{"id":4563,"date":"2019-12-31T16:45:35","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T20:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/?p=4563"},"modified":"2020-01-01T15:31:15","modified_gmt":"2020-01-01T19:31:15","slug":"williston-memories-1864-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/williston-memories-1864-66\/","title":{"rendered":"Oldest Living Graduate Remembers (1941)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dwight W. Learned, class of 1866 (Wikipedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dwight Whitney Learned (1848-1943), a native of Canturbury, Connecticut, graduated Williston Seminary in 1866 and Yale, B.A. 1870, Ph.D. 1873.\u00a0 He was a grand-nephew of Samuel Williston, his grandmother having been Samuel’s sister Sarah; that may have explained his choice of Williston to prepare for college.\u00a0 Following Yale, he taught Greek and mathematics at Thayer College in Kidder, Missouri, for two years, where he was ordained in the Congregational ministry.\u00a0 In 1875, under the banner of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, he went to Japan, where for 53 years he was professor of church history and theology at Doshisha University in Kyoto.\u00a0 He published extensively in both Japanese and English, and contributed to a Japanese translation of the New Testament.\u00a0 Upon his retirement in 1928, he was honored by the Emperor.\u00a0 He settled in Claremont, California, where he continued to preach and write.<\/p>\n

In 1941, as the centennial of Williston’s founding approached, Learned sent a typed memoir to centennial organizer Herbert B. Howe, class of 1905.\u00a0 As he points out, aged 92, he must have been among the oldest living alumni.\u00a0 Learned’s pages are reproduced here, with only a few annotations.\u00a0 They are an interesting window into student life during and after the Civil War, and even touch on the Confederate surrender and Lincoln’s assassination.\u00a0 It must also be noted that Learned’s recollections of Williston academic life, while amusing, are not altogether complimentary.\u00a0 (To enlarge any image, please click on it.)<\/p>\n

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No image is known of the campus as Learned saw it in 1864. In this 1856 engraving, Middle Hall (“Old Sem”) is at center. The original White Seminary building, to its right, burned in 1857 and was replaced by South Hall. The gymnasium, with its distinctive tower, rose well behind these buildings. Of the two churches, the Payson Church (Easthampton Congregational) remains today. Samuel Williston was about to remove the First Church, at left, to make way for North Hall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Principal Marshall Henshaw<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marshall Henshaw served as Principal from 1863-1876.\u00a0\u00a0 Both respected and feared by his students, of him Joseph Sawyer once wrote that “a botched translation was highway murder.”\u00a0 Williston Seminary had been coeducational until 1864, when Samuel Williston constructed a new public high school for Easthampton.\u00a0 The faculty mentioned by Learned, Amherst graduates all, were young men when they taught at Williston: Francis A. Walker became an eminent economist; Henry Goodell ’58 the founding President of Massachusetts Agricultural College;\u00a0 Charles M. Lamson ’60 and Thomas Smith important figures on the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.\u00a0 Classicist Henry Mather Tyler ’61 taught at Knox and Smith Colleges, and wrote an important history of the latter; while Marquis F. Dickinson ’58 became a distinguished attorney and, coincidentally, Samuel Williston’s son-in-law.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It is surprising to learn that in days of cleaner air and lower buildings, one could see Amherst college, eleven miles distant, from an upper story in Easthampton.\u00a0 Williston students attended services at the Payson Church, next to the campus.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Adelphi was the Seminary’s debating and literary society.\u00a0 Its rival, Gamma Sigma, had not yet been founded.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If, presumably, Learned is evoking the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, then he has misremembered the date, April 9, 1865 \u2013 although General Grant had indeed written Robert E. Lee on the seventh, offering to discuss terms of surrender.<\/p>\n

Happy New Year from the Williston Northampton Archives!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In 1864 the Civil War was still in progress, and the great event of the school year was the awful change from the uproarious jubilations of April 7, 1865, to the profound sorrow of April 15.”<\/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":[140,287,453,25],"tags":[266,530,171],"class_list":["post-4563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-alumnae","category-memoirs","category-student-life","category-williston-seminary","tag-amherst-college","tag-dwight-whitney-learned","tag-teaching"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563"}],"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=4563"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4579,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions\/4579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}