{"id":911,"date":"2015-09-29T15:00:20","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T19:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/?p=911"},"modified":"2015-09-29T15:00:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T19:00:20","slug":"williston-seminary-the-early-decades-by-rick-teller-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/2015\/09\/29\/williston-seminary-the-early-decades-by-rick-teller-70\/","title":{"rendered":"Williston Seminary: the Early Decades by Rick Teller ’70"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This annual assembly\u00a0on school history is informally known as the “Button Speech,” a reference to founders Samuel and Emily Williston and their manufacturing business (although buttons themselves are not usually the focus). This year, Williston Archivist Rick Teller \u201970 spoke during Upper School assembly on September 23. 2015. For the first time, the annual speech also included archival photos, included here.<\/em><\/p>\n

Good morning. To begin, I\u2019d like you to chew on a few words by the American poet Walt Whitman. No, Walt didn\u2019t go to Williston. As a matter of fact, in the 1850s, when he wrote this, Williston students didn\u2019t study English. (Things change.) Mr. Whitman wrote,<\/p>\n

\n

I know that the past was great and the future will be great,
\nAnd I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time . . .
\nAnd that where I am, or you are, this present day, there is the center of all days.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Samuel<\/a>
Samuel Williston in the 1840s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let\u2019s talk about the early history of the school. As you probably know, what was once called Williston Seminary was founded in 1841 by Easthampton native Samuel Williston, who earned a lot of money making buttons and elastic. But while our hearts yearn for him (for his campus and his geriatric elm), Mr. Williston\u00a0is going to lurk in the background this morning. There will be other occasions, like Founders\u2019 Day, to get to know him better. And you can always come talk with me.<\/p>\n

In the beginning, a Williston Seminary student would have enrolled in one of two divisions. There was a Classical Department, which provided the traditional grounding in Greek and Latin, that would prepare students for university and, perhaps, the ministry. More innovative, and closest to Mr. Williston\u2019s heart was the Scientific Department, in which students who did not plan to go to college could get a thorough education in engineering, mathematics, surveying \u2014 everything needed to enter the professions necessary to build a young nation\u2019s growing industrial base. This was an innovative notion in 1841.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Surveying<\/a>
Surveying class<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As his first principal, or headmaster, Mr. Williston\u00a0hired his boyhood friend Luther Wright who, a few years earlier, had instituted a similar dual curriculum at Leicester Academy, not far from Worcester. Mr. Wright was a clergyman and stern, no-nonsense classics teacher who ran the school much as Mr. Williston\u00a0expected his plant managers to run the factories\u2014so much so that the faculty called him \u201cBoss Wright\u201d behind his back. Mr. Wright\u00a0had little patience for students or teachers whose ideas differed from his own. He was succeeded in 1849 by Josiah Clark, a fine scholar who was a bit more flexible\u2014or perhaps more realistic.<\/p>\n

In the beginning we were coeducational. Samuel Williston thought that girls were a distraction and didn\u2019t really approve. But it made fiscal sense and, as it turned out, was a popular gesture to the town of Easthampton, which still didn\u2019t have a high school. In 1864, Mr. Williston\u00a0built one for the town, and the Seminary became all-male. It would remain so for 107 years.<\/p>\n

The original campus was located down on Main Street, on land now occupied by two banks and Big E\u2019s Supermarket. There were originally two buildings. One burned, disastrously, in 1857, and was quickly replaced by two others.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The campus, ca. 1850<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the middle 1800s, there was no sense of the school\u2019s round-the-clock involvement in every aspect of student life. Students went to their recitations\u2014you would call them classes. In the earliest years, everything happened simultaneously in one huge room. But except for required daily religious services, students were on their own. School-sponsored activities and sports were nonexistent, or rather, it was up to students to devise them. This they did, often meeting resistance from faculty who preferred peace and quiet. But it is remarkable to note that by the 1860s there was, for example, an extensive sports program, all entirely managed and funded by the students themselves.<\/p>\n

