{"id":4044,"date":"2018-10-31T16:16:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T20:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/?p=4044"},"modified":"2018-10-31T16:19:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T20:19:41","slug":"going-to-mount-tom-ca-1870","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/going-to-mount-tom-ca-1870\/","title":{"rendered":"Going to Mount Tom (ca. 1870)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Abner Davol, class of 1872<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mount Tom — the “great hill” that dominates Easthampton’s eastern skyline — has drawn Williston students since the school’s founding.\u00a0 Abner Pardon Davol, class of 1872, was no exception.\u00a0 Davol, a native of\u00a0Fall River, Mass., entered Williston Seminary in September, 1869, enrolled in the Scientific curriculum.\u00a0 He graduated in 1872.<\/p>\n

Student academic work from the mid-19th century is relatively rare.\u00a0 But somehow Abner’s essay, “Going to Mt. Tom,” survives in the Williston Northampton Archives.\u00a0 The manuscript, on both sides of a single folded 8 x 10 inch sheet, is undated.\u00a0 The writing is not terribly sophisticated, and there is a certain naivet\u00e9 to some of the content.\u00a0 My guess is that this was submitted to a weekly English composition class during Abner’s first or second year at Williston.<\/p>\n

Here is Abner’s paper.\u00a0 Readers may click on each image to enlarge it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Abner Davol, “Going to Mt. Tom,” page 1.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was, and of course, remains, a distance of just under two miles from the Old Campus on Main Street to the foot of the mountain.\u00a0 For Abner and friends to have walked the distance and<\/em> achieved the summit in 80 minutes is quite an accomplishment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mt. Tom from Holyoke Street, at the time unpaved. Except for a few farms, the mile between the “factory village” and the foot of the mountain was unpopulated.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What were they thinking?\u00a0 Apparently Abner and\u00a0his companions decided to descend via the steepest part of the escarpment, just beneath the basalt cliffs, a field strewn with broken shale.\u00a0 And after sunset.\u00a0 Contemporary maps confirm that there was a perfectly good road, but perhaps the kids were taking the most direct route from the summit to it.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Factory village” was the residential area east of Nashawannuck Pond and the factories alongside it.\u00a0 Town-gown relations were imperfect at this time, but Davol’s concern seems overstated.\u00a0 It was probably added for dramatic effect, since it is likely that he expected to read his essay to his English class.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mt. Tom from Nashawannuck Pond, ca. 1880. Then as now, the mountain was irresistible.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After Williston, Abner Davol returned to Fall River, where he became a banker and City Councillor.\u00a0 He died in 1940, aged 87.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLast Saturday afternoon as I was writing a letter in my room one of the students came in and wanted my chum and myself to go up on Mt. Tom with him; as I had not been up there but once before and that the day that I went was a little cloudy, I thought I would go with him . . .\u201d<\/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":[44,125,25],"tags":[494,493],"class_list":["post-4044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-history","category-easthampton-history-2","category-williston-seminary","tag-abner-davol","tag-mt-tom"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044"}],"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=4044"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4062,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044\/revisions\/4062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}