<\/p>\n
It has been a long time since I have said anything on this program about sports. This year I have heard much mournful lamentation about the small size of the Colby football squad, made up of fewer than thirty men. In these days of big football squads, when many a college fields two complete teams, one offensive and the other defensive, throughout a single game, and uses a couple of dozen individual substitutes, a large pool from which to draw those players seems highly essential.<\/p>\n
Because every successful college football team must today have a lot of available substitutes, Colby’s small squad was certainly at a disadvantage this past season. It occurred to me that we might take a look at Colby football at the turn of the century, more than sixty years ago. So I bid you to consider Hersey Keene’s team in 1901. I am sure many of my listeners knew Hersey Keene, who all his life kept up an ardent interest in Colby sports. Hersey was captain and fullback of the 1901 Colby team. On how large a squad could Hersey depend to see through a game?<\/p>\n
Believe it or not, Hersey Keene’s Colby squad consisted of a total of 19 men, eleven regulars and eight substitutes. Some of those regulars became well known persons. At one end of the Colby line was Willard Rockwood, for many years representative of the Strout Farm Agency in this area, and at one time my colleague on the Waterville Board of Education. At the other end was Leon Saunders, who became an insurance executive in New Jersey, and in 1911 won the Fly Casting Championship in Madison Square Garden. At one tackle was Wendell Washburn, member of the China, Maine family that has had many representatives at Colby. At the other tackle position was Oliver Taylor from Hampden, whose father was a close friend of U.S. Vice President Hannibal Hamlin. The two guards were Allen Clark of Augusta and a young ministerial student, George Wooster Thomas, who became a nationally known clergyman of the Presbyterian Church, with a big career of service in California. The center was Lou Hammond from Rumford.<\/p>\n
In the backfield, besides Hersey Keene at fullback, the quarterback was Noah Barker, who was to have a successful career in secondary education. One of the two halfbacks was a man who was one of the best known of all Colby men of that period, Bill Cowing. Cowing too spent his life in secondary school work, serving for many years as principal of the large, progressive high school at West Springfield, Mass. Until his death only a few years ago, Bill Cowing attended every Colby commencement whenever it did not conflict with his professional duties. After his retirement Bill was often seen at other Colby functions besides commencement. The other halfback was Elwood Dudley, who became a prominent Maine physician, being one of the few Colby graduates of his time who secured a medical degree at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.<\/p>\n
With a squad of only 19, and with many of the regulars playing all 60 minutes of a game, how did that 1901 Colby team fare against its opponents? It played eight games, won three and lost five. That year Colby played the University of New Hampshire twice. In Waterville Colby beat New Hampshire 34 to 0, and in Durham Colby won by 12 to 0. The only other game that Colby won that year was the last one in the eight game series, when Colby defeated Bowdoin 12 to 0. In 1901 Colby also played two games against the University of Maine, losing the first in Waterville 12 to 0, and the second in Orono 29 to 0. Bates beat Colby that year 17 to 6. But what is more surprising is the score of the game between Colby and Phillips Exeter Academy. Exeter won it, 18 to 5. It is not surprising to learn that the game with Brown ended Brown 16, Colby 0.<\/p>\n
Anyhow, that is the story of how Hersey Keene’s squad of 19 football players went through the season of 1901.<\/p>\n
Everyone has long noted the decline of Maine farms. A drive through the countryside, especially if one leaves the broad, well paved state and federal highways to travel the country roads, passes many an abandoned farm. Today we know that the number of farms allover the United States is decreasing every year, but Maine farms began to decline long ago, when the Great West, with its rich, black loam became the bread basket of the nation.<\/p>\n
There has long been the belief that Maine soil was impossible anyhow for farming. I myself have often quoted Cyrus Hamlin’s remark: “In Maine we have to sharpen the sheep’s noses so they can gnaw between the rocks” and Colby President Arthur Roberts’ indictment, “In Maine farming isn’t an occupation, it’s a misfortune.”<\/p>\n
I was therefore interested to read a recent book — “The Farmer’s Last Frontier. Agriculture 1860-1897” by Fred A. Shannon, a U.S. economic history book. Shannon tells us: “A personal inspection of abandoned farms in Maine by Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson in 1900 showed that the farms were not abandoned on account of sterility of the soil, but are in many cases capable of affording a good living to industrious farmers. are near to markets. and have other desirable features. They were abandoned simply because they could not compete with the far more productive farms of the West.”<\/p>\n