In 1863, Principal Clark admitted that after 14 years he could not live up to Mr. Williston\u2019s expectations, so he resigned. Enter Marshall Henshaw. Our third principal, and the first of our great heads, learned upon his arrival that Mr. Williston\u00a0was discouraged and planned to close the school. Mr. Williston\u2019s chief complaint was that his beloved Science Academy was generally considered mediocre. The first two heads had done little more than follow his\u00a0instructions, and Mr. Williston, business wizard though he was, didn\u2019t know thing one about running a successful school.<\/p>\n

Mr. Henshaw convinced Mr. Williston\u00a0to leave education to educators. What was really required was a large infusion of cash\u2014 that, Mr. Williston\u00a0understood\u2014and some independence. Perhaps no partnership has had more immediate success than Mr. Henshaw and Mr. Williston. In a short time they had expanded the curriculum, raised the standards, enlarged the faculty and student body, and purchased the finest scientific apparatus in the country, some of which remains on exhibit in Scott Hall. And in 1864, they built a gymnasium\u2014the first of its kind in any American high school. All this while the country was engulfed by Civil War. In fact, one of the arguments for building the gym was that it would provide indoor space for the student militia to drill.<\/p>\n

The Williston principal answered to a Board of Trustees. The role of the trustees in a school like this is to provide direction for the school\u2019s current programs and future development. They are responsible for overseeing the school\u2019s financial affairs, and for hiring the head. In the early years the board was largely comprised of Samuel Williston\u2019s friends and relations, and there was no question where the power lay, or whose vision was being acted upon. Meanwhile, Mr. Williston\u00a0paid off the school\u2019s substantial deficit every year. The first two principals could be relied on to do what they were told. Marshall Henshaw was his own man but, precisely because he had stood up to Mr. Williston, had become a close friend.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1874, Mr. Williston\u00a0died. With him died the certainty that the school\u2019s bills would be paid. Mr. Williston\u00a0had provided for Williston Seminary in his will, but much of his legacy was in securities that would not mature or produce income for many years. The fact was, he had suffered some business reverses toward the end of his life and there wasn\u2019t much cash around. His widow, Emily, had extensive charitable interests, but the Seminary wasn\u2019t among them. The school soon ran out of money. A faction on the board saw Principal Henshaw as having been too close to the founder, thus inhibiting their own influence, and managed to make Mr. Henshaw the scapegoat for the deficit. In 1876, they forced his resignation.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/a>
James Morris Whiton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Which brings us to the short, unhappy reign of James Morris Whiton. What can one say about a man so fundamentally unsuited to his job? In fairness, Mr. Whiton arrived already handicapped by having to follow the much-loved and badly treated Mr. Henshaw. He had come highly recommended from Hopkins Grammar in New Haven. In retrospect, Hopkins must have been happy to be rid of him.<\/p>\n

Much of the detail from this period may be found in a scrapbook kept by a student named Herbert Plimpton, Class of 1878, who devoted much effort to tormenting Mr. Whiton and recording the results. The events memorialized in Mr. Plimpton\u2019s scrapbook suggest that Mr. Whiton was an obsessive controller with no sense of humor, who didn\u2019t like students very much. Well, they didn\u2019t like him, either\u2014and he never quite figured that out. It was a recipe for chaos. As Mr. Whiton imposed one idiotic regulation after another, student response escalated from merely ignoring him to actively undermining his authority.<\/p>\n

The final crisis came in April of 1878. It began with a silly joke. Late one night someone painted the pillars on Mr. Whiton\u2019s house to look like barber poles and put up a sign offering haircutting services. According to one account, Mr. Whiton learned of this sitting at breakfast, when someone walked in and demanded a shave. His response was to lock the students in the chapel while their rooms were searched. Paint-spattered clothes were found\u2014possibly planted\u2014and a boy expelled.<\/p>\n

To my mind, the students\u2019 response to this is fascinating. They could have caved in; they could have run riot. They did neither. Instead, virtually everyone trooped over to the gym, sat down, and refused to leave. My generation sometimes pretends it invented student protest. But this was in 1878. Two days later, in desperation, Mr. Whiton closed the school for an early spring break.<\/p>\n

