{"id":2204,"date":"2013-09-23T01:43:36","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T05:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/?p=2204"},"modified":"2014-06-06T22:44:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-07T02:44:59","slug":"the-button-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/the-button-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The Button Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each fall Archivist Rick Teller ’70 speaks to the assembled School on some aspect of Williston Northampton history.\u00a0 The event, popularly known as “the button speech,” only occasionally concerns buttons at all.\u00a0 But this year it did.\u00a0 These remarks were delivered on Friday, September 20, 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Williston Birthplace, ca. 1880. Note the kid on the tricycle! (Click images to enlarge.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Good morning.\u00a0 At solemn occasions … like hockey games … we sing about someone named \u201cSammy.\u201d\u00a0 Our hearts yearn for him … for his campus and geriatric elm.\u00a0 But, you might well ask, about whom do we sing?\u00a0 Just who was \u201cSammy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Samuel Williston was born across the street, in a house located where the Homestead now stands.\u00a0 The house, where Mr. Swanson lives and which we now call \u201cThe Birthplace,\u201d was moved across Park Street in 1843.\u00a0 It is much grander now than it was when Sam arrived.<\/p>\n

That was in 1795.\u00a0 George Washington was President.\u00a0 Easthampton was a small farm village.\u00a0 Samuel\u2019s father, Payson Williston, was the minister in Easthampton\u2019s only church.\u00a0 Payson was a stern, old-fashioned New England preacher, with strong Calvinist leanings.\u00a0 We will get to Calvinism in a minute.\u00a0 The Reverend Mr. Williston\u2019s salary was tiny, and he had a house full of children.\u00a0 He added to his income by planting a few acres of mediocre farmland.\u00a0 That farm is now the heart of our magnificent campus.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Rev. Payson Williston (1763-1856) (Courtesy Emily Williston Memorial Library and Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Young Sam grew up with religion and the work ethic all around him.\u00a0 It may have been an austere childhood, but it was hardly confining.\u00a0 Payson Williston, a Yale graduate, and Samuel\u2019s mother Sarah valued learning and ideas.\u00a0 Early on, Samuel assumed he would follow his father\u2019s footsteps to Yale, and eventually enter the ministry.\u00a0 Admission to Yale, then as now, required an education of substance.\u00a0 That presented a problem.\u00a0 Easthampton had no schools.\u00a0 Sam was taught by his parents, and later by the minister in Southampton, and briefly attended a small academy in Westfield.\u00a0 He gained a decent, if fragmented, education, but it came second to farm work, first, at age 10, at home; later at a nearby farm, where he was able to earn a few dollars for his family.<\/p>\n

At 19, he took advantage of an opportunity to attend Phillips Andover, which offered scholarships to the sons of clergymen.\u00a0 At Andover Samuel lived with a family in the village.\u00a0 To earn his keep he did farm chores \u2014 pitching hay, chopping wood, and so on.\u00a0 His daytime work meant postponing study until after dark.\u00a0 Candles were expensive, so Sam worked by the light of a single whale-oil lamp. It produced more glare than useful light.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Samuel to his parents, January 9, 1815. “My eyes, I think, are some better, but I am unable to attend to my studies in the night.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Samuel had been at Andover for only one term when he became concerned that his eyes were failing.\u00a0 Poor eyesight ran in the family.\u00a0 He consulted doctors, who had no help to offer.\u00a0 That may actually have been a good thing, considering that the medical practice of the day often did more harm than good.\u00a0 It became apparent that he could not continue his studies, so he returned, disillusioned, to Easthampton.<\/p>\n

