The History of Dartmouth College Part 35

CHAPTER XXIX.

BENEFACTORS.--TRUSTEES.

From various authentic sources we have the following sketches of Dartmouth's leading benefactors, always excepting the last Royal Governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth, whose care for all the interests of the Province is a matter of enduring record. Of the distinguished person in honor of whom the College was named, the following account, published in 1779, is from "Collins' Peerage":

"William, _the present and Second Earl of Dartmouth_, for his more polite education, traveled through France, Italy, and Germany; and, on his return to England, took the oaths, and his seat in the House of Peers, on May 31, 1754. His Lordship was sworn of His Majesty's Privy Council on July 26, 1765; in August following he was appointed first Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, which he resigned in 1766; in August, 1772, he was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies; and on November 10, 1775, Keeper of the Privy Seal.

"His Lordship married, on January 11, 1755, Frances Catharine, only daughter and heir of Sir Charles Gunter Nicholl, Knight of the Bath; and by her had issue eight sons and one daughter.

"His Lordship is also President of the London Dispensary; Vice-President of the Foundling and Lock Hospitals; Recorder of Litchfield; LL. D., and F. R. S."

The armorial inscription is:

"GAUDET TENTAMINE VIRTUS."

Forbes' Life of Dr. Beattie gives the following interesting paragraph:

"His Majesty (George III.) asked what I thought of my new acquaintance, Lord Dartmouth. I said, there was something in his air and manner which seemed to me not only agreeable, but very enchanting, and that he seemed to me to be one of the best of men; a sentiment in which both their majesties heartily joined. 'They say that Lord Dartmouth is an enthusiast,' said the king, 'but surely he says nothing on the subject of religion but what every one may and ought to say on the subject of religion.'"

Of John Thornton, the devout Episcopalian, the kinsman of Wilberforce, and the most munificent of Dartmouth's early benefactors, almost the sole supporter of the founder for several years, Rev. Thomas Scott, in a memorial "Discourse" says:

"It is worthy of observation, that this friend of mankind, in the exercise of his beneficence, not only contributed his money (which often is done to very little purpose) but he devoted his time and thoughts very much to the same object; doing good was the great business of his life, and may more properly be said to have been his occupation, than even his mercantile engagements, which were uniformly considered as subservient to that n.o.bler design.

"To form and execute plans of usefulness; to superintend, arrange, and improve upon those plans; to lay aside such as did not answer, and to subst.i.tute others; to form acquaintance, and collect intelligence for this purpose; to select proper agents, and to carry on correspondence, in order to ascertain that his bounties were well applied: These and similar concerns were the hourly occupations of his life, and the ends of living, which he proposed to himself; nor did he think that any part of his time was spent either happily or innocently, if it were not some way instrumental, directly or indirectly, to the furtherance of useful designs."

"Abiel Chandler was a native of Concord, N. H. In his childhood his parents removed to Fryeburg, Maine, where he labored on a farm till he was twenty-one years of age. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1806, and spent the next eleven years in teaching at Salem and Newburyport, Ma.s.s. To the good reputation which he had previously gained as a student, he added that of an excellent preceptor. A little later he commenced a mercantile life at Boston. He was of the house of Chandler and Howard, and afterwards Chandler, Howard, and Company, for more than a quarter of a century, when he retired with a fortune. To numerous relatives he made liberal bequests, with great delicacy and judgment. After his legacy to the college, the residue of his property was bequeathed to the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane.

"The origin of Mr. Chandler's endowment of the Scientific School is referable to an incident that occurred to him when a young man at Fryeburg. He fell in company with some students of Dartmouth College, and he was impressed by their superiority to himself. He conceived the purpose of being himself a scholar, and he fulfilled it. When, after a few years of honorable industry as a teacher he became a merchant, he saw himself, though now a scholar, ignorant, to a great extent, of the principles and methods of mercantile life. Whereupon he set himself to a new variety of learning. He gained it, and with it gained a fortune.

But he saw other men around him, in different spheres, suffering as he had done from a similar want of knowledge,--merchants, traders, ship-masters, artisans, farmers, laborers.

"The Chandler School is the ripened fruit of a well-considered purpose to benefit mankind. He had confidence in the importance of his object, the integrity of his aims, and the wisdom of his advisers. He bestowed his charity with a hearty good-will, and left the event with G.o.d."

"_John Conant_ was born in Stowe, Ma.s.s., in 1790. His family descended from the French Huguenots who were driven into England by Louis XIV.

