress, receiving, it is said, 
 every vote in Pittsfield and nearly every vote in the congressional 
 district. He was a firm Democrat in contradistinction from the 
 contemporary Federalist, and continued in Congress for four terms, 
 serving on the Committee of Ways and Means, and becoming its 
 chairman in the trying times of 1812-13. He will long be remem- 
 bered for his eminent service in securing through his controlling 
 influence with the President the appointment of Judge Story to the 
 Supreme Bench of the United States, before that afterward renowned 
 
 CHAPTER-HOUSE OF KAPPA ALPHA. 
 Part of Starkweather's house in extreme right, old Store extreme left. 
 
 jurist knew that he was a candidate. Bacon had a poetic tempera- 
 ment, and near the close of a remarkably useful life, that is, in 1842, 
 he published a volume of. poems, dedicated to his old friend, Judge 
 Story, and entitled "Kecreations in a Sick-room." We shall learn 
 more about Ezekiel Bacon's remarkable probity in the account soon 
 to follow this of General Skinner's defalcation as Treasurer of the 
 State. His name was on Skinner's bond, and he ceased to be post- 
 master in April, 1807, which was the last year of Skinner's service; 
 and his retirement was very likely in some connection with the 
 developments in Skinner's financial affairs, then beginning to be 
 
300 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 made. It is almost certain that Bacon kept the post-office where 
 Starkweather had kept it, that is, in the store on the corner, and 
 where Bacon's successor is known to have kept it. 
 
 Henry Clinton Brown, commonly called Major Brown, because he 
 was once tendered a major's commission in the United States Army, 
 was the son of Colonel John Brown, of very distinguished and 
 patriotic memory, who was killed in the Revolutionary battle of 
 Stone Arabia, in 1780, when Henry C. was only five months old. 
 The father was an alumnus of Yale, 1761, a lawyer in Pittsfield, 
 the most active patriot in Berkshire County, of which he was a 
 native in 1744. Mrs. Brown, intending to rear her son to his father's 
 profession, put him into the Free School at Williamstown when he 
 was about a dozen years old. Impaired health finally compelled him 
 to relinquish the purpose of becoming a lawyer, and he was trained 
 a merchant, establishing himself in business at Williamstown, and 
 becoming the third postmaster here in April, 1807. August 12, 
 1804, he married here Tryphosa Sutton, a daughter of Burrall Sut- 
 ton, who was also a merchant on the Square, perhaps in company 
 with his son-in-law, the postmaster. Both, at any rate, occupied 
 parts of the Starkweather store. This connection brings into notice 
 again for a little the opposite corner of the Square, the house on 
 House-lot No. 1, then owned and occupied by Sutton, which was 
 assessed for taxing purposes in 1798 at $402.50. This was the old 
 Smedley corner. The then gambrel-roofed house enclosed in its L 
 the old "regulation house" built by Nehemiah Smedley not far 
 from 1753, and occupied by him for nearly twenty years, when he 
 purchased the farm on Green River at the east side of the village, 
 and built the large farmhouse now standing there. Burrall Sutton 
 had not been resident here long, and very little is known about him 
 or his family, except his two daughters, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Drake 
 Mills. One day the town was shocked by the news that Burrall 
 Sutton had committed suicide in his store in broad daylight. The 
 body was immediately carried across the Square into his own house, 
 where Mrs. Esther Bulkley Sabin happened, as a neighbor, to be at 
 the time, and the late Dr. H. L. Sabin, her son, has told the writer 
 of the consternation produced, not only in the home but also through- 
 out the town, by the catastrophe. There is no intimation by 
 tradition or record of any earlier suicide in Williamstown. The 
 circumstances of his family gave point to the universal surprise and 
 sorrow. Mrs. Sutton gave birth about three months afterward to a 
 daughter, named Abby, who, as the wife and widow of Mr. Drake 
 Mills, a merchant of New York, had a strange career, suggesting 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 301 
 
 insanity in her own case and in that of her father also. A daughter 
 of Mr. Mills married Fernando Wood, twice mayor of New York. 
 The following from a New York newspaper gives the ending of per- 
 haps the strangest and saddest story furnished by the annals of 
 Williamstown. 
 
 Fernando Wood's last wife is still living, but is hopelessly insane. Her 
 mother, Mrs Drake Mills, was, if not insane, at least very eccentric. She was 
 very rich, and during the latter years of her life lived in a small room on the top 
 floor of a second-class hotel. She took great delight in annoying Mr. Wood and 
 his wife, with whom she was not on good terms. She had the finest diamonds 
 in Washington, and her victoria, drawn by a magnificent pair of banged chest- 
 nut horses imported from England and driven by an old coachman of Lord 
 Napier, was a swell affair. She was very fat and common looking, but when 
 she drove out she was dressed in the gayest colors and her lap was covered with 
 a robe of ostrich plumes. She fell out of the window one night while under the 
 influence of liquor and was found in the area of the hotel in the morning. She 
 left a will, in which she bequeathed Mr. Wood a dollar gold-piece " to remember 
 me by," she said. 
 
 Henry C. Brown represented Williamstown in the General Court 
 for the years 1810-11, and the following year was appointed high 
 sheriff of the county of Berkshire, and removed to Pittsfield, where 
 he continued to hold this office acceptably to the people for twenty- 
 seven years, till his death in 1838, that is, from the age of thirty- 
 two till that of fifty-nine. The vacancy he was called to fill in 1812 
 was caused by the appointment of Sheriff Larned to the colonelcy 
 of the Ninth Regiment of the United States army. Mrs. Tryphosa 
 Sutton Brown died in 1814, in her thirty-fourth year. The distin- 
 guishing characteristic of Sheriff Brown was a genuine courtesy, 
 exhibited alike in his intercourse with his equals and with those 
 in the lower walks of life. He is said to have been active in all 
 benevolent undertakings, and a supporter of everything that tended 
 to the elevation of morals. He left behind him daughters, who 
 came to fill unusually high places in society. It is perhaps proper 
 in this connection to append a list of the high sheriffs of Berkshire 
 from the time of the organization of the county in 1761 to the 
 present. 
 
 Elijah Williams Stockbridge 
 
 Israel Dickinson Sheffield 
 
 John Fellows Sheffield 
 
 Caleb Hyde Lenox 
 
 Tompson J. Skinner Williamstown 
 
 Simon Larned Pittsfield 
 
 Henry C. Brown Pittsfield 
 
302 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Thomas Twining Sandisfield 
 
 Edward F. Ensign Sheffield 
 
 George S. Willis Pittsfield 
 
 Graham A. Root Sheffield 
 
 H. B. Wellington Pittsfield 
 
 John Crosby Pittsfield 
 
 A. F. Fuller North Adams 
 
 In the meantime, while these events were transpiring in the town 
 and the county, the thread of the College affairs was being obscurely 
 but continuously and strongly spun. The loss of Professor Mackay 
 was severely felt, but there was no one then fitted to take his place, 
 and tutors continued to carry on the bulk of the instruction till 1806. 
 Among these tutors was Gamaliel Smith Olds, an alumnus of 1801, 
 a scholar and teacher able to bear comparison in almost all points 
 with Amos Eaton. He was a tutor from 1803 to 1805, and was then 
 appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, the 
 duties of which department he performed with great acceptance for 
 two years, when in consequence of a disagreement with the presi- 
 dent, equally sorry to them both, he resigned his position. He was 
 only the second professor the College had had. President Fitch had 
 been dealing with temporary tutors from the beginning, with the 
 sole exception of Professor Mackay, 1795-99. It is only too plain 
 from the copious account given of the causes of this resignation by 
 Professor Chester Dewey, who succeeded Professor Olds in 1808, 
 that the president was chiefly to blame for the troubles which came 
 upon the College in that year, and which proved as untoward to the 
 institution as to both of the chief participators in them. This story is 
 instructive, and it must here be clearly brought out in all its aspects, 
 because it was the first decided manifestation on Williams ground 
 of a tendency on the part of a president to assume authoritative 
 functions never conferred on him, never designed by charter or 
 trustees to be exercised by him, and never actually put in practice 
 by any president then or since without a deadening moral effect 
 upon all parts of the institution itself. 
 
 The signification of the term "college," both etymologically and 
 customarily has frequently been mistaken by college officials to the 
 detriment of all parties concerned. The word means, and always 
 meant, "a body of colleagues," and can have no other meaning. 
 The Act of the Legislature of Massachusetts in 1793, quoted entire 
 in a previous chapter, created twelve men expressed by name, " to- 
 gether with the president of the said college for the time being," a 
 body politic and corporate by the name of the "President and Trus- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 303 
 
 tees of Williams College." One of the twelve men thus mentioned, 
 Tompson J. Skinner, was empowered in the Act itself to call a first 
 meeting of the body, when the twelve chose Ebenezer Fitch "presi- 
 dent of the college for the time being," and thus a colleague with 
 themselves. At the same meeting they chose one of their number 
 vice-president, Stephen West, who continued in that position for 
 nineteen years. At the same meeting, also, they passed a vote 
 "that Messrs. Skinner, Swift, and Noble be a committee to counsel 
 with the president." They established also the specific conditions 
 of entrance to be met on the part of all students ; elected one of 
 their own number, Sedgwick, Professor of Law and Civil Polity 
 (although he never entered upon his duties as such), and two 
 tutors; and furthermore enacted a code of laws "not differing 
 materially," says Dr. Durfee, "from those now in use." 
 
 This code of laws created another body of colleagues, subordinate 
 in certain particulars never very exactly defined theoretically, to 
 the body corporate created by the State, but still expressly empow- 
 ered by the latter to act independently and fully within the spheres 
 of instruction and practical administration. This in some sense 
 subordinate, but in other senses primary and substantial, body of 
 colleagues is the president and faculty, consisting of all the officers 
 of instruction, as well the tutors as the professors. The peculiarity 
 and the safety of the president's position is that he alone is a 
 member of both bodies alike, a colleague of the trustees and a col- 
 league of the faculty. It results from this, and the inference is of 
 importance practically, that the president represents the trustees 
 in the board of the faculty, and equally the faculty in the board of 
 the trustees; but he is in no sense whatever the embodiment of the 
 one board or of the other. He is president of both boards, but the 
 boards themselves are entities independent of him except in this 
 one particular. 
 
 Besides these two, there is a third and a very much looser "body 
 of colleagues," connected with and covered by the word "college." 
 Webster's Dictionary gives the following definition: ""A society 
 of scholars incorporated for purposes of study or instruction ; as, the 
 College of the Sorbonne." This use of the word is more ecclesi- 
 astical than secular, more European than American, more suited 
 perhaps to past times than to the present ; still, the students under 
 process of collegiate instruction in New England have always been 
 assumed in common language to be a part of "the college"; it has 
 always been felt, even if not asserted, that the students had certain 
 rights and privileges in connection with the governing and instruc- 
 
304 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ting boards, over and above all that is involved in the commercial 
 contract, namely, to receive and to pay for instruction, and to be 
 obedient to proper rules on the one hand as well as to receive cour- 
 teous and kindly treatment on the other. In short, although all 
 this has been and is still in cloud-land, it has been assumed and 
 acted upon that current students, and even the graduates as a body, 
 were in some sense a substantial part of the institution proper; 
 that they were colleagues to a certain extent and for certain pur- 
 poses associated for the time being with the other and more dis- 
 tinctly denned boards. As early as 1821, at one of the most 
 depressed times in the history of Williams College, there was 
 formed here at Commencement a "Society of Alumni," for the 
 express purpose of cooperating with the other two boards in pro- 
 moting the general interests of the institution. This society still 
 exists. Its organization was first suggested by Emory Washburn 
 of the class of 1817, afterward Governor of the Commonwealth. It 
 has been extremely useful in furthering the ends of its formation, 
 whenever its legitimate work has not been meddled with and 
 poisoned through the jealousy of certain members of one or other 
 of the more distinctly governing boards. It was a decided step in 
 the way of recognition of this real relation of the body of graduates 
 to these other boards, when, in 1868, the privilege was accorded to 
 the Society of Alumni of choosing by ballot at prescribed intervals, 
 and for a limited time of service, five out of the seventeen members 
 of the Board of Trustees, in order that they might have as a body a 
 distinct representation of their own in the chief governing board. 
 This was to be, and in general has proven to be, a bonafide election 
 by the alumni of one of their own number, each to serve for five 
 years, into a board, twelve of whom hold a life-tenure received 
 from the board itself. 
 
 It is greatly to the credit of Amherst College, which at its begin- 
 ning came out of the loins of Williams, that, first of the colleges, 
 it gave a formal and substantial recognition to the undergraduate- 
 body as a part of the governing force of the institution. The cor- 
 porate idea can no further go. The alumni as a body have had 
 nothing like the practical scope and sway at Amherst that they 
 have had at Williams; on the other hand, the student body as such 
 have had as yet no such influence at Williams as they have been 
 allowed to take and carry at Amherst. It would be very wrong, of 
 course, to apply to President Fitch in the first decade of the 
 century standards of estimation that prevail in all the colleges in 
 the last decade of the same; but it was necessary to say as much as. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL, 305 
 
 this, in order properly to convey to the reader certain causes and 
 effects within this college at the earlier period. 
 
 We have no information, except in an entry of President Fitch's 
 Journal, bearing date April, 1802, of what may properly be called 
 the first college rebellion. Though we have already quoted this 
 entry entire on a previous page and in another connection, it is so 
 significant in its bearing on what may be called the second college 
 rebellion in 1808, that we give it again here. " We have lately had 
 trouble in college. The judgments we drew up and published to 
 the classes respecting their examinations in March gave offence. 
 Three classes in succession were in a state of insurrection against 
 the government of the College. ' For ten days we had a good deal 
 of difficulty, but the Faculty stood firm and determined to give up 
 no right. At last, without the loss of a single member, we reduced 
 all to due obedience and subordination. Never had I occasion for 
 so much firmness and prudence, not even in the great rebellion of 
 1782 at Yale. Most of the students are now much ashamed of their 
 conduct. The present generation, I trust, will never burn their 
 fingers again. They have found that we will support our author- 
 ity." The "faculty" at that time consisted only of the president 
 and three or four tutors. All of the latter became in after life 
 unusually prominent men. It is creditable to the president that, 
 in his private Journal, he should ascribe the firmness and the suc- 
 cess to the "faculty." The hopefulness, not to say exhilaration, 
 of the latter part of this entry, was destined to be pretty soon 
 clouded over. Indeed, the sky of the College never afterward 
 became wholly clear and bright so far as the president himself 
 was concerned. Happily, we possess a candid and copious account 
 of the College troubles of 1808 from the pen of Chester Dewey, a 
 graduate of 1806, a tutor for two years, 1808-10, and then a dis- 
 tinguished professor for seventeen years more. 
 
 In the spring and summer of 1808, there was an attempt of the Sophomore 
 class to prevent the continuance of some of the officers of College after the Com- 
 mencement. The students supposed the tutors to be elected annually, and that, 
 by a petition to the Trustees against a re-election, the desired end would be 
 secured. To effect this object they enlisted the interest of two members of the 
 Senior class, then about to graduate. So much was said and done by these two 
 Seniors, that the Faculty obliged them to make some acknowledgment of the 
 impropriety of any such interference on their part, before they could be per- 
 mitted to perform their parts at Commencement, and receive their degrees. 
 Though the Seniors believed a change of Tutors to be important, they were 
 sensible that it was not their part to meddle with such a matter, and the affair 
 was settled with them. The Commencement passed off pleasantly, and as the 
 x 
 
306 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 tutors remained in their office, it was supposed the whole matter was settled ; 
 and the students returned after vacation, with the intention, as they said, of 
 going on in peace and good will. 
 
 Professor Olds had felt that the students were too much disposed to present 
 petitions on subjects over which they had no control, and in which their inter- 
 ference was entirely improper. This practice he wished to have broken up, and 
 this he designed to effect. He felt that the Tutors had been injured by the 
 course of the students, and that the Faculty were abused by it. He had led the 
 Seniors, by direction of the Faculty to make their acknowledgment in the case, 
 and he expected to bring the class more particularly concerned in the petition 
 to do the same. The Faculty agreed on the course to be pursued, and the Presi- 
 dent and Professor Olds presented the subject to members of the offending class, 
 which was now under the care of the Professor. When the acknowledgment of 
 the wrong and the renunciation of the practice were proposed, each individual 
 refused to put his name to the paper. The Junior class was now, therefore, in 
 direct opposition to a measure resolved on by the Faculty. Kecitations were 
 suspended in that class, and the whole College was in a state of high excitement 
 The expulsion of some of those most deeply implicated was feared. 
 
 When the state of things was reported to the Faculty, the President, with the 
 advice of one of the Trustees, refused to sustain the officers in the attempt, 
 [which was quite as much his attempt as theirs] and disclosed, that he had been 
 mistaken in the facts, or he should not have consented to require the Juniors to 
 make the proposed acknowledgment. He took a stand in favor of the students, 
 and against the Professor and Tutors. He said the matter had been managed 
 by Professor Olds, in whom great confidence had been placed, and who had 
 great influence with the Faculty and students; and that Professor Olds had 
 come to conclusions, and had led them to adopt measures, which the true state 
 of the facts, and the feelings and intentions of the students, did not authorize. 
 He therefore told the Professor that the proposed measure was not proper or 
 called for, and must be given up. Professor Olds felt that his honor was com- 
 promitted, that he could not hold a respectable standing in the eyes of the 
 students, and that he must be sustained, or leave the College. In a few hours 
 the resignation of the Tutors was sent to the President, and soon after that of 
 Professor Olds. 
 
 The college was then without any officer except the President ; and as the 
 vacancies could not be supplied immediately, a recess of four weeks was given 
 to the students, and they returned to their homes. 
 
 A few were disgusted by the procedure, and took dismission from the College. 
 At the end of the recess most returned, and Chester Dewey, John Nelson, and 
 James W. Bobbins, having been called to the tutorships, the remainder of the year 
 was employed in quiet and profitable study. For two years the students pursued 
 an unexceptionable course in all things. Order, peace, and good feelings ruled. 
 
 Professor Olds felt that he was greatly injured by the decision of the Presi- 
 dent, and his failing to sustain him when the trial came. The President, whom 
 the Trustees judged to have decided correctly, felt that he had been led into a 
 mistake by the representations of Professor Olds, not as intending any error, 
 but carried beyond the facts of the case by the influence and strong feelings 
 of the Professor. He regretted that he had not earlier scrutinized the case, 
 but believed he had now taken the only wise because the only right course. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 807 
 
 Professor Olds doubtless misjudged on the dishonor of his situation. So high 
 was the estimation of his talents by the students, and so great his influence with 
 them, and so strong their attachment to him, that they uniformly declared 
 many times in the year or two following, that they should have entertained all 
 respect and regard for the Professor, as they believed he had erred honestly, and 
 with the best intentions. By resigning and leaving the college, he lost much of 
 their respect, as it seemed to charge them with a criminal intention, which they 
 disowned. There was another apology for Professor Olds, to be found in the fact 
 that he had labored to support the Tutors ; and as they could not consistently 
 remain, he was bound to share with them the results. 
 
 To any one well experienced with the men and the ways of a New 
 England college, the above account written many years after the 
 events by Professor Chester Dewey, who became Olds's immediate 
 successor here, will seem remarkably balanced and candid. To any 
 such one also, it will seem as clear as daylight that a morally great 
 and magnanimous man would have taken a different course from 
 that pursued by President Fitch. Instead of throwing the entire 
 onus of the difficulty upon Olds and leaving him in the lurch, he 
 should have taken the main part of it upon himself, inasmuch as 
 Olds had done nothing and said nothing officially without his con- 
 currence and open participation. If he had said frankly to the 
 students, " we have all acted in this matter under misapprehensions 
 to which all men are not only liable but prone also, we on our part 
 unanimously as you unanimously on yours, now, as the new year has 
 already begun prosperously, we take back the requirement of acknowl- 
 edgments on your part, for we are now convinced that you acted in 
 good faith, and you must cease (as probably you have ceased) all oppo- 
 sition of any kind to the tutors, who are in their place for the second 
 year by legitimate authority, and from under whose instruction (ivhether 
 good or not) you as a class have wholly passed;" one thousand to 
 one the difficulty could have been removed in ten minutes. But 
 Ebenezer Fitch was not a man of sufficient moral largeness to see 
 the best way out in such a case. Indeed, there is only one way out 
 in such a case. And that is, for a man to acknowledge his own 
 fault, when calling upon students to acknowledge and abate their 
 own faults. Students are reasonable when they are dealt with 
 reasonably by their teachers. The writer has seen this demon- 
 strated a hundred times in his own limited experience. Nothing 
 offends college students more or more justly than the assumption 
 of infallibility of judgment and conduct on the part of their 
 teachers. 
 
 For Fitch to express his " regret that he had not earlier scruti- 
 nized the case," when he had himself in connection with Olds pre- 
 
308 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 sented the paper to the Junior class for their signatures and been 
 a personal witness to their unanimous refusal, and when he had 
 himself presided in the faculty meetings in which every step in the 
 whole process had been matured, was to perform what at this end 
 of the century is well named " a craivl," however it may have been 
 denominated at that end. We may be sure, that the students had 
 then some appropriate name for it, as they always have some word 
 for such things. 
 
 The names of the two tutors, who were thus put by the act of the 
 president into a wholly untenable place, were William Fitch Backus 
 and Oliver Chapin. Backus had been graduated in 1802, and 
 Chapin in 1805. The former was a nephew of the president's wife, 
 and a brother of Gurdon Huntington Backus of the class of 1806, 
 who will come before us in remarkably pleasant relations before we 
 have done with the president. It may be, that the latter was 
 swayed in a wrong direction against the tutors, for fear he might 
 be thought to be swayed in their favor because one of them was a 
 near relative. Nothing is known of the after life of this Backus, 
 except that he studied law, and that he died in 1818. Chapin, on 
 the other hand, lived to a good old age in his native town in Con- 
 necticut, and died highly respected in 1853. 
 
 Professor Dewey's account of the troubles of 1808 does not omit 
 to mention, that the president in the thick of them counselled with 
 one of the trustees, and that the whole body ultimately approved of 
 his action in the premises. Who the individual trustee was, does 
 not appear, though it is more likely to have been Israel Jones than 
 any one else; for of the three local trustees appointed by the body 
 in 1793 " to counsel with the president," two, Noble and Swift, were 
 already dead, and the third, Skinner, was at this time under extreme 
 personal difficulties in Boston, if not in actual durance there. As 
 this is, however, the first recorded instance of any trustees being 
 called in to advise on a current difficulty in the internal administra- 
 tion of the College, and as the advice given in this instance was just 
 about as bad as it could be, it is proper here to note how ill-qualified 
 in general our trustees have been from the beginning until now to 
 give the right kind of counsel either individually or collectively to 
 the executive officers of the College in such cases ; and also to affirm 
 in general on the best evidence attainable, that advice from that 
 source, whether called for or proffered, has not proven itself in the 
 later instances to be any better than it was in that instance. College 
 trustees have a vastly important sphere of their own, and within 
 that sphere they have usually shown themselves to be both compe- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 309 
 
 tent and faithful ; but when they have undertaken to adjudge penal- 
 ties for college offences, or to determine whether given actions were 
 under the circumstances offences or not, they have almost invariably 
 made a botch of it. One or two detailed instances of this will be 
 given further on in our story. 
 
 The effect on Professor Olds himself of this Parthian blow on the 
 part of the president was presently and permanently unhappy. He 
 was a fine scholar in college, and a good speaker, at a time when 
 very little attention was paid to any phase of/elocutionary work. 
 His two years as a tutor were distinguished, ^ were also his two 
 years as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. He him- 
 self had successfully adjusted the difficulty with the two Seniors, 
 who had strongly supported the Sophomores in their zeal against the 
 reappointment of the two tutors. He was probably somewhat elated 
 by this success, and by his unquestioned popularity throughout the 
 College. There is no record of any note of contrast struck by the 
 students as between him and the president, Olds in his prime at 
 thirty and Fitch at his opening decline at fifty-two ; Olds quick in 
 mind and speech and Fitch slow-moulded in all things and ill-ex- 
 pressed in words, but it is almost certain that such contrasts were 
 drawn, and may have affected the professor to elate him somewhat 
 and made the president more willing to give the other on occasion a 
 pullback. The only fault that can be detected at this distance of 
 time in the professor's action in the matter, is something pretty 
 nearly universal in young and successful college teachers, namely, a 
 propensity to cross the bridges before one fairly comes to them, to 
 gain securities for the future as well as indemnities for the past. 
 Now, guarantees for the future in any matter of college discipline 
 are always hard to get and practically worthless when obtained, 
 for this chief reason among others, that the college population is 
 continually in flux, the verbal promissors of this year are not the 
 tempted ones of next year. No college class can bind its successors 
 in anything. Professor Olds had already gained in the way of dis- 
 cipline all that was possible to be gained under the circumstances. 
 The Seniors had made acknowledgment of their fault, and had been 
 graduated : the Sophomores had quietly become Juniors, had come 
 out from under the instruction of obnoxious tutors, and had appar- 
 ently ceased their agitation against them. Unluckily, but not 
 altogether fruitlessly, since the example displays a principle, Olds, 
 like scores of others, wanted to make 
 
 Assurance double sure 
 And take a bond of Fate. 
 
310 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 When the crisis came, Olds withdrew from teaching, and studied 
 theology, at first with Dr. West at Stockbridge, then the vice-presi- 
 dent of the College, and afterwards at the newly established semi- 
 nary at Andover, and was ordained at Greenfield in 1813, and 
 preached there some three years, when the old teaching impulse 
 recurred, and he was solicited to take a professorship in Middlebury 
 College. For certain reasons now very imperfectly understood, 
 though they gave rise at the time to some public controversy, he 
 never assumed the duties of that professorship, but of another one 
 at the University of Vermont, which he held for two years, till the 
 establishment of Amherst College in 1821, where he taught for four 
 years. Of course the old sores found no tendency towards healing 
 so long as he was teaching in the strangely rival institution at Am- 
 herst. Later on in life he went to Georgia, and taught a few years 
 in a college in that State. Returning north, he devoted himself to 
 preaching, for some years at Saratoga, and then at Circleville, 
 Ohio, where he died in harness in 1848. Dr. Durfee in his "History 
 of Williams College " applies to Professor Olds the following appro- 
 priate language : " His mind was of a high order. He was a fine 
 linguist; and the whole system of mathematics taught in our col- 
 leges he had perfectly at his command. But his keen sensitiveness 
 led him to terminate his connection with institutions in such a sud- 
 den manner, that many years of his life were sadly embittered. 
 But his last years were spent in the service of the Church; and 
 when he died, honorable testimony was borne to his character, 
 fidelity, and usefulness." 
 
 The effect on the president of this decided disagreement with his 
 only professor, and the latter's consequent retirement from the 
 College, may perhaps best be seen in its effects on the College itself. 
 On this point we fortunately possess testimony of the highest credi- 
 bility. "From this shock," wrote Dr. Griffin in 1828, "increased 
 by exaggerated reports respecting the extent of the disorders which 
 prevailed, the College did not recover during the administration of 
 Dr. Fitch. The institution was then at its height. The rooms in 
 both buildings were nearly full, and the four classes then on the 
 ground produced more graduates than any four successive classes 
 have done up to this time, to wit, 115. The next largest number 
 was 113, and consisted of the classes that were in college in the 
 summer of 1808, when the difficulty began. The class that entered 
 the fall after the rupture produced but 20 ; and the four classes that 
 entered next after that event produced but 89. Other colleges had 
 sprung up to increase the effect." 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 311 
 
 But it would not be fair at all to refer the gradual decline of the 
 College, commencing in 1808, wholly to the causes within the insti- 
 tution itself which we have now been considering. President Fitch 
 did not indeed show off well in these exigences ; and it cannot be 
 that he cherished a thorough self-respect in connection with them. 
 There is something also of naturalness and probable truth in the 
 imputation that has always been cast upon Professor Olds and his 
 special friends, that their influence adverse to the College was 
 exhibited in its declining numbers and reputation. Greenfield, 
 where Olds was pastor, is a sort of gate to the College on the east; 
 Amherst, after its foundation in 1821, in which Olds was four years 
 professor from the start, could not but feel itself at first in antago- 
 nism with Williams, and certainly drew students from the central 
 region of the Connecticut River, where the latter had always found 
 its best recruiting-ground; and Vermont also, which had always been 
 tributary to Williams, especially from the western slopes of the 
 Green Mountains, was now trying hard to establish colleges both 
 at Middlebury and Burlington, with both of which the connection 
 of Professor Olds must have been more or less prejudicial to the 
 older institution on the Hoosac. 
 
 But all of these concurring causes do not serve of themselves to 
 account fully for the sharp decline of the College, emphasizing itself 
 in 1808, and thereafter continuing pretty steady for many years. 
 Although this connection has never been noticed before by any one, 
 so far as the present writer is aware, yet he is perfectly confident 
 that the defalcation of General Skinner as Treasurer of the Common- 
 wealth, which came fully to light in June, 1808, at the very time 
 when these troubles within the College were brewing to an over- 
 flow, had, in conjunction with the rest, more to answer for than all 
 the rest put together. Skinner was at the same time the treasurer 
 of the College, and had been from the beginning of the Free School. 
 He was an original trustee of both. He had been responsible for 
 the erection of the two college buildings, West College and East 
 College. He was the chairman of the committee that constructed 
 the meeting-house of 1798. He and his brother in company had 
 built and then owned the Mansion House. He had become by all 
 odds the most prominent citizen in the town in a business way, in 
 a political way, and in a social way. He was almost constantly in 
 one branch or the other of the General Court at Boston. He had 
 twice been chosen to Congress from the Berkshire district before 
 the old century went out. He had come to be tiptop in the militia, 
 tiptop in Freemasonry, sheriff of the county, and judge in the 
 
312 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Court of Common Pleas. He was also at one time United States 
 Marshal for the district of Massachusetts. In 1806 he was chosen 
 by the two branches of the Legislature (such was then the custom) 
 Treasurer and Receiver-General of the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
 setts. He had no trouble apparently in obtaining sureties in the 
 sum of $100,000. The names of his bondsmen follow, all but one 
 of them citizens of Berkshire. The bond is dated the 18th of June, 
 1806, and his term of service commenced then. 
 
 
 
 Timothy Childs, Pittsfield 
 
 Azariah Egleston, Lenox 
 
 Daniel Brown, Cheshire 
 
 Samuel H. Wheeler, Lanesboro 
 
 William Young, Williamstown 
 
 Ezekiel Bacon, Williamstown 
 
 John Chamberlin, Jr., Dalton 
 
 John Pickit, Sandisfield 
 
 Joseph Willson, Tyringham 
 
 James Baldwin, Egremont 
 
 Albert Smith, Hanover, " Co. Plymouth. " 
 
 There were eleven seals to this bond. William Dennison and 
 Jonathan Allen signed it as witnesses. One of the conditions of 
 this bond was that " within the year " the Legislature should by a 
 committee examine and report upon the accounts of the Treasurer. 
 By its own adjournment the Legislature did not pass upon these 
 accounts within the year, though their committee examined them, 
 and reported that they were correct. It was expressly stipulated 
 in the bond, that unless the Legislature performed this duty, the 
 individiial sureties should be exempted from all pecuniary liabilities 
 under it. Ezekiel Bacon, lawyer and postmaster at Williamstown, 
 was by much the ablest man among these eleven signers, and he had 
 occasion afterwards to make an unanswerable plea in equity against 
 his own and fellow-signers' liability to the State. This plea was 
 incorporated in a " Memorial of the Sureties of T. J. Skinner, late 
 Treasurer of the Commonwealth, together with a view of their case, 
 and the grounds on which they claim to be exonerated from their 
 liability for his defalcations." This Memorial was printed at Pitts- 
 field by Phinehas Allen, and was signed by Ezekiel Bacon, Albert 
 Smith, Timothy Childs, and John Chamberlin. 
 
 Ezekiel Bacon did not sign the second bond of Treasurer Skinner, 
 who was duly elected by " the Honorable the Senate and House of 
 Representatives of the Commonwealth for one year commencing the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 313 
 
 1st day of June instant." This second bond is dated June 11, 1807. 
 The names and seals to it are twelve in number, as follows : 
 
 Timothy Childs Pittsfield 
 
 Azariah Egleston Lenox 
 
 Daniel Brown Cheshire 
 
 Samuel H. Wheeler Lanesboro 
 
 William Young Williamstown 
 
 William Towner Williamstown 
 
 John Pickit Sandisfield 
 
 Joseph Willson Tyringham 
 
 James Baldwin Egremont 
 
 John Nichols Gt. Barrington 
 
 John Churchill Pittsfield 
 
 John Chandler Monmouth. 
 
 John Kead and William Smith sign as witnesses. The sum was 
 as before, $ 100,000. This time Skinner calls himself of "Boston, 
 County of Suffolk." Six names were common to the two bonds; 
 four are found on the first bond only; six on the second bond only; 
 and there are sixteen signers in all. 
 
 As the second year of Skinner's treasurership wore on and drew 
 toward its close, it became evident to a gradually widening circle in 
 Boston that something was the matter at the State treasury ; but it 
 was also evident to the same parties that the Treasurer had hopes 
 day by day, and even strong hopes, if a little delay were con- 
 ceded him, that his accounts -with the State could be honestly 
 adjusted. And it shows the strength of the confidence reposed in 
 him by leading members of the Legislature and other leading men 
 in Boston, men who had known him long and intimately, that these 
 delays were secured to him and all proper indulgence shown him. 
 But the crisis marched on like a warrior in arms. His last hope of 
 being able to cover disappeared from the heart of the Treasurer. 
 It was publicly announced by a committee of the Legislature that 
 the treasury was in apparent default to the sum of about $70,000. 
 Skinner's visible property, and that of his sixteen bondsmen, was 
 immediately put under legal attachment in behalf of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 The excitement soon became intense throughout the State. Berk- 
 shire County was in such a ferment as it had never been in before, 
 and as it has never been in since. The sheriff and his posse visited 
 nearly every important town in the county. The defalcation, though 
 strictly personal, was given at once a political color, and became a 
 hot ball tossed back and forth as between Federalists and Democrats. 
 
314 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Skinner was a Democrat, and so were all his bondsmen, and so were 
 a large majority of the citizens of Berkshire. But Federalism in its 
 partisan sense was still strong in Massachusetts, and particularly so 
 in Boston. Caleb Strong, a Federalist, was Governor, 1800-07; 
 James Sullivan, a Democrat, became Governor in 1807, and was 
 reflected in 1808; the Legislature had been Democrat in both the 
 years when Skinner had been chosen Treasurer; but, after a very 
 vehement struggle, the Federalists in 1808 obtained a small majority 
 in both branches. The Columbian Sentinel, a Federalist newspaper 
 in Boston, published the following editorials on the defalcation, the 
 first on July 13, and the second three days later. The partisan bias 
 is visible enough in both. On the whole, however, these are the 
 best contemporary comments obtainable ; and, as such, the readers 
 of this book are entitled to them in full. 
 
 THE TREASURY ! ! 
 
 It is a duty which we shall never neglect, however painful in performance, to 
 hold those up to censure, who have violated a public trust. It deters others 
 from enterprises, which equally involve their character and the public credit ; 
 and inculcates 011 the people the necessity of withholding their confidence from 
 men, who have no better claim to it than confessions of their political faith. 
 
 "We do therefore declare Tompson J. Skinner Esq., late Treasurer of the 
 Commonwealth, a Public Defaulter. We are authorized that the Committee 
 appointed by the General Court to examine his accounts and report thereon to 
 the Governor and Council, have reported, that there is a balance due and owing 
 to the Commonwealth of more than SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. 
 
 Whether Mr. Skinner from the contributions of bondsmen, or the successful is- 
 sue of his speculations, will discharge this debt is as yet uncertain. But the meas- 
 ure of his disgrace does not depend on the amount of the national loss. The 
 public money was confided to his care to be appropriated only to the public use. 
 He has violated his trust by converting it to his own private use. He was to hold 
 it to provide for the public safety, has employed it to make his own fortune. 
 
 The Constitution of the Commonwealth declares, that no money shall be 
 issued out of the Treasury but by warrant under the hand of the Governor, and 
 with the advice and consent of the Council, for the defence, support, and pro- 
 tection of the people ; and Mr. Skinner, in his oath of office, pledged himself to 
 conform to the regulation of the Constitution. Where, then, we ask him, is the 
 Sacred Deposit, which was appropriated by the people to the defence of their 
 altars and firesides, to the support of their peace and government? Has the 
 Governor and Council by warrant ordered our revenue invested in mercantile 
 speculations, or in sharp bargains on the Exchange? Or have the taxes which are 
 raised in this moment of public disaster and private embarrassment with so much 
 difficulty, been wasted by the Treasurer in the schemes of his broker, and in the 
 attempt to fill his own pocket out of the profits gained from the national capital? 
 
 The party who elected Mr. Skinner in the room of a man, whose virtues and 
 talents are objects of much esteem and respect, ought to be responsible for the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 315 
 
 injury as they are sharers of the disgrace. With the spirit of proscription they 
 hurried an honest federalist from office, and in the rage of faction they betrayed 
 the public money to a man, who has wasted it in his own speculations. 
 
 We can not repress our joy that the triumph of federalism has put an end to 
 a system in our Treasury so destructive of public credit, and so threatening to 
 the public safety. We congratulate our fellow citizens that the revenue of the 
 Commonwealth is again committed to the care of those [the Legislature had 
 then a very small majority of Federalists, though the Governor was still a Demo- 
 crat] who have held it as a sacred deposit ; that it will be no longer confided to 
 brokers or those employed in trade ; but will ever be safe in our Treasury, to 
 afford us defence and protection on any and every emergency. 
 
 The patriotic hope of this Federalist editor that the treasury of 
 Massachusetts "will ever be safe," has been indeed justified so far 
 as the past ninety years go, and the hope may be here reiterated as 
 reenforced by this long experience; but his basing of this hope on 
 the coming back to power and perpetuity of the Federalist party was 
 building on the sand; for the party waned in Massachusetts and 
 elsewhere for seven years, and went out forever under the reverbera- 
 tions of General Jackson's guns at New Orleans. Three days after 
 this editorial effusion in the Sentinel, that is to say, July 16, 1808, 
 the same writer resumed his pen in the same paper, and gave to his 
 contemporaries and to posterity the following: 
 
 THE TREASURY AGAIN. 
 
 The sad catastrophe, which has ensued from the temporary triumph of 
 Democracy, in our fiscal concerns, ought to warn the people of the danger of 
 confiding in the leaders of the party. A few considerations will show the mad- 
 ness of trusting the interest of the people to those pretended friends of the 
 people. 
 
 Mr. Jackson at the time of his removal from the Treasury, was entitled to a 
 reelection, if he had faithfully performed the duties of his office. The constitu- 
 tion permits a man to be eligible five years successively. There is an advantage 
 in continuing for some time in office the same person, who is thereby able to go 
 through the details of business with the greatest facility. It was proper how- 
 ever to guard against so long a continuance, as might enable a man to devise 
 schemes for using the public money without fear of detection. Hence such a 
 period was fixed as promised security from fraud, and at the same time induce 
 men of talents to take so responsible an office without hazard of pecuniary loss 
 by relinquishing private pursuits for public service. 
 
 Mr. Jackson's removal therefore was as contrary to the spirit of the constitu- 
 tion as it has proven injurious to the credit and character of the Treasury. If it 
 was not an infringement of his legal claims, it was a violation of his moral rights. 
 It was a measure dictated by the Sylla of his party, and for which he and his 
 coadjutors must answer. 
 
 The appointment of Mr. Skinner was as bad as the removal of Mr. Jackson. 
 No one pretended he had any knowledge, which rendered him competent to 
 
316 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 manage with accuracy or method the complicated concerns of the Treasury. It 
 was not his crime so much as his misfortune. But it was a substantial reason 
 for refusing such a substitute for a man perfectly conversant with the duties of 
 the office. 
 
 It was also known by the leaders of the democrats that Mr. Skinner had not 
 shown such prudence or method in his own concerns as to recommend him to 
 the management of the State Treasury. Such were his pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments, that probably not one of those who made him the Cashier of the State 
 would have loaned him money to discharge his private debts. The temptation 
 to use any man's money in one's hand, when a sheriff is at our heels, is so 
 strong, that it was criminal to deposit with such a man, however respectable, 
 the public revenue. 
 
 The democratic leaders are therefore directly responsible to the people for all 
 the injury our revenue or credit may receive from the defalcation of Mr. Skinner. 
 His appointment also should be considered as full proof of all their struggles,, 
 and all their clamor. 
 
 Their politics form only a branch of trade, and the acquisition of the govern- 
 ment, they call a successful adventure. They then sit to divide places of profit 
 and honor among themselves, on the same principles and with the same feel- 
 ings as joint merchants share the proceeds of a voyage. In this way, Mr. 
 Skinner had the Treasury for his part, and in full for the capital stock he had. 
 advanced. , 
 
 Those therefore who gave him his place, deserve most of the disgrace that 
 attached to his conduct. He has fallen a victim to his own wants and weakness.. 
 But their support of him was the huckstering barter of a faction. 
 
 The attempt to reelect Mr. Skinner for the present year was still worse than 
 his original appointment. The leaders of his party all knew the suspicions that 
 were abroad. They knew who were said to be his brothers they knew the 
 debt of some thousands of dollars he had paid in Berkshire they had heard 
 surmises of his bargains on the Exchange, and they understood how far his 
 private funds were adequate to all these enterprises. They had heard too, that 
 men of fortune had offered to pay the State five thousand dollars annually for 
 the Treasury, without a salary, with the same privileges Mr. Skinner had 
 assumed. But the leaders of the democrats still continued him their candidate, 
 and used their influence, and gave their votes, to secure his reelection. Nothing 
 but the principle and perseverance of their opponents rescued our revenue from 
 wider havoc. 
 
 The well-disposed and honest democrats who have followed the cunningly 
 davised fables of unprincipled demagogues, are now called upon to consider, if 
 they have not been deceived. They will think if the pretended love of the 
 people of which they hear and read so much, is not the mere hocus-pocus dialect 
 of political jugglers. By some legerdemain their revenue has flew out of sight,. 
 and we fear whether they will find any trick to get it back. They must feel too- 
 that the ruinous policy of the federal government [Jefferson's administrations] 
 has stripped them of their ready cash, while a baleful policy at home will 
 oppress them with unprecedented taxes, which they have no means of paying. 
 Surely they will feel that this is Egyptian Slavery, and they will rescue them- 
 selves from bondage and disgrace, by restoring their confidence to men, who led 
 them on to fame and fortune. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 317 
 
 This editorial writer, while he does not exaggerate the wrong-doing 
 of General Skinner as Treasurer of the State, uses a mess of bad 
 logic in these articles by trying to make it appear that Skinner's 
 party was responsible for his personal default; that his predecessor 
 in the treasury, Jackson, was removed from office in order to make 
 room for his peculations; that Skinner was a bad man when he 
 was elected by the Legislature to the treasury, and that his fellow- 
 partisans were worse men than he ; in short, that a trick had been 
 played upon the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Nothing can be 
 farther from the truth than that. Skinner was a criminal in act 
 while Treasurer, but not at all in purpose or premeditation. He 
 was caught in speculations and consequent losses, which began ten 
 years before he became Treasurer, and of which he became at last 
 with others a victim, while dealing in perfect good faith in lands 
 offered for sale in Northern markets under an unquestioned Act of 
 the State of Georgia, which act was ostensibly repealed by a subse- 
 quent Legislature of that State, after the formal and legal rights in 
 said lands had passed by sale into the hands of third parties. The 
 Constitution of the United States had gone into practical operation 
 in 1789. That instrument unambiguously declares : " No State shall 
 pass any law impairing the obligation of Contracts." But the 
 Supreme Court had not then adjudicated upon any case arising 
 under this clause. The famous Dartmouth College case came before 
 it much later in point of time. A brief account of the speculations 
 in these Georgia lands, so called, seems to be required in these pages 
 in order to exhibit the only possible, and at best but partial, exon- 
 eration of General Skinner. 
 
 The diary of Thomas Eobbins, under date of March 8, 1796, has 
 this entry : " Gen. Skinner arrived from Boston. Great loss there 
 from speculation in Georgia lands." Bobbins was then a Senior in 
 College here, and had just engaged himself to Alice Skinner, a niece 
 of the general. It would be incredible that Bobbins should make 
 such an entry as this in his journal, unless he himself had heard 
 General Skinner expatiate on these speculations and losses; and 
 equally incredible that Skinner should thus expatiate on them in 
 his family unless he himself were specially interested in them. It 
 may be, therefore, taken for granted, that Skinner, then and always 
 much in Boston, had begun to dabble in Georgia lands as early as 
 the spring of 1796. 
 
 But what were these lands? How came they to be offered for 
 sale in Boston? What was the cause of the great excitement there 
 in March, 1796? The following extracts from Hildreth's "History 
 
318 WILLTAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of the United States," second series, will answer these questions 
 quickly and satisfactorily. Vol. I., pp. 227 et seq., under date 
 1789: 
 
 The migration from the older districts to new lands, which prevailing pecuni- 
 ary embarrassments had occasioned, had given rise throughout the United States 
 to a great spirit of land speculation. The very first Legislature of Georgia, 
 which met under the new Constitution, undertook to sell out, to three private 
 Companies, the preemption right to tracts of land beyond the Chattahoochee, 
 five millions of acres to the South Carolina Yazoo Company for the sum of 
 $66,964, seven millions of acres to the Virginia Yazoo Company for $93,742, and 
 three millions and a half of acres for $46,875, to the Tennessee Yazoo Company. 
 It was one of the conditions of the sale that the money should be paid within 
 two years ; but, as the companies insisted upon paying, not in cash, but in the 
 depreciated Georgia paper, a succeeding Legislature took advantage of that cir- 
 cumstance to declare the bargain at an end. All the purchasers did not assent 
 to this view ; but the controversy upon this subject was quite overshadowed by 
 another, which sprang up a few years later, growing out of another sale of these 
 same lands to other companies, and giving rise to the more famous Yazoo claims, 
 of which we shall have occasion hereafter to speak. 
 
 These lands west of the Chattahoochee, which the Georgians 
 claimed in sovereignty, with the exclusive right of preemption from 
 the Indians, were the district out of which the two States of Ala- 
 bama and Mississippi have since been constituted. In the latter 
 part of 1795, and in the first two months of 1796, as is related by 
 Hildreth, Vol. I., pp. 582 and 642, these events happened. 
 
 The speculators had turned their attention to the lands claimed by Georgia 
 west of the Chattahoochee and between that river and the Mississippi. These 
 lands, it is true, were occupied at present by the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chicka- 
 saws, numerous and powerful Indian tribes. The title of Georgia to these lands 
 was also very questionable, especially to that part of them below the 33 d degree 
 of north latitude, all the lands below that parallel being claimed by the United 
 States, as formerly a part of the British province of West Florida. But this had 
 not prevented the formation of four companies, including some very eminent 
 citizens in various parts of the Union, to which the Legislature of Georgia, 
 during the preceding winter, had sold the preemption right to a vast portion of 
 the tract above described. Those speculators had proceeded to sell out, at a great 
 advance, to individuals and companies in the Middle States and New England. 
 
 At the present moment, attention in Georgia was chiefly engrossed, and the 
 feeling against New England greatly excited, by the speculative purchases, 
 already alluded to, of the preemption right to the lands west of the Chatta- 
 hoochee. Jackson, the Georgia senator, had resigned his seat, and procured 
 himself to be elected a member of the State Legislature, for the very purpose 
 of nullifying those sales, a business into which he entered with characteristic 
 energy. The lands had been sold for the sum of $500,000 to four separate com- 
 panies, the Georgia, the Georgia Mississippi, the Upper Mississippi, and the 
 Tennessee. The right to become interested in these purchases to the extent of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 319 
 
 two million, on the same terms as the original members, was reserved by the act 
 to the citizens of Georgia ; and it appeared that of the members of the Legisla- 
 ture who voted for the bill, all but one did, in fact, become interested, under this 
 provision, in one or more of the companies. Upon this state of facts, together 
 with other general allegations of corruption and of the inadequacy of the sum 
 paid, the Legislature of the present year passed a new act [February], revoking 
 the sale as unconstitutional and void, and directing the repayment to the com- 
 panies of their respective amounts of the purchase money, if called for within 
 eight months ; the several amounts uncalled for at the end of that period to be 
 adjudged "derelict and forfeit to the State." 
 
 As an additional evidence of the indignation of the Legislature, and a means, 
 too, of destroying all proof of the existence of the grant, the original act author- 
 izing the sale was ordered to be burned, and all the records relating to it to be 
 expunged. The burning was executed with great formality. The two houses, 
 moving in procession for that purpose, were preceded by a committee bearing 
 the obnoxious parchments. A fire having been kindled in front of the State 
 House, the committee handed the documents to the President of the Senate, he 
 to the Speaker of the House, he to the clerk, and the clerk to the door-keeper, 
 by whose hands they were committed to the flames. 
 
 The news of all these actions on the part of the Georgia Legisla- 
 ture in February reached Boston in the first days of March, and 
 Skinner brought them to Williamstown in time for Robbins's record 
 in his diary on the 8th of March. There had been no time for con- 
 ference on the part of the holders of these purchased rights in New 
 England, and no plan for concerted action. These came later. For 
 the present, there was a plenty of indignation and clamor. The 
 last extract from Hildreth will tell us all we want to know more. 
 
 Previous to this attempt to nullify the sale, the original purchasers, among 
 whom were Patrick Henry, Judge Wilson, and other distinguished citizens, had 
 already transferred their rights to others. These transfers had been made partly 
 in South Carolina and the Middle States, but principally in New England at a 
 large advance on the original purchase money. Nor were these new purchasers 
 at all disposed to concede the right of the Georgia Legislature to nullify the con- 
 tracts of their predecessors, especially in a case like the present, where the inter- 
 ests of third parties were concerned. Hence loud complaints of unconstitutional 
 breach of faith on the one side, and of corruption and fraud on the other. When 
 these same lands were subsequently sold by Georgia to the United States, Con- 
 gress, as we shall see, was loudly called upon for an indemnity to the claimants 
 under the Georgia grants ; but this claim was very vigorously contested, and 
 near twenty years elapsed before the matter was brought to a final settlement. 
 
 There can be no solid question (1) that these New England pur- 
 chasers of Georgia land rights were foully treated by the legislative 
 repudiation of 1796 on the part of Georgia; (2) that this repudiation 
 was contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution of the United 
 
320 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 States, although at that time there had been no judicial determina- 
 tion of the force of the " contract " clause of that instrument ; and 
 (3) that these innocent third parties had both a legal and certainly 
 an equitable claim on Congress as a legislative body, so far forth as 
 the United States came into possession of any part of these lands, 
 either by purchase from the State of Georgia or by enforcing their 
 own original claim to the lands lying south of the thirty-third 
 parallel. There can be doubt that Skinner and his fellow-losers in 
 Boston and the other parts of New England, during the ten years 
 from 1796 to 1806, the time of his election as Treasurer of Massa- 
 chusetts, nourished rational hopes of reimbursement in some form 
 and to some extent from the United States government. His 
 accounts with the State at the close of his first year as Treasurer, 
 namely, June, 1807, were all correct, according to the report of a 
 committee of the Legislature appointed for that purpose, which 
 report, however, was not passed upon and approved by the Legisla- 
 ture itself, and thereby made legal and certain. It is altogether 
 probable, nevertheless, that Skinner did not tamper at all with the 
 funds of the State until the second year of his treasurership. How 
 he then dealt with them so as to become a defaulter at its close, we 
 do not know, nor is it a matter of any importance. What we do 
 know is, that his fall came about in connection with these land 
 speculations, entered upon in good faith years before he became 
 Treasurer, and that at the last he had in Boston advisers and fellow- 
 sufferers, and possibly confederates, in his troubles, whose losses 
 had come from the same general sources. 
 
 How would the doubtless exaggerated reports of the downfall of 
 General Skinner have naturally affected the fortunes of Williams 
 College under all the circumstances? He was the treasurer of the 
 College, and had been from the very beginning. It was immedi- 
 ately and widely announced that no penny of the College funds had 
 been compromised in any way by the course of the treasurer. So 
 far so good. But Skinner was a leading trustee, and had been from 
 the opening of the Free School in 1791. His prodigious failure 
 could not but throw some discredit, and even some disgrace, upon 
 the Board of Trustees. Again, he had been for twenty years in 
 almost all relations the most prominent man in town; Colonel 
 Simonds, Judge Noble, Rev. Seth Swift, and others of the old pil- 
 lars had already recently passed away; now, might well reason 
 young men in course of preparation for Williams College in the 
 summer of 1808, instead of this forceful presence there in town and 
 college, there will be a vacuum, nay, a kind of abyss, we had 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 321 
 
 turn our steps elsewhere. It is well-nigh certain that many 
 young men reasoned in this way, not during that summer only, but 
 in subsequent summers also. This reasoning was legitimate and 
 inevitable. It undoubtedly had its effect on the numbers entered 
 in 1808. And then when, after that term had begun, and the effect 
 of the startling revelations at Boston had lost their sharpest edge, 
 the reports went out from here on the wings of the wind of the 
 trouble over the tutors, and that college had been dismissed for four 
 weeks on that account; and the scholars carried back to their homes 
 the news of both catastrophies conjoined, and what Dr. Griffin said 
 twenty years afterward about the " great shock " at this time may 
 well be believed. 
 
 Aside from the College, the sequels in Berkshire of Skinner's 
 defalcation were melancholy enough. His sixteen bondsmen were 
 nearly all pecuniarily ruined by it. Three of these were citizens of 
 Williamstown at the time of their signature, namely, William Young 
 and William Towner and Ezekiel Bacon. The first belonged to a 
 Celtic-Irish family that joined fortunes with the five ship-loads of 
 Scotch-Irish that came to Massachusetts from Londonderry in 1718. 
 About one-third of all these passed in the autumn of that year from 
 Boston to Worcester, where they settled down. This family were 
 very numerous in that generation and in subsequent ones. Moses 
 Young, himself born in Ireland, moved from Worcester t'o Brimfield, 
 where he became constable and tax-collector; and there remain 
 among his papers receipts from Harrison Gray, Treasurer of the 
 Commonwealth, for moneys thus paid in by Young in 1764 and 
 1765. This Moses never came to Williamstown ; but three of his 
 sons and two of his daughters had made permanent homes here be- 
 fore the father's death, which fell Sept. 25, 1781. Moses, Andrew, 
 and William were the names of the sons. The three all settled at 
 the South Part, where some of their descendants still live on the 
 ancestral lands, and all three were prosperous farmers. William, 
 the youngest, born in 1754, went to Cambridge as a minute-man in 
 1775, as his powder-horn continues to bear witness; and he carried 
 the same powder-horn into the battle of Bennington. He became 
 prominent later in town affairs as a Justice of the Peace, bearing 
 the coveted title of Squire. He was in the Legislature from Wil- 
 liamstown in 1792, '93, '95, and 1800-08, inclusive. He was on 
 both the bonds of General Skinner, and he was a member of both 
 the Legislatures that were concerned in approving or disapproving 
 Skinner's accounts at the close of each of his years of service in the 
 Treasury. Like Skinner, he was a Jefferson ian Democrat and a 
 
322 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Free and Accepted Mason. His house, which is figured below, and 
 which is still standing intact, owned and occupied by his grandson, 
 George Smith, had a lodge-room in the second story for the meet- 
 ings of his fellow-Masons. His farm in the little village of South 
 Williamstown was large and fine, and of course was taken possession 
 of by the State; but before these surety matters were settled for 
 good and all, Squire Young departed this life, and the State ulti- 
 mately restored to his widow about one-third of the farm, including 
 the house. 
 
 William Towner, another of Skinner's bondsmen, who came to 
 Williamstown about 1790 from Stafford's Hill, where he was the 
 
 WILLIAM YOUNG'S HOUSE. 
 
 first physician, and who became distinguished here as a physician 
 during the next twenty years, while his contemporary, Dr. Porter, 
 became perhaps even more distinguished as a surgeon, entered like- 
 wise eagerly into politics, " at that time the all-engrossing concern 
 of the day." He too was a Democrat and Freemason, a represen- 
 tative and senator at Boston, a general in the Militia, and a Justice 
 of the Peace. He was the first resident of Williamstown known to 
 be an Episcopalian, and as often as possible attended divine service at 
 Lanesboro, then the nearest point of that form of worship. He was 
 remarkably esteemed in all the relations of life by his fellow-towns- 
 men and by the people of all the neighboring towns. He died in 
 Pownal in 1813, while attending upon patients there scourged by 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 323 
 
 an epidemic of pneumonia. He died insolvent in consequence of 
 his suretyship with his friend, General Skinner. He was a total 
 abstainer from intoxicating drinks at a time when the physician 
 called or calling was expected to help himself to any " refreshments," 
 usually standing upon the mantel. A few days after his death, 
 there came to his address in Williarnstown, signed and sealed, a 
 high commission in the active army of the United States, which, 
 had he lived, he would undoubtedly have accepted; for he was a 
 partisan of the War of 1812, and a personal friend of General 
 Dearborn. 
 
 It is more than likely that Towner was recommended for this 
 commission by another of the bondsmen of General Skinner, at that 
 time possessing a great influence in Congress, and also over the 
 mind of President Madison, namely, Ezekiel Bacon of Williamstown 
 and Pittsfield. He was a man of extraordinary ability and of un- 
 usual popularity. He was the only lawyer, of distinction certainly, 
 whose name was on the first bond. He believed himself and his 
 fellow-signers to be legally absolved from the pecuniary responsi- 
 bility of their suretyship, in consequence of the failure of the Legis- 
 lature (by their adjournment) to pass formal approval on Skinner's 
 accounts at the close of his first term, which approval was an express 
 condition of the liability of his bondsmen; and he wrote out and 
 published a legal argument to this effect, entitled " Memorial of the 
 Sureties of Tompson J. Skinner, late Treasurer of the Common- 
 wealth, together with a view of their case, and the grounds on which 
 they claim to be exonerated from their liability for his defalcations." 
 This memorial made a strong impression upon the bench and the 
 bar and the people of Berkshire, and became the basis of the com- 
 promise ultimately entered into between the State and the bondsmen 
 and their heirs, by which a certain part of the pecuniary indemni- 
 ties were remitted. The ultimate loss to the State by Skinner's 
 transactions was $22,000. 
 
 But while Bacon fully believed in his legal exoneration, he did 
 not seek to evade his moral responsibility. He stood with the 
 majority of his fellow-bondsmen, though it took most of the earnings 
 and savings of his industrial life up to that time. It is said that 
 one or more of the sureties forgot to be honest in their dilemma, 
 and tried to conceal either themselves or their property; and it is 
 known that a few of the rest were put on "the limits," as it was 
 called, the authorities fearing that they might be tempted to do 
 likewise. One of these latter was John Chamberlin of Dalton. 
 But Bacon, then a member of Congress from the Berkshire district, 
 
324 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 gained great credit by making no protest, although he made an argu- 
 ment, against yielding up his property to the State. The present 
 writer has had the privilege of conversation and correspondence 
 with Judge William J. Bacon of Utica, a distinguished son of 
 Ezekiel Bacon. Judge Bacon writes : 
 
 I well remember the visit of my father to the bondsmen of Gen. T. J. Skinner 
 at the jail in Lenox, for I went with him, although a boy of eight or nine years 
 of age. My father's visit was one of sympathy with the bondsmen. He was 
 himself one of the sureties, but refused "to go upon the limits," as some of 
 them chose to do rather than surrender their property. He sacrificed a large 
 part of all he possessed, and finally effected a compromise, and was released by 
 the State, after suffering the loss of nearly all he had by his diligence acquired. 
 I knew little about these matters then, and wondered why the men chose the 
 jail limits, but I learned the reasons long afterwards ; and have never ceased to 
 honor my father's memory for the stand he took and the sacrifices he made for 
 a man, who betrayed the confidence of his sureties, and who proved to be a base 
 and venal defaulter to the State. 
 
 The man who "stepped over the border," or in other words, fled to Canada, 
 was, as is supposed, Barnabas Bidwell of Stockbridge. He ran away because 
 he was himself a defaulter as Treasurer of the County of Berkshire. He was 
 the father of Marshall S. Bidwell, who in after years came back to this country 
 and settled in New York, where he rose to eminence as a lawyer, and was in all 
 respects a most able and excellent man. 
 
 The bearing of Bacon throughout all these transactions was so 
 unselfish and honorable, that when he came before his constituents 
 for reelection to Congress in 1809, he is said by Historian Smith of 
 Pittsfield to have received every vote in that town, and nearly all 
 the votes in the congressional district. He served three successive 
 terms, 1807-13, was on the Ways and Means Committee, and chair- 
 man of it during his last term, which was a time of war and national 
 financial difficulty. His single influence with President Madison at 
 this time is said to have been sufficient to secure the appointment 
 of Joseph Story, another Massachusetts Democrat, to the bench of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
 The revelation of the defalcation of Barnabas Bidwell, who was 
 also a Democrat, to the county of Berkshire, and that of Skinner to 
 the State of Massachusetts, were nearly contemporaneous ; and it was 
 made at once and for a long time after a ground of reproach to the 
 Democratic party, and pushed as a means of loosening the hold of 
 that party upon the Commonwealth. This was perhaps partly suc- 
 cessful for a little time in the interest of the Federalist party, but 
 nothing can permanently secure from dissolution in a free country 
 any party that fairly plants itself upon special legal privileges to 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 325 
 
 the few at the cost of the many. The Federalist party, because it 
 was such a party, was wiggling to its death in both State and nation. 
 The reelection of President Monroe did not exhibit even the shreds 
 of a party in opposition to the fundamental political principles, 
 which were developed by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia and by 
 Parson Allen in Massachusetts at nearly the same time and in nearly 
 the same way, namely, No special privileges under the law to any 
 individual or class of individuals, equal rights and opportunities to 
 all men so far as governments are concerned. 
 
 But in Massachusetts, discussions and insinuations, blasts and 
 counter-blasts, sometimes hot-tempered and sometimes ludicrous, 
 continued for some years. The Congregational ministers, for an 
 obvious reason, were almost unanimously Federalists, and ecclesias- 
 tical privileges had to take their turn in submersion with those of 
 the political class. The credible story runs, that in those days at 
 a Fourth of July celebration in the Old Colony, where one at least 
 of Skinner's bondsmen resided, a minister by the name of Lincoln 
 vented himself in the following toast : 
 
 " If Skinner steals, and Bid well runs, 
 And robs the State of half its funds ; 
 How many democrats must follow, 
 To rob the Treasury all hollow ? " 
 
 No cause is lost so long as it finds even an impromptu champion. 
 A quick-witted Democrat present, not having the fear of the Church 
 before his eyes, sprang to his feet with the following on his lips : 
 
 " It takes nine tailors to make a man ; 
 Now solve this riddle, if you can : 
 How many priests like Parson Lincoln, 
 Would make a saint that God could think on ! " 
 
 Before passing finally from these town and college troubles of 
 this first decade of the century, we must advert to an appeal of the 
 College to the Legislature in 1805 for further assistance. The 
 original chapel in the south end of West College was in some 
 respects unpleasantly situated, and was inadequate to its religious 
 purposes. A committee of the Legislature which investigated the 
 condition and prospects of the institution under this appeal and 
 petition made the following report, Feb. 9, 1805 : 
 
 The Committee of both Houses, to whom was referred the petition of the 
 President and Trustees of Williams College, praying the aid of government to 
 enable them to build a chapel for the performance of divine service, and for 
 
326 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 keeping the college library and apparatus, having examined the origin, rise, and 
 progress of the seminary, from its institution to the present time, together with 
 the aid heretofore afforded by the government, and the existing state of its 
 funds, beg leave to observe, That the funds granted by the original donor and 
 the government have, in the opinion of the Committee, been judiciously applied 
 to the object of the institution, and with success exceeding the most sanguine 
 expectations, and that the present state of the college affords a reasonable and 
 pleasing expectation of its future extensive benefits to society, and that a chapel 
 for the purposes above mentioned would essentially promote the same ; and as 
 the encouragement and grants of the government to that college have not been, 
 equal to those made to other seminaries in the Commonwealth, the Committee 
 ask leave to report the following Resolve : 
 
 Resolved, For reasons set forth in the petition, that there be and hereby is 
 granted one township of land of the contents of six miles square to be laid out 
 and assigned from any of the unappropriated lands belonging to the Common- 
 wealth, in the District of Maine, except the ten townships lately purchased of 
 the Penobscot Indians. 
 
 It is certain that this resolve passed the General Court, although 
 no record of it has ever been found. No chapel at any rate was 
 undertaken to be built for more than twenty years after this ; but in 
 1809 another township of land in Maine was granted " for further 
 aid in support of Williams College, and for the erecting of other 
 buildings for the convenience of the institution, and for sustaining 
 a professor of the Oriental languages," and the sum of $9500 was 
 realized from the sale of the two townships. 
 
 Kecurring now to the College and its fortunes, during the up- 
 heavals of the War of 1812 and the political readjustments that 
 followed it, we note that at the close of the four weeks 7 recess in 
 the autumn of 1808, consequent upon the resignation of Professor 
 Olds and the two tutors, College reorganized itself by bringing- 
 together three new tutors, who, with the president, were the sole 
 teachers for two years, namely, Chester Dewey and John Nelson 
 and James W. Eobbins. Each of the three was a graduate of the 
 College ; and Bobbins, who was a younger brother of Thomas Kob- 
 bins, from whose diary copious extracts have been made, had been 
 previously a tutor for two years, and came back at the earnest 
 request of the president to help out in a case of difficulty. He only 
 taught, however, a little more than a year, when his health failed, 
 and he settled down to an honorable mercantile life in Lenox. John 
 Nelson was graduated in 1807. He continued to teach here for two 
 years. His home was in Worcester, where he taught at intervals 
 both privately and in a select school. Among his pupils was George 
 Bancroft, whom he taught Virgil; but the precocious boy could 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 327 
 
 shortly read Latin better than his preceptor. The writer has often 
 heard his mother, Lydia Gray, a native of Worcester, who attended 
 the select school, relate anecdotes of her amiable and excellent 
 teacher, who was not over well grounded in English Grammar, which 
 was her forte and pride. Nelson taught also for a while in the acad- 
 emy at Leicester, where he was settled in the ministry in 1812, and 
 continued the pastor there until his death in 1871, at the age of 85 
 years. An adopted daughter of the Nelsons was the wife of John 
 E. Russell, a public man of Massachusetts justly famous in his day. 
 The third of the new tutors in the stress of 1808, Chester Dewey, 
 became a far more notable man than either of the other two. The 
 families of Dewey and Noble are found planted together in Westfield 
 as early as 1666, represented by Thomas Dewey and Thomas Noble. 
 Branches of these two families migrated from Westfield to Sheffield, 
 Obadiah Noble being the first settler of the latter town. Members 
 of the two families came later from Sheffield to Williamstown, and 
 became, perhaps, the two most prominent families here for fifty 
 years. David Noble came just before the outbreak of the Revolution, 
 and Daniel Dewey just after its close. Chester Dewey was born in 
 Sheffield in 1784, entered college in 1802, pursued the full course, 
 and was graduated with unusual credit in 1806. He studied theol- 
 ogy with Dr. West in Stockbridge, and preached in Tyringham about 
 nine months, when he was suddenly called to the College. He was 
 assigned to carry on the instruction of the Junior class, the class 
 that had been served by Professor Olds, and that had come into the 
 difficulties with him and the president which have already been 
 described. Half a century later, Dewey himself gave an account of 
 what transpired at his first recitation : 
 
 When the students reassembled, the instruction of the refractory Junior class 
 was assigned to Mr. Dewey ; thus placing him in a most trying and responsible 
 position. His opinion, early formed, was that it was not best for a teacher to 
 say much about government, but so to influence students that they shall govern 
 themselves. Accordingly, when he met the class for the first time, he frankly 
 confessed to them his inexperience, reminded them of the unfavorable reports 
 which had gone abroad respecting them, and assured them that the only way to 
 counteract these reports, and do away their injurious influence, was by a 
 faithful and manly performance of duty in future. The appeal produced the 
 desired effect. They felt that they were thrown upon their individual responsi- 
 bility. Subordination and order were at once restored ; study was cheerfully 
 and heartily pursued. Years afterwards, the Hon. Daniel Kellogg, one of the 
 judges of the Supreme Court of Vermont, a member of the class, remarked: 
 "I remember as if it were but yesterday, that first recitation of Mr. Dewey 's, 
 and his address to the class. He put us on our honor, and after that we would 
 not for all the world have done a rebellious deed." 
 
328 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Besides Daniel Kellogg, there were in the class at that time Justin 
 Edwards, Darius Lyman, William H. Maynard, Luther Rice, and 
 several others, who made their mark in the world afterward. The 
 note of the pitch thus given by Chester Dewey in his first official 
 hour was kept up throughout a remarkably successful college song 
 for nineteen years. He carried this class through their Junior year, 
 and the next Junior class also, as their sole instructor ; when he was 
 elected Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in the 
 place of Professor Olds, a chair he held for seventeen years. He 
 was thus constituted the third in succession of regular college pro- 
 fessors, Mackay, Olds, Dewey. He alone of the three had time 
 and opportunity of showing what a college professor can do under 
 the best auspices. The impulses imparted here and elsewhere to the 
 study of the natural sciences by Amos Eaton, were felt in their best 
 form and degree and exhibited in their most attractive features by 
 Chester Dewey. Benjamin Silliman antedated at New Haven by 
 about five years such lectures on chemistry as Dewey began in 
 Williamstown, and continued these and cognate lectures on botany, 
 until both these departments were thoroughly established. These 
 were his specialties ; but, like Silliman, he considered as his field the 
 whole body of natural phenomena, not then as now subdivided into 
 many special sciences. Besides chemistry, Silliman took peculiar 
 possession of geology, and Dewey of botany; and the latter ulti- 
 mately made himself the authority in this country and in Europe 
 within the botanical department of the Carices. One of the last 
 years of his life was much occupied in classifying and completing 
 his then unequalled collection of Carices, which he gave by will to 
 his Alma Mater. 
 
 Visible and tangible nature was the chosen field both for study 
 and teaching of Chester Dewey. He saw that the field was wide, and 
 that no one man could do more than thoroughly to till one or two of 
 its subdivisions, while maintaining, as he thought was needful, a 
 general familiarity with all its departments. He saw also, that to do 
 either of these two things well, there must be many coadjutors. 
 Accordingly, he commenced a system of exchanging specimens 
 throughout the country, and a system of meteorological observations, 
 and interested many young men here and there as co workers. He 
 came to carry on a large correspondence with men whose scientific 
 inquiries were similar to his own, not only in America, but also in 
 England, France, Germany, and Norway. Throughout life his sym- 
 pathies were youthful, his facility in accomplishing work remark- 
 able, his vigor of mind and body unusual, and his industry 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 329 
 
 indefatigable. At the same time, he loved to impart as well as to 
 obtain. He was a natural teacher, modest, genial, unselfish. He 
 became, therefore, a leader of men along those paths which he him- 
 self trod. Unselfishness is the indispensable characteristic of good 
 teachers and of the moral leaders of men. Self-seeking is a deadly 
 blight in the college as in the world. 
 
 Wrote one who took his college course about the time when Dewey 
 left the College, that is to say, in 1827, speaking of the years of his 
 professorship : 
 
 During this time he held a prominent position in the management of the 
 college, and during a portion of the time was acting president. His facility and 
 success in the government of young men brought upon him special responsi- 
 bilities, and constituted him the leader in emergencies. In doubt, his counsel 
 was essential ; in difficulty, his presence was indispensable ; in any difference of 
 sentiment, his opinion was final. He did much to advance the standard of 
 scholarship and enlarge the course of study. In natural science he was untir- 
 ing. The departments of chemistry and botany he established on a permanent 
 basis. In religious experience, also, he exerted an admirable influence. The 
 students came to him for counsel, guidance, and encouragement. He was the 
 help of the inquiring spirit ; he did not fail to speak the apt word to the impeni- 
 tent ; he prayed with the prayerful, and rejoiced with the forgiven. As a 
 preacher of the gospel, Dr. Dewey was calm and gentle, yet earnest and impres- 
 sive. He loved most to dwell upon the benevolence and love of God as mani- 
 fested in the gift of his Son to die for sinners. But his presentations of the 
 gospel were always copiously illustrated from the sphere of his scientific studies. 
 He seldom wrote sermons ; but he talked to the people out of a gratefulness of 
 mind which could never be at a loss, with wonderful simplicity of language and 
 expression. His preaching was full of instruction and edification. 
 
 This discerning and beautiful and wholly credible testimony of a 
 contemporary, goes to prove a proposition important as toward un- 
 derstanding the life of a New England college, which has rarely, 
 if ever, been laid down in books, and which Chester Dewey was the 
 first to exemplify at Williams, namely, that a college professor in a 
 department that suits him, and which he is at the same time shaping 
 to his own mind without interference from any one, is in a position 
 for gaining and retaining a stronger moral hold on the students than 
 a president for the time being is likely to have, one may perhaps say 
 than a president can possibly have. All the reasons for this can 
 not be given in this place ; these are some of them : the professor 
 meets his students for the time being more constantly, more inti- 
 mately, with a relatively less aspect of authority in all cases ; he 
 can adapt himself better in methods and approaches to individual 
 characteristics among the students in his own classes; his circle is 
 
330 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 smaller and can be in all senses more easily compassed ; lie can, if 
 he chooses, see the men in their rooms in a sort of social way, and 
 invite them to his own room ; unknown to others he has opportuni- 
 ties of doing little kindnesses to individuals to a student who 
 is poor in purse or afflicted or needing in any way a paternal or 
 fraternal word; he can make his classes sure by all proper self- 
 re vealings that he has no selfish ends whatever in his instructions, 
 or in any part of his conduct toward them ; and having a less general 
 and a less wearing supervision and responsibility than the president 
 for the ongoing of things, he is able in a more genial way to gain 
 the confidence and affection of those to whom on his part he is bound 
 and inclined to show the utmost confidence warranted by the cir- 
 cumstances. Unwarranted suspicions manifested toward students 
 or colleagues is justly fatal to any man's influence in a college. 
 
 In ways like these, or ways implied in these, Professor Dewey 
 came to wield an extraordinary moral power in the College and in 
 the county. He forwarded the temperance, or rather the total- 
 abstinence movement, that began to sweep over New England in the 
 twenties. He lectured effectively on this subject as he had time 
 and opportunity. Besides bringing into full momentum here that 
 preeminence of the natural sciences over the other classes of studies, 
 which, continued by Albert Hopkins and others, characterized the 
 first third of the nineteenth century, Dewey began to give lectures 
 on botany and chemistry N to the Medical College in Pittsfield in 1822, 
 and later to the similar college in Castleton, Vermont ; and for a 
 good many years he gave about four months each year to such work, 
 thus forwarding the practical science and art of medicine. Yale 
 College gave him the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1825, Union 
 College the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1838, and Williams the 
 degree of Doctor of Laws in 1850. Under peculiar circumstances, 
 which, so far as they may be made fairly to illustrate permanent 
 college principles, may be detailed at a later stage of our story, 
 Chester Dewey resigned his professorship in Williams in 1827, and 
 took charge of a high school or " gymnasium " in Pittsfield, modelled 
 after the Eound Hill School at Northampton, established in 1823 by 
 George Bancroft and J. G. Cogswell. The idea of both these schools 
 was taken from Germany, as was also the name, and imported a 
 school of high grade for the training of boys, and particularly for 
 fitting them for college on a superior basis to any that then prevailed 
 in America. Bancroft failed utterly as a teacher, and Cogswell only 
 went on with his school for five years ; but Dewey for nine years had 
 a great success with his Pittsfield Gymnasium. In 1836, however, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 331 
 
 he removed to Rochester, and became influential in establishing and 
 building up the "University" there. Here he lived for thirty-one 
 years, honored by everybody, dying at eighty-three. His relations 
 with Williams continued remarkably pleasant and intimate till the 
 day of his death. His last visit here was at Commencement time in 
 1856 ; and the writer remembers with pleasure all the circumstances 
 of meeting him then in company with Mark Hopkins on the outlook 
 of the Astronomical Observatory. That was forty years ago. 
 
 The early intimate connection between Yale and Williams was 
 kept up from time to time by various pleasant relations, and by none 
 more, perhaps, than by the repeated visits to Williamstown of 
 President Dwight, while on his justly famous " Travels." In the 
 second published volume of these travels, pages 398-400, reference is 
 made to two distinct visits here, and the impressions received, one 
 of which has already been quoted in these pages relating to Seth 
 Swift, the first minister, his discouragements and successes ; and the 
 other reference will now be given in part, which has been often 
 quoted on account of its scientific aspects, and which deserves a 
 permanent home in a book like the present. 
 
 In September, 1806, I passed through this town on a journey to Vermont. 
 While I was here, President Fitch showed me an insect, about an inch in length, 
 of a brown color, tinged with orange, with two antennae, or feelers, not unlike 
 a rosebug in form, but in every respect handsomer. The insect came out of a 
 tea-table, made of the boards of an apple-tree, and belonging to Mr. [Schuyler] 
 Putnam, one of the inhabitants, and a son of the Hon. Major-General Putnam, 
 late of Brooklyn in Connecticut. I went with President Fitch to Mr. Putnam's 
 [on Bee Hill], to examine the spot, whence the insect had emerged into light. 
 We measured the cavity ; and found it about two inches in length, nearly hori- 
 zontal, and inclining very little, except at the mouth. Between the hole, and 
 the outside of the leaf of the table, there were forty grains of the wood. Presi- 
 dent Fitch supposed, with what I thought a moderate estimate, that the saw-mill, 
 and the cabinet-maker had cut off at least as many as thirteen more : making sixty 
 in the whole. The tree had, therefore, been growing sixty years, from the time, 
 when the egg was deposited in it, out of which the insect was produced. How 
 long a period had intervened between the day, in which the apple-tree was cut 
 down, and that, in which the table was purchased by Mr. Putnam, is unknown. 
 It had been in his possession twenty years. Of course, eighty years had elapsed 
 between the laying of the egg, ahd the birth of the insect. 
 
 After its birth, it was placed under a tumbler, and attempts were made, by 
 offering it for sustenance wood of the apple-tree, and bread to prolong its life. 
 It ate a small quantity of the bread ; but, either for want of more proper food, 
 or from being lodged in too cold a temperature, or from some other cause, it 
 died within a few days. My own acquaintance with entomology is so limited, 
 that I know not whether the observations which I am about to make, may not 
 seem idle, and be really superfluous, to persons acquainted with this branch of 
 
332 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 natural history. But, I confess, the fact opened to me a train of thoughts, in 
 some measure interesting. I had often wondered at many things, relative to 
 this class of beings ; and had often heard men of a respectable understanding 
 express their wonder, and their doubts, concerning the same things : particu- 
 larly, the origin of many new new tribes of insects, which, within the last forty 
 years, had visited these States : (tribes unknown even to the oldest men living, 
 and, therefore, styled new;) the periods intervening between the appearance 
 and disappearance of other tribes, which are well known ; for example, the 
 locust ; the apparently absolute disappearance of still other tribes, together with 
 several other things of a similar nature. I had long been satisfied with the 
 vivacious nature of seeds. Here I was presented with full proof of the same 
 nature in the eggs of insects. The egg from which this insect sprang, was 
 unquestionably deposited eighty years before its appearance in a living form. 
 Sixty of these years it existed in the tree, where it was laid. Perhaps it may be 
 more unobjectionably said, that eighty years elapsed from the time, when the 
 cause of its future animation was lodged in the tree, to the commencement of 
 that animation. What is true of this insect, is in all probability true of many 
 other species. 
 
 An interesting phase of this insect story either never caught the 
 ear of President Dwight, or he did not regard it as of sufficient 
 moment for record. Members of the family of Mr. Putnam heard 
 at intervals extending over several days unaccountable sounds 
 apparently issuing from this table. They harked and searched. 
 The sounds would cease under movings of the table or parts of it, 
 and then begin again. It became a mystery talked about, not only 
 at home, but also among the neighbors on the " hill. 77 At last, the 
 insect opened for itself the orifice on the surface of the table 
 described by Dr. Dwight. Out of utter darkness, it came forth into 
 the light. From long confinement, it issued into brief liberty. Its 
 persistent labor toward a living exit ended shortly in its exit from 
 life. Its nature was indeed " vivacious," as Dr. Dwight says ; but 
 several questions arise here, besides the one to which he and Dr. 
 Fitch seem to have confined themselves, that is, how long had this 
 possible vivacity been in the tree and in the table ? One might 
 naturally ask, did it pay this particular insect, in order to achieve 
 its transient notoriety or even what may be conceded a sort of 
 immortality, to labor so long and so hard to dig itself out ? What 
 was the motive or impulse that led it to gnaw so persistently the 
 well-seasoned apple-tree wood ? Is not the question of its voracity 
 quite as interesting as that of its vivacity? What influence upon 
 its hidden activity (if any) to emerge into the full light of day, had 
 the handsomeness of those colors then first displayed to the eyes of 
 men ? These questions are not put from the standpoint of ento- 
 mology, nor scarcely from any other standpoint, except perhaps the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 333 
 
 vague analogy they suggest with the painstaking labors of some 
 men and women. Some things about it are certain: the incident 
 excited the interest of one of the most inquisitive and honest minds 
 of the country at the opening of the new century; it brought 
 together again and repeatedly in pleasant curiosity two presidents 
 of colleges, in most respects extremely unlike each other, who had 
 been associated together at Yale in their younger lives, and who 
 seem to have respected each other so long as the older and abler 
 man survived; and it helped to connect for a while in agreeable 
 relations (soon to become hostile) the simple people of Bee Hill with 
 the College, since the Putnams sent for President Fitch so soon as 
 the insect emerged, and also presented him with the remains when 
 life was extinct, and often thereafter opened their doors and 
 exhibited their table to more scholarly and distinguished visitors 
 than had been accustomed to call at the farmhouse. 
 
 Perhaps Schuyler Putnam deserves at our hands a somewhat 
 fuller recognition in this place. He came to Williamstown in 1805 
 from Brooklyn, Connecticut, where he was born, and where his 
 more famous father died in May, 1790. His motive in moving to 
 Williamstown was to avail himself of the advantages of the place 
 for the education of his sons. Three of these, John Pope, Nathan, 
 and Schuyler, were graduated here with credit in the class of 1809. 
 The father's full name was Peter Schuyler Putnam, but he was 
 named after General Philip Schuyler, under whom and in connection 
 with whom Israel Putnam had served both in the last French and 
 Indian War and in the Eevolutionary War, and for whom he enter- 
 tained the highest esteem. Schuyler Putnam inherited some of his 
 father's qualities; he was social and generous and humane; and, 
 like his father, he was an enterprising farmer. The son devoted 
 himself particularly to cheese-making, all the work connected with 
 which he did himself, and prided himself upon its perfection. He 
 had a stamp bearing his own name, which he impressed upon his 
 own cheeses; and these came to have a great reputation in New 
 York City, which was his market, and always bore a price above the 
 common. On his deathbed he gave strict orders that this stamp 
 should be destroyed at once, which lets light in upon a highly com- 
 mendable quality of the man. Coming down from Bee Hill to the 
 village, he kept the Mansion House as a tenant under the Skinners 
 for a number of years, and closed a somewhat eccentric career about 
 1824, as a tenant on the large farm of Captain Kellogg, which he 
 contracted to carry on " at the halves," as the tenure was then called 
 in New England. His body was buried at North Adams. 
 
334 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 A total eclipse of the sun occurred in June, 1806, which stirred 
 the poetic impulses of a boy in Cummington to try to describe it in 
 rhymed pentameters. This piece is still extant in thirty lines, com- 
 mencing : 
 
 " How awfully sublime and grand to see, 
 The lamp of Day wrapped in Obscurity." 
 
 The poem is inscribed in the boy's handwriting : " Written by 
 W. C. Bryant, just after the great total Eclipse of the Sun, in the 
 Summer of 1806, in his twelfth year." This boy on the 9th of 
 October, 1810, was entered a Sophomore in Williams College. This 
 was then the beginning of the college year. About a month before, 
 he had attended with his father, Dr. Peter Bryant, the Commence- 
 ment exercises of that year, when twenty-nine young men, the 
 class that had had the trouble with Professor Olds and the tutors, 
 received their diplomas. As he was at the time of his admission 
 the most precocious and widest-read boy that ever entered the 
 College; and as he became the most celebrated man and the one 
 most likely to remain " in the choir of ever-enduring men," that was 
 ever in the College as a student, though his residence continued but 
 seven months in all, the reader will desire to construe for himself 
 line by line and in its entirety the account of it written by Bryant 
 in his autobiography sixty-five years afterward. 
 
 In the beginning of September, 1810, when the annual Commencement of 
 Williams College was at that time held, I went with my father to Williamstown, 
 passed an easy examination, and was admitted as a member of the Sophomore 
 class. After the usual vacation I went again to Williamstown and began my 
 college life. I found that kind of life on the whole agreeable, and formed pleas- 
 ant relations with my fellow students and instructors. There were two literary 
 societies in the College, to one or other of which every student belonged, the 
 Philotechnian and Philologian, and, as my room-mate, John Avery, belonged to 
 the Philotechnian, I was induced to join it. These societies had their literary 
 exercises, in which I took a great interest. 
 
 My room-mate was a most worthy and well-principled person, several years 
 older than myself, and I owed so much to his example and counsels that I have 
 often regretted not having kept up a correspondence with him. He became in 
 after life a minister of the Episcopal Church, and went to the Southern States, 
 to Maryland, I think, whence, about the year 1835, he removed to Alabama, 
 and died soon afterward. The students of Williams College were at that time 
 mostly youths of a staid character, generally in narrow circumstances, who went 
 to college with a serious intention to study, and prepare themselves for some of 
 the learned professions, so that I have no college pranks to relate. The course 
 of study in Williams College at that time was meagre and slight in comparison 
 with what it now is. There was but one Professor, Chester Dewey, Professor 
 of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, a man of much merit, who had the 
 charge of the Junior class. The President of the college, Dr. Fitch, superin- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 335 
 
 tended the studies of the Senior class, and the Sophomores and Freshmen were 
 instructed by two tutors employed from year to year. I mastered the daily 
 lessons given out to my class, and found much time for miscellaneous reading, 
 for disputations, and for literary composition in prose and verse, in all of which 
 I was thought to acquit myself with some credit. No attention was then paid to 
 prosody, but I made an attempt to acquaint myself with the prosody of the 
 Latin language, and tried some experiments in Latin verse which were clumsy 
 and uncouth enough. 
 
 Among my verses was a paraphrastic translation of Anacreon's ode on Spring. 
 Moore's version of Anacreon's ode was consulted, and my room-mate suggested 
 that these translations should be shown to two members of the Junior class, 
 whom he named, and of whose judgment in literary matters he thought highly, 
 and that they, without knowing the authorship of either, should be asked to say 
 which of the two was the better. Both versions copied in the same hand were 
 accordingly laid before them by Avery. He came back to me greatly pleased, 
 and informed me that the two judges had given the preference to my translation. 
 He added that they evidently supposed my translation to be that of Moore, and 
 spoke of the other in an encouraging manner as quite creditable on the whole. 
 He came away without undeceiving them. 
 
 My room-mate, for the sake of obtaining a more complete education than the 
 course of study at Williams then promised, had resolved to leave the college and 
 become matriculated at Yale in New Haven. His example, and a like desire on 
 my part, induced me to write to my father for leave to take the same step, to 
 which he consented. Accordingly in the year 1811, before the third term of 
 my Sophomore year was ended [May 8th], I asked and obtained an honorable 
 dismission from Williams College, and going back to Cummington began to 
 prepare myself for entering the Junior class at Yale. I pursued my studies at 
 home with some diligence and without any guide save my books, but, when the 
 time drew near that I should apply for admission to Yale, my father told me 
 that his means did not allow him to maintain me at New Haven, and that I 
 must give up the idea of a full course of college education. I have always 
 thought this unfortunate for me, since it left me but superficially acquainted 
 with several branches of education, which a college course would have enabled 
 ine to master, and would have given me a greater readiness in their application. 
 -I regretted all my life afterward that I had not remained at Williams, where, 
 considering that the expenses were less than at Yale, my father might have been 
 willing to support me till I should obtain the degree of Bachelor of Arts. 
 
 The room that John Avery and Cullen Bryant occupied together 
 in the interval of time sketched above, as their classmate Sedgwick 
 well remembered fifty years afterward, was the inner room on the 
 third floor of West College, east side, and was then and is still 
 No. 11. The changes wrought in the building in 1854 did not in 
 any respect destroy the identity of this room, nor indeed of any 
 other room in the building. Two small bedrooms were cut off from 
 the side of each of the large rectangular rooms as they were origi- 
 nally finished off, and the numbering of the rooms from one to 
 thirty-two was not in any instance changed. 
 
336 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Some of Bryant's ancestors on both sides had shown unusual 
 poetic impulses, and all were remarkably thoughtful and reading 
 people. His father was a good judge of poetry, and a merciless 
 critic of the boy's earliest efforts in that direction. He had more- 
 over a good library both of prose and verse. " My father delighted 
 in poetry, and in his library were the works of most of the eminent 
 English poets. He wrote verses himself, mostly humorous and 
 satirical. He was not unskilled in Latin poetry, in which the odes 
 of Horace were his favorites. He was fond of music, played on the 
 violin, and I remember hearing him say that he once made a bass 
 viol, for he was very ingenius in the use of tools, and played 
 upon it." Heredity had its full part/in making Bryant a great poet; 
 but the boy had in himself all the other conditions and prerequisites. 
 In his childhood he used to pray that he might receive the gift of 
 poetic genius, and write verses that might endure. "I presented 
 this petition in those early years with great fervor, but after a time 
 I discontinued the practice; I can hardly say why. Whatever I 
 might innocently wish I did not see why I should not ask ; and I 
 was a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer." Corresponding with 
 his desires was his diligence. He read books from his father's 
 library with an amazing facility and a most extraordinary memory. 
 Before he entered college (not yet sixteen), he had read every word 
 in a list of books recollected by himself, the length of which list is 
 the chief reason for its not being copied in this place. 
 
 He had mastered the rudiments of Latin and Greek with such ease 
 and quickness, and had perused the preparatory books with so much 
 pleasure and thoroughness, that he might doubtless have entered the 
 Junior class here just as readily as he did the Sophomore. In that 
 case he would have come immediately under the stimulating instruc- 
 tion of Chester Dewey, then just beginning his professorship after a 
 successful tutorship of two years. Had he done so, in all probability 
 he would not have left the College till his graduation. Besides his 
 reading, and his much initial writing of verse, he had already eagerly 
 commenced "in the love of Nature to hold communion with her 
 visible forms." Dewey would have been a man after his own heart. 
 Botany would have been equally the delight and inspiration of them 
 both. Each would certainly have kept step with the music of the 
 other. But it was not so to be. Providence knows best. Orange 
 Lyman, the Sophomore tutor, was a staid and self-willed and stiff 
 New England body, an alumnus of 1809, and during his life a home 
 missionary in New York and Ohio and Illinois. "Experienced, 
 judicious, grave," are words from his college obituary. Few im- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 337 
 
 pulses from such a man could come to such a boy as was Cullen 
 Bryant in 1810. The latter quickly mastered the daily lessons given 
 out to his class, and then went about his miscellaneous reading, his 
 college and society disputations, and his literary compositions in 
 prose and verse. 
 
 The memorable thing about it all is this, that the boy showed no 
 signs in his bearing or conduct of what must have been his conscious 
 superiority over all those around him in personal powers and 
 scholarly attainments. His modesty and self-poise under all the 
 circumstances are nothing short of wonderful. In 1808 his "Em- 
 bargo ; a Satire ; by a Youth of Thirteen ; " had been published in 
 Boston, and kindly noticed in the Federalist papers, and at least in 
 one literary periodical there. The same, somewhat enlarged, and a 
 few shorter poems added, passed into a second edition in 1809. Not 
 long after Mr. Bryant's death, in 1878, the present writer felt so 
 sure from the general principles of human nature, and from some 
 knowledge of a satirical poem written by him just before he left 
 college (rumors of which then first came to be bruited about), that 
 there must have been some such tokens of self-consciousness notice- 
 able at least by his classmates, that he wrote a letter of particular 
 inquiry on this point to General Sedgwick. The following is the 
 reply received: 
 
 SHARON, CT., June 13, 1879. 
 PROFESSOR PERRY 
 
 I have your favor of yesterday, and very cheerfully comply with your request 
 in relation to my recollections of Bryant while he was in college. His member- 
 ship was so short, that there is not much to be written about it. He entered our 
 class at the commencement of Sophomore year in 1810, being then in his 16 th 
 year, and brought with him the reputation of being the author of two or three 
 short poems bearing upon the politics of the day, which were deemed of remark- 
 able ability as the productions of an author so young. He had not then reached 
 the physical dimensions which he afterwards attained, but his person was 
 remarkably well formed, and his head was covered with a prolific growth of 
 dark brown hair. His room-mate was John Avery from Con way who was some 
 ten years his senior ; and they, as did other Sophomores, roomed in the West 
 College. As I now recollect, their room was in the 3 d story, north end, east 
 side, next to the N. E. corner room of that story. I never heard of the satiric 
 stanzas said to have been written by him on leaving college till since his decease. 
 I was a member of the Philotechnian Society, and feel confident that if such a 
 production had been read there, it would have excited a sensation which could 
 not have been forgotten by me. 
 
 When I noticed the allusion to the poem in the commemorative address by 
 Mr. G. W. Curtis, I took measures to obtain through Hon. E. C. Benedict a copy 
 of them, and the enclosed letter from that gentleman shows the failure of my 
 effort. As they are to be published, I suppose there can be no objection to my 
 
338 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 seeing them, and I earnestly request that you will send me a copy of them on 
 the return of Mr. Benedict's letter. Dr. Hallock did not become a member of 
 college till several years after Mr. Bryant left. 
 
 The tutor of our class was Rev. Orange Lyman, who was afterwards settled 
 in the ministry at Vernon, Oneida Co., N. Y. Bryant showed no superiority to 
 his teacher or to the other members of his class, who were men of studious 
 habits. He associated with the more orderly and industrious members of col- 
 lege, and was entirely modest and unobtrusive in his deportment. He affected 
 no superiority and was not particularly distinguished from other members who 
 studied faithfully, in any department of the course of studies then pursued by 
 the class. The only example of his poetry written while he was in college 
 which was known to the members was a composition read by him in fulfilling 
 that imposed duty, which received the examination but not the criticism of 
 Tutor Lyman ; and a translation of one of the odes of Anacreon which he 
 showed to a few friends. I had the reading of it, but have forgotten which of 
 the odes of Anacreon it was. 
 
 These statements will assure you that there was nothing in the feelings or 
 deportment of Mr. Bryant which is described in common parlance as sticking 
 up the nose. The reason always given by Mr. Bryant for leaving college was 
 that he intended to become a member of Yale and graduate there, but was pre- 
 vented by the want of ability of his father to sustain the expense of his educa- 
 tion there. I add as a matter of conjecture, that not improbably the influence 
 of his room-mate, John Avery, persuaded him to that course. Avery was far in 
 advance of many the other members of the class, when he entered Freshman, 
 and kept in advance through the whole term of his membership. He left college 
 at the same time with Bryant, and entered at the next term in Yale in the same 
 standing that he had at Williams ; and it is not improbable that his example if 
 not his council persuaded Bryant to adopt the same purpose. 
 
 I believe I have answered your inquiries as far as I can. If there is any- 
 thing further in which I can aid you, please command me at any time. Don't 
 forget to send me copies of the stanzas, as I have set my heart on seeing them 
 ever since I heard of their existence. 
 
 Very truly Yours 
 
 CHA! F. SEDGWICK. 
 
 There was at least one other man, who had " set his heart on see- 
 ing them " quite as firmly as had General Sedgwick. This man made 
 a journey from William stown to New York, on purpose to see what 
 could be gotten out of Eev. Dr. Hallock, then in his dotage. He 
 was willing to repeat parts of two stanzas, all that he could then pos- 
 sibly remember, but he forbade his visitor to write down even these 
 meagre lines. Mrs. Hallock, however, kindly wrote them down for 
 him in an anteroom, and he returned assured that he had made 
 something of a find. It was not long before he heard, vaguely indeed 
 but credibly, that one of Bryant's brothers in Illinois, who had lost 
 his house by fire and in it the original copy of the verses given to 
 him by the poet, and then supposed to be the only copy in existence. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 339 
 
 could repeat the lines by memory verbatim and entire. A corre- 
 spondence was entered upon immediately, first, to obtain the address 
 of this brother, and second, to obtain (if possible) a copy of the 
 stanzas. Before this roundabout correspondence had had time to 
 fructify, however, he received another letter from General Sedgwick, 
 which the reader will be glad to see. Neither of these letters have 
 ever before been printed. 
 
 SHARON, January 26, 1880. 
 PROFESSOR FERRY 
 
 I am very glad to have been able to furnish you with the manuscript we have 
 al} been seeking for a long time. It has occurred to me that you would like to 
 know the circumstances attending the discovery. 
 
 Several weeks ago, Parke Godwin Esq., son-in-law of Mr. Bryant, opened a 
 correspondence with me, to learn from me what I could tell him of Mr. Bryant's 
 college experience. After our correspondence was finished, it occurred to me 
 that Mr. Godwin might know something of the poem, and I addressed him a 
 note making inquiry on the subject. He wrote under date of Jan. 7, " There is 
 such a poem in possession of Mr. Hallock of this city, of which I saw a copy 
 many years since, but I do not think it was ever delivered or publicly read at 
 Williams. Mr. Arthur Bryant of Illinois could repeat it from memory, but has 
 no doubt forgotten it by this time." 
 
 I knew Mr. Bryant had a brother residing at Princeton, Illinois, and I there- 
 upon addressed him a letter, stating that I was seeking for a humorous poem 
 written by his brother when he left college ; and requesting him, if he had it in 
 manuscript or in memory, to send me a copy. Within ten days I received a 
 copy of the poem in full, and I copy verbatim the letter which accompanied it. 
 
 "PRINCETON, ILL., Jan. 15, 1880. 
 " C. F. SEDGWICK ESQ. 
 
 " Dear Sir, I send-you the poem you wish to obtain written out from memory. 
 I think it is accurate. As you will perceive, its tone is that of bitter sarcasm 
 and censure, rather than of humor. Twenty four years ago I had the original 
 copy in my brother's handwriting, but it was destroyed when my house was 
 burned. Written under it was this memorandum, ' Read in the Philotech- 
 nian Society March ' I have forgotten the exact date. 
 
 "Respectfully Yours, 
 
 "ARTHUR BRYANT." 
 
 Probably Mr. A. Bryant is the only person in the world from whom the poem 
 could be obtained. W. C. Bryant's subsequent relations to the college were so 
 intimate and friendly, that there is no wonder that he wished this early speci- 
 men of his young poetic talent should be suppressed. The sarcasm and censure 
 of the poem was afterwards amply condoned by his munificent friendship to our 
 
 Alma Mater. 
 
 Yours very truly 
 
 CHA? F. SEDGWICK. 
 
340 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 The good classmate's natural supposition that Arthur Bryant's 
 memory was the only repository of the stanzas in January, 1880, 
 proved not long afterward to be in fault. There was another class- 
 mate, Charles Jenkins, afterward tutor in the College 1816-19, 
 subsequently a pastor in Portland, father of Rev. Dr. J. L. Jenkins 
 now settled in the same pastorate, left among his papers at his death 
 in 1831 a complete copy of these verses, in the handwriting indeed 
 of the classmate and endorsed in the same, "Written by W. C. 
 Bryant, late a member of the Sophomore class in Williams College." 
 Bryant beyond question gave to Jenkins on leaving as a personal 
 keepsake the poem to copy and to possess. Among the latter's 
 papers the copy slumbered for three-quarters of a century and more, 
 when his son, an alumnus of Yale, very properly gave the poem to 
 the press. Indeed, it is very fortunate that he did so ; for otherwise, 
 the men/writer version of Arthur Bryant would have gone on perma- 
 nent record as a correct and unchangeable version. The present 
 writer has compared critically the two line by line and word for word. 
 The differences are only verbal, except in the first four lines of the 
 fifth stanza, where they are substantive. Arthur Bryant or some- 
 body else made a paraphrase of those lines, and made them much 
 weaker, also with different rhymes and a partially different thought. 
 On the other hand, in several of the verbal discrepances, the manu- 
 script copy is clearly right and the printed one wrong. There are 
 two obvious printer's errors. With much confidence that the follow- 
 ing recension is as near the original as it can possibly be made, the 
 writer submits to the readers its final form. 
 
 DESCRIPTIO GULIELMOPOLIS, 
 
 No more the brumal tempest sheds 
 
 Its gathered stores in sleety showers, 
 
 Nor yet the vernal season spreads 
 
 Her verdant mantle gemmed with flowers ; 
 
 But fettered stands the naked year 
 
 And shivers to the chilling air, 
 
 And lingers dubious on the wing ; 
 
 And often struggles to unclasp 
 
 Reluctant Winter's icy grasp 
 
 And greet the arms of Spring. 
 
 Hemmed in with hills, whose heads aspire, 
 Abrupt and rude, and hung with woods ; 
 Amid these vales I touch the lyre, 
 Where devious Hoosack rolls his floods. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 341 
 
 Dear vales, where every pleasure meets, 
 Fain would I paint thy slimy streets, 
 Extended views and wholesome air, 
 Thy soil with churlish guardians blest 
 And horrors of the bleak Northwest 
 Poured through the chasm afar. 
 
 Safe from the morning's golden eye 
 And sheltered from the western breeze, 
 These happy regions bosomed lie 
 The seats of bliss and bowers of ease, 
 Far-famed spot whose fertile breast 
 Now droughts with lengthened blaze infest, 
 Now tempests drench with copious flood. 
 Alternate heat and cold surprise, 
 A frozen desert now it lies, 
 And now a sea of mud ! 
 
 While rising on the tainted gale, 
 
 The morbid exhalations ride, 
 
 And hover o'er the unconscious vale, 
 
 Or steep upon the mountain side. 
 
 There on her misty throne reclined, 
 
 Her aching brows with nightshade twined, 
 
 Disease unseen directs her way, 
 
 Wields the black sceptre of her reign 
 
 And barbs her shafts with keener pain, 
 
 And singles out her prey. 
 
 Why should I sing its turbid springs 
 
 That trickle through its rocks of lime, 
 
 And why those domes where science flings 
 
 Her far-diffusing rays sublime, 
 
 Where through the horror-breathing hall 
 
 The pale-faced, moping students crawl 
 
 Like spectral monuments of woe, 
 
 Or studious seek the unwholesome cell, 
 
 Where dust and gloom and cobwebs dwell, 
 
 Dark, dirty, dank, and low. 
 
 Yet on the picture dark with shade 
 
 Let not the eye forever gaze 
 
 Where lawless Power his nest has laid, 
 
 And stern Suspicion treads her maze. 
 
 The storm that o'er the wintry waste 
 
 Rides howling on the northern blast, 
 
 In time will curb its furious way ; 
 
 But that o'er Hootiack's vales which lowers 
 
 Will never know serener hours, 
 
 Nor open to the day. 
 
342 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 1. This curious poem, although many of its expressions are much 
 exaggerated in accordance with the nature of all successful sarcasm, 
 is nevertheless of decided merit and of manifold value to posterity. 
 Allusion's to it made by George William Curtis in an oration on 
 Bryant before the New York Historical Society, Dec. 20, 1878, the 
 year of Bryant's death, awakened the public curiosity in relation to 
 it, and particularly the curiosity of certain graduates of the College 
 who knew Bryant well and were also desirous to know the College 
 well in its early day. The local scenery, as it was in the first 
 decade of the nineteenth century, was never better described, and 
 never can be again. 
 
 Safe from the Morning's golden eye [behind the Hoosacs] 
 And sheltered from the western breeze [by the Taconics], 
 These happy regions bosomed lie. 
 
 Another feature of the landscape as it was then, and almost as it 
 was forty years later when the writer first became familiar with 
 it, is perfectly hit off in the following lines : 
 
 Hemmed in with hills, whose heads aspire 
 Abrupt and rude, and hung with woods ; 
 Amid these vales I touch the lyre, 
 Where devious Hoosac rolls his floods. 
 
 No other poetic adjective so well as "devious" could describe the 
 course of the river through William stown. Near to the site of 
 old Fort Massachusetts the westerly course of the stream from the 
 junction of its two branches in what is now the city of North Adams 
 is sharply deflected to the south by striking on the rock-wall that 
 defends the whole northern side of the valley, and thus is made to 
 enclose the beautiful " Fort Meadow " as it is called. Like a wilful 
 child once sharply corrected, the stream soon begins to work its way 
 back to the same northern line of rock and slope, until, just before 
 taking in on its southern side the Green Eiver tributary, the Hoosac 
 makes an almost right-angle bend to the northward, which general 
 direction with many a "devious 7 ' loop it keeps thereafter till it 
 slips so out of the town and the State. This last stretch of the 
 Hoosac Eiver in Massachusetts, having thus made an exit for itself 
 through the high hills in some of the geologic ages, described indeed 
 by Bryant, 
 
 And horrors of the bleak Northwest 
 
 Poured through its chasm afar, 
 
 is fondly called by us a century afterward the "Golden Gate," 
 because there is the place where the yellow sunset lingers longest 
 in our horizon-circuit. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 343 
 
 2. So far as is now known, Bryant was the first in what has 
 proved a long succession of varying Vates to pay emphatic tributes, 
 poetic and dramatic, to the climate of Williamstown in March. 
 Certain incidents and attachments of that climate, pretty uniform 
 in itself considered, have grown a good deal more endurable during 
 the century past. An extremely gradual evolution of dry sidewalks 
 is one of the most considerable of the betterments. The general 
 description holds good to this day : 
 
 But fettered stands the naked year 
 And shivers to the chilling air, 
 And lingers dubious on the wing ; 
 And often struggles to unclasp 
 Reluctant Winter's icy grasp 
 And greet the arms of Spring. 
 
 Two of the incidents or accessories of the March climate are 
 savagely alluded to in these lines of Bryant, the springs of which 
 old Father Time has already been able pretty much to dry up, the 
 impassableness of the walks, and the alarmingly prevalent epidemics 
 of the springtime. General Samuel Sloan, whose family then 
 occupied the best house in the village, which he had built for him- 
 self in 1801, and which is still the official home of the College presi- 
 dent, was then giving in the sight of the students object-lessons 
 illustrating also these lines of Bryant : 
 
 Now tempests drench with copious flood. 
 Alternate heat and cold surprise, 
 A frozen desert now it lies, 
 And now a sea of mud! 
 
 Keliable traditions of eyewitnesses represent General Sloan as 
 sending out his hired man with two long boards to accompany his 
 daughters on making their village calls in the springtime, so as to 
 lay down one board on the muddy ground, and while the girls were 
 passing over that to lay down the other in front of it, and then to 
 take up the hinder one and repeat the process till the muddy places 
 were practically vanquished for that day. Clay and limestone go 
 naturally together, as much so as pines and sand; and the writer 
 knows the sites of three or four " old brick-kilns " dating back into 
 the eighteenth century on the western end of the village plat ; and 
 there might have been twice as many more in other parts of the 
 little hamlet, so predominant is the clayey soil over and alongside 
 the lime rocks. Luckily the numerous brooks have always had the 
 knack of bringing down plenteous gravel to the valley; gravelled 
 walks to and around the College buildings came in early ; the broad 
 
344 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and straight walk from the old East College through the centre 
 of West College to the meeting-house on eminence No. 3, received 
 copious gravel from year to year and decade to decade without ever 
 becoming very firm ground toward its western end; for a genera- 
 tion or more the College gave the students an annual holiday called 
 " Gravel Day," for bona fide personal work around the buildings, 
 but it dwindled at last to a trifling class tax, and then both day and 
 deed deceased. As the last years of the nineteenth century are 
 dropping off in welcome to the earliest of the twentieth, asphalt 
 sidewalks in long stretches are flanking the streets of the village in 
 all directions, and macadamized highways of a permanent character 
 (partly paid for by the State) are penetrating to all sides and corners 
 of the town. Old things in this respect also have passed away, and 
 behold all things have become new. 
 
 A prejudice or opinion, whichever it may be, against the whole- 
 someness of limestone water, especially to those who have not been 
 accustomed to it, has always prevailed in Williamstown more or 
 less, and is now tending to prevail the more under the careful judg- 
 ment of Dr. F. W. Olds, Williams College 1876, who highly com- 
 mends for sanitary purposes the Sand Springs water, the only water 
 in the valley not impregnated with lime. Bryant's father was a 
 practising physician ; and it can hardly be that the mocking lines, 
 
 Why should I sing its turbid springs, 
 That trickle through its rocks of lime, 
 While rising on the tainted gale, 
 The morbid exhalations ride, 
 And hover o'er the unconscious vale, 
 Or steep upon the mountain side, 
 
 should not be at least an echo of medical opinions entertained at 
 home. There is no successful banishing from this boyish poem the 
 thorough conviction derived from some source, that for some reason 
 or reasons the place as such was unhealthf ul, 
 
 Where through the horror-breathing hall 
 The pale-faced, moping students crawl, 
 Like spectral monuments of woe, 
 Or studious seek the unwholesome cell, 
 Where dust and gloom and cobwebs dwell, 
 Dark, dirty, dank, and low. 
 
 At this late day, and under the almost wholly changed conditions 
 of things, it is a matter of comparative indifference what a bright 
 boy thought of externals in Williamstown in 1811. But what he 
 thought of the people of the town, so far as he came in contact with 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 345 
 
 them ; and what he thought of his teachers, and of the educational 
 opportunities furnished by the College at that time, are matters of 
 perennial interest. The poem yields but a single line of judgment 
 on the people of the town : 
 
 Thy soil with churlish guardians blest. 
 
 His chances of acquaintance with the farmers of the place must 
 have been very meagre indeed. He came in October, he went in the 
 next May, and he spent a considerable vacation about New Year's 
 in Cummington. The writer is going to take all the risks of a pure 
 guess as to the source of Bryant's opinion that the farmers around 
 the College were "churlish." Incidents that certainly happened at 
 the same spot many times a few decades later may reasonably be 
 conjectured to have fallen then under his own observation. Each 
 West College room was heated in winter by its own very large brick 
 fireplace. The quantity of wood naturally burned out in one of 
 those immense apertures from October to April (the vacation ex- 
 cepted), in order to make the room even partially comfortable, was 
 enormous to contemplate and particularly to pay for, although the 
 best of wood was naturally cheap in those days. So cheap that a 
 device became common among those "churlish guardians of the 
 soil," namely, to delay bringing their ox-loads of four-foot wood into 
 the college yard to sell to students, until the afternoon of some un- 
 usually cold day, the sun falling fast down behind the Taconics, 
 when something like the following dialogue would take place be- 
 tween town and gown : " There's a good load of solid body wood for 
 you~, and I guess you'll need some of it before morning" "What do 
 you ask a cord for such wood as that is ? " " Pd oilers ruther sell it 
 by the load than by the cord." " Why so ? I would rather buy it by 
 the cord than by the load, for then I know how much I am getting 
 for what I am giving." " You've come to college, and you haven't got 
 eyes enough in your head to tell how much wood there is on a ox-cart ! 
 Come round this side of the load, and look at it ! " " Pitch it off, and 
 pile it up here against the college, and measure it, and I will give 
 you a dollar and a half a cord for it more or less." "No, you don't! 
 That will take an hour ! I've got to get home to chore time ! Who- 
 ever wants this load for a dollar and a half just as it is top, body, 
 and middle, every stick, now or never, can have it : where' s my whip 
 can have it / must be heading for home I " " Going to haul it back 
 on to the hill, are you ? It will not go so easy up hill as it came 
 down! Better pitch it off! I and my chum here will help you 
 cord it up ! It won't take long : you don't want to lug it home." 
 
346 WILLIAMSTOWX AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 "You bet! Two or three families between here'n home want this load 
 at that price ! TJiey said so coming down ! Take it, or leave it, I'm 
 goin' home ! " " What do you say, chum, had we better take it ? " 
 "I think so; it's going to be a mighty cold night." Off comes the 
 load pell-mell ; and three-quarters of a cord or less passes for a cord 
 for the hundredth time at the same place and under similar circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Cordial as Bryant's relations became in his elder life to the College 
 through several of its prominent trustees and professors, willing as 
 he became to assist at its anniversaries, to contribute to its funds, to 
 be enrolled among and to serve as president of its alumni ; he never 
 retracted even in semblance the biting words of his youth about its 
 authorities and instructors. He never ceased to regret that he left 
 the College in a huff, or that he left it at all; he always spoke in 
 terms of warm praise of Chester Dewey as a lovable man and a 
 persuasive preacher, though he did not come under his instruction 
 at all in the classroom ; but so far as the president and tutors were 
 concerned, he apparently took back nothing from the harsh words of 
 the " Descriptio." 
 
 Let not the eye forever gaze 
 
 Where lawless Power his nest has laid [Fitch], 
 
 And stern Suspicion treads her maze [Tutors]. 
 
 The storin that o'er the wintry waste 
 
 Rides howling on the northern blast, 
 
 In time will curb its furious way ; 
 
 But that o'er Hoosack's vales which lowers 
 
 Will never know serener hours, 
 
 Nor open to the day. 
 
 Almost fifty years after these lines were written, and many years 
 after some of these new relations spoken of above were knit, in a 
 letter to Calvin Durfee of the class of 1825, who published a valu- 
 able sketch of the life of President Fitch in 1865, Mr. Bryant in 
 answer to inquiries wrote the following : 
 
 At that time Dr. Fitch was president of the college, and instructor of the 
 Senior class. I have a vivid recollection of his personal appearance a square- 
 built man, of a dark complexion, and black, arched eyebrows. To me his 
 manner was kind and courteous, and I remember it with pleasure. He often 
 preached to us on Sundays, but his style of sermonizing was not such as to com- 
 pel the attention. We listened with more interest to Professor Chester Dewey, 
 then in his early manhood, the teacher of the Junior class, who was the most 
 popular of those who were called the Faculty of the college. Two young men, 
 recent graduates of the college [Gray and Lyman], acted as tutors, superin- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 347 
 
 tended the recitations of the two lower classes, and made their periodical visits 
 to the college rooms, to see that everything was in order. The college buildings 
 consisted of two large plain brick structures, called the East and the West Col- 
 lege, and the college grounds, an open green, were between the two and sur- 
 rounding them both. From one college to the other you passed by a straight 
 avenue of Lombardy poplars, which formed the sole embellishment of the 
 grounds. Concerning my fellow-students, I have little of importance to com- 
 municate. My stay in college was hardly long enough to form those close and 
 life-long intimacies of which college life is generally the parent. Orton and 
 Jenkins I am not sure of their Christian names, and have not the catalogue of 
 graduates at hand were among our best scholars, and Northrop and C. F. 
 Sedgwick among our best elocutionists. When either of these two spoke, 
 every ear was open. I recollect, too, the eloquent Lamed and the amiable 
 Morris. 
 
 The four classmates named in this passage all became distinguished 
 men, although " the eloquent " Sylvester Lamed did not remain till 
 the close of the course. Dr. Morris lived to found the Morris Pro- 
 fessorship of Rhetoric, and became thus and otherwise a very consid- 
 erable benefactor of the College. Eev. Dr. Azariah Orton bore the 
 distinction of having been a prominent candidate here in 1830 for the 
 professorship of "Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy," when Mark 
 Hopkins was elected over him for the place. Orton was a nephew 
 of Nathan Jackson, who became a singular and manifold donor to 
 the College, becoming interested in the needs of Natural History here 
 through the representations of Professor James Orton, a son of the 
 other, almost equally useful and influential in Natural History 
 matters at Williams and at Vassar. All these parties, the Jack sons 
 and the Ortons, were in the direct line of descent from Abraham 
 Jackson, the maternal grandfather of the founder of the College. 
 Indeed, Ephraim Williams spent his boyhood and youth in the family 
 of his grandfather at Newton. 1 Jenkins and Sedgwick have already 
 been somewhat characterized on pages preceding the present. Sedg- 
 wick was the last survivor of the class of 1813. He was often at the 
 College Commencements during his old age, which closed in 1882. 
 His presence was always as welcome as his person was imposing. 
 He was in the direct line of descent from General Robert Sedgwick, 
 one of Crom well's major-generals, as was also Judge Theodore 
 Sedgwick of Stockbridge. 
 
 On the fiftieth anniversary of the graduation of this class of 1813, 
 which fell in the thick of the Civil War, and Bryant could not him- 
 self be present, he sent by Sedgwick the following poem, which the 
 latter read at the Commencement dinner : 
 
 See, for particulars, Origins in Williamstown, p. 221 et seq. 
 
348 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Long since a gallant, youthful company 
 
 Went from these learned shades. The hand of Time 
 
 Hath scored upon the perishing works of man 
 
 The years of half a century since that day. 
 
 Forth to the world they went in hope, but some 
 
 Fell at the threshold, some in mid career 
 
 Sank down, and some who bring their frosty brows, 
 
 A living register of change, are here ; 
 
 And from the spot where once they conned the words 
 
 Written by sages of the older time, 
 
 Look back on fifty years. Large space are they 
 
 Of man's brief life, those fifty years ; they join 
 
 Its ruddy morning to the paler light 
 
 Of its declining hours. In fifty years 
 
 As many generations of earth's flowers 
 
 Have sweetened the soft air of spring, and died. 
 
 As many harvests have, in turn, made green 
 
 The hills, and ripened into gold, and fallen 
 
 Before the sickle's edge. The sapling tree 
 
 Which then was planted stands a shaggy trunk, 
 
 Moss-grown, the centre of a mighty shade. 
 
 In fifty years the pasture grounds have oft 
 
 Renewed their herds and flocks, and from the stalls 
 
 New races of the generous steed have neighed 
 
 Or pranced in the smooth roads. In fifty years 
 
 Ancestral crowns have fallen from kingly brows 
 
 For clownish heels to crush ; new dynasties 
 
 Have climbed to empire, and new commonwealths 
 
 Have formed and fallen again to wreck, like clouds 
 
 Which the wind tears and scatters. Mighty names 
 
 Have blazed upon the world, and passed away, 
 
 Their lustre lessening, like the faded train 
 
 Of a receding comet. Fifty years 
 
 Have given the mariner to outstrip the wind 
 
 With engines churning the black deep to foam, 
 
 And tamed the nimble lightnings, sending them 
 
 On messages for man, and forced the sun 
 
 To limn for man upon the snowy sheet 
 
 Whate'er he shines upon, and taught the art 
 
 To vex the pale dull clay beneath our feet 
 
 With chemic tortures, till the sullen mass 
 
 Flows in bright rents from the furnace-mouth, 
 
 A shining metal, to be clay no more. 
 
 O, were our growth in goodness like our growth 
 In art, the thousand years of innocence 
 And peace, foretold by ancient prophecy, 
 Were here already, and the reign of Sin 
 Were ended o'er the earth on which we dwell. 
 In fifty years, the little commonwealth, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 349 
 
 Our league of States, that, in its early day, 
 Skirted the long Atlantic coast, has grown 
 To a vast empire, filled with populous towns 
 Beside its midland rivers, and beyond 
 The snowy peaks that bound its midland plains 
 To where its rivulets, over sands of gold, 
 Seek the Pacific till at length it stood 
 Great 'mid the greatest of the powers of earth, 
 And they who sat upon earth's ancient thrones 
 Beheld its growth in wonder and in awe. 
 In fifty years a deadlier foe than they 
 The wrong that scoffs at human brotherhood, 
 And holds the lash o'er millions has become 
 So mighty and so insolent in its might 
 That now it springs to fix on Liberty 
 The death-gripe, and o'erturn the glorious realm 
 Her children founded here. Fierce is the strife, 
 As when of old the sinning angels strove 
 To whelm, beneath the uprooted hills of heaven, 
 The warriors of the Lord. Yet now, as then, 
 God and the Right shall give the victory. 
 For us, who fifty years ago went forth 
 Upon the world's great theatre, may we 
 Yet see the day of triumph, which the hours 
 On steady wing waft hither from the depths 
 Of a serener future ; may we yet, 
 Beneath the reign of a new peace, behold 
 The shaken pillars of our commonwealth 
 Stand readjusted in their ancient poise, 
 And the great crime of which our strife was born 
 Perish with its accursed progeny. 
 
 Mr. Bryant himself attended the Commencement in 1869, six years 
 after this poem with its confident predictions and aspirations had 
 been read, and was elected president of the Society of the Alumni. 
 Called up in this capacity by President Hopkins at the alumni 
 dinner, who, with extraordinary felicity of language, spoke of him 
 as one "having the wisdom of age in his youth and the vigor of 
 youth in his old age," Mr. Bryant remarked, after a few words by 
 way of introduction : 
 
 It has occurred to me, since I, in the decline of life, came to visit once more 
 this seat of learning, in which our youth are trained to succeed us on the stage 
 of the world, that I am in the situation of one who, standing on a spot desolate 
 with winter and dim with twilight, should be permitted by a sort of miracle, to 
 look upon a neighboring region glorious with the bloom of spring and bright with 
 the beams of the morning. On the side where I stand are herbless fields and 
 leafless woods, pools sheeted with ice, a frozen soil, and the shadows of approach- 
 
350 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ing night. On the side to which I look are emerald meadows, fields of springing 
 wheat, orchards in bloom, transparent streams, and a general sunshine. With 
 me it is too late for any further hopeful tillage ; and if the plough were put into 
 the ground, its colter would be obstructed by the ice-bound sods. On the side 
 to which I look I see the tokens of judicious cultivation and careful tendence, 
 recompensed by a free and promising growth. I rejoice at the kindly care thus 
 bestowed, and my hope and prayer is, that under such auspices all the promises 
 which meet my eyes may be amply fulfilled, and that from these luxuriant fields 
 a harvest may be gathered richer and more abundant than has ever yet been 
 stored in the granaries of our land. 
 
 In bringing to a conclusion this section of our story, which might 
 perhaps be called the Bryant section, it will be proper to insert here 
 a final letter from General Sedgwick, to whom all are indebted for 
 some of the best features of the section. 
 
 PROFESSOR PERRY SHAROK ' March 8 < 188L 
 
 . Dear Sir, I fitted for College with the Rev. Ammi R. Robbins of Norfolk, 
 Conn. My home was in Cornwall, Ct., about 7 miles from Norfolk, on the same 
 farm on which the Hon. Theadore Sedgwick of Berkshire was raised. Mr. 
 Robbins was a member of the Corporation of W ms College and his advice was 
 always in favor of that College for the education of his pupils. This probably 
 had an influence with my father to send me there, although the fact that educa- 
 tion there could be obtained at much less expense than at Yale gave W ms a 
 decided popularity. As I was but 14 years old when I entered College I was 
 not consulted on the subject, my father taking the matter into his own hands. 
 We rode on horseback to Williainstown to be present at the Commencement 
 in 1809. There I was examined and admitted with some dozen others, a member 
 of the freshman Class. The distance from my home to W ms town was 63 miles, 
 which as travelling was prosecuted in those days occupied a day and a half. 
 At the commencement of the next term my father took me to W ms town with a 
 wagon well loaded with furniture for my room, and as we were passing through 
 Sheffield Tutor Dewey, who had taken part in our examination at the previous 
 commencement, recognized me and asked for a ride with us to Williamstown, 
 which was cheerfully accorded to him. M* Dewey held the tutorship during 
 our freshman year and at the Commencement in 1810 was appointed to the 
 Professorship. He had, while tutor, the charge of the junior Class ; and in those 
 times, that was considered the trying year of the College course. There was no 
 change in his method of teaching after he became Professor from what it had 
 been while he was tutor. He was a faithful teacher, taking pains to illustrate 
 every matter which came before the class at the recitations in a way to be easily 
 understood. He not unfrequently exhibited his illustrations in geometry and 
 kindred sciences by plans and figures on the floor, with chalk. He was married 
 to a lady in Stockbridge (his first wife) during our Sophomore year, and his 
 house stood on nearly the spot now occupied by the Chapel. He gave no 
 Lectures while I was in College. He was not decidedly unpopular, but there 
 was not that fondness connected with respect for his office which attached to 
 Tutor Nelson whom all the College loved. His Recitation room was in the East 
 College (since burned), North End, west side third story, middle room. The 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 351 
 
 room which he occupied iii the College was the S.E. corner room 2 d story of the 
 same building. The only astronomical instruments which I ever saw was a 
 small telescope, and an Orrery, which was contrived with a good deal of ingenuity 
 to illustrate the revolution of the Planets round the sun and I think in some 
 cases of the Satellites round their planets. Professor Dewey sometimes brought 
 out the telescope on a pleasant evening upon the College green and gave the 
 scholars opportunity to look through it at the moon and stars. 
 
 The tutors who officiated in College while I was there were Dewey, Nelson, 
 Bushnell, Lyman, Emerson and Bancroft. Dewey and Lyman were the only 
 preachers among them then, but Nelson, Bushnell and Emerson afterwards 
 became preachers. None of them, during their tutorship, disclosed any very emi- 
 nent ability, but all discharged well their official duties as tutors. Tutor Lyman 
 instructed our class during Sophomore year, and during the first term and part 
 of the second he was very unpopular with the class. At this time there occurred 
 a difficulty between us and the freshmen, which at one time threatened serious 
 collision and when the matter came upon the faculty M r Lyman took decided 
 ground in our favor, and from that time he enjoyed the warmest friendship of 
 its members. We made him a handsome present in valuable Books when we 
 parted with him at the end of the year. 
 
 College expenses were very much less then than now. The common board- 
 ing houses charged 9 shillings ($1.50) per week. The first-class boarding houses 
 charged 10 shillings (1.69) per week and good board was furnished the students. 
 I think the cash paid by my father for my education at W ms towri was about $600, 
 and added to this was the expense of travel back and forth at the end and 
 beginning of each term. I kept a horse during the two last summers of my 
 College course, which I could procure well pastured at 34 cents per week. 
 
 This sheet is ended and the matters connected with my College life are 
 
 exhausted. 
 
 Very truly yours 
 
 CHA? F. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The writer turns from the clear and pleasant portion of his task 
 now completed, to what chronologically and on every other ground 
 properly comes next in order, not without certain misgivings of 
 heart or rather an unpleasant fear of disappointing and perhaps 
 offending certain friends of his own and of the College by the 
 manner of handling the portion that follows. The historical proofs 
 are not as clear as they have been ; and the historical tests strictly 
 applied do not lead to those conclusions, which have been fondly 
 accepted as settled by several of his predecessors, as at least partial 
 inquirers into this prized part of the college history. AVith motives 
 that were of the purest, and following evidences that certainly seem 
 to be plausible, these inquirers have made more than the histori- 
 cal facts will really warrant than the testimony of eye- and ear- 
 witnesses will fairly bear out of the early position of the College 
 as "the missionary college," "the birthplace of American * foreign 
 missions." Especially since 1854, when Byram Green of 1808 
 
352 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 revisited his Alma Mater and ostensibly identified the place of 
 the too-famous haystack, has a loose logic been employed in the 
 apparent behalf of the College, and historical proofs been adduced 
 of its agencies and instrumentalities, which, when candidly poised, 
 shrivel somewhat to the sight and shrink as to weight. The writer 
 has probably proven, perhaps overproven, throughout this volume 
 and the similar one that preceded it, that he would be among the 
 last to derogate one jot from the just honors of his town and college; 
 and he hopes to have proven, by the same means, that he prizes 
 truth in history beyond all other possible qualities of its pages. 
 
 The exact truth of the religious and missionary significance of the 
 early College, so far as that can be ascertained at this late date, will 
 turn best on the story of Samuel J. Mills. As appears by an entry 
 on one of the books of the college treasurer still extant, Mills entered 
 college in April, 1806. He died at sea off the coast of Africa in 1818. 
 The materials are fairly abundant from which to make out the state 
 of things he found on coming hither, the sort of life and influence 
 he had while here, and something of the germinating religious 
 agencies he left behind him. Fortunately enough for the present 
 purpose, we possess in a letter of Jedidiah Bushnell, a member of 
 the first Freshman class organized on the ground and an alumnus of 
 1797, the means of fairly constructing the religious condition of the 
 College from the very first. The letter was indeed written in his old 
 age, but it is probably all the better for that, and certainly all the 
 better for its writer, having had much to do in the meantime with 
 the organization and development of Middlebury College both as 
 a trustee and as a neighboring pastor. The reader will find a large 
 reward in conning this letter in a penetrative spirit. 
 
 Respecting the religious state of things in college during my residence in it, I 
 have no very favorable account to give. It was the time of the French Revolu- 
 tion, which was at that time very popular with almost all the inmates of College, 
 and with almost all people in that part of the country. French liberty and 
 French Philosophy poured in upon us like a flood ; and seemed to sweep almost 
 everything before it. Not that I believe, or ever did believe, that the greatest 
 part of the students were in theory settled infidels ; but I did fear at that time, 
 and now as much fear, that a number of talented young men of the several 
 classes did fix down on those infidel principles, from which they never afterwards 
 were recovered. Some, however, who thus made Volney their oracle, and openly 
 professed it, have renounced it since, and become pious and useful men. But 
 French principles at college had a commanding influence, and bore the multitude 
 onward in its course. The influence was so great, that it was very unpopular 
 for a sinner to be convicted of sin, or be converted or say or do anything on the 
 subject of experimental piety. There were two or three old professors of religion 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 353 
 
 whom the wicked very rarely treated with indignity ; but the moment the sinner 
 began to have serious thoughts, the wicked would load him with ridicule and 
 with shocking abuse. This spirit ran so high, that none dared manifest serious- 
 ness except those whom God truly made serious. Respecting the morals of the 
 college, some infidels were moral men according to the common acceptation of 
 that term ; but, as a general rule, the college suffered about as much in morals 
 as it did in the theory of religion. Comparatively with colleges now in New 
 England I think we were quite immoral. 
 
 Notwithstanding this state of things, there was a redeeming spirit in the 
 college as long as I was a member of the Institution. There was some solid 
 active piety in a few which remained unmoved. The number of professors of 
 religion was very few ; but one in my class at that time who belonged to any 
 church, none in the higher classes. The classes which entered afterwards 
 were larger, and contained several professors of religion, one or two instances of 
 decided piety. This spirit of piety, though limited to a small number, had an 
 enlightening and restraining influence on many, at times, beyond what is easily 
 imagined, so that it gave comfort and hope. About three or four were deeply 
 convicted or hopefully converted while I was a member of college. Others have 
 informed me since, that they received impressions then which were never effaced 
 from their minds, until they found the salvation of the Lord. 
 
 But that which in my judgement had the most influence of all things, under 
 God, was a prayer-meeting every evening of the week at the ringing of the nine 
 o'clock bell. One of the students opened his room for that prayer-meeting. 
 The meeting was much in the form of our usual family prayer. We read the 
 Scriptures, commented on the truth, exhorted one another, and closed by 
 prayer. Our number hardly ever exceeded twelve, sometimes nine or ten, com- 
 monly six, seven or eight. We usually spent twelve or fourteen minutes in those 
 meetings at a time. All were invited to come who wished. Some non-professors 
 came ; some of them would come for a while, and then retire for a season, and 
 then others would come. This meeting was sustained uniformly for four years 
 during my whole college life, and I believe will be remembered with joy by 
 some in another world. Those evening meetings were solemn, and sometimes 
 soul-refreshing, and they constituted a rendezvous for any serious mind in 
 college. As wicked as we were at that time, I do not recollect a single insult on 
 the room during the time of our devotions, or when we held those prayer-meet- 
 ings during the space of four years. The ground during the time of our worship, 
 seemed in the view of all to be sacred ground, which was a wonder to all thus 
 associated, and to me is a wonder now. I have always been glad that I was 
 there at the time I was, and still hold the scenes that there passed in sweet 
 remembrance. 
 
 In another paragraph of this same communication, not thought 
 worth while to quote verbally, Bushnell speaks of a weekly religious 
 conference in his time, generally though not uniformly kept up. 
 This must have been sustained by some member or members of the 
 faculty as then constituted ; and became the prototype of meetings 
 in different forms under the same auspices that practically knew no 
 intermission until just before the Centennial. There is no direct 
 
354 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 evidence like this of BushnelPs, but a plenty of indications on every 
 hand, that the state of things in college both religiously and socially 
 continued substantially as he described it for at least ten years 
 longer. Bryant's words are very significant as to the social dis- 
 orders and laxity of government just previous to his time. 
 
 Before my admission, it had been the practice for the members of the Sopho- 
 more class, in the first term of their year, to seize upon the persons of some of 
 the Freshmen, bring them before an assembly of the Sophomores, and compel 
 them to go through a series of burlesque ceremonies, and receive certain mock 
 injunctions with regard to their future behavior. This was called gamutizing- 
 the Freshmen. It was a brutal and rather riotous proceeding, which I can, at 
 this time, hardly suppose that those who had the government of the college could 
 have tolerated ; yet the tradition ran that, if it was not connived at, no pains were 
 taken to suppress it. There were strong manifestations of a disposition to enforce 
 the custom after I became a member of the Sophomore class, but the Freshmen 
 showed so resolute a determination to resist it, that the design was dropped ; and 
 this, if I am rightly informed, was the last of the practice. 
 
 Samuel J. Mills joined college in April, 1806. He came out of a 
 Dutch family very early settled in Windsor, Connecticut. His father 
 of the same name lived to be ninety years old, a giant in his physical 
 frame, and said to have been of a mental greatness equal to the 
 physical, though strongly mixed with oddity. "Fun oozed out of 
 him as freely as sap from a sugar-maple in spring-time." Even when 
 rebuking the boys in the gallery of his church at Torringford for 
 some apparent levity caused by the turns of his discourse, intending 
 the reproof in all seriousness, he would sometimes intensify the 
 merriment by the oddity of the terms of his rebuke. " But when he 
 unbent, and gave himself to wit and story-telling, he was famous in 
 all the region round about." l " It was a bad generation of books ! " 
 once exclaimed Henry Ward Beecher of that large number of 
 Memoirs of remarkably pious youth published in Great Britain and 
 in the United States during the early part of the nineteenth century, 
 Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher furnished these books to his youngest son 
 for his reading; and almost all pastors in New England did the 
 same thing. The present writer had access in his boyhood to no 
 other sort of books than these from his deceased father's library. 
 Among them, the very same volume now lies open before him, 
 was "Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills, late Missionary to the 
 South Western Section of the United States, and Agent of the 
 American Colonization Society deputed to explore the coast of 
 Africa." Other specimen books of this class were "Remains of 
 1 Letter to the author in lb5 from the late Increase N. Tarbox. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 355 
 
 Henry Kirke White," "Life of David Brainerd," "Memoirs of 
 Henry Obookiah," and " Memoir of Edward Pay son." Beecher did 
 not give the grounds of his unfavorable judgment of these books, 
 but they may be confidently supposed to be : (1) The unlovable and 
 unscriptural character of our Heavenly Father implied, if not deline- 
 ated, in most of them. (2) The monstrously unreasonable and un- 
 thinkable theology of those times, which, while it made the salvation 
 of every individual unchangeably depend on counsels and determina- 
 tions had from all etefnity among the persons of the sacred Trinity, 
 made at the same time the scattered Christians of England and 
 America responsible in a substantive sense for the desperate con- 
 dition of the heathen world. And (3) the abnormal and unsocial 
 display of the Christian virtues in individuals, who, for the most 
 part, segregated from their fellows in strange situations, and also 
 dying young, were worse than useless to common youth for purposes 
 of imitation. It will hardly be believed in the twentieth century 
 that, in the Christian churches of New England during the first half 
 of the nineteenth, the Lord's Prayer was relatively unpopular as 
 compared with the prayer of the " publican." 
 
 The first " revival of religion," so called, a phrase of great signifi- 
 cance and of great beneficence in the history of New England, 
 notwithstanding the narrowness of the current theology and the 
 assumption of the clergy in knowing what never can be known on 
 earth, came to Williamstown in the spring of 1805. The good pastor, 
 a native of Kent, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale in 1774, had 
 preached faithfully for twenty-six years, 1779-1805, without seeing 
 at any time any considerable fruit of his labors.. But it was borne 
 in from above upon the mind of the good man that he should live to 
 see a revival of religion under his own ministrations. Political con- 
 tentions had been a hindrance to his work almost from the first. 
 The pews were very much divided in political sentiment, the chief 
 seats, however, were thought to be occupied by Federalists, and the 
 pulpit was unanimously Federalist, whether pastor or president 
 preached; while a majority of the builders of the meeting-house, 
 and a majority of the attendants on church worship, and the most of 
 the leading men in town affairs, were Democrats. This distinction 
 went down deeper into social and religious life than can be easily 
 conceived of in these later generations. But Pastor Swift preached 
 on, it was thought, with more pungency and power, and with less 
 and less implied references to earthly, and therefore transient, differ- 
 ences among men. The whole surface of the barren soil seemed to 
 be broken up by this sharp colter of 1805. Fifty-four new members 
 
356 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 were united to the church in that year, and fifty-two in the following 
 year; and in February, 1807, the good man died while the good 
 work was still going on. But the College was not apparently at all 
 affected by this town movement the first year, except to be stirred up 
 to a bitter spirit of opposition. One young man in the Junior class, 
 Algernon Sidney Bailey, from Worcester County, is said to have let 
 his light so shine as to become a sort of terror to opposers both in 
 town and college. A combined movement was made to mob him. 
 It was his prayers that seemed to excite this personal bitterness. 
 A small party had couched themselves in an out-of-the-way place, 
 which he was to pass, with a view to offer indignity and violence to 
 his person, when some of them were suddenly brought to a moral 
 crisis in their lives. The ambush was broken up before the supposed 
 passer-by had reached the place of offence. 
 
 This young man, Bailey, with a very few other students, and at 
 the invitation of Mrs. Mehitable Bardwell, who lived near the 
 bridge over the Hoosac, a full mile northwest of the College, set up 
 a private prayer-meeting in her house, which had consequences of 
 lasting moment both to town and college. Indeed, here is one of 
 the many insoluble points of contact between town and college, 
 which make it impossible to set forth the history of one separate 
 from that of the other. It may well have been, though we have no 
 information on that point, that it was thought likely, that Bailey 
 would be wending his way northward to this meeting along the still, 
 shaded road toward Bennington, when the futile scheme was con- 
 trived to waylay him. This meeting, however, could not be kept 
 altogether secret. Though convened at a distance from the College, 
 because it was not thought prudent to hold such a meeting there, and 
 one could hardly have been held there at that time without ridicule 
 and interruption, the meeting itself at Mrs. Bardwell's increased 
 somewhat in numbers and much in interest throughout the summer 
 of 1805. " This was a blessed meeting," said one who was a member 
 of it, " and there I have always thought the College revival began." 
 The careful reader will note the circumstances of origin as well as 
 the date of this secret prayer-gathering at the small house by the 
 Hoosac River. Much confusion and undesigned misstatement has 
 arisen from confounding persons and mixing the dates of events 
 about this time. These first meetings at Mrs. Bardwell's house 
 were more than six months before Samuel J. Mills entered college. 
 
 Mrs. Bardwell was the nurse at the bedside of Colonel Benjamin 
 Simonds and of his wife, Anna Simonds, both of whom died in 
 April, 1807 ; and the Bardwells, who were then the nearest neigh- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 357 
 
 bors of the Simonds family, moved shortly afterward into a house 
 still standing in South Street, which itself had not long before been 
 moved from the site of the present president's house to make room 
 for this latter, then about to be built by General Sloan. When the 
 Bardwells were fairly established in their new home, whether by a 
 request of some students who knew of the former meeting-place or 
 by an invitation direct from Mrs. Bardwell, her kitchen was put at 
 the disposal of the students for a similar purpose during the winter 
 months, Saturday nights being designated as the time. After a 
 little, the family asked that the door into the sitting-room might be 
 left ajar, and that a few neighbors might be invited in to overhear. 
 This concession in the course of time changed the nature of the 
 meeting somewhat. It became a neighborhood prayer-meeting led 
 by the students, and continued for many years, until the breaking 
 up of the household by the death of the husband, Obadiah Bardwell, 
 and the removal of the widow to live with her daughter near by, 
 Mrs. Noah Cook. But the meeting had become so prized in the 
 neighborhood, that another good lady, Mrs. Benjamin, with her 
 widowed daughter, Mrs. Perry, opened their house for its con- 
 tinuance, where it flourished without intermission for about twenty- 
 five years. Either students or some professor in the College usually 
 conducted the meeting. Its last conductor was George B. Perry, 
 son of the widow just mentioned, still living in North Adams as an 
 honored citizen and beloved deacon in the church. 
 
 To revert now to the college situation, it must be said, that the 
 good work in the town commencing in 1805 took hold but slowly 
 of the men in the College. The advent of Mills, in April, 1806, a 
 freshman then twenty-three years old, brought a mature Christian 
 into influential contact with classmates as a rule much younger. 
 An extract from his diary under date of June 26, presents him and 
 them in striking relations. "Attended conference this evening 
 composed principally of the freshmen class. A very good meeting. 
 Many very solemn ; K. much cast down. It was very evident God 
 was stirring with some of his disobedient creatures. The work is 
 the Lord's and He is abundantly able to carry it on. Arise, Lord, 
 thou and the Ark of thy Strength ! It seems to me that I never 
 longed so much for the Sabbath as I do now. I am afraid the 
 impressions of my classmates will wear off. But all things are 
 possible with God." The biographer of Mills, Gardiner Spring, in 
 telling the story of the boy's conversion when he was sixteen years 
 old, that is, seven years before he ever saw Williamstown, quotes 
 from a letter of the son to his father, "that he could not conceive 
 
358 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of any course of life in which to pass the rest of his days, that would 
 prove so pleasant, as to go and communicate the Gospel salvation to the 
 poor Heathen." The biographer adds : 
 
 From this same hour he never once lost sight of his darling object. Though but 
 a youth of sixteen, he discovered a zeal in the missionary cause, an eagerness in 
 the pursuit of missionary intelligence, and an enlargement of thought in his 
 plans to become acquainted with the true state of the unevangelized world, 
 which left little doubt that he was chained to his purpose by a superior power. 
 It was a heart yearning over the miseries of perishing millions, that first led him 
 to think of acquiring an education with a view to the gospel ministry. Having 
 consulted his parents, and unfolded all his purpose, which, should God permit, 
 was no less than to devote his life to the cause of missions in foreign lands ; and 
 having received their approbation and their blessing, he resolved on measures 
 for changing his course of life. The Spirit of God came over him like Elisha in 
 the field. While toiling at the plough, was his heart touched with compassion 
 for the heathen world, and he bid adieu to his farm, to obtain an education on 
 purpose to carry the Gospel to millions who perish for lack of knowledge. Thus 
 in a retired field in Litchfield county, was the King of Zion beginning that 
 grand course of operations which have produced such a mighty revolution in the 
 American churches. Having put his secular concerns into other hands, and 
 having previously connected himself with the church under the pastoral care of 
 his father, Mills became a member of Williams College in Massachusetts in the 
 Spring of 1806. 
 
 This unquestionable record puts a different phase upon certain 
 events in Williamstown during the summer of 1806, from that under 
 which these have been hitherto often exhibited. It is true, that the 
 freshmen then studied geography in their summer term ; and it is 
 doubtless true, that this study together furnished Mills a happy oc- 
 casion to expatiate with his classmates on the vast numbers and the 
 desperate needs of the heathen world. That is one thing, and a 
 good thing. But to represent the interest of Mills and others as 
 springing up out of a casual geography lesson in West College, and 
 this becoming the uppermost headspring of the vast stream of Amer- 
 ican foreign missions, is an abuse rather than the use of geography 
 and history at once. Coming to Williams College, as he did, on 
 purpose to prepare himself for becoming a missionary to the heathen, 
 nothing is more natural and inevitable than that he should put 
 himself into immediate connection with the few spiritually-minded 
 Christians in college, like Bailey and Nelson ; that he should have 
 learned pretty soon about their place or places of secret conference 
 and devotion ; that he should have made the geography lessons on 
 Asia and Africa a means of discussing, especially with his class- 
 mates, the duty and privilege of a missionary life ; and that, con- 
 sidering his age and experience, he should have become (though a 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 359 
 
 f resliman) a sort of leader in a circle, several of whom were members 
 of upper classes. The point is, that things were already prepared 
 for Mills and his work in college, just as he was later instrumental 
 in preparing the way for others to enter the missionary field. It is 
 certain, that there were two out-of-the-way places of meeting for 
 prayer and conference in the summer in the fields not far from the 
 colleges, besides Mrs. BardwelPs kitchen north of the river, before 
 Mills arrived in town. Undoubtedly the most frequented of these 
 then and afterward was a thick grove of original maples on General 
 Sloan's land north of West College, nearly halfway between Main 
 Street and the Hoosac Eiver. The other was south of West College, 
 considerably nearer, at that time even more sequestered, under an 
 immense willow tree in the low ground, where now are growing as 
 representatives of that eight or nine large willows. The original 
 tree was struck by lightning in the night-time about 1864, and was 
 partially destroyed. It is not likely that willow trees will ever 
 cease to grow in that spot, and to be a reminder at once of the piety 
 and impiety of the students about 1805, for the place is unsuitable 
 for any building purposes, and the present trees are growing in the 
 boundary-line between two distinct estates. 
 
 It so happened that a students' meeting in the first mentioned of 
 these localities, and led by Mills, was specially remembered on 
 account of its sudden interruption by a thunder-shower, and the 
 accidental proximity of a haystack on the meadow, under which the 
 five students present took refuge till the western sky was cleared. 
 The brevity of the shower, the strangeness of their place of refuge, 
 and the peculiarity of their topic of prayer and conference, all took 
 hold of their imaginations and of their memories. They spoke of 
 the occurrence to others, and often among themselves, until the whole 
 thing became a sort of transmitted wonder. The relations of the 
 haystack to the grove as a frequented place for secret prayer were 
 only momentary, and never recurred ; and yet the story and the sub- 
 sequent traditions and exaggerations all seemed especially to fasten 
 on the Haystack, probably on account of the inherent oddity of such 
 a frail and transient structure proving a port of shelter in a thunder- 
 storm. Locally, the whole matter passed out of mind and memory. 
 Nobody here knew where the haystack stood, and very few had ever 
 heard of any special haystack, when the following letter, dated 
 " South Williamstown, April 26, 1852," was received by Professor 
 Hopkins. The writer was an entire stranger to him, and to all then 
 connected with the College, and proved long afterward to have been 
 a Baptist layman from a distance. 
 
360 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 In making inquiries this afternoon on ray first visit to William stown, in rela- 
 tion to the spot where the haystack stood, so famous in the history of missions 
 as the one behind which Mills and his associates prayed for the Divine guidance 
 and blessing while maturing their plans for preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom 
 to the heathen world, plans which were carried out so successfully, I re- 
 gretted to learn that the place was unmarked by tree, shrub, stone, or monument 
 of any kind. 
 
 Having learned that there had been among some ladies, who are the world 
 over always ready to every good work, some desire manifested to mark the 
 sacred place before it was entirely forgotten by some memorial, will you please 
 take charge of the enclosed dollar (a gold one), and apply it in any way you 
 may deem best suited to effect the object. It is little, but rain drops make the 
 shower. If it does no more than purchase a cedar stake to mark the spot, it 
 will not be in vain ; for long before that will have time to moulder, wealthy ones 
 will have marked with marble the place where American Missions had their 
 birth, and from whence went forth those who were chosen of God to commence 
 the work of making every heathen heart bow at the blessed name of Jesus. 
 
 Professor Hopkins " took charge " of the dollar, was immensely 
 interested in it, in fact, communicated its reception and purpose to 
 many persons of his acquaintance, and instituted inquiries of old 
 people and of old alumni in order to ascertain, if possible, the 
 locality in question. But nothing of consequence was in this man- 
 ner elicited. In the spring of 1854, after the gold dollar had lain 
 two years as buried seed, a venerable-looking gentleman called at 
 his study with the announcement, that his name was Byram Green, 
 that he was a graduate of 1808, and that he was one of five students 
 who had talked and prayed at the haystack meeting. None but 
 those two were then present, but the writer will venture the asser- 
 tion, that Albert Hopkins was glad to see Byram Green on that 
 occasion. " Can you tell me now where the haystack stood 9 " " 1 
 think I can, if* there are any remains of a maple grove, that stood near 
 there forty-eight years ago." " Whereabouts was the place in gen- 
 eral ? " " North of West College, down toivard the Hoosac River." 
 " What did you call the place in those days ?" " We called it 'Sloan's 
 Meadow. 9 " "Will you go down there with me, and see if we can 
 identify the place ? " " Most certainly I will." And they went. 
 
 The next day at the invitation of Professor Hopkins, Professor 
 Perry joined the two in a visit to the identified locality, saw the 
 stake which Green had set with his own hands the day before on 
 the supposed site of the haystack, and witnessed also something of 
 the uncertainty of the day before in his assertion of the precise spot. 
 The whole region had greatly changed in half a century. Green 
 was guided mainly by the position of three or four old maples then 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 361 
 
 standing, which he judged to be a part, or at least to indicate in 
 general, the place of the old prayer-grove. So let it be. So it will 
 be till the end of time. Within narrow limits, it is absolutely cer- 
 tain, that the place is rightly marked. It was Green's main errand 
 to Williamstown at that time to render, if possible, this precise 
 service. It was a good and great and timely service. But he ren- 
 dered another, not long after, much better and greater and more 
 timely, namely, to write out the following careful account of the 
 prayer-meeting. In all the scattered archives of the town and 
 college, wheresoever they may be kept and howsoever they may be 
 gathered, very few are more precious than this letter and all that is 
 implied in and between its lines. 
 
 You request a statement of the facts in relation to the prayer-meeting which 
 was held under the haystack, by some students of Williams College, in July or 
 August, 1806. That prayer-meeting becomes interesting to the Christian com- 
 munity, because it was then and there proposed to send the Gospel to the pagans 
 of Asia, and to the disciples of Mohammed. The stack of hay stood northerly 
 from the West College, near a maple grove, in a field that was then called 
 Sloan's meadow. 
 
 Samuel J. Mills, James Richards, Francis L. Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and 
 Byram Green were present. The afternoon was oppressively warm, which 
 probably detained all those from the East College that usually attended, and 
 some from the West. We first went to the grove, expecting to hold our prayer- 
 meeting there, but a dark cloud was rising in the west, and it soon began to 
 thunder and lighten, and we left the grove and went under the haystack to pro- 
 tect us from the approaching storm, which was soon realized. 
 
 The subject of conversation under the stack, before and during the shower, 
 was the moral darkness of Asia. Mills proposed to send the Gospel to that dark 
 and heathen land ; and said that we could do it if we would. We were all 
 agreed and delighted with the idea, except Loomis, who contended that it was 
 premature ; that if missionaries should be sent to Asia they would be mur- 
 dered ; that Christian armies must subdue the country before the Gospel could 
 be sent to the Turks and Arabs. In reply, it was said, that God was always 
 willing to have his Gospel spread throughout the world ; that if the Christian 
 public was willing and active, the work would be done ; that on this subject 
 the Roman adage would be true, Vox populi vox Dei. "Come," said Mills, 
 " let us make it a subject of prayer, under this haystack, while the dark clouds 
 are going, and the clear sky is coming." 
 
 We all prayed and made Foreign Missions a subject in our prayers, except 
 Loomis. Mills made the last prayer, and was in some degree enthusiastic ; he 
 prayed that God would strike down the arm, with the red artillery of heaven, 
 that should be raised against a herald of the cross. We then sang one stanza, 
 
 as follows : 
 
 Let all the heathen writers join 
 
 To form one perfect book : 
 Great God, if once compared with thine, 
 How mean their writings look ! 
 
362 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 The prayer-meetings were continued during the warm season of that year, in 
 the groves somewhere between the village and the Hoosac, and the subject of 
 Foreign Missions was remembered in our prayers. The following is a list of 
 names that usually attended, to wit: John Nelson, Calvin Bushnell, Byrarn 
 Green, Rufus Pomeroy, Francis L. Bobbins, Samuel Ware, Edwin W. Dwight, 
 Ezra Fisk, Harvey Loomis, Samuel J. Mills, and James Richards. Others 
 attended occasionally. 
 
 The next summer, 1807, the prayer-meetings were again held in the grove ; 
 two were added to our number, to wit, Luther Rice and John Whittlesey. I 
 have several times seen the names of Hall and Rice numbered among those who 
 were at the prayer-meeting under the haystack. That is an error. Rice was not 
 a member of college until October, 1806. Hall was not a professor of religion at 
 that time, and did not attend our religious meetings. He was made a subject of 
 grace in the year 1808, about six or eight months before he graduated. After 
 that he was active in the cause. 
 
 Up to this point Green speaks as an eye- and ear-witness, and his 
 testimony is unimpeachable ; but he added to the letter a couple of 
 short paragraphs, the first beginning with the words, "Nothing 
 can be more certain and direct than the connection between this 
 prayer-meeting and the subsequent movements in this country re- 
 specting Foreign Missions," in respect to matters of which he had 
 no opportunity personally to judge, and which as matters of fact 
 are at the least doubtful. Of the five men who prayed and sang 
 under the haystack, only one, James Eichards, ever went out as a 
 foreign missionary. He sailed for Ceylon in October, 1815. He 
 would doubtless have gone with the first party in 1812, had it not 
 been for his own humility and some judgment of his compeers that 
 he was not yet sufficiently prepared for the foreign service. In the 
 meantime he studied medicine in Philadelphia. Eichards was of 
 very moderate talents, but of a very conservative spirit. His most 
 memorable words were, that he was willing to work his passage to 
 India on shipboard. On leaving his native land in company with 
 eight missionary brethren and sisters he said, " I have been waiting 
 with anxiety almost eight years for an opportunity to go and preach 
 Christ among the heathen. I have often wept at the long delay. 
 But the day on which I now bid farewell to my native land is the 
 happiest day of my life." He died in Ceylon in 1822. Like Mills, 
 and others at that time, Eichards took a sort of mechanical view of 
 the Gospel, as if it only needed to be carried, as in a trunk by any- 
 body, even to such astute and intellectual people as are the natives 
 of India. In this point of view the contemporary words of Mills 
 himself are significant and saddening : " / wish we could break out 
 upon the heathen like the Irish rebellion, forty thousand strong." 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 363 
 
 Certainly the best mind by much, and probably the most useful 
 life, of the five men of the haystack had Harvey Loomis, the dis- 
 senter at the time of the meeting and the home missionary of blessed 
 memory. It is remarkable that home missions had its champion 
 and exemplar in that first and much-lauded gathering of young 
 Christian enthusiasts in 1806. There was a difference of opinion 
 then, and there is a difference of opinion now. As soon as he had 
 finished his theological education he went directly to Bangor, Maine, 
 which was then a difficult and highly important field of ministerial 
 labor. In November, 1811, he was ordained pastor there over a 
 church which was organized there the day before, consisting of four 
 members, and embracing all the male professors of religion then in 
 the place. For one year he preached in an unfinished hall over a 
 store ; the next year a court-house was built with the double purpose 
 of serving as a meeting-house and county house of justice ; and in 
 1821 the first meeting-house in Bangor was erected for the use of his 
 enlarged and constantly enlarging congregation. His practice was 
 to preach twice on the Sunday, morning and afternoon, and to hold 
 one conference meeting in the middle of the week. These meetings 
 were never increased in number even in times of special religious 
 interest, which times soon ceased to be special and became con- 
 tinuous, so that almost every communion witnessed additions and 
 the church became strong and influential. His method of conduct- 
 ing his weekly conference was characteristic of the man. He sat in 
 a chair in one corner of the room on the same level with the rest, 
 and wished and encouraged every man present, whether a professor 
 of religion or not, to take some brief part in the meeting. All who 
 had a word for the Master were requested to utter it in their own 
 way; and if any one had any objections to any point of the current 
 faith and practice he was urged to present them, and they were 
 always fairly met and as fully answered as the time and his ability 
 allowed. Some years after his death a competent contemporary 
 used these words of Harvey Loomis : 
 
 Few ministers have ever been loved and revered by their parishioners more 
 than Mr. Loomis ; and few have been more eminently successful in their labors 
 than he. He had the advantage of a fine person and a natural grace of manner. 
 He was rather tall, his form was commanding, his countenance noble, his ex- 
 pression full, his eye brilliant, his voice clear, and his utterance fluent. His 
 enunciation was remarkable for its distinctness. He was a man of great firmness 
 and decision, of uncommon moral courage, and of rare self-possession. No 
 assaults of opposers ever found him off his guard, or unprepared for the emer- 
 gency. A young lawyer wished for his minister's views respecting his favorite 
 amusement of dancing. Mr. Loomis replied, " I think that all things are not 
 
364 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 equally important. Some things have a claim prior to others. Now, it seems to 
 me the most important thing for you is to become a true Christian ; afterwards 
 you can dance just as much as will be for your enjoyment and usefulness." 
 
 Numerically foreign missions outvoted home missions four to one 
 in the haystack meeting. A part of those present then and there 
 formed, with a few others in college, in September, 1808, the " Society 
 of Brethren," so called, a religious organization with a decided bent 
 in its spirit and purpose toward foreign missions. Under various 
 modifications and designations this society has continued in the 
 College till the present time. As the old century is going out, its 
 name is the Mills Young Men's Christian Association. Four of the 
 members of this little Society of Brethren, namely, Mills, Richards, 
 Rice, and Hall, not long after their respective graduations, went to 
 the then newly founded Andover Theological Seminary, and all 
 became members of a similar missionary society there, which Mills 
 was instrumental in instituting, and which still exists in the semi- 
 nary. The connection between the haystack meeting and the Society 
 of Brethren, formed more than two years after, is not very direct, 
 though it may have been substantive ; and the same may be said of 
 the connection between that and the Andover society ; and when it 
 comes to the connection of all three of these in order with the estab- 
 lishment of the American Board of Missions in 1810, instead of 
 traceable causes and effects we come into a maze, in which it is diffi- 
 cult (to say the least) to find the clew. Samuel J. Mills was indeed 
 a living factor in all four of these matters, and has gained a precious 
 and lasting name in the field of Christian beneficence, while he never 
 went on a foreign mission himself, nor was he well fitted by tempera- 
 ment or scholarship for any such task. He was the religious leader 
 so long as he remained in college, for the reasons heretofore indi- 
 cated; but when he went to Andover, while he was there also active 
 and zealous and indefatigable, he met other young men more gifted 
 than himself, more naturally leaders in great enterprises. Such an 
 one, especially, was Adoniram Judson. The General Association of 
 Congregational Ministers, meeting at Bradford, in June, 1810, re- 
 ceived a delegation of four young men from the Andover Seminary, 
 bearing a formal paper signed by themselves asking the advice of 
 their Fathers in the church, and virtually offering themselves to go 
 as missionaries east or west, under such auspices and conditions as 
 the said Fathers might recommend. The paper was signed by 
 
 ADONIRAM JUDSON SAMUEL J. MILLS 
 
 SAMUEL NOTT SAMUEL NEWELL 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 365 
 
 The Association at that meeting raised a committee from among 
 themselves, which they entitled a Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions. That Board, afterward incorporated by the State 
 of Massachusetts, has done great and wonderful things both at home 
 and abroad during the past ninety years. But it was almost helpless 
 at first. After much consultation it was resolved to send one of the 
 young men to England, with a view to ascertaining what assistance, 
 if any, would be afforded to their mission by the London Missionary 
 Society. Judson was selected to go as their representative most fit, 
 and he went. In this connection it must be noted how baseless is 
 the claim often put forth in ignorance by men prominently connected 
 with the College and the Board, who ought to have known better, 
 that American foreign missions took the precedence in point of time 
 over those of all other modern nations. If this were so, why was 
 Judson sent to the London Missionary Society, founded in 1792? 
 And why should it be a matter of formal record, that " he was wel- 
 comed with great cordiality by the directors of the London Society, 
 who engaged to take him and his three brethren under their care, 
 and to allow them salaries, and employ them on a mission, if the 
 funds of the American Board should not be competent for their 
 support " ? In fact, contrary to the expectations of the Board, 
 Judson, during his absence, felt himself justified in entering into 
 partial arrangements, at least, to become the missionary of the 
 London Society in the East Indies. When Mills heard of this, he 
 exclaimed in a letter to a friend : 
 
 What ! is England to support her own missionaries and ours likewise ? O 
 shame ! If brother Judson is prepared, I would fain press him forward with 
 the arm of an Hercules, if I had the strength ; but I do not like this dependence 
 on another nation, especially when they have already done so much, and we 
 nothing. I trust that each of the brethren will stand at their several posts, 
 determined, God helping them, to show themselves MEN. Perhaps the Fathers 
 will soon arise, and take the business of Missions into their own hands. But 
 should they hesitate, let us be prepared to GO FORWARD, trusting to that God for 
 assistance who hath said, Lo ! I am with you always, even to the end of the 
 world. 
 
 A timely legacy from a Grod-f earing woman, Mary Norris, wife of 
 one of the founders of Andover Seminary, enabled the " Fathers to 
 arise," and to send out to Calcutta in February, 1812, five mission- 
 aries, namely, Judson, Nott, and Newell, three of the signers of the 
 missionary memorial of 1810; and Gordon Hall and Luther Rice, 
 both graduates of Williams, Hall in 1808 and Rice in 1810. The 
 biographer of Samuel J. Mills does not furnish us with the reasons 
 
366 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 why the latter did not embark for India with his fellow-signers 
 of the missionary memorial, but preferred to make two extended 
 and hazardous missionary journeys on horseback with but a single 
 companion in each, throughout the western and southern portions of 
 the United States. New Orleans was the objective in both tours; 
 and the larger part of the routes both going and coming was mere 
 wilderness. Were these home missionary journeys in any sense the 
 fruitage of the good seed-corn words of Harvey Loomis at the hay- 
 stack prayer-meeting ? 
 