Another thing it is well to remember about our Maine farms. Some of them did prosper. Why? The Shannon book gives us a clue. He says: “It was not necessarily the more intelligent who remained and succeeded on Maine farms. It was generally those with the better lands, who could therefore take longer to experiment with new methods. It is true that the broken topography and the smaller fields made most Maine farms less adaptable than the prairies to the use of heavy machinery. Nevertheless Maine farmers, in increasing numbers, began hanging up their scythes and abandoning their antiquated plows and adopted improved implements to the extent of their means.”<\/p>\n
Of course we have long known that one cause of farm decline in Maine was the living of the younger generation away from the farms. On that point Shannon has this to say: “In 1890 one Maine farm of 60 acres, with 12 under cultivation, and having a five room house, a barn, adequate water, and 32 bearing fruit trees, and situated within five miles of a railroad depot, was offered for sale for $400. A major reason for that farm’s abandonment was that four sons left home for more enticing prospects. One went to California, another to a big farm in Illinois, and the two others made fortunes in developing coal mines.”<\/p>\n
“It is no wonder”, says Shannon, “that many a Maine farmer saw no virtue in scrabbling for an existence on stony acres for the good of his soul.”<\/p>\n
All of us who have known Coburn Classical Institute for many years are proud of the school’s recent success and the determination of its present distinguished board of trustees to move its facilities to a new site between the Ridge Road and Route 95, not far from the rapidly developing area near the Elm Plaza Shopping Center.<\/p>\n
Recently I chanced upon a copy of the Waterville Mail for July 11, 1879, and discovered that it featured the 50th anniversary of Coburn, which then carried the name of Waterville Classical Institute. At that time one of the best known Colby and Coburn alumni, the author William Mathews, was still living, and he wrote a splendid, detailed historical account, which was published in the Waterville Mail.<\/p>\n
So let us see what William Mathews had to say about the origin and the early years of Coburn. Dr. Mathews wrote: “It was in the summer of 1829, after spending two years trying to fit for college at the academies in Readfield, China, Bloomfield and Monmouth, when I learned with inexpressible joy, that an academy had at last been founded in my own town of Waterville and would be opened in the fall. The institution had its origin in the deeply felt need of a feeder for Waterville College. The Hon. Timothy Boutelle, a graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1800, had given a lot of land, and a building had been erected with funds begged for the purpose by Jeremiah Chaplin, president of the college. The school went into operation under Henry W. Paine, at that time a senior in the college, who, though only 19 years old, was a competent teacher. Though still in his teens, Paine ruled the school so firmly that the acknowledged school bully quailed under his stern glance.”<\/p>\n
Dr. Mathews continued: “I remember that he once assigned the whole school to write a composition on the subject ‘The Love of Distinction’. I hadn’t the slightest idea what he meant by distinction or how one proceeded to love it. When my pal Judson Chaplin, the college president’s son, told Mr. Paine of my difficulty, the teacher said to me, ‘Why, William, I didn’t expect you to write on that subject, you are too young.’ In fact, I was so small when I entered the Academy that Mr. Paine thought I had mistaken it for a primary school.”<\/p>\n
“When Henry Paine was succeeded by Henry Chase”, continued Dr. Mathews, “we were sure Providence, the town, not Divine Providence, had sent us that graduate of Brown. He was a s<\/em>evere disciplinarian, with a heavy hand and a wicked cane. I learned later that he said of me, ‘that boy might come to something if he didn’t have a rich father’. It was the first time I ever heard anyone call my father rich.”<\/p>\n Then Dr. Mathews referred to the founding of Coburn’s rival school. He wrote: “In the later 1830’s was established the Waterville Liberal Institute, which attracted many students who would otherwise have gone to the Academy. At that time Nathaniel Rogers, a nephew of Timothy Boutelle. was the Academy Principal. He didn’t stay long, because in 1841 the trustees of the college gave <\/em>up their control of the school and an independent corporation was set up to manage it. In the fall of 1843 the new trustees persuaded James H. Hanson to become head of the academy.<\/p>\n Everyone now knows the extraordinary, almost magical, transformation that he accomplished. When Dr. Mathews thus wrote in 1879, Dr. Hanson was still Coburn’s principal and would continue in that office until his death in 1892.<\/p>\n And with these references to what one of her distinguished graduates wrote about Coburn 88 years ago, we must say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n Year: 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #743, Broadcast on November 19, 1967<\/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":[752,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755"}],"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=8755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}