<\/p>\n
In these days when Colby College raises money in terms of millions, it is interesting to note how hard the college struggled to get a few thousand dollars a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n
From the day when Jeremiah Chaplin arrived in Waterville to start the first classes in 1818, the little college on the Kennebec was constantly in need of funds. Every year for half a century its books showed a persistent deficit. In the early days members of the faculty often spent the long winter vacation making a state-wide canvass for funds. At that time the longest vacation period came not in the summer, but in the winter. The fall term closed about the middle of December and the spring term opened in early March. There was no such thing as a winter term. Instead of dividing the year into two semesters, the college divided it into three terms, called fall, spring and summer. The last was literally a summer term, beginning in mid-May and ending in mid-August. Usually only two weeks elapsed between Commencement at the close of the summer term and the opening ‘of the fall term, which marked the beginning of a new college year.<\/p>\n
The faculty solicitations for money during those winter vacations were not suspended because of the Civil War. President and faculty were determined to keep the little college open despite the drain of students into the volunteer regiments that went off to southern battlefields. There were then no women students — girls were not admitted until 1871 — and it was no mean task to secure either students or funds to educate them.<\/p>\n
Eighty years later, when World War II broke out, just as the Mayflower Hill campaign was getting well under way, that drive for funds had to be suspended until the end of the war, but it was not so in the 1860’s. During those bitter days when money was scarce and the demands of war called for most spare pennies, Professors Charles Hamlin, John B. Foster, Moses Lyford and Samuel K. Smith traveled allover Maine by every possible means of transportation then available, in their persistent search for dollars to keep the college alive. On one occasion Hamlin sat in a stage coach beside a man on his way to confinement in the Insane Hospital at Augusta. On another occasion he was kept awake all night in a hamlet east of Bangor by the howling of wolves. Foster one time walked ten miles into the country from the railroad station at Etna, and ten miles back, to get a subscription of five dollars. Smith spent one winter calling on delinquents who had failed to pay the subscriptions they had promised him the year before.<\/p>\n
Several of the old subscription books are preserved in the college archives. One contains a list of subscribers who anted up for Professor Smith in 1864. Samuel K. Smith was well known to many Colby generations. Born in Litchfield in 1817, he had graduated from Colby (then Waterville College) in 1845 and from Newton Theological Institution in 1848. For two years he served as editor of the official publication of Maine Baptists, “Zion’s Advocate”; then in 1850 joined the Colby faculty as Professor of Rhetoric. In that capacity he served for 42 years. After his retirement in 1892 he lived quietly in Waterville for twelve more years, dying in 1904 at the age of 86. His son, William Abbott Smith, graduated from Colby in 1891, followed his father as editor of Zion’s Advocate, and in his later years was pastor of the Waterville Congregational Church. Samuel Smith’s grandson, Abbott Smith, a Colby graduate of 1926 and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, is now an important official of the federal government in Washington. Abbott’s brother Donald is librarian at a great university on the west coast.<\/p>\n
In 1864 Samuel Smith began his solicitation near home, in what were then the two separate towns of Bloomfield and Skowhegan. At that time the part of the present Skowhegan that lies on the west bank of the Kennebec was the town of Bloomfield. In it lived many of the area’s aristocracy and in it was an old and famous school, Bloomfield Academy.<\/p>\n
Professor Smith picked up a number of $25 subscriptions from such men as James Cleavelend, levi Stewart and S.l. Gould. From Benjamin and Nathaniel Steward he got $50 each. To Smith’s great delight, William Parker signed up for $100. Of course the Coburn family, which later would be one of Colby’s leading benefactors, was represented — Stephen Coburn gave Smith $50.<\/p>\n
From Skowhegan Smith moved on to Bangor. There he had immediate and pronounced success. Charles Porter, a Penobscot lumber dealer, signed up to establish a $600 fund for a scholarship and paid $100 down on the spot. Within ten days Smith had three other such scholarships, from J.C. White, J.M. Pollard and T.B. Robinson.<\/p>\n