 Mills was present at Washington at the organization of the 
 American Colonization Society on New Year's Day, 1817. His 
 thoughts had been strongly drawn to Africa as a place of missionary 
 labor as early as his Sophomore year in college ; and his more recent 
 tours in the Southern States had brought him in contact with negroes 
 both free and slave. The colony of Sierra Leone had been fully 
 established by Great Britain in 1792, and more than a thousand 
 blacks had been transported thither in that year from Nova Scotia. 
 In 1816 the General Assembly of the State of Virginia had requested 
 their Governor to correspond with the President of the United 
 States for the purpose of obtaining a territory on the coast of Africa 
 to serve as an asylum for such persons of color as had been or might 
 be emancipated by the laws of that Commonwealth. How far the 
 motive in these proposed negotiations for colonization was to 
 strengthen slavery in the South by getting rid of the free blacks 
 there, it is impossible to say ; that that motive mingled in more or 
 less, both at the first and afterwards, is evidenced by the fact that 
 Henry Clay, a slaveholder, was president of the Society for many 
 years, and that the antislavery people of the North were strongly 
 prejudiced against it; but it is certain, that the men who actually 
 organized and put the Society into operation, like Caldwell and 
 Finley and Mills, were men of the purest philanthropy, who sup- 
 posed that thus only could American Christian missions obtain a 
 footing in Africa. In 1819; Congress voted an appropriation of 
 $100,000 to aid in the work, and the next year the first colonists 
 were sent out. But of course there were preliminaries to be attended 
 to. An eligible place on the coast of Africa must be selected by 
 somebody, and somebody must be sent out to explore the west coast 
 in the neighborhood of Sierra Leone for such a place. This commis- 
 sion, replete as it was with responsibility, was put at once into the 
 hands of Samuel J. Mills, with the privilege of selecting a colleague 
 to share the arduous labors with him. His thoughts were directed 
 to Ebenezer Burgess, a young minister of kindred spirit, who had 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 367 
 
 just before been a professor of mathematics in the University of 
 Vermont. He accepted the .appointment. The two left America 
 for England in November, 1817 ; the next February they departed 
 for the British Colony in Africa ; and after two months of explora- 
 tion on the coast to the south of that Colony, they selected what 
 they supposed was a suitable place for a settlement, and took ship 
 for home. On the sixteenth of May, Mills died at sea; his eyes 
 were tenderly closed by his faithful colleague, and his body buried 
 in the mighty waters off the coast of that Dark Continent, to serve 
 as a means of enlightening which he had done what he could. 
 
 Years afterwards, when Ebenezer Burgess had been a long time 
 pastor in Dedham, 1 he furnished the following tender, yet discrimi- 
 nating, characterization of his early companion in labor and perils : 
 
 If we wish to do justice to Mr. Mills, we must not contemplate him as a 
 student, a writer, a preacher, but as a philanthropist, wise in council, active, 
 zealous, self-sacrificing, and devoted to good works. He did not claim to be a 
 classical scholar, a lucid writer, or a popular orator. While his figure was 
 manly, his apparel studiously neat, and his manner rather graceful, his voice 
 was not clear, nor his eye brilliant, nor his language fluent. Unlike his father 
 he had no wit. The prominent traits of his character, which gave him efficiency 
 as a philanthropist, were such as these : He was sagacious to see what could be 
 done and what could not be done. He embarked in no theoretic or impracti- 
 cable enterprises. He had more than ordinary knowledge of human nature. 
 He did not attempt to do himself any work for which he was incompetent ; but 
 he had the wisdom to solicit the able writer, the effective preacher, the noble 
 statesman, the liberal merchant, to do each his appropriate work ; and then he 
 was willing they should enjoy all the reputation, while he was himself unseen. 
 He was sincere as zealous in his philanthropy. He expended the little patri- 
 mony of his maternal grandfather. He did not consult his own wealth, ease, or 
 honor. His compassion for man was tender and large. His love to the king- 
 dom of Christ was a flame of fire, enkindling his prayers, and warning him to 
 action amid the coldness of others. He wasted no time in despondence or com- 
 plaints. He was prudent in the use of his tongue. He did not rail about the 
 popular errors or vices, whether of nations or individuals. Slavery and war, 
 drunkenness and sensuality, were almost never topics of remark. Intent on 
 making the world better in the use of appropriate means, he did not expend his 
 energies in ridicule or in tears. He was no bigot. He silently communed with 
 the Baptist, prayed with the Methodist, loved the Moravian, and praised the 
 Friend. His prayers were short ; often saying, " We praise thee that we belong 
 to a race of beings who were made by Jesus Christ, and for him, and are 
 redeemed by his blood." 
 
 1 The present writer taught a school in Dedham in two successive winters, 1848-50, 
 during which seasons the Rev. Dr. Burgess was his pastor, and he had the privilege of 
 becoming well acquainted with him and his interesting family of two sons and two 
 daughters. 
 
368 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 In parting finally with the men of the haystack and their coad- 
 jutors, it may be worth while to note .two or three points relating 
 to them and their work. (1) Adoniram Judson, the ablest and 
 most successful of them all, himself also died at sea in April, 1850. 
 It is a matter of profound thankfulness that American Christians 
 have outgrown the intense sectarianism that made Andover Semi- 
 nary and New England Congregationalists generally, when Judson 
 and Rice became Baptists almost as soon as they became mission- 
 ari^s, look on them askance as if they had denied the faith and shut 
 themselves out of the fold. (2) As the decades have rolled by, the 
 words and life of Harvey Loomis have overtaken, even if they have 
 not overshadowed, in influence and power the words and life of 
 Samuel J. Mills. The American Home Missionary societies and 
 benevolences are now on a grander scale, and are obviously pro- 
 ducing more momentous results, than all the foreign missionaries' 
 agencies of every name. Mark Hopkins, Williams College 1824, 
 was for many years the president of the American Board, during 
 the time of its highest and broadest efficiency; his eldest son, 
 Henry Hopkins, Williams College 1858, is now one of the vice- 
 presidents of the American Missionary Association, an organization 
 of increasing and amazing potency for good. (3) It was not in the 
 plan of God that the American Colonization Society, probably 
 tainted in its source and certainly in its flow by the deadly slough- 
 off of American slavery, should accomplish much (if anything) as 
 toward the great ends of Liberty and Righteousness. 
 
 The identification of the place of the haystack excited a deal of 
 interest among the alumni and other friends of the College. Steps 
 were at once taken toward purchasing the land on which it stood, 
 that is to say, the whole of " Sloan's meadow " lying between Main 
 Street and the Hoosac, as toward the end of a " Missionary Park," 
 so-called. This fortunate move reached its goal. The Whitman 
 family, always warm friends and generous donors to the College, 
 sold the land for $250 an acre. The park was laid out on broad 
 lines, and came at first under the care of Professor Hopkins, but 
 before long passed into that of Professor Bascom, to whom for the 
 most part its beautiful paths and arboral adornments are due, and 
 who as the old century goes out still presides alone over all of its 
 steadily increasing beauties. As soon as the possession of the land 
 was assured to the College, Professor Perry went to President 
 Hopkins with a plan to utilize a small part of the Park, at one 
 corner, for a college cemetery. It was his own idea. He felt 
 strongly that such a place would come in time to be precious in its 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 369 
 
 associations, and that now* was the time to secure it. Dr. Hopkins 
 took no interest in the scheme, and at once discarded it ; whereupon 
 its proposer went to Professor Hopkins as the next most influen- 
 tial person in the premises, who listened attentively and assented 
 heartily and entered practically upon the realization of the plan. 
 This is the whole story of the origin of the College cemetery. It 
 is the more deeply impressed upon the writer's memory, insomuch 
 as his own first-born, Gray Perry, was the first to be deposited in 
 its consecrated ground. A little before this primal interment, Pro- 
 fessor Chadbourne had built a family tomb of brick in the south- 
 west corner of the cemetery lot, and his own first-born child also, 
 Abby Chadbourne, had been deposited beneath its broad arch. 
 After the death of President Chadbourne in 1883 and his own 
 entombment there, the trustees of the College erected the present 
 massive stone front of the tomb, on which an appropriate epitaph 
 is engraved. Already before the first half-century has expired, this 
 piece of ground has gathered to itself manifold and hallowed asso- 
 ciations connected with the sleepers there. 
 
 The semi-centennial of the haystack meeting was celebrated here 
 in 1856 with elaborate and highly interesting exercises. David 
 Dudley Field presided, and made the introductory address. The 
 principal address was given by Professor Albert Hopkins, and 
 occupied an hour and a half in its delivery. His theme was, of 
 course, the haystack ; and he subdivided it into, (1) the times of 
 the haystack ; (2) the men of the haystack ; (3) their relations to 
 the problem of the ages ; and (4) our relations and duties to the 
 same problem. Short and significant addresses were then made by 
 ten or a dozen distinguished men, among them Governor Briggs, 
 President of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Perhaps the 
 most weighty words of the occasion were those of Rufus Anderson, 
 then the veteran Secretary of the American Board. A part of these 
 are here transcribed : 
 
 Less than a year ago, it was my privilege to stand on the site of Antioch, 
 where the first foreign missionaries received their special designation from the 
 Holy Ghost. This historical association was to me the principal charm of that 
 beautiful and interesting spot. Next to Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee, I have 
 most pleasure in the recollection of Antioch. But where am I now ? The moun- 
 tains yonder are not ranges of Lebanon, nor Is yonder stream the Orontes. We 
 are met in the New World. The historical events we commemorate occurred 
 within the memory of some of us. Nevertheless they are important, and have 
 and will have a place on the historic page. And they make this, rather than 
 any and all other places, the Antioch of our Western hemisphere. 
 
 We may not claim, that the foreign missionary spirit in our American 
 
 2/B 
 
370 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 churches had its first development here. The -proof is ample that it had not. 
 But, so far as my own researches have gone, the first personal consecrations to 
 the work of effecting missions among foreign heathen nations were here. Here 
 the Holy Ghost made the first visible separations of men in this country for the 
 foreign work whereto he had called them. The first observable rill of the stream 
 of American missionaries, which has gone on swelling until now, issued just on 
 this spot ; and I am thankful the spot has been so well identified, and is so 
 convenient of access, and withal so beautiful ; and that it has now been secured 
 and consecrated as a permanent memorial. The development and result of this 
 movement meet our reasonable wishes. Samuel J. Mills rests near the shores 
 of Africa. The grave of James Richards I saw in Ceylon. Gordon Hall sleeps 
 among the Mahrattas of Western India. Hall died young ; but a life of rare 
 and consistent devotedness, illustrated by noble exhibitions of talent, give him 
 a place in the highest rank of missionaries. 
 
 The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had its origin 
 in the desire and request of young men of the Andover Seminary, including 
 those just named, to be sent abroad as missionaries. These two things stand in 
 the immediate relation of cause and effect. I am also persuaded, that the form- 
 ing of the " Society of Brethren " here in this college in September, 1808, before 
 even the conversion of Dr. Judson, and its removal to Andover Seminary early 
 in 1810, or sooner, had much to do, by its weekly conferences and prayers, in 
 maturing the plans of its members. Its leading object indeed, as we are assured, 
 was " so to operate on the public mind as to lead to the formation of a mission- 
 ary society." And its members corresponded on this subject with the men who 
 actually became the founders of the American Board. 
 
 In leaving now this topic of the haystack and of American foreign 
 missions, we must not forget to do ample justice to the Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts in its constantly recurring gifts to the 
 College in its times of need. While the last war with England was 
 still raging the Legislature passed an act, Feb. 24, 1814, " for the 
 Encouragement of Literature, Piety and Morality and the Useful 
 Arts and Sciences," and appropriated the taxes due to the Common- 
 wealth from the Massachusetts Bank, "for the ten years next to 
 come," to Harvard, Williams, and Bowdoin. Of this fund Williams 
 received "three sixteenth parts," which amounted to $30,000. In 
 1859 the State gave this College $25,000, and in 1868, $75,000. The 
 total of all legislative gifts is $153,500, from the beginning until 
 now. 
 
 In the same college class with Samuel J. Mills and Harvey 
 Loomis, namely, the class of 1809, was graduated the first uncom- 
 monly distinguished man that the college sent forth among its alumni. 
 This was a Hartford boy whose name was Samuel A. Talcott. 
 He had in his veins some of the best blood of Connecticut. His 
 ancestor, John Talcott, emigrated from England to Cambridge in 
 1632, and was in the original party that followed or made the old 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 371 
 
 "Bay Path" to Hartford, and settled that place in 1636. The 
 second John Talcott greatly distinguished himself throughout New 
 England as a military leader in King Philip's Indian War of 1676. 
 His son, Joseph Talcott, was Governor of Connecticut from- 1725 to 
 1741, the year of his death. The blood of John Ledyard, the world- 
 famous traveller, and of Colonel William Ledyard, the Revolutionary 
 hero, mingled with other strains in this Hartford lad, to the end of 
 making even his childhood precocious and remarkable. He entered 
 as a Sophomore here at sixteen, and was graduated at the head of 
 his class at nineteen, and took the valedictory on every ground as a 
 matter of course. But even as a boy he had contracted the habit of 
 drinking intoxicants. These were always for sale at every tavern, 
 and were exposed for social purposes on almost every private side- 
 board. Deacon Benjamin Skinner in all those years kept the tavern 
 just north of the Hoosac, which had been built and kept by Colonel 
 Simonds, who was his father-in-law. Young Talcott probably boarded 
 over there, as had Thomas Robbins and many another Connecticut 
 student before him. At any rate, Talcott before his graduation 
 became engaged to Rachel Skinner, as Robbins had been temporarily 
 engaged to Alice Skinner, her sister. This tavern in those days (it 
 is still standing) was a favorite place for parties and dancing and 
 drinking. The Mansion House, close by the church in which the 
 commencements were held, was equally open at all times for similar 
 purposes. As the exercises of commencement were going forward 
 in 1809, and the afternoon wearing away toward the valedictory, 
 two or three friends of Talcott found him intoxicated, too intoxi- 
 cated to appear on the stage. No time was to be lost. One of them 
 took strongly hold of each arm and trotted him down the street 
 toward the Green River and back again, as fast as they could 
 go. He was almost immediately thereafter called upon the stage, 
 and delivered his oration with the accompanying valedictory with 
 unequalled facility and eloquence. It has been said by many eye- 
 and ear-witnesses that no such exquisite performance had ever been 
 witnessed upon the stage before. 
 
 He married Miss Skinner in the autumn of 1809, and began the 
 study of law immediately with Thomas R. Gold of Oneida County. 
 We shall allow in a moment a classmate and friend to relate how he 
 took hold of that study, and how he adorned that profession. John 
 Ledyard Talcott was the only son of the first marriage, and he too 
 became a distinguished lawyer of Buffalo. From a second marriage 
 there was one son, Thomas Grosvenor Talcott, long a prominent 
 citizen of Hartford. While the wretched drinking habit did not 
 
372 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 prevent Talcott's rapid rise to the high places of his profession, it 
 pulled away steadily at his eminence till it levelled it, and brought 
 him down to his grave in 1836. The late Governor Briggs of Mas- 
 sachusetts used to tell in his fervent temperance lectures, and often 
 in private conversation also, of a call he made on President Van 
 Buren at the White House not long after the death of Attorney- 
 General Talcott, when the talk turned on that official of the State of 
 New York, and the President showed to him a picture of his friend, 
 and expatiated on the extreme brilliancy of his career at the bar. 
 He also mentioned the fact, that twice at least the Supreme Court of 
 the United States had felt obliged to adjourn from day to day solely 
 on account of the unfitness of condition to plead before them in im- 
 portant cases of the lawyer, who had come to Washington on purpose 
 to do this. 
 W. H. Dillingham, a classmate and friend of Talcott's, said of him : 
 
 This was one of the most extraordinary men of the age ; and it is fitting that 
 one who knew him intimately from boyhood should speak of his noble qualities 
 as they deserve. He was born at Hartford, of a distinguished family, one of his 
 paternal ancestors having been governor of Connecticut, and being connected on 
 his mother's side with Ledyard, the traveller, and Col. Ledyard, who so gallantly 
 defended Fort Groton in the war of the Revolution. He lost his father while 
 yet a boy, and he received his early education from a clergyman of East Windsor, 
 and afterwards at the Academy in Colchester. 
 
 He entered Williams College as a Sophomore in 1806, and graduated in 1809, 
 at the age of nineteen. During this period and at this early age, all those 
 extraordinary qualities were developed which marked his career, and so greatly 
 distinguished him in after life, towering genius and profound investigation ; 
 astonishing facility in acquiring knowledge, and a memory which never lost 
 what it had once acquired ; surpassing eloquence as a writer and speaker ; a 
 mind which could grasp and master whatever was most difficult in the abstruse 
 sciences, and at the same time exhibiting powers of imagination, wit, humor, 
 raillery, and sarcasm, which have been rarely equalled. To all these were added 
 the advantages of a commanding person, unrivalled address, a head and eye and 
 countenance, " the pattern of a man." He was in all respects most truly one of 
 Nature's noblemen. His heart was generous to a fault, and he had a soul which 
 knew not fear. 
 
 He was no sooner admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of New York, 
 than he took rank with the oldest and ablest men of that distinguished bar, and 
 was appointed attorney general of the State before he attained the age of thirty. 
 He was twice reflected to this office, once by a unanimous vote of the Legisla- 
 ture, and held it during the greater part of nine years. 
 
 Talcott's epitaph to the memory of his first wife has seemed to 
 many discerning persons one of the finest pieces of such writing in 
 existence : 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 373 
 
 HERE RESTS THE BODY or 
 MRS. KACHEL TALCOTT, 
 
 WHO WAS THE WIFE OF SAMUEL A. TALCOTT 
 AND DAUGHTER OF BENJAMIN AND RACHEL SKINNER 
 
 SHE WAS SUDDENLY CALLED TO ANOTHER AND WE 
 
 TRUST TO A BETTER WORLD ON THE 18 TH DAY OF AUG. 
 
 1817 IN THE 33 D YEAR OF HER AGE 
 
 HER HUSBAND HAS CAUSED THIS STONE TO BE ERECTED TO DESIGNATE 
 THE SPOT WHERE SHE REPOSES AND NOT IN THE UNNECESSARY 
 ATTEMPT TO COMMEMORATE HER WORTH FOR WITH THOSE 
 WHO KNEW HER (AND PERHAPS READER THOU ART ONE) 
 
 HER VIRTUES NEED NO REMEMBRANCER AND WITH THOSE WHO 
 KNEW HER NOT THE SIMPLE RECORDS OF TRUTH WOULD BE 
 MISTAKEN FOR THE LANGUAGE OF PANEGYRIC 
 
 Besides this daughter of Deacon Skinner and granddaughter of 
 Colonel Simonds thus beautifully commemorated, and besides the 
 eldest daughter of the family, Alice Kobinson, already fully charac- 
 terized on a previous page of this volume, the youngest daughter, 
 Harriet, must now receive a few pleasant words at our hands. She 
 married Austin E. Wing, an alumnus of the College in 1814. Wing 
 was a lad from Conway, and after his marriage located in Detroit 
 as a lawyer, and later in Monroe, Michigan. He represented the 
 Territory of Michigan in Congress from 1827 to 1832. During 
 President Folk's administration he was Marshal of the United 
 States for the State of Michigan. Durfee says of him: "He was 
 bold, energetic, and fearless, ardent in his feelings and friendships, 
 of considerable mental ability, great executive capacity, and com- 
 manding influence." In 1828 Deacon Skinner made a journey to 
 Monroe from Williamstown, whether only on a visit to his daughter, 
 Mrs. Wing, or to make a new home for himself in his old age, has 
 not been clearly ascertained ; but he died and was buried there in 
 the course of that year ; and is said to have spent his latest breath 
 in prayer for his two dissipated sons in South Williamstown, 
 William and Harry, who lived much of the time with their half- 
 sister, Mrs. Blair, and with their aunt, Mrs. Charles Sabin, who was 
 Mehitable Skinner, a sister of the Deacon. Harry Skinner, after 
 years of intemperance, reformed, and married a widow, who in early 
 life had been his sweetheart, but who dared not marry him then 
 on account of his habits. He too went West in his later life, and 
 became a Methodist exhorter, steady and respectable. William also 
 reformed after his father's death, but was never able to rally his 
 powers into a life of much usefulness. Both of these men are 
 
374 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 mentioned in an uncomplimentary manner in the last will and 
 testament of their grandfather, Colonel Benjamin Simonds. 
 
 The four other sons of Deacon Skinner, all three of his sons-in- 
 law, and two of his grandsons, were graduates of Williams College. 
 All nine became lawyers, and all were distinguished men in their 
 day and generation. Mrs. Harriet Skinner Wing died in 1836, and 
 lies buried beside her father in the cemetery at Monroe. She left 
 two daughters, Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Whittier, both educated here 
 at the East and both still living at the present writing in Hillsdale, 
 Michigan. These sisters have still in their possession a quaint old 
 dress belonging to their mother, bought and made in Boston, while 
 she was on a visit there at her uncle's, General T. J. Skinner, about 
 ninety years ago, before his financial and moral fall. Deacon 
 Skinner left behind him those permanent memorials, which com- 
 monly belong to a warm-hearted and unselfish and consecrated life. 
 Though not highly educated in books, he was a good public reader, 
 and when Judge Daniel Dewey was not available to the congrega- 
 tion in that capacity, he used to read on Sundays in the absence of 
 a minister the printed sermon, as the usage was in those days. The 
 credible tradition has nevertheless come down to our own times, that 
 the printed word " microscope," then comparatively new, proved on 
 one pulpit occasion too difficult for his powers of pronunciation. 
 
 It is time now to recur to Ebenezer Fitch, the first president of 
 College, and to follow him to the close of his honorable career as 
 such, and very briefly also to the end of his life, which came in 
 March, 1833. We left him on a former page making probably the 
 greatest mistake of his official life, in refusing to sustain Professor 
 Olds and the two tutors in an act of college discipline, which he 
 himself had led them in appointing, alleging in his own behalf 
 that he had not fully understood the circumstances and conditions. 
 Instead of taking his own leading share of the blame for precipi- 
 tancy (if there were any), and so relieving his colleagues for the 
 assumption of a similar share of their own, he tried hard to pull 
 himself out of all responsibility in the premises, and so left them 
 in the lurch, that they felt compelled to resign their places at once. 
 This necessitated a college recess of four weeks. In the meantime 
 three new tutors were secured, two of whom proved to be excellent 
 and popular teachers, and the College went on, This was in 1808. 
 In 1810 Tutor Chester Dewey was appointed a professor, and con- 
 tinued to draw toward himself the confidence of the students in a 
 remarkable degree, until his own resignation under a peculiar set 
 of circumstances in 1827. But President Fitch never seemed to 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 375 
 
 recover his own moral hold after the fiasco of 1808. There was 
 no immediate falling off in the number of students in attendance; 
 there were no marked manifestations of his unpopularity on the 
 ground, but there was something all the while in the way of favor 
 and influence working away from him as toward Professor Dewey. 
 The requisite conditions of ability and kindness being presupposed, 
 it is always easier for a young man to gain and hold a genuine 
 popularity in college instruction and government, than for an older 
 man to do this. Dewey gradually became a successful college 
 preacher and religious worker as well as a technical teacher, in 
 contrast with the older and slower and less vital methods of the 
 president in class-room and pulpit; the trustees (some of them) 
 noticed on occasion the failing tact and lessening grip of the presi- 
 dent, and he slowly became conscious of it himself; and then, as 
 is usual and inevitable, followed the buzz in college and town and 
 county, those under-breath prophecies which alway fulfil them- 
 selves, that some change is impending and necessary. 
 
 A much larger proportion of college students in those times than 
 at present entered rather at the beginning of the Sophomore year 
 than of the Freshman year. Most of those then entering here were 
 fitted, not as now in preparatory schools, but by country ministers, 
 themselves graduates of this College or of Yale, who were usually 
 fairly able to fit boys for the second stage of the curriculum as then 
 narrowly constituted both at New Haven and here. As a single 
 example of this custom, Moses Hallock, an alumnus of Yale in 1788, 
 and settled in the ministry of Plainfield in Hampshire County in 
 1792, fitted for college not only two of his own sons, Gerard and 
 William A., both of whom were graduated here in 1819, and both of 
 whom became distinguished men in matters of public activity and 
 benevolence, but also an almost constant succession of other students 
 both before and after that date, until about 1830. The decline in 
 the influence of President Fitch from 1810 to 1815 (the date of his 
 resignation) became manifest in the lessening number of students 
 entering and graduating. The average number of graduates in the 
 seven years preceding and including 1811, was twenty-seven ; while 
 the average for the six years, succeeding that date was only twenty. 
 The years of smallest entrance were 1813, 1814, and 1815. Had it 
 not been for Moses Hallock and his " school of the prophets " in 
 rugged Plainfield, the College would have dwindled to a small point. 
 It was said by Judge C. A. Dewey, himself a graduate of 1811, that 
 fully half or more of the entries in one of those three years were 
 from Moses Hallock, " who never forsook us." It is probable, how- 
 
376 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ever, that some allowance should also be made for the falling off in 
 entries and graduates during this period, on account of the excite- 
 ments and disasters of the second war with England, falling in those 
 years. The town and the county were strongly Democratic, favoring 
 the war ; the College authorities were strongly Federalist, opposing 
 the war. 
 
 Dr. Fitch was in his sixtieth year when he left Williamstown. 
 He had always led a life of care and anxiety. His early failure as 
 a merchant in New Haven had left its legacies with him, both sub- 
 jective and objective. The objective legacy was a debt, that cast 
 its shadow over him for many years. His natural disposition was 
 sanguine and buoyant ; he was more hopeful for the future than 
 the true state of things would warrant; at least five times in the 
 course of his life kind friends came forward to relieve him in whole 
 or in part from the burdens of almost constantly recurring debts ; 
 yet care and anxiety of course accompanied their contracting and 
 their pressure; he became used to being in debt, which is a great 
 misfortune to any man; and he maintained throughout his life a 
 sort of half happy-go-lucky and half trust-in-Providence demeanor, 
 which doubtless added an agreeable aspect to his society and author- 
 ity, but which certainly detracted from his manliness and dominance 
 over affairs. It has already been stated, that he married a widow 
 (an old flame of his) with two children, whom he adopted and reared 
 with his own numerous progeny. His income was insufficient to 
 maintain and educate these in the style to which he had been accus- 
 tomed ; and he had neither the financial foresight nor the force of 
 will to compel outgoes to come under income. 
 
 At a meeting of the trustees held May 2, 1815, the following vote 
 was unanimously passed : 
 
 Whereas, The Rev. President Fitch has signified to this Board his determina- 
 tion to resign his office of President at the ensuing Commencement ; and whereas, 
 in consequence of the state of the funds, the Corporation have not been able to 
 give him such a salary as his situation and the increased expenses of living for 
 years past have required ; Voted, That there be granted to the Eev. Dr. Fitch 
 the sum of twenty two hundred dollars ; one thousand thereof to be paid him in 
 the month of October next ; six hundred thereof in six months from that time, 
 and the residue in one year from October next. 
 
 By permission of the trustees, President Fitch immediately left 
 the College for the summer, his regular salary continuing until the 
 fall. Meanwhile Professor Dewey discharged the duties of the 
 president to universal acceptance. Fitch returned in August, pre- 
 sided at the Commencement exercises, helped to induct the new 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 37T 
 
 professor, Ebenezer Kellogg, into office as Professor of Languages, 
 and remained in town but a short time in order to officially receive 
 his successor in the presidency, and then took his departure with 
 his family for West Bloomfield, New York, to which place he had 
 already been called as pastor over a small Presbyterian church. He 
 soon began to feel and to exhibit the enfeebling effects of old age. 
 He continued, however, to discharge the regular and arduous duties 
 of a pastor there for twelve year's. His labors appear to have been 
 abundantly blessed. In a farewell discourse to his people, delivered 
 in November, 1827, he himself states some of the visible results of 
 his pastorate : 
 
 At the time of my installation, Nov. 29, 1815, this church consisted of forty- 
 eight members. Of these, four have since died, five have been excommunicated, 
 and seventeen dismissed. One has never since been in town, and, whether living 
 or not, I do not know ; another has been absent several years, though both, if 
 living, still retain their relation to this church ; leaving now in town only twenty 
 of the original members. 
 
 Since my installation, one hundred and ninety persons have been received as 
 members of this church, one hundred and forty -five of them upon their public 
 profession of faith in Christ, and forty-four were received by letters of recom- 
 mendation from sister churches. Of the whole number, one hundred and ninety, 
 received since my installation, thirteen have died, four have been excommuni- 
 cated, one was restored, and sixty-two regularly dismissed. The whole number 
 of members now in the church is one hundred and thirty-three ; twenty of these, 
 however, have removed so far from this town as not to be able to worship with 
 us on the Sabbath, or to attend the communion seasons of the church. During 
 my ministry, fifty-seven adults and one hundred and fifty children have been 
 baptized. During the same time two hundred and four persons have died in 
 West Bloomfield, being, on the average of the twelve years of my ministry, sev- 
 enteen each year ; twenty of them have died during a little less than eleven 
 months of the present year. 
 
 In reviewing the scenes and events of my twelve years 1 ministry in this place, 
 I find many things to regret and deplore ; and some which ought to excite my 
 warmest gratitude and yours, and call forth our united praise and thanksgiving 
 to God. I have great reason to regret the deficiencies and imperfections which 
 have attended my public services ; and my want of more zeal, fervor and faith- 
 fulness in discharging the various and important duties of the pastoral and min- 
 isterial office ; and that so little success has attended my labors. For my own 
 sinful deficiencies I ought to be humbled, and I desire to be humbled, before 
 God and before you. 
 
 I see reason, also, to deplore some events which have taken place in this 
 society; particularly and especially the introduction and prevalence of an 
 unscriptural opinion and dangerous error respecting a most important point of 
 doctrine, the real divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. This opinion supposes him 
 to be an inferior, subordinate, and dependent God, deprives him of his real 
 divinity, and degrades him to the rank of a creature. It, of course, destroys 
 
378 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 his atonement, and leaves the perishing sinner without help or hope. By the 
 introduction and prevalence of this heresy, and by the death and removal of a 
 number of able members of the church and congregation, the ability of the 
 society to support the gospel is materially diminished. 
 
 The next year after his dismissal from the active duties of the 
 ministry in West Bloomfield, that is, in the summer of 1828, and in 
 the seventy-second year of his age, in company with his wife, he 
 visited New England. He called at William stown and Pittsfield, 
 and proceeded as far east as Boston, and on his return took Canter- 
 bury and Norwich and New Haven in his way. It was his last visit 
 to the scenes of his childhood, and of his principal labors ; and is 
 said to have been a source of much satisfaction to him during the 
 remainder of his days. A letter written by H. H. Childs of Pitts- 
 field to Calvin Durfee in 1843, gives the recollections of the former 
 respecting this visit. Childs was of the class of 1802, and Durfee of 
 the class of 1825. 
 
 BOSTON, Feb. 11, 1843. 
 
 JRev. and Dear Sir : It gave me great pleasure to learn that you had prepared 
 for publication a sketch of the life and character of the good Dr. Fitch, the 
 venerable instructor of my youth. It gave me a melancholy pleasure to meet 
 him, in the fall of 1828, at that advanced period of life when of necessity the 
 powers of body and mind were gradually failing. He seemed, however, cheer- 
 ful and pleasant, and was very happy in meeting some of his former pupils and 
 friends. He evidently felt that he had nearly finished his course on earth. He 
 exhibited, however, a calm resignation to the will of his heavenly Father, and 
 expressed a confident hope of a glorious immortality. This strong hope gave an 
 unusual brightness to a face naturally beaming with kindness and benignity. I 
 well recollect the deep impression, which his visit left on my mind, that I should 
 see his face no more. It was his last visit to Berkshire. His friends were all 
 happy to see him again, and he apparently received much comfort and joy in 
 their society. Much of his conversation related to occurrences of bygone days, 
 the mention of which interested and animated him much. As a token of the 
 respect which we entertained for our venerable President, a few friends in Pitts- 
 field presented him with some mementoes of their esteem, which he kindly and 
 gratefully received, and which consisted of a suit of clothes, and something over 
 a hundred dollars in money. Permit me again to express my high gratification 
 that you have prepared for the press a work which will perpetuate the memory 
 of a great and good man. Please accept my kindest regards. 
 
 With much respect, Yours truly 
 
 H. H. CHILDS. 
 
 A couple of years before this his visit to the eastward, he himself 
 had received a visit at Bloomfield, the record of which is an honor 
 to human nature, and perhaps equally creditable under all the cir- 
 cumstances to the visitor and the visited. In the class that was 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 379 
 
 graduated at Williams College in 1806, was a nephew of Mrs. Fitch, 
 named G. H. Backus. He was poor while in college, and most of 
 his expenses had been defrayed by his uncle, the president, who 
 could but ill afford to do this in justice to his creditors. On taking 
 leave of Williamstown at Commencement, the young man assured 
 his uncle, that, if ever he should be able to do it, he would remu- 
 nerate him for his kindness. Backus became a successful lawyer in 
 Eichmond, Virginia ; and twenty years after his graduation, appeared 
 at Bloomfield at nightfall. He was not recognized at first, but soon 
 gladdened the hearts of the old people by an artfully delayed self- 
 introduction. After tea the visitor turned the conversation on the 
 matter of their present indebtedness. Evidences of this in the form 
 of several notes of hand, and a memorandum of a mortgage on the 
 dwelling-house, all held by persons in the immediate vicinity, were 
 sorrowfully produced, and allowed to lie on the table over night. 
 Eising long before the old people, the lawyer took a stroll over the 
 little village, and returned to breakfast with a sprightliness which 
 was an old characteristic, and which brought smiles upon features to 
 which they had long been comparative strangers. Taking from his 
 breast-pocket the papers they had canvassed the evening before, he 
 laid them before his uncle, and said substantially, " There is every 
 note you owe paid, every debt receipted, and the mortgage on your 
 house cancelled ; in the bank of the neighboring town I shall place 
 $2000, the interest of which you shall have as long as either of you 
 lives, when it shall revert to me." The old gentleman recounted 
 these facts to Josiah W. Canning of the class of 1803, who was 
 living in Williamstown at the time of the visit but just now referred 
 to. E. W. B. Canning, his son, of the class of 1834, passed the 
 anecdote down to those who are still living. 
 
 The recollections of many of his college pupils in relation to Presi- 
 dent Eitch were gathered many years after his death by Calvin 
 Durfee and others. The readers of the present pages are likely 
 to be struck by the kindly and even reverential tone of these 
 recollections. They are to be taken of course with those grains 
 of reservation that belong inherently to that class of testimonies. 
 What is seen through a vista reaching back to one's youth, connect- 
 ing with classmates and companions the like of whom were never 
 seen by others, and revealing the outline of elders and sages wiser 
 and better than anything the present can show, always catches 
 gleams and halos and crowns of softened light. Those whose duty 
 it is to make just estimates and comparisons that will wear, naturally 
 yield allowances to such tendencies as these. The materials are ample 
 
380 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 for a sound and lasting judgment on Ebenezer Fitch. His intellec- 
 tual abilities were only moderate ; his enthusiasms for learning were 
 always chastened ; he never took the risks for righteousness which 
 strong, good men ever take ; he blazed no paths for future progress 
 either in education or religion; he looked benevolently and even 
 paternally upon the young men of his day seeking an education in 
 the small institution over which he presided, but he was able to give 
 them no strong and lasting impulses along their chosen course, such 
 as the born teacher always imparts ; and, owing to his own lack of 
 vital individuality, he could neither recognize ' nor stimulate the 
 natural bent and individual traits of those students, who are always 
 and everywhere the best worth educating. 
 
 But lest we do or even seem to do the slightest injustice by these 
 deliberate judgments to the memory of a good man gone to his 
 reward, there will now be appended two or three testimonies by 
 different pupils under very diverse circumstances and at widely 
 different times. Professor Dewey, who, as student and fellow- 
 teacher, was intimately associated with him for ten or eleven 
 years, and who exemplified in the last half of that time, what has 
 been repeatedly and strikingly exemplified on this ground since, 
 that a professor of sound mind and warm heart in a good depart- 
 ment adapted to him, is under no disadvantage whatever as com- 
 pared with a president in gaining and holding intellectual and moral 
 power over the students, gave express credit, as one of the causes of 
 the powerful revival of religion in the summer term of 1815, to the 
 preaching of President Fitch in the weeks just preceding his leaving 
 the College, which, said he, "was more than commonly pungent." 
 John Nelson, who became a fellow-tutor with Dewey in 1808, wrote : 
 " I shall never forget the first interview which I had with the vener- 
 able President Fitch. I entered college young and inexperienced, and 
 with an overpowering dread of so high a dignitary as I then supposed 
 the president of a college must be. It was with a trembling step 
 that I entered the study of Dr. Fitch with my credentials in hand ; 
 but there was something so kind, so cordial, so fatherly in his greet- 
 ings, that my heart went forth to him at once as to a guardian friend 
 in whom I could safely trust. Nor did I ever find anything in the 
 spirit, the conduct, or the bearing of my venerated president, which 
 weakened or in any way effaced those early impressions. On the 
 contrary, while he faithfully maintained the discipline of college, I 
 ever found him ready to extend to all both the care and kindness of 
 an affectionate guardian and friend. But I did not fully appreciate 
 the domestic, the social, and the Christian, as well as the official ex- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 381 
 
 cellences of Dr. Fitch, till at a subsequent period I became more 
 intimately associated with him as a member of the College faculty, 
 and a boarder in his family. During the two years in which I sus- 
 tained these relations to him, I was more and more impressed with 
 the rare excellences which composed his character. His attachment 
 and kindness to his numerous family I found to be almost unex- 
 ampled. His benevolence to the poor and suffering flowed forth in 
 one continued stream. His hospitality seemed to be unbounded 
 Christian hospitality. His intercourse with his friends was cheer- 
 ful, free, and yet characterized by an all-pervading spirit of piety. 
 As the head of a college, Dr. Fitch was diligent, faithful, and efficient. 
 As an instructor he was clear, safe, and, to a good degree, able. As 
 a preacher he was profitable and interesting, and sometimes power- 
 ful. Had he been less modest, less retiring, less at home, his reputa- 
 tion, no doubt, would have stood much higher." 
 
 John Woodbridge, of the class of 1804, and long time a distin- 
 guished minister of Hadley, wrote in his old age of Dr. Fitch as 
 follows : "I knew him only as the presiding officer and teacher, 
 but I could bear witness to the kindness of his heart when I was 
 in trouble. For his counsel and encouragement, given in my early 
 years, I owe him a debt of gratitude. If he had any fault as a 
 teacher and disciplinarian, it was the excess of lenity, more than 
 needless severity. He was, perhaps, sometimes too irresolute and 
 wavering for the full maintenance of his authority. His menace 
 might have been sometimes more terrible than the execution. He 
 might in some cases have entreated when a command was necessary. 
 He might occasionally have wept when he ought to have inflicted 
 punishment. This, at least, was said by some not very friendly to 
 his administration." 
 
 In the summer of 1864, at the suggestion of some of the relatives 
 of Dr. Fitch, and through the instrumentality of his biographer, 
 Calvin Durfee, the remains of the first president were brought to 
 Williamstown, and interred in the College cemetery under an appro- 
 priate monument procured by subscriptions of some of the alumni 
 of the College. There was a pleasant ceremony on this occasion, and 
 Judge H. W. Bishop of Lenox, a graduate of the college in 1817, 
 whose recollections were only of the last year or two of Fitch's presi- 
 dency, made the touching address that follows, with the presentation 
 of which we take our leave of the first president of Williams College. 
 
 In the little box around which we are standing are the ashes of an eminently 
 good and useful man. They are all that remain on earth of him who first gave 
 form and vitality to the institution whose buildings crown the elevations of this 
 
382 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 valley, and from which so many have gone out to enlighten and elevate mankind. 
 Among those here, I am told, I am the only one who was a member of college 
 during his presidency. Of his own and the succeeding generation, few remain. 
 There are impressions made upon the heart which time cannot efface. The 
 relics before us bring back again, in full force, the sentiments of reverence 
 which the living presence inspired. I see his dignified form again, his grave 
 and benignant features, his courteous demeanor, his happy smile, and feel again 
 the veneration which the lapse of half a century has not extinguished. In Sep- 
 tember, 1814, I entered college. Dr. Fitch left it in September of the year 
 following. I knew him only as a presiding officer. As such, he made the 
 acquaintance of the students of the several classes. He regarded them as his 
 children, and his government of them was that of a father. He was coercive, 
 reluctantly and judiciously coercive, when persuasive kindness failed, and only 
 then. He mingled with his pupils with cheerful, serene familiarity. His man- 
 ners were those which high attainments give to a good heart and refined 
 breeding. 
 
 He was a Christian gentleman. In the devotional exercises of the college he 
 was impressively earnest and solemn. The supremacy and authority of divine 
 truths, as revealed, were earnestly enforced. No one who heard him discourse 
 upon their relative importance will ever forget how he placed them high above 
 all scientific and literary attainments, and his urgent advocacy for their diffusion 
 throughout the world. He dwelt with peculiar delight upon Christian missions, 
 the good they had wrought, and their prospects. Initiated by such a man, it is no 
 wonder that this college stands preeminent for its missionary zeal, that Mills, 
 and Hall, and James Richards should have become what they were, under the 
 inspiring teachings of one so able and so devoted to the spread of the gospel.' 
 The impress which he made in this respect upon the college still lasts. This is 
 most obvious to those who knew it early and know it now. May the mantle 
 cast upon it by him whose bones are here, cover it forever ! 
 
 I have always regarded Dr. Fitch as the real founder of this institution, 
 that had he not been, it would not have existed as it now does. He came here 
 early, a ripe scholar, apt, and eminently qualified to teach. He was thor- 
 oughly equal to impart all that an education then thought liberal required. 
 No collegiate institution was near ; increasing population and intelligence 
 demanded one. He was qualified to supervise and control it. The mate- 
 rials for its inception were at hand. He suggested their use, and, in a good 
 measure, directed their application. May he not, therefore, be permitted to 
 share, without impairing, the just fame of him whose munificence is acknowl- 
 edged by the name with which the institution has been christened ? 
 
 I retain with a good degree of distinctness the impression which his preaching 
 made upon my mind, and the characteristics of his eloquence. His sermons 
 were no academic discourses, polished and elaborate, of lofty style and glowing 
 imagery, challenging for the speaker the admiration of his audience. He spoke 
 for truth's sake, not for his own. He loved the truth better than he loved himself. 
 He preached it, that others might be brought to love it. This was the end of 
 his preaching. To that end all his forces were directed. His sermons were full 
 of the deep sensibilities of his own pure and affectionate nature, made active by 
 the clear conviction of the truths which he enforced. He seemed impressed with 
 the belief that his audience were to be influenced and drawn to the truth through 
 
TOWN AND COLLEJE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 383 
 
 the affections, that, the heart once touched, the reason ceases to cavil, and the 
 will becomes submissive. In a word, his was the eloquence of Christian love, 
 purifying all that is tender, affectionate, and holy in the heart. 
 
 To you, sir, whose active and disinterested devotion to the college, founded 
 in no small measure by the good and learned man whose name and deeds we 
 hope to perpetuate, I tender my cordial thanks and congratulations. You have 
 brought from a distance, to be buried here amidst the scenes of his usefulness, 
 all that is material which is left of him. We now bury "these sacred relics" 
 at the foot of the very appropriate monumental marble which you have caused 
 to be erected, and on which you have written his name and character. This 
 was due to his memory, to the college whose first president he was, and is 
 worthy of one enrolled among her steadfast and devoted sons. 
 
 In the name of the few surviving pupils of President Fitch, I thank you for 
 this manifestation of your appreciation of his worth, and recognition of his emi- 
 nent services in the cause of science, humanity, and Christian civilization. 
 
 Two sons of President Fitch were graduated at the institution, 
 Mason Cogswell in 1815, who settled as a lawyer in Virginia ; and 
 Charles in 1818, who was educated in theology at Princeton, and 
 became an obscure minister in several of the Western States. Be- 
 fore his graduation he contracted an engagement of marriage with 
 a young lady in Williamstown, belonging to a prosperous and promi- 
 nent family, whom he afterwards deserted in a manner thought by 
 her and others to be dishonorable. Some years afterward he re- 
 turned to town, and earnestly sought an interview and understand- 
 ing with the lady he had slighted, who refused even to see him. 
 Tradition has it, that some of his college classmates had persuaded 
 him that he ought to marry a woman with a handsome property, 
 who could afford to buy him a fine library and give him a good 
 send-off into the ministry. He never found any such woman, nor 
 did he ever gain any such send-off. The lady, however, in due 
 time found an excellent husband, who brought to her a large prop- 
 erty and a good name. Their son became an alumnus of the College 
 in 1859. 
 
 Mason Cogswell Fitch had a son named William, who was 
 educated at Princeton, and became a Presbyterian clergyman of 
 repute in Louisville, Kentucky, and died young. In February, 
 1896, while on a visit at Princeton, the present writer made the 
 acquaintance of a Mrs. Hale, who was a daughter of this Kev. 
 William Fitch, and so a great-granddaughter of Ebenezer Fitch. 
 Mrs. Hale was the mistress of a good old-fashioned farmhouse, 
 situated on what has long been called the "Mercer Road," and 
 flanked on three sides by a large and level and fertile farm, on 
 which, not very far from the house, General Hugh Mercer of the 
 
384 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Revolutionary army was mortally wounded during the battle of 
 Princeton. The brave Scotchman fell under several musket-ball 
 wounds and particularly a bayonet-thrust in the breast, and was 
 left on the field for dead. Being discovered alive, he was taken 
 to this very farmhouse, in w r hich he died after a week of extreme 
 sufferings. Mrs. Hale showed to the writer the well-authenticated 
 blood-stains upon the floor of the room into which he was brought 
 from the field. The day was January 3, 1777. Trained to the 
 medical profession in the University of Aberdeen, his native city, 
 and having been in the battle of Culloden as an assistant surgeon, 
 and himself severely wounded as a captain and companion of Wash- 
 ington in Braddock's battle at the Monongahela, he knew well what 
 battle-wounds were, and pointing to his breast, he said to his aid-de- 
 camp, Major Lewis, "This is what will kill me not the others.'' 
 His funeral in Philadelphia is said to have been attended by thirty 
 thousand people, and his grave at Laurel Hill was crowned by a 
 monument to his memory in 1840. 
 
 We come now to the second and far more serious crisis in the 
 affairs of the College than that one in 1808 and following, in the 
 course of which the College was transiently stripped of all its 
 teachers, save one, and even this one went forward thereafter with 
 lessened and constantly lessening influence. At the meeting of the 
 trustees in May, 1815, the same meeting at which they accepted 
 the resignation of Dr. Fitch and granted him a liberal gratuity, this 
 motion was introduced and carried, namely, " That a committee of 
 six persons be appointed to take into consideration the removal of 
 the College to some other part of the Commonwealth ; to make all 
 necessary inquiries, which have a bearing on the subject, and report 
 at the next meeting." This committee consisted of : 
 
 THEOPHILUS PACKARD of Shelburne 
 THADDEUS POMEROY of Stockbridge 
 JOSEPH LYMAN of Northampton 
 
 SAMUEL SHEPARD of Lenox 
 DANIEL NOBLE of Williamstown 
 
 JOSEPH WOODBRIDGE of Stockbridge. 
 
 What did this motion and committee-appointment mean ? It 
 meant, that an opinion had been springing up and spreading in 
 various quarters mostly east of the Hoosac Mountain and along the 
 Connecticut River, to the effect, that the location of the College in 
 Williamstown was unfortunate, that the place was inaccessible, that 
 the population of the town and its neighboring territory was small 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 385 
 
 and unlikely to increase, and that a college situated in the central 
 part of the western half of Massachusetts, instead of one in its 
 extreme northwestern corner, away from the centres of population 
 and influence, and separated from them by an immense mountain 
 wall, could be easily established and prosperously maintained, espe- 
 cially if the plant already set in Williamstown could be transferred 
 over that barrier and placed as a nucleus in some town on or near 
 the Connecticut Kiver, accessible from a large and homogeneous 
 circle of populous and prosperous towns. Precisely when and 
 wh^re this talk began, it is neither possible nor helpful to find out. 
 It is certain that the first public expression of it was had in the 
 trustees' meeting at Williamstown in May, 1815. The trustee who 
 made the motion for a committee of inquiry, and who became there- 
 after the strongest champion for the removal, was Theophilus 
 Packard of Shelburne. Shelburne is east of the Hoosacs. He 
 became a trustee in 1810. He climbed over the mountain from 
 the upper Deerfield to the upper Hoosac twice a year for many 
 years. It is certain that the gradually developing consequences 
 of the unfortunate occurrences in 1808 stimulated, even if they did 
 not originate, the talk for removal. It is certain that President 
 Fitch himself came to believe that it was the situation of the College 
 rather than his own loosening hold upon it, that caused in good part 
 its lessening numbers and lowered prestige. Of that, of course, he 
 was not a good judge ; but it is certain that, at the time of his resig- 
 nation, a considerable majority of the trustees had come to share in 
 this opinion, and that some of them held it more firmly than he did. 
 The practical point of much importance to a correct judgment of 
 the bitter controversies that came afterwards is, that at the outset 
 nobody from abroad solicited Williams College to move itself over 
 the mountain, but on the contrary all the initiatories were taken 
 and maintained here by and among the highest officials of the 
 Institution. 
 
 The report of the committee of six trustees was given in at the 
 regular September meeting, and ran as follows: "That a removal 
 of Williams College from Williamstown is inexpedient at the pres- 
 ent time and under existing circumstances." Such a report settled 
 nothing. The emphasis is obviously on the qualifying clauses, 
 rather than on the main proposition; but different persons under- 
 stood the report in quite diverse senses. It only served as a bone 
 of contention and a spring of bitterness. What were the " present 
 circumstances" under which it was deemed "inexpedient" to re- 
 move the College "at the present time"? The main circumstance 
 2c 
 
386 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of the present inexpediency was the presence in William stown for 
 inauguration of a new president of the College, chosen to succeed 
 Dr. Fitch ! And who was he ? Under what circumstances had he 
 been elected ? And with what understanding and conditions had he 
 accepted the trust ? 
 
 The 2d of May, 1815, was indeed a fateful day in the history 
 of college education in western Massachusetts. The origins of Am- 
 herst College were as much enwrapped in that meeting of the trus- 
 tees in Williamstown, as were the destinies of the older College for 
 at least two decades to come. Three apparently distinct actions of 
 the board upon that day had widespread and epoch-making conse- 
 quences, of which not one of that body had at the time even a glim- 
 mer. The withdrawal of Dr. Fitch in good heart under their liberal 
 benefactions ; the raising of the committee of six out of their own 
 number to inquire and report on the expediency of a new location 
 of the College to the eastward ; and the conditional election of two 
 men to the presidency, raising at the same time the salary from the 
 hitherto uniform $1000 to $1400 a year, contributed in the sequel 
 to make that meeting the most memorable one in the century. 
 Leonard Woods of Andover was chosen the new president, in case- 
 he would accept, and Hyde of the board was appointed as a com- 
 mittee to notify him; and Zephaniah Swift Moore, then of Dart- 
 mouth College, was contingently chosen, should Woods decline, and 
 Packard of the board was in that case to notify Moore. Woods- 
 declined, and Moore accepted. 
 
 We must take the measure as well as we can of this man Moore, 
 as he appeared at Williamstown in September, to be graciously in- 
 ducted into his office by his predecessor, the last official service 
 of the latter to the College. The predominant, if not the exclusive,, 
 strain of blood in the new president was that of the Scotch-Irish in 
 New England. On a still extant parchment hanging on a wall in 
 the capitol building at Concord, there are 315 names subscribed 
 to a memorial sent over to Governor Shute of Massachusetts in the 
 spring of 1718 from Londonderry in Ireland, expressing the desire 
 of the subscribers and of others to emigrate to that colony, provided 
 they could obtain from his Excellency suitable encouragement. 
 The following is the prologue to the precious list of names. 
 
 To His Excellency the Right Honourable Collonel Samuel Suitte Govenour of 
 New England. 
 
 We whose names are underwritten, Inhabitants of ye North of Ireland, Doe 
 in our own names, and in the names of many others our Neighbours, Gentle- 
 men, Ministers, Farmers and Tradesmen Commissionate and appoint our trusty 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 387 
 
 and well beloved Friend, the Reverend Mr. William Boyd of Macasky, to His 
 Excellency the Right Honourable Collonel Samuel Suitte Govenour of New Eng- 
 land, and to assure His Excellency of our sincere and hearty Inclination to 
 Transport ourselves to that very excellent and renowned Plantation upon our 
 obtaining from his Excellency suitable encouragement. And further to act and 
 Doe in our Names as his Prudence shall direct. Given under our hands this 
 26 th day of March, Annog. Dom. 1718. 
 
 Among these names occur the four following in the following 
 order, but each widely separated from the rest in the list itself : 
 John Muar, John Moor, Thomas Moore, and James Moore, Jr. 
 Besides these three varieties of spelling the same name, another 
 prevailed after the immigration among some of these families, 
 namely Mooar. The writer's college intimate and lifelong friend, 
 George Mooar of the Williams class of 1851, who spent his life in 
 California as a preacher and theological instructor, was out of one 
 of these families settled in Andover, Massachusetts. Zephaniah 
 Swift Moore, the second president of Williams College, was from 
 another of these Scotch-Irish families. This fact and relationship, 
 although it has never before been noted of him, was of very consid- 
 erable significance in him personally and in his whole course and 
 career in life. For these Scotch-Irish people, of whom he was and 
 among whom he lived, possessed certain marked peculiarities, which 
 distinguished them sharply for two or three generations and more or 
 less distinctly till the present time, from the descendants of the 
 Pilgrim and Puritan English throughout New England. The immi- 
 grants of 1718 about one hundred families of them at that time 
 landed in Boston in August, and about one-third of them went 
 directly to Worcester for settlement ; somewhat less than one-third 
 of them tarried in Boston and settled in the towns adjacent, particu- 
 larly in Andover ; and something more than one-third of them, after 
 a winter in Maine where certain straggling families chose to make 
 their permanent home, sailed back in the spring and up the Merri- 
 mac River and settled a large tract in southern New Hampshire, 
 which they named Londonderry. 
 
 These people were almost purely Scotch in origin, but they had 
 lived as Protestant settlers. for several generations in the north of 
 Ireland, and acquired in their isolated and peculiar situation certain 
 traits of character, which distinguished them alike from their Celtic 
 neighbors in Ireland, from their contemporaries in Scotland, and 
 from the English people generally whether at home or in colony. 
 They were fond of thinking and saying, that they combined some of 
 the best traits both of the Scotch and the Irish. Two features made 
 
388 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 them very obnoxious at first to their neighbors in New England. 
 They were at least called Irish, and they were very stiff Presbyte- 
 rians. The frame of their new meeting-house in Worcester was 
 burned down in the night by a mob of their Christian brethren of 
 the Qld South Church. They were indignant, but they Avere help- 
 less. The majority of them before long packed up their duds, and 
 migrated elsewhere, particularly to Pelham, which joins Amherst. 
 This mutual repugnance between the old-timers and the new-comers 
 naturally prevented intermarriages between the two, so long as it 
 continued. This rather served to emphasize the distinctive traits of 
 each party. 
 
 On the score of general intelligence there was little or nothing to 
 choose as between the two. Of the 315 names on the Shute parch- 
 ment all but thirteen are firm autographs, only these thirteen 
 " make their mark." It may well be doubted whether a like pro- 
 portion of literacy could at that time have been found in any other 
 community of common people on the British Isles. It is a hard 
 task to express in words even one's own conception of the essential 
 differences between these large bodies of Christians as they gradu- 
 ally became interfused rather than assimilated with each other 
 throughout New England. The writer is conscious of no prejudices 
 for or against either of them. On the paternal side he is straight 
 from London citizens and Puritan immigrants, all English ; while 
 on the maternal side there is no straighter Scotch-Irishman living. 
 So far as he knows, no writer hitherto has ever essayed to point out 
 categorically the differences in question. He thinks he cannot be 
 far wrong in propounding, that the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians had 
 a moral advantage over their neighbors of the English and Puritan 
 descent, 
 
 1. In inquisitiveness into the nature of men and things, and in 
 quick and penetrating intellectual activity in general. 
 
 2. In strength of personal conviction on almost all subjects, 
 and a persistency of purpose through thick and thin, often amount- 
 ing to obstinacy in common things and to bigotry in religious 
 things. 
 
 3. In a sense of humor, and a readiness of repartee, which is a 
 modern Irish trait also, and which these people possessed in such 
 a degree and breadth as marked alike the social meetings of their 
 ministers and the greetings on the road and everywhere of their 
 poorest and most illiterate. These people indeed took life seriously, 
 too seriously, but they enlivened it at many points, as scores 
 of well-attested anecdotes display. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 389 
 
 On the other hand, the more purely English portion of the popu- 
 lation contrasted very favorably with the other, 
 
 1. In personal habits and general customs of cleanliness, and in 
 all the amenities of social life. 
 
 2. In the knack of acquiring and maintaining property, and in 
 the somewhat corresponding knack of gaining and holding political 
 influence as well in the Colonies as in the later States. The Scotch- 
 Irish hated privileges granted by law to favored classes. Hence 
 they were Anti-Federalists and later Democrats almost to a man. 
 The English conscience in New England did not scruple to wrest 
 justice by law from dissentients in behalf of the church and from 
 the many in behalf of the privileged few. 
 
 3. In the point of discerning the best locations for permanent 
 settlement, and then remaining stationary, and thus gaining the 
 prestige that comes with time and a local ancestry. The Scotch- 
 Irish families migrated a good deal from place to place. Individu- 
 als and single families scattered sooner or later into almost every 
 town in northern New England. Their chief mass remained in 
 southern New Hampshire. In Massachusetts, Andover and Bland- 
 ford and Colerain and Pelham and Worcester continued to be pretty 
 distinctively Scotch-Irish towns. 
 
 Lieutenant Judah Moore was the father of Zephaniah Swift 
 Moore. He lived at the time of his son's birth, namely, 1770, in 
 Palmer, another of the Massachusetts towns owing its origin wholly, 
 like Blandford and Colerain, to Scotch-Irish families. As early as 
 1730 these people established a church in Palmer, which of course 
 took on a Presbyterian form, and almost of course (considering a 
 minor characteristic of the people) became a centre of small but 
 persistent quarrels tempests in a teapot. There is much curious 
 reading in the early records of this church, which does not now 
 particularly concern us, but we will give a single entry as a sort of 
 sample. 
 
 At a meeting of ye Inhabitants of this District, Legally Convened and assem- 
 bled at ye Public Meeting House in said place, ye Meeting being opened, Andrew 
 Rutherford was chosen Moderator. On the third article in ye warrant for said 
 Meeting, voted that Mr. Kniblows be allowed four pounds, Sixteen Shillings, 
 which is eight Shillings, Lawful money, for each Sermon he Preached on Sab- 
 bath Days, in this District, Except three Sermons which we can prove he preached 
 other men's works. 
 
 In the years preceding the outbreak of the Kevolution, when it 
 is certain that Judah Moore was a settled resident of the place, the 
 people of Palmer felt their spirit in common with the other settle- 
 
390 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ments of the Colony, and voted, "that this district will by all 
 prudent means endeavor to discountenance the use of foreign super- 
 fluities, and to encourage the manufactures of the whole continent 
 in general, and of this province in particular." The second article 
 in the warrant for a public meeting to be held in the " public meet- 
 ing-house," June 17, 1776, reads as follows: "To advise and 
 instruct the representative of this town, whether, should the honor- 
 able Congress, for the safety of the Colonies declare them indepen- 
 dent of Great Britain, they, the said inhabitants, will engage with 
 their lives and fortunes to support them in the measures, agreeable 
 to and in compliance with the resolve of the General Court." 
 Palmer furnished its proportion of the men and means for the war, 
 and performed its part toward securing that independence for 
 which it made so prompt and early a declaration. If there were 
 any Tories among the Scotch-Irish in New England during the war, 
 they have left little or no trace of themselves as such. John Stark, 
 who was the most distinguished man of that race in that generation, 
 had no difficulty in enlisting a regiment consisting mostly of these 
 people in southern New Hampshire, and under the sole authority 
 of that State, for the national battle of Bennington. 
 
 There is no evidence or probability that "Leftenant" Judah 
 Moore was in the battle of Bennington; where his Eevolutionary 
 service in connection with other Palmer men was rendered, we do 
 not know ; but the proof is positive that he migrated the next year 
 with his family to Wilmington, Vermont, and made a permanent 
 settlement there. Wilmington is seventeen miles to the east of 
 Bennington. Some of the New Hampshire soldiers passed through 
 it on their way thither, and liked its position at the junction of the 
 two head streams of the Deerfield Eiver, and later returned to it to 
 settle and abide. It is more than probable that some other Scotch- 
 Irish families from Palmer moved to Wilmington with the Moores, 
 and that the family of Colonel Thomson was one of these. Colonel 
 Thomson at any rate was an intimate adviser of the father in Wil- 
 mington, and long afterward an earnest coadjutor of the son in 
 Amherst. This son was in his eighth year when the father migrated 
 to Vermont in 1778. In those rough times and in that new town, 
 his opportunities for schooling were meagre indeed. He worked 
 hard on the farm for ten years, at the same time exhibiting from his 
 early childhood an uncommon inquisitiveness of mind and a great 
 thirst for knowledge. He availed himself with eagerness of every 
 opportunity, whether at home or at the district schools. When in or 
 nearing his eighteenth year, he besought his parents if he might not 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 391 
 
 go to college. Judah and Mary Moore, always much esteemed for 
 their intelligence and integrity and piety, could not see how it would 
 be possible for them to send their boy to college. In their resources 
 they were but common farmers. The Constitution of the United 
 States, though framed, had not yet gone into operation. Political 
 matters in Vermont were at that time strangely mixed and unsettled. 
 The future could not be discerned. 
 
 In his own perplexity and in his son's eagerness, Judah Moore 
 consulted his old friend Colonel Thomson. "Let him go if he 
 wants to, you will get along without it and find no trouble." About 
 five years later Thomson met the father on his way to Hanover to 
 see his son graduated, and said to him, Well, how do you come 
 out ? as well as I said you would ? " Keplied the other, " Oh ! when 
 I have sold my old oxen, I guess I shall be able to pay all the bills ! " 
 The self-denials and sacrifices of parents and child, accompanying 
 and conditioning the education of the latter, helped to prepare him 
 in an essential point to become the president of two collegiate insti- 
 tutions, in which most of the students were to be poor. 
 
 In the meantime, if Z. S. M. were to go to college, he must first 
 go somewhere to acquire the rudiments of Latin and Greek. For- 
 tunately for him and for a few others in the region of southern Ver- 
 mont, there had been incorporated in Bennington as early as 1780 an 
 academic school, called " Clio Hall," not destined to a long life, and 
 affording but slim facilities for preparation for college. In 1817, 
 the " Union Academy " was incorporated in Bennington, that had 
 for about forty years a useful and honorable career. Such as it was, 
 Clio Hall furnished to young Moore for a short time some instruction 
 in his preparatory studies. The neighborly relations between Ben- 
 nington and Williamstown were at that time much more intimate 
 than at present; and Moore while there must have heard a good 
 deal about what was then going on here. About the time he left 
 his home for Dartmouth College in the early part of 1789, the foun- 
 dations for the Free School and a part of the superstructure also 
 were laid, and several attempts had been made and abandoned to 
 penetrate the limestone ledge for a well of water. Just about the 
 time when he returned to Hanover for the beginning of his Sopho- 
 more year, the Free School was opened for pupils, and many Ver- 
 mont boys immediately availed themselves of its opportunities. 
 When Moore was graduated in 1793 at Dartmouth, Williams was 
 already incorporated as a college. Whatever he may then have 
 known of what was going on here, it is unlikely that he ever sur- 
 mised what a great and honorable part he himself was to play on 
 
392 W1LLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 this ground. His class at Dartmouth, were graduated thirty-nine in 
 number. Only three of these names are printed in the Triennial in 
 small capitals, the token of unusual distinction, namely ; Samuel 
 Bell, Governor and United States Senator of New Hampshire, Z. S. 
 Moore, a professor in one college, president in another, and founder 
 of a third, and Erastus Boot, Lieutenant-Governor of New York and 
 Chief Justice of its Court of Appeals. Several of Moore's class- 
 mates were Scotch-Irishmen like himself, particularly Samuel Bell 
 and Asa McFarland. As was natural under the circumstances, im- 
 mediately after his graduation Moore took for one year the academy 
 at Londonderry, then the great hive of his race. As he felt in him 
 the impulse to teach, so he felt in him the impulse to preach. The 
 two are at bottom one, and in the case of any individual who feels 
 both impulses in their strength, it depends on providential circum- 
 stances which shall predominate in practice. Moore then went for 
 two years to Somers, Connecticut, to the Rev. Dr. Backus to learn the 
 art of preaching. Some knowledge of Hebrew was then supposed to 
 be necessary in order to proclaim acceptably the Gospel in English. 
 It is possible that Moore had studied Hebrew somewhat in Hanover ; 
 at any rate he studied it in Somers ; and, after having been settled 
 in the ministry for eleven years in Leicester, during all of which 
 time he was a trustee and part of the time principal of Leicester 
 Academy, he was called back to Dartmouth as Professor of the Latin, 
 Greek, and Hebrew languages. This was in 1811. 
 
 It is plain to any one tracing his career with care, that Moore 
 could never have become the man he was in the later and more 
 important exigencies of his life, had he not had abundant experience 
 as a preacher and pastor. The teacher in him was destined to out- 
 strip at length the preacher and pastor; but he had native and 
 acquired gifts for these also, which all the better fitted him to per- 
 form the gigantic tasks of his later life. No sooner was he licensed 
 to preach in 1796, than he began to exhibit in the pulpit those rare 
 analytical and expositive and hortatory powers that were so much 
 prized in the New England of his time. He had a strong and strik- 
 ing face, as any one can see in the steel-plate impression of him in 
 Tyler's "History of Amherst College," page seventy-three. He is 
 said to have had very little action in the pulpit ; and yet there was 
 an impressiveness in his manner that fixed and held the attention of 
 his hearers. His voice, though not loud, was clear and pleasant, 
 and in animated conversation and in the pulpit pitched upon the 
 tenor key. In the more hortatory portions of his discourse, his 
 utterance became more rapid, and the sound of his voice shrill and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 393 
 
 tremulous, showing that he felt deeply the force of the sentiments 
 he uttered. 
 
 In person he was somewhat above the middling height, and came 
 earlier than most men to his maximum weight, some 240 pounds, 
 which he kept through life, and yet never appeared to be specially 
 corpulent. His firm and closely knit frame and muscle gave him 
 nothing of the air of obesity. He always wore what is called the 
 " continental costume," that is, breeches and long hose, which were 
 particularly becoming to his person, and which the clerical profes- 
 sion retained the use of longer than gentlemen generally. He was 
 uniformly extremely neat in his dress. He was fond of music and 
 an agreeable singer. His sense of humor in others, and the ability 
 to exemplify it himself on occasion and in a quiet way, made 
 him an agreeable companion, even with children, of whom he had 
 none of his own, with students, and with the gravest of men in 
 council. 
 
 After being licensed to preach, Moore occupied several pulpits 
 with rare acceptance, particularly those in Tolland, Connecticut, and 
 Peterborough, New Hampshire, and declined several nattering calls 
 to settle. Peterborough was a Scotch-Irish town, and his relations 
 to those people continued intimate. His first publication was a 
 Thanksgiving sermon preached there in 1796. Providence had not 
 yet thrown in his way a life companion and helpmate, and it was 
 not the fashion in those days for ministers to settle until that con- 
 junction had been consummated. He used humorously to relate 
 how the whole future course of his life hinged on an apparent acci- 
 dent which was at the time grievously disappointing to him. He 
 was visiting in Sutton (near Worcester) his sister, the wife of Rev. 
 Mr. Mills, and was detained there several days beyond the intended 
 period of his visit by the accidental lameness of his horse. While 
 chafing under the delay, a Miss Phebe Drury from Auburn, which 
 joins Worcester on the south, a friend of his sister's family, came to 
 make them a little visit. Somehow he was able to while away the 
 time better while his horse was getting well. In some connection 
 with this, the horse having recovered, he was able not long after to 
 ride to Auburn for a little visit. These peregrinations became 
 known to the people of Leicester, which joins Worcester on the 
 west, and as they were then without a pastor, they applied to him 
 to supply their pulpit, which led to his settlement over that parish 
 in January, 1798, taking with him Miss Drury, already become Mrs. 
 Moore. 
 
 It so happened, that Ebenezer Adams, Dartmouth College 1791, 
 
394 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 two years before Moore, was then teaching the academy in Leicester, 
 which he continued till 1806. The two men renewed old acquaint- 
 ance and now became fast friends. The pastor became deeply inter- 
 ested in the academy, in which he taught more or less from time to 
 time in conjunction with his preaching ; and the teacher both per- 
 ceived and drew out under the clerical habit of the other his strong 
 pedagogical impulses and powers. Adams went back to Hanover in 
 1809 as Professor of Languages. Two years later he was trans- 
 ferred to the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy ; and he 
 had influence enough over the trustees to secure the election of 
 Moore to his own vacated place, and over Moore to secure his accept- 
 ance of the same. So it was that Moore went to Dartmouth after a 
 successful pastorate of almost thirteen years. The elements were 
 so mixed in him as in almost no other man, that one could scarcely 
 say whether he were superior as preacher or teacher. The late 
 Governor Emory Washburn, a native of Leicester in 1800, who fitted 
 for college at the academy there, who entered Dartmouth in 1813, 
 because both Adams and Moore were professors there, and who came 
 to Williams in 1815, because Moore came here then as president, 
 gives competent and delightful testimony at once to the pastor of 
 his childhood and to the college president of his choice. 
 
 My acquaintance with him commenced with my earliest childhood and con- 
 tinued to the time of his death, a period of some twenty years. A portion of 
 that time was spent in his family, and the kindness which he always manifested 
 towards me, warrants me in saying that I knew him well. At the commence- 
 ment of this period, he was pastor of the church in Leicester, and I am scarcely 
 able to say of which I now retain the liveliest remembrance, the kindly greeting 
 and pleasant smile with which he recognized me in the street, his cheerful and 
 entertaining conversation to which I listened in his visits at my mother's house, 
 the plain, simple and hopeful manner in which he used to address us children in 
 his visits to the Schools, or his solemn and impressive services on the Sabbath. 
 The effect produced upon my young mind by the latter could not have been the 
 result merely of his grave dignified manner, the pleasant musical voice, or the 
 unaffected, earnest style of his delivery, though in all these respects he had few 
 superiors. His sermons were always full of thought, simply and neatly ex- 
 pressed, with that clearness of arrangement which commanded the attention and 
 impressed the memory of even young and uncultivated minds. The impressions 
 of childhood were but strengthened upon a more familiar acquaintance with him 
 in after life, especially as an officer of college. He was a man of the most sys- 
 tematic and untiring industry. Every duty had its place and was sure of being 
 performed at its appropriate time. 
 
 His manners were quiet and dignified, and always self-possessed. He was 
 never boisterous, even when most deeply excited or when administering the 
 sharpest rebuke in the way of college discipline or personal censure. Yet with 
 all this forbearance of manner, no man ever possessed a firmer spirit or a more 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 395 
 
 uncompromising resolution of purpose in whatever concerned a matter of right. 
 He was calm and deliberate in forming his judgment ; but when formed, he acted 
 up to it, in everything involving principle, regardless of personal consequences. 
 His qualities as a college officer were of a very high order. That suavity that 
 attracted the love, was mingled with a consistent dignity which commanded the 
 respect, of his pupils ; while a remarkably quick perception of the personal traits 
 of character in others, enabled him to adapt his deportment to whatever emer- 
 gencies might arise. Incidents might be referred to of his ready power in 
 quelling the excited passions that sometimes disturb college life, as well as in 
 subduing refractory spirits on occasions where individual discipline had become 
 necessary. 
 
 His favorite branch of instruction was metaphysics, and he was especially 
 familiar with the writers of the Scotch school upon that subject. But whatever 
 subject he taught, he made himself accurately and critically acquainted with all 
 its details and leading text-books. Dr. Moore was a delightful companion in his 
 own family. He was uniformly cheerful, kind, and observant to all. Though 
 he had no children of his own, he made his house a pleasant resort for friends of 
 any age. And I should be doing injustice to her who shared and promoted the 
 attractions of his home, if I should omit to recognize the harmony and confidence 
 which always subsisted between the heads of that family. He had a pleasant 
 countenance, a mild, penetrating eye, with rather heavy eyebrows, a finely 
 formed head without any particularly marked developments, a mouth with that 
 compact outline that denotes energy, and a smile, that, while it relaxed this into 
 playfulness, lighted up his eye into an expression of mirth, though he never in- 
 dulged in boisterous merriment. 
 
 Emerson Davis, who was graduated in 1821 under President Moore, 
 and who became in 1833 a trustee of the College, holding that place 
 with unusual fidelity to its duties till his death in 1866, who was the 
 fifth and last vice-president of the College, and who spent his entire 
 graduate life (except a brief tutorship here) in Westfield as either a 
 teacher or pastor, communicated in 1849 his recollections of Dr. 
 Moore as follows : 
 
 You have requested me to give you my impressions and recollections of Presi- 
 dent Moore. They are all exceedingly pleasant ; and yet I must say he was a 
 man of such equanimity of temper and uniformity of life, that I am unable to 
 single out one act or saying of his that produced a deeper impression than 
 others. 
 
 My first introduction to him was in the spring of 1818, when I was ushered 
 into his study with a letter of, recommendation for admission to Williams 
 College. It was to me a fearful moment ; but the cordial manner in which I 
 was received, and his kind inquiries after his friend who had furnished me with 
 a letter, made me at once easy in his presence. I found that he had the heart 
 of a man ; and through an acquaintance of several years to the time of his death, 
 he manifested the same kindness and cordiality that he did the first time I saw 
 him. He was a man of medium stature, rather corpulent, his complexion sallow, 
 the top of his head nearly bald, there being a slight sprinkling of hair between 
 
396 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the forehead and crown. His voice, though not loud, was clear and pleasant, and 
 in animated conversation and in the pulpit, pitched upon the tenor key. He was 
 dignified in his appearance, serious in his aspect, instructive and agreeable in 
 his conversation, kind and benevolent in his feelings, modest and unassuming in 
 his manners, deliberate and cautious in coming to a conclusion, but firm and 
 determined when his position was taken. If a student had at any time spoken 
 against him, he would have been regarded as a rebel against law and order. In 
 managing cases of discipline he was calm and entirely self-possessed. When he 
 felt constrained to reprove students, either in the recitation room or chapel, he 
 usually prefaced his remarks by addressing them as, "Young gentlemen"; 
 probably that they might the more readily perceive the impropriety of their 
 conduct. 
 
 In preaching, he had very little action ; and yet there was an impressiveness 
 in his manner that fixed the attention of his hearers. In the more animated 
 parts of his discourse, his utterance became more rapid, and the sound of his 
 voice shrill and tremulous, showing that he felt deeply the force of the senti- 
 ments he uttered. In his religious views, I know not that he differed from the 
 great mass of the orthodox clergy of New England of his day. 
 
 Probably enough has now been said, and enough been directly 
 quoted from his contemporaries who knew him personally, to give 
 the reader a distinct and correct idea of the man and president; 
 but there is yet another letter at hand, which will now be quoted 
 entire, fully as much for the sake of the light that it throws upon 
 the memory of the writer of it, as for the sake of any additional 
 gleams coming therefrom to illuminate the subject of it. Ebenezer 
 Emmons, a graduate of the College in 1818, and very intimately 
 connected with it in one way and another thereafter until his death 
 in 1863 in North Carolina, who was one year a student under Presi- 
 dent Fitch and three years under President Moore, wrote a letter 
 in 1855 in response to a request for his recollections of the latter, 
 which presents in an interesting way several phases of the College 
 and of individuals connected with it while he was a student. The 
 letter runs as follows : 
 
 MY DEAR SIR : Instead of attempting anything like an outline of Dr. Moore's 
 character, which you can easily obtain from other sources, I take the liberty to 
 comply with your request by stating an incident in his administration of the 
 College, of which I was a witness, and which strikingly illlustrated some of his 
 most prominent characteristics. 
 
 The incident to which I refer, occurred in 1816, just after Dr. Moore entered 
 upon his duties as President of Williams College. It was not only a new field 
 to him, but there were some circumstances that rendered his entrance upon it 
 peculiarly embarrassing. His predecessor, Dr. Fitch, though in many respects 
 an admirable man, did not always evince the highest degree of firmness ; and 
 hence, it had been common for the students, when his decisions were not in 
 accordance with their wishes, to make an effort, and generally not an unsuc- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 397 
 
 cessful one, to procure their reversal. Dr. Moore came to the College when 
 the three higher classes had been the subjects of this kind of training. In order 
 to give governmental efficiency to the institution, he was instrumental in effect- 
 ing a revision of its laws, and in introducing certain new regulations, which 
 were designed to secure a more thorough and effective discipline. The new 
 regulations took effect with the Sophomore class, of which I was a member. 
 The class numbered twenty-one, among whom were several who have since 
 attained to high distinction in the different walks of public usefulness. They 
 felt as Sophomore classes are very apt to feel, a sufficiently deep sense of their 
 own importance ; and this was probably somewhat increased from the fact that 
 the College was really in a tottering condition, and one in which it did not seem 
 safe to enforce very stringent regulations. 
 
 A copy of the new code of laws was given to each pupil on his entrance into 
 college, and soon afterwards he was summoned into the president's study, and 
 questioned in the following manner: " Have you read the laws of the College ?" 
 " Do you approve of them ? " " Will you obey them?" Of course an affirma- 
 tive answer was returned. But to fix the matter more securely, he was then 
 required to affix his name to his answer in a book prepared for that purpose. 
 Two-thirds of the members of the class had passed through this ordeal, attest- 
 ing their allegiance to the College government ; but, in the meantime, this new 
 regulation began to be talked about as an oppressive measure, especially in its 
 application to the Sophomore class. The feeling that it was derogatory to their 
 dignity began to run high, and, under the excitement, a class-meeting was called 
 to decide upon the measures to be adopted to remedy the supposed oppression 
 under which the class labored, and especially to vindicate its honor before the 
 other classes. At this meeting speeches were made, which, in point of spirit 
 were worthy of the times of '76. It was resolved to visit the president in a 
 body, making a committee of twenty-one, with Selah Root Arms (now a highly 
 respectable clergyman), for our chairman and chief speaker. The president 
 received us politely, and almost immediately gave the chairman an opportunity 
 to state the business of the committee. u Young gentlemen," said he, "what 
 are your wishes ? You must surely have some business of great importance to 
 transact with me." "We have come, sir," replied the chairman, "for the 
 purpose of getting our names expunged from that book," stepping forward at 
 the same time a little in front of the row, and placing his feet squarely upon 
 the floor. "Oh, indeed," said the president, "I am sorry for that; but you 
 are no doubt willing to obey the laws of College." " Certainly, sir," said he ; 
 "but then our names are upon that book." "If that is all," answered the 
 president, "you may be sure, that it will never hurt you." "But," replied 
 the chairman, "we do not see why the Sophomore class should be singled out 
 in this manner." "That," said the president, "is of little consequence, 
 you know we must begin somewhere ; and you are only required to obey the 
 laws of College, which you say you intend to do, and which all are required 
 to do." " But," said the chairman, " our names are upon that book," point- 
 ing to the very book on the table before the president, "and it looks badly 
 that we should be singled out in this way, when the Junior and Senior classes 
 are allowed an exemption from the rule." "I repeat," says the president, 
 "we must, as you well know, begin somewhere, and all the succeeding classes 
 will be required to conform to the rule, so that your names will not stand alone 
 
398 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 upon that book." Suffice it to say, it was evident that no progress could be 
 made, and the Doctor's manner carried more weight even than his words. It 
 seemed to be tacitly admitted that our case was a hopeless one ; and besides 
 we had become quite cooled off in his presence. But our spokesman made 
 another rally, coming directly to the point, "Must we understand then that 
 our names shall remain upon that book?" " Certainly," said the Doctor, 
 his benignant face becoming momentarily suffused with a deeper tint. We left 
 his presence as quickly as possible, satisfied that no impression could be made 
 upon his firmness ; and his polite reception and gentle bearing had quite dis- 
 armed us of all personal hostility. 
 
 Dr. Moore was consistent in his measures for the government of the College, 
 and this first occasion for the exercise of his firmness and moderation had its 
 influence throughout the classes, and I do not know that he was afterwards 
 called upon to exercise those admirable qualities in a similar manner. 
 
 Here is a capital touch on the disciplinary power of the second 
 president by a competent eye-witness, and one also who had had the 
 great advantage of being able to compare him in this respect with 
 the first. This graphic testimony is in harmony with all that can be 
 learned from other sources about the two men at this point. From 
 all the accessible evidence combined and compared, it is certain that 
 Moore was the most successful disciplinarian among all the presi- 
 dents of Williams during the first century of the College ; and this 
 proof is confirmed by the little that can be learned of Moore in 
 this regard by his very brief presidency at Amherst. He was well 
 adapted to be a college president in New England at that time. His 
 coming here was beset with difficulties of formidable proportions. 
 No year of his stay was free from their thickening shadow. After 
 six years of assiduous labor to save the College from extinction, he 
 went to Amherst in obedience to a call from thence, and in exact 
 accordance with the terms of the understanding under which he 
 came here in the first instance. Fifteen of the students went with 
 him. The local opposition to his going at all, the strenuous efforts 
 made to keep him, is irrefragable proof that he had done what he 
 could, and that he had done a great deal. 
 
 In the meantime, his reputation as a teacher and preacher was ex- 
 tending all over the State. In 1818 he was invited to preach the 
 Election Sermon in Boston. This was a great honor in those times. 
 It was a summons from the General Court to give them instruction 
 and edification. And it was not possible for them to go farther for 
 their preacher within the limits of the state. William stown was 
 just upon the uttermost bounds. A then almost impassable moun- 
 tain intervened between Williamstown and Boston. How did the 
 preacher get there, and get back again? A lively tradition in the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 399 
 
 Smedley family makes possible an answer to this question after a 
 wide interval of years. Levi Smedley, a prosperous farmer on the 
 Green River, who has already been mentioned in a previous chapter, 
 as driving, when a boy, a wagon of provisions to his father, Captain 
 Nehemiah Smedley, the next day after the battle of Bennington, 
 was the first citizen of Williamstown to provide for himself and 
 family a two-horse vehicle, then called a " swell-body hack " ; and 
 the president invited the deacon to drive him to Boston and back in 
 the new carriage, and to be his guest and companion while there. 
 The deacon lived until 1849 ; and used to be fond of relating to his 
 family incidents of the agreeable journey, and topics of the agreeable 
 conversation of the president, something of the novelties of the city, 
 and something also of the formalities and impressiveness of the 
 Election Sermon. This sermon was printed by order of the General 
 Court. All the people of the town, and the friends of the little 
 struggling College, were proud of the compliment thus paid to their 
 popular president. 
 
 The aggregate number of students graduated in the six classes 
 under Dr. Moore was ninety-two, and the average fifteen. The 
 average of the first three years was fourteen, and of the last three, 
 sixteen. This indicates no great growth on the whole. There 
 would, undoubtedly, have been a much greater growth, had the 
 minds of the trustees and of the public been settled that the College 
 was to remain in Williamstown. That question, however, not only 
 continued an open one, but also seemed to open more and more 
 towards the east. Moore's inaugural discourse in 1815 was not pub- 
 lished, as it ought to have been, but it has been credibly described as 
 an able and finished production, and as credibly asserted (and never 
 denied) to have contained an expression of his views in favor of the 
 removal of the College. His position was unequivocal from start to 
 finish. His heart was over the mountain among his kinsmen on 
 Taoth sides of the Connecticut, his judgment was fixed that the 
 College could not flourish in this narrow valley, and his expressions 
 never wavered in regard to its removal. 
 
 At the Commencement in 1818, just as the Board of Trustees were 
 about to adjourn, one of their own number, Packard of Shelburne, 
 acting as an agent for Amherst Academy, presented a petition re- 
 questing the board to unite the College with a proposed institution 
 to be located in the town of Amherst. Dr. Moore declared himself 
 to be favorable to such a project. But the trustees were not ready. 
 They made answer to the petition by this vote, "That the trustees 
 of Amherst Academy have leave to withdraw the communication 
 
400 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 which they have submitted to this Board." As soon as this vote was 
 passed, Packard predicted to his fellow-members that the board 
 would be summoned to attend an extra meeting in less than three 
 months ; which happened, as he said ; and when convened in Novem- 
 ber, the president immediately submitted to them a proposition for 
 the removal of the College, connected with the expression of his 
 purpose to resign the office of president unless the proposition 
 should be sustained. He stated at length that, at the time he 
 accepted the presidency, he had no idea that the College was to 
 remain at Williamstown, but had all the while supposed it was to 
 be removed to some place in Hampshire County. His statements 
 and his manner of stating them had doubtless much influence on 
 the action of the trustees, expressed by the following vote, nine out 
 of twelve voting in the affirmative, Jones of Adams, and Noble of 
 Williamstown, and Glezen of Stockbridge, alone voting nay. 
 
 Resolved, That it is expedient to remove Williams College to some more 
 central part of the State, whenever sufficient funds can be obtained to defray 
 the necessary expenses incurred, and the losses sustained by removal, and to 
 secure the prosperity of the College, and when a fair prospect shall be presented 
 of obtaining for the institution the united support and patronage of the friends 
 of literature and religion in the western part of the Commonwealth, and when 
 the General Court shall give their assent to the measure. 
 
 At the same meeting, " in order to guide the Trustees in determin- 
 ing to which place the college shall be removed, and to produce 
 harmony and union," a committee consisting of Chancellor James 
 Kent of New York, Judge Nathaniel Smith of Connecticut, and the 
 E-ev. Seth Payson of New Hampshire, was appointed and requested 
 " to visit the towns in Hampshire County, and determine the place 
 to which the college shall be removed ; the Trustees pledging them- 
 selves to abide by their decision, provided the requisite sum be 
 raised." The board then adjourned to meet at Pittsfield the next 
 May, at which time and place this distinguished committee reported 
 that the proper place to remove to was Northampton. The board 
 itself at the same time prepared an address to the public, which was 
 printed and extensively circulated, setting forth the reasons for the 
 intended removal, and requesting donations to increase the funds and 
 to promote generally the prosperity of the College at its new location, 
 namely, at Northampton. The gist of this address of reasons is in 
 the following paragraph : 
 
 That, since its establishment in 1793, other colleges have sprung up about it, 
 and had almost wholly withdrawn the patronage it had formerly received from 
 the North and West. That, owing to the want of support, its funds have become 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 401 
 
 so reduced that the income falls short of the expenditures, and the trustees, for 
 this reason, are unable to maintain the institution in its present state, and enable 
 it to compete with other colleges. These circumstances have induced the Trustees, 
 after mature reflection and deliberation, to think a removal of the college to a 
 situation more central and more easy of access necessary to its support and 
 continuance in usefulness. 
 
 It was now the springtime of 1819. The ball was opened. It is 
 needful to notice that all action hitherto had been the action of the 
 Board of Trustees upon this ground. They had taken the initiative 
 in May, 1815. They had followed it up from time to time as their 
 records show. There was in existence no party of the other part. 
 Just four years later they took of their own motion the strong action 
 now described. They issued a public address, announcing their deter- 
 mination, on certain specified conditions, to remove the College to the 
 eastward, to the end of its own upbuilding. Their motives were 
 pure, their opinions were strong, and all their actions open and above 
 board. It was in the discussion and agitation that followed for two 
 full years, in which everybody in the two counties became intensely 
 interested, that parties were formed, ill blood engendered, crimi- 
 nations and recriminations passed, and at last the impression pro- 
 duced, not even yet absolutely dissipated, that, somehow or other, 
 Hampshire had stolen a march on Berkshire, had purloined some- 
 thing, had gotten by indirection something that belonged to the 
 other. Under this impression the really spotless memory of Presi- 
 dent Moore has been shadowed. In behalf of his own freedom from 
 any such prejudice, the present writer can appeal to his direct 
 agency many years ago in helping to affix the designation "Mt 
 Moore" to the peak next south of Greylock, as the name "Mt. 
 Fitch " had been previously affixed by the Hopkins Alpine Club to 
 the peak next north of Greylock, in the same gigantic line. 1 
 
 Every vehicle of expression was employed, published letters, 
 printed pamphlets, newspaper editorials, and oral speech without 
 end, as the discussion waxed warm on both sides. In August, 
 1819, a large convention of Hampshire people was held in North- 
 ampton to take measures to effect the removal of the College to 
 Hampshire. Dr. Moore presided over this meeting, and resolutions 
 were adopted in favor of the removal, and committees appointed to 
 solicit subscriptions for that purpose. In October following, a large 
 convention of Berkshire gentlemen was held in Pittsfield, over which 
 William Walker, then and for twenty-five years Judge of Probate 
 for Berkshire, presided, for the purpose of expressing the views and 
 1 See Origins in Williamstown, p. 31. 
 
 2D 
 
402 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 feelings of the county in opposition to the removal. Resolutions to 
 this effect, and an address to the public, were reported and adopted. 
 The core of the resolutions, and also of the address, are herewith 
 literally transcribed. 
 
 It is the opinion of this meeting that nothing is necessary to preserve for Wil- 
 liams College, in its present location, the character of a highly respectable and 
 useful institution, but the cordial cooperation of the friends of literature, science, 
 and religion, in the western section of the State. 
 
 If the removal of the College should result in some peculiar losses, if some 
 widows and men of wealth were to suffer by it, these losses might be endured ; 
 but we know not what would restore to the community that confidence that 
 sweetens life and binds society together ; nor where would be found that balm 
 which would heal the wounds which this measure would inflict. 
 
 A month later, that is to say, in November, 1819, a meeting of the 
 trustees in Williamstown passed two votes, both of which had far- 
 reaching consequences, that could not have been at all divined at the 
 time. The first of these votes made a proposition to the trustees 
 of Amherst Academy, started in 1815 and incorporated in 1816, re- 
 questing them to unite their charitable funds with those of the Col- 
 lege, in case it were removed to Northampton. This proposition 
 received a prompt rejection, unless the transferred location were, 
 changed to Amherst. It was no longer, accordingly, a question 
 merely as between Berkshire and Hampshire, it had already be- 
 come a sort of triangular question with Williamstown at the apex 
 and Amherst and Northampton at either end of the base line. Nor 
 was it then, nor did it ever afterward become, a simply local ques- 
 tion. The founders and sustainers of Amherst Academy, the same 
 class of men and largely the same men as the founders and sustain- 
 ers of Amherst College, were not altogether the same sort of men in 
 race, in religion, in persistency, as the men who founded and sus- 
 tained the Free School and the College in Williamstown, or the men 
 in Northampton and elsewhere in Hampshire County, who would 
 have gathered to the support of the College, had it actually become 
 established in Northampton. In Professor Tyler's excellent history 
 of Amherst College, published in 1873, there are a number of expres- 
 sions that would be mysterious enough, were it not for the present 
 explanation, of which, perhaps, he was not then fully possessed. 
 For example, this sentence on page 34, relating to the charter of the 
 Academy, "having been delayed by opposition in Amherst, and 
 in the neighboring towns, of the same kind and partly from the very 
 same sources as that which the college encountered in later years." 
 Why should the charter of Amherst Academy have encountered 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 403 
 
 opposition in Amherst in 1815 ? or " in the neighboring towns " ? 
 And why should this have been of the same kind and from the same 
 sources as that encountered by the college ? This must have been, 
 and was, something more permanent and powerful in human nature 
 than questions of mere locality ever become. Take another example 
 from the text on page 71, and particularly from the note to the pas- 
 sage : " President Moore and Professor Estabrooke, having publicly 
 signified their acceptance and their assent to the Confession of Faith 
 which had been prepared for the occasion, were then solemnly in- 
 ducted into their respective offices." " Of this Confession of Faith 
 I find no record, except that it was reported to the trustees by a 
 committee appointed for the purpose immediately previous to the 
 inauguration. The committee consisted of Z. S. Moore, Thomas 
 Snell, and Daniel A. Clark." Why should there have been a special 
 Confession of Faith " prepared for the occasion " ? Why was it not 
 published at the time ? And why is there " no record " or trace of 
 it to be found at the present time ? Good answers are at hand to all 
 these questions, and they will be given incidentally a little farther 
 on. The only point to be specially noted here is, that the trustees 
 of Amherst Academy in 1819, three years after their incorporation, 
 had sufficient self-respect and esprit de corps to dictate terms both to 
 their neighbors in Northampton and to their possible coadjutors in 
 William stown. 
 
 The second, and even more important, vote passed by the Williams 
 trustees at the same time with the other, was, that, " It is expedient 
 to petition the Legislature for permission to remove Williams College 
 to Northampton." And a committee was chosen to present the peti- 
 tion to the Legislature. This place for the removal had been agreed 
 upon by their own Kent commission ; and they had promised before- 
 hand to abide by the decision. Moreover, fifty thousand dollars had 
 been subscribed in a short time by the people of Hampshire and 
 adjoining counties, to defray the expenses which would be incurred 
 and the losses sustained by the removal. This fact went along with 
 the petition to Boston. This petition and the accompanying docu- 
 ments were presented to both branches of the Legislature on Jan. 
 17, 1820, and referred to a joint committee of both Houses. The 
 same day and to the same joint committee was presented and re- 
 ferred the remonstrance of the town of Williamstown against the 
 removal of the College. This remonstrance was drawn up by 
 Charles A. Dewey, a native of Williamstown, a graduate of the 
 College in 1811, a citizen and lawyer of the town till 1826, a trustee 
 of the College from 1824 to 1866, and a Justice of the Supreme Court 
 
404 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of the State from 1837 till his death in 1866. The remonstrance 
 was passed upon and unanimously voted for at a legal meeting 
 of the inhabitants of William stown, holden Dec. 27, 1819; this 
 action attested and vouched for "as expressive of the feelings of 
 the inhabitants of this town," by STEPHEN HOSFORD, Town Clerk. 
 A subscription, amounting to $17,500, raised upon their own respon- 
 sibility by the inhabitants of the town and county, in terms to be 
 paid in the course of ten years to the College funds in case of non- 
 removal, was laid before the Legislature at the same time with the 
 remonstrance, and taken into consideration by the joint committee, 
 to which the whole matter and all papers relating to it were referred. 
 As the petition itself had gone to the General Court as the action 
 of the Board of Trustees by a vote of nine to three, the minority 
 thought it proper to send a memorandum to Boston, giving the 
 grounds of their dissent from the action of the majority. This 
 memorandum was drawn up by Daniel Noble, and signed by him, 
 by Israel Jones, and Levi Glezen, the three minority trustees. 
 Daniel Noble was also a native of William stown, an own cousin 
 of Charles A. Dewey, a graduate of the College in 1796, the first 
 alumnus of the College placed upon its Board of Trustees, in 1809, 
 and continued as such till his death in 1830, a citizen and lawyer 
 of the town, and treasurer of the College from 1814 till 1830. In 
 sending this memorandum to Glezen for signature, Noble wrote to 
 him a letter, which is worthy to be preserved and perpetuated. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Jan. 7, 1820. 
 MY DEAR SIR : 
 
 I find the public are expecting a Memorial from the minority of the Corpora- 
 tion, in the case of the petition to remove Williams College. I should have been 
 much gratified to have had this written by yourself ; but not being able to see 
 you, I have availed myself of a few hours 1 leisure, amidst my almost unceasing 
 calls, to place on paper a few of my thoughts in the shape of a Memorial to the 
 Legislature. I have been less particular than I should have been had we not 
 had a very full memorial from this town, in which the subjects are discussed in 
 detail ; and this town memorial is to be printed. I wish you to examine the 
 memorial which I send you, and put your own name .to it. You will please 
 leave room for Esquire Jones's name, yours second, and mine third and last. 
 
 We feel in tolerably good spirits as to the College question. We mean fairly 
 and honorably to discharge our duty, and be prepared for any result. There 
 has, on the whole, been a noble spirit of liberality manifested on the occasion. 
 Whatever shall be the issue, I trust we shall retain a high sense of gratitude to 
 our friends, in various directions, for the part they have taken upon this in- 
 teresting occasion. 
 
 I am very respectfully yours, 
 
 DANIEL NOBLE. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 405 
 
 All these formal documents, together with accompanying papers, 
 and particularly, as it would seem from their report, a sketch of 
 the early history of the College written for the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society by President Fitch in 1802, were put into the hands 
 of the joint committee, consisting of four able members of the House 
 and three of the Senate, on the 17th of January. On the 1st of 
 February, their report was rendered to the two branches of the 
 Legislature. The Senate approved the report on Feb. 8, by a 
 vote of 31 to 5 ; and the House concurred on Feb. 14, by a vote 
 of 120 to 25. This was quick work, even for those working 
 times. That it was good and thorough work, any one may satisfy 
 himself by reading the report, which is much too long for insertion 
 here, since it would occupy some fourteen or fifteen of these pages. 
 
 The two questions to which the committee addressed themselves, 
 and both of which they fully discussed, although it would seem as 
 if the first were more fit for a judicial than a legislative body, were : 
 first, Is it legal to remove the College ? and, second, Is it expedient 
 to remove the College? The celebrated Dartmouth College case, 
 involving essentially the same point as that involved in the first 
 question, had been adjudicated in the Supreme Court of the United 
 States just one year before, Chief Justice Marshall voicing the deci- 
 sion of that court in February, 1819, and sustaining Daniel Webster's 
 novel and always much-questioned plea; namely, that a gift to a 
 charitable institution of learning is a "contract," in the sense of 
 the Constitution of the United States, between donor and trustees. 
 To impair the obligation of a contract by any law of any State is 
 forbidden by the national Constitution. That this construction and 
 judgment influenced the minds of the committee is plain, although 
 they make no verbal reference to it, because they say : 
 
 The committee have supposed it to be their duty to notice that Woodbridge 
 Little of Pittsfield, and some persons in Williamstown, and some in Vermont, 
 and some in the State of New York, have made donations to Williams College ; 
 and the committee suppose that they ought not to disregard the presumption that 
 the location of this seminary constituted some part of the motive to this bounty, 
 and the committee cannot but doubt the justice of removing, and consequently 
 the power to remove this seminary to any place not contemplated by such donors, 
 to be the site of the future use of their charities. The committee have expressed 
 this opinion on the law with the most unaffected diffidence. But they have 
 thought it their duty to express some opinion hereon, because the two Houses 
 must judge of, and decide upon, the legal principles which arise on this petition, 
 since this is not a case, as the committee believe, in which the opinion of the 
 Supreme Judicial Court may be required. The [Massachusetts] Constitution 
 authorizes the aid of such opinions, only in cases where no private rights are 
 
406 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 involved. It is apparent that this subject relates to parties who may, hereafter, 
 possibly become suitors in that court, and whose rights cannot be judged of 
 until they are first heard. 
 
 The sailing of the committee on the second question, namely, the 
 expediency of the proposed removal, was on smoother and securer 
 seas. If the question had been at the beginning, whether Williams- 
 town or Northampton were the better place, in which to found a new 
 college, the opinions even then of well-informed and honest men 
 might fairly enough have differed; notwithstanding the general 
 concession of the advantages of Northampton, in point of its central 
 position on the Connecticut, the denser population in and around it, 
 superior facilities of access, and the attractions and stimulus of 
 larger numbers of educated men ; while, on the other hand, it might 
 well have been urged, that a relative seclusion is favorable to literary 
 proficiency, and to purity of morals, and that an education at a 
 smaller expenditure of money was more likely to be attainable at 
 Williamstown. But the present question is much distinct from that. 
 Par other elements enter in than a mere Then and Now. 
 
 The committee are of opinion, that so important a measure as the removal of 
 Williams College ought not to take place without a reasonable and unembarrassed 
 conviction, that some great benefit will result therefrom not attainable in the 
 present location. The committee are by no means satisfied that mere location 
 determines the degree of estimation and respect in which any literary institution 
 may be held. It is reputation that constitutes the attraction, and this is founded 
 on the modes and means of instruction ; and though it might be a very interest- 
 ing question whether $50,000 or $100,000 should be originally expended at 
 Northampton or Williamstown, yet considering the length of time which has 
 elapsed since the establishment of Williams College in the place where it is, 
 that a considerable part of its funds were given in contemplation of its perma- 
 nancy there, and considering too that no change of very imposing cast is likely to 
 be effected immediately, or before the lapse of some years, in the future useful- 
 ness of the institution, if at all, by removal, the committee come to the result, 
 that it is neither lawful nor expedient to grant the prayer of the petition ; and 
 for these reasons respectfully report, that the petitioners have leave to withdraw 
 their petition. 
 
 The speech of Josiah Quincy in the State Senate made in behalf 
 of this report of the joint committee has fortunately come down to 
 us in manuscript and entire. The year before his death, that is, in 
 1863, Quincy sent his speech with the accompanying documents to 
 President Hopkins, as a matter of curiosity, saying, " The documents 
 are precisely as I found them among my papers folded forty years 
 ago.' 7 The committee of the trustees sent down with their petition 
 were apparently present at the debate. Quincy hit them a good rap 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 407 
 
 in the course of his argument, which doubtless largely contributed 
 to the majority in the Senate defeating the removal. We extract 
 a short paragraph : 
 
 The trustees came all the way to Boston to make confession of a great crime. 
 They tell us that so long ago as 1793 they perverted the Free School Fund, which 
 the donor designed for the use of the poor people of Williamstown, to the use 
 of their college, that it was a great violation of a sacred trust. It is very strange 
 that these trustees all of a sudden should be filled with so great a compunction 
 on the subject of returning these funds when all concerned are satisfied with 
 their possessing them. What can be the object of this extraordinary penitential 
 confession ? Do they want absolution ? No, that is not what they want. 
 What can be their object ? In consideration of their confessing one crime, they 
 ask your indulgence to be permitted to commit another. They tell you in so 
 many words that we have for seven and twenty years been perverting to our own 
 use and contrary to the will of the donor one half of our present funds, in con- 
 sideration of which we pray liberty to abscond with the residue I 
 
 This well-reasoned report of the joint committee of the Legislature, 
 approved by large majorities in both branches, brought the agitation 
 for the removal of Williams College to a dead standstill. All parties 
 to the controversy had taken- the ground distinctly, that but one 
 college was needed or could be sustained in western Massachusetts. 
 Williams had now been established twenty-five years. Its founda- 
 tions could not be legally removed. Therefore, ran the expected and 
 partially drawn inference, that the western end of the State will now 
 unite to sustain the college already formed on its extreme border, as 
 the rest of the State had already gathered around Cambridge, on its 
 extreme eastern border. The people of Northampton and its vicinity 
 on the river took this general view of the case, then, and for long 
 after, showing a strong disposition to patronize the western college. 
 But the general phases of the question soon broadened from out the 
 mere matter of place and moderate foundations already laid to the 
 westward, and developed considerations of race and religion and 
 even of theology. Scotch-Irish Presbyterians settled in Worcester 
 in 1718 in large numbers, and thence and by gradual accretions from 
 their sort of folks in the north of Ireland diffused themselves over 
 the whole of western Massachusetts, sometimes going in colonies 
 so as to constitute townships, as in the case of Pelham (which is 
 next to Amherst) and Colerain and Palmer (which are in the 
 neighborhood) ; and sometimes migrating in smaller groups for con- 
 tiguous new settlements, and more rarely as individual families or 
 farmers. Their names do not shine so much as subscribers to the 
 " Charity Fund " connected with Amherst Academy, which became 
 
408 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the basis of Amherst College, because they were too poor for the 
 most part for subscriptions and payments in money. 
 
 But when it came to the erection of the first college building in 
 1820, still standing on the ground as " South College," and labor and 
 materials and provisions for the workmen were solicited by the com- 
 mittee, their opportunity had come. " The stone for the foundation 
 was brought chiefly from Pelham by gratuitous labor, and provisions 
 for the workmen were furnished by voluntary contributions. Dona- 
 tions of lime, sand, lumber, materials of all kinds, flowed in from 
 every quarter. Teams for hauling, and men for handling and tend- 
 ing, and unskilled labor of every sort, were provided in abundance. 
 Whatever could be contributed gratuitously was furnished without 
 money and without price. The people not only contributed in kind, 
 but turned out in person, and sometimes camped on the ground and 
 labored day and night, for they had a mind to work like the Jews 
 in building their temple, and they felt that they too were building 
 the Lord's house." Noah Webster, the lexicographer, then a citizen 
 of Amherst, and president of the board of building, an eye-witness, 
 and a man never given to exaggerations, used this language : " Not- 
 withstanding the building committee- had no funds for erecting the 
 building, not even a cent, except what were to be derived from 
 gratuities in labor, materials, and provisions, yet they prosecuted 
 the work with untiring diligence. Kepeatedly during the progress 
 of the work, their materials were exhausted, and they were obliged 
 to notify the president of the board, that they could proceed no 
 further. On these occasions the president called together the 
 trustees, or a number of them, who by subscriptions of their own, 
 and by renewed solicitations for voluntary contributions, enabled 
 the committee to prosecute the work. And such were the exertions 
 of the board, the committee, and the friends of the Institution, that 
 on the ninetieth day from the laying of the corner-stone, the roof 
 timbers were erected on the building." 
 
 In early May, 1821, at a meeting of the Trustees of Amherst 
 Academy, it "Voted unanimously that the Eev. Zephaniah Swift 
 Moore be, and he is hereby elected President of the Charity Institu- 
 tion in this town. Voted that the permanent salary of the President 
 of this Institution for his services as President and. Professor of 
 Theology and Moral Philosophy be $1200, and that he is entitled to 
 the usual perquisites." 
 
 In early June, in his letter of acceptance, dated at Williamstown, 
 President Moore says : " Previous to receiving any notice of your 
 appointment I had made up my mind to resign my office in this 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 409 
 
 College next Commencement. Providence had clearly made it con- 
 sistent with my duty to leave then, if not sooner. I have ascertained, 
 so far as I have had opportunity, the opinion of those who are the 
 friends of evangelical truth with respect to the necessity, prospects, 
 and usefulness of such an Institution as that contemplated at Am- 
 herst. I have much reason to believe there is extensively an 
 agreement on this subject. In my own opinion, no subject has 
 higher claims on the charity and benevolent efforts of the Christian 
 community than the education of pious young men for the gospel 
 ministry. Their classical education should be thorough, and I 
 should be wholly averse to becoming united with any institution 
 which proposes to give a classical education inferior to that given in 
 any of the Colleges in New England. On this subject I am assured 
 your opinion is the same as my own, and that you have determined 
 that the course of study in the Institution to which you have invited 
 me shall not be inferior to that in the Colleges of New England. I 
 am also assured that you will make provision for the admission of 
 those who are not indigent, and who may wish to obtain a classical 
 education in the Institution." 
 
 Dr. Moore had left town in the spring vacation, without a thought 
 of any such thing on the part of the students as their losing their 
 president, least of all to Amherst. Almost all of them had a high 
 veneration for him. As it was settled that the College could not be 
 legally moved from Williamstown, it had never apparently occurred 
 to them that the president would move away without it. At the 
 commencement of the summer term, almost immediately after writ- 
 ing the above letter of acceptance, he came into the chapel and 
 announced to the students that he had received such an invitation ; 
 and that he had accepted it, with the provision that he should 
 perform the duties of his office at Williamstown till the ensuing 
 Commencement, and then remove to Amherst. Said an eye-and- 
 ear witness : " This fell upon the students like a thunderbolt. 
 One would have supposed, from the strong attachment which the 
 students felt for the president, that the whole would have resolved 
 in a body to follow him. There came up at once, however, a division 
 of feeling among them. The students then numbered about eighty, 
 of whom nearly one-half resolved to go to Amherst, or to other 
 colleges. The rest determined to remain at Williamstown. Some 
 who despaired of Williams College were unwilling to go to Amherst, 
 because it was a new college, and could not of course afford equal 
 advantages with the older institutions. Hence they went to other 
 colleges ; and at the commencement of that year the number of 
 
410 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 students in Williams College, small as it was before, was diminished 
 nearly one-half." 1 
 
 During this last term of Moore's presidency on this ground, there 
 was much more debating than studying. College undergraduates 
 are generally a remarkably consequential set of men. Like Atlas, 
 they bear the world upon their shoulders. One party of the students 
 thought that their abandonment of the College would destroy it as a 
 public institution ; and the other, that the College could not die while 
 it enjoyed their own powerful presence and patronage. Moore, of 
 course, was quietly awaiting the time of his demission. It was not 
 his duty or purpose to interfere essentially with the semi-anarchy 
 that prevailed in College throughout the summer term. It was no 
 time for discipline or authority while college foundations were break- 
 ing up. Studies went nominally forward in all the classes. At the 
 time of the Senior examination, four weeks before Commencement, 
 when always a part of the trustees came together to examine the 
 class preparatory to graduation, the venerable Dr. Hyde of Lee, 
 then and for twenty years the vice-president of the College, called 
 the students together in the old chapel and addressed them. Regret- 
 ting the loss of the president so much valued, he remarked that, 
 though the president was about to retire, the guardians of the College 
 would remain ; and they were determined, by the help of God, that 
 the College should be sustained. This declaration by such a cautious 
 man at such a time had a considerable effect in restoring hope and 
 zeal. But when the first acts of the trustees at this meeting and 
 their issue became known the clouds returned for a while. As their 
 custom had been previously in case of vacancy, they elected two 
 alternate candidates for the place, Professor Goodrich of Yale and 
 Professor McCauley of Union College. Both in turn declined. The 
 students knew nothing of any further action of the trustees in order 
 to obtain a president until Commencement Day. 
 
 In the meantime, prospects 011 College ground continued gloomy 
 enough. President Moore was remaining simply to preside at the 
 Commencement exercises, and to help induct his successor, if one 
 should be found. Some members of the Senior class had just asked 
 for dismissions, in order to take their degrees at other colleges ; 
 others were now wavering. Under these disheartening circum- 
 stances, the Senior class called a meeting of their own members in or- 
 der to determine what to do. This proved to be, probably, the most 
 important class-meeting that ever was holden on this ground. Two 
 members of the class, Emerson Davis and Erastus C. Benedict, ad- 
 1 Parsons Cooke, a graduate of 1822. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 411 
 
 dressed the class. They spoke with a noble determination to sus- 
 tain, so far as they were able, the honor and reputation of the College 
 at all hazards. They declared their intention to remain and to have 
 a Commencement ; that, if left entirely by themselves, they would 
 still be graduated in the usual manner ; and that, if necessary, they 
 would perform all the several parts which had been allotted to their 
 classmates. When was ever such courage and resolve under thick 
 difficulties lost upon compeers ? They rallied to a man. The parts 
 were all acceptably rendered by those to whom they had been origi- 
 nally assigned ; fifteen men took their degrees upon the stage in due 
 form at the hands of President Moore, and in the presence (as it 
 happened) of his distinguished successor. 
 
 The two Seniors, Benedict and Davis, who took such a stand at the 
 critical moment in behalf of the College, lived to find a rich and long 
 reward upon this ground for their youthful and enthusiastic service. 
 Both became tutors, Davis immediately and Benedict two years after 
 graduation. Davis became a trustee in 1833, and in that capacity 
 was never absent from the Commencement, nor from 1845 when he 
 went on the Standing Committees from the Senior examination, until 
 his death in 1866. He was vice-president of the College also, fifth 
 and last, from 1859 so long as he lived. He went from his tutorship 
 here in its second year to become principal of the Westfield Academy, 
 and was settled in a lifelong ministry there in 1836. Being rela- 
 tively near at hand, a good scholar and a prudent counsellor, he 
 was relied on more than any other one of the trustees for special 
 attendance and for special service. In 1861 he presided at the Com- 
 mencement exercises on account of the absence of President Hop- 
 kins in Europe. He was a very corpulent man in person, very 
 considerate in counsel, always very popular in Williamstown as well 
 as in Westfield, and always particularly welcomed and honored here 
 by his classmate and colleague-trustee from 1838, Dr. Henry L. 
 Sabin. Benedict too became a trustee of the college in 1855, and 
 continued active and faithful as such till his death in 1880. He 
 played also a very prominent part in the intellectual and professional 
 and educational life of New York City during a long and highly 
 honored career. 
 
 That Commencement Day of 1821 became memorable for other 
 reasons than these just referred to and implied. 
 
 (1) It was the time of the first steps toward the formation of the 
 Society of Alumni. A public call was then issued, Aug. 25, 1821, 
 in the following terms: "Williams College. A meeting of the 
 Alumni of Williams College will be held at the College Chapel, Sept. 
 
412 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 5, at 9 A.M., to consider the expediency of forming a Society of 
 Alumni. The meeting is notified at the request of a number of gen- 
 tlemen educated at the institution, who are desirous that the true 
 state of the College may be known to the Alumni, and that the influ- 
 ence and patronage of those it has educated may be united for its 
 support, protection, and improvement. A general meeting is re- 
 quested." 
 
 The meeting thus notified assembled pursuant thereto, and the fol- 
 lowing preamble and constitution were adopted : 
 
 For the promotion of literature and good fellowship among ourselves, and 
 the better to advance the reputation and interests of our Alma Mater, we the 
 subscribers, graduates of Williams College, do form ourselves into a society, and 
 adopt the following constitution : 
 
 ART. 1. This Society shall be called the Society of the Alumni of Williams Col- 
 lege. 
 
 ART. 2. This Society shall meet annually at the College, at the time of the 
 annual Commencement. 
 
 ART. 3. An address shall also be delivered at each meeting by one of its mem- 
 bers chosen for that purpose. 
 
 ART. 4. The officers of this Society shall consist of a President, Vice-President, 
 Secretary, and an Executive Committee of three members, to be 
 chosen by ballot at the annual meeting. 1 
 
 Asa Burbank, class of 1797, was the first president. John Wood- 
 bridge, class of 1804, delivered the first oration in 1823. For forty 
 years and more an alumni orator seldom failed to appear at Com- 
 mencement; and for sixty years the Society itself in its varied 
 agencies in behalf of the College, and especially the alumni meet- 
 ings at Commencement, were the most efficient and far-reaching and 
 enjoyable of all the moral forces of the institution. 
 
 (2) It was also Moore's last official day in Williamstown. He 
 is said to have presided and to have performed all his parts with 
 noticeable dignity, and to have welcomed upon the stage at the be- 
 ginning of the afternoon exercises with striking decorum a man taller 
 than himself and even more punctiliously dressed, and better calcu- 
 lated every way to impress the senses and imagination of a crowd. 
 This was Edward Dorr Griffin. He was then fifty-one years old, at 
 the height of his popularity as a preacher and a revivalist. He had 
 been quietly elected by the trustees to take the now twice rejected 
 presidency, and had come on to see for himself before he decided the 
 
 1 There were two or three further articles of little consequence, specifying the 
 duties of the officers, and so on. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 413 
 
 question. He looked around upon the interior of a large meeting- 
 house full in body and galleries with common people, who were 
 attentively listening to exercises in which they seemed to have them- 
 selves a part. He saw upon the stage some ten or twelve venerable- 
 looking men, who were charged and seemed to be charged with heavy 
 responsibilities at that moment. They were the trustees. The 
 eldest of them in point of service was Alvan Hyde of Lee, then vice- 
 president of the College, and feeling more the weight of the occasion 
 than any one else present. About one-half of these men were clergy- 
 men, and most of the rest were lawyers. No one of them all went 
 back in point of official life to the original board as organized in 
 1793. It was the second generation of trustees. 
 
 Griffin had practised for many years the art of being consciously 
 looked at, of making an impression upon others by posture and 
 gesture and bearing. Doubtless on that decisive afternoon he 
 scanned with eager curiosity the words and actions of the man 
 whose position he had been invited to assume. Moore and Griffin 
 were both born the same year, 1770. Both were corpulent in body, 
 both scrupulous in dress, and both intellectual-looking. But Moore 
 did not disclose in his countenance the whole of his mental and 
 moral make-up in the sense in which Griffin did. Moore was by 
 much the deeper man. On this afternoon, when they saw each other 
 at close quarters for the first and last time, Moore had the moral ad- 
 vantage over Griffin, not only in securer gifts and a deeper insight, 
 but also in a more settled and restful spirit. Griffin had never been 
 long at a time quiet and restful in his work. In the twenty years 
 just then preceding, 1801-21, he had been twice settled and unset- 
 tled in the gospel ministry in Newark ; inaugurated as Professor of 
 Sacred Rhetoric in the new Theological Seminary at Andover, and 
 had shortly resigned and quitted the place in a kind of disgust ; and 
 had been both installed and dismissed as a pastor of the Park Street 
 church in Boston. Now he had come on from a second loosening up 
 of his ties in Newark, in order to see whether it were worth his 
 while to try something new in Williamstown. 
 
 But Moore was in a very different frame of mind. He had 
 consciously done all that he could do, and probably more than any 
 other living man could have done in the time, for the smitten 
 Institution upon the Hoosac. He had spent six full years in the 
 very fulness of his powers to accomplish that for Williams which 
 he did not believe at the outset could be effectively accomplished. 
 He had succeeded better than he had expected. He had more than 
 satisfied the anticipations of his colleagues of the Board of Trustees. 
 
414 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 They were very desirous that he should remain. The people of the 
 town, who had been most intimately associated with the College in 
 all things, and with whom Moore had made himself pleasant and 
 popular in the best senses of those words, were very desirous that 
 he should pitch his tent and continue to dwell with them. Besides 
 various personal and spiritual reasons, there were property reasons 
 a plenty, why the common people were anxious he should stay. 
 The value of their farms depended very largely on the prosperity of 
 the College. Any markets for their products outside of the valley 
 itself were distant and difficult to reach. The pecuniary interests of 
 the people were bound up in their pride of the past of the Free 
 School and the College, and in their hopes of the future of these. 
 Moore had done his best, and had done his all ; and his mind was 
 clear, that nothing further could be really achieved by anybody as 
 towards a permanent building up of the College. 
 
 This is negative. But Moore had positive grounds of good cheer 
 on that Commencement Day, which probably made him the happiest 
 man upon the stage, as its hours wore away. He had received and 
 accepted an invitation to become president of a literary and religious 
 institution, whose foundations had just been laid by and among 
 his own people, the peculiar Scotch-Irish-American Christians, who 
 were just entering upon the second century of their individual and 
 corporate existence in New England ; whose tenets were and were 
 to be religious in a commanding, if not exclusive sense, not even as 
 yet aspired to, still less fairly grasped at, in the older institution 
 bordering on and accessible to and already colored by the broader 
 and looser principles of Dutch New York ; and whose form and 
 superstructure were to be moulded from the very start by his own 
 skilful and experienced, and no longer hesitating hands. His heart 
 was over the mountains. His kindred were there. They were there, 
 who construed the vital conditions of human life and destiny under 
 somewhat different terms " ein bischen anderen Wortern " than 
 those then used by the devout descendants in New England of the Pil- 
 grims and the Puritans. There is a sense in which Amherst College 
 came out of the very loins of Williams through this great and good 
 man, Zephaniah Swift Moore ; its very first college building, for ex- 
 ample, was and remains an exact copy of the very first college 
 building in Williamstown ; while there is another sense, in which the 
 very first breathings at Amherst and its most persistent and character- 
 istic spirit from that day to this, were drawn from (as it were) a 
 different and a deeper lung than that rising and falling under the 
 inspirations and expirations in the secluded valley to the westward. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 415 
 
 These pages have no call to delineate in detail the origins and the 
 developments at Amherst. That work has already been admirably 
 done by the admirable Professor Tyler. At the same time it is not pos- 
 sible for any one to gain a thorough understanding of the beginnings 
 and increasings at the Hampshire institution, without comprehend- 
 ing their radical relations with the previous and preparatory happen- 
 ings in Berkshire. Moore is common property in the two counties. 
 Each has perhaps equal summons to do him honor. He died in 
 Amherst within less than two years after crossing the mountain 
 from Williamstown in company with Theophilus Packard the day 
 after the Commencement of 1821. His widow survived him there 
 until 1857, and nourished assiduously the property he left by will to 
 the institution, the " Moore scholarships," so called, the income of 
 which is steadily increasing by putting a part of the annual interest 
 to the principal, and the number of the beneficiaries, college candi- 
 dates for the Christian ministry, is increasing also from time to time. 
 There never was any real and rational ground for a feeling, that has 
 been traditionally kept up in Williamstown almost till the present 
 time, and that has found some expression in books and pamphlets 
 illustrative of Williams College history, namely, that somehow or 
 other, by somebody or other, the older institution was wronged or 
 worsted by the newer one in the course of these troubles and over- 
 turnings. There is evidence that no unkind feelings have ever been 
 cherished at Amherst toward Williams under color of those early 
 occurrences. 1 Moore's last will and testament throws additional light 
 upon the pure motives of the man, and upon the extraordinary 
 difficulties surrounding the establishment of any institution at all 
 at Amherst, and so indirectly upon the religious fervor and the 
 indomitable perseverance of the poor people, who, humanly speaking, 
 created it. The will expressly provided that, if the institution should 
 not be incorporated by the Legislature of the State, to which incorpora- 
 tion tremendous opposition had already been developed at both ends 
 of the State and even in Northampton and other leading towns in 
 the middle, the funds should be diverted into another charitable 
 direction ; and further, if the institution, though incorporated, should 
 ever become extinct, or should not give a thorough course of classical 
 education like the other colleges of New England, then the gift was 
 to take a diverse direction altogether. These clauses of his will show 
 
 1 1 am glad of an indirect opportunity of acknowledging the courtesy of the entire 
 body of Amherst students in inviting me to lecture before them on the subject of 
 Free Trade. A more intelligent and appreciative audience of students I have never 
 addressed. 
 
416 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 (1) the high estimate that Moore put upon classical education; (2) 
 his uncertainty whether the new institution would be incorporated, 
 or perpetuated, even if it were ; and (3) the absence of any possible 
 motive of selfish aggrandizement in going to Amherst. 
 
 A few days after this notable Commencement of 1821, the word 
 began to spread from lip to lip in Williamstown, and then in other 
 towns throughout the county of Berkshire, that Dr. Griffin had ac- 
 cepted the presidency at Williams, moved thereto largely by what he 
 had seen upon that stage and by what he had learned in talk from 
 trustees and others on the spot. It was good news indeed to Berk- 
 shire folks. It lifted the spirits of every farmer and church-goer in 
 Williamstown. They knew indeed very little about the requisites 
 for a successful college president, because those requisites had cer- 
 tainly not then been ascertained by anybody scarcely even in out- 
 line ; at the present time the multiform inductions of two centuries 
 in New England have not yet passed over into firm generalizations 
 upon this subject; for the risks of an experiment seem to attend 
 and overshadow the induction of each new college president, and in 
 at least one half of the cases relative failure is the actual result. In 
 those early days the chief criterion pointing to a possible college 
 president was his power as a pulpit orator. That striking gift 
 once conceded, boards of college control seemed to think there was 
 no need of looking farther. The choice of Jonathan Edwards as 
 president of the college at Princeton in 1757, while he was the mis- 
 sionary preacher at Stockbridge, is a good illustration of this pre- 
 vailing criterion ; and portions of his own reply to this choice and 
 offer from Princeton exhibit more sound sense of the actual condi- 
 tions of success in an average college president, than any forty 
 letters known to the writer conveying to average candidates such 
 choice and offer, and from them conveying acceptance of these. 
 
 STOCKBRIDGE, Oct. 19, 1757. 
 REV. AND HON. GENTLEMEN, 
 
 I was not a little surprised, on receiving the unexpected notice of your having 
 made choice of me, to succeed the late President Burr, as the Head of Nassau 
 Hall. 
 
 I am much in doubt, whether I am called to undertake the business, which 
 you have done me the unmerited honour to choose me for. 
 
 The chief difficulties in my mind, in the way of accepting this difficult and 
 arduous office, are these two : first, my own defects, unfitting me for such an 
 undertaking, many of which are generally known ; besides others, of which my 
 own heart is conscious. 
 
 I have a constitution, in many respects peculiarly unhappy, attended with 
 flaccid solids, vapid, sizy and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits ; often occa- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 417 
 
 sioning a kind of childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence 
 and demeanor, with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfiting me for 
 conversation, but more especially for the government of a college. 
 
 This makes me shrink at the thoughts of taking upon me, in the decline of 
 life, such a new and great business, attended with such a multiplicity of cares, 
 and requiring such a degree of activity, alertness and spirit of government ; 
 especially as succeeding one so remarkably well qualified in these respects 
 [Burr was Edwards's son-in-law], giving occasion to every one to remark the 
 wide difference. 
 
 I am also deficient in some parts of learning, particularly in Algebra, and 
 the higher parts of Mathematics, and in the Greek Classics ; my Greek learning 
 having been chiefly in the New Testament. The other thing is this ; that my 
 engaging in this business will not well consist with those views, and that course 
 of employ in my study, which have long engaged and swallowed up my mind, 
 and been the chief entertainment and delight of my life. 
 
 My heart is so much in these studies, that I cannot find it in my heart to be 
 willing to put myself into an incapacity to pursue them any more in the future 
 part of my life, to such a degree as I must, if I undertake to go through the same 
 course of employ, in the office of president, that Mr. Burr did, instructing in all 
 the languages, and taking the whole care of the instruction of one of the classes, in 
 all parts of learning, besides his other labors. If I should see light to determine 
 me to accept the place offered me, I should be willing to take upon me the work 
 of a president, so far as it consists in the general inspection of the whole society ; 
 and to be subservient to the school as to their order and methods of instruction, 
 assisting, myself, in the immediate instruction of the arts and sciences, (as dis- 
 cretion should direct, and occasion serve, and the state of things require,) espe- 
 cially of the senior class ; and added to all, should be willing to do the whole 
 work of a professor of divinity, in public and private lectures, proposing ques- 
 tions to be answered, and some to be discussed in writing and free conversation, 
 in meetings of graduates and others, appointed in proper seasons, for these ends. 
 It would be now out of my way, to spend time in a constant teaching of the 
 languages ; unless it be the Hebrew tongue ; which I should be willing to improve 
 myself in, by instructing others. 
 
 Edward Dorr Griffin, when he was chosen president of Williams 
 in 1821, stood in a high and just repute as a pulpit orator. So far 
 as this was a qualification for such a post in such a place at that 
 time, then was he well qualified for the position. He had gained no 
 other reputation, and never afterward acquired any other. His 
 childhood fell in the troublous times of the Eevolution, and they 
 were nowhere more troublous than in central Connecticut. His 
 health was too feeble to be put to hard work on the farm of his 
 well-to-do father, and consequently he was kept almost constantly 
 at school till he entered Yale College at sixteen, where he was 
 graduated in 1790. Delicate health in boyhood did not prevent his 
 developing a gigantic body in early manhood, full six feet three in 
 height, well proportioned throughout, and without any undue obe- 
 
 2E 
 
418 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 sity, weighing at the maximum two hundred and forty pounds. The 
 only feature that was decidedly lacking, in comparison with the 
 rest, was the nose ; he had a small nose ; and this was significant in 
 his case, as it almost invariably is in others, of a lack of certain 
 manly and executive qualities. He had a voice of immense compass 
 and of remarkable melody : he could bellow like a bull of Bashan, 
 if he only had occasion ; and he could pronounce the word " Meso- 
 potamia " with almost the witchery of Whitefield himself. The 
 effect of his personal presence upon strangers, whether singly or in 
 crowds, was uniformly impressive to a high degree ; he was com- 
 pletely conscious of this fact, and had a good right to be ; and he 
 studied constantly for himself, and came to be an excellent critic of 
 others, in the whole region of oratorical posture and gesture, action, 
 and repose. His countenance was bright, and full of actual or pos- 
 sible sympathy with audiences, of whatever kind and under what- 
 ever dominating emotions. His eyes were small and not deeply set 
 in the head, but they kindled easily, and, under provocation of 
 strong thought and feeling, into great brilliancy. When he came 
 to Williamstown in 1821, the hair upon his lofty head was as white 
 as it ever afterward became ; and there was accordingly an aspect 
 of venerableness as well as of brooding benignity and of a domina- 
 ting personal power, that helped to make up this striking impres- 
 siveness. 
 
 He was said to be proficient in all the studies of his college 
 course, and to have been graduated with honors ; but he seems to 
 have kept up no studies in his post-graduate life except the theo- 
 logical ones; and indeed "theology," so called, was his pride and 
 his life-work, and he had no doubt that the Bible held the data, and 
 his own mind the logical power, for the construction of a complete 
 statement of all the ways of God with man. This is perhaps 
 scarcely to be wondered at in his case, because Jonathan Edwards, 
 a man beyond all comparison with Griffin abler and humbler and 
 purer-minded, had written a half-century before what he called a 
 "History of the Work of Redemption, a body of divinity in an entire 
 new method, being thrown into the form of a history ; beginning 
 from Eternity, and descending from thence to the great work and 
 successive dispensations of the infinitely wise God, in time ; till at 
 last, we come to the general resurrection, last judgment, and con- 
 summation of all things ; concluding my work, with the consideration 
 of that perfect state of things, which shall be finally settled, to last 
 for Eternity. This history will be carried on with regard to all 
 three worlds, Heaven, Earth and Hell ; considering the connected, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 419 
 
 successive events and alterations in each, so far as the scriptures 
 give any light." This extract is from Edwards's letter to the trus- 
 tees of Princeton. The monstrous and baseless assumptions in it 
 of ample knowledge of the " three worlds " and of the two Eterni- 
 ties, spring from a total misunderstanding of the origin and nature 
 and divine purpose of the Bible. Griffin had no more question of 
 his own ability to construct a perfect "Doctrine of Atonement," 
 than Edwards had of his to write (the words are his own) "the 
 most beautiful and entertaining History of Redemption." When 
 Nathaniel Emmons, an older and more profound divine than Grif- 
 fin, published his own view on the Atonement, which only differed 
 from Griffin's as tweedledum from tweedledee, the latter wrote to 
 the former : 
 
 MY DEAR BROTHER: I have read your Sermon on the Atonement, and have 
 wept over it. 
 
 Affectionately Yours, 
 
 E. D. GRIFFIN. 
 
 To which Dr. Emmons replied : 
 
 DEAR SIR : I have read your letter and laughed at it. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 NATH'L EMMONS. 
 
 It ought, perhaps, to be added in passing, for we have no concern 
 with the " theologies " of that time or of any time except as they 
 bear on the fortunes of a small country town and college, that these 
 treatises and sermons, and scores of others like them, sprung, as it 
 were, from an underlying philosophy now discredited everywhere, 
 were matters of mere speculation, having very little reference to the 
 words of our blessed Lord and particularly to the words of His 
 divine prayer. They became, accordingly, the wonder of an hour. 
 They started up like mushrooms in a fertile soil, and decayed into a 
 speedy forgetfulness. 
 
 It was scarcely known at all at the time, and before very long became 
 a point of little consequence to anybody, the reason why Griffin left 
 after only two years Andover Theological Seminary and a professor- 
 ship, for which he was extremely well adapted, namely, the chair of 
 Pulpit Eloquence. The seminary was then new, Andover Hill, now 
 so charming, was then a rough and rocky and unsightly place, and 
 the school was located there largely for the same reason that a col- 
 lege was located at Amherst, namely, that it might be in the midst 
 of, and be partially supported by, devout and self-denying Scotch- 
 Irish-Americans. William Bartlett, a merchant of Salem, who is 
 estimated by those familiar with the facts to have given $250,000 
 
420 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 to start and forward the infant seminary, founded the professorship 
 of which Griffin was the first incumbent, and generously offered to 
 build him a house. Instead of hiring an architect to plan, and secur- 
 ing a contractor to construct, a proper house in such a place for 
 such a purpose, he gave his professor carte blanche to build the 
 house himself, promising to foot the bills as they came in. This he 
 did, and said nothing, as their aggregate mounted up to a sum per- 
 haps three times greater than had been expected. Griffin's good 
 taste and sound judgment as a builder was evidenced, in the expen- 
 sive levelling and preliminary preparation of the rocky site, and in 
 the erection of a house that still remains conspicuous for excellence 
 among the Seminary buildings; but his thorough architecture at 
 another's expense subjected him to much ridicule in connection with 
 some personal peculiarities, and so made Andover an unpleasant place 
 for him to live and work in. The students were reluctant to have 
 him leave them, for they prized his rhetorical instructions and exam- 
 ple. Park Street Church in Boston was then a-building with a view 
 of becoming an orthodox bulwark against Unitarianism and other 
 liberal religious opinions, at that time beginning strongly to assert 
 themselves in Boston. Griffin accepted a call to that pastorate ; and 
 for four years did good work there along the line of his call, when 
 he returned to Newark as a pastor, whence he came to Williams as 
 president in 1821. The influences that induced him to come were 
 not merely what he saw and heard on the spot at the Commencement 
 time of that year, but also, as is verbally stated in Sprague's " Annals 
 of the American Pulpit," "owing chiefly to some unpropitious cir- 
 cumstances which had prevented the growth of his congregation [in 
 Newark], and rendered them unable to continue to him a competent 
 support, he determined to accept and did accept this appointment." 
 
 His reputation as a preacher enabled him to anchor most of 
 the students then on the ground, excepting the fifteen who went 
 to Amherst with Dr. Moore, and to attract for about ten years a 
 considerable number, who would not probably have come here other- 
 wise. The people of the town were greatly favorable to his presi- 
 dency for reasons already indicated in another connection, it 
 would be likely to enhance the value of their property, and it would 
 give them a chance to hear extraordinary preaching in their own 
 meeting-house one-third of the time during each college year. 
 Before Dr. Griffin got settled in the president's house or was 
 formally inducted into his office, a set of circumstances occurred 
 that drew the hearts of the people toward him in a striking and 
 unusual manner. He thought to get settled in the summer vacation 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 421 
 
 and to begin strong at the opening of the fall term. In those days 
 the journey from Newark to Williamstown was water wise. Having 
 arrived at Troy, his eldest daughter was taken sick. He left her 
 there with her mother, and proceeded to Williamstown with his 
 other daughter. These constituted his entire family. Keturning 
 again to Troy he found that daughter in a dangerous condition with 
 the typhus fever. While he was waiting upon her there, the other 
 daughter was taken sick in Williamstown, first with the measles 
 and then with a bilious fever, which threatened her life. Having 
 again returned to Williamstown for the care of her, he soon received 
 a summons to go back to Troy in the expectation to see his eldest 
 daughter die. When he came the doctor told him that if she sur- 
 vived the next day, she would be liable to be taken every half hour 
 for three weeks. But she lived. And so did the other. It was full 
 seven weeks from the time when his family were separated at Troy, 
 before they could all be united again in the new home. In the 
 meantime the whole town was moved. These trying events brought 
 all, both in the College and in the town, into such intimate sympathy 
 with him and his, that all seemed to become but one family in the 
 share which they had in these afflictions of a stranger. Having been 
 exhibited to them as one of themselves in these most vital relations 
 of life, they were prepared to receive him and stand up for him and 
 assist him when afterward exhibited to them in traits and peculiari- 
 ties calculated perhaps to excite their ridicule. 
 
 Before the recovery of his children was complete, his formal 
 inauguration into the office of president of the College took place. 
 We are indebted to an eye-witness, Parsons Cooke, then a member of 
 the Senior class and afterward distinguished as a preacher and 
 pastor and editor of a religious newspaper, for some particulars of 
 this inauguration of Dr. Griffin, the third in a series, which reached 
 in 1881 its sixth number. " He of course was not in a state of mind, 
 nor in circumstances, to produce a labored discourse on that occasion. 
 It was understood that he was only to make a few offhand remarks ; 
 which he did, and which were of course well received. The aspect 
 of the scene was a fit emblem of the previous condition of the College. 
 It was one of those dark, chilly, rainy days, which the word Novem- 
 ber suggests ; when a handful of students, forty-eight all told, con- 
 stituting the whole body then in Williams College, gathered, with a 
 few of the people of the town, into what was then one of the largest 
 and one of the most dreary of country meeting-houses, for a cere- 
 monial which requires quite different circumstantials to render it 
 imposing. After his short address had been delivered the forms of 
 
422 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 his induction were passed through on the part of the Trustees. The 
 Professor of Languages then addressed the president, in Latin, wel- 
 coming him to his position, and the whole was closed by a prayer by 
 the late Dr. Shepard of Lenox, the sublime roll of whose utterance, 
 after more than thirty years, has scarcely ceased its reverberations 
 in our ears." 
 
 This Dr. Samuel Shepard, a graduate of Yale in 1793, a trustee 
 from 1808, and from 1834 till his death in 1846 the vice-president 
 of the College, held an uncommonly successful pastorate in Lenox for 
 over fifty years. " He exhibited a firm flow of spirits." Perhaps his 
 voice was not more remarkable in compass and mellowness and flexi- 
 bility than was Dr. Griffin's, but the echoes of it in Berkshire tradi- 
 tion are clearer and more pleasing. The Professor of Languages, 
 who took part in the inauguration on that chill November day, was 
 Ebenezer Kellogg. He was graduated at New Haven in 1810, deliver- 
 ing there, like Samuel Shepard before him, the salutatory oration 
 at Commencement. He was the fourth person to be selected a pro- 
 fessor here, Mackay and Olds and Dewey having in that order been 
 elected before 1815, when Kellogg began what proved to be a thirty 
 years' professorship in the ancient languages. Eleven years after 
 this he married a wife, and moved out of the northeast corner room 
 of the old West College, second story, into a house that stood a little 
 west on the Main Street of the old president's house. So long as he 
 roomed in West College, he made it a point to call at all the occupied 
 rooms in that building at least once a day, in order to see whether 
 the students were in their rooms, and attending to their studies. 
 This infinitesimal supervision of his gave him the nickname of 
 P K, which is, the requisite vowels being supplied, "Peek" He 
 was a man of small person, conscientiously devoted to small duties, 
 and wholly unfitted to inspire in his students any enthusiasm for the 
 Latin and Greek languages, of which he was a routine and only 
 rudimentary master. If he had intelligently spent a part of his 
 time wasted in useless and unwelcome visits, in studying his own 
 lessons day by day in order to bring out something from the text 
 fresh and interesting to the minds of his pupils, at the same time 
 teaching them to respect him as a living teacher making constant 
 progress himself, and as a manly man able and willing to trust a 
 class of students until he found out who of them (if any) were 
 untrustworthy, he would have helped to make the six years of 
 Moore's presidency less dreary, and have contributed to make that 
 worthy official more hopeful than he was of the success of the 
 College on this ground. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 423 
 
 It is plain enough from the obituary discourse of Mark Hopkins, 
 preached in October, 1846, just after the death of Professor Kellogg, 
 that the latter had many merits as a college officer. " Very pleasant 
 hast thou been unto me" was the text of that discourse. In his 
 relations to his colleagues he was perhaps all that could be desired. 
 If odium were to be incurred by college discipline, he was always 
 ready to take his full share of it. He was faithful in counsel, prudent 
 in action, patient in investigation, supporting in his small and cautious 
 way each of the three presidents with whom he served. But the 
 first and dominating duties of a college professor are to the individ- 
 uals and classes whom he is called on to instruct. Unless he can 
 gain their confidence as an individual seeking solely their good, 
 secure their personal respect for his intelligence and ability and in- 
 dependence, and inspire in their minds, little by little and increas- 
 ingly, some enthusiasm in the studies they are pursuing together, he 
 makes of necessity a failure in his professorship. Many times has 
 this been exemplified upon this ground. The true and only primary 
 constituents of a college teacher are his pupils. Unless he can gain 
 substantially and after a fair trial their suffrages in good will and in 
 a sense of obligation to him for good and steady impulses received, 
 he will remain a non-elect in his college position, no matter how use- 
 ful he may be to his colleagues in relations outside of the class-room, 
 or how faithfully he may pick up the hundred-and-one things that 
 need to be done, and that belong to no one in particular to do. 
 " Very pleasant hast thou been unto us," is the verdict from the lips 
 of his pupils, that at once acquits the college teacher of the minor 
 faults and infidelities which belong to all men, and marks him out a 
 true success in the essentials of his position. 
 
 It has often been repeated of Professor Kellogg, in substance, 
 that the students respected him more after they had left college, 
 than when they were under his immediate instruction and inspec- 
 tion. The proverb has been quoted in application to him : " He that 
 rebuketh a man, afterwards shall find more favor than he that 
 flattereth with his tongue." In the deliberate judgment of the 
 present writer, there is a harmful fallacy in the more or less current 
 expression and implication, that if a college officer perform faithfully 
 his whole duty to the college, he must expect to be unpopular with 
 the students, and wait for his reward (so far as they are concerned) 
 until they are out of sight and hearing. The reverse of all this is 
 much nearer the truth. Everything turns on what is his whole duty 
 to the college. His primary and essential duty to the college, to 
 which everything else is subsidiary and incidental, comes within the 
 
424 WILLIAMSTOWK AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 circuit of his own lecture-room. He is always to remember, that each 
 of his pupils has the same right and impulse and opportunity to 
 ascertain what manner of spirit he is of, that he has to find out and 
 pass judgment upon each of his pupils seriatim. Their sharp eyes 
 are rightfully upon him from the first meeting till the last ; they are 
 under no disadvantage as compared with him in coming to slow and 
 sound conclusions as to mutual motives and character; perhaps they 
 are young together, and if so, all the surer is the mutual understand- 
 ing between teacher and pupils. Many professors forget this, or 
 never stop to think of it in its bearings upon themselves, and pass 
 their swift judgments upon their pupils, as if they had the mo- 
 nopoly along this line of impression and conclusion, and as if they 
 could hold themselves inscrutable while scrutinizing at their leisure 
 their fellow-mortals of less experience. There is nothing inscrutable 
 or unfathomable in a college lecture-room. They who suppose there 
 is, and especially they who suppose they can keep back something in 
 themselves from eager gaze and just estimate, only thereby expose 
 themselves sooner or later to sterner judgments and a more difficult 
 recovery of a mutually good understanding. 
 
 If a college teacher, whether young or old, of whatever grade or 
 title, it makes no difference, both be and seem to be in his own class- 
 room unselfish, communicative, progressive, competent, zealous, 
 attractive, and kindly, an open type of a good teacher, he will be 
 certain to receive from the most of his pupils, and have not very 
 long to wait, recognition and approbation and cooperation and 
 gratitude, and a lasting affection. He will thus put himself into a 
 steady position to render easily and effectively all the other subordi- 
 nate duties that come to him as a colleague with others, and as a 
 general carer for the welfare of the college. But he cannot reverse 
 this order. If he try to do so, he is doomed. If he be, and if he is 
 he will certainly seem to be, rather a colleague and supporter of 
 others than an .independent worker in his own sphere ; if he enter 
 and occupy his class-room as if it were not his own throne-room, 
 morally bowing to some supposed majesty on the outside whether 
 single or plural; if he manifest in any way before his class as a 
 teacher, that he represents in any special sense the faculty or its 
 head, that he enjoys or desires any special support from that source, 
 he is almost certain to forfeit thereby, not only the ability otherwise 
 easily acquired to strengthen his colleagues and upbuild the college 
 generally, but also the ability to maintain himself on a firm footing 
 as an integral part of the college authority. To express the same 
 thought in other words, a college is a democracy through and through, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 425 
 
 as its name implies. The undergraduates, the body of graduates, 
 the teaching body, and the body of the trustees, each with functions 
 considerably distinct and yet considerably intermingled, is a democ- 
 racy in spirit and in action. Each is voiced by a majority of its 
 own, not necessarily by a majority of mere members, but of these 
 and moral weight combined. The moment a spirit and claim of 
 autocracy comes into any one of these four democracies, and with that 
 a spirit and exhibition of subserviency and sycophancy of some 
 toward others (whether toward one or a clique), there come in sus- 
 picions and divisions and disturbance and a sure loss of moral hold 
 on the part of those who seek undue power. 
 
 Ebenezer Kellogg was not independent enough in his moral posi- 
 tion and opinions to strengthen as he might have done the suc- 
 cessive faculties of which he formed a part ; he was not fresh and 
 vigorous enough in his own class-room to secure and retain the 
 steady respect and adherence of his pupils ; and he consequently 
 missed the first and fairest opportunity ever offered on this ground 
 to push the classical studies as such into a front and equal rank 
 with other advanced classes of studies. His colleague professor, 
 Chester Dewey, perhaps as near the ideal type of the all-round pro- 
 fessor as the College has ever shown, had already started the nat- 
 ural sciences into that foremost place, which they kept without a 
 rival throughout the first third of the century. But Professor 
 Kellogg was on the whole a useful college officer. He tried the 
 patience of his colleagues by minute objections to all plans proposed 
 by them, and even to plans proposed by himself. He often tried to 
 magnify small faults of the students into disciplinary offences, and 
 followed up as important little matters which wise men let drop. 
 In one word, he had not a good sense of proportion as to the ordi- 
 nary on-goings of college life. Yet in many things he had a clear 
 eye to the benefit of the College and of the community. He orig- 
 inated the idea of the College garden, and of the Horticultural 
 Society, which at one time embraced nearly every student in College. 
 He himself purchased the ground for the College garden, and pre- 
 sented it to the corporation ; and he devised the plan by which the 
 members of the Horticultural Society divided their summer's task 
 among themselves. "A share in the cultivation of a beautiful 
 flower-bed has fallen to my lot," wrote David A. Wells in the spring 
 of his Senior year. " Many improvements in the College grounds 
 are to be made this summer. What a blessing is a large and lux- 
 uriant flower-garden. " Wells was graduated in 1847, three years 
 after Kellogg resigned his professorship on the ground of feeble 
 
426 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 health, and one year after his death in Connecticut. In the first- 
 mentioned year the corporation had occasion to build a new dor- 
 mitory on the West College grounds, which they appropriately 
 named " Kellogg Hall," for they placed it on the patch of land which 
 Kellogg had bought for the College garden. The garden as such 
 shortly after disappeared for obvious reasons, but the modest build- 
 ing still remains a memorial, rather of the gentle care-taker and 
 gardener than of the first professor of ancient languages, who 
 was also, in keeping with all this, for several years the super- 
 intendent of the Sunday-school at the Congregational church. 
 The only lasting writing that Kellogg left behind him was the 
 brief but excellent historical account of Williamstown in Rev. 
 Dr. Field's " History of Berkshire County," published by " Gen- 
 tlemen of the county, clergymen and laymen," in 1829. Tak- 
 ing all things into consideration and speaking generally, that 
 book did great credit to those gentlemen who projected and exe- 
 cuted it. 
 
 President Griffin found in active service at his accession the two 
 professors, Dewey and Kellogg, and two tutors, Benedict and 
 Wheeler. Benedict had caught, while in college, from Chester 
 Dewey, whose sister he afterward married, the impulses of a good 
 teacher and the fondness for the natural sciences which he exempli- 
 fied for almost a life-time in the University of Vermont at Burling- 
 ton. In that initiatory term of 1821, there were but forty-eight 
 students in the whole College. Griffin himself took the entire 
 charge of the studies and exercises of the Senior class, besides the 
 labor of preaching one-third of the time (in term time) before the 
 College and the town congregation worshipping together. He also 
 proposed from the beginning to instruct a class in theology consist- 
 ing of members of the Senior class and any post-graduates desiring 
 the course. This, however, he carried out but one year, their 
 numbers proving too few, and their preparation too inadequate, for 
 the punctilio and profundity of a professor of theology. Only four 
 persons are known to have taken this proffered course in the one 
 year ; and of these the chief was Parsons Cooke of the class of 1822, 
 whose " Eecollections of Dr. Griffin," published by the Massachu- 
 setts Sabbath-school Society thirty years later, have furnished the 
 current pages with several interesting incidents. Cooke's college 
 classmate, Woodbridge, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards through 
 the latter's daughter Lucy, was afterward associated with him in 
 the editorship of the "Puritan Eecorder" of Boston. Both were 
 also associated with Williamstown through their marriage with the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 427 
 
 two Starkweather sisters, Hannah and Catherine, daughters of the 
 old postmaster here. 
 
 Griffin was doubtless disappointed in the failure of his offered 
 course in theology, as in several other matters connected with his 
 presidency, but no blame is to be laid at his door for these. Con- 
 trary to an impression that has long prevailed, and that has been 
 innocently deepened by several generations of well-wishers to the 
 College, candidates for the ministry and even professors of religion 
 were relatively few among the students during the first half-century 
 of the College. The famous "haystack prayer-meeting" and its 
 successors would never have been heard of, had not the few pious 
 students in those days found it needful to seek out secluded and 
 distant places for their devotions on account of the prevalence of 
 levity and infidelity in the mass of the College. Dr. Griffin himself 
 put on record some surprising statements respecting the paucity of 
 Christian students in the earlier time. "During the first seven 
 years of the existence of the College (in which ninety-three gradu- 
 ated in six classes), there were but five professors of religion in the 
 institution, exclusive of two, who, seven months before the close of 
 that period were brought into the church by revivals in Litchfield 
 County. In three of the six classes just named there was not a 
 single professor of religion. From the Commencement in 1798 till 
 February, 1800, there was but one professor of religion in college. 
 From the fall of that year [1800], in the four classes, which after- 
 wards sent out eighty graduates, there were but two professors. 
 The earliest revival known to this town commenced in the spring 
 of 1805, and continued between two and three years. It soon ex- 
 tended to the College, where five began to hope. In the- [next] 
 spring a new impulse was given to the work. Mills and Hall 
 entered college that spring. The work seems to have continued 
 beyond the summer, for one account says, ' Thirteen were added to 
 the church, of whom nine became ministers of the Gospel. Ten 
 others were supposed to be subjects of the revival.' 
 
 " In January, 1812, another revival commenced in town, under the 
 preaching of the Rev. Samuel Nott, one of the first five missionaries 
 who went out that year to India. In April and May it extended to 
 the College, chiefly to the lower classes. Twenty-four were hope- 
 fully converted then, and a number afterwards. In June, 1815, 
 the first president, Dr. Fitch, left the College. His parting sermon 
 had a great effect upon the students. A third revival followed. 
 Fifteen were hopefully renewed in the course of the summer. In 
 March, 1824, a fourth revival appeared to commence in the person 
 
428 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of William Hervey. Twelve or fourteen used to attend the inquiry 
 meetings. Several obtained hopes, who endured but for a time. 
 Hervey alone persevered. Of the others that were impressed, one 
 obtained a hope in the summer of 1825, and another (Mark Hopkins) 
 joined the church [in Stockbridge] after he was graduated. When 
 College came together in October, 1825, the arrows of the Almighty 
 stuck fast in several hearts. Some old hopes were scattered to the 
 winds. A fifth revival ensued. During the latter part of the term 
 the power was astonishingly great, affecting almost the whole College. 
 Of eighty-five students, full seventy thought themselves Christians. 
 The impression was kept up during the spring term, and then it 
 ended. In this revival thirty-five experienced hopes, some of which 
 were soon renounced. The sixth revival began about the 1st of 
 March, 1827, and continued till vacation. It spent its chief force 
 on the two lower classes, from which six professed religion. In 
 October, 1828, some seriousness appeared, which continued through 
 that and the next term. Nine visited me under some impressions. 
 Inquiry meetings were set up. One obtained a hope, which was 
 soon renounced. Not an individual held out. Three of them, how- 
 ever, have since given evidence of a saving change. 
 
 "A seventh revival appeared to commence in November, 1829. 
 That month two gave evidence of piety, who still continue. High 
 hopes were entertained and a determination was taken to pray till 
 the blessing came. Meetings for prayer accompanied with consider- 
 able excitement were kept up through the term, and through the 
 long winter vacation, and through the spring term. I attended until 
 broken off by sickness in April, 1830. In the course of the winter, 
 two more expressed hopes, one of which proved doubtful. On the 
 evening of January 6, 1831, I was sent for to visit Troy, where the 
 first in the series of protracted meetings in this region had lately 
 been held, and where a great revival had begun. I went on the 8th, 
 and returned on the 19th. Something had begun to appear in town 
 before I left home, and on Friday evening, the 21st, I went to a 
 meeting to tell the people what I had seen. One of the students, 
 hearing that a statement was to be made, went, and was awakened. 
 The next week we had a four days' meeting, beginning with a fast 
 and ending with the communion Sabbath. This was the second 
 protracted meeting in the series, and was attended with an evident 
 blessing. A revival began in town. During the vacation two of the 
 students obtained hopes here, and two more in Troy. When College 
 came together, the 10th of February, it was a time of great solem- 
 nity. The month of March was full of power. By the 2d of April, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 429 
 
 twenty, including those already mentioned, were apparently rejoicing 
 in the truth. Of those, four soon renounced their hope ; the other 
 sixteen, for ought I know, still endure, and the greater part appear 
 like devoted Christians. These eight revivals the pity of Heaven 
 has granted to this College in twenty-six years, five of which, includ- 
 ing two of less extent, have appeared in seven years. 
 
 "April 18, 1832. There is at the present moment the ninth re- 
 vival going on in College. On the 18th of January we had a fast in 
 town to pray for such a blessing in the College and congregation. 
 After that, I recommended it to the students who stayed in vaca- 
 tion, to hold meetings for prayer. The third which we had . was on 
 the 1st of February, and I was invited to attend. I found the meet- 
 ing uncommonly interesting and encouraging. I was then laboring 
 under the commencement of a disease which confined me till the 
 middle of March. In the interval, a protracted meeting was held in 
 town, and a revival commenced there ; and the spirit of prayer was 
 greatly increased in College, and a spirit of inquiry began among the 
 impenitent. The first hopeful conversion in College took place on 
 the 16th of March, two days before I resumed my public labors in 
 the house of God. There are seven students who now venture to 
 hope that they have " passed from death unto life." Everything is 
 conducted with perfect stillness and decorum. The means employed 
 in these revivals have been but two, the clear presentation of Di- 
 vine truth and prayer. The meetings have been still and orderly, 
 with no other sign of emotion among the hearers than the solemn 
 look and the silent tear. We have been anxiously studious to guard 
 against delusive hopes, and to expose the windings of a deceitful 
 heart, forbearing all encouragement, except what the converts them- 
 selves could derive from Christ and the promises, knowing that any 
 reliance on our opinion was drawing comfort from us, and not from 
 the Saviour. We have not accustomed them to the bold and unquali- 
 fied language that such a one is converted, but have used a dialect 
 calculated to keep alive a sense of the danger of deception. For 
 similar reasons we have kept them back from a public profession 
 about three months." 
 
 These copious extracts, relating to the early religious history of 
 the town and College, have all been copied from an elaborate letter 
 of Dr. Griffin's to the Rev. Dr. Sprague of Albany, who later became 
 his biographer and the editor of his published sermons. This matter 
 is valuable, because it is the only corrected account extant of the 
 early revivals of religion, so-called, in the town and the College, re- 
 garded as a part of one whole. This unity of interest and spirit as 
 
430 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 between the two was strikingly exhibited upon almost all occasions 
 during much the larger part of the first century of the College. The 
 first severe strain and snap came in an unexpected quarter, and as 
 between individual parties representing the two large and perma- 
 nent bodies, of whom it could not have been reasonably anticipated. 
 The present writer has preferred to introduce to his readers Presi- 
 dent Griffin rather upon his religious than upon his scholastic side, 
 for the reason that that side is more characteristic of him and more 
 favorable to him personally than the other. Griffin was called to 
 Williams in dark times, solely on the ground that he had a large 
 reputation as a preacher. The ground was too narrow to predicate 
 success upon. It was too narrow to achieve success upon. But it 
 was sound so far as it went. That quality in predominance could 
 not make a good president for a struggling college as Williams was 
 then. But it could call attention to the College, could diffuse a sort 
 of glow over it, and could win some students of a certain grade and 
 tendencies to it as pupils. This it did for a number of years. 
 Strong religious motives were powerfully brought to bear upon these 
 classes, in conjunction with relatively weak scholastic motives of the 
 several kinds that a small college under those circumstances offers. 
 Great good was accomplished on the whole. Two or three subordi- 
 nate teachers did good work in their several departments. Griffin 
 himself was a good teacher in the Senior classes of public reading 
 and of rhetoric generally. He was a good critic of the efforts of the 
 students in all their writing, and especially in all their elocution. 
 He exemplified constantly before them in the class-room and in the 
 pulpit sound principles of expression, both verbal and vocal. 
 
 But it is a curious point to notice, that Griffin's first decided break 
 with his environment, the first emphatic clash between town and Col- 
 lege, took place in relations at which there had always been the 
 steadiest harmony between the two, namely, their religious relations 
 and interactions. Eev. Whitman Welch, the first pastor in the town, 
 a young man about whose career in life and death an extraordinary 
 interest gathers, and apparently more and more as time glides on, 1 
 was followed in the pastorate by two men of greater age but lesser 
 picturesqueness, and as well by an interregnum of more than six 
 years, when, in October, 1816, another young man of unusual capaci- 
 ties, Kev. Ealph W. Gridley, was ordained and installed here. His 
 father was a Massachusetts minister, and he was a graduate of Yale 
 College in 1814. Like Welch, he commenced his ministry here in 
 the freshness of his youth, made a straight path into the confidence 
 1 See Origins in Williamstown, pp. 142, 463, 471, 473, 474, 528. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 431 
 
 and affection of his people, and was a faithful and laborious pastor 
 for almost eighteen years, when he was dismissed at his own request 
 in 1834, in consequence of Griffin's sublimated disagreements with 
 him as to methods and measures in conducting revivals on this con- 
 joint ground, and removed with his family as a home missionary to 
 Illinois, where his labors, though of comparatively short continuance, 
 were greatly blessed. He died at Ottawa in 1840, greatly lamented 
 by the churches and people to whom he ministered. 
 
 Gridley had been only five years a pastor, and was still compara- 
 tively a boy, when Griffin swooped down into the valley, as monarch 
 of all he surveyed, in 1821. As it was his function to preach in the 
 meeting-house one-third of the time throughout the college year, the 
 students and the congregation felt and professed great admiration 
 for the years-thumbed sermons of the celebrated president ; and the 
 conscientious young minister was put at a moral disadvantage, espe- 
 cially as before the students, the other two-thirds of the time ; little 
 by little, however, his modesty and fidelity and spiritual earnestness 
 won on the congregation, who regarded him as their own, and more 
 or less on the students also. During those revivals of religion already 
 characterized for us by Dr. Griffin, which became common to the Col- 
 lege and to the town, it was natural and inevitable that the manage- 
 ment of these, so far as they prevailed in the town, should fall to 
 the pastor, and so far as they prevailed in the College, to the presi- 
 dent. Particularly this became the case in the winter of 1830, when 
 the attendance of the president upon the meetings in town was 
 broken off by sickness, and when we hear through him that the 
 " meetings were attended with considerable excitement " ; and also 
 in the winter of 1831, when the president was invited to labor in 
 Troy for two weeks, and " a protracted meeting " or two was holden 
 in town. The pastor, as the younger and more open-hearted man of 
 the two, less self-centred and opinionated, was much more favor- 
 able than the president to what was then called, in the parlance of 
 the time, " new measures" in contrast controversially with " old meas- 
 ures" Mr. Mnney, in his wonderfully useful evangelistic labors at 
 about the same time, struck into this difference of opinion as to 
 method, and clung the rather to " old measures " for many years. 
 Perhaps the radical difference between the two may be expressed in 
 this way : old measures kept the emphasis all the while upon the 
 evangelist, his hand was firmly on the throttle, and only such 
 steam in such volume as he judged best was allowed to escape; while 
 the "new measures" gave scope and expression to the feelings and 
 choices of the special subjects of the revival. " Going forward for 
 
432 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 prayer," or, as the same was sometimes called, " taking the anxious 
 seat," and also time and encouragement given to the new converts 
 to express publicly their feelings and determinations, were the two 
 prominent criteria of the " measures " as contrasted. 
 
 As was entirely characteristic of the two men, Griffin was strenu- 
 ous for orderly preaching and dominant leadership in all religious 
 awakenings in which he profoundly believed and powerfully minis- 
 tered ; insensibly, as it were, in accordance with his entire make-up 
 as a man and a minister, Gridley fell in with the more popular 
 measures, and into a social and neighborhood leadership to which he 
 was admirably adapted. This brought the two men and the two 
 sets of measures into blunt antagonism. Griffin was falling into his 
 dotage, which only intensified the natural and acquired imperious- 
 ness of his temper, and his overestimate of himself in relations with 
 his colleagues and contemporaries. In the spring of 1833 he re- 
 ceived a slight paralytic shock in his left side, which was plainly 
 the beginning of the end ; the subsequent year he became subject to 
 a dropsical affection in his chest and lower extremities ; and from 
 that time it was evident to everybody but himself that the infirmities 
 of age and disease had gathered upon him to abide. The pastor had 
 no desire for contention, or even for its semblance. He only wished 
 to loosen as readily as might be the strong ties that bound him to 
 his own people, in order that he might realize his hope of greater 
 usefulness in the West, in more untrammelled action as a home 
 missionary. He was dismissed at his own request from the church 
 and society here in April, 1834. Already more than sixty years has 
 the fragrance of that good man's memory lingered in certain homes 
 of his first and blessed settlement. 
 
 A month or two after Mr. Gridley's dismissal, at the instance of 
 President Griffin, an independent church was formed in the College, 
 with the president pro tempore as the college pastor, and this form 
 of organization has continued till the present time. The initial 
 ceremony of its formation was almost pathetic in its simplicity. 
 Dr. Griffin had drawn up a series of articles of faith and the form of 
 a mutual covenant, substantially the same that are still in use and 
 acceptance, and had invited the faculty and the professors of re- 
 ligion among the students to a Sabbath service by themselves in the 
 college chapel. These had previously obtained letters of dismissal 
 from their respective churches and of recommendation to a new 
 church to be constituted in this way. In a service of this character, 
 President Griffin was more in his "element" than in any other 
 possible earthly function. The professors and students present 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 433 
 
 presented to him their certificates, and, on being called by name, 
 arose in their places in the chapel, and publicly assented to the 
 articles of faith, and renewed their covenant with God and with 
 each other. The three first names on the church records of these 
 proceedings are those of Mark Hopkins, Albert Hopkins, and Simeon 
 H. Calhoun. The first of these continued in uninterrupted com- 
 munion and membership in the little church thus organized for 
 fifty-three years, until his death in 1887. His brother Albert con- 
 tinued with him in such fellowship without change until his death 
 in 1872. Simeon Howard Calhoun, then a tutor in the College, and 
 later for a long lifetime an eminent missionary of the American 
 Board on Mount Lebanon, held high the torch of life and light in 
 intimate conjunction with the two others until his own death in 1876. 
 The following is the initial record of the college church, and also 
 the names of the original members. 
 
 The faculty having decided to form a church in Williams College, for the sake 
 of giving the students the advantages of its watch and care, invited those 
 who were members of other churches to bring certificates of dismission and 
 recommendation to the church about to be formed here. Whereupon the fol- 
 lowing persons, members of the Faculty and members of the classes, presented 
 their certificates ; and being called upon by the president as professor of divinity 
 and pastor, they arose in the chapel on the 15th day of June, 1834, (being the 
 Sabbath,) and publicly assented to the articles of faith, drawn up for the new 
 church, and renewed their covenant with God and entered into covenant with 
 each other, and thus formed themselves into a distinct church. 
 
