As a member of Maine’s State Board of Education I must share responsibi-Ii ty \\’Ji <\/em>th my nine fe Ilow board members for po Ii ci es under wh i ch our state teachers co I I eges operate. Those five schoo Is, four of wh i ch now have four-year courses and confer degrees upon their graduates, were formerly the Maine normal schools. Among my listeners tonight I suspect there are some who at one time attended the norma I schoo I at Farmi ngton or Gorham, Presque I s I e or ~~ach i as.<\/p>\n Probab Iy right here in vJatervi lie are persons who once attended what used to be cal led the Madawaska Training School at Fort Kent, and is now the Fort Kent State Normal School. Doubtless there are also some who had teacher training at the old normal school at Castine, whose bui Idings were some years ago turned over to the Mai ne ~1ari ti me Academy.<\/p>\n Wei I, anyhow, my interest in the normal schools made me appreciate especially information given me within the past year by that indefatigable collector of old-time items, Rev. Nelson Heikes of Albion; the retired clergyman who writes the Saturday column each week for Ima Wanderer in the Watervi I Ie Sentinel.<\/p>\n It is to Mr. Heikes that lowe the story of how a Maine man founded the first normal school in the United States.<\/p>\n During the last half of the nineteenth century one of the most prominent citizens of Augusta was Honorable James W. Bradbury. He lived in Augusta for a ful I 70 years; coming there as a young lawyer at the age of 28. At one time he was a I aw partner of lot. r-‘1. Morr i II, governor and U. S. Senator. In 1847 Bradbury himself was elected to the U. S. Senate, where he championed the famous f-enry Clay compromise of 1850. Lea~l.-flg the” Senate when h is term expired in 1853, Bradbury returned to Augusta, where he remained in the active practice of law unti I he was almost ninety years old. He died in 1901 at the advanced age of 99.<\/p>\n This is the man who was responsible for what is said to have been the first normal school in the United States. James Bradbury was born in Parsonsfield, Maine on June 10, 1802, the sixth in direct male descent from Thomas Bradbury, who had come to New Eng I and from 0 I d Eng I and in 1634, as agent for F erdin:lrrlJ (b.’YrfAC:: .. -~~ Arriving at Gorges’ so-cal led city of Agamenticus, that is now the town of York, Gorges’ agent went inland to Salisbury, New Hampshire, where he estab I i shed permanent res i dence. Thomas’ great-great-great grandson James the Bradbury of our story — was fortunate enough to go to col lege, which shows that his Parsonsfield fami Iy were probably people of position and means. He went to Bowdoin, where he graduated in the class of 1825, the famous class of Longfellow, Hawthorne and Admira1Gi Iley.<\/p>\n Bradbury’s first connection with the Kennebec above ~~rrymeeting Bay occurred the very year of his Bowdoin graduation, when he became a teacher at famous old Hal lowel I Academy. Along with his teaching he studied law with two prominent Kennebec practitioners, Rufus Mcintire and Ethan Shepley. Then in 1829 he was called to the principalship of Union Academy at Effingham, New Hampshire.<\/p>\n That school was then just ten years old and had already achieved popularity over a wide area, for in the third decade of the century there was no other academy nearer than the one in which Daniel Webster once taught at Fryeburg, Maine.<\/p>\n Young Bradbury had become convinced that if there were to be competent teachers for the common schools, those schools must not depend upon impecunious co liege students wi th no interest professiona Ily in teach i n9, but on Iy’ tryln.g to earn money between col lege terms. And that was indeed the chief source of school teachers at the time.<\/p>\n Bradbury replied to the Effingham offer that he would accept only if the academy trustees would agree to make their academy strictly a normal school to train teachers for New England’s common schools. The trustees consented, and under James Bradbury the academy at Eff i ngham became a fu II-f h:::dg~d norllld I scnoo’ \u2022<\/p>\n UTner schools in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont had introduced so-cal led normal training courses into their programs of instruction, but they continued to conduct their conventional col lege preparatory courses along with the teacher-training courses. Effingham is said to have been the first school to adapt its whole program to the training of teachers .<\/p>\n . Mr. Heikes has a picture of the bui Iding in which James Bradbury conducted America’s firsT normal school. The picture shows a two-story, box-like structure, looking much like the old grange halls. It has windows with twelve small lights of glass in each, a plain doorway, and a f:lag pole extending above the front end of the ridge pole. It looks very much like the old Grange Hall at Brown’s Corner, Riverside, or the one I used to know wei I at East Hebron. Mr. Heikes’ picture shows that the building was set in a field with no other bui Idings within camera range, and it was surrounded by a board fence.<\/p>\n There is an interesting coincidence-which connects this teacher, statesman and norma I schoo I founder wi th Ma i ne f s State Department of Educati on. I n the house wh i ch Mr. Bradbury bu i I t ~nd wh i ch se rved as his Augusta home for many years, the occupant in the 1920’s was the great educational leader and president of the World Federation of Educational Associations, Dr. Augustus Thomas, Maine’s Commissioner of Education.<\/p>\n Now let me te I I you about Moravi ans in Ma i ne. Among the ear Iy Ge rman settlers at \\AJaldoboro was a band of Moravians. They came in 1760 and stayed only nine years, because after much trouble with the larger resident body of Lutheran Germans, those ~bravians marched out to join a more prosperous Moravian colony in North Carolina.<\/p>\n Of pecu liar i nteres-r to us here in centra I Ma i ne is that the Ii tt Ie band of Waldoboro Moravians, instead of going to North Carolina, very nearly decided -ro settle at Fort Halifax, just as a group of other Germans had sett’led only a few years earlier at For-r Dresden in Pownalborough.