Radio Script #903

Little Talks on Common Things
October 17, 1971

A few weeks ago I mentioned on one of these broadcasts the prominent Coburn family of Skowhegan, with special attention to Abner Coburn, who served two terms as Governor of Maine, and who gave the building that was for many years the impressive classroom structure of Coburn Classical Institute. Today I want to tell you more about that family.

The first Coburn to attend Colby was Stephen of the class of 1839. Two years after his admission in 1835, his two brothers Samuel and Alonzo became members of the class of 1841. Preserved in the Colby archives are three term bills issued to Alonzo Coburn in 1838. Those bills reveal not only the low cost of attending college 130 years ago, but also show some items that seem peculiar today.

The college year then consisted of three terms: fall term from mid September to mid December, followed by the long winter vacation, during which most of the students taught a term in the common schools; spring term from late February to the middle of May and summer term from late May to late August. The end of the college year, with commencement, came near the end of August.

The preserved bills for Alonzo Coburn’s college expenses were not for the same college year. One was for the summer, or last term of 1837-38, the other two were for the fall and spring terms of 1838-39. For what was called that third term bill of 1837-38, Alonzo Coburn’s total charges came to $13.60. Tuition was $8, room rent $3.33, what was called average for General Damages, 30 cents, bell-ringing and sweeping, 30 cents; use of library 34 cents, monitors 10 cents, use of text books 13 cents, fines 10 cents, and commencement dinner $1.00. Alonzo’s bill for the fall term of 1838-39, came to $ 14.23 – 63 cents more than the summer bill. That difference was explained by two items: chemical lectures 50 cents, and use of text books 26 cents instead of the previous 13 cents. Alonzo’s spring expenses were lowest of all three terms, only $12.88. For all three terms this Skowhegan youth paid directly to the college $40.71. In that year the college provided no dining service, but board in town cost $1.25 a week for 39 weeks, a total of $48.75 for all meals during a college year. Added to the three bills paid directly to the college that made Al0nzo Coburn’s expenses for a full college year $89.46, and that included tuition, board, room, and all college fees.

Some of the items on those term bills of more than 130 years ago are today so unfamiliar that they need explanation. Why was Alonzo charged 13 cents and 26 cents respectively in two terms for an item labeled “use of text books”? The answer is that while books were then much less expensive than today, their cost represented a large share of a years’ expenses if a student purchased new all the books he needed. A good Latin grammar, for instance, represented half a week’s wages of a skilled workman. So the college rented textbooks, and for that very reason texts were seldom changed. In two or three years the college could redeem the initial cost and perhaps show a small profit. Nor did the college offer free use of its library. Every student was charged $1.00 a year for that privilege. Students employed to ring the college bell, to sweep the classrooms, and to take attendance at chapel and on Sunday at the various churches, were paid small amounts. The funds to pay them came from the term bill charges for ringing bell, sweeping, and monitors.

Every year since classes began at Waterville College in 1818, students, even ministerial students, broke windows, burst in door panels, and did other damage. When the culprit could be identified, he was charged for his bill under an item called Personal Damage. But it was seldom that an individual student was caught. So the college had a general charge of 90 cents a year that all students had to pay whether or not they personally did any damage to property.

As for fines, they were the commonest method of punishment when Alonzo Coburn was in college. A student was fined for absence from class, absence from chapel, for blowing a horn on the campus, for shooting fire crackers, for other loud noises, for disrespect to professors, for going out of town, and for a dozen other defined offenses. The fines were small, with the commonest being 12 cents, and a few as low as ten cents. The largest did not exceed 50 cents. Alonzo Coburn was lucky. His fines were only 10 cents one term, 20 cents another term, and nothing at all in the third term.

In 1838, before the day of the Greek letter fraternities, the college had two societies, known as Erosophian Adelphi and the Literary Fraternity. Both held weekly meetings at which the principal program item was a debate. The Literary Fraternity went to the formality of issuing printed forms to debate participants. The date of the meeting and the subject for debate were written in. In November, 1838, Alonzo Coburn received such a notice. It said: “Mr. A. Coburn. Sir: I have the pleasure to inform you of your appointment on the negative of the following question to be debated Wednesday Eve, Nov. 21, 1838. Which is better calculated for the advancement of Science, a monarchical or a republican government? J. W. Scammon, Sect. Literary Fraternity”

As I have previously noted on this program, the wealthiest and most prominent of the Coburns was Abner, who was Governor of Maine. Many of the staunch Baptists, whose fathers and friends had started Waterville College, were disturbed because Abner Coburn belonged to no church, though he was a regular attendant at the Baptist Church in Skowhegan. He had never been baptized, and in those days of closed communion he could not partake of the Lord’s Supper. Was Abner Coburn really a Christian? Absurd as it may seem to most of us today, that was a serious question during the Governor’s lifetime.

