DARTMOUTH COLLEGE AND THE CLASS OF 1841

The class of 1841 at Dartmouth College consisted of seventy-four Freshmen in 1837, of whom six left college before graduation. Ten were added to the class and seventy-eight graduated at Commencement in 1841.

The catalogue of 1837-8 contained twenty-four pages, with two hundred thirty-one students in the academic department, forty-two Seniors, fifty-seven Juniors, fifty-eight Sophomores, and seventy-four Freshmen. Fifty in this class were from New Hampshire, twenty-one from Massachusetts, four from Vermont, two from Maine, and one from New York. The catalogue of 1907 has three hundred forty-seven pages, with eleven hundred thirty-seven students in the academic department.

Thirteen became ministers, sixteen lawyers, twenty-one doctors, twelve teachers, three civil engineers, one editor, and the others engaged for a short time in teaching and for the most of their lives in business. It was expected that every college graduate at that time would enter one of the "learned professions," so called, and it was considered unnecessary and a waste of time to obtain a college education for mercantile, manufacturing, or other business outside of the professions.

The average age at graduation was twenty-four years. Two were seventeen, four nineteen, seven twenty-seven, five twenty-eight, one thirty, and one thirty-one years of age. Four of the class survive: Rev. Timothy F. Clary, Mattapan, Mass., Samuel Flagg, M.D., Worcester, Mass., John C. C. Hoskins, Sioux City, lowa, and myself; and reckoning these four at ninety years of age each, the average life is sixty years. Five died within five years after graduation. Twenty-five died in Massachusetts, fifteen in New Hampshire, five in Vermont, six in New York, four in California, one in Mexico, one in Washington, D. C., and seventeen in each of seventeen other states.

As one now looks upon the campus and the buildings about it he finds Dartmouth, Wentworth, and Thornton, the village church and the two houses east of it, and the old Shurtleff house on the west of the campus the same in appearance as in 1837, but the rest is changed.

The faculty consisted of Nathaniel Lord, President; Charles B. Haddock, Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory; Alpheus Crosby, Professor of the Greek Language and Literature; Ira Young, Professor of Mineralogy and Geology; Edwin D. Sanborn, Professor of Latin and Literature; James T. McCollom and Edward R. Peaslee, Tutors in Greek, Latin and Mathematics.

Commencement was on the last Wednesday of July, and vacations were four weeks from Commencement, fourteen weeks from the twenty-fifth of November, and two weeks in May. Nearly every student during these and succeeding years taught district schools for three or four months during the winter.

The principal studies during our four years were Latin and Greek, Algebra and Geometry. An opportunity was given to the very few students who attended the winter term of seven weeks to study French and some natural science, but with this exception no attention was given to modern languages or history, and very little to the natural sciences. There was no studying or teaching of the English language except that during the sophomore and junior years, students were required to write two or three compositions each year and send them to the professor, and these were returned with marks of correction. During the senior year each student was required to deliver an original oration in the Dartmouth Chapel before the College on Wednesday afternoon.

Tuition was then $27.00 per year, average room rent $7. 50 per year, board from $1.00 to $1.50 per week, and expenses for the whole year as estimated in the catalogue of 1837 were $95.74.

The college societies were the Social Friends and the Literary Fraternity, and the students were divided equally between them. Each society owned a library of a few thousand volumes, and each class at the time of graduation was accustomed to present to the libraries books amounting in value to from $100.00 to $500.00. The Phi Beta Kappa was then in existence, to which one third of the class were elected at the beginning of the senior year. The test for admission was not limited to scholarship. Ability as seen in debate, orations. or leadership counted more than scholarship.

It was understood that students were marked by the professor at each recitation, and that a record was kept of their scholarship, but I do not believe that any student was obliged to leave college on account of poor scholarship if he attended morning and evening prayers and church, so as to escape the black marks' of the monitor, and if he behaved fairly well.

Appointments for Commencement were not made for scholarship, but each student was required to prepare an essay, and from these perhaps ten or twelve were selected to be delivered on Commencement Day.

I think the student who is well fitted for college in the best high and preparatory schools today is better educated and better prepared tor a professional or business life than the graduates of college from 1837 to 1841.

