<\/p>\n
One of Maine’s oldest secondary schools, before its merger with another school, was Coburn Institute. Although founded as a separate school in 1828, it was actually older than that. It was opened five years earlier, in 1823, as a part of Waterville College, the institution that later became Colby.<\/p>\n
When in 1818 Jeremiah Chaplin became the first president of the college, he at once sensed the need of some educational unit connected with the college that would prepare young men to undertake college studies. I say “young men” because women were not admitted to the college until half a century later.<\/p>\n
There was already precedent, before 1820, for preparatory schools connected with colleges. In the 17th century Harvard had relied upon the Boston and Roxbury Latin schools, and Yale had the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. In the 18th century, the nation’s first Baptist college, Brown, had students prepared at the Moses Brown School in Providence.<\/p>\n
Chaplin’s original feeder for his college was not a separate school, but was set up within the college itself, and was called the Grammar School. It was taught annually by a senior student at the college. In 1825 that senior was Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who twelve years later would lay down his life in the cause of freedom of the press, when he was attacked by a mob in Alton, Illinois.<\/p>\n
That change of teacher every year lacked the continuity demanded of such a school. and after five years of that experiment, Chaplin arranged with interested persons in Waterville to put up a building on Elm Street, and operate the preparatory school as a separate entity, although still affiliated with the college. The new school was called Waterville Academy.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago I chanced upon a catalogue of that school published in 1847. It was the fourth year of the principalship of James Hobbs Hanson, who became the most renowned Maine schoolmaster. Although he left the academy in 1854, he returned ten years later and remained its head until his death in 1894. Dr. Hanson thus managed the school for a total of forty years.<\/p>\n
In 1847 it was pretty much a family school. Hanson’s wife was preceptress, and two other relatives were part-time teachers. His only fulltime assistant was Susan Pierce, teacher of music. Except for teaching by two part-timers, all academic subjects were taught by Hanson himself, although his specialty was Latin and Greek. In 1847 the academy had an independent board of trustees, although several of them were also trsutees of the college. All except three were residents of Waterville. Chairman of the Board was Dr. Samuel Plaisted, who had been encouraged to study medicine by Waterville’s first full-time physician, Dr. Moses Appleton, and had done so at the then new Bowdoin Medical School, and had married Appleton’s daughter. Another trustee was Stephen Stark, a young lawyer in the office of the veteran attorney Timothy Boutelle, who would gain fame at the Maine bar. Another was Zebulon Sanger for whom Sanger Avenue was named. Others were Dr. Stephen Thayer, said to be the last man in Waterville to insist on wearing knee breeches when every other man had turned to trousers; John Williams, proprietor of the popular Williams House that stood on the present
\nsite of the Federal Trust Company; and Harrison Smith, son of ‘the Waterville pioneer and first town clerk, Abijah Smith.<\/p>\n
Waterville Academy was well attended in 1847. Of its 201 students, 87 were boys and 114 girls. That is astonishing, because in the middle of the 19th century, few girls had schooling beyond the elementary one-room school. The explanation is that, soon after Hanson took charge of the school in 1843, he set up what he called a Young Ladies Department. It was not designed to fit girls for college, for at that early date no college would accept girls, but was rather set up as a finishing school, where girls would be taught the polite manners of society, given instruction in music and painting, and receive some introduction to the world language of high society, French.<\/p>\n
Although there were only 87 boys in the whole school, the number of students enrolled in the college preparatory course, that included Latin and Greek, was 92. Since some of the boys were surely in the so-called English Course, not designed for college preparation, there must have been a considerable number of girls studying Latin and Greek, despite the unlikelihood of college admission.<\/p>\n
Many of the girls came from well known Waterville families. There were four Fosters, three Marstons, three Philbricks, three Smiths, and two Starks, and one each from the families of Gilman, Nudd, Matthews, Gage and Blaisdell.<\/p>\n
As for the Academy’s boys in 1847, the one who would become best known was Isaac Kalloch who would become a Baptist minister and found Ottawa University in Kansas, then leave the ministry for a career in finance and politics. He organized the first vigilantes of San Francisco, the folks who took the law into their own hands in the lawless days of the American West. As the Mayor of San Francisco for four years in the 1880’s he was involved in a number of financial scandals, but was never indicted. He did gain a lot of notoriety allover the West.<\/p>\n
