Dan'l Adams, 1797
Author of ' Arithmetic" Used for Half a Century, This Versatile Doctor Was the Complete Yankee
ON October 28, 1861 Horace Greeley wrote a friendly epistle on the letterhead of the New York Tribune, to the aging Daniel Adams, Esq. of Keene, N. H. Referring to his own early study of mathematics, he said:
"To me Arithmetic came very easily, li seemed all implied in the multiplication table. Yet when I came to Cube Root, I was brought to a dead stand—l did not understand why we,should form the divisor in the way prescribed in the bookstill your blocks or demonstrations helped me to the reason. I am sure others must have shared my difficulty and its relief by you."
The recipient of this letter was, at the age of nearly ninety, working on his last revision of the well-known Adams Arithmetic which he had first published in ) 801. Dr. Dan'l Adams (Dartmouth 1797) was a descendant of the Henry Adams who was born in Barton St. David, Somersetshire, England, in 1583, and who migrated in 1638 to Massachusetts. Of this Henry's seven sons, Joseph Was the ancestor of Samuel Adams of Revolutionary fame, and of Presidents John and John Qukicy. It was from the seventh son, John, that Dr. Dan'l was descended.
Dan'l was born in Townsend, Mass., September 29, 1773, subject of George III, son of Deacon Daniel Adams and his wife Lydia Taylor. Of his boyhood little is known. The story of his life must be pieced together from a couple of New England town histories, a college note-book, a pile of yellowed letters, a sheaf of obscure newspaper notices, a shelf of long-outdated school text-books, a priceless Phi Beta Kappa Key dated 1797 and worn almost paper-thin by dangling at the watch-chains of his clerical and academic descendants, a beautiful Hepplewhite sideboard, and a striking portrait by Ethan Allen Greenwood dated 1813. Although apparently little known to or noted by historians of the last century, his story presents an interest- ing picture of a typical Yankee whose wideranging mind, insatiable curiosity, and indefatigable industry made it possible for him to combine, with at least a moderate degree of success, the professions of teacher, writer, physician, farmer and public servant.
In 1790 Dan'l began his preparation for college at New Ipswich Academy. In those days academy and college terms were so arranged that students might be released for considerable periods in the winter to serve as teachers in the district schools and for a month or so in the summer to help at home with the peak load of the haying. His early experience with the lack of adequate text-books at the elementary level was largely responsible for his life-long preoccupation with that need. After three vears of alternate teaching and study, Dan'l set out for Dartmouth College in 1793 on horseback. "Eat the horse" were, according to family tradition, his father's parting words. The Yankee freshman doubtless sold the horse for enough to furnish board (at a dollar a week) for at least his first year. The frugality of life at Dartmouth in those days may have something to do with the chief essay in his college note-book, which deals at length with "The Perils of Luxury."
Dan'l graduated from Dartmouth in 1797, wearing the silver medal of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and bearing home an ornate diploma (now in the Dartmouth archives) as witness to his scholarly attainments. In the spring of 1798 he entered the second class in the Dartmouth Medical School, graduating in 1799.
That autumn he settled in Leominster, Mass., where he was to practice medicine for the next six years. In his spare time he served as editor of the local newspaper, The Telescope, and began work on material for his school arithmetic, the need for which had become so clearly apparent to him in his interludes as a teacher in district schools. He kept up his reading on the history of medicine, and on February 22 delivered the memorial address on Washington's Birthday.
EARLY ADVOCATE OF VACCINATION
On August 17, 1800, Dan'l married Nancy, daughter of Isaac Mulliken of Townsend, a surgeon in the Continental Army in 1775. A few months later he was the first in his area to contract with Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Cambridge for the exclusive use of the new process of vaccination against smallpox. This took courage, for in Boston the Anti-Vaccination Society, formed in 1798 by physicians and clergymen, was demanding the suppression of vaccination as "bidding defiance to Heaven itself, even to the will of God."
In October 1801 Nancy presented Dan'l with a son, Darwin. In the same year Dan'l launched the first edition of his Arithmetic, pioneering a new idea in teaching, a book which in successive revisions was to be used in the schools of the eastern United States for more than half a century. In 1802, while continuing his medical practice, Dr. Dan'l published a second edition of the Arithmetic, and in 1803 turned his attention to the teaching of English, publishing two text-books, an elementary grammar entitled The Thorough Scholar, and TheUnderstanding Reader, which was to run through ten editions.