 MARK HOPKINS WORCESTER WILLEY 
 
 ALBERT HOPKINS HIRAM BELL 
 
 SIMEON H. CALHOUN SAMUEL D. DARLING 
 
 GEORGE H. BASSETT ANSON L. HOBART 
 
 NATHANIEL H. GRIFFIN EPHRAIM W. KELLOGG 
 
 ROYAL REED JEREMIAH A. SPENCER 
 
 SAMUEL C. WILCOX EDWARD CLARK 
 ROLAND S. HOWES * 
 
 This quiet founding of the college church on a June Sabbath in 
 1834 was the last official act of any special significance of President 
 Griffin. He had already practically ceased to teach on account of 
 bodily infirmities, although for a year longer he occasionally met the 
 Senior class for some special exercise. Even this ceased a full year 
 before his resignation in 1836. The late Joseph White of that class 
 told the writer, that they never once met the president in their 
 class-room for any purpose. He suffered from a species of gout, 
 that made walking or standing extremely painful to him. It shows 
 1 Copy furnished by Professor Fernald, clerk of the church. 
 2p 
 
434 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the amazing self-conceit of the man in his old age, that, although he 
 had been unfitted properly to perform the duties of a president ever 
 after his first paralytic stroke in 1833, and although others came to 
 perform in his stead all the functions of his place, he made not the 
 slightest advance to the trustees in the way of the resignation of 
 his place. At the Senior examination, in Juty, 1836, although the 
 president had never heard a single recitation in that class, and 
 although it was perfectly evident to the committee of trustees 
 present that he could do nothing more for the College, and stood 
 in the way of others doing what needed to be done, they were 
 compelled to send one of their own number to him to tell him in 
 so many words what a man of common sense and of a reasonable 
 estimate of himself would have been conscious of certainly for an 
 entire year, if not two years. The late Emerson Davis, of West- 
 field, was present at that Senior examination as one of the standing 
 committee of trustees, and gave twenty years later the following 
 written account of what then took place : 
 
 It was not entirely a spontaneous movement on his [Griffin's] part. It is not 
 common for men, whose strength is declining, to be first to discover that their 
 days of usefulness are at an end. At the Senior examination, in July, 1836, it 
 was very manifest to the standing committee of the trustees, that Dr. Griffin 
 would not be able to continue to perform the duties of his office another year. 
 They foresaw that it would be necessary for the trustees to take some action on 
 the subject at their annual meeting in August, and that it would be desirable 
 that Dr. Griffin himself should bring the matter before the board, in such a form 
 as should be agreeable to his feelings. The late Dr. Shepard of Lenox, as chair- 
 man of the committee, had a friendly interview with him, and told him frankly 
 the fears they entertained in regard to his future labors. Dr. Griffin seemed 
 at first astounded at the suggestion that he was an old man. "Is it possible," 
 said he, " that I must retire from active service, at this period of my life, when 
 most of my ancestors lived to a great age ? " In the morning he met the com- 
 mittee and told them the path of duty was clear in reference to himself, and 
 that he should resign at the Commencement. 
 
 In his own diary is the following entry, written on the Sunday 
 succeeding the Senior examination: "On the occasion of the late 
 visit of the standing committee of the trustees, I became fully con- 
 vinced as I could be by a voice from heaven, that it will be my duty 
 to resign at Commencement." It would have been far more to his 
 credit if he had become equally convinced eighteen months before, 
 and had communicated his conviction to the trustees, and had thus 
 given them an opportunity for preliminary inquiries and careful 
 judgment in relation to a suitable successor. A change in the 
 nominal head of a college ought never to be, and in connection with 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 435 
 
 proper public counsels and a proper organization of the two special 
 boards of control, never would become, the sudden and portentous 
 and ill-issuing matter, that has been many times witnessed in the 
 colleges of New England during the century now closing. The 
 question is one that primarily concerns the public, to which the 
 eleemosynary funds really belong, by which these are exempted from 
 taxation, and by whose constant supervision and recurring benevo- 
 lence the institutions are maintained in life and vigor. The record 
 at Williams of the primal appointments and. final resignations of 
 the several presidents for the century has not been altogether repu- 
 table ; and we are dealing now with one of the resignations that was 
 not even respectable ; here was a man wholly unable to render the 
 services for which alone his salary had been promised and paid, 
 regarding himself as having a right year after year to both position 
 and emoluments, and regarding himself as displaying great virtue 
 in surrendering these to others who should render the essential 
 equivalents. 
 
 We happen to have the testimony of another eye- and ear-witness 
 of something that took place in connection with Griffin's resignation, 
 that, namely, of Dwight Whitney Marsh of the class of 1842. " As 
 I was walking in the hall, I met him as he was returning from the 
 meeting of the trustees, his daughter, Mrs. Smith, having his arm. 
 He stood and said to me, 'Well, sir, I have just been to tender my 
 resignation to the trustees.' Mrs. Smith, drawing her arm from his, 
 was about retiring. ' Stop, my dear, hear what I am going to say. 
 When I came here, God made my duty as clear as the noonday, and 
 now He has made it just as clearly my duty to resign.' " Edward 
 Dorr Griffin, in his superannuated imbecility and disgusting piousity, 
 may have needed Divine assistance to help him see his duty in these 
 premises ; an ordinary and uninflated Christian needed nothing more 
 than a decent sense of what is fair and fit as between man and man. 
 A graduate of that year, 1836, at an alumni dinner forty years after- 
 ward, related his own personal experience in taking leave of the 
 president at Commencement: "He begged and beseeched of me, 
 throwing his arms about my neck, to do what I could for him, after 
 all, to put him back in his old place ! " Near the opening of the 
 fall term, arrangements having been made for his return to Newark, 
 into the family of his son-in-law, Lyndon A. Smith, the only condi- 
 tion prescribed by him for his admission being, that he might 
 continue his custom of a double invocation both before and after 
 the daily meals, the faculty invited him to a farewell dinner at 
 the Mansion House ; and, on the morning of his departure, which 
 
436 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was September 28, the students -waited on him in a body, and 
 presented him with a respectful address of farewell ; to which he 
 replied, with overflowing feelings, from his carriage, and so took 
 final leave of scenes and persons with which he had conspicuously 
 mingled for fifteen years. In the minds of some of those persons 
 both in town and College he had excited feelings of sympathy and 
 admiration; while in the minds of many others, both citizens and 
 students, he excited a very different set of feelings, and increasingly 
 so as old age and other disabilities came upon him. 
 
 The following is the address of the students referred to, with the 
 names of their committee. It must always be remembered, that 
 language, under such circumstances as these, tends toward some 
 extravagance of expression. This remark is applicable even to the 
 eulogy on Dr. Griffin delivered after his death, in the college chapel 
 by his successor, Mark Hopkins. 
 
 REVEREND SIR 
 
 Prompted by the feelings which the near departure of one so respected and 
 esteemed, naturally elicits, the college assembled this morning and appointed us 
 their committee to express to you their sentiments on this occasion. 
 
 Those of them who have been witnesses and partakers of the benefits you 
 have conferred on the college, acted from the deep feeling of gratitude : those 
 who have lately become of the number of students, were influenced by your 
 celebrity as a preacher, your character as a man. 
 
 Knowing this, it is with peculiar feelings that we have undertaken to become 
 their organ, and we should despair of expressing to you their opinions, were we 
 not conscious of their active existence in our own bosoms. When a distinguished 
 man departs from the scene of his former actions, he is followed by the aspira- 
 tions of those who have been benefited by his influence. If to have given celeb- 
 rity to our Alma Mater and a name of which we can proudly boast, if to have 
 given us sound moral and religious principles on which we can firmly base our 
 actions and to have exemplified the beauty and simplicity of a good man's 
 career, have conferred on us obligations, you will appreciate the feelings which 
 agitate our minds at the thought of your departure. Praise we do not offer, for 
 it would be futile, useless to one who stands so high in the opinion of all ; but 
 we present you with a better gift, our kindest feelings and hopes for your future 
 welfare. 
 
 In the name of the college, we bid you an affectionate farewell. 
 
 LEWIS BENEDICT JR. 
 SAM L G. JONES 
 THOS. A. HALL 
 
 LABAN S. SHERMAN 
 
 ,, . ^ Committee 
 
 ISRAEL W. ANDREWS 
 
 KUFUS G. WELLS 
 BARNABA.S COLLINS 
 To OLIVER DIMON 
 
 REV. E. D. GRIFFIN D.D. Sept. 27, 1836. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 437 
 
 The students also took action, as follows, on learning of Dr. 
 Griffin's death about a year after he left Williamstown, in a letter 
 to his son-in-law, Dr. L. A. Smith. 
 
 W MS COLLEGE Nov. 14 1837. 
 DEAR SIR 
 
 The students of Williams College, learning with the deepest regret the 
 decease of the venerable Dr. Griffin, so lately at the head of this Institution, 
 have appointed the undersigned, to express to the relatives of the deceased their 
 admiration of his virtues, and their affectionate regard for his memory. 
 
 In discharging this duty, allow us in behalf of the College, to offer the con- 
 dolence of sincere hearts. 
 
 By this death, the College has been deprived of its foster-father, the church 
 of an ornament, and his family of an affectionate parent. 
 
 His life was one of activity and usefulness. But it needs not the feeble tribute 
 of our praise. His name is connected with the benevolent Institutions of the 
 day, it is incorporated with the history of religion, and more than all, it is written 
 in the Lamb's book of life. 
 
 The light of Eternity only, can disclose the amount of his usefulness. 
 
 It was chiefly in his official capacity as President of this Institution, that we 
 knew him. He was ever found the watchful Guardian of its interests, the 
 prayerful and zealous promoter of piety in its members. He always proved 
 himself the vigorous instructor, and the affectionate and parental adviser. 
 
 His memory is dear to those who received his instructions. That benefit we 
 did not ourselves enjoy. But we are taught to reverence him, who so long and 
 so faithfully presided over the Institution of which we are members. 
 
 With the warmest affection for the memory of our late President, and with 
 the liveliest sympathy with the relatives who mourn his loss, 
 We are very respectively 
 
 Yours 
 
 DAN L R. CADY 
 W M BROSS 
 
 DR. L. A. SMITH E. P. HAWKES 
 
 Newark, N. J. L . ROSE 
 
 R. G. WELLS 
 S. J. ANDREWS 
 
 Committee 
 
 On the other hand, some students regarded him as self-conscious 
 and pompous to a ridiculous extent ; and others of them made it a 
 sort of study to lead him into positions, in which he could hardly 
 fail to exhibit himself as an object of ridicule. He was easily 
 duped by forms of respect shown to him by members of the Senior 
 class ; and he would sometimes ask services of them in a confiden- 
 tial way, such as the protection of his fruit from depredation in the 
 night-time, which were practically rendered so as to facilitate the 
 loss of the fruit. It was not in Williamstown alone, still less in 
 the College alone, that his ostentatious manners were unfavorably, 
 
438 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. * 
 
 if not ridiculously, commented upon. The late Governor Hiland 
 Hall of Bennington, who saw more or less of Griffin in his frequent 
 passages through Williamstowii as a member of Congress and 
 otherwise for many years, as well as in the pulpit at Bennington, 
 was once heard to speak sharply on this point, instancing the way 
 in which he would rise to his full height in the pulpit, and with 
 a magnificent motion of his hand accompanying the oratorical tones 
 of his voice, request that a certain window might be lifted or 
 lowered to meet his personal exigencies of air. 
 
 It was in the assertion of recondite theological dogmas, and in 
 detailed descriptions of familiar scenes in heaven and hell, that 
 this pretentious and preternatural mode of speaking seems at the 
 present day, at any rate, to be most hollow and offensive. In the 
 final arrangement of his sermons for publication during the last year 
 of his life he allowed to stand in two distinct discourses, extending 
 through an octavo printed page or more, the same precise passage 
 and picture of the "Lamb in the midst of the Throne." Parsons 
 Cooke, in his "Kecollections," is bold enough to think the passage 
 will bear to be printed for the third time, and so the reader will find 
 it (if he care to look) on the ninety-ninth page of that little treatise, 
 or tract. Three sentences near the beginning of the passage, how- 
 ever, may do a double duty in this place, namely, fully satisfy the 
 reader's curiosity and also furnish a fair specimen of the preacher's 
 eloquence from a general passage highly estimated by himself. 
 " How delightful to contemplate the honors which encircle the Lamb 
 in the midst of the Father's throne. After wandering an exile from 
 heaven for more than thirty years, for our revolt, how joyous to 
 know that he has found a home. After depending for bread on the 
 charity of his female followers, we are glad to see him the heir of 
 all things, and able in turn to impart to others." 
 
 Reverting now at length to the conditions of society in town in 
 relation to those in College at about the time of the accession of 
 Griffin to the presidency, in 1821, it is a pleasure to the writer to 
 be able to exhibit the generosity and self-denial of the citizens in 
 behalf of the College, then at its lowest estate. In the remonstrance 
 of the town of Williamstown against the removal of the College, 
 drafted by Charles A. Dewey, and unanimously adopted by the citi- 
 zens in town meeting assembled, the following language is used : 
 " We are gratified to have the pleasure of stating that the public 
 expressions which have been made in favor of the continuance of the 
 College at Williamstown have been accompanied with the most satis- 
 factory evidence of their sincerity. Subscription papers bearing the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 439 
 
 names of respectable gentlemen for the amount of eighteen thousand 
 dollars, for the use of the College in this town, have already been 
 placed in the hands of the Treasurer of the College." Fortunately 
 these subscriptions have been preserved in detail. They were tran- 
 scribed into a new ledger by Daniel Noble, then treasurer of the 
 College, which ledger is still extant, carrying a title-page as 
 follows : 
 
 COLLEGE LEDGER IN WHICH SUBSCRIPTIONS 
 TO WILLIAMS COLLEGE ARE ENTERED. 
 
 May 1820. 
 
 N.B. The interest on the subscriptions 
 entered on this Ledger become 
 due first year May 5, 1821, and so 
 annually, and the principal is 
 payable May 5, 1830. 
 
 Mem 
 
 # * * 
 
 D. NOBLE. 
 
 The following list of names and subscriptions, in which the coming 
 generations are sure to take some interest, is copied verbatim et litera- 
 tim, from the above-mentioned ledger. In most instances one year's 
 interest seems to be added to the sum of the principal as put down. 
 The date of final settlement is given in some cases. In some cases 
 legal process had to be resorted to in order to collect either interest 
 or principal, or both. In a few instances the costs of collection are 
 nominally added. Alleged misunderstandings of the terms of sub- 
 scription and consequent refusals to pay were in each instance dis- 
 missed by the courts as invalid. It was plausibly alleged by these 
 parties, that Daniel Noble, who secured these subscriptions and who 
 was the treasurer of the College at the time, said in substance, to the 
 subscribers verbally, We want these subscriptions from the citi- 
 zens of Williamstown, in order to show to the Legislature that we are 
 able and willing to do our part to sustain the College where it is : of 
 course, if the Legislature gives permission to remove it, you will 
 never be called on for these moneys : if we can keep the College here, 
 you and I will probably be glad enough to pay these sums, if neces- 
 sary. Nothing of all this was put in writing. The subscriptions 
 seemed to impart a legal contract; and they were, accordingly, 
 legally enforced. Ill feelings were naturally engendered in some 
 families as toward the two treasurers in succession, Daniel Noble 
 and Daniel Noble Dewey, who had to do with these cloudy claims 
 
440 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of the college as against certain citizens. In general, the feelings 
 were good, and continued so from generation to generation. From 
 time to time, and from the very beginning onward, there have 
 sprung up certain grounds of grievance of the one party (towns- 
 people) as toward the other (college people), but these have been 
 usually transient because they have been on the surface of things. 
 The suits at law, instituted to collect some of these dubious looking 
 subscriptions, left feelings more or less bitter, and continued in the 
 Hoxsey and Hickcock and Danforth families. While the old East 
 College was burning down, of a Sunday afternoon in 1841, in plain 
 sight from Bee Hill, certain young men representing these and per- 
 haps other families are said to have enjoyed the prospect hilari- 
 ously, and to have indulged in language toward the College and 
 some of its officials at least not expressly canonical. 
 
 The only other matter of any consequence or permanence, disturb- 
 ing the good relations between townfolk and gownfolk, during the 
 first century of the College, had its root in politics. We have already 
 learned that the first treasurer of the College was a Democrat, and 
 that a decided majority of the citizens of the town were of that 
 political faith in Jefferson's time and afterward. The two leading 
 families of the village, however, the Deweys and the Nobles, which 
 furnished the College treasurers in unbroken succession from 1798 
 to 1859, were of the Federalist stripe, that is to say, they covenanted 
 with those who had no objections at any rate to certain special 
 political privileges secured to themselves by law, and of course not 
 only denied to the masses of the people, but also secured to the 
 privileged few at the cost of these masses. This simple principle 
 under its diverse applications has always virtually divided the people 
 of the United States into two political parties, two and no more. 
 This issue has sometimes been transiently disguised by party names 
 and otherwise, but it has been the bottom issue, nevertheless, from 
 1796 to 1896 in every presidential election. Equality under the Law 
 as against Privileges under the Law, that tells the whole story. 
 Since the utter downfall of the Whig Party, the then party of Privi- 
 lege, in 1852, there has been no general ground of political differ- 
 ences as between the town men and the college men. The mutual 
 feeling has been good most of the time, and perhaps increasingly so 
 decade by decade, minus a dispute of some acerbity on the taxation 
 by the town of certain parts of college property, an issue at the 
 present time in litigation before the Supreme Court of Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 441 
 
 Daniel Noble 
 
 Timothy & John P. Whitman 
 
 Charles A. Dewey 
 
 Ralph W. Gridley 
 
 Eli Northam 
 
 Samuel Kellogg 
 
 Aaron Foote 
 
 Solomon Bulkley 
 
 John Hickcock 
 
 Stephen Hickcock 
 
 Keyes Danforth By judgment 
 
 Schuyler Putnam 
 
 Thomas F. Hoxsey 
 
 Josephus Bardwell 
 
 Noah Cook 
 
 William Starkweather 
 
 Lyman Hubbell 
 
 Douglas W. Sloane 
 
 Erastus Noble 
 
 Moses Batcheller 
 
 Joseph Birchard on 
 
 Asa Northam 
 
 Hosford & Brown 
 
 Peter S. Putnam 
 
 Daniel Galusha 
 
 John Kilborn 
 
 Samuel Tyler 
 
 Louis Toussaint 
 
 Eli Porter 
 
 Deodatus Noble 
 
 Gershom T. Bulkley 
 
 James H. Meacham 
 
 Oren Kellogg 
 
 Elijah Smedley 
 
 Dennis Smith 
 
 Emery Chamberlain 
 
 Amasa Shattuck 
 
 Thomas Faxon 
 
 Henry Green 
 
 Ralph Chamberlain 
 
 David D. Seelye 
 
 Titus Deming 
 
 Samuel Burbank 
 
 Ruth Benjamin 
 
 Joshua Morey 
 
 William Bridges 
 
 Benjamin Thurber 
 
 Noah Smith 
 
 Thomas Melody & sons 
 
 of Sup. Jud, Court P. & interest (1832) 
 Settlement June, 1835 
 
 " Dead and Poor " 
 " Dec d and Bankrupt " 
 a suit by compromise in full 
 
 1833 in full 
 
 1831 
 
 1833 
 
 1831 
 1827 
 1831 
 1833 
 
 "poor and gone" 
 1831 cost in full 
 
 1827 
 never paid 
 
 1834 
 
 1828 
 
 1822 
 
 1835 
 
 1826 
 and bill of costs 
 
 1825 
 
 1823 
 
 $ 830.66 
 $1338.46 
 $ 362.50 
 $ 219.70 
 $ 236.00 
 $ 323.67 
 $ 212.00 
 $ 180.00 
 $ 159.00 
 $ 159.00 
 $ 174.60 
 $ 65.00 
 $ 190.50 
 $ 56.00 
 $ 53.00 
 $ 213.00 
 $ 115.00 
 $ 124.00 
 $ 53.00 
 $ 28.00 
 $ 35.00 
 $ 260.00 
 $ 148.00 
 $ 124.00 
 $ 80.00 
 $ 28.00 
 79.37 
 53.00 
 31.00 
 168.00 
 148.00 
 126.00 
 162.52 
 68.00 
 37.00 
 51.50 
 38.50 
 26.50 
 45.00 
 47.33 
 42.00 
 40.87 
 37.00 
 27.50 
 89.50 
 62.00 
 92.50 
 32.50 
 29.50 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
442 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Solomon & John Prindle 1832 $73.60 
 
 " John Prindle gave his note for $45.45 
 
 and Solomon died poor " 
 
 Nathaniel Townsend 1835 $43.25 
 
 Zadock Ford $26.31 
 
 William Waterman 1835 $92.37 
 
 Nathan Putnam 1840 $27.87 
 
 Here are the names of fifty-nine persons, a majority of them 
 known to be poor, not over seven or eight of them even then called 
 "rich, "and all the rest farmers and artisans in common, that is 
 moderate, circumstances, coming to the help of the College at a time, 
 when, without this help, it is likely, the College would have gone 
 out of existence on this ground. There are some names on this list 
 one cannot read even at this late day without emotion. There is, 
 for example, the name of Louis Toussaint, the French tailor, whose 
 name is also found on the still extant subscription-list for the new 
 meeting-house of 1796. For that he put down 1 4s. Twenty-five 
 years afterward he put down fifty dollars to help out the College. 
 Whether he ever paid the latter may perhaps be doubtful, for the 
 treasurer writes the word "poor" after the name. Of course he 
 was poor, and by this time old ; for many of the families of the town 
 made their own woollen garments out of materials spun and woven 
 also by members of the household; many other families made up 
 their own winter clothing by the help of "seamstresses," as they 
 were called, usually spinsters, who made a livelihood by going about 
 from house to house in the neighborhood for this purpose ; and the 
 work that would come to a tailor's shop, like Toussaint's, unless it 
 were uniforms for the militia officers, or a suit for the new member 
 of the General Court to go to Boston in, would be small in quantity 
 and irregular in time. Toussaint lived to old age in the house still 
 standing, substantially unchanged, at the fork of the north Hoosac 
 road running west with the Simonds road running north. Nearly 
 opposite stood in those days the principal tavern of the town. It 
 was perhaps as good a place for a tailor's shop as the town afforded. 
 The tailor had his name and trade on two wooden signs, one front- 
 ing each of the two roads, in the angle of which the old house stood. 
 This petty fact comes down to the present generation through Rip- 
 ley Cole, who remembered it as a boy, and who remembered also the 
 rude pun turning on it, by which we are able to approximate the 
 current pronunciation of the strange French name, "Two-Sign." 
 
 Take a single other example from among the poorest of these 
 Williamstown subscribers to the funds of the College in its extremity, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 443 
 
 Thomas Faxon. He was from Hartford. He was a potter by 
 trade. So far as is known, he was the first and only potter who 
 ever tried to get a living by that occupation in Williamstown. He 
 found good clay on the bank of the Green River at the east end of 
 the village plot, close by the bridge. He set up his wheels, opened 
 his oven, and baked a cheap sort of unglazed ware. His neighbors 
 across the Green River, the Smedleys, bought some of his pots, and 
 transmitted to the present time some little knowledge of his exist- 
 ence and of the place of his business, such as it was. But he did 
 not get on. The College treasurer puts him down on his ledger as 
 owing $26.50, but later marks underneath the subscription, "poor 
 and gone." Somehow or other the special craftsmen did not find 
 Williamstown a favorable place for their development. They came, 
 but, as a rule, they did not stay a great while. Lime was burnt 
 here very early, and we happen to know where, but by whom and 
 how long no mortal can tell. Brick were manufactured here in 
 the last century, and West College and the old East College were 
 made out of them, but the yard on North Street at the foot of Man- 
 sion House Hill was early abandoned, and its place only accidentally 
 rediscovered of late years. Perhaps in order to furnish the brick 
 for Dr. Griffin's new chapel, which was planned for in 1825, at any 
 rate not far from that time, Stephen Hosford opened a new brick- 
 yard on South Street, on land now owned by Frederic Leake, and 
 at a place now occupied by Mr. Leake's tenant-house. Stephen 
 Hosford was the eldest of three brothers, all from Goshen, who 
 constituted, singly and combined, for many years an important 
 factor in the ongoings of the church and town. The brothers 
 worked for some time in the new brickyard, which furnished the 
 brick first or last for the Blackinton farmhouse near the present 
 village of Blackinton; the brick store near the east end of our vil- 
 lage (north side), in which " Hosford and Brown " were doing busi- 
 ness when they jointly subscribed to the College the above $ 148; 
 the brick house and store at the head of South Street (east side), in 
 which Hosford lived the rest of his life and kept both a store and 
 the post-office for a time; and (doubtless among some others) the 
 brick house at the foot of Stone Hill on South Street, built by Gur- 
 don Bulkley, and now owned and occupied by Mrs. L. B. Smedley. 
 Undoubtedly the main reason why special craftsmen in general, 
 omitting perhaps the cordwainers and carpenters and brickmakers, 
 did not thrive and continue in Williamstown, was, the people were 
 poor, the College was small, and, especially, the place was isolated 
 by high hills on every side from other habitable and thriving places. 
 
444 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 The primal conditions of a good market were absent. A market 
 for products is products in market. People cannot sell their own 
 goods except in places to which other goods are brought to be sold. 
 It is goods against goods the world over. Barriers, whether local or 
 international, are alike hindrances to trade. Domestic exports pay 
 for foreign imports. Whatever obstacles (tariff taxes or other) keep 
 foreign goods from coming in, keep, to precisely the same extent, 
 domestic goods from going out. Just so in the smallest local mar- 
 kets anywhere. Williamstown had the Ashford watershed of one 
 thousand feet to the south of it, the Taconic Mountain range, still 
 higher, to the west of it, the Hoosac Mountains, then untunnelled, 
 to the east of it, with a " dug-way " along the Hoosac Eiver toward 
 the Vermont hills to the north of it. Goods of any kind could not 
 be produced to profit within these circumjacent obstacles, paying 
 the cost of taking them out and paying also the cost of bringing in 
 the return goods. The inference accordingly is as certain as any 
 reasoning can be, that whatever diminishes or removes obstacles of 
 any of these kinds, is wholly favorable to profitable trade. The 
 opening of the Hoosac Tunnel may be said to have created the city 
 of North Adams, whose municipal motto, " We hold the gateway of 
 the West," derives the significance of its words from the removal of 
 an obstacle to trade. Still greater is the blessing of the removal 
 of artificial obstacles, like tariff taxes, for a striking example. A 
 blessed handmaid to a constantly cheaper production of goods of all 
 kinds is always and everywhere an easier transportation of them to 
 their own ultimate market. 
 
 One consequence of this isolation and general poverty of the 
 people of Williamstown, and of the isolation and rudeness in general 
 of the places from which the students came to the College, was, that 
 Griffin was shocked at once and constantly by the uncouth manner 
 of those with whom he came in contact as president. He had spent 
 nearly all of his active life in Newark and Boston, in positions that 
 required and rewarded courtly manners, which he took on himself 
 with ease and pleasure, and which he came to regard as due to him- 
 self in return. It was at this point of their manners in general, and 
 particularly of their personal behavior in chapel, in church, in the 
 recitation-room, on the street, and in his own study, that Griffin 
 first came into serious contact and conflict with the students. It 
 was undoubtedly an important point in their training, which had 
 been previously much neglected here as it was also afterward, and 
 which if properly attended to in college always makes a student's 
 entrance upon active life more propitious ; but in this case it was 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 445 
 
 unfortunate, because it was put forward as a foremost thing, as if 
 matters of form could properly take precedence of matters of sub- 
 stance, and as indicating to the minds of students the gradation of 
 educational subjects in the mind of the president. 
 
 It was in the old chapel in the southern end of West College, that 
 the students began fully to realize the change in administration. 
 The seats there had very low backs. It had been the custom, espe- 
 cially as there was a superabundance of room for the relatively few 
 students, for these to sit, many of them, back to back in pairs, with 
 one limb laid up on the seat and one body partially supported upon 
 the other. The attitude was unbecoming and irreverent in college 
 prayers. The president vehemently attacked it at once on that 
 ground, and also on the ground that it tended to form and perpetu- 
 ate ungentlemanly manners in general. The students were slow to 
 yield, alleging truthfully that to sit bolt upright on such benches as 
 those was a position very intolerable. The president evinced a 
 becoming zeal and determination, and of course carried his point, 
 not however without being obliged in some instances to give line 
 upon line and precept upon precept. The struggle was evidently 
 not lost upon him, either; for, when he built the new chapel, a few 
 years later, the backs of the new seats came up to the back of the 
 average student's head! Less defensible than this by much was the 
 president's requirement of the students when he was preaching in 
 the village church, namely, that they all should look him in the 
 face throughout the sermon. The preacher who cannot compel the 
 attention of his auditors to his discourse by its force and eloquence, 
 cannot habitually secure it by any other mode. Griffin discounted 
 beforehand his own power to gain a good hearing by prescribing a 
 mechanical rule, which, even if literally complied with, did not guar- 
 antee the serious attention of the student to what was said. A sorry 
 confession of his own lack distends the words of his own rule. 
 
 Much more may be said in favor of his habit, when he saw a 
 student in church with his head down upon his arm resting upon the 
 front of the seat, to stop in the midst of his sermon, call the student 
 by name, and thus correct his posture not for that time only, but 
 probably for all future times, a posture in which many a student 
 in former, as well as in subsequent days, took his quiet naps in 
 church. Not less particular was he in regard to the posture of the 
 students in his recitation-room, or when he received them in his 
 own study. Also he required all the students under all circum- 
 stances to doff their hats to him in the street, although the Main 
 Street of the village, on which alone he was likely to encounter 
 
446 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 them, was fifteen rods wide, and there were two walks, one on either 
 edge of the street. He always accosted any body of students as 
 "Young Gentlemen" evidently thinking that his calling them so 
 tended to make them so, and perhaps it did; but at the same time 
 he ridiculed the idea and practice of "mistering an undergraduate." 
 He was so constituted by nature, and had so punctiliously trained 
 himself in all the forms of propriety as he understood them, that he 
 could not be otherwise than sensitive to all variance from decorum 
 on the part of the students in the smallest matters as well as in the 
 greatest. This sensitiveness was doubtless aggravated by disease; 
 for he was almost always a sufferer from the gout from the time he 
 commenced his labors in the College, and so increasingly as the 
 years went by. This of itself often gave to his own painstaking 
 efforts to be civil to everybody the appearance of excess. His frame 
 was so large and latterly so inflexible, and so much space was re- 
 quired (and time) for his studiedly polite movements, that these 
 could not but seem to be overdone. In short, Dr. Griffin was a 
 striking example of relative failure in a college official from putting 
 too much stress upon form and expression and too little upon matter 
 and reality. Mark Hopkins, who was his pupil and sharp observer, 
 in 1821-24, once said to the writer, "Dr. Griffin was a good critic "; 
 further conversation developed the point, that his criticism expended 
 itself rather upon the clothing than upon the body of that submitted 
 to criticism. 
 
 If it may be permitted now to go back for a few minutes only to 
 the list of town subscribers to the College exigences of 1820, we 
 shall notice that by much the largest subscription of all was that of 
 "Timothy and John P. Whitman." These were brothers who had 
 married sisters and had become early established as merchants on 
 Main Street, occupying the very early purchased house-lot of Josiah 
 Horsford, of whose small house they made at first both a home and 
 a store. The rooms of this house are still the nucleus of their after- 
 ward muph enlarged house, still standing at the opening of Park 
 Street, and occupied at present by Dr. L. D. Woodbridge as both a 
 home and an office. The gambrel-roofed store built by the Whit- 
 mans a few years later and attached to the house on the east end, is 
 also still standing, much transformed, having been removed to the 
 west end of the Main Street at the time when they rebuilt, enlarg- 
 ing their own house, and is now the home of Mrs. Henrietta Cole. 
 The subscription of the Whitman brothers (one year's interest) is 
 $1338.46. It is not because this subscription is the largest that 
 attention is called to it here, but because the family who made it 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 447 
 
 were from first to last very prominent and influential and benevolent 
 people. The maiden name of the married sisters was Seymour, and 
 they were from Hartford or its immediate vicinity. Each of them 
 brought to her husband a very considerable property for those times. 
 Lucy Seymour Whitman is known to have attended the exercises of 
 the first Commencement of the College in 1796, and she united with 
 the church in Williamstown in 1797 by letter, while her husband, 
 John P. Whitman, joined by profession in 1801. Mary Curtis 
 Hopkins of Stockbridge, afterward the mother of Mark and Albert 
 Hopkins, is the only other woman positively known to have been 
 present at the initial Commencement of the College. By a coinci- 
 dence that may be called curious, both of these women died in 
 Williamstown not far from the same time in an old age unusually 
 protracted. Laura Seymour Whitman, the wife of Timothy, who 
 was by three years the older brother, brought her letter to this 
 church in 1812; and her husband, as we shall see in a moment, 
 never made a profession of religion at all. He had studied medi- 
 cine, and was always known here as "Dr. Timothy," coming to 
 town probably some fifteen years later than his brother, who put his 
 stress upon the merchandise side of the firm, while the doctor prac- 
 tised medicine with more zest or less till shortly before he died. 
 Both families lived in the same house, ate at the same table, and 
 brought up their children together, and exhibited in the village as 
 conspicuous examples of brotherly peace and good will, as the 
 Smedley brothers, Levi and Elijah, did upon their joint farm just 
 across the Green Eiver to the eastward. 
 
 Upon one point only was there a lack of harmony in the conjoined 
 Whitman household ; and that was of such a .character as interested 
 sooner or later the whole church and the whole College and the 
 whole community. Dr. Timothy, whose outward life was as exem- 
 plary as possible, and who was probably as good a Christian as the 
 village contained, could not see his way clear to find in the New 
 Testament the evidences of Divine inspiration in any verbal and 
 literal sense, or any proofs of the inexorable sternness of the Divine 
 government, as these had been preached by Jonathan Edwards, and 
 were preached in slightly disguised, but in essentially unchanged, 
 terms by President Griffin. He did not proclaim his dissent from 
 the current orthodoxy, he was a remarkably quiet and unobtrusive 
 man, and only used that dissent in self-defence when he was urged 
 and crowded and beseeched to pronounce his shibboleth just as the 
 other did, and by uniting with the church to announce in a public 
 manner his unqualified assent to dogmas which he believed unscrip- 
 
448 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 tural and also unworthy of his Heavenly Father. Prayer was made 
 for him without ceasing in the family and in the church and in the 
 community. He was regarded without a question as travelling the 
 downward road. He was to be snatched, if it were possible, as a 
 brand from the burning. 
 
 As specimens of the sort of questions with which Griffin was wont 
 to ply his neighbor Whitman, who, the former says, " resisted my 
 arguments with vehemence if not with passion," let us now take 
 those which, according to his own account, he put to his own two 
 daughters in succession, and to which he expected, as alone satisfac- 
 tory, answers like those at last given by them. " That evening I 
 visited Louisa, and put to her the old question, ' Do you feel that 
 it would be just in God to cast you off? ' After a considerable pause, 
 and in a low voice, she answered, 'Yes, sir.' The next day I said to 
 Ellen, 'My daughter, where do you expect to spend your eternity ? ' 
 She answered, 'Why, I have not thought of that.' 'What have 
 you been thinking about?' 'I have been thinking how good God 
 has been to me, and how ungrateful I have been.' The next day 
 she looked more like the image of misery than ever before. The 
 next time she came in, I asked her where she expected to spend 
 eternity? She said, 'I think most likely I shall spend it in hell.' 
 'Do you think that you deserve hell?' 'Oh! I know I do.' In 
 this condition she remained two days." Modern Christians have 
 these two among many other things to be devoutly thankful for: 
 (1) That it is no longer considered needful that one should be willing 
 to be damned in order to be able to be saved; and (2) that the Gos- 
 pel itself is so true and virile and divine, that it can work its work 
 and bless mankind and survive and grow strong in spite of all such 
 abominable perversions of itself as these are. Dr. Timothy Whitman 
 fell into a gradual decline and retired from the active duties of his 
 profession, about the time when Dr. Griffin received an invitation 
 to preach one of a series of sermons against infidelity, in what was 
 called the " Murray Street Lectures " in New York. " I wrote that 
 sermon," the preacher said afterward, "with my eye on Dr. Whit- 
 man, then an infidel, and sick with what proved to be his last sick- 
 ness. I was most deeply affected through the whole of it, and wrote 
 it with a strong desire for the conviction and salvation of Dr. W. 
 He had just before resisted my arguments with vehemence, if not 
 with passion. After I had finished my sermon, I read it to him, at 
 two different sittings, half at a time. He never resisted afterward; 
 and gave such evidence of his conversion and faith, that his pious 
 wife and other pious friends have no doubt that he went to heaven." 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 449 
 
 It may be added, after this long interval of time, that nobody else, 
 who knew all the circumstances, ever doubted that issue of a good 
 man's life. Dr. Griffin is careful not to say, nor does it otherwise 
 anyway appear, that the patient ever said a word retracting his 
 former contentions. It is to be hoped and believed that he did not. 
 No better opportunity than the present one is likely to recur, to 
 sketch briefly the later experiences of this wealthy and liberal and 
 highly esteemed family. Dr. Timothy died in 1830, at the age of 
 sixty -two; and his widow, Laura Seymour Whitman, in 1857, at 
 the age of seventy-one. Their only child, Euth Whitman, was 
 married to Professor Edward Lasell, Williams College 1828. He 
 became Professor of Chemistry here in 1835, and continued success- 
 ful in that capacity till his death, in 1852. In the meantime he 
 founded Lasell Seminary in Auburndale, an institution which 
 seems likely to perpetuate his honored name by a remarkable pros- 
 perity and prominence. John P. Whitman died in 1834, aged sixty- 
 three, after an unusually prosperous life in all the varied uses of 
 that phrase, leaving one son and one daughter; the latter to become 
 in a few years the first wife of Dr. H. L. Sabin, and the former, 
 Seymour Whitman, to continue his father's business in the same 
 store, to live in the same house, and to exert with his excellent wife, 
 Maria Bulkley, the same sort of influences, both social and religious, 
 as those diffused by his father and mother. Indeed, the mother out- 
 lived the son in the same house for two years, and died at eighty- 
 four, in 1858. When the first East College burned down, in 1841, 
 Mrs. Lucy Whitman was the first perspn appealed to for benevolent 
 aid to help rebuild it. She gave one thousand dollars to Mark 
 Hopkins, then the president, with her blessing superadded. Sey- 
 mour Whitman left at his death a widow, two daughters, and a son. 
 The widow died in 1886, at the age of seventy-nine years. The 
 oldest daughter, Lucy, married Rev. John Tatlock, a graduate of 
 the College in 1856, and these are the parents of John Tatlock, Wil- 
 liams College 1882, now a prominent actuary in New York. The 
 other daughter, Fanny, married H. C. G. von Jagemann, now a 
 distinguished professor at the University at Cambridge, Massa- 
 chusetts. John Seymour Whitman, the only son, Williams College 
 1854, has spent and is still spending a useful life as a Congrega- 
 tional minister. It is proper to add, that it was from the large 
 landed estate of the Whitman family, that the College became pos- 
 sessed, by purchase at different times, of the grounds holding the 
 Missionary Park, and the present president's house, and those of 
 the College Infirmary (established in 1895), and portions also of the 
 
450 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 "College Farm," so called at the present time. The College ceme- 
 tery, situated near all these lands, was cut off from the northern 
 end of that house-lot very early given to the College by David 
 Noble for the original "president's house." 
 
 The history of Amherst College is inwrought in a curious and 
 complicated way with various ongoings here at the westward. We 
 have already given at length the story of President Moore in going 
 from Williamstown to Amherst, accompanied by fifteen of the 
 Williams students, in 1821. Amherst had not then obtained from 
 the General Court its charter as a college. Moore did not live to 
 witness that devoutly wished-for consummation. But it came at 
 length in the winter of 1825, and sounded at first on this side the 
 Hoosacs like the death-knell of the older institution. It had been 
 argued a hundred times and assumed a thousand times, that two 
 colleges could not subsist together in western Massachusetts. Am- 
 herst, indeed, had commenced operations as a college in 1821, 
 though not assuming the name, because it had not secured a charter 
 from the Legislature; and the hope of life for Williams seemed to lie 
 in the strength of the difficulties which stood in the way of Amherst 
 being chartered. Williams, indeed, had but little influence in the 
 Legislature, but Cambridge had a great deal, and the two were 
 thoroughly combined in opposition to Amherst. Their petition for 
 a charter made but little headway year after year, and on the 
 strength of this the prospects of Williams brightened and the num- 
 ber of students increased in three years under Dr. Griffin (1822- 
 25) from 48 to 120. But tlje strenuous opposition of Cambridge, 
 an old college, arid lately become a Unitarian one, gradually made 
 a bad impression over the State, especially in orthodox circles. It 
 had the appearance of persecution as toward a feeble academy and 
 theological school on the Connecticut determined whether or no to 
 organize itself into a college, and to gain its permanence with or 
 without its name. Here was the perseverance of the saints. Here 
 was the push and the pull and the stand of Scotch-Irish-American 
 Christians of the Calvinistic type. Harvard saw that she was 
 becoming unpopular, and foresaw that she would be compelled to 
 yield sooner or later; and so, after securing the best possible terms 
 for herself in the premises, she suddenly relinquished opposition 
 and went in with a will for the charter to Amherst. 
 
 It had been so often said that Williams must die if Amherst 
 gained a full corporate life, that few were they bold enough to 
 question such a result. The news created almost a panic among 
 the students. Their number dropped from 120 to 80 before that 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 451 
 
 college year was over. During the fall term of the next college year 
 eighty-five students gathered all told in the four classes. William 
 Hervey and Mark Hopkins were the tutors. Both had recently 
 entered upon a decided religious life. The two were classmates and 
 warm personal friends. The state of the College was disorderly, 
 demoralized, openly irreligious, and some of the students awfully 
 profane. Many believed that the College was on the eve of dissolu- 
 tion, and some did not care if it were. But there were those in the 
 county, as well as in the College itself, who did care. First among 
 these should be mentioned Alvan Hyde of Lee, himself a graduate of 
 Dartmouth in 1788, vice-president of the College from 1812 to 1833, 
 the same who called the students together in 1821, when President 
 Moore left and told them confidently that the College ivould be sus- 
 tained on this ground, and the same who sent four of his own sons to 
 take their degrees here in succession, in 1815 and 1822 and 1826 and 
 1834, all admirable men, and the third in order, William, prominent as 
 a trustee and benefactor of the College. The second of county friends 
 to be mentioned should be David Dudley Field, of Stockbridge, him- 
 self graduated at Yale in 1802, who published a history of Berkshire 
 County in 1829, and who likewise had four sons, all distinguished, 
 all bearing the parchments of honor received in the regular course at 
 Williams College David Dudley, 1825; Jonathan Edwards, 1832; 
 Stephen Johnson, 1837 ; Henry Martyn, 1838. Besides these four, 
 he had another son, Cyrus West, also closely connected with the 
 College in many ways, who became more celebrated all over the 
 world than any of his brothers, as the originator of the Atlantic 
 Cable. What a Berkshire family was this, to say nothing of the 
 sister, Mrs. Brewer, whose son became a Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. 
 
 Now, the week after the annual Thanksgiving in 1825, these two 
 country ministers from the south part of Berkshire were sent by the 
 churches, in compliance with a custom of primitive Christianity, to 
 look into the state of religion in Williamstown and the College, to 
 visit and to pray and to exhort. The church in town, under their 
 fervid pastor, Gridley, anticipated their coming, and agreed to set 
 apart as a fast the day of their visitation. Intelligence of this was 
 communicated to the faculty of the College, and it was determined 
 by them to suspend literary exercises for the day, for the purpose of 
 giving any of the students who wished liberty to hear these messen- 
 gers of the churches from the south of the county, and also to fur- 
 nish them an opportunity of prayer and conference among themselves. 
 Nearly one-half of the students were at that time nominally profes- 
 
452 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 sors of religion ; but of these and of all the rest and of the occur- 
 rences following, an eye- and ear-witness, Albert Hopkins, then a 
 member of the Junior class, fortunately put into writing long after- 
 ward a copious record. 
 
 The two years preceding were years of great spiritual drought and declension. 
 Iniquity in various forms abounded, and the love of many waxed cold. There 
 was a good deal of dissipation at this period ; treating at elections and at other 
 times was common. Drunkenness was an occurrence not unfrequent, when 
 holidays were given. I should think the gravest men in College, certainly with 
 one or two exceptions, did not scruple to drink (at least drank) on set occa- 
 sions. The order of College, at this time, was not good. I am not aware that 
 any religious meetings were held during the week. On Saturday evening and 
 Sabbath morning, there were meetings, but very thinly attended. The majority, 
 probably, did not know that such meetings were held. 
 
 The announcement at evening prayers the night before, of the coming of the 
 ministers Hyde and Field, and of the cessation on that account of the ordinary 
 college exercises for the day, occasioned no small stir among the students, who 
 had begun to be already somewhat sensitive on the subject. As is usual at such 
 times, Satan took advantage of the natural enmity of the carnal heart, and 
 excited the wicked to throw off the convictions which had begun now to hover 
 around, if not to settle upon them. I have been told that there were mock 
 meetings, that night, all over College. There was also another meeting of 
 another kind at the Junior recitation-room, attended by Dr. Griffin, at which 
 one heart at least was stricken. Next morning, the aspect of things was rather 
 tumultuous. A meeting had been appointed, however, at the Senior recitation- 
 room under the idea that most of the religious part of the College would be 
 present, and some, at least, of the impenitent. The hour arrived, and immedi- 
 ately there began to be a nocking to the place. Some left their rooms without 
 the least intention of going to the meeting. Their account of it is, that they 
 found themselves there, they knew not how. Few had manifested any particu- 
 lar seriousness. Many were very bold sinners, and came in whirling their hats 
 across the room, as if in derision. The room became directly crowded. Every 
 student from both College buildings at length found his way in. The meeting 
 began with marked stillness, such as is wont to be noticed when a crisis is at 
 hand, and the Spirit of God intimately near. Tutor Hervey, who had been 
 from the first, in his meek and quiet way, exceedingly active, and his associate 
 in office [Mark Hopkins] were present to take the direction of this meeting. In 
 a short time, however, it became evident that the great Master of assemblies was 
 himself present to take the lead. 
 
 The exercises of the meeting had not proceeded far, when a student, the 
 hitherto notoriously profane one already alluded to, arose in the assembly. 
 The deep solemnity of his countenance, the altered air and strange attitude of 
 the speaker, conspiring with that deep impression of the Divine presence which 
 previously pervaded the meeting, was sufficient to bring about a sudden and 
 most extraordinary crisis. The minds of some were made up before he uttered 
 a word. In a moment, said he, " Will you trifle with your souls? " Every head 
 was bowed, the most hardened were melted, and the meeting became a scene of 
 indescribable interest. Considering the character of those who composed it, and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 453 
 
 their position in reference to society and the church, perhaps few private meet- 
 ings in our times are more worthy of our remembrance. 
 
 In the afternoon was the public meeting in the church ; and as little interest 
 as the mass of College took, the night before, in the delegation, probably Paul 
 and Barnabas were not more welcome at Antioch than were these messengers of 
 the churches now. During two or three days succeeding it was impossible to 
 pursue study ; there was a prayer- meeting going on in each College building 
 from morning to night, in some room or other. I do not know that the regular 
 recitations were omitted after the fast. So entirely, however, was the mind 
 absorbed with the great realities of religion, that anything like concentrated 
 attention to any book, except that long-neglected one, the Bible, became impos- 
 sible. The term was now drawing to a close, and ended with a religious meet- 
 ing of deep and affecting interest. The majority of those who were in the 
 religious meeting above described obtained hopes nearly at the same time, and 
 not many days after. College assembled at the opening of the spring term, to 
 experience a renewal of the same scenes which had characterized the closing 
 weeks of that which had preceded. The work went on, with more or less power, 
 until the warm season opened ; and a sermon was preached at the close of the 
 term, as had been done in 1812. 
 
 This revival of religion, which has been commonly called the 
 "revival of 1826," and which is so vividly described in these terms 
 by Albert Hopkins, became the means, in the view of Dr. Griffin 
 and others, of saving the College from the shock and moral menace 
 of the dreaded public incorporation of Amherst. It called universal 
 attention toward the elder institution at the very time when it 
 seemed to be going to pieces. The town also, and the county too, 
 shared in this powerful religious awakening in the College, and 
 enjoyed throughout the year of 1826 a memorable and probably 
 unprecedented season of religious interest. Under this common 
 impulse, the local constituency of the College rallied round it with 
 strong devotion and determination. Dr. Hyde of Lee, Dr. Field of 
 Stockbridge, Dr. Shepard of Lenox, and other influential friends at 
 the south, conspired with a will with Judge Noble, Judge Dewey, 
 Dr. Griffin himself, and other good men at the north, to hold up the 
 falling College. This was the period of Griffin's greatest usefulness 
 in Williamstown. The divisions which shortly after began so 
 unhappily to distract the local church in relation to " measures " 
 and their underlying "doctrines," had not then shown any front at 
 all. Mr. Gridley cooperated with all his might in every good 
 word and work, as a son with a father. Griffin did not then, as 
 afterward, deem it needful to spend time either in hunting after 
 heresy or in guarding against it. " He threw himself into the work 
 with no trammels or scruples to check the order of his feelings. 
 Evening after evening, for several months, through darkness, snow, 
 
454 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and mud, he went to a schoolhouse in the east part of the village, and 
 poured out torrents of truth, with an enthusiasm not inferior to that 
 which characterized his best days. He seemed to be nerved up to 
 a great effort, and probably never afterward appeared to the same 
 advantage, or preached with equal power" (Albert Hopkins). 1 
 
 The results of all this, though very important to the College, and 
 to the town, and sufficient to carry the former well over the crisis, 
 were not outwardly great nor inwardly lasting. The numbers 
 graduated in regular course from 1827-32, both inclusive, aver- 
 aged but twenty-one. Two years are commonly sufficient to change 
 the complexion of a college, so far as the body of the students are 
 concerned, almost completely; since the two upper classes usually 
 give tone and color to the whole body, and pass on out of sight. It 
 was remarkably so in this instance, as will be noticed a little further 
 on. But considered in reference to the president and the guardians 
 of the College, the results were considerable, and considerably per- 
 manent. He and they were sure that the College was now to stand, 
 and that it became them to secure for students better facilities for 
 the time to coins. Griffin was naturally most impressed with the 
 need of a new college chapel, in a separate building, away from 
 either of the two college dormitories. The old one occupied the two 
 middle stories of the south end of West College, and had become, 
 in the course of thirty-five years, both in many ways unsuitable and 
 also quite too accessible to mischievous students to ply their tricks 
 upon. Just before this revival commenced, the trustees at their 
 summer meeting, in 1825, had taken the desperate resolution to 
 raise, if it were possible, twenty-five thousand dollars, in order to 
 build a new chapel and to found a new professorship. The con- 
 ditions as to time extended from the first of September to the last 
 day of November. No subscription was to be binding unless the 
 whole were completed by the last-mentioned date. Dr. Griffin was 
 appointed the sole agent to solicit funds, and it was thought best 
 that his name should head the list of givers; to which he consented, 
 putting it down for one hundred dollars. One of the trustees pres- 
 ent, believed to be Dr. Shepard of Lenox, expostulated at once: 
 That will never do; the money cannot be raised on a paper headed 
 that way; probably it cannot be raised in any case; but it must 
 start out from Williamstown heavier than that. After deliberation 
 
 1 This schoolhouse was close by the old farmhouse of Deacon Levi Smedley ; and his 
 sons, Levi and James, and daughters also, attended these meetings. Deacon James 
 Smedley was my father-in-law, and I have often heard him discourse fervidly on 
 Griffin's eloquence and power at those times. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 455 
 
 and consultation, Griffin put down his name again, for one thousand 
 dollars in place of the other. Doubtless those members of the trus- 
 tees who could give at all went also to the utmost verge of their 
 pecuniary ability. 
 
 Griffin went out in September upon this agency of soliciting sub- 
 scriptions. He had but three months in which to complete the work. 
 After the revival commenced in college, he felt compelled to remain 
 at home for the most part of the time; but the powerful revival 
 itself proved later to have more efficiency as toward the end in 
 view than his own strong solicitations. " If the Lord ivere phased 
 to Ml us, he ivould not have shown us all these things." Heaven has 
 decreed that this College shall live. This was the burden of his later 
 appeals. Even these succeeded but slowly, because it was at a time 
 of commercial crisis, and among a people who had come to regard 
 the cause of the College as a hopeless one. While in Northampton 
 on this errand, he met with a very efficient agent of Amherst, trav- 
 ersing the same ground in the interest of that institution, and far 
 surpassing him in his success. This agent informed him of the 
 amounts he had raised in such and such instances. " Then are you 
 the prince of beggars." The guess of a Yankee may perhaps here be 
 tolerated, conceding all reasonable facility to this Amherst agent, 
 that his success was not due to his own ability so much as to the 
 youthful vigor and the long-delayed rights and the natural constitu- 
 ents of Amherst. At that time Griffin had but four weeks left in 
 which to raise twelve thousand dollars. He had just gotten over 
 the watershed. Almost one-half had yet to be gained. But on 
 account of the state of things at home his courage had grown faster 
 than his subscription list. Both his own daughters and his son-in- 
 law had been hopefully converted in the revival. According to a 
 careful memorandum still preserved among his private papers, only 
 four of the students actually on the ground at the close of the fall 
 term in 1825 remained unconverted; while there were eleven others 
 out of a total of eighty-five on the catalogue then absent from col- 
 lege, leaving seventy hopefully pious. His theory of missions, and 
 of Christian colleges indispensable in order to carry these forward, 
 made him so sanguine of the future of Williams, and he was enabled 
 to impart so much of his own enthusiasm to those whom he ap- 
 proached during the four weeks, that the whole amount of twenty- 
 five thousand dollars was assured before the close of the college 
 term. 
 
 In a double and emphatic sense, accordingly, does the institution 
 owe to its third president the beautiful building on the campus used 
 
456 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 for a little more than thirty years as a chapel, and still useful for 
 various other purposes, bearing the appropriate name of " Griffin 
 Hall " ; for he personally raised the money for its erection, and then 
 his tact and good judgment controlled in every part of the building, 
 from the levelling of the site to the final position of the weather- 
 vane. Most curious is it, that his experience at Andover many 
 years before, which brought upon his name much odium and more 
 ridicule, namely, his expensive handling of the rocky site there and 
 the erection at another's cost of the house for his own use, proved 
 of great service to him and the public in his corresponding work 
 here in 1828. When he took hold of the chapel project practically 
 the limestone rocks rose twice as high as the tallest man's head 
 right in the broad street north of the road, all along the opposite of 
 the old East College. Beyond these ledges the ground shelved 
 
 GRIFFIN HALL (building to the right). 
 
 down sharply to the north, where the building now stands. The 
 first thing to do was to blast down these rocks in front, and then 
 transport them some rods to the northwest, in order thereby to level 
 up the ground on the back side, and to lay a firm foundation all 
 around, most of it on the living limestone. The next thing to do 
 was to procure an ornamental and the locally novel underpinning, 
 which was gotten of sawn gray marble, nearly white, undoubt- 
 edly brought from Lanesboro, where the limestone is finer and 
 whiter than in Williamstown, and where at that time machinery 
 was in operation cutting out just such blocks as were required. The 
 window sills and caps, the latter somewhat longer and much 
 thicker than the former, and the two front door-sills and the steps 
 to these doors, were sawn out of the same material and by the same 
 process, the steps into very large blocks, all of which pieces are 
 in perfect place to-day after being seventy years in position. The 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 457 
 
 building is ninety-two feet long by thirty-eight feet wide, fronts the 
 south with two handsome doors equidistant from the corners, of 
 which the east one has always been the main entrance, and is three 
 stories high with an ample basement. 
 
 The costly underpinning was only used in front parallel with the 
 Main Street, and on the west end, then fully observable by all per- 
 sons passing from west to east. It consisted of two lines of blocks 
 one above the other, each just one foot high and the lower one well 
 above the ground, of different lengths of course so as to break joints, 
 and the smooth surface and light color contrasting finely with the 
 red brick above, of which the main building was constructed and 
 which in those days were never painted. The same relief was fur- 
 nished by the window sills and caps all over the building, except 
 that the heavy caps were not used on the back side at all, but in 
 place of them, and because they were much cheaper, bricks set on end 
 formed the caps, precisely as in the old West College. Certainly 
 in fact and, perhaps warned by his Andover experience, in cause, 
 Dr. Griffin studied cheapness in this building, wherever it would 
 not interfere with true beauty and usefulness. The back side, that 
 is, the north side, was wholly out of sight in those days, and almost 
 wholly so in these days also. There was no marble underpinning, 
 and no marble window-caps on the back side. The back wall of the 
 basement up to the uniform brick line was laid in the rough lime- 
 stone that came from the ledges in front. The wall, however, on 
 that side has not perceptibly settled any more than on any of the 
 others. It was good work all round. The marble sills were put 
 under every window in the building without exception; and there 
 were a considerable number of them left over when the chapel was 
 completed; and these Griffin sold to Mr. Morey, father of the pres- 
 ent William A. Morey, who was then about to build his brick house 
 near the southern end of Stone Hill, in which house the sills appear 
 firm and bright at the present time. 
 
 The steps leading up to the two doors in front were handsomely 
 constructed, and are handsomely in place at this day. The upper 
 stone in each is four feet by six and one-half, and nine inches thick. 
 The quick, heavy tread of hundreds of students to and from chapel 
 twice a day for over thirty years has perceptibly worn down the 
 upper block at the east door, and the sill behind it, at least two 
 inches at the middle point. The only entrance to the basement was 
 on the east end of the building near the front, and this door was also 
 handsomely wrought and approached by smaller blocks in the marble 
 steps; but the pressing need of another recitation-room, besides the 
 
458 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 famous Senior recitation-room in that corner of the first floor, caused 
 to be constructed, many years after the building itself, an annex of 
 one story, covering all of the east end in its lower portion, except 
 that part covered by the basement door and its approaches. This 
 low annex, wholly out of the plan and forms of the original build- 
 ing, greatly disfigures it, especially to those coming toward it up 
 " Consumption Hill, " which last designation sprung from a remark 
 of Dr. Griffin to the effect, that many a student had been cured of 
 tendencies to consumption by breasting up that hill in a hurry to 
 reach college prayers ! Barring this annex, Griffin Hall is a very 
 symmetrical and beautiful building. It cost ten thousand dollars. 
 It did and does great credit to the taste and skill of Edward Dorr 
 Griffin. It is not likely that it was drafted by any professional 
 architect. Neither of its external dimensions fall into even feet, 
 nor exactly into feet and half feet. It is surmounted by a belfry in 
 excellent proportion both as to size and height, and this is sur- 
 mounted by a strong iron finial, on which are fastened two gilded 
 globes of metal, one above the other, the lower one twenty-one 
 inches in diameter and the other fourteen inches. Above these is 
 the weather-vane, seven feet long. The finial comes to a point with 
 two slight bits of scroll-work, the broader sides toward the street. 
 The building arid all its summit-lines satisfy even the trained eye 
 and educated taste. 
 
 The evidence is direct and certain, although not written down 
 contemporaneously, that the copper balls and the weather-vane were 
 not fastened on the finial by any predetermined measurements, but 
 by the eye of Dr. Griffin himself, standing across the Main Street by 
 the old East College fence, while the men above the belfry lifted or 
 lowered the balls and the vane in accordance with the motions of 
 his long arm and huge hand, until each was in exact relation to the 
 others and in right proportions of height with the whole building 
 and with the terminating finial above, when at his stentorian 
 "Hold! " each and all were made secure in place. It is not known 
 that balls and vane have ever been unfastened and taken down, until 
 in August, 1896, under the general supervision of Watkins, college 
 carpenter, all three were temporarily removed for the purpose of 
 regilding. The only other feature of Griffin Hall that claims notice 
 in this place is the elaborate central window of the west end of the 
 building, directly in front of which within stood the pulpit of the 
 chapel. The present writer is no architect, and, accordingly, he 
 cannot technically describe this window; but he had the pleasure a 
 few years ago of running across a professional architect, otherwise 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 459 
 
 unknown to him, who was admiring and copying it by himself alone. 
 This man's emphatic testimony was, that the window was the finest 
 architectural feature on all of the college ground. It is but fair to 
 add, however, that Hopkins Hall and the three Thompson labora- 
 tories had not then been constructed, and could not consequently 
 come into this comparison. 
 
 Before the formal dedication of this chapel, the main feature of 
 which was a useful historical address by the president, the college 
 faculty, as such, suffered its first great loss by the resignation of 
 Professor Chester Dewey. He had been nineteen years in continu- 
 ous service, two years as a tutor, from 1808, and seventeen years as 
 
 
 GRIFFIN HALL AT PRESENT. 
 
 a Professor in the Natural Sciences. He entered college from 
 Sheffield in 1802, and while strong in mathematics and classics, he 
 evinced from the first a decided partiality for the natural sciences. 
 He was the pioneer on this ground, as Professor Silliman was at 
 New Haven a few years earlier, in this class of studies, and put 
 botany and chemistry on a permanent basis, and helped on in the 
 great work of sorting out the special sciences, which were then 
 grouped under the sole designation of natural philosophy. AS a 
 boy, he had been remarked for an early and symmetrical develop- 
 ment of both body and mind, for unusual good health and buoyant 
 spirits; as a student, he manifested quickness of perception, and a 
 
460 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 manly disposition, and high regard for the rights and feelings of 
 others, and a hearty interest in whatever he undertook, whether of 
 sports or studies; and as a man, he showed great facility in execut- 
 ing business of any kind and method, in fulfilling appointed duties, 
 and a willingness to help others, however weakened by habits or 
 circumstances. 
 
 It is admitted on all hands by his contemporaries that President 
 Griffin was no disciplinarian. He wholly lacked the wonderful tact 
 possessed by his successor of handling students practically without 
 discipline; and he lacked still more the sympathetic and whole- 
 hearted power, which some college officials have possessed, of so 
 drawing the good-will and confidence of students, and of so develop- 
 ing the interest of students in the studies pursued, that the steady 
 and impartial and kindly application of a few rules reached all the 
 ends of discipline with very little friction. Chester Dewey had all 
 the natural qualities implied, and quickly acquired the practical 
 skill requisite, in governing students by a combination of the two 
 above-mentioned modes of action, in which Griffin was deficient. 
 The professor consequently came to hold a prominent position in the 
 management, as well as in the instruction, of the College, and when- 
 ever the president was away, which was then a considerable portion 
 of the time, he acted tacitly in his stead, and usually with the best 
 results. As a contemporary has well put it: "His facility and suc- 
 cess in the government of young men brought upon him special 
 responsibilities, and constituted him the leader in emergencies. In 
 doubt, his counsel was essential; in difficulty, his presence was in- 
 dispensable; in any difference of sentiment, his opinion was final." 
 Any one can easily glean from what has been said about Griffin in 
 this chapter, that he would not relish such influence and deference 
 accorded to a colleague, or, as he doubtless conceived it, subordinate. 
 At any rate, he disrelished it. He could not understand the grounds 
 of his own weakness as a college officer. He did not understand the 
 grounds of the great strength of his colleague as a college officer. 
 Xor did he at all appreciate the indispensableness of Professor 
 Dewey to the College as matters then stood. Details of the quarrel 
 have not come down to us, nor direct proofs of the jealousy of the 
 president toward the professor; but it is as certain as anything in 
 the past can be, that the professor was far better fitted for the func- 
 tions of a president than was the president himself, and that this 
 circumstance, with others, made cordial relations between the two in 
 the practical ongoings of the College very difficult, if not impossible. 
 
 It is not suggested in these lines, neither can it have been true, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 461 
 
 that Professor Dewey was altogether without blame in the misunder- 
 standings and repulsions that led to his resignation of his professor- 
 ship in 1827. Such rare success as his was in winning the hearts 
 as well as the judgments of the students, was too well calculated 
 (human nature being what it is) to inflate a comparatively young 
 man, to make it probable that he kept himself as meek and silent 
 as would have been proper under the assumptions and criticisms and 
 suspicions of his elder in years and superior in position. But, how- 
 ever this may have been, the loss of Professor Dewey to the College 
 was severe and irreparable. The only full professor left was Ebene- 
 zer Kellogg, a man greatly inferior to Dewey in every respect. 
 Dewey had studied divinity during the two years between his 
 graduation and his accession to the teaching force of the College, 
 and he became an excellent preacher. Even at the beginning of his 
 professorship, William Cullen Bryant, then a Sophomore, regarded 
 his preaching so favorably, that he said of it fifty years afterward, 
 "We listened with more interest [than to President Fitch] to Pro- 
 fessor Chester Dewey, then in his early manhood, the teacher of the 
 Junior class, who was the most popular of those who were called the 
 Faculty of the College." 
 
 Albert Hopkins, who commenced his long-continued course of 
 teaching in the College in the year that Chester Dewey left it, in 
 that article on the religious history of the College already referred 
 to and quoted from, mentions this departure as one among several 
 causes of the decadence of religion and increase of impiety at that 
 time and afterward. " A want of permanence among the officers of 
 the College, operating, of course, unfavorably to the exertion of any 
 systematic religious influences." From what happened directly 
 afterward, as surely as from all that went before, it is clearly dis- 
 cernible that the College could have much better spared its presi- 
 dent than its chief professor. The latter was just in the prime and 
 fulness of his powers, forty-three years old; the former was not 
 indeed past age, as we generally reckon it for such functions, being 
 then in his fifty-eighth year, but he was uncommonly old for his 
 years, and unsuited in his whole make-up to enlarge and deepen the 
 studies of a college, which was to him a sort of mill-horse round. 
 Dewey, on the other hand, was constructive and progressive. He 
 had already enlarged the circle of studies, and had imparted a 
 vitality and prominence to the natural sciences, which they kept 
 unquestioned throughout the first third of the century. In that 
 interval of time, no other class of studies equalled these in interest 
 to the students, and in really educating power. The credit of this, 
 
462 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 rather the great distinction of it, will always rest with Chester 
 Dewey. His immediate successor in the professorship, Ebenezer 
 Emmons, and Albert Hopkins, in a cognate professorship created 
 in 1829, assisted to continue a certain preeminence to these studies 
 over others, until about 1833; then these slowly gave place to 
 another class of studies, for the next third of the century, under the 
 leadership of Mark Hopkins. 
 
 On leaving Williamstown, Dewey went first to Pittsfield, where 
 he remained for nine years in charge of a boys' school of a high 
 grade, called the Pittsfield "Gymnasium," which offered unusual 
 facilities for the training of boys, and which he conducted with 
 great success. In June, 1826, the Berkshire Association of Con- 
 gregational Ministers passed, at their session in Stockbridge : 
 
 1 st - That we will adopt measures to secure the writing, and as soon as cir- 
 cumstances shall permit, the printing and circulation of a History of the County ; 
 which shall embrace an account of everything important in it, whether natural 
 or artificial, civil, literary, or religious : more particularly, which shall embrace 
 an account of the settlement of the several Towns ; the formation of Parishes and 
 Churches ; the settlement, dismission and death of Ministers ; revivals of religion, 
 and sketches of the lives of eminent men. 
 
 2 d - That Rev. Mr. Field be requested to prepare the materials for said History. 
 
 In the preface to this publication, when it came to be printed, in 
 1829, Mr. Field wrote as follows : " At the time these votes were 
 passed, it was designed to apply to Professor Dewey to write the 
 Natural History of the County. He has done more. The part to 
 which his name is prefixed is written by him, with the exception 
 of the paragraphs which respect the early settlement of the County, 
 the Aboriginal inhabitants, the Revolutionary War, Shays's Insur- 
 rection, the Courts, revivals of Eeligion, and most of the Tables. 
 These have been supplied by the Committee according to an early 
 understanding between the Professor and him." 
 
 The title-page of the First Part, which embraces nearly one-half 
 the entire book, runs as follows : 
 
 A 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 THE COUNTY OF BERKSHIRE. 
 
 PART I. 
 CONTAINING A 
 
 GENERAL VIEW OF THE COUNTY. 
 BY REV. CHESTER DEWEY, 
 
 Late, Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy in 
 Williams College, and now Principal in the Berkshire Gymnasium. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 463 
 
 In 1836 he removed to Kochester to assume direction of the " Col- 
 legiate Institute" there, which became, under his auspices, the 
 present " University of Kochester." He never afterward removed 
 his home, but he continued for many years to give courses of lectures 
 on botany and chemistry in the medical schools of Pittsfield and 
 Castleton, Vermont. His old age was a pleasure and a wonder. 
 Preserving his youthful sympathies, his vigor of mind, health of 
 body, and lifelong habits of industry, he passed away in December, 
 1867, at the age of eighty-three, with a serenity and triumph that 
 befitted a Christian philosopher. He had kept up in general in 
 all the branches of natural science, but his specialty was botany, 
 and he became the highest authority in this country and in Europe 
 in the botanical department of sedges. His collection of grasses, 
 also, said to have been the largest and best in the world, he pre- 
 sented to Williams College, and one of the last years of his life was 
 much occupied in completing its scientific arrangement. 1 
 
 As we have already seen in part, the year 1827 was one of the 
 landmark years in the history of the town and College. The trustees 
 voted to raise money to build a new chapel, and also to found a new 
 professorship. This was termed of " Rhetoric and Moral Philoso- 
 phy," and its first incumbent was William A. Porter, an alumnus 
 of 1818, a tutor in 1819-21, in which latter year he pronounced 
 the master's oration, which Dr. Griffin is credibly reported to have 
 said was the best that he had ever heard on a Commencement occa- 
 sion. After a leisurely study of theology under his father's tuition 
 at Catskill, and at Princeton for two years, he was called to Bur- 
 lington as a candidate for settlement in the ministry, but before 
 that question was decided he was chosen Professor of Languages in 
 the college there, in which position he served two years, and then 
 came back to his Alma Mater to fill the new professorship, of which 
 much was expected, and to which Daniel Noble, his father-in-law, 
 contributed pecuniary support. Professor Porter had all the advan- 
 tages of an uncommonly fine personal appearance, a melodious voice, 
 warm feelings, and even temper, talents and accomplishments both 
 varied and brilliant, and local associations and relations that were 
 of the best. No man before or since has stepped into a professor- 
 
 1 1 am not likely to forget the circumstances under which I saw Professor Dewey 
 for the first and only time. It was the morning of Commencement day, 1856. I was 
 to be married the next morning in the college chapel hy Mark Hopkins; and was 
 anxious to present to him beforehand my legal certificate to that end. I found him 
 at length on the top of the old astronomical observatory in the sole company of his 
 old teacher and confrere. I was not introduced, but I had a chance to mark the 
 features and bearing of a man of men. 
 
464 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ship on this ground with obviously equal prospects and preparations 
 for a useful and excelling career. But time (an indispensable ele- 
 ment in college success) was denied to him. Death cut short his 
 opportunities before he finished his third year of service. What is, 
 what was, is open to observation and record; the door to what might 
 have been is inexorably closed to human eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Porter, thus left a widow in early life, was Mary Noble, 
 eldest daughter of the treasurer of the College. Her beauty of per- 
 son as a girl and as a woman, even to old age, was noteworthy; and 
 it has often been repeated from one lip to another that she was the 
 handsomest woman ever bred in Williamstown. In 1832, after two 
 years of widowhood, she married Charles Stoddard of Boston, who 
 was a competent and faithful trustee here from 1839 till 1872, and 
 she often accompanied her husband back to her old home, especially 
 when their son, Charles A. Stoddard, was filling out his college 
 course to its completion in 1854. Her character was as beautiful 
 as her face, and neither left much to be desired. Her body was 
 brought to the old cemetery here on the hillside. Dust to dust. 
 Around her resting-place moulder, too, the ancestors on both lines. 
 On the question of personal beauty, there was sometimes friendly 
 rivalry and rallying as between the special friends of Mrs. Stoddard 
 and those of Mrs. J. V. C. Smith, both natives of Williamstown and 
 both in mature life fellow -residents in Boston. Mrs. Smith was one 
 of the daughters of Henry C. Brown, sheriff of the county. The 
 late Dr. H. L. Sabin was fond of telling a story, in the simple inci- 
 dents of which he was a chief participator. In 1854, Mrs. Smith's 
 husband was the mayor of Boston. Two or three years after that, 
 Dr. Sabin and two of his colleagues in the State Legislature were 
 sauntering along Washington Street of a Saturday afternoon, 
 jocosely killing time. There was an empty dry-goods box con- 
 veniently near the sidewalk, and the three proceeded to sit down on 
 it country style. One of them proposed that, if a real handsome 
 woman passed by, those of their number who thought her such 
 should lift the right hand in signal thereof. Pretty soon all three 
 hands went suddenly up, it was Mrs. Charles Stoddard. Not 
 long after all the three hands popped up again, and this time it 
 was Mrs. Mayor Smith! Sabin then vociferously claimed them 
 both as Williamstown girls, and old pards of his! 
 
 Another apparently insignificant, but really historical, item of 
 this year, 1827, bearing on both the College and the town, was the 
 master's oration delivered at Commencement by Mark Hopkins. 
 He was the eldest of three sons of Archibald and Mary Curtis Hop- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 465 
 
 kins of Stockbridge, born Feb. 4, 1802. Their farm consisted of 
 375 acres, and it was one of the old Indian mission farms of the 
 century preceding; and one of the buildings upon it had been erected 
 for mission purposes by the General Court of Massachusetts, which 
 stood in its place and was put to ordinary farm uses till long past 
 the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Hopkins 's grand- 
 mother was Electa Sergeant, daughter of the Rev. John Sergeant, 
 the sainted Indian missionary of Stockbridge. Electa Sergeant was 
 granddaughter of Ephraim Williams, Senior, the father of the 
 founder of the College, the head of one of the four English families 
 brought to Stockbridge by the General Court in order to set an 
 example of Christian living before the mission Indians. It is per- 
 haps likely, although there is no hint of it anywhere, that these 
 circumstances in the line of their descent and in the origin of their 
 home may have influenced the boyish thoughts of Mark Hopkins 
 and of his brother Albert, who was five years younger, as toward 
 religion and missions. It is more likely that these boys derived 
 from their mother, who was a woman of uncommon strength of mind 
 and moral purpose, at once their intellectual traits and deeply 
 religious impulses. Little is told of their childhood, but this little 
 is significant. The elder related of the younger a family scene, 
 which he witnessed. When Albert was about three years old, he 
 was standing in the middle of the room, and his mother, who was 
 seated, bade him come to her. He refused. She used persuasion 
 with no avail, and then went and whipped him. Seating herself 
 again, she told him to come. He again refused, and was again 
 whipped; and this went on, the whippings becoming more severe, 
 till it seemed as if he would be whipped to death. During the 
 whippings he screamed, and then stood sullen and defiant. At 
 length, after the severest whipping of all, when his mother had 
 seated herself and bade him come, he stretched out both arms and 
 ran to her, and hid his face in her lap and sobbed. From that time 
 he was never disobedient, and grew up to be one of the most affec- 
 tionate and dutiful of sons. It was also remembered of Albert by 
 the older brother, that, when he was just able to run alone, he was 
 one day missed, and, having been found by his mother half a mile 
 from home, and being asked what he was doing there, he said he 
 was " looking at the great treeses." Mark also remembered, and some- 
 times used it as an illustration in his lectures in anatomy, that once, 
 when Albert had put his arm out of joint at the elbow, his father 
 had brought him up to Williamstown in a wagon to be treated by 
 the famous bone-setter of that day, Dr. Porter, and just how the 
 2n 
 
466 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 bone had been thrust back into its socket in half a minute's time. 
 The district school which these two boys attended in the winter was 
 a mile and a half from their home. This tended to develop their 
 physical constitution, naturally robust; the younger became noted 
 among his fellows in Stockbridge, and afterward in college, for 
 feats of strength and physical endurance; and the older one, after 
 a few years of half and half health, came into a forty years' course 
 of remarkable physical vigor, though he did not take the active 
 exercise nor make the strenuous bodily exertions of his brother. In 
 their boyhood, both worked on the farm in the summer-time, both 
 were very fond of natural scenes and growths, and both were early 
 stimulated by their parents to lives of study and reflection. 
 
 " Study was more congenial to my brother Mark than to me. He 
 entered upon the pursuit of knowledge prompted, I think, by a love 
 for it, mixed doubtless with something of a worldly ambition." So 
 wrote Albert Hopkins, who was five years younger than his brother, 
 to a mutual friend of both in 1840. These boys had an uncle, Jared 
 Curtis, an alumnus of the College in 1800, who providentially came 
 to be placed in a position to supplement the influence of the parents 
 in relation to their going to college. After several vocations else- 
 where, he became principal of an academy in Stockbridge, his native 
 place, just at the right time to assist in persuading his nephews to 
 go to college and to assist also in fitting them to enter. When 
 Mark was about seventeen years old he taught school for a term in 
 Richmond, the town adjoining Stockbridge on the north, and there 
 is good evidence that then and there he struck the key-note of his 
 after life. He gained the hearts of his scholars, so that they never 
 forgot him afterward. This primal success was followed up the 
 next year, when he was eighteen, by an experience that has but 
 recently come to light (1897), from a bundle of old letters preserved 
 by his mother. Partly on account of infirm health, and partly with 
 a view of earning money with which to go to college, for his parents 
 were not forehanded and they had just then lessened their means by 
 opening their home to the orphaned children of John Hopkins, 
 whom they brought up as their own, in May, 1820, Mark went to 
 Virginia, to open a school in Mecklenburg County, on the border of 
 North Carolina. He boarded with a Mr. Nelson, chief patron of 
 the school, who built the schoolhouse on his own land after young 
 Hopkins had arrived. Several of his pupils came from a consider- 
 able distance. The state of society, according to his letters to his 
 parents, was astonishingly primitive. His pupils though ignorant 
 were capable. He became strongly interested in them, and stayed 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 467 
 
 with them about eighteen months before he returned North. He 
 interested himself also in the blacks, who were one-half of the popu- 
 lation. At their request he read a chapter in the New Testament 
 to them in each of their fervid meetings, but withdrew after reading. 
 His letters home though artless are impressive. Even then he had 
 a master stroke in English. A letter to Albert in Latin is scarcely 
 English. A letter in the bundle from the mother addressed to Mark 
 on his nineteenth birthday is a masterpiece both in sense and 
 expression. 
 
 Some six or eight months after his return home from the South, 
 and in the line of some assurance of pecuniary help sent him by his 
 father while there, Mark entered Williams about the middle of 
 Sophomore year, and was graduated in due course in 1824. Per- 
 haps because his health was not yet firm, and because the instruction 
 offered was not all of it inviting, he was not specially assiduous or 
 constant at his college studies even after he had entered. 
 
 The full course has always been twelve terms. Four of these had 
 fully passed before he entered at all. He was certainly absent most 
 of the time for two more. By entering late he mainly (perhaps 
 wholly) escaped the tuition of the tutors, who, in their best estate, 
 were crude in their scholarship. There were then besides the tutors 
 two professors and the president. The only one of these three who 
 was at once a good teacher and an inspiring exemplar in life and 
 science, and a hopeful and companionable man, was Chester Dewey, 
 Professor of " Mathematics and Natural Philosophy." Mark Hop- 
 kins was not an adept in mathematics. What parts of them he 
 heartily essayed to learn, he learned with difficulty and with no 
 great success. Neither was he a good student in the ancient lan- 
 guages. Of his Greek lessons, he once said to a college mate, 
 " They are easy ; I do not know enough of Greek to make them 
 hard." But upon the natural sciences, under the impulse and guid- 
 ance of Professor Dewey, he entered with zest, and had a good suc- 
 cess in them throughout. The best and a complete proof of this 
 may be found in the master's oration, the first writing of his that 
 was published, in which nearly all of his illustrations are drawn 
 from those departments of knowledge loosely covered at that time 
 by the term, Natural Philosophy. His only college training in the 
 Baconian logic was derived from Dewey ; and he speaks, with some 
 enthusiasm, in the oration just referred to, of "an induction of par- 
 ticulars," like that of Newton in respect of gravitation. It is a 
 pity that he did not afterward pursue his studies in logic farther, 
 for he never came to a full comprehension of the essential differ- 
 
468 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 
 
 ences between the inductive and deductive logic, and their pro- 
 digious importance in the studies of which he was in general a 
 profound master. "I have never read Mill's 'Logic,' or any other 
 full book on that subject," he said apologetically to the writer in 
 the latter's Senior year, while he was going over with the class a 
 petty and antiquated book mainly on the syllogism. 
 
 From a boy his mind seems to have taken a philosophical turn, 
 causa causarum, although it does not appear that he found at 
 home many (if any) philosophical books strictly so called. As soon, 
 however, as he had fairly entered college, he began to search the 
 college library for such books. He found Eeid, Dugald Stewart, 
 Paley, and some others, which he read carefully and partially as- 
 similated, before he came under Dr. Griffin, who then taught these 
 subjects in the Senior year. It had been the function of the presi- 
 dents from the beginning to teach the Seniors morals and meta- 
 physics. Dr. Moore was fully competent to do this; and it is 
 probable that he had secured to the library the works of Scotch and 
 English writers, which Hopkins had devoured at his leisure. Dr. 
 Griffin was no metaphysician, and still less a scientific moralist. 
 There is no question that Hopkins was more than a match for his 
 teacher in these topics from start to finish. Not that he had yet 
 come to any final conclusions of his own, as to the ultimate grounds 
 of mental or moral action; but he knew what the then current 
 writers had said on these points, and what was consistent or non- 
 consistent with their fundamentals. We catch from a letter of 
 Harvey Rice, a classmate and friend, written to Franklin Carter, 
 while the latter was preparing a brief memoir of Hopkins not long 
 after his death, in 1887, an interesting statement or two, and, what 
 is better, some personal reminiscences of Hopkins's bearing in the 
 class-room toward his teacher and president. One statement is, 
 " He soon evinced a decided love for the study of metaphysics, and 
 read all the books on that subject which he could find in the college 
 library, and took great pleasure in discussing the different theories 
 advanced by different authors." The middle part of this state- 
 ment is loosely drawn, as such generals commonly are, and is 
 very probably exaggerated, although the library was then scant 
 enough in special books on any one branch of knowledge; and 
 besides, the strong statement conflicts with what the person con- 
 cerned expressly told the present writer thirty years later. The 
 other two clauses of the statement, however, are obviously and 
 abundantly true. 
 
 The following reminiscences in Rice's letter are pregnant with 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 469 
 
 suggestions in several directions, and are beyond all price as illus- 
 trating the character of two successive presidents of the College. 
 
 In the recitation-room he often put questions, arising out of our lessons, to 
 the learned professor [Griffin], which perplexed him, and then would answer 
 the questions himself with becoming deference. I well remember that on one 
 occasion, during our Senior year, he read before the class in the presence of the 
 professor an essay on a metaphysical subject. About half the essay was origi- 
 nal, and the other half copied from the distinguished Scotch author, Dr. Reid. 
 Hopkins had placed quotation marks on what was original, but omitted to credit 
 Keid. The learned professor who had the class in charge, in criticising the essay 
 pronounced the quotation all right, but cut and scored Dr. Reid unmercifully. 
 Hopkins said nothing, but doubtless laughed in his sleeve. He soon after con- 
 fided in me the finesse he had practised on the professor [president], with an 
 injunction to keep it secret, lest it might come to the ears of the professor and 
 wound his feelings. I doubt if he ever spoke of it to any one else. I kept the 
 secret for more than forty years, and then disclosed it, for the first time, in a 
 speech which I made at the Commencement dinner, in 1871, when Hopkins was 
 president of the College and presided at the table. The anecdote was received 
 with prolonged applause. 1 
 
 Was it honest for the pupil to put quotation marks around what 
 was his own in a composition destined to come before the eye of the 
 teacher, and to take bodily from another a long passage and pass it 
 off as his own? 
 
 Was the mere fact that the teacher " cut and scored unmercifully " 
 a passage really from Reid, a proof of his incapacity, when the 
 pupil continued to do that precise thing, as a teacher, with other 
 passages from Keid for forty years and more? 
 
 Because the teacher in class approved of the passages written by 
 the pupil, even though inveigled to do so by the quotation marks, 
 was that a good joke upon him, or any proof in itself that the pas- 
 sages approved were weak philosophy? 
 
 Did Hopkins impart to Rice the real reason for his injunction to 
 secrecy, in the words, " lest it come to the ears of the professor and 
 wound his feelings " ? 
 
 Finally, did the pupil respect himself any the more or his teacher 
 any the less for the apparent success of what he must have known 
 was an immoral trick? 
 
 The child is father of the man. The simple truth is, that Mark 
 
 1 1 was present at this Commencement dinner, and heard Mr. Rice tell the above 
 story, and joined without reflection in the laughter and applause. The laughter was 
 at the expense of the memory of the past president, Griffin, and the applause in honor 
 of the present president Hopkins. What reflection has led rne to conclude as to the 
 character of the whole matter from first to last, is made sufficiently apparent in the 
 text. 
 
470 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Hopkins displayed in this incident of his student life a trait, which 
 appeared and reappeared at intervals in his varied intercourse with 
 others throughout his active life, a trait which is well described 
 in a review of Carter's book in the Atlantic Monthly, presumably 
 written by the editor, H. E. Scudder, Williams College 1858, " as 
 something very like guile." Perhaps he inherited this feature of his 
 character from Ephraim Williams, father of the founder of the 
 College, who certainly possessed it to such a degree as ultimately to 
 destroy his influence in Stockbridge, and indirectly to destroy the 
 Indian Mission there. 1 Hopkins was great-great-grandson of Wil- 
 liams. The testimony of their college contemporaries is copious 
 and uniform, that both the Hopkins brothers were good students, 
 correct and decorous in all their deportment, courteous to everybody, 
 willing to help anybody they could, and highly esteemed at once 
 for their talents and their character. Mark was regarded by his 
 classmates as the best writer and deepest thinker in college at the 
 time. He received at graduation the appointment of valedictorian, 
 "an honor,' 7 says Harvey Rice, "justly bestowed and heartily ap- 
 proved by every member of the class. In conversation with him 
 nearly fifty years afterward, the writer happened to remark that he 
 was greatly surprised that the only dullard of his class, in his 
 graduating oration, had manifested a degree of ability and talent 
 which exceeded the expectation of everybody who knew him; and 
 that he was unable to account for it. 'Well,' said Hopkins, 'per- 
 haps I may, now the fellow is dead, explain it. The truth is, I 
 wrote the oration for him.' ' 
 
 The following is a copy of an invitation to the Commencement 
 Ball of 1824: 
 
 College 
 
 COMMENCEMENT BALL, SEPTEMBER ist, 1824 
 
 The Class of Graduates requests the attendance of 
 
 Miss Lucy Bridges 
 at Sylvester's Assembly Room at 7 P.M. 
 
 H. RICE S. MOOAR 
 
 M. HOPKINS fiftanagerg c. w. BULKLEY 
 
 J. H. CARPENTER J. S. ROBINSON 
 
 1 See for particulars Origins in Williamstown, passim. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 471 
 
 The "Assembly Koom" in the old Mansion House, elsewhere 
 described, was then called "Sylvester's," from the name of the 
 lessee of the tavern. In the early time these balls were as regu- 
 lar a feature of the annual Commencement as the baccalaureate 
 sermon or the valedictory oration. The "Miss Lucy Bridges" 
 herewith invited to this ball is now, 1897, Mrs. James Smedley, 
 and has kept this souvenir of her early youth (sixteen years) 
 until now, and has recently given it to the writer for the present 
 purpose. 
 
 Soon after Hopkins 's graduation, in 1824, he entered as a student 
 the Medical College at Pittsfield, but taught a part of that year in a 
 school at Stockbridge. Then he was chosen a tutor in his Alma 
 Mater, and served with acceptance for two years in that position. 
 But his heart was not in the subjects which he taught in the class- 
 room. Latin and Greek as such had few charms for him, although 
 for a part of the time he taught in other subjects, and in the Junior 
 class. For the first year he was associated in the tutorship with his 
 classmate and warm friend, William Hervey. Both were power- 
 fully influenced, religiously, by the wonderful outpouring of the 
 Spirit upon the College during that year, and both powerfully 
 influenced the students in the way of righteousness; and not 
 the students only, but also many people, young and old, in the 
 town. After Tutor Hervey retired, and during the year when 
 Hopkins was what was then called "Sophomore tutor," he 
 taught a class of ten or twelve boys in the Sunday-school of 
 the town. The testimony is direct and pathetic as to his religious 
 influence over that class. Said one of them of their teacher, " He 
 left in the autumn of that year, and the final meeting with us 
 was an occasion whose memory of more than sixty years is still 
 tearful." 
 
 The faculty appointed Tutor Hopkins, as a compliment to him 
 and fittingly to round out his official connection with them, to 
 deliver the master's oration at Commencement. This appointment 
 continued to be an honor, so regarded by the donors and so relished 
 by the recipients, to one of those seeking that degree three years 
 after graduation, for about thirty years after this, as it had been 
 considered an honor for a long time before this. At this very Com- 
 mencement, William A. Porter was chosen Professor of Moral 
 Philosophy and Rhetoric, largely on account of distinction gained in 
 1821 by his master's oration, as has been already noted; and it is 
 as certain as any such matter can be made, that Hopkins became 
 Porter's successor in this professorship in 1830, still more largely 
 
472 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 in consequence of distinction gained by his own master's oration 
 in 1827. 
 
 This piece, which reads like an essay in philosophy, and has few 
 oratorical features in it from beginning to end, except clearness and 
 force of statement and reasoning, convincingly shows what his read- 
 ing had been, and how the bent of his mind had been set, in the 
 three years since graduating. Its subject was "Mystery." It does 
 not show a trace of any of the subjects he had been teaching in for 
 two years in College. No one could have guessed from it that he 
 had attended medical lectures, and was about to resume them, in 
 preparation for the profession which he had chosen for his life- 
 work. It made a deep impression upon those who heard it. It was 
 published the next April in the American Journal of Science and 
 Arts. There is no evidence, indeed the evidence is all the other 
 way, that the delivery of the oration on the commencement stage 
 added anything to its impressiveness over and beyond what has been 
 received by careful and intelligent readers of it. About 1880, at 
 any rate the last time that John Morgan, of the class of 1826, was 
 here, Hopkins told in the alumni meeting at his own expense and 
 in the presence of Morgan, who had been for a lifetime Professor of 
 Biblical Literature in Oberlin College, of an amusing passage once 
 happening between the two just after Hopkins had spoken on the 
 stage : " Mark, you are the aivkwardest man that ever 1 heard 
 speak!" Morgan was a native Irishman, born the same year as 
 Hopkins, immigrating in early childhood, fitting for college in 
 Stockbridge Academy, becoming a classmate here with Albert Hop- 
 kins, and always continuing intimate with the older brother also. 
 John Morgan was as tall and burly as Mark Hopkins, but far more 
 supple in motion and graceful in attitude, as befitted a well-to-do 
 native of the Isle ; while stiffness and awkwardness in attitude and 
 motion continued to characterize the public addresses of the other 
 even to old age, although they gradually became less, or at least 
 less noticeable. Much earlier in life than most men, Hopkins lost 
 his hair on the top of the head, while considerable tufts remained 
 till the last upon the sides and back of it; and it was a very 
 peculiar motion of his in public speaking, to bring up over the top 
 of his head with one hand or the other the long stray hairs on 
 one side or the other, which were doubtless brushed and trained 
 to stay there in general, as appears in all his pictures. His eyes 
 were deep set in his head, very bright, shaded by uncommonly 
 thick and long lashes, so that it was difficult for any one to tell 
 of what color they were. He used sometimes to amuse himself 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 473 
 
 by asking chance groups of young people to tell him what color his 
 eyes were. 
 
 With that master's oration Hopkins took permanent leave of the 
 College, as he supposed. The only professorship then founded that 
 he was fitted for, or would have thought of accepting had it been 
 offered to him, had been just at that time filled by Professor Porter, 
 an earlier alumnus, a very suitable man, and a man more favored 
 by President Griffin than Hopkins then was or ever after came to 
 be. Albert Hopkins became a tutor at the same time that Mark 
 went out of his two years' tutorship; and if either of them had 
 then thought, that a college life would be desirable for himself or 
 the other, the chances would have looked brighter for the younger 
 brother; for he was the better mathematician, better fitted for and 
 grounded in those .natural sciences, which Professor Dewey had 
 brought and kept to the fore. And so it happened in point of fact. 
 Albert Hopkins did not leave the College from 1827 till his death, 
 in 1872; not that he was teaching all the time in that long interval, 
 and still less teaching in single lines of study. He remained for 
 two years a tutor, then assumed the duties of Professor of Mathe- 
 matics and Natural Philosophy for nine years, and then for just 
 thirty years continued in the chair of Natural Philosophy and 
 Astronomy, when he practically ceased teaching in 1868, though 
 nominally bearing the title of "Memorial Professor of Astronomy," 
 on a foundation given by his lifelong friend, David Dudley Field. 
 Mark Hopkins went back to his medical lectures, to some teaching, 
 pursued as a means of paying his expenses, and to a futile effort to 
 establish himself as a physician in New York City. His own phrase 
 in relation to this was often repeated in after life, " I had pretty 
 much got out of practice in New York, or rather, I had never 
 got in." 
 
 There must also be chronicled under this year of 1827, something 
 perhaps equally interesting in the history of the town and college 
 both, since both were concerned in its initiation and maintenance 
 while it lasted, namely, the establishment in April of that year of 
 a weekly newspaper, entitled the American Advocate, "Edited and 
 Published by Eidley Bannister, nearly opposite the West College, 
 for the Proprietors." A random file of these newspapers, extending 
 from No. 11 to No. 76, though far from complete within these 
 numbers, is now lying on the writer's desk. They are well able to 
 yield some gleanings of promise to our general purposes in this 
 chapter. Bannister was the printer as well as the editor and pub- 
 lisher, the only printer in town who has ever left a name behind 
 
474 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 liim as such, and probably the only man who ever exercised the 
 printer's art within its limits. The printing-office was at first 
 down street, '" nearly opposite the post-office," as was announced 
 in the earlier headlines, but more eligible quarters were later found 
 in the Williamstown Academy building, undoubtedly in the east 
 room of the lower floor, in which Keyes Danforth, still later, held 
 his law office, and also the post-office from 1853 till 1861, nearly 
 the entire front of which building is shown in the accompanying 
 woodcut. It is quite possible, that the trustees of the Academy and 
 owners of the building were among the " proprietors " mentioned in 
 the headlines of the newspaper in every issue. Who the "proprie- 
 tors " were is not otherwise known; but it is plain enough that the 
 
 ambitious enterprise (for so small a town) did not prove to be 
 profitable to them; for it is believed that no number of the 
 paper was printed after November, 1828. It died within two 
 years of its hopeful beginning. It died amid the bitter disputes 
 and turmoils of the first election of Andrew Jackson to the 
 presidency. 
 
 The name of the newspaper, American Advocate, hints at the in- 
 fluence and policy of Henry Clay, at that time a Democratic politi- 
 cian of wonderful personal magnetism, but with no claims to profound 
 statesmanship. If there were ever anything absolutely un-American 
 in every fibre of it, it was that jumble of restrictions and prohibi- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 475 
 
 tions on foreign trade, which Clay dubbed the "American System." 
 There was no " system " about it whatever, but only a game of greed 
 and grab, and the devil take the hindmost; there was nothing 
 ''American" about it, because it denied the fundamentals of Jeffer- 
 son's Declaration, and forbade to the whole people, at the instance of 
 a few schemers, the " liberty " to buy and sell and get gain. Never- 
 theless, there were then, as there have been more or less ever since, 
 ignorant dupes of these public plunderers, led astray by the sound 
 and fury of deceptive words like "Protective" and "American" and 
 "Home Market." Clay was a candidate for the presidency in 1824 
 under this false hue and cry, but was beaten by John Quincy Adams 
 in the national House of Eepresentatives, the only time a President 
 has been chosen by that constitutional method. Clay himself voted 
 in the House for Adams, and became almost immediately the latter 's 
 Secretary of State, in consequence of which the charge of " bargain 
 and corruption " was vehemently raised against him, and he lost a 
 large part of his great popularity, and never afterwards regained it. 
 Clay had many warm friends in Massachusetts, particularly Henry 
 Shaw of Lanesboro, father of the late " Josh Billings " of humorous 
 memory. He visited Shaw on one occasion in Lanesboro as a per- 
 sonal friend, whose vote in favor of Clay's "Missouri Compromise" 
 in 1820 put a sudden end to Shaw's political life in Berkshire. A 
 large majority of the people of Wllliamstown had been Democrats 
 in distinction from Federalists ever since that party line was drawn, 
 and some of them had been misled by the wretched fallacies of Clay 
 and others into supposing that prohibitions on trade could increase 
 riches whose only possible source is trade; and there were enough 
 of these people in Williamstown in 1827, and they were influential 
 enough, to give both a name and a sort of policy to their respectable, 
 though short-lived newspaper. We notice in one of the numbers an 
 editorial in ostensible support of this restrictive and prohibitive 
 theory of commerce ; but there is not a paragraph or a line in it that 
 is worth quoting, because the right of citizens to buy and sell freely 
 is not a subject that has two sides to it any more than any one of 
 the ten commandments has two sides. Jefferson, in immortal words, 
 has pronounced this right and liberty to be at once self-evident and 
 inalienable. Government, which in the last analysis is nothing in 
 the world but a committee of the citizens to act in their behalf and 
 for their good as a whole, may indeed, with their consent and at 
 their instance, restrict and prohibit trade proved to be prejudicial 
 to the public health or the public morals or the public revenue, and 
 on no other grounds whatever. 
 
476 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 In politics, the Williamstown Advocate supported the then incum- 
 bent of the presidency, John Quincy Adams, as against General 
 Jackson. The paper did not survive the triumphant election of the 
 latter in the fall of 1828. The "Tariff of Abominations," so called 
 in the parlance of the time, passed in the summer of that year, and, 
 increasing greatly the tariff-taxes over those of the then unprece- 
 dentedly high taxes of the "Tariff of 1824," was a main means of 
 overthrowing the administration, and of a reaction that in turn 
 overthrew protectionism for that generation. 
 
 The members of the faculty contributed freely to the columns of 
 the Advocate. Ebenezer Emmons, for one, who, during his college 
 course of 1814-18, became greatly interested in the several brandies 
 of natural science under the tuition of Chester Dewey and Amos 
 Eaton, and continued these studies as a practical physician in Ches- 
 ter and Williamstown, and subsequently had a large share in intro- 
 ducing these studies into the country at large. In 1826 he published 
 his " Manual of Mineralogy and Geology." Soon after he moved to 
 Williamstown as a physician and was appointed Lecturer on Chem- 
 istry. He furnishes a short series of articles to the newspaper on 
 the minerals and plants in the neighborhood. He was a plain and 
 unpretentious man, full of scientific information, zealous in his 
 work, and willing to teach anybody who was willing to learn at any 
 time and in any way he could/ He was chosen a deacon in the 
 church here in 1828, and continued to serve in that capacity till 
 1836, when he removed his family to Albany, and began to take his 
 share in the geological survey of the State of New York. And this 
 was a prodigious share too. He retained his connection with the 
 College, however, coming annually to Williamstown to deliver a 
 course of lectures on geology and mineralogy for many years, until 
 his public work as a scientist for the State of North Carolina inhib- 
 ited this, and he died there in 1863. 
 
 Albert Hopkins was a tutor in the College during most of the time 
 when the newspaper was published in the town. A series of moral 
 and religious essays appeared in the paper, signed "U," of which 
 the thirteenth was printed in No. 76. The style of these essays 
 leads the writer to believe that they were written by Tutor Hopkins. 
 They were given a prominent place in the paper, in some instances 
 certainly the first column of the first page. We have seen that 
 Mark Hopkins quit his connection with the College as tutor at the 
 Commencement in 1827, gaining much reputation for himself on 
 that occasion by his master's oration on "Mystery." We learn 
 from a number of the Advocate, printed October 18, that he delivered 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 477 
 
 on the second of that month, in Stockbridge, an address before the 
 Agricultural Society of that town, then celebrating its fourth anni- 
 versary. The paper prints the address in full, and thus becomes a 
 curious channel for transmitting to posterity his first published 
 effusion, all knowledge of whose existence had passed out of the 
 minds of living men. A feeling of the grotesque is excited in com- 
 paring the metaphysical and sustained effort of September with the 
 mechanical and strained effusion of October. Mark Hopkins never 
 owned a rod of land in his life. And if there ever was a farmer's 
 son born and bred who separated himself more completely in after 
 life in sympathy and knowledge and interests from the men of the 
 plough, it has not been the writer's lot to know him. We are glad 
 to give the opening passage of this address verbatim, and then a 
 paragraph from the middle of it, thus seizing a chance to perpetuate 
 a transient phase of personal and public opinion. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY: 
 
 As the agricultural interest is the great interest of the country, it behooves no 
 good citizen to decline anything, which, in the judgment of others, may conduce 
 to its promotion. A conviction of this, together with an application from your 
 committee under circumstances somewhat peculiar, must be my apology for pre- 
 suming to appear, in niy present capacity, before a body of agricultural men. 
 Who is there indeed, that would not be happy to hail the spirit on this subject, 
 which has brought together, upon a day so unpropitious, so large an assemblage 
 of our agriculturalists ; and especially the spirit that has this day gratified the 
 Society by a very interesting exhibition from one of our neighboring and most 
 enterprising towns ? 
 
 One thing more I mention as requisite to the prosperity and respectability of 
 Agriculturists, and that is a republican simplicity of manners. Under this head 
 properly falls the encouragement of Domestic Manufactures, a subject upon 
 which I had not intended to touch. But the exhibition of them this day at 
 the Academy, for the abundance and beauty of the articles, for their fineness 
 and firmness of texture, was such as to make a most interesting part of the 
 exhibition, and afford a subject of congratulation to all who witnessed it. It 
 implies a strength of character, a persevering industry, public spirit and domes- 
 tic habits truly valuable, which it is no flattery to mention, which it would be 
 even wrong not to commend. A perseverance in this course would go far to 
 remove the pernicious influence of the first cause at war with simplicity of man- 
 ners. This is vanity, which is always clamorous ; and the encroachments of a 
 spirit of ostentation and useless expense are to be constantly guarded against. 
 The vexation which it brings is but a thorny pillow to sleep on, and he who 
 knows not to quell its solicitations to the measure of his income, deserves to read 
 in a writ the record of his folly. The man who does not ground his respect on 
 the attributes which God has given him as a man rather than on anything which 
 money can purchase, deserves not the name. 
 
478 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Because he never gave any radical thought or analysis to that 
 subject which was indeed beyond his sentry's beat, Mark Hopkins 
 never emancipated himself from the notion implied in his use of 
 the then current phrase, Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures. 
 No wonder this was "a subject upon which I had not intended to 
 touch." The farmers of Berkshire were by no means agreed upon 
 it, and their orator first and last was always cautious to timidity 
 and sometimes timid to moral cowardice. If domestic manufactures 
 were profitable under the natural conditions of the time and place, 
 they needed no artificial encouragement. Profit is the only legiti- 
 mate and the always sufficient stimulus to industry and trade. But 
 the tariff of 1824 had already made it luridly evident what was the 
 nature of the "encouragement" sought to be given to "domestic 
 manufactures." It was by means of tariff-taxes levied on a large 
 part of the population in order to exclude foreign commodities of 
 certain kinds and grades, so that a very small part of the same popu- 
 lation might sell in a monopoly-market thus secured their own wares 
 at an artificial price grossly enhanced. The "encouragement," of 
 which the country has heard so much at intervals even down to the 
 present day, is nothing but the encouragement of taxes ; and the 
 " domestic industries " thus encouraged at the expense of their 
 neighbors are always found to be few in comparison with the whole ; 
 the industries thus " encouraged " by their own conspiracy and secret 
 combination are found to be the oldest and already richest and most 
 natural (except agriculture) of any in the land ; and the whole result 
 is always and of necessity loss and wrong and ruin. Mark Hopkins 
 was young and inexperienced in the ways of the world when he 
 applauded in Stockbridge what he so little understood. In the 
 course of a long life he never analyzed into its elements a single 
 case of trade, either foreign or domestic, to find how good it is in 
 the plan of God for both parties to it, how buying is always at the 
 same instant selling and selling ipso facto buying, how the keeping 
 out of foreign goods that want to come in is inevitably the keep- 
 ing in of domestic goods that want to go out to pay for them, and 
 how selfish interference with the divinely appointed laws of trade 
 comes home to roost and to defile in financial losses and social dis- 
 tinctions and moral hatreds and national decay. 
 
 The extant copies of the American Advocate exhibit a good many 
 interesting bits of information and advertisement as to the ways of 
 living and thinking in town and in College three-quarters of a cen- 
 tury ago. We learn from one of them, for instance, that the profes- 
 sors then on their induction delivered an inaugural discourse, just 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 479 
 
 as the successive presidents do now, a custom that has since fallen 
 into " innocuous desuetude," as our good President Cleveland would 
 doubtless express it. Two new professors, Porter and Hovey, were 
 inaugurated at Commencement, 1827, and both gave public discourses 
 pertinent to their respective departments, which were editorially 
 commended, not to say criticised, in the columns of the newspaper. 
 The programme of the exercises of Commencement Day was printed 
 entire, and we reproduce it here for the benefit of any of our readers 
 who may be curious in such matters. 
 
 COLLEGE KECOKD. 
 
 Commencement at Williams College took place on Wednesday, the 5th inst. 
 The day was fine, which gave an opportunity for a much larger and more 
 brilliant audience to attend, than we have ever before witnessed on similar 
 occasions, at this College. The following was the order of exercises: 
 
 MORNING. 
 
 1. Sacred Music. 
 
 2. Prayer by the President. 
 
 3. Salutatory Oration in Latin. JAMES BALLARD, Charlemont. 
 
 4. Oration. The importance of high aims. GEORGE HUBBELL TRACY, 
 Troy, N. Y. 
 
 5. Dissertation. The Inquisition. SAMUEL WILCOX, Hartford, Con. 
 
 6. Conference. Henry Martyn and Gordon Hall. WILLIAM BRADLEY, 
 Lee, DAVID DOWNS GREGORY, Sand Lake, N. Y. 
 
 7. Dissertation. The claims of the Aborigines. BARNABAS PHINNEY, 
 Lee. 
 
 8. Oration. Influence of climate on physical and mental constitution. 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HOXSEY, Williamstown. 
 
 9. Oration. Triumphs of Truth. JOSEPH MERRILL SADD, New Hartford, 
 Con. 
 
 10. Disputation. The expediency of attempting an entire suppression of the 
 use of ardent spirits. ORSAMUS TINKER, Worthington ; ASAHEL FOOTE, Lee. 
 
 MUSIC. 
 
 11. Oration. Oriental Poetry. OSCAR HARRIS, Goshen, N. Y. 
 
 12. Conference. Reputation as depending on Genius, Application, and 
 Circumstances. GEORGE WHITEFIELD HATHAWAY, Freetown ; WILLIAM LEWIS, 
 New Windsor, N. Y. ; BARUCH BUTLER BECKWITH, Great Barrington. 
 
 13. Philosophical Oration. Light. JOSEPH ANDERSON, Shelburne. 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 14. Sacred Music. 
 
 15. Greek Oration. Character of Lucian's Satire. JAMES MORRISON 
 ARNELL, Goshen, N. Y. 
 
 16. Oration. Palestine. MASON NOBLE, Williamstown. 
 
480 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 17. Poem. A vision of the year two thousand. AMOS DEAN WHEELER, 
 Leicester. 
 
 MUSIC. 
 
 18. Oration. Mystery. Mr. Tutor HOPKINS. 
 
 MUSIC. 
 
 19. Oration. Infidelity not Philosophy; with the Valedictory Address. 
 NATHAN BROWN, Whitingham, Vt. 
 
 20. Degrees conferred. 
 
 21. Sacred Music. 
 
 22. Prayer. 
 
 Prize-speaking of the undergraduates at some time during Com- 
 mencement Week, usually in the evening preceding Commencement 
 Day, whence the current name of the exercise, "Moonlight," 
 began early in the history of the College and has continued from 
 that time until this without intermission and scarcely without dimi- 
 nution of interest, to be an anticipated and remembered and impor- 
 tant feature of the exercises of the week. We copy from the Advocate 
 its editorial notice of this speaking for the year 1827, more particu- 
 larly because all the prize-winners were or came to be residents and 
 citizens of Williamstown. One of the prizes on this occasion was 
 the first scholastic honor that fell to Professor Edward Lasell of 
 wholesome memory. 
 
 The prize speaking on the same evening, deserves particular notice. A high 
 degree of improvement in declamation, is less frequently attained, than in most 
 other branches of education in our colleges. The fact is undeniably true ; and no 
 other reason can be assigned for it, than a culpable neglect on the part both of 
 officers and students. Simple elocution is, of itself, sufficiently important, to 
 claim a separate rank, and share its separate honors. Without it, a collegiate 
 education is like a structure of rough marble, strong and durable indeed, but 
 lacking the polish that renders it inviting. A conviction of this fact, would 
 induce more students to cultivate this elegant accomplishment ; and we were 
 gratified to perceive from the specimens exhibited by those selected on the 
 occasion, that they, at least, were aware of its importance. The successful 
 candidates were, in the Freshman Class, Ebenezer S. Cannon of Williamstown, 
 in the Sophomore Class, Henry Hubbell of Williamstown, and, in the Junior 
 Class, Edward Lasell of Schoharie, New York. 
 
 The office-bearers in the town government for the year 1828 are 
 found in a record of the " March Meeting " of that year, as follows. 
 All shades of politics are represented in the names of these office- 
 bearers. The chairman of the Board of Selectmen, a place he often 
 filled during a long series of years on account of his strong sense 
 and unusual executive ability, was Keyes Danforth, a Democrat of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 481 
 
 Democrats, whose fine farm at the western end of the village was 
 inherited by his son of the same name and of the same political 
 sentiments, Williams College, 1846, who kept with his few surviving 
 classmates their semi-centennial anniversary at Commencement, 
 1896. 
 
 MARCH MEETING. 
 
 The following are the TOWN OFFICERS elected at the meeting in this place 
 on Monday last : 
 
 Edmund Badger, Town Clerk. 
 Keyes Danforth, -j 
 
 Ebenezer Foster, I Selectmen, Assessors, and Bridge Committee. 
 Amasa Shattuck, ) 
 Stephen Hosford, ^ 
 
 Lyman Hubbell, > Overseers of the Poor. 
 Daniel N. Dewey, J 
 
 Josephus Bardwell, ) _. 
 
 , , > Constables. 
 Thomas C. Phelps, J 
 
 It appeared by the Report of the Overseers, that the whole expense to the 
 town, of supporting the poor during the last year, was $25, more than the 
 income of their labour, and that the clothes of the paupers are worth more than 
 $25, more than they were at the commencement of the year. 
 
 It is noticeable in this list of town officers how strongly the South 
 part is represented in it. Ebenezer Foster and Lyman Hubbell and 
 Thomas C. Phelps were all prominent men in that part of the town 
 at that time. Relative decadence, however, in comparison with the 
 northern half, had already manifested itself there; and a general 
 decadence of the whole town, in the point of leading men and in 
 comparison with forty-five years before, was visible enough. No 
 such men as Isaac Stratton and JSTehemiah Woodcock at the south, 
 and Benjamin Simonds and Thompson J. Skinner and David Noble 
 at the north, were in active life in town in the decade of 1820-30. 
 And a relative decadence, both in prominent men and in financial 
 prosperity, is to be observed in general for about thirty years longer. 
 The causes and extent of this decline will be treated farther on in 
 these pages, so far as this may be called for in a book of this 
 character. 
 
 The general story and characteristics of the "Gore," so called, 
 may be found in the early part of the " Origins in Williamstown." 
 The petition of Samuel Comstock to the General Court of Massa- 
 chusetts in 1827, a citizen who then lived on the Gore, as do also his 
 descendants of the same name to this day, is here quoted at length 
 from one of the numbers of the Advocate, because it is a legal paper 
 and illustrates a state of things in the southwest corner of the town, 
 2i 
 
482 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 a portion that still remains more unchanged from what it was a 
 century ago than any other portion. 
 
 To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court 
 assembled 
 
 SAMUEL COMSTOCK an inhabitant of the Gore of Land on the South West 
 Corner of Williamstown Called Trees Grant humbly shews, 
 
 npHAT the land of your petitioner lies wholly on said Gore and is bounded on 
 -L the East by Williamstown line. That his business leads him to Williams- 
 town (where he pays State and County taxes and performs Military duty) to 
 Hancock, Pittsfield and Albany that there is no open travelled way by his 
 house ; a County road running from Williamstown is the nearest which is about 
 100 rods from the town line before mentioned. That the road which your 
 Petitioner now enjoys by sufference crosses Moses Young's Land and Daniel A. 
 Sherwood's land and the said Sherwood refuses to allow your Petitioner to 
 occupy the said road any longer than next Spring and your Petitioner cannot 
 go to any of the places above mentioned without permission from the said 
 Young and Sherwood, or others over whose land he must pass, and he does not 
 know that he can get his permission after the next Spring. And your Peti- 
 tioner further shows that he has been informed and wisely believes that the next 
 Commissioners of Highways for the County of Berkshire nor the Selectmen of 
 the town of Williamstown aforesaid have any authority by law to locate a road 
 for the convenience of your Petitioner, as is provided in other cases and for 
 other Citizens of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Wherefore your Petitioner prays that the said Commissioners of Highways or 
 the said Selectmen of the town of Williamstown, as in the discretion of your 
 Honorable body shall seem most fit, may be empowered to lay out and locate a 
 road for the convenience of your Petitioner, and as in duty bound will ever pray. 
 
 (Signed} SAMUEL COMSTOCK. 
 
 Among the Williamstown advertisers in the Advocate were 
 Daniel Noble and Charles Baker, lawyers ; Ralph W. Gridley, 
 Chairman of the School Committee ; Samuel Duncan, Saw-mill ; 
 Luther Bartlett, Tanner and Currier ; Ridley Bannister, Printer and 
 Bookseller; Cheney Taft, Chair-Maker; Abraham Hanson, Saddle 
 and Harness ; William D. Beardsley, Tailor ; Mrs. West, Millinery 
 and Dress Making; Daniel N. Dewey, Fire Insurance; Charles 
 Chapin, Book-Binding ; Samuel Smith and Henry L. Sabin, Physi- 
 cians and Surgeons; C. A. Butler, Tailor; Whitmans and Benjamin, 
 Merchants; Samuel Kellogg, Executor; Solomon Bulkley, Deputy 
 Sheriff; John Hickcox, a runaway indented boy named William 
 Pratt ; William C. Johnson, Dry Goods ; John West, the buildings 
 and lot of the Williamstown Mineral Spring; Thacher G. Platt, 
 Wool-Carding and Cloth Dressing; Hosford and Brown, Lumber; 
 and the Directors, namely, Ralph W. Gridley and Daniel Noble and 
 Stephen Hosford and Solomon Bulkley and Daniel N. Dewey and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 483 
 
 Lyndon A. Smith and Charles Benjamin and Charles Baker, The 
 Williamstown Academy. Four of these directors and promoters, 
 namely, Bulkley, Baker, Benjamin, and Dewey, had advertised in 
 the Advocate on July 4, 1827, for a contractor, " to erect a building 
 suitable for an Academy, to be forty-four feet by twenty-eight, and 
 two stories high ; to be built either of wood or brick, the latter is 
 preferred." Precisely such a building as is thus described was put 
 up in less than a year, and stood at what is now the opening of 
 Park Street from Main. The site was afterwards occupied by the 
 Catholic church, the first one erected in town ; and the fee simple 
 of the land passed from that body, in 1896, to the President and 
 Trustees of the College. 
 
 There is a "Notice" in the Advocate of June 28, 1827, that is 
 worth quoting entire. 
 
 FOURTH OP JULY. An Oration will be delivered by a member of College, 
 accompanied by the other exercises usual on the occasion, at 10 o'clock, A.M., 
 in the College Chapel. 
 
 An Address will also be made by appointment of the Anti-Slavery Society, 
 by a Member. 
 
 Contemporary evidence in abundance is forthcoming at call, that 
 the students for a long while publicly celebrated the Fourth of 
 July by orations delivered, music performed, and other appropriate 
 exercises ; but the sole evidence known to the writer, that there was 
 ever an Anti-Slavery Society in College, and that it proposed to 
 agitate that subject publicly in combination with the customary 
 celebration of Independence Day, is contained in this precious 
 notice, worth its weight in gold, and in an editorial in the next 
 week's paper describing the joint celebration. How this society 
 originated, who its members were, how long the society lasted, and 
 what put an end to its existence are questions that cannot be 
 answered now, and probably never will be. But at any rate, and 
 this is significant enough, there was an Anti-Slavery Society in Wil- 
 liams College in 1827, and it gave a public address and furnished 
 an ode sung in the chapel on the 4th of July. Was there an earlier 
 and similar society anywhere else in New England ? William Lloyd 
 Garrison did not set up his Free Press in Newburyport until 1826, 
 nor his Journal of the Times at Bennington until 1828. 
 
 We gladly copy the Advocate's editorial, and the odes musically 
 performed on that memorable occasion. 
 
 FOURTH OF JULY. This Anniversary was celebrated in the College Chapel 
 by the Faculty and Students, and the inhabitants of our village. An oration 
 
484 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was pronounced by Mr. ROBINSON of the Sophomore Class, and an address was 
 delivered before the Anti-Slavery Society of Williams College by Mr. BECKWITH, 
 of the Senior Class. After the oration the following ODE was sung. 
 
 HAIL to the day that awakens good feeling, 
 
 The day that struck liberty's spark ; 
 Once more it salutes us, again 'tis appealing 
 To every American heart, 
 
 Remember the days, 
 Those hard-foughten days ; 
 Our fathers well acted their part. 
 
 E'en now round our mem'ry past glories assemble, 
 
 The triumphs of conquest are heard ; 
 The victor is wreath'd, see the diadem tremble, 
 It falls never more to be rear'd. 
 
 Hail, land dearly bought, 
 'Twas our fathers that fought, 
 For this it is ever endear'd. 
 
 The struggle is o'er and the voice of complaining 
 
 Is lost in the shouts of our joy : 
 We hear not the wretched oppression bewailing, 
 We have peace without any alloy. 
 
 From the east to the west 
 The whole nation is blest ; 
 Let praise our glad voices employ. 
 
 These blood-purchas'd blessings call loud for oblations, 
 
 And bid our thanksgivings arise ; 
 We proffer hearts beating with grateful pulsations, 
 And waft them afresh to the skies. 
 
 To him who sustain'd us, 
 The Saviour all glorious, 
 We gratefully lift up our eyes. 
 
 Come laud his high name who hath kept us from falling, 
 
 Who made our lov'd ancestors brave ; 
 On him when in trouble our hearts will be calling, 
 For he is Almighty to save. 
 
 To Jehovah we raise 
 Ascriptions of praise, 
 For all we inherit he gave. 
 
 The following ode was sung after the address, and closed the exercises. It 
 is supposed to be the Hymn of the liberated slave, just embarked for his native 
 shore. 
 
 The high heaving bark spread her wings to the sweep 
 Of the grove-scented gales as she moved in her pride ; 
 While bright eyes were glancing afar o'er the deep, 
 And soft strains of gladness were blent with the tide. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 485 
 
 We are free, brothers, free from the scourge and the chain, 
 That has cankered for years round the toil-callous' d limb, 
 Then light bound our hearts as the roe of the plain, 
 And the sun of our joy let no sorrows bedim. 
 
 The bright star of freedom beams proudly and high, 
 Lo, the night of oppression shall shroud us no more, 
 For the white friend has wiped every tear from our eye, 
 And bade us go free from his crime darken'd shore. 
 
 Farewell, mighty land of the noble and brave, 
 Sincerely we leave our best blessing to thee, 
 With a sigh when we think that the groan of the slave, 
 Is heard on the same breeze with songs of the free. 
 
 How gladly our tears would erase the foul blot, 
 That cankering lies on the scroll of thy worth ; 
 But the grief of a world can ne'er hallow the spot, 
 Where man, reckless man, trode his fellow to earth. 
 
 We are bound for the land of our fathers afar, 
 And the blue wilds of ocean exulting we roam 
 For hope tells of kindred that watch for us there, 
 And glad bosoms bounding to welcome us home. 
 
 And when on the soil of our sires we repose, 
 'Neath the cocoa tree lifting its voice to the wind, 
 While we smile at the kindness that solac'd our woes, 
 We will weep for the lov'd ones left groaning behind. 
 
 For ourselves, we were gratified with the performances, and are disposed 
 to consider the strictures (if they are meant as such) of our correspondent ID. 
 as random shots, in this instance at least, of a somewhat careless archer. It 
 was not, we believe the least pleasing circumstance attending this celebration, 
 that there was nothing to awaken strong feeling, and boisterous mirth, and 
 that with the exercises above enumerated, all further public demonstrations 
 ceased. We do not mean, however, by this, to express any disapprobation of 
 celebrations of a different character. It 'is the right and privilege of every one, 
 especially on such an occasion, to manifest his feelings in his own way, provided 
 he does not pass the bounds of morality, and good order. 
 
 At the same time, with this anti-slavery society, there was also 
 in College a Temperance Society, whose purpose and members are 
 known, and whose influence in reaction from tendencies and practices 
 to be characterized a little later was wholesome and permanent. 
 Mason Noble and Asahel Foote, both of the class of 1827, the one 
 a native and the other a lifelong resident of Williamstown, were 
 prominent in this society. Mason Noble was a distinguished Pres- 
 byterian clergyman in New York and Washington; and Asahel 
 
486 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Foote reflected credit throughout a long life upon his native town of 
 Lee and his early chosen William stown, as a teacher, a temperance 
 man, a cultivator of fruits, a deacon in the church, and a holder of 
 public office both local and State. 
 
 In parting now finally with the American Advocate, whose stray 
 copies, accidentally preserved in a garret for seventy years, have 
 afforded the readers several interesting bits of information relating 
 to that early time, we make one more excerpt, which brings before 
 us moderns in a pleasant light at once a granddaughter of General 
 Samuel Sloan, and Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, physician and professor. 
 It is an editorial of Ridley Bannister. 
 
 SURGICAL OPERATION. 
 
 Last Sunday, a young Lady of this town, the daughter of D. W. Sloan, Esq. 
 accidently swallowed a pin, which lodged about half way down in its passage to 
 the stomach. In the confusion and alarm that ensued, many expedients were 
 adopted by kind hearted and afflicted friends, such as swallowing hard sub- 
 stances, &c. and by medical advice, which was immediately procured, emetics 
 were also administered, but all to no purpose, except to render the situation 
 of the patient more distressing. About ten hours after the accident, Doct. 
 EMMONS of this town was called in, and the remedy he applied, though simple, 
 was to us novel and ingenious, and may be of use in similar cases, if made 
 public. A common wire was used, about twelve inches and a half long, and 
 doubled, with a piece of sponge attached to the end, this in a dry state was 
 easily passed down the passage below the pin, where it absorbed moisture and 
 became so much swollen, that in drawing it up, it completely filled the oesopha- 
 gus, and brought up the pin, strongly attached to it. 
 
 The ingenuity and success of this operation reflect great credit on Dr. E. 
 and though modest merit, if consulted, might have forbidden any comment on 
 our part, we feel that justice to him, and duty to the public, both require it. 
 
 Passing now in general to the state and progress of the College in 
 the last years of Dr. Griffin's presidency, it may be remembered that 
 Albert Hopkins became a tutor in 1827 and a professor in 1829, and 
 so came into a position, in which he continued uninterruptedly for 
 forty years, to know intimately and to remember vividly the state 
 of morals and religion in college, and so to put into a written account 
 his knowledge and recollections about 1860 for Durfee's " History of 
 the College." Some of the salient points of this account are quotable, 
 and more are condensable, for the purpose at present in hand. The 
 professor's personal religious experience was not only peculiar, but 
 also entirely unique on this ground. He understood that the one 
 great need of man is conformity to the will of God ; and he under- 
 stood, too, that this conformity is not to be reached and maintained 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 487 
 
 without a great and constant struggle ; and it was his own belief at 
 times, if not uniformly, as we learn from his own written words and 
 from unnumbered oral expressions, that perfection might be attained 
 as the result of such a struggle under the impulse and guidance and 
 blessing of the Holy Spirit. He says, " The doctrine of perfection, 
 as that doctrine has since been held by various persons, scattered 
 throughout the country [especially in Oberlin], started, so far as I 
 have been able to ascertain, here at this time. The original principle 
 here appears to have been good, but it has since been adulterated 
 with many things." From the first he gave himself to a practical 
 and incessant study how he could bring himself into this lofty 
 spirituality, and then how he could help to bring the largest num- 
 bers of others into it. As compared with an ordinary Christian 
 community, a college community offers to such a man seeking such 
 ends extraordinary obstacles. (1) The community itself is not con- 
 tinuous. It is wholly changed once in every four years. Impetus 
 given, example set, influence gained, outlooks widened, some spiritual 
 peaks reached, then all are scattered to the four winds. (2) Each 
 single year is broken into by very considerable vacations. Periodic 
 religious fervors kindled in the fall are apt to be cooled by the holi- 
 days at home or by the winter's schoolkeeping. The spring term is 
 followed by the out-of-doors attractions and distractions. (3) The 
 evangelist has to rely all the time upon inexperienced coadjutors, 
 young men subject to youthful moods, sometimes religiously 
 exhilarated, and oftentimes discouraged and depressed. (4) Cur- 
 rents of worldliness and wickedness sweeping over whole regions 
 of country at times are sure to deposit in a college successive classes 
 of young men intractable and wholly averse to religious influences. 
 
 In accordance with this last statement, Professor Hopkins puts 
 in strong testimony as to the moral decadence following the great 
 upliftings of 1825-26. 
 
 There came an influx of an uncommon amount of impiety, men of corrupt 
 principles or no principles, and dissolute life, spoiled before coming, and fitted, 
 of course, only to taint and corrupt the moral atmosphere. College soon became 
 again corrupt, probably quite as much so as before the revival of 1825. Intem- 
 perance and card-playing prevailed. Also, at this time there was not a little 
 licentiousness. Enjoying great opportunities of association, wicked men " waxed 
 worse and worse." The college buildings, or at least the West College, was 
 repeatedly set on fire, there is reason to believe wantonly. The Bible was stolen 
 from the desk, and worse than burnt. This state of things ran on till the fall of 
 1829, when some engaged Christians [Hopkins was their leader] instituted a 
 meeting at nine o'clock in the evening, which Dr. Griffin used to attend. No 
 decided change in the religious aspect of College occurred till the following winter. 
 
488 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 The change then manifesting itself was a great breaking down 
 among professors of religion. One of this description came out as 
 a new convert ; and within three days more than twenty professors 
 of religion had given up their hopes. " This breaking up of hopes 
 probably will furnish a clew to the awful and reigning stupidity 
 and dissoluteness of morals before adverted to." Professor Hopkins 
 did not think well of this form of religious experience, especially as 
 he was aiming for himself and for others a steadiness of Christian 
 development, from term to term and from year to year, such as had 
 not heretofore been witnessed in the College. One genuine conver- 
 sion was to him much better than two ostensible ones. He says 
 expressly : " Of those who were awakened in this revival, several 
 went back; some became infidels, of whom two have since died; 
 one, however, renouncing his infidelity on his dying bed." Of far 
 greater interest and importance than these shiftings and risings 
 and fallings is the professor's own account of the institution of 
 the famous noon prayer-meeting in College, which went on uninter- 
 ruptedly in term time for thirty-five years under his own supervision 
 and constant personal attendance. It was his prayer-meeting in every 
 sense of the word ; not alone because he instituted it and attended 
 it and controlled it for more than a generation, but also because it 
 sprang out of certain theories and characteristics of his own, which 
 would have made it impossible for any other man to carry it on 
 after he left it, even if any other man had been bold enough to 
 attempt it. Indeed, in his own hands, some years before his death 
 in 1872, the potent sceptre lost the greater part of its unique efficacy, 
 and he was called upon to bear a cross, which nearly all old men of 
 peculiar and striking powers in active life must bear, namely, the 
 wonderment and disappointment that the ancient wand of power is 
 weakened and is broken. Probably nothing in the entire history of 
 the town and the College is so distinctive and significant as is this 
 story of the Williams noon prayer-meeting. 
 
 The spring of 1832 was one of religious interest in town. Rev. Dr. Beman 
 held a protracted meeting here. A number of conversions occurred in the Col- 
 lege, in the course of the term. Those who came in at this time were, for the 
 most part, made special objects of prayer and labor. They came in lingeringly, 
 one or two in the course of a week, for a considerable time. Not many were 
 awake, but these labored hard. It was a time of much trial in the church, and 
 it is believed that spiritual religion gained ground. The necessity of toiling on 
 under a heavy burden, and working as it were, at arm's length, on account of the 
 sluggishness of the mass of professed Christians, inured those who came under this 
 burden to severe toil, contributed to form habits of patient, persevering effort ; 
 and the College probably has never turned out a more faithful set of working 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 489 
 
 men than those who passed through this ordeal. Indeed, I regard this as in some 
 sense the commencement of a new era in the religious history of the College. 
 
 I am now going to explain in what way I think the revival of 1832 contributed 
 to a more permanent religious order. It did so, I think, by exercising the prin- 
 ciple of personal exertion and self-sacrifice, till it became habitual, and led on 
 to a system which I shall presently give some account of. The principle of per- 
 severing, steady devotedness has been firmly established in some minds, in all 
 ages. But too little has been done to perpetuate this sentiment. One and 
 another has cut his way through the solid rock, and, as it were, filled up the 
 space behind him, so that others have been little benefited, except as they have 
 seen them safe out, and therefore gathered hope, on the ground that such a 
 thing was possible. Peter says, to be sure, "The God of all grace, after ye 
 have suffered awhile, stablish you." But we are not to infer from all this that 
 direct means are of no use toward the confirmation of piety. There is, no 
 doubt, in respect to means, such a thing as millennial order (using the term 
 millennial generically here), and it was towards this that numbers among us 
 were led at this time to look. Having become inured to a pretty steady course 
 of religious action, anxious to persevere in this without faltering, and sensible at 
 the same time of the sluggishness of nature, and warned by the experience of 
 the past, the inquiry came up : What corrective can be thrown in, what stimulus 
 to excite us forward in an unwavering onward course of Christian action? It 
 was resolved by the Christians of that period that they would meet together at 
 noon. This, it was thought, would furnish a strong antidote against a tendency, 
 so prevalent everywhere, but perhaps especially in college, to fall in with the 
 tide of worldliness. By setting up, as it were, a dam at midday, it was thought 
 possible to check the current, and thus prevent our Christianity from being 
 overflown, and everything relapsing again into a stagnant and dead state, as 
 had been the case after most previous revivals. 
 
 I must be permitted to say, that I think the idea of a perfect Christianity, 
 that is, of living in perfect conformity to the injunctions of Christ without 
 regard to seasons or circumstances, and without reference to the feelings or 
 practices of others, had to do with this institution of means. A very good 
 opportunity was approaching to test it, or at least to test the strength of the 
 resolution which determined on its adoption, namely, the approach of the sum- 
 mer term, when there is uncommon temptation to laxness, and a letting down 
 of the Christian watch. The result proved that the idea is a very practicable 
 one, and very salutary in the operation of it. A few, from five to seven, from 
 the two college buildings, met in rainy as well as sunshiny weather, during the 
 term, and felt improved by it. This meeting, somewhat modified in its char- 
 acter, has continued to the present time, and has more than answered the 
 anticipations of those who originated it. It has served as a balance-wheel, to 
 check the irregular movements of individual action, to temper well-meaning 
 but injudicious zeal. I am just now in from one of these meetings, consisting of 
 from forty to fifty students. The average sometimes ranges considerably higher 
 than this, in times of awakening, and sometimes falls short of it. I have intro- 
 duced this subject here, because the religious history of the College cannot be 
 given, from this point, without frequent allusions to this meeting, it having 
 become a pretty certain criterion by which the religious pulse of the College may 
 be judged of. 
 
490 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 It will be observed by careful readers, that no reference is made, 
 in this critical and conscientious record of a new religious departure 
 in College, to Dr. Griffin, still president and still supposing himself 
 to be the fount of all influence both scholarly and also Christian. 
 The truth is, that the zealous and masterful young professor, after 
 five years' experience in the College as a teacher, and learning the 
 bottom state of affairs, including Griffin's loss of moral hold on town 
 and College, found it needful to plan and act religiously without 
 taking the head of the College into account. There was no other 
 way to do, if anything effectual were to be done. " One generation 
 passeth away, and another generation cometh; while the earth 
 abideth forever." In his eager search after light and duty and 
 power, Professor Hopkins put himself forward without hesitation 
 as the religious leader of College, and kept that place without serious 
 question for about thirty years. Griffin grossly overestimated him- 
 self, especially as a theologian and a college president. About this 
 time he published his " Treatise on Divine Efficiency," in opposition 
 to what then began to be known as the " New Divinity," of which 
 Mr. Finney was the chief and ablest exponent. He was fully of 
 the opinion, and had a supreme confidence in it, that the views 
 which he supposed to be held by the divines of that school were at 
 variance alike with Scriptures and sound philosophy; and hence 
 he felt himself called upon to take up his pen in defence of what 
 he believed to be important truth. Within a little more than a 
 year, besides the "Divine Efficiency," he published a sermon entitled 
 " Regeneration not effected by Light," and a formal letter on " The 
 New Measures and the New Doctrines." These controversial 
 writings, to which he attributed a vastly exaggerated importance, 
 fell pretty flat on the public eye and ear, partly because the old 
 New England theology as formulated by Edwards and Hopkins was 
 already worn thin and bare, but chiefly because of Finney's pungent 
 and incessant (though indirect) attacks upon it in his revival 
 preaching, as virtually making God the author of sin and respon- 
 sible for its interminable existence in His own universe. The theo- 
 logical allies of Edwards in Scotland perceived this inevitable 
 inference from the " Freedom of the Will," and begged the author 
 to recast certain parts in a new edition, which he did; but not 
 striking down to the logical root of the matter, his Scotch friends 
 were as much confounded as David Hume and Lord Kames were 
 delighted. 
 
 These futile controversies not only occupied Griffin's time and 
 thought to the exclusion of proper college work, but also set him on 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 491 
 
 heresy-hunting in general ; one consequence of which was, the local 
 church lost the best and most beloved pastor they ever had, and 
 relations with his college colleagues became more or less embittered. 
 
 " The truth's worst foe is he who claims 
 
 To act as God's avenger, 
 And dreams, beyond his sentry beat 
 The crystal walls in danger. 
 
 Who sets for heresy his traps 
 
 Of verbal quirk and quibble, 
 And weeds the garden of the Lord 
 
 With Satan's borrowed dibble." 
 
 Professor Hopkins, then, obtained no help from the president of 
 the College in his impressive novelty of the noon prayer-meeting. 
 He received help, nevertheless, from another potent quarter. Simeon 
 Howard Calhoun. whose parents were among the original members 
 of Park Street church in Boston, of which Dr. Griffin had been the 
 first pastor, aid who was graduated here in 1829, became a tutor in 
 February, 1834, and remained in that capacity till Commencement 
 in 1836. He commenced at once to attend the noon prayer-meeting, 
 which had increased during the previous season to fifteen or more, 
 and which was held in the East College; and it was not very long, 
 as times and terms go in college, before his fervid spirit brought so 
 many students with him daily from the West College, where the 
 tutors always roomed, that it was proposed to divide the meeting 
 on three days of the week, the Freshmen and Sophomores meeting 
 with Calhoun in the West College, and all classes coming together 
 on Fridays with Hopkins and Calhoun in the East College. In the 
 words of Professor Hopkins, " The West College set up for them- 
 selves and the silent influence of their operations appears to have 
 been considerable. An infidel has told me lately, one at least 
 who was either tempted or trying to be so at that time, that the 
 prayers and singing kept him constantly uneasy, so much so that at 
 length he divulged his feelings to his teacher [Calhoun], renounced 
 his infidel principles, and became one of the most steady supporters of 
 the meeting." This arrangement continued until Tutor Calhoun left 
 the College to enter upon that remarkable foreign missionary career 
 on Mt. Lebanon, in which he was conspicuously useful till his death 
 in 1876. About twenty-five years after this reunion of the two 
 branches of the noon meeting, they separated again at the request 
 of the Christian students in West College and Kellogg Hall on the 
 same conditions as before ; and Arthur Latham Perry, who had 
 
492 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 been a constant attendant on the meeting during his college course and 
 after his return as a teacher in 1853, took charge of the western and 
 weaker branch, until the enlistment of students in the army and the 
 excitement of the Civil War resolved it again into the other branch. 1 
 The apparently untimely and much-lamented death of Professor 
 William A. Porter, in 1830, made necessary an election to fill that 
 then most important professorship. Mark Hopkins had quit the 
 College as a tutor in 1827 with a considerable reputation along the 
 lines of this now vacant chair of Moral Philosophy and Ehetoric, 
 acquired mainly by his master's oration, which had been published 
 not long after its delivery. He had studied medicine, received his 
 medical degree, and made some futile attempts to get into practice 
 in New York and elsewhere. The letters are still extant, preserved 
 by his mother, in which may be read some of the replies to his vari- 
 ous inquiries made of his friends as to a proper location for a young 
 physician. Harvey Bice, his college classmate, invited him to come 
 to Cleveland, then a rising town of twelve hundred inhabitants. Dr. 
 Emmons, then just settled in Williamstown as a doctor, had already 
 made quasi arrangements to take into partnership with himself 
 Henry L. Sabin, of the class of 1821 : Sabin was then about to marry 
 one of the young ladies of the Whitman family, then the principal 
 merchants here; and Emmons wrote to Hopkins, that if Sabin did 
 this, and went into business with the Whitmans, he would take 
 Hopkins into partnership instead of Sabin! The marriage indeed 
 took place, but Sabin preferred his profession to a country store. 
 Hopkins was transiently disappointed. But his heart was not in 
 the life of a physician. He was not built in that way. But he 
 was built in another and very distinct way. Providence designed 
 him for a teacher along the highest walks of that profession. His 
 anatomical and medical studies, however, were a foundation and 
 preparation for much that came to him later in his life-work as a 
 teacher. When his name was proposed in the meeting of the Board 
 of Trustees as the successor of Professor Porter, there was much 
 divergence of opinion in that body. President Griffin was opposed 
 to the selection; some of his reasons may be easily guessed at from 
 items given on preceding pages ; another may be surmised in the 
 fact, that Hopkins was a doctor and not a minister, and in no way 
 trained with reference to his becoming a minister; and this last is 
 confirmed by the fact that three years later, when Hopkins applied 
 
 * The writer well remembers the fervor of the prayers of Edward Payson Hopkins, 
 only son of Albert Hopkins, in this smaller meeting, who himself was killed in the 
 service at Ashland, Va., in 1864. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 493 
 
 to the Berkshire Association for license to preach, Griffin is known 
 to have opposed its granting on the ground of insufficient technical 
 preparation. Nevertheless, the license to preach was granted then 
 and there by a majority of votes. In the earlier question of the 
 professorship, whatever opposition there was was overcome by a 
 somewhat novel method. When a man is preordained to any post, 
 there is always a champion to present him at the door. Henry W. 
 D wight, Jr., born in Stockbridge in 1788, and consequently fourteen 
 years older than Hopkins, a grandson of General Joseph Dwight, 
 whose wife, Abigail Williams, was great-grandmother of Hopkins, 
 was at that time a member of the Board of Trustees. He was a 
 lawyer and a colonel. He had represented western Massachusetts 
 in the House of Representatives at Washington. He was a man of 
 talents and attainments, and of uncommonly fine and commanding 
 personal appearance. He had known Mark Hopkins from a child, 
 and they were of the same kith and kin. At the proper moment in 
 the discussion, Colonel Dwight arose and made an eloquent and 
 resounding plea in behalf of his young neighbor and distant kins- 
 man; and he was accordingly elected. Posterity owes its thanks to 
 Dwight for this signal service; and his name, otherwise beclouded 
 by a single evil habit contracted, or at least intensified, at Washing- 
 ton, will be perpetuated in connection with it. In this way there 
 came into the faculty permanently one who was ready and able to 
 hold up his brother's hands in all religious plans and movements, 
 although he never fully shared in the latter 's theological views in 
 the matter of perfection. President Griffin looked askance at both 
 of these young men religiously; but it made no difference; both 
 went on, each in his own way, in accordance with their diverse con- 
 genital and hereditary endowments and tendencies; while the elder, 
 even after he became president, never superseded the younger as the 
 practical religious leader and guide to the students, especially in 
 times of religious awakening. The elder resigned his presidency 
 the year in which the younger died, 1872. 
 
 Before passing now to some more continued characterization of 
 the man who became Dr. Griffin's successor in the presidency, it is 
 more than in order to append here the recollections of his own col- 
 lege days, 1822-26, of William Hyde, eldest of the four graduated 
 sons of Rev. Dr. Alvan Hyde of Lee, long the vice-president of the 
 College. William, who became in many ways a large benefactor of 
 the College, wrote these reminiscences at the writer's request and 
 for the present purpose, more than fifty years after his graduation 
 in 1826. 
 
494 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND COLLEGE 
 
 When I entered college in 1822 Dr. Griffin had been president but one year. 
 The number of students was small. Many had left with Dr. Moore for Ainherst 
 and other colleges. The senior class numbered only seven. The college had 
 been under a cloud, and its continuance in doubt. We entered a class of about 
 25. The only college buildings were the West college and the East college, 
 since burned, and a small wooden building used by Prof. Dewey for chemistry. 
 We met in the freshman recitation-room, bare of furniture except a wooden 
 bench with no back. Another bench was necessary and was ordered from Dea. 
 Taft by the class, and my first financial exploit was to assess and collect a tax 
 of six cents and a quarter to pay his bill of f 1.50. Blackboards were not known 
 in my college course. We drew our diagrams on paper and used slates in 
 algebra ; while Prof. Dewey drew his illustrations and worked his problems with 
 chalk on the floor of the recitation-room, when lecturing on natural philosophy 
 and astronomy. There was not a carpet on any floor in college, except in the 
 room of the excellent Prof. Kellogg in the West college. He had an open Frank- 
 lin stove, and close box stoves were in the recitation-rooms, in all other rooms 
 open fire-places. The chapel, then in the West college, had one stove, but no 
 fire in it when we went to prayers at 6 o'clock in cold winter mornings. The 
 scriptures were read by the light of tallow candles and the prayers were none too 
 short. The students were generally poor ; many, like myself, the sons of min- 
 isters with scanty salaries and large families. Economy was necessary and 
 easily practised. We bought wood at $2 per cord, cut it ourselves and carried 
 it to our rooms. Prof. Kellogg did the same. This was exercise and amuse- 
 ment. We had no base-ball or boating clubs, but kicked foot-ball. Washing 
 cost 12| to 17 cents per week. I paid usually $1.17 per week for board, one 
 summer but $1. The last term of senior year a few of us felt big and boarded 
 with John R. Bulkley, with the tutors, paying a dollar and a half for aristo- 
 cratic fare. Livery bills were small, and cigars seldom seen. Pipes and 
 tobacco were common. I gave them up in the revival of my senior year, and 
 have not resumed their use. A few students tried to board themselves in their 
 rooms, but with sad results to their health. There were two professors, Dewey 
 and Kellogg, with salaries of $800. Tutors were employed for a year or two at 
 $400 ; such men as Emerson Davis, Erastus C. Benedict, Joseph Hyde, Mark 
 and Albert Hopkins. The instruction given was about like the pay. In these 
 days it would be called superficial. It certainly was far below the present 
 standard. I could hardly enter college now with the attainments of my college 
 course. Marking was not then known, except for absences from prayers and 
 recitations. We worshipped with the town in the church. Dr. Griffin supplied 
 every third Sabbath, when Mr. Gridley preached at South Williamstown, and 
 frequently at other times. He was called the "prince of preachers." There 
 were two or three seasons of special religious interest in my time in college. Dr. 
 Griffin preached with great power in the church, in the chapel and in school- 
 houses packed full. The candles would go out for want of oxygen, so great was 
 the press. The whole town was moved, as was the college. Many were con- 
 verted who have been prominent in the ministry and as missionaries. I never 
 heard such powerful presentation of truth. His style would now be called arti- 
 ficial. It was studied, elaborate, finished, not at all adapted to these days. I 
 
WILLIAM HYDE. 
 W. C;, 1826. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 495 
 
 heard the sermon on the " Worth of the Soul " three times while in college, and 
 the "Flood sermon" as many. His majestic presence and his studied modula- 
 tions and gestures could not be printed. The relations of the college and town 
 were always friendly. The students were as gallant to the ladies as now, and 
 as many found life partners. What changes in 50 years ! The college funds 
 were then about $20,000, the president's salary $1200 ; the buildings and 
 grounds with no adornments or attractions ; the material for an education, 
 meagre. My father furnished me with less than $400 for my education. It 
 was enough for the times and his means. The tendency is now too much the 
 other way. Expenses are too large. Do you make better men than when it 
 cost self-denial to work through college ? We have seen great progress in 50 
 years. Methuselah saw nothing like it in his long life. It would have taken 
 him 200 years to have gone through college. 
 
 Mark Hopkins was beyond all question the most conspicuous fig- 
 ure and the most useful man in any connection with Williams Col- 
 lege during the first century of its existence. From 1830, when he 
 became a professor, till 1887, when he passed away from earth, he 
 drew the eyes of men, he won the confidence and applause of stu- 
 dents, and exerted, on the whole, a deeper and steadier and more 
 wholesome influence than any other man has ever done. But it is 
 a great mistake to suppose, as many persons have done unadvisedly, 
 that this confidence drawn and influence exerted were uniform and 
 unintermitted. Not so. In the first place, he had his trade to 
 learn just like all other men. He did not jump into the confidence 
 of the students, nor into the best modes of teaching, nor into accept- 
 able methods of governing, by a single leap, nor by several leaps. 
 He found his footing slowly and tentatively, just as every other 
 successful teacher in the College has done. He was accustomed 
 himself to say to his friends, that he made many mistakes at first, 
 particularly in the matter of government. He once told the writer, 
 that so unpopular did he become in connection with some cases of 
 discipline, that a student told him to his face that he had not a single 
 adherent in the whole body of students. Till he became president 
 himself, in 1836, he was placed in truly difficult circumstances. 
 Much as in the previous case of Chester Dewey, though of course 
 with varying elements, the students, in the deepening infirmities of 
 Dr. Griffin, saw that Hopkins was really the head of the College, 
 but he could not ostensibly act as such without offending his nominal 
 superior. He did the best he knew how under trying conditions; 
 his brother was doing the same at the same time in relation to reli- 
 gious means and methods; the two supported each other as best 
 they could, and each succeeded in the end; but nothing can take 
 the place of experience ; and both missed their aim in part. As is 
 
496 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 usually the case with young men at first charged with authority in 
 prominent positions, these two were more strenuous in discipline at 
 the beginning than afterwards. Indeed, so far as the elder brother 
 is concerned, there was a notable reaction from his first ten years of 
 service towards a milder and more relaxed discipline, which contin- 
 ued and perhaps increased so long as he was in office. 
 
 The election of Mark Hopkins to the presidency of the College, 
 in 1836, was attended by circumstances that were striking at the 
 time, and are instructive at all times. The trustees elected Rev. 
 Absalom Peters, a graduate of Dartmouth College in 1816, a pastor 
 in Benningtori from 1820 to 1825, as president immediately on the 
 resignation of Dr. Griffin; but Peters declined the position, for 
 which indeed he was unfitted, and which was not attractive at that 
 time to any one not well knowing the state of things both within 
 and without. Dr. Griffin's health had been such and his practical 
 separation from College so complete, that he had not heard a single 
 recitation nor attended any exercise of the class of 1836 during their 
 Senior year. Hopkins had been their sole teacher throughout that 
 year. They liked him, and admired him, and believed him to be 
 the most suitable man for the new president. They were as a class 
 too sensible of the proprieties to take upon themselves the function 
 of giving advice to the trustees to elect Mark Hopkins as the presi- 
 dent of the College ; they took a less objectionable, a more indirect, 
 and, probably, a securer way, to affect the election favorably ; they 
 prepared a careful paper, which all the members signed, expressing 
 their deep satisfaction with the instruction of Professor Hopkins 
 for the Senior year, and expressing the hope also that future Senior 
 classes might receive similar instruction and participate in similar sat- 
 isfaction. These facts were communicated to the writer more than 
 once in detail by Joseph White, a prominent member of the class 
 of 1836, long a trustee, and of late the treasurer, of the College. 
 When this paper was read to the trustees in Commencement week, 
 Dr. Samuel Shepard of Lenox, vice-president of the College and 
 presiding at the board, is credibly said to have exclaimed to his 
 colleagues, "If the boys want him, let them have him ! " Emerson 
 Davis, then the youngest member of the Board of Trustees, was 
 present, and soon reported the election as consummated. 
 
 The year 1836 thus became another epochal point in the history 
 of the College, worthy to be placed alongside the year 1827, and 
 certainly looked back upon ever since as the beginning of a num- 
 ber of new and better things. The class itself then graduated was 
 in several respects unusual and notable. It was larger in number 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 497 
 
 than any previous class after 1811, filling out thirty -two men ; and 
 a larger proportion of these than usual came to distinction in after 
 life, several of them in close connection with the College itself. 
 Let this suffice as a special roll of honor : 
 
 ROBERT CRAWFORD CHAUNCEY GILES 
 
 NATHAN W. HARMON WILLIAM HOPKINS 
 
 SAMUEL KNOX THOMAS NELSON 
 
 JOB SWIFT OLIN ZALMON RICHARDS 
 
 JOHN TATLOCK RANDOLPH W. TOWNSEND 
 
 BUSHNELL WHITE JOSEPH WHITE 
 
 JAY A. WIGHT EDMUND WRIGHT 
 
 The reader will not be displeased to see in this place a copy of the 
 " Order of Exercises " at the noteworthy Commencement of 1836. 
 It fell on Aug. 17. 
 
 ORDER OF EXERCISES. 
 
 1. SACRED Music. 
 
 2. Prayer by the President. 
 
 3. Salutatory Oration in Latin. WALTER WRIGHT, Chicago, III. 
 
 4. Oration. Character of John Jay. THOMAS NELSON, Peekskill, N. Y. 
 
 5. Oration. Influence of France on our Manners and Morals. 
 
 JOSEPH PYNCHEON, Springfield. 
 
 6. Oration. Influence of Eloquence in Republican Governments. 
 
 SAMUEL KNOX, Blandford. 
 Music. 
 
 7. Oration. Importance of high Aims. 
 
 PHILO CANFIELD, Bridgeport, Ct. 
 
 8. Conference. The Reformation in Scotland, and in Spain. 
 
 JOHN WILSON, Andover. 
 
 ZALMON RICHARDS, Chester, Ohio. 
 
 9. Oration. Division of Labor. JOB OLIN, Shaftsbury, Vt. 
 
 10. Oration. New Hampshire. ANSON L. HOBART, Columbia, N. H. 
 
 Music. 
 
 11. Conference. Resemblance ; Contiguity in time and place ; Cause and 
 
 Effect. 
 
 E. WM. KELLOGG, Sheffield. 
 THEODORE J. CLARK, Northampton. 
 HAZEN CHENEY, Lunenburgh, Vt. 
 
 12. Philosophical Oration. Volcanoes. BUSHNELL WHITE, Buckland. 
 
 Music. 
 
 13. Oration. Connection of Science and Religion. 
 
 ROBERT CRAWFORD, Lanark, U. C. 
 
 14. Oration. Superstition. GEORGE CLISBY, Medford. 
 
 2K 
 
498 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 15. Poem. Burning of the Turkish Fleet by Kanaris. 
 
 J. AMBROSE WIGHT, Jamaica, L. I. 
 
 16. First English Oration. The right estimate of our abilities. 
 
 JOSEPH WHITE, Charlemont. 
 Music. 
 
 17. Oration. Prejudice. MR. MARTIN I. TOWNSEND, Troy, N. T. 
 
 18. Oration. Connection of Moral Science with Religion. 
 
 MR. SAMUEL BUEL, Troy, N. T. 
 Music. 
 
 19. Oration before the Alumni. HENRY H. CHILDS, M.D. 
 
 Music. 
 
 20. Valedictory Oration. Metaphysics. JOHN TATLOCK, Liverpool, Eng. 
 
 21. Degrees Conferred. 
 
 22. SACRED Music. 
 
 23. Prayer. 
 
 Under date of August 16, the diary of Albert Hopkins holds the 
 concise statement, "Mark was chosen president this afternoon." 
 Under date of September 16, the same holds this entry, "Term 
 commenced yesterday, but there were no exercises on account of the 
 Inauguration service." This relates to his brother's inaugural 
 discourse, whose theme was, "A Wise System of Education." 
 
 All things taken into consideration, it is extremely unlikely that 
 Mark Hopkins would have been chosen president when he was, if at 
 all, if it had not been on account of a shrewd and proper move of a 
 part of the student-body as towards that end. This was the first 
 occasion in the history of the College, when undergraduates, as 
 such, exerted a clean-cut and positive influence on the policy of the 
 College. It was a well-considered, timely, and wholesome stroke. 
 It was good in itself, and it led off in a good direction. From that 
 day till the date of the present writing is sixty full years ; and the 
 long interval is marked by several similar instances of happy influ- 
 ence initiated, or fortified, by the student-body as standing in con- 
 trast with the trustee-body, the faculty-body, or the body of the 
 alumni. All four of these bodies are now recognized constituents 
 of the common weal. No man can state in terms, no existing writ- 
 ing even attempts to define, the proper order in point of time or 
 proportions in respect of weight of these four authoritative influ- 
 ences ; but they are all felt, when important questions are pending, 
 each within certain limits, due regard being had at the same time 
 to each of the others. The accession of Hopkins marked the first 
 considerable change in the order and proportion of these four rela- 
 tive and governing forces. The reasons for this are obvious enough. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 499 
 
 They are to be found partly in the characteristics of the man, and 
 partly in the circumstances of his accession. 
 
 The body of trustees were and remain first in the order of time 
 and of moral precedence. They alone of the four are a legal body. 
 They alone hold the purse-strings, and manage the property of the 
 College. They are the fons et origo of everything. They choose a 
 president, who becomes ipso facto their head, and the head also of 
 a body of teachers, who, owing their appointment to the act of the 
 trustees, become the secondary body indeed, but the working body 
 also, the only body that comes into direct and constant influence 
 and control over the tertiary body, the students, for the sole sake of 
 whose training all the causes and effects are instituted from the 
 first. In 1821 the Society of Alumni was instituted here, the first 
 known organization of the kind; and, barring certain transitory 
 slips and falls, this " fourth estate " has had a pretty steadily aug- 
 menting and usually useful influence for three-fourths of a century. 
 Naturally enough, the president of a college is apt to emphasize in 
 its working the authority of the corporate body, which only meets 
 twice a year, and over which it is easy for him to keep the drive- 
 hand, rather than the body of instruction, which meets weekly in 
 term-time, and between whose head and members friction and com- 
 bination are much more likely to arise. At Williams, neither the 
 faculty as such nor the students as such came to have any recogni- 
 tion as over against the trustees and the president, until about the 
 middle of Griffin's administration, when Chester Dewey was forced 
 out of the faculty, because he was better liked and more heeded 
 than the president was; and we have just now noticed that both 
 Mark and Albert Hopkins were obliged, a little later, to combine 
 their personal and faculty influence in derogation of Griffin's lead 
 and mischief. In other words, the faculty as such came first, and 
 have usually since been able to maintain their own proper make- 
 weight as over against the trustee-body. 
 
 Mark Hopkins understood perfectly well that he was indebted for 
 his easy accession in 1836 to the approbation and politic action of 
 the student-body as such. This circumstance by itself naturally 
 and powerfully led him to look for support and good understanding 
 to the successive classes of students, especially as they came under 
 his sole instruction and management during their Senior year. He 
 had less use for the trustees as such, than any one of his three pred- 
 ecessors had had; and there commenced at once a shifting of steady 
 influence from them and from their carefully compiled body of col- 
 lege laws, 'towards the faculty of instruction and their head, and 
 
500 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 particularly towards them in their new relations to the students of 
 better acquaintance and growing confidence. As Mark Hopkins 
 handled thereafter the Senior class both as instructor and college 
 officer, so Albert Hopkins became college officer and principal in- 
 structor of the Junior class; the two brothers, though markedly 
 different in personal characteristics, acted together as a unit college- 
 wise ; the two upper classes tended more and more to give tone and 
 opinion to the two lower; and, consequently, faculty and students 
 from this time on gained a more controlling influence relatively to 
 trustees and alumni. 
 
 Another circumstance conspired with this at the same time to 
 throw into the hands of Mark Hopkins a wider influence and a 
 steadier control than had fallen personally to the lot of any one of 
 his three predecessors in office. Each of these was a stranger when 
 he came hither. Fitch and Griffin were natives of Connecticut, and 
 graduates of Yale. Moore was a Scotch-Irish-American, born and 
 bred among those peculiar people, a graduate of Dartmouth in 1793, 
 and more at home in New Hampshire than in any other part of New 
 England. But Hopkins was to the manor born. He was a native 
 of Berkshire, and a graduate of Williams. Local pride turned to 
 him from both ends of the county. The leading trustees had been 
 Berkshire men from the first, and they were so at the time of his 
 accession. This gave him a decided moral advantage over each of 
 the three who preceded him, and also over each of the two who suc- 
 ceeded him. So far as the writer is aware, no one has ever noticed 
 before this coign of vantage of the Berkshire man, though it obvi- 
 ously helps explain that surprising degree of high and early and 
 easy and long-held success in office, which has never yet seemed to 
 any competent judge to be fully accounted for by merely extraordi- 
 nary natural gifts and heredity, special opportunities of education, 
 habits of industry, depth and serenity of character, unselfish and 
 persistent devotion to the ends set before him in life. It is certain 
 that he would have had, he could have had, no such prompt and 
 wide success as he had here, had he been called in 1836 to Amherst, 
 to Brown, to Dartmouth. Dwight's speech before the trustees in 
 1830, when Hopkins was chosen professor, gave the key-note to the 
 song of 1836, and to its local reverberations for forty years there- 
 after. That was a Berkshire speech by a Berkshire congressman, 
 in behalf of a Berkshire native and graduate before a tribunal com- 
 posed largely of Berkshire judges. More than this. It was a Stock- 
 bridge speech by a Stockbridge citizen in favor of another Stockbridge 
 citizen, both of the two directly out of the loins of the three earliest 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 501 
 
 and most prominent citizens of Stockbridge, namely, Ephraim Wil- 
 liams and John Sergeant and Joseph D wight. The tribunal of the 
 trustees in 1836 was antecedently quite as favorable of the candidate 
 as was that of 1830. 
 
 It will do our eyes good to look over a selected roll of the most 
 prominent Berkshire trustees from the opening of the College, in 
 1793, till the opening of the fourth presidency, in 1836. 
 
 STEPHEN WEST JOHN BACON 
 
 DANIEL COLLINS ISRAEL JONES 
 
 DAVID NOBLE WOODBRIDGE LITTLE 
 
 THEODORE SEDGWICK TOMPSON J. SKINNER 
 
 SETH SWIFT WILLIAM WILLIAMS 
 
 ALVAN HYDE DANIEL DEWEY 
 
 SAMUEL SHEPARD JOSEPH WOODBRIDGE 
 
 DANIEL NOBLE LEVI GLEZEN 
 
 NATHANIEL BISHOP WILLIAM P. WALKER 
 
 CHARLES A. DEWEY EDWARD A. NEWTON 
 
 RALPH W. GRIDLEY * HENRY W. DWIGHT 
 
 DANIEL N. DEWEY EDWIN W. DWIGHT 
 
 While Providence placed the College at the north end of the 
 county, and in the valley of the Hoosac, which had been from im- 
 memorial time the war-path of hostile Indians back and forth, and 
 also a war-path of French and British and colonial forces in several 
 hard-fought campaigns, thus making this valley-line historical and 
 deeply interesting, the same Providence appointed the south end of 
 the county (and particularly Stockbridge) the seat of the engrossing 
 Indian Mission and its famous missionaries and teachers, and also 
 the place of earlier English settlements and more thriving and popu- 
 lous towns. Williamstown opened the doors of its Free School and 
 College, but it was from Stockbridge and its vicinity that the most 
 of the scholars came for the first quarter-century. The four per- 
 sons composing the first graduate class of the College, in 1795, 
 
 SAMUEL BISHOP 
 JOHN COLLINS 
 CHAUNCY LUSK 
 DANIEL STONE 
 
 all hailed from Stockbridge. Let him believe it who chooses, 
 the historian avers not, but it is said of late years, that, in conse- 
 quence of a minuter survey of the town-line, John Collins was born 
 just over the border in Lenox. Very likely. This concession does 
 not militate against the point of the present paragraph. The entire 
 county, both ends and all parts, girded up the loins of its mind and 
 
502 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 its purpose in 1836 to sustain the Berkshire college as such. This 
 impulse was intensified and made more reasonable, and even neces- 
 sary, by what had been taking place for twenty years in the next 
 neighboring county of Hampshire. They had now gotten a good 
 college of their own at Amherst. Hampshire had formerly sent a 
 goodly number of students over the mountains to Williamstown. 
 Such could no longer be expected. While, as we have seen before 
 in the proper place, there was no rational ground for any ill feeling 
 as toward the more eastern institution, such a feeling was cherished 
 in certain quarters for some years; and the natural reaction from it 
 riveted local feeling in and around the older college. The rise and 
 prosperity of Amherst has never harmed the Berkshire college at all 
 in any broad view of the matter, while it has served to exhibit, 
 somewhat in the way of contrast, the topographical advantage of the 
 latter, in that the Hoosac River opens up an easy access to the broad 
 and fertile valleys of the north and west. Williams is in touch 
 with the Hudson Eiver and Lake Cham plain, and their tributaries. 
 New York soon made up, and more than made up, any losses from 
 the region of the Connecticut. 
 
 No such considerations as these, however, entered the minds of 
 Mark Hopkins and of his few, but willing colaborers, as they 
 buckled down to their tasks in the autumn of 1836. They did not 
 expect great things, and they had no reason to expect great things. 
 The new entrance did not quite make up in numbers the relatively 
 large class that was graduated. The first class to be graduated 
 under Hopkins, that of 1837, numbered but eighteen men, but there 
 were three men in it who became quite distinguished in after life, 
 and who always maintained close relations of friendship with their 
 then youthful president. These were Stephen J. Field, Justice of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States; Israel Ward Andrews, 
 President of Marietta College ; and Brigadier-General Lewis Bene- 
 dict, killed in battle for his country, pierced by five balls, in the 
 Ked Kiver campaign, April, 1864. The next class, 1838, held at 
 graduation twenty-three men, of whom James Denison Colt, Judge 
 of the Supreme Court, Massachusetts; William Bross, Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Illinois; Henry Martyn Field, Editor of the New York 
 Evangelist; John V. P. Quackenbush, Surgeon -General of New York; 
 and Judge John Wells were the most notable members. The next 
 class, that of 1839, the third under Hopkins, was the largest in 
 point of numbers that had ever taken their degrees at the College, 
 namely, thirty-five, very encouraging to the new regime, which pre- 
 sented the same number again in 1842, and increased it by one in 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 503 
 
 1845. The College was evidently getting on. The new president 
 was becoming increasingly popular. What now first becomes notice- 
 able is, that young men begin to take the honors of the College, who 
 make themselves influential and memorable as college teachers in 
 after life. In this class of 1839, the largest in number that had 
 then been dowered, were three men who subsequently distinguished 
 themselves beyond their classmates, and all three of them along 
 lines of college teaching and kindred work. These were Samuel 
 James Andrews, author of the "Life of our Lord on the Earth," 
 and Professor of Metaphysics and Logic in Trinity College, the first 
 graduate of Williams to become an Episcopalian churchman of 
 mark; George Kerr, Professor of Mathematics in the New York 
 Agricultural College; and William Porter, a prominent professor 
 for many years in Beloit College, Wisconsin. 
 