His father was an industrious and successful farmer. In the district school he was taught the merest rudiments of an English education. In after years, by the aid and sympathy of an intelligent and well-educated wife, he fitted himself to write for the public journals, to lecture on temperance and agriculture, and to perform with credit and honor the duties of important official stations, in town and State. His leisure hours were devoted to study. He collected a small private library of choice books in history, biography, and science, and made them the companions of rainy days and winter evenings.

"At the age of twenty-six, he purchased a farm in Jaffrey, under the shadow of 'the great Monadnock,' on which he labored for thirty-five years, and gathered 'a plentiful estate.' This was acc.u.mulated by means of those home-bred virtues, industry, prudence, and economy; for he never, in a single instance, increased his wealth by speculation.

"When the New Hampshire Insane Asylum was occupying the public attention, he contributed liberally to its endowment, and was at one time president of its Board of Trustees, being sole superintendent of the first buildings that were reared.

"Turning his thoughts toward the rising academy at New London, Mr.

Conant proposed to add to its literary and scientific departments an agricultural school. He ascertained, however, that his whole estate would be inadequate to the work, and, after making generous donations to the academy, he turned his attention to the Agricultural College at Hanover.

"In his endowment of this inst.i.tution, along with other things, he has provided a model farm for the college, and founded a scholarship for each town in Cheshire County, twenty-two in all, with an additional one for Jaffrey.

"Mr. Conant was through life a liberal contributor to public enterprises, and a supporter of the gospel, and for twenty years was an active member of the Baptist Church."

Boynton's History of West Point gives the following valuable paragraphs relating to Sylva.n.u.s Thayer, by whose munificence to the cause of education he has laid his Alma Mater and his native town under lasting obligations:

"Brevet-major Sylva.n.u.s Thayer, of the Corps of Engineers, on July 28, 1817, a.s.sumed command as superintendent of the West Point Military Academy, and from this period the commencement of whatever success as an educational inst.i.tution, and whatever reputation the Academy may possess, at home or abroad, for its strict, impartial, salutary, elevating, and disciplinary government, must be dated. Major Thayer was an early graduate of the academy. He had served with distinction in the War of 1812, and had studied the military schools of France, and profited by the opportunity to acquire more complete and just views concerning the management of such an inst.i.tution than were generally entertained by educational and military men of that day. The field before him was uncultivated; the period was one when rare qualifications for position were not considered valueless; and, blessed with health, devotion to the cause, and firmness of purpose, he was permitted to organize a system, and remain sixteen years to perfect its operation.

"Immediately after entering upon his duties, the Cadets were organized into a battalion of two companies, with a colonel of Cadets, an adjutant, and a sergeant-major, for its staff; and within the year he created a 'Commandant of Cadets,' to be an instructor of tactics.

"The division of cla.s.ses into sections, the weekly rendering of cla.s.s reports, showing the daily progress, the system and scale of daily marks, the establishment of relative cla.s.s rank among the members, the publication of the Annual Register, the introduction of the Board of Visitors, the check-book system, the preponderating influence of the 'blackboard,' and the essential parts of the Regulations for the Military Academy, as they stand to this day, are some of the evidences of the indefatigable efforts of Major Thayer to insure method, order, and prosperity to the inst.i.tution. When relieved, at his own request, the upward impetus given to the inst.i.tution had attracted general observation."

General Thayer evidently believed that "peace hath her victories" as well as war, and n.o.bly acted in accordance with his intelligent, earnest convictions.

"Joel Parker was born at Jaffrey, N. H. After studying in the academy at Groton, where the late President James Walker was one of his schoolmates, he entered the Soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s at Dartmouth College in February, 1809, at the early age of thirteen, and graduated in 1811, not yet seventeen years of age. After his graduation he studied law at Keene, and with his brother Edmund at Amherst, and entered the bar of Cheshire County, at the October term in 1817, at the former place, where he at once engaged in practice.

In the year 1821, contemplating a change of residence, he visited the West, and was admitted to practice in the Circuit Court of the United States at Columbus, Ohio, in January, 1822; but, fortunately for his native State, returned in the latter year, and devoted himself a.s.siduously to his chosen pursuit.

Free from domestic cares, affianced only to his profession, he early gained an honorable position by the steady exercise of natural abilities well adapted to its pursuit. He was industrious, thorough, minute, painstaking, cautious, persistent, and untiring. "Judge Parker's mode of practice in the trial of cases," writes an early professional a.s.sociate, who still enjoys a ripe and honored age, "to take down the testimony in full of the witnesses in writing, and to cross-examine them at great length as to all the circ.u.mstances they might know relative to the case, contributed greatly to change the previous practice of the witness' first telling his story of what he knew, followed by a brief cross-examination, with only a few notes, made by the counsel, of the leading points of the testimony."