Before long he was in Springfield learning the storekeeper\u2019s trade with a family friend.\u00a0 Business seemed to suit him.\u00a0 He learned a few things about sales, and hard bargaining, and managing money.\u00a0 Eventually he took a job in New York with another family friend, Arthur Tappan, and continued his hands-on business education.\u00a0 That ended suddenly in 1817, when the economy forced Tappan\u2019s business to close.\u00a0 Sam returned home, still wondering, at age 22, what he might do with his life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Emily Graves Williston (1798-1889) in middle age.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not long after this, he met Emily Graves, the daughter of the minister in Williamsburg, just north of Northampton.\u00a0 Emily was as serious-minded as Samuel.\u00a0 Sam\u2019s father, no fool about these things, brought them together.\u00a0 But in an age when arranged marriages were common, Samuel and Emily just happened to be ideal for one another.\u00a0 They were soon engaged, although the wedding would not take place for another five years.\u00a0 Samuel insisted on achieving some measure of financial security before committing himself to marriage.\u00a0 He scraped together a little money to expand the family farm, and raised sheep where we now play football.\u00a0 Sam saw possibilities in getting in at the start of a New England wool industry, which could compete with expensive British imports.\u00a0 He had also never lost his interest in education, and found that despite his poor eyesight he could teach a little in the winter, when the farm needed less attention.<\/p>\n

In May of 1822 he and Emily were finally married, in a simple farmhouse service in Williamsburg.\u00a0 Emily wore a black silk wedding dress, the first silk garment ever owned by any member of her family.<\/p>\n

The wedding was the beginning of a spectacular partnership.\u00a0 Do you have an image of the submissive nineteenth-century housewife?\u00a0 Not Emily, who was clearly Samuel\u2019s equal in both intellect and will.\u00a0 Sam knew it, and he cherished it.\u00a0 Throughout their long marriage, they would consult one another on every business or charitable venture.\u00a0 More to the point: to save Samuel\u2019s bad eyes, Emily would read to him and frequently wrote for him.\u00a0 She knew virtually everything he did. They would prove to be an ideal combination of a man of vision and a woman of practical means, not without vision of her own.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Ed Hing ’77<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the great success stories of the 19th century begins with the most mundane, insignificant item imaginable. Can you see this?\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s a button.<\/p>\n

In an economy partially based on barter, Emily, like many local women, earned a little extra money with needlework.\u00a0 Her specialty was making fancy cloth-covered buttons, a intricate process in which a circle of cloth was sewn around a wooden disk.\u00a0 She\u2019d learned this from her mother.<\/p>\n

In 1823, the Willistons had a visitor.\u00a0 Emily noticed that on his coat there were buttons of a type she had not seen before.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t resist.\u00a0 In the dead of night, while the rest of the household was asleep, she removed a button from the coat, carefully took it apart, figured out how it was made, reassembled it, and sewed it back on.\u00a0 The guest left the next day, unaware of his role in your history.<\/p>\n

OK, pause.\u00a0 Those of us who attended Williston Academy any time between around 1870 and 1970 cut our teeth on this story.\u00a0 It is part of EMILY WILLISTON, THE LEGEND.\u00a0 One challenge for an historian is to try to separate the good stories from the true ones.\u00a0 Is this one true?\u00a0 Sam Williston used to tell it slightly differently.\u00a0 Joseph Sawyer, who served on the Williston faculty from 1866 to 1919, wrote that he had this version from Emily herself.\u00a0 As one who valued her moral reputation above all else, Emily would not easily have admitted doing something downright sneaky.\u00a0 So in this instance, there appears to be some truth to the tale.<\/p>\n

In any case, Emily practiced making the new button until she felt secure with it and then \u2014 remember the black silk wedding dress? \u2014 she cut it up to make sales samples.\u00a0 Sam offered them to his former New York employer, Arthur Tappan.\u00a0 Tappan\u2019s response was astounding: He offered fifty dollars for 25 gross \u2014 that\u2019s 3600 handmade buttons.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Samuel Williston, aged about 40. (Courtesy Emily Williston Memorial Library and Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fifty bucks may not seem like much to us now, but to Sam and Emily, it was a fortune.\u00a0 Consider: the most his father had ever earned in a year was $300.00, and he was often paid in firewood and chickens.\u00a0 Tappan paid cash!\u00a0 The Willistons worked out a scheme in which local women were employed at home, making buttons to the new design.\u00a0 Samuel and Emily provided materials, instructions, and transportation.\u00a0 Soon over a thousand households between Springfield and Pittsfield were employed in button manufacture.\u00a0 For the first time in their lives, the Willistons were earning real money.\u00a0 It is an early example of the remarkable business team this couple would make: Emily had ideas, and the practical sense to figure out how to do something.\u00a0 Samuel was ambitious, and could sell.<\/p>\n