 Of course, in contrast with the widely known and courtly and cor- 
 pulent briifin, Hopkins at first was often indirectly made to realize 
 that he was relatively obscure and awkward and spindling; and, 
 later in life, he was fond of repeating to his intimates depreciatory 
 remarks made in this connection, either in his presence or that 
 came to his ears. For example, Eev. Mr. Jennings, long the eccen- 
 tric pastor of Dalton, who had been accusto x med occasionally to call 
 upon Dr. Griffin, called, after his accession, upon Dr. Hopkins, 
 and said to him, " You have not much abdominal dignity ! " 
 
 It may be a mere fancy, or it may express some relation of cause 
 and effect, to connect the notable success of these three men of a 
 single class as college teachers, with the accession here of a new 
 administration of comparatively young men but three years before, 
 and particularly with the coming to the front in influence and con- 
 trol, both by precept and example, of President Mark Hopkins. 
 He felt the weight of personal responsibility very keenly. Under 
 all the circumstances of the case, a view of which has been carefully 
 given in the pages preceding, his election was a vastly more impor- 
 tant matter to the College than the ordinary accession of a college 
 president in New England. This was sui generis in vital respects. 
 Hopkins knew the crevasses in Griffin's character and administra- 
 tion thoroughly. He knew better than most men know at thirty- 
 four what he himself could do, and what he could not do. He knew 
 that he had no financial ability, and that he should never acquire 
 the capacity successfully to solicit subscriptions for college uses, 
 either from individuals or the Commonwealth. Accordingly, he 
 made exemption from this duty a formal condition of his acceptance 
 of the presidency. This is stated on his own authority repeatedly 
 
504 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 given. On the other hand, he knew by a sort of instinct, and better 
 still by a steady experience of six years, that he could teach in his 
 otvn way, and that his own way was more or less a new way. As 
 soon as his hands were free, and he was consciously master of the 
 situation, he entered at once with zeal, but saying nothing to any 
 one, upon what came to be a successful and famous method. It has 
 often been called the "Socratic method," but this name cannot be 
 intelligently applied to it. The originality of Hopkins's mode of 
 teaching can be easily vindicated by a few simple comparisons 
 between it and that of the great Athenian ; and still more easily by 
 the statement, that the Yankee president scarcely knew in those 
 days that there ever was a man by the name of Socrates ; certainly 
 he did not know that he practised a manner of teaching different 
 from that pursued by Plato, or by the Scotch metaphysicians at the 
 close of the eighteenth century. Men entered and quitted college 
 in those days with marvellously little knowledge of the past, or 
 even of the present. Hopkins said of himself, that he did not know 
 enough of Greek to know whether it were a hard language or not. 
 More than twenty years after he became president, he said to one 
 of his own professors, whom he was apt to catch reading when he 
 called, "You read books: I don't read any books; in fact, I never did 
 read any books." 
 
 It seems more than likely, indeed almost certain, that the sharp- 
 eyed Seniors in those days, as well as in the later days, when they 
 came exclusively and gratefully under his instruction, and felt them- 
 selves stimulated by it, watched his manner of imparting to such 
 good purpose, that, when they came to be teachers themselves, they, 
 consciously or unconsciously, caught something of method as well, 
 as spirit; or, at any rate, instinctively trusted themselves, as he 
 did, to an inner voice, and went on to distinction as public teachers. 
 
 The Senior class had two distinctions in those days from the three 
 other classes, namely, they had but two recitations a day, and they 
 came exclusively (or nearly so) under the instruction of the presi- 
 dent. These differences seemed large to the students, and the presi- 
 dent properly emphasized them in order to secure a better attention 
 to new studies, and to employ a general method both of instruction 
 and discipline more grateful to the self-respect of his classes. He 
 used no strict rules of any kind in order to make sure of attendance 
 on his hours of teaching, nor did he any more treat all alike in 
 reference to absence from college prayers and Sabbath services. 
 He made his hours as attractive as possible to all, laying very little 
 stress upon the text-book, catching quickly at the close attention 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 505 
 
 and power of apprehending on the part of the brighter and more 
 earnest fellows, and wasting very little time in questioning the 
 dullards or explaining to them even the radical distinctions of the 
 subject. For the vigor and pleasure of his recitation hours, he was 
 usually dependent on the leaders of his class, who were not always 
 by any means those who stood the highest in scholarship in the 
 earlier years. His peculiar magnet generally attracted a consider- 
 able majority in his classes, but never all of them; and he had not 
 the knack of some teachers of making a recitation seem to go off well 
 when the class did not contribute their fair share to it. He was 
 never exacting in respect of the text ; and he did not insist even upon 
 his own vital distinctions nearly so much as most teachers do who 
 have vital distinctions of their own to make. He did this on theory, 
 and not simply in practice. He did not believe in teaching particu- 
 lars much, but only generals; and generals rather in a way to wake 
 up the mind of the pupil to act for itself, and to come to some con- 
 clusions of its own, rather than to bring it to accept definite propo- 
 sitions inductively and strictly arrived at. 
 
 There are advantages and disadvantages in this general method 
 of teaching the moral sciences. (1) There is this advantage, that 
 present interest and prospective progress in these depend less than 
 might be expected beforehand on the previous interest and standing 
 in those college studies usually regarded as preparatory. Hopkins 
 cared little personally for what had gone before. Of course, he saw 
 the results in mental discipline of previous studies of languages and 
 mathematics and natural sciences, if those results were present; 
 and he saw equally well proofs of discipline secured in other ways, 
 in practical life or by teaching; but he did not use such scaffolding 
 a great deal for his own purposes. It was not much a condition of 
 his own good work, that his colleagues had done good work and 
 reaped good fruit in the earlier years. A student could largely 
 redeem himself in the Senior year. Minus is minus and plus is plus 
 everywhere; but Mark Hopkins could get on pretty well with ill- 
 fitted students and those who had been personally neglectful up to 
 Senior year, provided only they would give their best attention day 
 by day, and put their minds thoroughly into contact with his, and 
 send out a hopeful spirit to meet his helpful spirit. The loose 
 organization of college studies in those times, the little coordination 
 between the separate years, worked less mischief on the Seniors on 
 account of certain peculiarities in the president's way of teaching. 
 He could open up his own paths of approach to the minds of stu- 
 dents. His method allowed of this. With a certain class of stu- 
 
506 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 dents it gave him more creative credit than he deserved. Another 
 class, who prized the paths behind them, in which they had dili- 
 gently walked, and who thought their gains should be utilized in 
 the new progress, were often disappointed and inclined to fall back, 
 giving the new leader less credit than he deserved. In short, the 
 best way was to take what he offered then and there, without much 
 reference to past or future connections. Such students oriented 
 themselves with him quickly and found a rich repast, not every 
 day indeed, nor in every subordinate subject, but generally speaking 
 and on the whole. They were his true supporters and admirers and, 
 generally, his lifelong friends. 
 
 (2) There was a second and greater advantage in his flowing-robe 
 methods. He did not generalize a great deal in the presence of his 
 classes. He did not ask them to accept bodily the results which his 
 own mind had reached by induction, any more than he urged them 
 to accept the logical conclusions reached by the text-book writers. 
 He had never trained his mind in the strict logical methods, whether 
 inductive or deductive; and, consequently, he rarely (if ever) felt 
 that inflexible conviction of truth which a careful and repeated in- 
 duction of particulars never fails to impart to the trained logical 
 reasoner. He knew that God had made the world and men on ever- 
 lasting lines of order; but he often missed the blessed consequences 
 of this, namely, that any just generalization, made and fortified 
 inductively, is put thereby beyond hazard of essential chance for all 
 time. While this feature of his mind and teaching gave room for 
 that advantage to some of his pupils, to be specified in a moment, 
 he recognized it in himself as a lack in any broad and final view. 
 "I have never read Mill's 'Logic,'" he said in a deprecatory way 
 to the writer when a Senior, as if he had said, "I wish I had." The 
 differences between induction and deduction were never very clear 
 to his mind; but he had what was in many respects better for him: 
 a broad and common-sense and penetrative insight into the nature 
 of things, which made his reasoning, in all cases in which he was 
 tolerably familiar with the particular facts, cogent and convincing, 
 which is only another way of saying that he possessed a sort of 
 native, or instinctive, power of inductive reasoning; which, how- 
 ever, of course, failed him wretchedly in all departments in which 
 he was ignorant of the essential facts. 
 
 Now, there were in every college class a few students of naturally 
 constructive minds, which liked to come to their own conclusions 
 by their own freely chosen and practised steps, and which only 
 needed to be stimulated into action on any important topic in order 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 507 
 
 to see its postulates and relations and results. Such students were 
 the delight of the great teacher. They did not need to have pointed 
 out to them particularly and numerically either in the text-book 
 or by the teacher the inferences and the opposites implied. The 
 processes were fructifying in such minds, whether the results were 
 worth tabulating or not, or whether the fruits ripened in the minds 
 of the pupils corresponded in hue and succulence with those in the 
 mind of the teacher. He rarely quarrelled in class with the state- 
 ments there of this limited class of men. He seemed more desirous 
 that they should think, and think vigorously in their own way, and 
 state the result in their own language, than that they should think 
 rightly according to his suppressed standard, or express themselves 
 technically. These men profited by their liberty, and rejoiced in 
 the consciousness of mental powers. He encouraged them. He 
 sometimes praised them, perhaps beyond what was their due. He 
 treated them, at any rate, as fellow- wayfarers. He claimed no pre- 
 cedence over them. It may have happened in a few cases that these 
 privileged men even before graduation became better reasoners in a 
 general way than the doctor was himself. It goes without saying, 
 however, that there were probably in every class at least one-third of 
 the members who would have gone straighter and better in stronger 
 leading-strings. To this class, the actual results at the end of the 
 year in knowledge, in distinction, in resemblances, in facts, were 
 meagre enough, too meagre for graduates. 
 
 (3) There was a third advantage, or quasi-advantage at least, in 
 what may perhaps justly be called the university method of Dr. 
 Hopkins in his personal teaching, namely, he had very little occa- 
 sion ever to rebuke with any severity any of his pupils as such. 
 There was very little of strict requirements of any kind in his 
 lecture-room. The majorities were uniformly interested in his 
 work, and fairly met his expectations. The text-book, in general, 
 was so little regarded, that no student could be accused of having 
 neglected his particular lesson. If his behavior in classroom were 
 good, his attention there sufficient to keep the general run of the 
 discussion, and his wits enough about him to make reasonably per- 
 tinent replies to the questions put to him individually, all was 
 fair sailing between teacher and pupil. Each was very well satis- 
 fied with the other. There was no friction anywhere, and consid- 
 erable mutual admiration instead. The doctor was much less 
 disturbed than most good teachers are by a little whispering here 
 and there in class by the way of side discussion or comment, or even 
 by a little laughing now and then in a corner. He was a perfect 
 
508 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 master of the situation, and he knew it, and all the members of the 
 class knew it; and the bolt, when it came, which was very seldom 
 indeed, to smite the wanton disturber of the peace, was terrific. In 
 the class of 1852, it crashed but once in the entire year, and then it 
 came in such a way that neither offender nor observer ever forgot it. 
 The member was sitting near the head of the class, and near to the 
 desk, which Griffin had planned for the old recitation-room. He 
 was gabbling and laughing oblivious of what was going on from the 
 desk. There was an impressive pause throughout the room. Turn- 
 ing halfway round in the desk, and looking the sinner full in the 
 face: " Some folks talk because they have something to say, AND SOME 
 
 BECAUSE THEY ARE LEAKY!" 
 
 It seems scarcely needful to add, that there were some obvious dis- 
 advantages in the president's general mode of carrying on college 
 instruction and discipline. (1) The first was one which he recog- 
 nized himself, and more than once spoke of to some in whom he had 
 confidence as colleagues. " There are alwa}^s in my class some six 
 or eight or ten men, about whom I do not care morally whether they 
 are at my recitations or not. I cannot get anything out of them, 
 and they do not get anything out of me. Of course, we must insist 
 on formal attendance, but I don't care whether they are in my room 
 or not." As a matter of fact, he did not himself insist on the 
 formal attendance of this residuum, nor had he any means of enforc- 
 ing it, as he never called the roll in his class, nor had any monitor 
 keep a record there for him. As a matter of fact, also, most of these 
 men were generally there, because the recitations were uniformly 
 pleasant, and it was altogether the fashion for the Seniors to attend 
 them, and so be able to join in the social gossip about "Prex." On 
 the other hand, there were almost always two or three other teachers 
 in College, and the writer was always one of them, who took special 
 pains in their respective years to look after and encourage as much 
 as possible the poor scholars, the dullards, who not infrequently 
 were sufficiently helped forward by these teachers to enable them to 
 do good work in their Senior year. The gratitude of such men to 
 these teachers has been perennial and a hundredfold rewarding. It 
 has been well for the College for a half -century past, that the special 
 methods of its best teacher were not followed in detail by others 
 justly inferior in reputation, but perhaps not inferior in usefulness 
 on the whole. 
 
 (2) A second disadvantage of the president's general methods with 
 his classes was, that they were not so readily emptied under these 
 of their self-conceit as by the methods of some other good teachers. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 509 
 
 To preserve the self-respect of pupils is a great desideratum, and 
 Hopkins possessed that art almost to perfection; but the self-conceit 
 and over-estimate so common among young men is a very different 
 matter, and is an obstacle to genuine intellectual progress, and 
 needs to be well gotten out of students in order to make room for 
 thorough and growing acquirements. The president attained this 
 end with skill in certain cases, and not only saved his man, but 
 began at once to build him up; but his usual point of touch with 
 the average student tended rather to inflate than to puncture. He 
 missed his chance with many men. All other teachers miss their 
 chance with many men. The present criticism relates to a courteous 
 and attractive and comprehensive method, under which the average 
 results were excellent, but which involved certain unexcusable 
 defects. During the central portions of Hopkins's career as a 
 teacher, when he was justly and widely popular, it used often 
 to be said by chance observers in the way of compliment, " Every 
 graduate bears on him the stamp of Mark Hopkins." This was 
 never a true saying in its full significance of any single class of 
 graduates. Speaking generally and with due allowance for the 
 unexpected and ever-present exceptions, the president either did a 
 good deal for the student and left on him a deep mark, far more 
 visible to the wearer, however, than to the onlooker, or he did 
 very little for him and left on him no outward visible mark at all. 
 Numerically the former class was the larger. 
 
 (3) There was one other disadvantage worth noting in this con- 
 nection of Dr. Hopkins's way of dealing with students, particularly 
 in the matter of offences against the college order. He did not treat 
 all students alike in such cases by any manner of means ; nor did he 
 practically allow the officers of discipline in the classes below his 
 own to treat their offenders alike in the way of penalties and dis- 
 abilities. This was his greatest fault as a college officer. It some- 
 times wrought extensive mischiefs and demoralizations. Instances 
 of such results will be given farther on. In the class of 1842, John 
 B. Gale, who is still leading an honored life in Williamstown in 
 1896, after an unusual successful professional career elsewhere, has 
 lately made the following statement in relation to himself. While 
 he was in college, the written or unwritten well-understood college 
 rule was, that no student should be absent from his college room 
 past midnight ; and, if he were known to be so, he must give account 
 to his class-officer of the fact and cause of such absence. Professor 
 Kellogg was. a sort of night-owl, and used often to perambulate both 
 Colleges late at night in search of information. Gale came to col- 
 
510 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 lege from an excellent family in Troy, accustomed to amusements 
 not then common in the best of families in New England, and, though 
 nearly the youngest member of his class, was a level-headed and 
 right-principled boy. Moreover, he could afford to indulge in a style 
 and limit of expenditures denied to most of the college boys at that 
 period, a fact that never failed to influence the president's mind 
 favorably toward such a boy, so long as he taught and governed in 
 the College, although he cared nothing for the riches and honors of 
 the world for himself. In his Senior year, young Gale was more 
 than once invited to balls given in Pittsfield, whose acceptance 
 necessitated of course an all-night absence, involving morning pray- 
 ers in chapel. The president did not suffer him to be called to 
 account by anybody for this. He trusted the young man, which 
 naturally increased the latter's self-respect and moral safety. Per- 
 haps no harm was done to anybody in that particular case. But 
 was that a right principle in college government? And would it 
 work well in the long run, and in a college later to become larger ? 
 
 The following is a good and authentic instance of Dr. Hopkins's 
 way of dealing with a certain class of college offences. Silas W. 
 Sanderson was a member of the class of 1846. He and another 
 student unknown were coming back from Hancock way very early 
 one Sunday morning, when the wheel to their wagon broke down, 
 and they stopped at the Mills farm at the South Part to get another 
 vehicle to reach home with. One of the two students gave his name 
 as Sanderson. Mr. Mills very properly gave the facts as he saw 
 and heard them to Dr. Hopkins. The latter called up Sanderson, 
 and rehearsed what had been reported to him, " but the student 
 may not have given his right name," he added. "It was I I 
 always give my right name ! " There was supposed to be a woman 
 in the case. Sanderson did not wish to bring out his comrade under 
 any circumstances. "I will give you," said the president, "an 
 honorable dismission now, or we will have an investigation, with the 
 chances of an expulsion later." Sanderson took the dismission, 
 went to Union College, and was graduated. He was from Sunder- 
 land, Vermont. He afterward went to California, and became at 
 length Chief Justice of the Supreme Court there. " He was the 
 smartest man in our class ! " [Keyes Danforth.] 
 
 Hopkins's professional training as a doctor stood him in good stead 
 as a teacher from the first day until the last. He naturally and 
 uniformly commenced his teaching .with the human body, with all 
 the parts of which he had become familiar as a medical student. 
 He did not, however, make the mistake, which has been conspicu- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 511 
 
 ously made since, of attempting to teach an entire college class the 
 Latin names of all the muscles, nor even of all the bones of the 
 body. Analysis must indeed precede synthesis in all good teaching ; 
 but it is possible and often actual to carry this primary analysis too 
 far for the general purposes of the study. Inexperienced teachers 
 and sometimes professed educators forget that life is short, and 
 that a college course of four years is quite too short a time in which 
 to teach young men the minutice of any great subject on science 
 whatever. Precisely at this point of difficulty has arisen the ten- 
 dency of the times to change by stealth the colleges into quasi-uni- 
 versities. This college has not escaped the attempt thus to mongrelize 
 institutions of a radically diverse kind. .Hopkins took the medium 
 and wise course of presenting to his classes the organs and functions 
 one by one of the subordinate systems of which the body is made up, 
 such as the Osseous system, the Muscular system, the Respiratory 
 system, the Circulatory system, and so on, to complete the entire 
 round ; and then he brought before his class all these systems united 
 both anatomically and physiologically in the entire body, in their 
 interactions and mutual dependencies, in their resemblances and dif- 
 ferences. In all this he showed himself to his students as masterful, 
 as those matters were understood and taught at that time. 
 
 He then passed in his exposition from the body to the mind, a 
 subject in itself for many reasons far more difficult to expound in 
 the classroom. The illustrative specimens and mechanisms and 
 mannikin had now to be left wholly behind. It was, relatively, 
 both to teacher and pupils, a new as well as difficult field. He still 
 exhibited himself to them as a master, but of necessity in a much 
 less masterful way. Two of the ablest and most appreciative of all 
 his pupils, Professors Bascom and Spring, have given their inde- 
 pendent and yet conjoint testimony, each gathering from widely 
 differing data and approaching the point by diverse routes, that 
 there was little of his own either in Dr. Hopkins's intellectual or 
 moral philosophy, so far as substance of doctrine or collocation of 
 material are concerned. Bascom says, 1 "President Mark Hopkins, 
 so long a distinguished teacher of mental science, entertained the 
 Scottish philosophy in a modified form. He did not accept the 
 doctrine of a direct knowledge of the external word in perception, 
 but thought that we gain, in one act, a recognition of two opposing 
 forces, mental and physical, in connection with muscular activity, 
 an inroad of force from without, and our resistance to it. The 
 question is not much altered by this transfer of the point of deter- 
 1 An Historical Interpretation of Philosophy, pp. 318-320. 
 
512 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 urination. We are still called on to know the unplienomenal term 
 which we call ' force ' directly, to separate between two conflicting 
 ' forces,' the one arising within the field of spiritual being, and the 
 other without it. We shall not make much progress in philosophy 
 till we learn to distinguish between the strength of a crowbar and 
 the strength of a desire, the push of a purpose and the push of an 
 elephant, the grip of conscience and the grip of a right hand, the 
 sensations which accompany muscular effort and the energy produced 
 by it, the force due to exertion and the mental states which accom- 
 pany it ; and also that in all these cases the ' force ' is an inference 
 from this experience and not a part of it. Dr. Hopkins, having thus 
 accepted a direct knowledge of ' force' as force, finds no occasion 
 of causation as a primitive idea. The mind already drops, in mus- 
 cular experience, plumb to the bottom of things." 
 
 Professor Spring, in an excellent essay on "Mark Hopkins, 
 Teacher," which may be found in volume second of the Berkshire 
 Book, pages 124-150, makes a truthful and delightful summary of 
 the peculiarities of the Hopkinsian teaching, in which appear the 
 following pregnant sentences : 
 
 Dr. Hopkins did not establish a school of philosophy. In the nature of the 
 case that was impossible. The undogmatic temper of his instruction, the absence 
 of partisan bias, the constant appeal which he made to the individual to be true 
 to himself, precluded such an issue to his career. To train men into habits of 
 broad and independent thinking ; to develop the resources of personality, that 
 loftiest summit toward which we move in our attainment, was his mission, and 
 it did not call for the erection of a party. A grander and more fitting memorial 
 of his work remains, the memorial that is found in the enlarged and vitalized 
 lives of his pupils. 
 
 Dr. Hopkins's methods remained substantially unchanged during his long 
 career as a teacher. I think, however, that he himself supposed they had under- 
 gone considerable modification. Indeed, he said something to that effect on the 
 only occasion when I remember to have heard him refer to them. I spoke of his 
 class-room work in 1862-63, as I recalled it. "Things are different now," it 
 was in the winter of 1885-86, he replied. " I have changed my ways of teach- 
 ing since you were here." The innovation which he had in mind was the use 
 of the blackboard. He employed it successfully in his lectures at the Lowell 
 Institute to illustrate points in his so-called system of philosophy, and this expe- 
 rience led him to have analyses and summaries of the lessons written upon it for 
 the use of the pupils. But I am confident that he overrated the importance of 
 his innovation, that in reality it brought with it very slight modification of 
 method. 
 
 With these discriminating observations of Professor Spring, whose 
 privileges as an interested and observant pupil of the president were 
 ten or eleven years later than his own in the same relation, the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 513 
 
 present writer is wholly at one. It was natural, and perhaps in- 
 evitable, from his early choice of a profession and his thorough 
 training as a physician, that Dr. Hopkins, as a later metaphysician, 
 should have laid great stress upon sensations, and their obvious rela- 
 tions to the external world. Moreover, whatever previous training 
 he had gained in the higher realm of mental science, had come from 
 the Scottish writers ; and these had been compelled, in order to avert 
 the consequences of the widespread acceptance of Hume's sceptical 
 and even nihilistic philosophy, to fall back upon what they called 
 "common sense," that is, the general convictions of mankind. In 
 this they did wisely. Indeed, there was nothing else to be done. 
 All philosophy must have a starting-point for its explanations in 
 that which is to be explained, namely, the common and fundamen- 
 tal beliefs of mankind, such as the difference between right and 
 wrong, the difference between self and non-self, the difference 
 between cause and effect. Having thus gained a valid starting- 
 point for philosophical inquiry, the Scotch writers make a vast leap 
 in the dark, and assert that the mind itself has a direct perception 
 of the external world, thus blindly linking the Ego and the non-Ego 
 through an immediate activity of the former. Thomas Reid, Dugald 
 Stewart, Thomas Brown, and Sir William Hamilton, all Scotch, and 
 all holding the same fundamentals, were the writers with whom 
 from first to last Mark Hopkins was most familiar. He merely 
 modified their common contention by the hypothesis, that, in mus- 
 cular action, we gain a recognition of two opposing forces: one 
 mental and the other physical, the one energy proceeding from our- 
 selves and the other from without ourselves. He did not, there- 
 fore, escape, nor even try to escape, the limitations of the Scottish 
 philosophy. Apparently he did not employ his mind upon the radi- 
 cal distinctions at issue between the so-called intuitional and 
 empirical schools of thought. 
 
 Within the former of these schools the terms and distinctions, 
 sense and understanding and reason, are well-established landmarks 
 within what is strictly mental science. As has been already said, 
 Dr. Hopkins emphasized sensations, developed in his own way the 
 action of the mind in analysis and generalization, but had very 
 little room in his system for the reason, or intuition. He not only 
 did not employ these terms, nor adopt any of his own correspond- 
 ing with them, but he scarcely recognized the distinctions under- 
 lying them. He certainly did not steadily build into his system 
 anything analogous with these primary mental differences. 
 
 When it came to ethics, upon which he bestowed a great deal of 
 
 2L 
 
514 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 labor and exposition, one of the most important of his books being- 
 entitled "The Law of Love and Love as a Law," Dr. Hopkins 
 does not seem to be able to snap the chain that binds him in a subtle 
 bondage to Paley, any more than he was able to emancipate himself 
 from the radical postulate of Reid. Perhaps it was at bottom the 
 same bond in both cases. Hopkins was fond of turning points on 
 Paley in the classroom; but it was rather the incidental points of 
 the great churchman, than his fundamental point, namely, that the 
 broad pleasures of obedience and the pains and penalties of disobe- 
 dience are the ultimate ground of moral obligation. He used Paley's 
 work as the text-book for some years, although he early projected a 
 manual of his own, which was not realized until 1862, in the mean- 
 time using for a good while Wayland's "Elements of Moral Sci- 
 ence." His brightest pupils always enjoyed the keen critical thrusts 
 by which hei often brought the blood out of Paley's long-lived cor- 
 pus; and, in talking with one of these about his own project of a 
 text-book, the pupil asked him if he thought it would be any better 
 for the classes than to keep " hacking " Paley. He replied that he 
 presumed it might not. 
 
 Dr. Hopkins found in " Blessedness " the ultimate ground of 
 human duty. This is a different word from "Pleasure," which is 
 Paley's word; but, as used in ethical inquiry, can these two words 
 denote different things? If so, where does "pleasure" end, and 
 "blessedness " begin? What is the difference between them? And 
 what organ or power of the mind is it, that discriminates between 
 the two, and measures the distance between them? The hatchet 
 that was sharp enough to hack off some of the limbs of Paley's tree, 
 to the delight of the spectators, does not seem to have been broad 
 and keen enough to fell the main trunk of it. Hopkins found in 
 the Beatitudes of our Lord, which are the deepest and most perva- 
 sive and most compacted portion of His teachings, a term which 
 appeared to him able to transplant ethical discussion upon higher 
 and firmer ground. Mere words were more to him than they ever 
 can be to one who knows thoroughly their earthly origin, their 
 changeableness in meaning, and their inevitable decay. Words as 
 such owe their significance to what men put into them for the time 
 being, and not to what is in them for all time. They are like ships, 
 which may be freighted with all precious substance, but which also 
 are ever liable to wasting winds and wrecking rocks. They are 
 vehicles. They are earthen vessels. They may indeed be so inter- 
 laced with each other, so made by comparative prescience to support 
 and strengthen one another, so anchored as a whole in the great deeps 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 515 
 
 of human consciousness, as truly they were in our Lord's Sermon 
 on the Mount, that they come down through the ages over all the 
 interminable hazards of the way, a rich heritage to every generation, 
 though doubtless blurred and marred more or less and all the time. 
 Not so with single words. "Blessed are the meek." What is it 
 to be blessed? More to the present purpose, whence comes the sense 
 of blessedness? What is its ground? Is it tentative experience or 
 instant insight? Here divide the empirical and the institutional 
 schools in philosophy. And between them is a great gulf fixed. 
 
 The present writer can never forget the first hour spent by his 
 class of 1852, at the beginning of Senior year, with Dr. Hopkins on 
 the "Assembly's Catechism." Its significance in the present con- 
 nection is the proof it furnishes that Hopkins was through and 
 through a disciple of Paley, so far as essentials go. He took up 
 with us, as with all his classes in succession, the first question of the 
 catechism, " What is the chief end of man? " He spent the entire 
 hour on an exposition of the answer, " To glorify God and enjoy 
 Him forever." The class were unanimously carried away with the 
 force and fervor of his main contention, namely, that the two ap- 
 parent parts of this answer are in reality but one. To glorify God 
 is to enjoy Him forever, and, transversely, to enjoy Him forever is 
 the only way to glorify Him. The moral basis of the universe is 
 enjoyment, or blessedness. This is at once ground and end of obe- 
 dience. Joy begun is duty done. The two are interchangeable 
 and identical. Joy is not so much the issue of the duty done as it 
 is the motive to it and the realization of it. It is not probable that 
 a single member of that class was able to follow on that occasion the 
 steps of the reasoning (if such there were) by which the president 
 seemed overwhelmingly to establish his main propositions; but 
 every member of it was electrified by a brand-new experience, by 
 a gorgeous display of rhetorical and moral power; and a class-meet- 
 ing held shortly after unanimously invited the doctor not to confine 
 himself strictly to an hour in the exercise on the catechism to fol- 
 low, but to take, if he would, an hour and a half each time. No 
 hours like that followed in that course, though they were all inter- 
 esting and profitable; and looking back to that over an interval of 
 almost fifty years, it seems to one of those present, as. if at least a 
 partial explanation could be found there of the following sentiment 
 uttered by Dr. Hopkins long afterward: "but I too am a mystic." 
 
 During the first five years of this man's presidency, that is, from 
 1836 to 1841, things' slowly settled down in college toward fairly 
 good behavior on the part of the students, and more than fairly good 
 
516 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 teaching on the part of the instructors generally. Professor Hop- 
 kins with his quiet but tentative enthusiasm was getting hold of his 
 department with what proved to be a steady grip. In 1834 he had 
 gone to Europe, chiefly at his own expense, to procure for the Col- 
 lege some philosophical and chemical apparatus. He was always 
 fond of some mystery and surprises in all that he publicly said and 
 did. In 1835, without telling them exactly what he was purposing 
 to do, he asked a party of students to go with him to the quartz ite 
 ledges on East Mountain. With crowbars and other suitable imple- 
 ments, they were soon prying and tumbling down and piling up for 
 transportation blocks of stone, which, he told them, were to be used 
 in some novel building on college ground, exactly what, they 
 would ascertain in the future. There were stout men among those 
 students, but he was by much the strongest man in the party, the 
 leader, and acting in the whole business on his own responsibility. 
 Thus originated the Hopkins Astronomical Observatory of 1835. 
 It was gradually supplied with a good telescope and other needful 
 apparatus for original work. It has often been said by friends of 
 the College, in good faith, that this was the first building erected in 
 connection with any college in the United States exclusively used 
 for astronomical purposes. This is not literally and strictly true. 
 The University of North Carolina had such a building, small indeed 
 and poor, about ten years prior to the erection of this, our observa- 
 tory, which still proudly crowns the highest ground in the East Col- 
 lege yard. This undoubted statement of priority was verbally made 
 to the writer by his friend, the present president of that honored 
 university. 
 
 Associated in the interval of time just indicated with these two 
 foremost men of the College, were Professors Kellogg and Emmons 
 and Lasell, and Tutors Griffin and Tatlock and Crawford and White 
 and Coffin. Of these five tutors two became afterward much 
 respected professors here, and the other three were each long and 
 intimately associated with the town and college in one way or 
 another. Kellogg, a graduate of Yale, was appointed Professor of 
 Languages in 1815, and continued, with slight intermissions, to 
 perform the duties till 1844. He remained a bachelor for eleven 
 years, and lived in the northeast corner room of West College, on 
 the second floor, whence he made peregrinations daily to all the 
 rooms in that building, to see if the students were in their rooms 
 and attending to their studies. He was nicknamed by the students 
 "P-K"; which, they explained, according to the exigencies of the 
 inquiry, either as short for Professor Kellogg, or as a more obvious 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 517 
 
 contraction for Peek. He was small in person, and the calibre of 
 his mind was conformable thereto. He was a schoolmaster rather 
 than a teacher. He gave his attention almost exclusively to details. 
 There was little or nothing about him that was inspiriting or broad- 
 ening to the students. Yet he had some excellent qualities as a 
 man, and as a college officer also; he effected some good and perma- 
 nent results both in the town and the College, such as, for example, 
 originating the idea of the college garden, the ground for which he 
 purchased and gave to the College ; and all these traits and acts are 
 kindly and candidly brought out by President Hopkins in a sermon 
 preached in his memory in the village church, Oct. 11, 1846. We 
 quote a single paragraph : 
 
 He was one of those men who have strongly marked peculiarities, which yet 
 do not go to such a length as to become weaknesses. On the other hand, they 
 were such only as are required by the variety, the harmony, and even by the 
 wants of human society. While, therefore, we should not wish to have every 
 one to be, in the points referred to, such a man, we should yet not have wished to 
 have him different. Among those I will only mention here that peculiarity of 
 mind which led him to notice all the particulars of every subject in which he 
 was interested, and to go into all its details. No one can have been long 
 acquainted with Professor Kellogg without noticing this trait. It showed itself 
 in all his inquiries, in the kind of knowledge which he had on many subjects, in 
 the objections he would start to any plan proposed, and in the thoroughness and 
 completeness with which he would carry out those things which he undertook. 
 A striking illustration of this, showing at the same time his continued interest 
 in the college, he gave in a plan which he drew up not long before his death for 
 the improvement of extempore speaking among the students, by the institution, 
 if the means could be procured, of prizes for that purpose. The plan was judi- 
 cious, and if it could be carried into effect, would do much good ; but it cov- 
 ered two or three sheets of paper, and every possible emergency and objection 
 were considered and provided for. This habit of mind would naturally beget 
 caution, and accordingly, he well understood, and in its spirit commended to 
 others, the maxim which would teach us to "make haste slowly." This par- 
 ticularity and caution did not, however, render him deficient in enterprise. He 
 often originated new plans, which he was just as ready to scrutinize, as he was 
 to check the ardor of others in those proposed by them. 
 
 Professor Emmons, as he was always called upon this ground, 
 although he never held a strict professorship here, a graduate of 
 the College in 1818, and coming, while in college, under the stimu- 
 lating impulses of Chester Dewey and Amos Eaton in natural his- 
 tory, was appointed Lecturer in Chemistry in 1828. At that time 
 he was practising medicine in Williamstown, and was appointed one 
 of the deacons of the church in that year. Ten years later he was 
 appointed Professor of Chemistry in the Albany Medical College, 
 
518 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and took up his residence in that city, but he retained his connec- 
 tion with the College, coming here annually, in the summer, to 
 deliver courses on geology and mineralogy for many years. The 
 critical turn in his life happened in 1836, when Governor Marcy of 
 New York appointed him one of the four surveyors in the novel and 
 famous geological survey of that State. Amos Eaton, then and for 
 long the head of the Rensselaer School at Troy, had been most influ- 
 ential with the Legislature and the governor in the creation of this 
 survey, and continued to wield much influence over its execution, 
 partly because he had already reconnoitred, in his geological sur- 
 vey of the country adjoining the Erie Canal, the central portions of 
 the great State. To Emmons was assigned the second or northern 
 district, including the Taconic and Adirondack region. He first 
 made the public acquainted with the unexplored Adirondack coun- 
 try, and gave their names to the principal mountains there. He had 
 for his geological assistant during his first year of service James 
 Hall. 
 
 A partial readjustment of the survey and its leaders for the next 
 year, 1837, made at the instance and under the shaping hand of 
 Amos Eaton, added Jefferson County to Emmons's second district, 
 and promoted James Hall to be chief geologist of the fourth or 
 western district. Hall says, in the preface of his final report upon 
 this district, " Having been appointed by the late governor, the Hon. 
 William L. Marcy, to investigate the geology of the fourth district, 
 my duties in that region commenced in the spring of 1837." But 
 what of duties in the Adirondack region in 1836? Emmons's reports 
 are searched in vain for any reference whatever to Hall in that 
 primal year of his service, which must have given to somebody 
 probably to Eaton evidences of such geological ability as trans- 
 ferred him the very next year to an independent position in the sur- 
 vey equal to that of Emmons himself and such as kept him (without 
 once severing his connection with Albany) for sixty years of dis- 
 tinguished service in geology and paleontology, 1836-96. 
 
 This brings to notice a marked fault in Emmons's otherwise stain- 
 less career as a distinguished scientist. He did not always give 
 just credit to others in publishing the results of joint labors and 
 discoveries. On the other hand, in botany, for example, he called, 
 and allowed others to call, by his own name, plants that had been 
 previously found and described by others. H. H. Ballard, Wil- 
 liams College 1874, in his paper on Amos Eaton, in the second 
 volume of the Berkshire Book, gives flagrant instances of this. 
 Undoubtedly this propensity prejudiced many of his scientific con- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 519 
 
 temporaries against his other claims to originality, and led them to 
 deny or belittle what was unquestionably his own, namely, what he 
 called the " Taconic System " in geology. Precisely when or where 
 he first perceived the proofs of a group of rocks intermediate between 
 the Potsdam Sandstone, which is the lowest of the sedimentary 
 formations of New York, and the primitive rocks of central and 
 western Vermont, constituting a distinct system by themselves, not 
 recognized in the ordinary classification as it was then, we do not 
 know. Observations made in one place after another in his reor- 
 ganized second district of New York, at length brought him to a 
 firm conviction that such a stratum existed, and would have to be 
 recognized by the geologists sooner or later. Meantime, he main- 
 tained his discovery single-handed amid much ridicule and odium, 
 and even ostracism on the part of his fellow-geologists. It was in 
 his formal Eeport of 1838, that he first publicly announced his 
 discovery, and named it the "Taconic System." 
 
 Professor Albert Hopkins had spent his summer vacation of 1836 
 with Emmons and Hall in northern New York, amid their first ex- 
 plorations in that region. It is not likely that Emmons had then 
 hit on any evidence of his Taconic System; but it is a curious fact, 
 that Hopkins was present under peculiar circumstances when Em- 
 mons thought he found a confirmation strong as Holy Writ of what 
 his mind had already concluded upon as a stubborn fact in science. 
 In the summer vacation of 1841, Hopkins started from Williams- 
 town on a journey to Maine, to be married to Louisa Payson, the 
 daughter of a then celebrated pastor in Portland. Portland is in 
 the east country ; and it is an illustration of the obstacles to travel 
 in that direction then afforded by the Hoosac Mountain, under which 
 the Hoosac Tunnel now passes, that Hopkins and his party started 
 directly west, in order to begin their eastern journey from Albany. 
 The party to Albany was made up of his brother, who was to per- 
 form the ceremony in Portland, and of Professor Emmons and 
 Joseph White, then lately a tutor in the College, the two latter 
 casually occupying the stage over the Taconics with the two broth- 
 ers. At a little pause in the journey, perhaps to rest or bait the 
 horses, Emmons dashed off into a gorge or cave not far from the 
 road, when shortly the others heard him exclaim with enthusiasm, 
 "Here it is! Pve found it! Here is my Taconic System!" 
 
 From 1846 to 1854, Emmons worked steadily and officially on the 
 geology and the agriculture of New York, issuing in the interval 
 four volumes of reports, containing elaborate descriptions and fig- 
 ures, and illustrated by colored plates and otherwise. In the last- 
 
520 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 mentioned year, he published the first part of a treatise on Ameri- 
 can geology, which was followed by a brief text-book on the same 
 subject. Before these had appeared, Dr. Emmons had been ap- 
 pointed by the governor of North Carolina to the charge of a geo- 
 logical survey of that State. To this he devoted the last nine years 
 of his life, publishing every two years elaborate reports of his 
 labors, which were interrupted by the breaking out of the Civil 
 War. Anxieties consequent upon the war and upon separation 
 from his Northern friends and his family probably hastened his 
 death, which fell at Brunswick, North Carolina, in October, 1863. 
 He was born at Middlefield, Massachusetts, in May, 1799. He was 
 a plain and unpretending man, but a keen observer of nature and 
 an indefatigable worker. He was not a good teacher in the class- 
 room, nor had he power to gain and hold the attention of students 
 anywhere, who were not specially interested in the subjects he was 
 wont to teach. He appeared the best in the field or on the moun- 
 tain, surrounded by a small group of interested students, unfolding 
 to them in his quiet way the facts of botany or mineralogy or 
 geology. This mode of field-teaching he copied from his own more 
 original and grip-holding teacher, Amos Eaton. In the summer of 
 1851, in place of a lecture in the classroom, he invited the Junior 
 class here to accompany him to the East Mountain, in order that he 
 might explain to them the quartzite rock that appears to good ad- 
 vantage upon its sides and summit. The name " Mount Emmons " 
 has since been applied to this summit by one of his pupils, and has 
 been accepted as appropriate by many more. 1 The invited class 
 (which was the writer's) descended Consumption Hill with him in 
 force, but one-third or more had ravelled out before they reached 
 what is now called Cole Avenue, and half of the rest were gone 
 before was reached the bridge over the Hoosac, and how many (if 
 any) reached the summit with their leader the writer dares not say, 
 for he was not there to see ! 
 
 In his younger days here as a physician and a college teacher, 
 and before he got entangled in the great controversy of his life, 
 Emmons was popular both in the town and the College. An inci- 
 dent illustrating this, and also illustrating the high pressure of local 
 politics in those times, is well authenticated. The town was pretty 
 steadily Democratic during the first third of the century, while the 
 Noble and Dewey families and the college officials generally were 
 of the party of the other part. Sharp practice was indulged in on 
 both sides. Keyes Dan forth, the Democrat leader, a natural organ- 
 1 See Origins in Williamstown, p. 11. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 521 
 
 izer of common men, and always a shrewd counsellor in times of 
 stress, had usually a ready resource for voters in the then large 
 colored population in the White Oaks. It was a disputed question 
 whether college students had the local franchise. The Whigs had 
 planned to carry the election by covertly putting on the check-list 
 the names of thirty or forty students, supposing of course that they 
 would vote for their candidate for the Legislature. So they naturally 
 would. But Danforth, getting wind of what was going on, sounded 
 one or two of the newly enfranchised, "Will you fellows go for 
 Dr. Emmons, if our party will nominate him?" "Every man 
 of them will!" That is the way Dr. Emmons came to be in the 
 Massachusetts House of Eepresentatives in the winter of 1832- 
 1833. In those days Williamstown had two representatives in. 
 the General Court each year, one of them usually chosen from 
 the South Part. 
 
 Ebenezer Emmons has gained a lasting name and fame in geo- 
 logic science, in which he was one of the pioneers, independently 
 of the question whether or no the Taconic System be ultimately 
 accepted as such by the geologists. This is a question of construc- 
 tion and classification, and not at all of a correct observation and 
 description of facts. The geologic facts as he descried and described 
 them are admitted by all observers. In the sixty years during 
 which the controversy has raged, and it has not even yet been defin- 
 itively settled, there have been stout defenders both in this country 
 and in Europe of Emmons 's contention that these rocks, admitted on 
 all hands to be extremely difficult of classification, were really a 
 layer by themselves originally, although now curved and twisted 
 and mingled with the limestone and the quartzite; while the later 
 opinion, particularly that of the United States Geological Survey, 
 seems destined to prevail, namely, that these rocks, estimated to be 
 over eighteen thousand feet in thickness, are not strictly a "sys- 
 tem " by themselves, and consequently, that the distinctive term 
 "Taconic" must be dropped. Professor Walcott of the Smith- 
 sonian Institute, acting under the direction of the United States 
 Geological Survey, spent the two seasons of 1886 and 1887 in the 
 special exploration and study of these rocks ; and while he concedes 
 that there is no proper Taconic system, he yet pays the following 
 generous tribute to Emmons. "There is no doubt that Dr. Em- 
 mons was correct in classifying the upper Taconic as pre-Potsdam. 
 He deserves great credit for the work he did. Struggling under 
 adverse circumstances, he accomplished a work in one of the most 
 complicated regions of American geology, the central idea of which, 
 
522 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 that a great series of Paleozoic strata of pre-Potsdam age existed 
 east of the Hudson River, we now know was correct." 
 
 Aside from all purely scientific questions, it is a matter of inter- 
 est to the people and the students of Williamstown, that one of their 
 citizens and teachers found the materials of a most interesting dis- 
 covery and of world-wide controversy lying at their very doors. 
 Emmons at first, in 1838, located his Taconic System as designating 
 the low mountain range running parallel with the main range of the 
 Green Mountains, but a few miles to the west, along the boundary 
 line between Massachusetts and New York. In 1842, in his regular 
 " Report on the Second District of New York, " and later in his large 
 quarto pamphlet repeatedly reissued, entitled "The Taconic Sys- 
 tem," he extended its area so as to include a breadth of territory 
 stretching through the whole length of Vermont and into Canada as 
 far north as Quebec. He claimed that the rocks of this region 
 differed in character from the mountains on either side of them suf- 
 ficiently to be distinguishable, and to form a separate and distinct 
 system older than the Potsdam, but younger than the primitive 
 rocks. It is only fair to state that his associates in the New York 
 survey, Hall and Mather, differed with him from the first in this 
 construction. 
 
 Dr. Emmons added much to his already large reputation by his 
 official labors and discoveries in the state of North Carolina. In 
 paleontology, in particular, his studies there were prolific. He dis- 
 covered and named two brand new species of fossils, the Dromathe- 
 rium sylvestre and the Rutioden carolinensis. It may be a matter of 
 interest to some persons to note that E. V. B. Conklin, Williams 
 College 1835, married the eldest daughter of Professor Emmons, 
 Amanda, and both spent their lives in Williamstown on the estate 
 now known as Farm B, belonging to John B. Gale, Williams 
 College 1842. 
 
 Matters were progressing well in a small way for a small college 
 under the tentative but growing leadership of Mark Hopkins, and 
 under the then novel, though destined to become powerful, religious 
 views and methods of Albert Hopkins, when on a Sunday afternoon 
 in October, 1841, while the students were at church in the old meet- 
 ing-house on the square, the East College took fire and burned to 
 the ground. It was without insurance, and was a total loss. We 
 have already learned, upon an earlier page of this book, that the 
 East College was a larger and finer building than the West College, 
 and it was the first really college edifice erected, inasmuch as the 
 other was built for the uses of the original Free School, in 1790, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 523 
 
 without a thought of its ever becoming an appurtenance of a college 
 proper. This was erected in 1797 from the proceeds of two town- 
 ships of land in Maine, granted to the College by the General Court 
 in January, 1796. The land brought $10,000. The building cost 
 $12,400. It was of brick, four stories high, with a bevel roof like 
 the West College, 104 feet long and 48 feet wide. It differed from 
 the West College in having two halls through it east and west, 
 instead of the original one central hall of the other. It contained 
 thirty-two convenient dormitory rooms, and two recitation rooms 
 for Juniors and Seniors. The two literary societies forming the 
 
 HOPKINS OBSERVATORY. 
 
 Adelphic Union, which itself had been instituted two years before 
 this building was erected, namely, in 1795, the Philologian and 
 Philotechnian, had each but a little while before the fire fitted up 
 for itself a room on the third floor with its library and proper 
 furniture. There was a small theological library in another room 
 of the building, which was totally destroyed. All the rooms were 
 fitted with open fireplaces burning wood; and there had been 
 partial burnings within the building before ; but this conflagration 
 left the entire building a smouldering ruin. 
 
 The fire had taken in the southwest corner room of the fourth floor 
 
524 WILLIAMSTOWN AXD WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 from a stick of wood falling from the fireplace to the wooden floor. 
 It took but a little while to bring the students from the meeting- 
 house to the burning, and they did all that mortal man could do 
 under the circumstances to save their own property and that of the 
 College. An eye-witness once related to the writer, how Addison 
 Ballard of the Senior class persisted till the last possible moment 
 in throwing out from the third-story windows the books from one of 
 the society libraries; how William Goodwin, of the same class, 
 caught while engaged in similar labors by the advancing flames, 
 descended to the ground by the lightning-rod; and how, while the 
 south end of the huge pile was burning, and the then new astro- 
 nomical observatory was endangered, it was saved only by the stu- 
 dents covering the combustible parts with wet blankets. Every 
 room in the building was occupied at the time. Most of their pri- 
 vate furniture and books was saved by the students, although in a 
 damaged condition, except those in the rooms in the vicinity of the 
 place where the fire originated. The larger part of the libraries and 
 furniture in the two society rooms was also saved by such heroic 
 exertions as are characteristic of college students at a fire in the 
 country. 
 
 The immediate question precipitated upon the College as the sun 
 went down on that Sabbath afternoon was, Where shall the more 
 than fifty roomless students lodge to-night? Students under such 
 circumstances are full of transient resources. The West College 
 opened its rooms with hospitable intent; and as most of the beds 
 and bedding on the other hill had been saved from the flames, 
 couches on the floors sufficed for many, the president and professors 
 provided sleeping-places for some, and a few found lodgment in the 
 town. The next day, systematic and successful efforts were made 
 by all these parties to secure rooms as well as lodgings for all who 
 needed them. It was with a just pride that Mark Hopkins wrote, 
 forty-five years afterwards, " Every room had been occupied, and it 
 was feared that many students would leave, from the seeming im- 
 possibility of finding accommodations. There was, however, an 
 enthusiasm for the College, and not a man left." Amos Eaton 
 wrote out from Troy, that they would take in at the Polytechnic 
 Institute temporarily any and all who might wish to come. By 
 Monday night all the homeless were fairly provided for. Tuesday 
 morning the regular recitations in all the classes were resumed, and 
 continued without a break till the end of the term. 
 
 The blow of this fire-loss fell upon the young president and his 
 brother with almost crushing force. For more than ten years, in 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 525 
 
 various relations and positions, these two men had borne the brunt 
 of the burdens of the College. They had unselfishly gained the con- 
 fidence of the students, and had a moral hold on their hearts and 
 lives. The two had given themselves to the College in their youth, 
 and they were not the men to hold back when disaster came. 
 Neither of the two was by any means a perfect man, either then or 
 afterwards. The younger said of the elder, that " he doubtless had 
 something more of worldly ambition." Perhaps so. Both of them 
 had worldly ambition enough, though in different directions. But 
 both had consecrated themselves to the true interests of the College 
 in diverse ways, and both continued faithful to this their drift so 
 long as they lived. Upon the president fell the anxieties of the 
 new public and pecuniary situation. Shortly after the fire he called 
 at the Whitmans, more for general counsel and comfort than to ask 
 for money. "Do not be discouraged," said Mrs. Lucy Whitman, "I 
 will promise to give you one thousand dollars to help rebuild the 
 College." Very often in after life did Mark Hopkins refer to this 
 opportune promise as lifting a heavier weight from his mind than 
 any other college gift ever received by him. The quick giver gives 
 twice. A meeting of the trustees was at once called, and active 
 measures to secure money with which to rebuild were set in motion, 
 and several thousand dollars were gathered by subscription in a 
 comparatively short time ; but this was not enough to warrant action 
 to start the rebuilding. The times were hard. The total disap- 
 pointments following the election and speedy death of President 
 Harrison in that year weighed on all industry and enterprise. " In 
 this emergency," wrote Hopkins, "after some vain attempts to raise 
 money by subscription, it was determined to ask aid from the State. 
 I accordingly went to Boston, and presented a petition. That peti- 
 tion was referred to a committee, a member of which, from the 
 eastern part of the State, boarded at the same hotel with myself. 
 On his return from the State House, after his appointment, he came 
 to me to inquire about the College. 'Williams College,' said he, 
 'let me see, Williams College is somewhere on the North River, 
 isn't it ? ? Of course there was little chance of getting money 
 through a committee composed in part of such material." At any 
 rate, none was gotten. 
 
 In those early days there were six weeks 7 vacation in midwinter, 
 and most of the students went to teach school for a term of twelve 
 weeks, and some for even more. The winter term of instruction and 
 attendance was much mutilated in those days ; but as spring ap- 
 proached, and there is no place in the world where early spring is 
 
526 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 pleasanter than in Williamstown after a long winter, a better feel- 
 ing about the new building began to prevail in the town and among 
 the trustees generally. A contract was made by the treasurer, 
 Daniel X. Dewey, with Robert Noble, a citizen of the village, to 
 clear off the site of the burned building, and to pile up to one side 
 the brick that were fit for re-using, preparatory to a contract for 
 putting up two new dormitories to take the place of the old one. 
 Four stories to a college building were prejudiced in the local mind 
 by the circumstances of the fire, which caught in an angle of the 
 building, and at an inaccessible height. It was proposed, accord- 
 ingly, to have the new buildings but three stories high, the front one 
 to be still called "East College," and to occupy substantially the 
 site of the old one, and to be of the same length as that, with two 
 halls running through it, east and west, as before ; the second one 
 to be just two-thirds as long as the other, to stand directly south of 
 it, with four feet greater breadth, and to be called " South College," 
 having the main entrance at the north end and a second one in the 
 middle of the east side. 
 
 A careful contract was made for the erection of these buildings 
 by the treasurer with Crandall and Curtis, the junior member of 
 which firm of carpenters and builders, Harry Curtis, is still living 
 in. Williamstown in an highly honored old age. He practically 
 superintended the erection of the buildings from start to finish, and 
 his memory of all the details is, now fifty -five years after the time, 
 clear and strong, and has just been confirmed by measurements 
 made by others. The foundations of the old building, like those of 
 West College, rested on the limestone rock all around; and the con- 
 tract called for similar foundations under both of the new buildings. 
 This introduced a contingent element into the money terms of the 
 contract. As to the front building the depth of the rock beneath 
 the surface was pretty well known, though its exterior lines did not 
 follow altogether the old lines, the difference in the width of the 
 two being ten feet; but as to the South College, nobody knew the 
 depth of the digging needful to reach the limestone; so the contract 
 was made flexible in this respect, an extra allowance was to be made 
 to the builders for all foundations laid deeper than four feet on an 
 average beneath the surface of the ground. As a matter of fact, the 
 deepest digging was had along the northwest corner of the south 
 building, which accounts for the odd figures of its cost at the settle- 
 ment, $5090. The East College cost $7000. As the payments 
 were not to be made until the work was completed, the trustees 
 relied for the more moneys needed upon a second passing round of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 527 
 
 the hat in the town and the county and the State, and upon some 
 hoped-for collections to be made at Commencement, when the but 
 partially completed buildings would make a silent appeal to gradu- 
 ates and visitors. Accordingly, the Commencement dinner-table 
 was spread in the open air on the East College campus just to the 
 east of the buildings, and a little to the north of the then new as- 
 tronomical observatory. The weather was fine. The attendance 
 was large. The spirit was excellent. The president, as he always 
 did upon those occasions, made a hopeful and admirable speech, in 
 the course of which he heartfully thanked the Senior class, then 
 having just eaten their first alumni dinner, for standing by the 
 College to a man at the time of the disaster the autumn before. It 
 is safe to say, that no men felt better at the alumni dinner of 1842, 
 or remembered that dinner longer, or were thereafter drawn to the 
 College more firmly, than the thirty-five men constituting the class 
 of 1842. An unusually large proportion of this class was attracted 
 and attached to the town and the College in one relation or another, 
 and exerted, in one way or another, an influence in their behalf both 
 at home and abroad. A list of these men will enrich the present 
 pages. 
 
 Thomas S. Bacon John B. Gale Henry Osborn 
 
 Addison Ballard William Goodwin Job Pierson 
 
 Elisha B. Bassett Enos J. Halstead George W. Pleasants 
 
 James Brewer William A. Hawley Henry W. Porter 
 
 George P. Briggs Horace I. Hodges Andrew G. Riley 
 
 Thomas Colt Eli A. Hubbard John H. Sage 
 
 Theodore Cooke Charles S. Jordan Oliver M. Sears 
 
 William H. Edwards John H. Kellom John B. Skinner 
 
 George R. Enbler Jonathan Le Fevre Josiah T. Smith 
 
 Leland Fairbanks Horace Lyman Lewis M. Strong 
 
 Henry A. Ford Dwight W. Marsh Edward Taylor 
 Oliver Warner Lyman F. Wilcox 
 
 The chief speaker at this alumni dinner of 1842 was Nicholas 
 Murray, of the class of 1826. He was an Irishman, born and bred 
 in the tenets of the Catholic faith. A boy's disgust at some con- 
 duct of a Romish priest at home led him to question the claims of 
 that church, and led him to surrender at sixteen to an elder brother 
 all rights to any portion of their deceased father's property, in con- 
 sideration of money enough to take him to New York. In July, 
 1818, he arrived there friendless and almost penniless. Obtaining 
 work in the publishing house of Harper & Brothers, his capacity and 
 fidelity gained him the lifelong friendship of those gentlemen, and 
 the young sceptic was brought under the preaching and influence of 
 
528 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Kev. Dr. John M. Mason, and afterward became a member of Dr. 
 Spring's Brick Presbyterian church. He showed such fine natural 
 abilities and such an earnest spirit, that he was advised to prepare 
 himself for the ministry, and was sent to Williams in 1822. He 
 was not half fitted for college so far as the studies were concerned, 
 but he was full of life and insight, of humor and wit, and became a 
 favorite and leader in his class, holding such men as John Morgan 
 (another Irishman) and Albert Hopkins and William Hyde and 
 Samuel Bridges and Jonathan Noble and the two Fuller brothers. 
 
 Murray gradually became one of the most eloquent preachers of 
 his time, and a successful pastor in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which 
 post he did not leave, under never so urgent solicitations, until his 
 death, in 1861. He became also a very famous writer, under his 
 own name and that of KIRWAN, especially in controversy with 
 Bishop Hughes and other standard-bearers of the Romish faith. 
 His spirits were exuberant, his fund of anecdote inexhaustible, his 
 repartee keen and sometimes scathing, and he was a delightful com- 
 panion as well as a powerful champion. At this after-dinner table 
 on the college campus, right at the flank of the new buildings, 
 already covered in, but not yet finished, Nicholas Murray gave his 
 reminiscences and made his appeals in behalf of the Old Lady, as 
 he called her, the Alma Mater, who had been despoiled by fire of a 
 part of her wardrobe, and must now receive, at the hands of her 
 children, a new dress, in which she may properly receive at the 
 opening of the new college year a large accession to her family, and 
 be ready to receive back next year at this time, at her semi-centen- 
 nial, well-robed and without a debt, at the old hearth and board, all 
 the now scattered members of her old family. 
 
 A new subscription paper was circulated around the table, and 
 many who had subscribed before put down their names for an addi- 
 tional and, in some cases, an equal sum, and young graduates and 
 country ministers made their necessarily small contributions; and 
 there was good feeling all around, and, morally speaking, the College 
 was strengthened by an apparent misfortune. 
 
 One of the old ledgers in the treasurer's office exhibits the follow- 
 ing title and sequel, the names of the twice contributors appearing 
 here but once with the aggregate sums: 
 
 "Subscriptions to rebuild the East College, which was burnt Oct. 17, 1841 r 
 amounting in all to the sum of $8949.00." 
 
 Mrs. Lucy and Seymour Whit- Isaac Vanderpoel $50 
 
 man $1500 Ebenezer Learned 15 
 
 Daniel N. Dewey 500 John Hotchkiss 25 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 529 
 
 Albert Hopkins 
 Asahel Foot 
 Charles A. Dewey 
 Persons in Pittsfield 
 Persons in New York 
 W. M. Halsted 
 Ebenezer Kellogg 
 Charles Sedgwick 
 Erastus C. Benedict 
 Thomas Eggleston 
 David Buel 
 M. O. Halsted 
 Thomas Allen 
 Mrs. Laura Whitman 
 
 sell 
 
 Mark Hopkins 
 Henry L. Sabin 
 John Mills 
 Lyman Hubbell 
 Boston Collections 
 H. W. Brunsmade 
 John Tatlock 
 Benj. F. Mather 
 Jane Sedgwick 
 Samuel Shepard 
 William A. Hallock 
 Vail 
 
 $300 S. F. B. Morse 
 
 100 C. Alger 
 
 100 W. S. Tucker 
 
 400 Persons in Chesterfield 
 
 208 Persons in Becket 
 
 100 Joseph Alden 
 
 100 Nicholas Murray 
 
 85 D. 0. Kellogg 
 
 50 William Porter 
 
 50 Emory Washburn 
 
 75 Homer Bartlett 
 
 50 Russell C. Cook 
 
 10 S. E. Morse 
 
 E. La- Ruth Benjamin 
 
 1000 H. Byington 
 
 600 D. R. Williams 
 
 300 Persons in Peru 
 
 100 E. V. B. Conklin 
 
 100 Collections in Lenox 
 
 1700 Joseph Hyde 
 
 100 Jona. Bixby 
 
 100 Williston 
 
 50 Oliver B. Morris 
 
 40 James H. Coffin 
 
 42 Gerard Hallock 
 
 50 John C. Brigham 
 
 25 Abel West 
 
 $50 
 25 
 10 
 20 
 30 
 50 
 20 
 40 
 50 
 20 
 30 
 25 
 25 
 30 
 25 
 10 
 48 
 10 
 70 
 50 
 10 
 
 200 
 20 
 30 
 50 
 20 
 10 
 
 Well worth the noting are a few points in relation to this 
 subscription paper. (1) The relatively large sum contributed by 
 the residents of Williamstown. Fifty-four per cent of the whole, 
 that is, $4880, came from this source. The president and five other 
 members of the faculty, all young men, gave in the aggregate $1180. 
 The president's salary was then $1100 per annum, and the profes- 
 sors received $700. James H. Coffin, the only tutor at that time, 
 whose salary was $400, and who became afterward a distinguished 
 professor at Lafayette College, subscribed $30. The Whitman 
 family, merchants, the only family in town then denominated rich, 
 gave liberally, considering their means. The people of the village 
 and, indeed, the people of the entire town, had declined in pecuniary 
 means during each decade of the new century. The Sloans were all 
 gone in 1842; the Nobles were all gone; and the Deweys were all 
 gone except the treasurer, who was then relatively a poor man, 
 though he gave $500 toward the rebuilding. Emigration had 
 already carried away to the westward a considerable part of the 
 enterprise and of the property in Williamstown. When the pres- 
 
 2M 
 
530 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ent writer entered college, in 1848, the village had rather a decayed 
 look from one end of it to the other. There were only three private 
 houses in it that were out of the ordinary. 
 
 (2) The reader may have been struck by the amount, $1700, 
 under the head of "Boston collections." This money was gathered 
 and largely contributed by a mercantile firm there, whose style was 
 "Edwards and Stoddard." The families bearing these names were 
 very closely related by intermarriage and otherwise, in Northampton 
 and New Haven and Boston and elsewhere. Solomon Stoddard, 
 pastor of the church in Northampton, 1672-1729, was a maternal 
 grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, his successor in that church, 
 1729-50. The two were colleague pastors there 1727-29. The 
 Boston merchant, Charles Stoddard, was born in Northampton in 
 1802, became established in business in Boston about the time of 
 his majority, and continued in its active management for fifty years. 
 As he was a large importer of foreign goods, and, consequently, 
 became an experienced buyer of foreign "exchange," he came, as a 
 member of the prudential committee of the American Board, to be the 
 buyer in behalf of that body, having constantly large remittances to 
 make for the support of their missions, of the " exchange " needful 
 for that purpose ; and is said in times of stress to have repeatedly 
 loaned his own personal credit to the Board in that way in order that 
 the missionaries might not suffer in their work. It has already been 
 noticed elsewhere, that in 1832 Charles Stoddard married here Mary 
 Noble Porter, the widow of Professor William A. Porter, and was 
 thus drawn into intimate relations both to the town and the College, 
 which were never afterward intermitted till his death. In 1839 he 
 was chosen a trustee of the College ; and when the fire came, two 
 years later, he exerted himself to the utmost to repair the loss. 
 
 (3) The miscellaneous signatures in this subscription list are not 
 without significant and even historical interest. But three ladies 7 
 names appear; and, oddly enough, they are the names of three sis- 
 ters, born Seymour, in Hartford, Connecticut. Lucy and Laura 
 Seymour married the Whitman brothers, and Ruth Seymour married 
 a Mr. Benjamin, and signs her subscription of fifty dollars, " Ruth 
 Benjamin." All three were long-time residents of Williamstown. 
 The names of the brothers, S. F. B. Morse and Sidney E. Morse, are 
 both on this paper; the former as the practical inventor of the elec- 
 tric telegraph and likely to be always remembered as such, is the 
 most distinguished name on this list, and the latter, only less dis- 
 tinguished, was the founder of successful religious journalism in 
 this country. "In 1815 he established the Boston Recorder, a 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 531 
 
 weekly religious newspaper, of which for fifteen years he was sole 
 proprietor and editor. In May, 1823', with his younger brother, 
 E. C. Morse, he established the New York Observer, the oldest 
 religious newspaper in New York State." (Drake's "Diet. Am. 
 Biog.") S. E. Morse, like his older brother, was an inventor of 
 great merit both in connection with him and others too. Also on 
 the subscription list appear the names of two brothers, contempo- 
 rary with the Morses and often associated with them, but who, 
 unlike them, were both graduates of Williams in 1819. These 
 were Gerard and William A. Hallock, sons of Rev. Moses Hallock 
 of Plainfield, who fitted for college in his own house there perhaps 
 one-half of all the graduates of Williams during the first quarter 
 of this century. Gerard Hallock and David Hale were the joint 
 founders and proprietors of the New York Journal of Commerce, in 
 1828, to expedite the receipt of news for which they fitted out a fast 
 schooner to cruise off Sandy Hook to intercept European vessels for 
 foreign news, which was taken off by means of ingenious signals. 
 A little later they established the "pony express" from Philadel- 
 phia to New York, by which they were enabled to publish Congres- 
 sional news a day in advance of their contemporaries. This made 
 the Journal of Commerce the newspaper of New York, and of course 
 enriched its proprietors. William A. Hallock, who took the vale- 
 dictory here in 1819, became the founder, in 1825, of the American 
 Tract Society, with which he was completely identified for more 
 than fifty years. Other uncommonly interesting signers of this 
 subscription paper, of whom it would be a pleasure to say some- 
 thing in this place, were it otherwise proper and relevant, were 
 George N. Briggs and Nicholas Murray and Charles Sedgwick and 
 John C. Brigham and David Buel and William Hyde and Oliver 
 B. Morris and Emory Washburn and Homer Bartlett. 
 
 (4) It is noticeable, in the last place, that the chief procurers and 
 most of the contributors of this college money were what would be 
 called nowadays extra orthodox people. Why the College in distress 
 should make its appeal almost exclusively to such, and how the Col- 
 lege at any time came to be looked upon as a sort of champion of a 
 special style in theology, it is not easy to see, and consequently diffi- 
 cult to explain. It has been noted in its place, that the trustees 
 threw out by a formal vote the Hopkinsian system of divinity from 
 the studies of the Senior class, and substituted for it the milder 
 series of views of the amiable Dr. Isaac Watts. It is not known 
 that the trustees as such ever took any action on the Unitarian con- 
 troversy in Massachusetts, which may be said to have begun in 
 
532 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 1815, under the powerful leadership of Rev. Dr. Channing, and to 
 have been consummated some time before his death, in 1842. The 
 Unitarians carried their point before the Supreme Court of the State, 
 that " a church " is not a legal body entitled to hold real estate, but 
 only "a parish" can do this; consequently, a large number of 
 "meeting-houses " in the eastern part of the State passed under the 
 control and worship of the Unitarians, because the majority of the 
 members of a parish so voted. Harvard College also came into 
 their control for a generation, but it is now neutral in its attitude 
 towards all Christian sects. It is true that Presidents Moore and 
 Griffin were strenuous Calvinists, and that Amherst College, under 
 the presidency of the former, was expressly founded on those prin- 
 ciples, and that the latter deemed himself, and was considered by 
 many others, as a great champion of orthodoxy ; but all this had no 
 special bearing on the status of the College as such. Mark Hop- 
 kins was so little of a theologian, having never been trained nor 
 trained himself in the tenets of the schools, that Griffin, in 1833, 
 was for withholding from him an ordinary license to preach. Later 
 in life he had neither leisure nor inclination to look into these tech- 
 nicalities, and in his old age he volunteered the statement, "/ too 
 am a mystic" Notwithstanding all this, in 1842, when these sub- 
 scriptions were put down, and long afterward also, the College was 
 looked upon in many quarters as a specialized institution of ortho- 
 doxy. Charles Stoddard, as a member and deacon of the old South 
 Church in Boston, and bearing a brunt in the contest there on the 
 orthodox side, which can hardly be said to have won, so far as that 
 city was concerned, became more or less embittered towards those 
 who did not pronounce their shibboleth as he did. In other words, 
 he became an orthodox bigot; and on several occasions exerted a 
 distinctly sinister influence over Dr. Hopkins himself, as may here- 
 after appear, as well as over the course of the American Board. 
 The Morse brothers also were strongly orthodox, doubtless largely 
 because their father, Rev. Jedidiah, D.D., "was much occupied 
 in religious controversy, in upholding the orthodox faith in the 
 New England churches against the assaults of Unitarianism, an 
 undertaking which seriously affected his health." (Drake.) Sub- 
 stantially the same may be said of the Hallock brothers, and of 
 many more of the signers. 
 
 When the new East and South Colleges were finished in the 
 autumn, and Treasurer Dewey came to settle up with and pay off 
 the contractors, Crandall and Curtis, it was found that these had 
 honestly and fairly made two thousand dollars apiece under their 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 533 
 
 contract. This sum included of course the wages of superintendence 
 as well as net profits. The contractors had sublet the mason work, 
 
 including foundation and bricklaying and plastering, to Samuel 
 Keyes of Bennington. Keyes was satisfied with the outcome of his 
 
534 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 contract. The carpenter's contract did not include the floors to be 
 laid in the two buildings. These came under a special contract 
 made by Treasurer Dewey with a then prominent citizen of the 
 town, named Liberty Bartlett. Both were Whigs, extreme parti- 
 zans, and political manipulators. Bartlett's figure stands out even 
 now in generally picturesque and sometimes grotesque outlines. 
 His father was a tanner here and also in North Adams, and was 
 commonly called Squire Bartlett. The tannery was on Green River 
 just where it turns snarply to the east on Water Street. Near it 
 was the old sawmill and gristmill, almost coeval with the town 
 itself ; every trace of all three on the spot vanished long ago, and all 
 three operated from the first milldam built in Williamstown. Lib- 
 erty Bartlett was proprietor now of tannery and sawmill. He went 
 into wholesale shoemaking in the long building above his tan vats. 
 He employed many men. The town went a-booming in the Har- 
 rison campaign, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Before the inevi- 
 table failure and collapse came round, Dewey reached a hand to 
 Bartlett in the contract for the floors. The boards when put down 
 were of different widths and full of knots, and made by far the 
 worst job in the buildings. Dewey would hardly have accepted it 
 from a contractor of a different faith and practice. But Bartlett 
 was content with the returns he received according to the terms of 
 the bargain. After his first failure, he got on his feet again as a 
 merchant, and built the house so long owned and occupied by Har- 
 vey T. Cole. Man and measures boomed again for a while, and then 
 came the second moral as well as commercial wreckage. Bartlett 
 turned up years after in Little Eock, Arkansas, where he became a 
 judge, and lived to extreme old age. 
 
 The explanation of the fair profits in all these cases is found in 
 the "hard times," so-called, of 1842. Artisans were glad of work 
 at almost any price, and came in from the surrounding towns to 
 offer themselves. Curtis paid his ordinary carpenters sixteen or 
 eighteen dollars a month. They worked from sunrise so long as 
 they could see in the evening twilight, averaging about fourteen 
 hours. The most that was paid to the best carpenter was one dollar 
 per day. This was to a graduate of the College of the year before, 
 of the name of Pierson, who had learned the cabinet-maker's trade 
 before he came to college. He aimed to become, and did become, 
 a minister, but not having means to prosecute his further studies, 
 he offered his services to Crandall and Curtis as a carpenter, with 
 promise of pay contingent on his efficiency. He proved the best 
 man on the job in every respect, and was settled with at twenty-six 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 535 
 
 dollars per month. It is a pleasure to write of this man in this 
 connection, for he was a type of many of the early graduates of the 
 College. Many students came hither after their majority, having 
 already learned trades ; and most of the rest knew how to do all 
 sorts of farm-work. Pierson was twenty-seven years old when he 
 was graduated, a then not very unusual age. A wrong idea indeed 
 prevailed in New England in those days to the effect that if a young 
 man were converted by the time of his majority, it was his duty, at 
 all hazards, to seek to enter the ministry, no matter how much his 
 education might have been neglected up to that time. The preva- 
 lence of this notion tended to fill the colleges with young men excel- 
 lent in character and persistence, but who could not really take a 
 college education ; and it tended also to fill the pulpits with minis- 
 ters who could not sustain themselves for any length of time in one 
 place as public Christian teachers. The countervailing considera- 
 tion was, and remains, that so many new pulpits in new fields were 
 calling for supplies that, had not this class of men come forward as 
 they did, these pulpits must have gone altogether vacant. Rev. N. 
 E. Pierson belonged to this class of men. He served many small 
 churches, mostly in the state of New York, and during the Civil 
 War went to the field as chaplain of the 89th New York Volunteers. 
 He died in Michigan in 1872. Williamstown has an interest in his 
 memory, because he married, in 1844, Roxana Bixby, a beautiful 
 daughter of Jonathan Bixby, himself one of the subscribers of 1842 
 The Bixbys lived at that time on Northwest Hill directly opposite 
 the farm of Colonel Samuel Tyler, whose son Samuel's family moved 
 down into Charityville about the time that the Bixbys moved thither 
 also. The two families thus became neighbors again in the north- 
 western part of the village. 
 
 The year 1843 will ever be memorable in the history of Williams 
 College. It was the semi-centennial year. It was memorable for 
 what preceded it, memorable for what accompanied it, and memo- 
 rable for what followed it. Both town and college had had a mili- 
 tary origin. The topography of the valley and its surroundings, 
 which made it the scene for centuries of warlike expeditions back 
 and forth, which made it the site of two considerable forts and 
 garrisons in tfee two last French and Indian wars, 1745-59, and 
 which made it the best passageway later by which to strike from 
 the east Burgoyne's flank at Bennington and Saratoga, caused it, 
 when permanent peace came, to be quiet and obscure because rela- 
 tively inaccessible. The State fathered the College in something 
 the same spirit in which it had built Fort Massachusetts. The 
 
536 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 College was small and had but small resources. There is no evi- 
 dence from its first half-century that any of its promoters and offi- 
 cials had any expectations of its ever becoming what it did become 
 in its second half -century. The establishment of Amherst College 
 was one ground of great discouragement at the time and afterward 
 to those who had in charge the feeble institution behind the moun- 
 tains. Notwithstanding all these and many discouragements more 
 of other kinds, the College did fairly good work for its students 
 throughout its first fifty years. Its best work by much was done 
 in the circle of studies that constituted then the sphere of natural 
 history. Chester Dewey and Amos Eaton and Ebenezer Emmons 
 put their branches into the forefront, and kept them there (speak- 
 ing generally) till the semi-centennial. The town exerted its fas- 
 cination then over the students, as well as the simple and honest 
 ways of the College. Many of those who came up to keep the feast 
 with zeal and enthusiasm were natives of the town, and they had 
 no occasion to try to discriminate in their reminiscences between 
 what was merely local and what was merely collegiate. Many more 
 had married their wives from the valley and its hillsides, and they 
 came of course with joy, bringing their sheaves with them. Many 
 of the returning alumni had never before seen Professor Hopkins's 
 astronomical and magnetic observatories, and the new East and 
 South Colleges, though lower, made a more cheerful impression than 
 the grim fortress of 1797, although there were some there who 
 mourned over the loss in the landscape of the familiar home of their 
 college days. On the whole, the returning pilgrims brought more 
 joy and hope with them than they found entertained upon the 
 ground itself. 
 
 It is difficult, or rather impossible, for us moderns to comprehend 
 the degree of discouragement that the burning of East College had 
 brought to those having the College in hand. The new buildings 
 were indeed erected and finished, but there was a debt on them of 
 several thousand dollars. Treasurer Dewey always put his new 
 college buildings (he built five of them) down upon the solid lime- 
 stone, where he wished them to stand firm, and where they do stand 
 firm to-day ; he did not like debts resting upon himself as treasurer, 
 or upon his buildings so soundly based otherwise; he was brother- 
 in-law to the president, and undoubtedly communicated to him 
 something of his own impatience and discomfort from this source ; 
 and it was agreed beforehand to renew at the semi-centennial the 
 effort of the year before on a broader scale. A few months before 
 the anniversary the treasurer wrote : " We have as yet obtained only 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 537 
 
 eight or nine thousand dollars. We must raise it to fifteen thousand 
 dollars to put us in as good condition as before the fire. This sum 
 we cannot get along without." The alumni passed a resolution re- 
 questing " the trustees to make an appeal to the public to contribute 
 to relieve the College from its present debt." The case was indeed 
 hard and dispiriting. The total amount of productive funds on that 
 anniversary day fell below $30,000. The interest account for the 
 year then ended scarcely reached $1800. The combined salaries 
 paid that year to the president and six professors and the tutor 
 amounted to but $5150, an average of $645 each. The president 
 had $1100; a full professor, that is, one employed all the year round, 
 had $700. Two of the professors were not employed all the year 
 round. 
 
 But the summons for the gathering of the clans had gone out in 
 cheerful tones from the Society of the Alumni, that body which, 
 from 1821, had been the outer voice of the College, its main and 
 constant stay and support. The organized alumni took the initia- 
 tive, took the direction, and controlled the spirit of the semi-cen- 
 tennial. They did not send delegates to this festival, they came up 
 themselves. Forty-eight classes had then been graduated, 1039 
 alumni in the aggregate, an average of nearly 22 in each class. Of 
 this aggregate 217 were then known to have died, leaving 822 sup- 
 posed to be living. Of these, five certainly, namely, Jonas King 
 and William Richards and Henry E. Hoisington and Simeon H. 
 Calhoun and Dwight W. Marsh, were then living missionaries in 
 foreign lands ; and five, namely, Mills, Rice, Hall, James Richards, 
 and William Hervey were of the dead. The last three had died 
 missionaries in India. Very much scattered over the country were 
 the mass of the living alumni in 1843, and Williamstown was then 
 very inaccessible. Nevertheless, it is certain that fully one-third 
 of these came up to the feast. They came because they wanted to 
 come. They came because they felt they had been dealt with fairly 
 and openly and kindly by the college and by the town. The society 
 procured a book, in which the alumni present inscribed their names 
 by classes, with the express stipulation that the book be preserved 
 and presented at the centennial in 1893. This book disappeared 
 long before the destined time of future presentment, but the signers 
 under the first eighteen classes are known. Only 1795 and 1797 
 and 1809 were without a present witness in 1843. Thomas Robbins, 
 who made one of the two formal addresses, represented 1796; Wil- 
 liam P. Walker, 1798; Samuel Fisher and William Patrick, 1799; 
 Jared Curtis and Caleb Knight and John Dickinson, 1800; Oliver 
 
538 W1LLIAMSTOWK AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 B. Morris, 1801; Henry H. Childs and James W. Eobbins, 1802; 
 David Buttolph and J. W. Canning and Phineas Cooke and Jacob 
 Ten Eyck, 1803; Barnabas King, 1804; David Buel, 1805; Samuel 
 E. Betts and Chester Dewey and Thomas A. Gold, 1806; John Nel- 
 son and James Stebbins, 1807 ; Joseph Boies and Noah Ely and F. 
 L. Eobbins, 1808; Justin Edwards and Daniel Kellogg, 1810; 
 Charles A. Dewey and Eben L. Clark, 1811. Calvin Durfee, of 
 the class of 1825, who was present at this anniversary, says of it : 
 " This occasion brought together a great number of graduates (prob- 
 ably not far from three hundred), and with them a large crowd of 
 interested spectators." 
 
 It so chanced that the state of political feeling in Massachusetts 
 in 1843 helped to make more hilarious the exercises of the semi- 
 centennial. Marcus Morton was then the governor of the State, a 
 graduate of Brown in 1804, a man of high character and of strict 
 adhesion to his political principles, which were those of a liberty- 
 loving Democrat of Jefferson's school. He was a distinguished 
 lawyer and pleader, had been for two terms a member of Congress, 
 1817-21, for fourteen years a judge of the Supreme Court of Massa- 
 chusetts, 1825-39, and was elected governor of the State in 1840 
 over Edward Everett by one vote in the famously vivacious Har- 
 rison campaign of that year. The universal disappointments follow- 
 ing that national election, the hard times ensuing, the inevitable 
 and demonstrated inability of so-called " protective " tariff -taxes to 
 relieve the industrial condition of the people (as these were set up 
 again in the tariff of 1842), caused such a reaction against the 
 Whig party in Massachusetts, that Morton was elected governor 
 again the next year by a handsome majority. He felt well over it. 
 The people of Berkshire County felt well over it. Henry H. Childs 
 of Pittsrield, Williams College 1802, was chosen lieutenant-governor 
 on the same ticket. The governor of the State had not then been 
 accustomed to attend the Commencements at Williams town, and 
 there was a great local curiosity to see and hear him. Coming up 
 by way of Pittsfield he was publicly welcomed there; and, joined 
 by Lieutenant-Governor Childs and other distinguished gentlemen, 
 the party proceeded to North Adams; and thence was escorted to 
 Williamstown by a band of music, a cavalcade of gentlemen on 
 horseback, and a long train of carriages. Never had the like been 
 seen in northern Berkshire, and nothing like it has been witnessed 
 since. It was no privileged few honoring and being honored, it 
 was a popular demonstration in the best and heartiest sense of that 
 phrase. Governor Morton was entertained by the president at the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 539 
 
 president's house. Every college building, and every house in the 
 village, both public and private, were crowded to excess. 
 
 Agreeably to public notice widely circulated, although no dele- 
 gates from other colleges and no non-graduates had been specially 
 invited, on Wednesday morning, August 16, the alumni gathered in 
 the Griffin Chapel at 8 o'clock to celebrate their own semi-centen- 
 nial. "I remember," said an eye-witness fifty years afterward, 
 "as the alumni were gathering on Wednesday morning, Hon. Daniel 
 Kellogg was walking up, when a friend accosted him, 'Why, Kel- 
 logg, did you graduate here? ' 'That I did, sir,' he replied, with an 
 emphatic thump of the cane and a kindling of the eyes that even 
 now flashes on my memory. My dim reminiscences can give no im- 
 pression of the joyous enthusiasm with which the alumni recounted 
 the history and looked forward to the future of the College." David 
 A. Wells, who was probably present as an entering Freshman, and 
 at any rate was graduated in 1847, wrote as follows of this gathering 
 in his Senior year: "Here were assembled men of every profession, 
 judges and magistrates, pastors and teachers, some whose locks 
 were white with the frosts of many winters, and others in the full 
 strength of manhood; some of whom had not pressed the hands of 
 their classmates or revisited the scenes of their youth since the 
 parting of the class on Commencement day. Curious, painful, and 
 interesting was the recognition of venerable men, who, when life was 
 bright before them, had left this pleasant valley, to return after the 
 lapse of years, when the visions of youth had departed, and the sober 
 realities of old age had gathered around them. Delightful were the 
 congratulations; a hurried review was taken of the past; new pledges 
 of friendship were given and received, while a spontaneous and 
 universal, though silent prayer, went up to Heaven for the long- 
 continued prosperity and usefulness of their Alma Mater." 
 
 The inscription of their names by classes in the book already 
 referred to, which was the first matter attended to in the meeting 
 after it was called to order by Judge 0. B. Morris, of the class of 
 1801, the current president of the association, gave opportunity for 
 these informal greetings and reunions. While this was going on, 
 the president read aloud the names as they were inscribed, and thus 
 all were informed of the presence or absence of any. The society 
 then proceeded to elect their officers for the year. Judge S. E. 
 Betts, of the class of 1806, was unanimously elected president for 
 the year ensuing. A vote was then passed electing his Excellency 
 Governor Morton an honorary member of the society; and Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor Childs and Judge Betts were chosen a committee 
 
540 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 to repair to the president's house (where he was entertained), and 
 inform his Excellency of his election, and invite him to attend and 
 take a seat on the stage. In a few moments he was escorted to the 
 platform amid vast applause and waving of handkerchiefs, and took 
 his seat by the side of Judge Morris, who had not yet vacated the 
 chair. Just at this time, Jared Curtis, of the class of 1800, came 
 up to the stage to write his name in the book. Curtis was a native 
 of Stockbridge, own uncle of the Hopkins brothers, two years a tutor 
 in the College, and, subsequently, for more than thirty years a chap- 
 lain in the state prisons, first, for a brief time, in Auburn, and then 
 in Charlestown for a long time. He was the first state prison 
 chaplain employed in this country, and was extremely useful in his 
 self-denying labors in behalf of prisoners. At this time he was 
 sixty-six years old, venerable and benignant in his appearance. 
 Morris and he had been in college together one year apart, and had 
 known each other intimately afterward. As Curtis was writing 
 his name, Morris gravely remarked to the audience: "The indi- 
 vidual who is now writing his name is Jared Curtis, a native of 
 Stockbridge, and belonged to the class of 1800. He is a clergy- 
 man, and the only alumnus of our College who hails from the state 
 prison. And, inasmuch as his Excellency the Governor is now 
 with us, I would suggest whether this would not be a favorable time 
 to present a petition for an unconditional pardon." Instantly rose 
 the Governor with these words on his lips, "A pardon is impossible 
 for him, so long as he continues his present course of conduct ! " 
 Marcus Morton, though a Democrat, conquered the alumni com- 
 pletely by this single felicitous stroke, and made easy for himself 
 another sweeping victory in the afternoon by his facetious and 
 admirable talk. 
 
 On the adjournment of the society to the meeting-house, a proces- 
 sion was formed in front of the chapel in the following order: 
 graduates of this and other colleges in the order of their graduation ; 
 trustees and faculty of the College ; strangers and undergraduates, 
 and all marched to the meeting-house, which was filled to over- 
 flowing. Here two memorable public addresses were given, the 
 first by Mark Hopkins, of the class of 1824, and the other by Thomas 
 Robbins, of the class of 1796. Hopkins was then forty-one years 
 old, in the full vigor of his early prime. An eye- and ear-witness 
 long afterward spoke of his " bald forehead and scholarly stoop " as 
 giving "him an older look." The surroundings were beyond meas- 
 ure inspiring, his own sense of rightful responsibility and of being 
 master of the situation was contagious, and he spoke with unprece- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 541 
 
 dented energy and feeling. This is the testimony of all who heard 
 him; and it is the testimony of some well-qualified judges, who 
 heard all of his later masterly efforts, which alone could come into 
 competition with this, namely, some two or three of the baccala,u- 
 reate sermons, that even these did not surpass that in beauty of 
 expression and eloquence of utterance and sustained power of argu- 
 mentation. Professor Spring, a competent and elegant critic, wrote 
 in 1893 : " Some of the baccalaureates may surpass the semi-centen- 
 nial address in weight and originality of thought, in reach and 
 thoroughness of discussion, but none of them excel it and few equal 
 it, in felicity and nobility of utterance, in vital sympathy between 
 speaker and subject." 
 
 The writer feels it incumbent on him, as a historian of the town 
 and the college, to put into the pages of the present book, which he 
 hopes may survive to the second centennial, a few paragraphs from 
 the introduction, body, and peroration of this semi-centennial 
 address of 1843. 
 
 BRETHREN ALUMNI : 
 
 It is my first, and most pleasing duty, to bid you welcome to this spot. I do 
 it with a full heart. I do it personally, as an Alumnus of this institution to his 
 brethren Alumni. I do it feelingly, as holding a position in which I need your 
 sympathy and approbation ; in which, aside from those high moral considera- 
 tions which, I trust, will always be paramount, I find in that sympathy my best 
 encouragement to labor ; in that approbation, my highest reward. I do it as 
 gladdened and strengthened by your presence ; for few as have been the difficul- 
 ties I have been called to encounter, they have yet been enough to make one feel 
 how like the sunshine after clouds is the presence of so many here to-day, come 
 up to manifest their continued attachment to the cause of sound learning, their 
 interest in each other, and in the prosperity of this Institution. Men of earlier 
 times, to whom I have been accustomed to look up with reverence ; men in 
 active life, who have left your business and your cares to join in these glad 
 scenes ; and you, younger men, who have gone out with my own instructions 
 and parting blessing, it is with emotions which I cannot express that I welcome 
 you all. 
 
 But it is not in my name only, or chiefly, that I bid you welcome. It is in 
 the name of our venerable Alma Mater. With her you have sympathized in her 
 prosperity, and in her adversity. When she has been in poverty and distress, 
 when she has been opposed and misrepresented by ignorance and prejudice and 
 faction, when flames have swept over her, she has still heard your voice of en- 
 couragement, and has been sustained by your generous aid. In your hearts, 
 far rather than in buildings and in apparatus, she has hitherto had, and still has, 
 her best and her highest life. In her name, then, I bid you welcome to her 
 quiet seats, to this green spot in the memory of the past, to these familiar 
 scenes, these remembered walks, to the sound of that bell, not unwelcome 
 now, to these circling and unchanged mountains, to this scenery unsurpassed. 
 
542 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Especially do I bid you welcome to the fellowship of this literary festival, where, 
 with our congratulations in view of the progress and success of fifty years, we 
 may mingle our hopes of a brighter future. 
 
 Fifty years ! What changes do these words suggest ! Some of them occurring 
 in those ordinary and ever-repeated movements of nature which return upon 
 themselves, and some in that onward march of things which is made known only 
 as the scroll of Divine Providence is unrolled. Fifty years ! So many times has 
 the verdure of spring been seen to brighten this valley, and to creep up the sides 
 of these mountains ; and so many times have their tops slept in the sunlight of 
 the summer noon ; so many times have they put on the gorgeous robes of autumn, 
 and been swept bare and rested in the embrace of winter. These changes have 
 passed upon them, but they are still the same. Not so those who have looked 
 upon them. Of those who were in active life at the commencement of this period, 
 few, if any, remain. He that was then an infant clinging to his mother's bosom, 
 is now a man with gray hairs upon him, and with his children grown up around 
 him. In the meantime, with the regularity of the seasons, there has come the 
 Senior Examinations, and then the Commencement, with its greetings, and part- 
 ings, and wide dispersion ; with its gathered crowd, that has come in like the 
 rush of the brook after a shower, and has again dispersed, leaving these streets 
 solitary and quiet. During this time more than a thousand young men have 
 received the honors of this Institution. Here they have been agitated with the 
 hopes and fears,' and have shared the pleasures and perils, of this miniature world. 
 From this retreat they have looked out upon the ocean they were to sail, and 
 have gathered strength and skill for the voyage. Ah ! who can tell how many 
 anxious thoughts, how many hopes and fears of parents, how many fervent 
 prayers have clustered round and ascended for all these ! During this time, too, 
 the heads of the three venerable men who have presided over the institution 
 have been laid low. Fitch, and Moore, and Griffin, whose voices have so often 
 been heard in this place, and were once so familiar to many of you, where are 
 they! 
 
 Such have been the changes in this valley. Need I refer to those that have 
 passed upon the great theatre of the world ? It was often said by Dr. Griffin, 
 that this college came into being at the commencement of a new era. It was 
 just then that the smoke and the lava of the French Revolution began to be 
 thrown up, and that the shocks of that great moral earthquake began to be felt 
 among the nations. Infidelity, having gained the ascendancy in France, was 
 then mustering and concentrating her forces, and was sending out her emissaries 
 to convert the nations, and Anarchy and Bloodshed were following in her train. 
 These events alone have marked the period as an era among historians, and have 
 caused it to be regarded by the interpreters of prophecy as the opening of a new 
 seal. But besides these, it was the same year that Carey and his associates were 
 ordained to the great work of modern missions, and that the angel having the 
 everlasting gospel to preach among the benighted nations of the East, began his 
 flight. This was the commencement of a movement far more important than 
 the French Revolution. It was as the invention of the art of printing to the 
 effects of a battle. It was a moral movement, embracing in itself not only 
 moral, but political revolutions, which are to be accomplished, not by blood, but 
 by the noiseless and irresistible progress of truth and love. In the same year, 
 too, commenced that series of revivals of religion in this country, which has 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 543 
 
 never since entirely ceased, in connection with which this college has been so 
 largely blessed, and in consequence of which alone, it has been sustained. 
 
 Coming into being at such an era, its first half century could not but be event- 
 ful in the history of the race. Perhaps no fifty years since the world began has 
 been more so. And in connection with the great events that have taken place, 
 the human mind has been thoroughly agitated and aroused. Every institution 
 has been scrutinized, every opinion has been tested, and certain great truths, 
 with reference to civil and religious liberty, have, as we trust, become so firmly 
 established that they cannot be shaken. It has been the era of the application 
 of science to the arts, and of the extension of the dominion of man over physical 
 nature. If man had been endowed with the strength of a giant, and with the 
 wings of an eagle, the gift would hardly have been greater. It has been the era 
 of the extension of liberty, and of the diffusion of knowledge among the masses 
 not merely an era of change, but also decidedly an era of progress. 
 
 And this leads me to the topic to which I propose to call your attention on the 
 present occasion. I propose to make some remarks and inquiries respecting what 
 has been called the law of progress of the race, and then to say something of the 
 connection of this college with that progress. 
 
 Probably the alumni of no college in the Union are more scattered than ours, 
 composed, as they have so largely been, of those who have had their own way to 
 make in life. As I have already said, more than one thousand young men have 
 completed their course of study here, and of these more than one-third have 
 been or will be ministers of the gospel. Many of these, too, would never have 
 been educated I have no reason to suppose I should myself have been if it 
 had not been for Williams College. Embosomed among these mountains, it has 
 exerted a suggestive power, and called out many such men as become most use- 
 ful when educated. They have come from the yeomanry of the country, from 
 the plough and the workshop, with clear heads, and firm nerves, and industrious 
 habits, and unperverted tastes in need, it may be, of polish, but susceptible of 
 the highest. They have come because they felt high impulses struggling within 
 them, and they have made their own way. Such men we welcome. They 
 become, intellectually, the working-men of the land energetic practical men, 
 whose influence has been and is extensively felt in the benevolent operations of 
 the day. It is probably by bringing forward such men, as teachers, as minis- 
 ters, as practical men in all the professions, and diffusing in society the leaven 
 of their influence, indispensable in institutions like ours, that this college has 
 done most good. 
 
 But if our number had been smaller, and we had done less by that general 
 influence that belongs to all literary institutions, it might still be presumptuous 
 to speak of what we had done on so broad a field. In some respects the progress 
 of knowledge and improvement is like the gradual accumulation of a pile to 
 which every scholar may be expected to add something, as every Indian is 
 said to have laid a stone upon the pile at the foot of Monument Mountain, 
 but in other respects it is more like the progress of fire which is set at certain 
 points, and spreads on every side. Luther, and Bacon, and Newton, and Carey, 
 and Samuel J. Mills, set fires, and he who does this to any extent does some- 
 thing for the race, even though that which kindled the blaze was but a spark, 
 and was lost in the brightness and glow of the succeeding conflagration. The 
 
544 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 brightest history of an institution is to be found in what it has done in setting 
 such fires. 
 
 And here I cannot fail to be reminded by the position in which I stand, sur- 
 rounded by its genial light and warmth, of one such fire. So far as I know, the 
 Society of the Alumni of Williams College was the first association of the kind in 
 this country, certainly the first which acted efficiently, and called forth literary 
 addresses. It was formed September 5th, 1821, and the preamble to the con- 
 stitution then adopted was as follows: "For the promotion of literature and 
 good-fellowship among ourselves, and the better to advance the reputation and 
 interests of our Alma Mater, we, the subscribers, graduates of Williams College, 
 form ourselves into a Society." The first president was Dr. Asa Burbank. 
 The first orator elected was the Hon. Elijah Hunt Mills, a distinguished Senator 
 of the United States. That appointment was not fulfilled. The first oration 
 was deliver in 1823, by the Rev. Dr. Woodbridge, now of Hadley, and was well 
 worthy of the occasion ; and since that time the annual oration before the Alumni 
 has seldom failed. In 1832 a measure was adopted by this Society of great impor- 
 tance to the college. It is scarcely credible how meagre the philosophical and 
 chemical apparatus then was, and it was voted that this Society would attempt 
 to raise for the benefit of those departments the sum of $4000, by subscriptions 
 of the Alumni and other friends of the college. The effect of this, faithfully 
 applied as it was to the direct means of instruction, has, I know, been felt from 
 that time to this, in every beating pulse of the institution. Since this Society 
 was formed, the example has been followed in other institutions, and bids fair to 
 extend to them all. Last year, for the first time, the voice of an Alumnus orator 
 was heard at Harvard and at Yale ; and one of these associations, I know, sprang 
 directly from ours. It is but three years since a venerable man attended the 
 meeting of our Alumni, one of those that have been so full of interest, and he 
 said he should go directly home and have such an association formed at the 
 commencement of his Alma Mater, then about to occur. He did so. That asso- 
 ciation was formed, and the last year the voice of one of the first scholars and 
 jurists of the nation was heard before them. The present year the Alumni of 
 Dartmouth were addressed for the first time, and the doctrine of Progress was 
 illustrated by the distinguished speaker in more senses than one. 1 Who can tell 
 how great the influence of such associations may become in cherishing kind feel- 
 ings, in fostering literature, in calling out talent, in leading men to act, not sel- 
 fishly, but more efficiently, for the general cause through particular institutions ? 
 
 Another important idea originated here is that embodied in the Horticultural 
 and Landscape Gardening Association, the results of which are seen in the col- 
 lege garden, and in the garden around the observatory. With slight exceptions, 
 the whole labor bestowed upon these, from the first, and its amount is greater 
 than most would suppose, has been done by the students. The object has not 
 been profit, but the promotion of health and of a taste for the beautiful, and the 
 effect has been most happy upon health and cheerfulness, and upon the emotive 
 nature. Perhaps it does as much as can be done in remedying that evil of col- 
 lege life, the want of a domestic and home influence. It shows that students 
 can make of college just what they choose that they can make it a home of 
 peace, and connect with it associations of beauty and moral purity, a place full 
 
 1 Hon. Levi Woodbury, whose subject was "Progress." 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 545 
 
 of unspeakable interest to parents and friends, and to those who have the over- 
 sight of it. When standing in the midst of beauty thus created, my mind has 
 often been led on to the conception of a higher beauty than that of flowers and 
 mountains, and I have had a vision of what a college might be. I do not know 
 that our example in this respect has been followed by other colleges in some 
 it could not be but I know of several academies which are now surrounded by 
 tasteful grounds in consequence of what has been done here. I hardly know of 
 an idea with which the young people of this land more need to be imbued, than 
 that which lies at the basis of this association. 
 
 Another thing which I may properly notice here, is the fact that to this col- 
 lege belongs the honor of having erected the first Astronomical Observatory on 
 this continent. This was commenced at a period of great apathy on the subject, 
 but since then the interest has become extensive and intense. Nor was this 
 building erected as a single isolated undertaking. It was one mode of realizing 
 an idea that had been adopted in regard to all education respecting sensible 
 objects, which is that we are not so much to talk about a thing, as to show 
 it. You may tell me that the stone you hold in your hand is petrified wood, and 
 I may believe it ; but let me see, by a microscope, the porous structure and the 
 layers still remaining, and I have an impression that I could have got in no 
 other way. You may tell me of the magnitude and motion of the planets ; but 
 let me see them hanging in space, and passing rapidly through the field of a large 
 telescope, or let me turn that same telescope upon one of the nebulae, or into the 
 depths of infinite space, and it is quite another thing to me. The idea is 'that 
 the teacher is to make nature the principal, and, as far as possible, is to let her 
 do her own teaching. In pursuance of this idea, the Magnetic Observatory has 
 been built, very efficient Meteorological and Natural History Associations have 
 been formed, and scientific expeditions and pedestrian tours have been several 
 times undertaken. The direct object was not so much the extension of science, 
 as to convey a more accurate impression of the universe as now known, and to 
 promote habits of observation. Have the means and apparatus to do this fully, 
 and your course loses the character of mere book-learning. The student is led 
 to direct communion with nature, and with nature's God, and though you do 
 not advance science immediately, yet you kindle fires. You incorporate your 
 course into the very being. You awake thoughts and feelings " that shall perish 
 never." Such is the idea which we have attempted to realize in the teaching of 
 physical science, which we have realized as far as our means would permit, and 
 of which the Observatory was but a single result. And here I cannot omit to 
 mention, as connected with our facilities in this department, the donation dur- 
 ing the past season by Prof. Emmons, of a complete suit of the New York min- 
 erals and rocks, a gift of great importance, connected as those rocks are with the 
 general science, and one worthy of the munificence of a State. 
 
 I will mention one idea more, indigenous here, as it must have been else- 
 where, which we have of late attempted to realize. It is that of making the 
 college studies have the impression and effect of a system on the mind of the 
 student. Laying the power of expression, whether by writing or speaking, out 
 of the question, we divide our course into the Languages, Mathematics, Physi- 
 cal Science, and Man, as he is in himself, and in his relations to his fellow- 
 creatures, and to God. Pursuing Mathematics and the Languages in the usual 
 way, and Physical Science in the manner just spoken of, we take up first the 
 
546 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 physical man, and endeavor to give, as by the aid of the valuable preparation of 
 Auzoux l we are able to do, an idea of every organ and tissue of the body. We 
 then take the intellectual man, and investigate first and classify his several 
 faculties ; then the grounds of belief and the processes of the mind in the pur- 
 suit of truth, with an explanation of the inductive and the deductive logic ; 
 then the moral nature, together with individual and political morality, com- 
 prising a knowledge of constitutional history and of the rights and duties of 
 American citizens ; then the emotive nature, as taste and the principles of the 
 fine arts ; then natural theology and the analogy of the natural to the moral 
 government of God. Perhaps other and better systems have been adopted else- 
 where ; but I know that formerly here, the studies were pursued as separate and 
 isolated, and there is reason to suppose that the idea of the system, of the com- 
 munication of one grand organized body of knowledge, answering in unity as 
 well as in diversity to the universe of God, is too little regarded. 
 
 And now, as half a century has rolled away, and this college, notwithstanding 
 its struggles, has accomplished so much, we cannot help anticipating for it a high 
 career of usefulness for the half century to come. We cannot but hope that 
 those who shall be gathered here fifty years hence, shall have far higher occa- 
 sion to rejoice in what this Institution has done for the good of the church and 
 of the world. Why should it not be ? The great difficulty of former times, a 
 want of facility of access, is now removed. Probably a greater proximity of 
 railroads would not benefit the college. We are removed, comparatively, from 
 temptation. We are not only in a beautiful, but healthy region. I think it is 
 remarkable, and I mention it with gratitude, that since I have been at the head 
 of the college, not a student has sickened and died on this ground, and with the 
 exception of a single case of consumption, there has been no instance of the 
 death of any one connected with us. We are indeed still embarrassed from 
 the loss of that building where so many of us have roomed and studied. But 
 ample accommodations have risen in its place. And here I will say, that severe 
 as was that loss, dark as was that hour, yet the college never gave indications of 
 a higher vitality than when those ruins were yet smoking. And when I saw a 
 full and prompt meeting of the Board of Trustees, when I saw every student, 
 without exception, standing by the college, often at great inconvenience, when 
 I saw the spirit of accommodation among this people, when I heard an excellent 
 woman, who has done more good than the world knows of, tell me not to be 
 discouraged, at the same time subscribing a thousand dollars, I knew the cloud 
 would pass over. It will pass over. To this place now as a site for a college, 
 I know of but one objection, and that perhaps necessarily connected with the 
 peculiar retirement and quiet it enjoys. From its position in the county and in 
 the State it can have but little local sympathy, and it is remote from the obser- 
 vations and sympathies of men of wealth, who often take a pleasure and a pride 
 in doing something for our institutions of learning. Accordingly, no halls have 
 risen here by private munificence, no professorships have been endowed. Hence, 
 with the exception of the Woodbridge Little Fund, amounting to something over 
 
 1 The reference is to the manikin, which was purchased by Hopkins to illustrate 
 his college lectures on anatomy, and which was paid for by means of public lec- 
 tures given by him in the chief towns of the county, using the model in the way of 
 illustration. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 547 
 
 $5,000, and two bequests of $1,000 each, the whole income of all which goes to 
 pay tuition, the college has never received anything by legacy or private gift, 
 except what has been solicited by subscription for special purposes. Hence, we 
 have often struggled for years, and labored under great disadvantages for the 
 want of that which, if they had known it, I am sure it would have given hun- 
 dreds pleasure to supply. Hence, while it was found impossible in a case of 
 great emergency and destruction by fire, to raise $2,000 for this college, in a city 
 justly celebrated for its liberality, another institution more favorably situated 
 found no difficulty in raising at the same time fifteen or twenty thousand dol- 
 lars, to increase its already large library ; and while only $300 could be raised 
 from such sources when an observatory was contemplated here, there is no diffi- 
 culty in other quarters of obtaining $20,000 for the instruments of one. I do 
 not say this in the way of complaint. It is natural it should be so, and we are 
 only the more grateful to our friends for the indispensable aid they have ren- 
 dered. Possibly, as wealth increases, and the means of communication are 
 greater, there may be some change in this respect. It may perhaps occur to 
 some one of the many who wish to do something for the progress of the human 
 mind, that such things, coming to those who need them, are far more highly 
 prized, and that the name of the benefactor that stands comparatively alone, is 
 oftener repeated, and more fondly remembered. But however this may be, we 
 have no wish to be rich. But we do wish the means to keep pace with the 
 times, in cabinets, and books and apparatus, and in the introduction of new 
 branches of study. These means, by the blessing of God, we hope to have. 
 Let the college have these, and who can estimate the good it shall do in the 
 coining fifty years ? Who can tell the gratulations of those who shall gather 
 here at the end of that time, and look back upon its bright career? 
 
 Brethren Alumni, you have come up at the call of your committee to cele- 
 brate this semi-centennial anniversary. You have come, but our number is not 
 all here. Many, whose hearts are with us, are detained by business, or pre- 
 vented by distance ; but many, too, are where no call of ours could reach them. 
 Some rest beneath the soil of their own New England ; some beneath the prai- 
 ries of the far West ; some are with Mills in his ocean-bed, and some slumber 
 with Hall and Richards, and my own class-mate and associate tutor, the 
 beloved Hervey, "on India's coral strand." 
 
 Along the earlier years of our catalogue the stars have gathered thickly. In 
 all, 217 are known to have terminated their earthly career. And those stars 
 will continue thus to gather, as, one by one, we too go down to the tomb. When 
 another half century is past, and the call shall go forth for the Centennial gath- 
 ering, we shall not hear it. Possibly, indeed, as we now venerate the age, and 
 are to be instructed by the wisdom of one who was within one year of the very 
 earliest of the Alumni, so those who shall be gathered then may hear the voice 
 of one whose words shall fall with weight, as from the height of these earlier 
 times possibly they may listen to one who now hears me. But, long before 
 that time, the most of us will have done what we have to do for the weal or the 
 woe of man. The impressions which we choose to make in the yielding mate- 
 rials of time, will, before that, have been made, and have become set in the 
 eternal adamant of the past. What then remains to us, in this period of the 
 birth-throes of coming wonders, but to meet our responsibilities as patriots, as 
 scholars, as Christians, as the Alumni of an institution where the fire of a 
 
548 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 benevolence practically embracing the world was first kindled in this country, 
 and upon whose altars that fire has never gone out ? Let us then throw our- 
 selves upon the tide of this great movement the advancing tide of Christian 
 progress, which we trust is to rise, and swell, and flow over the earth. We are 
 here to-day to build up no merely local or sectional interest. We have, indeed, 
 our personal feelings, we have associations dear to us, connected with this spot. 
 But there are higher considerations than these, and we would do nothing, and 
 ask nothing for this institution, except as it may be, and ought to be, in its 
 place, one of the grand instrumentalities through which we can labor most 
 effectually for the highest good of man. As such, we cherish it. As such, we 
 commit it to the guardian care of Him who has hitherto watched over it. As 
 such, we hope to see its influence expanding as a seat of all liberal culture, but 
 especially as connected with the great cause of Christian benevolence, till those 
 plans and movements which originated here shall be consummated, and they 
 shall not teach any longer every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, 
 saying, Know the Lord : for all shall know Him, from the least to the greatest. 
 
 Prodigious according to the measure of those times was the effect 
 of this semi-centennial oration on those who heard it, and also on 
 those who read it shortly after its delivery. It was sixteen years 
 after the delivery and printing of the master's oration on "Mys- 
 tery," in 1827, which proved to be the first strong stroke as toward 
 the young man's steady reputation. Professor Silliman happened 
 to be present at that Commencement, and heard the oration on 
 "Mystery," and asked for a copy to be printed in his then widely 
 circulated Journal; and it first appeared there the next spring. 
 Ten occasional discourses, including the inaugural discourse of 
 1836, had been separately printed before 1843, and as many occa- 
 sional sermons before 1847, to all which Hopkins him elf makes 
 reference in the following terms on their republication in the latter 
 year, " They are all either discourses or lectures prepared for spe- 
 cific occasions, and not originally intended for the press; and the 
 author would not himself have so far presumed on their permanent 
 interest as to hazard their republication." As a matter of fact, 
 none of these delivered and printed in the interval of time referred 
 to made any special impression on the public. They were whole- 
 some and luminous discussions of topics relevant to their respective 
 -occasions. That was all. 
 
 But this semi-centennial oration was a sustained peal of thunder. 
 It was reverberant and it was powerful. It never could have been 
 written but for the discipline of the fire. It never would have been 
 written but for the only half-smothered indignation over the appar- 
 ent indifference of the State and of Boston and Cambridge to the 
 crying needs of a Massachusetts college, which had done its work 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 549 
 
 well for fifty years. Looked at indeed under the light of all the 
 facts and circumstances, there are phrases in the oration that now 
 seem perhaps unjust to the State. The State had always before 
 responded to every call for money, in moderate sums to be sure, 
 but it had responded and responded promptly. The money value of 
 its gifts had amounted at that time to over fifty-three thousand 
 dollars in all. The aggregate looks small, but then the College was 
 small. As compared with Cambridge, which had been sending out 
 its college classes regularly ever after 1642, Williams seemed very 
 new indeed. Four semi-centennials down there to only one up here. 
 Cambridge was close by, Williams was very far off " on the North 
 River ! " The appearance in the lobby of the Legislature of a com- 
 mittee of the trustees twenty years before to enforce the petition of 
 that body for leave to move the College to Northampton, had made 
 a bad impression in Boston and Cambridge, which had only slowly 
 worn off. As Hopkins admitted, their present indifference was 
 "only natural." But the courage and grit of his peroration, what 
 was scarcely less than a note of defiance, had a striking effect all 
 over the State, and secured even in Boston and Cambridge (as we 
 shall see in the next chapter) a new and stronger recognition of the 
 College and of its present head as now no longer " borrowing leave 
 to be." 
 
 Of a far different character, on a much lower plane, with more of 
 complaint in it than of encouragement, was the oration on the same 
 semi-centennial occasion of Thomas Robbins, of the class of 1796. 
 "Oh! what a falling off was there." Yet in himself was Bobbins a 
 distinct and interesting personality. Representing the second class 
 of the Williams graduates, he brought the word over from the pre- 
 ceding century. He brought over also in his dress the small clothes 
 and buckles of the Revolutionary period. He was small in person, 
 with a weazen face. He had pursued most of his college course at 
 Yale, and was regularly graduated there just one week after he was 
 regularly graduated here. His name is on both triennial catalogues 
 alike. As was the custom in those days with candidates for the 
 ministry, he studied his profession with pastors in active work, with 
 Ephraim Judson at Sheffield and Stephen West at Stockbridge in 
 succession. His home was at Norfolk in Connecticut. As a home 
 missionary in the new towns of Vermont and New York and Ohio, 
 and in transiently supplying pulpits in Massachusetts and Connect- 
 icut, he passed his time till 1808, when he settled down to steady 
 preaching for nineteen years, at what is now South Windsor, Con- 
 necticut, whose first minister was Timothy Edwards, father of 
 
550 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards. Here he commenced what was really the great 
 enterprise of his life, namely, the collecting of a private library, 
 which was destined to become one of the largest and best of his 
 generation. The Connecticut Historical Society exhibits at its 
 rooms in Hartford what can be accomplished in this way by an 
 unmarried country minister, without inherited property, and with 
 only the ordinary salary of such men in New England in his 
 time. 
 
 But why was he unmarried? What can be gleaned from his diary 
 and other sources about the futile love-affair with Miss Skinner in 
 Williamstown in 1796, has been related in place on some of the 
 earlier pages of this book. It has been said by another, " When Dr. 
 Robbins commenced his professional life, the question came dis- 
 tinctly before him, whether he should surround himself with a 
 family or a good library; and he deliberately chose the library." 
 However, he may be remembered longer from his diary than from 
 the library, which is to be kept intact and separate by the Historical 
 Society that now owns it. The diary was begun in Williamstown, 
 Jan. 1, 1796, and was continued, with very slight intermissions 
 on account of sickness, until the last entry, made March 6, 1854, 
 a period of over fifty-eight years. Eobbins Battell of Norfolk, 
 a nephew of the diarist, and his sister Anna were at the munificent 
 expense of printing in 1886, in two large and elegant volumes, this 
 diary entire, edited and annotated with extraordinary industry and 
 intelligence by Increase N. Tarbox. The entries in the diary in 
 relation to the semi-centennial exercises here in 1843 are as 
 follows : 
 
 Aug. 15. Took the cars [at Boston] and rode to Pittsfield. Dined at Spring- 
 field. Got acquainted with Bishop Onderdonk. The scenery and the work of 
 the railroad between Westfield and Pittsfield are astonishing. Took a stage 
 and rode to Williamstown. Very kindly entertained at President Hopkins's. 
 Had a pleasant day. 
 
 Aug. 16. Attended an interesting meeting of the Alumni. I am the senior 
 present. Attended the public services. The president delivered a very good 
 address respecting the college. I delivered mine. Too long an hour and 
 forty-five minutes but kindly heard. The Alumni had a long public dinner. 
 A very numerous and highly respectable collection. Gov. Morton is present. 
 At evening attended the speaking of undergraduates. Not greatly fatigued. 
 
 Aug. 17. Met with the corporation [he was a trustee from 1842 to 1853]. 
 We voted two divinity doctorates. Attended the Commencement exercises: 
 good, but want of variety. It is said that there has never been so great a col- 
 lection of people on a like occasion. See many former acquaintance. Feel a 
 want of rest. The Alumni voted to publish the president's address and mine. 
 Left Williamstown towards evening. Tarried at a private house in Hancock. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 551 
 
 It is due to the memory of this good and painstaking, but in 
 no sense great man, that a couple of paragraphs from his semi- 
 centennial oration be appended. The first is taken almost at 
 random from the body of the address, and the second is the brief 
 peroration. 
 
 One of the best species of genius that we know of is a disposition for applica- 
 tion. The eminent Dr. [Noah] Webster, lately deceased, has seldom been 
 spoken of as distinguished for genius. Public sentiment, in this respect, has 
 rather been against him. Because he was known, principally, by his Spelling- 
 book, a work, by the way, of no ordinary intellect, he has not been generally 
 ranked among the men of genius and talent in our own country. Yet he attained 
 to the rank, in the opinion of good judges, of the first philologist of the age. It 
 may be safely said, that in this important department of literature, he was 
 not surpassed. And in his large Dictionary he has left the richest legacy to his 
 countrj^men that has ever been left by any literary man. It is, undoubtedly, 
 the best dictionary in the English language. " And while a nook remains where 
 English minds and manners can be found," it will be resorted to as an authority. 
 No American author has realized as much pecuniary profit by his works as Dr. 
 Webster. He has always been a man of excellent character, of public spirit and 
 a good citizen. The class at Yale College of 1778, to which he belonged has 
 long been considered as one of the most distinguished from that institution. 
 Their tutor was the Rev. Dr. Buckminster, of Portsmouth. The class con- 
 tained Oliver Wolcott, Joel Barlow, Uriah Tracy, Josiah Meigs, Zephaniah 
 Swift, Asher Miller, Noah Smith, Stephen Jacob, and other distinguished men, 
 and no one has been more useful in life, or left a higher reputation at his death, 
 than Dr. Webster. And now my young brethren Alumni, graduates and under- 
 graduates, behold a model of character, presented to the literary young men of 
 the United States; Who can say that such an eminence is unattainable? I 
 heard a gentleman say in New Haven, many years ago, he little thought that 
 Mr. Webster, when in college, would ever be employed in correcting and improv- 
 ing our language. How has all this been effected ? By a correct course of life, 
 and a steady, persevering industry. This is the whole secret ; means within 
 the reach of all. A name of respect and esteem to endure for ages. 
 
 The machinery of Divine Providence is rolling on ; the heralds of the Cross 
 will follow the Navigator and the Warrior ; the lights of science will explore the 
 recesses of the Mausoleum, the Harem, and the Convent ; all true history will 
 be confirmed, the universal brotherhood of man is established, the impostures of 
 Mecca and of Rome are unveiled ; the peaceful sceptre of the Man of Calvary 
 unites a joyful race in thanksgiving and praise. "Go, ye swift messengers, to 
 nations scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto, 
 to nations meted out and trodden down, whose lands rivers have spoiled, and 
 bring them, a present, unto the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the 
 mount Zion." 
 
 The crowning scene of the semi-centennial week in point of inter- 
 est and enthusiasm was undoubtedly the alumni dinner spread on 
 
552 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the East College campus just to the east of the then completed East 
 College. The afternoon was fine, as it was the year before, when 
 the feast was spread in the same place, but under widely different 
 circumstances. "The alumni had a long public dinner," wrote 
 Bobbins at the time. Indeed, the prandial and post-prandial per- 
 formances continued until the shades of evening began to draw on. 
 Bobbins described the diners as " a very numerous and highly re- 
 spectable collection." With a single exception, in the case of the 
 speech of Charles A. Dewey (1811), scarcely anything has been 
 preserved to us but the names of the speakers and the general order 
 in which they spoke. Samuel R. Betts (1806), as president of the 
 alumni, opened the ball, and then called on Governor Morton 
 (Brown 1804), who was responded to with the liveliest applause. 
 Chester Dewey (1806), Henry H. Childs (1802), John Nelson 
 (1807), Jared Curtis (1800), Justin Edwards (1810), Emory Wash- 
 burn (1817), John C. Brigham (1819), Erastus C. Benedict (1821), 
 Joshua N. Danforth (1818), followed. And so ended this memorable 
 day for the College and its alumni. 
 
 A few points in conclusion may be enumerated respecting this 
 semi-centennial gathering, in comparison and perhaps in contrast 
 with the centennial in 1893. (1) The spontaneity of everything 
 connected with it. Nothing was cut and dried from beginning to 
 end. Very few, if any, special invitations were issued. It is not 
 certain that even Governor Morton was specially invited either by 
 the College or by the alumni. The probability lies in the other direc- 
 tion. Henry H. Childs of Pittsfield, an enthusiastic alumnus and 
 Berkshire man, and then Lieutenant-Governor, is more likely to have 
 invited the Governor into the county, at the time of these novel exer- 
 cises at Williamstown, so that the people might see him. The semi- 
 political character of his welcome at Pittsfield and at North Adams, 
 and on the way over to Williamstown, rather confirms this view. 
 It is certain that no Governor of the State while in office had there- 
 tofore attended a Commencement here. His commission requires 
 him to attend the Commencements at Cambridge. Often before and 
 since 1843 the festival at the two places has fallen on the same day. 
 It is believed to be the uniform custom of late years to send an 
 official invitation to the Governor to be present. Occasionally he 
 comes accompanied by his staff. But however all this may have 
 been in 1843, so far as the Governor was concerned, all the exercises 
 of the semi-centennial seem to have gone on of themselves. The 
 Dutch took Holland. There was nothing stiff or stilted at any 
 time. The speaking came out of the hearts of the speakers. Every- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 553 
 
 thing was in fusion and solution. No cliques. No self-seeking. 
 No authorities. Alma Mater and her children. 
 
 (2) The entire emphasis lay on the Society of the Alumni. Even 
 the president of the College, except in the meeting-house, took, as 
 it were, a back seat. President Bliss of the alumni engineered their 
 morning meeting with roistering success, and President Betts the 
 afternoon gathering upon the campus. Emory Washburn, 1817, the 
 originator of the society in 1821, was present to witness its growth 
 and the influential position it had gained in the years intermediate. 
 He was always a faithful and favorite son of the College in storm 
 and shine. Governor of the State in 1854, he was here to receive 
 the degree of LL.D., his brethren, the alumni, applauding. After- 
 ward, so long as his honored life continued on the earth, he was 
 frequently a guest at the Commencement time, recalled doubtless 
 in part by the memory of the beautiful Williamstown maiden that 
 he had loved in his youth, but did not win. He was the father of 
 the Society of the Alumni, was proud of it, and the members were 
 proud of him till the last. The just and useful prominence, not to 
 say preeminence, of the Society of the Alumni, first fully manifested 
 in 1843, continued unabated for forty years longer, when it began to 
 wane under the covert, but persistent, assaults of one who falsely 
 fancied that his own eminence was being overshadowed by their own, 
 as will be later told in detail. 
 
 (3) The ancient harmony and unity of the town and college ap- 
 peared in pleasing and undimmed lines in all the ongoings of the 
 semi-centennial. Town and college really began together, let us 
 say, in 1765, ten years after Colonel Williams's death 'at Lake 
 George, when the town was incorporated by the Commonwealth 
 under his name, and his executors were nourishing the small and 
 scattered sums he left by will to found a free school for the use of 
 the citizens. There had been, indeed, from time to time transient 
 disputes and some ill blood, but on the whole the town had gathered 
 sturdily around the College, and the College had rested upon the 
 bosom of the town. This harmony and union strikingly appeared 
 in many phases of the half-centenary. Never before and never 
 after did so many citizens crowd within and around the meeting- 
 house as on that Commencement day; and there was a broad and 
 eager fringe of local men and women around all the tables on the 
 campus the day before, watching the faces of the individual alumni 
 and listening to their speaking till the sun went down. There was 
 scarcely a house in the whole valley that did not entertain at least 
 one college man, and that did not enter thoroughly into the fervor 
 
554 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of the recollections and inspirations of the time. Even Thomas 
 Bobbins, who had been away from the town for forty-seven years, 
 enters in his diary, "See many former acquaintance." There is not 
 good evidence that the earlier graduates saw and appreciated so 
 much of natural beauty and grandeur in the town and its region as 
 the later ones have done; and yet there must have been some of 
 them so familiar with the earlier (uniformly the better) poetry of 
 Wordsworth, as to be reminded even in relation to the externals 
 here, of those inimitable lines written a little above " Tintern Abbey," 
 in 1798. 
 
 These beauteous forms. 
 Through a long absence, have not been to me 
 As is a landscape to a blind man's eye : 
 But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din 
 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them 
 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
 Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart ; 
 And passing even into my purer mind, 
 With tranquil restoration : feelings too 
 Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps, 
 As have no slight or trivial influence 
 On that best portion of a good man's life, 
 His little, nameless, unremembered, acts 
 Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 
 To them I may have owed another gift, 
 Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world, 
 Is lightened : that serene and blessed mood, 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, 
 Until, the breath of this corporeal frame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul : 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 If this 
 
 Be but a vain belief, yet, oh ! how oft 
 In darkness and amid the many shapes 
 Of joyless daylight ; when the fretful stir 
 Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, 
 Have hung upon the beatings of my heart 
 How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, 
 O sylvan Wye ! thou wanderer through the woods, 
 How often has my spirit turned to thee ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 
 
 As the insect from the rock 
 
 Takes the color of its wing ; 
 As the boulder from the shock 
 
 Of the ocean's rhythmic swing 
 Makes itself a perfect form, 
 
 Learns a calmer front to raise ; 
 As the shell, enamelled warm 
 
 With the prism's mystic rays, 
 Praises wind and wave that make 
 
 All its chambers fair and strong ; 
 As the mighty poets take 
 
 Grief and pain to build their song : 
 Even so for every soul, 
 
 Whatsoe'er its lot may be, 
 Building, as the heavens roll, 
 
 Something large and strong and free, 
 Things that hurt and things that mar 
 
 Shape the man for perfect praise ; 
 Shock and strain and ruin are 
 
 Friendlier than the smiling days. 
 
 J. W. CHADWICK. 
 
 PROFESSOR ALBERT HOPKINS had his study and lodging-room, and 
 his recitation-room also, for many years in the old East College, 
 which was burned to the ground on a Sunday in October, 1841. He 
 had very properly and necessarily assumed the leadership of reli- 
 gious matters in College, at the same time and under much the same 
 circumstances as required his elder brother to assume the teaching 
 and control of the Senior classes, some two or three years before 
 the departure of President Griffin. He began his stated, and there- 
 after uninterrupted, services to the College in 1827 as a tutor, his 
 brother ceased a two-years' tutorship at the same time, and assumed 
 uninterrupted service as a professor in 1830. From this time on 
 for forty years they stood together in efficient and harmonious, 
 though very diverse service. The four years from 1827 to 1831 
 
 555 
 
556 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 were what Albert Hopkins was accustomed to call " the turbulent 
 period in College." President Griffin was breaking down, both 
 physically and mentally, and there were not yet any firm hands on 
 the rudder. As he carefully set down afterward : 
 
 Since the year 1831 there has been a general improvement in the order of 
 college, petty annoyances have become less frequent, and cases of discipline 
 have become rare. Except one or two 4 th of July occasions, there has been next 
 to nothing of an outbreaking character. I have lived in all these years in the 
 East College building, and could not wish in general for a more quiet habitation. 
 This statement can not be made, with equal truth, in reference to the West 
 College, occupied by the two lower classes. The order there, however, has 
 been generally good. 
 
 The Junior recitation-room, in which Professor Hopkins did his 
 work until the fire, was in the south end of that building, and the 
 Senior room in the north end; and the classes, so far as their 
 lodging-rooms were concerned, grouped themselves generally in the 
 same way. At the rebuilding, the Junior room was located at the 
 south end of South College, first floor, and there Professor Hopkins 
 continued to teach so long as- he taught at all ; so that the new East 
 College held no recitation-rooms, the Seniors having migrated some 
 years before this over to the new room made expressly for them in 
 the new chapel, now called Griffin Hall. 
 
 Professor Hopkins himself left on record a remarkable account of 
 the origin and continuance of the noon prayer-meeting, so called, 
 which met uniformly (until the fire) in the Junior room of East Col- 
 lege at one o'clock on Mondays and Tuesdays and Thursdays and 
 Fridays of term-time, and thereafter uniformly in the Junior room 
 in South College, until at length the meeting died out, in 1867, 
 thirty -five years in all. The present writer is desirous of helping 
 his readers make the thorough acquaintance of the mind and man- 
 ners of Professor Hopkins; and this end can best be reached by 
 giving them, whenever possible, his own language in relation to the 
 critical passages of his career. It is indeed history and not biogra- 
 phy, that is attempted in this book; and it is because Hopkins was 
 a chief actor along some lines of college progress and upbuilding, 
 that so much pains is taken to furnish in outline a just picture of 
 the man as he was. The noon prayer-meeting was his conception 
 and his achievement. It was his most distinctive contribution to 
 the ongoing of things here in his active day. It was novel. It was 
 influential. It was lasting. All are likely, accordingly, to be inter- 
 ested in his own account of it. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 557 
 
 I am now going to explain in what way I think the revival of 1832 contributed 
 to a more permanent religious order. It did so, I think, by exercising the prin- 
 ciple of personal exertion and self-sacrifice, till it became habitual, and led on 
 to a system which I shall presently give some account of. The principle of 
 persevering, steady devotedness has been firmly established in individual minds, 
 in all ages. But too little has been done to perpetuate this sentiment. One and 
 another has cut his way through the solid rock, and, as it were, filled up the 
 space behind him, so that others have been little benefited, except as they have 
 seen them safe out, and therefore gathered hope, on the ground that such a 
 thing was possible. Peter says, to be sure, "The God of all grace, after that 
 ye have suffered awhile, stablish you." But we are not to infer from this that 
 direct means are of no use toward the confirmation of piety. There is, no 
 doubt, in respect to means, such a thing as a millennial order (using the term 
 millennial generically here), and it was towards this that numbers among us 
 were led at this time to look. Having become inured to a pretty steady course 
 of religious action, anxious to persevere in this without faltering, sensible at the 
 same time of the sluggishness of nature, and warned by the experience of the. 
 past, the inquiry came up, What corrective can be thrown in, what stimulus 
 to excite us forward in an unwavering onward course of Christian action ? It 
 was in the way of righteousness, "doing his will," that light was thrown on this 
 subject, the doctrine of means. It was resolved by the Christians of that 
 period that they would meet together at noon. This, it was thought, would 
 furnish a strong antidote against a tendency, so prevalent everywhere, but per- 
 haps especially in college, to fall in with the tide of worldliness. By setting up, 
 as it were, a dam at midday, it was thought possible to check the current, and 
 thus to prevent our Christianity from being overflown, and everything relapsing 
 again into a stagnant and dead state, as had been the case after most previous 
 revivals. I must be permitted to say, that I think the idea of a perfect Christi- 
 anity, that is, of living in perfect conformity to the injunctions of Christ, with- 
 out regard to seasons or circumstances, and without references to the feelings or 
 practices of others, had to do with the institution of this system of means. A 
 very good opportunity was approaching to test it, or at least to test the strength 
 of the resolution which determined on its adoption, namely, the approach of the 
 summer term, when there is uncommon temptation to laxness, and a letting 
 down of the Christian watch. The result proved that the idea was a very 
 practicable one, and veiy salutary in the operation of it. A few, from five to 
 seven, from the two College buildings, met in rainy as well as sunshiny weather, 
 during the term, and felt improved by it. This meeting, somewhat modified in 
 its character, has continued to the present time, and has more than answered 
 the anticipations of those who originated it. It has served as a balance-wheel, 
 to check the irregular movements of individual action, to temper well-meaning 
 but injudicious zeal. I am just now in from one of these meetings, consisting of 
 from forty to fifty students. The average sometimes ranges considerably higher 
 than this, in times of awakening, and sometimes falls short of it. 
 
 The general order of these meetings continued the same from first 
 to last. They began by singing a stanza or two of some familiar 
 hymn, indicated by number in the hymn-book, and also often by the 
 
558 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 leader's repeating the first line, which he could always start in tune 
 if necessary, but preferred that some student present should start 
 it. Then the professor always repeated with great solemnity a brief 
 text of Scripture, and the recitation of such texts then passed round 
 the room in order whether five or fifty were present. If any stu- 
 dent verbally slipped in repeating his passage, from whatever part 
 of the Bible it had been brought, it was invariably corrected by the 
 leader, either instantaneously or else as soon as the word had passed 
 round the circle. His verbal familiarity with the Scriptures was so 
 great, and his memory so retentive, that he could give the entire 
 verse or sentence out of which a member had been culled. Usually 
 two or three short prayers, offered by students, preceded any word 
 of exposition or exhortation given by him. He always had some 
 strong or weird word in the course of the meeting, sometimes drawn 
 'from the text he had repeated, but more often from one repeated 
 by another. He himself rarely offered prayer in these meetings, 
 and students spoke but rarely; but it was seldom the half -hour was 
 out before he had gained full possession of the meeting on some 
 thought or duty, and when he rose to his feet to conclude with the 
 single stanza of a hymn, all rose with him simultaneously, and he 
 had the power to hold with his eye (which was deep-set and extraor- 
 dinarily bright) every person present so long as he pleased at the 
 close of the song. Not a foot stirred till he dropped his lids, whether 
 it were one minute or less or more. This was a subtle and spiritual 
 power, and he was fond (not to say proud) of exercising it. Any 
 person who possesses a genuine and unusual power like that, is not 
 only fully conscious of it, but is also glad to employ it on occasion. 
 To the writer, who was long a pleased attendant on these meetings, 
 both during and after his student life, the professor spoke once or 
 twice familiarly of this gift of keeping a religious gathering in per- 
 fect stillness at will after the last word was said or sung. It was 
 not something he had ever aimed at or thought of till he found he 
 had it, and then he sometimes used it with great solemnity and 
 effect. It was a silent, but most expressive testimony on the part 
 of the participators that the meeting was his meeting, to come 
 and stay and go. 
 
 But there was also uttered testimony a plenty, on the part of 
 hundreds of students, to the spiritual benefit to themselves of these 
 noon meetings, and to their observed benefits upon others. Thomas 
 K. Fessenden, of the class of 1833, wrote long afterward : 
 
 It was during the summer of 1832 that he commenced the daily noon prayer 
 meetings ; which for years afterward became a most valuable means of grace 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 559 
 
 to a little circle of ten to twenty attendants. I can never forget how earnestly 
 and forcibly Professor Hopkins then and there enforced upon us the exceeding 
 breadth and purity of God's law, and the duty of Christians to rise above the 
 ordinary standard of Christian character. 
 
 Professor Phillips, of the class of 1847, wrote : 
 
 It furnished a sort of spiritual exchange, where Christians from the different 
 classes met and exchanged views upon religious experience and religious work, 
 mingled their prayers and praises, and girded themselves for the common con- 
 flict. It was a place, too, where any impenitent person who was beginning to 
 be anxious about his salvation might come, or be brought by a friend, and be 
 welcomed and guided and helped on his way to Christ. It was alike a training- 
 place and a recruiting-station for the band of Christians in college. It was the 
 true prayer-gauge also. It showed, as the mercury the pressure of the air, the 
 intensity of religious fervor in the college. The exercises invariably began by 
 each attendant repeating, in his turn, a verse of Scripture, the Professor cor- 
 recting all errors in quotation. His remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures 
 was the result of daily reading and study, helped by a naturally retentive 
 memory. 
 
 Professor Bascom, of the class of 1849, let slip from his pen in a 
 single sentence, a compendium of the good results of the noon 
 prayer-meeting: 
 
 It was the most firm, persistent, and steadily influential means of religious 
 life, that I have ever had occasion to observe. 
 
 William D. Porter, of the class of 1850, once instituted a com- 
 parison by way of illustrating one feature of what he called " the 
 blessed noon prayer-meeting " : 
 
 Across the Menai Straits in England is built the Britannic Tubular Iron 
 Bridge. Just under the very centre of the structure, where one would naturally 
 feel the most insecurity, there peeps above the water a small island. On this a 
 pier has been erected, reaching up to and supporting the bridge. The noon 
 prayer-meeting was to the College day what this pier is to the Britannic Bridge. 
 
 The keen eye of Professor Hopkins perceived at the outset, and 
 numbers of students had opportunity to observe ever after, that all 
 the good of the noon meeting was not confined to those who attended 
 it. There was an incidental good. Speaking of the first of these 
 meetings about thirty years afterward, the professor said : " A few, 
 perhaps six in number, assembled accordingly at that hour. This 
 was in the year 1832, on a pleasant day in June, which will no 
 doubt be vividly remembered by those who were present, and who 
 yet survive. Numbers were on the college green, and under the shade 
 of the maples, as these brethren, with hymn-books in hand, passed 
 
560 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 through on their way to the conference -room. By some professors of 
 religion the movement was looked on with disfavor ; most supposed, 
 no doubt, that it would be ephemeral. But not so. God was evi- 
 dently in it. Little was said, but the meeting by degrees increased. 
 From that time it has not been intermitted, but has been, on the 
 whole, a growing power till now." The persons gathering to the 
 meeting went quietly over the campus and through the halls, and 
 were mostly unnoticed by others; but when, two or three minutes 
 later, the song burst forth, sometimes, according to the numbers and 
 the state of feeling within, with swelling and reverberating volume, 
 it was heard all over the building and all around it, and an impres- 
 sion was made on the careless and irreligious that something was 
 going on in college that they knew nothing about. What is it? 
 Song perhaps called more from this class into the meeting than invi- 
 tation or curiosity. In certain states of feeling within and without 
 a favorite stanza in closing began with the words, " Oh ! there will 
 be mourning at the judgment-seat of Christ. 7 ' What transpired in 
 the room was usually a benefit to those within; the fact that such a 
 meeting was known to be held was sometimes a benefit to those 
 without. Not that the meeting was always fervid in tone. Some- 
 times it was dull. Occasionally it was cold. But it was always 
 genuine. There was no pretence about it, and no machinery in it. 
 The next noon after the burning of the East College there was a scene 
 near by and a sequel, which Professor Hopkins described long after- 
 ward as follows : " This building had witnessed many scenes of deep 
 religious interest. Many of its private rooms had been bethels, and 
 here, especially, the daily meetings had long been attended in the 
 Junior recitation-room. The day after the fire we rallied around 
 the spot. It was a desolate place, but the feelings of those who had 
 been wont to gather there seemed rather quickened than depressed. 
 
 Those ruins shall be built again, 
 And all that dust shall rise, 
 
 were words which seemed to have a spiritual significance. It was 
 determined not to abandon the meeting, but to adjourn to the 
 Sophomore recitation- room. We accordingly went over, and the 
 step had a good effect. The lower classes were encouraged by seeing 
 so many, and not a few zealous Christians coming to their support." 
 The professor merely noticed fact, when he said above, "By 
 some professors of religion the movement was looked on with dis- 
 favor " ; he did not state the grounds of that fact, and probably he 
 never fully knew them. Without doubt there were valid grounds 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 561 
 
 why many excellent Christian students did not favor, and could not 
 attend, the noon meetings. It is not worth while at the present time 
 to dwell with any fulness on the nature of these objections felt and 
 sometimes expressed. The phase of Christian feeling and striving 
 so strikingly exemplified in Albert Hopkins has passed away, no 
 more to return to college or town. Indeed, it had practically passed 
 away a decade or more previous to his death, in 1872. He himself 
 did not understand why his wand, which had been so potent, seemed 
 slowly to lose its power to bring the spirits from the vasty deep. 
 The reasons lay partly in himself, in his own theological beliefs, 
 and in his practical construction of a living Christianity. He had 
 been the accepted religious leader so long, and the work of the Lord 
 had so evidently prospered in his hand, that he came to feel that his 
 way was the only right way ; that the modes of the noon meeting, 
 with its heart-searchings and sin-confessings and subjective reveal- 
 ings, were the true means of spiritual progress, both individual and 
 social; and he came unconsciously to look with some distrust upon 
 those Christians in college and in town, who felt that for them- 
 selves there was another and better way of following alongside the 
 footsteps of the Master. A single illustration of what came to be 
 a more or less mutually repellent attitude between him and them, 
 may be seen in his bearing toward a small circle of Episcopalian 
 brethren, of whom William Tatlock, of the class of 1857, was the 
 leader in college, and Thomas Mole in town. These subsequently 
 became the founders of the now flourishing St. John's Church. Tat- 
 lock, with a couple of these students, came into the noon meeting 
 one day undoubtedly with the best of motives, but rather for spir- 
 itual observation than for fraternal communications. The writer 
 was present as usual, and noticed that the leader did not have his 
 usual freedom; the meeting lagged, and when, after giving the 
 visitors conspicuous opportunity and invitation to speak, they 
 naturally remained silent, the leader rebuked them in sharp tones 
 for having nothing to utter by way of testimony to the Gospel ! Not 
 far from the same time Mr. Mole had occasion to ask Professor Hop- 
 kins, who was then supplying the village pulpit, to read a notice 
 from the desk of the time and place (in a private house) of a meet- 
 ing for church purposes of this little handful of brethren. He not 
 only refused, but, handing back the paper, remarked also, that there 
 was little difference between Episcopals and Koman Catholics! 
 Mole and Hopkins had then been for a long time near neighbors and 
 fellow-citizens and brother Christians. These facts were excep- 
 tional in the life of an extraordinarily good man; but they mark a 
 2o 
 
562 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 narrowness, a self-sufficiency, an assumption of judgment, that 
 could not but clip the wings even of an eagle. 
 
 The excellent and intelligent family in Stockbridge, in which 
 Albert Hopkins was brought up as the youngest child, was not dis- 
 tinctively a religious one. He lacked consequently an early theo- 
 logical training at home, such as perhaps most boys of his time in 
 New England received, crude indeed, but current, and effective as 
 against special peculiarities and idiosyncracies of belief. His 
 religious life began early and in a strangely isolated way, and he 
 did not make a profession of religion until after his graduation, in 
 1826 ; and when his mind fully turned to the adoption of theological 
 tenets, he reached and long maintained certain beliefs quite diver- 
 gent from the prevailing ones. In December, 1832, about six 
 months after the establishment of the noon prayer-meeting, which 
 itself, as he tells us elsewhere, was instituted under the pressure 
 of the same belief, he makes the following entry in his journal, 
 which is a cardinal passage for the right understanding of his career. 
 " For a year and a half I have regarded entire sanctification as a 
 duty; but now I have come to regard it as attainable. This change 
 has been wrought by entering, under a sense of duty, upon what I 
 considered a course of godly living. While in this way I fell in 
 with one who supposed himself entirely sanctified. This led me to 
 search the Scriptures with prayer, endeavoring to lay my heart all 
 open to conviction, throwing off entirely the shackles of sect, and 
 here I found the doctrine as I supposed clearly stated. The Scrip- 
 tures now appeared a new book; nearly as much so as when I 
 experienced justification. And now I am expecting when God shall 
 take up His abode in me, and walk in me." This view of complete 
 sanctification, whatever that phrase may really mean, colored the 
 course of the noon meetings from first to last, not obtrusively, not 
 in a way to excite friction in minds doubtful or hesitating, but in 
 the way of a tacit and quiet, and yet pervasive and insistent leader- 
 ship. It was in him and of him and went out from him. Here 
 came in one of the weaknesses and, consequently, one of the sources 
 of decay of the noon prayer-meetings. One could not be in regular 
 attendance upon them, even for one's brief college course, without 
 insensibly coming to feel that he must, in order to be a good Chris- 
 tian, think as the leader thought, pray and strive as he did, and so 
 in an unnatural, and therefore unwholesome way, become an imi- 
 tator of a fellow-Christian. Such imitation is always weak and 
 futile. Thomas a Kempis, on the other hand, gave the pitch to the 
 true Christian song the world over in his "Imitation of Christ." 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL TEE CENTENNIAL. 563 
 
 It would be wrong to imply that the decay of the noon prayer- 
 meeting was wholly owing to any decay in the professor's powers 
 in his old age, or any lessening on the whole of his activities and 
 influence. He became a changed man amid the changes that were 
 taking place around him, but never a listless or unenterprising one. 
 He said little or nothing in his later years about sanctification as 
 attainable in the present life. His subjective experiences, some- 
 times racking and sometimes rapturous, of which his journal is full 
 to a surfeit, slowly gave way to objective schemes and efforts for 
 the amelioration of mankind. The battle-field of faith and righteous- 
 ness shifted from the region of an exaggerated self -consciousness to 
 the more palpable region of the wants and woes of his fellow-man. 
 He became an outspoken antislavery man. He and the good Deacon 
 James Smedley carried their sentiments on this topic to the ballot- 
 box together for several years before any other of the citizens of 
 Williamstown accompanied them thither. When the Civil War 
 broke out, in 1861, he gave up to the service and to an early death 
 in battle the only child he ever had. When the war was over, and 
 he had personally recovered his dead, and buried the remains by 
 the side of the long-time invalid wife and mother in the college 
 cemetery, he seemed to have nothing else to do or care for, but to 
 spend the remaining years in the building up religiously of the long- 
 neglected waste places of the White Oaks. There he bought and 
 cultivated a small and poor farm, for the purpose of showing what 
 were then a mostly shiftless people what industry and thrift are. 
 There he built a chapel, mostly from his own resources, in which 
 he preached and prayed so long as he lived. There he formed a 
 church, which he named "The Church of Christ in White Oaks." 
 The present writing is just twenty-five years since the gifted pastor's 
 death. Church services and the Sunday-school have not been inter- 
 mitted since. The chapel has been rebuilt and enlarged, the grounds 
 around it greatly beautified, and the whole neighboring population 
 uplifted, during this interval of time. Dr. L. D. Woodbridge and 
 his wife, from this side of the river, and from unusually busy pro- 
 fessional and family cares, have been the main support of the Sun- 
 day-school. Able and faithful young ministers mostly in a course 
 of preparation for pulpit labors on wider fields, have kept up in 
 growing power the weekly services in the chapel; so that now the 
 entire work in that region is stronger and steadier than ever before, 
 all a beautiful and useful fruitage of Professor Hopkins's own 
 planting. 
 
 It is probable that no other man connected with the College clur- 
 
564 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ing the first century of its work, had an influence so varied in its 
 direction and so far-reaching in its continuance, as that of Albert 
 Hopkins. He was not equally successful in each of his manifold 
 activities; no man of such activities ever is, or can be, on account 
 of the invincible limitations of human nature : the remarkable thing 
 about him is, that success did not fall to him in the line of his ear- 
 lier efforts and greater promise. His department was the natural 
 sciences. He went to Europe in 1834 to procure some apparatus for 
 his class-room, and to confer more or less as to matter and method 
 with the men of science abroad. In 1835 he built his astronomical 
 observatory, and a year or two later the magnetic observatory. 
 The auspices seemed to point strongly toward an eminent teacher 
 of these and the kindred sciences, toward a man who should add 
 to the sum of current scientific knowledge. His department at first 
 included mathematics; but he was not a good mathematician, and 
 this branch was passed over to John Tatlock in 1838, and the depart- 
 ment thereafter called Natural Philosophy and Astronomy. But he 
 did not prove to be a good teacher in any of these branches. His 
 heart was not in them. His manner of teaching was not adapted to 
 enlist the interest of any pupils, except those who had a strong bent 
 to that class of studies, and some of these are said to have soon sur- 
 passed him in their acquirements. Others of these easily made 
 perfect recitations in class, but gained nothing new from him. John 
 Basconi was one of these, and has been heard to say, that he could 
 not recall a single new idea in science or a single impulse to per- 
 sonal research in any scientific direction, derived from his lecture- 
 room. He did not encourage questions from his students while 
 even his experimental lectures were going forward. It would be 
 nearer the truth to say that such questions were so wholly unex- 
 pected that they were not even allowed. The writer remembers to 
 have asked a question once in his eagerness to understand a compli- 
 cated point which the professor was unfolding. It is hard to say 
 whether the class or the professor were more astounded at the inter- 
 ruption. The latter stopped, answered the question courteously, 
 but not clearly, and was evidently disturbed by it. That was the 
 first and last question ever put by the men of 1852 to Professor 
 Hopkins in the class-room. 
 
 In the street, on a walk, at his own study, he was genial enough 
 with the students, often jocose, always communicative. John C. 
 Goodrich, of the class of 1863, a harum-scarum and devil-niay-care 
 student of good character and innocent purposes, relates an expe- 
 rience of his own, as follows : 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 565 
 
 I envy you the hearing of Professor Bascom's paper on Professor Hopkins ; 
 and did not other matters render it impossible I would go to hear it. I had the 
 greatest affection for Professor Hopkins. We became friends through some law 
 of opposites. I recall now how that comparison was once expressed, one of 
 the students made a remark and it passed current. 
 
 One day I ventured to tell it to "Prof. Al." I said, as we were walking in 
 town after a mountain trip, "Professor, do you know what the boys say when 
 they see us together." He said he did not. " Well," I said, " they say, ' There 
 goes the Apostle Paul and Captain Kidd.' " " Do they ? " said he, with scarcely 
 a motion on that grave face. 
 
 What imp of darkness possessed me, what state of depravity came over me, 
 I know not, but I next broke the silence with the remark, "I wonder if they 
 think I am the apostle." 
 
 The good old saint's face was then smooth-shaven, and I shall never forget 
 the expressions that came over it. It commenced with a certain smack of the 
 lips and ended with a peculiar twinkle of his eye that we rarely saw. The sub- 
 ject was dropped, and I knew I was forgiven, but I have always thought it a 
 miracle that I was not eaten by bears, or had some of the sudden punishments 
 dropped upon me, such as in old times were meted out to those who reviled the 
 prophets. 
 
 No one anticipated or could have anticipated from his apparent 
 interest and zeal in scientific pursuits at the outset, that his teach- 
 ing in these would become so formal in the class-room, so cold and 
 dead, as it unfortunately did become in following years. On the 
 contrary, the index-finger pointed the other way. During the 
 summer vacation of 1835 he organized and conducted a natural his- 
 tory expedition, which is believed to be the first one in this country, 
 to Nova Scotia. Dr. Ebenezer Emmons and Tutor S. H. Calhoun 
 were associated with the leader in the conduct of the expedition. 
 President Chadbourne, in his sermon at the funeral of Professor 
 Hopkins, in 1872, makes the following reference to this: "Such 
 expeditions are comparatively common now, when travel is easy 
 and the necessity of field work in natural history is well understood. 
 But that such an expedition should have been planned in a college 
 among the Berkshire hills, and successfully carried out nearly forty 
 years ago, when as yet it was necessary to travel a hundred miles 
 to reach the railroad, shows that the organizer of the expedition was 
 one of those minds that see in advance the demands of science, and 
 have wisdom and energy enough to adapt the most efficient means 
 for its advancement." 
 
 Professor Hopkins himself in an account of the college revival of 
 1835, written about 1860, developed a connection between the revival 
 and this expedition as follows: "It deserves, 'perhaps, to be men- 
 tioned here, as evidencing the fact that Nature and the Christian 
 
566 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 religion are not unfriendly, that the day after the close of the term, 
 an expedition started under the auspices of the Natural History 
 Society, consisting of about twenty individuals, most of whom had 
 been affected more or less by the awakening. Indeed, had it not 
 been for the awakening, I question whether the expedition would 
 have moved at this time. There was a disposition to blow the Gos- 
 pel trumpet about the land, and as the news of what the Lord had 
 been doing for us had gone before, it seemed to be taken for granted 
 that we would hold meetings as we travelled; which we did, much 
 to our own gratification, and we have reason to believe, in some 
 instances, not without special benefit to others." 
 
 After an absence of about four weeks on shipboard and among the 
 Blue Noses of the northeast, the expedition returned safely-; and 
 Professor Hopkins wrote out a full account of it for the American 
 Traveller, in three numbers. The Traveller was then edited by a 
 graduate of the College, and we are now going to give our readers, 
 at this late day, the pleasure and benefit of. reading about half the 
 first number in the professor's own words. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION 
 
 Of Students of Williams College, from Boston along the Eastern Coast to St. 
 Johns, N. B. and Halifax and Windsor, N. S. 
 
 WILLIAMS COLLEGE, Oct. 19th, 1835. 
 
 MR. PORTER : A few weeks before the close of our summer term, the idea 
 was started here, of an expedition to Nova Scotia, during the September vaca- 
 tion. The interesting account of the Mineralogy and Geology of that section of 
 the country, recently published by Messrs. Alger and Jackson the fame of the 
 high tides and romantic scenery of the Bay of Fundy, aided, perhaps, a little by 
 that love of adventure which is so natural to young men gave the idea an 
 unexpected degree of popularity. In a few days it became evident that several, 
 especially, those connected with the Lyceum of Natural History, would be satis- 
 fied with nothing short of an excursion. It was accordingly agreed upon, and 
 a vessel was forthwith chartered for the purpose. As you have appeared, sir, to 
 take an interest in our movements, prompted either by your professional sym- 
 pathy with all the travelling community, or as we would more readily believe by 
 the feelings of an Alumnus, and have requested some brief sketch of our adven- 
 tures, we readily comply ; assuring you, however, that our object in the tour 
 has been rather to benefit ourselves, than to enlighten the public. 
 
 Our party consisted of twenty, mostly undergraduates three who were 
 instructors in the College some few old College friends, and one or two young 
 men of liberal curiosity who were anxious to join us. Having laid in the requisite 
 stores, we left Boston harbor in the sloop Flight, (a Yarmouth packet) Capt. Hal- 
 lett, on the Monday evening ensuing our Commencement. The sun was setting 
 as we got under weigh, leaving us less time than we could have wished to enjoy 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 567 
 
 a view, more rich in interest to a child of the Pilgrims than any other, and 
 scarcely yielding to any in intrinsic beauty. The Capitol with its imposing 
 dome, the old South Church, noted in revolutionary annals, Bunker Hill, and 
 Dorchester standing watch- words for the last half century, wherever the cause 
 of human rights has been at issue came successively before us. Under the 
 lengthening shadows of these imposing objects, associated with our earliest ideas 
 of valor and patriotism, we would willingly have lingered, but a favorable gale 
 bore us rapidly away. In a short half hour, nothing could be made out of the 
 dim outline of the distant Capitol, which itself in turn disappeared. The night 
 was now closing fast upon us ; and as there seemed to be a desire to give utter- 
 ance to some united expression both of our grateful remembrances and hopes 
 for the time to come, we did so in the lines 
 
 " With grateful hearts the past we own, 
 The future all to us unknown," &c. 
 
 The sentiments of these noble stanzas chimed in with our feelings as we 
 committed ourselves, most of us, for the first time to the Ocean, on a voyage 
 which, though short, is fraught, probably, with more danger than one across the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 A fine sail of about 40 hours, with a uniform rate of nearly six knots, brought 
 us in with the west Quoddy Light. The heavy bell of the Light House was toll- 
 ing with a quick startling toll, as is the custom in these seas in foggy weather, to 
 warn the mariner of rocks which lie near by. A steep and isolated one was 
 pointed out to us by our Pilot, on which, not long since, a vessel foundered in 
 the night. In the morning, none of the crew were to be found, but one poor 
 woman with an infant child in her arms, who had been washed up by the surf 
 upon the pointed rock. She was rescued in safety. 
 
 We gazed with more than ordinary interest upon the point where the Light 
 House stands, as it is the most easterly in the territories of the United States ; 
 lying in Lon. 66 deg. 15 min., and in Lat. 44 deg. 50 min. Less than an hour's 
 sail from the light brought us to anchor in the harbor of Lubec. This is a busy, 
 commercial village, the most eastern on the main land. Eastport, which lies 
 about 4 miles due north, or a little east of north, is on an island. The collector 
 of the port boarded us in a few moments, to whom we had letters, and who had 
 for several days been waiting our arrival. He is a gentleman partial to science, 
 and maintaining a taste for it, even amidst the active engagements of the Legal 
 profession. It is perhaps not surprising, certainly it is a fact, so far as our 
 observation extends, that very few, next to none in this profession, give time to 
 scientific pursuits. The physician you shall find, with his cabinet carefully col- 
 lected, often, and tastefully arranged. He whose office it is, "to vindicate the 
 claims of Providence and justify the ways of God to man," occasionally finds 
 room for a few specimens of his works, among shelves richly laden with the 
 spoils of vanquished sects, and the massive weapons of polemic theology. But 
 beside the pandects of Justinian or the commentaries of Blackstone, we have 
 rarely seen a mineral or a plant. The first object which struck our attention, on 
 entering the office of Mr. Thayer, was a telescope, which we immediately recog- 
 nized as the workmanship of Mr. Holcomb. We were not a little surprised, that 
 the instruments of our worthy friend, should have found their way so soon into 
 the remotest village in the Union. We think they may yet get across the Atlan- 
 tic and be picked up, perhaps, by some of our learned professors who are rang- 
 
568 W1LLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ing the British Isles and the continent in search of similar objects : this was one 
 of Mr. Holcomb's $100 instruments, and yet Mr. Thayer informed us, that it 
 would distinctly divide the north star. But to return from this digression. 
 
 The next morning there was a fog. For, in this part of the country, if you 
 enquire of one who is weather-wise, what the prospect is ? he informs you 
 gravely, "that there is an appearance of a fog." So we were informed the 
 evening before, and so in the morning we found it. However, Mr. T. proposed 
 visiting the lead mine, " which was only a short row of eleven miles." This to 
 us, young as most of us were, and inexperienced in rowing, among narrow arms 
 of the sea, rapid tides and a dense fog withal, appeared somewhat formidable. 
 However so great was the zeal to be of the party that, in order to prevent diffi- 
 culty, we concluded to decide who should go by lot. And here we may state, 
 that our expedition went on the peace principle. Several of us were quakers, at 
 least so far as the New Testament goes, and those who were not, never meant 
 any harm, we believe, still it was difficult for them always to be exactly right. 
 A good man will not dispute a very little. Having rowed an hour or two, we 
 found ourselves setting on a strong tide, we knew not whither, our pilot having 
 lost his bearings. At length we came under land, and on enquiring found it 
 to be Moose Island, the same on which Eastport stands, several miles out of 
 our way. Here we got our bearings and proceeded on until afternoon ; when 
 the fog suddenly melted up. The effect can scarcely be described ; the nearest 
 objects having been until this moment completely shrouded from our view. We 
 lay in the bosom of a retired bay, studded with rocky and romantic islands. 
 These islands were crowned with evergreens, whose reversed pendent branches 
 gave to the scenery an aspect decidedly northern ; whilst the familiar shrubs and 
 trees, interspersed here and there, and the warm shining of the sun, reminded 
 us that we were still in New England. Some of us had been familiarized to 
 scenery, like that which soon opened, during our expedition, last Autumn, to 
 Umbagog and other Lakes in the interior. To others it was entirely new. All 
 probably felt repaid for a fifteen miles row, for such it proved to be. The lead 
 occurs in veins, which run completely down to the bay ; though we traced sev- 
 eral of them quite a distance back into the country. The veins are from one to 
 six feet in thickness. The ore, which has been but slightly wrought, is a fine 
 crystallized mineral, resembling much both in external characters 'and composi- 
 tion, that found at Southampton in this State. Zinc occurs abundantly at this 
 locality and specular iron on the opposite shore. 
 
 Our space forbids but a single excerpt further from the copious 
 and humorous account, which the professor gave to the Traveller, of 
 the varied experiences of his party in their month's wanderings and 
 collectings in the region of Nova Scotia. There were two or three 
 in the party who cared little or nothing about its natural history 
 phases, but who joined it at the professor's invitation for the pur- 
 pose of health or recreation. One of these was Mr. B. F. Mather, a 
 merchant of Williamstown, whose long and honorable life here in 
 church and town made him influential and memorable in both. Of 
 course the variety in the position and interest of those whom he was 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 569 
 
 conducting added something to the leader's perplexities, to which 
 he makes some amusing allusions in the passage following, which 
 is selected from among others perhaps equally entertaining, mainly 
 on account of the grotesque contact between the party and Judge 
 Haliburton of Nova Scotia near the latter 's summer home on the 
 coast. 
 
 Next morning the rock bound coast of the Peninsula, a long wall-like barrier 
 of Greenstone, lay close beside us. This was Nova Scotia, which we had long 
 had before us, and every foot was eager to step off the point where we were, 
 abounding in interesting minerals. It is termed Peter's Head. At such times 
 it is necessary to restrain young men a little you must check them, and not 
 suffer all to go overboard at once the older and graver members must get into 
 the first boat, and go quietly ashore then the younger ones must follow. This 
 was all done up without any difficulty. In fact no restraint was necessary ; 
 they always urged us to go first, which we sometimes did to save time and 
 trouble. The members of our party, in one word, had all been brought up, 
 without which a person will never respect either age or character, or any thing 
 else but himself. And now all hands were busy with the minerals. The Capt. 
 himself, it appeared, had caught the spirit of the expedition, running around 
 among the rocks, as wild and eager as any of us. One of the company, mean- 
 while, who had found his way on to the table land above the cliff, brought back 
 word of a fine mansion he had seen said to be the country seat of Mr. Hali- 
 burton, the Chief Justice of the Province. Lured in part, by a curiosity to see 
 the cottage, (for such it was) and, in part, by the prospect of a fine view of the 
 bay most of the party went up to a little dwelling which stood just on the 
 brow of the cliff. Whether the fame of our expedition had gone before us, or 
 whether the Chief Justice, like the hospitable Patriarch, was watching an oppor- 
 tunity to entertain strangers, we know not certain it is that he soon appeared 
 in person, and constrained us, though little in the guise of gentlemen, to go up 
 and partake the hospitalities of his house. It was one of our greatest mortifica- 
 tions to have been absent on this occasion. Having wandered farther than the 
 rest, and lighting in a cave, roofed and paved with stilbite, we were at work very 
 honestly, without any knowledge of what was taking place above. On return- 
 ing, and finding not a solitary mineralogist, we began to be suspicious ; and 
 hastened as fast as possible, up the steep and across the fields, to the Cottage. 
 Having on our pea jacket, and coming after the rest, we were somewhat appre- 
 hensive of being mistaken for one of the crew. However, making a shift to 
 bring our sledge hammer into a prominent position, it served as an ample 
 passport. The interesting family of the Judge (for he himself had been gone 
 some time with the party) received us with polite attention. We of course stayed 
 but a moment, returning immediately to the beach, where we arrived nearly at 
 the same time with the Judge, and had the pleasure of a few moments conversa- 
 tion. On enquiring into the state of society and morals, he informed us that it 
 was not unusual, with him, to pass through his extensive circuit, without meet- 
 ing a single criminal case. In a few moments the party were all at the boat, 
 and the Judge with a hearty shake of the hand took his leave, making his way 
 among slippery rocks, under the patterings of a smart shower, to his now dis- 
 
570 WILLIAMSTOWN AND AVILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 tant residence. This was a specimen of Old England, and old New England 
 politeness. We remember to have seen a few, in our early boyhood, who we 
 think would have done that thing ; but since they have got into the habit of 
 coining gentlemen at the mint, one might look almost in vain, among us, for 
 a specimen of this old and venerated school. 
 
 Judge Haliburton, of whom nothing was then known in the United 
 States, was a native of Nova Scotia in 1797, educated at King's Col- 
 lege, and admitted to the bar in 1820. He practised law in Nova 
 Scotia many years ; was a member of the Provincial Assembly ; and 
 became a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1829, and later of 
 the Supreme Court. During this very year of 1835, when the Berk- 
 shire party encountered him on his own estate, he was contributing 
 a series of articles to a Nova Scotia newspaper, satirizing the Yan- 
 kees, which became exceedingly popular in the United States and 
 even in England, and which were published, with additions and 
 alterations, in 1837, under the title of " The Clock-Maker ; or Say- 
 ings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville." Whether or not 
 the striking courtesy and hospitality of the first great American 
 humorist to this Berkshire crowd had any part of its root in a 
 desire to see and hear some new specimens of the genus Yankee for 
 his own current literary purposes, we shall never know; but we 
 may know one thing with absolute certainty, namely, that when 
 he grasped the hand at parting of Albert Hopkins, in his pea jacket, 
 he saw a man of uncommon physical presence and strength, a man 
 described about that time by one of the alumni, as possessing "a 
 frame which would have suited an athlete, and a head such as the 
 Greek sculptors gave to their great orators, large in feature, but 
 symmetrical and well-poised, clad with soft curly hair, and wearing 
 beneath the shaggy protection of a rugged brow eyes of raven hue 
 and of unmatched depth and brilliancy." 
 
