THE GIFTED CROSBYS
Oldest Dorm Bears Name of Famous Hanover Family
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY at Hanover in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was curiously different from that of the present day. The institution was small—perhaps thirty families made up the role of those associated with it. These families lived in close contact, each of them in possession of a house which would be deemed large by present standards, with well kept gardens upon which a goodly portion of the family livelihood depended. The community was closely knit, everyone knew the doings of everyone else and each took a lively interest in the affairs of the others.
Incomes seem to us to have been small, but living, in some senses restricted, in others was on a suprisingly spacious scale. Certainly it was marked by a very considerable degree of formality and adherence to convention. Certain taboos were inflexibly enforced. Church attendance, not only on Sunday, but very largely at week day services, was practically compulsory, and any deviation from rigid orthodoxy became at once a public scandal. Attire, both for men and women (at least when these persons appeared in public), was in accord with conservative prevailing custom. Social intercourse, while there was much that was informal, in general was subject to fixed convention, deviations from which were regarded with high disfavor. Certain things definitely could not be done—such, for instance, as a variety of types of domestic labor by the mistress of the house, who, by custom, was practically required to employ a servant or servants—in those happy days available in abundance at a very moderate compensation.
While family letters of the period, which the writer has come across from one source or another, indicate that, as in all human society, friction, envy, dislike, even some degree of malice were not absent from this miniature society, on the whole the picture, although somewhat set, has its attractive features. Although the social forms in vogue may appear to us as stiff and unbending, life in faculty circles was marked, in general, by a community of interest, sincere friendliness, genuine helpfulness and, most of all, by an elevated and intellectual point of view. In those days Hanover must have been a pleasant and often stimulating place in which to pass one's life.
In the period roughly from 1835 to 1880 a dominating position in the society thus described was held by the Crosby family. It sprang from Dr. Asa Crosby, 1765-1836, educated as a physician by the prevailing apprentice system of the day, who practiced his profession successfully for a long lifetime in towns in the central part of New Hampshire Moultonborough, Sandwich, Gilmanton. By his two wives he was blessed with seventeen children, of whom eleven (seven boys and four girls) lived to mature years. Of the sons three became physicians, one a lawyer and one a teacher, all five of whom received degrees from Dartmouth College. Two of the daughters married physicians. Upon retirement from active practice in 1833 Dr. Asa came to Hanover to pass his remaining years. As a home he bought the house, dating from 1810, on the corner of Elm and College Streets. The structure was subsequently occupied in succession by his two sons. Professor Alpheus and Dr. Thomas and, upon the death of the latter, by his widow. It thus remained in the possession of the family until 1897. At that time it was acquired by the College and used under the name of the Elm House, first as a dormitory and then for faculty apartments. Upon the erection of the Baker Library it was moved to East Wheelock Street, where it is now owned by Professor Sidney H. Cox.
Three of Dr. Asa's sons were connected in an official capacity with Dartmouth. The first, in point of time, was Professor Alpheus, 1810-1874. As a child Alpheus was an infant prodigy, acquiring learning with astonishing rapidity and with no apparent effort, although he was no prig and always an active participant in the normal sports and other interests of the boys of his time. At the age oi gi/2 his father brought him to Hanover, where he passed all the examinations required for admission to college. It was unthinkable that he should enter at this early period, so for three years he marked time—an object of considerable worry to his parents who were in much perplexity as to what to do with him. Finally at the age of 13 he was enrolled with the class of 1827, still wearing the attire and having the general aspect of a child. Despite his juvenility he soon became the most popular member of his class and by far its best student. Upon graduation he served for a year as preceptor of Moor's School and then for three years as college tutor. Subsequently he passed two years in study at the Andover Theological Seminary and in 1833, at the age of 23, was appointed Professor of Latin and Greek in Dartmouth College. Four years later the chair was divided, he ceased to teach Latin and confined his services to instruction in Greek. He was a prolific writer of text books in Greek, Latin and mathematics, and generations of schoolboys must have regarded him with distaste as the author of the Greek grammar most widely used in American schools.
CENTER OF CONTROVERSY
Professor Alpheus, possessed of an independent mind, thereby was involved in one of the two important controversies concerning academic freedom which arose during the administration of President Lord. Sympathetic with Universalism, he did not hesitate to write pamphlets sharply attacking the orthodox Congregationalism of the day. The horrified Trustees demanded his immediate discharge and, in fact, took action depriving him of his chair in 1849. The Professor (possessed of adequate financial means through his wife) was quite willing to resign of his own volition, but protested violently against discharge—the Trustees, not convinced that otherwise they would be rid of him, were determined that his pernicious influence should be terminated by their own action. Thereupon ensued a heated controversy, settled finally by the tactful treatment of President Lord. On the one hand all trustee action was rescinded; on the other the Professor resigned. Thereupon at the ripe age of 3g he was appointed Professor Emeritus. Subsequently he became head of the Salem Normal School and was effective in building up that institution.
Dr. Thomas Russell Crosby, 1816-1872, was possessed of a precocity similar to that of his brother Alpheus, but his early efforts were impeded and his progress delayed by ill health. First he studied medicine under his father and his brother Dixi, for a time he then turned his attention to theology, but finally came to the mysterious conclusion that the life of a physician would make fewer demands upon one in frail health than that of the minister. Whereupon he entered Dartmouth in the class of 1841, at the same time attending the medical lectures, so that he received his academic and medical degrees in the same year. He entered practice with his brother Dr. Asa at Manchester and continued with reasonable success. His interests extended far beyond his profession, particularly in the direction of agriculture, and he became the editor of the first farm paper in New Hampshire.