His talents lay not only in salesmanship, but in an ability to make unusually canny fiscal projections.\u00a0 He was a perceptive market economist at a time when the term had not yet been invented.\u00a0 He could analyze balance sheets and practically predict the future.\u00a0 As the button business grew, he didn\u2019t sit on his cash, but started or invested in other industries, a general store, the railroad, gas lighting, banks, and especially cotton yarn and elastic.\u00a0 He and Emily seemed to be especially lucky, or especially blessed.<\/p>\n

But even as they shared success after success, horror struck.\u00a0 For most of us, the loss of a child is unimaginable.\u00a0 Emily and Samuel had four daughters.\u00a0 Not one of them lived past the age of five years.\u00a0 At a time when antibiotics were unknown, infant mortality was common.\u00a0 But \u2014 all their children?<\/p>\n

With their deeply-held religious beliefs, Emily and Samuel would have turned to God and asked, \u201cWhy?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhat can we do?\u201d\u00a0 And for them, God had an answer: Use what has been granted you to do the Lord\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The first page of Samuel Williston’s contribution record from the mid-1840s, showing large sums to Amherst College and Williston Seminary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Which they did.\u00a0 If there was a worthy cause, Sam and Emily were there.\u00a0 Foreign missions were important to them.\u00a0 The abolition of slavery.\u00a0 Samuel built a new Congregational church for the growing town.\u00a0 When it burned down, he built it again, and a third time after the steeple fell through the roof in a windstorm.\u00a0 The third structure still stands: the white brick church on the corner of Main and Union Streets.\u00a0 Education \u2014 they were passionate about education.\u00a0 Williston money helped get Mount Holyoke College started.\u00a0 When Amherst College neared bankruptcy, Sam bailed them out.\u00a0 The Amherst trustees actually offered to rename the college for him.\u00a0 Sam and Emily, like many Americans in the 1840’s and 50’s, were caught up in the idea that it was the manifest destiny of the United States to expand and develop the western continent.\u00a0 The Willistons, clearly believing that educational institutions were a hallmark of civilized society, subsidized the founding of several colleges on what was then the frontier, including Knox in Illinois, Grinnell in Iowa, and others.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Williston Seminary, 1853, flanked by the First Church, where Payson Williston preached, and the new Payson Church, today the Easthampton Congregational Church.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDoing the Lord\u2019s work.\u201d\u00a0 For many of us, in this secular age, that doesn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 But let\u2019s return, for a moment, to Williston\u2019s Calvinist background.<\/p>\n

Calvinism had deep roots in New England.\u00a0 It was the core of the Puritan faith which had led the first Pilgrim exiles to settle in Plymouth, and which dominated Massachusetts religion and politics during much of the 17th and 18th centuries.\u00a0 As its American version evolved, New England Congregationalism softened its harshest attributes, though not before hanging eighteen innocents during the Salem witch hysteria.\u00a0 It was falling out of fashion by the early 19th century, but for 100 years one of its intellectual homes had been Yale University, which had trained Samuel\u2019s father along with some dozen other Williston uncles and cousins, all highly respected New England clergy.<\/p>\n

Calvinism taught that God had a plan for each of us.\u00a0 Your life was determined before you were born.\u00a0 If you were predestined to be a horse-thief \u2014 well, so be it.\u00a0 If, however, you were one of the elect, one of those whom God had selected to be saved, then Heaven was guaranteed.\u00a0 But, you ask, what about free will?\u00a0 Was there nothing you could do?\u00a0 How depressing!\u00a0 How fatalistic!\u00a0 No wonder the belief was in decline.\u00a0 Samuel Williston\u2019s grandson marveled that \u201c a man . . . should be agonized with fear that he was not one of the elect, and that, irrespective of his conduct, he was fated to eternal damnation,\u00a0 yet such was Mr. Williston\u2019s attitude of mind during a large part of his life.\u201d1<\/sup>\u00a0 One prayed to be among the elect, a recipient of God\u2019s grace.\u00a0 That grace was justified through faith, a faith demonstrated by the way one led one\u2019s life.\u00a0 Now this idea can be interpreted as incredibly arrogant, especially when accompanied by the pose of public piety practiced by the great and would-be-great of the time.<\/p>\n