To Mr. Coburn’s defense, soon after his death in 1885, rose the Skowhegan pastor, Rev. W. O.Ayer. His letter in the Baptist weekly, Zion’s Advocate, then published in Portland under the editorship of Maine’s great historian, Henry Burrage, is worth quoting in part. The most pertinent portions were as follows:

“Little has appeared in print on the spiritual life of Ex-Gov. Coburn. It is true that he did not make a public profession of faith by baptism, and uniting with the Church. I do not undertake to defend that omission, but I am certain it was justified in his own conscience. However, it is also well to know that regular attendance at church and strict observance of the Lord’s Day were marked characteristics of his life.

“My own conviction about his Christian character was settled in the spring of 1882. One day I called on a lady of our church who was too feeble to attend services and I told her about the spiritual revival that had aroused our congregation. As I left her, I decided to call on Mr. Coburn and tell him the same thing. He already knew of the spiritual interest aroused in our church. When I called, he questioned me freely and expressed his hope that the good work would continue. I said to him, “I have just left Mrs. Bigelow, and I find your interest similar to hers. I can account for it only because you have the Lord in your heart.” Mr. Coburn made no answer, but the tears in his eyes told me as plainly as words that he did not deny my statement.”

“In the summer of 1882 Mr. Coburn suffered the severe loss by drowning, of his brother and his ne.phew, Stephen and Charles Coburn. In that affliction he was sustained by the helping grace of God. In all my frequent meetings with him I never had reason to alter my opinion that in his heart Mr. Coburn was a true disciple of Jesus.”

The member of the Coburn family best known to people of my own generation was the gracious lady, Louise Helen Coburn, whose distinguished life of 92 years ended in 1949. She was the second woman graduate of Colby College, preceded only by Mary Low. Miss Low was the only woman graduate of the Class of 1875. Miss Coburn graduated in 1877. Born in 1856, the daughter of Stephen and Helen Miller Coburn, she attended the Waterville Classical Institute, later named for her uncle, Gov. Abner Coburn. Graduating there in 1873, she was the first Somerset County girl to attend any college. At Colby Miss Coburn led the few other girls who entered during her years in college in founding the Sigma Kappa Sorority, which became a national organization with chapters in many other colleges. Her early professional interest was botany, which she studied at Harvard and at the University of Chicago. For three years she resided in Europe, studying French, German, and Italian. She spent several months also in Greece and Egypt.

As a botanist, Miss Coburn had an herbarium of more than 2000 plants, and from all over the world she collected trees for Coburn Park in Skowhegan. A poet of considerable ability, she published verses in several periodicals and issued a volume of her collected poems. In writing, Miss Coburn’s major achievement was a two-volume w0rk, Skowhegan on the Kennebec, a definitive history of her native town. It is still considered one of the best of Maine’s many local histories. Miss Coburn’s interest in regional history was further shown by her sponsorship of the Skowhegan Historical Society. She provided a major part of the funds for them to obtain their present museum building, History House, which welcomes several hundred visitors every year.

On Miss Coburn’s death in 1949 I was asked to speak at her funeral in the Bethany Baptist Church in Skowhegan. Unlike her Uncle Abner, Louise Coburn was a baptized member of that church, and no one had to provide an argument, as the Rev. Ayer did for Abner, to prove her devout, Christian faith. At the funeral this is part of what I said: “Miss Coburn was a pioneer. When she was born in 1856, the covered wagons were crossing the prairies. Not until her father’s term in Congress, when Lincoln was President, did the first transcontinental railroad span the continent. Although she rode in no prairie schooner, Miss Coburn pioneered in other directions. Few women dared to break into the sacred precincts of men’s colleges in the 1870’s. Miss Coburn was one of those who dared. Again she pioneered when, in 1919, she became Colby’s first woman trustee.”

“A truly educated person, Miss Coburn was also a devout religious churchwoman. Her most productive years came at a time when many sincere religious leaders saw an irrepressible conflict between learning and piety, between knowledge and belief. Many of them regarded even a little learning as a dangerous thing. To Miss Coburn education and religion, science and faith were not opposing terms, but rather partners in the quest for truth.”

I ended my remarks at the funeral with these words: “Miss Coburn was a defender of the trinity. I do not mean the theological trinity, though she did subscribe to that. I mean, rather, the trinity of home and school and church. Today we see the ties between these three venerable institutions breaking apart. It is well for us to recall that Louise Coburn lived her long life with the conviction that home, school and church must be central in common tasks of personal and civic development. ”

“In my own student days at Colby. I came to revere two persons. One was the leader of the alumni, Chief justice Leslie C. Cornish of the Class of 1875. The other was Louise Coburn, leader of the alumnae, of the class of 1877. When Judge Cornish died, a fellow Maine jurist said of him, ‘Judge Cornish knew a trifle when be saw one.’ Of Miss Coburn I may now say, ‘She spent her whole long life concerned about the eternal values.'”

And with that reminder of what I said about Louise Coburn 22 years ago, I must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1971