After the Revolution the poverty and anxiety of the country were followed by just such a rousing of the people's energies and consequent renewal of prosperity as in the case of our late War of the Rebellion. It was in 1791 that, in spite of heavy taxation and much uncertainty, the town of Berwick made up its mind to have as good an academy as Byfield or Yarmouth. One of the old state historians says that Berwick has always been celebrated for the excellence of its schools. A town may have a profession as well as an individual, and Berwick chose to be an educator of youth. Judge Chadbourne gave ten acres of land in the finest possible situation and a sum of money besides, to begin the subscription; and Parson Tompson rode twice to Boston on his old white horse, and finally returned victorious with the charter granted by the General Court and bearing the fine signature of John Hancock. The history of Berwick Academy (MAP) from that day to the delightful occasion of its centennial celebration would make a long magazine article in itself; but it can only come in as an episode in the town's history, and as the best expression of the spirit of the Berwick citizens. In giving this necessarily brief account, I shall take the liberty of quoting from the historical address given at the celebration of the academy's hundredth year, by Rev. John Lord, LL. D., one of the most gifted and best known pupils of the old hill school.

"The founders," says Dr. Lord, "were all honorable men, at least they were all respectable citizens in this prominent village, or were distinguished clergymen or lawyers in the neighboring towns. Primus inter pares, there was old Judge Benjamin Chadbourne, a veritable patrician, with a great landed estate, which his ancestor purchased from the Indians." Here we find the great-grandson of that Humphrey Chadbourne who came with the earliest settlers, and was for many years their leader. The late President Chadbourne of Williams College belonged to a later generation of the same family. "Judge Chadbourne lived in a fine colonial residence surrounded by noble elms, not far from the Vineyard, and was a great lover of trees. He gave to his friend, John Hancock, a large number of elms from his Berwick estate to be planted on Boston Common, where some of them still exist."

The Hayes House.

There was indeed an interesting group of men in the town, the stamp of whose thought and ambition may still be felt as a good inheritance from the early planters of Berwick [may be felt], I believe, all through her history. The houses built by these men are, for the most part, still standing, and many of their own traits and actions are still remembered. The importance of the village, and its connection with the world outside, can be measured by the manner of its housekeeping; and no one can enter Judge Chadbourne's house or the Hamilton house at the Lower Landing, the Gen. Goodwin house at Old Fields, the Hayes house (MAP) built by Col. Dudley Hubbard, the Hobbs house built by Madam Elizabeth Wallingford, and long occupied by her children and grandchildren of the Cushing family, the Hayman house, or the Haggens house at the Corner (MAP), the Timothy Ferguson house, without seeing at once that people of refinement and cultivation had planned them and lived in them with elegance and hospitality. The best life in such a town as this was no more provincial in early days than it was in Salem or Boston, and the intercourse and sympathy between people of the same class in New England was more marked than at any other period.

The Haggens House.

The richest founder of Berwick Academy, the oldest literary incorporation in the state, was Col. Jonathan Hamilton, a shipowner and merchant, who from humble beginnings accumulated his great fortune in the West Indian trade. He was born on Pine Hill, in the northern part of the town; but built later the stately old house at the Lower Landing, and lived in it the rest of his life, with all the magnificence that was possible in his day. On his archaic looking tomb, in the Old Fields burying ground (MAP), the long high-sounding inscription ends with the solemn words, "Hamilton is no more." Another of this interesting group of the first trustees of the academy was Mr. John Lord, the young partner in business of Col. Hamilton, afterward Gen. Lord, and the successor to Judge Chadbourne's and Col. Hamilton's pre-eminence and authority in town affairs. He lived at the Upper Landing, in another fine old house, which was long ago destroyed; and died when hardly past middle age, leaving a large inheritance to his family and generous gifts to the church and academy, beside a fund to the latter, from which each student is given a copy of the Bible. Among his children and grandchildren have been many distinguished men and women.

The Hamilton House.

 

The Hamilton Tomb.

The minister, Mr. Tompson, has already been spoken of; and the other trustees were Dr. Hemmenway of Wells, the great theologian of his day; and Judge David Sewall of York, of the Superior Court, who was as famous a lawyer; Dr. Ivory Hovey of Berwick, the most picturesque person and character of his day, and Gen. Ichabod Goodwin of Old Fields, the major-general of militia for York and Cumberland Counties; whom Dr. Lord calls "a staff to lean upon in all parish and educational affairs."