Teaching had not then become a profession. There was no systematic teaching as today in the preparatory schools, the colleges, or the professional schools. A medical student attended two or three courses of lectures at Dartmouth of three months each, and then commenced practice. In law, the student read or pretended to read in an office for three years, without instruction and without system. At the Harvard Law School, Story, Greenleaf, and Sumner were great lawyers, but they were not teachers such as Harvard has today.

As I recall Dartmouth College and its President during the four years from 1837 to 1841, Doctor Lord seems to me like some prophet of the Old Testament. He had wonderful ability in prayer. His prayers seemed like passages from the book of Isaiah. There was a grandeur and sublimity in them each day, and especially on Commencement Day, that surpassed anything of the kind I have ever heard. He was a man of decided ability, of commanding presence, and of a tender and affectionate nature, but he was a product of the time. He managed or governed Dartmouth College under certain fixed rules ordained according to his interpretation of the Bible. "He fully believed in the most radical acceptance of the doctrine that the powers that be are ordained of God. A recognition of this fundamental law guided and governed him daily and hourly through all his life."

I have no recollection of his teaching in any department excepting a biblical exercise on Monday morning. No student, I believe, was under his care who did not have great respect and even reverence for him as a man of genuine ability and honest purpose. In his inaugural he said: "The relations which every individual student sustains to God and to eternity, the methods of Divine administration and the solemnities of eternal retribution should be kept before him in all their significance." His biographer says: "He was suspicious, possibly too suspicious of any intermixture of man's wisdom." The same ideas dominated, I understand, the founders of Harvard, Yale, Amherst, and Williams colleges.

The rules of the College compared with the present were peculiar No student was allowed to play billiards, ten pins, or cards, and if one was detected playing any of these games, he was brought before "President Lord and admonished and entreated to avoid all such dangerous practices. Occasionally a student for misconduct or lack of scholarship was placed "on probation" as it was called, with some country minister, in part as punishment and also to be tutored in such studies as he had failed to meet the college standard.

I think the rigid rules of the College and the watchful care which the President kept to enforce them tended to make some enjoy breaking rules as a sort of experiment or a sort of daring to do things for the fun of it. It was thought fun by younger students to visit Vermont or Lebanon or some distant place in the night and take chickens or turkeys and bring them to the College and cook them in their rooms and so have what they called "a jolly good time" in spite of the rules and commands of the President.

The sermons on Sunday and the exhortations of the President at other times were in sharp contrast with the Sunday vesper addresses for the past twelve years.

College life outside of the work of the classroom was in marked contrast with that of the present. In fact, compared with the present there was no distinct College life. We had baseball by a dozen or more students playing occasionally, and football between two classes on- the campus. Both games without rules and without spectators. We had the Handel and Haydn Musical Association in anthems and psalm tunes. We had two societies, the "Fraters" and the "Socials" with no rivalry, with little or no spirit or interest. We had no athletic field, no intercollegiate contests in football, baseball, tennis, basketball or other games. We had no college songs, no "Wah Who Wah" and other college yells to give rhythmic greeting to the President and others, to arouse enthusiasm in athletic contests, and with college songs to give zest and life to every Commencement dinner and to every assembly of Dartmouth men. We had no Junior Prom, no Class Day, no dramatics, no Greek letter fraternities with their houses and social life.

If the junior class in 1840 had published the Aegis and had sought material from every source as is done bv the veracious and ingenious editors of the present time, they could not have made a book of more than fifty pages, where now is more than two hundred and fifty.

When I recall memories of the class of 1841 and consider the habits, the standing and prospective success of each one, a prediction made at the time of graduation as to success or non-success would have been verified in all instances as to those who were above twenty years, but not as to those under that age.

At the time of graduation the class agreed to meet at Hanover on Commencement Day in three years, and then each tenth year thereafter. A few of us met the third year, a larger number the tenth and twentieth years, and then there was no meeting of any account until the fiftieth year, 1891. In 1891 there were twenty-one of the class living. Fourteen of them met at Commencement, and through a day and most of a night enjoyed a cordial and interesting reunion.