 No single key is adequate to unlock the complex life and tenden- 
 cies of Albert Hopkins. The results in different directions do not 
 seem to be consistent with one another. What one would have con- 
 fidently anticipated, he does not in reality find ; and he indisputably 
 finds much that seems to be in no logical connection with what 
 went before. But so far as any one principle appears to be pre- 
 dominant over others his whole life through, it comes out in his 
 own words (but just quoted) in relation to this Nova Scotia expedi- 
 tion. It was a natural history expedition. They went to observe 
 the high tides in the Bay of Fundy, and to bring back what they 
 could of scientific interest of botanical and geological and miner- 
 alogical specimens. Still, they would not have gone at that time, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 571 
 
 he tells us, if it had not been for the religious revival of the preced- 
 ing term. They went, after all, " to blow the Gospel trumpet " on 
 shipboard and in remote regions. In his few minutes only with 
 Judge Haliburton on the beach, the topic was solely the state of 
 society and morals in Nova Scotia. In his account of their immi- 
 nent shipwreck, it was its religious aspects chiefly that his mind 
 dwelt upon. " This was the moment of jeopardy. Say your pray- 
 ers, say your prayers, said a wicked sailor, who had run below and 
 brought up what little money he had. Poor fellow, he did not 
 seem to feel that we had attended to that while the sky was clear. 
 Now was the time to look out for the body. Only about twice the 
 length of the vessel remained to make a tack in, a little space, 
 but to us as good as an ocean. She turned firmly on her unstable 
 pivot, poised a moment, and then left for ever this, Ebene- 
 zer, so we called it, to be still dashed on by the ocean surf; but 
 not soon to be forgotten by the youthful band who met deliverance 
 under its threatening summit." 
 
 The spirit first, and then the " body " ; the next world " while the 
 sky is clear," and afterward this present evil world with its cares 
 and duties : this was unquestionably the key-note of the professor's 
 life. But it was above pitch even for his own high-toned instru- 
 ment, take it through and through. Still more was it above pitch 
 for his orchestra generally. There could not but be more or less 
 dissonance under such circumstances ; and, to drop the figure, it was 
 impossible for him to maintain year after year this marvellous pre- 
 cedence in thought and action of the uncertain and the unseen and 
 the eternal over what is seen and scientific and, in one sense, tem- 
 poral. One world at a time, in the proper construction of that 
 abused phrase ; and still more a conception of the profounder truth, 
 that all worlds are one, as that is now beginning to dawn on the 
 docile and the waiting and the thoughtful of mankind, would have 
 been an unspeakable boon to the lofty spirit of Albert Hopkins. 
 But hush! Every man is for his own generation, and not for the 
 next. He is not, and he cannot be, essentially and on the whole, 
 far in advance of his environment and his contemporaries. What 
 he contributes is indeed his own, but the ability to receive on the 
 part of others limits the contribution as really as his own ability to 
 impart limits the same. What New England needed in the two 
 decades on either side the middle of the nineteenth century was not 
 so much the doctrine of evolution, or the unity of God in all his 
 works and in all his worlds, as it needed clear-eyed and disinterested 
 and fearless men to perceive and believe and announce in word and 
 
572 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 in life the invisible government of God in and over mankind. 
 Within his sphere men understood to a large degree the life and 
 testimony of Albert Hopkins in his day. They did not and could 
 not understand the broader and deeper and loftier words of Darwin 
 and Huxley and Martineau. In a sense, accordingly, he was more 
 useful to the men of his generation than they could be to the same 
 men. If he had been a better scientist than he was, if he had 
 learned the charm and the sweep of the inductive logic, and had 
 given himself even as much as Silliman and Amos Eaton did to the 
 then opening science of the United States, he would not have been, 
 on the whole, so useful a man and so moving a force as he actually 
 became. He saw indeed that Nature and Religion are allies, reach- 
 ing one another the hand over a wide intervening space; he did not 
 see that these are twin sisters nourished from the same breast. 
 
 The inevitable happened. He gradually lost his hold over the 
 students in the class-room as a teacher of science, only to be stirred 
 to greater effort and still more self-denial in their behalf as a 
 religious leader. He could not be successful in both. The stu- 
 dents, who began to be earnest and outspoken in relation to his 
 growing unfitness to teach the sciences of his department, were 
 among the best students and the best men who have ever taken the 
 honors of the College. And it may be added that they were among 
 those who estimated at the highest the value of Professor Hopkins 
 to the College as a religious stimulus and guide. Two only of these 
 will be mentioned here as examples of many more of like insight 
 and character, George W. Northrup, of the class of 1854, and 
 Charles Marsh, of the class of 1855. The former class was the 
 largest that, till then, had ever been graduated from the College, 
 sixty -three men; and the latter class was only inferior in number to 
 that by eight. Both held an unusual proportion of men who after- 
 ward became distinguished in their several walks of life. Without 
 trying to draw a sharp line in the matter of reputation, a thing 
 impossible to be done in any case, the following fourteen men of 
 the class of 1854 may be fairly reckoned as " distinguished, 7 ' just one- 
 half of them being marked on the triennial as doctors of divinity : 
 
 JAMES M. ANDERSON CHARLES R. BLISS 
 
 JAMES R. DEWET JOHN Doun 
 
 HENRY M. GROUT ABBOTT E. KITTREDGE 
 
 ELBRIDGE Mix GEORGE W. NORTHRUP 
 
 FRANCIS L. ROBBINS JARVIS ROCKWELL 
 
 NORMAN SEAVER ROBERT B. SNOWDEN 
 
 CHARLES A. STODDARD ORSON V. TOCSLEY 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 573 
 
 The same number may properly be designated in the same man- 
 ner of the class of 1855, six of this class being noted as doctors of 
 divinity, three as members of the United States Congress, four 
 prominent college professors, and two noteworthy foreign mission- 
 aries. The fourteen may be grouped in this way : 
 
 WILLIAM W. ADAMS WILLIAM R. DIMMOCK 
 
 CYRUS M. DODD HANFORD A. EDSON 
 
 CHARLES E. FITCH PHINEAS W. HITCHCOCK 
 
 JOHN J. INGALLS EDWARD P. INGERSOLL 
 
 JAMES ORTON WILLIAM P. PRENTICE 
 
 HENRY W. SEYMOUR GEORGE T. WASHBURN 
 
 ABRAHAM LANSING CHARLES MARSH 
 
 The next class, that of 1856, though smaller than the two pre- 
 ceding, may justly claim an equal number of members of public 
 note. Of course, all might not agree in the following selection of 
 the fourteen : 
 
 STEPHEN W. BOWLES JAMES A. GARFIELD 
 
 JAMES GILFILLAN CHARLES S. HALSEY 
 
 JAMES K. HAZEN CLEMENT H. HILL 
 
 FERRIS JACOBS GEORGE B. NEWCOMB 
 
 FRANKLIN NOBLE ALMON F. ROCKWELL 
 
 HENRY ROOT JOHN T. STONEMAN 
 
 JOHN TATLOCK FREDERICK F. THOMPSON 
 
 Now, it is important to the present purpose to record that the 
 entrance and course and exit of these three college classes, at that 
 time and under those circumstances, brought in a new phase of life 
 and opinion to this institution. If it may not be truthfully said of 
 those six years that old things passed away then and behold! all 
 things became new; it may at least be truthfully said, that those 
 six years, 1850-56, were a pivot of time on which college things 
 turned to face thereafter in new directions. It has already been 
 unfolded in these pages that a full-orbed college consists in the 
 action and interaction of four distinct yet constantly changing bodies 
 of men, namely, the trustees, and the faculty, and the students, 
 and the alumni. The last came into organized and wholesome 
 operation upon this ground in 1821, the first instance of such 
 activity in the history of New England colleges. Up to the middle 
 of the century, and somewhat beyond, it may be said with certainty 
 that the feelings and opinions and forecastings of the student-body, 
 so far as there was any occasion and opportunity for gathering these 
 to a head in expression, had had little or no influence on the stated 
 action of the two bodies having primarily the College in charge. 
 
574 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 But in the decade already referred to, there was a very consider- 
 able change in this particular. The student-body was much larger 
 than ever before. Each class contained a considerable number of 
 clear-sighted and disinterested, and more or less experienced, stu- 
 dents, who came to know thoroughly what was going on in College,' 
 what was going wrong in College, and that they had and could not 
 escape some personal and cooperate responsibility for all these 
 things. A sort of cooperate self-consciousness was developed in 
 the student-body for the first time. Individual students began to 
 talk these matters over among themselves in a sober and reflective 
 and responsible way. There were small and informal and indecisive 
 conferences as between some of the best students in the different 
 classes. There were two young professors at that time, neither of 
 them long out of College, both of them beginning their work of 
 instruction at the same hour in 1853, neither of them certain for 
 several years that they themselves would make a thorough success 
 of it; but both of them drawing the general moral confidence of the 
 students to a degree in which the older professors did not. These 
 were Professor Lincoln and Professor Perry. Some of those stu- 
 dents just characterized spoke with more or less freedom to one or 
 the other of these gentlemen about their older instructors, without 
 any concert as between themselves, and without any resulting con- 
 ference as between the two. Neither of the latter could say much, 
 if anything, in the way of comment on the confidential talk of the 
 former. Their position as newcomers forbade it; and their per- 
 sonal relations to the older teachers, who had but recently been their 
 own, forbade it also; and besides, there was more or less dissatis- 
 faction, freely expressed, in relation to the two young professors 
 also. Nevertheless, these, at any rate, and undoubtedly others, 
 too, connected with the College, became aware that there was a 
 deep-seated feeling among some of the best students in College, in 
 relation to the unsuitableness as college teachers, not at all as 
 Christian men, of Professor Hopkins and Professor Tatlock and 
 Professor Griffin, and in that general order of delinquency. The 
 present writer, as one of those more or less an object of this critical 
 feeling and discussion, wishes to express his conviction of the pro- 
 priety and usefulness of such discussion and animadversion on the 
 part of college students as toward their college instructors and gov- 
 ernors. When the motive is good, when the spirit is temperate, 
 when the real or supposed interest's of the college furnish the light 
 and atmosphere of such discussions, they can do no harm, they 
 never did any harm in this College certainly. Perhaps one or more 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 575 
 
 bits of injustice have been done and suffered, but these rather in 
 consequence of the mismanagement by others of such reasonings 
 and conclusions than of their direct effect. 
 
 So far as Professor Hopkins himself was concerned, the marked 
 disaffection toward him as a teacher was diverted for a time by the 
 skilful manipulations of his brother and others, and he continued to 
 teach his sciences nominally for ten years longer, or until 1868. 
 This was no real boon to him, and it was a positive loss to the Col- 
 lege in many ways. Through the munificence of David Dudley 
 Field, his old townsman in Stockbridge and fellow-collegian here, 
 Professor Hopkins was then put upon a new foundation of astronomy 
 alone; but so far as the instruction even in that single branch was 
 concerned, during the four years of his further life, it amounted 
 absolutely to nothing, and tended to disorganize the entire disci- 
 pline of the Junior class. In the meantime, and indeed all the 
 time, the immense vitality of the man was seeking other outlets 
 than those commonly encircling a professor's life. He was never 
 satisfied with what he sometimes called "the mill-horse round." 
 Like other versatile and original men, he tired after a while of 
 almost any routine, no matter with how much enthusiasm he had 
 entered upon it and persuaded others to embark in it with him. The 
 only long-time exception to this was his noon prayer-meeting, which 
 itself, however, palled at last. He took up at different periods of 
 his life radical ideas in relation to missions, in relation to educa- 
 tion, and to practical Christian conduct, ideas very diverse from 
 those of his brother and of the community ; and would press these 
 for a time with vehement zeal on all convenient occasions. By and 
 by, dropping these special phases of truth and duty, he would take 
 up something else, usually cognate with the last, and all certainly 
 bound together in his mind with the present and pressing need of 
 the kingdom of God. 
 
 (1) He did not believe, for instance, in the training of Christian 
 ministers through theological seminaries. It seemed to him some- 
 thing unreal, like the trying to learn botany out of the pages of a 
 book, rather than in the fields in contact with the flowers themselves. 
 He had his fling at the " dry wooden desk," and at the " lily-fingered 
 clergyman, who never went into the heart of Greylock or into the 
 heart of anything." All his life he disparaged books as compara- 
 tively useless for purposes of interpretation, and particularly the 
 interpretation of Scripture; he commended a commentary "not of 
 learned critics and theologians," but of rocks and mountains, of 
 expanses of earth and sea and sky. All the same, he was very fond 
 
576 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and very proud of a literal and critical translation of the Book of 
 Job, executed from the original Hebrew by his own invalid and 
 scholarly wife, while his personal knowledge of the Bible was con- 
 fined to an amazing familiarity with the words of both Testaments 
 in the old English version, large portions of which he seemed to 
 know by heart, and would upon occasion quote before an audience, 
 with an apparently powerful effect, when sometimes neither he him- 
 self nor one person in the audience had a glimmer of any rational 
 sense in the passage quoted. He called the rocks and nooks and 
 fields and hills in the White Oaks, those in the neighborhood of his 
 chapel, by Hebrew names culled from the Old Testament, and thus 
 gave a grotesque flavor to his talk about them, and sometimes to 
 his preaching. He seemed to think that theological seminaries put 
 up a barrier between their students and the breezy freshness of 
 Nature, her direct impressions and solemn admonitions. 
 
 (2) Throughout one interval of several years' duration he de- 
 nounced the methods of the American Board, of which his brother 
 was then the president, of sending out seminary-trained and salary- 
 paid missionaries in order to convert the heathen to Christianity. 
 He thought the better way was to this end, to encourage the going 
 out of volunteer colonies of young Christian people, composed of 
 farmers and tradesmen of all sorts, and merchants, who should 
 settle down together in a heathen land, and exhibit to the heathen 
 practically the virtues and the thrift of Christian civilization, all 
 earning their own living, and all laying by something for a rainy 
 day ; and thus and otherwise showing forth the precepts of Christ 
 in actual operation before the very eyes of the unbelievers. He 
 would have such colonies prepared after a little to build railroads 
 and construct ships and found banks, and so demonstrate the superi- 
 ority of Christianity (not in words, but in action). 
 
 He sometimes waxed very warm in unfolding the benefits of his 
 system as contrasted with the here a little and there a very little of 
 the current missionary societies, as applied, for example, to the 
 worn-out civilization of India. " Why, when those Hindoos see the 
 working of your railroad, and understand it, they will pick up their 
 old dirt roads and carry them off on their shoulders, and fling 'em 
 away forever ! " 
 
 But he preferred in his discourse to make these experiments some- 
 where in the neighboring Catholic countries of Central and South 
 America. Those unfortunate people were way behind the times. 
 Without making much reference to their peculiarities in race and 
 training, in climate and general environment, he seemed to think 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 577 
 
 that such a colony well established in Nicaragua, for example, or 
 on the Isthmus, would soon turn the Catholics into Protestants, and 
 the Spanish-mixed bloods into Yankees. He interested several 
 students practically in such a scheme, and particularly Frederick 
 Hicks, of the class of 1861. Hicks was a native and resident of 
 Bennington, and died there Feb. 24, 1871. Professor Hopkins 
 wrote the following memorial of him in the college paper of the 
 time, the Williams Vidette. 
 
 Mr. Hicks inherited, in large measure, the missionary zeal and enterprise 
 which first made its appearance on this ground in 1806. 
 
 The very summer of his graduation he visited South America, and travelled 
 there somewhat extensively. His object was to select certain points where 
 permanent Christian missions might be formed. Having made himself some- 
 what familiar with the country and language, he returned to Panama. Having 
 an eye to future movements, he thought a station on the Isthmus would be con- 
 venient ; and that he might be himself more advantageously located there. 
 After some experience he saw the necessity of a religious centre, and to secure 
 this object he erected a chapel at an expense of about twelve thousand dollars. 
 He established various schools, Sabbath schools, and others not strictly of a 
 religious character. He made excursions northward into Guatemala and other 
 provinces, and was laying the foundation apparently of extensive usefulness, 
 when his labors were interrupted by disease. Against this he fought heroically, 
 but unsuccessfully. An unhealthy climate and frequent exposure proved too 
 much for a constitution not originally strong. 
 
 Mr. Hicks was a man of earnest convictions. What he believed, he believed 
 thoroughly, and he had sufficient strength of will to carry his convictions into 
 effect. During his college course he became convinced that the Kingdom of 
 Christ ought to be advanced in a business-like way, as other enterprises are. 
 He saw enterprising young men going to California and elsewhere, setting up for 
 themselves, amassing fortunes, and doing a good thing for their generation. 
 Why might not Christian young men be as wise ? Young men who go to the 
 West do not ask their neighbors to help them, they help themselves. If the 
 land is full of Christians, why should they not go out, plant themselves every- 
 where, and thus disperse everywhere the leaven of the Gospel ? This was the 
 idea of brother Hicks. He believed emphatically in the idea of self-sustaining 
 missions. If others chose to be sustained by the Board, he did not object ; but 
 for himself, the line of duty seemed to lie in another direction. 
 
 Twice during his stay on the Isthmus Mr. Hicks was called to act as Vice- 
 Consul. In this way he became generally known. And it was very well under- 
 stood that he carried his religion into his office. Clamorous applications were 
 made to have business attended to on the Sabbath, as had been the custom ; but 
 the example of Nehemiah was followed, and applicants were told emphatically 
 that if they had business at the office they must come on week-days. 
 
 Mr. Hicks was a man of faith. His views coincided, to some extent, with 
 those of Miiller, as delineated in his "Life of Trust." And his brief career 
 was marked by many instances illustrating the doctrine, that it is safe to *' trust 
 in the Lord." 
 2p 
 
578 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 He revisited the college for the last time late in the autumn. Arriving with 
 his family just as the noon meeting was about to commence, he was anxious to 
 be once more in his place ; and those who were present will well remember his 
 exhortation, and how firmly he planted himself on the doctrine of simple faith : 
 Who will be baptized for the dead ? 
 
 (3) In connection with his peculiar views on the best method of 
 conducting missionary operations in foreign lands, Professor Hop- 
 kins maintained for a number of years views still more peculiar in 
 respect to college education. As his own grasp on the actual college 
 training grew weaker and weaker, he seemed to think that the 
 trouble was with the plan and organization of the College itself, and 
 that radical changes were needful. One change that he proposed 
 and dwelt on vehemently for a while, was that the College should 
 actually become what it had been nominally called on very slight 
 grounds indeed, "The missionary college." Instead of having the 
 students who proposed a foreign missionary life for themselves 
 pursue on this ground the ancient and modern languages as a part 
 of their general education, and postpone the study of the language of 
 the people to whom they proposed to minister until they should 
 arrive in the foreign land as otherwise full-fledged missionaries, he 
 would have heathen youth in very considerable numbers brought 
 over here to Williamstown, and while they taught their native lan- 
 guages to the prospective missionaries, so that these when they 
 went could begin their evangelizing labors immediately, the native 
 comers would in the meantime learn English well, and see Chris- 
 tianity and civilization exemplified before their own eyes on a grand 
 scale. When this was done, some of them might accompany the white 
 missionaries back to their own native shores as their most efficient 
 coadjutors, while others would naturally remain in America to plead 
 the cause and exemplify the wonders of universal evangelization. 
 
 Professor Hopkins had a constructive imagination of marvellous 
 power to set forth the amazing benefits of such a visionary scheme 
 as this; but he was not equally facile to put one side the obvious 
 difficulties and impossibilities of such a plan to be realized in such 
 a narrow and remote and inaccessible valley as this of the upper 
 Hoosac River, and between almost contiguous mountains. Still, 
 his mind foresaw one of the inevitable objections, and he made a 
 rude attempt to parry it. "I used to think," he exclaimed, raising 
 his voice to its utmost pitch and volume, " I used to think that we 
 couldn't have more than two hundred students here, but now, consider- 
 ing what kind of students these are to be, I DON'T CARE IF WE HAVE 
 TWO MILLION HERE! " 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 579 
 
 Of course the incongruities of such a burst of fervor necessitated 
 a burst of laughter on the part of those present, of whom the writer 
 was one. Naturally the speaker subsided, not without some signs 
 of wonderment as to what caused the laughter! 
 
 In April, 1863, while the clouds of the Civil War hung heavily 
 around the whole horizon, while his only son was meditating on the 
 military service, which he entered shortly after in the First Massa- 
 chusetts Cavalry, to be killed in a charge near Ashland, Virginia, 
 May 11, 1864, and while College was depressed in every part by the 
 loss of sixty students gone to the war, Professor Hopkins formed 
 the "Alpine Club of Williamstown," likely to be long remembered 
 as the first organization in the United States for recurring pedestrian 
 mountain climbing. The original club consisted of twelve members, 
 as follows : 
 
 FANNY DEWEY LOUISA HOPKINS 
 
 RUTH SABIN FANNY WHITMAN 
 
 CARRIE HOPKINS ELISABETH KILBY 
 
 ALBERT HOPKINS PAUL CHADBOURNE 
 
 BESSIE SABIN HARRY HOPKINS 
 
 MAGGIE TATLOCK KITTIE FOOTE 
 
 The only officers of the club, and their tenure was perpetual, 
 were a "Leader" (Miss Dewey), a "Chronicler" (Professor 
 Hopkins), a "Secretary and Treasurer" (Miss Carrie Hopkins), 
 a "Surgeon" (Miss Bessie Sabin), and a "Bugler" (Miss Whit- 
 man). The object of the' association was declared to be "to 
 explore the interesting places in the vicinity, to become ac- 
 quainted, to some extent at least, with the natural history of 
 the localities, and also to improve the pedestrian powers of the 
 members." 
 
 In the course of the year, and in a little time subsequent, twelve 
 others were admitted to the privileges of the club, under this ex- 
 press provision of the constitution, that no new members were to be 
 admitted " unless they are possessed of good pedestrian powers, are 
 enthusiastic lovers of Nature, and show a willingness to receive 
 instruction from the members of older standing! " 
 
 MAGGIE ADRIA.NCE EDWARD GRIFFIN 
 
 SAMUEL SCUDDER EDWARD HOPKINS 
 
 JOHN G. GOODRIDGE HENRY GRIFFIN 
 
 MRS. D. DEWEY JULIA GOULD 
 
 HENRY TATLOCK CHARLES GARDNER 
 
 ABBIE MARKER JOHN DENISON 
 
580 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Nineteen excursions were made in 1863, of which the longest was 
 a two days' camping trip to Manchester, Vermont, for the ascent of 
 Mount Equinox. The record book of the club contains some account 
 of all the excursions, whether short or long. The short ones were 
 usually taken in the afternoon, often lasting until late in the even- 
 ing, to gain the advantage of the cooler air and to see the beauties 
 of Williamstowii by moonlight. The following record may be taken 
 as a fair sample of the rest. Ex uno disce omnes. 
 
 On Wednesday afternoon, October 18, in spite of a cloudy and threatening 
 sky, a walk which had been planned to Eolacca was undertaken. Professor 
 Hopkins offering, however, to take the party to Huge World, a spot unex- 
 plored by the club, it was resolved to go there instead. The gathering of 
 chestnuts, bright leaves, and berries made the progress up the mountain a slow 
 one, and a light rain was falling when Laurel Glen was reached. Undeterred 
 by this, however, the club clambered up the ledge, and, seated on the edge of 
 Pulpit Rock, enjoyed the view of the valley with the shower sweeping over the 
 distant mountains. Just north of this they stood on Solomon's Housetop, and 
 watched the crashing descent of numerous rocks which Professor Hopkins and 
 Mr. Denison, by great exertions, loosened from their resting-places and rolled 
 down the steep. After a visit to Geological Rock, and a climb to the top of both 
 Seneh and Bozez, they descended once more into the glen, and the rain coming 
 down quite briskly, found a cave where they built a fire and rested for a while 
 till the shower passed on and they were able to return home. 
 
 During the next year, 1864, eighteen regular tramps were taken ; 
 the first on April 16 and the last on October 6, including two camp- 
 ing excursions, one to Pontoosuc Lake, where the party, with 
 invited guests, numbered twenty-six; and one of three days to the 
 Hopper, in which seventeen persons joined. They camped at 
 Bacon's, then the town poorhouse, the ladies occupying the ground 
 floor of the house, and the gentlemen bestowing themselves as 
 best they could in the barn. The chronicler entitled his account 
 of the varied occurrences of these three days "Baconian Eeminis- 
 cences; or the Short and Simple Annals of the Poorhouse." Fun 
 enough. Ascents and descents; getting lost in the night, coming 
 down from Bald Mountain ; getting found ; "a blast of a trumpet, 
 the advance of torches through the murky night, a rush, a passage 
 of arms, embraces, kisses unequally bestowed, a Babel of tongues, a 
 rush of the famishing to the groaning board, the clash of steel, 
 questions and answers; and then over the home of the Bacons 
 silence reigned supreme." 
 
 Nineteen excursions were made and recorded in 1865, the last 
 year of the active operations of the club. Professor Hopkins did 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 581 
 
 not join the party of eight, five ladies and three gentlemen, 
 who represented the club in their crowning exploit of a twelve days' 
 excursion to the White Mountains. Samuel Scudder, a trained 
 mountaineer, conducted this expedition, the members of it rendez- 
 vousing at White River Junction, August 22. The professor had 
 wearied somewhat of the excitements and labors and festivities of 
 an organization of which he was the source and the inspiration; and 
 had turned with new ardor to his evangelizing work in the White 
 Oaks, probably already conscious that this was to be the last and 
 best, as it certainly was the most characteristic and permanent, of 
 his earthly labors. He was planning this summer for his chapel 
 there, which was built in the next, and dedicated Oct. 25, 1866. 
 He christened both the building and his little band of believers 
 " The Church of Christ in the White Oaks." Here he preached and 
 prayed and labored with his hands in unflagging zeal till the very 
 end. The body of believers in covenant there was organized, 
 Dec. 20, 1868, with twelve members, increased in 1895 to seventy- 
 three; but it was not till March 6, 1872, two months before his 
 death, that he wrote the formal covenant and form of admission 
 into this church, which he fain hoped might be adopted as a 
 formula by many Christians of every name everywhere. A parson- 
 age was built in 1880 through the efforts of S. H. Woodbridge, class 
 of 1873 ; and the enlarged and beautified chapel was rededicated in 
 January, 1895. 
 
 No such funeral as that of Professor Hopkins, in point of num- 
 bers in attendance, in point of universal sympathy of each and every 
 class in the community, and especially in point of Sunday-school 
 scholars with May flowers in their hands filling the galleries of the 
 large church, has ever been attended in Williams town. The fu- 
 neral of his brother, just fifteen years later, brought together many 
 more distinguished people from abroad, and filled the body of the 
 church with sincere mourners. The funeral of Professor Dodd just 
 twenty-five years later also filled the body of the same church with 
 college people and townsfolk who admired and loved a diffident and 
 faithful and nature-loving man. 
 
 The writer closes these extended memoranda of Albert Hopkins 
 with a skilful portrayal of him from the pen of Professor Phillips, 
 professor of Greek from 1857 to 1868, and afterward librarian. It 
 is almost more in endeavor to keep green the memory of this good 
 man of insight and sympathy indirectly, than in hope of adding any 
 new lineament to him who is thus portrayed, that this beautiful 
 sketch is appended. 
 
582 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Professor Hopkins first became known to me upon my entering College in 
 1843. He was then in the prime of life and as fine looking'a man as one would 
 meet in many days. He was tall, erect, dignified though unassuming, simple 
 in garb even to plainness and sometimes to rudeness ; but always refined and 
 courteous in demeanor, with a frame which would have suited an athlete, and a 
 head such as the Greek sculptors gave to their great orator large in feature 
 but symmetrical and well-poised, clad with soft curling hair, and wearing 
 beneath the shaggy projection of a rugged brow eyes of rare hue and of un- 
 matched depth of brilliancy. With the more sober and religious part of the 
 students he was a great favorite, and in their estimation he fairly divided the 
 honors of the College with his more distinguished brother. He was their chosen 
 spiritual guide and moral hero. His was the favorite type of religious devotion. 
 His prayers, exhortations and appeals his methods of religious work were 
 commended. His religious earnestness and separateness from the world, his 
 reputed fastings and struggles with the powers of evil invested his person with a 
 peculiar sanctity in the eyes of enthusiastic young disciples. As may be sup- 
 posed his moral influence was great. Humanly speaking he stood at the head 
 of the religious powers of the College. But he had other claims to hero-worship 
 of a different order, and such as brought him a larger class of adherents. His 
 physical strength, agility and endurance were remarkable, and he was not averse 
 to testing them, whence it happened that many stood in awe of his physical 
 powers who were not greatly moved at his spiritual excellence. Students 
 engaged in barring their associates out or in blocking hall or chapel door by 
 forming a wedge, were shy about resisting the weight of his hand or the momen- 
 tum of his push. Nocturnal depredators were not fond of attracting his notice. 
 To be aware of his presence at any spot where anything unjustifiable was going 
 on was enough to sober if not to stay the stoutest hearted actor. His low knock 
 at the door of a room where there was a sound of revelry was a signal for uncon- 
 ditional surrender. Many stories were told about encounters with him some 
 real probably and some imaginary. It was said that on the way to a preaching 
 exercise at Pownal, as he walked according to his custom, he came upon a 
 couple of pugilists somewhat heated by drink, who were about to settle their 
 differences by personal combat. As a messenger of the Prince of Peace, he 
 interposed to prevent the strife at the risk of drawing upon himself the ven- 
 geance of both the contending parties, and was actually upon the point of being 
 struck by one of them, when he gave the man a look and said in his deliberate 
 way " You'd better not strike we, Sir. If you do, you won't strike another man 
 in some time." The assailant quailed before the look and the tone, and con- 
 cluded to defer his fight for a season. One night when there was a disturbance 
 about College and the watch were out, a very muscular person chanced to be 
 stooping for some purpose to pick up a fireball perhaps when he felt a heavy 
 hand laid on him from behind. By a sudden effort he wrenched himself free 
 and fled, but found that he had left as a trophy in the grip of his adversary a 
 handful of stout cloth. This person always believed that the man who tore his 
 trousers for him that night was Professor Hopkins. My acquaintance with 
 the Professor began in the Junior class room. Thoroughness was his motto 
 there. Hurried and confused utterances were discouraged. Deliberate clear 
 and precise statements were required. All things were made ready before per- 
 mission was given to move. Then every one was expected to go in his own 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 583 
 
 strength at least he received no help from the teacher. There were no catch- 
 words to pull one's self along by, nor was there any changing the terms of a 
 question to indicate the answer. Every one in general was suffered to "gang 
 his own gait" but a brilliant dash was sometimes suspected of hiding a defect 
 and the ground had to be marched over more slowly, the lame were allowed to 
 stumble and the slipshod to scuffle along as they might, but when they came to 
 a stop they found all their labor vain for the next was invariably asked to state 
 that. He never to my recollection indulged in jocose remarks while hearing a 
 recitation or encouraged undue familiarity on the part of the students. He gave 
 his attention strictly to the business in hand, and expected them to do likewise. 
 He once refused to hear our debate and broke up the session because the subject 
 chosen, viz., the expediency of bringing water to the College from a neighboring 
 spring, as he alleged, was frivolous. Of course his presence insured order. It 
 would have seemed an impertinence if not a species of sacrilege to have attempted 
 any disturbance. Another place where many of the students became acquainted 
 with Professor Hopkins was the daily noon prayer meeting which he almost 
 always attended and conducted. He established this meeting and it continued 
 to be held as long as he lived. There can be no doubt that it was a great bless- 
 ing to the College. It furnished a sort of spiritual Exchange where Christians 
 from the different classes met each other and exchanged views upon religious 
 experience and religious work, mingled their prayers and praises, and girded 
 themselves for their common conflict. It was a place, too, where any impeni- 
 tent person who was beginning to be anxious about his salvation might come or 
 be brought by a friend, and be welcomed and guided and helped on his way to 
 Christ. It was a training place and recruiting station as well for the band of 
 Christians in College. It was the true prayer-gauge also. It showed as the 
 mercury the pressure of the air the intensity of religious fervor in the College. 
 It was a precious season to many who are now engaged in a purer and loftier 
 service on high, and to many who still tarry here. The Exercises invariably 
 began by each attendant repeating in his turn a verse of Scripture, the Professor 
 correcting all errors in quotation. His remarkable familiarity with the Scrip- 
 tures was the result of daily reading and study helped by a naturally retentive 
 memory. I imagine he rarely needed to consult a concordance to discover where 
 a particular passage was to be found. The solemnity of his manner at these 
 meetings, especially when there was unusual interest and the room was filled, 
 and the fervor of his prayers and addresses and singing were veiy marked and 
 impressive. A green spot in the latter part of my college life is the Thursday 
 evening meeting held in Professor Hopkins' study and attended by a circle of 
 choice spirits from the town, and by some of the students in the College. The 
 walls of the study were covered with cases of minerals and with bookshelves, and 
 in front of these were ranged sofas, benches, and chairs which were occupied gen- 
 erally by perhaps twenty -five or thirty persons. Sometimes we were crowded out 
 of the study into the Conservatory, where we had a glimpse of Mrs. Hopkins sit- 
 ting secluded in the back parlor but with the door ajar so that she could hear what 
 was said in the study. The Professor was expounding the Psalms with a delightful 
 freedom, and unction and power and beauty. The meeting was conducted mostly 
 by him some other generally offering a prayer and occasionally brief remarks. 
 The throng became so great that it was thought best to adjourn to the schoolhouse, 
 but the meeting was spoiled by the change and had to be brought back soon. 
 
584 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Probably the estimate generally set upon Professor Hopkins' power as a 
 preacher is not high enough. His efforts were very unequal. He had a poet's 
 soul, and when the inspiration came he rose to the loftiest heights of oratory, 
 while at other times he remained stationary. He never sank to a low level, 
 however. His pulpit efforts were never commonplace, though when chilled by 
 untoward circumstances his manner was constrained and his tones low and 
 spiritless. But when in good bodily health he stood before a company of appre- 
 ciative and sympathizing friends, especially when there was fresh religious feel- 
 ing and signs betokening a coming revival for which he always watched and 
 waited, when the clouds began to gather and draw nigh and stand overhead, 
 big with mercy and only needing to be pierced to discharge their treasures and 
 pour out a blessing greater than could be received, then he rose in the pulpit as 
 from a throne of power, and with nerves unfluttered, rather steadied by excite- 
 ment, with rare command of picturesque speech and with the highest display of 
 dramatic force in look, tone, and gesture, he enforced the lessons and raised the 
 spirit of the hour. We shall never again hear such sermons as he preached upon 
 the " Beginning of the End," "The Barren Fig Tree," and " The Conversion of 
 Zaccheus." He labored much in private for the spiritual welfare of individuals. 
 I remember his entering my room one summer evening as I sat alone in the late 
 twilight, and having taken a seat, remaining silent for a few minutes as if lost 
 in thought, then looking up pleasantly and saying, " Well, aren't you about ready 
 to go with us ? " Without waiting for an answer, he struck up some familiar 
 and appropriate hymn, I believe it was "We're Marching to Immanuel's 
 Land," sang one verse, and disappeared quickly with a pleasant "good 
 night." He often gave a religious turn to ordinary conversation. Once when 
 the year had opened with a revival and there had been many conversions in 
 the College, some students who had been taking a walk met him and informed 
 him that they had heard the notes of a blue-bird. "Yes," said he, "the time 
 of the singing of birds is come and," with a significant smile, "the voice of the 
 turtle is heard in the land." A marked feature in Professor Hopkins' charac- 
 ter was his love of nature, the delight he had in some fine scenery, and the inter- 
 est he took in individual objects of the outer world, as birds, flowers, trees, and 
 rocks. He was proficient to a considerable degree in nearly all the branches of 
 natural history. He was the presiding genius of the Natural History Society of 
 the College, whose career has been long and honorable. He was well acquainted 
 with the local Fauna and Flora, the habits and habitat of its individual mem- 
 bers. He knew in what sunny nook the earliest blooms of the arbutus were 
 scenting the air. Every June he visited the secluded dale where the woods were 
 gay with the curious clustered cups of the broad-leaved Kalmia. Once, when in 
 taking a short route to the Cascade we had reached the centre of a large and 
 barren field, he stopped before an inconspicuous shrub and asked if I knew what 
 Species it was. I was about to take hold of it when he exclaimed, " Don't touch 
 it. It is the Rhustoxicodendra, the most poisonous of plants." He was the 
 best and most genial guide to the many places of interest about the College. 
 In fact they had become places of interest largely from the interest which we 
 had taken in them. The numerous summits and cascades and glens had their 
 names and fame mainly from him. The Alpine Club of Williamstown and 
 Tent Life upon Graylock were originated by him, and he rarely appeared to 
 better advantage than when he met the little company of his followers to. open 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 585 
 
 a geode or crack the nuts, literary or artistic, gathered in their rambles. Any 
 one who accompanied him for half a day over East mountain and through the 
 White Oaks, and kept by his side as he strode over the open, darted in and out 
 of thickets, climbed over ridges, and plunged down precipices, with all his senses 
 of exquisite fineness on the alert, observing everything, but pausing only to 
 notice something special, a remarkable tree, or rock, or flower, or to gain 
 a view of the valley from some spot of vantage, visiting the nether and upper 
 springs, the cliffs Bozes and Seneh, the lake Ulacca, and other places to which 
 his playful fancy had assigned names, stopping to council with poor people 
 about things temporal and spiritual, and finally reaching and examining the 
 Chapel with its neighboring missionary plot, and apple trees for the wayfaring 
 man, and its own grounds set with grapes and roses and Japanese lilies, and 
 having its miniature water works, any one, I say, who ever had this experience 
 found himself by turns amused, interested, fascinated, and at the close profoundly 
 tired. In the line of his special studies, Professor Hopkins was particularly fond 
 of Astronomy. The grandeur and the mysteries of the stellar worlds appealed 
 strongly to his imagination, and he loved to lie and watch through the telescope 
 the appearances of the moon and the planets the fixed stars and nebulae and 
 comets. He often kept late hours in his Observatory. One night when I hap- 
 pened to be with him, he made an interesting terrestrial discovery through the 
 telescope. It was at the close of a series of Indian summer days such as we 
 usually have in the latter part of October about ten o'clock in the evening 
 that he turned his instrument towards the full moon and was surprised to see 
 flocks of small birds drifting across the object glass, birds which he quickly rec- 
 ognized as flying steadily and in countless numbers toward the south. A closer 
 inspection showed the species to be the common American Robin. They were 
 passing through one stage of their annual migration, and they chose to do it by 
 night. The fields had been alive with them during the day. In the morning 
 they had all disappeared, and within twenty -four hours the ground was white 
 with the first snow of the season. The last time I saw Professor Hopkins while 
 he was able to be out of doors was a beautiful summer evening when the azure 
 sky was studded most thickly with its diamonds. He gazed for a long time and 
 with great enthusiasm, first with the naked eye, and then with his glass, remark- 
 ing at the same time on the number of the stars then visible in the milky way. 
 Not very long after, the blind disease which was gently working in him, gained 
 the mastery, and he was parted from his weeping friends and translated to a 
 fairer world above the stars, where he may feast his soul on the transcendent 
 glories of the heavenly state. Sad, indeed, should we be, did we not believe 
 that the ties which are broken here, will be reunited there that the pleasant 
 intercourse with our friend will be resumed again when the night is gone. 
 
 Alongside of Professor Hopkins, and closely associated with him, 
 there labored for many years, as professors, and, in a very subordi- 
 nate sense, as successive librarians also, two graduates of the Col- 
 lege who must now be characterized, both individually, and, too, in 
 connection with each other and their work. These were Nathaniel 
 Griffin and John Tatlock. Griffin was graduated in 1834, and Tat- 
 lock in 1836. Both were associated in College in the Kappa Alpha 
 
586 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Society, then just established, and the first of its kind on this 
 ground. Both were good scholars in College, as scholarship was 
 then reckoned, and Tatlock was the valedictorian of his class. Each 
 married in due time into a leading family in Williamstown, Griffin 
 into that of the Buckleys, and Tatlock into that of the Whitmans. 
 Both were called to a tutorship at the same time, 1836, the year in 
 which Mark Hopkins was called to the presidency, and Griffin 
 served one year and Tatlock two years in that capacity. Griffin 
 studied theology in Princeton, had a brief Presbyterian pastorate 
 in Delhi, New York, returned to the College, and passed a year 
 supplying the place of Professor Tatlock in his absence and that 
 of Professor Kellogg in his illness, and then established himself 
 in Brooklyn as a teacher for some years. He was born and bred 
 and fitted for college on Long Island. He entered at sixteen, in 
 1830. 
 
 John Tatlock was just six years older than Griffin, and eight years 
 older at his graduation. He was born on the Island of Anglesey, 
 North Wales. His parents removed to Liverpool, and seem to have 
 come into some sort of relations with Sir John Gladstone, himself 
 also a Welshman in part, though born in Leith. Sir John won 
 wealth and eminence in Liverpool as a wholesale wine and spirit 
 merchant. William Ewart Gladstone, born in Liverpool, was just 
 a year younger than John Tatlock. In September, 1822, at fourteen 
 years of age, young Tatlock entered the office of Sir John Gladstone 
 as a clerk, and remained with him for eight years, when he left 
 Liverpool for the United States, landing at Philadelphia. After 
 some mutations, he found himself in Hunter, New York, where he 
 came under the influence of Eev. Calvin Durfee, of the college class 
 of 1825, who helped him to prepare for college, and persuaded him 
 to come to Williams. On the Commencement schedule of 1836, his 
 residence is put down as "Liverpool, England." According to the 
 custom of the time he taught both languages and mathematics as the 
 Freshman tutor, and the same the next year to the Sophomores ; and 
 in 1838 was elected Professor of Mathematics. Seven years later 
 lie was transferred for a single year to the chair of languages, then 
 vacated by Professor Kellogg. In this he made no impression, ex- 
 cept a confused and sinister one. It is somewhat characteristic of 
 the man's mind as a teacher, that he undertook to learn by heart 
 each day's lesson in Livy, to carry no text into his recitation, and 
 in that way to teach students who were as a rule extremely ill- 
 prepared for college in the classics, their complex and difficult con- 
 structions and translations. It was a dead failure of necessity; and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 587 
 
 so he went back to mathematics again, and kept his place till 1867, 
 twenty -one years. 
 
 Griffin in the meantime had been elected, in 1846, in the succes- 
 sion to Professor Kellogg, who died that year, to the chair of Latin 
 and Greek, which he held till 1853, when he was given the Greek 
 alone, and the Latin passed over into a new department, which was 
 first held by Isaac N. Lincoln, of the class of 1847, for nine years, 
 until his death in 1862. As a memorial of Professor Kellogg, a 
 small but substantial brick building of three stories was erected in 
 the West College garden in 1847, and named "Kellogg Hall." The 
 first floor was occupied by two commodious recitation-rooms, then 
 called the " Freshman " and " Sophomore " recitation-rooms. Unless 
 there was disorder of some sort in one^ of these rooms, the two were 
 so far separated from each other that the proceedings in one were 
 not noticed in the other; but any such matter as the egress from 
 either of a whole class at once could not but be a great disturbance 
 in the other. At this point Professor Griffin, who often occupied 
 one of these rooms while Professor Tatlock was nominally occupy- 
 ing the other, was placed at a great disadvantage; for Tatlock, 
 having come to possess great facility in the elements of mathe- 
 matics, such as geometry and conic sections, and naturally losing 
 interest in them from not carrying forward further researches in 
 them, rarely giving any oral instruction to his classes, but merely 
 calling up a few to recite the propositions and another few to demon- 
 strate these at the blackboard, gradually came to have very short reci- 
 tations, lasting usually from fifteen minutes to half an hour, and then 
 his class, on being dismissed, plunged out of the room in a body 
 and noisily to the great detriment of the work going on to its full 
 hour's limit in the adjoining room. More than this, as Tatlock 
 grew older and lazier, relishing the quasi popularity that came from 
 short and easy recitations (especially if they went off without a break 
 in their flow), perhaps insensibly to himself, came to call up the 
 good mathematical scholars only, while the lamer ducks could paddle 
 through an entire term without being once halted. It was the tes- 
 timony of at least one 1 good mathematician in the class of 1852, 
 that he did not remember and did not believe he was ever in one of 
 Professor Tatlock's recitations in the whole course when he was not 
 called up to recite. 
 
 Professor Griffin was a competent and conscientious teacher. He 
 needed and desired a full hour each day in order to test the mem- 
 bers of his class without discrimination as to their previous skill, 
 1 Henry M. Hazeltine. 
 
588 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and to give such instruction to all as lie supposed was fitting and 
 desirable. His department was not popular; he had grave faults as 
 a teacher, and still graver difficulties to contend with in the miser- 
 ably inadequate fitting of the bulk of his students in their classics. 
 To such a man, wishing to do his best with such students, it was 
 no light additional burden to carry to have his class made restive 
 and impatient by the bursting out of a neighboring class from their 
 already completed task, some of them, perchance, peering through a 
 window in mockery upon those still kept in durance vile. Griffin 
 worried along, doing the best he could, all the time useful to the 
 College in various capacities, not supported as such a man ought to 
 have been by his colleagues, including the executive head of the 
 College. In every class he encountered at least two or three of the 
 students who were fond of the classics and willing to be instructed, 
 to whom he always gave quick recognition, and all the help fairly 
 at his disposal. His chief fault as a teacher was that he did not 
 keep to a progressive proportion in his questions and instructions. 
 He would examine a Freshman for admission in much the same style 
 as a Junior on a passage in Demosthenes. Closely connected with 
 this fault, even if it were not a part or a cause of it, was his failure 
 to keep himself fresh and growing in all the ever-new events con- 
 nected with his department. It is essential to the sustained success 
 of a college professor that he read and study much in order that he 
 may teach a little. Griffin was useful and efficient as the secretary 
 of the Society of Alumni. He was for twenty years, till his death 
 in 1876, the active and intelligent college librarian. He was an 
 earnest patriot. " We must back up the Government at all hazards I " 
 he cried, at the news of the second battle of Bull Kun, in the last 
 of August, 1862. " It is time for the Government to lack us up ! " in- 
 stantly responded one of his colleagues. In less than a month both 
 things followed, a newly recruited army, and Lincoln's prelimi- 
 nary Emancipation Proclamation, dated September 22. 
 
 The writer saw Professor Griffin on his death-bed. No wavering 
 of his life-long faith in Jesus Christ, but an honest and earnest 
 expression of ignorance of what the future is to be. Whittier's 
 stanza expresses exactly the spirit of that conversation : 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care. 
 
 No words should be spoken or written in extenuation of the short 
 times and partial nature and wrongful neglects of Professor Tat- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 589 
 
 lock's recitations. He slighted and shirked his proper and needful 
 work. He came to keep few or no records of the absences or of the 
 standing of the members of his classes. He often casually threw 
 upon others more conscientious the duties that were peculiarly his 
 own. Whatever was easiest in relation to all college matters seemed 
 to him to be best. He gradually and naturally lost the respect and 
 control of his classes, and wore out the forbearance (much too long 
 extended) of the president and his other colleagues. College became 
 more or less demoralized throughout by his own remissnesses and 
 occasional absences. Things came to a preliminary crisis in 1860, 
 which was a critical year in the history of the College, when the 
 trustees came together to inquire into abuses and negligences (not 
 his alone by any means) that had become noised abroad, and when, 
 in consequence, discipline was superficially and temporarily tight- 
 ened up. Tatlock, however, did not resign till 1867. 
 
 Let no reader infer from all this that a man who was out of his 
 place as a college professor did not have some excellent traits of 
 character, and a practical benevolence perhaps unusual. He edu- 
 cated at the College, mainly at his own expense, three of his 
 nephews born in the old country, William, John, and Henry Tat- 
 lock, who were graduated respectively in 1857 and 1856 and 1871. 
 William, the eldest, born in Liverpool in 1833, became prominently 
 useful as a rector and otherwise in the Protestant Episcopal Church 
 in the United States ; he was secretary to the Bench of Bishops for 
 about a quarter of a century, nearly until his death in Stamford, 
 Connecticut, where he was a rector after May, 1866. John, born 
 in 1835, was and remained a distinguished minister in the Presby- 
 terian Church. He, too, like his uncle, married into the Whitman 
 family of Williamstown. His son John, Williams College 1882, 
 became a skilled and trusted accountant in the office of the " New 
 York Mutual Life Insurance Company." 
 
 Professor Tatlock had a homely wit, and often made a quick and 
 telling retort. For a perfect recitation, the students were always 
 supposed to be marked 10, or, expressed colloquially, "to rake an 
 X." When the news of General Pope's capture of the rebel " Island 
 No. 10 " in 1862, reached the College, some students rushed to him 
 with the announcement, "Hm! hm! he raked an X, didn't he?" 
 This was quite as good, though not so severely classical, as Lawyer 
 Evarts's expression on the same exploit, which was achieved by saw- 
 ing off the trunks of trees four feet under water for access for the 
 gunboats to the island, " A new Ccesar ! He came, SAWED, con- 
 quered! " 
 
590 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Throughout a part of his teaching career, Professor Tatlock 
 preached occasionally both in town and in the neighboring towns ; 
 and while his sermons were never labored or original, they were 
 often sensible, and sometimes piquant and impressive. They were 
 more apt to tell upon young men in common and artisan life than 
 upon any other class of persons. Instances are known to the writer 
 of great and permanent good coming to such from his preaching. 
 But he repeated himself in the pulpit to the weariness of any stated 
 hearers. His sermons lacked depth and solemnity. They were 
 always short, like his recitations; they were often iterated, both in 
 parts and as wholes ; and they soon ceased to be called for in any 
 'one particular place. In College, they never became common. We 
 have no call to follow the professor in his after life as a lawyer. 
 Following one year's study he was admitted to the bar and opened 
 an office in Lenox. He was sixty years old. He soon moved his 
 office to Pittsfield. He never gained a foothold in the county as a 
 lawyer. Of course he could not. His character deteriorated sadly 
 under his inevitable disappointments. He died in 1886, and was 
 buried in the college cemetery. What are the lessons of this man's 
 life and failures? (1) Waste not through indolence or other neglect 
 the given golden opportunity. (2) Inflexible and invariable duty 
 to others the only key to life-success. 
 
 The celebration of the semi-centennial of the College, in 1843, 
 and the publication of the striking address of Mark Hopkins upon 
 that occasion, extended very much the reputation of the institution 
 and of its president, who was then forty-one years old and had been 
 seven years in his place. Neither had yet become widely known. 
 The average number of graduates for the nine years up to and in- 
 cluding 1843, was twenty-eight; while the average for the nine 
 years following was forty -two. This steady increase in a college 
 remote from the centres of population, and itself difficult of access, 
 can only be accounted for by some general cause ; and that cause 
 was unquestionably a good name, extending out on longer radii of 
 influence. Nor were increased numbers the only indication of this. 
 Even a surer proof of it was the public attention then and thereafter 
 centred upon Mark Hopkins, and the invitations addressed to him 
 to perform public services or fill public positions elsewhere than in 
 Williamstown. The earliest one of these noticeable invitations was 
 that to deliver a course of lectures on the then newly laid foundation 
 of the Lowell Institute in Boston. John Lowell had bequeathed, 
 in 1836, to his native city about two hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars to maintain there in perpetuity annual courses of free lee- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 591 
 
 tures on natural and revealed religion, the sciences, literature, and 
 eloquence. The lectures went into operation in the winter of 
 1839-40. Dr. Hopkins was chosen to lecture upon this foundation 
 in the winter of 1843-44. He chose for his theme " The Evidences 
 of Christianity." He was doubtless led to this choice by his inter- 
 est in and through study of Paley and Butler, who had been the 
 chief text-book authors in Senior studies from the beginning of the 
 College, and over some of whose points, especially Paley 's, he had 
 combated, as a student, with Dr. Griffin as his teacher, and both of 
 whom he had now been critically teaching to Seniors for several 
 years. Paley's " Moral Philosophy " was published in 1785, his 
 " Horse Paulinae " in 1790. his " Evidences of Christianity " in 1794, 
 and his " Natural Theology " in 1802. The first and last of these 
 were college text-books, and they quickened Hopkins 's mind, first 
 and last, more than any other text-books he ever used, except it may 
 have been Butler's "Analogy." It is altogether likely that he had 
 access in the college library to the other two books of Paley just 
 mentioned; but the "Horse Paulinae," which was the broadest and 
 most original of the four, was not adapted to the structure of the 
 president's mind; and while he quotes from it once in his own 
 lectures, there is no evidence that an historical argument based upon 
 the undesigned coincidences between the Epistles of St. Paul and 
 the statements of the four Evangelists ever deeply affected his 
 mind, or colored his own lectures. 
 
 In his later life, to the writer particularly, for reasons which will 
 appear in a moment, and to others also, Hopkins communicated 
 freely and repeatedly the circumstances of this appointment and of 
 its fulfilment, which pleased him greatly at the time, and ever after 
 in the retrospect. The interval of time between appointment and 
 fulfilment was about a year; nearly all of this time was preoccupied 
 by pressing duties, both teaching and executive; he postponed as 
 much in the way of preparation as he could until the summer vaca- 
 tion, when he would give all the days long to the writing of his 
 twelve lectures ; when the time came, he devoted himself assidu- 
 ously and exclusively to this writing; "when the vacation was about 
 two-thirds gone, and I had put in my utmost strength, suddenly one 
 morning while writing, and as quick as a flash, I heard something snap 
 in my head, and I found I could not write at all. I do not know ivhat 
 it was never experienced anything like it before or since, and never 
 heard of anybody who had anything like it, but I could not write a 
 word. I flung up everything, kept out of doors most of the time for a 
 week or more, walked and drove and climbed, and then I found I could 
 
592 WILLIAMSTOWST AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 write again, but not at the previous pace, which I have never since 
 resumed." This is his own account of the matter orally and often 
 given. 
 
 While he was thus hastily writing these lectures, he never had a 
 thought of their being printed. They were written for a popular 
 audience and for popular effect. They were well adapted to both. 
 Lowell lectures were then new in Boston. They were popular. 
 They became the talk of the town. They were resorted to even 
 from considerable distances by families in their carriages. The 
 Unitarian controversy in Boston had somewhat subsided from its 
 previous virulence. The Lowell lectures, though founded and 
 largely supported by Unitarian families, were acceptable to and 
 frequented by the Orthodox also. This was particularly true of 
 the Hopkins course on the "Evidences of Christianity." There was 
 nothing whatever sectarian in the theme or in the treatment of it. 
 The lectures formed a common ground of meeting and fellowship for 
 all the sects. The man was the man for the time and place and 
 subject. This proved to be very fortunate for him and for the 
 College. It was at this time and in this way that his lasting rela- 
 tions were knit with Amos Lawrence, who became thereby a munifi- 
 cent patron of the College. The Unitarians of Massachusetts as a 
 body, by this initial course of lectures and by three subsequent 
 courses upon the same foundation, were more or less drawn toward 
 the College, and became more or less patrons of it in the way of 
 sending students. The ability and breadth of the president as 
 manifested in these four courses of Lowell lectures, and in another 
 course of lectures later delivered before several of the theological 
 seminaries, and especially the masterly baccalaureate sermons, both 
 as individually printed and as collectively published under different 
 titles, persuasively disarmed all sectarian feeling, and gradually 
 brought to the support of the College members of all Protestant 
 denominations, and many Catholic students also. The debt of the 
 institution to its fourth president along this line of forceful Chris- 
 tian attraction was and remained very great indeed. This personal 
 attractiveness of the man and his manner, and more specifically the 
 attractiveness of his public presentations of moral and religious 
 truth, did not depend very much upon the accuracy (or want of it) 
 of his citations of fact, whether for argument or illustration; nor 
 did it depend very much on the width of his reading (or want of it) ; 
 and still less did it depend very much on whether his main points 
 were what is called " original " or borrowed. It did depend very 
 much on a broad-minded and warm-hearted and thoroughly honest 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 593 
 
 attitude as toward his topic, combined with an ever-hospitable 
 aspect toward all cognate truth known to him, by whomsoever 
 stated, and also with an always luminous and often beautiful style 
 of language. 
 
 J. R. Marvin, a printer of Boston, though in no sense a publisher, 
 finding the echoes of these lectures pretty clear and strong for some 
 time after their delivery, requested leave to print them at his own 
 risk, which was granted. They were issued in good form, but not 
 with so good a promise of circulation as if they had been in the 
 hands of a regular publisher. Dr. Hopkins took occasion long after- 
 ward to express his regrets to the present writer that he had not 
 put his book into one of the regular channels of communication with 
 the public, and that he himself had not divined before, and while 
 writing it, that it would probably be printed, and so come under the 
 eyes, in every part, of careful and critical readers. He was com- 
 pelled to pay the inevitable penalty of his haste in composition, and 
 of his want of foresight and diligence in comparing his quotations 
 with their originals and his statements of fact with authorities of 
 ready reference. The book had some sale from the first. The cir- 
 cumstance, however, that gave to it subsequently its main success 
 deserves to be recounted in these pages at length. 
 
 Joseph Alden, a name fast interlinked with the history of Wil- 
 liamstown and Williams College, although not in the deepest or 
 highest or longest relations, was ordained pastor of the church in 
 town in 1834, at the age of twenty-seven. He had spent two years 
 at Brown University, and then two more at Union College, where 
 he was graduated in 1828. He then spent two years at the theo- 
 logical seminary in Princeton, and then was a tutor in Nassau Hall 
 for two years more. In his brief pastorate in town his health 
 apparently gave way, and he was chosen, in 1835, Professor of 
 Rhetoric, Political Economy, and History. He had seen much 
 more of the colleges and of the intellectual life of the country than 
 either of the Hopkins brothers, then both professors here, and he 
 was of just the same age as Albert, and but five years the junior of 
 Mark. He was a young man of fine personal presence, tall and 
 handsome, of a good voice and superior elocution, though lacking in 
 the clear and courageous and dominating eye of each of his two 
 compeers. He had just married into the very prominent Livingston 
 family, descendants of the emigrant Robert, of a noble Scottish 
 family, who obtained, in 1686, the patent of Livingston Manor on 
 the North River. Mrs. Alden was the daughter of Rev. Dr. Liv- 
 ingston of Philadelphia, whose widow spent much time in Williams- 
 
594 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 town in her daughter's family. Had Joseph Alden, in connection 
 with all these external advantages, been possessed of a real love of 
 college teaching and management, the power of gaming and holding 
 the confidence of his classes as their friend and instructor, and been 
 persistent and patient in all his relations with others, there is no 
 telling what a social and academical pillar he might have become. 
 As it was, he stayed seventeen years as a professor without ever 
 becoming locally rooted. He helped and stimulated individual stu- 
 dents a good deal, both rhetorically and politically, without ever 
 receiving the majority of the suffrages in a single class. The mem- 
 bers of his family were highly esteemed in the town and in the 
 College. He built a handsome house for them, and lived in better 
 style than other members of the faculty. But he was not contented 
 in his work. He complained of living under the densissima umbra 
 of Mark Hopkins's growing reputation, when he might apparently 
 have made no small shade of his own. He resigned in 1852, under 
 circumstances which will be later referred to again, becoming at 
 once Professor of Moral Philosophy in Lafayette College, and in 
 1857 president of Jefferson College, and in 1867 president of the 
 State Normal College at Albany. 
 
 Shortly after the appearance in print of Hopkins's " Evidences of 
 Christianity," Professor Alden volunteered to introduce the book 
 into his own department, as a text-book for study and recitation; 
 and did so, continuing to teach it in a rather cursory way so long 
 as he stayed. By this casual stroke he left his own mark on the 
 College in a longer and deeper form than in any other; for when 
 Professor Perry succeeded, in 1853, to Alden's professorship, this 
 study, by the president's express order, went over to him, along 
 with the history and political economy. A separate disposition was 
 made of Alden' s rhetoric by the appointment of Addison Ballard, 
 of the class of 1842, as brief professor of that branch, and then of 
 John Bascom, of 1849, as a permanent professor. As a student, 
 Perry had studied the " Evidences " under Professor Alden, and had 
 become much interested in them ; as he had also gained more than 
 the other members of his class from all other of that professor's 
 studies. Accordingly, when he became charged with the instruction 
 out of that book to successive Junior classes, he devoted himself 
 anew to that study, resolving that nothing in it should escape him ; 
 and that he would communicate to his class every thing, pertinent 
 that he himself might acquire. He began by preparing his own les- 
 sons in such a way that he had no need to carry into his recitation- 
 room a text-book, at all. He did not memorize the paragraphs, but 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 595 
 
 he mastered them thoroughly, so that he could explain the allusions 
 and enforce the arguments and apply the illustrations. His own 
 interest and zeal gradually communicated themselves to the mem- 
 bers of the successive classes, so that it was said, and the president 
 certainly believed it, that there was no study in college that, speak- 
 ing generally, drew out the attention and the powers and the con- 
 tinuous efforts of the students as this did. The president often 
 attended the oral examinations at the close of the study, and always 
 expressed himself as more than satisfied and more than gratified 
 with the results thus exhibited. In other words, the book, when 
 given ample time and thorough discussion in the class-room, proved 
 itself, under all the circumstances, to be an excellent text -book. 
 The president more than once expressed his surprise as well as 
 gratification that it had proven so. 
 
 At the same time, and in harmony with the result, the book proved 
 itself also, under such continuous handling, to be imperfect and 
 defective in places. All books are imperfect and defective; while 
 a book written under such circumstances as that was, and by such a 
 man as he was, necessarily showed weak spots, and many of them. 
 It needs to be said in this connection, that Perry, however deficient 
 his college education had been in other important directions, had 
 given himself, wholly outside of the curriculum, a thorough course, 
 lasting over a year in all, in Mill's "Logic," which had then newly 
 appeared. Said Dr. Hopkins to him many years afterward, "I 
 picked you out for a professor in your Junior year in that first pub- 
 lic debate between the societies." This self-imposed and solitary 
 and long-continued training in a subject, then and still too much 
 neglected in the College, had given him a keen scent for logical 
 fallacies of all kinds, and also a keener delight in all kinds of logical 
 proofs. In the first and preparatory lecture in the "Evidences," 
 there fell an attempted refutation of Hume's argument against 
 miracles, and what purported to be verbal extracts from Hume's 
 essay upon that subject. Almost from the first of his teaching the 
 book, Perry did not like the form of the refutation, nor did he see 
 the germaneness of its alleged accessories. He went to the college 
 library to draw a copy of Hume's "Essays." To his surprise, he 
 found there was no copy there, and never had been. After delays 
 of a year or two, for in those days such books had to be imported to 
 order, and were not kept in stock by the city booksellers, the library 
 procured a set of Hume's "Essays," and the "Essay on Miracles" 
 was eagerly perused by the professor who had wanted it. He found 
 that the refutation was not relevant to Hume's argument; and what 
 
596 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 surprised him more, there were no such sentences in the essay as 
 seemed to be verbally quoted in the lecture. There was a reference 
 in the latter to a note in the essay, and an ostensible summing up 
 of the contents of the note; but no such note was found in the 
 essay itself or in any connection with it. 
 
 Of course these points were kindly and fully communicated to the 
 president by the professor at a proper time, and were considerately 
 and kindly received. The two men then went over the points 
 together; and the president pleaded carelessness on his own part in 
 copying or condensing from the arguments of others against Hume. 
 " I never read Hume's argument," said he. He was more or less dis- 
 turbed by all this, but not distressed as most authors would have 
 been under such circumstances. As soon as he could fairly bring 
 it about through his printer, which was not indeed very soon, the 
 whole passage was remodelled and put into a more defensible shape. 
 When he had undertaken his original task, he divided the "Evi- 
 dences" into external and internal. Naturally the external, or 
 historical, part should be treated first ; and so indeed he had begun, 
 as he told Professor Perry more than once; but he had no interest 
 in and no special qualification for writing upon that branch of the 
 general subject, which was ultimately put over into the four final 
 lectures of the twelve; which were introduced by the remark that 
 nothing new was left to him, either as to the matter or manner 
 of presentation. In this final third of his lectures he had merely 
 copied or summarized from the books of other authors upon the his- 
 torical evidences. It is to be presumed that his chief source was 
 Paley's "Evidences." He took no real interest in this part of his 
 task. History he had never conned, and did not care for. Eight 
 lectures to four was the proportion he gave to the internal evidences, 
 in which his own personal interest and preparation lay. Fortu- 
 nately the bent and training of Perry led him in the opposite direc- 
 tion. What was of dead weight to the president in the preparation 
 of these lectures was a live concern to the professor in the teaching 
 of them. He gradually schooled himself in the authorities quoted, 
 in the comparisons and contrasts instituted or implied; and so was 
 able in general to keep up the enthusiasm of successive classes per- 
 haps to the plane of their interest in the earlier and better lectures. 
 There were, of course, a good many mistakes in the last four lec- 
 tures ; but they were of such a character as could be easily smoothed 
 over and swallowed up in a new and fresher presentation of the 
 argument. For seventeen years consecutively Professor Perry 
 taught the " Evidences " in this general fashion, when the, claims of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 597 
 
 his own more special studies, history and political economy, led to 
 another arrangement. 
 
 Moreover, all the emphasis is to be put on Lectures II. -VIII., if 
 one seeks to investigate the normal action of the author's mind in 
 the day of his prime, or would find the clew to determine the oft- 
 mooted question whether Paley or Butler (almost his sole teachers) 
 exerted the more penetrative and permanent influence upon his mind. 
 In these seven lectures on the Evidences of Christianity, the master- 
 working of both these great leaders of English thought is clearly 
 enough discernible, and it is rather a matter of curiosity than of any 
 practical consequence which of two cognate influences predominates. 
 Hopkins had an original mind of his own, which acted in its own 
 way, which it is interesting to watch and wait upon, and which, 
 while it rarely or never strikes out a wholly new path for itself, 
 indicates its own greatness by receiving only the really great 
 impulses from without. In these lectures Hopkins borrows bodily 
 from Butler much more than he takes in the same way from Paley. 
 In the third and fifth lectures, for example, there is little else than 
 adoptions and adaptations from the "Analogy," whose author he 
 declares in another connection "the highest English authority in 
 morals." In the three lectures following the fifth, there are several 
 main points unquestionably suggestad by his complete familiarity 
 with Butler's "Analogy." Nevertheless, it is the writer's firm 
 conviction, that, were all the teaching and preaching and all the 
 books of the president subjected to a fair analysis under the present 
 point of view, it would abundantly appear that William Paley, rather 
 than Joseph Butler, guided the trend of these lifelong investiga- 
 tions and expositions in mental and moral science. In Hopkins, as 
 well as in Paley, the ethical elements by much outweigh the meta- 
 physical, and the two, as developed in each, lie along paths notice- 
 ably similar, although not identical in direction. 
 
 In his "Historical Interpretation of Philosophy," page 268, Bas- 
 com has this illuminating sentence : 
 
 The completeness with which the English mind was subjected to the ethics of 
 Happiness is seen in the "Moral Philosophy" of William Paley, a dignitary of 
 the church, and remarkable as a writer for his clear, terse statement, and the 
 firmness of his hold on the nearest and most conclusive arguments. He does 
 not hesitate to bring forward, as the last and most inclusive motives to obedi- 
 ence to the Moral Law, itself resting on the will of God, the pleasures and 
 pains of another life. 
 
 The same comprehensive author, in the volume just quoted from, 
 page 320, has this also further to say pertinent to the other passage : 
 
598 TVILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Most of the expositions of Ethics in this country, arising in connection with 
 the timid claims and half-way concessions of Scottish philosophy, have been of 
 an unequal, incongruous order. They have sought to reconcile experience and 
 insight as sources of authority. The theory of Dr. Hopkins, that Blessedness is 
 the ultimate ground of duty, is a favorable example. A distinction is made in 
 pleasures, which, after all, cannot be sustained without a prior recognition of 
 moral vision. Few have been able to find, in the manifold teachings of experi- 
 ence, simply the indispensable conditions under which the inner life is called 
 out. 
 
 The widespread popularity, in the best sense of that much-abused 
 word, that came to Dr. Hopkins in connection with the delivery 
 and publication of his lectures of the Evidences, rather suddenly in 
 point of time and almost without stint in point of measure, coming 
 as it did outside the lines of that distinctive Christian sect of the 
 country with which he was connected, coming particularly from 
 Unitarians and Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Methodists, 
 while it was deserved and did him good in some ways, and the 
 College a great good, it must also be said that the popularity and 
 its accessories, namely, a flood of invitation's coming in on all sides 
 for years to take permanent positions in city churches and in theo- 
 logical seminaries and in newly organized universities, for most 
 of which positions he was wholly unfitted, did him an immediate 
 and lasting harm. He was by nature unusually susceptible to 
 flattery. That appetite, beyond all others, grows by what it feeds 
 on. Public recognition was grateful to him and wholesome to him, 
 as it is to all men; but in his case, certainly, there came in connec- 
 tion with this from various sources something quite different in its 
 nature from recognition, namely, the subtle suggestion of the wizard, 
 of something marvellous in power and stroke. To some of those 
 who knew the facts about the brevity of the time in which the 
 Evidences were prepared, it was a strong temptation to suggest or 
 imply to him : No other man could have done that thing, and with 
 such results! No matter in what form it came, his manifested 
 pleasure at all such insinuations but drew the speaker on to say 
 more, with even a heartier reception. It was not by any means 
 those alone who had private ends to gain, though these were present 
 in increasing numbers as the years went on, but more especially it 
 was those who love to confer pleasure for its own sake, and who 
 only erred in not being scrupulous enough to keep within the exact 
 truth while they were conferring a happiness which cost them little 
 and which seemed to go a good way. In most cases innocently 
 enough, but in others for the sake of warding off from themselves 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 599 
 
 or from their clique deserved censure or college discipline, certain 
 students in almost every class caught on to this trick of flattering 
 the president; in both classes of cases alike ill effects followed 
 sooner or later to both parties, and for obvious reasons. The presi- 
 dent was the chief sufferer in the end. Insensibly to himself he 
 came to regard the sweet-smelling offering as his due, and when it 
 was withholden, he deemed himself wronged; what was worse in 
 the result, some such stimulus came at length to be a need of his 
 life, and a future page may record one or two instances of such 
 painful deprivation and reaction. 
 
 Seventeen years after his first experience with Lowell lectures, 
 namely, in 1861, Hopkins was invited to deliver a second course 
 upon the same noble foundation. His topic this time was " Moral 
 Science." The lectures were originally written in 1830, when he 
 became professor of Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric. They were 
 thoroughly revised and enlarged at intervals during the three years 
 preceding their delivery, although it does not seem that their fun- 
 damental principle was changed. According to Paley, the last and 
 most inclusive motive to obedience to the moral law is Happiness; 
 according to Hopkins, the ground of moral obligation is Blessedness. 
 When he came to publish these lectures in 1863, he referred to a 
 change of view on his own part, addressing his former pupils in the 
 Introduction, as follows : 
 
 When these lectures were first written, the text-book here and generally in 
 our colleges was Paley ; not agreeing with him, and failing to carry out fully the 
 doctrine of ends, I adopted that of an ultimate right, as taught by Kant and 
 Coleridge, making that the end. If, therefore, any of you still hold that view, 
 as doubtless many do, it is not for me to say that you have not good authority 
 for it, or to complain if you object to that now taken. 
 
 " That now taken " appears to some of the best authorities to be 
 a decided going back to Paleyism; and if it be such, it is of some 
 interest in relation to our recent contention that Paley was, after 
 all, the master-spring of Hopkins 's mind throughout. In searching 
 for the ultimate ground of the Ought, it seems, even to laymen, in 
 these controversies, that simplicity at least must crown the finding. 
 But Dr. Hopkins's ultimate is not simply composite, but a ganglion 
 of powers and functions. Possibly his early training as an anatomist 
 may have insensibly favored the conception he repeatedly unfolds. 
 He says : " The whole moral nature consists of those powers whose 
 activity gives the moral quality, and also of those which judge of 
 the moral quality, and are affected by it, and it would conduce to 
 
600 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 perspicuity if the term ' conscience ' could be confined to the latter." 
 The newspaper controversy carried on between Presidents McCosh 
 of Princeton and Hopkins of Williamstown turned almost wholly on 
 this point of the ultimate ground of Eight. In McCosh's review 
 of the " Law of Love and Love as a Law, " he introduces his criti- 
 cism by the remark that the "reading of Dr. Hopkins, like that 
 of Edwards, seems confined, and confined to rather commonplace 
 works " ; to which Hopkins rejoins with dignity : " While I acknowl- 
 edge fully the want of reading referred to by Dr. McCosh, and regret 
 it, I may be permitted to say that on this subject he has presented 
 no point that I had not seen, and has raised no objection that I had 
 not considered." McCosh presented his own, the intuitive, view of 
 what is ultimate in Morals, which is the view Hopkins had dis- 
 carded, and the view now taken by the leading thinkers of the world, 
 in these words : 
 
 Why ought I to love my fellow-men ? Why ought I to love God and to love 
 Him more than I love even my fellow-men ? To MS, whatever there may be to 
 higher intelligence, there can be no answer but one, and that is, that I ought to 
 do so. And if any one puts the other question, " How do I come to know this ? " 
 there is but one answer, and this is that it is self-evident. In other words, an 
 action is right because it is right, and that is the end of it. 
 
 Dr. Hopkins was often heard playfully to remark on the contrast 
 between the circumstances under which were delivered his first 
 course of Lowell lectures, in 1844, and those in which came off the 
 second course, in 1861. The fine carriages from the city and suburbs 
 bringing in and taking away at the steps of the hall the fine ladies, 
 old and young, in their silk gowns and handsome bonnets, probably 
 accompanied by well-dressed husbands and brothers, to fill up the 
 hall to the very walls, had mostly disappeared in the long interval 
 of time. The ladies and their style were no longer prominent. 
 Lowell lecturing was slowly coming down to hard-pan. Audiences 
 were not the popular audiences of two decades before. Besides, the 
 Civil War was drawing on in January, 1861. Gloom was over- 
 spreading the whole land. Before the president sailed for Europe, 
 with certain members of his family, in the spring of that year, 
 there were several earnest conversations in the weekly faculty 
 meeting over the prospects of the country. Many of the States had 
 already seceded, and blood had been shed as between the sections. 
 There are but two persons now living who remember the vigor with 
 which the president expressed his doubts whether the two parts 
 of the country would ever be politically reunited. He took for 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 601 
 
 Ms parallel case the division of Solomon's kingdom at his death 
 into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel. And they never came 
 together again never. There was no more reason for that division 
 than for this perhaps not so much. But they parted. They spilt 
 each other's blood. They never became one kingdom again. John 
 Basconi took up the cudgels valiantly in behalf of a hoped-for 
 reunion of the States. But he had no concrete historical example 
 to aid him. When the war was all over, and the president made 
 a speech before the students in their public jubilation, he asserted 
 confidently that he had never felt a doubt of what the good issue 
 would be from the beginning. There were at least two persons 
 present who "never felt a doubt" that the good president had for- 
 gotten what had happened at the beginning. 
 
 The third course of lectures before the Lowell Institute was 
 delivered in 1868, and the volume ensuing was entitled " The Law 
 of Love and Love as a Law." This, like the second, was a thorough 
 discussion of Ethics, in which, after a seven years 7 interval of time, 
 while the fundamental ground of Obligation was not changed, there 
 was perhaps a wider and riper scope given to the entire presenta- 
 tion, and certainly a more direct and full appeal made to Scripture 
 confirmations of his own well-developed system. 
 
 In January, 1872, the year in which he resigned the presidency 
 of Williams College, but retained the professorship of Intellectual 
 and Moral Philosophy, he gave a fourth and final course on the 
 Lowell foundation, entitling it "An Outline Study of Man." This 
 also proved to be a popular book, perhaps as much so as his " Moral 
 Science " had been. It was at any rate the final statement of his 
 matured views in the nature and action of the Mind, in its relation 
 on the one hand to the Body, and on the other to the Soul. The 
 studies of his earlier years, and those of his middle life and ripe 
 old age, all brought their contributions in due form to this crowning 
 and comprehensive book. So far as books are concerned, he then 
 ceased. But he went on to prepare a course of lectures on " The 
 Scriptural Idea of Man," which were read first in 1875 before the 
 Yale Theological Seminary, and some years later at Princeton and 
 Oberlin and Chicago. He prepared also in 1876 a course to be read 
 at Yale on "The Scriptural Idea of God." As he himself had no 
 knowledge of the Scriptures except what he had gained in the 
 ordinary way from the common English version, and no background 
 whatever for their interpretation in any acquaintance with Oriental 
 (in distinction from Occidental) history and modes of speech and 
 conceptions of the universe, and held, too, in a bald way, the dogma 
 
602 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of a verbal inspiration, these last-mentioned lectures had very little 
 significance in the eyes of scholars, who were then beginning to find 
 in the varied books of the Bible a vastly increased significance and 
 a greater assistance in personal living, from a view of their origin 
 and interpretation in the natural, and hence divine, aspirations and 
 findings and anticipations of holy men of old, who thought their 
 thoughts and said their words in a racial and historical and tradi- 
 tional setting quite different from those in New England. And it 
 should be added in this connection, that Hopkins had little sym- 
 pathy with and considerable prejudice against two or three of his 
 younger colleagues in the faculty, who were then in an earnest and 
 devout spirit searching the Scriptures daily in the light of all out- 
 ward helps accessible to them whether these things are so. This 
 only means that the best and wisest man is for his own generation, 
 and for very little beyond it. 
 
 Wide and sound as the reputation of Dr. Hopkins became from 
 his lectures and books, it was on his skill and success as a college 
 teacher and preacher that his main fame always rested. The Senior 
 classes passing out from under his instructions for more than forty 
 years carried with them to their homes and elsewhere, and conse- 
 quently disseminated widely, a high opinion of him in these two 
 functions, or rather in the one function as combined toward them 
 in the class-room and college pulpit. There were some differences, 
 of course, in the ways of his teaching as from desk or pulpit, but 
 there were more likenesses than divergences between the two. He 
 did everything in public in a certain large way. He was a large 
 man in person. He was possessed of a large mind. His grasp of 
 the points he wished to present, whether in class or in church, was 
 usually broad and firm. He looked like a master, and he was mas- 
 terful in his way of putting points in whichever place he might be. 
 In a preliminary way, he often conceded a good deal to any party 
 of the other part, who might seem to be present or might have a 
 claim to be present; and in this manner and otherwise he gained a 
 general attention; and, his hearers once well in hand, he was care- 
 ful not to let them drop, never drowning his points in too many 
 words, passing readily from one to the next, and often finishing 
 before he was expected to finish. He did not seem to wish to take 
 any advantage of anybody anywhere. There was a " lucid sanity " 
 about the man, as Francis Palgrave predicates it of William Words- 
 worth, that gave him a moral advantage, both as teacher and 
 preacher, of which he was well aware, which he availed himself of 
 to the fullest, which he made a means of conveying truth to ordinary 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 603 
 
 minds without much effort, and which enabled him with a very little 
 special preparation to preach an acceptable and often excellent ser- 
 mon on any ordinary occasion. His general resources were so con- 
 stant, his possession of them and of himself so calm, that he was 
 rarely or never disconcerted or his theme belittled. He preached 
 so much and for so many years, both in town and in college, and to 
 these as often and for long united in one audience, that almost of 
 necessity he came to borrow more or less from himself; but it must 
 be said that he usually adorned the thought presented before, and 
 polished up the old illustrations. All this of his ordinary sermons 
 delivered to an ordinary mixed audience, and always ex tempore. 
 " How long does it take you to prepare these sermons, such as you 
 give us from Sunday to Sunday?" "Very little time indeed." 
 
 But when it came to his baccalaureate discourses, the story is 
 quite different. These were elaborately prepared. These were 
 always written out in full. They had a body carefully moulded in 
 moral and religious philosophy, and a form fashioned after a severe 
 but lofty rhetoric. Much came to be expected of them, and much 
 was devoted to a realization of these expectations. There is a moral 
 interacting in demand and supply, much after the pattern of the 
 more open economical demand and supply. On baccalaureate Sun- 
 days Mark Hopkins rose to the occasion; and the occasion rose in 
 crowded pews and galleries to the sermon. The neighboring towns 
 sent in their quotas, and strangers came from a distance, to hear. 
 By all odds his best writing and most eloquent speaking were therein 
 displayed. All of these printed discussions were admirable; two 
 surpass all the rest, namely : " Strength and Beauty are in His Sanc- 
 tuary," and " They shall mount up as on Eagles' Wings." Looked at 
 as a whole, the baccalaureates slowly climbed up to this lofty water- 
 shed, and as slowly declined from it till the end. 
 
 In partial distinction from his preaching powers and methods, 
 description must now be briefly attempted of his ordinary manner 
 and success in the class-room. This is the more needful in the 
 interest of truth and candor, inasmuch as some frightful exaggera- 
 tions of his skill and power became current toward the end of his 
 life which were by no means free in their origin from that strong 
 temptation to flatter him of which previous mention has been made. 
 He was an easy master in his own lecture-room, not in the way of 
 exercising authority there, not in the way of exacting requirement 
 of any kind from his pupils, and not at all in the way of a sharp 
 discrimination made between those who had studied their lessons 
 and those who had not. He put them all at their ease at the out- 
 
604 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 set. He did not call the roll, nor did he look around to note the 
 absences of any who might not be in their places. There were no 
 preliminaries whatever. He assumed that all came to be instructed, 
 and for no other purpose, and that he was the instructor, and they 
 the pupils. He knew perfectly well that there was a considerable 
 fraction in every class whom he would not be able to benefit, because 
 they had not reached that sufficient discipline of mind enabling 
 them to grapple even with the elements of mental and moral sci- 
 ence, which was his staple ; nevertheless, he did not allow that fact 
 and his knowledge to create any friction anywhere. He did not 
 seek to eliminate from his room any such, or bring home to their 
 consciousness in any way a sense of their inferiority. " Let them 
 come in and get what they can. Some of them will practically get 
 nothing, but they do no harm. Most of them will get something, 
 and some of them will get much." So he expressed himself in sub- 
 stance over and over again. In a somewhat different connection he 
 used to say in substance : " There are always from six to ten in my 
 classes, as to whom I do not care whether they are present at my 
 recitations or not, that is, morally care, of course we must see 
 to it that there is a fair attendance." Practically, this meant with 
 him, they can come or not as they see fit, for all I care. But to 
 the classes themselves, coming up out of the hands of men who did 
 care, and who made more or less friction and trouble in class and 
 faculty meeting about attendance, and who seemed to the students 
 less securely seated in their chairs than the president did in his, 
 this coming under the free and easy conditions of the Senior year 
 seemed like paradise regained. They came for the pleasure of it 
 and for the profit of it and for the freedom of it. Prex is great, 
 and we are the beneficiaries. In most cases, probably, they did not 
 gain so much as they seemed to themselves in the course of the year 
 to be gaining. No matter. They gained a good deal, and they were 
 fond and proud of the president. 
 
 What was the general method employed by him when once the 
 subject was reached? Speaking generally, and mindful of the motto 
 that exceptions but prove the rule, he followed the drawing-out 
 rather than the pouring-in process. He rarely referred to the ety- 
 mology of words, and was seldom guided thereby in his expositions, 
 but he did call attention to the origin of the term "education," as 
 implying something led forth rather than something imparted. He 
 did not appear to have any special theory of education in mind, and 
 he did not believe that a really good teacher could be made, least 
 of all by the copying of others, while his own teaching was surely 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 605 
 
 adapted to himself and to his training and to all his surroundings. 
 As to text-books, he always used one in each and every his subjects 
 taught, and he expected his pupils to know something about the 
 order of the thoughts in the book; he almost invariably began his 
 questioning by asking what the book said upon this or that topic, 
 while usually he pretty soon got away from the line of the book, 
 especially if he had up a few students in succession who actually 
 knew what the discussion was about, and the most important and 
 the most common question under these circumstances was pretty 
 sure to fall in : " What do you think about it? " This question, if 
 not in form, yet certainly in spirit, is the central key which unlocks 
 the remarkable success of Mark Hopkins as a teacher. What do 
 you think about it ? It stole the hearts of crude young men to hear 
 such a man as he was plumping down upon them from his desk, as 
 if it were a matter of much importance, such a question as that ! It 
 suddenly increased their own self-respect. If they had no opinion 
 then, they felt bound thereafter to gain one, and a sound one, 
 if possible. It quickened their interest in the subject, however 
 abstruse it might be. It led to some research, and to a comparison 
 of opinions of others. It sometimes led the foremost of a class to 
 think of themselves more highly than they ought to think, rather 
 than soberly according to the measure of real acquirement. But 
 these were pretty sure to fall to their proper level afterward. Of 
 course a section in every class could not be roused to interest and 
 introspection by this or any other means ; but even they were lifted 
 up to some attention by pat questions and answers back and forth, 
 although they saw very little of the drift of either. Suspended 
 animation is better in a college class-room than a dull level of death. 
 It has been sometimes said that Mark Hopkins pursued the 
 Socratic mode of instruction. That depends on what the Socratic 
 mode is. If that be, as it is, a mode of reasoning and instruction 
 by means of a series of questions and answers leading to a desired 
 result in the case in hand, then the Hopkinsonian was not the 
 Socratic mode. In his earlier and middle and some of his later 
 teaching, the president rarely, if ever, prepared a lesson beforehand 
 with any reference to leading the class to any desired and definite 
 position at that time. He did not know himself what course the 
 recitation and discussion would take. He did not much care. His 
 purpose was to awaken the minds of the class, and to give a general 
 training to their intellectual and ethical powers. He did not him- 
 self see the end from the beginning, and he did not care to have his 
 pupils suppose there was any special end toward which he was 
 
606 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 driving. From his point of view this general method had great 
 advantages, for he did not care to tie himself down to any par- 
 ticular trend within a comprehensive subject. More than most 
 teachers he liked to keep himself foot-loose for emergencies. He 
 escaped any casual charge of inconsistency of view with wonderful 
 adroitness and plausibility. But the manner had its disadvantages 
 also. In certain states of the weather and of the class and of the 
 teacher, a profitable general discussion could not be started, or, if 
 started, could not be maintained. The conditions were adverse. 
 Hence a dull hour, sometimes a very dull hour. Again, some 
 classes were better fitted than others by nature and previous culture 
 for such a free and high and cooperative method as this. A few 
 classes spoke against it in such numbers as indicated a majority of 
 voices. One day the president called on one of the professors, in 
 whom he had confidence, in more dejection than that man ever saw 
 in him throughout an almost lifelong association, and told him that 
 his copy of Dugald Stewart, from which he had taught classes twenty- 
 five years, had been purloined through the agency (he had no doubt) 
 of members of the Senior class. He never saw his copy afterward, 
 nor did he ever teach from Stewart any more. This incident would 
 not be worth the noting, were it not for a false impression that went 
 widely abroad years ago, that, whatever might happen to any one or 
 all of his colleagues in the way of unpleasant experience with the 
 students, Mark Hopkins always rode the topmost wave of college 
 popularity. This was not the fact. Taking his whole college career 
 from 1830, when he became a professor, till 1872, when he laid down 
 the presidency, as one piece, he had about his share of sinister mani- 
 festations from the students as compared with three or four of the 
 most permanent and successful professors in the same interval of 
 time. Even as a college preacher he received a personal insult from 
 a few despicable scapegraces, such as was never offered to any other 
 in the whole history of college preaching here. It was when he was 
 regularly officiating in the college chapel Sunday forenoons, while 
 the clerical professors were alternating afternoons, that the entire 
 furniture of the desk was removed before one morning service, and 
 many of the students' seats were outrageously defiled. 
 
 It is important to notice, in order to do full justice to Dr. Hopkins 
 as a teacher of Ethics, that, in his own o*pinion, and in the opinion 
 of some of his best critics, he changed in his later life his mode of 
 questioning in his classes more toward the Socratic method; and 
 this, not because he knew or cared much about the Socratic method, 
 or any other method but his own, but because he had slowly come 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 607 
 
 to the doctrine of Ends, or to the doctrine of the Conditional, or to 
 the law of Limitation, by each of which three terms he expressed 
 his view of the ground of moral obligation. " If the End accom- 
 plished by any system or group be conditional for any other end 
 beyond itself, it will be lower than that end." Or, again: "Every 
 activity may be put forth, and so every good be enjoyed, up to the 
 point when it is most perfectly conditional for a higher good. 7 ' 1 
 As it was incumbent on him under this view to indicate the rank 
 or order of the various forms of good, and so to offer a criterion of 
 pleasures, and a law of precedence among them, he gradually came 
 to arrange his questions and discussions in a way subordinate to his 
 system as a whole. This appeared more distinctly, and indeed very 
 distinctly, in his examinations of his classes in Morals. He was a 
 skilful questioner under all circumstances, and in all subjects ; but 
 particularly so in Senior examinations on his own book of " Moral 
 Science," because of these gradations or goings-up from the lower 
 to the higher, from the body and its innocent pleasures to the mind 
 and reason with their insights and approbations. Great pleasure 
 was often experienced and expressed in connection with these 
 examinations, not only by the committee of the trustees, which 
 always attended them, but also by returning graduates and other 
 gentlemen, to whom they were open. Competent and attentive 
 Seniors easily took the cue in these examinations, and often appeared 
 extremely well in them, which, perhaps more than any other one 
 thing, gave rise to the common saying, that Williams graduates 
 bore the stamp of Mark Hopkins in their after lives. Under a wide 
 observation, this was only true in the sense in which all competent 
 and enlightened teachers influence strongly the lives of their pupils. 
 His teaching was always broad, lucid, and attractive, but never 
 incisive. " What is the use of being so earnest about it ? " was 
 once his query to a teacher, who had just lectured to a normal-school 
 class under the direction of the Secretary of the Board of Education. 
 Nothing too much was so much in the make and spirit of the man, 
 that much too little was often the criticism of him and of his attitude 
 in relation to great public questions involving moral rights of a part 
 of the people, in respect to which the people themselves were divided. 
 Then, too, the college subjects that he taught, including Health and 
 Metaphysics and Morals, do not commonly allow such sharp and 
 certain judgments as do some at least of the sciences. 
 
 It remains to this branch of the present inquiry to consider 
 President Hopkins in his relations as head of the faculty and gen- 
 1 Moral Science , pp. 68 and 72. 
 
608 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 eral administrator of college affairs. The circumstances have already 
 been detailed, and may now be remembered, under which Mark and 
 Albert Hopkins were forced during the decline of the powers of 
 President Griffin to assume advisory and executive functions. This 
 they did wisely and modestly and successfully, with the full appro- 
 bation of those trustees who knew the most of the state of things. 
 If these two had been common men, they would naturally have 
 assumed more and more control after the final retirement of Griffin, 
 under whom both had become professors, and after the accession of 
 the elder of the two to the presidency in 1836. But they were not 
 common men. The younger continued, indeed, almost to the close 
 of his life to have the direction in matters religious, not because he 
 had been compelled at that time to assume it, but because he was 
 the fittest of all men to have and hold it. On the accession of Mark 
 Hopkins, the faculty consisted of Professors Kellogg and Emmons 
 and Hopkins and Alden and Lasell, and Tutors Griffin and Tatlock. 
 The tenure of tutors was too brief to reckon them as members of 
 the faculty in general; but it so happened that these two tutors 
 became permanent professors afterward. Emmons and Lasell were 
 only employed about one-third of the year each. Kellogg was then 
 creeping into his dotage, having been appointed professor in 1815, 
 and having never been a strong man in the matter of government; 
 Alden was then new in his place, and peculiar in his views, and 
 never, in his seventeen years of service, became a really thorough 
 coadjutor ; and all this left the two brothers, young and strong and 
 united, in such a situation as must have tempted, and certainly 
 invited, them to assume more of influence and domination than they 
 actually took. Both showed themselves to be rare and admirable 
 men in the spirit of fellowship and concession exhibited to all their 
 colleagues. The elder brother would have been more than human 
 if he had escaped altogether the flush sense of new and almost un- 
 trammelled authority in the first years of his presidency. No one 
 would now have known that he did not escape it, if he himself had 
 not repeatedly spoken of it in his later life. He pressed his author- 
 ity in two or three cases almost to the point of snapping it, with 
 the result, as he used to phrase it, of being told to his face by one 
 of the students that he had scarcely a friend left in their whole 
 number. 
 
 This fact is the more noteworthy, inasmuch as a notable and last- 
 ing reaction in his own mind from mere or bare authority was evi- 
 dently the result of it. He gained back all his friends in the classes 
 fast enough, when he himself fell back from authority to persua- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 609 
 
 sion, or sometimes to finesse. But lie always thereafter governed 
 through the faculty ostensibly, and almost always in reality. He 
 relied on his own powers of persuading them in cases of decided 
 difference of opinion, or in shifting the question in one way or 
 another so as to secure unanimity. He was exceedingly skilful in 
 devising verbal or other compromises so as to avoid friction or 
 division. He did not always expect to bring over his colleagues to 
 his point of view, or always succeed even when he did expect this. 
 He knew how gracefully to surrender when it came to that as well 
 as graciously to receive capitulations. The latter were the more 
 common of the two. It was take and give, back and forth. Fac- 
 ulty meetings were held on Wednesday evenings throughout term- 
 times, and were not intermitted in his rare absences from town. 
 Very frequently there was no business to bring before the meeting; 
 but that made no difference, the meeting was held all the same ; 
 there was a social chat, and the president made it a point to make 
 it pleasant for all present. He never seemed to be in a hurry. He 
 seemed to enjoy the hour or more so spent as much as anybody. All 
 enjoyed it. He always contributed the most to the flow of conver- 
 sation, or to any discussion that chanced to come up. If there were 
 any business it was much the same, so far as informality and mutual 
 good-fellowship and hospitable greetings were concerned. General 
 business was presented first, and always by him, and was guided by 
 him to its conclusion; special business was then in order, and was 
 always called for, and each one presenting it was patiently heard 
 and courteously treated throughout, until that, too, was brought to 
 a satisfactory conclusion. It is not meant to be here asserted that 
 there was never sparring or retort or transient ill-blood in these 
 faculty meetings while Mark Hopkins presided in them (1836-72). 
 Something of these was a matter of course in such a changeable 
 body, for so long a time under recurringly diverse circumstances. 
 The exact meaning is, that during this long interval of time, for 
 more than half of which the writer was in constant attendance on 
 them, the faculty meetings were pleasant, harmonious, consolidat- 
 ing, useful in acquaintance-making and friendship-forming, and 
 extremely useful as a place where extra steam was let off, and bud- 
 ding feuds nipped, and loyalty to the College strengthened, all 
 which was promoted by the wisely generous leadership of the 
 president. 
 
 New men came into the faculty almost every year, as the elders 
 fell out from one cause and another, and as new branches of in- 
 struction were established from time to time. Tatlock and Griffin, 
 
 2B 
 
6JO WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 who were both members of the Kappa Alpha Society in college, and 
 fellow-tutors, became permanent professors, the former in 1838 and 
 the latter in 1846. Professor Lincoln and Professor Perry both 
 became professors in 1853, and both held their first recitations at 
 the same hour in the same building. Professor Bascom was ap- 
 pointed as such in 1855, and Professor Phillips in 1857. The same 
 broad policy that characterized President Hopkins in the manage- 
 ment of the faculty meetings, characterized him also in his rela- 
 tions with these and all later new professors appointed under his 
 administration. So far as times and interrelations of instruction 
 needed adjustment when new professors came in and new depart- 
 ments were formed, these questions were determined, after discus- 
 sion, in open faculty meeting; and each man was then left at full 
 liberty to decide on his own text-books and peculiar modes of 
 instruction, as whether by lectures or recitations or the proportions 
 between each. The president's bearing toward all his colleagues 
 was open and friendly ; toward the younger and inexperienced ones 
 kindly and fatherly; he often called on these at their rooms, and 
 gave them encouraging or cautionary words, as their case might 
 seem to him at the time ; he quickly recognized and acknowledged 
 good service in all; and he was too large a man to play the small 
 despot toward any because he chanced to have authority and oppor- 
 tunity to do so. He was patient and forbearing toward all, 
 sometimes too much so toward some who may have been inclined 
 to slight their work. He was perfectly conscious of his own supe- 
 rior success and popularity as a teacher, and was more than willing 
 that this should be enlarged upon by any who consulted him about 
 their own relative failures in this regard; while his general atti- 
 tude of encouragement to those about him tended to bring out all 
 that was good in them, and to develop all that was peculiar to them, 
 so that their ultimate failure (if it fell) could not be justly referred 
 to him, and their ultimate success (when it came) came with a per- 
 sonal self-respect and sense of independence that doubled its value. 
 As there is no ground for supposing that his college relations to 
 Professor Perry were essentially different from those to a dozen 
 others, who began with him and served long with him, it would 
 seem to be fair and logical to select some of these as a single 
 example, for the sake of definiteness, among many other possible 
 ones, in order to illustrate in some detail the mind and heart of 
 perhaps the most illustrious college teacher in New England during 
 the century now closing. It was his habit to watch critically and 
 persistently any student who manifested a special talent along any 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 611 
 
 line, and particularly along his own line, of studies. In the fall 
 term of 1850 occurred the first of those annual public debates 
 between the Philologian and Philotechnian Societies, which were 
 kept up with interest for several years thereafter. Perry, then a 
 Junior, having already given himself a careful training in Mill's 
 "Logic," to which reference was made some pages back, was one 
 of the debaters for the 'Logian. The question turned on the influ- 
 ence of civilization upon the imagination. It was doubtless crude 
 enough, but the Junior did the best he could for his side and 
 society, noticed that the president gave him close attention, and 
 then forgot all about it. Near twenty years after the latter said to 
 the former, "I picked you out for a professor, when you tvere a Junior, 
 in that first public debate between the two literary societies" The next 
 year, when the president took entire charge of the Senior studies, 
 the boy, largely owing to his previous studies in Mill, had a deeper 
 interest in and a firmer grasp on the Senior course than any other 
 member of the class of 1852. So, at least, thought the president; 
 and, accordingly, as his Commencement appointment, he assigned 
 to this boy the "metaphysical oration," never given out but once 
 before, and then to P. M. Bartlett, of the class of 1850, a man much 
 older and more mature than the average graduate of those days. 
 This honor of the metaphysical oration on the Commencement stage, 
 which was only given in four cases in all (possibly in five), was 
 justly regarded by each of its recipients as a great honor, because a 
 more personal one than the valedictory itself, which was always 
 bestowed on the scholar with the highest aggregate average in all 
 the studies of the course. The last person to receive this special 
 honor was E. H. Griffin, of the class of 1862. 
 
 During the year following his graduation, Perry was an assistant 
 in an academy in Washington, and received the subjoined letter 
 from the president of the College. 
 
 WILLIAMS COLLEGE, May 2, 1853. 
 DEAR SIR : 
 
 It gives me much pleasure to say that at a recent meeting of the Faculty you 
 were unanimously elected as a Tutor for the ensuing College year. I hope it will 
 be in accordance with your views and arrangements to accept the appointment. 
 With much Regard, Yours, 
 
 MR. A. L. PERRY MARK HOPKINS. 
 
 To this letter a response was given on the 18th of May, declining 
 the appointment of tutor, partly on the ground of the supposed 
 smallness of the salary attached, but chiefly for the reason that the 
 
612 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 writer had chosen the Christian ministry as his profession, and was 
 intending to enter in the fall the theological seminary at Andover, 
 and did not wish to incur the delay of a year in Williamstown. The 
 following rejoinder by President Hopkins to this response changed 
 in the issue the whole course of Perry's life, and hence has been 
 regarded by him as the most important letter he has ever received; 
 but the principal reason for its printing now, for the first time and 
 in this connection, is, that it illustrates in almost every line some 
 one of the president's deep-lying qualities of character; his fore- 
 thought, his caution, his kindness, and his deference to the opinions 
 of other trustees. 
 
 WILLIAMS COLLEGE, May 27 th , 1853. 
 DEAR SIR : 
 
 As I have been absent during the vacation Yours of the 18 th inst. has remained 
 unanswered. You are right in regard to the smallness of the salary. It is only 
 $400. This is too little. I have endeavored to have it increased, but have not 
 yet succeeded, though I think I shall the present year. That however is of 
 comparatively little consequence. In writing to you I had another object in my 
 mind, of which I think I may and must speak to you now confidentially. We 
 have not as yet been able to find any one to fill the place vacated by Dr. Alden ; 
 and after conversing with gentlemen here, I have preferred to look to some 
 young man, who should prepare himself for the place. We could not elect you 
 professor now, but if everything should go right, I think we could at the end of 
 a year. This is my present view of what would be best for the college, but I do 
 not know that the Trustees would concur in it, and there might be other reasons 
 why such a plan could not be carried out. It was however with special reference 
 to that that I wrote to you, and now I do not like to give up the hope of seeing 
 this carried out. I can, as you will see, promise you nothing absolutely, because 
 I must always hold myself open to act as the good of the Institution shall require ; 
 but if you will come, I will do what I can to have the compensation at least 
 $500, and I should hope the result might be that you would be associated with 
 us permanently. This is all I can say. I should have preferred to have you 
 come and say nothing about it, but it is evident I must either state to you all 
 that is in my mind or give it up altogether, and I prefer the former. Under 
 these circumstances I hope you will make up your mind to come, and we will 
 see what the leadings of Providence may be. 
 
 With much Regard, 
 
 Yours, 
 
 MARK HOPKINS. 
 
 This considerate and fatherly letter came to Perry, then just 
 turned of twenty -three, in perfect health, and with a physical con- 
 stitution as firm perhaps as any boy ever had, as the voice of God. 
 He had been reared in extreme poverty in northern New Hampshire, 
 son of a young minister graduated at Cambridge and Andover, de- 
 ceased at Lyme in 1830, and of a mother of Scotch-Irish blood, born 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 613 
 
 at Worcester (as was also the father), of keen intellect and of indomi- 
 table will and work. The perspective of an earnest young life was 
 shifted in an hour. A letter to Dr. Hopkins accepted all the con- 
 tingencies of his proposal. At an interview in August the president 
 offered the young man an immediate election to the professorship, 
 which the latter declined, preferring the issue of a year's experi- 
 ment in the department as a nominal tutor. At the end of the year, 
 he was chosen Professor of History and Political Economy, in con- 
 tinuation of Dr. Alden's work, exactly in accordance with the plan 
 outlined in the president's letter quoted above. In an association 
 with Mark Hopkins of forty years all told, 1848-87, Perry probably 
 came to know him better than any one else outside of his own 
 family. His sense of personal obligations to the president, which 
 continued strong till the last; his free admiration for the great tal- 
 ents, practical wisdom, constant benevolence, kindness, and courtesy, 
 and silent forbearance under undeserved and cruel treatment toward 
 the last, never blinded the mind of the younger man to certain 
 minor yet persistent faults of the elder, manifested for two genera- 
 tions alongside of and in connection with conspicuous virtues on a 
 theatre of life that may well be called illustrious. To attempt to 
 catalogue these faults would afford no pleasure or profit to anybody, 
 least of all to the writer. Some of them have already been im- 
 plied or referred to in these pages, and others will in like manner 
 appear as we go on. 
 
 To his own self not always just, 
 Bound in the bonds that all men share, 
 Confess the failings as we must, 
 The lion's mark is always there ! 
 
 The weekly rhetorical exercises in the college chapel on Wednes- 
 day afternoons, otherwise a half-holiday, which had probably begun 
 with the beginnings of the College, and certainly continued till about 
 1860, at which the president presided, assisted by the Professor of 
 Rhetoric, constituted a prominent feature of college routine, par- 
 ticularly under the imposing leadership of Griffin and Hopkins. 
 All four of the classes were assembled in their places as at prayers; 
 two members of each class declaimed on the stage from Freshman 
 to Senior; the president criticised each declamation in turn, usually 
 at some length, laying down from time to time the principles appli- 
 cable to oral expression in public, and the professor in attendance 
 sometimes followed in supplementary criticisms; and the exercises, 
 taken as a whole, were profitable and popular in college. The better 
 
614 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 speakers took pains in these efforts, and were somewhat dependent 
 on them for their "moonlight" and other rhetorical appointments. 
 The order in the classes on these occasions was usually pretty good 
 in the time of Dr. Hopkins ; but he was in general so thoroughly a 
 master of the situation that he was not scrupulous about some whis- 
 pering and laughing in the classes, some applause or its opposite at 
 the end of a declamation. One day in 1852, not long after he had 
 been urged to accept the nomination as president of the University 
 of Michigan, there was rather more disorder of these sorts in the 
 classes than usual, to which he had quietly called attention in order 
 to check it ; but as it continued nevertheless, he rose to his feet and 
 rebuked it with dignity, and added (with less dignity), " I am not 
 obliged to remain here longer in my present position." The incident 
 is trifling in itself, while it gave rise to a little talk as between two 
 Seniors, each of whom expressed himself strongly, that that was the 
 very first indication, in word or act, on the part of the president of 
 any lowering of the highest dignity and self-control they had ever 
 witnessed. 
 
 Perry had not been very long a member of the faculty before he 
 had occasion to witness and experience a trait in the make-up of its 
 head which, continuing its manifestations from time to time toward 
 other members and at times toward the entire faculty, became at 
 length the main cause of the lessening of his legitimate authority 
 and the moral necessity of his resignation. The pettiness of this 
 occasion makes it all the better illustration of a trait which, longer 
 indulged, became at last a weakness irresistible by him. When the 
 class of 1856 were Sophomores, and Perry was the officer of the 
 class, and thus in some sense responsible for their current disci- 
 pline, he ascertained the names of three members who had repeatedly 
 hazed and abused a Freshman rooming alone in West College, an 
 entire stranger in town and college, a boy very slightly built, but 
 excellently fitted, who had come as a first-fruit to Williamstown 
 from an academy in central Vermont, which sent most of its well- 
 fitted boys to Dartmouth. The three Sophomores were big, burly 
 fellows, just brave and chivalrous enough to think it an exploit to 
 boast of to harry and browbeat a small, solitary Freshman in his 
 room. Eldredge, one of the three, a smooth-tongued fellow (nothing 
 is now said of his other qualities), suspecting that he was known, 
 went to the president, lauded him to his face, told him two or three 
 of the class had just had a little fun nothing more with a new 
 Freshman, they had not touched him to hurt him, and pro- 
 ceeded to deprecate as useless, and worse than useless, the making 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 615 
 
 any case in discipline out of any such innocent matter; the class 
 was all right, the individuals were all right, and the College was 
 the best in the country. Eldredge won his case before it got into 
 court. The Freshman stole out of town in the night; and from 
 that day to this not another student has entered here from that 
 academy. What the president promised to Eldredge, if anything, 
 is not known; what he said to the class-officer is well remembered. 
 He forbade a word being said to the Sophomores in the way of re- 
 buke, or a thing being done in the way of discipline ; only, when 
 the term was over, and the term-bills to parents made out, a minute 
 might be entered of the offence, if the officer thought best. In this 
 way an easy victory came to the three rowdies, of which they were 
 fully conscious, and in general the class also, with such results to 
 general discipline as might of course be expected. A son of Gov- 
 ernor Marcy of New York, the same who was afterward hung at 
 the yard-arm of a naval vessel for mutiny, was a member for a time 
 of this Sophomore class ; whose ill reputation for lawless conduct 
 was redeemed during its last two years by the accession of James 
 A. Garfield and several others of a like spirit, and also by the 
 coming forward into relative prominence of the better members of 
 the class from the first. 
 
 There is evidence, although it is indirect and would not stand of 
 itself as such, that this instance of a weak concession by the presi- 
 dent to offenders against good order and express college laws was 
 not the first of its kind. This should in justice be said, in partial 
 extenuation at least of the want of proper control of their classes by 
 Professor Griffin and Professor Tatlock. To take the odium of fol- 
 lowing up an offence and ferreting out the offenders, and then to be 
 secretly thwarted in the application of proper punishment, does not 
 conduce to the self-respect of a college professor, and least of all to 
 the respect in which he is held by those for whose good conduct he 
 is held responsible. Such things, if much repeated, go far to excuse 
 faithful college officers for ultimate laxity in discipline. The only 
 problem here is to reconcile, as far as it may be done, the ostensible 
 and actual deference of Mark Hopkins to his colleagues, both singly 
 and collectively, with a personal action recurring too often, whose 
 result was their humiliation and also a deep-cast wound into general 
 college discipline. The result crept on for the most part invisibly, 
 but ever inevitably, until 1860, when there came a crisis, which 
 makes that year an epochal one in the history of the College, 
 although but few persons now living know it to have been such. 
 It is but fair to suppose that the president did not realize that an 
 
616 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 apparently simple function, which afforded him great pleasure, and 
 which he was extraordinarily well-fitted to exercise, namely, to 
 bring all sorts of students (whether presently offenders or not) into 
 personal allegiance with himself, must in such cases bring pain 
 to his colleagues, and injure of necessity the reputation, because the 
 efficiency, of the College itself. The institution was to him as the 
 apple of his eye. He had done much and suffered much and for- 
 borne much in its upbuilding. It was by no means a case of per- 
 sonal selfishness as over against general interests. Dr. Hopkins 
 was not a selfish man in this sense. Selfish men in this sense have 
 indeed been seen on this ground, and their actions weighed in a 
 balance and been found wanting; and the inescapable consequences 
 have come home in ignominy and disaster. But Dr. Hopkins was 
 not at any time in that boat. The circumstances under which he 
 and his brother came into almost absolute control in the College, 
 about 1835, were not favorable toward preventing him from con- 
 tinuing, in minor matters, a personal removal when possible of 
 what he dreaded more than almost anything else, namely, a public 
 friction in the ongoing of College. This, too, after matters had 
 come to be well established under a reasonably full body of profes- 
 sors, who, in order to move effectively, must needs move together. 
 He doubtless seemed to himself to be doing a good thing, to be 
 relieving both the College and his colleagues of some impending 
 trouble by compromising, by privately settling, the matter with the 
 student or students involved. Whether it were a good thing or not, 
 depended very largely upon how far the matter had already gone 
 in other hands than his own. His general motives in action were 
 good ; but he did not see as clearly as he might, nor estimate as 
 highly as he should, the principle, that general college discipline in 
 the hands of a body must suffer by being taken out of the hands of 
 the body. 
 
 The trustees have always passed over into the hands of the fac- 
 ulty, not into the hands of the president, the general control of 
 instruction and discipline. The president is also a member of the 
 Board of Trustees, and is the usual channel of communication from 
 them to the faculty. This is the theory and practice of the College. 
 This has been the express tenor of the college laws, so called, from 
 the beginning, and in every one of their editions and revisions. 
 Dr. Hopkins understood this, and often expounded it to others, and 
 acted on it himself in good faith. Even in the particular already 
 now sufficiently indicated, he doubtless acted in good faith, but with 
 too little prevision and circumspection of the natural ill conse- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 617 
 
 quences. His fault lay in a subconstruction of his duty, rather than 
 in a false construction of his position relating to others. When 
 this very question came before the trustees as a body, it was decided 
 as against the president, and in favor of the rights and privileges 
 of the faculty as such. This was very important action on their 
 part. Whether it were properly recorded or not may be doubtful ; 
 but it is pretty certain to have passed out of the minds of most of 
 those who have had to do with the management of the College since 
 that time. Whatever may be said of the language of charters and 
 laws and precedents, there is a practical region of cloudland between 
 the spheres of action and influence respectively of trustees and fac- 
 ulty and alumni and students. There are certain rights and privi- 
 leges to each of these four conjoint bodies that constitute the 
 College in the largest sense of that flexible and comprehensive word. 
 The trustees are not the College, the faculty are not the College, 
 the alumni are not the College, and the students are not the Col- 
 lege; but all of these together, in certain actions and reactions, in 
 certain living and reciprocal relations, which it is as impossible as 
 it is needless precisely to delineate in words. All that is necessary 
 in order to the harmonious interworking of these bodies as toward 
 the great ends of education and righteousness is good sense and good 
 will and reciprocal respect and forbearance on the part of the most 
 in each of these four bodies toward each other. 
 
 That these conditions with this issue are not Utopian and unat- 
 tainable, has been demonstrated for considerable and recurring inter- 
 vals of time in each of the older New England colleges during the 
 century now closing. Individualisms and colleges are a contradic- 
 tion in terms, and in practical hostility to each other. Any undue 
 exaltation of one person in any one of these four bodies becomes at 
 once an element of mischief to that part, and consequently to each 
 of the other three parts. This vital principle in the constitution of 
 colleges, which may be prejudiced in some minds by its comparative 
 novelty, does not mean, or imply, that a man in any position may 
 not have or ought not to exercise all the weight that conies to him 
 from superior intelligence or experience or character; but it does 
 mean that all such or other influence, in order to be wholesome and 
 safe, must be exercised with sincere deference and kindness to all 
 colleagues and with a quiet submission to any decision of the most 
 of questions belonging to all. A lifetime of college experience and 
 observation has brought this conviction to some men, that most col- 
 lege difficulties of any depth (and they have been very prevalent), 
 have come from the assumption on the part of somebody of func- 
 
618 WILL1AMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 tions that did not properly belong to him, or the personal exhibition 
 toward his colleagues of qualities unworthy a man and a Christian. 
 This does not require of college men that they be perfect men; but 
 it does require of them that they be kindly and just gentlemen. All 
 others are unfit for college officers. And it does particularly, also, 
 require of these men that they be open and above board and honest 
 in all their relations to colleagues, or else pay the certain penalty 
 of the opposite, always at the expense of the institution itself as 
 well as at their own expense. It is fortunate, on the whole, that 
 the name "college," both in the etymological and customary signifi- 
 cance, that the theory of the selection and action of all the bodies 
 constituent of a college, and the natural and unmistakable ill effects 
 of the violation of these in practice, all alike and all the time 
 forbid any college man to maximize himself, that is, to minimize 
 his colleagues, in any matter of their conjoint responsibility, by and 
 through the above-mentioned assumption or exhibition. 
 
 As the annual Commencement season drew on, in 1860, at Wil- 
 liams, there came evidence to some of the men then in active service 
 on the ground, that the trustees would come together with deep dis- 
 satisfaction in their minds as to the condition of college discipline. 
 When they did come together they adopted a novel means of ascer- 
 taining the precise views on this subject of all the responsible col- 
 lege officers. They summoned the faculty to appear in two sections 
 simultaneously before a large committee of the trustees, themselves 
 sitting in two sections. The professors then in service were Hopkins, 
 Tatlock, Griffin, Chadbourne, Emmons, Lincoln, Perry, Bascom, 
 and Phillips. The trustees then in service were C. A. Dewey, Em- 
 erson Davis, H. L. Sabin, Charles Stoddard, George N. Briggs, John 
 Todd, Absalom Peters, H. W. Bishop, Adam Reid, Joseph White, 
 A. C. Thompson, E. C. Benedict, Homer Bartlett, William Hyde, 
 and Nicholas Murray. The professors in each section were sub- 
 jected to a courteous and sharp questioning, the preliminary in case 
 of the younger. men being, "How long have you been here?" and 
 then each was invited to state his own view of the reasons why dis- 
 cipline in College was so slack. That it was too slack was assumed 
 at the outset and throughout by each party. It is believed there 
 was no discussion on this point in either section; there was certainly 
 none in one of the two sections. How the trustees came so gener- 
 ally to believe that the faculty were negligent in their duty in this 
 regard is not now known, nor is that point one of much moment ; 
 the point of moment was, that they did believe it, and that it was 
 true. It is possible they had noticed a decline in the average num- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 619 
 
 ber of graduates. For the five years 1854-58 the average had been 
 fifty -five ; in each of the years 1859 and 1860 the number was forty- 
 eight. It is more likely that individual members of the Board of 
 Trustees, several of whom resided in the town or the neighborhood, 
 had learned through conversation or correspondence with members 
 of the faculty the fact of baffled discipline and the point at which 
 it was being baffled. At any rate, however this matter may have 
 been, when the question came to be pointedly put to each of three or 
 four professors in turn in each of two committee-rooms by the spokes- 
 man of three or four trustees in each room, " What is the matter 
 with college discipline?" the answers brought forth were all of one 
 tenor in substance, namely this, the executive officer of the faculty, 
 the president, either softened down or ignored the decisions of the ma- 
 jority in cases of discipline brought before them, or took out of their 
 hands altogether important cases, either patching them up himself or 
 more likely letting them drift. It should be said here, in explanation, 
 that no records of the ordinary faculty meetings were kept at that 
 time ; and the exact terms of votes passed could only be reproduced 
 by memory; and the president's memory of words, though good, 
 naturally presented the softer rather than the sterner expressions. 
 The next forenoon after these important meetings in the library, 
 it so chanced that Professor Perry met two of the influential trustees 
 together in the office of their late colleague, Judge Daniel N. Dewey. 
 Neither one of these two had been in that section the evening before, 
 in which he had given expression to his views concurrently with 
 Professor Lincoln and Professor Tatlock, and perhaps more fully 
 and pointedly than either of them. Probably these two trustees had 
 been present in the other section. At any rate, they knew thor- 
 oughly what had been the responsive voice in both sections; and 
 they proceeded to address him in language and with an earnestness 
 that has never ceased to seem strange to him, considering that he 
 had been but seven years in service, and these quiet years absorbed 
 in the work of his own department. They must have gotten an idea 
 from some source more favorable to his vigor and influence in the 
 faculty than the facts would then have warranted. They urged him 
 as from the side of the trustees, and as expressing the sense of the 
 trustees, to pursue a policy in faculty meetings independent of the presi- 
 dent's, more strenuous and steady in the line of good discipline; and, if 
 this individual action did not prove effective as toward that end, to 
 make combinations with other professors like-minded, in order to outvote 
 the president on occasion, and to hold him up strongly to a line of col- 
 lege conduct to which he was naturally and by habit disinclined. 
 
620 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Doubtless it may be said that this was improper talk as between 
 two trustees and a single professor after such formal and official 
 meetings as those of the evening before, unless the two were spe- 
 cially charged by the whole to communicate such a message to a 
 member or members of the faculty. Whether it were improper talk 
 or not, it was actual talk and emphatic talk, passing from the two 
 to the one as if it were the judgment of the whole, though it was 
 not announced in words as such judgment. The professor was wholly 
 passive in the interview, receiving the message as a personal one 
 and as from authority, saying nothing, least of all making any 
 promises. Whether there were any one or more of the trustees 
 present at the meetings deeply friendly enough to the president to 
 frankly tell him what had passed there, can now never be known ; 
 that there was communication over the matter between them and him 
 is proved by his telling the faculty not very long after, that "the 
 trustees felt better about it when they went away than when they 
 came." Why they should have "felt better about it" has never 
 been revealed. The only known immediate result of a very consid- 
 erable official procedure on their part was the chance interview with 
 Perry just narrated. 
 
 There were, however, more distant results of that interview of 
 some consequence to the College. Perry did not speak of it to any 
 one of his colleagues, or to any one else, for more than thirty years. 
 He remembered it nevertheless, and profited by it. (1) He could do 
 no less than assume from it that he had already gained the confidence 
 of the trustees as a competent and faithful college officer, knowing 
 what the institution was established and maintained for, and willing 
 to take risks (if need be) for the furtherance of those ends. (2) With 
 this, their confidence, in mind, and seeing no evidence of any more 
 stringent methods in the president's hand, and distrusting the effi- 
 cacy of any such possible combination of professors as had been 
 commended to him, he determined quietly, but firmly, to take the 
 control of each class as they came in succession under his instruction 
 into his own hands, so far as his jurisdiction in his own lecture- 
 room and his own studies might be extended, and thereafter to bring 
 no case of discipline thus occurring before the faculty in any event. 
 He did so, saying nothing to any one of his purpose and of its 
 gradual success. He was the first professor in the College to call 
 aloud the roll of his class at the beginning of every exercise, and 
 thus to keep an exact account of all absences. If any one's number 
 of absences in any study became considerable, he spoke to the stu- 
 dent about it privately, looking him always right in the eye, and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 621 
 
 saying that if such unexcused absences continued, his name would 
 be dropped from that roll altogether. If any student appeared to be 
 culpably negligent in his preparation of the lessons, he, too, was seen 
 privately, and asked the reason : if he were a poor scholar and found 
 the subject difficult, he was uniformly encouraged and helped ; if he 
 were shirking and indifferent, he was told that unless there were 
 evidence of an immediate and continued improvement, his name 
 would be dropped from the roll, and there would be no replacing it. 
 These simple customs, kindly and firmly administered, did much 
 more than secure a fair attendance and proper progress in study in 
 that lecture-room ; they drew the confidence of pupils toward the 
 teacher, as aiming solely at their good and at the good reputation 
 of the College. The teacher also strove to make the acquaintance 
 of all the members of his classes, trusting every one until he saw 
 good grounds for distrusting him ; pursuing a course frank and open 
 as toward all; and paying particular attention, unobserved, to 
 those pecuniarily poor and those poorly fitted for college, trying the 
 most to help along those who needed it the most. The moral re- 
 wards that have been coming and that keep coming to that teacher 
 from those thus slightly assisted at the outset of their course in life, 
 cannot be expressed in words. 
 
 (3) In more direct accordance with the intimations received from 
 the trustees, Professor Perry rarely or never failed, after 1860, to 
 support in the faculty meeting, in all cases of discipline brought 
 there, the view that seemed to him the surest in favor of good and 
 steady government. There were then no "sides" in the faculty 
 properly so called. The president was the acknowledged head and 
 leader. No one in the faculty desired to make any combination to 
 outvote him on any question of discipline, current or prospective. 
 But opinions even then pretty sharply diverged. He was sure to 
 take the smooth side in all such questions relating to the students, 
 for two main reasons : namely, first, he believed and frankly avowed 
 that college government was a sort of family government, extended 
 and modified, in which precept and example and moral considera- 
 tions brought to bear upon the students individually and collec- 
 tively, were far better than a system of offences with difficulty 
 precisely defined, and with rigid penalties attached to them; and, 
 secondly, he was conscious of possessing superior facilities himself 
 in thus handling students to good ends, and of having had remark- 
 able success along these lines in the time past. At the same time, 
 he wanted no monopoly of these influences in his own hands. He 
 desired each of his colleagues to use these general methods in his 
 
622 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 own way, and the better each succeeded with his classes, the better 
 the president was pleased. He knew nothing of Perry's special 
 experiments or the motives that led to them, but he knew that the 
 latter was gaining the good will of his classes, and getting in a 
 modest way good work out of them; and he rejoiced at this, and 
 communicated to the others his satisfaction time and time again. 
 Particularly did he do this, when the young man seemed to be suc- 
 ceeding well in his preaching in turn in the college chapel. After 
 three successive written sermons, which had taken him all the 
 summer vacation to prepare, he called attention to them in a faculty 
 meeting, commended them, and, especially, the skill displayed in 
 each in making transitions, and expressed the good-humored wish 
 that the professor might go on so throughout the term; and when, 
 some terms later, the young man ventured on his first ex tempore 
 delivered discourse in the chapel, the president took pains to come 
 down to his house early Monday morning to congratulate him, "I 
 did not see but you succeeded perfectly." He did not require of 
 any new professor adhesion to his principles of moral government 
 in College, nor did he ever prescribe to any one the manner in which 
 he should teach or govern in his classes. Every man had unre- 
 stricted liberty in his own department. On the last day of June, 
 1897, the trustees of Amherst College voted unanimously that each 
 professor should be head and master in his own department, in spite 
 of the president or anybody else. Exactly that liberty, and nothing 
 short of it, was enjoyed at Williams by each and every professor 
 throughout the entire administrations of Mark Hopkins and his 
 successor. Nor did this liberty rest on any vote of the Board of 
 Trustees. It rested on the original constitution of the College as 
 such, on which no doctrine in conflict with this can find any foothold. 
 (4) It is true, nevertheless, that an increasing number in the fac- 
 ulty, as well as in the trustees, were feeling that something more 
 tangible and immediately applicable than family government was 
 needed in the daily administration of the College. The trustees 
 appointed a committee, of which Joseph White was the chairman, 
 to prepare a code of college laws. Mr. White gathered together the 
 printed codes of all the New England colleges, and of several outside 
 of New England, and then, feeling that he was not really adequate 
 to the work, thrust the whole batch into the hands of a member 
 of the faculty, at the beginning of a long vacation, who did not feel 
 at liberty to decline the task. Thorough and long-continued labor 
 was given to the codification, and it was read in extenso by Dr. Hop- 
 kins to the faculty in manuscript, and, being approved by them, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 623 
 
 was enacted by the trustees without a single change, and with only 
 the addition of one sentence relating to the annual meeting of that 
 body ; and then was printed as the laws prescribed by the trustees 
 to the faculty and students. But Dr. Hopkins did not like rigid 
 rules prescribed in this formal and roundabout manner any better 
 than rigid rules prescribed by the faculty as such to themselves. 
 The new code, so unanimously approved, was rarely ever referred 
 to in faculty meetings, and was soon forgotten altogether. John 
 Bascom, of the class of 1849, had come permanently into the faculty 
 in 1855 as Professor of Rhetoric. Though always lacking in the 
 social and sympathetic impulses, which must be a part of the very 
 best teachers as such, in intellectual, insight and vigor and in moral 
 purpose and power, accompanied with language appropriate for the 
 expression of these, he was not equalled by any man at Williams 
 during the first century of the College; and it shall go hard if any 
 man during its second century shall present himself to surpass him. 
 But rhetoric was not his natural department of instruction; nor did 
 he ever become satisfied with it as the proper sphere for the exer- 
 cise of his trained and profound powers. His book on that subject 
 is entitled "The Philosophy of Rhetoric," giving, as he says in the 
 preface, "the principles as well as the rules on which excellence 
 depends. The discussions present the mental and moral laws of 
 influence." These words indicate the ineradicable bent of his mind, 
 which was toward and in the ultimate philosophy. He held the 
 professorship, however, for eighteen years, when he became presi- 
 dent of the University of Wisconsin for fourteen years, in which 
 position he taught his favorite studies only. Partly on account of 
 this lack of content with his department at Williams, and partly on 
 account of some theological antagonisms aroused as between the 
 president and him by his independent thinking and preaching in 
 the chapel, he did not exercise so controlling an influence in and 
 over the College as he otherwise would doubtless have done ; for he 
 was a master in the art of strong speech no less than in the art of 
 strong thought. In 1860 and afterward, he was certainly, though 
 quietly, in favor of more stringent rules of action by the faculty as 
 toward delinquent students. 
 
 The same may be said of Professors Lincoln and Phillips, who 
 assumed their respective professorships of Latin and Greek in 1853 
 and 1857. These men were classmates, graduated in 1847, were 
 brothers-in-law, and always very intimately associated with each 
 other until the death of the former, in 1862. They belonged to two 
 differing types of men and teachers, each excellent in his way. 
 
624: WILLIAMSTOWX AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Lincoln, in his more pronounced and strenuous mode of instruction, 
 had felt much more the need of external aid from the faculty in the 
 governing of his classes, and had been vexed in spirit that such aid 
 had been withheld, doubtless under a good deal of misapprehension 
 of the real relations between him and his classes on the part of the 
 president and others. Phillips needed no help from anybody, for 
 his quiet and scholarly ways were masterful; but both alike would 
 have welcomed in 1860 such deliberate action by the faculty as 
 would have been forthcoming if the trustees had courageously ful- 
 filled their duty by reporting back to the faculty as such what they 
 had found out by painstaking inquiry. Paul A. Chadbourne, of the 
 college class of 1848, had beeji appointed Professor of Chemistry 
 and Botany at the same time as Lincoln and Perry had been ap- 
 pointed to their respective departments, and occupied for many 
 years, till he was chosen president in 1872 to succeed Mark Hop- 
 kins, a somewhat anomalous position in College, in that he was 
 never employed throughout the entire year, even after he became 
 Professor of Natural History, in 1859, and was always changeable 
 in times and seasons and in purposes and manner. Yet there is not 
 the least doubt that he would heartily have favored a substantial 
 change of policy in 1860, had but the trustees kindly and firmly 
 told the president what the professors had said, and enjoined him 
 to lead in a suitable conjoint reform in faculty action. The golden 
 opportunity was missed. President Hopkins felt himself stronger 
 than he actually was, and did not clearly perceive the danger signals 
 ahead, that pointed to 1868 and 1872. 
 
 There followed a somewhat broken time of several years. In 1861 
 the president visited Europe for the first time. The Civil War 
 breaking out while he was away, according to a public statement of 
 his after its close, carried from Williamstown about sixty students, 
 and among them three of his own sons and the only son of his 
 brother Albert. Notwithstanding this, the average number of gradu- 
 ates for the five years, 1861-65, was fifty-three, only two less than 
 the average for the five years 1854-58. The next five years, 
 1866-70, witnessed a decline in the average to thirty-nine, or four- 
 teen annually less than for the five years preceding. 
 
 In the course of the decade, 1861-71, came into the faculty, at dif- 
 ferent times, the following gentlemen, each of whom deserves con- 
 siderable notice at our hands at the present time, namely, Charles 
 F. Gilson of the class of 1853; Sanborn Tenney of the Amherst 
 class of 1853; Cyrus M. Dodd of the class of 1855; William E. 
 Dimmock of the class of 1855; and Franklin Carter of the class of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 625 
 
 1862. In the course of impressive funeral services in memory of 
 Professor Dodd, who died in his work in April, 1897, Professor 
 Bascom said with solemnity of manner and depth of feeling, that 
 the most hospitable man in mind and heart that he had ever met with 
 in his life (he was then just turned of seventy) had been Professor 
 Gilson. This touched a responsive chord in the hearts of many 
 present, but none so deeply as in that of Professor Perry, whose 
 house had been the other's transient home in Williamstown for 
 very many years (he had no other), and within whose lot in the col- 
 lege cemetery the beloved brother had been sleeping since his death, 
 in 1881. His monument there bears this inscription, suggested by 
 himself, "Mein Trubsal war rnein Gltick." Gilson had come to the 
 College as a Freshman in 1849, just a year later than Perry had 
 come from the same general region of country, though Gilson's 
 home was lower down on the Connecticut and on the Vermont side 
 of the river. Gilson had an interesting ancestry and one connect- 
 ing him closely with the Hoosac Valley, although he himself never 
 knew of this connection. His grandfather, Michael Gilson, was 
 for some time a soldier in the line of forts during the last French 
 and Indian war, of which Fort Massachusetts was the chief. In 
 1755, John Perry and Michael Gilson and Philip Alexander, all 
 known to have been soldiers in the east and west line, and others, 
 were ordered by the General Court of Massachusetts to go up the 
 Connecticut, above ISTorthfield, and to build a block-house on the 
 " Great Meadow, " in what is now Putney, in the north and south 
 line of forts along the Connecticut, of which the southernmost was 
 Fort Dummer and the northernmost the Charlestown fort, or No. 4, 
 on the other side. The new fort to be built in Putney was to be 
 almost an exact copy of the Forts Shirley and Massachusetts in the 
 other line. That Michael Gilson fulfilled his task, and helped also 
 to garrison the fort when built, is proven by his becoming one of 
 the first settlers on the fertile meadow a little above in the present 
 town of Westminster. Among the landed proprietors of Westmin- 
 ster in 1760 were "Captain Michael Gilson and Susannah Gilson." 
 From this farm Charles F. Gilson .came to College in 1849. His 
 grandfather had a brother, Zachariah, six years younger, both born 
 in Groton, Massachusetts, who was in the disastrous siege of Fort 
 William Henry at Lake George in 1757, who bore on his shoulder 
 the scar of the tomahawk of one of the frenzied Indians who attacked 
 the surrendered soldiers on their egress from the fort. 
 
 Gilson was a tall, muscular fellow, and, as he used to say, " ached 
 with strength." In a friendly tussle with another student as strong 
 2s 
 
626 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 as himself, he dislocated a knee, and as he was carried on the 
 shoulders of a group of students to Dr. Hubbell's office for treat- 
 ment, he kept them all in a roar of laughter by the comicalities of 
 the situation. The knee was set, the recovery was complete, and 
 he had almost forgotten the incident, when he went bathing in the 
 Hoosac River, and, as the phrase ran at the time, " took cold " in 
 the injured knee, and never afterward was able to walk freely upon 
 it, even when he could walk upon it at all. He used a crutch or 
 crutches most of the time for the rest of his life. He suffered 
 much of many physicians, and was nothing bettered, but rather 
 grew worse. The inability to take proper exercise tightened the 
 hold of dyspepsia upon him, which he had contracted in early life 
 by being compelled to eat salt pork (the steady diet of New England 
 farmers at that time). He knew that diet harmed his health, but 
 he succumbed to the taunt that he was "dainty." He was the son 
 of a father's old age, who was stern and unreasonable and querulous. 
 The son found but little respect for the father either living or dead. 
 He attended the funeral perfunctorily, and read " Carlyle " in the 
 cars both going and coming. It should be stated in candor that 
 young Gilson was naturally self-willed and imperious. He was con- 
 scious of being well-endowed by a recorded ancestry, Essex County, 
 England, whose first American representative, Joseph Gilson, was 
 married in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Nov. 18, 1660, to Mary 
 Caper. The family moved to Groton, where Joseph's son, John, 
 was born in 1674. John's son, Michael (the elder), was born in 
 Groton in 1702, as were also his own two sons, Michael and Zacha- 
 riah, born there in 1731 and 1737 respectively. The elder Michael 
 was a soldier in the line of forts in the old French war, as his two 
 sons were in the last French war. 
 
 Gilson often said to the writer in substance, that nothing short 
 of his lifelong physical pains and disabilities could probably have 
 reduced him to proper terms of docility and Christian meekness. 
 Be that as it may, he made, with God's blessing, the most of him- 
 self, disabilities and all. After graduation he taught for a while 
 in Hancock, and knit permanent relations and affections in the 
 family of Silas Gardner, of the college class of 1822. In 1856 he 
 went to Germany for purposes of health and study, and remained 
 three years, spending most of the time in Heidelberg. He taught 
 German in College for a single term in 1861, and was appointed 
 later an instructor in Latin and modern languages ; but was shortly 
 forced to forego the position on account of illness. In 1865 he went 
 to Germany again, and spent nearly a year in the mountains of 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 627 
 
 Saxony and Bohemia. Three years later he was elected Professor 
 of Modern Languages and Literature, and held the post with great 
 credit for thirteen years, until his death. Whenever and wherever 
 he had health to meet classes in any continuity, he gained their 
 confidence at once and held it thereafter as with hooks of steel. He 
 was a kindly, masterful, and most successful teacher. He had the 
 hearts of his colleagues also, because he respected them and trusted 
 them and loved them. He was an Israelite indeed without guile. 
 He stood (alas ! his time was but short) in the first rank among the 
 best teachers Williams College employed during her first century. 
 He had a deep and fruitful Christian experience, which helped to 
 make intercourse with him profitable in a high degree, though he 
 was prone to speak out of this experience rather than of it. He 
 was a faithful friend in all things. 
 
 Professor Sanborn Tenney was graduated at Amherst in 1853; 
 after a considerable and successful experience in teaching elsewhere, 
 he was appointed Professor of Natural History at Williams, and 
 served nine years, until his death in harness in 1877; and he was 
 the first professor on this ground who had been graduated elsewhere, 
 to take and hold as such a place in that front rank which was 
 accorded just above to Professor Gilson. He lost no time in taking 
 firm hold of the work in his department, as it had been left by his 
 immediate predecessor, Professor Chadbourne. He did not appar- 
 ently spend one moment in looking about him in order to criticise 
 his new colleagues, to find points of contrast, or even of compari- 
 son, as between Williams and Amherst, least of all to enter into any 
 intrigue with others to find a place for himself as a leader before he 
 had earned his own place as a colaborer. He was generously wel- 
 comed by all, and made a thoroughly generous response to all. And 
 he proved himself throughout, in all the essentials of service, to be a 
 truer son of the College than some have done in like circumstances 
 who have borne its regular diplomas. 
 
 The illustrated lectures in natural history, which Tenney had 
 given in some form in the normal schools of the State and in Vassar 
 College, were attractive from the first to the students here, as was 
 also the lecturer himself. His open face was an index to the trans- 
 parent teacher. He carried about with him no mysteries, he 
 attempted no surprises, and he made no pretences. He liked his 
 classes, and his classes liked him. He loved nature, and intro- 
 duced them into that fascinating realm. They followed with 
 alacrity, and were rewarded manyfold. He was perhaps but the 
 second of the professors at Williams who taught his subject out of 
 
628 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 a text-book of his own construction. This is always a moral advan- 
 tage to both teacher and taught, provided the text-book be but fresh 
 and original. It is understood that the plates in Professor Ten- 
 ney's books were drawn under his own selection and supervision, 
 and that the text was in substance the lecture he had been publicly 
 giving for years. The sudden death of Professor Tenney in middle 
 life was a shock to the College, and particularly to the class then 
 under his hand, the class of 1879 in their Junior year. Cyrus W. 
 Field, of that class, was particularly attached to Professor Tenney, 
 and at his instance and mainly at his expense, the class put a memo- 
 rial window into the chapel, the first that found place there, which 
 does much more credit to the genuine affection of the class toward 
 their teacher than it does to the then state of American art in 
 memorial-window building. 
 
 A day or two after the death of Professor Dodd, the editor of the 
 Williams weekly requested Professor Perry to write a brief notice 
 of him for the pages of that college periodical. He did so; and the 
 paragraphs subjoined, without the altering of a word, subserve as 
 well the present purpose also. 
 
 CYRUS MORRIS DODD. Professor Dodd would have been graduated in the 
 Class of 1848, had he possessed the pecuniary means needful to conclude his 
 college studies with the class in which he commenced them. As it was, he 
 withdrew from college and devoted himself to teaching for four or five years, 
 and then returned to be graduated in the Class of 1855. This was in some 
 respects unfortunate for him ; for he never felt fully at home in the new class 
 relations, partly because he was much older than most of the rest, and partly 
 for the general reason that such delicate relations as those of classmateship once 
 snapped can never be in the nature of things perfectly reknit. The Class of 
 1855, however, proved itself to contain an unusual number of distinguished 
 men, two United States senators and one United States representative, six 
 doctors of Divinity, four prominent college professors, and two noteworthy 
 foreign missionaries ; and Professor Dodd by no means was lacking in pride of 
 his ultimate college classmates. 
 
 He himself passed up in 1861 from what are commonly reckoned the lower 
 forms of teaching to become professor of Latin Language and Literature in Jef- 
 ferson College ; five years later to be professor of Mathematics and Latin in the 
 State University of Indiana ; and then in 1870 to be professor of Mathematics in 
 his Alma Mater a position he held with credit for twenty-seven years. The 
 reader of this brief record of life work will notice, that he gradually passed over 
 from the studies of his first professorship, Latin, exclusively to the studies of his 
 last professorship, Mathematics. This seems to have been a second unfortunate 
 turn in his whole college career ; for, while at his graduation he received as an 
 honor the mathematical oration, thus indicating high proficiency and facility in 
 that branch of knowledge, a glance at his library and the privilege of close con- 
 versation when he came hither in 1870, revealed the fact that his real enthusi- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 629 
 
 asm as a scholar and teacher lay along the lines of Literature both classical and 
 modern. 
 
 Among the strongest of the reasons that led him to Williamstown in middle 
 life, and into a department of instruction that did not wholly satisfy him were 
 the relations of his family with that of Captain Isaac Latham, a prominent and 
 excellent citizen here. While these relations were in some respects a help to 
 him in his new position, they became in other respects disappointing and per- 
 plexing and discouraging. His freedom of choice and action both pecuniary 
 and otherwise became hampered. No one can begin to understand Professor 
 Dodd in his course at Williams without reference to these circumstances which 
 certainly reflect no discredit upon him. 
 
 By inheritance, by early training, and on mature conviction, Professor Dodd 
 was extremely conservative. This tendency appeared in his class-room, in all 
 his talk, and in his whole attitude toward current questions in Church and 
 State. His methods of teaching were the old methods. He never changed 
 them, mainly because his own point of view towards that which he taught never 
 changed. He was not a natural mathematician in the sense of being a growing 
 mathematician. All things continued as they were. This imparted a monotone 
 to the exercises in his room, apt to be distasteful to the quick and eager mathe- 
 matical minds in the division. On the other hand, the slow and dull (always 
 the majority) knew exactly what was required of them, and most by patient 
 work could compass it, and never failed to receive quick recognition and ap- 
 proval of even their partially successful effort. He bore with the feeble, who 
 tried and did their best, with astonishing and reiterated patience. He would 
 give them his time at special hours over and over again. He was discriminating 
 and faithful and patient to the last degree. By such means as these, he carried 
 scores and scores of young men through his mathematical courses, who would 
 never have gotten through at all under (perhaps) better mathematical men and 
 methods. This is the crowning merit of Professor Dodd as a teacher. Those 
 duller ones whom he stimulated and helped through, esteemed him very highly 
 in love. 
 
 Professor Dodd was a courteous, almost courtly, gentleman. He was a well- 
 read and all-round scholar. He was attractive to strangers and dear to his 
 friends. He drew confidence easily, and never betrayed it. His conversation 
 and conduct to all were above-board and honorable. Subterraneanism he 
 despised. The older of his colleagues in the Faculty knew him best, and 
 valued him highest. More perhaps than any of the rest he worshipped at the 
 shrine of Nature. He held communion with her visible forms. He was a per- 
 sonal friend and guest of Bryant, and familiar with many of the latter's local 
 haunts. According to his lights, which were of the ancient pattern, he was a 
 conscientious and consecrated Christian. He did not indeed know the joy of 
 Hack and Hew in the Lord's name. He took too little of the risks for Right- 
 eousness. But he has done a good work. We shall never see his like again. 
 
 Franklin Carter, a native and resident of Waterbury, Connecticut, 
 entered the class of 1862 at Williams from Yale College, where he 
 had passed the first half of his course, and where he had been over- 
 taken by severe bleeding at the lungs. He had shown himself 
 
630 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 remarkably competent in his preparatory studies at Andover, and 
 quite as remarkably competent at New Haven in the position at or 
 near the head of the class of 1859. He was a boy extraordinarily 
 self-conscious and extraordinarily ambitious. His physician did 
 not deem it safe for him to resume his studies in any class at New 
 Haven, but thought he might venture to resume them in the Berk- 
 shire hills after two or three years of general recuperation. He 
 came accordingly to Williamstown to pursue, if possible, his studies 
 here equivalent for the last two years at New Haven. With some 
 precautions as to health, wisely taken on his own part, with some 
 privileges properly accorded him by the faculty, and with at least 
 one pronounced interruption of his studies, through the recurrence 
 of his malady, he was able to graduate with the class of 1862. It 
 was a large class for Williams, comprising an unusual proportion of 
 able and (later) distinguished men. As a rule, its members did not 
 seem to be very well acquainted with Carter at graduation, nor 
 were they very generally drawn toward him as a classmate. His 
 character was by no means simple, nor did he present himself to 
 differing men in the same aspects and relations. It is always a 
 disadvantage to a student to enter a college class so late as the 
 Junior year ; because, naturally, persons and things get, on the one 
 hand, pretty well shaken together, or, on the other, repelled from 
 each other, during the first two years. Carter never fairly belonged 
 to the general current type of the Williams student; nor was he 
 ever fairly aware that there was a peculiar prevailing type of stu- 
 dent, both at New Haven and Williamstown, derived from college 
 traditions and from the more usual modes and places of fitting, and 
 from the popular characteristics of the main localities of student- 
 supply. He was fond of saying at the time and ever afterward, 
 that he, as a student, had found Williams College "provincial." 
 Precisely what he meant by that he never explained. It was not 
 of much matter to anybody but himself what he meant by it. He 
 meant by it something derogatory to the College to which it was 
 applied as an epithet. The manner in which he pronounced it 
 was invariably supercilious. In his "Life of Mark Hopkins," 
 published in 1892, Carter repeated his favorite saying, that the 
 College was "provincial" in his own student days; but he ve- 
 hemently asseverated that Dr. Hopkins was never "provincial" 
 in any of his attitudes toward the College or the public. As 
 he manifested much concern to shield the president from the 
 charge of "provincialism," and as the president was the undis- 
 puted leader in all directions, it is not easy to see just what the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 631 
 
 provincialism was or where it came in. Nor is it worth while to 
 try to see. 
 
 It was the phrase of an inflated boy, no doubt derived from his 
 reading of Caesar's "Gallic War." Gaul was a province. Rome 
 was the capital city. Carter was a Connecticut boy with all that 
 that implies, and a Yale student at a time when the average number 
 of graduates was a little more than twice as large at Yale as at 
 Williams. For the five years 1856-60 the graduates were 104 a 
 year at Yale : at Williams for the same five years a fraction over 
 50 a year; but Yale had been running just a decade more than 
 twice the decades of Williams : ergo Yale was Eome, and Williams 
 was Gaul. Williams, however, had abolished tutors in 1853; and 
 for seven years thereafter none but full-fledged professors taught in 
 any Williams class-room. Yale kept up a full quota of tutors in 
 1860, and the bulk of all the instruction of Freshmen and Sopho- 
 mores was given by inexperienced and usually short-lived fledg- 
 lings. Perhaps this was a point of contrast that made Williams 
 in Carter's eye "provincial." 
 
 Seriously, and to the vast advantage of each of the two colleges, 
 there were ineradicable differences between them, the source of 
 which, the value of which, and the depth of which, it was never 
 given to Carter's mind either as boy or man to perceive or appre- 
 ciate He saw differences, anybody could see them; he supposed 
 they were superficial and transmissible ; and he even thought his 
 own weak hands could transpose them. His mind had been care- 
 fully trained in the niceties of the two so-called classical languages, 
 and not at all in the immutabilities of an historical development. 
 A single line of one of Emerson's rather mechanical poems, if Carter 
 had ever put his mind on it in its grounds and reaches, would have 
 done more to make him a man and an educator than all his languages 
 and all his f ussings and turnings put together, " Not the gods can 
 shake the past ! " Yale College was what it was in 1860, partly 
 because John Davenport was what he was and where he was in 
 1638 ; partly because James Pierpont, whose wife was Davenport's 
 granddaughter, gathered some books and named eleven trustees in 
 1700 ; partly because in 1717 its first building was lifted, 170 feet 
 long and 22 feet wide, and Elihu Yale endowed the school with 
 400 sterling ; partly because the first Timothy D wight was a great- 
 grandson, and Theodore D. Woolsey was a great-great-grandson of that 
 same James Pierpont ; and partly because Jonathan Edwards, him- 
 self standing genealogically between Pierpont and Dwight, was of 
 the Yale class of 1720, and David Brainerd, " whose religious char- 
 
632 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 acter was of a high order," was of the class of 1741 ; and more par- 
 ticularly because Jeremiah Day and Benjamin Silliman and James 
 L. Kingsley and Chauncey A. Goodrich and James Hadley spent 
 their useful lives there as professors. Williams College was what 
 it was in 1860, partly on account of the settlement of Eobert Wil- 
 liams in Eoxbury in 1638, the same year in which John Davenport 
 settled in New Haven ; partly on account of a line of descent from 
 him, mostly bearing his name, soldiers and statesmen and preachers 
 and educators, one of them Elisha Williams, rector of Yale College, 
 at one time a chaplain in the expedition against Louisburg and a 
 colonel in the invasion of Canada, and described as "a man of 
 splendor " who spoke Latin freely and delivered orations gracefully 
 and with animated dignity ; besides this Williams line, direct, and 
 bearing the Williams name, wanting in no generation its distin- 
 guished members, and closing even now in Bishop Williams of Con- 
 necticut, the oldest bishop in service on the American Episcopal 
 bench, Mark Hopkins and all the Dwights of southern Berkshire 
 were in the direct line of Ephraim Williams, Senior; partly on 
 account of local campaigns of the old French and Indian wars pass- 
 ing back and forth through the narrow valley of the upper Hoosac, 
 calling for the location of forts and towns ; and particularly on 
 account of such professors as Amos Eaton and Chester Dewey and 
 Ebenezer Kellogg and Albert Hopkins, who gave their lives to the 
 broadening and uplifting of young men's minds and characters in 
 William stown. Yale College was what it was on account of its 
 pregnant past and present environment: Williams was what it 
 was by means of a past more fixed in locality, more strenuous and 
 continental in significance, quite as firm and distinctive and indepen- 
 dent in its development and environment. Even pristine Williams- 
 town had its considerable and continued contentions as between the 
 men of the Bay and the men of the Sound. 
 
 Franklin Carter was not the first nor the only person who made 
 the mistakes and encountered the moral defeats of a lifetime by 
 ignoring the persistent powers of origin and the peculiarities hard- 
 ened by tradition and usage and longtime adjustment. He came 
 northward as a student, not from choice but by medical necessity. 
 He came from Connecticut, which meant something ; he came from 
 Yale, which meant more; he had never apparently roughed it with 
 other boys of similar age in the public school and on the village 
 playground, and learned there the invaluable lesson that rights are 
 equal to rich and poor, and that a boy can keep of any kind of 
 advantage just what he can fairly win and hold, and not a fraction 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 633 
 
 further ; he came as a chronic invalid, not without impending fears 
 of a consumptive's death, which gained him instant sympathy from 
 all, and a sort of welcome never perhaps accorded to any student 
 here before ; he took rooms and board for the course in the Mansion 
 House, the sole hostelry in the village to another instance of the 
 like the memory of the College ran not back; he was reputed rich, 
 and the style of expenditure confirmed the report ; private rooms 
 in a public house were unfavorable to college acquaintance ; he soon 
 showed good scholarship in those lecture-rooms which he attended, 
 and manifested a deep interest in the religious condition of the 
 College and in the personal welfare of certain classmates and others. 
 It cannot be truthfully said, however, that his entering Williams 
 under these circumstances increased the happiness of his class or 
 the strength of the College in any way. He knew nothing whatever 
 of the past of the College, or of the inspiring region round about, of 
 the strenuous men and true who had created and who were perpetu- 
 ating the atmosphere of struggle and service which was then at any 
 rate more or less the distinctive environment of Williams. Young 
 Carter could not forget that he had come from Yale, which was a 
 large college, that he had been fitted under Samuel Taylor, a strict 
 disciplinarian and a classical scholar polished to the nail ; and he 
 did not even try to conceal the condescension with which he stooped 
 to certain studies and certain teachers and certain college usages. 
 He did not seem to entertain any special scorn for the younger 
 teachers who were then just buckling on their armor. Years after- 
 ward he asserted with emphasis to the present writer, " When I was 
 in college, the instructions of Dr. Hopkins in philosophy did not 
 amount to anything." 
 
 Thirty-five years after their graduation, that one of his classmates 
 most likely to be informed of the other's bearing toward the Senior 
 volunteer literary work for the good of the College, such as writing 
 for the College magazine, and the one also who actually did the most 
 of this work, said distinctly and verbally : " Carter was chosen one 
 of the editors of the magazine, and used sometimes to come into the 
 room where we worked, and patronized us, and said it was all a good 
 thing to do, but he never wrote an article for us, nor did one thing 
 to help us out. His nose icas up ivhen he entered our class, and he 
 never got it down so long as he was in our class. It was all good 
 enough for us, but it was not good enough for him." 
 
 The writer ventures to put down in this place a list of the fourteen 
 most distinguished men in the class of 1862. He makes no claim 
 to infallibility of judgment in a matter so impalpable and change- 
 
634 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 able as public reputation. But one other of their old college 
 teachers is still alive to approve of or dissent from the present list, 
 whose judgment, if it could be obtained, would doubtless be pre- 
 ferred to the writer's by the living members of the class. 
 
 HENRY ANSTICE SAMUEL C. ARMSTRONG 
 
 FRANKLIN CARTER JOHN H. DENISON 
 
 EDWARD H. GRIFFIN ARCHIBALD HOPKINS 
 
 GEORGE F. MILLS CHARLES P. H. NASON 
 
 MASON NOBLE GEORGE L. RAYMOND 
 
 JOSEPH E. SIMMONS FRANCIS H. SNOW 
 
 JAMES F. SPALDING EDWARD W. SCHAUFFLER 
 
 In the summer vacation following the graduation of the class of 
 1862 was closed the remarkably active and useful life of Professor 
 Lincoln, and he was the first professor to be buried in the new college 
 cemetery. His death made a vacancy in the Latin department, 
 which was transiently filled by his brother-in-law, the beloved Pro- 
 fessor Phillips, Professor of Greek. In the course of 1863, an 
 arrangement was made between President Hopkins and Franklin 
 Carter, by which the latter assumed the vacant professorship, and 
 it was understood at the time that the service was to be voluntary 
 (in part at least) so far as the salary was concerned. He thus 
 entered the faculty with all the auspices in his favor, with no 
 prejudices against him in any quarter, but also of course under pre- 
 cisely the same conditions as to success and control of all other 
 professors. There could be no special privileges of any kind on the 
 ground of health or of fortune. There were then already in suc- 
 cessful service by his side three young professors, Phillips and 
 Bascom and Perry, of whom Carter himself wrote afterward, they 
 " were among the truest men and the most conscientious teachers to 
 be found in any of our colleges." It is not difficult to classify the 
 conditions of success (or failure) among the professors at Williams 
 during the first century of the College. Some of the conditions 
 are more general and more vital and more observable than others, 
 but a careful and continued analysis and induction will surely dis- 
 cover them, and safely guide in their application to particular 
 instances. Nothing of much consequence in the happenings of a 
 college is ever the result of accident. A college building may burn 
 down in consequence of the careless placing of a block of wood on 
 the fireplace, but a solid college influence and reputation was never 
 yet built up or broken down by any series of accidents. Nor was 
 such influence ever established by the direct choice and exertions as 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 635 
 
 toward that end of the man mainly concerned in the premises. Still 
 less was such influence and reputation ever undermined or perma- 
 nently weakened by secret and hostile machinations of one or a 
 clique. Here, if anywhere on the footstool of God, we are in the 
 region of moral forces acting in the open and toward the ends of 
 righteousness. Concealment of any kind is out of the question. 
 Self-aggrandizement is impossible. Cause and effect, action and 
 reaction, on a small theatre and under argus-eyes. 
 
 It may not be presumptuous to attempt to classify in this place 
 the conditions of success in college positions here during the last 
 century. At this point there is no essential difference between a 
 president and a professor. Success to both hinges on the same moral 
 causes. Just so far as a condition of success is vital, its absence 
 conditions a failure. 
 
 1. A man must be in mental and moral and historical adjustment 
 to his place. 
 
 2. A man must deem his present duties worthy of his best powers, 
 and perform them with satisfaction for their own sake, not making these 
 a stepping-stone for another place. 
 
 3. A man must remember that students are fellow-beings, endowed 
 precisely as he is, and practically endowed with omniscience so far as 
 his own motives and methods are concerned toward them. On this 
 point they read him like a book, while he is spelling them out one by one. 
 It is not fit that he should ask them to trust him one hair farther than he 
 is willing to trust them. 
 
 4. A man must know and practise on it, that the ivord and thing 
 College involves colleagues, and that he at his best estate is only a small 
 part of a large whole ; and that the best interest of all is his own inter- 
 est. 
 
 5. A man subserves the best interest of all by primarily minding his 
 own business, and never reaching out to broader ends except as the 
 authorised agent of the whole ; intrigues and cabals, accordingly, 
 whisperings and back-bitings within the body, are always hostile if not 
 fatal to the welfare of each and all. 
 
 As a matter of fact, and one within the possible knowledge of any 
 competent and patient inquirer, it may be safely said that no man 
 has ever succeeded in Williams College except by a general concur- 
 rence in these five conditions, and also that numbers of persons 
 have/cw7ed in each generation by running counter to them. 
 
 The campaigns of the Civil War, 1861-65, had comparatively 
 little effect on the regular proceedings of the College. Consider- 
 able numbers, indeed, left their classes to join in the distant fray, 
 
636 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and made good record for themselves in camp and field; but prob- 
 ably quite as many came on to fill their places on account of inter- 
 ruptions to business and the then uncertainties of the future. One 
 young man, however, is deserving of our especial notice, inasmuch 
 as he gained a great and astonishingly rapid military promotion in 
 the course of the war and directly after its close, namely, Eanald 
 Slidell Mackenzie of the class of 1859. He was born in New York 
 in July, 1840, fitted for college at Sing Sing, took a good rank in 
 his college class till about the middle of the Junior year, when he 
 was appointed a cadet at the United States military academy at 
 West Point, where he was graduated in 1862. He was a frank and 
 popular student here, and everybody was sorry to have him leave 
 for West Point, nobody in January, 1858, having any premonition 
 of that which was to come. He was sent at once from school to 
 field, became a major in 1863, lieutenant-colonel in 1864, brigadier- 
 general in the regular army in 1865, and in the same month major- 
 general of volunteers. After the close of the war, in which he 
 had been three times severely wounded in battle, when the new 
 military department of Texas and the Southwest was established, 
 he was put in command of it, with headquarters at Santa Fe, and 
 with the rank of major-general. Not so young a man had ever 
 borne such high ranks in the regular army. He must have been 
 born an extraordinary military genius; for he filled each succeeding 
 position with great credit, and also received the following incidental 
 eulogium from General Grant, who was asked by Thomas Murphy 
 at Long Branch, who reported the conversation at the time, in 
 1870: 
 
 "'Whom would you put in command of a great army, say 50,000 
 men, should it become necessary?' The General, without hesi- 
 tating a second, said, 'Sheridan.' 
 
 " 'Next to Sheridan? ' The General answered, * Miles or Macken- 
 zie ' ; and after puffing away at his cigar two or three minutes, he 
 decided on Mackenzie." The present writing is at midsummer of 
 1897, and the " Miles " of this conversation is now in succession to 
 the great Three as senior major-general of the army of the United 
 States, and has just been to England to represent his country, and 
 that organization in particular, at the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, 
 the passing of the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the throne. 
 The brilliant Mackenzie, in consequence of wounds and exposures 
 and anxieties on the Mexican frontiers and from hostile Indians, 
 became unsettled in mind in 1883, and was taken to the Blooming- 
 dale Asylum for treatment. In 1886 he was removed to Staten 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 637 
 
 Island, where he was tenderly cared for by his sister till his death 
 in 1889. 
 
 Another graduate of the College in the period under review, whose 
 public career in certain respects reminds one of Mackenzie, particu- 
 larly in the rapidity of advancement to very high places of authority, 
 may be briefly characterized at this point. This is John James 
 Ingalls, of the class of 1855. He was born in Haverhill in Decem- 
 ber, 1834, and was carefully and religiously trained by excellent 
 parents, who sent here also a younger son, Francis Theodore Ingalls, 
 of the class of 1864, who, after graduating with the valedictory 
 oration, studied theology at Princeton and Andover, and was 
 ordained to the ministry in 1870 ; and thereafter for eighteen years 
 became a prominent pastor in Kansas, which was the home also of 
 the elder brother; when the younger accepted the presidency of 
 Drury College at Springfield, Missouri, arid wrought a grand work 
 in that position until his death in 1892. Both the college and sub- 
 sequent careers of the two brothers were extremely divergent. The 
 elder one is remembered on college ground as insubordinate, defiant, 
 irreligious, and devil-may-care. Nothing seemed to be sacred to 
 him. At that time students worshipped on Sunday with the people 
 of the town, the president preaching one-third of the time. Most 
 of the preaching was not attractive to the students, and compara- 
 tively few paid much attention to it, while Ingalls often passed the 
 hour conspicuously reading from some book brought in his pocket. 
 "Whether his college teachers as such were worthy of his respect or 
 not, it is certain that he did not respect them, and equally certain 
 that they did not expect much from him in after life. He studied 
 law and was admitted to the bar in 1857, and in the fall of the next 
 year removed to Kansas, which was then in the throes of its fren- 
 zied birth ; he became a member of the Constitutional Convention of 
 
 1859, which framed at Wyandotte a constitution prohibiting slavery, 
 which constitution was ratified by a popular vote of nearly two to 
 one. Ingalls put in good work down at the very roots of the state- 
 hood of Kansas. He was Secretary of the Territorial Council in 
 
 1860, and of the State Senate in 1861. He was State Senator in 
 1862, and the three following years rendered, as major, lieutenant- 
 colonel, and judge advocate, efficient services in the Kansas State 
 Volunteers. 
 
 All this, and much besides, paved the way for that political influ- 
 ence in Kansas which enabled Ingalls to be elected for three terms 
 in succession to the Senate of the United States. What is in some 
 sense more, he was repeatedly elected by the Kepublican majority 
 
638 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 of that body to be President of the Senate pro tempore, with all the 
 exalted contingencies then and now connected with that office. A 
 candid historian must add, that in this long period of public service 
 in high station, he made no mark as a legislator nor any valuable 
 contribution to the political thought of his country. The only prose 
 phrases of his that will go down to posterity in any connection are 
 the already famous and infamous sentences expounding modern 
 political ethics. 
 
 The purification of politics is an iridescent dream. Government is force. 
 Politics is a battle for supremacy. Parties are the armies. The Decalogue and 
 the golden rule have no place in a political campaign. The object is success. 
 To defeat the antagonist and expel the party in power is the purpose. In war 
 it is lawful to deceive the adversary, to hire Hessians, to purchase mercenaries, 
 to mutilate, to kill, to destroy. The commander who lost a battle through the 
 activity of his moral nature would be the derision and jest of history. This 
 modern cant about the corruption of politics is fatiguing in the extreme. It pro- 
 ceeds from the tea-custard and syllabub dilettanteism, the frivolous and desul- 
 tory sentimentalism, of epicenes. 
 
 Ingalls also wrote a notable sonnet on " Opportunity," which may 
 survive, for it has a fine form and considerable literary merit, while 
 it is as godless in every line as the prose extract but just quoted is 
 destitute of any sense of moral obligation. It follows, exactly as 
 published by him. 
 
 OPPORTUNITY 
 
 Master of human destinies am I ; 
 
 Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait. 
 
 Cities and fields I walk ; I penetrate 
 
 Deserts and seas remote, and, passing by 
 
 Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late, 
 
 I knock unbidden once on every gate. 
 
 If, sleeping, wake ; if feasting, rise before 
 
 I turn away ; it is the hour of fate, 
 
 And they who follow me reach every state 
 
 Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 
 
 Save death ; but those who doubt or hesitate, 
 
 Condemned to failure, penury and woe, 
 
 Seek me in vain and uselessly implore ; 
 
 I answer not, and I return no more. 
 