But this is an over-simplification, and an unfair one.\u00a0 For Calvin\u2019s message was that success was granted by God; that material blessings were gifts meant to be enjoyed \u2013 and especially, shared.\u00a0 Samuel Williston, having started out literally with nothing, was particularly conscious of this obligation.\u00a0 It would drive his actions throughout his life.<\/p>\n

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From the 1st Annual Catalogue of Williston Seminary, 1842.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mindful of his inadequate schooling, Sam proposed a school for Easthampton that would provide two curricula: a Classical Department, in which young men and women could obtain the traditional grounding in Greek and Latin which would prepare them for University and, perhaps, the ministry; and a Scientific Department, in which students who did not plan to go on to college could get a thorough education in engineering, mathematics, surveying \u2014 everything needed to enter the professions necessary to build the young nation\u2019s growing industrial base.\u00a0 This was a radical notion in 1841.\u00a0 One can make a case that Williston Seminary was among America\u2019s first technical high schools.<\/p>\n

On Samuel 46th birthday, June 17, 1841, the cornerstone was laid for the first Williston Seminary building, on a campus situated down on Main Street, where the banks and Big E\u2019s are today. Incidentally, that cornerstone is now embedded in the foundation of Memorial Dormitory.\u00a0 Look for it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to recite the history of the school today.\u00a0 It thrived.\u00a0 There were some rough decades, particularly after Sam was no longer around to pay the bills.\u00a0 But here we are.<\/p>\n

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The first Easthampton button factory, 1848. The building still stands.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And Mr. and Mrs. Williston \u2014 they thrived, too.\u00a0 In New England, towns like Easthampton were rapidly transforming from an agricultural to a manufacturing base.\u00a0 Williston moved his button business from a thousand kitchens to factories in Haydenville in 1831 and then Easthampton \u2013 the town\u2019s first \u2014 in 1848.\u00a0 Samuel\u2019s grandson recalled a building full of “ingenious machines which struck out and covered a button at a single blow.”\u00a0 The button mill was the first of many factories Sam would build.\u00a0 Many of them still stand.\u00a0 It is at least symbolically significant that our Schoolhouse is a former textile factory.\u00a0 Waves of immigrants were arriving to work in the mills.\u00a0 Easthampton attracted large numbers from Ireland, Germany, Quebec, later Poland.\u00a0 They needed housing, stores, schools, and churches.\u00a0 Sam and his associates saw to it that they were built.\u00a0 As the town grew, so did the Williston fortune.\u00a0 They were inseparably linked.<\/p>\n

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The Williston’s home, now called “The Homestead,” in 1880.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Notwithstanding their generosity, the Willistons lived in the grand manner.\u00a0 Their mansion \u2014 our Homestead \u2014 was the finest in town.\u00a0 There are suggestions that Samuel\u2019s aging parents, bred to Puritan austerity, did not approve of such vanity.\u00a0 Samuel was criticized for being \u201cgenerous with a dollar and tight with a penny.\u201d\u00a0 Inevitably, his success, coupled with a certain patrician arrogance, made him a target for fun \u2014 when he wasn\u2019t around to hear it.\u00a0 There are stories, some a little suspect, but too good not to repeat.\u00a0 Sam would drive carpenters mad by walking around construction sites, picking up dropped nails.\u00a0 His business partner, Horatio Knight, claimed that one day he and Sam were conversing in front of the Homestead.\u00a0 When a passing horse did what horses do, Sam, without breaking off the conversation, produced a shovel and dumped the manure in his garden.<\/p>\n

In the business world, Williston was a tough customer.\u00a0 While outright dishonesty horrified him, he was a master at taking advantage if he saw an opening.\u00a0 For example: there was a special fabric, made in England, he wanted to cover buttons.\u00a0 The tariff \u2014 an import tax \u2014 was very high.\u00a0 Making button covers involved punching holes in the cloth.\u00a0 If a few holes were punched by the weaver in England, then the fabric could be imported as rags \u2014 no tariff.<\/p>\n