All this got into the national newspapers, from the New York Times<\/em> on down. The Utica Herald<\/em>\u2019s remarks are typical: While decrying the students\u2019 actions, the Herald<\/em> equally condemned the violation of their privacy, trumpeting that \u201cthe moral aspect is bad. Students, though boys, and some of them bad, have the right to expect honorable treatment.\u201d That clich\u00e9 about any publicity being good publicity was no more true in 1878 than now.<\/p>\n

The Trustees demanded that Mr. Whiton restore order. And after vacation, all seemed eerily quiet for a few weeks. But at the spring trustee meeting Mr. Whiton confidently reported that he had succeeded in returning the Seminary to the rule of law. That night, in a field across the street from the hotel where the Trustees were having dinner, pretty much the entire student body turned out for a bonfire at which they burned Mr. Whiton in effigy. To make sure no one missed their point, they printed flyers explaining exactly what they were about. The next morning, the Trustees reconvened and demanded Mr. Whiton\u2019s resignation. He hadn\u2019t lasted two years.<\/p>\n

Mr. Whiton, by the way, would go on to a distinguished career as editor, philosopher, and theologian. He would never have another school. Herbert Plimpton, who chronicled the more colorful details of his downfall, became an influential alumnus, for whom a building is named. Now there\u2019s justice for you.<\/p>\n

The new principal, Joseph Fairbanks, distinguished himself by being absolutely invisible. There was no question that the Board was in charge. Mr. Fairbanks seemed to have little interest in day-to-day administration, either. Most of that was handled by Joseph Sawyer.<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Sawyer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mr. Sawyer is one of the huge figures in our history. At this juncture he had been on the faculty for 12 years, having been hired in 1866 as a teacher of mathematics and something called \u201cmental philosophy” \u2014we now call it psychology\u2014plus economics and history, and later surveying and English. Teachers had to be multi-talented in those days. They had to be tireless, as well; the typical course load was six one-hour classes, every day. Under Mr. Fairbanks\u2019 minimal leadership, more and more of the daily administrative detail devolved to Mr. Sawyer.<\/p>\n

He was so good at it that when, after six years, Mr. Fairbanks resigned, the Board, unable to agree on a successor, appointed Mr. Sawyer as Acting Principal. His understanding was that it was to be for a few months at most. Two years later he felt obliged to remind his handlers that he was supposed to have been temporary. The Reverend William Gallagher was eventually appointed in 1886. In his 10\u00a0years at the helm he would be an even greater nonentity than Mr. Fairbanks.<\/p>\n

Despite, or perhaps because of administrative indifference, this is a period during which student activity blossomed. Williston was famous for its two rival debating societies, Adelphi and Gamma Sigma, which provided weekly public debates and lectures and were in a real sense the center of campus and town social and intellectual activity. Adelphi began to publish The Willistonian<\/em> in 1881. It remains the oldest continuously published high school newspaper in the country. Music and theater flourished, and our sports teams\u2014still entirely managed by students\u2014regularly beat college squads. The most popular sports were football and baseball, and a newfangled game that was just catching on: basketball.<\/p>\n

In June of 1896, Mr. Gallagher suddenly resigned. The Trustees were faced with finding a Principal on very short notice. Once again, they noted that Mr. Sawyer had been doing most of the work, that he had the respect of teachers and students alike, and that he tended to be uncontroversial. So they appointed him Headmaster. He had never applied for, and didn\u2019t want, the job.<\/p>\n

In fact, he was traveling in Europe at the time and didn\u2019t learn of his new role until he returned to Easthampton. He protested that his health was shaky, that he was, at 54\u2014older at the start of his service than any of his predecessors had been when they left\u2014even that his long association with the school, which the Board considered an advantage, might actually be a drawback. My suspicion is that the Board was counting on Mr. Sawyer\u2019s age, health, and uncontroversial nature to result in a short, uneventful term of service followed by his gracious retirement. They could not have been more wrong.<\/p>\n