 An outline of the history of the College from about the time of 
 the ending of the Civil War until the close of the College century, 
 will crowd the conclusion of the present chapter. The mass of 
 material is abundant; the task of selection is difficult; to throw 
 into a narrative form that shall prove somewhat attractive to the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 
 
 639 
 
 readers of a future time, which itself is sure to be thronged with 
 interesting events and persons, enough detail of past events with 
 sketches of the characters of the chief actors already in the past, 
 doubtless overgoes the literary ability of the writer. But what he 
 had the boldness to undertake, he must now muster the courage to 
 
 STUDENT-SOLDIERS MONUMENT. 
 Dedicated on the Campus, 1868. 
 
 complete. The original motive to the undertaking was the desire 
 to be useful to some of those coming after; the concomitant encour- 
 agement as each stage of the work progressed has been the same; 
 and not for the pleasure of it to himself, nor primarily to impart 
 
640 TVILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 pleasure to others, will the concluding pages be written. Some 
 help, some profit, some impulse and guidance, to those who shall be 
 called on to upbuild the town and to develop and solidify the Col- 
 lege, this mainly has been the pushing force and will be the shining 
 goal. 
 
 In the interval of time between 1863 and 1868, causes and events 
 were maturing, which gave in general a novel and sinister turn to 
 the course of the College, which has not even yet rectified itself 
 altogether. The lesson of this turn is too instructive to let go by. 
 If Franklin Carter, when he became a member of the faculty under 
 somewhat peculiar circumstances, had followed the usual and only 
 wise course of young men beginning college instruction alongside of 
 more experienced men, it would have been happier for him and 
 more fortunate for all. That course is (1) to take a modest view of 
 one's own position; (2) to learn thoroughly and perform quietly the 
 duties heretofore attached to that position ; (3) to get acquainted as 
 soon as convenient with the individual students coming under him, 
 and gain their confidence by fellow-feeling and a mutual good under- 
 standing; (4) to assume that there are some crooked things that 
 cannot be made straight ; (5) to take for granted that the past of a 
 college exerts a powerful influence on its present; (6) to respect and 
 trust older colleagues until positive reasons appear for the opposite; 
 (7) to learn to wait for influence and leadership in the body till these 
 are 'earned by long and proved service ; (8) to secure influence and 
 control in his own class-room so as not to have to appeal to the body 
 for help in daily management; and (9) to suppose that the body 
 as a whole knows at least as much as the newcomer about college 
 evils and the way to handle them. 
 
 With many excellent traits of private character, Carter began and 
 continued his public life as a teacher with such drawbacks as proved 
 to be inexorable mainly because he himself did not perceive and 
 implore them. Probably no young man ever commenced professor 
 in a New England college with so small a knowledge of human 
 nature in general, and of his own weaknesses in particular. As 
 has been said already, the circumstances of his youth and his own 
 idiosyncrasies were alike unfavorable to the attainment of self- 
 knowledge, and of those conditions under which alone in all social 
 relations men get on together with a minimum of friction and of 
 hostile feeling. Carter never possessed instinctively nor acquired 
 reflectively a good sense of proportion as between himself and others, 
 as between what was due from him to them and from them to 
 him. Closely allied with this, if not a part of this, was a constant 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 641 
 
 overestimation of what he was familiar with and respected, as com- 
 pared with what others were familiar with and respected. He 
 maximized the one and minimized the other. This quality of judg- 
 ment appeared so soon as ever he began to teach. It prevented him 
 from fairly taking the usual and useful initiation into the mysteries 
 of the proper relations of an inexperienced teacher with college 
 classes, and of the relations of a new-fledged colleague with men 
 older and wiser. In consequence of this, he soon came into hot 
 water with his classes, and sometimes into very hot water. He 
 attributed this unpleasantness to the general laxity of discipline in 
 the College. It is true that the discipline was lax, as compared 
 with that in the fitting school at Andover and with that in the college 
 at New Haven ; and it is also true that at least seven of the Williams 
 professors at that time, in spite of the admitted laxity in general, 
 were carrying forward in their own lecture-rooms pleasant and effi- 
 cient and appreciated teaching. These had gained the confidence 
 of their classes in the usual way, namely, by granting confidence to 
 them in advance, and by manifesting in their places (because hav- 
 ing) no motives except reciprocally conveying and receiving instruc- 
 tion and impulse. These had no occasion to bring weekly complaints 
 to the faculty meeting of absence and negligence, although all were 
 willing and desirous of strengthening the cords of discipline for the 
 sake of each and all, by any means not issuing in the disturbance 
 and weakening of the College as a whole. 
 
 Carter knew nothing of what had happened in 1860. He knew 
 nothing of the delicacy and the difficulty under the then circum- 
 stances of lessening in any way, or trying to lessen, the influence 
 and control of President Hopkins; especially as the latter had a 
 well-thought-out theory of college government, and honestly pro- 
 claimed it on all proper occasions; and also because he almost 
 invariably treated the faculty openly, very rarely attempting any- 
 thing of general interest without their well-considered cooperation. 
 Before he had fairly gotten a moral mastery over his classes (which 
 always takes time), Carter began to busy himself, as if he alone 
 were possessed of the knowledge, with telling his colleagues in what 
 a bad condition things were, and how necessary it was that there 
 should be rules of the faculty in particular controlling the matter 
 of absences from recitations. In his own cautious and inimitable 
 tones, the president said repeatedly to those in whom he had confi- 
 dence, "Professor Carter finds things pretty bad here !" Members 
 of the faculty listened to Carter's talks patiently, agreed with him 
 partly, and wondered all at his youthful presumption in putting 
 2x 
 
642 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 himself forward as a leader in renovating the College. It was quite 
 too soon, to say the very least of it, for him even to look forward to 
 any such position. He was not yet master of himself. He was not 
 yet master of his individual class. He had not yet gotten a glimpse 
 of the fundamentals of college government. He still supposed that 
 a written rule, mechanically enforced, could enmesh college students 
 and land them in his boat without a slip. So far as is known, the 
 only one of his colleagues whom he frankly consulted about his own 
 want of success in handling his classes in his recitations was Pro- 
 fessor Phillips ; and he was the best one of all to consult, for he 
 was kindness and good judgment and experience combined. Carter 
 profited by the sweet advice thus given, and was grateful for it, 
 and spoke warmly of Phillips ever after; and this little incident it 
 is pleasant to record, amid matters of an opposite cast, which it is 
 necessary to make mention of. 
 
 Men and things worried along in these general directions until 
 1868. In that interval of time, a few of the departments became 
 considerably strengthened, and one of them at least enjoyed an 
 unusual triumph, of which perhaps something may be said by and 
 by. Carter was still very desirous to secure a faculty rule relating 
 to absences from recitations ; and at length in a full faculty meeting 
 the whole subject was discussed, and a committee appointed to frame 
 such a rule, and to report it at a subsequent meeting. Bascom and 
 Carter were the chief, if not the sole, members of the committee. 
 It was generally known in College that some rule toward that effect 
 had long been in contemplation, and was now in course of prepara- 
 tion, and that Professor Carter was the main mover and agent in the 
 whole matter. Dr. Hopkins was present and presided at the faculty 
 meeting when the subject was discussed and the committee to draft 
 the rule appointed ; but he was out of town and at a long distance 
 from home at the time of the regular faculty meeting when the 
 report of the committee was naturally but unfortunately presented, 
 and it was adopted unanimously. This was in the first week of 
 November, 1868. The rule thus adopted and promulgated was worded 
 as follows : 
 
 Each absence from any recitation, whether at the beginning of or during the 
 term, whether excused or unexcused, will count as zero in the record of stand- 
 ing. In cases, however, in which attendance shall be shown by the student to 
 have been impossible, each officer shall have the option of allowing the recita- 
 tion to be made up at such time as he shall appoint ; and no mark shall be given 
 to such recitation unless it shall amount to a substantial performance of the 
 work omitted. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 643 
 
 It is not without significance that this rule was almost verbally 
 the one then and long in vogue in Yale College. While it indicated 
 on the part of all the members of the faculty a decided dissatisfac- 
 tion with the prevailing laxity of government, it was couched in 
 terms and breathed a spirit foreign to the past as well as to the then 
 present of the College. It put an emphasis on the marking system 
 as a means to moral ends such as that system never deserved. The 
 rule itself exalted mechanical means of discipline in a way contrary 
 to the sober sentiment of most of the men who voted for it. But 
 they were in a sort of despairing mood in that particular, and they 
 took what was offered to them by the men chosen by themselves. 
 In the absence of Dr. Hopkins, Professor Bascom as the senior in 
 point of time of graduation and as the officer of the Senior class, 
 took the brunt of responsibility for its passage and promulgation. 
 He had a slight hand in its formation. But it could never have 
 been adopted but for his influence on the committee, and but 
 for his influence in the faculty. Its promulgation at the time 
 and under the circumstances created intense opposition and indig- 
 nation among the students ; and Bascom's refusal, as the nominal 
 head of the College, to call a special faculty meeting to consider 
 their eminently fair proposition to delay the enforcement of the 
 rule until the president's return, increased the excitement and indig- 
 nation. For this refusal Bascom had the general consent of the pro- 
 fessors, while the responsibility for it was more his than theirs ; and 
 a very considerable injustice was done to Professor Carter by the 
 general judgment of the students, that he was chiefly responsible for 
 the passage and promulgation and non-postponement of the rule. 
 The instinct of students in such matters is usually unerring. It is 
 true that his insistence and urgency originated the movement for 
 some such rule. It is true also that he furnished out of his New 
 Haven experience the substance of the rule. But it is not true that 
 he had anything more to do with the passing of the rule at a most 
 unfortunate time, or with the refusal to put off for a few days its 
 execution at the respectful request of the students, than any other 
 of the leading members of the faculty. If any one were to be singled 
 out as a special target at the time for the ill-feeling of the students, 
 John Bascom and not Franklin Carter should have been that man. 
 The faculty stood together in the right and in the wrong of the 
 whole matter, and shared the responsibility alike. It should be 
 said, nevertheless, that Bascom's phlegmatic temperament allowed 
 him to stand throughout the entire crisis without the manifestation 
 of any feeling whatever ; while the mercurial temperament of Carter 
 
644 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 kept him on the go and on the buzz during the whole interval, 
 thus betraying to the students and to all his deep personal interest 
 and anxiety as to the outcome ; and it is remembered by one of the 
 faculty that the former took pains to avoid as far as possible for 
 the time the society and conversation of the latter. 
 
 In this way was brought on the first and only rebellion of the 
 body of students against constituted authority in the history of the 
 College. The students, too, were unanimous in their action. They 
 thought themselves to be in the right by quite as deep and serious 
 conviction as did the faculty. Their resolutions, which follow, in 
 two successive college meetings, were temperate in their tone, even 
 if mistaken in their scope. 
 
 Whereas the faculty of Williams College have imposed on us, students of said 
 college, a rule to the effect that each absence from recitation, excused or inex- 
 cused, shall receive a zero mark in the record of standing ; and it is left with 
 each officer of the college to act his option as to whether he will hear necessary 
 absentees in their lost lessons ; and said officer shall act his option as to giving 
 any credit for such recitation ; and 
 
 Whereas we, students of Williams College, regard the imposition of this rule 
 as a blow aimed at our personal honor and manhood, therefore 
 
 Resolved, That we students of said college protest against said rule, and call 
 upon the faculty of Williams College to annul it. 
 
 Whereas, our petition presented to the Faculty of said Williams College, 
 November 6, 1868, for the repeal of the above-mentioned rule, has been disre- 
 garded, therefore 
 
 Resolved, that we students of said Williams College declare our connection 
 with said college to cease from this date, until the authorities of said college 
 shall repeal the above-mentioned rule. 
 
 Resolved, That we, as a body of young men, agree to remain in this neighbor- 
 hood and abstain from all objectionable conduct, until the final settlement of 
 our difficulties. 
 
 On Saturday, November 14, President Hopkins returned from Ohio, 
 whither he had gone to preach an anniversary sermon at Marietta. 
 He found the town quiet, and the College disbanded. He preached 
 as usual the next morning in the college chapel, to the faculty and 
 their families and to those students who chose to come in. It is 
 still remembered as a dreary service by one who sympathized 
 strongly with the president in what must have been a heavy duty 
 under all the circumstances of the case. At the close of the service 
 he invited those present, and through these the entire College, to 
 meet him the next morning in the same place. All came. In a 
 calm and dispassionate way, but as one conscious that he was master 
 of the situation and of all legitimate situations in which he might 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 645 
 
 be placed, he spoke from the platform for nearly half an hour, not 
 separating himself in the least degree from the faculty, whose head 
 he was, and whose action in his absence had caused all this trouble. 
 His first point was, to demonstrate the untenableness of the position 
 assumed by the students in their resolutions, namely, that any 
 student can dissolve his connection with college by his own act, and 
 particularly in combination with other students in the way of a 
 threat as against college authorities. Each student on entrance is 
 matriculated. Matriculation is a formal contract. It cannot be 
 broken by the party of the second part, without conjoint action of the 
 party of the first part. If any student at any time be dissatisfied 
 with the rules of the College, and wish to break his connection with 
 it, he may ask for an honorable dismission, which will always be 
 granted. So now, you are all in college as much as you ever were or 
 ever can be. And if any of you, after a return to duty and so an 
 acknowledgment of the authority of college, wish to leave it, asking 
 for letters of dismission in a proper way, you shall receive them. 
 
 His second point was, that the faculty governed the institution, 
 and must govern it ; and that any rule formulated by them must be 
 the law for the time being, until the rule be reconsidered and changed 
 or annulled. While in force, any combination against a rule of the 
 College is resistance to the government of the College, and cannot be 
 tolerated for a moment. If this rule for regulating absences from 
 recitations, against which you have taken such unprecedented action, 
 be not the best rule possible, it can be changed for such a rule. At 
 any rate, the faculty desire the best possible rule for the purposes 
 intended. The same authority that made the rule, and no other 
 authority, may amend or rescind it. 
 
 This consummate address, here but rudely outlined from recollec- 
 tion, was listened to in breathless attention, not because it was elo- 
 quent, but because it was logical and penetrating and comprehensive, 
 and did not leave the students any the least justification of the 
 mode of expressing their disapprobation of the rule adopted. The 
 address was fair throughout. The need of some such rule was 
 strongly affirmed. Absences from recitations were too many, and 
 must be curbed. But this particular rule may not be in the best 
 form. If not, it may be changed. The right of the students to 
 judge in such matters was not denied, nor sought in any way to be 
 curtailed. Nor was their right to make respectful representations 
 to the faculty in any way questioned. But their right to take any 
 such action into their own hands as was then pending was lucidly 
 shown to be impossible. One simple preliminary to discussion even 
 
646 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was shown to be indispensable, namely, the return of the students 
 to duty, their acknowledgment in that way of the authority of 
 the College. The meeting was then dismissed. No specific action 
 of any kind was asked for. 
 
 In the afternoon, the president went out upon the street, and was 
 warmly accosted by all the students whom he casually met, and 
 frankly said to them that he himself was not in favor of the word- 
 ing of the rule as it stood, and that if the students came back to 
 their recitations (the sooner the better), the rule would certainly be 
 reconsidered by the faculty, and would probably be altered in 
 certain respects. At the four o'clock recitations that afternoon, the 
 students as a body were back in their places in their respective 
 class-rooms, and the Eebellion of 1868 was over. Up to this point 
 the management by Mark Hopkins, after his return, of an exceed- 
 ingly difficult and delicate crisis, w^as able and skilful and perfect. 
 The supreme difficulty was yet to come. 
 
 Every member of the faculty was present at the faculty meeting 
 Wednesday evening. It was a quiet and memorable scene. All 
 were agreed that the rule should be changed. How ? Either by 
 the president alone, or by him after consultation with some others, 
 it was proposed to alter but a single phrase of the wording of the 
 rule, and to substitute for words as definite as language can be made 
 another short phrase capable of a double construction. Professor 
 Perry was then the oldest professor in time of full and active 
 service. He had just entered upon the sixteenth year of his pro- 
 fessorship. He probably understood better than any other man in 
 the room the strong points and the weak points of the president, 
 and also the actual state of feeling as between the trustees and the 
 president, and as between the students and the College. He had had 
 nothing whatever to do with the obnoxious rule, except to vote for it 
 on its passage. In the students' minds, he was not connected with 
 the rule in one way or the other. In the interim of the suspension 
 of college duties, those students whom he met spoke freely to him 
 and he to them on all indifferent topics. He was, therefore, nearer 
 in the attitude of impartiality on the point at issue than any other 
 active member of the faculty. Moreover, while honoring the presi- 
 dent above all other living men, he had always noticed the con- 
 stitutional and consuetudinal tendency in him to escape from any 
 transient difficulty through the door of some verbal ambiguity. In 
 the address on Monday there had not appeared the least trace of 
 this tendency ; but now on Wednesday evening it came out again to 
 Perry's mind clearly enough. He saw, or thought he saw, that the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 647 
 
 students would construe the new phrase in one way and regard them- 
 selves as having gained a real victory in their contest, while those 
 who had set their hearts on the rule as it stood would construe it 
 another way. The words were ambiguous ; and ambiguity in speech 
 was ever an abomination to this man. He took no part in the brief 
 discussion, for it was not his business to do so ; but when the point 
 was put to vote, and every man in the room besides voted aye, and 
 the contrary was called for, he voted no. He did not explain the 
 ground of his vote, nor was an explanation called for, the majority 
 was too overwhelming. 
 
 In the course of the next week the first case under the changed 
 rule came up for adjudication. The student claimed of course the 
 construction of the rule more favorable to himself and his fellows 
 (leave students alone for that ! ), and the president allowed that con- 
 struction, and so the precedent was inflexibly set. In the faculty 
 meeting next following, the application of the rule to this case was 
 unfolded to the surprise of some, and to the disgust at least of one. 
 " If I had supposed" exclaimed Professor Carter with warmth to the 
 president, "that the changed rule was capable of, and would have 
 been given, this twist, I should have voted last week with Professor 
 Perry" 
 
 Here also is a small key that unlocks a considerable cabinet of 
 historical curiosities. The various issues of the rebellion were not 
 very nearly to the mind of anybody. Parturiunt monies nascetur 
 ridiculus mus. The man who deserved and derived the most credit 
 from it, and who had the most reason on the whole to be satisfied 
 with the outcome of it, was Mark Hopkins. He had shown himself 
 throughout portentous difficulties to be a great man. He had 
 demonstrated again, and for the last time, that he was the master- 
 spirit of the institution. And he had done this, not in any sense by 
 setting himself up as over against the gentlemen of the faculty, but 
 by linking them to himself and himself to them more publicly and 
 unreservedly than ever before. And yet he could not help asking 
 himself, nor could others help asking in regard to him, why did the 
 rebellion take place at all ? Did it spring up out of the ground in 
 the night like a toadstool ? He probably could not help feeling, 
 and it is almost certain that he did feel, that, somehow or other, 
 both away back and at the present, he was more responsible for the 
 state of things, out of which the rebellion had but very gradually 
 emerged, than any other man. He was getting old. The grand 
 climacteric in human life is usually placed at sixty-three, but he 
 had already reached sixty-six in the February last past. And then 
 
648 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 again, some members of the faculty had always thought him too 
 patient of absentees, remiss in watchfulness, too lax in general 
 restraint, and had told him so frankly and kindly. His brother 
 Albert had just then given up his long-kept active professorship for 
 what was really a nominal one, and his advice to his brother was 
 clear that he had better do something similar pretty soon. Accord- 
 ingly the four years from 1868 to 1872, when the president became 
 seventy years old and resigned the presidency, was not a period of 
 much vigor in administration, was rather a time of taking in sail 
 preparing to enter a quiet harbor. 
 
 It scarcely needs be told that those who had been most strenuous 
 for a strong rule relating to college absences, and, in particular, 
 Professor Carter, took little satisfaction in the rule as amended, 
 and began to turn their thoughts in other directions. The four 
 years just indicated were the period of the Greek professorship of 
 William Reynolds Dimmock, of the class of 1855. He had been 
 fitted for college at the Boston Latin School, and had been teaching 
 the classics for several years in that renowned institution, when he 
 was summoned here, in 1868, to take the place of the beloved Pro- 
 fessor Phillips. Now fell the best opportunity that ever came to 
 make the two classical languages the leading study in the College. 
 Carter was now relieved of the French branch of his professorship, 
 and was to give his sole attention to the Latin. Dimmock was pro- 
 fessor of Greek only. Natural science had been the leading study 
 in the College throughout the first third of the century, mental and 
 moral science had occupied that place quite as decidedly during the 
 second third of the century; and now had dawned a golden oppor- 
 tunity for the classics to become first. The two young professors 
 had been thoroughly trained in these studies, they excelled in them, 
 and were justly proud of their attainments in them. No hindrance 
 from any quarter opposed either of them in the developing of their 
 departments in their own time and way. If the conditions of ad- 
 mission to college in the classics were too low, as doubtless they 
 were, it was within their functions to raise them gradually and 
 patiently to any point not inconsistent with the general position 
 and patronage and historical past of the College. If the College 
 needed raising in general scholarship and culture, as doubtless it 
 did, theirs was the chance and the privilege to unite with their 
 younger colleagues, at least equally so disposed with themselves, 
 quietly and persistently to push things upward along the lines 
 already open. All this would take time, but would insure ultimate 
 success. The one thing that the College could not arid would not 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 649 
 
 allow, was to have its existing walls, reared by the painstaking and 
 self-denial of the older builders, levelled to the ground in order to 
 make room for novel constructions by inexperienced artificers after 
 models alien to the place. 
 
 This providential opportunity for the classical languages to take 
 for once and in their turn their rightful place in the forefront of the 
 curriculum was not improved by the two men who held the whole 
 disposal in their own hands. Both were graduates of the College, 
 but did either ever become a true son of the College? Sonship 
 implies a line of descent. It implies limitations and directions 
 imposed by predecessors. It implies some conditions that cannot be 
 disregarded. It implies a name and something also which that 
 name connotes. Steeped in notions derived from fitting schools in 
 Andover and Boston and from colleges in New Haven and Cam- 
 bridge, these young men became mutual colleagues here in 1868 in 
 cognate departments, and neither of them was willing to recognize 
 the rights of their Alma Mater in her honorable past and reputable 
 present to practically control them in their new relations to her. 
 They had thrown themselves out of adjustment with the old College, 
 and were unwilling to readjust themselves heartily to the inevitable 
 conditions involved in the very life and growth of an original and 
 independent institution. They were half ashamed to be professors 
 in a college so much out of date and so provincial. If they had 
 wisely chosen to accept the material at hand and the limitations as 
 they existed, which indeed was all involved in the acceptance of 
 their places, and had adapted their teaching to the needs of the hour, 
 carrying their classes along with them, quietly pointing the way to 
 something better in the future, and so helping others to bring in that 
 something better in a progress self-respecting and general and in 
 accordance with the nature of things and the scope of the times, 
 they would have served their generation better than they did, and 
 left an easier task to any truthful historian of the College. 
 
 When he was in college, Professor Dimmock had belonged to 
 the Sigma Phi Society, one of four or five so-called secret fraterni- 
 ties then existing, and the only one then possessing a building and 
 home of its own for society purposes. This building was erected 
 on Spring Street in 1857, under the impulse, and largely at the 
 expense, of Charles Stoddard, of the class of 1854. Several of the 
 previous professors had belonged to one or another of these societies 
 as students, particularly the Kappa Alpha Society, which was the 
 oldest and most prominent of them all ; but it had not been usual 
 for these professors, as such, openly to fraternize with their younger 
 
650 \VILLIAMSTO\VN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 brethren, the student members. Dimmock was perhaps the first 
 professor to do this without restraint, and so to introduce a new 
 social custom of doubtful utility on the whole. According to his 
 own statements, he felt it to be his duty to try to elevate the scholar- 
 ship and moral tone of the young men standing in these relations to 
 himself in social ways, and so on stated evenings he would sit and 
 smoke with them till midnight. When it came to class-room instruc- 
 tion of boys, four-fifths of whom had been but half prepared for 
 college in Greek, instead of teaching them as best he could forms 
 and constructions and attainable translations, which were the only 
 points they could possibly take with profit and in progress, he 
 would, for example, in a Greek play, do all the translating himself 
 in a splendid fashion, and require them to learn and recite the 
 variorums in the Greek text. He seemed to think that his own 
 voluntary transference from a school to a college was but a personal 
 opportunity to do high teaching in a university way. It was not a 
 success ; and he threw the blame upon the College. He contrasted 
 it with the Boston Latin School, as did also his classical colleague, 
 in a similar way, Phillips Academy, Andover. The true and only 
 practicable remedy for this state of things in the College was wholly 
 in their hands. It involved time and labor. It involved, too, some 
 present secondary work on their part, which should have been, and 
 could have been, soon thrown off upon the fitting schools tributary 
 to Williams. It involved, also, a union in spirit and effort with 
 other colleagues of more penetration and experience and practical 
 power than they themselves possessed. 
 
 The precise form of the remedy for a disagreeable college con- 
 dition, which these two professors concocted with more or less com- 
 pleteness as between themselves, is no longer of any historical 
 interest. The proof is abounding, and some of it will shortly be 
 given, that some such scheme existed, and was sought to be put into 
 force, and that its ultimate thwarting and collapse caused both these 
 gentlemen extreme chagrin. 
 
 As the four years ending in 1872 ebbed way, everybody came to 
 know that Dr. Hopkins was about to resign the presidency, and so 
 that a prominent vacancy in the College was about to be filled by 
 somebody. There were only two persons in the faculty who were 
 thought of, or at least talked of, as candidates for the position ; and 
 these were Professor Chadbourne and Professor Bascom. The latter 
 had been a professor in the department of rhetoric for nearly twenty 
 years. This department did not fully call out his powers, nor sat- 
 isfy his ambitions. His large abilities and forceful character were 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 651 
 
 well displayed nevertheless in his own lecture-room and from the 
 College pulpit and by a number of able books written from time to 
 time. His preaching, however, excited more or less in the mind of 
 Dr. Hopkins the odium theologicum. His orthodoxy, according to 
 the supposed standards of the time and place, was properly enough 
 distrusted. Dr. Hopkins was not by any means a heresy hunter in 
 the common acceptation of that term, though he was naturally sensi- 
 tive as to the theological sentiments to be held by his own successor, 
 and there were those in the Board of Trustees at that time who were 
 offensively narrow and bigoted theologically. This alone cut off all 
 chance of Bascom's preferment, and there were other minor grounds 
 of opposition to him. 
 
 Paul A. Chadbourne, of the class of 1848, had become a Professor 
 of Botany and Chemistry in 1853, and in 1859 of Natural History, 
 though he was at no time resident, except for a portion of the col- 
 lege year. He was employed in various other colleges a good deal 
 as a lecturer, particularly at Bowdoin and at the Agricultural Col- 
 lege at Amherst, of which last he was twice president for brief 
 periods. He was an open and outspoken and agreeable man, a good 
 observer and facile lecturer in botany and other branches of natu- 
 ral history, stirring and restless, fickle-minded, ambitious of place 
 and power, fond of money, overestimating his own abilities and the 
 commercial worth of his services, and thinking himself to be a good 
 business man and a good executive officer when he was neither. He 
 was born in Berwick, Maine, in 1823, of Methodist parentage, but 
 his early training in Arminian views of theology he discarded for 
 extreme Calvinistic views superficially taken up and very narrowly 
 held. He attended for a few months the theological seminary at 
 East Windsor Hill, now Hartford, teaching in an academy there at 
 the same time ; and he was accustomed to say in after life in refer- 
 ence to some of the deepest problems of human life and destiny, 
 " / settled all those questions when I was in the seminary." As an in- 
 stance of the profundity of his reasoning in matters of biblical inter- 
 pretation may be given his word in relation to the first chapter of 
 Genesis, " Those verses must have been divinely and verbally inspired, 
 because otherwise no man could have knotvn ivhat was the order of the 
 creation." 
 
 Professor Chadbourne successfully led natural history expedi- 
 tions in 1855 to Newfoundland, in 1857 to Florida, and in 1861 to 
 Greenland. In 1859 he visited Europe, giving his time mainly to 
 the Scandinavian countries, and becoming a member of the Eoyal 
 Society of Northern Antiquities at Copenhagen. For twelve years 
 
652 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 he gave a course of chemical lectures in Mount Holyoke Seminary; 
 for three years he lectured in the Berkshire Medical College ; and 
 he gave a single course of lectures in Western Reserve College. In 
 1860 he published four lectures on natural history, previously deliv- 
 ered at the Smithsonian Institute; and he delivered a course of lec- 
 tures before the Lowell Institute on natural theology, which were 
 subsequently published. He dabbled also in politics a little, but 
 not deeply ; and was a member of the Massachusetts Senate for two 
 years. The first winter he determined that nothing should escape 
 him; he was always in his seat in the hall and in committee-rooms; 
 he seconded motions that by usage required no seconding; and he 
 made a number of respectable speeches from his seat, without pre- 
 vious preparation, on current topics of legislation, and one admi- 
 rable eulogy upon a member deceased. The second winter he tired 
 of the whole business; on about one-half of the session days he was 
 not in his place at all, and when he was in attendance it was with 
 his books of science in his hand, which he often read the whole ses- 
 sion through. It is superfluous to add to this account that Chad- 
 bourne was remarkably versatile throughout his busy life, that he 
 did many things pretty well and nothing very well, and that he 
 scarcely realized in his own mind the difference between well done 
 and fairly done. He became president of the State University of 
 Wisconsin in 1869, and performed what was regarded on the ground 
 as good work in that capacity for about three years. 
 
 Chadbourne early acquired, and naturally improved by intercourse 
 with all sorts of men in many climes, a good judgment of his fellow- 
 men, of their salient tendencies and radical character. This was 
 one of the strongest features of the man. He seemed to know others 
 better than he seemed to know himself. Less than is common he 
 judged others by himself. His verdicts in general were charitable 
 and correct. He made sharp and courageous distinctions between 
 what he deemed right and wrong, clean and foul ; but he did not 
 distrust others until he saw firm reasons for distrusting them. As 
 is far safer and more rational in a world like this, he was rather an 
 optimist than a pessimist. Like Professor Lincoln, whom, in some 
 respects, he much resembled, he was born and bred a Democrat in 
 politics, and continued strong in the faith of equal rights for all and 
 special privileges under the law for none, until the Civil War broke 
 out and confused for a long time the political schools of Jefferson 
 and Hamilton. He was broad in his sympathies as toward the 
 rights of individuals, both in college and in town ; and he was usu- 
 ally open and earnest in his methods of contriving and conducting 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 653 
 
 means to ends. Examples of this general rule will pretty soon be 
 given, as well as two or three notable exceptions to it. 
 
 Not very long after Chadbourne became a professor here, in 1853, 
 he had a considerable misunderstanding with President Hopkins, 
 and at that time spoke freely to some of his colleagues (certainly to 
 one), of what he deemed and what was one of the chief defects in 
 the latter's character. His words were, " The only way to influence 
 Dr. Hopkins is to flatter him." The statement was true in the sense 
 in which he made it, and did credit to his general penetration into 
 character. Hopkins was aware of this transient alienation, and re- 
 ferred to it in conversation with other parties many years later, at 
 a time when, it is to be feared, Chadbourne acted upon his previous 
 estimate in his own behoof. President Hopkins was sincerely 
 desirous that the College should be continued and perpetuated along 
 the intellectual and theological lines to which he had been instru- 
 mental in bringing it; and this was not only natural in the circum- 
 stances, but praiseworthy also; and furthermore he claimed, as a 
 sort of right that he had earned, the privilege of naming his own 
 successor; and there was no one then inclined to contest this- claim, 
 and, besides, it would have been useless to contest it. This was a 
 purely personal claim of his own, and it did not rest on any induc- 
 tion of particulars either here or elsewhere. Indeed, the principle 
 that an outgoing president should have any special say about his 
 own successor has been practically controverted on this ground, and 
 proven to be evil. Hopkins's own predecessor as president stoutly 
 opposed his succession, yet it prospered beyond all previous limits. 
 That predecessor came in in 1821 without any influence as toward 
 that end of his predecessor; and Dr. Moore was scarcely known, 
 much less favored, by the original president, Ebenezer Fitch. Even 
 the insistence by Mark Hopkins on the privilege of naming his suc- 
 cessor did not issue in his own comfort or peace of mind, but 
 quite the reverse ; and so far as that successor exerted any control 
 over the election of the one to follow him, it proved a disappoint- 
 ment to him and his coadjutors. If we may take a single instance 
 from another college, to strengthen the generalization that seems to 
 be justified by an induction from the particulars at Williams, let it 
 be from Dartmouth at the beginning of the century. The crucial 
 troubles at Hanover, which almost extinguished the college, though 
 at the same time incidentally making it celebrated, came very 
 largely from the determination of Eleazer Wheelock, founder and 
 first president, to make at all hazards his son and assistant, his 
 successor in the presidency. College presidents had best have 
 
654 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 very little to say one way or the other about their successors in 
 office. 
 
 Undoubtedly the main reason that weighed on the mind of Mark 
 Hopkins, inducing him to throw all his weight in favor of Chad- 
 bourne rather than of Bascom, was his conviction that the former 
 pronounced and would pronounce his religious shibboleths both in 
 class-room and from the pulpit more in accordance with what had 
 been usual. So justly confident was he that the majority of the 
 trustees were possessed of the same conviction, and would follow 
 his lead in the election coming on in the summer, that, in the spring, 
 when Chadbourne came to Williamstown to preach the funeral ser- 
 mon of his brother, Professor Albert Hopkins, he virtually promised 
 the succession to Chadbourne. It was said, and it is wholly credible, 
 that Chadbourne confidentially communicated this promise at the 
 time to Postmaster Taft, with whom he was always very intimate 
 both politically and otherwise. As the time of the election drew 
 on, it was impressed on the minds of most of the older professors as 
 a foregone conclusion, that Chadbourne would be the man ; and that 
 prospective issue was on the whole agreeable to them. Neverthe- 
 less, Bascom was led by circumstances to believe, that, if he had the 
 support of the majority of the faculty, he might after all be chosen. 
 With this feeling, he requested his special friend, Professor Perry, 
 to invite to his study for an informal conference the members of the 
 faculty indiscriminately. Perry said to him frankly that such a 
 step would do no good practically, that Chadbourne would surely be 
 elected ; but as, 011 the other hand, it could do no harm, and since 
 he wished it, the invitations should be given. Nearly every member 
 of the faculty then in town convened at the appointed time and 
 place, when they encountered such a sudden surprise as has rarely 
 or never fallen to the lot of that body. 
 
 Perry's study was then on. the second floor of his house, and as he 
 heard some one a trifle belated coming up the stairs, he stepped 
 forward to the door to open it and to greet him ; when Professor 
 Carter stepped inside and said in a low voice, but one loud enough to 
 be heard by all present, "lean take no part in this meeting, for I am a 
 candidate myself" and immediately withdrew. The announcement 
 was instantaneously bewildering. Carter had scarcely more than 
 reached the outside door below, when every person in the study 
 rose, and, without uttering a single word, descended the stairs. 
 Bascom, who was the last to go out, expressed his surprise to his 
 friend in a single phrase in passing, and the latter was now left 
 alone, when the comical element in the whole scene struck him, and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 655 
 
 he remembers sitting down and indulging in a hearty laugh. If we 
 may judge of this single sentence quickly pronounced by its instant 
 effect in dissolving a conference that had not yet begun to confer, it 
 may perhaps be said that it was the most powerful sentence that 
 Carter ever uttered in his life ! 
 
 Nothing could have been more honorable on his part than the time 
 and place of publicly announcing his candidacy, and nothing could 
 have been more unsuitable than the candidacy itself. It was a nomi- 
 nation not fit to be made, still less to be self-made. Its unsuit- 
 ableness is best indicated by the fact that he himself was not aware 
 of its unsuitableness at all. This was his first demonstration in the 
 sight of all men of a radical deficiency in his moral make-up, des- 
 tined later to be exhibited 011 this ground scores of times, namely, a 
 lack of any proper sense of proportion as between what was due to him- 
 self and the other men, and as between some things and other things on 
 a scale of mental measurement as to their relative importance. A 
 part of this lack was due to his ignorance of, and consequent under- 
 estimation of, the historical past. He saw no incongruity in his 
 becoming the immediate successor of Mark Hopkins, under whose 
 instruction (1830-72), 1620 graduates had passed out of the Col- 
 lege, nearly three-fourths of whom were then living, and whom 
 nearly every living man of these respected and revered, and stood 
 ready to help forward still in his official work as president. Carter 
 had been but ten years out of college, and knew very few indeed of 
 the alumni graduated before 1862. His college course had been 
 fragmentary at best, and had been still further interfered with by 
 sickness. He knew most of those graduated in the ten years' inter- 
 val, and these were acquainted with him also, and did not entertain 
 for him the respect and admiration that almost all graduates cher- 
 ished for Mark Hopkins. Not indeed so striking in these particu- 
 lars was the contrast between Franklin Carter and John Bascom. 
 But Bascom had been twenty-three years out of college after a full 
 course of four years, and was known and honored by most of all the 
 alumni since 1849, was known to be highly gifted by nature and 
 broadly educated theologically at Andover and Auburn, and was 
 already recognized as the best-read and most roundly developed phil- 
 osophical student and writer that had ever been graduated at the 
 College. Besides this, he had been already teaching consecutively in 
 the College for seventeen years, was known to be desirous of succeed- 
 ing to the presidency, and was conscious (partly by trial of some of 
 them) of the several abilities needful to success in that office. 
 
 Carter was no theologian and no preacher, had never had any 
 
656 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 training or facility in those directions ; and yet lie had no scruple to 
 set himself up as a more eligible candidate for the presidency of 
 Williams College than John Bascom. It is true, he was free from 
 any suspicion of aberrations from the then current standard of ortho- 
 doxy, and no doubt he regarded this as one coign of advantage that 
 he possessed over the other; but this did not avail him one particle 
 as over against the other more open candidate, Professor Chadbourne. 
 Chadbourne was effusively if not offensively orthodox. He had also 
 a wide public reputation as a teacher and lecturer, he had already 
 been president of two well-known colleges and had quitted both for 
 reasons growing out of his precarious health, and the public East and 
 West was in no way surprised by his election as president at Williams, 
 where he had been the valedictorian of his class twenty-four years 
 before. He had taken his many previous honors easily, had sepa- 
 rated himself from them readily one by one, and now seemed ready 
 without much break or friction to assume the final step of ascent. 
 Carter, of course, since he was an avowed candidate, made efforts 
 that may well be characterized as desperate, to persuade some of 
 the trustees at least, that he himself was the proper man for the 
 place. The trustees did not know him very well ; the alumni as a 
 body scarcely knew him at all ; he had no public reputation of any 
 kind, and had never said or done anything to acquire that boon ; 
 and it was well known that Dr. Hopkins favored the election of 
 Chadbourne. 
 
 There was something of the irony of fate in the inimitable tones, 
 partly of sarcasm and partly of satisfaction, in which Dr. Hopkins 
 announced over and over again to different friends, after his return 
 to Williamstown, the result of the balloting of the trustees. His 
 words were these : " One vote was blank, one vote for Professor Carter, 
 and all the rest for Professor Chadbourne." He also let it be known 
 that the blank vote would have been cast for Carter, if there had 
 been any the least chance for his election. He, himself, regarded 
 that candidacy as both unsuitable and ridiculous. After all the 
 president's mind was not altogether at ease in the result of the 
 election. He remembered the even then long-ago misunderstanding 
 with Chadbourne, and he suspected that one or two of the older 
 members of the faculty remembered it too. When it became time 
 for the faculty to make the arrangements for the inauguration at the 
 Commencement approaching, he expressed his desire in the faculty 
 meeting that Professor Perry be chosen to make the public address 
 "in behalf of the faculty," and he was accordingly chosen unani- 
 mously. But Perry remembered only too well what Chadbourne 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 657 
 
 had told him repeatedly about the president's liability to influence 
 by flattery ; and a subtle instinct led him to foresee that the two men 
 would not get on well together very long in their positions now about 
 to be reversed, and he did not like to be a public party to a relation 
 which he somehow believed would end in their mutual repulsion. 
 Accordingly, he firmly declined the appointment of the faculty, 
 giving, of course, no reasons ; and Professor Bascom was then 
 chosen to perform the duty, and accepted it. 
 
 A couple of days afterward the president came to Perry's house, 
 and urged him to reconsider his refusal to represent the faculty in 
 the inauguration exercises, and to consent to make the address, say- 
 ing that Bascom did not care particularly about the service. It was 
 not very clear why he was so persistent about such a small matter ; 
 and his interlocutor, feeling still the full force of his original reason, 
 and the additional weight of Bascom's formal choice by the faculty, 
 declined to make any change. The two fell then into some desultory 
 discussion about the course the election had taken ; and the professor, 
 while raising no specific objection to Chadbourne, for he felt none, 
 referred the president to the latter's many and facile changes of posi- 
 tion in contrast to the steadiness and general weight of Bascom's 
 course. Nine years afterward, when Perry's memory had pretty 
 much let drop the items of this conversation, Hopkins, referring to 
 it, said to him, " You said, that John Bascom could put twenty Chad- 
 bournes in his breeches pockets and walk off and not know it." " Very 
 well," said the other, " I say so now." Either at this interview or 
 another at the same place a day 'or two after, Dr. Hopkins showed 
 himself to be nervous over insinuations made elsewhere, that he had 
 overpassed his prerogative in throwing all his influence in favor of 
 Chadbourne ; and still more nervous over his fear lest Chadbourne 
 should not in the future remember and requite this great service. 
 Finding his interlocutor quite reticent on this second point, he at 
 last asked him outright, whether he remembered anything about their 
 former disagreements, or had heard Chadbourne say any words about 
 them ? To this question, the other responded frankly, as in duty 
 bound, but kindly ; and the reply evidently pained the questioner, 
 and foreshadowed what actually happened afterward. So soon as 
 the result of the election was promulgated in Williamstown, both 
 Carter and Dim mock resigned at once their respective professorships, 
 the one to take a professorship of German at Yale, and the other to 
 become master of the Adams Academy at Quincy. The separate 
 informal leave-taking of these gentlemen with Dr. Hopkins, at both of 
 which the writer chanced to be present, was discourteous to him on 
 2u 
 
658 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the part of both the professors, and emphatically and gratuitously 
 so on the part of Professor Dimmock. 
 
 The inauguration of President Chadbourne, July 27, 1872, was a 
 memorable occasion. Its most distinctive feature was the address of 
 the late president, after holding the office for thirty-six years, and 
 his formal act of passing over the keys of the College to his successor. 
 The present pages should hold of right the introduction to this 
 address, and also its central paragraphs, as follows : 
 
 Why do I resign my present position ? 
 
 One reason is, that it may not be asked why I do not resign. 
 
 Another is, that it is safe to go by averages. The average man of my age is 
 not equal to the burden of the office as I have borne it ; and to lay down the 
 burden and keep the office would not benefit the institution. 
 
 A third reason is, that whatever power I have had to draw students here is 
 diminished and diminishing. I am now three score and ten years old. From 
 my having been here so long it is generally supposed that I am much older. A 
 young man entering College knows that he would not come under my instruction 
 for three years, and I know that the impression in regard to my age has worked, 
 and would continue to work increasingly, against the College. A change must 
 come soon. I see nothing' that could be gained by delay, while, in the present 
 state of the institution and of educational movements, much might be lost to my 
 successor. A guiding and vigorous hand that is to hold the helm for some time 
 to come is now needed. 
 
 Other reasons might be given. I will only add, that while I have regretted to 
 go counter to the wishes of the trustees expressed a year ago, when I gave notice 
 of my purpose to resign, and also to the opinion of friends whom I honor, yet 
 that I have not taken this step without the advice of those nearest me ; and it 
 will be of weight with many when I say that my brother strongly advised it. 
 
 But buildings, grounds, apparatus, funds, are but instruments. What have 
 we done in teaching and in forming men ? We have first increased the teaching 
 force. Thirty-six years ago there were but three full professorships. Now there 
 are nine. Then we have changed the character of the teaching. For a long time 
 part of the instruction was given by tutors. Now there are no tutors. To have 
 professors only was a great step,- involving the essential thing in a College. A 
 College is like a lighthouse. The structure may be vast, but if the light at its 
 top be dim it is good for nothing. So the value of a College depends on its 
 teaching and formative power, and these will depend more on right methods of 
 instruction, including the arrangement of studies, and on having the right men, 
 than on any thing that money can buy. Money can even buy teaching power, 
 which many, with knowledge enough, have not ; but good, common sense, and 
 weight of character, and the power of inspiration, and unselfish devotion to the 
 higher interests of the young men, money cannot buy ; and without these the 
 best results of a College will be far from being reached. At present the College 
 is rightly constituted, and approximates, more nearly than I had expected to see 
 it what I had steadily labored for, that is, the power to do for young men in 
 giving them a liberal education ; and, in forming them to a right character, all 
 that can be done in four years. For this its surroundings are most favorable, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 659 
 
 and, even as now endowed, I do not believe it is excelled in this respect by any 
 institution in the country. 
 
 There is a false impression in regard to the benefit to undergraduates of the 
 accumulation of materials and books, and of a large number of teachers. It is 
 not by the amount of food in the larder that might be eaten, or by tasting a little 
 of a great variety of dishes that a strong constitution is built up. It is from these 
 that dyspepsia comes. . What is needed, and all that is needed, is enough of the 
 very best food so provided as to meet the changing wants of the system and then 
 appetite, and digestion, and assimilative power ; and that is the best institution, 
 physically or mentally, where there is the most of these. I should say, also, that 
 for the best ends of an undergraduate course, the average number of this College 
 for the last twenty years is quite sufficient and better than more. 
 
 The inaugural address of Dr. Chadbourne was able and noteworthy 
 throughout. Its introduction and three of its more significant 
 paragraphs will soon be reproduced as they were spoken and printed. 
 As Dr. Hopkins took pains to express at length the grounds of his 
 confidence in his successor, also to make an implied apology for 
 what seemed to most the latter's changeableness, and also to give 
 him in passing a few words of caution, a handsome reference to 
 his distinguished predecessor which it is not needful to quote here, 
 it is fit that these points also should be added to those already quoted 
 above. 
 
 From the time he had entered this College, coming, as I remember, partic- 
 ularly commended to me, I have known the President elect, or known of him, 
 as a student, as a tutor, as a professor in this and other Colleges, as a preacher 
 and public lecturer, as a business man, as a member of our State Senate, as 
 President of the University of Wisconsin, as an author, and have known that 
 what he has done in each of these positions and relations has been a decided 
 success. Doing many things, he has done them all well, and in some has gained 
 high distinction ; and if, in doing many things, he has changed often, it has 
 always been for the better, and so is no evidence that he is changeful. This 
 success he owes to a remarkable combination of executive power with the power 
 of investigation and of teaching ; his power of investigation having been shown 
 in his published works, that do honor to the College and to the country, and 
 his power of teaching in the enthusiasm awakened in his classes. I know him 
 as thoroughly in sympathy with the College in the spirit of what has already 
 been done its objects and its methods ; and also with that system of religious 
 truth which has been held here. 
 
 With this knowledge then, and also with a high personal regard and esteem, 
 I rejoice to commit to you, sir, the office which I now formally resign, and of 
 which these keys are the emblem, and, by the authority of its trustees, to 
 constitute you, as I now do, President of Williams College. 
 
 In doing this, your attachment to the College as one of its Alumni and your 
 wide experience in this and other Institutions, preclude a call for any words of 
 exhortation or advice from me. I will only say that, in executing the trust thus 
 committed to you, you will need not only authority but influence ; not only 
 
660 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 wisdom, but the "meekness of wisdom" ; not only strength, but the forbear- 
 ance which conscious strength gives. For these you know where to look. 
 
 The form of Dr. Chadbourne's introduction is made to seem more 
 appropriate, when one remembers that the special studies of his life- 
 time had been in the general field of natural history. 
 
 It is the order of nature, in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that all 
 growth shall be marked by periods. The time of growth is preceded by apparent 
 quiet, in the outward activity at least, a preparation season, when material 
 is collected and energy garnered, until the fixed period of development, or some 
 accidental condition, calls them into activity. The grain of corn sends up its 
 folded blade of green, and the century-plant its massive trunk and wealth of 
 flowers, from their slowly garnered materials extreme types of that periodic 
 growth, which marks the change of field and forest, and to a greater or less 
 degree, the varied forms of animal life. In many kinds of the animal kingdom, 
 the change is almost magical. The old form is broken, deserted or moulded into 
 a higher type, as the being passes on to a higher life. Then in this transition 
 state, is the time of hope and fear for the progressive being. Then new possibili- 
 ties and new manifestations of power give hope, and the daring use of untried 
 powers invites the destroyer, and not unfrequently leads their possessor to 
 destruction. Then is the time, when Natural Selection manifests its agency, as 
 large numbers disappear and the favored few survive to perform and enjoy all 
 that their highest power and capabilities permit. 
 
 I should be doing violence to my own convictions, to my high sense of respect 
 and regard for the Trustees, who have administered the affairs of this Col- 
 lege, and for the men who have composed its Faculty, if I hesitated to declare 
 that in my judgment, the instruction in Williams College has, upon the whole, 
 afforded as true a type of high education as that in any College of our land. If 
 she has not made as accurate scholars in all departments, she has made as able 
 men, as any other institution. The position of the Williams Alumni in the pro- 
 fessional schools, and every department of human activity, is better proof of her 
 work than any words of mine. She has lacked means, and she has been far 
 from perfect, as her best friends are ready to allow. But if her Alumni have 
 had occasion to regret her deficiencies, it is because she gave them so much of 
 solid education, that they understood their own wants as well as the wants of 
 the College. They went out with an eagerness to labor, and with habits of inde- 
 pendent thought, that soon carried them to a position where the best College 
 education seems ridiculously meagre, if not sadly defective. The work they 
 have done for themselves and the world, shows that they went forth with eager, 
 healthful, well-trained minds, a far better preparation for life than special 
 knowledge, without system or living power of growth. 
 
 We propose, then, for Williams College no revolution, no reform even, in its 
 aim, for that we believe to be right. We have nothing in its system to root up. 
 We are to cultivate a vineyard that has been well planted, pruning wherever a 
 dead or superfluous branch may be found, plucking up every brier and thorn as 
 it appears, digging deep, enriching and preparing the soil, that the fruit may be 
 more abundant, delighting every friend of the College, and blessing the world. 
 The College is to-day like the householder, and her voice is heard, and will be 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 661 
 
 heard every hour of the day, calling first of all to her Alumni, her own children, 
 " Go, work to-day in my vineyard." 
 
 A College is simply an agency for distributing. It is a Trust Institution 
 where the State and the rich put funds for the benefit of all who desire them in 
 the form the College is appointed to give. When the College has funds it is the 
 community, the poor especially, who have so much on deposit, to be drawn in 
 the form of the best education. The Colleges discount every year, to the extent 
 of their funds, to every poor boy who applies for admission. It is the commu- 
 nity that suffers, as the College has lack of funds. Probably there is no College 
 in the country, which is not compelled to withhold advantages from its students, 
 from a lack of money. Certainly they nearly all withhold from their Professors, 
 what their services would rightfully entitle them to receive, and they are all 
 compelled to do it to such an extent that a Professor's work in many of our 
 Colleges, becomes missionary work. In consequence of the demands made upon 
 Professors and the moderate pay they receive, it becomes more difficult to secure 
 the men that are needed. Those who have special love for the work, or are 
 already in the harness, will submit to labor for less than they could obtain 
 elsewhere, but the filling of new chairs with competent men is exceedingly 
 difficult now, and will become more so, if the present disparity between College 
 salaries and the pay from other employments continue. We can point to men, 
 whose names are known to all the people, who have spent twenty, and even 
 forty years, in College work, and have not received enough from the College 
 treasury to pay the needful expenses of their families. Such men are often 
 spoken of as working for the College. They ARE THE COLLEGE, so far as it is 
 an active agency. They are working for the community, and are entitled to 
 a fair support. 
 
 The address " in behalf of the Alumni " was given by James A. 
 Garfield, then sixteen years from his graduation at the College, an 
 interval of time filled up by him with distinguished services both 
 military and civil. He often returned to the College in those days 
 at the commencement time, and was always warmly greeted, and 
 sometimes instrumental in showing up some weak place in the 
 college ongoings. His address is herewith given in full. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT: You have accepted the symbols of authority, from yonr 
 predecessor in office ; you have received the official congratulations of the Board 
 of Trustees by whom you were elected ; you have been welcomed by the Faculty 
 with whom you are to labor, and by the undergraduates for whose benefit the 
 College exists. There is still another constituency to whom the solemn and 
 impressive ceremonies of this hour are of the deepest interest. They are the 
 graduates of the year and of former years the Alumni of the College. Here, 
 more than half a century ago for the first time in the history of American 
 Colleges the peculiar relations of graduates to their Alma Mater, was recog- 
 nized by the founding of a Society of Alumni. Its first object was to renew and 
 perpetuate the memories and associations of College life ; to drink again at the 
 fresh fountain of youth whose inspiration, at the best, dies all too soon. But 
 recently the Alumni have been received into nearer and still more important 
 
662 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 relations to the College. They now select one-third of the whole number of 
 Trustees and appoint committees to examine the financial condition of the 
 College, to attend the examination of its classes, and to report to the Society its 
 condition and prospects. This Society, which drew its life and inspiration from 
 the College, is now returning to the College its tribute of affection and support. 
 
 The Alumni have directed me to present their greetings, and to tender you 
 their cordial support. 
 
 We cannot, if we would, and if we could we will not, transfer to any other 
 the profound reverence, the deep affection with which we cherish the name and 
 fame of the retiring President. His title to these is inalienable and imperishable. 
 He is and will continue to be our President of Williams College. He is also 
 yours; but, in loving him, we shall none the less love the College with the true 
 loyalty of grateful children. Its success and glory in the future will be to us no 
 less precious than in the past. To its sacred memories will be added, we trust, 
 the rich harvest of our hopes. 
 
 To you, sir, as one of our number, sharing, as we doubt not you do, our 
 hopes and aspirations for its future to you and your associates we look for the 
 energy and intelligence, guided by wisdom, which will lead the College onward 
 and still upward in its high career of usefulness. 
 
 We recognize the difficulty of the work you undertake as the head of the 
 College a work always great, always difficult, but now made doubly so by the 
 example of him who has so long and so nobly trodden the path which you now 
 enter. We will not ask you to bend the bow of our Ulysses. Let it here remain 
 unbent forever as the sacred symbol and trophy of victories achieved. But we 
 do expect you to confront the future with its new and difficult problems in the 
 spirit of fearlessness and truth in a spirit conservative to save all the garnered 
 wisdom which experience has purchased and courageous to adopt and lead all 
 true reforms, and to work manfully by the light of each new rising sun. 
 
 Working in this spirit, and with these aims, success will be secure ; and, what 
 is still greater and better, it will be deserved. 
 
 In that work you will have the cordial support of the Alumni. They are an 
 army seventeen hundred strong, deployed along all the outposts and taking part 
 in all the battles of life. While you and your associates are here, unfolding the 
 principles of science, we are out in the many fields of active life, testing the work 
 which has been done for us here, and bringing back from year to year our sug- 
 gestions and contributions. But going out or returning, sharing whatever fortune 
 life may bring, we shall bear in our hearts the deepest love for the College and 
 our most earnest wishes for its continued prosperity. 
 
 Next in its independence and pertinency and comprehensive wis- 
 dom to the address of Mark Hopkins, and in certain respects supe- 
 rior even to that, was the address on this occasion of John Bascom 
 "in behalf of the Faculty." It is just a quarter of a century since 
 those words, which will now be printed in their entirety, were deliv- 
 ered ; and there is not a line of them that is not as appropriate and 
 as forcible and as worthy of practical heed, as on that day. The 
 subsequent spurning of the spirit of these wise words by one clothed 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 663 
 
 with nominal authority on this ground, has imparted an emphasis to 
 them, and given them a sort of prophetic power, which they could 
 not otherwise have possessed, and renders it probable that this ad- 
 dress will survive in a living way so long as any words survive ever 
 spoken here 011 any inaugural occasion. The address of Dr. Hopkins, 
 a portion of the address of Dr. Chadbourne, and these words of 
 Dr. Bascom, combined, present a complete outline of the theory and 
 practice of a successful New England college. Time has not altered 
 the conditions of such a success, and it never will essentially alter 
 them. Time may indeed outgrow the college altogether, and bestow 
 upon the world something new and even better in its place ; but so 
 long as a genuine college continues, it will be a body of colleagues ; 
 the president will be " a leader among equals " [Bascom] ; " the 
 Faculty are the College, so far as it is an active agency" [Chad- 
 bourne] ; and all College officials will " need not only authority but 
 influence, not only wisdom but the meekness of wisdom, not only 
 strength but the forbearance which conscious strength gives " [Hop- 
 kins]. The current of prejudice against Bascom at the time of this 
 inauguration, mainly on theological grounds, but subordinately also 
 on account of his outspoken independence of character and judgment, 
 did not permit those more especially interested to perceive the radi- 
 cal harmony of his words with all the rest that was significantly said 
 on that occasion. Even Chadbourne was so far deluded as to say 
 that Bascom stood there before him "with a chip on his shoulder" ; 
 and good old Parson John Todd of Pittsfield, one of the trustees, 
 who offered the inaugurating prayer, said, that " all of those speeches 
 might have been made in heaven, except Professor Bascom' s ! " 
 
 PAUL A. CHADBOURNE, President of Williams College By the wish of the 
 Faculty of this College, and in their behalf, I meet you here at the threshold of 
 your new duties to bid you welcome, and to assure you of their cordial support 
 in every effort for the well-being of our common Alma Mater. 
 
 The interest which, as a Faculty, we feel in Williams College, and in your 
 administration of it, is not unknown to you. There are no men, nor body of 
 men, that are by interest, service and love so deeply pledged to a College as its 
 Faculty ; no men, nor body of men, have had the same opportunities to under- 
 stand its wants, or the same occasion to desire that they shall all be fully met; 
 none who actually are rendering, or can be expected to render it, the same degree 
 of self-denying service. An educational institution is what its Faculty make it 
 to be, neither less nor more. The guardians and friends of a College who fail to 
 see this are in error. 
 
 There are two conditions on which able and independent men such as are 
 the Faculty of Williams College, and such as should be the Faculty of every 
 College on which able, independent and right-minded men will cordially 
 
664 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 labor ; first, that they shall have the ordering of the forms and conditions of 
 their own work ; second, that they shall have influence in that general control 
 which includes their own work with that of others. Under the first of these 
 particulars we gladly mention the generosity, and, as we believe, the wisdom of 
 the administration which has just closed, one which has covered so many halcyon 
 days of the College. 
 
 Nor can we turn from you, sir, who have so long been the honored President 
 of this Institution, to a new incumbent without bidding you an adieu that gathers 
 tenderness from memories scattered entirely through our College life, without 
 recalling obligations that began early in our history as students, and have since 
 been often renewed. 
 
 As Professors we have been wont to do each in his own department what was 
 right in his own eyes, and he who has the power to teach must find this liberty 
 his first condition of success. He who requires dictation is unfit for instruction. 
 We do not see how the public, or any portion of it, shall say to a College pro- 
 fessor what or how he shall teach, what opinions he shall hold, and when and 
 where he shall express them, unless they wish to degrade a branch of knowl- 
 edge, or make its impartation contemptible. When one is called to a professor- 
 ship these subsidiary questions are settled, and he is then accepted in the freedom 
 and integrity and totality of his manhood. 
 
 The second point is scarcely less important. It matters little how skilful 
 may be subordinate service, if the vessel itself is to be run on a rock. The 
 value of the life-work of every professor is dependent, in the first instance, on 
 his own skill, in the second instance on the able, successful administration of 
 the College to which he belongs. It is not strange, then, that he should covet 
 the right to be heard in its concerns, since these concerns are his concerns, in a 
 most immediate and weighty sense. He cannot prosper, he cannot gain the 
 rewards of well-doing, unless the College prosper, unless his services and self- 
 denials are made effective by the enterprise and wisdom of that system in which 
 they are inclosed. Petty tyrannies, absolute powers, secret counsels belong to 
 an army or to a man-of-war, in which the barbarous creed of force still prevails, 
 not to a College. 
 
 There is no room here for jealousies, for assertion of slight authority. The 
 College is intrusted to the concord and wisdom of grave and unimpassioned 
 men. The President is a leader among equals, the weight of whose words is 
 more that of wisdom than of authority. We know, sir, your independence and 
 ability, and accept these qualities as your tacit pledge, that you are ready to 
 respect the same endowments in others, and understand well the conditions 
 they call for. 
 
 Again, therefore, we welcome you, and pledge you, and through you the Col- 
 lege, the loyalty which is consistent with the higher loyalty we owe to ourselves 
 and the truth. 
 
 Good men and great men have gone before you in your office, greatness and 
 goodness will be confidently expected of you, and we shall not stint the labor, 
 nor withhold the sympathy that shall aid you in meeting this demand, a demand 
 fitted to search your own resources, and the resources of those who shall work 
 with you. 
 
 We remember your services here in times past, the attachment you have 
 always shown to the place and the College, the vigorous spirit you have been 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 665 
 
 wont to bring to your undertakings, and, with the hope and buoyancy born of 
 resolve, we welcome you to the crowning labor of a patient, considerate and 
 efficient presidency, waiting on the conditions of a divine favor that underlie all 
 successful human action. 
 
 Special difficulties confronted President Chadbourne when he 
 assumed the charge of the College, besides those which always sur- 
 round a new president, whether he be thoroughly familiar with the 
 institution or not, and these must be borne in mind before a just 
 judgment can be pronounced upon his success or the want of it. 
 (1) The sudden vacancies in two important professorships, caused 
 by the resignation of Carter and Dimmock, which must of course be 
 filled before college work could begin in the fall, made a quick 
 demand upon his resources. Taken all in all, the College was fortu- 
 nate in the men then secured for these places : Edward H. Griffin, of 
 the class of 1862, for the Latin department, and 0. M. Eernald, a 
 graduate of Harvard, for the Greek department. Griffin, oldest son 
 of the former professor of that name, had been a tutor for one year 
 shortly after his graduation, and then had been settled in the Con- 
 gregational ministry in Burlington. He had no special interest in 
 the Latin language and literature, though he was competent in them, 
 and found his teaching duties burdensome, while his classes found 
 them monotonous. It is vividly remembered by some, that, in a 
 faculty meeting, when Chadbourne chanced to be absent, Griffin, 
 with great frankness (which was not common with him), contrasted 
 the ministry with a professorship to the extreme disadvantage of the 
 latter in point of pleasure and opportunity. It is also remembered 
 that Ira Eemsen, Professor of Physics and Chemistry, who came 
 into the faculty at the same time with Griffin and Fernald, took up 
 the cudgels on the contrary in behalf of a professorship. Griffin 
 continued with the Latin for nine years, until the accession of Pres- 
 ident Carter, but along a relatively low plane of impulse and influ- 
 ence for a man of his talents and culture, when he was transferred 
 to the department of Rhetoric, which he liked much better, and in 
 which he did work more stimulating to the students. In 1886 he 
 took from the enfeebled hands of Mark Hopkins the chair of Moral 
 and Intellectual Philosophy, which he occupied with fair success for 
 about three years, when he resigned it to take a somewhat similar 
 professorship in Johns Hopkins University. It cannot be truthfully 
 said that, during these seventeen years of changing work at Williams, 
 Griffin made any very deep impression upon the college life, and 
 during the last part of this period he voluntarily came under circum- 
 stances almost fatal to a genuine college influence. It will be a duty 
 
666 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 somewhat further on in these pages briefly to unfold these circum- 
 stances. It is enough here to add, that a common and just judgment 
 of his classes and colleagues was that Professor Griffin was not 
 always in plain sight. There was a pretty general distrust of his 
 sincerity in talk and action. 
 
 Professor Fernald came to the College on call from the high school 
 at Springfield. T. M. Brown of that city, of the class here of 1859, 
 was the main instrumentality in securing this removal. He entered 
 at once with alacrity and industry upon the duties of his place. 
 Things seemed strange and loose to him, particularly in contrast 
 with the strict rules of a Massachusetts high school. His prede- 
 cessor had demoralized the department more or less, as has been 
 shown above, and the whole college was more or less demoralized in 
 the transition from Hopkins to Chadbourne. Fernald was intelligent 
 and conscientious and faithful ; but he did not readily and strongly 
 orient himself in relations with his colleagues or his classes ; no com- 
 plete stranger, as he was, could have compassed these points in any 
 very brief time of service ; and the structure of his mind and the 
 habits of his life thus far were unfavorable to any speedy personal 
 adaptation to his new conditions. Consequently he drifted. He did 
 not find any firm anchorage for a good while thereafter. Hem sen, on 
 the other hand, who came in at the same time an equal stranger, owing 
 to quicker apprehensions, a greater independence, and feeling less the 
 need of a routine and of external authority, gained a strong hold of 
 his department and a firm footing in the College, though he stayed 
 but four years, and then went to Johns Hopkins, where he greatly 
 distinguished himself along the same lines. Holding a professor- 
 ship unusually extended in point of time though never rising into 
 the front rank of Williams professorships in point of influence and 
 power, and showing the qualities of a first-rate schoolmaster rather 
 than those of an inspiring teacher, Professor Fernald always dis- 
 played accurate Greek scholarship, remarkable assiduity in all his 
 work, patience and self-restraint under recurring difficulties, a will- 
 ingness to be useful wherever his help was solicited, and ever a 
 strange sense of duty in serving the silly and selfish vagaries of 
 some of those in authority, which last must at times have cost him 
 some loss of self-respect, and which certainly cost him some loss of 
 the thorough respect of those about him. 
 
 (2) The religious condition of the College at the time of Chad- 
 bourne's accession was the source of peculiar anxiety to him. Pro- 
 fessor Albert Hopkins had been the local religious leader for forty 
 years previous to the resignation of his professorship in 1868. The 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 
 
 667 
 
 four years following this, till his death and the coming in of Chad- 
 bourne, had been somewhat confused religiously. There had always 
 been, perhaps from the beginning of the College, a weekly religious 
 gathering for the attendance of the faculty and students combined. 
 It had changed its form somewhat from time to time, and President 
 Hopkins had made it for many years a short lecture on Saturday 
 evenings. After 1868, he justly felt that he ought to be relieved 
 
 IRA REMSEN. 
 Professor of Physics and Chemistry, 1872-76. 
 
 from that special service, and it would naturally have fallen into the 
 hands of Professor Bascom, if it were to be continued as a stated 
 lecture ; but the president had a notion that it better take the form 
 of a conference meeting to be led by three or four of the professors 
 in rotation ; and, owing to some little friction of some sort between 
 Bascom and the president, the meeting failed after a time even in 
 this easier form; and when Chadbourne took hold, he found the 
 College without any general religious meeting in the week of any 
 
668 WILLIAMSTCA\ 7 N AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 kind. This distressed him. He promptly asked Professor Perry 
 to take a college meeting for Monday evening, to conduct it in any 
 way he thought proper, and to be personally responsible for it. 
 The meeting thus begun on those terms continued for eleven years 
 without any break whatever, and without any lessening of attend- 
 ance or interest, until President Carter broke it up, hoping that 
 another form of his own choosing might prove more efficient. It 
 did not. The College has now been for many years without any 
 weekly religious meeting of that kind in any form (1897). There 
 have been, however, various substitutes adopted from time to time. 
 In another way President Chadbourne felt moved from the outset 
 of his office to try to promote the religious knowledge and activity 
 of the students. In connection with Sunday evening prayers in the 
 chapel, he made a short address to them on points of personal 
 religion. These addresses were simple and direct and pertinent to 
 the time and place and audience, and manifested (as those pro- 
 fessors thought who heard them), the best of motives and an ex- 
 cellent spirit and judgment on his part in the choice of topics and 
 mode of treatment. Whether it were, that the students thought 
 that an unfair advantage was taken of them in connection with 
 prayers, attendance on which was compulsory, or that they had some 
 subtle prejudices against the president as a religious teacher and 
 leader, they did not give good attention on these occasions, and this 
 special service was soon intermitted. The president was a warm- 
 hearted Christian man, and earnestly desirous to exert a wholesome 
 and steady religious influence over the College so long as he was at 
 the head of it. How to do this was a question that confronted him 
 at the outset, and continued with him until his exit. But he was at 
 no time able, practically, to solve the problem. The students did 
 not, as a body, really like to hear him preach, and still less to hear 
 him in those occasional addresses that belong to the ongoings of a 
 religious college. On one of the annual days of prayer for colleges, 
 that fell about the middle of his term, the president made the first 
 brief address to the assembled students, and Professor Perry the 
 other. When the former closed, there was a distinct stamping of 
 feet all over the chapel floor, as in the way of ordinary applause ; 
 while the latter spoke and when he closed, a more attentive and 
 reverent and apparently impressed college audience could not have 
 been desired. The difference in the two cases defies the writer's 
 powers of analysis. It may be, that the students had in some way 
 an inkling of what may be called the president's bigotry. A pathetic 
 instance of the exercise of this narrow spirit was exhibited toward 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 669 
 
 Professor Gilson, a saintly man if there ever was one in connection 
 with the College, who, in one of the Monday evening meetings, had 
 expressed himself in devout language differing somewhat in tone 
 from the customary orthodox phrases, and who was told by Chad- 
 bourne, at the close of the meeting, that his participation in the 
 religious meetings of the College was not desired. Gilson was a 
 confirmed invalid, and was even then nearing his departure. He 
 came to the meeting with difficulty, and his heavenly spirit through 
 unusual words bestowed a benediction upon it. It is believed that 
 Gilson never mentioned this to any one. Chadbourne himself told 
 the writer of it after Gilson's death. 
 
 (3) The third incidental difficulty experienced by Dr. Chadbourne, 
 and one more inescapable than either of the others, was his ex- 
 traordinary relations to Dr. Hopkins, who, though ceasing to be 
 president, continued to be teacher, and continued of course to be the 
 chief figure-head of the College. General Garfield, speaking in 
 behalf of the alumni, had told Chadbourne publicly at the inaugura- 
 tion that he could never be the president of those whom he repre- 
 sented on that occasion. Of course he could not. Dr. Hopkins 
 thoroughly occupied that field, because it was his own field by 
 emption and preemption. There was no help for that. No caution 
 or conduct on the part of either or both could possibly have pre- 
 vented unpleasant experiences and comparisons, particularly on 
 the Commencement stage and at the alumni dinner. To succeed 
 Dr. Hopkins as president and still have him on the ground as a 
 vigorous and dominant teacher, the semi-idol of the whole body of 
 living alumni, could have been a present boon to no man, no matter 
 how calm his temperament or how high his standing. 
 
 But Chadbourne's temperament was not calm, nor was his stand- 
 ing high enough easily to escape comparisons the more readily 
 started by the obvious contrast between his short stature and no 
 way very striking presence and the magnificent proportions and 
 overshadowing presence of his predecessor. Nor was this by any 
 means all in their relative relations that held the menace of future 
 trouble. Dr. Hopkins claimed it as a right of his long and sur- 
 passing service to the College to dictate the person of his successor. 
 He did so ; and not in his usual way of consultation and conciliation 
 with his colleagues. Not a single word was said beforehand to one 
 of those faithful men on whose judgment he commonly placed so 
 much reliance, unless it were to Sanborn Tenney, who perhaps 
 deserved this distinguishing mark of confidence, in case it were 
 given, which is doubtful. In explanation of this reticence, however, 
 
670 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 it should be said that he was well aware some little time before the 
 election was actually had that Carter was an avowed and Bascom 
 a quasi candidate for the succession. His full and free and repeated 
 conferences with Perry after the election had taken place showed 
 clearly enough that he had lost no confidence in him as one in 
 whose mind the interests of the College were foremost. He wanted 
 it distinctly understood that he had chosen Chadbourne as his suc- 
 cessor, and that he had practically brought about his formal election 
 without any serious question from any quarter. This was the exact 
 truth in the premises. But it was a truth not altogether satisfactory 
 to either of the main parties to it. Chadbourne, now that he was in, 
 had much rather have come in by the free choice fairly canvassed of 
 his colleagues and of the body of the alumni. There is not much 
 doubt, if any, that he could have come in by this open door. That 
 would certainly have been the better way. A conviction of this led 
 him to belittle his obligations to his former chief ; and, besides, he 
 remembered uneasily what he had said many years before : " The 
 only way to influence Dr. Hopkins is to flatter him." Had he him- 
 self not tried on his own receipt, and had it not succeeded ? 
 
 On the other side, the late president did not quite relish all of the 
 retrospect and its issue. Was it a sound principle for an outgoing 
 college president to exert such a controlling influence as this on the 
 choice of his successor ? Was it treating just right the real and 
 whole constituency of a college ? Was it likely in this case to pro- 
 mote kindly and stable relations as between promoter and promoted ? 
 He did not forget what Perry had frankly told him on his earnest 
 request to know, namely, that Chadbourne had judged him very 
 accessible to personal praise, and that it was quite possible that he 
 had yielded more than was meet to such influence. It would have 
 been a miracle if two men standing in such reciprocal relations as 
 all these had gotten on without friction and mutual repulsion. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the first term had not passed before Chad- 
 bourne announced to his faculty, although not in faculty meeting, 
 that such friction existed, and some of the grounds of it. It was, 
 however, at the end of the year and on the Commencement stage 
 that the first open evidence appeared that their relations were 
 strained and would be pretty certain to become more so. The 
 valedictorian of the class of 1873, in taking the usual leave of the 
 president in the name of the class, was rather brief and cool, as 
 toward President Chadbourne, and emphatically warm and extended 
 as toward ex-President Hopkins, who sat beside him. This was 
 perfectly natural on the part of the speaker, for Hopkins had been 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 671 
 
 the president during three-fourths of the college course of the class, 
 and besides had been their principal teacher throughout the Senior 
 year just ended. Hopkins was in no sense whatever to be blamed, 
 for he knew nothing of it beforehand, though of course it was very 
 grateful to him. Neither the valedictorian himself nor the Pro- 
 fessor of Bhetoric, who had passed upon his piece, saw anything out 
 of plumb in its closing passages. But Chadbourne manifested his 
 displeasure on the spot. If the reader will but put himself in 
 the president's place, he will see that there were grounds for 
 displeasure. Still, the displeasure, especially as extended after 
 the event, was disproportioned to its occasion. He was incensed 
 against the valedictorian, against the rhetorical professor, and even 
 against the entire class. He saw to it effectually that nothing of 
 the sort ever took place again. 
 
 It is in no sense worth the while to follow in detail the causes 
 and occasions of the further and deeper alienation as between these 
 two men. The hardest place for them to get over was the annual 
 alumni dinner at Commencement time, at which both were ex- 
 pected to speak in succession ; at which it was impossible for the 
 younger man to gain the attention and applause freely accorded to 
 the older one, for the simple reason that he excited the more inter- 
 est as having done and even doing the greater work. After two 
 or three years of this, Chadbourne took the bull by the horns, and 
 said at the opening of his speech : " It is often said to me, t You 
 have a big pair of shoes to Jill ! ' I have never proposed to fill any- 
 body's shoes but my own. / am trying my best to Jill my own 
 shoes ! " The burst of applause that followed this sally, the most 
 he was ever able to elicit on such an occasion, showed that the 
 alumni appreciated the immense difficulty he was laboring under, 
 and approved his independence of spirit and expression. There- 
 after, Dr. Hopkins avowedly confined himself, in his always wel- 
 comed speech, to personal matters and points of reminiscence, and 
 left the College to be reported on by the president proper. But 
 no precautions and no forbearance on either side, or both sides, 
 could make the stream run smooth which starts out amid rocks 
 with sharp points, and continued to run through and past the same. 
 Neither of the men was happy in contact and association with the 
 other; and it came at last to merely casual speaking relations, 
 when these could not be easily avoided. Attention has already 
 been called to the more obvious lesson to be drawn from this un- 
 fortunate state of things, namely, that an outgoing college president 
 should have little or nothing to say in the choice of his successor. This 
 
672 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 lesson conies again with redoubled emphasis from the experience 
 next following his of 1872, that is to s&y, that of 1881. 
 
 The query may here be raised, while no answer will now be 
 attempted, whether it would not have been better, for the peace 
 of mind of Dr. Hopkins in his last years, for his permanent post- 
 humous reputation, and for the general good of the College even, 
 if he had resigned his teaching functions when he resigned his 
 presidency in 1872 ; if, when he gave up most, he had also given 
 up all, so far as Williams was concerned ? He had then had forty- 
 two consecutive years of teaching at home; lecturing away from 
 home would have been still even more open to him. There are 
 two strong sides to this question. More and later light must fall 
 upon it before a rational judgment can be entered. 
 
 The expectation of the trustees, and of the alumni, and of the 
 public naturally was, that Chadbourne would enter at once upon 
 efforts to recruit the funds of the College; for he had some repu- 
 tation as a business man, and his associations had lately been with 
 some of the leading capitalists of the county and of the State. 
 Most of the colleges of New England had already reaped a large 
 harvest out of the fortunes so easily made during and after the 
 Civil War by manufacturers and contractors and large operators 
 generally, assisted, as those were, by the inflated prices caused by 
 greenback money declining in value. Mark Hopkins could not 
 have been expected at his age, and with his past, to join in the 
 college scramble for a share in these largely factitious gains. The 
 college funds fell relatively much behind in this interval of time. 
 Chadbourne's accession to the presidency was facilitated and wel- 
 comed on the ground that he would probably make up lost time 
 by addressing himself at once to this task. As Hopkins continued 
 to teach much as of old, and as the vacated professorships were 
 well filled, Chadbourne could have been absent from college on 
 this errand a good deal, probably without weakening its stated on- 
 goings at all. If it had been understood that he were away for 
 that purpose, he would probably have held and gained popularity 
 among the students much more than it was possible for him to do 
 by settling down to a certain routine of executive work not at all 
 to be appreciated by them. Bascom and Perry were then in their 
 prime, both of them having been active and successful in their 
 places for about twenty years, and both of them having much 
 influence with the students. But Chadbourne reasoned in another 
 direction. As he explained to one of these professors, he wanted 
 to get all things into good shipshape before he went out to beg. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 673 
 
 And he wanted to increase the number of students first. This was 
 not very logical reasoning, and it did not work well in practice. 
 When everything is in good working order, and the attendance 
 increasing, there would seem to be less point in an appeal for help. 
 At any rate, such an appeal was not made. Nor were the numbers 
 in attendance increased, on the whole. The average number of 
 graduates during the first five years under Chadbourne was thirty ; 
 the average during the last five years under Hopkins had been 
 thirty-seven. The time never came during his nine years' service, 
 when it seemed best to him to make a steady and persistent effort 
 to increase the endowment funds. In justice to him, however, it 
 should be said, that his first year of service was by much the most 
 favorable of any that fell during his term, for such a purpose as 
 that. In 1873 there commenced a commercial depression, that 
 continued without much intermission till the resumption of specie 
 payments in 1879. 
 
 Nor was Dr. Chadbourne fortunate in either of the college build- 
 ings that rose during his presidency and under his instance. Good- 
 rich Hall, built in 1864, contained a la*ge gymnasium which became 
 in the course of years on many accounts unsatisfactory ; and the 
 agitation for a smaller and more manageable one continued till the 
 last year of Chadbourne's office, when he proceeded to plan for and 
 build another. It was of wood, and was placed a little to the south- 
 west of West College, a location inconvenient and unpopular to 
 the students rooming on the East College campus. It was unsightly 
 also, and had a transient look that soon justified itself by its entire 
 disappearance. The alumni dinner was held in it in 1882. That 
 Commencement was signalized by the appearance of the new presi- 
 dent, Franklin Carter, at all its public exercises in the scholastic 
 cap and gown. This innovation, proper enough in itself, was not 
 pleasing to most of the alumni, and they made endless fun of it in 
 private. Near the close of the speaking, which always followed the 
 dinner, a harmless gibe indulged in by one of the professors at the 
 new robe and head-gear brought out vociferous applause. The next 
 year, 1883, the dishes had already been laid for the dinner in the 
 same place as before, and the day before, when a terrific wind swept 
 through the valley and brought the roof and a large part of the 
 frame of the gymnasium to the ground. The dishes of course 
 shared the same fate as the building, and helped to make the whole 
 accident ludicrous. One was about as fragile as the other. The 
 dinner was seasonably provided for in the gymnasium in Goodrich 
 Hall. The class of 1833 was holding its jubilee gathering at the 
 2x 
 
674 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 time, and Martin I. Townsend, their leader and spokesman, fur- 
 nished most that was hilarious in the after-dinner speaking of 1883. 
 His discourse, in part at least, was on the pertinent topic of 
 " Wind." This old gymnasium room continued till the erection 
 of the elegant Laselle Gymnasium in 1886 as the current place of 
 exercise for the students. 
 
 The only other new college building for which Dr. Chadbourne 
 stood in any sense as sponsor was the so-called Clark Hall. This 
 
 GOODRICH HALL. 
 Built in 1864. 
 
 building is interesting as occupying the alternate site chosen by 
 the original trustees of the Williams Free School to that on which 
 they actually reared their first building in 1790, now the West 
 College. They chose provisionally two sites, subject to an ultimate 
 choice as between them. The eastern option was a point " opposite 
 to the old lime-kiln." The "old lime-kiln" old in 1788 was 
 near the site of the Soldiers' Monument. Clark Hall stands oppo- 
 site that point across the Main Street. Edward Clark, of the class 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 675 
 
 of 1831, and a trustee from 1878 till his death in 1882, a successful 
 lawyer in New York, offered to Chadbourne to put up at his own 
 expense and under his own supervision, any needed college building, 
 whose purposes and proportions the president might designate. It 
 is well understood that there were no limitations at all to this offer. 
 Here was an opportunity of one's lifetime for cautious deliberation, 
 wide consultation with others, and an ultimate decision that should 
 have greatly honored both donor and chooser. Here was an offer 
 indicating large financial ability and a willingness to spend freely 
 in the interest of the Alma Mater. Chadbourne reasoned it over 
 somewhat in this way: We need two or three college buildings 
 very much, here is a generous but indefinite offer to build, 
 probably this man would just as soon give us three buildings at 
 $25,000 each, as one big building for $75,000, would it not be 
 best to lead him along by one small building first and thoroughly 
 interest him in the College that he will then build for us one or two 
 more ? Mr. Clark was then living in London, and could not be 
 personally consulted, though he might have been and should have 
 been consulted by letter. Chadbourne talked it over cursorily with 
 members of the faculty and with members of the Board of Trustees, 
 and concluded to have a relatively small building of the local lime- 
 stone put up for the purpose mainly of housing the college collec- 
 tions in natural history. Such a building was accordingly put up 
 on the best site left accessible to the College on its old grounds by 
 the direct agents of Mr. Clark under his own supervision and in 
 accordance with a general plan furnished by the College and elabor- 
 ately wrought out by a competent architect. The actual construc- 
 tion was shabbily done, and repairs have been repeatedly made at 
 large expense. This was dubbed Clark Hall. It was neither this 
 nor that. A part only of the college collections in natural history 
 was deposited in it. It served no purpose adequate to its cost, 
 which was $25,000, nor adequate to the munificent offer originally 
 made, nov to its honorable name. It was only in harmony with 
 some of the fundamentals of human nature, that Edward Clark 
 promptly and positively declined the suggestion made to him that 
 he invest more of his money in a building or buildings on the 
 college campus. Perhaps this issue might have been antici- 
 pated. 
 
 It was from the University of Wisconsin that Dr. Chadbourne 
 came, after an interval of a year or two, to be president of Williams. 
 One of his old students there, Burr W. Jones, wrote of him as fol- 
 lows, twenty-five years after the experience depicted : 
 
676 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 None but those who knew the University of Wisconsin in her dark days can 
 fully appreciate the changes which took place during the administration of 
 President Paul A. Chadbourne, from 1867 to 1870. The legislature had just 
 made an attempt to atone for the neglect and wrong doing of many former 
 legislatures ; they had recognized the institution by an act showing a proper 
 conception of the needs of a State University, and had even given promise that 
 her inheritance should be no longer withheld or diverted. For years the stu- 
 dents had felt it their duty to watch and wait in the galleries of the legislature, 
 and see whether the University could exist another year. When President 
 Chadbourne came they soon found that he knew all about legislatures, and they 
 found they had little time to play the role of lobbyists. Although in physical 
 stature President Chadbourne was of slender frame and shorter than most of his 
 students, we never feared that the dignity of his place would not be maintained 
 nor that his leadership in the University was in danger. His classic head 
 and face would have attracted attention among any body of men ; he had 
 not been among us a week before we had learned that the flash of his dark 
 eye and the quick flush of his cheek indicated a temper that would brook little 
 nonsense. 
 
 A little gift of oratory in a college president always warms the cockles of 
 the student heart. President Chadbourne had this gift, and the enthusiastic 
 Western boys were always glad to give him audience. We supposed that he 
 had great executive ability and we knew that he was a good teacher. How- 
 ever strange it may seem in these days of specialization, he seemed to us 
 equally at home in his lectures on Natural Theology, Botany, Crystallography, 
 and Moral Philosophy. It is doubtless true, that the president had touched 
 the world at too many points, and studied too many things to be a specialist 
 of the highest rank ; but he was a man eminently fitted for the stirring, 
 practical duties of those days of reconstruction when the lax methods of the 
 old college were to be given up forever. He was a strict disciplinarian, and 
 knew how to inspire enthusiasm among his faculty and students, and how to 
 create confidence among the people of the State. He was able to see the 
 great possibilities of the little struggling institution to which he had come, 
 and at once bent his energies to the planning of different colleges and 
 courses. 
 
 Another pupil at Madison, contemporaneous with Mr. Jones, and 
 this time a woman, gives us a few fine touches of Dr. Chadbourne, 
 and of herself also, and of those she was fortunate enough to repre- 
 sent in a critical phase of the University. Like the other, it is 
 quotable. 
 
 The University officials took a very radical step when, in the fall of 1871, they 
 introduced coeducation into this institution. The clock of the century had not 
 then struck woman's hour. The crown of the new woman's head had scarcely 
 emerged above the horizon. That was a quarter of a century ago. In defer- 
 ence to the feeling that the taxpayers had some claim upon the State institution 
 for the education of their daughters as well as their sons, young women had 
 been tentatively admitted to a "Normal Course." The next step was to dub 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 677 
 
 this troublesome "annex" "Female College." How utterly inadequate and 
 unworthy were the advantages offered, may be inferred from my own experi- 
 ence when I entered the "College" in 1869. I had known only the advantages 
 of district and select school. 
 
 With much difficulty I was at last classified with the Seniors in Geology 
 and Political Economy, and, without any preliminary preparation, with a 
 class in Latin reading Caesar's Commentaries ! Thanks to the kindliness of the 
 respective professors, Daniels and Carpenter and Allen, I still live to tell the 
 tale! 
 
 Without question, President Chadbourne was a scholarly man and a magnetic 
 teacher, but old-fashioned and unprogressive to a degree as far as woman's half 
 of the world was concerned. But he could not stem the tide that was rising. The 
 climax came when the Castalians in solemn conclave decided that the coming 
 anniversary exercises must be held "down town." Since fools rush in, etc., 
 this writer was spokesman of the committee appointed to beard the lion in his 
 den, inform him of our wishes, and, if possible, secure his consent to our pro- 
 ject. With such show of courage as we could muster, we made known our 
 plans, to be received with scant and wrathful courtesy. " We might do as we 
 pleased ; but as for him, he wished us to know that he was unalterably opposed 
 to the whole thing." With that deliverance, he turned his back upon us, and 
 we considered ourselves dismissed. Nevertheless we crossed "the Rubicon," 
 and the crowded condition of the old Congregational Church on anniversary 
 night and the encomiums of the daily papers the next day were the testimony to 
 the success of our bold exploit. But presto ! It is the fall of 1871. President 
 Chadbourne is out and President Twombly in. 
 
 It is not the exact truth to say, that this unwelcome pressure of 
 coeducation upon him as the head of the University caused the 
 resignation of Chadbourne from Madison ; but this was one of two 
 or three occasions in all, seized upon by his native and now over- 
 grown restlessness, to quit the present and seek the future post of 
 duty. Restlessness was a part of his nature, and it had been intensi- 
 fied, perhaps, by a chronic disease in his lungs. He had had severe 
 hemorrhages before he came to college from New Hampshire ; they 
 recurred after longer and longer intervals ; and the menace of them 
 impended over him so long as he lived. It had been his custom to 
 begin any new enterprise with great energy and with far-reaching 
 plans, as if this certainly were to be his life-work. He pretty soon 
 grew tired of certain parts of it, and sought change as to those parts ; 
 and, by and by, he would weary of the whole of it, and often find in 
 the state of his health the real, or at least the ostensible, reason for 
 shifting the scene. More than once he began to build houses for a 
 permanent home, but it is believed that he never finished one of 
 them. When he had gotten ready to fling up at Madison, he felt a 
 strong desire to explore the Rocky Mountains, partly for the sake of 
 his health, and partly because he believed himself able to tell, even 
 
678 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 by the looks of certain rocks, whether they were metalliferous or not. 
 He did not stay in the Rockies long enough to enrich himself, or 
 anybody else, in this novel method ; but a sojourn of a few months 
 was beneficial to his health, and added fresh material to his knowl- 
 edge of geology and earth-building. In April, 1872, he was tran- 
 siently back in Williamstown, in order to preach the funeral sermon 
 of Professor Albert Hopkins ; and while here at that time, he 
 received the virtual assurance from Mark Hopkins that he should 
 become his successor at the trustee's meeting in July. This hap- 
 pened in due time, as has been already narrated. 
 
 It seemed for a considerable time that Chadbourne had now 
 reached the goal of his ambition. He had been now graduated from 
 the College twenty-four years, 1848-72. He had been back for brief 
 periods during most of the interval as tutor, and lecturer, and pro- 
 fessor, and so kept up his acquaintance with the personnel of the 
 College, particularly with the Hopkins brothers who were then the 
 main men in the management and instruction. He seemed to settle 
 down as if to a life-work. He was then fifty-one years old. He 
 had already built his family tomb in the then new college cemetery, 
 and the body of his eldest daughter, Abby, had been the first to be 
 deposited within the hallowed ground. He had not been altogether 
 pleased, as has been said, with Bascom's address in behalf of the 
 faculty at the time of the inauguration, but he had no real reason 
 to be displeased with it, and he would not have been displeased with 
 it had he known Bascom as well as some others of his colleagues 
 knew him. In the course of his second year, he had a good oppor- 
 tunity to show Bascom a kindness and an honor, and at the same 
 time to manifest a more than willingness that he should leave the 
 faculty at Williams. Things had not settled down at Madison; 
 and one of the regents of the University came East to procure a 
 president, and came to Williamstown to consult Dr. Chadbourne. 
 The latter recommended Dr. Bascom; and the regent, after a 
 thorough talk with Bascom, offered him the place. He determined 
 to accept it, in case he should ascertain that it was not Chad- 
 bourne's desire that he should remain here. A single talk with 
 Chadbourne over this point was sufficient to elucidate it, and 
 Bascom went to Madison, where he had a successful presidency of 
 fourteen years. 
 
 This shift was doubtless equally fortunate for both of these able 
 gentlemen ; for Bascom found at Madison not only varied executive 
 duties that were agreeable and easy to him, but also studies to teach 
 in the Senior class that were exactly to his taste and training. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 679 
 
 These were Philosophy, now so-called ; at that time they were named 
 usually Metaphysics and Ethics. These had been his favorite stud- 
 ies in college, and in the Theological Seminary at Auburn, and they 
 had been his main reading for many years afterward ; but till now 
 he had had no opportunity to teach in them. His department at 
 Williams had been Ehetoric and Elocution, and he had expressed in 
 a talk with Chadbourne at the latter's accession to the presidency, a 
 strong desire for a change, if possible, in the nature of his studies 
 taught. Of course Dr. Hopkins could not be disturbed in his life- 
 long teachings at Williams, and all these circumstances facilitated 
 the transfer of Bascom to Madison, where his teaching as well as 
 his general administration bore the happiest fruits. On the other 
 hand, it was better for Chadbourne to have Bascom away from here 
 during the former's brief administration of affairs, mainly for this 
 reason, the president's suspicion of Bascom's theological opinions. 
 Chadbourne was narrow and Bascom was broad, each in his own 
 settled religious views and constructions ; while both of them were 
 admirable practical Christians. Perhaps each of them would have 
 proved rather belligerent than irenical in their religious attitude 
 toward each other, if both had remained prominent in association 
 on this ground. There might have been friction at other points also. 
 Chadbourne was irascible. Bascom was self-controlled. Each was 
 personally ambitious in the etymological and customary sense of 
 that ambiguous word even beyond the point of wholesome develop- 
 ment and rational content. 
 
 In order to judge fully and fairly of Paul Chadbourne as a presi- 
 dent of the College, particularly in contrast with Mark Hopkins sus- 
 taining the same relations, it is well to compare the two men in one 
 respect in which they were singularly unlike. Like many other men, 
 Mark Hopkins had large sides to him, many of them, and also, on 
 occasion, small sides, a plenty of them. When he presented himself 
 to the students as a body, or to the public, he always exhibited one 
 or more of his broad sides, the habits of his life had been formed 
 in that way, and he gave consequently the impression of doing all 
 things in a large way. Chadbourne too had his broad sides and 
 narrow sides ; but it did not seem natural and habitual to him to 
 exhibit himself to the students, and to other bodies of men, to his 
 own best advantage. On the contrary, he seemed pretty uniformly 
 to present himself officially in one or more of those smaller charac- 
 ters which he seemed to have at command, and to make the impres- 
 sion of doing things in a small way. For example, the first thing he 
 busied himself upon, when he was fairly inducted into office, was 
 
680 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the college campus, in its walks, and green spots, and shrubbery, 
 and trees. These, indeed, needed his attention. They had been 
 neglected. Dr. Hopkins cared relatively for none of these things. 
 Instead of calling a college meeting and asking the cooperation of 
 the students as a body in an effort to improve the landscape garden- 
 ing, or at least interesting the classes as such in maintaining in 
 order each certain parts of the campus as a whole, he had warning 
 notices posted on all the green spots in small capitals, KEEP OPT 
 THE GRASS ! The traditional college delvers were hired to trim the 
 college walks, which were in due time gravelled in the ordinary way ; 
 while, as a harbinger of improved shrubbery and shade, a line of 
 small hemlocks was set directly in front of the president's house. 
 These were small, and they looked small. They made an unpleasant 
 impression upon the students, as if the president were beginning at 
 the wrong end of things to renovate and upbuild. They were all 
 torn up in a night, and carried off nobody knew whither. The presi- 
 dent said nothing about this, and after a few days other small 
 hemlocks of the same sort were set in their places. These, too, 
 disappeared in the same way in the night-time. Nothing was said, 
 and in a few days similar hemlocks were quietly reset in the same 
 places by the same hands in the daylight hours. These last were 
 never disturbed by the students. The president seemed to gain the 
 victory in this particular. 
 
 But he had no stroke of policy to present in any particular that 
 appealed to the imagination of the students. He had said in his 
 inaugural that he had no reforms to propose, and no radical changes 
 to make. There was not enough that was new to satisfy the curi- 
 osity of a new set of students. Dr. Chadbourne was a naturalist 
 or nothing. In this class of studies he had distinguished himself 
 as a student, as a professor here and elsewhere, and as a leader in 
 scientific expeditions, particularly to the northward. The natural 
 sciences had been decidedly the leading study in the College during 
 the first third of the century. Mark Hopkins had fairly brought 
 the philosophical studies into the first place during the second third 
 of that century, and now there was an inviting opportunity, if Chad- 
 bourne had chosen to embrace it and to heed it, to bring back these 
 branches into their former predominance, with the aid of Professors 
 Tenney and Remsen and others, since metaphysics and ethics were 
 relatively declining in the now aging hands of Hopkins. But the 
 opportunity was not embraced, and was lost in favor of another set 
 of studies entirely, as we shall see more fully by and by. Chad-- 
 bourne now professed to have lost interest in the pursuits of his 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 681 
 
 youth in which he was thoroughly proficient, and in which coad- 
 jutors stood by able to give him an unquestioned lead and triumph. 
 He professed to have been weaned from these studies in behalf of 
 those in which he had feebly tried his hand at Madison ; namely, 
 the metaphysics and theologies. Mark Hopkins was still too strong 
 to yield anything of much account in those realms of his own win- 
 ning, and the new president contented himself for the present in 
 teaching natural theology, in which he also published a book of 
 very considerable merit. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of exhibiting to the students and to the public 
 his own broadest side, and the broad aspect of all his previous life, 
 when he became president in succession to a man much more dis- 
 tinguished than himself, he rather presented himself as in a state 
 of transition from what was distinctively his own into something 
 of which he was not yet in full possession. True, he had now a 
 coveted place, but he had not yet an assured position in it. He 
 made no novel appeal to the scholarly instincts of anybody. He 
 did not even propose to himself to enlarge the horizon of the Col- 
 lege in any striking way in accordance with the scientific tenden- 
 cies then strongly felt in most of the institutions round about. 
 On the contrary, he indulged with his intimates, and more or less 
 in his classes, in a line of college talk much more connected with 
 the past than with the bursting present and the hopeful future. 
 He was fond of saying (and he said it in an interesting way), that 
 he himself could teach all the branches usually taught in a New 
 England college ; that he had taught in nearly all of them already, 
 and that he was confident that he could succeed in teaching eco- 
 nomics and politics, then newly coming forward as prominent studies 
 in some of the colleges, although he had not tried his hand in these. 
 Just as all the college studies were in an opening process of spe- 
 cialization, this was not helpful nor stimulating talk to teachers 
 or students. It was an anachronism to talk thus. It was self-flat- 
 tery in relation to the speaker, and bad policy in relation to the 
 hearers. The promises of the new college administration were " in 
 their budding sere" There was looking backward in plenty, but no 
 blazing torch thrust forward by the president. There was not 
 enough of new proposed in any direction to keep up his own inter- 
 est as an experimenter in college education. True enough, he did 
 not interfere in the least degree with the experiments and com- 
 parisons entered upon by the enthusiastic young teachers in the 
 faculty around him. At this point his conduct throughout was 
 admirable. He deemed himself the head of a body of colleagues, 
 
682 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 whose rights to and in their places were as substantive as his own. 
 He was ready with his counsel for each and all his associates, when- 
 ever it was solicited by them ; but it was never protruded unasked, 
 as if from a stool or throne. Every man had his liberty of choice 
 and action in his own department. Every man's self-respect as an 
 integral part of the college was respected by him. This is great 
 praise. This is a college president's chiefest merit. Several de- 
 partments of college instruction, accordingly, were amplified and 
 solidified during the term of Chadbourne's presidency, even while 
 he himself was growing restless and discontented, and his own hold 
 on the College was loosening. 
 
 President Hopkins at the inauguration of his successor had 
 pointedly called the latter's attention to the distinction between 
 college authority and college influence, affirming that he would 
 stand in constant need of both of these. As term after term and 
 year after year wore away, Dr. Chadbourne perceived clearly enough 
 that he was not gaining in power of influence either official or per- 
 sonal over the body of students. He did not attempt to deceive 
 himself on this point, as many another man would have done under 
 these circumstances ; he was too clear-minded and honest-hearted 
 for that. He knew as well as any man the immense practical dif- 
 ference between the truth and what is only apparently and super- 
 ficially the truth, and he talked these points over frankly and 
 repeatedly with Professor Perry, the oldest in service and the free- 
 est in expression of his faculty. He seemed to have complete con- 
 fidence in him. as a personal friend, and as a colleague on whom 
 reliance could be had in all exigencies. One such conversation he 
 brought to a close in these words of much emphasis, " You are con- 
 tented and lam not, AND THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE ! " This was, indeed, 
 one great difference between the two men. One consequence of this 
 difference was that the professor's college influence and enjoyment, 
 without any special authority whatever, was steadily increasing year 
 by year, while the president's authority, technically ample at all 
 points, was not accompanied by a corresponding influence. Many 
 a president would have thrown the blame of a contrast like this 
 upon the professor himself. But Chadbourne did not. Here was 
 a second great merit. He showed no suspicion nor jealousy toward 
 a colleague who was getting on in his college work much better than 
 he himself was getting on. And he magnanimously referred this 
 greater success to one of its chief causes, namely, to an entire con- 
 tent in the one case with the conditions of work just as it was. 
 
 As Dr. Chadbourne's absences from College increased in number 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 683 
 
 and duration in his last two or three years of incumbency, he always 
 left the College in the hands of Professor Perry, sometimes telling 
 him that he was to be away and passing over the supervision with a 
 friendly grasp of the hand, and quite as often, perhaps, saying noth- 
 ing about it, presuming that Perry's presiding in the faculty meet- 
 ings as the oldest professor in service would carry along with it the 
 needful care at all points. When Chadbourne's successor in the 
 presidency met the faculty for the first time, Professor Fernald, an 
 unexceptionable witness, volunteered this bit of information to the 
 new official: " We have always thought that the College was more 
 quiet while Dr. Chadbourne was away from town than when he was 
 present." About two years before the actual resignation of his 
 place, there occurred a quasi rebellion in the Sophomore class, from 
 certain trivial causes not now worthy of recall, the expression of 
 which was a refusal to attend college exercises on the part of the 
 entire class. In the course of handling the business, the president 
 came to Perry, and desired him to visit the Sophomores, who roomed 
 in the West College, and to say to them as individuals, that unless 
 they attended a specified exercise impending, they would be excluded 
 from their rooms, by force if necessary. As Perry had had no con- 
 nection of any kind with their foolish movement, and had the keen- 
 est sense of its folly, he not only executed his commission to these 
 men in good set terms, but also he reasoned it out with them, like a 
 father. Very shortly after a committee of the class waited on the 
 president, and told him they were ready to make their submission to 
 Professor Perry. Without knowing what had been said or done, the 
 latter saw the entire class approaching his house. He had barely 
 time to snatch his memorandum-book, containing a list of their 
 names, when they drew up in front of his piazza to meet him. There 
 was no time for parley nor solemnities. He assumed that they had 
 come to reknit their boyishly snapped connections. There was no 
 propriety in his meeting them with a club in his hand. Accordingly, 
 he said to them pleasantly : " / am glad to see you. I did not ex- 
 pect you so soon, nor in such large numbers." Then, taking out his 
 class-list, saying that he should take for granted that each one re- 
 sponding " present " thereby resumed his place and duty in the Col- 
 lege, the roll was called, the response unanimously made, and the 
 class withdrew, not without some signs of hilarity. The only criti- 
 cism openly made by the president on the conduct of the professor, 
 during nine years of intimate association, fell in the next faculty 
 meeting, when he remarked with some acerbity that the matter was 
 too jocosely handled. It was noticeable, though, that neither he nor 
 
684 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 any other member of the faculty practically suggested any way in 
 which it could have been differently handled or with better results. 
 
 Consequences, unpleasant to President Chadbourne, followed this 
 little ripple of a rebellion, largely as a result of references which he 
 himself made to it at an alumni dinner at Cleveland, references 
 that proved displeasing to the trustees and alumni present, and on 
 their publication to other trustees and alumni. Previously to this, 
 Chadbourne had gone into manufacturing in a small way at a fall in 
 the Green River on Water Street. Indeed, he had been dabbling in 
 local stocks and factories for ten years before he became president. 
 As an agent for the Arnold Brothers in North Adams, he had pur- 
 chased the fine water privilege on the Hoosac Eiver at the railroad 
 station, and took stock in the cotton-mill built there. About the 
 time he became president he purchased additional stock, and became 
 the treasurer there. These functions were so actually and obviously 
 incompatible with his duties as president of the College, that he soon 
 resigned the treasurership ; while the purchase-money for this stock, 
 which he borrowed, remained an item in his insolvency at the time 
 of his death. About the time of this resignation of the treasurership 
 of the large cotton-mill on the Hoosac, Dr. Hopkins was desirous to 
 find a place in local business for his youngest son, Mark Hopkins, Jr. 
 Chadbourne had then a reputation for business capacity of all sorts, 
 and a self-estimation of his own ability along these lines, altogether 
 exaggerated beyond the real facts in the case. Largely at Dr. Hop- 
 kins's instance a joint-stock company was formed to build and run a 
 mill on Green Kiver for some subordinate branches in the cotton man- 
 ufacture. It was styled " Loup, Hopkins & Co." The stockholders 
 were Mark Hopkins, Paul Chadbourne, Keyes Danforth, and a young 
 man from the large mill on the Hoosac, who was to be the manager. 
 The new mill promised to be profitable. Chadbourne was proud of 
 the combined designation of college president and cotton manufac- 
 turer. At the Cleveland meeting just referred to, the president, 
 probably in pleasantry, contrasted the running of a cotton-mill with 
 the running of a college to the disadvantage of the latter function, 
 adding with considerable emphasis, " A cotton-mill never rebels ! " 
 
 This extremely injudicious reference, under all the circumstances, 
 and the wide publicity given to it, and the hostile criticism excited 
 by it, brought matters to a head so far as the action of the trustees 
 toward Chadbourne was concerned. There had been a quiet move- 
 ment in 1879 to oust Chadbourne, which became known to some of 
 the trustees, who assumed to say to those having it in charge, that 
 the trustees themselves would take such decisive action as would 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 685 
 
 bring about the resignation in 1880, certainly in 1881. Chadbourne 
 already knew he had lost whatever confidence he had had of students 
 and of faculty and of trustees ; and it was supposed by those best 
 entitled to know, that Judge Dewey of Worcester was the agent of 
 the trustees in inducing the president to agree to resign in 1880, to 
 take effect at Commencement in 1881. Garfield's political campaign 
 for the presidency fell in the fall of 1880. Those not in the secret 
 were surprised, that the president of the College should be away 
 from his post during much if not most of that fall term ; that he 
 should be making stump speeches at the West, and particularly in 
 Ohio ; and their surprise was not abated when the bullet of Garfield's 
 assassin brought the private statement from Chadbourne that Gar- 
 field had specifically promised to him the United States mission to 
 Copenhagen. He had visited that capital many years before and had 
 been highly honored there, as a naturalist and traveller ; the appoint- 
 ment would have been highly appropriate in any case, as Garfield 
 was a graduate of the College, and Chadbourne its present president ; 
 and the form of the honor was the result of an understanding be- 
 tween the two men in connection with campaign services rendered in 
 the autumn. Garfield was already on his way to attend the Com- 
 mencement here of 1881, when his predestined fate confronted him ; 
 and while its announcement in Williamstown fell as a personal be- 
 reavement more heavily on Dr. Hopkins than on Dr. Chadbourne, it 
 was to the latter a crushing blow on his immediate and future pros- 
 pects. His college career was over. He had no home. He had no 
 apparent means of livelihood. He did not know which way to turn. 
 That Commencement was a memorable one in the history of the 
 College. The first impulse of the officials when the appalling news 
 from Washington reached them was to forego all the public cere- 
 monies of the week. But the graduating class, to whom such cere- 
 monies come but once in a lifetime, were by no means inclined to 
 surrender them, and there was no solid reason why they should. 
 The annual alumni meeting on Tuesday sent through their secre- 
 tary a feeling telegram to the White House, which was pathetically 
 responded to through Colonel Rockwell, a classmate and companion 
 of the suffering President. Though the atmosphere was of course 
 depressing, the exercises of Wednesday, graduating day, the last at 
 which Dr. Chadbourne presided, passed off much as usual. He was 
 low in spirits throughout the week ; and, calling on the writer for 
 the final good-by, he said: "My presidency here seems now way 
 back in the past, as much so as my work in Madison does, almost as 
 much as anything in my past life, cut off sharp like the weaver's 
 
686 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 thread." The faculty were a body of able and independent men, 
 who, as soon as it was generally known in the summer of 1880 that 
 he was to leave the College at the end of the following year, were 
 desirous to transmit to him and have put on record their sense of his 
 courtesy to them and fair-mindedness in general. Professor Perry was 
 requested by his colleagues to draft such a paper, which he consented 
 to do on condition that it might be substantive and not merely for- 
 mal in its expressions. In fact, his estimates of the president were 
 more favorable than those of most of his colleagues, mainly because 
 he knew him more thoroughly and had learned to look beyond his 
 obvious shortcomings. Llewellyn Pratt of the class of 1852 was at 
 that time the professor of the best literary taste in College, and he 
 had a good insight into character. Perry was his college classmate, 
 and the two were always fast friends. Pratt objected to two or 
 three phrases in the first draft of the Chadbourne paper as too com- 
 plimentary 'to be truthful ; and it was then written over anew so as 
 to meet his objections and receive his signature. "When this was 
 presented to Professor Dodd, the veteran of the circle, a man 
 notably conscientious in all his criticisms, he still objected to a 
 single expression as too nattering to his old classmate of 1848. No 
 paper was to be handed in unless it carried the names of all the 
 members of the faculty ; and no paper was to be handed in unless 
 certain qualities of the president were honestly and emphatically 
 commended. In this dilemma, Perry wrote his paper for the third 
 time, and thus secured Dodd's name as a trophy and a proof of his 
 magnanimity also, and all the rest in due order of succession. After 
 preamble the professors say : 
 
 We heartily unite in expressing to you our deep personal regret that you 
 propose to take this step ; second, our sense of the loss which the college will 
 sustain thereby in the most important of its varied relations ; third, their confi- 
 dence in you as a Christian man, as a conscientious citizen and a college admin- 
 istrator ; fourth, their sense of the value to them and to the college of the 
 almost perfect harmony that has uniformly subsisted between you and them ; 
 fifth, their gratitude for the independence allowed them in their respective 
 departments and the unquestioned support rendered to them whenever it has 
 been needed ; and sixth, their cordial good will and sincere hopes for your con- 
 tinued success in those paths of activity along which you propose to walk in the 
 future. 
 
 The president's reply to these words of the professors was equally 
 cordial in its recognition of the pleasant relations sustained and the 
 honest work done by all for the common cause. Both pieces of 
 writing are on permanent record in the book of the faculty. The 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 687 
 
 president's reply is dated Aug. 23, 1880. Its main paragraph is 
 here quoted verbatim : 
 
 It would be improper for me to give all the reasons for my resigning. The 
 time may never come when it will be wise to give them all. Enough reasons 
 lie upon the surface to justify the step. Nine years of presidency during which 
 the college has made constant advances enables me to leave with honor to my- 
 self, and with a good degree of assurance that the college can continue to pros- 
 per under wise and efficient management. The loss of a large amount of money 
 during my administration, by entrusting my business to others, makes it neces- 
 sary for me to care for the interests of my family. A permanent place involv- 
 ing much less labor and responsibility than a college presidency is ready for me 
 at a yearly salary of $10,000 ; so that, while in many respects my present position 
 is the most desirable of any that I could fill, I feel that the indications are plain 
 that I should leave the college. But in doing so, I beg to assure the present 
 Faculty that they have my warmest thanks for the past and my best wishes for 
 the future. 
 
 Whoever reads the above lines with care, and also between the 
 lines, will be able to see what kind of a man Paul A. Chadbourne 
 was pretty nearly. He was transparent, over-sanguine, fickle-minded, 
 gifted, versatile, superficial, commonly judging more truthfully those 
 about him than himself, trustful and worthy of trust. He was mis- 
 taken when he imagined that those about him did not know substan- 
 tially all the reasons that led him to resign. They knew them in 
 fact better than he knew them himself. His reference to the un- 
 known and perhaps never-to-be-revealed element was to the intolera- 
 ble relations between himself and Dr. Mark Hopkins. He was 
 mistaken too when he assumed and asserted that the College had 
 made " constant advances " during the nine years of his presidency. 
 It had not. Neither in numbers, nor in moral power, nor in public 
 reputation had it made such " advances," speaking generally. He 
 was also mistaken in affirming that his pecuniary losses came by 
 " entrusting my business to others." It was rather the truth that 
 his partners, Hopkins and Danforth, lost more money than he did 
 by entrusting their business to him. The president of a college 
 has no business to have any such business as the practical running 
 of a cotton-mill. Chadbourne's short-lived reputation as possessing 
 extraordinary business capacity was illusory as much to himself as 
 to others, and cost himself and others first and last a good deal of 
 money. The financial panic of 1873, which really continued till the 
 resumption of specie payments in 1879, was probably the main 
 reason of the failure of the cotton-mill, and that failure was cer- 
 tainly the cause of much and lasting bitterness in several of the 
 leading families in Williainstown. 
 
688 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 If it were true, as it doubtless was, that " a permanent place in- 
 volving much less labor and responsibility than a college presidency " 
 was ready for Dr. Chadbourne when this letter was written in Au- 
 gust, 1880, "at a yearly salary of $10,000," it would seem to be a pity 
 that he did not accept it at once and leave Williams a year before 
 he did ; for the place was not " ready " for him in 1881, although he 
 did some work in the course of that year for the New York Life 
 Insurance Company, which had made him the " permanent " offer. 
 An official of that company chanced to tell the present writer some 
 time afterward, that Chadbourne's transient work in writing for 
 them had done the company no good, though he had been liberally 
 paid for it. Besides, as we have already seen, he had in the mean- 
 time been deflected into politics, and suffered therefrom a harrowing 
 disappointment. Though he was paid his full salary to the last 
 cent, his last year in college was a pitiable dwindling out at every 
 point ; and his last baccalaureate sermon, that of 1881, was but a 
 shabby rehash of an old discourse on the Parable of the Sower, 
 which he had preached before in Williamstown a half-dozen times. 
 This was but in accordance with a habit he had of taking pains to 
 make a striking introduction to his sermons, and then fall down to 
 medium or below it in the body of them. His best discourse was 
 the funeral sermon on Albert Hopkins, and that is, of all his writ- 
 ings, the piece most likely to survive his generation. He usually 
 wrote in great speed, and prided himself on the quickness with 
 which he could produce even an important paper. A curious exam- 
 ple of this occurred in connection with one of his baccalaureates, a 
 copy of which he sent to the Spring field Republican to be printed on 
 Monday after its delivery. Through some mistake in the printing- 
 office, the sermon appeared on Saturday instead of Monday. One 
 of his professors, seeing the printed paper as soon as it arrived in 
 Williamstown, and meeting him shortly after on the street, con- 
 gratulated him on the extra promptness of its coming out. He was 
 confused for an instant, and angry, then cried out, " I'll fix it ! Pll 
 write a new sermon ! " He did so. The same professor watched its 
 delivery the next day line by line. It was fair and passable ; but it 
 was not equal to one of the usual baccalaureates of Mark Hopkins ! 
 
 In the failure of any proper and profitable work to fall into his 
 hands in 1881, he took up again for a short time the presidency of 
 the State Agricultural College at Amherst ; and later in the season 
 he came back to Williamstown to see whether his political confreres 
 would send him for the winter to the lower house of the State 
 Legislature at Boston. At this point he met with a humiliating 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 689 
 
 rebuff. The late James Waterman, long the practical leader of the 
 ^Republican party in town, brusquely told him that they had nothing 
 for him, that he had had already more than his share of the political 
 honors in being sent two years in succession to the Senate of Massa- 
 chusetts. The local curtain falls on a disappointed man. John F. 
 Arnold of North Adams, a prominent manufacturer there, for some 
 time a leading partner of Chadbourne in the cotton business, said of 
 him, some years before this, " He wants all the profit and all the 
 honor all the time." He had cherished all these years an astonish- 
 ing overestimate of his political prominence and prospects. While 
 he was still carrying the presidency and the mill properties and 
 several other enterprises, he even made some movements toward 
 being nominated a member of Congress from the Berkshire district; 
 and, what no intelligent person except on ear-witness would credit, 
 he actually said of Henry L. Dawes, " Dawes got me into my present 
 place [the presidency], in order to keep me out of his way! " 
 
 The average judgments of Dr. Chadbourne passed by his col- 
 leagues in the faculty were more favorable than those of the stu- 
 dents and those of the citizens. An observant graduate of the year 
 1881 wrote of him a dozen years later as follows : 
 
 I think Dr. Chadbourne hardly got his due ; but if, as I hope, he is now 
 serenely botanizing in the Elysian Fields and making up for his misdirected life 
 on earth, the old gentleman will never know the difference ! 
 
 A very special interest attaches to the following sweet and simple 
 verses which fell from the pen of Dr. Chadbourne a little before 
 the close of his life, which came at length Feb. 23, 1883. Dr. 
 L. D. Woodbridge of the class of 1872 was in constant medical 
 attendance upon him for two weeks before he died, and spoke 
 warmly of his masterful human victory over the King of Terrors. 
 
 THE WAITING SAVIOUR. 
 (Sol. Song v. 2; Rev. iii. 20.) 
 
 In the silent hours of darkness, 
 When the world is hushed and still, 
 Comes the Saviour, gently knocking, 
 Till His locks the dew-drops fill. 
 
 Listen, oh, my soul, with wonder, 
 That this Saviour comes to thee, 
 Ever knocking, ever waiting, 
 Waiting what thy will shall be. 
 
 2T 
 
690 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Oh, for grace to listen to Him ! 
 Oh, for room within my heart ! 
 Oh, for love to bid Him enter ! 
 Enter never to depart. 
 
 Come and enter, precious Saviour, 
 Come, dear Father, with the Son, 
 Come, Thou ever loving Spirit, 
 Come, Thou Holy Three in One ! 
 
 Come according to Thy promise, 
 Come to calm this troubled breast, 
 Come to cheer this earthly journey, 
 Come and take me home to rest. 
 
 More than once in the course of the foregoing pages occasion has 
 been taken to .notice that, during the first third of the college cen- 
 tury, under impulses communicated by Professor Silliman of Yale 
 and by Amos Eaton of the Williams class of 1799, the natural 
 sciences held here the predominant place in the college curriculum, 
 owing chiefly to the remarkable influence exerted on the spot by 
 Professor Chester Dewey. These sciences, such as chemistry and 
 botany, have their basis in observation. It has been noticed also, 
 that, during the second third of the century, say from 1833 to 1866, 
 the same leading place was held even more firmly by the philo- 
 sophical sciences, such as metaphysics and ethics, under the con- 
 summate skill of Mark Hopkins. These sciences rest back for 
 their basis upon introspection. It remains now to notice, since it is 
 impossible to characterize correctly the last third of the century 
 without calling specific attention to it, that a corresponding promi- 
 nence was then acquired and maintained by the political sciences, 
 such as economics and politics, both of which bear peculiar rela- 
 tions to history. 
 
 Professor Colby of Dartmouth College has rendered a signal ser- 
 vice to all the colleges of the country by publishing in 1896 the re- 
 sults of an original and painstaking investigation into the time and 
 circumstances under which the older colleges introduced and con- 
 tinued the legal and political and economical studies as a part of 
 their public instruction. Dartmouth was relatively early, if not the 
 earliest, to combine economics with politics in the same department, 
 and was also extremely fortunate in the very able and distinguished 
 men who in succession taught in it, namely, Roswell Shurtleff 
 (1828-38), Charles B. Haddock (1838-54), Clement Long (1854-61), 
 Samuel G. Brown (1861-67), Daniel J. Noyes (1867-83). Political 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 691 
 
 economy, distinctively such and almost uniformly also, as helping 
 to denominate the department of instruction, was instituted at Wil- 
 liam and Mary in 1807 ; Harvard in 1820 ; Yale in 1824 ; Columbia 
 in 1827 ; Dartmouth in 1828 ; Princeton in 1830 ; and Williams in 
 1835. This nearly synchronous introduction of political economy 
 as a branch of study in the northern colleges was doubtless much 
 facilitated by the publication in Boston of an English translation of 
 Leon Say's " Political Economy " in 1821 ; which presents the subject 
 in general in a clear and attractive form, as indeed with many 
 diversities the French economists have usually presented it. 
 
 So far as Williams is concerned, Joseph Alden, a graduate of 
 Union in 1828, was chosen in August, 1835, Professor of Rhetoric, 
 Political Economy, and History. He held this chair with honor for 
 seventeen years ; and continued a college teacher and president in 
 different institutions throughout a long life, ending it in Albany as 
 president of the New York Normal College. Dr. Alden was an able 
 and successful man, but for some reasons was never popular with his 
 classes at Williams, probably because in part he stood in many re- 
 spects in strong contrast with Mark Hopkins. Usually, however, 
 there were one or two or more students in each class who found in 
 him a stimulating teacher, and whom in turn he treated as favorite 
 pupils. For one example, there was mutual admiration between him 
 and David A. Wells of the class of 1847. It has never transpired 
 if the teacher influenced the pupil much in economy, in which the 
 latter distinguished himself greatly in his later years, but it is a 
 matter of record, or rather of personal transmission, that the one did 
 influence the other largely in rhetoric. " Wells, whenever you write 
 anything that you think is specially fine, strike it out ! " For a 
 second example (and they might easily be multiplied), Dr. Alden 
 imparted a strong and lasting impulse as a teacher to Arthur L. 
 Perry of the class of 1852, who was destined to become, his imme- 
 diate successor at Williams. This time the influence was felt along 
 the line of politics. Alden gave some thoroughly good lectures on 
 the origin of the Constitution of the United States, and specially 
 on the individuals most concerned in the construction and early ad- 
 ministration of that instrument, as Hamilton and Jefferson and 
 Madison. The first of these great characters then interested the 
 boy for the first time ; the opportunity of an extended conversation 
 with Mrs. Hamilton, who survived her husband just fifty years, dur- 
 ing the following year at Washington, naturally deepened his en- 
 thusiasm ; and this has never been suffered to slumber long at a time 
 in the long interval since. 
 
692 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Dr. Alden was a consistent Jeffersonian Democrat all his life. His 
 instructions in politics to the young men here, though too little re- 
 garded by them, were sound and wholesome. Their fundamental 
 principle was and remains, Equality of Rights to all citizens under 
 the Law: no special Privileges to the few at the expense of the 
 Many. This principle cuts up what is called " protectionism " by the 
 roots, leaving no vestige. Of course, Dr. Alden was what is called 
 a free trader. He then used as a text-book Wayland's " Elements 
 of Political Economy." Way land was a free trader too, because 
 he was a clear thinker and a righteous man. Protectionism, in every 
 degree of it and in every manifestation of it, is contrary to common 
 sense and common decency and common morality. It contravenes 
 the letter and spirit of the Ten Commandments, as well as the spirit 
 and letter of the Two Commandments of the New Testament. Dr. 
 Alden did not make much of political economy in his classes, nor 
 of history either, but he made a beginning. He prepared the way 
 for another, who was much more interested in all these things than 
 he was, was willing to give to them a more radical and comprehen- 
 sive study, and was able after a little to gain the ear of the College 
 for them, and even that of the public also. Dr. Alden had married 
 into the Livingston family of New York, proprietors of the Living- 
 ston Manor on the banks of the Hudson, and so had corne into inti- 
 mate relations with several statesmen and divines connected with 
 that distinguished family. He was a personal friend of Governor 
 William L. Marcy of New York, twice the leading member of a 
 President's Cabinet at Washington. In consequence of all this, Dr. 
 Alden had an advantage in point of general intelligence and culture 
 not possessed by any of his colleagues at Williams. Scarcely, how- 
 ever, if at all, did this superficial advantage aid him in gaining and 
 holding a firm footing in the College. He lacked some of those 
 qualities more essential to the highest success of a college teacher 
 than the polish that comes from travel and intercourse with what is 
 known as the best society. He resigned his professorship in 1852, 
 and it remained practically vacant for a year. 
 
 In the meantime, the boy whom he had stimulated by his lectures 
 on the founders of the republic, who had been stimulated more 
 roundly and deeply by the studies of Mark Hopkins, who had in- 
 herited from Scotch-Irish ancestors an analytical mind never satis- 
 fied till it had reached the very bottom of questions, and who had 
 given to himself in private a full year's study of Mill's " Logic " while 
 in college, thus familiarizing himself with the inductive reasoning, 
 was asked to take the chair vacated by Dr. Alden. Although he 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 693 
 
 knew nothing about it at the time, there was, beyond question, a tie 
 of connection between this painstaking study of Mill and his call to 
 the professorship ; for President Hopkins repeatedly said to him 
 years afterward, " / picked you out for a professor in your Junior 
 year, at that first public debate between the two literary societies" 
 Mill's book was nearly finished when that debate took place in 
 November, 1850 ; and it is more than likely that that Junior's pre- 
 sentation of his side of the subject was clarified and stiffened by the 
 logical theory and practice. The professorship thus reached in 1853 
 was denominated History and Political Economy. The rhetoric of 
 Dr. Alden's former department devolved on John Bascom two years 
 later. 
 
 Every young professor has his trade to learn, makes his inevitable 
 mistakes, and exposes himself to the initial ridicule. In this case 
 there was a will and a way. To render something of one's own of 
 considerable consequence in point of substance, and in point of 
 form interesting to the mind of students, is the sine qua non of suc- 
 cess. Students invariably distinguish sharply between substance 
 and form. Leave them alone all the year round to tell the differ- 
 ence between realities and shams. They know a man when they see 
 him. They come to trust a teacher implicitly who trusts them by 
 admitting his present ignorance through obvious and earnest efforts 
 to gain the knowledge that he may impart it to them. Perry had no 
 difficulties of any account with his early classes. He was young 
 and crude. So were they. He never pretended to understand any- 
 thing that he did not understand, nor professed to be satisfied with 
 any analysis or induction of the text-book that did not meet the 
 criteria of his own mind and training. He talked over the processes 
 with his classes even more than the conclusions. So far as it was 
 possible, he made it seem to them that he and they were in one boat 
 together, voyaging and exploring. He studied every lesson faithfully 
 in reference to that particular recitation and discussion. He was 
 reading history diligently with reference to ulterior ends, economi- 
 cal and political; but so far as it was taught in those years from a 
 text-book, it was taught almost solely to enlarge the horizon of the 
 pupils geographically and intellectually. The main emphasis was 
 put on English and American history. 
 
 In the meantime, with class after class, further on in the course, 
 the questions were raised and tentatively answered in mutual dis- 
 cussion year after year. What is political economy ? Within what 
 precise field do its inquiries lie ? What is a science ? How are 
 economics differentiated from politics ? What is the motive to 
 
694 \VTLLI AMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 every trade ? What is the motive for obedience to government ? 
 These and similar vital questions, and the subordinate questions im- 
 plied in them, with any helps presented by the current text-books, 
 were familiarly discussed day after day, and illustrated by historical 
 examples at home or abroad. Objections were always in order from 
 any member of the class, and were duly weighed. No doctrine, his- 
 torical or other, was ever thrust down the throat of any pupil. Fre- 
 quently an objection raised was thrown over to volunteers in the 
 class to confute or confirm. The only condition imposed on desk 
 or seats was the universal one, "play fair." Recitation hours con- 
 ducted in this way on the pregnant topics ever arising within such a 
 department held up the interest alike of desk and seats. The depart- 
 ment as such slowly but steadily rose in the estimation of the students. 
 After ten or eleven years of such work as has now been described, 
 it appeared to the teacher that he might properly essay a text-book 
 of his own on the economical branch of his department. The 
 endeavor became known to his classes while it was still going on, 
 and their interest in it was almost equal to his own. The "Elements 
 of Political Economy " was published by the Scribners in 1865. The 
 book had several new features. (1) Probably the most transform- 
 ing one was the dropping from the start throughout of the technical 
 term " Wealth," which all writers had found undefinable and conse- 
 quently grossly confusing, and the substitution therefor of the term 
 " Valuables," which is easily defined in a sense of its own, and yields 
 perfectly to the analysis of three kinds, namely, Material Commodi- 
 ties, Personal Services, Commercial Credits. (2) The correspon- 
 dence of the three kinds of Valuables to the three grand divisions of 
 Time, namely, Commodities to the Past, Services to the Present, 
 Credits to the Future. (3) The sole subject of Political Economy is 
 Buying and Selling. (4) The impossibility of Buying without at 
 the same instant Selling, or Selling without Buying at the same 
 instant. (5) The sole motive and universal reward of Buying and 
 Selling is the mutual Gain accruing to each party ; without this no 
 trade would ever take place. (6) Trade is profitable in its inmost 
 nature ; and to forbid it or restrict it except in the clear interest of 
 public Health, or public Morals, or public Eevenue, is alike injustice 
 and impoverishment. (7) The laying down in terms and demon- 
 stration in logic of the universal principle, A market for Products 
 is products in Market. (8) Tariffs are Taxes. (9) Historical chap- 
 ters accompanying and illustrating the chapters establishing and 
 collating Economical Principles. (10) The Proof that Political 
 Economy is a Science in the strictest sense of that word. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 695 
 
 The reception accorded to this book by the colleges and by the pub- 
 lic generally and by the successive classes here who used it as a text- 
 book for twenty-five years has a significant bearing on the main 
 proposition now being illustrated. President Woolsey, who was 
 then teaching political economy in Yale, was kind enough to listen 
 to considerable portions of the manuscript before it was printed, and 
 then said, "Wayland is good, but much of it is milk for babes; 
 I shall introduce your book here as soon as it is published." After 
 using it a year or two, Dr. Woolsey wrote, "Your book interests 
 students more than any I have ever instructed from." Professor 
 Noyes shortly introduced the book in Dartmouth, President Miner 
 in Tufts, and their respective professors in Bowdoin, Trinity, Wes- 
 leyan, Union, and Princeton colleges, and Wooster and Brown, and 
 New York Universities, and in the course of a few years in many of 
 the State Universities both West and South such as Virginia and North 
 Carolina and Nebraska ; making in all perhaps thirty of the highest 
 grade institutions of learning in the country. It was a new thing 
 for the colleges to come to Williams in such numbers for guidance 
 and leadership in this way ; and it was a new thing for Williams to 
 issue a book which required new editions on the average each year 
 for eighteen years. Four editions of this first book were subse- 
 quently required. In 1877, at the instance of the publishers, a much 
 smaller book, entitled " Introduction to Political Economy," was 
 presented to the public, and passed through five ordinary editions, 
 besides a special edition printed in raised letters for the use of the 
 blind. In 1890 a new book of nearly the size of the first one, 
 entitled " Principles of Political Economy," was issued. In this more 
 space and care were given to a radical and comprehensive discussion 
 of the science of economics and much less to a history of its doc- 
 trines and their applications in legislation. Of this book, President 
 Cravath of Fisk University wrote : " The clear and masterful 
 manner refreshes and stimulates. It is worthy to be the crowning 
 triumph of a lifelong devotion to this noble science, whose practical 
 fruits are becoming richer and more abundant continually." And 
 the Southern Educator wrote also, "Perry's ' Principles' stands, by 
 all means, at the head, for its readableness and scientific accuracy 
 combined." 
 
 As bearing upon the quality of the instruction given and the 
 stimulus imparted in the economical and political lecture-room at 
 Williams, it is worth while to notice the testimony given to the first 
 and third of these books by two or three men, themselves employed 
 at the time in the very highest places of public administration. 
 
696 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the United States Treasury, the 
 man whom Lincoln (as he said), " brought from over the mountains 
 [Fort Wayne, Indiana] to handle the war finances of the Union," 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 You have made an exceedingly valuable contribution to the science of politi- 
 cal economy. I am not a little surprised that a college professor should have 
 written a book so intelligible to the common mind, and so eminently practical 
 and instructive. Accept my thanks for your kindness in sending me the book, 
 and my grateful acknowledgments as your fellow-citizen for the service you 
 have rendered the country. It is, in my judgment, the ablest and most valuable 
 work yet published upon the science of which it treats. I do not see where it 
 could be improved in matter, or style, or arrangement. 
 
 What was thought of the third book in the committee-room of the 
 Ways and Means of the 51st Congress may be seen in the subjoined 
 letter of the Hon. C. B. Breckin ridge, written on the official paper 
 of that Committee, dated March 31, 1891, and now printed from the 
 original for the first time. 
 
 PROF. A. L. PERRY, LL.D. 
 Williamstown, Mass. 
 
 Dear Sir : I am greatly obliged to you for the copy of " Principles of Political 
 Economy." It should have been acknowledged much sooner ; but the drudgery 
 of congressional work kept me until recently from giving it the careful reading 
 that I desired to give it, and which I find it so richly deserves. Sound princi- 
 ples of economics lie at the root of the comfort, liberty, and morals of a people ; 
 and we, rioting in the abundance of our natural endowments, have wandered far 
 and long from them. The activity and earnestness shown by our best writers 
 and leaders of thought to get to good ground is none too soon ; and your book is 
 certainly entitled to the highest rank among those directed to this end. I am 
 greatly pleased with your divisions and terms, while your illustrations drawn 
 from current events, combined with great clearness of statement, give the book 
 uncommon strength and interest. 
 
 It will be observed, that this letter of the distinguished congress- 
 man commends especially the scientific " divisions and terms " of the 
 Williams book, that is to say, its fundamental nomenclature, and 
 not any discussions of subordinate principles or local and transient 
 policies ; and the same is true (though not perhaps in the same 
 degree) of scores of other letters from similar sources. All three of 
 these Williams books are books on political economy as a science, 
 and not on any phase of transient politics whatsoever ; and that is 
 the reason why they have brought to the College and to their author 
 so much of reputation and distinction for so long a time, and why 
 the attacks upon them and the defences of them form an essential 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 697 
 
 part of the history of the College during the last third of the cen- 
 tury. These books brought out a radical view of credit, and con- 
 sequently of banking, that was relatively new and transforming. 
 They brought out also a view of the nature of buying and selling, 
 which makes protectionism (so-called) a contradiction in terms, as 
 well as a necessary impoverishment and an inescapable injustice. It 
 was not strange, accordingly, that certain officials of the United 
 States, feeling a thorough and intelligent sense of their own respon- 
 sibility to God and men, should have resorted to Williams College 
 for guidance and help in their management of financial affairs. In 
 the first administration of President Cleveland, when his first secre- 
 tary and bosom friend, Daniel Manning, grew sick unto death, he 
 indirectly invited Professor Perry to become Secretary of the National 
 Treasury. The professor's cordial relations with the President com- 
 menced while the latter was Governor of the State of New York. 
 John B. Thacher of the college class of 1869, and long Mayor of the 
 city of Albany, was the original medium of communication between 
 them. These pleasant relations have continued till the present 
 time. During the second administration of President Cleveland, 
 while it was in the thick of its portentous struggle to maintain the 
 gold standard of values as against the impending menace of a drop 
 to silver payments, and while John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, the 
 ablest and most efficient financier in the nation, was at the helm, an 
 official request from the Cabinet voiced to him by Secretary Morton, 
 was forwarded to Professor Perry by mail, for a short and sharp and 
 logical and popular demolition of the whole silver pretensions. 
 
 In 1883, at Commencement time, fell the first public protest 
 against the college teaching of Professor Perry on political econ- 
 omy, from any persons entitled to a respectful hearing. George H. 
 Ely, of the class of 1848, an ironmonger of Cleveland, who had been 
 very instrumental, with a few others of the same general craft, in 
 getting so-called protective tariff taxes upon forms of iron imported, 
 for the sole sake of enhancing the prices of his own wares at the 
 uncompensated cost of his countrymen, circulated among others, 
 like-minded, the subjoined petition to the trustees of the College. 
 There lies before the writer a contemporary record of the Com- 
 mittee of Ways and Means at Washington, before whom Ely et 
 alii had presented their demands that the whole people of the 
 United States should be taxed in order to hire them to make and 
 sell iron at a cost thereby artificially enhanced to every buyer, and 
 to whom they at once confessed and betrayed under the sharp ques- 
 tions of certain members of the Committee, that their sole motive in 
 
698 WILLlAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 urging these taxes on, was this selfish and abominable one. There 
 was not, therefore, any difference of opinion between these petition- 
 ers and the College as to the designed and actual effects of so-called 
 protective-tariff taxes. In fact, there never was any difference of 
 opinion at this point between any protectionists and free traders. 
 The difference of opinion, so far as there ever was any at all, lay at 
 the point, whether it were fair and right to rob the millions by law 
 for the sake of stealthily enriching a few hundreds. But let us now 
 hear these petitioners in full. 
 
 WILLIAMS-TOWN, July 3, 1883. 
 
 To the Honorable President and Trustees of Williams College : 
 
 The undersigned alumni and friends of the college respectfully beg leave to ask 
 your attention to a subject affecting, in no small degree, its permanent interests. 
 
 It is well known that the advocacy of free trade, in the instruction here in 
 political economy, has operated to the virtual commitment of the college to these 
 doctrines. Such commitment is regarded by a very large number of its friends 
 and alumni as most inexpedient, unwise, and unjust. It is true that our insti- 
 tution of learning is bound to sustain, establish, and teach truth throughout the 
 domain of morals and science. But absolute scientific truth cannot be predi- 
 cated of any question of social science or political economy. In this case there 
 is an entire absence of capacity or susceptibility of numerical application an 
 element essential in this case. It is a question of national policy only, and, 
 hence, has become naturally and necessarily a political question, and, for this 
 reason alone, it should have no advocate here. 
 
 We deprecate, therefore, without further suggestion, everything in the admin- 
 istration of the college which tends to place it in the position of advocate or 
 defender of any controverted politico-economic question. 
 
 For these reasons, and believing that thereby the usefulness of the college will 
 be increased and a just and necessary cause of the alienation of friends be happily 
 removed, we respectfully, but most earnestly, request that the college do refuse 
 to accept from any foreign government, or any foreign political or commercial 
 organization, any prize for proficiency in this department. 
 
 We sincerely deprecate such influence of a foreign organization in an Ameri- 
 can college as is suggested and implied by its acceptance of a prize from such a 
 source, and for such a purpose. We remain, gentlemen, most respectfully, 
 GEORGE H. ELY EDWARD H. FITCH G. W. HUBBELL 
 
 H. R. HATCH OLIVER G. BARTON JAS. S. KNOWLSON 
 
 CHAS. A. DEWEY PARKER HANDY T. P. HANDY 
 
 S. S. MELLEN J. B. PARSOXS J. LASELL 
 
 J. H. DOUGLASS HENRY M. HOYT 
 
 Of the fourteen names appended to this petition, purporting to be 
 " alumni and friends of the College," six were never to be found on 
 the triennial catalogue. If the language chosen had been " alumni 
 or friends of the College," simple truth would not have been violated 
 in the preamble, and the petition itself would not have been preju- 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 699 
 
 diced, as it was; but whether that mode of simple speech would 
 have been more in accordance with the usual methods of protection- 
 ists, need not now be considered. Eight of the signers were grad- 
 uates of the College ; and some of them certainly were excellent, 
 albeit mistaken and relatively obscure men. Nearly all if not quite 
 all of them had been members of a single secret society in College. 
 As soon as this petition had been sent to the press, action was taken 
 upon it in the city of Cleveland, the home of Mr. Ely, and a counter- 
 petition (as follows in full) was circulated there ; and it was said at 
 the time that every alumnus of the College then resident there (ex- 
 cepting of course Mr. Ely) appended to it his signature with the 
 date of his graduation. At any rate the list was headed by Harvey 
 Rice of the class of 1824, a classmate and lifelong intimate of Mark 
 Hopkins. Of him a full account has been given on some of the 
 preceding pages. 
 
 To the Honorable President and Trustees of Williams College : 
 
 We, the undersigned, graduates of Williams College, residing in Cleveland, 0., 
 without regard to party, predilections or political bias, desire to respectfully 
 submit to you this statement of our regard for Professor A. L. Perry as a teacher, 
 a scholar and a man eminently fitted for the position he fills in the Faculty of 
 Williams College. 
 
 As a teacher of political economy he has no superior in this country. Upon 
 all questions pertaining to this important science he invites the freest discussion 
 in his class-room, and insists upon a broad research and reading by his students 
 of all the eminent writers upon this subject, so that these discussions in the 
 class-room may be instructive and interesting. 
 
 We do not "deprecate the fact " that he takes a stand and has decided views 
 upon one of the great questions of this science. Without expressing our views 
 upon this subject of free trade or protection, we do not "deem it inexpedient, 
 unjust, or unwise " that the majority of the young men of each class should go 
 out from his instruction also with decided views upon these questions. If they 
 are advocates or defenders of the weaker side they ought soon to discover their 
 error when they come to meet the question as educated men, if the stronger side 
 be strong enough to show them their error. If not, what harm that the right 
 should be taught them ? 
 
 If the Cobden Club, which has among its members in this country such men 
 as Charles Francis Adams, Cyrus W. Field, Stanley Matthews, Samuel J. Tilden, 
 Horace White and James A. Garfield, desires to offer a medal to the best student 
 in Political Economy at Williams or Yale, we do not think that the " usefulness " 
 of these colleges " would be impaired," nor do we see any reason why it should 
 lead to " the alienation " of their friends if the successful student should be a Free 
 Trader or a Protectionist, as he happened to be at Williams in the class of 1882. 
 For the purpose, then, of partially replying to a protest recently handed to the 
 honorable president and trustees of Williams College, and signed by some who 
 are not graduates, and being desirous of expressing our belief in the ability of 
 
700 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Professor Perry as a teacher, and of his success in his department we respectfully 
 submit the above. 
 
 HARVEY RICE, Class of 1824 H. J. HERRICK, Class of 1858 
 
 JARVIS M. ADAMS, Class of 1851 M. M. MOWER, Class of 1880 
 
 VIRGIL P. KLINE, Class of 1867 JOSEPH PERKINS, JR., Class of 1882 
 
 BUSHNELL WHITE, Class of 1836 JACOB B. PERKINS, Class of 1877 
 
 SAMUEL D. DODGE, Class of 1877 A. E. BUELL, Class of 1882 
 
 ROLLO OGDEN, Class of 1877 CHARLES E. BARR, Class of 1881 
 E. P. INGERSOLL, Class of 1882 
 
 Stunning as was the blow at George H. Ely, when every one of 
 his fellow-alumni in Cleveland immediately confronted his petition 
 with their own, there followed in his town a public manifestation in 
 opposition to his position as a protectionist, which seemed to his 
 fellow-citizens, if not to him, more deadly still. Tom L. Johnson, 
 personally engaged in the iron business in the same localities and 
 under the same conditions as was Ely, announced that protective- 
 tariff taxes, so-called, in behoof of the manufacture of iron were 
 wholly unnecessary, as well as monstrously unjust to the masses of 
 the people. Johnson continued this public contention as long as Ely 
 lived, and afterward was repeatedly elected a member of Congress 
 from the Cleveland district on the strength of it, and by means of 
 the consistent maintenance of it became a national statesman of large 
 proportions. It throws a sort of lurid light on a life otherwise 
 eminently respectable that the College necrology of 1894 has these 
 words on George H. Ely. " Early in the tariff discussion [of 1893] 
 he went to Washington to present the interests of iron industry. 
 While conducting this business he died of heart failure, Jan. 24, 
 1894." Of much more local interest was the way in which these 
 college petitions struck the newspapers of Berkshire County and 
 vicinity. The Springfield Republican, for one example, had the 
 following editorial even before the Cleveland petition had been 
 received. 
 
 The protest of several of the alumni and friends of Williams College against 
 the teaching of free trade at that institution derives most of its strength from 
 the honorable names which are attached to it. As a statement of truth it is 
 singularly weak, and if it became the basis of the policy of the institution it 
 would reduce the teaching of political economy to mere speculative abstractions. 
 They say truly that " absolute scientific truth cannot be predicated of any ques- 
 tion of social science or political economy." But when they add that " in this 
 case there is an entire absence of capacity or susceptibility of universal applica- 
 tion, an element essential in this case," we are puzzled to know what they 
 mean. If it is the principle of free trade which lacks " capacity or susceptibility 
 of universal application," and if this is " an element essential in this case," then 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 701 
 
 clearly many of the principles of exchange, currency, banking, and government 
 in its large sense fall under the same condemnation and would be thrown out of 
 the college class-room and text-book. But it would be above all things extraor- 
 dinary if in the United States, where absolute free trade prevails among 38 
 states and amid a continental nation, without precedent or parallel in magni- 
 tude, an American college should be muzzled on this subject, on the ground 
 that the principle has not yet acquired "universal application." 
 
 The claim that, because "free trade is naturally and necessarily a political 
 question," "for this reason alone it should have no advocate here" is another 
 most extraordinary doctrine to propound to a college concerned in the instruc- 
 tion of future citizens, and which has already furnished one President to the 
 United States. The proposition amputates one of the great purposes of the 
 college. There is no higher public concern than politics, and the idea that there 
 is a field of political economy and morals higher than politics or of which poli- 
 tics is a perversion and degradation is what manly scholars have been combat- 
 ing for a generation. "Political questions" are not questions on which the 
 colleges should keep silent. Rather they should illuminate them with the fullest 
 presentation of truth, and to this end there is increasing demand for instruction 
 in the subjects of government and political economy. The protest of these 
 gentlemen against the Cobden club prize is in a very narrow spirit and in 
 unfortunate ignorance of the purpose and mission of the Cobden club. While 
 that club has issued pamphlets on free trade in America, in fact its most impor- 
 tant publications have been upon the internal policy of Great Britain in regard 
 to land tenure and local taxation, and its researches upon these questions have 
 placed political economists throughout the world under obligation. 
 
 If the signers of this protest were to object that the teaching at Williams has 
 been too exclusively in favor of free trade, or that the instruction in political 
 economy is inadequate, they would place their criticism on debatable ground, 
 and could only be answered that the college would be pleased to endow more 
 agencies of instruction if it had the means. It will probably be the upshot of 
 the matter that means will be furnished for another lecturer perhaps in political 
 economy, but we trust the institution will never forsake the broad charter of 
 free instruction upon the themes of political economy and government which 
 it has always held for such a narrow policy of abstention and silence as is 
 advised by the signers of this protest. The missionary college owes its fame 
 to its catholicity of culture and of spirit, the world is its consecrated field, and 
 it is too late now to narrow its mission in any respect. 
 
 Franklin H. Giddings, now (1897) Professor of Sociology in the 
 Columbia University of New York, was then (1883) editor of the 
 Gazette, a South Berkshire newspaper of high character. His edito- 
 rial, which follows, while too favorable personally to the economist 
 at Williams, was written under some misapprehension of his method 
 of teaching, and under more misapprehension perhaps of the real 
 question at issue as between free traders and protectionists. It 
 was always borne in mind in the lecture-room at Williams, and 
 always borne in upon the minds of the students, that free trade is 
 
702 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the natural state of things, and wholly negative in its character. 
 Free trade does not compel anybody to trade, does not even rec- 
 ommend anybody to trade, says nothing about trade one way or 
 another, until some one else steps in with a look of authority be- 
 tween two parties about to trade to their own mutual advantage, 
 and says to them, " You shall not trade except on conditions agree- 
 able to me, even if I allow you to trade at all ! " Who is this third 
 party, who presumes to interfere violently with the natural ongoing 
 of things as God appointed them, and to destroy by a stroke the 
 legitimate gain of two persons ? Who is this man who sets himself 
 up to be wiser than God, and to have certain rights supreme over 
 the trial rights of his fellow-citizens ? How did he obtain the 
 authority to lord it thus over his fellow-men to their outward im- 
 poverishment, and to their inward sense of intolerable wrong? 
 This was always the bottom question in that lecture-room, and it 
 was always the radical question everywhere as between free traders 
 and protectionists. There was no opportunity for dogmatic teach- 
 ing, and no temptation to enter upon it. Free trade was not even a 
 postulate, still less was it a theory in any sense of that much-abused 
 word. It was a negative. The proving lay with the party of the 
 other part. Free trade seems to lie embedded in human nature, 
 and in the fundamental laws of the physical world, and therefore in 
 the wisdom and purpose of God ; and it is only when men attempt 
 to give ostensible and positive reasons for infringing it by means of 
 public law, when their real reasons for doing so are obvious out of 
 their own mouths and actions, that logic comes in play to show the 
 fallacy of the alleged reasons, and the obviousness of the real ones. 
 Never was there a fairer opportunity for the inductive process of 
 reasoning than in the number and simplicity and certainty of the 
 instances given in Benton's " Debates," and in the official records of 
 the Ways and Means Committee, to demonstrate the selfish motives 
 (utterly careless of the rights of others) of those who have practi- 
 cally gotten the protective-tariff taxes laid on. Out of their own 
 mouths and confessions were they judged in every instance. But 
 let us now hear Professor Giddings. 
 
 It is only a, few weeks since the protectionist guerillas, in and out of the 
 newspapers, were exercising themselves by a scattering fire upon Yale College 
 and its professor of political economy, W. G. Sumner. No blood was shed nor 
 any free trade gun silenced. Unsuccessful in that quarter, the skirmishers have 
 gone north and made a brave little raid on Williamstown. At the commence- 
 ment the other day a memorial signed by 14 inconsequential alumni, most of 
 whom were never heard of before, was presented to the trustees, objecting to 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 703 
 
 the "virtual commitment" of the college to free trade, and protesting against 
 the acceptance of a certain prize offered by the Cobden club of London for an 
 essay on the free trade question. 
 
 All this is aimed, of course, at Professor A. L. Perry, the most original stu- 
 dent of political economy this country has yet produced ; the one member of 
 the Williams faculty who besides its presidents, Hopkins, Chadbourne and 
 Carter, has been much known outside of Berkshire county ; the one man, not 
 excepting the presidents above named, who has made the institution known and 
 honored in Europe ; the scholar whom Macleod of the University of Cambridge 
 puts above all other American economists ; the one whom to confute, Bonamy 
 Price of the University of Oxford has put forth his best powers and failed. 
 
 There is little danger that these memorialists will accomplish much beyond 
 their own confusion. But the opportunity seems a good one to call attention to 
 what is perhaps a real mistake in American college teaching of political and 
 economic science. Is it not possible that the teaching is too dogmatic, too 
 authoritative ? The dogmatic method does not harmonize well with the modern 
 scientific spirit. 
 
 The simple truth, was shown to be such by every criterion of 
 truth applicable in such matters, that these men were trying to 
 feather their own nests out of the stolen plumage of other birds, and 
 at the same moment were accusing the disinterested men who stood 
 up against the wrong, and in behalf of the wronged, of being de- 
 luded by a theory and of introducing the millennium into this wicked 
 world. Nothing is more respectable than a theory in its own place 
 and when well proven. But unluckily for these illogical protection- 
 ists, free trade is not a theory at all, while protectionism is nothing 
 but a theory, and a very bad theory at that because it is insuscepti- 
 ble of any proof, and issues in palpable injustice obvious to a child. 
 Conjoined with the charge of being theorists, the free traders were 
 assailed with, being " scholars in politics," as if care and diligence in 
 looking into the nature of trade and taxation, and clearness and 
 vigor in expressing the results of such research, ought at once to 
 disfranchise the inquisitive citizen of the republic, and subject him 
 to other pains and penalties at the instance, and under the pressure 
 of, the " business man in politics," that is to say, of the protection- 
 ists. To such absurd lengths was this doctrine urged, that one of 
 their own number, Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, felt obliged to 
 take up the cudgels in behalf of decency and science as follows : 
 
 I wish to put on record my emphatic opinion, that a college president or pro- 
 fessor has as much right to express his opinion on a question affecting the com- 
 munity as any man in the country. Not only has he the privilege, but the 
 community has the right to know what he thinks. The public should know 
 what the scholars think of what is going on. The republic cannot be run if this 
 is not so. 
 
704 WIILIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Just a little of this painstaking inquiry into the nature of things, 
 which Senator Hoar so admirably commends as essential to the on- 
 going of the republic, would have shown every one of the signers of 
 the Ely petition their own utter ignorance of the salient points of 
 the history of their country. The American Eevolution grew 
 directly out of the attempt of Great Britain to apply protectionism 
 to their liberty-loving colonists. The Constitution of the United 
 States and the legislation of the first Congress under it practically 
 established free trade both within and without the republic. When 
 England herself came at length to perceive the inherent losses and 
 wrongfulness of the delusion she had hugged so long, and made in 
 1846 the gigantic throw of her civil history and cast off the Corn 
 Laws forever, the United States (after a brief wandering in the 
 wilderness) was already farther advanced in the doctrine and prac- 
 tice of free trade than was England. Robert J. Walker, then 
 Secretary of the United States Treasury, made a report to Congress 
 advocating absolute free trade, which was republished in England 
 by order of the House of Commons, at the instance of Sir Eobert 
 Peel, in order to facilitate the abolition of the Corn Laws. England 
 was then more than willing to be taught by the advanced thought of 
 the United States. It was England that kept step to the music of 
 the free trade exemplified in the United States from 1846 to 1861. 
 Without any public discussion whatever, by those underhanded 
 methods so dear to the protectionist heart, while the black clouds 
 of civil war were breaking over the nation, representatives of 
 Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, by log-rolling with others like- 
 minded, foisted into the tax laws of the time restrictions and pro- 
 hibitions certain to diminish the revenue (the one thing needful) 
 and certain to enrich the few at the cost of the many. These stolen 
 marches on the people enabled the confederated protectionists to 
 entrench themselves in a plutocracy, from which they were, with 
 great difficulty, long afterward dislodged, but which they could not 
 possibly hold against the intelligence and fairness of the people. 
 Ignorance and craft succumb to light and righteousness in a free 
 country, or else, as Senator Hoar says, the freedom itself disappears. 
 
 Grotesque to the last degree seemed the drivel of the Ely petitioners 
 about the Cobden Club of England in the light of the fact that the 
 American Free Trade League was then at work with all its might 
 to disseminate throughout this country the thought and practice 
 which England and America had conjointly striven to effectuate 
 for so many years. Particularly was such a petition grotesque as 
 addressed to Williams College, in view of the prominent personnel 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 705 
 
 of the American Free Trade League. Who constituted that League 
 in the day of its vigor and moral influence ? Its first president was 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, a graduate of Williams College, the 
 most distinguished name on the triennial catalogue. Its second 
 president was DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, a graduate of Williams Col- 
 lege, the next most distinguished name on the triennial catalogue. 
 Its third and last president was DAVID AMES WELLS, a graduate of 
 Williams College, a less distinguished name indeed than that of his 
 two predecessors, and yet the name of a man who, in his prime, was 
 almost as well known throughout the United States and western 
 Europe as were they. The memories of these three men are worthy 
 to stand, and will stand, in history, alongside the memories of PEEL 
 and COBDEN and BRIGHT, as disinterested benefactors of mankind. 
 
 But what shall be said about the disinterestedness of motive on 
 the part of the Ely signers, and of all the other men who made their 
 voices audible above the ground or underneath it, in bitter oppo- 
 sition to the open and straightforward and everyday teachings of 
 the College? The motives of men cannot, indeed, be observed 
 directly, but in most cases, and after an interval of time, they either 
 exhibit or 'betray themselves in outward conduct. It is obvious at 
 the outset, and the contrary was never claimed, that free traders can 
 have no personal or selfish motive in expending vitality and running 
 hazards to advocate the universal rights of mankind, in whose bene- 
 fits they themselves can only share when and as all other men share 
 them. It is equally obvious in the ongoing that protectionists can 
 have no other than personal and selfish motives in striving to curtail 
 these universal rights, because the mode of their action invariably 
 betrays its character, even when the men do not openly confess it. 
 Men have never gone to Washington to do protectionist work there, 
 or hired lobbyists to do such work for them, and at the same time 
 been such fools as to pretend they were acting for the public good ; 
 even if they had pretended it, the public were not such fools as to 
 believe it ; and, as a matter of fact, the pretences have rarely been 
 made. Protectionists as such know what they are about, and why 
 they spend their money in influencing the tax laws of the nation, 
 and everybody else knows what they are about and why they spend 
 their money. They have always been open to the charge of being 
 public plunderers of the masses, but they have not often been open 
 to the charge of being hypocrites by professing to enrich while they 
 really impoverish them. The ordinary tests of motives apply plainly 
 enough to their ordinary words and conduct, while the last and best 
 and never-failing test is their attitude of hostility to all those who 
 2z 
 
706 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 clearly discuss and unflinchingly expose the methods of protection- 
 ism. The fundamental motto of free traders may be expressed in 
 the lines : 
 
 The world is wide, 
 
 And God is good. 
 
 The thought in this motto practically unfolded never failed to 
 excite the anger of the practical protectionists, whose fundamental 
 principle may be expressed in the distich : 
 
 The world is small, 
 And one is all. 
 
 All this was well illustrated in all the men who raised the out- 
 cry of opposition, from first to last, to the quiet and explicit teach- 
 ings of Professor Sumner at Yale and Professor Perry at Williams. 
 Every signer of the Ely memorial, whose business relations were 
 known at the time or ascertained afterward, was directly and pe- 
 cuniarily interested in the unjust legislation designed to raise the 
 price artificially of his own wares, particularly iron wares. The 
 same may be said with even more of emphasis, of those individuals 
 in the Board of Trustees of the College, who, in long succession and 
 with more of bitterness and persistence at the last, endeavored in 
 various ways to undermine and overthrow the position of the Pro- 
 fessor of Political Economy. Fortunately these men, seeking their 
 own and not the public good, were overmatched, one after the other, 
 by abler and disinterested men, who knew the truth and despised 
 the self-seeking. Usually, if not always, the professor was pri- 
 vately informed by broader members of the board, like-minded 
 with himself, of these machinations. Except in one flagrant in- 
 stance, he preserved absolute silence, and went on his way rejoicing. 
 In that instance, a member of the board from Worcester, in which 
 city was then being carried out the most iniquitous and far-reaching 
 monopoly under tariff taxes the country had seen, and whose citi- 
 zens were aware that this trustee was, up to his eyes, in counsel 
 and concord with these grasping monopolists, and had brought to 
 bear upon him, in consequence, such moral pressure as had com- 
 pelled him to resign a State judgeship, broached to the board a 
 scheme to weaken and dishonor the Professor of Economics ; a 
 fellow-trustee, who was familiar with all the facts in the case, re- 
 ported the whole device to the professor; who, in turn, requested 
 his informant to say from him to the Worcester man in most ex- 
 plicit terms, that if another word were spoken by him, or another 
 move made as toward that scheme, the next morning afterward 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 707 
 
 the /Springfield Republican would print in full an exposure of the 
 whole Worcester deviltry, his own included. Meek and silent was 
 that particular trustee thereafter in relation to that professor, and 
 dead as Csesar became his subterranean contrivance. 
 
 One more instance, out of a number of others, of a college trustee 
 seeking private revenge for public teaching solely offensive to him 
 because it was the simple truth, will suffice in this connection. 
 This time it was a manufacturer of buttons in Easthampton. In 
 the so-called wool and woollens tariff of 1867, heavy tariff taxes 
 were levied on foreign woollens in order " to protect " the domestic 
 manufacturers, that is, to rob the people in their special behoof; 
 foreign woollens of the best quality were needed by the East- 
 hampton button-makers to cover their moulds with ; strange to say, 
 these button-making protectionists were averse to paying protective- 
 tariff taxes themselves, though they helped to heap them on the 
 masses with glee ; so it was craftily inserted in the law, that dam- 
 aged cloth, suitable for covering buttons and for other purposes, 
 should come in free ; on the direct testimony of a chief clerk of 
 the establishment at Easthampton it was stated to credible wit- 
 nesses, that their cloth was sometimes purposely damaged on the 
 other side, so as to legally escape the tariff taxes on this side, but 
 not so as to injure it for covering buttons. This striking instance 
 was repeatedly cited in the Williams lecture-room, not to prove 
 that the Easthampton Galileans were sinners above all the Gali- 
 leans, but to prove that protectionists, when it came to action, 
 had precisely the same opinion of the effect of tariff taxes that 
 free traders had. The trustee in. question was naturally restive 
 under this cited instance, and its obvious logical bearing on the 
 class of men to which he belonged. Other trustees strongly sym- 
 pathized with him. But what could be done in such a case? 
 These trustees were in the wrong. 
 
 On the other hand, it is a pleasure at this late day to recall 
 the names of some of those clear-headed and broad-minded and 
 justice-loving men, who invariably proved the heavyweight in the 
 recurring scrimmage. " You let Professor Perry alone," exclaimed 
 Judge Colt, as from the bench, at the close of one of these confabs, 
 as he himself reported it to the party chiefly concerned. Judge 
 Bishop, another Berkshire citizen, always took the same side. So, 
 preeminently, did Dr. Prime, clergyman and journalist, of New 
 York, whose field of observation was the world. Joseph White 
 and James White, both long-time residents of William stown, be- 
 lieved in discussion rather than repression, in light rather than 
 
708 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 in darkness ; all these were graduates of the College ; and with 
 many other younger men who had been pupils of the professor, 
 and so best judged in the matter in hand, stood up strongly for 
 him. William Hyde of Ware, trustee from 1859 till 1877, an alum- 
 nus of 1826, educated as a lawyer and spending his entire active 
 life as a banker, better fitted than any other member of the board 
 to understand and appreciate the public importance of the economic 
 teaching of the College, and disgusted with the picayune policy of 
 some of his colleagues, determined to found in the name of one 
 of his family the department of History and Political Economy. 
 This he did in 1875, his father-in-law, Orrin Sage, a Massachusetts 
 manufacturer, furnishing, at his instance, $50,000 for this purpose. 
 In a private letter to Professor Perry he unfolded his reasons for 
 taking this step, which were, in substance, to put on permanent 
 record his approbation of the intelligence and fidelity and success 
 with which the department had been rounded out by him who was 
 to be the first beneficiary of this foundation. In his letter to the 
 trustees conveying the principal to them in trust, he insisted as a 
 condition of its bestowment, that Professor Perry's annual salary 
 under it should be $2500, or five per cent, that being as high a 
 rate of interest as could be expected in perpetuity. The salary of 
 the full professors in 1875 was but $2000. For several years the 
 Orrin Sage professor received under this distinct provision $500 
 more than his colleagues. After all this, there could be, one would 
 think, no rational question about the legal and moral right of this 
 professor to teach the economical and political doctrines that he 
 had always taught, that his predecessor in the department had 
 always taught before him, and that in 1875 had been already for 
 ten years published to the world in a widely circulated treatise 
 and text-book. 
 
 In 1891, with broken health and after thirty-eight unbroken years 
 of assiduous teaching in it, the first incumbent resigned the Orrin 
 Sage professorship. For several years the place remained unfilled. 
 Its " acting " incumbent in this interval, Professor John Bascom, 
 taught with applause a part of the subjects embraced within the 
 professorship. Though not a trained economist, and not in the 
 best sense a competent economist, for he had given his fine powers 
 for a lifetime to the higher themes of philosophy, on ethical rather 
 than economical grounds, Bascom was a pronounced free trader ; and 
 so there was never one official word spoken in a lecture-room opened 
 in 1835 and continued throughout the century, in behalf of a paltry 
 scheme soaked in wrongthinking and set to dry in wrongdoing. 
 
ORRIN SAGE, 
 Founder of Professorship. 
 
n 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 709 
 
 Paul A. Chadbourne was succeeded in the presidency of the 
 College by Franklin Carter of the class of 1862. This change took 
 place in the summer of 1881. All the circumstances leading to it 
 were interesting and instructive, and are here to be fully narrated 
 for the first time. 
 