During the Civil War, when Southern ports were sealed by a Union naval blockade, Sam needed cotton for his mills.\u00a0 He paid a business associate $60,000 \u2014 a huge sum in the 1860’s \u2014 to assure a supply, no questions asked.\u00a0 This meant running the blockade.\u00a0 Since Sam\u2019s biggest customer was the Union Army, from which he had a monopoly contract to supply tent cloth and cartridge belts, he could reason that he wasn\u2019t just doing the Lord\u2019s work, it was patriotic!<\/p>\n

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Samuel Williston in the 1860s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet he had little tolerance for shadiness in others.\u00a0 He had a long and stormy relationship with Charles Goodyear, who had discovered the process for vulcanizing rubber.\u00a0 Before Goodyear\u2019s success he had tried to get Sam to finance a venture which Sam dismissed as a get-rich-quick scheme.\u00a0 Sam had repeatedly turned Goodyear down.\u00a0 In 1848 Sam sought a reliable supply of rubber for a new elastic suspender factory.\u00a0 Someone suggested that he \u201cgo after Goodyear.\u201d\u00a0 Williston exploded.\u00a0 \u201cGo after Goodyear?\u00a0 No difficulty in that.\u00a0 To get away from him is real trouble.\u00a0 If he hears of an old lady with ten dollars tucked away in a broken teapot, Goodyear will go after it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Sam aged, and his fortune grew, so did his ego.\u00a0 Emily, who was born with the greater portion of common sense, acted somewhat as a check on this.\u00a0 But Samuel\u2019s investment wizardry had never failed him.\u00a0 He was so confident that he took risks that occasionally scared his partners.\u00a0 If he had a project to finance, whether it was a new mill or a charitable venture, he might strip one of his companies of nearly all its cash, or borrow heavily from the bank.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s what banks are for,\u201d he once said, conveniently neglecting to add that he owned the bank, and was moving money from one pocket to the other.<\/p>\n

The greater the amount needed, the more likely it was to get his attention, especially if it was for charity.\u00a0 One of his adopted children recalled that if a supplicant was na\u00efve enough to ask for a small contribution, Sam would put on his best farm boy expression and mumble, \u201cI ain\u2019t got that kinda money.\u201d\u00a0 On the other hand, in 1864 the Reverend John Holbrook was in New England seeking to raise $30,000 to endow newly-founded Grinnell College in Iowa.\u00a0 Holbrook told Williston\u2019s friend Samuel Seelye that he hoped Williston would consider giving $1,000.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t bother,\u201d said Seelye \u2014 \u201che won\u2019t even listen.\u201d\u00a0 Holbrook\u2019s face fell.\u00a0 \u201cNo, no, you misunderstand me,\u201d Seelye protested.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019ll just ignore a small request.\u00a0 Ask for the full $30,000.\u201d\u00a0 Holbrook got all of it.<\/p>\n