What is very surprising is that of the school’s 87 boys, only nine lived in Waterville. The others came from 16 Maine towns, and from the states of New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. Thus, as early as 1847, Waterville Academy was attracting students from a wide area. That was due almost entirely to the spreading fame of Dr. Hanson and the excellence of his teaching.<\/p>\n
It did not cost much to attend the Academy in 1847. For each of the four terms the tuition charge was five dollars, a total of $20 for the year. Each of the four terms was eleven weeks long. Since we hear much about the few weeks each year that the common schools were then open, it is astonishing to note that Waterville Academy held classes during 44 of the year’s 52 weeks. The first term opened on the first Monday in August and the fourth term closed the first week in July. Between each two terms there was a short vacation.<\/p>\n
That 1847 catalogue had this to say about the town of Waterville: “The academy is located in Waterville, Maine, a delightful village situated at the head of steamboat navagation on the Kennebec River. rendering easy communication with Portland and Boston.”<\/p>\n
Today we would call that slow communication anything but easy. In 1847, however two years would elapse before the railroad reached Waterville and going by boat down the river to Hallowell and there taking a ship for Boston was much faster than the tedious journey by stage coach.<\/p>\n
Concerning the college preparatory course the catalogue said: “This has been arranged with special reference to the course pursued at Waterville College, yet students may prepare here for any college they choose. The plan of instruction is simple, gradual and thorough. It commences with Kolner’s Latin Grammar, a book admirably adapted to produce acquaintance with the forms and principles of the language which is absolutely essential for success in a college course. The student’s memory is not taxed with committing large parts of abstract grammar without any application of them. That book. with a similar one in Elementary Greek Grammar make up the two studies that occupy the student’s full time at the academy in the first year. Then he continues until graduation the study of Roman and Greek authors, that include Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Plautus, Terrance and Sallust, as well as a Greek reader and Greek Poetical Extracts.” From that list we conclude that the renowned Odyssey of Homer was left for college study.<\/p>\n
About the English course which today we would call a general course the catalogue said: “This course, without any study of Latin or Greek, is designed for those who plan to teach in the common schools or discharge the more ordinary duties of life. Prominence is given to those studies closely connected with teaching. The plan of study is analytical and thorough. Students are not permitted to advance from one point to another until they give evidence that they have mastered the former. We believe the aim of education is personal development, not merely the acquisition of knowledge. The truly educated person is one who has learned to think, not one who has only stored up the thoughts of others.”<\/p>\n
Latin and Greek texts were by no means the only books used at Waterville Academy. For mathematics the student had Tower’s Algebra, Thompson’s Geometry, Legendre’s Trigonometry, and Davis’s Surveying. In what we today call Social Studies, there were Smith’s Geography, Worcester’s U. S. History,and.Shurtleff’s Governmental Instructor. In what was then thought of as science, there was Olmstead’s Natural Philosophy, Burrill’s Geography of the Heavens, Lincoln’s Botany, and Coombs’ Physiology. The college preparatory student also got an introduction to the field of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, an area that he would be required to study extensively in college. As texts the academy used Wells’ On the Mind, Whiteley’s Lessons in Reasoning, and Wayland’s Moral Science. Amazingly there were no studies in English literature. The texts in English all concerned grammar, rhetoric and oratory. They included Well’s Grammar, Newman’s Rhetoric, Webster’s Dictionary, Webb’s Parsing Book, and Parker’s Exercises in Composition. Concerning discipline the catalogue was clear. “Discipline at Waterville Academy is at once strong, mild and parental. Scrupulous attention in the classroom is rigidly required, and moral rectitude is demanded in students’ relations with each other. Vicious students who are found to be utterly perverse will be removed from the institution. The acquisition and practice of good moral habits is a life requirement, and hence should be a part of education.”<\/p>\n
What a change since 1847 is the situation today. Many educators strongly contend that moral standards have no place in school instruction. Some of us old timers still believe they do.<\/p>\n
Year: 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1284, Broadcast on October 11, 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35323,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}