DARTMOUTH'S PART IN UPBUILDING PHILLIPS ANDOVER ACADEMY
Dartmouth College was founded too late in the 18th century to allow its graduates to share in establishing our oldest New England academies. Within twenty-five years after its first Commencement, however, the influence of the College upon the development of .these schools, all of which still were in their formative period, became apparent through appointment of some of its graduates as teachers in these academies and the election of one of them as Principal of Phillips Andover Academy in 1794. Throughout the 19th century while the College was making a notable contribution to secondary education in other parts of the country through the large number of its graduates who entered the teaching profession (more than 1000, above one-fourth of the whole number graduating between 1769 and 1869, having taught from one to fifty years each) it had a most important part in upbuilding some of our oldest New England academies and adding to their present prestige. This fact is illustrated in the recently published and very interesting history of "An Old New England School — A History of Phillips Academy, Andover, by Claude M. Fuess," a member of its present faculty.
This school which was opened in 1778 and is the oldest incorporated academy in the country, was founded by graduates of Harvard College, the three Phillips brothers, one of whom also established Phillips Exeter Academy, which was opened in 1783. Despite this circumstance and other natural relations which always have tended to make Phillips Andover Academy in large measure a preparatory school for Harvard or Yale this History, which covers the period 1778-1901, discovers the following facts: that several of its trustees who have most clearly shaped its policy since the death of the last of its founders in 1804, four out of its seven Principals, whose aggregate term of service was 81 years out of the 122 years under review, and a considerable number of its assistant teachers since 1793 were graduates of Dartmouth College.
The large service which it thus appears Dartmouth graduates have rendered in upbuilding this great preparatory school seems to deserve a more detailed statement.
Upon the board of trustees of the Academy four Dartmouth graduates, Newman, Johnson, Taylor and Bancroft, served ex-officio, while Principal and the last two apparently determined the policy of the board for 62 years. Other Dartmouth graduates who have been influential trustees are the following: Rev. Daniel Dana of Newburyport, (D. C. 1788). President of Dartmouth College. 1820-21, who served on the board for 52 years, 1804-56; Samuel Fletcher, Esq. of Concord, N. H. (D. C. 1810) who was member of the board for 19 years, 1839-58, and also treasurer of the Academy from 1841 to '50; John Aiken, Esq., of Lowell. (D. C. 1819) was a trustee 19 years, 1844-63, and President of the Board, 1853-7; Rev. Joshua W. Well-man of Maiden, (D. C. 1846) held the office of trustee for 30 years, 1870-1900.
Upon the resignation in 1786 of the first Principal of the Academv, Eliphelet Pearson, (Harvard 1773), Caleb Bingham, (D. C. 1782) who was Preceptor of More's Indian Charity School, 1782-83, acted as Principal of the Academy for two months, but his strength proved unequal to the duties of the office.
The third Principal of the Academy, succeeding: Ebenezer Pemberton, (Princeton 1765) was Mark Newman, (D. C. 1793) who having served as one of its assistant teachers the year following his graduation was elected Principal in 1794. Although entering upon this office with scant preparation for its difficult duties and proving so lax a disciplinarian that his administration is described as a period of decline, he appears to have held the respect and esteem of the Trustees as a man. Upon his resignation as Principal in 1809 which vacated his office as trustee, he was reelected a trustee and made clerk of the board, a position which he held till 1836, thus completing a term of service for the Academy in different offices of 43 years.
The fifth Principal of the Academy, succeeding John Adams (Yale 1795), and the first of its own graduates to hold that position, was Osgood Johnson, (D. C. 1828), who after serving as tutor in Dartmouth for one year and as assistant in this Academy for three years, was elected its Principal in 1833. A growing scholar, a remarkable teacher, and a wise disciplinarian, his most promising administration of the Academy was cut short by his failing health which compelled his resignation in 1837, a few months before his death.
