Radio Script #1144

Little Talks on Common Things
December 18, 1977

One of the most widely known and most highly respected schoolmasters ever to serve in Maine was James Hobbs Hanson, principal of Coburn Classical Institute for 40 years. He first headed the school in 1843, when he was only one year out of college. He stayed for ten years, then left to lead other Maine schools for eleven years, but returned to the Waterville academy in 1865, where he continued as its distinguished headmaster until his death in 1894.

Hanson was born on a farm in China, Maine, in 1816, while Maine was still a part of Massachusetts. While at the time he was too young to know what it meant, he was afterward often reminded that he was born in the notorious “Year of No Summer,” which some folks referred to as “1800 and Frozen to Death”. There was frost in every month of that year, and snow fell in every month except August. Enough fell to cover the ground white for several hours on the second day of July. Crops were ruined, and in some areas there was genuine suffering.

What James Hanson did remember very well was his baptism for acceptance into the China Village Baptist Church, in 1835 when he was not quite 19 years old. The immersion was in China Lake and the date was March 26. The ice had to be cut away from the shore to permit the chilly baptism.

He felt the need of a college course, but he believed he could undertake it financially because his mother had other help to maintain her household. So he entered Waterville College in 1838 and graduated in the Class of 1842. There were only ten in that graduating class, all men, because nearly 30 years would then pass before any woman was admitted to the college.

Even though the class was small, it produced some distinguished men. One was Nathaniel Butler, who served Colby as a trustee for 30 years and was the father of Colby president Nathaniel Butler, Jr. Another was Henry McClellan, who made a fortune as a leather merchant in New York. A third was Alfred Morse, missionary to the Dakota Indians. A fourth was Augustine Sprague, who after passing the Maine Bar and serving briefly as a lawyer in Piscataquis County, moved to Illinois, where he became a highly respected judge, living to the age of 91.

But of all those ten young men who received their Colby diplomas in 1842, James Hobbs Hanson was the most renowned. Waterville Academy had been started by the college as a school to prepare boys for entrance. It first was called the College Grarmnar School, but in. 1828 became an academy under a separate board of trustees, although still fostered by the college. A few years later it became completely independent, but never lost its close ties with Colby. In fact all academy principals up to and including Hugh Smith were Colby graduates.

In the early 1840s the school, then known as Waterville Academy had a bad slump with very few students and no money. It felt especially competition from the Waterville Liberal Institute, situated about 100 yards down Elm Street from the academy. The school needed a strong head to revive it. In the summer of 1843, James Hanson was on the family farm in China and had just been disappointed by having another man beat him in the selection of principal for Hampden Academy. It may have been that the lack of any better prospect induced the young man to go to the run-down Waterville Academy. Financially the new job was anything but attractive. The Trustees offered Hanson no salary at all. They agreed to keep the small school building in decent repair and furnish wood for its big stove. Hansen could retain as salary the tuition paid by students, but out of it Hanson would have to pay any teaching assistants.

At first, with his young wife, the only other teacher, he somehow scraped through his first year, 1843- 44 with total tuition income of less than $250. For more than one meal that first year the Hansons sure must have gone hungry. Gradually between 1843 and 1854, Hanson increased both the enrollment and the prestige of the academy. In 1852 enrollment reached the top figure of 108. Despite that success, he could not persuade the extremely conservative board of trustees to make badly needed physical improvements, and in 1854 he resigned to become principal of Eastport High School.

After three years at Eastport, he became principal of Portland Academy, where he remained for eight years. The Civil War hit all preparatory schools hard. At that time many boys in those schools were older than high school boys are now accustomed to be, and the army took them just as it took a majority of the college classes during the war years. So when Hanson was again challenged by the school in Waterville that he had previously served for 11 years, he felt that the challenge, the war having ended that spring, was just what he wanted in the autumn of 1865. When he held the opening classes in Waterville that September, he had no intention of making it his last educational port. But that was what it became, for he stayed 29 years, until death removed him from the scene.