In 1896, the school was still very much as Samuel Williston had envisioned it. But 55 years had passed. Mr. Williston\u00a0had been gone for 22 of them. The Board had attempted to preserve Mr. Williston\u2019s vision, but they had done so by manipulating a weak leadership, all the while isolated from the day-to-day issues of educating. The school had undergone little curricular or social evolution in 30 years, the finances were a mess, and enrollment was unstable at best. Mr. Sawyer reluctantly hung his coat in the front office and got to work. His first task must have been to convince the Trustees to let him work. To its credit, the Board, many of whose more assertively conservative members from the post-Samuel years had died or stepped down, was willing to listen. They soon would recognize that Mr. Sawyer had what no Williston leader had shown since Mr. Henshaw: vision.<\/p>\n

The educational demands of universities and the workplace had changed. The old twin curricula had become less and less relevant. With Mr. Sawyer, a comprehensive curriculum would evolve, resembling something we would recognize today. Mr. Sawyer\u2019s vision of Williston was of an institution which involved its students around the clock. It was thus under his leadership that school-sponsored athletics came into their own, and that the faculty took on substantial social and advisory roles in their students\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n

Money, as always, was the real problem. The buildings were aging. Meanwhile, the school was paying for the upkeep of the Williston Homestead property\u2014our present campus\u2014without using it. Mr. Sawyer imposed rigid economies and, after many years, retired the deficit. He also seemed to know something that had escaped his predecessors: that vision and creativity will get you through times of no money, better than money will get you through times of no vision. He had a truly controversial idea, that we take for granted now: asking the alumni for money.<\/p>\n

\"Ford<\/a>
Ford Hall groundbreaking, 1915.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt won\u2019t work,\u201d he was told. \u201cPeople think the school is rich and won\u2019t believe it when you ask for contributions.\u201d That turned out to be true. Mr. Sawyer spent 15\u00a0years stubbornly trying to convince people otherwise, and was finally successful. A major gift from John Howard Ford led to construction of Ford Hall in 1916\u2014that\u2019s mr. Sawyer at the groundbreaking\u2014opening the new campus to student use, and providing more flexibility in the use of the original school buildings downtown.<\/p>\n

And then World War I\u00a0began. As young men enlisted, and the economy soured, enrollment dropped like a stone. In 1919 there were only 13 seniors at graduation. Without tuition income, deficits mounted quickly. Mr. Sawyer saw all he had worked for crumbling away. Pleading exhaustion, ill health, and advanced age\u2014he was, after all, 77\u2014he tendered his resignation, pending the appointment of a replacement. He had served the school for 53 years, his entire adult life. Mr. Sawyer went home. A few weeks later he was dead.<\/p>\n

He would never know that the foundation he had built was solid. With the end of the war, enrollment recovered, his legacy of good management soon had the ledgers in the black, and his school evolved rapidly and positively. Would that he could have seen it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve reached the 1920s and we haven\u2019t even mentioned Northampton School for Girls, or how we became Williston Academy. But those stories must wait for another time.<\/p>\n

So: to be continued… perhaps by me, perhaps by you. Definitely by you! One more poetic reference. We don\u2019t read a lot of Alfred Tennyson any more; back when I was a student we probably read too much of him. There is a poem, \u201cBlow, Bugle, Blow”; it\u2019s posted in the library as the current “Poem of the Week.” (Did you know we have a “Poem of the Week”?) Mr. Tennyson writes of the sound of a bugle echoing in the hills, and in with some nonsense about the horns of Elfland, he writes these extraordinary lines about how echoes<\/p>\n

\n

. . . die in yon rich sky,
\nThey faint on hill or field or river:
\nOur echoes roll from soul to soul,
\nAnd grow for ever and for ever.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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

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

Editor\u2019s note: This annual assembly\u00a0on school history is informally known as the “Button Speech,” a reference to founders Samuel and Emily Williston and their manufacturing business (although buttons themselves are not usually the focus). This year, Williston Archivist Rick Teller \u201970 spoke during Upper School assembly on September 23. 2015. For the first time, the … Continue reading Williston Seminary: the Early Decades by Rick Teller ’70<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-16-assemblies"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/speeches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}