I wish I could give an account of that meeting as it really was and as it has recurred to my mind again and again since 1891. Fourteen old men, the youngest sixty-nine years and the rest more than seventy, after a separation of fifty years, met again, all changed, all different, and yet some characteristics of former days remaining. We went out, boys full of hope, full of expectations and longing for a part in the success of life. We came together sober, sedate old men, who had found the world far different from what college life had given us to expect. Illusions had vanished and realities had made us all what we had become, but what analysis and theory cannot explain.

We had not seen each other, but few of us, for the fifty years, and as we came together and clasped hands, the gray beard and bald heads of some had wrought such changes that at first we could not recognize the person until the voice and the eye revealed the name.

The best part of the meeting after the first greetings was in the afternoon and night session of more than ten hours, when the chairman, taking a list of the seventy-eight members of the class, began with Batchelder, calling each name alphabetically, and then in response the one called, if present, gave a frank account of his past fifty years, his business, his family, positions of honor or trust held, incidents of professional life, and occasionally the changes in his views of life the years had wrought, and if from modesty he failed to tell the whole story, others would add to the narrative. If the person called was not present, then all who had known anything about him would give a full history.

The meeting was one of deep personal feeling, and revealed the lives of the seventy-eight Dartmouth men for fifty years, or to ,the time each had lived, in words, emotions, and memories not possible to be explained and not possible to be understood, except by Dartmouth men after fifty years from graduation. All present without exception were glad they had lived at Dartmouth for four years, and felt devout thankfulness for the kind Providence that had guided them until that day.

There were several surprises. Some had become men of standing, influence, and wealth never dreamed of by the others while in College. Not one had lived so as to cast a shadow on his good name or cause one of us to blush for the fault of his brother.

It was a day and night of much amusement and good cheer, of much pleasure mingled with some sad notes of sorrow for several who had died early after graduation.

Not one of the trustees, professors, or officers in any way connected with the College in 1841 is now living; not one of the graduates of the College in any class prior to 1841, except Sylvester Dana of Concord of the class of 1839, and only four of our class, as before stated, are living.

As we reflect on this, as we look in vain for those who started in life with us or who had lived before us, not one can be found. Does life then seem to be lonesome? Does the world then seem like some "banquet hall deserted?" Not a bit of it! Old friends like old wine may be better than new, but new friends with new lives, with more abundant and better lives, take the place of the old, while the old remain a happy memory. "The change that we have seen has been in the direction of a life far higher and broader and sweeter, more wholesome and more hopeful than of old."

Those of us who have now lived more than four score and ten years into the fourth generation of men, can see the advantage of the present over the preceding generations. The College itself and all who have been students in the College, do not seem to have lived in the dim mysterious past, but contemporaneous with us. As we come into the fourth generation, we realize that every generation, in opportunity and in achievement excels the former. Our knowledge and our sympathy have expanded until the whole world is nearer to us than the people of any other state in our first generation. We can almost say in truth, "The whole boundless universe is ours." Or in the words of John Fiske this idea is better summarized, when he says: "As the railway surpasses the sedan chair, as the telegraph surpasses the carrier pigeon, so the present surpasses the past."

The class of 1841 is midway in the one hundred and thirty-nine years of the College life. Its connection with Dartmouth began sixty-eight years after the organization of the College and seventyone years have since passed. The history and traditions of the College and the lives of its sons are in some part interwoven with our own lives. The four survivors might have known one or more of the graduates of every class since 1771 to the present time. In fact we have seen and known during more than the past eighty years a large number of the graduates who became eminent in business, in the professions, and in statesmanship.

The names of the class are upon the doors of Webster Hall, a memorial from our classmate, John Wyman Jones.. The names themselves will mean nothing to those who may read them, but the spirit that prompted the gift, the memorial itself, will, we trust, touch the hearts of many and lead to other memorials and other gifts from members of classes that have been, and from members of classes that are yet to be.

The survivors of this class feel profound gratitude to the donor and hold his memory in most tender regard for a memorial so enduring and so beautiful. We trust too, that it is an indication of the affection that the sons of Dartmouth have for the College and the affection that each graduate has for all as Dartmouth Brothers.

I would like to give a sketch of each one of the class, but have not sufficient knowledge of them, and besides the space allowed me will not permit, and I therefore shall refer to only a few names.

