Radio Script #998

Little Talks on Common Things
January 27, 1974

A prominent citizen of Waterville, and in fact of the entire State of Maine, at the turn of the century 75 years ago, was Edward Winslow Hall, the Librarian of Colby College. He was not only a pioneer in what became the new field of library science. He was also an historian of education, especially higher education in Maine, for several years a member of the local school board and a leader in many community projects. For more than 30 years he was Clerk of Waterville’s First Baptist Church. I want to tell you today something about this unusual man.

Born in Portland in 1840, Hall entered Colby as a student in 1858, when it was still Waterville College. He was thus nearing the end of his sophomore year when the Civil War broke out. Because of physical defect he was not accepted for military service. Disappointed at his rejection, he saw a majority of his classmates become soldiers of the Union before the half dozen who were left graduated in 1862.

After the war many of those classmates who had left academic life for military duty received their diplomas as of the Class of 1862. The Colby alumni records therefore list 26 men as graduates in Hall’s class, and 19 others who at one time attended Colby in that class but did not get degrees. Exactly half of those 26 graduates served in the Union Army, and 11 of the 13 ranked as officers, all the way from 2nd Lt. to Major. In those days Colby turned out a large proportion of graduates bound for the ministry. It is therefore interesting that two of Hall’s classmates who later became well known clergymen, served, not as chaplains, but as commissioned officers of infantry in the Civil War.

Determined to serve his country in some capacity, Edward Hall obtained appointment as a clerk in the War Department, then presided over by Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War. In 1864, when Maine’s own William P. Fessenden became Secretary of Treasury, Hall was transferred to that department. For two years, in the War Department, he was in charge of accounts of military expenditures, a heavy responsibility.

In 1866, after the war was well over, Hall was asked by President James T. Champlin to join the Colby faculty as Professor of Modern Languages. In 1873 he was appointed Librarian, and from then until 1891 he both managed the library and taught courses in French and German. Hall was a literary scholar of wide interests. He was perhaps the first professor in any small American college to become interested in the Russian mystics, and he became somewhat of an authority on Tolstoi. That interest led him to the mystic literature of the Far East. But all the time it was the great writers of 19th century France and Germany who claimed his chief attention.

In 1891 Hall relinquished the chair of Modern Languages, but continued as Colby Librarian until his death in 1910. He had the distinction of being the first Colby professor to be officially granted sabbatical leave, spending the year 1872-73 in Germany at the University of Gottingen. It was, however, as librarian rather than as teacher of modern languages that Edward Hall was known far beyond the Colby campus. Before the invention of the Dewey system of library cataloging, Hall perfected a system that won loud acclaim and was adopted by many other libraries. Before Hall became head of the Colby Library, there had been no systematic arrangement of the books. They were simply numbered successively as they were received, so that by 1873 the numbers ran, without subject classification from 1 to more than 10,000. Before he died 27 years later, he had personally classified and catalogued more than 30,000 books and pamphlets.

Hall’s system was actually a shelving system. The old Colby Library in east wing of Memorial Hall had a number of recessed alcoves. Hall gave each alcove a number. Partitions in the alcoves marked off divisions in the shelves. The place had two floors. As a result, the number 154 meant that a book was on the first floor, in the fifth alcove, in the fourth division of shelves. Hall’s classification placed books in the same subject field together in the same alcove. At that time small libraries, like Colby’s, felt no need for the elaborate sub-division worked out by Dewey, and later even more efficiently by the Library of Congress system. Since, under Hall’s plan, each alcove division had only a few shelves, no book was hard to locate, although several carried the same number.

As time went on, Hall did add a decimal to his basic numbers, signifying the shelf in the division where a particular book was located. Interestingly he numbered the shelves from the bottom to the top, so that the number 154.3 meant a book on the third shelf from the bottom in the fourth division of the fifth alcove.

More important than his classification system was Hall’s introduction of a card catalogue, the first for any library in Maine. Up to that time, 1875, there was occasionally issued a printed list of books in the Colby Library, and at the Librarian’s desk was always a complete list of books the Library was supposed to have, but it often took long search to find the number of any book with which the librarian happened to be unfamiliar. Hall’s innovation of a card catalog, already adopted in the libraries of larger universities, was a tremendous advance.

Another innovation, never to this day abandoned at Colby since Hall introduced it, was open stacks. Previous to his librarianship, no student had been permitted to browse among the books. He could approach the desk and ask for a specific book which would then be found for him if it was not out or lost, and even with those closed stacks books were indeed sometimes lost. Hall opened the stacks in 1874 and in his next annual report he wrote: “No trouble has arisen from admitting students to the shelves. Not a volume has been missed and there is very little misplacing of books.”

