Radio Script #939

Little Talks on Common Things
September 17, 1972

Waterville’s Maine Central Railroad station, torn down only a few years ago, when the present underpass was built, had stood so long there on College Avenue directly opposite the old Colby campus, that many local people thought it had been there ever since the first trains pulled into Waterville.

That is not true. The station was not there as late as 1856, though the first railroad line, the Androscoggin and Kennebec, had come in 1849. The original station stood near the present site of the freight shed just east of Main Street, and at first the tracks did not cross Chaplin Street. Chaplin is indeed a very old street, built in the early 1820’s to connect the road to Kendalls Mills (now College Avenue) with the road to Fairfield Meetinghouse (now Upper Main Street).

Proof that the station many of us knew so well was not there in 1856 is contained in a deed signed by the Colby professor whose diary we discussed on this program last year, Samuel K. Smith. In 1856, Smith conveyed to Waterville College a parcel of land containing exactly one acre that was situated just where the station was later erected. That deed said: “I, Samuel K. Smith of Waterville, in consideration of $700 paid by the President and Trustees of Waterville College, do convey to said President and Trustees a parcel of land bordered on the south by the north line of Chaplin Street, on the east by the west line of College Street, on the north by the north line of land conveyed by Colin Newton to Waterville College, and on the west by a line drawn at right angles with Chaplin Street and so far distant from College Street that the parcel shall contain precisely one acre, being the Newton house and the eastern part of the Newton lot, so called. April 1, 1856,”

That instrument was a mortgage deed. Smith had bought the property from the College, which had acquired it when Professor Newton left in 1838. The College had in fact taken it back from Newton, to whom it had sold the piece of land in 1831. It was part of the big lot that the College had purchased from Robert Hallowell Gardiner in 1815, extending 80 rods on the Kennebec and back to the Messalonskee on the west. The College eventually kept only the land east of the highway, selling off all the rest of the huge lot that originally contained 180 acres. In the early days of the College it was customary to sell a house lot, usually an acre or more in size, to each professor, as he joined the faculty, encourage him to build a house on the lot and take his mortgage deed in partial payment. Professor Smith may have lived a short time in the Newton house, just above Chaplin Street, but it was not long before he bought a large lot further up the avenue and built a fine, new house on the corner of what is now Abbott Street.

Among the papers of Professor Smith, still possessed by the family is a letter signed by one of New England’s most famous men a century ago. The letter says: “235 Clarendon Street, Boston, January 12, 1887. My dear Mr. Smith: I am very much honored by the invitation which you have sent me to address the students of Colby University at their next commencement in July. I am sorry to say that my engagements for next summer will not allow me to come, and I must lose the pleasure which you offer me. But I hope you will assure the students of my cordial thanks for their request. I am respectfully yours, Phillip Brooks.”

I want now to tell you about a famous school which played a part in the lives of many Kennebec Valley Quakers, though the school is situated in Rhode Island rather than in Maine. Afterward named for the Quaker philanthropist, Moses Brown, it was originally the Friends School of Providence. A catalogue of the school, issued exactly 100 years ago in 1872, tells us that it was situated on a hill 180 feet above tidewater, overlooking Narragansett Bay. Every town in Rhode Island could be seen from the building’s cupola. The school was coeducational, having boys in one wing, girls in the other, with classrooms between. The catalogue proudly announced that the place was lighted by gas. The grounds contained 50 acres, with academic groves furnishing delightful places for recreation. A nearby marsh was flooded each winter for skating. Emphasis was given to the new apparatus that enabled students to perform experiments in chemistry and natural philosophy (i.e. physics).

While the curriculum, preparing, the catalogue said, for any American college, was distinctly classical, with the emphasis on Latin, Greek and Mathematics, we are told, “Classes in French and German are formed yearly, and those branches may be substituted for other literary studies.” Young ladies were offered instruction in charcoal and pencil drawing, painting in oil and water color, and painting on china. Bible study on Sundays was required of all. The Friends School had developed an athletic program as early as 1872, but it seems to have been largely intramural, for nothing is said about contests with other schools. The school did, however, boast three baseball diamonds and five nines, supported track and field days, and had tennis courts. There was also a gymnasium, where winter exercise was required.