It is due to John Wyman Jones for the gift of the bronze doors for Webster Hall that a more elaborate sketch be given of him than any other member of the class.

He was born in Enfield, N. H., May 22, 1822, and died at Englewood, N. J., October 27, 1904. He was a successful lawyer in Utica, N. Y., from 1840 to 1858. In 1858 he conceived the idea of laying out a town in New Jersey through which the Northern Railroad was about to pass, and he purchased several hundred acres of land and laid out the town and induced wealthy men from New York to build there, so that this place which he called Englewood became one of the favorite residential neighborhoods of New York. This enterprise of itself gave him wealth sufficient for his life, but he afterwards became president of the St. Joseph's Lead Company in Missouri and devoted thirty years to the development of that corporation and to the building of railroads in connection with it, so that this company became the largest lead producing corporation in the United States. The officers of this corporation after his death entered upon their records this tribute to him: "He not only impressed his personality indelibly on every branch of its organization, but the greatness of his character,, his buoyant hopefulness, his simplicity of manner, his high principles and, above all, his unqualified loyalty to his friends, brought to him a responsive devotion from all who worked with him that was measured only by the depth and breadth of the strong character that called it forth."

Mr. Jones was prominent in the secular and religious life in Englewood, and an active member of the Presbyterian church. In addition to the initial work in Englewood, he also became largely interested in the neighboring towns of Closter and Norwood, the latter of which he established and named.

He was twice married. His first wife was Harriet Dwight Dana of Utica, N. Y.. a sister of Professor Charles D. Dana of Yale College. They left one child surviving them, Dwight Dana Jones, a graduate of Yale, a prominent lawyer in New York and the author of books of law of recognized authority in the courts of New York. His second wife, who survives him, is Mrs. Saloma Hanna Chapin of Cleveland, Ohio, a sister of Mark Hanna.

All things considered, Mr. Jones, as a successful lawyer, business man of the most generous impulses, a helper of his fellowmen and as a leader in all good enterprises, was an honor to his native state and a credit to Dartmouth College.

Being in failing health during the last years of his life he sent to two of his friends interested in the College, money to be used for a memorial to the class of 1841. The form of the gift was left to the judgment of these two friends and the approval of the trustees, with two restrictions; that the memorial exhibit clearly the names of the seventy-eight members of the class and the name of the donor. The design of the bronze doors at the entrance of Webster Hall was furnished by Melzar H. Mosman of Chicopee, Mass., and he has molded them and completed the work satisfactorily and in full accord with his reputation as an artist and worker in bronze memorials.

The doors are thirteen feet high and seven feet wide, surmounted by bronze grill open work. The ornamentations are of the Grecian type of rosettes and moldings, and on the back of the doors are inscribed the names of the class on tablets, and above these, the name of the donor. The doors are so adjusted that when opened these names are clearly presented to the sight.

Henry E. Parker—Was the best scholar in the class and would have received the first appointment at Commencement if the system of appointments had prevailed. He was minister at Concord South Church until the commencement of the Civil War, and was then for a time chaplain in the army and afterwards professor of Latin at Dartmouth until his death in 1896. Dartmouth conferred upon him the degree of D.D. From his first days in College until his death he was the same kind, genial, companionable man and the courtly gentleman. Pie was never great as a preacher, but always interesting and attractive. He was so genuine as a man that he attracted by his personality everyone to him as a friend.

Leonard Swain—Was a minister in Nashua for several years and then from 1852 to the time of his death in 1869 pastor of the Central Church in Providence, R. I., one of the largest and most influential Congregational churches in New England. Doctor Harris, now president of Amherst College, was his successor, and said of him in an address after the death of Mr. Swain; "Doctor Swain was held in almost idolized regard, especially by those who had known him through his entire ministry. Heis able, intense, and at times, eloquent preacher; a man who had the courage of his convictions." Brown University conferred the degree of D.D. upon him in 1857.

Gardner Green Hubbard—Was a leading lawyer in Boston for several years and afterwards for more than thirty years continued the practice of his profession in the United States Court at Washington, D. C. Columbia University in 1888 and Dartmouth in 1894 conferred upon him the degree of LL. D.