The sixth Principal of the Academy was Samuel Harvey Taylor, (D. C. 1832) who became one of New England's most famous teachers. After serving one year as assistant in the Academy under Johnson and another as tutor in Dartmouth College, Dr. Taylor was elected Principal in 1837 and held that position for 34 years, until his death in 1871. Albeit during his life and even today opinions differ widely about "Uncle Sam," as he was familiarly called by Andover boys, his educational ideals and his methods of discipline which were those of the English school-master of the old type, all agree that his administration was masterful and that under it Phillips Andover Academy had a remarkable expansion. He was admittedly "the ruler" both of its pupils and its trustees for a whole generation and his remarkable gifts as a teacher added much to the prestige of the school. At his death in 1871 it was no longer a distinctively New England school, but, as its historian says, it "had grown to be a great American school, reaching into the Far West and South and even to foreign countries for its scholars."
The eighth Principal of the Academy, succeeding Frederick W. Tilton, (Harvard 1862) was Cecil F. P. Bancroft, (D. C. 1860), who had been for a short time an assistant under Dr. Taylor and at the time of his election was a student in the University of Halle. His administration of the school, beginning in 1873, continued for twenty-eight years, till his death in 1901. Taking the office of Principal at a time when many social and economic changes throughout the country were uniting to demand some radical changes in all our educational institutions, Dr. Bancroft had the discernment to see what was needed to adapt the Academy to serve the new era, the breadth to shape a wise policy for it and the progressiveness and tact to carry it into effect seasonably. He thus proved himself an educational leader, and the period of his administration was marked by the reconstruction of the Academy. The methods by which he gave effect to his policy involved (1) bringing the school into harmony and cooperation with the Colleges and Scientific schools, which required an extension of its course of study from three to four years and a series of changes in its curriculum, methods of study and discipline; (2) granting to members of its Faculty, who often had been "mere birds of passage," a fixed tenure of office and salaries which tended to make it a permanent body of experienced teachers and admitting them to a definite and responsible share in the administration of the school; (3) renewing and enlarging the buildings and equipment of the school and initiating the movement of its Alumni and other friends to secure its permanent and adequate endowment. The reconstruction of the Academy thus wrought by Dr. Bancroft with the large help of an exceptionally able and loyal group of assistant teachers whom he gathered about him greatly enlarged its efficiency and added to its prestige. During his administration the number of assistant teachers rose from eight to twenty-two and the enrollment of students from two hundred and thirty-seven to an average during the last ten years of over four hundred. At its close he left the Academy, as its historian affirms, "a more virile and substantial institution than ever before" and so remodeled as to promise to serve the present generation, as it now is doing under his able successor, as a model preparatory school.
Of the large number of assistant teachers who in varying measure and for longer or shorter periods have shared in the work of the Academy, its historian gives no complete list, but among them appear the names of a considerable number of Dartmouth graduates. These include such distinguished teachers as Abner J. Phipps, (D. C. 1838) later Secretary of the Mass. Board of Education; Charles A. Aiken, (D. C. 1846) afterward Professor of Latin at Dartmouth and later holding a chair in the Theological Seminary at Princeton; Charles A. Young, (D. C. 1853) sometime Professor of Astronomy at Dartmouth and then at Princeton; Isaac Bridgeman, (D. C. 1856) long Headmaster of a private school in Syracuse, N. Y.; Albert C. Perkins, (D. C. 1859), who became Principal of Phillips Exeter Academy and later of Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn, N. Y.; John C. Proctor, (D. C. 1864) afterwards Professor of Greek at Dartmouth; and Matthew S. McCurdy (D. C. 1873), who, appointed instructor in Mathematics in 1873, still holds that position and now is completing his forty-fifth year of continuous service, a record unequalled by any other teacher in the history of the Academy.
At the Dartmouth Centennial in 1869 Dr. Samuel Harvey Taylor delivered an address upon the Relation of the College to Education, in the course of which he attempted to appraise its influence upon the secondary schools of New England. That task, confessedly difficult, was performed with such modesty, he then being Principal of Phillips Andover Academy, that neither it nor the famous teachers, with a single exception, who had helped to shape it and given it prestige were so much as named. If at the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the College in 1919, any re-appraisal of its influence upon secondary education shall be undertaken, it would seem fitting that distinct recognition be given to the large part which Dartmouth graduates serving as its trustees, principals and assistant teachers have had in up-building this old and now national and famous school
THE DARTMOUTH UNIT WITH THE AMERICAN AMBULANCE SERVICE