In the bleak winter of 1864-65, \u00b7when Maine soldiers were plodding through the mud of Georgia roads in Sherman’s march to the sea, Prof. Smith was bucking the snow drifts in Turner. There Henry Berry donated $30, Blaine Teague $50, and Richard Teague $20. Some of Smith’s collections were pitifully small. One day his total take was three dollars. On another day he collected eight donations of one dollar each.<\/p>\n
It was understood that even small subscribers had plenty of time to pay. For instance, in February, 1865 L.F. Barrett of Turner signed the following statement: “I hereby agree to pay to Waterville College the sum of ten dollars in five equal annual installments without interest.”<\/p>\n
From Turner Smith turned west through the neighboring Oxford County towns of Sumner, Hartford and Buckfield. Though his prospects were mostly Baptist families, he did not neglect friendly people who were not converted to what he considered the true faith. In Paris he got $25 from a staunch orthodox Congregationalist. But it was hard, frustrating work. In all of Oxford County that winter the traveling salesman for Waterville College got total subscriptions of only $600 and took only $70 in cash.<\/p>\n
Prof. Smith’s carefully kept record of his travels tells us that his expenses were extremely modest. For five days in Skowhegan in December, 1864 the cost was $4.55. A year later he was in the same locality, where he spent 60 cents for dinner, $1.25 for supper, lodging and breakfast, $2.00 for all day use of a horse and buggy, and round trip railroad fare from Waterville, 75 cents.<\/p>\n
When present day Colby professors tell you how hard they are working, just remind them of those extra curricular activities of the good professor of rhetoric in 1864.<\/p>\n
It is easy for us older persons to forget that there is ever growing up a new generation which, in the words of the Bible, “knew not Egypt”. Things that were once familiar to us were never heard of by them. So I refuse to be surprised when I encounter Colby students who assumed the college had always been on Mayflower Hill. It won’t be many years before only old-timers will remember the big brick school near my home as anything except the Pleasant Street Elementary School. As a matter of record, if for no other reason, let us note the history of that old school site.<\/p>\n
There at the corner of Pleasant and School Streets, was built in the 1830’s a small wooden schoolhouse. Later replaced by a substantial brick building, it became Waterville’s first public high school. For ten years after the opening of the new high school on Gilman Street in 1913, it housed upper elementary grades. Then in 1923 it was torn down to make room for the present spacious building, opened as Waterville’s first junior high school. Leon Tibbetts was then mayor and scoffers called the building Tibbetts’ folly, declaring the city could never fill it with pupils in a hundred years. Before 1930 it was crammed to overflow. When the splendid new senior high school was opened beyond the Messalonskee two years ago, the old high school on Gilman Street became the Junior High, and the building on Pleasant Street reverted. to the original purpose of its little wooden predecessor, an elementary school.<\/p>\n
My listeners in Winslow may be interested in the petition that was made for a new road in that town 120 years ago in 1844. Signed by Clark Drummond, Amaras Dingley, Robert Ayer, Thomas Hayden and J.H. Drummond, this is what the petition pleaded for: “To the Selectmen of Winslow. The undersigned freeholders of Winslow respectfully request you to layout forthwith a road three rods wide at the Swan Landing, so called, to the end of Fort Point, and from thence along the center of the same to the road leading past Col. Moor’s house. Also one other road, commencing at Ticonic Bay, south of the Red Shed, so called, to the Sebasticook River south of the Old Block House, said road to be three rods wide and to pass from river to river. Also one other road on said Point, nearly opposite Swan Landing, as laid out on John Jones’ plan of Fort Farm. Winslow, March 18, 1844.”<\/p>\n
That petition is evidence of a lot of business at the junction of the rivers in Winslow 120 years ago. Those petitioners saw a need for three additional short roads, all on the point of land where now stands the last remaining relic of old Fort Halifax.<\/p>\n
Year: 1965<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #647, Broadcast on March 28, 1965<\/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":[792,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8492"}],"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=8492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}