During his tenure on the Colby faculty, Edward Hall served as secretary of the Alumni Association and became the one person most familiar with the careers of Colby graduates. In 1882 he performed single-handed the prodigious task of compiling Colby’s first general catalogue of information about all persons who had attended the college up to that time. He compiled another edition in 1887 and a third in 1909. The last appearance of that very valuable publication appeared more than half a century ago in 1920, compiled by Hall’s successor, Charles P. Chipman.

There have recently come to light several letters written by Edward Hall while he was a government clerk in Washington during the Civil War. On February 24, 1864, he wrote to his father in Portland as follows: “On Monday I did a bold thing. I questioned the authority of the Secretary of War, and I beat him too. Being unwell, Mr. Stanton felt unable to attempt the labor of signing a huge pile of requisitions. He told Mr. Dana, the Asst. Secretary to sign them. Dana began to do so. I refused to pass the requisitions, telling Mr. Dana they would certainly be stopped at the Treasury. Mr. Dana showed me his written order from the Secretary of War, over the signature of Edwin M. Stanton. That order authorized Mr. Dana to sign requisitions. I replied that Mr. Lincoln was the only person who could grant that power.

“Wishing not to appear imprudent, I volunteered to consult with the officers of the Treasury and leave the decision with them. I went to the Second Auditor, F. B. French, through whose hands the requisitions had to pass. He immediately confirmed my position. His chief clerk accompanied me to the Second Comptroller, who is higher than the auditor, and whose counter-signature is necessary on all requisitions. Dr. Broadhead, the Second Comptroller, confirmed my action and read the laws on it. He declared he could not countersign any requisition signed by the Asst. Sect. of War.

“I made my report to Mr. Dana, who at once put on his hat and rushed to the Pres. When he returned, he had a commission signed by Abraham Lincoln. I at once put my signature, as accounting officer, on the questioned requisitions. I
had won my point.

“Fearing I should be discharged when Sect. Stanton returned to his desk, I told Mr. Fessenden all about the incident. He could not understand why Mr. Stanton did not know better. The Secretary is now back and I am still here.”

Another letter from Hall in Washington concerns General Grant. Written on March 13, 1864, the letter said:

“The great event of the past week has been the presence in the capital of General Grant. He arrived Tuesday evening about 8. At 10 o’clock I went to the White House. I had shaken hands with the President and had passed on a few feet when a bustle behind me attracted my attention. Turning I saw General Grant meet Mr. Lincoln. The President kept his grasp and said, “I am very glad to see you, General, very glad indeed.” He then introduced the General to Mrs. Lincoln and to Secretaries Seward and Stanton. This was Mr. Lincoln’s first meeting with Gen. Grant and was very cordial.

“I could not help comparing Gen. Grant to Gen. Sickles, who was present at the same time. Sickles was neatly combed, brushed and polished. He smiled graciously and bowed low to the ladies. When Grant was presented to Mrs. Lincoln not a smile touched his countenance, but when Sickles was introduced, his face was covered with smiles. Grant was as unmoved as a stone image.”

Three years before Prof. Hall’s death, he had a part in President Charles L. White’s vigorous attempt to get Colby on the list for faculty pensions under the Carnegie Foundation. That attempt, made in 1907, was unsuccessful for what today seems ironical. The Secretary of the Carnegie Foundation wrote to Pres. White: “The application of Dr. Edward W. Hall was considered for a retirement allowance, and I regret to say was not granted. As long as our charter stands as it does, the commission is unable to vote retirement allowances to professors in institutions which are controlled by a church body or in which any denominational test is imposed upon trustees or faculty. This decision does not in the least reflect upon the merit of Dr. Hall’s case.”

That letter makes it clear that after Colby had been in existence for 94 years, it was still considered to be a Baptist College. When Gardner Colby had made his gift of $50,000 in 1864, he had attached a denomination provision that hampered the college for many years afterward. He stipulated that the President and the majority of the faculty should always be Baptists. It was 70 years after Mr. Colby’s gift before his heirs legally freed the college from that obligation, and the faculty were able to secure annuities through the Teachers Annuity and Insurance Association, successor to the Carnegie group. In 1942, Seelye Bixler became Colby’s first non-Baptist President, 35 years after Edward Hall had been an unsuccessful annuity applicant.

Year: 1974