One of his daughters became deaf and dumb at the age of eight years, and this led him to investigate "lip reading," or teaching speech to the deaf and dumb, and through his efforts mainly, the deaf and duma school at Northampton, Mass., was established. This daughter married Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone inventor, and Mr. Hubbard became the projector and promoter of the American Bell Telephone Company, organizing the "International," the "Oriental" and other foreign corporations under the Bell patents, and perfecting the telephone service in Russia. In 1876 he was appointed by President Grant as a special commissioner to investigate the subject of railroad mail transportation. He was a member of the Board of Education in Massachusetts, regent of the Smithsonian Institution, vice president of the American Association to promote the teaching of speech to the deaf, and vice president of the American Association of Inventors and Manufacturers, president of the Joint Commission, of the Scientific Societies of Washington, and trustee of Columbia University. Mr. Hubbard accumulated great wealth and occupied high position among government officials and leading men of Washington, D. C.

Thomas R. Crosby—The degree of A.B. and M.D. were both conferred upon him at Commencement in 1841. He practiced medicine in Manchester for several years, was professor of Physiology and Natural History in the Norwich University from 1854 to 1864, was professor in a medical college at Washington from 1866 to 1870 and at the Chandler School at Dartmouth from 1870 to 1872.

J. C. C. Hoskins—There is one event in the life of Mr. Hoskins of such exceptional interest to me as showing the determination of the South to make the issue of the presidential election of 1860 the crucial test of war or peace with the North,and that as early as 1856 they began the reorganization of militia for that purpose, that I venture to insert it here;

Mr. Hoskins says in substance that he located in Virginia in 1850, engaged in his profession of civil engineer, and afterwards married into a Virginia family; that in October, 1856, before the presidential election of that year, while he was the guest of a leading Virginia family, United States Senator Mason visited the family and gave to the head of this family blank commissions signed by the governor with the avowed purpose of reorganizing the militia of that state; that he and Mr. Mason had a long and earnest conversation relating to the political conditions of the country and the questions then under discussion; that Mr. Mason in closing his talk arose from his chair, raised his right arm, and slowly, with great emphasis, said: "Mr. Hoskins, I do not believe that Fremont will be elected, but (shaking his finger), mark my word, when the next election comes the Abolitionists, if permitted, will elect their man, and we must be prepared; we must be ready." - I understood at that time that part of Mr. Mason's business then was to set on foot a reorganization of state militia, and I believed and do still that this reorganization was a part of the preparation of which Mr. Mason in our discussion foretold the necessity.

Mr. Hoskins further said that it became evident to him that he could not live in peace in Virginia on account of the intense Southern feeling against Northern men and in April, 1857, surrendering the lucrative salary of engineer he left Virginia with his wife and located in Sioux City, then almost in the wilderness. From that time to the present he has lived in Sioux City. His profession has been that of a civil engineer, but in addition to this he has for many years been postmaster, and in the civic and financial business of the city has taken an active and leading part.

Daniel Tenney—Was a popular Con- gregational minister and the father of Charles Daniel Tenney, class of 1878, who has taken high rank in educational lines in China.

Moses Charles Richardson—Was a successful practitioner of medicine and the father of Charles Francis Richardson, the distinguished head of the English department in Dartmouth College.

Gilbert Pillsbury—Was one of the oldest members of the class, and one of the fifty-two students who left Phillips Andover Academy in 1836 because the faculty would not allow them to organize an anti-slavery society. The admission of Thomas Paul, a colored man, to the class, made Dartmouth conspicuous as favoring the anti-slavery sentiment of the time,' and this drew Pillsbury and many other New England young men. It was reported at the time that Paul had been refused admission to other colleges on account of his color.

Gilbert Pillsbury was a brother of Parker Pillsbury, celebrated as an antislavery public speaker, and of Josiah W. Pillsbury who graduated in 1840. Until about 1863 he was engaged in teaching, and then served as commissioner of the "Freedmen's Bureau" at Hilton Head, South Carolina, until 1865, when he took an active part as a member of the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, and was the first- mayor of Charlestown after the Civil War. As mayor of Charlestown he introduced many changes which were of great advantage to the city, so that his name is to this day held in high esteem by those who have investigated the history of his administration.

Edward Webster—Son of Daniel Webster, was a major in the Mexican War, and died in Mexico in 1848.