A year earlier Sam had told headmaster Marshall Henshaw that he was discouraged that his Scientific academy was not developing as fast as he had hoped \u2014 the actual expression Sam used was \u201cI have often wished the whole thing at the bottom of the sea.\u201d\u00a0 (We once had that printed on a T-shirt.)\u00a0 He intended to cut his losses and close Williston Seminary.\u00a0 But Henshaw knew his man, asked for the moon and the stars, and came away with salaries for three new teachers, and a science lab that rivaled Harvard\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In a 1940 memoir, Samuel\u2019s grandson, who spent his childhood summers visiting the Homestead, recalled \u201ca man of imposing presence, who in earlier years must have been notably handsome. . . . I never heard him speak harshly, and I cannot recall that he ever rebuked or corrected me.\u00a0 His manner, however, was uniformly serious if not solemn. . . . That he had softer feelings than might have been guessed from his manner, was indicated by his toleration of young children about the house, as well as by his habit of feeding daily with his own hands the family cat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emily, the grandson wrote, \u201cwas the embodiment of gracious dignity . . . a wise woman . . . and not afraid to smile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samuel incurred serious losses in the post-Civil War economic downturn.\u00a0 He made the one great mistake of his life at about this time.\u00a0 His ego got ahead of his judgment, and he invested heavily in a cotton thread mill that was destined for failure.\u00a0 It was the only time in his life he had gone against Emily\u2019s advice.\u00a0 To his credit, he admitted it.\u00a0 By his own estimate, he lost about 60% of his net worth.\u00a0 There\u2019s no real indication of how it affected him, except that the strain may have damaged his health.\u00a0 He consolidated his assets, revised his will, and set his sights forward once more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Easthampton Public Library, now the Emily Williston Memorial Library and Museum, at the time it opened in 1881.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His last words in 1874 were \u201cI think I am going through safe.\u201d\u00a0 He was 79.\u00a0 He and Emily had been married for 52 years.\u00a0 She continued their good works, although she had little to do with the school.\u00a0 She took special interest in Mount Holyoke College, and in the Easthampton Public Library, which is named for her.\u00a0 Several writers who knew her have used the word \u201cserene\u201d to describe her last years.\u00a0 The end came in 1885, a month shy of her 89th year.\u00a0 Consider what she and Samuel had lived through: the rise from a post-colonial confederation to a true republic and world power; the industrial revolution; the invention of the railroad, the telegraph, and so much more; the expansion of the country westward across the continent \u2014 and perhaps most important of all, the end of the abomination of slavery, and the cathartic conflict that accompanied it.<\/p>\n

One day in 1877 Emily and Williston principal James Whiton were riding to South Hadley for a Mount Holyoke Commencement.\u00a0 Emily, in a reflective mood, said to Whiton, \u201cI thank God for the opportunity to do my part in a time of colossal change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thank God for the opportunity to do my part.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I think that, above all else, sums up Emily and Samuel Williston.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Ed Hing ’77.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And remember that I mentioned that Sam ruined his eyesight at Andover, in part because of an inadequate lamp?\u00a0 This is the very lamp.\u00a0 You might well ask how on earth we still have it.\u00a0 Well, you know how you save stuff?\u00a0 At least according to legend, Samuel Williston kept this on his desk throughout his working life.\u00a0 My guess is that it was a reminder of where he\u2019d started, and how far he\u2019d come.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to learn more about the Willistons, I recommend Frank Conant\u2019s biography, \u201cGod\u2019s Stewards.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s in the library.\u00a0 Or come and talk to me.\u00a0 I think, since it\u2019s a new school year, and a troubled time, we should close with Samuel Williston\u2019s own prayer for his school, written in 1845: that it was \u201cthe earnest desire and prayer to God of the Founder\u00a0 . . . that his Providence, who has so signally blessed the Seminary in its foundation, may ever be as a wall of fire around it, and a light and a glory in the midst of it, and that his Spirit\u2014 the spirit of all wisdom and grace\u2014 may dwell in the hearts of Teachers and Pupils.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amen.\u00a0 Thank you.\u00a0 Go make history yourselves.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Richard Teller, 2003, 2013<\/p>\n

1<\/sup>After the lecture someone asked how the Willistons could have had grandchildren, given the deaths of all their children in infancy.\u00a0 The answer, of course, is that they adopted four children.\u00a0 The grandson quoted several times above is Harvard Professor of Law Samuel Williston (1861-1963); whose happy memories of childhood visits to the Homestead are recorded in his autobiography, Samuel Williston: Life and Law<\/em> (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940).<\/p>\n

Subscribe to From the Archives<\/em> and never miss a post!\u00a0 Just use the box at the top of the page!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each fall Archivist Rick Teller ’70 speaks to the assembled School on some aspect of Williston Northampton history.\u00a0 The event, popularly known as “the button speech,” only occasionally concerns buttons at all.\u00a0 But this year it did.\u00a0 These remarks were delivered on Friday, September 20, 2013. Good morning.\u00a0 At solemn occasions … like hockey games … Continue reading The Button Speech<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[138,25],"tags":[85,126,14,50,136,5],"class_list":["post-2204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-founders","category-williston-seminary","tag-button-speech","tag-buttons","tag-easthampton-history","tag-emily-williston","tag-payson-williston","tag-samuel-williston"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2204"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2621,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204\/revisions\/2621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}