In 1850 he fell a victim to lead poisoning from drinking water and returned to Hanover in despair, apparently a doomed man. By a careful regime, however, he survived and was even able to take on a limited medical practice and to teach in Norwich University. Despite his ill health, at the outbreak of the Civil War he volunteered his services and was placed as Major in charge of the Columbian Military Hospital in Washington. He remained in that position for the duration of the struggle. There he is said to have performed \more operations than any other surgeon in the Federal service. At the conclusion of the war he became Professor of General and Military Surgery in the National Medical College, returning to Hanover in 1870 as Professor of Animal and Vegetable Physiology in the Agricultural College and Professor of Natural History in Dartmouth. He was a man of wide scientific information and interests, one of the seven founders and first president of the Dartmouth Scientific Association—now the oldest of such organizations among American colleges. Continually subject to ill health, he died in 1872.
The most important of the three Crosby brothers in Hanover was unquestionably Dr. Dixi, 1800-1873. Early in life he was destined for mercantile pursuits, but, finding this calling distasteful, he began the study of medicine under the tutelage of his father. Even at that early date he showed qualities of resourcefulness, courage and energy which promised for him a successful career, although some of this resourcefulness, in the form of grave-snatching (almost indispensable at this time if the study of anatomy was to be successfully prosecuted) brought the whole Crosby family into sharp disrepute in all the region around. He received no academic training, but was graduated from the Dartmouth Medical School in 1824. For a number of years he practiced in Gilmanton and Laconia but in 1838 he was called to succeed Dr. Reuben D. Muzzey as Professor of Surgery at Dartmouth. The remainder of his life was spent at Hanover, where, in some sense, he was regarded as the head of the medical profession of the state. He was a bold and successful operator, original in his conceptions and his technique. He devised a new method for reducing metacarpo-phalangel dislocations (in English, a dislocated thumb), he was the first in America to remove the arm, scapula and most of the clavicle at a single operation, and the first to open an abscess of the hip joint. There was no variety of surgery,.as then practiced, which he did not carry out and he always kept abreast of the times. As a lecturer he was clear, dignified and incisive. An imposing personality, in social intercourse he was genial and sympathetic. His interests were wide, particularly in music and in nature study. In the long rides, indispensable in the career of the surgeon and consultant of the day, he found ever renewed joy in the varying aspects of the scene. A resident of Hanover for 35 years, in all that time no personality in the community was better liked and more esteemed than Dr. Dixi.
The family tradition was continued with Dr. Dixi's son. Dr. Alpheus Benning Crosby, 1832-1877, always known as "Dr. Ben." Of mental capacity characteristic of the family, his personality, although different from that of his father, was equally attractive. Reared in the medical tradition, even as a boy he accompanied the older doctor on his rounds, learning by practical experience. With the advent of anesthesia (warmly welcomed and quickly applied by Dr. Dixi) he was early intrusted with the administration of anesthetics in the operations conducted by his father. A graduate of the College in the class of 1853, he received his medical degree in 1856. In the early part of the Civil War he served as an army surgeon and is said to have been the first to install a military hospital on the pavilion system. Returning to Hanover he became Adjunct Professor of Surgery in 1862 and succeeded his father as Professor in 1869. His reputation became such that he was in demand in other medical schools, eventually holding professorships simultaneously in no less than five of them. In the latter part of his life his principal residence was New York, where he was regarded as in the first ranks of the surgeons of the city. He made a practice, however, of returning to Hanover in the summer for the duration of the college medical term.
High as was his reputation as a surgeon, it was equalled by his fame as a lecturer and particularly as an occasional and after-dinner speaker. In the New York of Evarts, Depew and Choate he yielded the palm to none in timely and felicitous utterance. His principal fault seems to have been an utter incapacity to say "no" when called upon for service either in his profession or outside it. As a result he literally wore himself out with his manifold efforts, dying in Hanover in 1877 at the early age of 45 years.
Dr. Ben's two sons, Dixi, 1869-1900, and William Pierce, 1874-1914, were both physicians and both graduates of the Dartmouth Medical School. The latter, for a time practiced in Hanover. The only representative of the family now residing in the community is the widow of Dr. Pierce, who, since the death of her husband, has made Hanover her home.
When the elder Dr. Dixi came to Hanover in 1838 he purchased the residence of his predecessor, Dr. Muzzey—a brick house on Main Street, built originally in 1810 by Professor Zephaniah Swift Moore, afterwards President successively of Williams and Amherst. The attractiveness of the house, as it originally was, is shown by the accompanying illustration. In 1884 the house was acquired by the College at an expense of §6,012. For a time it was used as a faculty apartment, but in 1896, in pursuance of the policy of Dr. Tucker to provide proper dormitory facilities, it was converted to that purpose. While the outer Avails of the structure were preserved, otherwise it was completely changed, both in its external and internal aspects and it was also greatly enlarged. It was thus made to accommodate 64 students. It is now the oldest of the dormitories in actual use, and while its facilities are not so modern as those of more recent buildings and while its construction is not fire-resisting, its large and airy apartments are perhaps the most attractive of any 011 the campus. It is now valued on the college books at $20,000.
While the Crosby House does not by its name commemorate a donor to the institution, as do most of the college buildings, the Crosby family is not unrepresented among the benefactors of Dartmouth. The gift of §49,540 made in 1905 by Stephen M. Crosby, 1849, son of 'he lawyer, Nathan Crosby, 1820, and grandson of Dr. Asa, as a part of the subscription for the establishment of Webster Hall, was the donation which completed that subscription and which made possible the erection of the building.
THE CROSBY HOUSE, left, as it appeared in the middle of the 1 9th century when it was the home of Dr. Dixi Crosby, one of the leading New Hampshire doctors at that time; and, right, Crosby Hall as it appears today in its role of a Dartmouth civilian dormitory.