<\/p>\n In the spring of 1769 George Soeller, leader of the \\tlaldoboro ~10ravians, wrote in a letter to a friend in Phi ladelphia: ~tOf the land over: around Fort Halifax I have twice wri-r-ren you. Since that time a couple of our people have inspected it. A certain man named Ewer has recently moved to Broad Bay from Boston. He formerly lived on land there on the Kennebec, but sold that property and moved to Boston. He -rei Is us that Dr. Gardiner’s land is very good, but is six mi les back from -rhe river so that one cannot do much lumbering. The Plymouth Company and Dr. Gardiner are now devoting al I their energies to getting the land settled. According to the suggestion in your letter of February first, I have made the proposal -rhat our people should move over there. However they have decided not to do so. If there were a settlement of the brethren near Fort Halifax, our people would gladly go there. But there is no such settlement, and our people are determined to go where some of their own faith are already settled.<\/p>\n p<\/p>\n So, as to Moravians in Maine, the old, customary story of settlement was repeated. Everywhere like cal Is to like. A few Quakers first came to this region of the central Kennebec. Others fol lowed, unti I there had sprung up sizeable Quaker settlements a-r Vassalboro} at North Fairfield, at the Outlet, and all around China Lake. The reverse was also true. Where there were no Quakers, other Quakers did not so generally go. Because those Moravians at Waldoboro found themselves an uncomfortable minority with no others of their faith in f’-1a i ne, they I eft the reg ion, never to return.<\/p>\n Speaking of religion in Waldoboro reminds me of hymn sin9ing in pioneer times. In colonial days many a church had no musical instrument and only one hymnbook. It was the custom of the pastor to read the words of the hymn by couplets, and the congregation would sing each couplet before the pastor read the next. It was cal led lining out the hymn.<\/p>\n Down in \\Va I doboro the German pastor just after the Revo I ut ion, Rev. Starman, carried on the old practice, even when he conducted his service in English, as the new agreement required him to do. Starman was troubled by fai ling eyesight. One Sunday he arose in the pulpit and, as he wiped his eyes, he said:<\/p>\n 17lvJein sight ist poor, mein eyes i”st dim,<\/p>\n I scarce can see to read dies hymn.!!<\/p>\n Whether he knew or not that he had uttered a rhyming couplet, the congregation knew it; so they” sang it back to him. The startled preacher retorted:<\/p>\n !11 did not mean to sing dies hymn,<\/p>\n meant to say mein sight ist dJm.”<\/p>\n Back came the congregation’s repetition of the same words in song. Then the old preacher, completely exasperated, burst out:<\/p>\n “I tink you heed der Debbel’s call.<\/p>\n Das vas no hymn to sing at al I.!!<\/p>\n Even with that couplet the congregation fol lowed through, but beyond that point tradition is si lent. By that time probably old Pastor Starman had had enough.<\/p>\n In ‘:Kennebec Yesterdays 11 I have to I d how our ~1a i ne roads deve loped from Indian trai Is and colonial bridle paths. But I did not then indicate the political procedure by which a town first got its roads.<\/p>\n The town would first vote to layout a road between two given points. Sometimes two or three years would elapse before action was taken to implement the vote. When the selectmen finally got around to it, they would mark out the course of the road by blazing trees. Then in desultory fashion a few citizens might clear some of the trees and underbrush for the lumber they could thus obtain.<\/p>\n Finally, after sometimes as much as five years had gone by, the citizens might get around to work out their taxes on such a road. That work simply opened the road for traveling on foot or horseback. And it was no easy road even for them. On one side might be a stump, on the other a deep hole, and between them a huge, jutting rock.<\/p>\n When enough people insisted that a road be made passable for carts, the town voted not money, but a levy of labor. By town meeting vote a certain sum would be stipulated for a road; the rate of pay per day for men, oxen, plows and carts would be fixed by town vote; and finally it was voted that every man should work a certain number of days bui Iding the road. In one Maine town in 1780 the rates were three shi I lings per day for a man, two for a yoke of oxen, and one for a cart or a sled.<\/p>\n For persons I ike myself, who are inclined to get bored with statistics, and who doubt whether one can or ought to reduce everythi ng in life to stat i stical measurement, I want to tel I the story of two brothers and their horses. Because these two fellows were what one would call unusually dumb, let us call them the Moron brothers.<\/p>\n Wei I, the two Moron brothers lived together, and each had a horse which was kept in a common stable. The Morons had a dreadful time telling which horse belonged to which brother. They tried cutting the mane of one horse, to make it shorter than the other’s, but the mane soon grew out again. Then they cut the tai I shorter on one horse, but the tai I too soon grew out. So they decided to use statistical methods. They carefully measured each horse for height, length of back, and other features, to see if they could find some difference in size.<\/p>\n And sure enough, they were successful and could ever after tel I which horse belonged to which brother} because they discovered that the white horse had longer ears than the black one.<\/p>\n Year: 1956<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #317, broadcast on November 4, 1956<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7673"}],"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=7673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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