 The claim of Mark Hopkins, which all of the alumni were inclined 
 to respect, namely, that he ought to be allowed to select and induct 
 his own successor, had this, among other attendant evils, that it 
 prevented any public canvass of the merits of any particular candi- 
 date. Such a canvass is eminently proper and needful in every 
 case, especially in such a case as this was, where a large body of 
 alumni was an essential part of an old college, who know best the 
 needs of the college and the qualities of the man most likely to 
 succeed at its head. The public furnishes the funds to endow and 
 upbuild an institution of learning, and furnishes also the scholars 
 to receive its advantages and the conditions under which the life- 
 work of these is to be accomplished. The public, accordingly, have 
 a right to some voice in the choice of the presiding head of a public 
 institution. A board of trustees and their head are never less 
 respectable, or rarely less wise, than when they practically deny 
 this and act in this sense as a close corporation. It is indeed 
 probable, that, in 1872, even after a full and fair comparison of 
 views, Chadbourne would have been preferred by a large majority 
 of all the persons interested ; for there was a strange illusion about 
 him at that time as a man of business and of affairs generally, that 
 was wholly dissipated before 1881. Still, if Hopkins had had the 
 backing of the public in 1872, such as would likely have followed a 
 free discussion, he would not have experienced the bitter personal 
 regrets and disappointments that fell to him as a result of that 
 election. These feelings are certain to have constrained his action 
 and whole attitude in relation to the election of 1881. 
 
 On the other hand, Chadbourne knew perfectly well that he had 
 been wholly indebted to the personal favor of his predecessor for his 
 own elevation, and he did not see any reason why he himself should 
 not exercise the same privilege in relation to his own successor. 
 Not that he intended to go forward secretly and uncounselled in the 
 premises, for in a moment we shall see to the contrary. But the 
 unhappy relations existing between these two good men tended to 
 make each of them suspicious of any choice of the other for a man 
 to stand in the succession. Early in the summer term of 1881, in a 
 frank manner as was his wont, Chadbourne came to Professor Perry, 
 and said, that they two certainly, and later other members of the 
 
710 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 faculty, ought to consult together and agree upon some man for the 
 succession. Perry said in reply, "I have given no thought to the 
 subject, have heard no agitation of it whatever, and have no man in 
 my mind." Chadbourne said, "Well, you think about it, and 
 we will talk it over again in a few days. It is really our business 
 to attend to this, or somebody else will attend to it. By the way, 
 what do you think of Daniel Merriman ? " Perry rejoined, "I 
 have a good opinion of Merriman, but I have never thought of him 
 in this connection." So they parted for the nonce. The impression 
 on Perry's mind was strong, and remained so, that Chadbourne had 
 not then fastened upon anybody in his own mind. Perhaps a fort- 
 night afterward the two men happening to meet, Chadbourne 
 recurred to the subject, but this time in a more perfunctory and 
 hurried way, as if between times he had struck upon somebody 
 satisfactory at least to himself. But he suggested no name. Neither 
 did the other, who took, in fact, very little interest in the matter. 
 Probably Chadbourne perceived this, for a few days after, the two 
 again casually meeting, he said in effect with a smile and in haste, 
 " That matter we have been talking about, let it all go ! " There 
 is now no doubt at all that about that time he had come into com- 
 munications with Professor Carter of Yale, and that he favored the 
 re-aspirations of that gentleman to become president of Williams. 
 There is also no doubt at all that Chadbourne knew that such a 
 nomination would be very repugnant to Dr. Hopkins, as it was. 
 
 There was no one then in the faculty at Williams who had any the 
 least desire to become president. If any one of several professors 
 might have had such a desire under other circumstances, which is 
 doubtful, the place had then become to all of them forbidding. The 
 only one actually talked of more or less, and influentially approached, 
 in the premises, was Professor Llewellyn Pratt of the class of 1852. 
 He had been six years Professor of Rhetoric. He was a kindly and 
 courteous and conservative gentleman. He was such a man as Mark 
 Hopkins took to, and esteemed very highly in love. He was a good 
 teacher, an admirable preacher, and a steadfast friend. As soon as 
 Hopkins knew that Chadbourne had set his face toward Franklin 
 Carter as president, he determined to prevent that consummation, if 
 it were a possible thing. Once and again and again he went to Pro- 
 fessor Pratt privately, and urged him to allow his name to go before 
 the trustees as a candidate, and justly assured him that, if he would 
 do so, his election would be certain. Dr. Hopkins estimated rightly 
 at this point his own influence over the body of trustees as contrasted 
 with that of Dr. Chadbourne, who had fallen into more or less odium 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 711 
 
 in all quarters. But while Pratt was deeply touched by these tokens 
 of confidence and affection on the part of his old president, the offer 
 itself made no favorable impression upon his mind. He did not 
 give at any time the least encouragement to anybody that he would 
 take the place on any conditions. (1) He was conscious of a certain 
 unfitness for the executive functions involved, in which self-judg- 
 ment his most intimate friends concurred. (2) The College was then 
 demoralized, its funds were low, and its friends not easily concentred. 
 (3) He himself had been a little before chosen a professor in the 
 Hartford theological seminary, had accepted the post, and could not 
 go back on his promise. 
 
 Still Dr. Hopkins, not fully apprised of any one of these reasons 
 in its full force, did not give up his quest. He arranged for an in- 
 terview between three of the trustees, himself and Joseph White 
 and Judge Colt of Pittsfield, and Professor Pratt, the party of the 
 other part. Here it must be premised that Pratt had been for 
 some time in special communication with Carter at New Haven. 
 The latter, owing to his forwardness and self-protrusion, which was 
 a part of the nature of the man and had been exhibited all through 
 his professorship at Williams, and in a glaring light at the close of 
 it, had had a rough experience at Yale, and was still as ambitious 
 as in 1872 to become president at Williams. Pratt knew little of 
 Carter's previous experience at Williams and less of his strifes and 
 bitterness at Yale, and was prepared to believe what Carter himself 
 really believed (with that ready self-deception characteristic of the 
 man), that, in the Yale life, he had outgrown the foibles which had 
 made him so obnoxious at Williams, that he ha'd learned his true 
 place relatively to others, and that consequently he was an eligible 
 and acceptable candidate. But Pratt knew that Hopkins was un- 
 alterably opposed to any second experiment at Williams, and also 
 that he had been distinguished through a long life for his knowledge 
 of men. Pratt, therefore, as a comparatively young man and far 
 less deeply versed in the human heart, took an unwarranted respon- 
 sibility, certainly without some further inquiry at Yale, in urging 
 upon the self-appointed committee of the trustees the choice of 
 Carter as a good candidate. Pratt was mistaken in his judgment. 
 In the interview referred to, while absolutely declining to become a 
 candidate himself, he strongly commended to these trustees, as, 
 upon the whole, their best man, Franklin Carter. In the course of 
 the interview, turning to the former president, he said, " / do not 
 wonder, Dr. Hopkins, that you feel as you do about Professor Carter. 
 He was foolish in Williamstown before. He admits it, and deplores it. 
 
712 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Bat he was young. He has learned much in these last nine years. He 
 is anxious to repair faults on the ground where he committed them." 
 
 This disinterested and earnest advocacy, while it did not convince 
 Dr. Hopkins, became the main ground of Carter's subsequent elec- 
 tion. He owed more to Pratt than to all others combined. Pratt 
 was a modest and highly cultivated man, and was heard to say time 
 and again, " I could have prevented Carter's election as easily as 
 turning niy hand over." He unquestionably meant by this, (1) that, 
 if he would have listened to the proposal, he might certainly have 
 been elected himself; and (2) that, if he had not urged Carter upon 
 unwilling ears in season and out of season, the latter could never 
 have been elected. Next to Pratt, but much below him, was Carter 
 indebted to Professor Perry, as will now appear. The latter indeed 
 had never thought of Carter as a candidate, until the movement in 
 his behalf had made considerable progress, and until the candidate 
 became anxious to know what the other thought about it. Instead 
 of frankly writing and asking him, which was the only way their 
 uniformly friendly relations could justify, the candidate preferred 
 a roundabout and subterranean method. He wrote to Professor 
 Griffin, a college classmate but by no means an assured friend, to 
 find out. With another professor, who was not even a graduate of 
 the college, the two sidled up to Perry on a college walk, one on 
 either hand very near, and in a manner that instantly betrayed them 
 as emissaries, Griffin asked what he thought of Professor Carter as 
 president of the College, the other confederate bending forward his 
 ear so as to catch every word. Surprise at the question and disgust 
 at the manner of it prevented the interrogated from asking the 
 interrogator quickly, what he thought about it. This question, if 
 it had been truthfully answered on the spot, would have broken up 
 the interview, and spoiled the wretched device. Eecovering him- 
 self in a moment, Perry replied : " I am surprised at it, but I think 
 well of it. From the way he went away from here, I did not sup- 
 pose he would ever come back. If he comes, I shall support him 
 cordially." 
 
 Not many days after this, with a manner in utter contrast with 
 that just related, Professor Pratt spoke to Perry on the latter' s 
 piazza, and said in effect: "I hope you will see your way clear 
 not to oppose in any way the accession of Carter. As things are, 
 the college cannot, I think, do any better." With utter sincerity, 
 as before, the other replied : " Not only will I not oppose his acces- 
 sion at any point, but I will do what I can to promote it, for I am 
 inclined to agree with you, that the college cannot do any better. I 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 713 
 
 have taken, as you know, no special stand for anybody." Perry did 
 not then know what Pratt had said to the trustee committee, but 
 added his own construction of a difficulty, which everybody felt, in 
 substantially these very words, " Carter has been revolving those, 
 years in the great wheel at New Haven, with nobody to pay any 
 special attention to him, and this experience has probably taken, out 
 of him his egregious self-conceit." This last inference proved to be 
 unwarranted by the facts, and was the more unjustifiable because 
 the speaker's good acquaintance with several of the leading gentle- 
 men at Yale might easily have furnished him exact information if 
 he had only asked for it. 
 
 Things were now moving in considerable force toward New 
 Haven, and the time of the decision meeting of the trustees in New 
 York was approaching, and Dr. Hopkins made a final grasp at what 
 proved to be a straw, and another trustee even after he had reached 
 New York telegraphed to Professor Pratt to see if he could not get 
 a crumb of comfort elsewhere. Dr. Hopkins went down to Pro- 
 fessor Perry's house, as he had done nine years before. In his words 
 he was very cautious, which was like him ; but his errand came out 
 clearly enough in the interview ; which was to see whether Perry 
 would favor a dash to Bascom, who was then president of Wisconsin 
 University. Perry, who remembered his promise to Pratt, and took 
 a cool view of the whole situation, replied, that it was too late 
 things had gone too far New Havenwards if Bascom were here in 
 the faculty as in 1872 it would be a different question he is 
 anchored at Madison, and there is no time now to make a shift. 
 " You said then that Bascom could put twenty Chadbournes in his 
 breeches pocket, and walk off and not know it." " I say the same now." 
 " Oh ! do you ? " " But that was nine years ago, and the question now 
 is wholly different." It is not probable that Hopkins thought that 
 anything tangible could really come out of this last turn, but he 
 made it partly to see where his colleague stood and partly as a 
 refuge for his own mind. His manner was crestfallen and dis- 
 heartened. 
 
 The election of Franklin Carter proceeded without incident and 
 under the usual forms. He thus became a member of the Board of 
 Trustees, and their official head. He also thereby became a member 
 and the head of the faculty, which always had been and always will 
 be not only a constituent part of the complex College, but also the 
 most considerable and most vital part of the complex College. He 
 was elected under the force and sanction of a written body of laws, 
 which had been compiled and amended with extreme care a few 
 
714 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 years before by a member of the faculty, and which had been 
 adopted by the Board of Trustees, after a slow and careful reading 
 before them of every clause, without the altering of a single word. 
 At the first faculty meeting after its adoption by the trustees Presi- 
 dent Hopkins in a similar manner read every word of it before the 
 faculty, and it was unanimously adopted by them without amend- 
 ment or discussion. The time and precedents of the trustee's meet- 
 ing in New York, at which Carter was formerly elected president, 
 were- prescribed in this body of laws. If these laws, thus sanc- 
 tioned, under which he was elected president, were not binding upon 
 him as such, at least until they had been changed or abrogated by 
 equal authority, then his own election was invalid. As a matter of 
 fact, he misunderstood and disregarded the essentials of the position 
 to which he had been chosen. From the first he spoke and acted as 
 if he were proprietor of the College, and not merely president under 
 strict and verbal conditions of each of two conjoint boards, of each 
 of which he was indeed a part, but of each of which he was still 
 more an agent. Members of the two boards were his equals in status, 
 in grounds of authority, in duration of power, in everything, except 
 he was to gather and voice the authoritative opinions of each in rela- 
 tion to the functions of the other, and of both in all relations to the 
 student-body. Also he was to preside (when present) in the formal 
 meetings of each board ; when absent, somebody else presided, with 
 the authority of each body unimpaired. The new president even 
 spoke of "retaining" in the service of the College members of the 
 faculty, some of whom were well established professors when he 
 came to College as a student in 1860 ; just as if he had entire power 
 to dismiss every one of them, and it were only by his grace that 
 any one of them remained in the college service. He also spoke 
 constantly of his " administration" as if he conceived of it, as he cer- 
 tainly did, under the conditions of a President of the United States, 
 who usually brings in a new Cabinet entire, but sometimes retains a 
 previous Secretary or more. Those members who were most assidu- 
 ous in attendance on faculty meetings during the first years under 
 Carter, never heard him refer to this body of laws just spoken of 
 as having any significance whatever. As he spoke, so he acted. He 
 himself reported to the faculty, at the close of his first year, a rep- 
 rimand he had received from the trustees for acting on his sole au- 
 thority in changing usages they regarded as beyond his province. 
 Whereupon he determined to thwart the trustees and to ignore the 
 faculty in the matter of his own authority and by nondescript and 
 indecent means, which had never before been heard of in the College, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 715 
 
 and which, it is safe to say, will never be heard of a second time. 
 It is enough at this point to add, that, of all those who had any 
 share or function in the election of Franklin Carter as president, 
 Mark Hopkins was the one person most prudent and far-seeing and 
 college-honoring. The vindications of his position came swiftly and 
 strongly, and continued. Pratt proved to have been mistaken. 
 
 The new president's inaugural discourse made for the most part a 
 very good impression upon all who heard it. It was a scholarly and 
 original plea for the introduction into the college curriculum of the 
 Hebrew language, and perhaps of other Semitic tongues. It was a 
 vigorous defence of the chief item of Emerson's famous catalogue of 
 the sources of the world's civilization. 
 
 Heir of Egyptian labor, Grecian art, 
 Hebrew religion, and of Roman law ; 
 The Anglo-Saxon will in turn impart 
 His hard-earned contribution, and withdraw. 
 
 His case was abstractly well made out ; and, as a presentation of 
 the preeminence of Semitic thought as conveyed to the world through 
 Hebrew forms, was weighty and admirable. The weakness of the 
 discourse appeared when it came to the practical suggestions, how 
 and where it could be introduced into the course and made harmoni- 
 ous with the other parts of it, what it should displace, by whom it 
 should be taught, and what class of students (if any) would be likely 
 to elect it if offered. The suggestion, taken by itself, was not of any 
 great significance, and when the elective came to be offered to the 
 Seniors a year or two later and continued to be offered for fifteen 
 years, an average of perhaps two or three students a year availed 
 themselves of the opportunity. The prominent discussion, however, 
 in an inaugural of so remote and professional a study as Hebrew as 
 proper and pressing for a college course, gave due notice to every- 
 body that the new president would move, at a proper time and after 
 some consultation with the two boards of which he formed a part, for 
 a considerable substitution of elective studies in lieu of the prescribed 
 studies then constituting almost the sole college course. The Juniors 
 during their summer term had long had an option as between the 
 French and German languages. These were the only " electives " 
 properly so-called offered by the College before 1881. Dr. Hopkins 
 had long prided himself and been much praised by others on a 
 thoughtful arrangement in due order and dependence of the college 
 studies for the four years. The trustees as a body set much store 
 on this established arrangement for a small college. The faculty 
 
716 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 were satisfied with it, and nearly every one of them had been trained 
 under it. But Carter had been teaching for nine years in a large col- 
 lege in New Haven, the college of his native state and of his own earli- 
 est choice, from which he had been driven to Williams as a student 
 by the stress of ill-health. He had gone away from Williams as a 
 teacher in 1872 with no very large respect for the College as then 
 administered, and with no very kind feelings toward Dr. Hopkins 
 personally. He came back to. the College in 1881 self-determined to 
 change its form, and to make it over into a sort of new Yale after a 
 pattern of his own. The elective system had then already made 
 considerable inroads in Yale upon the former system of required 
 studies throughout. 
 
 Carter thought it would be best to make a quiet beginning of elec- 
 tives at once, without any open discussion of any change with any- 
 body ; and so he persuaded Professors Griffin and Fernald, the heads 
 of the Latin and Greek departments, personally to offer electives in 
 their departments, for that first year, '81-82. This step was not 
 debated in the faculty meeting, nor even mentioned there. It so 
 happened, that, at the close of the year, when the examinations in 
 those two electives had just passed, Professor Perry met the two 
 professors together, as they came out of the door of the post-office, 
 when Griffin accosted him with emphasis, saying, "The fellows in 
 my elective have done just nothing at all throughout the term, 
 just nothing at all!" Turning to Fernald, the latter asked him 
 quietly, how it had been in his department. Fernald responded, 
 after a manner of his own, " It has been no great success, certainly." 
 This dismally proclaimed failure, after a year's trial at the hands of 
 his two then most trusted agents, instead of giving Carter pause, as 
 it certainly would have done any wise man, made him furious, and 
 determined him, in spite of the warning of the trustees and of the 
 well-known opinions of the faculty and alumni in general, to compel 
 certain college teachers to offer electives in their long-established 
 departments contrary to the matured judgments of the teachers 
 themselves. The means chosen to bring about this end were such 
 as no one but a low-lived boor would ever have conceived of, and no 
 one but a man of towering self-conceit would ever have asked others 
 to help him carry into execution. So thoroughly disgraceful were 
 these means, that the subordinate agents selected to carry them out 
 were, with one exception, men recently come into the faculty, and 
 who were afraid if they refused the function forced upon them, that 
 they would lose their places. So conscious were these men at the 
 time and afterward, that the work was dirty work, totally unworthy 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 
 
 717 
 
 in its inception and execution of gentlemen, that afterward and 
 again and again they made ample apologies to the chief subject of 
 the wrong, pleading as their sole excuse the novelty of the situation 
 and their personal dependence upon the wrongdoer. 
 
 The public has no concern with the strangely changing personal 
 relations as between Franklin Carter and Edward Griffin, except so 
 far as these permanently and deeply affected the public ongoings 
 of the College itself. The College is a very public institution 
 indeed. It is the child of the State through its charter and the 
 
 EDWARD HERRICK GRIFFIN. 
 
 recurring grants of the public money to extend and upbuild it. 
 Indeed, there is nothing private about the College as such. The 
 presidency, for example, both when it begins and so long as it con- 
 tinues, is something about which every man who helps to constitute 
 the public has a right to have and to express an opinion. College 
 presidents are apt to think themselves intrenched. They are not. 
 They are amenable every day they live, in each and every public 
 act, to that large and composite constituency which made and can 
 unmake them at will. Moral obligations are mutual and reciprocal 
 
718 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 and constant through that delicate and complex organization called 
 a college. Trustees administer a public trust given over into their 
 t hands by that large public, to which they are in their corporate 
 capacity responsible. Faculties render, at least they ought to 
 render, to their own members, each to each, and as a body to 
 each member, services of a helpful and lofty character, as well as 
 those peculiarly difficult ones daily due to their own pupils. A 
 faculty, if it be good for anything as such, must be a moral unity, 
 the individuals working together as toward certain common ends, 
 in much the same way as a Christian church, if it be vitally and 
 influentially such, must be a substantial unity working as toward 
 similar moral and public ends. The strictly private and personal 
 ends and relations as between members of the same college faculty 
 are beyond the ken of the faculty as a body, and of course beyond 
 the ken of other individuals as such. But when private cliques are 
 formed within a faculty to control faculty action, or to build up one 
 and to pull down another, and especially when a college president, 
 whose official relations to all his colleagues are of necessity com- 
 mon, and whose moral obligations to each and every colleague are 
 conterminous and equally sacred with the moral obligations of each 
 colleague to him, lends himself to secret cabals within the body, 
 becomes the head and organizer of them for ends of his own, he 
 forfeits thereby every moral claim to the respect and cooperation 
 of his colleagues as such. He is a president only in name. He is 
 a misfit, and out of his place. All the forces of the moral world 
 around him come into just combination to upset and deny him. 
 
 Carter and Griffin were college classmates but not intimates 
 during the two years while the former was a member of the class 
 of 1862, years also considerably broken by his ill-health and conse- 
 quent isolation. So far as is known and believed, Griffin had taken 
 no decided part for or against Carter while the latter was a candi- 
 date in the summer of 1881. It was not like him to take a decided 
 part under such circumstances. Nor was it the part of wisdom for 
 any one 011 the ground to take a decided part under the circum- 
 stances. Griffin, however, knew well that Perry was more favorable 
 to Carter, and that Dr. Hopkins was more opposed to him, than any 
 one else on the ground. When the election had been carried and 
 announced, Griffin, usually very reticent, occasionally very frank 
 on critical points, casually meeting the older and always friendly 
 colleague, manifested his deep disgust at the turn things had taken. 
 More contemptuous expressions, both facial and vocal, are rarely 
 witnessed than those then employed by him without disguise. His 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 719 
 
 words, indeed, were few, but his sentiments were completely revealed. 
 It was a volunteer conference on his part, wholly private, and nobody's 
 business. The recipient took it and kept it as confidential. It was, 
 however, actual, and, in the sequel, vital to a public state of things 
 in College, not pleasant to record, but needful to the record. It 
 was unquestionably an honest and proper expression of views then 
 entertained and afterward entertained again. Perry did not lay a 
 single straw of any name or nature in Carter's way, either before 
 or after he assumed to administer the College. He gave his coun- 
 sel, both in private and in faculty meeting, whenever it was asked 
 for, in utter integrity and in as conciliatory a manner as possible, 
 while Carter became, term after term, intensely and increasingly 
 unpopular, and the weekly faculty meeting became so hollow and 
 distasteful to all that they could with difficulty persuade themselves 
 to attend it. "Darned old faculty meeting!" was the repeated excla- 
 mation of Professor Rice, while it was equally the sentiment of the 
 rest. Perry, though never a flatterer or fig-shower to anybody, was 
 really the best and steadiest friend that the president had in the 
 faculty, and when the latter asked him about the odium attaching 
 to the meetings replied frankly and kindly : " I have never known 
 in my life any such unpopularity of the faculty meeting." " How 
 do you account for it ? " said he. The other answered in substance, 
 not verbally, that he accounted for it, in part, by the unwise innova- 
 tion by which the meeting, which had fallen uniformly on Wednesday 
 evening since the foundation of the College in 1793, was arbitrarily 
 put on Monday evening, at a great inconvenience to some and at no 
 advantage to any ; and also in part by the fact that the time of the 
 gentlemen was frittered away night after night by the attempted 
 construction of petty details and regulations which could be handled 
 better by a small committee. 
 
 In the meantime it was clearly perceived by the experienced 
 members of the faculty, that Carter did not intend to govern the 
 College through or by means of the faculty, and also that he did 
 not intend to give the faculty his confidence as to the manner in 
 which he had determined to govern the College himself. It was 
 also perceived at the same time, and with increasing clearness by 
 the same men (such things cannot be concealed in a small college, 
 and the very effort to conceal them reveals them), that the president 
 was making special confidants of two or three colleagues in relation 
 to pending and approaching college questions, and so forming a 
 secret council, to whom he could dictate, and who should help him 
 execute autocratic decrees, of which the faculty as such knew noth- 
 
720 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ing, and to which certain members might be easy victims. One of 
 these experienced observers certainly, and it must be said of each of 
 them that he had been for long and unselfishly devoted to all the 
 interests of the College as these had been expounded by its author- 
 ized representatives, was astonished as the evidences unfolded that 
 Griffin was to be and became the chief man of this secret conclave. 
 In what way he had been won over from his pronounced position of 
 1881 is not known, nor is it of the least consequence. It is enough 
 and too much, that, by some means, he became willing for a consid- 
 erable length of time to abandon an honorable and recognized posi- 
 tion as councillor and coadjutor, for which he had hereditary talents 
 and high personal ability, to accept an incompatible position of 
 servility toward one, whom, as a college official, he despised, and 
 of machination toward others, whom, as colleagues, he had every 
 reason to respect and honor. This second position, however, be it 
 thankfully added, he sloughed off, after a full trial, with every 
 mark of loathing. Self-respecting coadjutors Carter did not want, 
 nor would he tolerate them ; he wanted men " Friday," and found 
 them, and harmed them, and they harmed him irreparably. 
 
 The first positive proof that came under Perry's observation that 
 Griffin had radically changed his position of 1881, and had become 
 willing to help Carter bring in a college autocracy aut Cwsar aut 
 nullus in spite of faculty and in spite of trustees, was exhibited 
 in Perry's own house, which stood on his own grounds. Carter and 
 Griffin calling together were courteously received and seated. Their 
 manner was somewhat constrained, and they had obviously come on 
 a common errand. Griffin said nothing, and Carter said little. 
 After a few commonplaces back and forth, which meant nothing, the 
 pair rose to go, and the host accompanied them to the door, when 
 Carter blurted out with vehemence, and in a tone of accusation, 
 "You are an optimist!" The comical aspects of the scene most 
 impressed the host, who was conscious of having been polite in the 
 interview, and was also conscious of having a native and acquired 
 tendency of looking on the bright side of things so far as possible. 
 He had no time, still less disposition, to palliate the charge, for the 
 two passed out at once with the air of men who had performed a 
 solemn duty, and were relieved of a moral burden. This air, how- 
 ever, was not an air of satisfaction, nor scarcely of self-respect. It 
 was, perhaps, fortunate for themselves that the message they had 
 brought was entirely true, and that the receiver was optimistic 
 enough even to ignore the gross discourtesy of such an official call 
 bringing such a formal announcement delivered in such a toplofty 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 721 
 
 way. It did not disturb his equanimity in the least. It engendered 
 in his mind, of course, more or less of contempt for a couple of 
 relative novices, showing so little manliness and manners in their 
 going forth to war against established usages, and an already hard- 
 ened historical development of an institution already old. 
 
 These two men never came to the same house together again, in 
 the patent interest of the absolutism of one through the unscrupu- 
 lous facility of the other ; but each came again singly after consid- 
 erable intervals of time, each in the same interest, and with a 
 pronounced accession of ill-bred impertinence. The president, 
 amazing as the statement will seem, conceived it to be a part of his 
 function as such, not only to possess and administer the sole author- 
 ity in college, choosing his tools and minions as agents, but also 
 even to determine the sentiments and beliefs of his colleagues on 
 certain great public questions, and what they should publish or not 
 publish in relation to these questions, about which in his saner 
 moments he was prompt enough to avow that he knew nothing at 
 all. It was true, indeed, that he knew nothing at all of the ultimate 
 nature and drift of these subjects, but it was also true that he had a 
 narrow and bitter and bigoted prejudice in relation to them, warped 
 by private interest and family associations, which last of itself was 
 enough to prevent such a kind of man as he was from attaining any 
 balanced judgment whatever in that class of subjects. A national 
 society in New York largely officered and supported by some of the 
 most distinguished graduates of Williams College had printed for 
 general distribution a leaflet written by Professor Perry, entitled 
 " A Free Trade Lesson from the New Testament." Whether Carter 
 had read a copy of this may be doubted, at any rate he had heard 
 something about it from some of his protectionist confederates. 
 What may not be doubted is, that he had never learned the precious 
 art of minding his own business : he was a meddler and a mischief- 
 maker, an incessant busybody in other men's matters. He under- 
 took to suppress the circulation of this leaflet, by a self -assumed 
 authority to control whatever had gone out or might thereafter go 
 out from Williams College, in virtue of his becoming personally a 
 transient president thereof. He appeared in the same hallway as 
 before, with a face as black as Erebus, just as the householder was 
 parting with another caller, an intimate and highly esteemed friend, 
 Mr. Frederic Leake. This time he declined to be seated, though 
 courteously asked to do so, and, without waiting for Mr. Leake to 
 withdraw, who was already standing in the door, he hurled at the 
 host an indecent and almost blasphemous expression in reference to 
 
722 W1LLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the leaflet without mentioning it, and instantly went out. Vulgar 
 boorishness in manner under a colleague's roof could no further go. 
 Impertinence and self-assumption as to the matter could no further 
 go. His college autocracy was to extend into fields that stood in no 
 relations to the College. The man thus accosted in the presence of 
 an honored guest had been for more than a dozen years the senior 
 member of the faculty, for the same length of time had had the 
 sole charge of the weekly religious meeting uniting the faculty and 
 the students, was in reality the best friend the president had on the 
 ground, was doing more teaching and exerting a more quieting and 
 harmonizing influence than any one else, and at that very time and 
 afterward was doing all that lay in his power to reduce in the minds 
 of the students the increasing detestation in which the president 
 was held. 
 
 Professor Griffin did not understand the real lay of the land. He 
 did not foresee the extreme lengths to which Carter would carry the 
 doctrine and practice of his personal sovereignty. Fairly good 
 motives must be accorded to Griffin in his successive changes of 
 attitude and action. His mistakes, nevertheless, at two points were 
 radical, and brought great trouble to himself and to others. As a 
 Christian minister and a college professor, he ought to have seen be- 
 forehand, that it is involved in the nature of things, that personal 
 rights and usual courtesies cannot be filched from anybody without 
 producing reactions and results injurious, not only to those who 
 thus violate an external rule of right, but to the whole community 
 as well. In the second place, he should have known that for any 
 one to take up a radically false position with a determination to 
 maintain it blindly, carries along with it the consequence that such 
 a one is necessarily involved in further falsities and in increasing 
 difficulties. The moral world is constructed on the principle that it 
 is excessively hard work to take care of an initial lie in its after 
 developments. The stars in their courses fight against him who 
 attempts this. Carter's claim to college sovereignty, to which 
 Griffin had weakly surrendered, implied, in order to gain any 
 strength of ground at all, that his colleagues must admit (tacitly at 
 least) that the president was the College, and that " loyalty to the 
 College" meant personal subserviency to him. Though all mixed 
 up in the logic, Carter was clear in the conclusion, that he himself 
 was " the College " in a very substantive and emphatic sense. Alike 
 in his conception and in his parlance for years, loyalty to the 
 College was toadyism to himself. His case was parallel, mutatis 
 mutandis, with that of the French king before the Revolution, 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 723 
 
 " The State ? I am the State ! " Griffin was clearer-headed than 
 Carter, but not so strong-willed. He had submitted to the sov- 
 ereignty doctrine, perhaps under the impression that he was to be 
 a sort of co-sovereign, which, we may be sure, was no part of Carter's 
 purpose, and which, as it turned out in practice, proved to be no 
 part of the actual result. He submitted also, as logically compelled, 
 to the "loyalty" doctrine, though it is probable that he expected to 
 escape for himself the reality and the charge of the "toadyism" 
 inextricably involved. He did not and could not escape either of 
 them. They betrayed him to his lasting humiliation. 
 
 The interview between two of the college professors herein in a 
 moment to be narrated, though at first sight perhaps trivial, is 
 historical in the strict sense, on the ground by which any fact what- 
 ever becomes historically important. What is an historical fact? 
 And what is the distinction between such and the innumerable facts 
 that are non-historical ? For any fact to become historical its causes 
 must be known and calculable, and its consequents seen to take their 
 place in the record of the social progress of mankind, along some one 
 of the many lines by which such progress manifests itself. Twice at 
 least after Griffin had yielded himself to the quasi-menial service 
 of the president, and feeling himself exalted through the new rela- 
 tion, and doubtless in the expectation of constraining Perry to take 
 up a similar condition of subserviency, he had grossly insulted the 
 latter, as if he himself were already a twin-sharer in the throne. 
 Under a mistaken confidence in the issue of a policy of irenics, as 
 alone capable of saving Carter from an impending downfall, these 
 insults had been received in patience and silence, although not 
 without abundant contempt for a man acting such dastardly parts. 
 Griffin wholly misinterpreted the patience and silence. So did 
 Carter misinterpret them. They sprang out of a genuine loyalty 
 to the College in the only true sense of that phrase, which neither 
 of these men possessed nor had the magnanimity to recognize in 
 others. College term after term passed by, while the sovereignty 
 system did not seem to prosper at all. The students saw it through 
 and through, and did not take kindly to it. They called it in their 
 printed periodicals the " spy-system." They kept calling it so for 
 several years. They denominated it justly and sharply. They 
 discriminated pretty sharply also in their feelings and in the mani- 
 festation of them, as between those professors who were open and 
 guileless and independent, and those who seemed to be and to act 
 in some sort of a secret ring. It is possible that Griffin began to be 
 somewhat isolated under these circumstances in the faculty itself. 
 
724 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 It is true, however, that several other good members of that body, 
 mostly new men, and all in ignorance of the nature of the moral 
 struggle going on, acted in general accord with him. This ignorance 
 several of these men afterward acknowledged and regretted. At any 
 rate, Griffin thought there would be no harm nor hazard in insulting 
 and outraging the senior professor once more in his own house, 
 which was a noticeable feature in the whole proceeding. Carter, no 
 doubt, incited him to come, and instructed him in the line of assault. 
 Certainly he came and acted as one sent, though appearing as a free 
 agent, and not at all foreseeing the moral issue of the interview. 
 
 Courteously admitted into the study and declining to be seated, 
 he began without preliminary or apology of any kind to berate his 
 host for not being loyal to the College. The words were substan- 
 tially these, and were deliberately repeated, the eyes of the two men 
 confronting each other, " J think it is time for you to become loyal 
 to the College ! " Quietly and firmly the other, " Who do you mean 
 by the College ?" Griffin's eyes fell to the floor instantly, and the 
 wretched evasion uttered in quick low tones came to his lips, " / 
 and the faculty." He did not await what would have been the imme- 
 diate and inevitable inquiry, " On what ground should I crouch to 
 you, and how does the faculty come in here ? " Irrecoverably chop- 
 fallen, he went immediately out. The simply pertinent question dis- 
 embowelled a huge beast that looked formidable a moment before. 
 Pitiable was the answer to it in its weakness and contradiction, and 
 deplorable in its blazing falsities. It was a confession that the 
 claim of any individual to " loyalty " from his colleagues, was not 
 only untenable but also unmentionable. When once questioned at 
 the bar of reason, its champion did not dare even to pronounce his 
 name. The answer was the best exit open to a quick-witted man 
 from a contradiction in terms and a monstrosity in nature. Loyalty 
 is a monarchical term. It goes from a person to a person from a 
 subject to a king. It has no place among equals. It is a misnomer in 
 a republic. It is an absurdity in a college. Perhaps the perversion 
 of the term took its origin in the mythical mother of the colleges, 
 the Alma Mater. In the language of the imagination, loyalty to her 
 is an allowable and beautiful expression, and no graduate of any col- 
 lege is under such a constraining obligation to loyalty to her in this 
 figurative sense as is any transient president. But for him to set 
 himself up in her place and claim for himself what only belongs to 
 her, and what only the finer minds of an alumni body can easily con- 
 ceive and hold fast to, is at once a crime against language and an 
 outrage on decency. 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 725 
 
 The interview just characterized was historical in the strict sense 
 of that word, for its certain influence upon Griffin and Carter, and 
 for its almost certain influence in perpetuity upon the College itself. 
 Griffin was never known thereafter to crack his " loyalty " whip 
 about the ears of any one of his colleagues. His relations with all 
 of them continued to be friendly, though they may hardly be said to 
 have been intimate unless it were with Professor Fernald, who was 
 not a graduate of the College, and who thus escaped some of the 
 weighty obligations to the Alma Mater falling upon most of the rest. 
 The tight place into which Griffin was casually thrown in the inter- 
 view must have set him to thinking whether his factitious relations 
 with the president were proper for him to hold, or indeed any rela- 
 tions not essentially common to him and his colleagues. If his pre- 
 vailing motive were, as is likely, to help hold Carter up in his chosen 
 policy of government, and particularly that part of it consisting of 
 petty intrigues, incessantly rising and breaking like the foam on the 
 waves of the sea, he could not but perceive that his supposed help 
 was futile and wasted. Carter was gaining no settled moral hold on 
 any portion of the College. The bulk of the students detested his 
 methods, and distrusted him. The trustees were getting doubtful 
 and anxious. The members of the faculty were doing all that men 
 could do under the circumstances in building up their departments, 
 and in strengthening the College in general. They were a competent 
 and faithful and meritorious body of men. Not one of them but was 
 more " loyal to the organism " than was Carter himself ; who did not 
 render to others what he was vehemently desirous and demanding 
 that they should render to him, and what, for the most part with 
 astonishing magnanimity, they did render to him. Griffin could not 
 but perceive what was protrudingly true, that he himself was suffering 
 an increasing unpopularity from his well-known and special relations 
 to one whose unpopularity was already boundless. Indeed, a disin- 
 terested friend said to him in so many words, " Each of you inten- 
 sifies the unpopularity of the other." All the processes of Griffin's 
 mind in the premises are not known, nor need to be ; what passed 
 from time to time between the two men is not known, nor needs to 
 be ; what is known and became historical in this case is the sudden 
 and complete and undisguised split of the professor from the presi- 
 dent. It was something fitting and wholesome, that the final cleav- 
 age was mediated in an open faculty meeting with palpitating wedges 
 of scorn from Griffin's own lips, with whom, as against the other, all 
 present seemed to sympathize. Carter himself, who learned in the 
 school of experience and adversity but very slowly, talked less loudly 
 
726 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 from that day on about his own royal position, and the duty of his col- 
 leagues to recognize it in their "loyalty" to him, yet he continued 
 to think about it, whispered of it to some, and now and then indi- 
 rectly proclaimed it, just as before. The incident did him some good 
 on the whole. It should have transformed his attitude altogether. 
 
 An autocracy in any form and a college in its normal form are a 
 contradiction in terms. An attempted autocracy within a college is 
 an attempted destruction of the college itself. Williams received 
 in 1881 as its president a man who, with many excellences of pri- 
 vate character, was unfitted in endowment and in temperament and 
 in training for the large public place which he had coveted and striven 
 for during many years. On assuming its difficult and complicated 
 duties, he gave no sign to those around him, every one of whom was 
 ready in good faith to help him if allowed to do so, of ever having 
 reflected for a moment upon the etymological and customary mean- 
 ing of the word " college." He quickly manifested his determination 
 to decide everything and to do everything by himself. He was and 
 was to be the fons et origo of everything pertaining (no matter how 
 remotely) to the College. This was the more strange, inasmuch as, 
 when he was a professor under President Hopkins for nine years he 
 was in a frequent fret and fury against him, because he did not 
 defer enough (or at least scrupulously enough) to the rest of the 
 faculty ; and when also he was a professor afterward for nine years 
 at Yale, it was well understood in general that he often made 
 himself and those about him uncomfortable on somewhat similar 
 grounds. At any rate, Franklin Carter was the last man in the 
 world to have quietly submitted in another to the swelled and base- 
 less functions assumed by himself as toward others. From the first 
 his very look was sinister and suspicious, and his every attitude 
 one of opposition and prepared resistance, when there was nothing 
 to be resisted or opposed. " As a man soweth so shall he also reap." 
 There is no possible and there was no actual cutting of that heaven- 
 appointed tie between cause and effect. The students were the first 
 to take the true measure of their man. He distrusted them without 
 cause, and gave them speedy proof of his suspicions ; and they not 
 only failed to render him respect, but began to despise him for a 
 trickster and a spy-monger. For ten years, certainly, if not longer, 
 the president failed to possess himself of the fair confidence of a 
 single graduating class ; and these consequently went out in succes- 
 sion not feeling so well toward the College as the classes before had 
 pretty uniformly done ; which proved an irreparable damage to the 
 College itself, and the report of which did not fail to reach the ears 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 
 
 727 
 
 of the scattered trustees from time to time, and to cause them dis- 
 quiet, and once at least to bring them together at their own motion 
 upon the ground to see and hear what they could for themselves. . 
 It is true, indeed, that the students, considered as a body, gave 
 the new president a reasonable margin of time and opportunity 
 to manifest himself, before they fully made up their minds what 
 manner of spirit he was of. Those who had observed the slack 
 methods of the last years of President Chadbourne were pleased 
 to see the signs of vigor and the instant proofs of executive ability 
 shown by the new head. Five new professors and three new in- 
 
 LASELL GYMNASIUM. 
 Built in 1886. 
 
 structors were in their places almost immediately. Two or three 
 of the older professors were given positions better to their mind. 
 Many other changes were initiated or proposed. The new presi- 
 dent was expected to increase the funds of the -College, and he 
 addressed himself to that task with skill and persistency. When 
 it was announced that a gift of $100,000 for a new dormitory had 
 been secured from Governor Morgan of New York by his direct 
 solicitation, the students were jubilant, little surmising the heart- 
 
728 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 burnings and bitterness that the new building would engender in 
 the course of a few years. The Lasell Gymnasium, understood 
 to have been secured by similar means, built in 1886, excited 
 similar feelings on the part of the students, without being fol- 
 lowed by any permanent reactions as in the other case. President 
 Carter deserved large credit for his laborious and successful efforts 
 to add to the funds of the College, and to its material equipments 
 generally ; but that did not and could not of itself make him a good 
 president, because such an official in all his relations to the persons 
 surrounding him and constituting the College, must have personal 
 and moral and social qualifications such as Carter did not possess. 
 No one man indeed ever did have, or ever will have, all the qualities 
 seemingly requisite for a good college president ; but he must have 
 the essential qualities, namely, the ability to draw and hold the con- 
 fidence of all the bodies with which he has specifically to do, as an 
 open and competent and faithful official. The experiment that was 
 tried on this ground during the last two decades of the century was 
 presently advantageous to the College and the community. 
 
 But its main significance and usefulness lay in the future. It was 
 vitally important for the College that the principle and practice 
 within it of sovereignty and loyalty should be not only scotched 
 but killed. Every branch needed to be excided and every root 
 eradicated. The experiment of establishing it, if it were to be made 
 at all, were well made persistently, under favorable auspices, and 
 by mammals of the pachydermatous order, and then the failure of 
 the trial be exhibited to all the world as total and dismal. Sub- 
 stantially these conditions existed and this result was exhibited. 
 (1) The time and place for the experiment were favorable. The 
 strictly and properly collegiate government had been weakened in the 
 last years of Hopkins and all the years of Chadbourne. Influence had 
 then largely taken the place of authority. Influence is better than 
 authority, and if there cannot be but one, is greatly to be preferred. 
 But the legitimate authority kindly and firmly exerted by the con- 
 stituted body as such, and then a personal influence gained and held 
 by individuals as such and exerted in studied harmony with the 
 other, makes the perfection of a college government over students. 
 An ideal is never practically reached, and a perfect college govern- 
 ment has never been witnessed in New England ; nevertheless, it 
 remains and always will remain, that these two factors, collegiate 
 authority and personal influence, properly conjoined and adjusted 
 and lubricated by clear intelligence and Christian charity, constitute 
 the normal and rotund college government. Neither factor of these 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 729 
 
 two can possibly get on well without the other. Each president and 
 each professor must be content to act at once as a correlated part and 
 as a subordinated whole in the great college sphere. (2) Franklin 
 Carter was just the man to try the experiment of displacing in 
 general influence by authority, and also collegiate by presidential 
 authority. The primary quality needed was self-sufficiency. A 
 secondary one was persistency regardless of the rights and feelings 
 of others, coupled with a practical insensibility to the strokes falling 
 of course on the anachronist and iconoclast. If such a man for such 
 a work needed and desired a confidential cooperator, then was 
 Griifin the best man he could have chosen; for he had within 
 certain limits all the good qualities and all the bad qualities com- 
 patible with such a questionable service. If the scheme could have 
 succeeded, then these two men would have put it through. With- 
 out positively affirming that such a scheme could not succeed under 
 any circumstances, it may be confidently affirmed that this scheme 
 under all these favorable circumstances did not succeed. It failed. 
 It miserably failed. 
 
 What is historical and hopeful in this whole business is the 
 extreme unlikelihood of such an experiment as that was ever being 
 tried on this ground again. Prognostication is not indeed so easy and 
 safe as is retrospection and a record ; but the social progress of man- 
 kind is facilitated perhaps as much, certainly a great deal, by the 
 conspicuous failure of false principles, as by the exhilarating success 
 of sound principles. Future faculties of Williams College are likely 
 to be warned by the ill success of this desperate trial. This thing 
 was not done in a corner. Nor was it in itself a feeble attempt. 
 The light of the past shines out not dimly for this institution into 
 the still opening roads of the twentieth century. 
 
 History is disposed to linger still longer on the college annals of 
 these two decades, not with a view of exalting or depreciating any 
 individuals as such, but with the purpose of elucidating certain per- 
 vasive principles which belong radically to the development of col- 
 leges and similar schools of learning. These institutions come to 
 have an historic growth of their own, the result partly of original 
 bent and long-continued culture, and partly of special environment. 
 Williams College had such a growth under peculiarly definite causes 
 of both these sorts. It became strong after its own fashion, and in 
 accordance with conditions normal only here. No man was fit to 
 exert or capable of exerting a controlling influence which should be 
 healthful and continuous on a college so grown and so, in a certain 
 sense, self-conscious, who did not historically understand these con- 
 
730 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ditions and thoroughly respect their embodied results. Franklin 
 Carter came hither as president in 1881 without knowing those his- 
 torical antecedents and ingredients of the College, and without car- 
 ing anything at all what they had been, and consequently without 
 heartily respecting the College itself. He had not an historical 
 mind to start with; and for this he was not to blame. He had 
 never given himself any historical training, for the good reason that 
 he had given himself an almost exclusively linguistic training, and 
 the two are quite diverse in their action on the mind. Scarcely in 
 its germs did he ever come to possess what is happily called the 
 " Historic Sense." But he himself was unaware of any personal de- 
 ficiency at that point. He spoke and acted throughout as if any 
 local knowledge of the past were a matter of no consequence to him 
 or to any one else. He came to Williams and began his lordly 
 operations apparently just as he would have done had he gone to 
 Dartmouth or Bowdoin, so far as any past of Williams was con- 
 cerned in his mind and plans. He knew nothing of the imposing 
 strength of an honorable and historical past. It was all to him as 
 a tabula rasa. He thought himself able to transform and re-create 
 the College after types existing in his own mind. 
 
 During his first terms as president he busied and wearied himself, 
 arid kept his faculty busied and wearied, in trying to make new rules 
 and regulations for everything. Nothing in the past of the College was 
 good enough for him. He did not respect the processes and he did not 
 respect the result. It angered him to have any one of the older pro- 
 fessors even suggest that this or that had been formerly managed so 
 and so. That was enough to condemn it outright. He was eager to 
 learn and quick to quote how a certain difficulty was handled in 
 remote institutions, and was anxious to apply at once the foreign 
 remedy to the domestic ill ; and when some one suggested that there 
 might be hazard in applying the same rule in diverse conditions, and 
 that much bodily borrowing seemed unseemly, then was hurled from 
 chair to colleague the instant insult (a new thing in Williams Col- 
 lege), as if some differences of opinion and divers points of view 
 were not implied in all consultations and councils, and were not the 
 sole ground of their utility. The president had very little ingenuity 
 of his own in framing verbal rules and restraints ; and while several 
 of his colleagues had much more, and did their utmost to serve the 
 ends he had in view, the almost uniform result was that the stu- 
 dents had little trouble in driving a coach and four through the fin- 
 est network of words that could be framed. The ingenuity along 
 this line of any body of students passes beyond description when 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 731 
 
 they set themselves to it under provocation. They are fearfully and 
 wonderfully made in this regard. And this is one reason why a col- 
 lege can never be governed by any collocation of mere words, how- 
 ever elaborate. The infirmities and ambiguities of language are too 
 many for any such purpose. A solid personal influence on the part 
 of the teachers is indispensable in order to reenforce the words, or 
 better still, in order to dispense with them mainly or altogether. 
 But the president gained very little personal influence over the stu- 
 dents. He did not know how to do it. He scarcely even tried to 
 do it. He did not meet them with open face and a clean heart, man 
 to man, and no subterfuges anywhere. The structure of his mind, 
 his past experiences, and their repeated evasions and overthrows of 
 his superfine regulations, deepened his suspicions of them ; and they 
 in their turn, as classes and bodies, never gave him their confidence, 
 mainly for this reason, that he never made a clean breast of it with 
 them. He chose to govern by authority, and pushed that forward 
 on all occasions, authority both legitimate and illegitimate, over 
 young men who are always open to appeals to reason, and to honest 
 manifestations of confidence by those who in any sense are over 
 them. The results of this isolated and personal policy, of this fail- 
 ure of the president to identify himself with the College and to appeal 
 to and abide by some at least of its traditions and historical strength, 
 and of his manifested determination to cut himself off from the old 
 and to build with a free hand on new foundations, were steadily de- 
 plorable, first on the members of the faculty, second on the succes- 
 sive classes of students, and third and more slowly upon the body 
 of the alumni. 
 
 Previous presidents had taken pains to make the weekly faculty 
 meetings pleasant to all those who participated in them so that, as 
 a rule, they were looked forward to in the way of anticipation by 
 all parties as an interruption of the monotony of college work and 
 duty. It became a time and place for mutual acquaintance and 
 good cheer, a sort of club. The college business, whatever it 
 might be, was usually presented first the president bringing up 
 any general matters that had been called to his attention, and then 
 asking in turn each professor if he had anything to present from 
 his own department or classes. This over, and it rarely took up 
 the whole evening, the gathering became informal and social. Men 
 manifested themselves just as they were without restraint. Opin- 
 ions jostled, and animosities melted. Men got acquainted with 
 each other, and came to have a mutual respect and a brotherly feel- 
 ing. Their weaknesses got mildly ridiculed from time to time, and 
 
732 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 their points of strength eventually came out more or less. Stories 
 were told on each other back and forth, doubtless much like those 
 which were circulated among the students about this professor or 
 that, and these were more or less put on their guard, and gradually 
 helped into sounder paths. Best of all, under these circumstances 
 a faculty came to feel that they were an organism ; that their indi- 
 vidual interests were in common ; that they were a body of indi- 
 viduals constituting a whole for important public purposes, and 
 consequently that they must not ravel out at the edges. It would 
 be wrong and foolish to expect that every president could manage 
 such loose gatherings of colleagues as these, to generally cheerful 
 and wholesome ends, as Mark Hopkins did for so many years. 
 
 But Carter had nothing of all this freedom and consequent good 
 feeling and unity. His faculty meetings were to the last degree 
 official and solemn. Every man felt under a conscious restraint, 
 and he more than anybody else. He allowed himself no opportu- 
 nity to get acquainted with his colleagues when they were all to- 
 gether. In fact, there was no other opportunity. And he did not 
 get acquainted with them. He never put himself on a level with 
 them socially, or in any other way. He never put himself at ease 
 with them as a body, and they never came to feel at ease with him. 
 Instead of ministering to a feeling of unity, and of an organization 
 for common ends, which a college is if it be anything, the faculty 
 meetings served to intensify the individuality of each person who 
 attended them, the president's especially. They solved no difficul- 
 ties, they removed no alienations, they quickened no organic pur- 
 poses, they ministered to no man's content or comfort. Accord- 
 ingly, the story of the faculty meetings, during the whole period of 
 Carter's presidency, form the dreariest portion of a record other- 
 wise, for the most part, dreary enough. They became so odious 
 and useless that they were intermitted altogether for considerably 
 long seasons. At other times they gathered only at the special sum- 
 mons of the president for special purposes. During his occasional 
 absences from town, when otherwise they were assembling regu- 
 larly, the professors were warned by special messenger not to 
 gather. This was something entirely new in the history of the Col- 
 lege ; for before this the faculty unif ormly came together whether 
 the president were present or not. The deeper truth in this whole 
 matter was, that under Carter's theory and practice of personal sov- 
 ereignty, regular faculty meetings were an incongruity rather than 
 a necessity. By studiously making himself independent so far as 
 possible of the sound historical precedents of the College, that 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 733 
 
 is to say, cutting himself off from its goodly fame, consolidated in 
 an honorable growth of nearly a century, Carter weakened him- 
 self as an administrator, and weakened his colleagues as individ- 
 uals, as well as a body, in all their relations to the students as a 
 body and as individuals. 
 
 How little the president knew, and how less he cared about the 
 history of the town and college, was manifested in his bearings 
 toward the Professor of History, who, when a student, had become 
 deeply interested in the origins of both ; that is to say, in the old 
 French and Indian wars, as these were carried on along the valley 
 and over the mountains of the upper Hoosac River, necessitating 
 a line of forts from the latter to the Connecticut River, and bring- 
 ing at length into the region a body of brave soldiers and citizens, 
 who became the founders of both town and college. Becoming 
 Professor of History in 1853, this man continued mostly in college 
 vacations, and wholly at his own expense, glad and successful re- 
 searches into this then terra incognita. He had quietly pursued 
 this course for almost thirty years when Carter became president. 
 He had made the beginnings of an historical museum. The trustees 
 had voted into his care the sword and a few other authentic relics 
 of Colonel Ephraim Williams, the founder of the College. While 
 still a student he had brought to the College, with the consent of 
 the owner of the meadow on which Fort Massachusetts stood, the 
 last headstone remaining in the little graveyard adjoining it, and 
 he added to this afterward several historical relics from the same 
 hallowed site. He visited repeatedly, and carefully explored, the 
 remains of Fort Pelham in the town of Rowe, and Fort Shirley in 
 the town of Heath, both in the line of forts to the eastward from 
 Fort Massachusetts to the Connecticut River. John Henry Haynes, 
 since so world-distinguished for historical explorations on the plains 
 of the Euphrates, received his first impressions and took his first 
 simple lessons along what proved to be his life-work, in kindly as- 
 sisting his professor in excavating and measuring at the sites of 
 Forts Pelham and Shirley. Interesting memorials from both these 
 places came at length to the little museum, not without much pains- 
 taking and considerable expense. President Chadbourne of his own 
 accord offered a commodious home for the slowly growing collection 
 in the then just finished Clark Hall, which had been built under his 
 auspices. Dr. Chadbourne, whose special intellectual interests lay 
 as remote from history as did those of Dr. Carter, yet saw clearly 
 the great value of the historical work that was being done, both 
 present and prospective, kindly promoted it in every way he 
 
734 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 could, and voluntarily gave a suitable place of deposit for the 
 collection. 
 
 Fort Shirley was a jointed block-house sixty feet square, built of 
 hewn pine timber at the order of Colonel John Stoddard of North- 
 ampton by Captain William Williams in the summer of 1744. All 
 the original documents relating to the erection and garrisoning of 
 Fort Shirley are still extant in the archives at Boston, many of them 
 in the handwriting of John Stoddard, the military commandant of 
 western Massachusetts. Six of these old pine timbers used in the 
 building of the fort were fortunately preserved in a family by the 
 
 CLARK HALL. 
 
 name of Maxwell, which came to own the land on which the old fort 
 stood. In October, 1885, in company with Mr. Maxwell, who repre- 
 sented that generation of this family, the Williams professor care- 
 fully examined these timbers, and found how the fort had been 
 constructed throughout. They had been hewn and jointed and 
 dowel-pinned and dovetailed at the corners. Indeed, he pulled out 
 with his own hands two of these pins from their- places, in which 
 they had then quietly rested 141 years. Not long after this the 
 town of Heath celebrated the centennial of its organization. As it 
 had little to distinguish it above the surrounding towns except the 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THi: CENTENNIAL. 735 
 
 interesting story of old Fort Shirley, the professor was invited to 
 deliver the address on that occasion. When he had concluded, Mr. 
 Maxwell publicly presented to him a section about five feet long of 
 one of these timbers in the name of the town, and as a memorial of 
 the Maxwell family. As a precious relic of " ye olden time," the 
 section was brought to the College and given a modest place in Clark 
 Hall. President Carter continued to manifest in various ways a 
 haughty contempt for the local historical labors of the professor of 
 History, and particularly toward the small collection of relics in 
 Clark Hall. Perhaps this is not so strange in itself, for he was 
 totally ignorant of the background of these relics, and of course the 
 relics themselves meant nothing to him ; his assumption was, that 
 what meant nothing to him meant nothing to anybody else ; and 
 even then it remained inexplicable why he should feel such a pique 
 and grudge toward these unobtrusive tenants in Clark Hall, and, in 
 particular, toward the section of one of the timbers of old Fort 
 Shirley, so-named after the energetic and popular colonial Governor 
 of Massachusetts. The president usually kept in tow a small coterie 
 of underlings and fig-showers, sometimes students and sometimes new- 
 comers into the faculty, who held their places through his good will, 
 and these stood ready to do anything at his persuasion, however 
 discreditable to him and them. One day the historical professor 
 was astonished to find that his bit of wood from Fort Shirley had 
 been disfigured and was scrawled over in writing to the effect that 
 it was a piece of rubbish of no significance at all ! The relatively 
 innocent agent in this act of low-lived prejudice afterward acknowl- 
 edged of his own accord to the person chiefly concerned, that he had 
 done this thing at the president's instigation and under the general 
 fear of otherwise losing his place. 
 
 Some years after this, when this same person concerned had 
 resigned his professorship, an unfortunate newcomer and ninny, a 
 total stranger to the place and to the past of this whole region of 
 country, was used by the president to uncork his vials of wrath on. 
 the doomed relics in Clark Hall. Many of them, including the 
 Shirley beam, were ignominiously dumped into an unoccupied room 
 of a neighboring building; and the poor irresponsible dupe, who 
 verily thought he was doing God service, was told to inform the 
 professor of what had been done, and to invite him to come and see 
 the wrecks as newly bestowed. The invitation was never accepted. 
 The emissary was quietly asked, what had become of the colonial 
 and revolutionary swords. " Oh ! " responded he, " / have saved all 
 the good things ! " " Good things ? How did you know ivhich the good 
 
736 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 things were ? There was nothing there that was not a good thing ! You 
 know nothing whatever of the significance of a single item of the collec- 
 tion^ any more than the man who sent you on the vile errand ! " The 
 tool used in this case was a scientist, who knew practically no other 
 subject. Except on his own hugged delusion, that he was the pro- 
 prietor of the College and of every person and thing in it, this mag- 
 nanimous official had no more right to break up and scatter the 
 hopeful beginnings of an historical museum, which directly and 
 indirectly had cost some hundreds of dollars and many a long jour- 
 ney, than he had to scatter on the campus the geological specimens 
 
 TRUMAN HENRY SAFFORD. 
 Born Jan. 6, 1836. 
 
 (for instance) of Professor Emmons. Can it be accounted strange 
 that his colleagues could bear little respect for a man, who treated 
 them all, first or last, in this high-handed and senseless fashion ? 
 And was it any lack of Christian charity, which led some of them 
 privately to predict, years before that welcome event took place, 
 that a well-authenticated announcement of his resignation from the 
 College would undoubtedly raise here the price of tar-barrels ? 
 
 An illustration or two, tending to show how the alumni in general 
 became somewhat alienated from the College, may here be given 
 of a deficiency in the mental make-up of President Carter, which 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 787 
 
 wrought much mischief and diffused much misery in college circles. 
 This was a want of any delicate and sufficient perception of moral 
 proportion as between different men and differing proposals. He 
 appeared insensible to incongruities in times and circumstances, for 
 example, in arranging the parts of a college curriculum, or in placing 
 persons (himself included) in relations to each other as toward any 
 recognized end or public service. A concrete instance will make this 
 clear. When Carter became president in 1881, Mark Hopkins had been 
 teaching metaphysics and ethics, or as it is now called, philosophy, 
 for forty-five years. He had taught these subjects in his own way 
 indeed, constantly profiting by his own experience in teaching them, 
 without much help from current treatises or from the use of text- 
 books in his classes. The key-note of his teaching throughout may 
 be found in the question very frequently put to a pupil, " Wliat do 
 you think about it ? " This route led to some introspection and 
 discussion. It always kindled some interest in these subjects even 
 in the minds of the common run of students ; for it may be said on 
 good authority, that in each of the fifty classes, 1849-99, there 
 were not more than two out of forty students on the average of the 
 classes, who had any special aptitudes or ever made any great 
 proficiency in philosophy. Nevertheless the almost universal ver- 
 dict of Dr. Hopkins's classes in their after years was, that his methods 
 gained the utmost attainable in college undergraduates, crude at 
 best, having had an average distinct preparation of about two years 
 for a course of four years in college. He himself knew very little 
 of the history of philosophy, and he could not have availed himself 
 much of it if he had known, in harmony with his general methods 
 of teaching and in justice to the generally low intellectual condition 
 of his pupils. It was impossible for him to extort from his pupils 
 much, if any, previous study or reading in preparation for his daily 
 recitations. A very few would read something in some author 
 alongside the text-book; more than half would fairly prepare the 
 prescribed lesson in the text-book ; the rest, for the most part, by 
 carefully watching the openings and progress of the discussions, 
 could get along comfortably when the turn came to them ; and then 
 there were always a few who practically got nothing at all out of 
 the course. No one knew all this better than Dr. Hopkins himself. 
 No student ever long deceived him. He knew the tribe, and he 
 knew the individual. He knew his own resources, and his own 
 difficulties and deficiences. He did the best he could with the 
 means and materials at his hands. 
 
 Franklin Carter's ideal of a good teacher on the other hand was 
 SB 
 
738 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 quite diverse from that of Mark Hopkins. The former's model was 
 Samuel Taylor of Phillips Academy, Andover, under whom he had 
 been extraordinarily well fitted for college in the classical languages. 
 That there could be any other efficient way of teaching in other 
 departments of learning than by " making the pupil work " (as he 
 usually expressed it) in study hours previous to the recitation hours, 
 seemed to find no place in his head or his system of college educa- 
 tion. When, in 1881, by a curious topsy-turvy, the president had 
 become professor and the professor president, Carter gave almost his 
 first prominent attention to the department of philosophy. He 
 understood in a general way the great consideration due to Dr. Hop- 
 kins. No doubt his prevailing motive in bringing in another man to 
 teach subordinately in that department was, to " make the Seniors 
 work " ; but with this motive it was plain that he was not averse to 
 adopt a course that would naturally humiliate Dr. Hopkins. So at 
 any rate the latter and his family, and many others too, interpreted 
 the course adopted ; which was, to invite Granville Stanley Hall, of 
 the class of 1867, since distinguished as a student and teacher of 
 psychology, and president of Clark University, to deliver an annual 
 course of lectures to the entire Senior class on the history of philoso- 
 phy. If it had been left optional with the members of the successive 
 classes to take the course or not, no fault could have been found with 
 the plan at any point ; or, better still, if Professor Hall had been re- 
 quested to lecture in his own way on such portions of the great field 
 of philosophy as he might choose, still holding the entire class to 
 the lectures, there could have been no valid objections to that; for 
 Hall had already made original investigations (largely augmented 
 since) in the special field of physiological psychology, in whose 
 results he would certainly have interested and profited majorities in 
 successive classes. Instead of either of these alternatives, he was 
 asked by Carter to lecture on the history of philosophy, and par- 
 ticularly of German philosophy, who added the astounding prescrip- 
 tion in so many words, " Give it to 'em stiff on Hegel ! " 
 
 Hall himself verbally told the present writer, in implied explana- 
 tion at least of his failure to interest the classes in his lectures, that 
 he had worked under definite instructions, couched in part in the 
 above-quoted sentence. Here was incongruity carried to the pitch 
 of absurdity. The " secret of Hegel " had not then been agreed 
 upon even by the most advanced of the philosophers themselves ; 
 some of these affirm, that the " secret " has not yet been fairly 
 enucleated ; and there may be a few who say, that the infirmities of 
 language are such that Hegel's deepest thoughts cannot be conveyed 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 739 
 
 over to other men through such weak and shifting instrumentalities 
 as words. In the winter of 1898, however, appeared a new and 
 revised edition of Dr. James H. Stirling's " The Secret of Hegel." 
 This writer had not only found out the secret, but also had finally 
 expressed it in words, as follows : 
 
 As Aristotle (with assistance from Plato) made explicit the abstract Univer- 
 sal implicit in Socrates, so Hegel (with less assistance from Fichte and Schelling) 
 made explicit the concrete Universal implicit in Kant. The steps to Hegel's 
 ultimate secret are his m, /or, and his in and for itself. They have analogues 
 in Aristotle ; but, unless they are regarded simply in their derivation from Kant, 
 they will be misunderstood. 
 
 Hall's introductory lecture to his first year's course was attended 
 by Dr. Hopkins and another professor who sat next him. Both gave 
 close attention to the entire lecture. As soon as it was concluded, 
 Hopkins turned his face to the other, and said, " I do not know any- 
 thing about this." Both then rose together to go up to the dais to 
 greet Hall, who had just before come to town. Immediately the 
 greetings were over, Hopkins repeated to Carter and Hall, who stood 
 side by side, the same words he had just said to his seatmate, "J do 
 not know anything about this ! " Instantly perceiving by the blank 
 faces of the two auditors, that he had said something mal apropos, 
 the alert doctor made it worse instead of better by adding, " but 1 
 am glad to learn about it ! " It was not on the whole an auspicious 
 beginning for a course of lectures to a class of undergraduates who 
 were compelled to attend them. Hall began as he had virtually 
 been bidden to do, with Kant ; and many of the class were con- 
 siderably interested in the biographical details given of the outward 
 life of the German sadler's son of Scotch descent ; but when the lec- 
 turer passed on to " the concrete Universal implicit in Kant," their 
 interest dropped off. Fichte and Schelling and Hegel fared no 
 better at their hands, but rather much worse. Dr. Hopkins's mental 
 and moral condition as being " glad to learn about this " was more 
 hopeful than theirs. Professor Hall redeemed his second year's 
 course, more or less, from the indifference and repugnance felt 
 toward the first, by putting in at the end a number of lectures on 
 physiological psychology, which took hold of the class pretty well, 
 and of which the whole course should have consisted, for that was 
 Hall's own and proper field. He then worried through the third 
 year's similar course with increasing friction, and came then to an 
 end ; for practically the students refused to hear him any longer. 
 Dr. Hopkins suffered no diminution of his popularity with his 
 
740 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 classes from this repeated exhibition of the methods of modern 
 German philosophy, but continued, till his death in 1887, skilfully 
 to adapt his instructions to the average mental and moral condition 
 of his grateful pupils. 
 
 The first president of the Society of Alumni was Dr. Asa Burbank, 
 of the class of 1797, a man born and bred and professionally trained 
 in Williamstown ; and the first annual orator before the society was 
 the Rev. Dr. John Woodbridge, of the class of 1804, whose theme in 
 1823 was " The Obligations of Literary Men to embrace with Ardor 
 and maintain with Constancy the Divine Religion of the Gospel." 
 This address was printed and widely circulated. For about fifty 
 years thereafter the annual oration (or poem) before this society by 
 one of its own members rarely failed to be a chief attraction of 
 Commencement week. So prominent and influential became the 
 Society of Alumni among the agencies cooperating in the upbuilding 
 of the College, that its semi-centennial celebration in 1843 was con- 
 ducted directly under its auspices and officers. As the years and 
 decades went by, the society came into such self-conscious coopera- 
 tion with these other agencies that in 1868 a carefully matured 
 plan came into operation by which the alumni as such were there- 
 after to choose five out of the seventeen trustees of the College, 
 each one of these to serve for a term of five years. From the 
 beginning until then the College Corporation was a wholly self- 
 renewing body on a life-tenure. There had come to be some dis- 
 satisfaction with the trustees as a body of exclusively elderly men. 
 Friendly conferences were held as between the society and 'the 
 corporation. Friendly conclusions were at length reached, to the 
 effect that in order to avoid the necessity of a radical change in 
 the college charter, the trustees should continue to fill by election 
 the vacancies happening in their own body through death or resigna- 
 tion, but pledge themselves to choose one person each year already 
 selected from their own number by the Society of Alumni by ballot 
 to serve for five years. The secretary of the society was to canvass 
 by mail the entire body of alumni for their votes from a list of five 
 candidates nominated at their previous annual meeting. The candi- 
 date thus receiving the majority of votes was to be certified by the 
 secretary to the trustees for his ultimate election. The whole 
 burden of this somewhat complicated machinery fell upon the 
 secretary of the alumni, who was always a member of the faculty, 
 and who of course found his task burdensome and uncompensated, 
 and more or less invidious. Giles Bacon Kellogg, of the class of 
 1829, a native of Williamstown and representing by descent three 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 741 
 
 or four of its oldest families, was the first trustee chosen in this 
 manner in 1868. At the end of five years he was rechosen in the 
 same way to fill the vacancy caused by the expiration of his first 
 term of office. 
 
 This broadening of the basis of suffrage for the choosing of nearly 
 one-third of the Board of Trustees was in the line of the spirit of 
 the times, and was satisfactory to the Society of the Alumni for 
 a while 5 but, as is common in such cases of balanced powers, the 
 alumni did not remain altogether contented with the degree of 
 direct influence secured to them by this roundabout method of 
 selecting certain members of the trustees. The action of the latter 
 as a whole still seemed to many of the former as too tardy and old- 
 fashioned. The New England colleges generally were becoming 
 relatively restless and dissatisfied with the results of the current 
 schemes of college education and government. Williams was no 
 exception to the rule. The Society of Alumni, accordingly, deter- 
 mined to take a further step in the way of supervision and securing 
 some practical influence on the methods and results of class-room 
 instruction. They decided to raise annually a committee of their 
 own to visit the College in term-time, to attend recitations and 
 lectures, to inquire on the ground of both teachers and students how 
 matters were progressing, and what changes (if any) were needed 
 this visiting committee to make a formal report in writing to their 
 principals at the alumni meeting of Commencement week. These 
 successive changes of method, considered as one, constituted, by 
 deliberate design, a considerable innovation, and lessened relatively 
 the prestige of the College Corporation as a body, and, of course, 
 also that of the president as an individual official. To carry these 
 changes into effective execution required (1) a resident executive 
 officer of the alumni responsible only to them ; and (2) a yearly 
 visiting committee similarly responsible, whose expenses were to be 
 paid from the college treasury. The new system worked well for a 
 number of years. There was nothing in the nature of it, nor in the 
 practical operation of it, that should hinder satisfactory results. 
 The entire scheme was a wholesome recognition that the College 
 was a public institution, to be administered in the sole interests 
 of the public, and to be responsive through each of its three main 
 agencies to genuine and assured changes in public opinion. Let it 
 be repeated, that these three main agencies were and are, (1) the 
 trustees, (2) the faculty, (3) the students and alumni. Ever after 
 1821 the third body, itself more accessible and flexible to general 
 public opinion than the other two, had been increasingly leaned 
 
742 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 on by the other two. All three had worked together in almost 
 unbroken harmony. As an experienced and trusted member of 
 the faculty, the new secretary of the alumni represented in a 
 certain sense all three of these governing bodies, though he was 
 directly and chiefly responsible to the third only. If either of the 
 other two bodies sought to use him officially as a means to any of 
 their special ends, his duty would be as clear as the light; namely, to 
 ignore them absolutely in that regard; for he was an agent only, 
 and could have as such no personal motives or ambitions. His 
 delicate functions were to gather and record and count and certify 
 the alumni votes for alumni trustees. 
 
 When Carter became president with his peculiar and inadmissible 
 views of what constituted the College, and while the secretary of 
 the alumni was collecting their votes in the manner expressly pre- 
 scribed to him, the two men meeting on the street, the president 
 demanded to know the then current state of the voting. His man- 
 ner was imperious. He had no right to ask such a question. The 
 other had no right to answer it. As alumni each had his individual 
 vote, and neither had a moral right to influence the votes of others. 
 The scheme was concocted on purpose to pass over to the body of 
 the alumni a modified power that formerly belonged to the body of 
 the trustees. But Carter was unwilling that the actual transfer 
 should continue. The menace in the eye and tone of the man on 
 the street foretold what actually happened, namely, that not a stone 
 would be left unturned to get back, by hook or by crook, into his own 
 hands the virtual selection of every member of the Board of Trustees, 
 the Society of Alumni and the faculty of the College to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding. The secretary of the alumni, on the other 
 hand, had no option or individuality except to do what had been 
 bidden him to do by those whom he had freely consented to serve as 
 an agent. His task was laborious and thankless, but somebody 
 must perform it for the common good, and take the inevitable con- 
 sequences of suspicion and odium. He had no motive whatever to 
 do anything but the right in letter and spirit. Silent and self- 
 restrained, accordingly, because knowing his duty and determined to 
 do it with as little friction as possible, the other party to the casual 
 meeting on the street turned and went his way with a light heart. 
 
 Angered and transiently thwarted, the president began immedi- 
 ately his secret machinations against the Society of Alumni in the 
 person of their hard-worked secretary, as if he were the responsible 
 evil-doer ; and these intrigues were not intermitted until his private 
 ends were measurably reached in the enforced resignation of that 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 743 
 
 official and in the practical disfranchisement of the alumni as such. 
 Former presidents of the College had always attended the general 
 alumni meeting on the Tuesday morning before Commencement, 
 and as simple alumni had taken an interested part in the exercises, 
 and had helped to make those meetings crowded and enthusiastic ; 
 but Carter rarely or never attended that meeting in propria personcij 
 while he always had his brief special tools and toadies there, flat- 
 tered beforehand by his peculiar recognitions, and usually manifest- 
 ing to practised eyes whose livery it was that they wore. He secured 
 in this way annual changes in the conditions under which the alumni 
 votes were to be gathered or counted or announced. The only thing 
 common to all these changes was, that each of them made the duties 
 of the secretary more arduous, more perplexing, more possible to be 
 cavilled at and overthrown by a vote of the whole body. For exam- 
 ple, one of these new regulations was, that the secretary should not 
 even begin to count the votes received until twelve o'clock of the 
 night preceding the annual alumni meeting, and there must be at 
 least one other alumnus present to assist in the counting ! It took 
 between two and three hours of the night to count the votes in this 
 manner. This feature was shortly outworn as too obviously insult- 
 ing to the integrity of the secretary. A substitute was foisted in 
 some time afterward to the effect, that the secretary, though he 
 might count the votes at his leisure, should not announce the result 
 to anybody under any circumstances, until twelve o'clock meridian 
 in the general alumni meeting. This rule, like the other, was in 
 force but a single year, and had a singular issue ; for, in the late 
 evening preceding the day of the meeting, while the trustees were in 
 session, a classmate and friend of the secretary, John W. Dickinson, 
 then a member of the trustees and in session with them, came to the 
 secretary's house, and for the space of half an hour or more endeav- 
 ored by various devices, all friendly in tone and shrewd in contrivance, 
 to extort from him the state of the votes for alumni trustee. Dick- 
 inson did not say that he came on this errand at the instance of the 
 president, nor did he wish the other to infer this, but it was impos- 
 sible for him to conceal it. The other man knew that Dickinson did 
 not personally care a straw for the state of the votes, and he could 
 not help betray his true character as one sent. Besides he was deal- 
 ing with an old bird that knew the difference between chaff and 
 grain. His errand proving futile for obvious reasons, the two friends 
 walked back together to the building in which some at least of the 
 trustees were then sitting, and there parted for the night. 
 
 The two leading candidates from the alumni that year were 
 
744 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 James M. Barker of the class of 1860, and Henry H. Anderson of 
 the class of 1848. For some reason not at all relevant to the prog- 
 ress and issue of these intrigues, Carter was very desirous that Barker 
 should be chosen. As a matter of fact it was a case of tweedledum 
 and tweedledee. Both were good men. Barker had been trustee for 
 five years, he lived in Pittsfield, and had belonged while in college 
 to one of the later formed fraternities, the D. K. E. Anderson was 
 a son of the long-time secretary of the American Board, was a 
 college classmate of President Chadbourne, lived in New York, and 
 had belonged to the earlier formed fraternity of the Sigma Phi. It 
 had been noticed by many, and left unaccounted for, that relatively 
 few of that society had ever found a place in the Board of Trustees, 
 particularly as compared with members of the contemporary society 
 of the Kappa Alpha. More interest was generally felt on this 
 account in the possible election of Anderson. College-bred men, 
 like all other men, are fond of what is called fair play. At any 
 rate, it was injudicious (to use no stronger term) for the president 
 to fling himself headlong into this canvass in the way he did. No 
 man knew how the vote stood, nor had the least inkling of it, except 
 the secretary, who had counted and recorded the votes. There was 
 a general though vague impression that Anderson would be chosen ; 
 and Carter had determined that, even if he were, he should be 
 "counted out" in favor of Barker. If Dickinson had wormed out 
 of the secretary how the vote stood, then the election was to be pro- 
 nounced invalid, on the ground that the latter had divulged what 
 could only be legally announced in open alumni meeting at the 
 specified time. Foiled in device No. 1, the fertile mind of the presi- 
 dent fell back on a second possible expedient. One of the rules 
 prescribed to the secretary for the guidance of his conduct as such 
 had been drawn loosely and ambiguously, so that a charge of its 
 violation either in letter or spirit might be trumped up against 
 the secretary so as to pronounce the election void, and the alumni 
 present authorized to proceed to elect. 
 
 The alumni meeting the next morning was a spectacle to gods and 
 man. Nothing like it was ever seen before in any connection with 
 Williams College. It may be doubted whether anything to equal 
 it had ever been witnessed in Tammany Hall. When the meeting 
 opened in the college chapel, the conspirators found themselves in 
 a difficult quandary. They did not know how the vote stood on 
 record, and the only man who did know had been expressly for- 
 bidden to tell till twelve o'clock. If they waited till that hour, and 
 Anderson were declared elected, it would then be impossible to 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 745 
 
 count him out, that is to say, to reverse the verdict of the whole 
 body of alumni. But something must be done at once and at all 
 hazards. At least the secretary might be egregiously insulted at 
 each opportunity, and the impression be produced on the minds of 
 doubtful alumni present, that he were somehow or other a culprit at 
 the bar, that he had been guilty of some malversation in office, 
 nobody knew what. Possibly he might thus be provoked into 
 blurting out the state of the vote, and so give them time to bring 
 into operation their subtle contrivance No. 2. This last hypothesis 
 did not serve them, for the secretary seemed to be the only man in 
 the room perfectly at his ease. The great magician of course was 
 not present, but his puppets were in considerable numbers, and the 
 wires between them seemed to be in good working order. As he 
 pulled, they danced. The president of the day was Milton B. 
 Whitney of the class of 1849. He had taken his orders direct from 
 headquarters, and had consented to forego the honorable task of 
 presiding over a deliberative body in accordance with honorable 
 precedents, bound to respect the rights of majorities and all the 
 decencies of parliamentary law. He came upon the platform on 
 the rampage, inflated and prancing. The secretary read the min- 
 utes of the last annual meeting. Reference was made in them in 
 due course to a report then given to the alumni by Charles A. 
 Davison of the board of trustees. As soon as the reference was 
 read, Mr. Davison rose and interrupted and corrected the secretary 
 verbally as to its purport. This was unlucky both for the knot of 
 cavillers on the floor, of which Davison was a centre, and for the 
 overcharged Whitney on the platform, who interjected, " The 
 secretary ivill correct Ms minutes ! " The secretary quietly observed 
 to Davison that the passage objected to was under quotation marks 
 and copied verbatim from his own report, which was at that moment 
 in the secretary's custody. There was obviously no occasion to cor- 
 rect the minutes. 
 
 The meeting went forward much as usual, until the cabal on the 
 floor, after more or less of whisperings with one another, thought 
 it best to make the main attack. The goal to be reached was so 
 to discredit the secretary, in some way or other, they did not care 
 how, as to give some color of right to their determination to pro- 
 nounce his record of votes invalid, and to assume the right of the 
 meeting to choose then and there. Barker was to come in vi et 
 armis, under their supposition that Anderson had been regularly 
 elected. The cue then was to show the secretary at fault in his 
 proceeding at some obscure and ambiguous point of his prescribed 
 
746 W1LLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 duty. James White of the class of 1851, who had spent an active 
 and reputable business life in Boston, had just been chosen at this 
 session of the trustees, and, under Carter's special auspices, treasurer 
 of the College, but this fact was not known at the moment to many 
 of the alumni present. White, who was a man of excellent char- 
 acter, had never been distinguished for perspicacity, but was rather 
 noted for the lack of it, especially in matters of complicated and 
 recondite statement. He was usually a modest man, and was a 
 good friend of the secretary's, as they had been three years in col- 
 lege together as undergraduates, and were friendly ever after. But 
 White was naturally exhilarated by his election to the responsible 
 and honorable post of college treasurer, felt under deep personal 
 obligations to the president for his elevation, and was assiduous 
 at the latter's request to begin at once to repay service by service. 
 It fell to him, accordingly, to state to the alumni wherein the dere- 
 lictions of the secretary had consisted, and to support by argument 
 the motion now formally before the body, namely, that the recent 
 election of trustee be formally vacated. Everybody listened intently 
 to what he said, no one more so than the secretary himself, but 
 the latter certainly, and so far as afterward appeared 011 general 
 inquiry, nobody else, could construe from the speech what the 
 radical or even superficial fault in the official proceeding had been. 
 His assumed task proved to be beyond his powers. His zeal seemed 
 to have no rational basis, or at least no explainable basis. But this 
 fact, as often happens under similar conditions, did not lessen at 
 all the zeal of the persons committed to the scheme to carry it out 
 to the end. White's most intimate friend from boyhood was Wil- 
 liam E. Merriman of the class of 1850 ; they were fellow-townsmen 
 in Hinsdale and three years in college together, and as Merrirnan 
 had been less successful in his life-work than White, he became 
 in the fair sense of those terms a protege and dependent on White. 
 Of course the one would naturally be in at the inauguration of the 
 other as treasurer of the College, and be ready to assist in any such 
 work of sycophancy as the other was now employed in. Accord- 
 ingly, Merriman rose to second the motion to pronounce the elec- 
 tion invalid, and also to reinforce the argument (if possible) on 
 which such action was sought to be grounded. To those who knew 
 the existing relations of White to Carter, and the steady relations 
 of Merriman to White, this exhibit of secondary toadyism would 
 not have been assuring, even if Merriman's speech had been plau- 
 sible and logical. It was neither. In substance it was as weak 
 as water, and in form it was the talk of Poor Poll. Its effect upon 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 747 
 
 the alumni in two opposite directions was curiously marked. Upon 
 about half of those present, who had already made up their minds 
 for differing reasons to smash the vote and humiliate the secretary, 
 the total want of force in the speech led them to make up in noise 
 what was lacking in reason.- It seemed to open Pandora's box. 
 Samuel H. Scudder of the class of 1857, probably as the explosion 
 of some old grudge thirty years old, rose to express two or three 
 bitter insults to the secretary, having not the slightest relation to 
 the circumstances in hand. He sat down self-satisfied, as if he 
 had done a gentlemanly act, and one sure to contribute something 
 toward the felicitous end in view. 
 
 His brother, Horace E. Scudder, of the class of 1858, who sat 
 near him, rose next, as if it were a fraternal duty to give a moral 
 support to the good cause, although, as he freely confessed in a 
 letter of apology written to the secretary some little time after, 
 he did not really know what the good cause was. He saw lots of 
 smoke, and supposed that there must be a considerable fire some- 
 where. His speech, courteous in terms for the most part, assumed 
 that the secretary had committed some great sin against constituted 
 order, and that the trustees present with their satellites, and the 
 excited spirits around him, including his brother, stood for violated 
 law and the sanctity of precedents. He administered, therefore, 
 proper rebukes to his old college teacher for his hypothetical mal- 
 versations in office, without indicating in the slightest the nature 
 of the malversations. By this time the other half of the alumni 
 had experienced the opposite effects alluded to above. Oliver B. 
 Hayes of the class of 1850 rose in personal and indignant defence 
 of the secretary. What has he done ? What is his offence ? In 
 the name of all that is fair and true, what is the accusation against 
 him ? He has been our secretary for ten or twelve years or more, 
 and has done all our hard work, as you all know, gratis, and so far 
 as any of you all know, in the most faithful manner; and now, 
 before I hear any more of this loud talk around me, I want to know 
 what it is that our sole executive officer has done, or at least what he 
 is now being accused of having done ! 
 
 Presiding-officer Whitney looked daggers at Hayes, and evidently 
 ached for a chance to pronounce him out of order, which he would 
 have doubtless done in an instant and silenced him, had anybody 
 ventured to raise the point : and the new Treasurer White looked 
 anxious while Hayes was speaking, and there was a good deal of 
 buzzing before he ceased, to the effect that the motion before the 
 house ought to be put at once, before any more such irrelevant and 
 
748 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 unfortunate questions should be put. In the slight confusion caused 
 by the closing of Hayes, a special friend of Anderson's, a member 
 of the Sigma Phi, a lawyer and (as it proved) an orator, obtained 
 recognition of the chair. It had now become known, or at least 
 surmised, by all of the alumni present, that a high-handed though 
 underground attempt was being made to break up the result of the 
 regular election, and to put into the Board of Trustees on the part of 
 the alumni a man who would have no proper right there. The com- 
 
 
 COLLEGE CHAPEL. 
 Built in 1859. 
 
 parative stranger who had the floor secured an uncommonly atten- 
 tive hearing for a calm and elegant speech in behalf of precedents, 
 in favor of the right of each alumnus to deposit a free vote and to 
 have it properly counted; in favor, in short, of exhibiting in the 
 annual meetings of the Williams Alumni the methods and manners 
 of scholars and gentlemen. As soon as the speaker was seated, the 
 call, "Motion ! Motion! " rose in the room, and President Whitney 
 was only too glad to put it before any further damage were done to 
 its chances of passing. Many of the alumni did not vote at all, and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 749 
 
 the motion was declared " carried. " As it was not yet twelve 
 o'clock, the secretary quietly, but with all due emphasis, resigned 
 his office as such, and passed out of the east door of the chapel, and 
 so round to its front on his way to his house. As he passed the 
 front doors, Keyes Danforth of the class of 1846 and Eugene M. 
 Jerome of the class of 1867 came out in order to see how the re- 
 corded vote actually stood. The record-book was held up before 
 their eyes, showing a plurality of 110 votes for Barker over Ander- 
 son ! " The devilish fools ! " exclaimed Danforth. Jerome was 
 silent, but not less indignant. Both passed back into the chapel, 
 and each whispered to his neighbors in the rear of the room the 
 state of the vote. In one minute that part of the room was filled 
 with derisive laughter, which spread into a general guffaw ; jeers at 
 the extra-officious presiding officer confused and astonished him 
 before he knew the cause of the disorder, and still more after he had 
 found it out ; poor Merriman's face carried over even into the next 
 day a dazed and damaged and hang-dog look ; and it was no very 
 hazardous conjecture, judging from his countenance and attitudes, 
 that the new treasurer began to suspect that he himself had made a 
 bad beginning by so conspicuously drawing his bow over the second 
 fiddle in trying to keep up with the sly and false and cowardly key- 
 note of his recent, but now absent, benefactor. But what was now 
 to be done by the men responsible for the issue of the annual 
 alumni meeting ? And who was to be declared the choice of the 
 alumni for trustee for five years ? The second act in the deep-laid 
 scheme was, after discarding the result of the regular election, to 
 call on the alumni present to choose the trustee in some summary 
 manner, viva voce, hand-showing, or extemporized ballot. The 
 sense of the meeting as to the senseless trick that had been sought 
 to be played upon them was manifest even to the dullest. If the 
 now discomfited and disgraced leaders of the meeting had ventured 
 to carry out the plan, and order a new election then and there, 
 Henry H. Anderson would in all probability have been chosen 
 trustee. The fair-minded members of the body (not in the plot) 
 were disgusted on the one hand with the gratuitous insults heaped 
 on their secretary without the shadow of a reason for them, and 
 also, on the other hand, at the meanness of the attempt to " count 
 out" an honorable gentleman for no reason whatever except. that 
 the president of the College preferred for private ends another man. 
 Ludicrous to the last degree was the backing and filling, the hawing 
 and geeing, of the now exposed and dilemma-caught leaders and 
 servitors. Gulp after gulp they swallowed down all their proud 
 
750 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 words of an hour before, and were inclined to think that the pains- 
 taking and regular election, although its result had not been de- 
 clared in due time and form by their late worthy secretary, after all 
 expressed the deliberate wishes of a majority of the alumni ! So 
 James M. Barker was announced as elected ! 
 
 There is no proof and no probability that Barker approved of or 
 was even privy to this detestable trick, entered into by the president 
 ostensibly in his behalf; nevertheless, it is a duty to record the 
 unquestionable fact that Barker's good name and subsequent useful- 
 ness to the College as a trustee suffered materially from the associa- 
 tion of his name with this singularly unworthy procedure. He had 
 occasion to pray to be delivered from the influence of his superser- 
 viceable friends. This was a story that had to be told over and 
 over again, with his name prominent in it, wherever a knot of grad- 
 uates gathered to talk over the old days and the newer days of the 
 College. Moreover it helped to put Barker into unnatural relations 
 with Carter for many years afterward, not favorable to the self- 
 respect of either of them, and not conducive to the independent and 
 broad-reaching counsel which every trustee is bound to render to his 
 College with just as little reference as is possible to previous per- 
 sonal relations and alliances within the body itself. The story of 
 the Board of Trustees while Franklin Carter was at the head of it, 
 will never be written out nor fully known; but enough escaped 
 from time to time out of the safety-valves of certain members into 
 the ears of judicious friends of the College who held their peace, to 
 make indisputable the bitter disputes, the crimnations and recrim- 
 nations, that often transpired in their sessions. The effect on James 
 White of his initial participation in a piece of wretched policy pre- 
 scribed to him was morally unwholesome so long as he lived. For 
 about ten years he continued to be, so far as the College was con- 
 cerned, not like his predecessor in the treasury, Joseph White, an 
 independent adviser and coadjutor to trustees and faculty and 
 alumni alike, but rather a negative echo and servitor of the presi- 
 dent. He acquired very little personal and responsible influence in 
 the College. He clung to his chief alike in the right and in the 
 wrong, as if the latter person were the College and he himself no part 
 of it, thus belittling his duty and his opportunity. In some not closely 
 discriminating words spoken at his funeral, the president praised 
 the late treasurer as displaying a " loyalty to the College " beyond his 
 compeers ; and so furnished a further definition of that much abused 
 phrase undoubtedly held in common by the two men. The ill-effect 
 of this whole alumni passage was most obvious and pronounced 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 751 
 
 upon the College Society of the Sigma Phi. This was the oldest 
 but one of the college fraternities, and their members comprised a 
 body among the alumni large in numbers, influential in social posi- 
 tion, and probably representing more of material resources than 
 any other equal number of college graduates. Man for man they 
 were probably as friendly to the College as any other equal number 
 of graduates ; although for reasons for which they were not at all 
 to be blamed, they had never received anything like the recognitions 
 and positions from the College that fell to their contemporaries 
 of the Kappa Alpha Society. But here was a positive stroke, whose 
 source could not be mistaken, that would have made any body of 
 men indignant, and have alienated them from the College. Not 
 that they showed a vindictive spirit. They manifested in word and 
 conduct the spirit of gentlemen justly and deeply offended. Ander- 
 son never visited Williamstown afterward, and very property sent his 
 own sons to Yale College. During the decades following, Eugene 
 M. Jerome fairly represented on the whole the attitude of his breth- 
 ren of the society. He was stirred to the depths by what he wit- 
 nessed and by what he knew. But when his personal help was 
 needed in the laborious preparations for the College Centennial of 
 1893, he rendered self-denying services as toward that end unsur- 
 passed by those of any other alumnus. Jerome came out of the 
 loins of the very earliest Williamstown, being in the direct line of 
 descent from Colonel Benjamin Simonds ; and as a prominent resi- 
 dent and citizen of the town, he enriched by himself and his beauti- 
 ful family its society and progress throughout his middle life. 
 
 The writer has in his possession still the original report read to 
 the Society of Alumni by their visiting committee, of which Irving 
 Magee of the class of 1857 was the chairman, and Jonathan Wadhams 
 of the class of 1867 was a member; and the historical significance 
 of this report, as showing how the College was then being secretly 
 administered, was so considerable as to justify and reward a brief 
 notice of it at this point. The society had wisely and deliberately 
 undertaken, while Mark Hopkins was still president of the College, 
 and with his cordial consent and cooperation, to take some hand in 
 its practical guidance and government. This took the form (1), of 
 securing from out their number in the way already explained five 
 of the seventeen trustees; and (2), of learning at first hand from 
 a visiting committee of their own the state and needs of the College. 
 The bottom purpose of both these plans was, to have in their own 
 hands the means of knowing in general how the College was getting 
 on and of influencing in general that ongoing, independently of the 
 
752 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 impressions and representations of the stated authorities of the 
 College. The visitors might indeed ask the president and professors 
 any questions they chose, but they were to make up their own minds 
 from what they saw and heard in the various lecture-rooms, and 
 from all other data open to their observation and conclusion, and 
 to report direct to their principals, the alumni. Any other view of 
 their functions than this would make their mission and its results 
 abortive and ridiculous. President Carter did not think that he 
 needed any assistance from the alumni in administering the College, 
 or indeed any assistance from any other source ; and what was more, 
 he determined that there should be no investigations into the state 
 of the College, and no public reports made from the College of 
 any kind, unless he had a chief hand in the researches and in the 
 accounts given of them. We have just seen in the paragraphs 
 above what practical respect he paid to the rights of the alumni 
 to elect their own trustee in their own way. We shall now see 
 what practical respect he paid to rights of the alumni to inquire and 
 report as to the state of the College. 
 
 When Irving Magee gathered his committee together at the 
 annual meeting to read to them the report he had written in their 
 conjoint names, preparatory to his reading it in public, there was 
 a passage in it strongly reflecting on one of the professors for his 
 manner of conducting his recitations. The other members of the 
 committee interrupted the reading : " Have you visited that recita- 
 tion-room ? " " No." " Have you asked any of the students attend- 
 ing it, whether those alleged facts be so or not?" "No." "Who 
 told you that the facts were so ? " " Franklin Carter." This silenced 
 but did not satisfy the committee. Indeed, Magee himself was not 
 satisfied with the truth of the statements, he himself being the sub- 
 sequent witness ; but he had come under the power and transient 
 fascination of Carter, who had dictated to him the very words of the 
 passage ; and so Magee read them the next day with emphasis in 
 the open alumni meeting. No names were used, and not one in 
 twenty (if so many) of the alumni present knew to whom reference 
 was had. In the course of the day and evening, however, it became 
 known. At the hotel at which Magee was staying (this is on the 
 testimony of eye- and ear-witnesses), numbers of the undergradu- 
 ates gathered, who had been in actual attendance at this lecture- 
 room for one or two years, and these students communicated with 
 Magee in a manner very unpleasant to him. They said in his hear- 
 ing, that the averments in his report were made-up falsehoods; they 
 did not care who was responsible for them, they were false and 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 753 
 
 malicious; and that the professor in question was not only the 
 best-liked man on the ground, but was also the best teacher on the 
 ground, interesting the pupils in his subjects more and getting 
 more real work out of them. Magee left the hotel by an early stage 
 the next morning, and it was said by a witness of his departure that 
 his countenance evidenced a very low state of spirits. He was one 
 of the best friends the College had in its whole body of alumni. 
 Being settled in the ministry near the North Eiver, he had been 
 assiduous in his attendance at the Commencements and constant 
 in his interest in the College for about twenty-five years. He came 
 as usual the next year after making his report, and found the state 
 of things different from what he had expected. The president did 
 not seem to be glad to see him ; which might have been anticipated 
 by any knowing the custom of that official to use men for his secret 
 ends and then contemptuously to discard them. He did not find in 
 the alumni meeting any visiting committee prepared to make any 
 report on the state of the College, for it appeared that no visitor 
 from out of town had come upon the ground during the year ; A. C. 
 Sewall of the class of 1867, then the minister in Williamstown, was 
 of the committee but not its chairman, and made a few desultory 
 remarks for which the meeting seemed to care little. The professor 
 who had been apparently compromised in his report of the year 
 before greeted him cordially and was warmly greeted in turn ; the 
 clasp of hands and the glance of eyes indicated a mutual under- 
 standing and a thoroughly mutual regard. But the good man 
 never afterward set his foot on the soil of Williamstown so far 
 as is known. 
 
 Something was working, and working powerfully and constantly, 
 to discourage the alumni in their legitimate undertakings to help 
 the College along. The proofs of this fact were as clear as proofs 
 can be, whatever view one might take as to the causes of it. The 
 interest and satisfaction of the visitors and of the alumni as a body 
 in their visitors and in any report these might make at the annual 
 meeting dwindled perceptibly after Magee's report in 1889. Also 
 the numerical attendance of the alumni themselves on the annual 
 Commencements grew less and less from the same date, and presum- 
 ably, in part at least, from the same causes. In 1891 A. C. Sewall 
 made a verbal report more elaborate indeed than his brief state- 
 ments of the year before ; but he was a resident of the town, and 
 might be supposed to reflect the views of the local authorities of the 
 College, which was no part of the purpose of the institution of the 
 visiting committee. In 1892 the report of the visiting committee 
 3c 
 
754 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 (such as it was) was transmitted by telegraph, and read to the few 
 alumni present at the annual meeting. In 1894 no visitor, no 
 report, not even a telegram, appeared. In the two years following, 
 S. W. Dike of the class of 1863, a nominal member of the visiting 
 committee, did all that a faithful and able alumnus could do to 
 revive interest in the Society of Alumni ; and W. B. Putney also of 
 the class of 1863, perceiving that the steadily diminishing numbers 
 of alumni present was a discouragement to visitors so far as prepar- 
 ing and reading any report was concerned, kindly offered to meet 
 the expense of printing for circulation among the entire alumni the 
 annual report of the visitors. The report of these in 1897, of wh'om 
 L. C. Mygatt of the class of 1870 was chairman, was printed and 
 circulated in this way ; but through no apparent fault of the five 
 worthy names appended to it, the report itself was not such in 
 topics and in handling and in hopefulness of tone as prognosticated 
 anything essentially better along this line in the immediate future. 
 
 We have now been looking (perhaps too long) at the internal and 
 moral condition of things in Williams College under the presidency 
 of Franklin Carter. These are the essential things. These are the 
 central things. A college consists of persons. A good and strong 
 college consists of good and strong men in wholesome and hearty 
 relations with each other, all consciously working as toward a com- 
 mon end, namely, " the increase and diffusion of knowledge among 
 men." These persons, as already indicated more than once, may 
 fall into several groups, of which the faculty are always the central 
 and most important one ; while the common end, and the voluntary 
 and usually gratuitous services of the others, make possible and 
 actual a good degree of harmony and zeal among them all. A col- 
 lege is a republic, a republic of letters. From the nature of it, 
 the sole purpose of it, and the mode of operation within it, it cannot 
 tolerate the monarchical idea in practice, and at the same time reach 
 its ends. No more can it tolerate in practice as to matters essen- 
 tially important what is sometimes called "college diplomacy," that 
 is to say, wheels within the wheel, or, otherwise expressed, secret 
 manipulations by or for or against any college official in any one of 
 the few groups constituting the college. And, lastly, no college 
 can tolerate, and reach its true ends, the suspicious temperament and 
 habit in its officials. Autocracy, diplomacy, settled distrust, are 
 the three chief foes to the peace and success of colleges. Equality 
 of privilege as between the groups, and as between the members of 
 each group; open discussion and fair conclusion in all matters of 
 radical interest; and a human and Christian confidence in one's 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 
 
 755 
 
 neighbors and colleagues, that they are as clear-headed and pure- 
 minded as one's self (unless proven to the contrary), are the three 
 indispensables to efficient college progress. Confidence by college 
 officials as toward each other, and by these as toward classes of col- 
 lege students as such, is rational, and is rarely misplaced, except in 
 relatively few individuals easily separable from the mass. When 
 members of a college class, especially in the beginnings of their 
 course, find themselves trusted by those with whom they have most 
 to do, the influence is most happy in all vital directions ; on the 
 other hand, manifested doubt and distrust in those circumstances 
 
 
 MORGAN HALL. 
 Built in 1882. 
 
 tend to poison the entire atmosphere, and facilitate the inference so 
 easily drawn, that those who find it difficult to trust young men in 
 general are themselves unworthy to be trusted. The experience 
 in Williams College certainly, during its first century, seems to 
 demonstrate this proposition, namely, that college young men are 
 more worthy of confidence in all essentials than any equal number 
 of young men in the other walks of life. 
 
 Considerably distinct, however, from these internal and moral 
 and vital conditions in the common college life, lie certain depart- 
 ments external and financial and regulative. These fall naturally 
 and properly into the hands of the president for the most part. For 
 
756 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 some of these functions President Carter possessed unusual qualifi- 
 cations, and attained remarkable successes in them. He had busi- 
 ness capacities of a high order. He was expected to enlarge the 
 funds of the College. He addressed himself to this work with 
 promptness and pertinacity. His first stroke along this line sur- 
 passed any single stroke achieved in this way in the history of the 
 College. By personal solicitations, he obtained from ex-Governor 
 E. D. Morgan of New York, in a lump sum, $100,000, of which 
 $82,400 went into the fine dormitory, Morgan Hall, built in 1882. 
 This while Governor Morgan still lived; and after this his execu- 
 tors paid over into the treasury the remaining $17,000. An inciden- 
 tal circumstance of some interest undoubtedly contributed something 
 to this triumph of the president. Governor Morgan was a native of 
 Berkshire County, having been born on one of the many hills of 
 Washington in 1811. Many other very considerable sums of money 
 were obtained by President Carter through personal solicitations of 
 individuals for the enlargement and embellishment of the College. 
 He was also very instrumental in securing from willing donors the 
 sums expended in 1890 upon Hopkins Memorial Hall, amounting to 
 $87,800, by much the finest building upon the college grounds. In 
 all this work of solicitation he was incidentally aided by his posses- 
 sion of a private fortune, and by his command upon occasion of 
 manners unusually courtly. 
 
 The most munificent gift ever received by the College in its whole 
 existence hitherto did not travel hitherward along the route of per- 
 sonal and official solicitation. It came of its own accord. It was 
 proffered unsolicited. This was the first and chief benefaction of 
 Frederick F. Thompson, of the class of 1856. He was a lifelong 
 banker and broker in the city of New York, with a summer home 
 in Canandaigua in the same State. His first conception of this gift 
 was the purpose to erect a massive building that should cost one 
 hundred thousand dollars, to be dedicated to the conjoint uses of 
 chemistry and biology and physics. Practical difficulties were 
 encountered in the planning to unite, under one roof, and at the 
 same time keep separate, the work of instruction and research in 
 these three great departments. Thompson's wisdom and generosity 
 surmounted these difficulties. There shall be three laboratories 
 ranged side by side. Each department shall be under its own roof. 
 It will nearly double the cost, but the advantages to the College 
 shall be just as great as they can be made. Accordingly, the 
 Thompson Chemical Laboratory was put up in 1892, costing $60,- 
 000 j the Thompson Physical Laboratory in 1893, costing $60,000; 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 757 
 
 and the Thompson Biological Laboratory, also in 1893, costing 
 $60,000. Professor Leverett Mears (Amherst 1874) was at the 
 head of the instruction given and the work done in the chemical 
 laboratory from the first; Professor S. F. Clarke (Sheffield 1874) 
 was similarly the chief in the biological laboratory ; and Professor 
 Henry Lefavour (Williams 1883) was chief, also from the begin- 
 ning, in the physical laboratory. This magnificent donation in 
 the behoof of the natural sciences was not by any means the sum 
 total of the pecuniary benefactions of Frederick Thompson to 
 Williams College. No full list will here be given of them. 
 They were abundant and recurrent and diffused. Very expensive 
 annual courses of lectures and entertainments for the College 
 were furnished by him for many years. He gave, also, the main 
 impulse to the College infirmary, a quasi hospital for sick students, 
 costing ten thousand dollars. The Hoosac Eiver pours into the 
 Hudson, and the Hudson rolls on into the bay of New York. 
 Frederick Thompson wrought a miracle, causing a counter current 
 to flow up the Hudson from New York, and even into the upper 
 waters of the Hoosac, where its tide tarried indeed in place, but its 
 effects will flow on thence forever. 
 
 Following is a list of the gifts of the late Frederick F. Thompson to Williams 
 College, excluding the considerable amounts given to students either in pay- 
 ment of term bills and board bills or for other purposes : 
 
 1882 Library $500 1889-98 Additions to "Prize 
 
 1886 Gymnasium clock. . 1,000 for Prizes " . . $750 
 
 1887 College farm . . . 10,500 1886-99 President's private 
 
 1888 Library 500 fund, mainly for 
 
 Hopkins Hall . . . 25,000 entertainment 
 
 1890 Loan fund .... 450 course .... 17,500 
 
 1891-93 Thompson labora- 1893-99 Expenses of infir- 
 
 tories 180,000 mary .... 600 
 
 1894 The infirmary . . . 5,100 1899 " Sustentation fund" 
 
 1895 General expenses of of new Y. M. C. A. 
 
 college 10,000 building .... 2,000 
 
 1896 General expenses of 
 
 college 5,000 Total $265,900 
 
 1898 General expenses of 
 
 college 5,000 
 
 In connection with what may be called the show occasions of the 
 College, President Carter possessed talents that enabled him easily 
 to distinguish himself. Many of his speeches at the annual alumni 
 dinner at home were in every way felicitous; and some of those 
 delivered from time to time at local alumni dinners, as in New 
 York, Chicago, and Boston, were perhaps equally so. A few of 
 these addresses, particularly of those at home, were happily humor- 
 
758 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 ous, and enjoyed by everybody. When he felt well he felt very 
 well, and countenance and conversation and formal address were all 
 in conformity. This, however, was but seldom. His temperament 
 was melancholic. His situation was trying at best, and all the more 
 so, in fact, because he was out of adjustment with it from the first. 
 Mainly for personal reasons, some of which have been sketched in 
 outline, he led an unhappy life in Williamstown. Nobody could 
 help this. It was in the make-up of the man and of his surround- 
 ings. If those external circumstances and relations at which he 
 fretted and wore himself down could all have been changed to his 
 mind at the moment, he would not have been the happier on the 
 whole. The worst thing about it was, he was less able than most 
 men to disguise his inner feelings. His countenance was a true 
 index. He did not desire to make those around him miserable, but 
 if he were miserable himself he could not conceal it, nor cut the 
 cord of natural sequence. This drawback to his usefulness as a 
 college official was thought to grow less as the years drew on toward 
 the close of his presidency. His external difficulties and conten- 
 tions in the town and elsewhere rather increased than lessened, but 
 he was probably able to maintain toward his colleagues and pupils a 
 more cheerful aspect on the whole. His teaching, particularly of 
 theism in the Senior class, became more and more successful and 
 enjoyable, though the old despairing look would once in a while come 
 back and cover the entire hour. At one such time a Senior of the 
 class of 1898 whispered to his fellow, "Do you think that Dr. Carter 
 himself really believes that there is any God 9 " 
 
 The more solemn tone and aspect on all sorts of occasions was 
 more natural to him, which gave his festive strokes, when they 
 came, all the benefit of sharp contrast. Another kind of surprise 
 also frequently attended his serious public addresses. Any one who 
 took occasion to note these from year to year, or at least from time 
 to time, might well have been astonished at the rapid changeable- 
 ness in the opinions expressed and measures commended in them. 
 If it were true, as he was wont to explain in private, "I never 
 know what to say on those occasions," it was still more true that 
 his most familiar auditors never knew what he would say! It may 
 be wise for a public educator to have little pride in consistency of 
 utterance, and so be able to avail himself of unanticipated changes 
 of public opinion; but if there be possible gains to be gathered 
 along this route, the hazards of it are sure to be considerable also. 
 For example, in Carter's address to the New England alumni in 
 Boston in February, 1898, as reported and given below, there were 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 759 
 
 many points made fitted to recall to many present his intense ani- 
 mosity of a few years before toward professors for holding these pre- 
 cise opinions and maintaining the exact attitude herein commended. 
 
 President Carter was received with marked enthusiasm. At the outset he 
 spoke of the disposition now manifest in colleges to emphasize material equip- 
 ment, and recalled in contrast to this tendency the self-denial of the early men 
 of the college. The material and physical gain in all institutions and professions 
 is largely the contribution which the applications of science to industry, com- 
 merce, and the arts have made, and it is immense. The problems which great 
 fortunes and startling inequalities among the people, the corruption of municipal 
 government, the medievalism of much modern taxation, the complicated rela- 
 tions of business as affected by currency and trusts and international jealousies 
 present for our solution, have a right to force themselves into the schools of 
 learning as never before. The college must teach the solemn responsibility for 
 good government resting upon every citizen in our republic, and must also teach 
 faith in the people, faith in God's guidance and the supreme patience which 
 these faiths underlie. 
 
 There were pretty constant contradictions like this, not only in 
 Carter's opinions and expressions, but also in his general policy and 
 personal conduct. To know him as he was at any one time only 
 was not to know him at all. To learn to know him as he was at all 
 times was a task difficult, if not impossible, of accomplishment. 
 To anticipate what he might say or do in a set of circumstances 
 somewhat new was beyond the ken of those associated with him, 
 and of course tended to beget in some of these a fluidity of general 
 sentiment and a laxity of general conduct, demoralizing to the Col- 
 lege, and proving, later, unfortunate to him. And yet it must be 
 regarded as certain that his motives in general were better than his 
 actions in general, considered as a public official, in which light 
 alone he has been held up in these pages throughout. Owing largely 
 to the circumstances of his youth and training, he never came to 
 know other men well, and he never came to know himself well. 
 Without any ground for it, he discriminated between his own rights 
 as an official and the rights of other officials about him, both of 
 them to be equally and at all times respected. This discrimination 
 became perhaps less flagrant in the later years. The faculty meet- 
 ings, though they never came to convene regularly as of old, but 
 only occasionally, at the call of their faithful and patient and com- 
 petent secretary, Eben B. Parsons, of the class of 1859, meeting on 
 the average once in two or three weeks, became more tolerable 
 toward the last, simply because they became less and less signifi- 
 cant. Little was left to them to do or to decide on. Compulsory 
 
760 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 attendance of students on stated religious exercises in the colleges 
 became a topic of controversy at Williams during the last decade 
 of the century; but at no time heated as elsewhere. Upon this 
 question Dr. Carter represented very accurately the general opinion 
 of the alumni, and of the faculty, and of the local friends of the 
 College, in favor of such attendance. This discussion led to the 
 appointment of a college dean, whose sole function at first was to 
 control attendance upon the stated religious services of the College 
 under regulations prescribed by the faculty. Little by little his 
 functions increased, until he came to exercise practically nearly all 
 of the duties of the four class officers, whose authority in their 
 respective classes shrunk contemporaneously with that of the fac- 
 ulty meeting, leaving to the dean the practical control of the stu- 
 dents, the teachers reporting to him daily their absences. Thus 
 the collegiate idea and practice dwindled as individualism was 
 strengthened. This tendency was marked at the same time by the 
 multiplication of elective at the expense of the prescribed studies. 
 
 Several of the professors in alternation have always officiated at 
 morning prayers; the presidents in succession singly officiated at 
 evening prayers so long as these were continued ; and Sunday even- 
 ing prayers, which were never intermitted, were always a solemn 
 and impressive duty of the successive presidents. In the perform- 
 ance of this duty, Dr. Carter surpassed his predecessors in reverence 
 of demeanor, in solemnity of scriptural reading, and in appropriate- 
 ness of spiritual petition. This service became attractive to, and 
 was frequented by, many others outside of the strictly college circle. 
 The arrangement of all its parts, especially the musical portion of 
 the service, in which the organ and a special choir gained a new sig- 
 nificance in connection with the usual congregational singing, was 
 admirable, and manifested alike the good taste and piety of the 
 president. He was conservative in relation to the older Puritan 
 doctrine and practice, but scarcely more so than the one prevailing 
 on the whole among his colleagues of the faculty and the Board of 
 Trustees. Among the stronger of the motives actuating him to as- 
 sume the presidency of the College, in 1881, was the hope that he 
 might be able to exert a strong religious influence over the students 
 as a body. This hope was dashed on account of a lack of thorough 
 acquaintance with the mind and ways of students, and a lack of tact 
 in approaching and moving them on any subject. He gained very 
 little continuous moral hold over the students. 
 
 As a sermonizer, or preacher, on common baccalaureate occasions, 
 President Carter was in no way remarkable. He usually occupied 
 
TOWN AND COLLEGE TILL THE CENTENNIAL. 761 
 
 the chapel pulpit on the first Sunday of the college year, and occa- 
 sionally at other times. None of his baccalaureates were printed. 
 Perhaps the two most memorable of all his sermons were those 
 commented on at the time as preached to himself, and whose lesson 
 was thought to be more applicable to him than to any of his audi- 
 tors ; namely, one from the text, " With what judgment ye judge, ye 
 shall be judged " ; and another of similar tenor from the text, " By 
 thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be con- 
 demned." It is believed by those most competent to judge of this 
 matter through long opportunity and absence of prejudice, that the 
 main reason why Carter's preaching held so little of the attention 
 of the students and acquired so feeble an influence over them was, 
 that they had come to distrust him in matters secular, and could 
 not easily discriminate him as a religious teacher, in which sphere 
 he was worthy of all trust. Whatever else the president might 
 prove to be to them, he was statedly proving himself to be a man 
 of manoeuvres. Distrust in one set of relations begets distrust in 
 other relations. A man who descends to stratagems, and of course 
 to commerce with such men as stratagems imply, thereby and so far 
 forth shows himself unworthy of confidence in any of the relations 
 of life. That at any rate is the usual style of reasoning. Such 
 was the reasoning here, particularly during the decade 1885-95. 
 At the graduation of the last named class, there was witnessed a 
 scene in the church, on the baccalaureate Sunday, such as made all 
 judicious friends of the College grieve to the heart. The feelings of 
 the baccalaureates toward the president seemed to be indicated in 
 the patent facts that not a single one of them paid any visible atten- 
 tion to his sermon as it proceeded, and not a single one of them rose 
 to his feet to pay respectful attention to the personal address at its 
 close, as had been the unvarying custom for just one hundred years. 
 
 For about five years, during the eighties, John H. Denison, of 
 the class of 1862, was pastor of the college church and stated 
 preacher in the chapel. He was a man of profound spiritual insight 
 and knowledge of the Scriptures, who knew how " rightly to divide 
 the word of truth " at all times to his college congregation, while 
 the state of his health and his sensitive nervous system made the 
 duties and difficulties of his post so wearing upon him, that he left 
 them in 1889, to the great regret of his brethren in general. From 
 that time on the delicate task of securing from Sabbath to Sabbath 
 suitable preachers from abroad was met by President Carter with 
 noticeable skill and success. 
 
 Probably the most pregnant and permanent improvement brought 
 
762 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 about by Dr. Carter in the opportunities furnished the entire Col- 
 lege relates to the college library. Until the erection, in 1846, 
 through the liberality of Amos Lawrence, of the Lawrence Hall 
 library building, the small collection of books was very little fre- 
 quented by either students or professors. This pleasant and acces- 
 sible building (figured below) cost seven thousand dollars, and soon 
 began to attract some visitors and book-takers. John Tatlock was 
 then the librarian, and a few new books were purchased from time 
 to time, but the library was not regularly opened, although it pur- 
 ported to be, and contributed very little to the intelligence or research 
 of the College. Nathaniel H. Griffin, 1856-76, made a better libra- 
 
 LAWRENCE LIBRARY BUILDING. 
 
 rian, and Truman H. Safford, 1879-88, one better still; and the 
 library slowly and steadily increased and widened its influence. 
 With the accession, as librarian, of Charles H. Burr of the class of 
 1868, in 1888, after some of the inevitable perturbations, the library 
 began as a modern library, and sprang into prominence as an effi- 
 cient educating power. Two wings were added to the original build- 
 ing in 1890, at a cost of ten thousand dollars; ample rooms were 
 provided for readers in loco; reference books of all sorts were gath- 
 ered in other rooms for research on the spot; all books were classi- 
 fied in sections, and students allowed access to the shelves ; portraits 
 of college officials and alumni covered the circular walls of the main 
 room; liberal provision was made for the purchase of new books; 
 and the library was opened under certain restrictions for the use of 
 the students on Sundays. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 
 
 Turn the key and bolt the door, 
 
 Sweet is death fore verm ore. 
 
 Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, 
 
 Nor murdering hate can enter in. 
 
 All is now secure and fast ; 
 
 Not the gods can shake the past. 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWN was always, is now, and is likely to remain, what 
 is called a small place. The preceding chapters have shown well 
 enough that it has been useful and influential, and in some few 
 aspects remarkable since its organization as a town in 1765. But it 
 has been uniformly small in population. The reader will perhaps be 
 pleased to see in a table, as appended, the results of all the enumer- 
 ations of population taken in the town, 1776-1890, both inclusive. 
 
 Year. Population. 
 
 Colonial Census 1776 1,083 
 
 "United States Census 1790 1,769 
 
 " " " 1800 2,086 
 
 " " " 1810 1,843 
 
 " " " 1820 2,010 
 
 " " " 1830 2,134 
 
 " " " 1840 2,153 
 
 " " " 1850 2,626 
 
 State " 1855 2,529 
 
 United States " 1860 2,611 
 
 State " 1865 2,555 
 
 United States " 1870 3,559 
 
 State 1875 3,683 
 
 United States " 1880 3,394 
 
 State " 1885 3,729 
 
 United States " 1890 4,221 
 
 In 1800, 2086 persons were found in the town by the national 
 enumerators. In 1865, two-thirds of a century later, the State 
 enumerators discovered but 2555 persons, a gain in 65 years of 
 
 763 
 
764 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 only 469 souls. During those 65 years, the population varied at no 
 time 600 people from its condition at any other time. As a rule in 
 that interval, a single pair of parents had the characteristic then 
 common in New England, namely, a large number of children, and 
 had it not been for pretty steady causes of outflow, first to western 
 Vermont, and then to central and western New York, the popula- 
 tion would have increased here much more than it actually did. 
 Each of the States just mentioned had its " Williamstown," occa- 
 sioned by early emigrants from the town on the Hoosac. The origi- 
 nal families here came about one-half from Connecticut, and the 
 other half from the towns in Massachusetts east of the formidable 
 Hoosac Mountain. The difficulties of access and the distance were 
 about equal whether they came up from the south or over from the 
 east. Some slight jealousies, both religious and social, were encoun- 
 tered in each other by the folks from the Bay and the folks from the 
 Sound. They were alike a strong stock, there was room enough for 
 all, the land in its virgin strength was fertile, and the families mul- 
 tiplied on every hand. Not until the opening of the Erie Canal in 
 1825 did the people here experience a steady pull toward the more 
 fertile and workable lands around the lakes of New York. Between 
 the national censuses of 1830 and 1840, Williamstown gained but 
 19 to her population. It is safe to conclude that most of the over- 
 flow in that decade passed into central New York. The Fitchburg 
 Railroad, connecting Williamstown at once with the East (through 
 the Tunnel), and the West (across the North River), was the main 
 force that checked emigration from it and tended to bring new pop- 
 ulation into it. The gain in five years from the State census of 1865 
 till the national census of 1870, was 1004. The gain from 1885 till 
 1890 was similarly 492. The pretty steady increase in the numbers 
 in attendance upon the College, although the students as such are 
 not reckoned in the census, tend indirectly to increase the population 
 of the town. The immediate proximity to North Adams, already a 
 city and growing rapidly with but slight means of local expansion, 
 tends also to increase the population of Williamstown. The so- 
 called State Road, constructed between these two centres about 
 1897, not only facilitated intercourse of all kinds between them, but 
 also enabled men doing business in North Adams to find permanent 
 homes across the line in Williamstown, where the building expanses 
 were broader and pleasanter. The building at about the same time of 
 the electric railroad parallel with the river and the steam road fur- 
 thered the same ends more directly. The two towns were at one in 
 their origin as East and West Hoosac, and in their common relations 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 765 
 
 to Colonel Ephraim Williams ; and they have seemed to be growing 
 more united in their interests and fellowships, as well as in their 
 local habitations. 
 
 The mountainous surroundings of the western town have a geo- 
 graphical peculiarity, a brief description of which will now pave the 
 way to some historical and biographical features within the enclosure. 
 The highest peaks of each of the three ranges, together encircling the 
 valley, present themselves to the eye in groups of seven. Namely, 
 on the range to the southeast, Mount Williams, Mount Fitch, Grey- 
 lock, Mount Moore, Mount Griffin, The Bluffs, Simonds Peak ; on the 
 range to the northeast, Smedley Height, Mount Emmons, Hudson's 
 Height, Mount Hazen, Mount Sentinel, The Dome, The Domelet; and 
 on the western range, the famed " Taconics," Leet Hill, Dodd's Cone, 
 Mount Hopkins, McMaster Mountain, Mount Mills, Comstock Heights, 
 Sabin Heights. There have been graduated from Williams College 
 at the present writing, 1899, very nearly 3700 graduates in all. It 
 would be a comparatively easy task for any one, thoroughly familiar 
 with the history of the College and with its special rolls of honor, to 
 construct three groups of seven alumni each, who should seem in 
 point of the manifested power of their lives and hence in point of 
 reputation, relatively to the great body of the graduates much as 
 these foremost groups of seven peaks each seem to their neighboring 
 heights and to the lower levels of the town. But this task would 
 prove ungracious in its details, and would become more difficult of 
 determination the further one should pass from the very highest 
 eminence of character and achievement. At any rate, it is more 
 feasible to essay the universal suffrage of one's competent contempo- 
 raries in relation to the position of seven men than that of three 
 times seven men. Who were the seven most eminent of the gradu- 
 ates of Williams College in the first century of its existence ? We 
 give our judgment and the ground of it. 
 
 AMOS EATON 1799 . . Naturalist and Promoter. 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT . . 1813 . . Poet and Publicist. 
 
 MARK HOPKINS .... 1824 . . Teacher and Preacher. 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD . . . 1825 . . Lawyer and Codifier. 
 
 WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY . . 1845 . . Scholar and Lexicographer. 
 
 JOHN BASCOM ..... 1849 . . Thinker and Orator. 
 
 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD . . 1856 . . Worker and Winner. 
 
 1. AMOS EATON. Born in Chatham in 1776, died in Troy in 1842. 
 The significance of this man's life and labors, in a scientific and ped- 
 agogical sense, as described by numbers of well-informed compeers, 
 
766 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 may seem to modern readers as exaggerated and almost incredible. 
 But the various portions of this manifold testimony, when carefully 
 compared together, seem mutually self-sustaining and corroborative. 
 He was extraordinarily precocious ; and yet, unlike ordinary cases 
 of precocity, his work at full maturity and even to old age was as 
 remarkable as in his prime. He was the son of Capt. Abel Eaton, 
 a worthy farmer, and a deacon in the Orthodox church in Chatham. 
 The father was a native of Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1754, and the 
 mother, Azuba Hurd, was a native of Roxbury, Connecticut, in 1758. 
 Her father, Amos Hurd, had perished of starvation in the last French 
 and Indian war, probably in the near neighborhood of Williamstown, 
 of whom the brief record is, " died in the campaign, Nov. 29, 1759." 
 The Chatham family were poor, and it was the strong religious char- 
 acter of the mother, coupled with her self-denying economies, that 
 sent both Amos Eaton and his younger brother, Sylvester, to Wil- 
 liams College. Perhaps it was in part because he had been born 
 in 1776, that Amos Eaton was selected to deliver a 4th of July ora- 
 tion in 1790. Of course it was a creditable performance. About 
 the same time he was employed to carry the chain for a local land 
 surveyor, when he made up his mind to learn the art himself. Being 
 too poor to buy the needful instruments, he showed his practical 
 sagacity by a bargain with a skilful local blacksmith, who wanted a 
 hand to " blow and strike " for him, to render that service daytimes 
 in consideration of the blacksmith's work for him night-times. In 
 this way, after several weeks, a good surveyor's chain was made and 
 a well-shaped needle. Eaton magnetized his needle by a pair of 
 kitchen tongs, which had themselves been magnetized by long stand- 
 ing perpendicular to the earth's current. The bottom of an old 
 pewter plate, polished and graduated by his own hands, made a pas- 
 sable case for his compass ; and he was soon in the field with his 
 home-made instruments, doing little jobs of surveying for his obser- 
 vant neighbors. As one result of this early experience, he generally 
 preferred to make his own scientific instruments of whatever sort 
 out of simple materials with his own hands, even after he became 
 well able to purchase them, and so long as he lived. 
 
 Except the statement that he was graduated with a high reputa- 
 tion for scientific attainments, nothing is known of his college life 
 and special companions and teachers. Four classes, averaging twelve 
 graduates each, had already preceded his own, which consisted of fif- 
 teen graduated. If there ever were a boy who showed at graduation 
 what he was predestined to become, that boy was Amos Eaton, and 
 that vocation was natural science. Nevertheless, right in the teeth 
 
AMOS EATON, 
 W. C., 1799. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWAKD. 767 
 
 of the manifested will of God, in accordance with a foolish fashion 
 then prevalent, he was put apprentice in a lawyer's office in Spencer- 
 town, studied later in New York, was admitted attorney in Albany 
 in 1802, and practised for several years at Catskill. One dare not 
 affirm, absolutely, that all this was dead waste ; for it may be that 
 the scientific impulse, which he could no more resist than he could 
 resist his breathing, took on a more practical, every-day-useful form 
 in consequence of these legal studies. At any rate, his very first 
 publication (there were more than forty others that followed it), was 
 entitled "Art without Science." It was a small pamphlet printed 
 in 1800. In this, and in most of the rest of the productions of his 
 pen, truth seems to have been investigated more for the sake of its 
 practical applications than for the sake of science as such. For ex- 
 ample, he sought to make botany of quickening and broadening use 
 to farmers as a class ; and other of the natural sciences to mechanics 
 and other producers so-called. While still in the law office in New 
 York, he borrowed Kirwan's " Mineralogy," then a scarce book, and 
 made a manuscript copy of the whole of it. In 1810, while still in 
 some sense a practising lawyer in Catskill, he formed an institu- 
 tion there for the practical study of botany, and prepared for the 
 use of his pupils a small elementary treatise on that subject. Refer- 
 ring to this effort long afterward, which attracted at the time wide- 
 spread attention and recognition, he said himself, "/ made then 
 the first attempt in this country at a popular course of lectures ivith a 
 view to make practical botanists of young persons of all conditions and 
 pursuits." 
 
 In 1815 Amos Eaton abandoned the legal profession altogether, 
 not without disgusts, and not without certain scandals, and never 
 resumed it ; the scientific impulse had completely conquered, and he 
 left Catskill with his family for New Haven to avail himself of the 
 assistance of Professors Ives and Silliman, and the general advan- 
 tages afforded by Yale College in the way of lectures, libraries, and 
 cabinets. This was the turning-point of Eaton's life. To their great 
 credit the professors mentioned received him kindly, opened to him 
 their private libraries, and constantly aided him by their personal 
 counsel. He soon became qualified to take the field as a scientific 
 explorer, and the desk as an acceptable lecturer. Professor Silli- 
 man wrote of him long afterward, "Professor Eaton passed a 
 winter here in preparation to become a lecturer, and he became a 
 distinguished teacher." This was the winter of 1815-16. While 
 in New Haven he translated from the French the " Botanical Dic- 
 tionary " of Professor Richard of the Medical School in Paris, with 
 
768 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 " additions and corrections." Even the classification of Linneas is 
 more or less modified. It is dedicated to Eli Ives, M.D., as follows : 
 " Although this dictionary has not received the benefit of any cor- 
 rections immediately from your own hand, I have been governed by 
 your opinions in all cases of doubt." In the body of the book it is 
 incidentally stated, "The manuscript was prepared last summer 
 under the immediate inspection of Professor Ives of Yale College." 
 The botanical dictionary was published in New Haven in 1817 by 
 Hezekiah Howe, and a copy of it is in the library of Williams Col- 
 lege, to which institution as his own Alma Mater Eaton had betaken 
 himself in the meantime; arid these notices just quoted from the 
 book itself imply trips back and forth between Yale and Williams, 
 and indicate furthermore the best of feeling in the bonds of natural 
 science between Eaton and the professors at New Haven and the 
 young Professor Chester Dewey at Williamstown, graduated there 
 in 1806 and becoming Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philos- 
 ophy in 1810. Dewey in particular and the whole student body in 
 general welcomed him to Williams, not indeed as an additional pro- 
 fessor, for the college was too poor to employ another, but as a vol- 
 unteer explorer and lecturer in the natural sciences. His students 
 were equally volunteers with himself. He gathered about him at 
 the start almost the entire Senior class, and also some members of 
 the lower classes. He griped these men to himself and his methods 
 with hooks of steel-. It was the dawning of a new day of studious 
 'enthusiasm in Williams College. Before the volunteer course was 
 over, he received from the students the following written address : 
 
 As the course of Lectures on Mineralogy, which you have conducted so much 
 to the benefit of your class, is nearly completed, we are gratified with the pros- 
 pect of attending your course of Lectures on Botany, knowing that our 
 improvement in that branch of Natural Science would be greatly facilitated by 
 a systematic description of vegetables, and being destitute of such a system, we 
 render you thanks for the one, which you have been pleased, gratuitously, to 
 present to us for publication. 
 
 This complimentary address was signed by sixty-three students, 
 comprising all the young men in the Senior and Junior classes, every 
 member of the Sophomore class with the exception of one, and all of 
 the Freshmen but three. This was a personal as much as a scien- 
 tific triumph for Eaton, for it rested back on certain open and ad- 
 mirable qualities of the man even more than on those attainments in 
 science, which were indeed already remarkable. At this very point, 
 a distinction is to be noticed and emphasized, without laying proper 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 769 
 
 stress upon which, the success or non-success of college teachers can 
 never be understood or explained. If an analysis of Eaton's manly 
 traits may now be ventured on this ground, where they were first 
 conspicuously displayed, notwithstanding the dimness that has gath- 
 ered over them in the entire century since his graduation, it would 
 be substantially this : (1) Self-Confidence. (2) An open Trust in 
 others. (3) Jocoseness. Self-confidence is a very different thing 
 from self-conceit; it maybe said to be even an 'opposite thing to 
 self-conceit. Self-confidence is an egotism based on palpable reason. 
 The foundation of self-confidence in matters relating to the natural 
 sciences is a personal conviction of the uniformities of nature, and 
 hence of the strength of scientific classification. Eaton stated to his 
 first classes in Williamstown that there were nearly 1000 species of 
 plants collectible within a radius of ten miles of New Haven. How 
 did he know this ? Because he had examined particular specimens 
 of all these species. One species varied from every other by palpa- 
 ble differences practically universal. Nature is so uniform in main- 
 taining these differences from age to age and from continent to 
 continent, that a real lapsus natures in these essentials is a wonder 
 of wonders. Therefore, scientific statements resting on these ob- 
 served classifications may be made with all assurance. There is no 
 guesswork about it. With a just confidence in his own powers of 
 observation and conclusion within these fields, practising a natural 
 logic that was essentially inexorable, Amos Eaton had entered upon 
 an assured inheritance ; he spoke as one having authority ; he had 
 no doubt about it himself, nor did his mien allow any of his hearers 
 to entertain any doubt about it. This confidence in self and nature, 
 that is to say, in God, was and is and ever will be delightful to stu- 
 dents. It gently and powerfully carries everything before it. And 
 not to students only. Largely in virtue of this princely quality, 
 Eaton afterward swayed for years such leaders as De Witt Clinton 
 and Governor Seward and Founder Van Eensselaer ; and held and 
 persuaded such hard-headed audiences as the Legislature of the 
 State of New York, and gatherings of farmers and ordinary citizens 
 all over that State to listen to popular lectures on geology and kin- 
 dred subjects. 
 
 The second of Eaton's personal traits, hardly less conspicuous 
 and influential than the first, was his manifested trust in others. 
 He carried an open face and an open heart. He believed in the 
 truthfulness of nature, in the integrity of his own inental and 
 moral organization, and (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) 
 in the equal trustworthiness of other men. Students particularly 
 
 3D 
 
770 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 have an instinctive distrust of teachers who distrust them, and an 
 equally immediate confidence in those who manifest an instinctive 
 trust as toward them. They are not, indeed, apt to philosophize 
 about this, and probably seldom find the true ground of it ; but the 
 ground of it is firm, nevertheless, in the fundamentals of human 
 nature. Erom the necessities of their construction and position, 
 men are compelled in general to judge of others by themselves; 
 and it is only by the slow observation and still slower ripening of 
 experience that this inevitable rule becomes modified in its action 
 here and there. When a public teacher is found extraordinarily 
 distrustful of his pupils, he cannot conceal this attitude of mind 
 from them if he tries, and the more he tries the more he betrays 
 it; and whether he tries or not, the suspicions become self-inter- 
 pretations : for how should he come to suppose others unworthy of 
 confidence, when he is thoroughly conscious of being worthy of con- 
 fidence himself ? Ex nihil nihil Jit. A specially suspicious man is 
 a specially untrustworthy man the world over. A specially sus- 
 picious teacher is deservedly distrusted by his pupils. If not too 
 old, he may find fitter occupation than his present one with Pinker- 
 ton's detectives. Now Amos Eaton had nothing of all these unusual 
 suspicions. As a boy he was known to have roughed it and joyed 
 in it with other boys ; as a student he may be concluded to have 
 measured others by himself, as well as himself by others; and as 
 a man it is certain that he displayed himself worthy of all trust, 
 partly because he found men in general trustworthy, and helped to 
 make them still more so. 
 
 The third prominent personal quality of Amos Eaton, closely 
 connected of course with the former two, was that constant atti- 
 tude of mind, by which he instantly perceived and could neatly 
 express, without the least malice, any ridiculous side of men or 
 things. He had a natural and inexhaustible humor, as harmless 
 as it was enjoyable. He could enliven at will the driest scientific 
 presentations in chemistry or geology by quaint hits right or left, 
 by which the point was sure to be remembered by pupil or audi- 
 tor, and himself sure to become more esteemed and endeared. He 
 was as willing that others should turn a joke upon himself as he 
 was ever ready to exercise the same privilege upon them. In this 
 rare respect he resembled Mark Hopkins. It was difficult for the 
 spriest student or auditor to catch either of them, but whenever 
 it was fairly done, the laugh of the masterful victim was the 
 heartiest and longest. It fell to the lot of Eaton throughout his 
 life at intervals to suffer the severest strokes of affliction, particu- 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 771 
 
 larly in the persons of his own f amily ; and there can be no doubt 
 at all that this cheery temper in connection with his profound and 
 practical faith in the benignity of the Divine Providence both 
 lightened his burdens and broadened his influence. 
 
 Eaton began his volunteer work at Williams in March, 1817, 
 comprising courses of lectures on botany, mineralogy, and geology ; 
 and the encouragement he received from the faculty and students, 
 and particularly from Professor Chester Dewey, his lifelong friend 
 and coadjutor, determined him to attempt courses of popular lec- 
 tures with practical instruction to such classes as he might organize 
 in several of the larger towns successively in New England and 
 New York. The dedication of the second edition of his " Manual 
 of Botany," published in 1818, to the Williams president and pro- 
 fessors, pleasingly expressed his sense of obligation in these words, 
 " The ' Science of Botany ' is indebted to you for its first introduction 
 into the interior of the Northern States, and I am indebted to you 
 for a passport into the scientific world." He went first to North- 
 ampton, where he is said to be the first man in America to enrol 
 classes of ladies in the study of natural science. Then he went to 
 Amherst, where Mary Lyon, the founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary, 
 became his enthusiastic pupil, and later in Troy, where she was by 
 invitation a member of his family. He lectured also in Lenox and 
 Stockbridge and other towns with ever widening applause and per- 
 manent reputation. President Gates of Amherst College said finely 
 of him, " He knew how to ring the rising-bell in the dormitory of 
 the soul." Great matters were then stirring along the upper Hud- 
 son, which was a more important stream than the Hoosac, the 
 Housatonic, or the Connecticut; and the greatest of these was the 
 marvellous scheme of De Witt Clinton to unite by means of a series 
 of canals the waters of Lake Erie with the upper tides of the Hud- 
 son, for purposes of public transportation, whose success or failure 
 was largely a matter of scientific geology. Clinton was Governor 
 of New York during nearly all the progress of this vast work, 
 namely, from 1817 to 1825; and the greatest obstacles he experi- 
 enced were from the Legislature of the State and the practical 
 incredulity of its people. In 1818 Governor Clinton sent to Amos 
 Eaton a special invitation to give a course of lectures on geology 
 before the members of the Legislature in session at Albany. He 
 went. He lectured in his own novel and inimitable way. He so 
 interested the leading men of the State in geology, not only in its 
 relations to the canals, but also in its relations to agriculture, that 
 the first steps were then and there taken which resulted in the 
 
77 '2 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 preparation and publication of that great work, " The Natural His- 
 tory of the State of New York." Governor Seward in his Intro- 
 duction to this work, Albany, 1842, said of Eaton : " He described 
 rocks which no geologist had at that time attempted to classify. 
 We are indebted to Eaton for that independence of European clas- 
 sification which has been found indispensable in describing the 
 New York system." 
 
 It is probable but not certified, that it was at Albany at this time 
 that Amos Eaton made the permanent acquaintance of General 
 Stephen Van Rensselaer, the greatest of the Patroons, and the 
 earliest of the great benefactors of practical science in this country. 
 In 1820 he employed Eaton to make an exhaustive agricultural survey 
 of his own vast estates, the original Dutch colony of Kensselaer- 
 wyck, extending forty-eight miles one way and twenty-four the 
 other, and now covering three counties. The results of this and 
 further similar surveys east as well as west of the North Biver 
 were published in 1824 at the sole cost of his generous patron. He 
 also paid Eaton to give popular lectures on geology throughout the 
 State. The crowning work of the lives of both these men centred 
 in the establishment in Troy of a school of the highest grade, 
 entitled the " Rensselaer Institute," endowed by the one and super- 
 intended and directed by the other till his death in 1842. President 
 Brainerd of Middlebury College has the following to say of these 
 two men in relation to each other : 
 
 The pioneer explorer in American Geology was Professor Amos Eaton. He 
 had the good fortune to find a munificent patron, who sustained him for nine- 
 teen years, enabled him to travel more than seventeen thousand miles in explo- 
 rations, and published his reports and maps. In these days Geology became 
 the rage. It was talked on every steamboat and canal packet, and at every 
 public watering-place. Perhaps the fact that Eaton had more than seven 
 thousand pupils or auditors had something to do with it. At any rate, at his 
 death in 1842, every State in the Union except five had authorized geological 
 surveys. 
 
 In a book designed and entitled and constructed as is the present 
 one, it would be a grave fault to omit to notice, that Ebenezer 
 Emmons of the class of 1818 and Albert Hopkins of the class of 
 1826, whose after relations both to the town and college were 
 peculiar and long continued, owed their first faltering steps in their 
 distinguished scientific career to the skilled and helpful hand of 
 Amos Eaton. Albert Hopkins described in his later life his own 
 early impressions in the words following, to wit : 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 773 
 
 Professor Eaton was one of the first to popularize science in the Northern 
 States. For this task he had some peculiar qualifications. He had an easy flow 
 of language, a popular address, and a generous enthusiasm in matters of science, 
 which easily communicated itself to his pupils. 
 
 I well remember attending a lecture of his in my native town, the first scien- 
 tific lecture I ever attended, and, if I may judge by the sharp outline of it still 
 in my mind, one of the most interesting and impressive. Perhaps the "leafy 
 month of June," the subject of the lecture, "Flowers," and the presence of a 
 large number of interesting young persons, may have added something to the 
 charm ; but making all due allowances, I am sure that the leciure itself must 
 have had a good deal of intrinsic merit. Professor Eaton was at this time (1817, 
 I think) nearly in his prime. His person was quite striking, a large frame, 
 somewhat portly and dignified, though entirely free from what is commonly 
 called starch. His face was highly intellectual, the forehead high and some- 
 what retreating, locality strongly marked, and the organs of observation and 
 comparison well developed. His hair at that time was black, and being combed 
 back, rendered his fine physiognomy still more striking. I well recollect the 
 flowers, which I believe his young pupil, Emmons, had been employed to collect 
 for the occasion. They were, in the first place, the common lilac, which I had 
 probably seen before ; however this may be, the small floret, with its salver-form 
 Corolla and long tubular throat, into which the Professor dexterously inserted 
 his pen -knife, with no murderous intent, but to give us a view of the organs 
 which the great Linnaeus had selected as the basis of his classification, this 
 little floret, I say, is the first I now recollect to have seen; and seen it was, and 
 still is, with great distinctness. Then followed the Pedicularis, and some plants 
 more difficult in their analysis. In the analysis of these plants Professor Eaton 
 made use of his Manual descriptive of plants in the vicinity of Williams College, 
 a book which, with some imperfections, was highly valuable as a pioneer work. 
 Professor Eaton was among the first in this country to study nature in the field 
 with his classes. I think his zeal in the department of Botany led Professor 
 Dewey to direct his discriminating mind to the study of plants. At this time 
 Dr. Emmons took the field. In fact Natural History came in on a spring-tide 
 and has never lost the impulse since. 
 
 2. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. Born in Cummington in 1794, 
 died in New York in 1878. In a former chapter of this book are 
 given in sufficient detail the interesting circumstances connecting him 
 with Williams College. His astonishing precocity in the classical 
 languages and in poetry, and his eminence in both of these directions 
 maintained throughout a very long life, have no need to occupy us 
 for the purpose at present in hand. The man and his life-story 
 possessed a great fascination for his countrymen. Two generations 
 of them became familiar with it while he still lived, and a third 
 generation came to know it through the beautifully truthful biogra- 
 phy of his father-in-law, by Parke Godwin. So far as the public 
 were concerned both before and after Bryant's decease, the emphasis 
 was usually put upon his wonderful career as a poet both at the 
 
774 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 beginning and toward the close of his life. Almost everybody 
 knew something of his " Thanatopsis," written at seventeen, of which 
 the poet Stoddard said, "Thanatopsis was the greatest poem ever 
 written by so young a man ; " and the literary classes of all three of 
 these generations came to know, that "for the first time on this 
 continent a poern had been written destined to general admiration 
 and enduring fame. It in fact began our poetic history, and, what- 
 ever great things have since been done or will yet be done, to 
 ' Thanatopsis ' belongs the glory of the morning star, which glit- 
 ters on the front of day, and only fades in the superior light it 
 has itself announced." So at the close of his life, where, to use the 
 words of aline in one of his early poems, he was "journeying in 
 long serenity away," the attention of the public and particularly of 
 all lovers of Homer was strongly drawn and held to his complete 
 translations in English blank verse of the " Iliad " and " Odyssey." 
 This was wholly an old man's work. It was commenced in 1868, 
 when he was nearly seventy-four years old, and completed before 
 the close of 1871. It was therefore rapid work, though the work 
 of a brain and pen already accustomed to similar work for more 
 than sixty years. He had the advantage of all the previous trans- 
 lators of Homer into English verse, (1) in having their good work 
 before him for comparison with and emendation of his own ; (2) in 
 possessing a better command than any of them of a full vocabulary 
 of old and pure and strong English words; and (3) by escaping 
 through his choice of simple blank verse the restrictions and infe- 
 licities of rhyme and metre, under which most of the rest had 
 placed themselves. It was apparently the conclusion of the most 
 competent critics in this country at least, that Bryant's Homer was 
 more nearly Homer's Homer than any other English Homer on the 
 shelves of their libraries. 
 
 As already intimated, it is the present purpose to dilate rather on 
 Bryant's work and influence as a publicist, in which character he 
 was far less known to his countrymen and more closely connected 
 with his college. During fifty years, 1829-78, he was an editor 
 on the New York Evening Post, and for the most of that time editor- 
 in-chief and the principal owner of the paper. He virtually con- 
 trolled the political and economical policy of the Post for that 
 broad interval of time. He either wrote himself or secured and 
 approved the writing of the daily leading articles of a widely read 
 and widely quoted newspaper in the commercial centre of the 
 United States, and thus exerted a commercial and political influence 
 difficult indeed to weigh in exact terms but certainly and satisfy- 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 
 W. C., 1813. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 775 
 
 ingly prodigious. The Evening Post was founded in 1801 under the 
 auspices of Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist friends, by 
 William Coleman, who became sole editor in 1809 and continued so 
 till 1829, when Bryant succeeded him. Jefferson had become 
 President of the United States in 1801, and the Post started and 
 continued in strong opposition to the prevailing party until the 
 close of the second war with England (1815), when party lines were 
 mostly obliterated, and the paper became and continued more or 
 less independent. Bryant began to work for it in 1826 in a subor- 
 dinate capacity under Coleinan, and it is said that the paper began 
 at once to show the impress of a finer hand in more discriminating 
 notices of new books, in more frequent extracts from foreign jour- 
 nals, in the presentation of the claims of artists and of a better 
 architecture, in more careful characterizations of public men and in 
 almost daily suggestions of reform in matters relating to the city 
 government. In politics there was no sign in those days of the pres- 
 ence of a new hand, except on the subject of free trade. It has often 
 been publicly pronounced, that Bryant first induced the Post to 
 advocate that doctrine, but this was not the case. The journal was 
 fully committed to that righteous policy before the day of his 
 apprenticeship. So indeed was the city of New York, through its 
 merchants and more eminent citizens. There were calls in those 
 days for free-trade meetings and delegates to free-trade conven- 
 tions ; and one may find in the files of old newspapers as signers of 
 such calls and delegates to such conventions, the names of the first 
 citizens and greatest merchants of New York. Let seven taken 
 almost at random serve as examples of the rest Albert Gallatin, 
 James Kent, Peter Gay, Isaac Bronson, John Duer, Morgan Lewis, 
 Peter Bemsen. 
 
 How came this young man to become and to remain a Democrat 
 and a free trader? There were none of his kinsfolk and early 
 acquaintance of that way of belief. His father was a strong Feder- 
 alist. So were all the ministers and teachers of his boyhood. By 
 much the greatest man in western Massachusetts was Judge 
 Theodore Sedgwick, next to Alexander Hamilton the most influen- 
 tial member, and the national leader of the Federalist party. Curi- 
 ously enough Theodore Sedgwick, second son of the judge, fourteen 
 years older than Bryant, with whom the latter was very intimate, 
 early adopted the tenets of the Democratic party, and was a ready 
 and powerful speaker and writer in behalf of free trade until his 
 death in Pittsfield in 1839. Whether this Theodore Sedgwick, fore- 
 most of the family after the death of his father in 1813, exerted any 
 
776 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 direct influence politically over Bryant's mind is not specifically 
 stated or inferrible, but it is altogether likely, for, in a memoir of 
 his friend, he describes him as one " whose character deserves to be 
 held up to the imitation of all men engaged in political life, or in 
 public controversies of any kind. He was a man of many virtues, 
 but he enjoyed one distinction difficult of attainment, that of being 
 a politician without party vices. In the question respecting the 
 powers of government and the proper objects and limits of human 
 laws, he took part with great zeal, deeming them highly important 
 to the welfare of mankind." Bryant, however, was not a man to 
 take opinions of a radical cast from anybody without thorough 
 researches of his own. Such researches he made particularly in the 
 first half of the decade of the twenties, reading with care the great 
 debates in the British Parliament in the time of Huskisson (1820 et 
 seq.), through whose reasonings and exertions the old restrictions on 
 the trade of the colonies with foreign countries were removed, the 
 removal or reduction of many import duties obtained, and even con- 
 siderable relaxations of the Navigation Laws secured. Huskisson 
 is allowed on all hands to have been the chief practical pioneer of 
 free trade. At the same time Bryant took up the then current lead- 
 ing treatises on political economy, those of Adam Smith and Jean- 
 Baptiste Say and David Ricardo, and learned whatever they had to 
 teach him. He lived long enough to gain, and often to express the 
 opinion, that these and the other technical writers on the subject 
 had become antiquated and practically useless, as following a 
 method that is non-scientific, and embracing discussions too compre- 
 hensive to be scientific in the proper use of that term. It was his 
 view that political economy has since become a science, and that 
 that science is simply and solely the science of buying and selling. 
 
 After all that may be said and done about the proper use of books 
 in the study of political economy, Bryant possessed an additional, 
 and for men of his power of analysis, a superior resource. As in the 
 " Thanatopsis " he described a world of things, and men as subject to a 
 law of inevitable decay, appointed of God and unchangeable by men, 
 so he saw and came to describe with, an invincible logic day by day 
 and year after year, burning it into the unwilling minds of men, 
 that all the great economic movements of human society by 
 which the wants of all men and all nations are reciprocally supplied, 
 are as uniform and regular as any other complicated aggregate of 
 palpable causes and effects; and that, consequently, for any so- 
 called government to interfere in any artificial manner with the play 
 of these divinely appointed laws of demand and supply is of neces- 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 777 
 
 sity impoverishing in practice, and in contradiction to one of the 
 most sacred rights of men, that, namely, of freely bettering their 
 own condition without impairing the condition of anybody else. 
 This argument in substance satisfied the mind of Bryant for more 
 than fifty years. Only a few months before his death he exclaimed 
 in public, " / have been fifty years in this service, and have never 
 wearied of it ! " One of those associated with him in the American 
 Free Trade League, of which he was the first president, was wont to 
 put the same argument in the way following, namely, It always 
 takes two persons to make a commercial exchange, that is to say, a 
 trade, each of whom renders something to the other for the sake of 
 receiving something else from that other ; each of these estimates 
 less what he is about to part with than what he is about to receive, 
 otherwise he would not part with it to that end ; usual intelligence 
 supposed and fraud aside, the trade if consummated is profitable to 
 both parties, otherwise it would not take place ; now, if a so-called 
 Law (Protection!) comes in to prohibit or restrict this trade, the 
 interfering law destroys the profit of each of two persons, or of two 
 millions, as the case may be. What are the motives of the men 
 who always conspire to get such a restrictive law passed by the Leg- 
 islature ? These will always bear looking into ! They will invaria- 
 bly be found to be of a selfish and sordid character. No instance 
 to the contrary has ever been exhibited in the world of trade- 
 legislation. 
 
 There is no original connection obvious between free trade and 
 politics strictly so-called. Nevertheless, there are derived connec- 
 tions very plain to be seen. In becoming a free trader Bryant logi- 
 cally and almost irresistibly became a Democrat, as that word was 
 used in contradistinction with Federalist. He had been reared a Fed- 
 eralist, and so more emphatically had Theodore Sedgwick, second 
 son of the great judge. Both of these young men came to see, as 
 clearly as day, that protectionism so-called was a selfish scheme to 
 plunder the public for the enrichment of a few, and so to be resisted 
 in all stages and at all hazards ; and they saw also at the same 
 time, that the leading statesmen in Congress were apt to take posi- 
 tion in regard to so-called " protective " taxes, according to their 
 own proclivities of constitutional doctrine. Those who were in- 
 clined to protectionism were also inclined, or rather bound by the 
 necessities of the case, to broad constructions of the powers of the 
 national government ; while those who had emancipated themselves 
 from old economic errors were as earnestly disposed to a rigid exe- 
 gesis of the clauses of the Constitution. Free traders naturally 
 
778 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 became Democrats, and Democrats were logically free traders. The 
 only deep-cutting distinction in our national politics from the 
 beginning for a century at least lay along the line of State Bights as 
 contrasted with an elastic construction of powers granted in the 
 Constitution to the national government. The following formula 
 expresses as perfectly as frangible words can do it, the exact politi- 
 cal and economical truth combined : Equal opportunities under the 
 law to all citizens ; no special privileges of any kind to any. Bryant 
 and Sedgwick and thousands of other intelligent young men passed 
 thus through the open door of free trade into the safe fold of the 
 Democratic party. Bryant's mind was satisfied with the results of 
 this process as a matter of historical interpretation of the Constitu- 
 tion, while it continued active for many years upon a broader 
 phase of the same vital question. 
 
 What are the functions of government, if any, within this vast 
 sphere of social and industrial liberty, which is capable of operating 
 harmoniously and to universal advantage, impelled alone by per- 
 manent and indefeasible impulses ? The European answer to this 
 question had been Laissez faire, Let alone, let things take their 
 natural course. If Laissez faire were regarded as the mere negation 
 of the positive restrictions and interferences of government in 
 matters industrial or commercial (the two adjectives mean the same), 
 then Mr. Bryant would accept Laissez faire as the true answer to 
 the question. But he wished to make his own limitations. What 
 he said in effect was this : Government is the organ and repre- 
 sentative of the whole community, not of any class or of any frac- 
 tion of that community. Its primary and substantial function, 
 therefore, is to maintain the conditions of universal liberty, that is 
 to say, the equilibrium and harmony of the social forces so that the 
 energies of the individual may the most freely act and expand, 
 according to his own judgment, his own capacities in particular, 
 and his own views and purposes in general. Government must not 
 undertake directly any enterprises of its own of any kind, whether 
 religious or intellectual or artistic or economical, but must secure a 
 safe and open field to every kind of enterprise for every one of its 
 members in an individual or corporate capacity. Its functions are 
 juridical, that is, to protect and maintain existing rights ; and not 
 paternal or eleemosynary that is, to encourage and nurse and coddle 
 interests. The supreme, if not the exclusive, ends of government 
 are liberty, justice, order; not at all prosperity, which will come of 
 itself when these ends are measurably reached. This was Bryant's 
 theory of the State; on these foundations our national institutions 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 779 
 
 were distinctively and historically built ; these principles must be 
 carried out to every logical and practicable result through the State 
 governments, as well as through the national government, or else 
 the people give up their pretentious to democracy. 1 
 
 The educating power of these points of political philosophy, urged 
 editorially in the columns of a daily newspaper year after year and 
 decade after decade, urged not in the abstract, but in the concrete as 
 illustrations of them or of infractions of them came out in the news 
 of the day, reenforced also by those ethical and Christian considera- 
 tions which were all one in the mind of the editor-in-chief with 
 sound politics, and both alike clothed day by day in great beauty 
 and simplicity of language, expressing the convictions of the writer, 
 not more than bespeaking the candid attention of readers, the 
 educating power of these discussions over the people of the country, 
 and especially over the great political party with which the Even- 
 ing Post rarely broke, so far as organization and practical work 
 were concerned, cannot be adequately expressed in words. Bryant 
 became personally identified with the Evening Post perhaps as much, 
 though in a quite different sense, as Horace Greeley with the New 
 York Tribune. Both were equally sincere and philanthropic men. 
 But Bryant was a broad-minded, well-educated, much-travelled, and 
 aesthetically gifted man ; and his life-work consequently was put in 
 much nearer the vital foundations of society and progress, than that 
 of his more superficial and dogmatic contemporary. It was often 
 said of Bryant in his highly honored and extraordinarily useful old 
 age, by those entitled to judge and to compare, "He is the first citizen 
 of the Republic!" 
 
 3. MARK HOPKINS. Born in Stockbridge in 1802, died in Wil- 
 liamstown in 1887. Discussions of heredity are perhaps still rather 
 speculative than philosophical; but Mark Hopkins was a believer 
 in observably transmitted tendencies in his own case. The writer 
 once asked him about his relationship with Samuel Hopkins, the 
 distinguished New England theologian. He answered with mani- 
 fested interest, though in general he cared little for genealogies, 
 "He was my grandfather's brother." More demonstrably than 
 heredity did environment influence the choices and the career of 
 Mark Hopkins. Stockbridge was a Puritan town in the best sense 
 of an adjective whose significance is already becoming dim. It was 
 an historic town in the sense in which no other town in western 
 Massachusetts was historic, that is, having its origin in direct acts 
 of the General Court for ends and purposes of the Court's own. It 
 1 See Godwin's Life of Bryant, Vol. 1, page 254 et seq. 
 
780 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was in its origin a missionary town pure and simple. After the 
 Stockbridge Indians had left the place for good, it became exclu- 
 sively a town of farmers. The farm on which Mark Hopkins was 
 born and brought up, was one of four farms originally set apart by 
 the General Court for the use and occupancy of four English fami- 
 lies, which should serve as object-lessons to the Indians of the mis- 
 sion undergoing direct instruction at the hands of their missionaries. 
 When Mark Hopkins was born, the minister and the squire and the 
 doctor were the only parties in Stockbridge differing in position and 
 influence from the strong, fee-simple farmers of the valley and the 
 hillsides. When he was seventeen years old, and his brother Albert 
 twelve, Rev. David Dudley Field came to Stockbridge as pastor of 
 the church, bringing with him his eldest son of the same name, then 
 fourteen years old, and a second son, Stephen J., nine years younger. 
 There was an Irish boy in Stockbridge at that time, John Morgan, 
 born in Cork in 1802, that is, of the same age with Mark Hopkins. 
 In 1888, in an address at Williams College, David Dudley Field 
 spoke as follows of circumstances occurring in Stockbridge : 
 
 In the year 1819 three youths met for the first time in the academy of Stock- 
 bridge. Their ages were not far apart, and they were all in training for a college 
 education. Their tastes were much alike ; they were enthusiastic, lovers of 
 knowledge, and untiring in its pursuit. They went to the same college and 
 afterwards into different professions, but they always kept watch of ODC another. 
 Of these, two died in maturest age, and I alone survive. The first to leave us 
 was John Morgan, of whom I can never think but with deep emotion and 
 admiration for his profound learning, his guileless nature, and his devout life. 
 Long useful and honored as professor at Oberlin, he now sleeps by the shore of 
 that inland sea which pours its waters over the cliffs of Niagara. The second, 
 Mark Hopkins, descended into the grave two years behind his comrade, and he 
 sleeps here under these waving trees. 
 
 Mark Hopkins used to say, that he had no reason to suppose he 
 should ever have gone to college at all, had there not been an acces- 
 sible college in Berkshire. His maternal uncle, Jared Curtis, was 
 the medium of communication between the three Stockbridge boys 
 and the slender institution at the opposite extremity of the county. 
 Curtis was a native of Stockbridge, and was destined by his parents 
 for the ministry. He was employed as a tutor for two years in the 
 College, 1803-05, after his graduation in 1800, and then for ten 
 years thereafter in mercantile pursuits, reasons existing mainly in 
 his own mind always keeping him out of the ordinary pulpit. For 
 several years he was principal of the Stockbridge Academy, con- 
 stantly sending up boys to the College, and so becoming from his 
 
MARK HOPKINS, 
 W. C., 1824. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 781 
 
 early boyhood a sort of shuttle thrown from south to north and back 
 again, bearing threads forming a firm web between Stockbridge and 
 Williamstown. Licensed to preach, and going into central New 
 York, he was providentially appointed a chaplain in the state prison 
 at Auburn. He was the first person to be inducted into such a func- 
 tion in this country. Subsequently he was appointed chaplain in 
 the state prison of Massachusetts, where he passed about thirty 
 years of his life in self-denying labors for the spiritual good of 
 convicts. The changes of character wrought through his instru- 
 mentality were said to be in some instances wonderful. He died in 
 1862, at the age of eighty-five. His two nephews, Mark and Albert 
 Hopkins, were a ground of much pride and satisfaction to him, and 
 he became in a certain sense a second father to them in matters 
 educational. 
 
 Albert Hopkins described in a letter their home in Stockbridge 
 as " a secluded dwelling," and Mark was heard to say in middle life 
 that the distance from it to the district school was not far from two 
 miles. Mark was five years older than Albert, and the two labored 
 on the farm with their father in summer, and attended the district 
 school in winter. This tended to develop their physical constitu- 
 tions, naturally robust, and the younger became noted among his 
 schoolfellows, and afterward in college, for feats of strength and 
 physical endurance. Both were tall, with broad shoulders, wiry in 
 shape and motion, and slightly bent as old age drew on. There was 
 a difference in bodily temperament, the elder tending to indolence, 
 and the younger seeming to be fond of exertion even for its own 
 sake; there was a difference in intellectual endowment, and in 
 breadth and solidity of grasp, the elder being much the superior 
 in all this ; in matters of emotion and in control of the feelings of 
 others, Albert was very different from his brother, and in times of 
 religious excitement in college and in town easily came to the front, 
 and held his position there ; while in steady persistency of plans, 
 and in all the elements of a broad intellectual and moral leader- 
 ship, Mark Hopkins was the greater and more influential man. 
 Very little can be gleaned about their early life in Stockbridge, 
 probably for the reason that there was very little remarkable about 
 it. A single paragraph from a letter written by the younger brother 
 in 1840 is significant and precious : 
 
 Study was more congenial to my brother Mark than to me. He entered upon 
 the pursuit of knowledge prompted, I think, by a love for it, mixed doubtless 
 with something of a worldly ambition. For myself, it was rather at the instance 
 of my parents that I commenced study. I yielded to their wishes, and think I 
 
782 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 can now clearly trace in those promptings of parental kindness the agency and 
 direction of God. I have little doubt of having found the sphere assigned me 
 and designed for me in Providence, a sphere, however, for which I could not 
 have been prepared otherwise than by pursuing the steps marked out for me by 
 them. 
 
 (1) There was an element of largeness about Mark Hopkins in 
 what he was and said and did and planned, that seemed to discrimi- 
 nate him from most (if not all) other men of his generation in New 
 England. He had a large way with him from whatever point of 
 view one might observe him. He had a striking bodily presence, 
 awkward rather than graceful in every movement, and yet every 
 movement rather impressive than otherwise. Whatever he said in 
 conversation or counsel or persuasive discourse, or other orations 
 in public, was sure to have in it something that gave the hearer 
 the impression that it was something of his own that he was say- 
 ing, and also that it was something of peculiar scope and breadth. 
 Even trivial things he pronounced in a manner that seemed to give 
 them weight and consequence. An illogical argument fared better 
 in his hands than at the hands of anybody else, and seemed at the 
 time more convincing than when one went over it afterward alone, 
 in order to reassure himself. It is much to be suspected that he 
 sometimes amused himself, as well as more often deceived himself, 
 by the overpersuasion he was enabled to effect, particularly with 
 students, by reasonings really fallacious. But given a fair cause, 
 capable of being supported by sound arguments, and the impression 
 was invariably favorable to the cause and favorable to himself, 
 through a large way he had of looking at things in general, and 
 that cause in particular, and also through a way he had of disarm- 
 ing prejudice by disclaiming advocacy. Sometimes he seemed at 
 the outset to be about to give away his case wholly, in order to 
 take it back again amplified and reenforced at every point. It was 
 not that he was more learned than other speakers, for the contrary 
 was rather the fact ; it was not that he was more earnest and elo- 
 quent than others, for he rarely rose to much of personal warmth 
 in any stage of the discussion ; but it was that he made it plain at 
 the outset that he was in wide command both in thought and lan- 
 guage of the whole field, and seemed to demonstrate that it was 
 safe and sensible for every hearer to go with him readily along the 
 broad highway to his foregone conclusion. Much the same quali- 
 ties appeared in all his printed books, and tended to make them 
 popular and effective. He dreaded to be, and had little occasion 
 to be, a disputant ; and as to becoming a belligerent, it was not in 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 783 
 
 his make-up, and no part of his divine call in the service of his 
 fellow-men. 
 