Making the school the renowned institute that it became was the great work of his life. One outstanding achievement was his successfully soliciting and maintaining the interest of ex-Governor Abner Coburn, who not only gave the impressive new academy building, but also substantial endowment. In gratitude, the trustees renamed the school Coburn Classical Institute.

At the memorial services following his death, Dr. Hanson’s pastor, Rev. William Spencer of the Waterville First Baptist Church said: “Dr. Hanson had a passion for thoroughness and exactness in the performance of each duty, and he expected the same from his students. Carelessness or neglect kindled fire in his eyes, but even in chastisement he was always fair and hundreds of Coburn students profited by his great human kindness.”

The title “doctor” that the pastor and others always used when referring to the Coburn principal in his later years was well deserved. In 1872 Colby had conferred on him an honorary doctorate of laws. For 32 years he was a trustee of the college. Quite appropriately, when the school’s name was changed to Coburn, it was called a Classical Institute, for the man who was heading it into its era of prestige was a distinguished classicist, a true scholar in the area of the ancient, classical languages Latin and Greek. He compiled and edited several Latin texts which were widely used throughout New England in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Many a modern school man would be completely exhausted by Dr. Hanson’s working hours. This is not to belittle present-day high school principals, most of whom are no clock-watchers, and work long hours. But the hardest working of them could scarcely be expected to put in Dr. Hanson’s usual 15 hour day. As Colby President Beniah Whitman said of him: “Many of us burn the midnight oil, but few of us burn it also in the morning. Often, even in dead of winter, six o’clock would find him at his morning desk. Only a determined giant could stand such a strain. Though Dr. Hanson was no physical giant, he was a giant inside.”

President Whitman pointed out that during the Hanson principalship, Coburn had sent more than half of each year’s classical course graduates to Colby, and then Coburn was indeed the one best source of Colby freshmen year after year. “But,” added President Whitman, “it was something better than numbers that Dr. Hanson gave to the college. His pupils came extremely well fitted. His intolerance of intellectual sham was passed on to generations of students. For fifty years this man stood for sound scholarship, for spiritual integrity, and for all that is best in education.

Another characteristic of Dr. Hanson’s was emphasized by former Colby president, George Dana Boardman Pepper: “Dr. Hanson” he said, ”was a man of truth. With him to know the truth was a passion. He loved truth for its own sake, as well as for its uses. He pursued it, and pursuing it he found it. He did not have to ask Pilate’s question, what is truth? He knew. That made him a just and righteous man.”

When the Coburn trustees spread a tribute to their distinguished principal on their records, soon after his death, they reported: “The magnificent building and endowment from Governor Abner Coburn came largely through the influence of Dr. Hanson. Governor Coburn gave the money, Dr. Hanson gave himself and hundreds of boys and girls profited by the combination.”

In 1845 James Hanson had married a Waterville girl, Sarah Boardman Marston, of a family that for a full century was prominent in Waterville affairs. They had three children, the oldest being a daughter who died before she was two years old. The second child, Sophia became Mrs. Pierce, who after many years away from Waterville was returned here for burial beside her father about twenty years ago. She had graduated from Colby in 1881. The youngest child, a boy, was Frank H. Hanson, graduated from Colby in 1883, who became principal of the widely renowned Washington School in Newark, N.J.

From what I have already said about him, it must be abundantly clear that James Hanson was a devoutly religious man. In the Waterville Baptist Church he held several offices and was a deacon for many years. His ability to preach a good sermon equalled that of the best theologically trained clergymen, and unlike many of those long-winded divines, he knew when to stop. Like his younger friend and distinguished educator, President Arthur Roberts of Colby, Dr. Hanson understood that no souls are saved after the first twenty minutes.

Dr. Hanson had deep religious faith, and he lived it all his life. Just as he prized truth and integrity, he hated hypocrisy.
Yes, one of Maine’s great and memorable schoolmasters was James Hobbs Hanson of Waterville.

Year: 1978