So much controversy is rampant today over school discipline, with the emphasis on free schools where pupils study what they please when they please, that it is refreshing to some of us old timers to note what the Friends School catalogue said about discipline 100 years ago. Here it is word for word: “Good discipline in an institution demands unqualified obedience to its rules. Moral and social training, the most important matters in education, teaches individual responsibility and obedience to personal conviction of right and duty. The immediate care of the pupils is committed by the principal to two officers whose duty it is to exercise constant and controlling influence at all hours. Boys and girls recite together, sit at the same dining tables, and meet socially in the public hall. Experience has shown that the benefits arising from such controlled coeducation cannot be overestimated. Rules are few, but those few are definite, understood by all, and are rigidly enforced. The school cannot tolerate the continued attendance of a pupil whose persistent, unreformed behavior is a detriment to others.”

What did it cost in 1872 to attend what is now the expensive, prestigious Moses Brown School? In tuition, board, washing and incidentals – everything except books – the cost for an entire year was $150. The catalogue contained a list of suggestions: “Each pupil should bring soap, towels and table napkins. It is especially desired that the dress of girls be sensible and inexpensive. It is particularly requested that parents and friends do not visit the school on the Sabbath.”

The school was very old. In 1780, Moses Brown proposed that the Quakers open a boarding school, and he started a subscription with $575. Thus began the Friends New England Yearly Meeting School, started in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1784. It was closed between 1788 and 1819, when it reopened, not in Portsmouth, but in Providence, where Moses Brown provided 43 acres of land. When Moses Brown died in 1836, he left the school $15,000 in his will. Thirty five years later, on the death of Moses’ son, Obadiah, the school received $100,000 from the Brown family. No wonder the trustees later decided to name the school for Moses Brown.

Some Central Maine people living in the 1870’s who had graduated from that Rhode Island school were Sarah Taber, Lucy Whitehouse and Abbie Weeks of Vassalboro, Oscar and William Winslow of Larone, Lois Varney of Unity, Charles Jacobs and Mabel Austin of China, Alton Cates of East Vassalboro, Arthur and Rufus Jones of South China, Herbert of Winslow, and Lucy Hankes of Manchester. Of that list by far the most famous name is that of Rufus Jones of South China, the man who became the internationally renowned head of that great relief organization, the Friends Service Committee.

Now as we close let us have a bit of old-time information about Colby College, as it was even before Samuel Smith, who bought that land on College Avenue, joined the faculty, or had even attended as a student. In 1824 the faculty consisted of three professors and two tutors, and so remained until 1832, when the professors were increased to five. How slowly the college grew is revealed by the fact that that number of five professors and two tutors remained constant until 1867, when Gardner Colby’s gift made possible the employment of a sixth professor. Not until 1885, which was 67 years after Jeremiah Chaplin had begun the first classes, did Colby have as many as ten professors. What about the number of students? In 1824 there were 62, but four years later in 1828 the number had dropped to 36, and in 1829 it reached bottom at 31. That was when, in 1830, the trustees decided to open a medical department, in cooperation with a medical school in Vermont. Through political machination, the Vermont School had lost the authority to grant degrees. So arrangements were made for part of the work to be done at the Waterville College, with all clinical work in Vermont. At the end of the course Colby would confer the M.D. degree. So, in 1830 Colby enrolled 28 medical students in addition to 45 candidates for the A. B. The number then rose rapidly so that in 1832 there were 81 A.B.’s and 74 medics. The next June, 1833, saw the Vermont school reobtain its degree rights, and the merger with Colby was abandoned. But the Waterville school prospered, and in 1834 enrollment for the first time exceeded 100. In 1835 the number was 112, the highest the college would have until 25 years later in 1860. In fact in 1844, enrollment had dropped to 44 students. A new president, Dana Sheldon boosted the figure to 90 in 1851, but when Sheldon’s liberal theology offended many Baptists, the number had dropped to 65 by 1856.

On some later broadcast I’ll tell you how Colby enrollment was affected by the Civil War, but now we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1972