 (2) Few are the men of whom it can be reasonably said, that 
 they produced distinct and decided currents in the movements of 
 their generation, and even this cannot be surely affirmed, until that 
 generation be well past; and in regard to Mark Hopkins, it is 
 already pretty clear that he did not belong to that select few ; but 
 he belonged to another class of men not more in point of number, 
 and perhaps eventually even more influential ; that class, namely, 
 whose members have the ability and the opportunity to impress 
 themselves and their own germinant ideas recurrently year after 
 year, upon scores after scores of gifted young men, who, in turn, 
 diffuse their own impressions upon hundreds and thousands of their 
 countrymen, and so on interminably. Mark Hopkins was first of 
 all, and more than all, a teacher of young men. He chose that 
 early as his function in life. He had special capacities for it that 
 were congenital, and he schooled himself in it by patient observa- 
 tion, and through mistakes and recovered tendencies that were 
 better. He could teach, and he knew it. His successive classes 
 knew it. The community knew it. The country came to know it 
 very well. This process went on practically unimpaired for forty 
 years. He taught large numbers of those who came in turn to be 
 teachers, and who transmitted to others, if not a method, at least 
 the spirit of a method. Here and there, one possibly one in ten 
 years on the average went out from his class-room to become as 
 good a teacher as himself. It was as a living teacher that Mark 
 Hopkins was incomparable. It was from this fount flowed his 
 influence and his distinction. It was not so much what he taught, 
 considered as substance of doctrine. He founded no school in 
 metaphysics or ethics. He looked directly for himself, and he 
 taught the most capable of his pupils to look directly, upon the 
 phenomena of mind and morals through introspection open alike 
 to all. He could not be said to teach a system of his own in either 
 of the two great branches of philosophy ; although it is true that he 
 threw into new relations and dependencies certain sections of both 
 of those vast fields of thought, particularly that of morals. 
 
 What was vital and distinctive, and most worthy to be remembered 
 is, that in his best hours he put himself into instant and constant com- 
 munication with the best, that is, the most receptive, of his pupils, 
 to investigate with him while he investigated anew each recondite 
 topic as it came before them. He asked them questions in order to 
 encourage them to ask questions. There were hazards in this 
 
784 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 method, of course. The discussions sometimes straggled on to no 
 purpose and no end. There were always some in each class who did 
 not follow to profit any of this talk. But there were almost always 
 some who learned something in every excursion, however tentative 
 and apparently futile. To learn to inquire, to learn to postulate, to 
 learn to discriminate, and to learn to conclude at least a little, was 
 the task perpetually laid before those young men. In. nearly every 
 class of the forty to which reference has just been made, there were 
 one or two or more who caught his knack of studying directly 
 these invisible phenomena, and who became in time philosophers 
 themselves, if not in the strictly technical sense of that term (as a 
 considerable number of them did), yet philosophers in the etymo- 
 logical sense of the term, and so influential in transmitting to wide 
 and diverse circles of men elements of permanent power that had 
 their start in the Mark Hopkins lecture-room. Again, there were 
 in each of those forty classes one or two young men who were pon- 
 dering the point of becoming foreign missionaries. The College was 
 considered and often called the missionary college. The Hopkins 
 brothers were men of a strong missionary spirit, though it was mani- 
 fested in each in a peculiar way. These inchoate missionaries 
 watched and welcomed the manner of instruction in that lecture- 
 room with an interest accentuated by some prospect of their need- 
 ing to use it themselves in a foreign land through a foreign language 
 for simple but divine purposes. After Hopkins became president of 
 the American Board, which fell in 1857, Williams graduates in 
 foreign fields renewed their interest in him and in his books, and on 
 their return to this country from time to time, they as well as others 
 continually going out, looked upon him as their intellectual and 
 spiritual father ; to the general result that he came into moral pos- 
 session of remarkable influence even in the lands of the heathen. 
 Providence opened up to him both at home and abroad paths of ac- 
 cess and impression trod in the same sense and to the same degree 
 by no other public educator among his contemporaries. 
 
 (3) Mark Hopkins became a distinguished preacher. That was 
 not his original calling. He had no special preparation of any kind 
 for that profession. It was incidental to his professorship in 1830, 
 and particularly to his presidency in 1836. He always recognized 
 the authority of the Bible in the common English version, and never 
 took any occasion to inquire critically into the sources and sanctions 
 of that authority. No such questions ever really came before his 
 mind. He happily escaped altogether the problems sweeping down 
 irresistibly upon the next generation of Christian ministers. He 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 785 
 
 found by experience the enlightening and healing power of all parts 
 of the Scriptures, and he interpreted them to others in the light of 
 those principles of knowledge and duty that he accepted for himself. 
 He exhibited on ordinary occasions ordinary Christian truth in a 
 plain and forcible way. These sermons cost him very little time in 
 their preparation. They were useful, but in no way extraordinary. 
 But when the unusual occasion and opportunity offered itself, he was 
 prompt to meet it with elaborate preparation, and with results that 
 were striking and permanent. Such, for example merely, was his 
 special sermon before the American Board, 1845, and the Election 
 sermon, 1839, and the series of Baccalaureate sermons in general, 
 1850-72, of which "Strength and Beauty" (1851), "Eagles' 
 Wings " (1858), " Spirit, Soul, and Body " (1869), made the most 
 powerful impression at the time of their delivery. To these labored 
 and finished discourses of the days of his scarcely diminished strength, 
 should be added a reference in this connection to three or four of his 
 unwritten addresses at the annual meetings of the American Board 
 delivered in his capacity of president of that body during the last 
 decade of his life. Eepresentatives of all the continents and of the 
 islands of the sea present singly or in groups at these annual gather- 
 ings were astonished as well as delighted at the breadth and fore- 
 cast and unmistakable power of these apparently ex tempore speeches 
 of a man about eighty years old. 
 
 4. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. Born in Haddam, Connecticut in 1805, 
 where his father of the same name was pastor of the Congregational 
 church, died in New York in 1894. The father moved to Stock- 
 bridge as pastor when this the eldest son was fourteen years old, 
 who came at once under the instruction and influence of Jared Cur- 
 tis of the Williams class of 1800, and into intimate associations with 
 Mark and Albert Hopkins. Mark was three years older than Dud- 
 ley. The friendship thus begun in boyhood, and continued in col- 
 lege, prevailed unweakened throughout a long lifetime, till the 
 earthly tie was snapped in 1887 by the death of the elder. The 
 next year, in a public address here, the other said of his friend : 
 "He was to me as a brother. We started on the voyage of Life to- 
 gether, from the same shore, each in his own bark, but keeping always 
 within hailing distance of each other. I knew, as he knew, that if evil 
 befell either, the other would hasten to the rescue. We have had our 
 good and our evil days, but the good have prevailed over the evil. Now 
 from my bark still lingering on the sea, I wave my parting salutation to 
 him safely landed on the shore." 
 
 Entering college as a Freshman in 1821, young Field at once 
 SB 
 
786 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 distinguished himself as the scholar of the class, a rank he held 
 till the close of his course. He also proved himself an active leader 
 in all legitimate enterprises, such as college students are likely to 
 be interested in. As a single example of this, he organized a con- 
 siderable body of the students in 1824, when La Fayette was visiting 
 this country and about to pass through Berkshire, to go down to 
 Pittsfield, and, as representing the College, to pay their reverence 
 to the great Frenchman. This incident, trifling in itself, presaged 
 in a boy of nineteen a natural leadership among men when life 
 should open before him more fully, and especially a peculiar interest 
 in the great events of the world and in its public men. This visit 
 of La Fayette, which lasted more than a year, was one long ovation. 
 Congress made him a gift of $200,000 and of 24,000 acres of land. 
 He entered into friendly relations with President Monroe ; with 
 John Quincy Adams, who was elected President during his sojourn ; 
 with John Adams, and Albert Gallatin, and Daniel Webster; and 
 he was also Jefferson's guest at Monticello. While still a college 
 student, Field had determined to become a lawyer, and in the 
 autumn after his graduation he studied for a short time in Albany, 
 and soon passed down to New York to enter the office of Henry and 
 Robert Sedgwick, both sons of Judge Theodore Sedgwick, and both 
 graduates of Williams College in 1804. Field was admitted to the 
 bar in 1828, and practised with the Sedgwicks, his teachers, until 
 the death in 1831 of Henry, the elder and abler of the two brothers, 
 when he entered into partnership with the other, Kobert, who also 
 fell a victim to excessive professional labor, and died in 1841. 
 From that time certainly, even if not before, David Dudley Field 
 stepped into the very front rank of American practitioners at the 
 bar, and held this place unquestioned by anybody for fully forty 
 years. 
 
 The influence of the Sedgwicks upon Field was at least in a 
 general way as distinct and pronounced as was that of the members 
 of the same family upon Bryant, as previously noted in these pages. 
 Next to Field himself, Henry Sedgwick was the most distinguished 
 lawyer graduated at Williams College in its first century. It is not 
 generally known, but it is certainly true, that the dissenting opinion 
 given by Judge Theodore Sedgwick of the Supreme Court of Massa- 
 chusetts in 1810, in the case of Greenwood versus Curtis, was 
 written by his son, Henry Dwight. It is still more relevant in the 
 present connection to notice that the Sedgwick brothers, and par- 
 ticularly Henry, were earnest advocates of law reform and of a 
 codification of the laws, while David Dudley Field was still in 
 
DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, 
 W. C., 1825. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 787 
 
 college. In 1822 Henry Sedgwick published an elaborate pamphlet 
 entitled " The Evils and Absurdities of the Practice of the English 
 Common Law." He also published in the North American Review 
 various articles on the common law, its possible modifications, and 
 its practicable codification in connection with some of the leading 
 principles of the civil law of Rome. The common law of England, 
 as it was practised in the American colonies and later in most of 
 the American States, was a huge, indigestible mass of judge-made 
 law, full of contradictions, quite inaccessible to the minds of the 
 people for whose benefit alone it had been ostensibly pronounced, 
 and consequently, as Sedgwick claimed and proved in his pamphlet 
 of 1822, full of "evils and absurdities." Edward Livingston, a 
 graduate of Princeton, belonging to a family in New York fully as 
 distinguished as the Sedgwicks in New England, probably ante- 
 dated by a little the labors of the Sedgwicks in behalf of a simple 
 and rational codification. While studying law with his brother 
 Robert, Edward Livingston had devoted special attention to the 
 Roman jurisprudence. The purchase of Louisiana by the United 
 States was accomplished through the negotiations of his brother 
 with Napoleon at Paris ; and a marvellous set of circumstances 
 made Edward Livingston a citizen and lawyer of New Orleans ; and 
 in 1820 he had been appointed to draw up a code of civil procedure 
 for Louisiana. This proved so admirable, that he was shortly after 
 empowered to reduce to a system the then confused body of the 
 civil laws of Louisiana. He had to aid him the some time before 
 completed Code Napoleon, also the nomenclature of Scotch law, and 
 a familiar acquaintance with all that was most valuable in the 
 English jurisprudence. Thus was produced, and reported, and 
 adopted in 1823, the "Civil Code of Louisiana," undoubtedly the 
 most successful adaptation of the civil law to the conditions of 
 modern society ever made. The Sedgwick brothers made the most 
 they could out of the Louisiana labors of Livingston, although the 
 conditions in the State of New York were very different from those 
 in the French colony and State of Louisiana. There was of course 
 no such prejudice there against Latin forms and principles as a 
 similar movement was sure to encounter in the Dutch and English 
 usages intrenched on the banks of the Hudson. 
 
 What makes all these statements pertinent to the present place 
 and purpose is, that two extraordinarily gifted lawyers, both gradu- 
 ates of Williams College in 1804, were among the very first in this 
 country powerfully to advocate in the name of the people the great 
 cause of the simplification and certitude of the laws. Both died 
 
788 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 before the cause had been thoroughly argued over the continent; 
 but they had admitted into their counsels and imbued with their 
 spirit another graduate of Williams, destined to eclipse them both, 
 a young man of powerful frame, of tireless industry, of incisive 
 and ever broadening mental grasp and dignity, who expended hercu- 
 lean labors in his life-work initiated by them, and who lived to see 
 the practical triumph in most of the States of the Union of parts at 
 least of his own codifications of the law. It was in several respects 
 like Gladstone's apprenticeship to Sir Robert Peel in the English 
 House of Commons. Peel was Gladstone's master and model. 
 What Peel began, Gladstone ultimately completed and amplified. 
 Peel was almost forgotten in the longer parliamentary life and 
 broader sweeps of the policy of Gladstone. So the Sedgwicks fared 
 in their relations to Field. They helped to teach him not only the 
 law as it was, but also the law as it ought to become. But the 
 pupil came after a while to surpass his teachers in both these 
 respects. Time is a great element in success and in reputation. 
 Gladstone sat for sixty-three years in Parliament. Field pleaded at 
 the bar in New York, and labored conspicuously and successfully at 
 home and abroad in behalf of betterments of the law both civil and 
 international, for sixty-three years also. The beneficent results of 
 codification in this country were best displayed in the States of 
 Louisiana and California. So far as the latter was concerned in 
 this regard, there was a point of much interest connected with 
 David Dudley Field, and with Williams College too. Stephen J. 
 Field of the class of 1837, of which he was the valedictorian, 
 studied law with his brother in New York, and after his admission 
 to the bar became his partner till 1848, when for the second time he 
 went abroad, and passed a year and a half in Europe, employed 
 chiefly in expanding his early knowledge of the French and other 
 continental languages. Returning in the autumn of 1849, he joined 
 in the emigration then just beginning to California, settled in a place 
 where now stands the city of Marysville, and was elected informally 
 the first alcalde or judge, holding office until the organization of the 
 judiciary under the first constitution of the State. The jurisdiction 
 exercised by him in the anomalous condition of society in California 
 at that time was practically unlimited. As a member of the Legis- 
 lature of 1850, he framed the Judiciary Act of the State, most of 
 whose provisions were retained in the later code, over whose sub- 
 stance and form he exerted the controlling influence. In the same 
 capacity as a legislator and at the same time he framed the mining 
 laws of the State, later adopted by other mining regions of the 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 789 
 
 country, and at length by the Congress of the United States. As a 
 judge of the Supreme Court of California from 1857 to 1863, Field 
 by his decisions and influence permanently settled the law of real 
 property for his State. President Lincoln in 1863 appointed Judge 
 Field an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 whose functions he fulfilled for a longer time than any other occu- 
 pant of that bench had ever done, when he resigned them in 1897. 
 
 What Edward Livingston and the Sedgwicks had well begun in 
 behalf of law reform, David Dudley Field carried on indefatigably 
 throughout a long life. As early as 1839, two years before the death 
 of the younger Sedgwick, he published his first essay on the subject, 
 pointing out again the defects of the old system, and the necessity of 
 the reconstruction of the modes of legal procedure. This was fol- 
 lowed up by a succession of similar articles till 1847, when the Legis- 
 lature of New York appointed him a commissioner on practice and 
 pleadings, and as such he took the leading part in the preparation 
 of the code of procedure, whose design it was to abolish the old 
 distinctions between the forms of action, and particularly to 
 obliterate the difference between legal and equitable suits, so that 
 all the rights of the parties may be determined in. one action. In 
 1857 the Legislature appointed him at the head of a new commission 
 to prepare a political code, a penal code, and a civil code, works 
 designed to contain, with the two codes of procedure, the whole 
 body of the Law. These codes were all laboriously prepared and 
 reported ; but their adoption was bitterly opposed by the great body 
 of the lawyers of the State, because the codes tended to make com- 
 mon and easy the knowledge of the law, which the lawyers wished 
 to keep as a monopoly of their own. Said Mr. Field in his old age, 
 namely, in 1886 : " This condition of things will last forever, unless 
 the people take the matter into their own hands. The lawyers as a 
 body never did begin a reform of the law, and judging from experi- 
 ence, they never will. The reform must be the work of laymen, 
 aided by a minority of the lawyers." This was spoken in general. 
 On the same occasion he spoke in particular as follows : 
 
 Perhaps I may be expected to say something about codification in the State 
 of New York, the pioneer Commonwealth in the work of law reform, though I 
 am sorry to say it has paused in mid career. We have had here as earnest a 
 contention as was ever had in any work. Of the five codes prepared, three have 
 become laws. The Political Code need not be brought into the discussion, for it 
 is chiefly a compilation of existing statutes, relating to the government of the 
 State and the functions of its public officers. The Civil Code, the most impor- 
 tant of all, has been once rejected by the Assembly, and twice passed by both 
 
790 WILLIAMSTOWX AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Assembly and Senate, but failed to receive the approval of the Governors. The 
 onslaughts that have been made upon it, the falsehoods that have been told 
 respecting it, the means that have been resorted to for its defeat, would form a 
 chapter of legal history which I hope yet to see written, amusing and instructive, 
 for the information of the world, touching the devious ways of prejudice and 
 ignorance. It has been objected that the code is too long, and that it is too short ; 
 that it has too many new phrases ; and too many old ones ; that it changes the 
 law, and does not change it ; and so on to the end of the score of objections. 
 
 The Sedgwick brothers were not only good lawyers and strenuous 
 if not original advocates of law reform, but they were also good 
 Democrats in the Jeffersonian sense of that good word, and conse- 
 quently were devoted free traders and radical antislavery men. In 
 each and every of these regards, David Dudley Field warmly adopted 
 the views and the practical line of action of his teachers, because the 
 views commended themselves to his inner sense of what was fair 
 and right and divine. These views grew stronger and stronger 
 within him, and were expressed in firmer and firmer outward action, 
 as he grew older and as experience of the influence and results of 
 the opposite sentiments demonstrated to his mind their inequality 
 and injustice and iniquity. He acted politically with the Democratic 
 party so long as its leaders were faithful to the fundamentals of 
 Jefferson ; and in 1856 he publicly broke away from that historical 
 organization for reasons expressed in the opening paragraph of his 
 speech in convention at Syracuse, which was in terms following, to 
 wit : 
 
 Fellow-Democrats : The time has come for Democrats to declare their inde- 
 pendence of those packed conventions which have lately assumed to dictate the 
 measures and the candidates of the Democracy. That party of glorious memory, 
 .which once spoke and acted for freedom, has fallen into the hands of office- 
 holders and political adventurers, serving as the tools of a slaveholding oligar- 
 chy. For more than ten years the measures of the General Government have 
 been directed mainly to the increase of Slave States. One measure has followed 
 upon another, each bolder than the last, until we have violence ruling in the 
 Federal Capitol, and civil war raging in the Territories. 
 
 The reference in this passage to " violence ruling in the Federal 
 capitol," was to the cowardly and murderous assault on Senator 
 Sumner by Congressman Brooks of South Carolina. Mr. Field 
 never wavered in his private and public' opposition to slavery, in 
 season or out of season, till it was exterminated on this continent. 
 His speech before the Peace Congress of the States at Washington 
 in February, 1861, was a marvel of conciliatory firmness and philo- 
 sophical forecast, displaying an ability to read to the bottom the 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 791 
 
 hearts of men both South and North. He resumed his political 
 affiliations with the Democratic party upon the nomination for the 
 presidency of Governor Tilden of New York, in 1876. He and 
 Governor Tilden had been neighbors for years, and each knew the 
 ability and uprightness and steadfastness of the other; and when 
 the infamous purpose of the leaders of the Republican party to 
 "count out" Governor Tilden, who was elected, and to "count in" 
 Governor Hayes, who was not elected, manifested itself, Mr. Field 
 published a pamphlet in January, before the " count, " and another 
 in March, after the "count," both maintaining the constitutional 
 and righteous election of Tilden in such an irrefragable manner, 
 at every point, that no attempt was ever made by anybody to over- 
 throw or even to weaken the arguments. 1 The twenty-two years 
 already elapsed between the prediction of Mr. Field as to the per- 
 petrators of that portentous fraud and the present writing, con- 
 firmed the substance of it over and over again. " The moral sense 
 of the whole American people was shocked. No form of words can 
 cover up the falsehood ; no sophistry can hide it; no lapse of time wash 
 it out. It will follow its contrivers wherever they go, confront them 
 whenever they turn, and as often as one of them asks the suffrages of 
 his countrymen, he may expect to hear them reply, ' Why do you reason 
 with us, why seek to persuade us into giving you our votes, you that 
 have taught us such a contempt for votes, that one fraudulent certificate 
 is better than ten thousand of them f ' ' 
 
 Mr. Field's fidelity to the noble cause of free trade was unswerv- 
 ing from youth to age. On accepting the presidency of the Ameri- 
 can Free Trade League, in succession to Mr. Bryant, he paid a 
 notable compliment, in words, to the latter for his lifelong services 
 to the people against the greed and plunder of the protectionists ; 
 while he paid at the same time, in act, a still more notable com- 
 pliment to the good cause by consenting to bestow in its behalf the 
 scanty leisure he could find or make from his own most exacting 
 vocations. In the writer's judgment, there was never a prouder 
 moment in the history of Williams College than that moment when, 
 in the city of New York, scanned by the eager gaze of a crowd of 
 earnest and disinterested men, her most distinguished son, all things 
 considered, passed over to her next most distinguished son, all 
 things considered, the robe of an office worn by both simply and 
 solely for the unmixed good of the whole people and of the whole 
 world ! 
 
 Even more than William Cullen Bryant, and much more than any 
 i See Vol. II. of the Works of David Dudley Field, pp. 88-127. 
 
792 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 other one of all the sons of Williams, did David Dudley Field hold 
 a position of great honor and influence in each of the countries of 
 western Europe. This was owing in part to the admiration of 
 the European lawyers and judges for the compactness and symmetry 
 and beauty of his Civil Code of New York. England has always 
 been known as a proud country. She has always been specially 
 proud of her common law. Nevertheless Field lived to see enact- 
 ment after enactment of the British Parliament, embodying princi- 
 ples and forms originally from the civil law of Rome, but so 
 combined and transfused with the spirit if not the letter of the 
 common law of England, largely the work of Field himself, that 
 Lords and Commons saw the superiority of the new to the old, and 
 legislated it into the British statute-book. Most of all did this 
 homage appear in the " Supreme Court of Judicature Act." Shortly 
 after the passage of that act by Parliament some one asked Mr. Field 
 in the writer's presence, "Did not Parliament borrow from your 
 Code in that Act ? " His exultant reply was, " It is my code ! " 
 In still greater part, however, was Mr. Field's European position 
 owing to his labors in conjunction with the foremost publicists of 
 Europe in behalf of a Code of International Law. The success in 
 the United States and in England of the New York codes led on to 
 those more cosmopolitan attempts to improve the law of nations. 
 In a banquet given to Mr. Field in London by the Law Reform 
 Society, of which Lord Brougham was the president, it was said that 
 those New York codes were being introduced into the most distant 
 British colonies, so that " an American was giving law to Australia." 
 When at length a commission was appointed by the English crown, 
 composed of three lord chancellors and other eminent legal authori- 
 ties, to consider and report on the whole subject of a revision of the 
 body of the English law, in their first report to Parliament they 
 spoke of the revised codes of New York as a marvel of achievement, 
 and also referred to Mr. Field by name as having rendered to them 
 valuable assistance in explaining personally the details of these 
 codes, and their method of revision, thus shedding light on their 
 own future labors. As these labors went forward, John Bright was 
 led to say that he " wished they had some man like Mr. Field in 
 England to do for this country what he had done for America." 
 
 At a meeting in 1866 at Manchester of the British Association for 
 the Promotion of Social Science, Field called the attention of that 
 body to the unsettled condition of international law, which led to 
 frequent disputes between nations like that relating to the ship 
 Alabama, and made a proposal for a general revision and reform of 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 793 
 
 the law of nations to be ultimately adopted by all civilized coun- 
 tries in the interest of universal peace and good-will. In accordance 
 with the suggestion a commission was appointed to prepare a formal 
 international code, consisting of eminent jurists of Europe and 
 America. As a member of this commission, and acting on his own 
 proposal, Mr. Field labored for seven years, and completed in 1873 a 
 work entitled " Outlines of an International Code," which he presented 
 to the Social Science Congress of that year. It met with very favor- 
 able criticism from eminent jurists all over the world. But what- 
 ever of this sort might emanate from a British association was sure 
 to encounter prejudice from nations for any reason hostile to Eng- 
 land, and so in that year, 1873, Mr. Field became the first president 
 of a new association formed at Brussels for the same purpose as the 
 other, namely, the form and the codification of the law of nations. 
 It was differentiated from the other mainly in this, that it pro- 
 claimed as one of its chief objects the substitution of arbitration for 
 war in the settlement of all international disputes. 
 
 So and in other similar labors of broad-minded beneficence, always 
 including painstaking toward the welfare of Williams College, 
 passed the old age of David Dudley Field. On his eighty-seventh 
 birthday, Feb. 13, 1892, he wrote the following lines which were 
 specially printed over his own name. A copy was sent to one of the 
 professors of the College, and at the same time a photograph of 
 himself taken on the same day, both of which are herewith repro- 
 duced. 
 
 LINES WRITTEN ON MY 87TH BIRTHDAY. 
 
 What is it now to live ? It is to breathe 
 
 The air of Heaven, and behold the pleasant earth, 
 
 The shining rivers, the inconstant sea, 
 
 Sublimity of mountains, wealth of clouds, 
 
 And radiance o'er all of countless stars. 
 
 It is to sit before the cheerful hearth 
 
 With groups of friends and kindred, store of books, 
 
 Rich heritage from ages past, 
 
 Hold sweet communion, soul with soul, 
 
 O'er things now past, or present, or to come, 
 
 Or muse alone upon my earlier days, 
 
 Unbind the scroll, whereon is writ 
 
 The story of my busy life, 
 
 Mistakes too often, but successes more, 
 
 And consciousness of duty done. 
 
 It is to see with laughing eyes the play 
 
 Of children sporting on the lawn, 
 
 Or mark the eager strifes of men 
 
794 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 And nations, seeking each and all, 
 Belike advantage to obtain 
 Above their fellows ; such is man ! 
 It is to feel the pulses quicken, as I hear 
 Of great events near or afar, 
 Whereon may turn perchance 
 The fate of generations, ages hence. 
 It is to rest with folded arms betimes, 
 And so surrounded, so sustained, 
 Ponder on what may yet befall 
 In that unknown mysterious realm 
 Which lies beyond the range of mortal ken, 
 Where souls immortal do forever dwell, 
 Think of the loved ones who await me there, 
 And without murmuring or inward grief, 
 With mind unbroken and no fear, 
 No cares and no resentments even, 
 Calmly await the coming of the Lord. 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 
 February 13, 1892. 
 
 In taking its final leave of David Dudley Field, a book entitled 
 " William stown and Williams College" cannot forbear printing 
 another poem of his written almost exactly fifty years earlier than 
 the one just quoted. 
 
 GREYLOCK. 
 
 Thy summit, Greylock, gives the straining eye 
 Visions of beauty o'er that glorious land, 
 That lies around thee ; valleys broad and green, 
 Teeming with corn, and flocks, and men's abodes ; 
 And countless hills ; and the far mountain ridge, 
 Whose roots strike deeper than the ocean's depths, 
 And whose blue line, traced on the distant sky, 
 Hangs like the edges of a watery cloud ; 
 The old and shadowy woods ; the slumbering lakes, 
 Bright in the summer noon ; the thousand streams, 
 Binding the earth with silver ; villages 
 Scattered among the hills ; and frequent spires, 
 Greeting the sunlight. 
 
 But thyself, vast pile 
 
 Of congregated mountains, whose tall peaks, 
 Where the clouds gather and the eagle's build, 
 And the strange pine puts forth, stand over there, 
 Like the old pillars of the firmament, 
 Thyself hast more than beauty ; and thy dark 
 And yet untrod defiles, whence comes no sound, 
 But from the screaming bird and murmuring tree, 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 795 
 
 And thy deep chasms, where falls the avalanche, 
 And the white torrents pour, have an intense 
 And dread sublimity, too great for words. 
 For ever, since the world began, thy eye, 
 Gray-headed mount, hath been upon these hills. 
 Piercing the sky, with all thy sea of woods 
 Swelling around thee, evermore thou art, 
 Unto our weaker, earthly sense, the type 
 Of the Eternal, changeless and alone. 
 
 5. WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY. Born at Northampton in 1827, 
 died at New Haven in 1894. It is impossible to explain the marvel- 
 lous career of Whitney, by all odds the most scholarly, that is to 
 say, the most learned, man ever graduated at Williams, without a 
 considerable reference to his remarkably scholarly and learned 
 ancestry. Special heredity played no large part, at least no very 
 visible part, in the development of any one of the four celebrities 
 already characterized in the present connection ; but when we strike 
 this our only great linguist and lexicographer, we instinctively feel 
 that he was endowed with something, that he was saturated with 
 something, that could have come to him in no other way than the 
 way of special inheritance ; what one merely sharing in but the 
 common lot of descent could by no possibility acquire as an individ- 
 ual in one short life. Industry, moral integrity, aspiration, a dis- 
 tinctive goal, and special environment will do wonders for a man, and 
 make him a torch-bearer of a certain kind ; but all these and kin- 
 dred qualities of themselves can never make such a man as Whitney 
 was, nor such a torch-bearer as he became. Intelligence, character, 
 power, are cumulative in human life along the line of families. " Of 
 the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." 
 The more noted of the families and kindred concerned in the descent 
 and at least in the broad training of Professor Whitney, were those 
 of DWIGHT, STODDARD, EDWARDS, and WHITNEY. 
 
 A few years ago the present writer was standing on the platform 
 of the station of the Providence Railroad at Dedham. Near by was 
 an elderly gentleman, both waiting for a coming train, of very intel- 
 ligent mien and evidently to the manor born, whom the stranger 
 ventured to accost by asking, " Do you know where is the site of 
 the house in Dedham which John Dwight occupied about two hun- 
 dred and fifty years ago ? " " I do ; and we are now standing 
 within a few feet of the place ; some of the posts of this platform 
 are set in that very ground." In the first volume of the Dedham 
 Kecords, lately printed, the first entry in the register of births is the 
 
796 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 following: "1635. Mary. Daughter of Jn and Hanna Dwight, 
 borne 25 of ye 5m." As the year was then reckoned to commence 
 March 1, Mary Dwight, the first white child born in Dedham, was 
 born (says Savage) July 25, 1635, which was the year of the first 
 incorporation of the town. Timothy, son of John, was born in Eng- 
 land about 1633, became freeman in Dedham in 1655, and was often 
 a representative to the General Court. Timothy has been a favorite 
 Christian name in the family for at least two centuries, and two 
 members bearing that name have been presidents of Yale College. 
 Henry Dwight, son of Timothy, grandson of John, resided in Hat- 
 field, married in 1702 a daughter of the famous Joseph Hawley of 
 Northampton, was a man of large public spirit and filled important 
 offices, became the ancestor of all the Springfield Dwights and pre- 
 sumably of Anna Dwight who was the wife of Lieutenant Zebadiah 
 Sabin of Williamstown. The descendants of John Dwight in New 
 England in each generation were about as notable for character and 
 public influence as were the descendants of Robert Sedgwick, who 
 settled in Charlestown the very year that the other settled in 
 Dedham. 
 
 John Whitney, a great-grandson of Sir Robert Whitney, who 
 became a knight under Queen Mary in 1553, migrated from London 
 to Watertown in 1635, bringing with him five sons, with wife Elinor 
 John, Richard, Nathaniel, Thomas, and Jonathan. He was the 
 first of the name in America, and the one from whom the great 
 majority of the Whitney s in the United States were descended. 
 In 1834, seventeen of the name had been graduated at Harvard, 
 three at Yale, and ten at other New England colleges. The family 
 at Northampton, whence William Dwight Whitney entered Wil- 
 liams as a Sophomore in 1842, was prominent and highly connected. 
 Solomon Stoddard had been the pastor in Northampton from 1672 
 till 1729, and had exerted a prodigious influence there, both theo- 
 logically and in every other way. His grandson, Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, was chosen colleague-pastor with Stoddard in February, 
 1727, and thereafter for a full century, till February, 1827, when 
 William Dwight Whitney was born, was a presence and power in 
 Northampton, being held by some in a way of affectionate venera- 
 tion and by others in a way of indurated opposition by both 
 classes in such a way as to stimulate intellectual action. The 
 public schools were of such a character that young Whitney fitted 
 for the Sophomore year in college without leaving town, and found 
 himself easily at the head of his class in Williams so soon as he 
 had opportunity to exhibit his relative rank. He was then but 
 
WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY, 
 W. C,, 1845. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 797 
 
 fifteen years old. The first place had been, during Freshman year, 
 in a sort of dispute as between two other members of the class, 
 who yielded their claims so soon as Whitney discovered his own. 
 The classical languages were then at a low ebb in college, perhaps 
 lower than at any other time, relatively, during the century, and 
 the natural sciences were still maintaining that sort of preemi- 
 nence they had held for three or four decades, and the studies of 
 Dr. Hopkins's department were assuming the first place, which 
 they then kept for three or four decades. While he was in college, 
 Whitney showed no signs of language-preference over other studies; 
 he was easily from the first the best linguist in his class, but he 
 took no special pains with his classics ; rather he devoted himself 
 to the natural history studies, and to the Natural History Society, 
 anything that took him into the fields, and into the woods with 
 his gun, and upon long walks for rare plants. He was already a 
 good botanist, and was studying birds particularly. "If he saw 
 a bird, he could imitate its notes ; if he heard its voice, he could 
 name the singer." He had a rare mechanical skill in mounting 
 birds, and in other similar manipulations; and he left among the 
 collections of the Natural History Society a large number of the 
 local birds beautifully mounted. 
 
 Young Whitney seemed to come under the special influence, 
 from the beginning, of Professor Albert Hopkins. He was such 
 a lad as " Prof. Al" naturally took to ; although in the course of 
 a long life the teacher never encountered just such another pupil. 
 The professor's taste for natural history, and his acquaintance 
 with its various branches, made him instrumental in peculiarly 
 fostering such tastes among the students, and in sustaining their 
 interest in the Natural History Society of the College. Neither 
 professor nor pupil wished to pitch his tent in any one department 
 of the great field. Each was training his eye in his own way to 
 see specialties on the earth, and under the earth (geology), and 
 over the earth (astronomy). The professor was married in the 
 summer vacation of 1841, when he was thirty-four years old, and 
 Whitney entered college just a year later, and remained on the 
 ground for three full years. It is certain that these two unique 
 personalities came into interesting and mutually influencing rela- 
 tions with each other ; but the details are not now known, except 
 that Professor Whitney had an extraordinary and life-long estimate 
 of Professor Hopkins, both as a naturalist and as a supernaturalist. 
 President Mark Hopkins at that time taught the entire studies of 
 each Senior year. When the class of 18-45 passed out from under 
 
798 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the hand of Professor Hopkins at the close of the Junior year, 
 and came into a new circle of studies involving new standpoints, 
 there was a marked change thereafter on Whitney's part in mental 
 attitudes. Not that he ceased to maintain a lively interest in the 
 progress of the physical sciences. More than once, for example, 
 after his graduation, he took part in important geological surveys. 
 At the institution and gradual upbuilding of the Sheffield Scientific 
 School at New Haven he took a leading part for twenty years, as 
 well in council as in teaching, having no prejudices in behalf of 
 the old college and university ways, and but slowly devoting him- 
 self by choice and profession to what may be called literary pur- 
 suits, that is to say, to the profound study of the speech and so 
 to the history of mankind. The initial turn with him was when 
 he got hold of Bopp's " Sanskrit Grammar." The veteran Professor 
 Salisbury guided Whitney in his incipient study of Sanskrit, and 
 then founded the professorship which enabled him through life to 
 pursue his original Oriental researches. These researches, with all 
 his other gifts and gains, enabled him to develop, as no other man 
 had ever done, the Indo-European languages as a class by them- 
 selves, and to differentiate from the Sanskrit, the eldest sister of 
 the family, the German and French and English branches of that 
 great linguistic stock. There was a clarity and a simplicity and a 
 certainty about the language-affiliations as brought out, for example, 
 in " The Essentials of English Grammar," perhaps his most perfect 
 work of this kind, found nowhere else in the world. His " Language 
 and the Study of Language," his first publication, with perhaps some- 
 thing less of ease and fluency, completely exhibits the organic unity 
 of his system. Whitney was a consummate systemizer. His Ger- 
 man and French grammars show the same facility and beauty and 
 comprehensiveness. 1 
 
 Professor Whitney's father was a bank president in Northamp- 
 ton, and put his boy at once into the bank when he came home 
 from Williams at eighteen, having just delivered the valedictory 
 oration. This was in 1845. Here he stayed for three or four 
 years, becoming an adept in every one of the banking processes as 
 then practised. This fact of personal familiarity with practical 
 banking gave point and interest to the words of Professor Whitney 
 to the alumni the last time he was in Williams town at Commence- 
 ment. He had come up to attend the fortieth anniversary of his 
 graduation. With several of his classmates also in attendance, he 
 
 1 See the Whitney Memorial Meeting, a volume edited by Charles R. Lanraan, 
 assisted by Professor March, President Gilman, and several others. 
 
\ 
 BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 799 
 
 had visited in the morning their old Senior recitation-room in Grif- 
 fin Hall. That room had been built expressly by President Griffin 
 for his own work with the Senior class. Dr. Hopkins had simi- 
 larly used it in succession for nearly forty years ; and now Whitney 
 et alii found to their great surprise the National Bank of Williams- 
 town in busy occupation of the premises. The bank had been or- 
 ganized in January, 1884, partly for the convenience of the college 
 treasury, and partly in the business interests of a country town. 
 The College, as such, took a portion of the bank stock as an invest- 
 ment, and persons in one way or another connected with the College 
 took most of the rest ; Frederic Leake, a retired banker and citizen, 
 who had taught French in the College for some years, became the 
 first president of the bank, and Charles S. Cole of the class of 1870 
 became the first cashier. But there was no convenient room in the 
 village for its practical operations. The old Senior recitation-room 
 happened at that time to be unused, and was temporarily appro- 
 priated by the bank, and proved a convenient place of business, 
 both to town and college, for several years. When Whitney was 
 put forward to represent his class at the alumni dinner in the 
 afternoon, the incident of finding the money-changers in the most 
 sacred place in the temple was a godsend to him and proved the 
 making of his speech. The incongruity, that is to say, the humor 
 of it, went without saying; while the significance of the speech 
 as a whole lay in the betrayal of considerable remains of the old 
 prejudice, even in one of the most liberal and broad-minded of men, 
 whose father and himself had given some of their best years to the 
 highest forms of buying and selling, that after all, to buy and sell 
 as a business in some sense soils the hands of the exchangers. This 
 old prejudice must go out root and branch. Williams College has 
 done a good deal, both scientifically and practically, to exalt all 
 forms of trade into their God-appointed niches. 
 
 James White of the class of 1851, while serving as treasurer of the 
 College, was chosen as the second president of the bank, and Cashier 
 Cole then afterward succeeded Mr. White as treasurer of the Col- 
 lege, and John B. Gale of the class of 1842 became the third presi- 
 dent of the bank. As owner also of one of the two chief business 
 blocks of the village, situated on Spring Street, Mr. Gale furnished 
 the bank as tenant its convenient and permanent quarters for 
 business. 
 
 William D wight Whitney closed his astonishing career as a 
 scholar and lexicographer, fulfilling the duties as the editor-in-chief 
 of the " Century Dictionary." This magnificent work, in ten majestic 
 
800 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 volumes, was first offered for sale complete and unlimited in the 
 June days of 1898, while the present pages were in process of com- 
 position. Whitney's strictly lexicographical labors began in early sys- 
 tematizing and simplifying the definitions of "Webster's Dictionary," 
 and then in contributing material to the " St. Petersburg Sanskrit 
 Dictionary." These labors continued in the planning and direction 
 of his " German Dictionary," and finally in the broadest superintend- 
 ency of the " Century Dictionary," which has been said to be a sort of 
 apotheosis of Webster. He had his say in securing the adoption of 
 the plan for the etymology, and for the handling of most of the 
 philological material from the modern languages ; and many of all 
 the ingenious devices of arrangement and notation, particularly to 
 indicate pronunciation of letters of varying sound, were of his own 
 personal contriving. 
 
 6. JOHN BASCOM. Born in central New York, May 1, 1827. 
 It has been usually thought both in ancient and modern times to be 
 hazardous and unwise for any one to attempt any elaborate and per- 
 manent estimate of another, while the latter is still living on the 
 earth. In the present connection the writer was placed in a strait 
 betwixt two, either to mutilate outright a carefully culled category 
 of the seven college celebrities, or to defy in one instance a dictum 
 which in general time has consecrated as just. He chose the latter 
 alternative, and took his risks ; for what the verdict of posterity in 
 this particular case will be, posterity alone can discover. 
 
 Next to Whitney in our present list of seven notable graduates of 
 the College, it is plain that Bascom was more indebted to notable 
 ancestors than any one of the number. His mother was Laura 
 Woodbridge, a daughter of Major Theodore Woodbridge of the 
 Revolutionary army of Connecticut, who was a son of the Rev. 
 Ashbel Woodbridge, Yale College 1724, chaplain of a Connecticut 
 regiment in the old French war, and was a Fellow of Yale College 
 at the time of his death in 1758 ; his tombstone bears this memorial : 
 
 A GREAT SCHOLAR, AN EXCELLENT DIVINE, A FAITHFUL MINISTER, 
 
 A WISE PEACE-MAKER, HE SHONE WITH UNCOMMON LUSTRE IN EVERY 
 
 RELATION OF LIFE. This great-grandfather of John Bascom on the 
 Woodbridge side seems to furnish at most salient points a fair type 
 of his descendant. By going back one step to Rev. Timothy, who 
 was born in Wiltshire in 1656, who came to New England with his 
 father in 1663, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1675, and 
 became minister of the First Church in Hartford in 1683, we seem 
 to strike an additional set of qualities and functions somewhat 
 typical at any rate of his great-great-grandson. He was one of the 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 801 
 
 ten principal ministers of Connecticut named by the General Assem- 
 bly as trustees, and authorized to found Yale College in 1699; he 
 was Fellow of Yale from 1700 to 1732 ; was offered the rectorship 
 after the resignation of Rector Cutler in 1722 ; and he was largely 
 concerned with the political affairs of the colony, serving on impor- 
 tant committees named by the General Assembly. Miss Talcott 
 says, "All my investigations in the old records of Hartford show 
 that Mr. Woodbridge was a very prominent figure here all his life." 
 He died in 1732, the year that Washington was born. The will of 
 this Timothy Woodbridge, and also extant records of his eldest son 
 Timothy, show the family to be decided men of business and large 
 holders of real estate, and taking hard and grasping views of prop- 
 erty rights in general. The will, for example, has this : " and my 
 Negro Girll named Lydia, desiring if my Wife should assent to it, that 
 my daughter Susannah Treat May have said Negro girll, paying a 
 reasonable price for her. And whereas I have disposed of the principall 
 part of my Reall Estate to my three Sons by Deed of Gift my Mind 
 and Will is that the remainder of my Estate " etc. The son Timothy 
 referred to was graduated at Yale in 1706, and was ordained at 
 Simsbury in 1712. For a minister, he was an active man in busi- 
 ness, and pugnacious to the last degree. He engaged in the manu- 
 facture of steel, and also in the making of turpentine, of which last 
 he shipped in 1728 no less than five tons at one time. By this sharp 
 turn for business, and harsh sense of his own property rights, he 
 became involved in vexatious lawsuits, and in great difficulties with 
 his parish. The story of the famous copper mines of Simsbury, and 
 the state prison of Connecticut in connection therewith, compromise 
 considerably the good name of this Timothy Woodbridge, and also 
 of two other Woodbridge clergymen, his near relatives, namely, 
 John of Springfield, and Dudley of Simsbury, who jointly took the 
 contract of " The Mining Company of Simsbury for the smelting of 
 the ore." 1 
 
 On the Bascom side, also, Professor John Bascom came of distin- 
 guished lineage. Thomas Bascom was one of the original company 
 settling in Dorchester, in 1634 ; but removing with others to Wind- 
 sor, in 1639, and thence to Northampton about 1660, where the 
 family seat remained till 1733. Samuel Bascom of the fourth gen- 
 eration, through Thomas 2d and Thomas 3d, removed to what is now 
 Warren in Worcester County in 1744, where Aaron Bascom was 
 born in 1746. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1768, and 
 was ordained the next year as the first pastor over the church in 
 1 See Phelps in History of Newgate, passim. 
 
 3F 
 
802 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Chester, where he spent the remaining years of his life, thus minis- 
 tering to one flock for forty-five years. He is said to have been " a 
 very useful and laborious minister." He was usually denominated 
 " Priest Bascom," and is known to have been puritanic in his the- 
 ology and imperious in his personal manners. He sent three of his 
 sons to Williams College, all graduating in the highest rank as 
 scholars, Samuel Ashley in 1799, and John in 1807, and Eeynolds 
 in 1813. The two latter became ministers of the Gospel, and died 
 nearly at the same time, Reynolds at Camden, South Carolina, in 
 1827, and John at Genoa, New York, in 1828. The last had married 
 Laura Woodbridge in 1813, and these became the parents of Pro- 
 fessor John Bascom in 1827. The family were extremely poor at 
 the time of the father's death, and afterward ; and the burden of the 
 education of their brother fell upon the three sisters, and particularly 
 upon the middle one of the three, named Mary, who showed an aston- 
 ishing push and power. While still young, she came to New England 
 to fall under the moulding hand of her aunt, Mrs. Wright, one of the 
 daughters of Priest Bascom of Chester. Emma Willard's celebrated 
 school, the Troy Female Seminary, then in the flush of its prosperity, 
 opened its privileges to gifted girls who were poor, on what may be 
 called the instalment plan, that is, portions of the expense of their 
 education were advanced by the seminary to be repaid by the bene- 
 ficiaries from the proceeds of their own teaching, especially at the 
 South, where there was at that time a strong demand for female 
 teachers at good wages. Mrs. Wright made all these arrangements 
 with the seminary for her niece, Mary Bascom ; and she, in turn, 
 for both of her own sisters. All three were thus graduated at Troy, 
 and all taught at the South in partial payment for their education. 
 The brother meanwhile went to the public school at home, and so 
 fitted for college in mathematics, which he acquired throughout with 
 extraordinary ease ; and began the study of the classical languages, 
 which always came hard to him relatively. To complete his prepara- 
 tion for college he went but for two terms to the Homer (New York) 
 Academy, of which his sister Mary was then the principal. He 
 entered Williams as a Freshman in 1845, just after William D wight 
 Whitney had graduated. His sister paid his college expenses 
 throughout the four years ; and only a few days before his gradua- 
 tion, in 1849, she passed suddenly into the great and blessed Uni- 
 versity above. 
 
 During these four years John Bascom was a very marked man in 
 college. Not only was there no other in his class who could stand 
 any sustained comparison with him in silent power and positive 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 803 
 
 influence, but there was no student in college during his time who 
 could do this, and it may be fairly questioned whether there were 
 ever a student here maintaining during four years such an easy and 
 acknowledged supremacy in all good things above all his compeers. 
 It was not that he was a better scholar in general than many others ; 
 Beckwith of his own class maintained a higher rank in technical 
 marks throughout, and was graduated with the valedictory ; and 
 Carpenter of the same class, who died in 1898 as Chief Justice of 
 the Supreme Court of New Hampshire, had a clearer practical 
 insight into men and things in general : these two were the only 
 other students in his class with noticeably fine intellectual endow- 
 ments and a clean purpose fully to cultivate them. The present 
 writer was a Freshman while Bascom was a Senior, and shared in 
 the universal admiration of his time for the latter's splendid talents 
 and character; but the opportunity for observation at that time 
 and an intimate association afterward during forty years, more or 
 less, did not convey along with the impression produced in his own 
 mind the power to convey to others in words an adequate delinea- 
 tion of his peculiarities or their sources. An attempt must never- 
 theless now be made once for all. 
 
 He entered college eighteen years old, six feet tall, as straight as 
 an arrow, with sandy hair and complexion, a pronounced Eoman 
 nose springing from between eyes always bright though usually 
 quiet, the whole countenance and bearing, whether on the wicket- 
 field or in the recitation-room, indicating a restful self-possession 
 and an easy mastery over all that belonged to him, with a corre- 
 sponding indisposition to meddle with anything that belonged to any- 
 body else. He seemed to claim nothing from anybody, to need 
 nothing from anybody, while manifesting indirectly an unmistaka- 
 ble purpose to defend all that was his own. The first positive and 
 profound impression made upon his classmates in recitation was the 
 entire ease with which he handled his Euclid, then used as a college 
 text-book. Whether it were proposition or problem, it was all 
 child's play to him. He paid little or no attention to demonstrations 
 as given in the book. What is to be proved ? What is to be solved ? 
 A half-dozen ways were equally facile to his hand. One mental 
 glance gave exits in plenty, each equally valid. It was so in succes- 
 sion with all the mathematics of the course, whether pure or applied. 
 He strode over these fields, while his classmates toiled and tugged. 
 He was not looked upon as a wonder, as was young Safford at Har- 
 vard, but he was looked on as a genius, which indeed he was. This 
 facility was not an acquisition, it was a congenital bestowment or 
 
804 WILLIAMSTOWN AXD WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 inheritance. He himself always thought and spoke of it as one and 
 the same gift with his intuitional insight in philosophy. This last 
 indeed surprised and gratified his classmates during their Senior 
 year, but it gave him no such reputation and honorable isolation as 
 the mathematical powers had done. His face in college and ever 
 afterward indicated a remarkable purity as well as elevation of 
 thought. He had been brought up wholly by and with his mother 
 and sisters. This may have had ultimately some drawbacks, but its 
 moral advantages to a boy in college are obvious enough. He was 
 practically subjected to no temptations of any kind. He was sure of 
 himself, sure of pecuniary support, sure under a kind Providence 
 of his future career. He chose his own companions, and they were 
 always the best to be had. 
 
 He had made a profession of religion before entering college, and 
 fell at once under the personal religious influence of Professor Albert 
 Hopkins, participating in his daily prayer-meetings, and feeling no 
 repugnance to those views of biblical truth which he crowded home 
 on the students with incredible force and fervor. President Mark 
 Hopkins exerted no such stimulating power over this student by his 
 philosophical teachings of the Senior year. Not that the boy was 
 ready yet to question the foundations of the Scottish philosophy, or 
 of any other school in metaphysics, of all which he then knew very 
 little ; but his mind was waking up to a consciousness of its own 
 special endowments, and to an independence of the minds of others, 
 which showed itself in a singular choice of the law as his profession 
 for life, mainly because his mother and sisters confidently expected 
 him to be a minister, as his father and uncle and their father before 
 them had been ; at the same time and contributing toward the same 
 end, he became conscious of an inherent love of pragmatical assertion 
 and even of dogmatical contention, as well as of a capacity for phil- 
 osophical generalization. So he was graduated with the law in full 
 view. But first he taught an academy for a year at Hoosac Falls. 
 Two of his trustees and patrons, Deacon Wilder and Lawyer Ball, 
 were men of science as well as of business, the former exhibiting a 
 fine collection of geological specimens which ultimately came to the 
 College, and the other a working chemical laboratory in complete 
 order. All these things quickened Bascom's attention to the vast- 
 ness of Nature, to the comprehensiveness of her laws, and to the 
 sesthetical side of her manifestations both on the grand scale and on 
 the minute also. Close observation of Nature's processes and results 
 came to be a habit of his life. He took long walks and rides and 
 drives, always with his eyes open. One special consequence of this 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 805 
 
 must be noted here, namely, his mind came to be filled with outward 
 images of all sorts capable of illustrating the abstract and recondite 
 topics with which he was so largely to deal both as a writer and 
 speaker ; and this facility of illustration affected his style in a pleas- 
 ing and useful manner; for the copious use of figurative language 
 served to adorn in spots a written style otherwise rather rugged and 
 repulsive, often to explain a statement that would go hard without 
 it, and sometimes in the highest reaches of philosophical discussion 
 where appropriate words are few, if not wanting altogether, to carry 
 the thought along indirectly but effectively over what would other- 
 wise have been impassable crevasses of expression. 
 
 A single year of a lawyer's office in Rochester, with its consequent 
 acquaintance with average clients and quarrels, was enough to satisfy 
 Bascom that this was not the life for him, and he turned to the 
 Auburn Theological Seminary, where he encountered in Dr. L. P. 
 Hickok his best teacher in philosophy, one of the most stimulating 
 thinkers and leaders he ever had, and certainly his warmest personal 
 friend in the generation just in advance of his own. Dr. Hickok had 
 the moral advantage over Dr. Hopkins so far as this particular pupil 
 was concerned, in that the pupil had had some additional years of 
 self-development with an accompanying experience of men and 
 things very precious in that considerable interval of time. 
 
 It is probable that Dr. Hickok never had another pupil in phi- 
 losophy, unless it were his own nephew, Julius H. Seelye, at once so 
 receptive and capable, and ultimately so independent and coequal. 
 Dr. Hickok carried out his intuitional philosophy to the extent of 
 practically denying that there could be any empirical philosophy at 
 all. Bascom hesitated along this pathway, carried his doubts to his 
 teacher to have them removed temporarily, but at length planted in 
 his own mind the empirical philosophy as firmly as the other and 
 harmoniously with it. When, accordingly, Dr. Hickok published 
 the " Rational Cosmology," teacher and pupil broke as philosophers, 
 but continued steadfast as friends. In the meantime, Dr. Bushnell 
 of Hartford, looking at all problems prevailing from the religious 
 side, contributed to harmonize the ethical and the religious with the 
 philosophical, and Bascom derived more help from Bushnell as 
 toward his own ultimate solutions than from any other thinker. 
 This he was always prompt to acknowledge. 
 
 Nothing has hitherto been said, though it cannot any longer be 
 delayed, about a peculiar factor in the make-up of John Bascom, 
 namely, an intense and immeasurable, and yet for the most part sup- 
 pressed, personal ambition. This colored every day of his active 
 
806 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 life, and controlled every substantial turn in it, and had much to do 
 with his ultimate satisfactions or his lack of them ; and yet very few 
 of his acquaintances were ever aware of its dominating power over 
 him. He took without question everything that offered or seemed 
 to offer itself which was large and good. He did not distrust his 
 ability to accomplish any task whatever that seemed to promise for 
 his private gain or for the public welfare. Perhaps it may be said in 
 general, that he did not overestimate his intellectual and executive 
 abilities taken as a whole. But he did overestimate his ability 
 altogether to do certain things, which nevertheless he promptly 
 undertook. Accordingly, to take an early example, so soon as his 
 mind was fully set on a theological and preaching career, he deter- 
 mined to master absolutely the Hebrew language, especially as he 
 had not gotten in college a very firm hold of either Latin or Greek. 
 The persistent attempt to accomplish this, together with much other 
 reading contemporaneously carried on, caused a serious collapse of 
 his eyes ; and he was suddenly confronted with a possible future 
 quite different from that which he had latterly sketched out for him- 
 self. We can all see now that this was well for him in the ultimate 
 outcome, terrible as the shock was at the time ; for such ability as 
 was unquestionably his, and such ambition as was confessedly his 
 also, coupled with full vigor in all physical organs, would have cer- 
 tainly led on to a different man and Christian from that actully pre- 
 sented in life. While thus halted by Providence, and hesitating what 
 course he should take, he was invited to a tutorship in his Alma Mater; 
 a third avenue seemed thus to open before him, all equally clouded 
 perhaps by the visual misfortune, lawyer or minister or teacher, 
 which? It was curious and dubious and pathetic. He took the 
 tutorship for a year and a half, but it did not prove any great suc- 
 cess, mainly because Bascom was not a natural class-room teacher 
 and never became such, although class-room teaching became his 
 life-work, and also partly because tutor's work was in Latin and 
 Greek, for which he had neither fondness nor sufficient preparation. 
 Then naturally came theology again for a year or two, this time at 
 Andover; and as there always was a decided bent toward public 
 speaking, and now some opportunity for ex tempore preaching, things 
 seemed to be drifting in the best direction attainable under the cir- 
 cumstances; when, in 1855, six years after graduation, he was 
 elected to the professorship of Rhetoric at Williams. Technical 
 rhetoric was not to his taste nor scarcely to his capacity, while practi- 
 cal oratory was abundantly adapted to both. If it had been a profes- 
 sorship of philosophy at any well-established college, the case would 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 807 
 
 have been perfectly clear to his mind, and to the mind of anybody 
 who knew him well. But in rhetoric the case was different. Dr. 
 Hopkins, who practically called him to this chair in Williams, had 
 grave doubts about his succeeding well in it. These doubts he frankly 
 imparted to Professor Perry, then a colleague who urged the appoint- 
 ment, conceding the technical unfitness of the candidate. Bascom 
 himself hesitated to accept on very much the same grounds, and on 
 another ground also, of which mention will be made in a moment ; 
 and he told the writer more than forty years afterward, that he 
 thought it might have been better for his happiness and his reputa- 
 tion, if he had declined the professorship offered, and had either 
 awaited another one elsewhere more to his mind and talents, or had 
 resolutely clung to the preacher's desk and its collateral opportuni- 
 ties. However, he accepted the professorship at Williams, and 
 worked in it for twenty years under considerable limitations partly 
 personal and partly external. In this interval of time he published 
 his treatise on Rhetoric, which was reissued in 1882 with the collabo- 
 ration of H. H. Morgan (Williams College 1859) in a second edition. 
 The special grounds of Bascom's hesitation alluded to above was 
 marked changes in his philosophical and theological beliefs during 
 the six years preceding, which he feared would encounter prejudice 
 and opposition from Dr. Hopkins particular \y, and which, as a 
 matter of fact, did encounter these strongly. But why should a 
 professor of rhetoric come in contact and collision with the con- 
 clusions of a professor of philosophy and Christian theology ? 
 
 (1) Because it was not in Bascom's nature to conceal from his 
 colleagues anything of importance working out toward a conclusion 
 in his own mind. His impulse to think aloud was very strong, and 
 helpful to himself and others. He could not bear to wait until 
 everything correlative was cleared up and rounded out. On the 
 contrary, beyond most men, he felt bound by inclination and even 
 by conscience also, to unfold privately and publicly partial results 
 so far as he had well gotten at them at the time. A college is 
 always a place where ethical themes are in agitation, as between 
 the professors themselves and these and the foremost students. 
 
 (2) At that time Sunday services were held in the chapel twice a 
 day, the president always preaching in the morning, and four or five 
 professors alternating in the afternoons. Bascom of course took his 
 turns with the rest. While he never sought occasions in the desk 
 for differing with Dr. Hopkins, such occasions thrust themselves 
 upon him. The doctrine of the Atonement, and a consequent 
 doctrine of the Trinity, as these were then held in most of the 
 
808 WILLTAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 churches of New England, were points at which Bascoin had already 
 clearly put himself in the opposition, and it could not well be that 
 the sparks should not now and then fly. Hopkins had never had any 
 technical theological training at all, had read theological books but 
 very little, yet it had come about naturally enough (all things con- 
 sidered) that his opinions on these topics were generally supposed 
 to be finally authoritative. There were always some few students who 
 delighted to hear Bascom in g^asz'-opposition, and who frequented 
 his study more or less for conversation on these themes. .But in 
 general a prejudice was excited and cultivated against him as an 
 innovator in religion. And it was astonishing to observe with what 
 vitality this feeling continued to manifest itself, notwithstanding the 
 fact that little by little a large portion of the clergy of New England 
 came to occupy theological positions practically identical with his own. 
 When Dr. Hopkins resigned the presidency of the College in 1872, 
 there was a continuation of this manifested prejudice, and probably 
 an intensification of it. As Hopkins was to continue to teach 
 philosophy and theology as a professor, and did so for fifteen years 
 longer, more or less, it was not strange that Chadbourne and the 
 trustees refused to give Bascom a chair in Philosophy, which he 
 very much desired, and which would have attached him to the 
 College for life, though doubtless at the expense of some friction 
 in high places. Really, Chadbourne did not want Bascom on the 
 ground in any capacity, and this made the one more than willing to 
 recommend the other to the regents of the University of Wisconsin 
 as president there, a place which Chadbourne himself had just left 
 after a brief tenure of it. Bascom accordingly went to Madison, 
 where he had an untrammelled career of almost fourteen years. In 
 1886 Edward Herrick Griffin succeeded Mark Hopkins as Professor 
 of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy for three years, when John 
 Edward Eussell assumed the chair. During these rapid changes, 
 the bottom grounds of which were very curious and not worth the 
 telling in sober history, Bascom returned from Madison to Williams- 
 town, where his homestead had remained, with unimpaired powers 
 and un quenched ambition. But the religious prejudice against him 
 had survived the changes in the presidency also, and some other 
 similar feelings as well, and so he could ,gain no opportunity to 
 teach college classes in his chosen line of research and achievement. 
 This was a renewedly keen disappointment to him. In saying that 
 Bascom was an extraordinarily ambitious man, it must be borne in 
 mind that the etymological sense of that word, the going about to 
 seek for something desired, was not the prominent element in his 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 809 
 
 case. He rarely applied for places he coveted and that he was con- 
 fident he was well able to fill, though he usually let it be known to 
 some one concerned that he wished for the place ; but the steadiness 
 and strength of the ambition revealed itself rather after it had been 
 again and again foiled and thwarted. In his old age he said delib- 
 erately and repeatedly to a friend, though without a tinge of bitter- 
 ness : " The College has always had a malign influence over me" 
 referring particularly to this odium theologicum. After the return in 
 1887 he preached occasionally both in college and in town and else- 
 where for many years, always with power and eloquence, but never 
 popularly, because his thought was too deep and his mode of reason- 
 ing too difficult for the common mind to follow them readily. He 
 lectured also in various places, particularly on temperance ; and he 
 was repeatedly a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts on a plat- 
 form demanding the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating drinks. 
 He was an unquestioned orator in the pulpit and on the lecturer's 
 platform. His character was of the highest in every respect. He 
 was the centre of a genuine admiration on the part of his neighbors 
 and of a very wide circle of friends and acquaintances. He was 
 an active and courageous and disinterested citizen. He was the 
 acknowledged leader for his town in all matters of village improve- 
 ment and of aesthetic adornment in every direction, setting a modest 
 and economical example to all in and through his beautiful estate on 
 Park Street. 
 
 Yet it must be conceded that he did not take that steady and 
 solid satisfaction in his own life and work that such a man seemed 
 to be fully entitled to. This was painful to his best friends to 
 observe. Because it was instructive also to those who observed it, 
 and may be instructive to some who come after, a few reasons for 
 this will be hinted at in this and the following paragraphs, in con- 
 nection with some careful statements of what was the great work of 
 his life. Premising in words what has been already implied, there 
 was a considerable want of adjustment in general throughout his 
 active life between his personality and his environment. Speaking 
 after the manner of men, he was pre-ordained to investigate, affirm, 
 modify, reaffirm, readjust, and carry forward toward an ultimate 
 solution the problems of philosophy. What is philosophy ? He 
 shall tell us : 
 
 Philosophy is a presentation of the ultimate reasons of belief. Its purpose is 
 to define the forms, nature, and force of knowledge. Physical phenomena arise 
 in Space, and are united by causes. Mental phenomena arise in Consciousness, 
 and are united by reasons. The two forms of phenomena are in such living 
 
810 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 interaction that causes modify reasons and reasons redirect causes. It is the 
 first business of Philosophy to define knowledge in reference to these, its two 
 original constituents, and in reference to their interaction on each other. The 
 one element is present to the mind as Sensations, the other as Conceptions, while 
 the two are woven together reflectively under experience. The nature of these 
 two terms, sensations and conceptions, and their respective validity, is the pri- 
 mary problem of philosophy. The answer we give it will modify all our notion 
 of the nature of the reflective process by which sensuous impressions and mental 
 ideas are united in judgments through all the diverse forms of knowledge. 1 
 
 The best conditions for the slow founding and building up of 
 such a structure as is here clearly described in outline, the most 
 recondite and difficult and ultimate work to which the human mind 
 can rationally apply itself, are furnished by successive college classes 
 under a teacher capable at once of conducting for himself such far- 
 flung researches and of letting himself down, without loss of dignity 
 and authority, to the mental level of students, and taking them along 
 with him in these perilous journeys and bringing them safely back. 
 Comparatively few students in an ordinary college class can accom- 
 pany at every step the adventurous leader, but there are always 
 some who can, and all who choose can go part way and profit by 
 each step they take ; and, as these trips are or should be constantly 
 recurrent forth and back, some who stumble at the first excursions 
 learn to stand in future ones, and even to stride at last alongside 
 of the teacher. These constant and mutual experiences in the class- 
 room are as fruitful for the teacher as for the taught as respects the 
 slow and certain progress of philosophy. It is not in philosophy 
 as in scientific generalizations, in natural history, for example, or 
 in political economy, one careful induction from a few particu- 
 lars, and then an end for all time. It is repetition and re-formation 
 and reorganization of all correlatives, of each radius to its centre, 
 of each spoke to its hub. Bascom, by build of mind and choice of 
 will, took early to philosophy as his special field. But he had not 
 the advantage of an early professorship in it. He needed that 
 advantage. He never wholly overmastered the consequences of the 
 lack of it. As a teacher, he could not naturally and easily let him- 
 self down transiently to a lower intellectual level than his own. If 
 he had begun to teach philosophy to boys , while he himself were 
 still tentatively learning it, and had had this opportunity renewed 
 year after year, before his own lines of thought had become rigid 
 and dogmatic, and had had the help, both in discovery and correc- 
 tion which the bright fellows never fail to yield to a sympathetic 
 1 Historical Interpretation of Philosophy, p. 375. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 811 
 
 and growing teacher, Bascom's manners and methods as a teacher 
 for life could not but have been both softened and strengthened. 
 There would have been less of ex cathedrd and more of mutual 
 fellowship. Then, too, he would have had after a while young and 
 enthusiastic disciples, who would have caught his central principles 
 in the class-room and then have gradually diffused them in the 
 regions round about. All this would have added to his reputation 
 at an age when such things are prized, and would have rewarded 
 and stimulated his skill and zeal. 
 
 As it was, he was almost compelled to develop the leading cor- 
 relatives of his central principles, such as ethics and aesthetics and 
 natural theology, before he had put in order and published to the 
 world his central constructions in philosophy itself. This was like 
 a general entering on a complex campaign without first having 
 established headquarters. He wrote many books, too many, 
 all of them involving special points and peculiarities of his own 
 philosophical system, before having brought out in simple connec- 
 tion with each other each buttressing the rest these points 
 and peculiarities themselves. In 1885 was published " Problems 
 in Philosophy," the book coming the nearest of all to an expo- 
 sition and defence of his philosophical system. Indeed, in its 
 preface he says : " Philosophy, above most topics, calls for an explicit 
 statement of a few fundamental principles, and a pushing of inquiry 
 in reference to them till some satisfactory conclusion is reached. The 
 present volume aims to make, in the most direct way, a contribution 
 on the more obscure topics of philosophy" Some of the preceding 
 books in particular " The Words of Christ," 1883 do not seem 
 in their titles to involve these central statements and inferences 
 from them, and yet the text is full of these, which makes the 
 books hard to read and also to seem less valid in their conclusions 
 than they really are. " An Historical Interpretation of Philosophy," 
 1893, is a careful general criticism within moderate limits of all the 
 most important philosophical speculation from Pythagoras to Lotze, 
 is an extraordinarily comprehensive and valuable book, by much 
 the most so of any given to the world by John Bascom, and the 
 criticism, of course, involves throughout, though in an indirect and 
 modest way, a presentation of his own fundamental points of philo- 
 sophical belief. No one can fail to see, however, in a general way, 
 that the number of these books, a baker's dozen or more, and 
 especially the order of their publication, would prejudice the posi- 
 tion of their author as a speculative philosopher. The natural 
 readers of such books, in this country at least, are a set of very 
 
812 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 busy men who want to take what any thinker has to give them in 
 a direct and compact way. Very few indeed have leisure to com- 
 pare critically a half-dozen books on as many different subjects in 
 order to draw out of them a consistent scheme of philosophic 
 thought, or even to satisfy themselves whether the implications in 
 them all may be harmonized. To use a phrase current among the 
 publishers, no one of Bascom's many books " sold well." He came, 
 when at all, very slowly and imperfectly into his own. This being 
 so, and considering the purpose of these paragraphs, it is incumbent 
 on us to display as clearly and succinctly as possible the points 
 which Bascom himself considered to be his chief contributions to 
 philosophy. 
 
 The two lines along which thought has always gone out in search 
 of ultimate goals are best characterized as intuitional and empirical, 
 or (less happily) as subjective and objective. The tendency of all 
 individual philosophers hitherto, and of each specific school of 
 philosophy, has been to put the emphasis upon one or the other 
 of these lines, that is to say, upon either insight or experience, 
 each to the minimizing of the other. In many cases and in many 
 schools, this minimizing of the other practically amounted to the 
 denying the validity of that altogether. Bascom claimed as his 
 own more material contributions to the long discussion the follow- 
 ing, though the words are not wholly his: 
 
 1. A better and more rational, and consequently a defensible, 
 statement of the grounds and limits of Intuitionalism. 
 
 2. A complete and comprehensive acceptance of Empiricism, and 
 so a rational reconciliation of two conflicting schools of thought. 
 
 3. The drawing of attention more definitely and strongly to the 
 intuitive convictions of all men as proof positive of the postulates 
 of Intuitionalism. 
 
 4. The recognition of Space and Consciousness as the two primi- 
 tive form-elements under which all phenomena arise ; physical 
 phenomena demand Space only, mental phenomena demand Con- 
 sciousness only ; hence no possible connection between the two as 
 phenomena, and all alleged sub-conscious agencies are unprovable 
 and therefore non-existent. 
 
 5. A clean reconciliation in Evolution as properly defined of both 
 empiric and intuitive elements, without whose combination in Growth 
 Evolution is impossible. 
 
 John Bascom was not the man to claim anything for himself that 
 properly belonged to another, or to allow any one (so far as he 
 could help it) a title to something really belonging to somebody 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 813 
 
 else. All men may therefore accept without scruple as his those 
 radical contributions toward an ultimate explanation of men and 
 things, which is philosophy. Even a tyro in such difficult matters 
 can see, and a fair-minded expert will not deny, that these contri- 
 butions are vastly important, that they simplify even if they do not 
 solve the problems of philosophy, as well by inclusion as exclusion ; 
 that probably no other American has as yet approached this man in 
 patient penetrativeness and power of comprehensive explication ; 
 and that by the same probability his rank as a philosopher was 
 highest in the land of his birth as the nineteenth century passed 
 into the twentieth. As that transition approached, Williams Col- 
 lege, though not with entire unanimity, claimed him as her most 
 distinguished living graduate; and feared not the verdict of pos- 
 terity as to his position first or among the first in rank then and 
 there. Williams was a small college at that epoch, and relatively 
 obscure as compared with the great and old universities of the land, 
 like Harvard and Yale and Columbia and Princeton and Pennsyl- 
 vania and Virginia, and yet she respectfully presented to these and 
 all other institutions similar to these and to herself the name of 
 John Bascom as having done as much in his day to elucidate philos- 
 ophy, that is, to throw into a vexed and dark region of thought 
 unbroken rays of light, as any graduate of any one of them all. 
 
 Making the above presentation with all confidence, the College at 
 the same time was as ready to admit as anybody else was prompt to 
 assert, that Bascom did not equally illumine by any means all the 
 topics that he touched and taught. He touched and taught too 
 many topics to make this possible under the universal and in- 
 vincible human limitations. These several failures may all be 
 traced back to one source, namely, the lack either in the original 
 structure of his mind, or (what is more likely) in its early training 
 and the consequent life-habit, the lack of inclination and ability 
 to treat the particulars of any one class of facts or phenomena in an 
 inductive way, and so to reach sound scientific generalizations. He 
 was often heard to say, that his mind was reluctant to gather up for 
 itself the particular facts one by one with which it delighted to deal 
 when some one else had furnished them. " Let somebody gather up 
 my facts for me and I will take good care of them." Such an ad- 
 mission as this was far more significant than he ever supposed it to 
 be. He supposed it indifferent, it was actually fatal. If he chose 
 to have others select his particulars for him, he was at the mercy of 
 those others in his own further manipulations of them. How could 
 he know that his facts were well gathered ? How could he know 
 
814 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 that each and every one of them really belonged to a single class of 
 facts or phenomena ? Many facts superficially viewed may seem to 
 belong to a certain class, and may be honestly and carelessly put 
 there, and yet really belong somewhere else ; and these, if accepted 
 with the others, necessarily work confusion and ruin to any argu- 
 mentation based upon them. Bascom was not only liable to be 
 deceived by facts or particulars so gathered and taken for granted, 
 but also he was actually and repeatedly so deceived, to the conse- 
 quent comparative worthlessness of even whole volumes of his 
 books. If he ever clearly saw the radical difference between in- 
 ductive and deductive reasoning, he nowhere clearly explains this 
 difference, nor gives the grounds for his own ever manifested partial- 
 ity for what he calls the " deductive " forms. He had an elaborated 
 criticism of Mill's "Logic " (" Historical Interpretation," pp. 235-243) 
 without being fair to Mill, quoting little or nothing from his book 
 verbally, and ignoring his ample concessions to intuitionalism both 
 in the introduction and throughout the text, and seeming to take 
 for granted that because Mill was reared in empiricism his logic 
 must bear all the faults and corollaries of that system as such. On 
 the contrary, Mill himself says (they are the last words of his intro- 
 duction), " I can conscientiously affirm, that no one proposition laid 
 down in this work has been adopted for the sake of establishing, or with 
 any reference to its fitness for being employed in establishing, precon- 
 ceived opinions in any department of knowledge or inquiry on which 
 the speculative world is still undecided." Again, "Logic is common 
 ground on ivliich the partisans of Hartley and of Reid, of Locke and of 
 Kant, may meet and join hands." And once more : " Whatever is 
 known to us by consciousness is known beyond possibility of question. 
 What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be 
 sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of 
 establishing such truths. There is no logic for this portion of our 
 knowledge." 
 
 The indefiniteness and consequent confusion of some portions of 
 Bascom's published writing was illustrated by his use of the techni- 
 cal term " science. 7 ' He published a book entitled, " Science, Philoso- 
 phy, and Religion." A book so entitled should certainly contain an 
 exact definition of each of its titular terms, and the precise differ- 
 ences between them. Years after the publication of that book, in a 
 more ripened and final discussion of the same themes, we find the 
 following : " Science is homogeneous tvith kiiowledge. It does in 
 minor directions precisely what philosophy should do in major ones. 
 It makes our insight deeper and more consistent. It accepts the habit- 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 815 
 
 ual force of thought, and bears it forward to a full performance of its 
 office. It tests its own additions and corrections by their concurrence 
 with knowledge, by their ability to carry familiar lines of light a little 
 further. Philosophy must start from the same centres of truth and 
 return to them. All conclusions that lie beyond the primary convictions 
 of men will be aberrations, vagaries." When questioned as to the 
 exact meaning of this assuredly not over-clear passage, its author 
 added by way of elucidation, " All science is knowledge, but all 
 knowledge is not science." " What, then, is the precise line of dis- 
 tinction between the two ? " " Science is that portion of knowledge 
 more thoroughly settled in the mind by reflection." "Can no clear 
 and technical distinction be made between the two?" "No." 
 " Then of what earthly use is the term science, and what do men 
 mean when they talk about the amazing progress of modern sci- 
 ence ? " The silence that followed was nothing but the failure to 
 appreciate the nature and power of inductive reasoning. " All 
 ruminating animals are cloven-footed." There is not a scientific 
 man in the world who doubts the truth of that proposition. How 
 did they become assured of its truth ? Because a few careful men, 
 interested in such things, who did not leave to others to gather the 
 primary particulars for them but who did this for themselves, 
 observed in a considerable number of instances that the ruminating 
 function in animals was invariably accompanied by the split-hoof 
 peculiarity in their feet; and then at once with complete assurance 
 of mind from the instances examined passed to the logical generali- 
 zation, that all ruminating animals everywhere are split-footed. 
 Scores upon scores of generalizations made in just this way from 
 particulars constitute, and precisely so of all other bodies of tracts 
 properly called the " sciences," the science of natural history. The 
 process is induction pure and simple and safe, because God has made 
 the world on everlasting lines of order, and He has made men so 
 that they instinctively and immediately trust this order so soon as 
 they clearly perceive its lines, and science is but the recognition in 
 propositions of this predetermined order as it manifests itself in 
 various classes of facts or phenomena. But men must be cautious 
 and repetitive in gathering up their particulars under some general 
 conception of classes or universals. Whether this general con- 
 ception be preexisteiit or born on the instant makes no difference 
 whatever in the process of induction, which is the process of reason- 
 ing or inference. Bascom says above, that all conclusions that lie 
 beyond the primary convictions of men are aberrations or vagaries. 
 Tut! That it takes two shoes for each foot of an ox, and only one 
 
816 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 shoe for each foot of a horse, are among " the primary convictions 
 of men ; " but that the ox chews his cud while the horse does not, 
 and that a certain shape of foot invariably accompanies the world 
 over a certain mode of feeding, is not among the primary convictions 
 of men. Far from it. The one is knowledge, the other is science. 
 There is a sharp line of distinction between them. The one is the 
 result of local observation, the other of logical inference, that is, of 
 reasoning, that is, of induction. 
 
 Professor Bascom's first book was a treatise of political economy. 
 It was unfortunate from whatever point of view looked at, that, 
 instead of gathering up and studying for himself the primary facts 
 of that branch of knowledge, he languidly allowed others, as was 
 his wont, to do that preliminary work for him. He borrowed 
 bodily from old English sources, then already becoming antiquated, 
 the notions and phraseology that first came to hand. He ignored 
 the admirable hints toward a reconstruction conveyed by Arch- 
 bishop Whately's proposal to denominate the whole subject Catallac- 
 tics, or the science of Exchanges. He assumed without question, 
 with many others more at fault at this point than he, that the word 
 "Wealth" was an adequate word to put in at the foundation of 
 economical inquiry. Yet neither he nor anybody else was ever able 
 so to define this word as to make it useful or even sufferable in any 
 rational attempt to build up from its foundation a consistent science. 
 He also took for granted from his unscientific predecessors, (1) that 
 economics were substantially an investigation about things rather 
 than persons, about commodities rather than services, about the 
 past and present rather than the present and future, the word 
 " wealth " has a concrete meaning ever deceptive in this connection ; 
 (2) that economics must (in order to start at all) start in axioms, 
 and proceed (in order to proceed at all) by corollaries, thus assimi- 
 lating the reasoning to that of mathematics. All this was delusive 
 and impedimentary. It contributed to no progress. It cast no 
 light. That the word " wealth " is not needful to the unfolding of 
 economics, but is rather a hindrance in every way, is shown by the 
 fact that a Williams College text-book on the subject, without even 
 once using the obnoxious word, was published in 1865, and passed 
 through more than twenty editions in twenty-five years ; and there 
 seemed to be no disposition in later books to recur to the scientific 
 use of the word, so far as they appeared and were observed by the 
 writer. Professor Bascom never became a good political economist, 
 and therefore never a good teacher of those topics, chiefly for the 
 reason that he never studied at first hand for his own use the 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 817 
 
 primal subject-matter in the market-place, in the labor-exchange, and 
 in the banking and clearing-houses; secondly, for the reason that 
 he never became an adept in the current and scientific inductive 
 reasoning. 
 
 7. JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. Born in Cuyahoga county, Ohio, 
 Nov. 19, 1831, and died at Long Branch, Sept. 19, 1881. We have now 
 reached the seventh and last of the most notable examples of Wil- 
 liams graduates during the first century of the College. We feel 
 sure of the united suffrages of the living alumni, when this book 
 shall be published, in favor of the selection of these seven as the 
 most distinguished of all the alumni. The point of heredity as 
 throwing some light upon the life of each of the seven, though 
 striking also in relation to Garfield, had a considerably different 
 application to him from that in the two cases of Bascom and 
 Whitney. Unlike these last, Garfield was not the scion of indi- 
 vidual ancestors of remarkable distinction, rather the reverse, 
 but he showed as distinctly as they the strain of commingled blood 
 coming down through generations of relatively common men from 
 the Puritan, Edward Garfield, one of the proprietors of Watertown, 
 1635 ; and on the other hand, from the Huguenot, Maturin Ballou, 
 Providence, 1639. Puritan and Huguenot features, distinct and yet 
 commingled, showed themselves in almost every line of Garfield, 
 boy and man. The Ballou strain through the mother, Eliza Ballou, 
 was the finer, the more intellectual, the more spontaneous, the more 
 religious. She was born in 1801, in Richmond, New Hampshire, 
 the same town where Hosea Ballou, the founder of Universalism in 
 this country, and a relative, was born in 1771. He was a son of 
 Rev. Maturin Ballou, 2d, a Baptist minister, and a father of a race 
 of preachers of distinction. According to tradition the Ballous 
 have been small in stature, have even been said to be "a French 
 pony breed," which means a fine texture of organization throughout. 
 Eloquence, the gift of poetry, and a knack of leadership, came 
 naturally to this family of exiles for righteousness sake in all the 
 several generations. Silas Ballou, a brother of Garfield's grand- 
 father James, was the author of more than a score of hymns in the 
 first Universalist "collection?" edited in 1837 by Hosea Ballou, 2d, 
 chosen the first president of Tufts College in 1853. From his 
 mother's side of the family the general derived legitimately his 
 fitness and fondness for public speaking, his imagination, his finer 
 sentiments of all kinds, his gifts of leadership. 
 
 From the father's side in long succession the general gained 
 apparently another set of qualities, a strong physical development, 
 
818 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 unusual power of muscle, together with what often goes with these, 
 good-nature, generosity, and a quick sense of the visibly ridiculous. 
 Five generations of the first Garfields in Massachusetts, including 
 the first Edward, who in all probability came in Governor Winthrop's 
 company in 1630, lie buried in or near Watertown. Solomon, the 
 sixth in descent, great-grandfather of our Garfield, was the first of 
 the line to look beyond New England for a home. The wilderness 
 west of the northern Hudson got talked about in central Massachu- 
 setts after the surrender of Burgoyne in 1777, and Solomon Garfield 
 was one of a company that settled what is now the town of " Wor- 
 cester," New York. Solomon w r as known in the rocky clearing made 
 there as a man of prodigious strength. He was once offered a grind- 
 stone weighing five hundred pounds if he would carry it home. He 
 put it on his shoulders and carried it home, a mile's distance, with- 
 out even availing himself of the privilege of leaning against a fence. 
 His son, Thomas Garfield, and his son's wife, Aseneth Hill, had 
 born to them in December, 1799, the month in which Washington 
 died at Mt. Vernon, Abram Garfield, the father of the President. 
 When Abram was ten years old, who should move into the clearing 
 at Worcester from southern New Hampshire but the mother of 
 Eliza Ballou, then nine years old, with three other small children. 
 Among Eliza's playmates for five years in Worcester was Abram 
 Garfield, her future lover and husband. Her eldest brother, James 
 Ballou, after whom the general was ultimately named, took brief 
 militia service in the War of 1812, and had his adventurous spirit 
 quickened and his local ideas enlarged by hearing about forest- 
 covered Ohio. In 1814, he persuaded his mother to take her 
 children there, the goal being Muskingum County, near Zanesville. 
 In the meantime Abram Garfield became an orphan and bound out 
 to service in Worcester, remembering all the while the little Ballon 
 girl, broke his bonds at eighteen and set out for the Ohio wilderness, 
 where he found his " better half " and made her legally his own within 
 a year. The enterprising young giant found employment through 
 the building of the Ohio Canal by the State ; and, showing wits and 
 will and character, was appointed a superintendent on the canal 
 work, and soon fell to taking contracts, which for a time were 
 profitable. But the usual frontier reverses overtaking him, he paid 
 up in full, and, taking a half-brother with him, he struck out for the 
 unbroken wilderness of what is now Orange, fifteen miles from 
 Mentor. 1 There was but one house within seven miles of them. 
 
 1 Harry A. Garfield, the general's eldest son, Williams College 1885, told the 
 writer in Williamstown, July 29, 1898, that there never was anything in Orange except 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 819 
 
 They built a log-cabin and lived in it until a second was built, when 
 both men went to work to make a hole in the forest. There in 
 November, 1831, James Abram Garfield, the youngest of four chil- 
 dren, was born. When he was eighteen months old, the father, who 
 had never found his match in strength, though often challenged, 
 died suddenly in consequence of putting forth the efforts of ten 
 men combined to save his home and crops from a sweeping forest 
 fire. 
 
 Our Garfield could never find in the college triennial catalogues 
 but one other Garfield alumnus, showing that the family, though 
 long established and large in numbers, were not a college-frequenting 
 race. The names of all his own four sons have since been gathered 
 to his own in the Williams triennial. The childhood and youth of 
 James A. Garfield did not differ in essentials from that of tens of 
 thousands of poor boys, his own contemporaries in all parts of this 
 country. He had an excellent mother. Her mode of handling him 
 from the beginning on was worthy of all praise. She trained him 
 at every stage to respect her judgment as well as to reciprocate her 
 affection. He inherited from her strong religious tendencies, and 
 an appetite for learning. It was at these two points that she 
 watched him, and worked and waited for him. She read to him out 
 of the New Testament, and taught him to read to her out of the 
 same, and thereafter when separated in place they often read it in 
 conjunction, chapter by chapter. Fortunately, the family came into 
 the neighborhood of other poor families belonging to the Christian 
 Disciples, or Campbellites so-called, and came under the influences 
 diffused by the simple-hearted ministers of that denomination of 
 Baptists. The father and mother had become " Disciples " shortly 
 before James was born ; and the associations of the family with 
 these excellent people, and their influence over Garfield himself so 
 long as he lived, were wholesome and uplifting. He had felt indeed 
 at times the common reaction of boys religiously brought up, and 
 had absented himself from the meetings in the neighborhood school- 
 houses, one of which stood on his mother's own land ; but when he 
 was a little past eighteen and had just finished his first term of 
 teaching in a rough district school, he came under special impulses 
 from the preaching of a plain old Disciple in the little schoolhouse, 
 and was hopefully converted, and was baptized into the faith of his 
 mother. Thereafter everything in prospect became new to him. 
 He determined to acquire the best and broadest education that hard 
 
 cross-roads, others of the people besides the Garfields being drawn to Mentor early 
 by its proximity to Lake Erie and the railroad. 
 
820 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 work could impart. Alexander Campbell, educated at the University 
 of Glasgow, came to the United States in 1809, and settled in Penn- 
 sylvania as a Presbyterian minister, but became a Baptist in 1812, 
 and in conjunction with his father, Thomas Campbell, founded 
 several congregations which united with the Baptists, but protested 
 against all creeds ; and in 1827 weje excluded on this account from 
 all fellowship with the Baptist churches. In 1833 the Campbellites 
 numbered about one hundred thousand, mostly in the States of 
 Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee. Thereafter they increased 
 rapidly in Ohio and Indiana and Illinois and Missouri. Their 
 growth was particularly noticeable among the Scotch-Irish people 
 settled in those States. These people, wherever settled, even in 
 New England, manifested a spontaneous and exceptional devotion 
 to every attainable means of intellectual and religious culture. 
 Alexander Campbell, born in Antrim, Ireland, in 1786, may perhaps 
 be termed an educational zealot, was at any rate a large-minded 
 teacher and apostle, and impressed himself in an extraordinary way 
 educationally on all his religious followers, until his death in 1866. 
 He founded Bethany College, Virginia, in 1844, and became its first 
 president. Among several others similar, he was instrumental in 
 establishing the institution at Hiram, Ohio, at which Garfield him- 
 self was fitted for college, and of which afterward he became for 
 some years the head. 
 
 The following letter, written in the early autumn of 1854, is a key 
 to unlock very much in the subsequent career of young Garfield. 
 He was then not quite twenty-three years old. One curious in such 
 matters may compare with it Milton's sonnet " On being arrived at 
 the age of twenty-three." 
 
 There are three reasons why I have decided not to go to Bethany: 1 st The course 
 of study is not so extensive or thorough as in Eastern colleges. 2 d - Bethany leans 
 too heavily towards slavery. 3 d - I am the son of Disciple parents, am one my- 
 self, and have had but little acquaintance with people of other views ; and, hav- 
 ing always lived in the West, I think it will make me more liberal, both in my 
 religious and general views and sentiments, to go into a new circle, where I 
 shall be under new influences. These considerations led me to conclude to go 
 to some New England college. I therefore wrote to the Presidents of Brown 
 University, Yale, and Williams, setting forth the amount of study I have done, 
 and asking how long it would take me to finish their course. These answers are 
 now before me. All tell me I can graduate in two years. They are all brief 
 business notes, but President Hopkins concludes with this sentence: "If you 
 come here we shall be glad to do what we can for you." Other things being so 
 nearly equal, this sentence, which seems to be a kind of friendly grasp of the 
 hand, has settled the question for me. I shall start for Williams next week. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 821 
 
 The present writer, the only person now living who was teaching 
 at Williams while Garfield was in college, remembers distinctly the 
 impression produced upon the Junior class and its teachers, by the 
 accession of two young men from Ohio, Garfield and Wilbur, at 
 the beginning of the fall term of 1854. They came together. Both 
 were Disciples. Each was older by about a couple of years than the 
 average member of the class. These two roomed together through- 
 out the course. Both were about equally proficient in the matter of 
 their studies. The class had been more than decimated at the 
 close of the Sophomore year by the dropping out of some poor 
 scholars and some unworthy men, making the class the smallest in 
 college. Besides the two from Ohio, there were four or five new 
 and able men joining at the same time, transforming the face of the 
 class, and making it very interesting to all its teachers. It is not 
 true that Garfield was in any sense eminent as a student over at 
 least fifteen or twenty others of the class of 1856. He was under 
 some disadvantages as compared with these. He was poor, and 
 obliged to earn concurrently a considerable portion of his expenses. 
 He taught evening writing-schools in Williamstown and in Pownal 
 and in other places more distant. During a considerable part of his 
 two years' college residence, in conjunction with Wilbur, he minis- 
 tered to small Baptist congregations inclining to hear the lay 
 preaching of the Disciples, driving over the Taconic mountain- 
 wall for this purpose to the small villages of Berlin and Petersburg. 
 He missed in this way much of the stimulating college preaching 
 of President Hopkins, whose lecture-room nevertheless was the 
 centre of attraction to him for the Senior year. Twenty-four years 
 after his graduation, and just after he had been nominated as a 
 candidate for the presidency of the United States, Dr. Hopkins 
 gave in writing his recollections of him as a student. These were 
 careful and candid, and corresponded in almost every particular 
 with those of at least one other, his college teachers. The reader 
 will be glad to see these characteristics, given indeed for campaign 
 purposes, but almost wholly free from partisan bias. 
 
 My first remark, then, is that General Garfield was not sent to college. He 
 came. This often marks a distinction between college students. To some, col- 
 lege is chiefly a place of aimless transition through the perilous period between 
 boyhood and manhood. Without fixed principles, and with no definite aim, 
 with an aversion to study rather than a love for it, they seek to get along with 
 the least possible effort. Between the whole attitude and bearing of such, and 
 of one who comes, the contrast is like that between mechanical and vital force. 
 In what General Garfield did there was nothing mechanical. He not only came, 
 
822 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 but made sacrifices to come. His work was from a vital force, and so was with- 
 out fret or worry. He came with a high aim, and pursued it steadily. 
 
 A second remark is that the studies of General Garfield had breadth. As 
 every student should, he made it his first business to master the studies of the 
 class-room. This he did, but the college furnishes facilities, and is intended, 
 especially in the latter part of its course, to furnish opportunity for gaining 
 general knowledge, and for self-directed culture. To many, the most valuable 
 result of their college course is from these. What they have affinity for they 
 find, and often make most valuable acquisitions in general literature, in history, 
 in natural science, and in politics. Of these facilities and of this opportunity 
 General Garfield availed himself largely. Of his tendency towards politics in 
 those days we have an illustration in a poem called " Sam," which he delivered 
 while in college, and in which he satirized the Know-Nothing party. He mani- 
 fested while in college the same tendency towards breadth which he has since, 
 for it is well known that he has been a general scholar and a statesman rather 
 than a mere politician. 
 
 And as General Garfield was broad in his scholarship, so was he in his sym- 
 pathies. No one thought of him as a recluse, or as bookish. Not given to athletic 
 sports, he was fond of them. His mind was open to the impression of natural 
 scenery, and, as his constitution was vigorous, he knew well the fine points on 
 the mountains around us. He was also social in his disposition, both giving and 
 inspiring confidence. So true is this of his intercourse with the officers of the 
 college as well as with others, that he was never even suspected of anything low 
 or trickish ; and hence, in part, the confidence I have always felt in his integrity. 
 He had a quick eye for anything that turned up with a ludicrous side to it, and 
 celebrated a trick that the Freshmen played on the Sophomores by a clever parody 
 of Tennyson's u Charge of the Light Brigade." Respecting always the individu- 
 ality of others, and commanding without exacting their respect, he was a gen- 
 eral favorite with his associates. 
 
 A further point of General Garfield's course of study was its evenness. There 
 was nothing startling at any one time, and no special preference for any one 
 study. There was a large general capacity applicable to any subject, and sound 
 sense. As he was more mature than most, he naturally had a readier and firmer 
 grasp of the higher studies. Hence his appointment to the metaphysical oration, 
 then one of the high honors of the class. What he did was not done with facility, 
 but by honest and avowed work. There was no pretence of genius, or alterna- 
 tion of spasmodic effort and of rest, but a satisfactory accomplishment in all 
 directions of what was undertaken. Hence there was a steady, healthful 
 onward and upward progress, such as has characterized his course since 
 graduation. 
 
 More quotable by much in this connection, and more illustrative of 
 the trend of Garfield's college life than the crude and ill-rhythmed 
 political satire to which Dr. Hopkins referred, was the following 
 poem published in the third volume of the Williams Quarterly, in 
 his Junior year, that is in 1855. This is a really fine poem, as the 
 reader shall now see. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 823 
 
 AUTUMN. 
 
 Old Autumn thou art here ! upon the Earth 
 
 And in the heavens, the signs of death are hung ; 
 
 For o'er the Earth's brown breast stalks pale decay, 
 
 And 'mong the lowering clouds the wild winds wail, 
 
 And sighing sadly, chant the solemn dirge, 
 
 O'er summer's fairest flowers, all faded now. 
 
 The Winter god, descending from the skies, 
 
 Has reached the mountain tops, and decked their brows 
 
 With glittering frosty crowns, and breathed his breath 
 
 Among the trumpet pines, that herald forth 
 
 His coming. 
 
 Before the driving blast 
 
 The mountain oak bows down his hoary head, 
 And flings his withered locks to the rough gales 
 That fiercely roar among his branches bare, 
 Uplifted to the dark unpitying heavens. 
 The skies have put their mourning garments on 
 And hung their funeral drapery on the clouds. 
 Dead Nature soon will wear her shroud of snow 
 And lie entombed in Winter's icy grave. 
 
 Thus passes life. As hoary age comes on 
 The joys of youth bright beauties of the Spring, 
 Grow dim and faded, and the long dark night 
 Of Death's chill Winter comes. But as the Spring 
 Rebuilds the ruined wrecks of Winter's waste, 
 And cheers the gloomy earth with joyous light, 
 So o'er the tomb, the Star of Hope shall rise, 
 And usher in an ever during day. 
 
 The excellent reason given by Garfield himself to his correspond- 
 ent why he should go to an Eastern college rather than to Bethany, 
 namely, because he had always hitherto been associated with Disci- 
 ples as such, justified itself in every stage of his after life. He 
 went back to Hiram to teach so soon as he had been graduated at 
 Williams; he became a marked man there at once in a sense in 
 which he was not a marked man when he left there ; it was not be- 
 cause he was essentially a more gifted, a more faithful, a better read 
 man than perhaps three or four others of his compeers ; it was be- 
 cause he had been for two years under a new set of influences, both 
 intellectual and religious, under new physical conditions, particu- 
 larly of the mountains, and under a new kind of teacher and 
 of classmate examples ; he had in no sense abandoned the points of 
 his old Disciple training, he went back unto his own, but they 
 perceived the differences at once, the grounds of which he himself 
 
824 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was scarcely conscious of, though he was now ready to assume, and 
 they were now ready to concede a new leadership, both educationally 
 and ecclesiastically, the fundamentals of which were corporate and 
 sectarian. Five years of lordly teaching had sent out from and 
 gathered at Hiram College enough of trained Disciple material prac- 
 tically to constitute the Forty-second Ohio regiment of volunteers in 
 the autumn of 1861, with Garfield as colonel. The same complex 
 influences combined, all of them honorable to him, but not all of 
 them springing by any means from his individual qualities, elected 
 him to Congress from the Nineteenth Ohio district in October, 1862. 
 He took his seat on the 5th of December the following year. It was 
 a critical turn. It brought with it great opportunities. It brought 
 with it still greater hazards. 
 
 There was nothing remarkable in Garfield's brief military career, 
 nor anything to indicate special military ability except the fact that 
 he gained arid retained for life the confidence and friendship of both 
 General Rosecrans and General Thomas. He was chief of staff to 
 the former in the much-disputed battle of Chickamauga, and was 
 extravagantly praised in certain quarters for asking the permission 
 of his chief, after the defeat of one wing of the army in that battle, 
 to go find General Thomas, who commanded the other wing still 
 unrouted ; but Thomas retreated into Chattanooga the next day, just 
 as Rosecrans had ordered the retreat of the defeated wing the even- 
 ing before ; and General Garfield never joined in the opinion of those 
 who clamored that the latter did not do all that a good general could 
 do to save the day as a whole. The present writer had the highly 
 esteemed privilege, after the war was long over, of hearing Garfield 
 discourse in private and at length, and on recurring occasions years 
 apart, of the campaigns and of the generals and of the mistakes in 
 the Civil War. Rosecrans was always a marked favorite of the 
 soldiers in the armies he commanded, who commonly called him 
 " Old Rosy " ; and Garfield was so intimate with his chief, and so 
 fully possessed his confidence, that he also usually addressed him as 
 " Rosy." " Noiv, Rosy, you don't want to do that" or " It is dear that 
 this is the right thing for us to do, Rosy." He did not, however, at 
 any time put Rosecrans upon an equality, in point of military ability 
 and genius, with General Thomas ; nor did he even allow in that 
 place of comparison General Grant himself. In his magnificent 
 funeral oration over the remains of Thomas, buried at Troy in May, 
 1870, he did not scruple to put that chief, on the whole, at the head 
 of American generals of the present century ; nor, so far as is known, 
 was there ever anything in his conversation to invalidate that esti- 
 

 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 
 W. C . 1856. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 825 
 
 mate. He was never inclined to place General Grant, either in mili- 
 tary or civil position, so high, as most other competent critics did ; 
 pencil in hand, he was known to be prepared to demonstrate Grant's 
 military mistakes in the campaign resulting in the capture of Yicks- 
 burg ; and he had commanded under Grant a brigade in the terrible 
 battle of Shiloh, just before he was made chief of staff to Roseerans, 
 and probably received (as many others certainly did) an unfavorable 
 impression of Grant's military management. Garfield was appointed 
 a major-general " for gallant and meritorious services in the battle of 
 Chickamauga, Georgia," but resigned shortly after to take his seat 
 in Congress Dec. 5, 1863. 
 
 Little need here be said about his long career in the national 
 House of Representatives, and that little will rest chiefly on his own 
 authority, given in frank conversations with a friend, in whose house 
 he was repeatedly a guest. (1) Very few members of the House 
 knew him by sight when he first took his seat. But for obvious 
 reasons there was great curiosity to know him and to talk with him. 
 He had just arrived from the seat of war in the southwest, which 
 was then the crucial point in the gigantic contest, as it proved to be 
 the middle point of time also. Many members were very doubtful 
 whether the War Department had not treated General Eosecrans with 
 needless and unjust severity for his part in the partial failure of the 
 day at Chickamauga. ^ Garfield was as eager to make the acquaint- 
 ance of the members as they were to make his. He was full of 
 youth and life and buoyancy. He was just thirty years old. For 
 two years he had had a thrilling experience, and he liked to talk 
 about it. He was affable to everybody, and an extraordinarily good 
 talker. He frequented the lobby quite as much as the floor, and the 
 former was often the more animated scene. Some of the older and 
 staider members smiled at his overflow and vehemence, and endless 
 good-nature, but in their hearts they wished that they were young 
 again, and had as clear a conscience as he had. (2) When it be- 
 came time for him to take his turn in debate, it was found that, 
 without the least apparent effort, he could be heard to the remote 
 corners of the hall, that he had a readiness and good sense and per- 
 tinency in debate that can only come from quick apprehension of 
 the real points involved and a general candor toward the position 
 of an opponent. Members listened first because they could easily 
 hear all that was said ; and second, because they were pretty sure 
 to get some views of the subject that might be useful to them. Gar- 
 field was a good debater. He had an extraordinary voice. He had 
 good sense. He had had a good college training. He meant to be 
 
826 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 fair to all sides. He commonly had the persuasive power that an 
 obvious personal conviction takes along with it. " In no one of the 
 Congresses that I have attended, have there been over ten or twelve 
 members who could be heard all over so easily as I could." 
 
 (3) Pretty soon after the death of Garfield his friend and fellow- 
 Disciple and biographer, B. A. Hinsdale, now a professor in the 
 University of Michigan, published a small volume of extracts from 
 the speeches and other writings of the universally lamented Presi- 
 dent, and in the preface he referred at length to the obvious fact 
 that the extracts as such gave inadequate impression of the force and 
 masterfulness of the writings as a whole. Everything must be seen 
 in its setting and surroundings in order to be properly seen at all. 
 This may be easily explained from the nature and training of the 
 man. No human being ever yet had a complete intellectual devel- 
 opment. No human being ever yet had a full and rounded moral 
 outfit. The crevasse is found, now here and now there, but cre- 
 vasses are patent enough in each and all of the world's heroes and 
 favorites. The fundamental reason why Garfield rarely or never ex- 
 pressed himself in quotable apothegms or moral maxims was that he 
 was not built in that way. A scientific generalization inductively 
 reached and properly expressed, has no exceptions whatever ; and it- 
 is the highest joy of the scientist in any field to grasp and to utter 
 such generalizations. A moral maxim perceived in its grounds of 
 ultimate truth and righteousness stands fast forever, whether at- 
 tained by processes of inductive proof, as in the case of the Ten 
 Commandments, or intuitively sighted by the very highest minds, 
 as in the case of the Beatitudes. " Thou shalt not commit adultery." 
 No exception no tampering no escape. " Blessed are they who 
 hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled " with 
 righteousness. Garfield's mind was not of that rare order that it 
 took quick and firm hold of certainties as certainties. He saw 
 truths, a great many of them, and took comfort in them, that 
 he was sure lay near to the Throne, while he had a lingering fear 
 that some of them might, after all, in special circumstances slip down 
 the steps ! He never grounded his soul on the profound formula, 
 that a miss is as bad as a mile ! This was the source of all the mis- 
 takes, and he made a good many of them, while he was a 
 prominent and powerful and mostly admirable member of the 
 House of Representatives. The most masterful speech of his life, 
 and the one that yielded the condensed expression most likely to 
 live, was that given to an excited and maddened crowd in New 
 York just after the murder of Lincoln, and the happy phrase 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 827 
 
 was, " The President is dead, but God reigns, and the Republic still 
 lives." 
 
 (4) The American Free Trade League was organized in New York 
 a little after the close of the Civil War, for the express purpose of 
 exposing the motives and thwarting the action of certain members 
 of Congress from Pennsylvania and New England, who had secretly 
 conspired, under the convenient disguises of huge war taxes and de- 
 preciated greenbacks, to carry the country back, without open dis- 
 cussion, to protectionism, which the country, after full and long and 
 public discussion, had definitely abandoned in 1846, twenty years 
 before, the year, also, in which Great Britain had definitively abol- 
 ished her own so-called " protective " tariff taxes, namely, the Corn 
 Laws. More unselfish and patriotic men never lived than those who 
 formed the bone and sinew of that League. They combined to stand 
 up for the rights of the poor and the plundered, for those who for 
 obvious reasons could not stand up for themselves. The three presi- 
 dents of this League in succession were William Cullen Bryant and 
 David Dudley Field and David Ames W T ells, all graduates of Wil- 
 liams College, all nationally and internationally distinguished men, 
 all men highly esteemed by Garfield as fellow-alumni and disinter- 
 ested citizens. He agreed with them in the constitution of their 
 League, and in their statements of the nature of tariffs as taxes, and 
 of the radical difference between revenue tariffs and so-called " pro- 
 tective " tariffs, the former being so devised as to let the foreign 
 goods come in and so pay the taxes on them into the United States 
 Treasury, and the latter so devised as to keep the foreign goods out 
 and so get no revenue on them (or if a few come in in spite of the 
 barriers, a very little revenue at a very high cost). Garfield saw 
 through the motives of the men who went to Washington to get 
 " protective " tariff taxes put on. Indeed, he was a member of the 
 Ways and Means when the first considerable raid was made on that 
 committee for such abominable taxes ; for he used the words follow- 
 ing to a friend in the next congressional recess : " there was not a 
 man or a delegation before us last winter to get protective duties put on 
 or old ones increased, but came in bare selfishness, without a thought or 
 care except so to raise the price artificially of their own wares to their 
 oivn countrymen." In March, 1869, just after the inauguration of 
 General Grant as President, the American Free Trade League set on 
 foot a series of public addresses in some of the chief cities of the 
 North, beginning in Philadelphia. Two young men from New 
 York, prominent in the League, Charles H. Marshall and Mahlon 
 Sands, accompanied their speaker on this tour, and endeavored to 
 
828 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 make influence for the cause wherever they went. From Philadel- 
 phia all three went on to Washington, and Marshall and Sands saw 
 a number of public men, members of Congress and others, favorable 
 to a national agitation for free trade ; but they saw no other one so 
 favorable to this as the then chairman of the Ways and Means, 
 James A. Garfield. He inquired after the particulars of the Phila- 
 delphia meeting, and. after the speaker's special line of argument at 
 that time, which they gave to him, and of which he expressed his 
 approval. His outspoken adhesion on this occasion to the princi- 
 ples and practice of the League were perhaps the reason why he was 
 commended to the Cobden Club of London as a candidate for their 
 membership. At any rate, he was so commended from this side, and 
 was regularly elected a member over there, and signified in due time 
 by letter his cordial acceptance of the honor conferred upon him. 
 
 The strange story of Garfield's nomination for the presidency at 
 Chicago in the summer of 1880, was many times told by eye- and 
 ear-witnesses claiming to know its inner history ; and more than a 
 decade and a half after the event a new interest was kindled in it 
 over the country by original and important contributions made to it 
 through the magazines by Murat Halstead and T. B. Connery. The 
 former of these added much to the public knowledge at several 
 points, while conceding his own inability to explain a striking 
 fact to which he more than once called attention, and which will 
 now be referred to in conclusion. John Sherman of Ohio was 
 the logical and the really only proper candidate for the presidency 
 on the Kepublican side in 1880. A leading member of the House 
 Committee of Finance throughout the Civil War, and for some time 
 its chairman ; as Secretary of the Treasury under President Hayes, 
 superintending the measures leading to the resumption of specie 
 payments in January, 1879, after their suspension for seventeen years, 
 and engaged in refunding at lower rates of interest the debt of the 
 United States ; he represented more prominently than any other 
 statesman the Republican policies both of war and peace. He justly 
 deemed himself entitled to the nomination, and honorably and ear- 
 nestly sought t^e position. As a congressional neighbor and next 
 friend to Sherman, Garfield volunteered to attend to his interests in 
 the nominating convention, and did so with scrupulous fidelity ; from 
 one of the reporters' tables on the floor, Garfield put his colleague in 
 nomination by means of a speech that was extraordinarily admired ; 
 and which was only equalled by a corresponding speech uttered by 
 Roscoe Conkling in behalf of the renomination of General Grant for 
 a third term of the presidency ; but a hidden force at work in the con- 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 
 
 829 
 
 vention, of which not even Garfield was aware at first, which made 
 the nomination of Sherman impossible, was attended by another 
 hidden force of prescription and sound sentiment, which rendered 
 impossible also the renomination of General Grant. The bottom 
 story, now fully known, need not be told in this place. It is enough 
 
 METHODIST CHURCH. 
 
 to quote in full the letter of John Sherman in relation to it, as 
 follows : 
 
 " / believe that Garfield was loyal and did Ms best to carry out the 
 mandate of his delegation. If there icas ant/ disloyalty it was not on 
 his part. When my nomination seems:! hopeless, and there was a ten- 
 dency of my strength to go to him, I tdctj.-a^n-J lii.u my full consent. I 
 
830 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 was glad that the nomination was to go to an Ohio man. I think his 
 friendship for me was unshakable, as mine was for him. Garfield was 
 an exceedingly brilliant man, ivith a handsome face and imposing ap- 
 pearance. What he seemed to lack was moral steadfastness. He was 
 very susceptible to the influence of stronger natures. He lacked depth 
 of conviction. The last man who got his ear was apt to influence his 
 judgment. I not only gave his nomination my hearty approval, but I 
 worked hard for his election" 
 
 If we may fairly assume as the chief tests of a high success in a 
 college professorship, (1) a considerable length in the time of ser- 
 vice, say, not less than ten years; (2) a proved ability not only to 
 carry on his own teaching acceptably, but also helpfully to con- 
 tribute his full share to those miscellaneous duties falling to the 
 members of any college faculty; and (3) a contented and hopeful 
 spirit, such as served to enheart the students generally and tended 
 to keep them in pleasant relations to the College, we might 
 safely reckon one half of the following named graduate professors 
 as having gained a high success in their exalted calling; the other 
 half, while there were decided differences between them in respect 
 to those tests, may fairly be called successful professors on the 
 whole. The year of graduation and the department of instruction 
 are appended to their names. 
 
 CHESTER DEWEY ....... 1810 . . . Mathematics and Physics. 
 
 EBENEZER EMMONS 1818... Natural History. 
 
 ALBERT HOPKINS 1826 . . . Physics and Astronomy. 
 
 EDWARD LASELL 1828 . . . Chemistry. 
 
 NATHANIEL HERRICK GRIFFIN . . 1834 . . . Latin and Greek. 
 
 JOHN TATLOCK 1836 . . . Mathematics. 
 
 ISAAC NEWTON LINCOLN .... 1847 . . . Latin and French. 
 
 JOHN L. T. PHILLIPS 1847 . . . Greek. 
 
 JOHN BASCOM 1849 . . . Rhetoric. 
 
 ARTHUR LATHAM PERRY .... 1852 . . . History and Economics. 
 
 CHARLES FRANKLIN GILSON . . . 1853 . . . Modern Languages. 
 
 CYRUS MORRIS DODD 1855 . . . Mathematics. 
 
 EDWARD HERRICK GRIFFIN . . . 1862 . . . Latin and Rhetoric. 
 
 LEVERETT WILSON SPRING . . . 1863 . . . Rhetoric. 
 
 LUTHER DANA WOODBRIDGE . . . 1872 . . . Anatomy and Physiology. 
 
 JOHN EDWARD RUSSELL 1872 . . . Philosophy. 
 
 HENRY LEFAVOUR 1883 . . . Physics. 
 
 Applying the same tests of success as before, and premising 
 that some of the following named non-graduate professors reached 
 the highest rank of general usefulness attained by the first half of 
 the names in the list preceding, there may well be named the follow- 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 
 
 831 
 
 ing. Their respective colleges and departments of instruction are 
 appended. 
 
 EBENEZER KELLOGG Yale 
 
 JOSEPH ALDEN Union . 
 
 SANBORN TENNEY Amherst 
 
 TRUMAN HENRY SAFFORD . ... Harvard 
 
 LEVERETT HEARS Amherst 
 
 ORLANDO MARCELLUS FERNALD . Harvard 
 
 RICHARD AUSTIN RICE Yale 
 
 SAMUEL FESSENDEN CLARKE . . . Harvard 
 
 JOHN HASKELL HEWITT . . . Yale 
 
 Latin and Greek. 
 
 History and Economics. 
 
 Natural History. 
 
 Astronomy. 
 
 Chemistry. 
 
 Greek. 
 
 Modern Languages. 
 
 Natural History. 
 
 Ancient Languages. 
 
 GEORGE LANSING RAYMOND. 
 
 A considerable number of professors and instructors, both gradu- 
 ate and non-graduate, are excluded from the above lists by the test 
 of the time of service. The writer cannot forbear, however, to 
 mention as falling in this category of the excluded, George Lansing 
 Raymond, of the Williams class of 1862, who was Professor of 
 Oratory from 1875 till 1881, who displayed here, and afterward at 
 
832 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 Princeton in a similar position, extraordinary gifts and acquire- 
 ments along the line of art in general, and in particular the art of 
 oratory. His written style was not felicitous in exposition; and 
 besides, his topics were among the most remote and recondite ever 
 treated of before college classes; and yet he earned, through his 
 teaching and his books, an unique reputation in the country at large 
 for original and profound construction in what may be termed per- 
 haps the science of art. Professor Kaymond was also through and 
 through a kindly and considerate gentleman. 
 
 A few words here in relation to the college fraternities, or secret 
 societies, of which there were ten as the old century went out, and 
 about fifty per cent of the students constituted their membership. 
 More than half possessed fine houses of their own, in which lived 
 and lodged their members. 
 
 There was one ill consequence certainly of this custom of the fra- 
 ternities to build expensively and to fare sumptuously : from it fol- 
 io wed, by a sort of necessity, the habit of selecting for their new 
 members each year the young men whose fathers were possessed of 
 long purses ; not that this was the only principle in their selection 
 by any means, but it came to be a leading principle. It might be 
 thought that this would introduce into the secret societies a kind of 
 aristocracy, but such was not the case practically ; they continued 
 democratic in their relations each to each, and all in their common 
 relations to non-fraternity students ; while each was doubtless some- 
 what weakened intellectually and in point of forceful character by 
 the necessity alluded to. There continued to be considerable discus- 
 sion among the alumni of the College, among the college officials 
 generally, and among the successive generations of college students, 
 whether or not the fraternities were a benefit on the whole. The 
 question certainly had two sides to it; it was debated on both with 
 varying ability and intensity; and candor compels the statement of 
 fact, that the fraternities pretty steadily gained in the college public 
 opinion. They furnished a transient home to their graduates return- 
 ing to the Alma Mater; they furnished a special motive to graduates 
 to send back to the College new students from time to time ; and 
 when (as happened more than once) the old College seemed declin- 
 ing and unpopular, the feeling ran in many circles round the country 
 over, the Society must be perpetuated at any cost through the rescue of 
 the College. Thus the parent institution was strengthened through 
 the instincts of self-preservation. 
 
 The centennial celebration of the College fell on Oct. 8 and 9 
 and 10, 1893. It was in every way a notable occasion. The weather 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 
 
 833 
 
 was throughout superb. Extraordinary pains had been taken in the 
 points of invitations sent out and hospitalities prepared for. It 
 
 CHI PSI. 
 
 was a part of a matured plan to secure by means of this occasion a 
 more general and pronounced recognition of the College as among 
 
834 W1LLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 the leading colleges of the northern and eastern half of the country. 
 Special invitations were sent to the representatives of these institu- 
 tions, which were quite generally accepted, and their particular pur- 
 pose measurably secured. Through local committees, alert and 
 well-organized, courteous- attentions were paid to strangers and to 
 persons from a distance. The public exercises were well maintained 
 from the beginning to the end, and the intervals between these were 
 given up to walks and calls, to the making of new acquaintances 
 and the renewing of old ones. President Carter displayed his re- 
 markable skill in the organization of the celebration as a whole, in 
 the public welcome accorded to all comers, arid in the happy and 
 proportionate recognition of institutions and individuals as the 
 presiding officer throughout. All seemed to have a good time ; all 
 said that they had had a good time ; and, as things go in a world 
 constituted as this one is, it was superficially and apparently a great 
 success. That there were drawbacks was a matter of course. That 
 there were striking contrasts as between the semi-centennial of 1843 
 and the centennial of 1893 was a matter of necessity. On the other 
 hand, that there were such drawbacks as appeared to thoughtful and 
 keen-eyed men; and such contrasts appearing to the same between 
 the two occasions in the same place fifty years apart; was a matter 
 of distinct and deep-lined ill-omen to the old College. Before a few 
 of the more material of these drawbacks and contrasts are here 
 enumerated, it may be well for all to read brief specimens of the 
 good words publicly spoken on that occasion by prominent alumni. 
 Henry Hopkins of the class of 1858, eldest son of Mark Hopkins, 
 preached the sermon, the exordium of which is appended in full, 
 and also three or four sentences from the body. 
 
 Williams College is an hundred years old, and there is not a wrinkle on her 
 brow. Through the constant growth of a century, she has stood a steadfast 
 type of a distinctive educational idea. In constantly increasing numbers, occupy- 
 ing ever wider areas, there have been other institutions having substantially the 
 same origin, aims and methods. The American college is the generic name of 
 the class. This designation has had in the past, and notwithstanding the 
 changes of the present, still has, a definite meaning. It is descriptive of an 
 educational organization conformable to no other type. These colleges stand 
 here and there on the high places, through all the great land, from the Aroostook 
 to the Golden Gate, from Canada to the Gulf ; and are an honorable and excel- 
 lent sisterhood, dynamic, dignified, gracious, beneficent. They are to-day bless- 
 ing and adorning the vast commonwealths that make up the glory and strength 
 of our Republic. Their history is a large and noble part of the history of the 
 letters, the science, the patriotism, and the religion of our country; while in 
 foreign lands the transplanted American college, as represented by such institu- 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 835 
 
 tions as Robert College at Constantinople, and the Doshisha in Japan, is training 
 the men who are bringing in popular enlightenment, constitutional liberty, and 
 the kingdom of God. If you search for a common characteristic, you will come 
 very near to the heart of our topic, which is, the connection between education 
 and religion. We are concerned especially with the higher education as illus- 
 trated in the American college, and religion as related to it. 
 
 There is trouble in getting contact after you have gotten men. Increase of 
 numbers tends to weaken influence. The professors with large classes some- 
 times degenerate into automatic teaching-machines. The intercourse between 
 teacher and pupil grows unlovely, frigid, and formal. How alluring the con- 
 trast, the idea of the academic family of the colleges of the English University ! 
 President Woolsey is quoted as saying, " Had I my life to begin over again, I 
 would throw in my lot with one of the smaller institutions : I could have more 
 influence in training mind and in shaping character." There was a greater than 
 he, who, when he would commit to the world truth of priceless value, was satis- 
 fied with a single class of only twelve. It is better to lead a few by the hand 
 to the tree of life than, like a guide-board, to point a multitude to the tree of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Charles Cuthbert Hall of the class of 1872 said the following 
 words, amid many more of the same general tenor. 
 
 Williams College regards Christianity as something more than the cherished 
 faith and the holy tradition of nineteen centuries. To us Christianity means 
 the present power of the living Christ operating in the earth through the varied 
 ministries of the Divine Spirit. Jesus lives, not as a precious memory, but as a 
 contemporary Being ; and because He lives, we live also, having received His 
 Spirit in ourselves. And, through men who are made alive by His Divine Spirit, 
 the power of the living Christ becomes an applicable force in the present age, to 
 correct, inform, and guide social relations, and to advance the complete redemp- 
 tion of the individual. 
 
 James Hulme Canfield of the class of 1868 delivered the centen- 
 nial oration. Two passages from it, herewith appended, will 
 impart a fair conception of its drift and spirit. 
 
 Because of the somewhat limited number of students in attendance, Williams 
 has often been referred to disparagingly as a " small college." But it should be 
 remembered that its aim has always been to be a safe college rather than a large 
 one. Undoubtedly ideal education calls for but one pupil and one master. The 
 most powerful inspiration is that which comes from close personal relations. 
 The best of the education which this college has offered young men during this 
 century has been the influence of its Faculty. Association with strong character 
 must breed strength of character. The relations of teacher and taught are 
 mutual relations, and are mutually helpful, uplifting, and upbuilding. This 
 "smallness" of the college has maintained conditions conducive to the fulfil- 
 ment of its early purpose and plan. Personal character and watchfulness and 
 sympathy have always been more possible, as well as more probable, than in 
 larger institutions. 
 
836 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 The best test of the success of the college, after all, is the men it has made. 
 And in considering this point, one must carefully note the material with which 
 it has always worked. You will recall that lirst petition for a charter for the 
 college ; wherein it was set forth that the location was advantageous because of 
 certain conditions which tended to lessen the expense of instruction and render 
 the means of a liberal education more easy, and thus bring them more within the 
 power of the "middling and lower classes." To these classes the college has 
 always appealed with the largest possible degree of helpfulness. It has believed 
 that sound education was just as possible to the son of a peasant as to the son of 
 a president ; just as helpful to the blacksmith as to the barrister ; just as quick- 
 ening in all its power with the farmer as with the philosopher ; and in its possi- 
 bilities, quickening power, and helpfulness, a constant blessing to all, through 
 all ; and is needed by all alike. 
 
 Granville Stanley Hall of ifie class of 1867 used the following 
 significant words, which will bear reading between the lines also. 
 
 We are wandering in the wilderness, and have been to a certain extent, it 
 seems to me, in all matters of higher education, ever since the beginning of the 
 elective system. When we began we had a symmetrical, seasoned, well-digested 
 college curriculum. The only other example of a course of education known in 
 the history of the world was known long before this country was founded. It 
 was the course of education represented by the old trivium, quadrivium and quin- 
 drivium, which held their own for a thousand years, by the " ratio studioruin" 
 of the Jesuits, and also by the schools which Charlemagne founded. 
 
 Since we lost that course, and it is being rapidly lost, we have been 
 wandering in the wilderness ; and all these promising attempts, admirable as 
 they are, have not by any means completely solved the problem. On the other 
 hand I think there is a general consensus that the great problem is yet before us 
 and that it must be solved by new methods, if not, indeed, to some extent, by 
 new men. 
 
 Washington Gladden of the class of 1859 made his contribution 
 to the centennial in the form of the following hymn ; as he had 
 made many years before the more notable contribution of the first, 
 and still the chief of the college songs, " The Mountains." 
 
 Here, 'neath the soft October sky, 
 
 A century gone, the scholars stood 
 And praised the Power who dwells on high, 
 
 The Source of Light, the Fount of Good. 
 
 The flaming mountains heard their praise ; 
 
 The winding river hushed its mirth, 
 And through the dreamy depths of haze 
 
 The heavens stooped down and touched the earth. 
 
 A hundred years their gifts have brought 
 
 To crown the work that day begun ; 
 And flames from off this altar caught 
 
 Light every land beneath the sun. 
 
BACKWARD AND FORWARD. 837 
 
 O flaming mountains, guard us still ! 
 
 O skies of autumn, softly bend, 
 And whisper of the gracious will 
 
 Of God, our Father and our Friend. 
 
 O Lord of life and light and love, 
 
 The years to come are safe with Thee ; 
 Clothe us with wisdom from above, 
 
 And make us brave and strong and free ! 
 
 It is of the very nature of a centennial celebration to be commemora- 
 ti ve to look mainly backward, and perhaps also to imply something 
 of comparative criticism on the changing methods of the present. The 
 prose excerpts just presented, and especially the last one, all either 
 imply or import such criticism. The president of the College in the 
 last dozen years, of his own motion and by means and authority more 
 than questionable, had changed essentially the college curriculum, 
 which, according to President Hall, was " symmetrical, seasoned, and 
 well-digested," and had gone off "wandering in the wilderness." 
 There was a widespread feeling among the alumni to the same effect, 
 though no one else expressed it so frankly and strongly as Stanley 
 Hall ; probably there was no other one present so competent to give a 
 sound judgment on that topic as was he. In this undertone of forebod- 
 ing was seen the first of the contrasts between 1893 and 1843. The 
 second was like unto it. The entire number of graduates during the 
 first fifty years of the College was 959 ; during the second fifty years 
 the number was 2292. At the semi-centennial, Calvin Durfee, of the 
 class of 1825, who was present, and who was a man of sober judg- 
 ment in such matters, records in his " History of Williams College," 
 page 251 : " This occasion brought together a great number of gradu- 
 ates (probably not far from three hundred), and with them a large 
 crowd of interested spectators." Suppose we reduce his estimated 
 number of 300 to 240, then it will follow that just one-fourth of all 
 the graduates up to that time were actually present on the ground in 
 1843. This, too, while Williamstown continued to be extremely inac- 
 cessible to persons from a distance. Also a considerable proportion 
 of the 959 had then already passed over into the land of silence. 
 The number of graduates during the second fifty years of the Col- 
 lege was 2292, as officially recorded. A praiseworthy and persistent 
 effort was made to obtain for permanent preservation the autographs 
 of all graduates actually in attendance in 1893. The names thus 
 secured were 409. This number should be reduced certainly by 7, 
 probably by 11 or 12, on account of those who properly enough 
 signed with their classmates, but who for one reason or another did 
 
838 WILLIAMSTOWN AND WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 not receive diplomas with them. It seems to be fair to reckon 400 
 (and no more) of the alumni on the ground at the centennial. But 
 this is only a little more than one-sixth of the entire number gradu- 
 ated in the fifty years preceding. Fully one-fourth of the graduates 
 corresponding were present in 1843. There was, therefore, a strik- 
 ing difference in the relative number in attendance at the two dates. 
 And that, too, when the centennial naturally drew more strongly 
 and from wider circuits than a semi-centennial ; also, when the pre- 
 vious inaccessibility had changed in the interval by means of rail- 
 roads, from south and north and east and west, to unusual easiness 
 of access for a country town ; and also when, owing to larger num- 
 bers in the later years, a much larger proportion of the entire 
 numbers were relatively young men. How do we account for this 
 difference in attendance at the two times? It was not anticipated. 
 The authorities of the College had expected 600, and but 400 came. 
 The reason for this was discussed at the time and place by many 
 of the experienced alumni; and their varied opinions concentrated 
 at least around this one point, namely, that some personal disaffec- 
 tion toward the College on the part of those more recently gradu- 
 ated at the College was an adequate ground for this discrepancy of 
 attendance. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Adams, 'Ebenezer, 393. 
 Adams, John, 172, 269. 
 Adams. John Quincy, 476, 786. 
 Adams, North, 5, 172, 444, 7(54. 
 Adams, Samuel, 24, 276. 
 Adelphic Union Society, 266. 
 Advocate Advertisers, 482. 
 Agricultural College, 688. 
 Aix la Chapelle, 5, 54. 
 Alden, Joseph, 593, 608, 693. 
 Allen, Ethan, 25, 60. 
 Allen, Parson, 115, 169, 225. 
 Alma Mater, 724. 
 Alpine Club, 401, 579. 
 American Advocate, 474. 
 American Board, 576. 
 Ames, Fisher, 277, 284. 
 Amherst, 14, 304, 398, 402, 415. 
 Amherst College, 450, 622. 
 Amherst, General, 20, 119. 
 Anderson, H. H., 745. 
 Anderson, Rufus, 369. 
 Andover and Blandford, 389. 
 Anclover Seminary, 419. 
 Anti-Slavery Society, 483. 
 Arnold, Benedict, 25, 29, 60. 
 Arnold, Stephen, 47. 
 " Ashuelot Equivalent," 165. 
 Ashuwillticook, 5. 
 Astronomical Observatory, 545. 
 Auburn, 201. 
 A very, John, 335, 338. 
 Avery, Oliver, 11. 
 
 B. 
 
 Babbitt, Captain, 113. 
 Baccalaureates, 603. 
 Backus, G. H., 377. 
 Backus, W. F., 308. 
 
 Bacon, Chloe, 80. 
 
 Bacon, Daniel, 134. 
 
 Bacon, John, 175, 198, 298. 
 
 Bacon, Ezekiel, 175, 298, 323. 
 
 Bailey, A. S., 356. 
 
 Baker Bridge, 128. 
 
 Baker, Elisha, 78, 83, 128. 
 
 Baldwin, Joel, 143. 
 
 Ballard, Addison, 524, 527. 
 
 Ballard, H. H., 518. 
 
 Bancroft, George, 22, 330. 
 
 Bangor, Maine, 362. 
 
 Bank, National, 799. 
 
 Bannister, Ridley, 473. 
 
 Bard well, Mehitable, 356. 
 
 Bard well, Obadiah, 44. 
 
 Barker, J. M., 745, 751. 
 
 Bartlett, Homer, 534. 
 
 Bartlett, William, 419. 
 
 Bascom, John, 368, 511, 559, 597, 601, 
 
 650, 655, 678, 708, 713, 765, 800. 
 Batten Kill, 21, 22, 96, 109. 
 Battle, Lake George, 15. 
 Battle of Bennington, 114 et seq. 
 Baum, Colonel, 18, 61, 116. 
 Bay Path, 50, 371. 
 Beadle, 1. 
 
 Beecher, H. W., 354. 
 Beecher, Lyman, 354. 
 Bee Hill, 134, 333, 440. 
 Beers, Isaac, 237. 
 Belcher, Governor, 5. 
 Belding, Noah, 152. 
 Bell, Governor, 392. 
 Bennington, 12, 15, 109, 391. 
 Benton's debates, 702. 
 Berkshire, 2, 9. 
 Berkshire American, 172. 
 Betts, S. R., 552. 
 Bid well, Barnabas, 324. 
 Biography, Preface. 
 Bishop, H. W., 290, 381, 707. 
 Bixby family, 535. 
 
 839 
 
840 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Black David, 63, 130. 
 
 Blair, Absalom, 138, 231. 
 
 Blair, Ezekiel, 36, 143. 
 
 Board man, William, 173. 
 
 Bondsmen of Skinner, 312. 
 
 Bosworth, W. G., 141. 
 
 Braddock, General, 54. 
 
 Brainerd, David, 631. 
 
 Breckinridge, C. R., 696. 
 
 Breimanns, Colonel, 125. 
 
 Brewer, Colonel, 102. 
 
 Brewer, Judge, 451. 
 
 Brickyard, 192. 
 
 Bridges, B. F., 29. 
 
 Briggs, Governor, 369, 372. 
 
 Britain, 22. 
 
 Broad Brook, 100. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, 792. 
 
 Brown, Captain, 113. 
 
 Brown, Harry, 281. 
 
 Brown, John, 24. 
 
 Brown, Samuel, Jr., 97. 
 
 Brown, T. M., 666. 
 
 Bruce, Wallace, 124. 
 
 Brush, Colonel, 121. 
 
 Bryant, Arthur, 339. 
 
 Bryant's Lyric, 341. 
 
 Bryant, W. C., 196, 236, 334, 461, 705, 
 
 765. 
 
 Bryant's commemoration poem, 348. 
 Bulkley Farm, 130. 
 Bulkley, J. R., 35, 295. 
 Bunhill Fields, 17. 
 Bunker Hill, 40. 
 Bunyan, John, 17. 
 
 Burbank, Asa, 246, 281, 411, 544, 741. 
 Burgess, Ebenezer, 366. 
 Burgoyne, General, 14, 20, 96. 
 Burning of East College, 267. 
 Bushnell, Jedediah, 352. 
 Butler, J. D., 19, 33. 
 Buttons in Easthampton, 707. 
 
 C. 
 
 Calhoun, S. H., 565. 
 
 Canaan, Conn., 10. 
 
 Canfield, J. H., 835. 
 
 Canning, E. W. B., 379. 
 
 Canning, J. W., 379. 
 
 Carleton, General, 104. 
 
 Carlisle, J. G., 697. 
 
 Carter, Franklin, 44, 468, 629, 633, 647, 
 
 709, 713. 
 
 Cartright, Richard, 152. 
 Castleton, 30. 
 Catamount Tavern, 110. 
 Catskill, 767. 
 
 Census, 273. 
 
 Census of the town, 763. 
 
 Centennial, 832. 
 
 Century Dictionary, 799. 
 
 Ceylon, 362. 
 
 Chadbourne's inauguration, 656. 
 
 Chadbourne, P. A., 44, 624, 652, 656, 
 
 709. 
 
 Chadbourne tomb, 369. 
 Chad wick, J. W., 555. 
 Champlain, Lake, 22. 
 Chapin, Elisha, 11. 
 Chapin, Oliver, 308. 
 Charlemont, 28. 
 Charlestown, N.H., 18. 
 Charter of College, 214. 
 Charter of Free School, 154. 
 Chatham, 766. 
 Chaudiere, 38, 59. 
 Chicago Tribune, 140. 
 Chidester, 98. 
 Childs, H. H., 539, 552. 
 Chip Day, 268. 
 Cm Psi, 187, 833. 
 Chittenden, Governor, 144. 
 Cider-brandy stills, 129. 
 Civil code, 787. 
 Clark, Alonzo, 44. 
 Clark, Billy J., 201. 
 Clarke, Professor, 758. 
 Clarke, Samuel, 71, 111. 
 Clarke, S. F., 831. 
 Clark Hall, 262, 673, 733. 
 Clay, Henry, 168, 475. 
 Cleveland Petition, 699. 
 Cleveland, President, 697. 
 Cobden and Bright, 705. 
 Cobden Club, 704. 
 Cochran, Robert, 17. 
 Code Napoleon, 787. 
 Co-education, 677. 
 Coffin, James H., 528. 
 Cogswell, Rev. Dr., 209. 
 Cogswell, Samuel, 209. 
 Colby, Professor, 690. 
 Colchester, 12. 
 Cold Spring, 194. 
 Cole Avenue, 520. 
 Cole, C. S., 805. 
 Cole, Mrs. Henrietta, 446. 
 Colerain, 389. 
 Colleagues, Bodies of, 304. 
 College Bell, 198. 
 College building, 673. 
 College Catalogue, 237. 
 College Cemetery, 369. 
 College Centennial, 752. 
 College Chapel, 749. 
 College Church, 432. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 841 
 
 College discipline, 397, 619. 
 
 College Library, 762. 
 
 College rebellions, 305. 
 
 College revivals, 427. 
 
 College Spring, 188. 
 
 College Temperance Society, 485. 
 
 Collins, Daniel, 78, 148, 167. 
 
 Colonization Society, 354, 366. 
 
 Colt, Judge, 707,711. 
 
 Columbian Sentinel, 315. 
 
 Commencement, 223. 
 
 Commencement Ball, 470. 
 
 Comstock, Samuel, 481. 
 
 Concord, 8. 
 
 Conditions of success, 635. 
 
 Congregational ministers, 325. 
 
 Consumption Hill, 183, 458. 
 
 Continental Bills, 185. 
 
 Converse, Walter, 68. 
 
 Cooke, Parsons, 296, 410. 
 
 Coos Country, 140. 
 
 Corbens, 12, 55, 141. 
 
 Corbin, Asa, 275. 
 
 Court, Supreme, 184. 
 
 Cox, Betty Hubbell, 257, 264. 
 
 Cox, Thomas, 257, 263. 
 
 Crandall and Curtis, 526. 
 
 Cravath, 695. 
 
 Crawford, John, 11. 
 
 Crown Point, 11, 22. 
 
 Curtis, Allen, 9. 
 
 Curtis, G. W., 342. 
 
 Curtis, H. B., 263. 
 
 Curtis, Jared, 540. 
 
 D. 
 
 Daggett, President, 206. 
 
 Dalton, 165. 
 
 Danforth, J N., 552. 
 
 Danforth, Keyes, 279, 474, 481, 521, 684, 
 
 750. 
 
 Dartmouth College case, 317, 405. 
 Daughters of Griffin, 421, 448. 
 Davis, Emerson, 395, 411. 
 Davis, Henry, 223. 
 Davison, C. A., 746. 
 Dawes, H. L., 689. 
 Day House, 297. 
 Dean, Josiah, 10. 
 Dearborn, General, 281. 
 Dedham, 367. 
 Deerfield River, 7. 
 Defalcation of Skinner, 315. 
 Delaplace, Captain, 31. 
 DELTA Psi, 833. 
 Democratic Party, 205. 
 Democrats, 245, 355. 
 
 Denison, John H., 761. 
 
 Dewey, C. A., 189, 255, 331, 403. 
 
 Dewey, Captain, 121. 
 
 Dewey, D. N., 619. 
 
 Dewey, Professor, 129, 308, 346, 375, 459, 
 
 690. 
 
 Dickenson, T. W., 27. 
 Dickinson, Deacon, 63. 
 Dickinson, J. W., 744. 
 Dike, S. W., 755. 
 Dimmock, Professor, 649, 657. 
 Dinners of Alumni, 671. 
 Disciples, Sect of, 819. 
 Doctor's Brook, 89. 
 Doctrine of Perfection, 487. 
 Dodd, Professor, 628. 
 Doddridge System, 220. 
 Douglas, Asa, 41, 46, 257. 
 Douglas, S. A., 113, 140. 
 Dunbar, Tutor, 223. 
 Duncan, Dr., 244. 
 Dunning, Michael, 71. 
 Dunning, Josiah, 59. 
 Durfee, Calvin, 219, 237, 346, 837. 
 Dutch settlements, 12. 
 Dwight, Henry W.,493, 500. 
 Dwight, John, 55, 795. 
 Dwight, Timothy, 207, 278, 631, 796. 
 Dwight's " Travels," 331. 
 
 E. 
 
 East College, 260, 522. 
 
 East Hoosac, 93. 
 
 Easton, Colonel, 28, 33. 
 
 Eaton, A., 286, 302, 517, 765. 
 
 Eaton, Major, 294. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 169, 218, 416, 418. 
 
 Eldridge, Griffin, 42. 
 
 Eldridge, Hamilton, 614. 
 
 Election of Mark Hopkins, 498. 
 
 Eliot, John, 48. 
 
 Elocution, 614. 
 
 Ely, Geo. H., 697. 
 
 Ely Petition, 698. 
 
 Emmons, Ebenezer, 281, 396. 
 
 Emmons, Nathanael, 419. 
 
 Enos, Colonel, 41, 62. 
 
 Equality under the Law, 440. 
 
 Ethics, 607. 
 
 Ethics of Mark Hopkins, 513. 
 
 Evarts, Lawyer, 589. 
 
 F. 
 
 Faculty Meeting, 731. 
 Faxon, Thomas, 443. 
 
842 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Federalists, 228, 276, 355. 
 
 Federal Party, 161. 
 
 Fernald, Professor, 433, 665, 716, 831. 
 
 Field brothers, 451. 
 
 Field, David Dudley, 99, 451, 705, 765. 
 
 Field, Henry M., 171, 177. 
 
 Field, S. J., 780. 
 
 Finney, Rev., 421. 
 
 First Commencement, 233. 
 
 Fish Creek, 96. 
 
 Fitchburg R. R., 27. 
 
 Fitch, Charles, 209, 383. 
 
 Fitch, Ebenezer, 13, 45, 52, 137, 151, 204, 
 
 228, 311, 376. 
 Fitch, James, 51. 
 Fort Dummer, 20. 
 Fort Massachusetts, 7, 8, 15, 170. 
 Fort Pelham, 733. 
 Fort Shirley, 152, 733. 
 Fort William Henry, 55. 
 Foster, Ezekiel, 10. 
 Fraternities, College, 832. 
 Freemasonry, 71, 280. 
 Free School, 14, 153, 193. 
 Free Trade, 23, 415, 702, 777. 
 Free Trade League, 827. 
 French King, 723. 
 French Revolution, 230. 
 French War, 8, 10, 11, 15. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gale, John B., 799. 
 Gardner, Caleb, 294. 
 Garfield's campaign, 685. 
 Gar field, J. A., 661, 765, 823. 
 Garrison, W. L., 483. 
 Gates, General, 95, 101, 111. 
 Gemote, 1. 
 General Court, 2, 3. 
 Geology, 291. 
 Georgia lands, 317. 
 German tribes, 1. 
 Giddings, F. H., 701. 
 Giles, Jonathan, 129. 
 Gilson, C. F., 625, 830. 
 Gladden, Washington, 836. 
 God's acre, 11. 
 Godwin, Parke, 773. 
 Goodrich Hall, 673. 
 Goodrich, J. C., 564. 
 Gore, 71, 175. 
 Gore, The, 481. 
 Grace Court, 264. 
 Grant, General, 636, 824. 
 Grants, N.H., 17. 
 Gravel Day, 344. 
 Graves, Ebenezer, 10. 
 
 Gray, Lydia, 327. 
 
 Green, Bryam, 351, 361. 
 
 Green, Henry, 65. 
 
 Green Mountains, 22. 
 
 Greylock, 794. 
 
 Gridley, R. W., 430. 
 
 Griffin, his resignation, 436; his death, 
 437; his sermons, 438; his peculiari- 
 ties', 446. 
 
 Griffin, E. H., 611, 665, 712, 717, 722, 808. 
 
 Griffin Hall, 197, 262, 456. 
 
 Griffin, N. H., 516, 585. 
 
 Griffin, President, 310, 412. 
 
 Grist-mill at North Hoosac, 117. 
 
 H. 
 
 Haliburton, Judge, 569. 
 Halifax, 566. 
 Hall, Ambrose, 42. 
 Hall, C. C., 835. 
 Hall, Governor, 26, 120, 133. 
 Hall, G. S., 738, 836. 
 Hallock brothers, 531. 
 Hallock, Moses, 375. 
 Hallock, William, 338. 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 277. 
 Hancock, 46. 
 Hancock, John, 58. 
 Handy, Parker, 45. 
 Hanover, N.H., 392. 
 Hardwick, 14, 16. 
 Harris, Israel, 33, 105, 138. 
 Harrison, Clement, 171. 
 Harvard College, 405. 
 Harvey, William, 428. 
 Harwoods, 14, 251. 
 Hawkins, Robert, 79, 86. 
 Hayes, O. B., 748. 
 Haynes, J. H., 733. 
 Haystack, The, 359, 369. 
 Hebrew Language, 715. 
 Hegel, 738. 
 
 Hemlock Brook, 9, 11. 
 Henderson, John, 136. 
 Herkimer, General, 107. 
 Herrick, Colonel, 121. 
 Hervey, William, 428. 
 Hessian soldiers, 135. 
 Hewitt, J. H., 831. 
 Hickcox, Stephen, 134. 
 Hickok, L. P., 805. 
 Hicks, Frederick, 577. 
 Hinsdale, B. A., 826. 
 Historic Sense, 730. 
 History, Defined. Preface. 
 Hoar, Senator, 704. 
 Hoisington, H. R., 298. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 843 
 
 Home Market, 475. 
 
 Homesteads, 274. 
 
 Hoosac, 5. 
 
 Hoosac Junction, 16. 
 
 Hoosac Mountain, 12. 
 
 Hoosac Tunnel, 444. 
 
 Hopkins, Albert, 360, 368, 453, 466, 555. 
 
 Hopkins, Colonel A., 257. 
 
 Hopkins, Edward Payson, 492. 
 
 Hopkins Hall, 231. 
 
 Hopkins, Henry, 368. 
 
 Hopkinsian System, 219. 
 
 Hopkins, Mark, 99, 465, 471, 541, 598, 
 
 644, 765, 779. 
 
 Hopkins, Mark, Colonel, 94, 104. 
 Hopkins, Mary Curtis, 447. 
 Hopkins Observatory, 523. 
 Hopkins, Samuel, 167, 219. 
 Hosford, Stephen, 404, 443. 
 Housatonic River, 3, 
 House Tax, National, 226, 270. 
 Hovey, Professor, 479. 
 Howe, Fisher, 233. 
 Howe, Sampson, 54. 
 Hoxsey and Hickcock families, 440. 
 Hubbel, C. L., 283. 
 Hubbell, Jedediah, 113, 264. 
 Hubbell, Lyman, 62, 481. 
 Hudson, Seth, 9. 
 Hunn, John, 60. 
 Hyde, Alvan, 410. 
 Hyde, William, 494, 708. 
 
 I. 
 
 Indian towns, 4. 
 Ingalls, F. T., 637. 
 Ingalls, J. J., 637. 
 Innoculation, 103. 
 Ives, Professor, 768. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jackson, Abraham, 151. 
 Jefferson, 161, 229, 269, 475. 
 Jenkins, Charles, 340. 
 Jennings, Reverend, 503. 
 Jerome, Eugene, 11, 750. 
 Jerome, Leonard, 42. 
 Jogues, Father, 117. 
 Johnson, Harry, 131. 
 Johnson Hill, 11. 
 Johnson, W. E., 72. 
 Johnson, W. S., 16. 
 Jones, B. W., 676. 
 Jones, Israel, 168. 
 Jones, of Adams, 400. 
 
 Josh Billings, 168. 
 
 Judson, Adoniram, 364, 368. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant, 739. 
 
 Kappa Alpha Society, 610, 745. 
 
 Kellogg, Charles, 185. 
 
 Kellogg, Daniel, 201. 
 
 Kellogg, Ebenezer, 163, 179, 377, 423. 
 
 Kellogg, Giles B., 231. 
 
 Kellogg Hall, 262, 426. 
 
 Kellogg, Samuel, 77. 
 
 Kelloggs, 12. 
 
 Kent, James, 400. 
 
 Kidder Pass, 67. 
 
 Kilburn, Marcia, 90. 
 
 Killingly, 12. 
 
 Kimball, Richard, 19. 
 
 King in Council, 16. 
 
 Kiugsley, Professor, 224. 
 
 L. 
 
 La Fayette, 41, 792. 
 
 Lake George, 15, 23. 
 
 Lanesboro, 74. 
 
 Larned, Sylvester, o47. 
 
 Lasell Gymnasium, 728. 
 
 Lawrence Library, 762. 
 
 Leake, Frederic, 443, 721, 799. 
 
 Leet Hill, 174. 
 
 Leet, Jared, 174. 
 
 Lefavour, Professor, 758, 830. 
 
 Lexington, 40. 
 
 Lincoln and Phillips, 623. 
 
 Lincoln, General, 110, 134. 
 
 Lincoln, Professor, 574. 
 
 Lincoln's "Worcester," 17. 
 
 Linsley, Tutor, 223. 
 
 Little Hoosac, 65. 
 
 Little, Woodbridge, 166. 
 
 Livingston, Edward, 787. 
 
 Loomis, Harvey, 363. 
 
 Lottery for Free School, 157, 189. 
 
 Loup, Hopkins & Co., 684. 
 
 Lowell, John, 590. 
 
 Lowell Lectures, 592. 
 
 Lyon, Mary, 771. 
 
 M. 
 
 McCosh, 600. 
 McCulloch, Hugh, 696. 
 Mackay, Professor, 224. 
 Mackenzie, R. S., 636. 
 
844 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 McMahon, Thomas, 256. 
 MacMaster, 67. 
 Magee, Irving, 752. 
 Man " Friday," 720. 
 Manning, Daniel, 697. 
 Mansion House, 186, 260. 
 " Manual of Botany," 290. 
 March climate, 343. 
 Marcus Morton, 538, 540. 
 Marcy, Governor, 615, 692. 
 Marshall, C. H., 827. 
 Marshall, Chief Justice, 213 
 Marsh, Charles, 572. 
 Marsh, Dr. Perez, 165. 
 Marsh, D. W., 435. 
 Marvin, J. R., 593. 
 Mason, John, 51. 
 Mather, B. F., 568. 
 Mather, Elias, 258. 
 Mayunsook, 5. 
 Meacham, James, 84. 
 Meacham, Jonathan, 10, 188. 
 Meack, Jacob, 72, 78, 89. 
 Meadow lots, 11. 
 Mears, Professor, 757, 831. 
 Meeting-house, Old, 240. 
 Mercer, General, 383. 
 Merriman, Daniel, 710. 
 Merriman, W. E., 746. 
 Metaphysics and Ethics, 679. 
 Mills, Drake, 301. 
 Mills, E. H., 247. 
 Mill's " Logic," 468, 611, 692. 
 Mills, Samuel, 66. 
 Mills, Sedgwick, 67. 
 Mills, S. J., 352, 543. 
 Mineralogy, 768. 
 Missionary College, 351. 
 Missionary Park, 368. 
 Modes of discipline, 509. 
 Modes of teaching, 505. 
 Mohawk, The, 107. 
 Mohawk trail, 7, 27. 
 Mole, Thomas, 561. 
 Montcalm, General, 11. 
 Monument Mountain, 4. 
 Moore, Judah, 389. 
 Moore, President, 254, 386. 
 Moore, Z. S. M., 391. 
 Morgan, B. F., 87. 
 Morgan, Colonel, 41. 
 Morgan, Governor, 727, 756. 
 Morgan Hall, 263, 755. 
 Morgan, H. H., 807. 
 Morgan, John, 472, 780. 
 Morris, Founder, 347. 
 Morse, Joseph, 35. 
 Mount Defiance, 107. 
 Mount Fitch, 401. 
 
 Mount Moore, 401. 
 Mum Bet, 159. 
 Murray, Nicholas, 527, 618. 
 Muster-rolls, 39, 126 et seq. 
 Mygatt, L. C., 754. 
 Mystery, 548. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nash, Lieutenant, 113. 
 
 Natural sciences, 287. 
 
 Navigation Act, 22. 
 
 Nelson, John, 326, 358. 
 
 Newark, 420. 
 
 New England Puritans, 296. 
 
 New France, 11. 
 
 New Hampshire, 16. 
 
 New Hampshire Grants, 25, 28. 
 
 Nicaragua, 577. 
 
 No. 4 , 18. 
 
 Noble, Daniel, 384, 405, 439. 
 
 Noble, David, 77, 143, 173, 253. 
 
 Noble, J. H,, 33. 
 
 Noble, Juliette, 255. 
 
 Noble, Mason, 252, 485. 
 
 Noon Prayer Meeting, 488, 557. 
 
 Norris, Mary, 1365. 
 
 Northam, Sarah, 134. 
 
 North Carolina, 476. 
 
 Northrup, G. W., 572. 
 
 Nott, President, 280. 
 
 Nott, Samuel, 365. 
 
 Noyes, Professor, 695. 
 
 O. 
 
 Oberlin, 601. 
 
 Ode, Anti-slavery, 484. 
 
 "Old lime-kiln," 183. 
 
 Old measures, 431. 
 
 Olds, F. W., 344. 
 
 Olds, Professor, 307, 374. 
 
 "OldTi,"46, 105. 
 
 Origins in Williamstown, 481. 
 
 Orton, Azariah, 347. 
 
 Orton, Professor, 347. 
 
 Otter Creek, 21. 
 
 Owl Kill, 109. 
 
 P. 
 
 Packard of Shelbourne, 399. 
 Packard, Theophilus, 384. 
 Page, Dr., 101. 
 Paley, 514, 595. 
 Parker, Linus, 115. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 845 
 
 Park Street Church, 420. 
 
 Parsons, E. B., 759. 
 
 Partridge, Dr., 120. 
 
 Patterson, Colonel, 41. 
 
 Peaks, Mountain, 765. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 704. 
 
 Pelham, 388. 
 
 Perry, A. L., 491, 595, 612, 682, 691, 710, 
 
 807. 
 
 Perry, Bliss, 130. 
 Perry, George B., 357. 
 Perry's Elm, 8. 
 Pest-house, 100. 
 Peterborough, 393. 
 Peters, Rev. Dr., 180. 
 Petition for College Charter, 210. 
 Plister, Francis, 119. 
 Phelps, E J., 19. 
 Phillips, Professor, 559, 581. 
 Philologian Society, 266. 
 Philosophy, 679, 809. 
 Philotechnian Society, 266. 
 Pilgrims of Plymouth, 2. 
 Pine lots, 100. 
 Pittsfield Gymnasium, 330. 
 Pittsfield Sun, 294. 
 P. K., 422, 516. 
 Political Economy, 816. 
 Politics, 778. 
 Pomfret, 48. 
 Port Byron, 202. 
 Porter, Dr., 66, 98, 280, 282. 
 Porter, Professor, 463. 
 Post, Evening, 775. 
 Post-office, 204. 
 Potter, General, 131. 
 Pownal, 59. 
 Pratt, Bill, 265. 
 Pratt, Llewellyn, 686, 710, 711. 
 Pratt, William, 139. 
 Priest Potter, 21. 
 Prime, Rev Dr., 707. 
 Princeton College, 176, 416. 
 Prindle, Lieutenant, 113. 
 Procter, H. T., 192, 298. 
 Propriety, 9. 
 Proprietors' Book, 10. 
 Protectionism, 22, 277. 
 Protestants, 220. 
 Public Debate, 595. 
 Puritans of the Bay, 2. 
 Puritan Recorder, 426. 
 Putnam, Israel, Preface. 
 Putnam, Schuyler, 333. 
 Putney, W. B., 754. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quack at Williamstown, 103. 
 Quakers, 171. 
 
 Qualities of Fitch, 238. 
 Quebec, 12, 58, 177. 
 Quincy, Josiah, 406. 
 
 R. 
 
 Raymond, G. L., 831. 
 
 Rebellion of 1868, 642. 
 
 Reeve, 1. 
 
 Rehoboth, 46. 
 
 Removal of the College, 385. 
 
 Remsen, Ira, 667. 
 
 Republicans, 276. 
 
 Rice, Harvey, 468. 
 
 Rice, Professor, 719, 831. 
 
 Richards, James, 362. 
 
 Rich, Elijah, 67. 
 
 Rich, Moses, 67. 
 
 Robbins, J. W., 326. 
 
 Robbins, Thomas, 225, 235, 549. 
 
 Robinsons, 14. 
 
 Robinson, Captain, 16. 
 
 Rockwell, Colonel, 685. 
 
 Rogers, Robert, 20. 
 
 Root, Charity, 265. 
 
 Rosecrans, General, 824. 
 
 Rossiter, Nathan, 42. 
 
 Roxbury, 48. 
 
 Rudd, Joseph, 133. 
 
 Russell, John E., 327. 
 
 Rutland, 20. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sabin, H. L., 38, 65. 
 
 Sabin, John, 53, 75. 
 
 Sabins, 51. 
 
 Sabin, Zebediah, Preface, 42, 47. 
 
 Safford, J. H., 174. 
 
 Safford, T. H., 736, 762, 803, 831. 
 
 Sage, Orrin, 708. 
 
 St. Croix, 114, 117. 
 
 Salisbury, Professor, 798. 
 
 Sanderson, S. W., 510. 
 
 Sands, Mahlon, 827. 
 
 Sand Springs, 344. 
 
 Saratoga River, 96. 
 
 Schuyler, General, 18, 94, 212. 
 
 Schuylerville, 139. 
 
 Scotch-Irish, 17, 37, 387, 389. 
 
 Scribners, 694. 
 
 Scudder, H. E., 470, 747. 
 
 Scudder, Samuel, 581, 747. 
 
 Seal, Free School, 14, 204. 
 
 Searle, Isaac, 183. 
 
 Second Meeting-house, 258. 
 
 Sedgwick, 775 
 
 Sedgwick, General, 337, 338, 350. 
 
 Sedgwicks, 786. 
 
846 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sedgwick, Theodore, 72, 157, 347. 
 
 Seelye, Ephraim, 100. 
 
 Seelye, J. H., 805. 
 
 Selling of wood, 345. 
 
 Semi-centennial, 535, 547. 
 
 Senior recitation-room, 799. 
 
 Sergeant, Erastus, 97. 
 
 Sergeant, John, 4. 
 
 Seward, Governor, 292, 769. 
 
 Seymour sisters, 530. 
 
 Shattuck, Amasa, 89. 
 
 Shaw, Henry, 168. 
 
 Shay's Rebellion, 92, 277. 
 
 Sheffield, 3. 
 
 Sheldon, Noah, 264. 
 
 Sheldon, Remembrance, 279. 
 
 Shepherd, Samuel, 384, 422, 454. 
 
 Sheridan, General, (536. 
 
 Sheriffs of Berkshire, 301. 
 
 Sherman family, 244. 
 
 Sherman, John, 829. 
 
 Sherman, W. B., 242. 
 
 Shute, Governor, 17. 
 
 Sierra Leone, 366. 
 
 Sigma Phi Society, 744. 
 
 Silliman, Professor, 288, 328, 690, 767. 
 
 Simonds, Benjamin, 73, 95, 186, 190. 
 
 Simonds family, 357. 
 
 Simonds, Joseph, 75. 
 
 Skaneateles, 201. 
 
 Skinner, Alice, 250. 
 
 Skinner, Benjamin, 371, 374. 
 
 Skinner, Mehitable, 61, 373. 
 
 Skinner, Rachel, 371. 
 
 Skinner, Rev. Thomas, 162. 
 
 Skinner's Meadow, 252. 
 
 Skinner, T. J., 72, 82, 104, 138, 161, 249, 
 
 312. 
 
 Slick, Sam, 570. 
 Sloan, D. W., 44. 
 
 Sloan, General Samuel, 41, 42, 123, 343. 
 Sloan Road, 42. 
 Slope Hawks, 82. 
 Smedley, Deacon James, 131. 
 Smedley, Lucy B., 264, 443. 
 Smedley, Nehemiah, Preface, 15, 27. 
 Smith, Dr. Samuel, 279. 
 Smith, L. A., 435. 
 Smith, Lorin, 73. 
 Smith, Nathan, 38. 
 Society of Alumni, 246, 304, 411, 740. 
 Society of Brethren, 364. 
 Socratic methods, 605. 
 Soldiers' Monument, 263. 
 Sprague, Rev. Dr., 428. 
 Springfield Republican, 700, 707. 
 Spring, Gardner, 357. 
 Spring, L. W., Preface. 
 Spring, Professor, 235, 512. 
 
 Spy-system, '723. 
 Square, The, 8. 
 Stafford, Joab, 57, 114. 
 Stamp Act, 22. 
 Stark, John, 18, 105, 389. 
 Starkweather, Augustus, 296. 
 Starkweather, William, 295. 
 Stewart, Dugald, 606. 
 Stirling, J. H., 739. 
 Stockbridge, West, 4. 
 Stoddard, Colonel, 4. 
 Stoddard, Colonel John, 734. 
 Stone Hill, 64. 
 Story, Judge, 299. 
 Stratton, Ebenezer, 150. 
 Stratton, Isaac, 90, 123. 
 Stratton 's House, 91. 
 Stuart, Lemuel, 36, 187, 255. 
 Student body as such, 499. 
 Student-soldiers monument, 6">H. 
 Subscription for new church, '241. 
 Sullivan, John, 64. 
 Sumner, Charles, 790. 
 Sumner, Professor, 706. 
 Sutton, Burrall, 300. 
 Swell-body hack, 399. 
 Swift, Rev. Seth, 148, 177. 
 
 T. 
 
 Table of trustees, 181. 
 
 Taconic Passes, 282. 
 
 Taconic system, 519. 
 
 Talcott, Samuel A., 370. 
 
 Tariffs and Taxes, 694. 
 
 Tariff-taxes, 478. 
 
 Tatlock, John, 449, 585. 
 
 Tatlock, William, 561. 
 
 Taxation, 23. 
 
 Taylor, Samuel, 738. 
 
 Temperance Society, 203. 
 
 Tenny, Sanborn, 627, 669, 831. 
 
 Terry, General, 146. 
 
 Thacher, John B., 697. 
 
 The town, 2. 
 
 Thomas, Dwight, 88. 
 
 Thomas, E. M., 227. 
 
 Thomas, General, 824. 
 
 Thompson, Colonel, 391. 
 
 Thompson laboratories, 263, 459, 756. 
 
 Thompson, Robert, 53. 
 
 Thompson, F. F., 756. 
 
 Tibbett's Place, 119. 
 
 Ticonderoga, 11, 31. 
 
 Tilden, Governor, 791. 
 
 Todd, Rev. John, 663. 
 
 Todd, Rev. Samuel, 171. 
 
 Tories, 75. 
 
 Torrey, Asenath, 68. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 847 
 
 Torrey, Justin, 283. 
 
 Tory breastwork, 116. 
 
 Toussaint, Louis, 442. 
 
 Towner, General and Doctor, 43. 
 
 Towner, Sophia, 281. 
 
 Train, Thomas, 10. 
 
 "Trees Grant," 71. 
 
 Troy and Boston Railroad, 294. 
 
 Trumbull, J. H., 148. 
 
 Tyler, Professor, 392, 402. 
 
 U. 
 
 University of Cambridge, 210. 
 University of Rochester, 463. 
 University of Wisconsin, 675. 
 
 V. 
 
 Van Rensselaer, 772. 
 Van Schaack, 222. 
 Vermont, 14, 110. 
 Vernon, 12. 
 Von Jagemann, 449. 
 
 W. 
 
 "Wadhams, Jonathan, 751. 
 
 Walden Spring, 194. 
 
 Walker, R. J., 704. 
 
 Walker, William, 401. 
 
 Walloomsac, 12. 
 
 Warner, Seth, 19, 25. 
 
 Warren, Jabez, 10. 
 
 Warren, Joseph, 24, 58. 
 
 Washburn, Emory, 553. 
 
 Washburn, Governor, 290. 
 
 Washington, General, 38. 
 
 Watts, Isaac, 17. 
 
 Wayland's " Moral Science," 515. 
 
 Webb, Derick, 146. 
 
 Webster, Captain, 120. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 212. 
 
 Webster, Noah, 408. 
 
 Welch, Whitman, 13, 430. 
 
 Welch, William, 57. 
 
 Wells, David A., 425, 691, 705, 827. 
 
 Wells, John, 502. 
 
 Wentworth, Governor, 15. 
 
 West College, 183. 
 
 Western Star, 294. 
 
 Westfield, 4. 
 
 West Hoosac, 7, 12. 
 
 West Hoosac Fort, 8, 11. 
 
 West, Stephen, 218. 
 
 Wheeler, Deacon, 150. 
 
 Wheelock, Eleazar, 653. 
 
 Whig Party, 440. 
 
 White David, 63, 130, 178. 
 
 Whitehall, 22. 
 
 White, Horace, 140. 
 
 White, James, 707, 746, 750. 
 
 White, Joseph, 28, 255, 423, 622, 707, 711, 
 
 750. 
 
 White River Junction, 19. 
 Whitfield, George, 17. 
 Whitman, Dr. Timothy, 447. 
 Whitman, Mrs. Lucy, 525. 
 Whitmans, 12, 368, 446. 
 Whitney, M. B., 745. 
 Whitney, W. D., 765, 796. 
 Willett, Colonel, 107. 
 Williams, Abagail, 97. 
 Williams, Dr. Thomas, 98. 
 Williams, Elijah, 218. 
 Williams, Elisha, 200. 
 Williams, Ephraim, 5. 
 Williams, Founder, Preface, 8, 13, 152. 
 Williams, Judah, 147, 173. 
 Williamstown Academy, 474. 
 Williams versus Amherst, 409. 
 Williams, William, 9, 164. 
 Will of President Moore, 415. 
 Will of the Founder, 153. 
 Window of Griffin Hall, 459. 
 Wing, A. E., 373. 
 Winthrop, Governor, 49. 
 Wirt, William, 212. 
 Witenagemote, 2. 
 Wolfe, General, 11, 54. 
 Woodbridge, J. E., 296. 
 Woodbridge, John, 381, 411, 740. 
 Woodbridge, Joseph, 4. 
 Woodbridge, L. D., 443, 689, 830. 
 Woodbridge, Timothy, 4. 
 Woodcock's Corner, 85. 
 Woodcock, Nehemiah, 78, 85. 
 Wood for fuel, 268. 
 Woods, John, 166. 
 Woods, Leonard, 386. 
 Woodward, Jonathan, 141. 
 Woolsey, President, 695. 
 Worcester, 388. 
 Wordsworth, 554, 602. 
 Wright, Charles, 170. 
 Wyman, Isaac, 10, 98. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yale College, 13, 41, 631. 
 Yankee speculation, 14. 
 Young, Erastus, 44. 
 Young, William, 68, 321. 
 Youngs, 37, 69. 
 
 Z. 
 
 Zelie and Perry, 265. 
 
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