After six years of busy life as editor, occasional orator, and publisher of school text-books, Dr. Dan'l moved to Boston in the autumn of 1805. Here, as in Leominster, he added other interests to his medical practice. In January 1806 he began the publication of a periodical known as TheMedical and Agricultural Register, which in two years attained a circulation of 4,000, said to be one of the first agricultural journals published in the United States. This was another important pioneering venture, facilitating exchange of experimental data and observation among both physicians and farmers in the New England area. Meanwhile the Doctor's growing reputation as a writer of school books led to a new phase of hie career, for he was invited to head a private school for boys, a task which, in addition to a growing medical practice, fully occupied his time for the next six years. It is not surprising that this double burden led to impaired health, with the result that he left Boston in 1813 and settled in the small farming community of Mont Vernon, N. H., where he was to spend over thirty years as physician, gentleman farmer, writer of school-books, and holder of numerous public offices.
WROTE SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY
His life-long interest in public school education led to the publication of a School Geography (1814) which ran through eleven editions and is probably the only book of its kind to list Monadnock and Moose among the famous mountains of the world! There followed an Agricultural Reader (1824), the NewArithmetic (1827) and the MonitorialReader (1839). The New Arithmetic was used in U. S. schools for years, found its way to Canada, and via missionary schools to Greece.
A second son was born in 1814. named Daniel Lucius, who was to attend Amherst and graduate from Yale. The first son, Darwin, graduated from Dartmouth in 1824, and from Bangor Theological Seminary in 1827.
During his "retirement" at Mont Vernon the versatile doctor served (1815) on a reorganization committee of the New Hampshire Medical Society. For ten years he was a member of the local school board. He served at least one term as town clerk, and two as state senator. He was twice elected President of the New Hampshire Medical Society, and served two terms as President of the Hillsborough Agricultural Society, making an address each year at the annual Cattle Show and Fair. He led the village choir for many years, and was long President of the New Hampshire Bible Society. He was an ardent advocate of the rapidly growing temperance movement, and spoke from time to time on its behalf in a dozen neighboring communities.
A MAN OF MANY INTERESTS
These varied activities did not prevent him from supervising a half-interest in the village store, carrying on medical practice, and conducting farming operations on a considerable scale. Detailed account books covering his practice and his farm are extant for the entire period, including an accurate record of the yield of each haycocks field, and the location of every load of hay stored in his barns. But his restless and curious mind was always busy. In one letter he requests Daniel L. (at Yale) to find out for him all he can about how to make Lucifer matches, and to see whether silk can be woven in any Connecticut textile mill. On his rocky New England acres he has been experimenting with the culture of silk worms, and has actually succeeded in raising 700 cocoons. He was also the inventor of the hay-cap later widely used on New England farms to protect the haycocks from sudden showers. And as if this were not enough, he is watching with the greatest interest the advent of rail transportation in New England and (1842) promptly invests in "shares in the Concord Railroad."
But the years were taking their toll. In 1846 he gave up farm and practice, and moved to Keene, N. H., where he was to spend the rest of his life in revision of the Arithmetic, private tutoring in medicine, and supervision of his modest but productive investments in rails and real estate. On July 28, 1847, he attended the fiftieth reunion of his college class. In 1851 his wife died. This active man of 79 notes the death of the Duke of Wellington and of Daniel Webster, his junior by three years. As his contemporaries pass from the scene, his diary shows an increasing awareness that the sands of time are running out for him. The summary of his expenses for the year 1852 shows new purchases of railroad stock. His dividends, interest, and book royalties show an income of better than two thousand dollars. In 1854 he held a one-sixteenth interest in "the ship Rich'd Cobden." In 1857 he is reading on astronomy, medical discovery, politics, and foreign missions, and is further revising the Arithmetic—at the age of 84. Two years later this revision was completed, his grandson (age ten) reading proof for him for the remuneration of three cents an hour. In iB6O he is busy composing a highpressure advertising circular to be issued at his own expense because his cautious publishers hesitate at such a novel type of promotion. At 87 the Doctor is facing westward, but nevertheless preparing to sign a 14-year contract for the publication of a "new and improved" Arithmetic. The Greeley letter cheered him in this task. Letters from friends console him in the loss of his hearing—he can no longer hear the ticking of the clock, or the Church bells.
The last letters extant (1863) refer with satisfaction to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and regretfully to his own failing health—"my last day will soon come. It is not far from any one of us." The day came in 1864, bringing to a close the humble but useful career of a New England Yankee and a Dartmouth man whose life spanned the years from the Revolution to the Civil War.
DAN'L ADAMS, whose many activities now seem almost fantastic, as painted by Greenwood, 1813.
The author, who is head of the Department of the History and Literature of the Bible at Mt. Holyoke College, is the great-great-grandson of Dan'l Adams. Member of a Dartmouth family that goes back to the earliest years of the College, he is the great-grandson of Darwin Adams, 1824; the son of Charles Darwin Adams '77, Lawrence Professor of Greek at Dartmouth from 1893 to 1927; and the brother of Robert E. Adams '17. Dartmouth awarded him the honorary D.D. degree in 1932.