Of Judge Parker's judicial life in New Hampshire, Charles Sumner, in 1844, wrote: "It will not be unjust to his a.s.sociates to distinguish.

Mr. Chief Justice Parker as ent.i.tled to peculiar honor for his services on the bench. He may be justly regarded as one of the ablest judges of the country."

The event which brought Judge Parker more conspicuously before the public, and undoubtedly contributed justly and largely to give him a wide and established reputation for vigor, independence, learning, and capacity, was his controversy with 14 Mr. Justice Story of the Supreme Court of the United States in regard to the proper construction of a clause--it might even be said the meaning of a word [lien]--in the Bankrupt Law of 1841; a controversy which became political in other hands, and threatened to reach the magnitude of a conflict between the United States and New Hampshire.

After the experiences of this generation, such a collision seems trifling; but it involved subjects of grave importance, and was a contest between no insignificant combatants,--not without interest at this day to a student of common or const.i.tutional law.

It began in 1842, when Story and Parker were each in the full vigor of judicial life, and enthusiastic crowds of young men were learning the science of the law from Story's lips. It ended seven years after, when Story had pa.s.sed away, and Parker was lecturing where Story taught, to young men who now revere the memory of both. He had laid aside the honor and labors of the office which required him to engage in the struggle; and, in the first year of his service as a professor in the school to whose success and reputation Story had so largely contributed, the court which Story had adorned declared the survivor victorious. Like Entellus, he might say,--

"Hic victor cestus artemque repono."

The eminent service rendered to the country and the age, by Judge Parker, while Royall professor of Law at Cambridge, forms a material part of our national history.

Richard Fletcher was a native of Cavendish, Vt. Having graduated at Dartmouth, in 1806, he studied law with Daniel Webster, and commenced practice in Salisbury, N. H. In 1819 he removed to Boston, where he shortly took rank with the very first of legal advocates.

His biographer says: "While in practice before the courts his presence ever commanded the utmost respect. Of good form, of handsome and expressive features, and of most gentlemanly and pleasing address, with his great learning and untiring industry, it is not strange that he should have succeeded at the bar and on the bench.

"He was an orator of great power,--fluent and elegant in diction, bright and sparkling in thought, keen and quick in repartee.

"His care not to be engaged in unworthy causes was a matter of note.

"In political life he found little that suited his tastes, although at different times a member of both the State and National Legislatures.

"Mr. Fletcher was a sincere Christian. His religion was not so much of the aggressive kind, nor did he often urge his views upon others; but it pervaded his entire character, and shone out in all his actions. In his will he made a provision for publishing biennially, a prize essay adapted to impress 'on the minds of all Christians a solemn sense of their duty to exhibit in their G.o.dly lives and conversation the beneficent effects of the religion they profess, and thus increase the efficiency of Christianity in Christian countries, and recommend its acceptance to the heathen portions of the world.'"

Few of Dartmouth's alumni have manifested a more affectionate, steadfast devotion to their Alma Mater, than Mr. Fletcher.

Tappan Wentworth was the son of Isaac Wentworth, of Dover, N. H., and was born there February 24, 1802, and died in Lowell, June 12, 1875.

His father was a poor man, a boatman running a freight-boat between Dover and Portsmouth.

He was sent first to common schools till he reached the cla.s.sical school where he studied Latin in a cla.s.s with the late John K. Young, D.D., Dr. George W. Kittredge, and Hon. John H. White, but was taken from school after having read two books of Virgil. Judge White says: "Tappan was a good scholar, energetic and self-reliant. I was in the Latin cla.s.s with him, and was told by the father that he was too poor to keep him in school." He then spent about three years in Portsmouth, in a North End grocery store.

From Portsmouth he went to South Berwick, Me., into the stores of the late Benjamin Nason and Alphonso Gerrish, successively, as clerk. He there attracted the attention of Hon. William Burleigh, a then member of Congress from York district, by a spirited article he had written in favor of Mr. Burleigh's reelection. Mr. Burleigh now offered to take him as a law student, and the young clerk entered upon the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in York County in 1826. After seven years' successful practice in his profession in South Berwick and Great Falls, he came to Lowell, bringing some seven thousand dollars with him.

He now seemed to form his life plan of work, professionally and financially,--diligence in his profession and all possible investments in real estate. At his death his $7,000 had swollen into nearly $300,000, during his forty-five years of Lowell life.