Joseph E. Hood—Deserves more than a passing notice. He was twenty-six years of age at graduation. He' had learned the printer's trade before entering College and supported himself at his trade during the college course. He was chairman of the Board of Editors of the Dartmouth. The articles written by him and published during the year are well worth reading today. In this connection I might say that the Dartmouth was a magazine commencing in the class of 1840, and was published by the class of 1841 under the direction of six of the class, viz: Hood, Cross, Tenney, Dinsmore, Verback, and Pills, bury, elected as editors. As I read the Dartmouth published that year and compare it with the publications at Dartmouth College today, I find the same evidence of improvement as in every department of the College.

He was one of the principal editors of the Springfield Republican, and after his death Mr. Bowles, the publisher of the Republican,, said of him: "Mr. Hood was a born editor and early found his vocation. From 1855 to 1869 he held a leading position in the editorial department of this paper. For more than a quarter of a century he had been a constant writer upon the weekly and daily press of America, doing a greater amount of first class work than almost any other man who has lived and labored in this generation,—yet only a few of the men and women who daily read and were daily instructed and inspired by his writings on political, social, and religious questions, know to whom they were indebted, or were even aware of his personal existence. His style was admirable,—simple, direct, pure, forcible without being passionate, pungent without being vulgar, often delicately sarcastic and deliciously humorous, never egotistical, never suggesting the writer, always representing the journal, and this is the voice of the people,—he was by nature, by culture, by experience, the model working journalist."

Jesse P. Bancroft—Was a physician at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, for twelve years, superintendent of the New Hampshire Asylum for the insane from 1857 for twenty-five years, and treasurer of the same for thirty-four years. He was the first to advocate detached hospital building construction, and individualism of treatment. He advocated state care of the insane as distinctive from county or almshouse care. He was before committees of the legislature every year while superintendent, urging for new buildings, for new facilities for the institution, and especially state care of dependent insane. His life work, now supplemented by his son Charles continuing in charge for sixteen years past, the asylum has become one of the best of its class. For three years he was lecturer in the Dartmouth College Medical School. By addresses before associations and by articles in medical journals, he made valuable contributions for the treatment of the insane, and these published and circulated have given him a most favorable reputation in this country and in Europe. As we knew him in College, he was through life, a man to be loved and respected.

I would like to speak of Burns in Lancaster, N. H., of Mason in Boston, of Benton in Lawrence, all successful and eminent lawyers, of Russell as physician and superintendent of the asylum at Wincbendon, Mass., of Gordon at Exeter accumulating great wealth and of his contributions to charity, of Dinsmore as lawyer and business man at Sterling, Ill., and his reputation as legislator and leader in politics, of the quiet studious life of Corser at his bachelor farmer home in Boscawen, of the great success as teachers of J. S. Spaulding, Hills, Paul, and Davis, of Kimball as banker and man of affairs at Andover, Mass., of Knapp as bank official, active in church and always a gentleman of culture and refinement, of Hill in Tennessee, Pratt in Great Falls, N. H., Brown in West Newton, Gile in New Bedford, and Flagg in Worcester, Mass., as distinguished physicians. Of Goodhue I have-no information except that in the catalogue he is reported as principal of a Theologcal Seminary, and also lawyer and pastor, and it would seem from this report that he must have combined more varied talent than other members of the class. And of others I would be glad to speak particularly, but their history would be but repetition of many others in like circumstances, as having done well and yet of no great marked success or lack of success.

Something, perhaps, ought to be said of the ten young men connected with the class during part of the four years who did not graduate. They were in College but a short time and I have no distinct recollection of any of them except Cyrus Dickey of Keene.

He was with us three years and died in the fall of 1840. He was a man of marked physical presence. He seemed, in fact, a mature, self-possessed business man and almost out of place as a college student. He was commander of the Dartmouth Phalanx, the College military company, for one or two years. He was every inch a soldier and every inch a noble fellow. He gave promise of leadership in after life, but all too soon left us, before the opportunities in pro- fessional or business life had come to him.

2 Dickey's death was a terrible surprise to us. It was a shock something like the first death in a family that had lived long together. This death of Dickey is the only remembered sad event in my College life.