"According to the charter," he continues, "the academy was founded 'to promote piety, religion and morality.' It is not easy in this critical age to define the difference between piety and religion, . . . but, I must add, to speak truthfully, 'to educate youth in such languages, and such liberal arts, and sciences as the trustees should direct.'" By the charter six of the trustees were to be residents of the town, and seven to be non-residents, -- a regulation intended to prevent the academy from degenerating into a mere village school, with only local interests to guard, rather than to hold out inducements for young men at a distance to avail themselves of a good business education, or to prepare for college, -- the primary end for which our academies were founded. "There were many cultivated persons in Berwick, who read the best books and knew what was going on in the world. It was inevitable that they should insist upon having a good school, and ask much from their teachers, as to both social and intellectual gifts."

These expectations were almost always gratified, especially in the early years of the school's history. Mr. Samuel Moody was the first master, on a salary of ninety pounds a year, with the addition of sixpence a week for each pupil. Mr. Joseph McKeen succeeded him, -- not the president of Bowdoin, but later the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard College ("a very able man," says Dr. Lord), who was followed by Mr. Benjamin Green, afterwards Judge Green, a distinguished lawyer and gentleman in the village, noted for his fine address, autocratic manners, and love of horses. Then followed Preceptors Hilliard, Seaver and Tompson, and a strange erratic person named Holton, who was gifted as a teacher of mythology and of the exercises of Wednesday-afternoon speaking and composition. Ira Young, his successor, was one of the best masters the school ever had, and was soon beckoned away by Dartmouth College, where he was for many years the Professor of Mathematics. Stephen Chase, a man of fine powers, who came after him, also became a Dartmouth professor; and the Rev. James Wilson Ward, under whose administration the prosperity of the institution reached its acme. He was a fine linguist, being a Hebrew scholar as well as learned in Greek: "a very genial man," whose son, the present editor of the New York Independent, has kept to the same high directions and ambitions.

The early records of the academy were lost, probably in the burning of the second building, which also destroyed most of the books of the old Social Library, so precious to the town. The list of the scholars who have received Bibles from the Lord Fund is, happily, in the possession of the secretary, Charles Cushing Hobbs, Esq.; and from the year 1817, when it begins, the students number about three thousand. From 1791 to 18I7 would, however, give many more, and some of the best men the academy could show.

Hon. Francis B. Hayes.

A second academy building was made necessary by the growth of the school, about the year 1825. This is looked back to by those who remember it as having been a very suitable and handsome structure, which stood well on its conspicuous site. It had a high white belfry, and fine rows of Lombardy poplars led up to it from the street. The old oaks were already decaying, but nobody thought to put young ones in their places. This was burnt in 1851, and the new building seems to have poorly replaced it, although Hon. Francis B. Hayes, who succeeded his father, Judge Hayes, as president of the board, used every means to have the best schoolhouse that could be obtained, going to Richard Upjohn of New York for the plans; but it shows what advance has been made in our time in architecture, that the first American architect of the day should have shown so little imagination. The two high gables showed well, however, above the treetops, when one saw it from the westward; and the large schoolroom, which could be divided at will, was very handsome and gave a fine sense of light and air. The hall too, with its open roof and finished framework of beams, is not without beauty, especially as many old pupils will always remember it garlanded with oak leaves, and decorated with the school mottoes done in elaborate fashion after traditional rules.

The Old Academy.

Until 1828 Berwick Academy (MAP) was entirely a boys' school; but in that year the names appear of Hetta Lord Hayes, Caroline Lord, Miranda Smith and Martha Leigh; and these brave young persons seem to have left the door open behind them, for the record of the next term shows seventeen of their friends to have followed a wise example. From that time the names of girls and boys appear to be about equal.

The aim of such an academy as this to fit young men or young women for college, or to give, as it does to many pupils, their last opportunity for school instruction, and so to hold the final chance for directing and developing their young ambitions, is indeed a high aim; and the standing of many of the Berwick Academy pupils in after life is certainly some evidence that the task has been well fulfilled. It would surprise us if we could count up the number of Harvard and Bowdoin and Dartmouth graduates who were fitted here, and no less if we could make a list of the distinguished men among them: four college presidents and three governors of states, with many college professors and eminent teachers, men and women both; highly accomplished men of the professions and men of affairs; soldiers, sailors and statesmen of renown; and many women, who, in their ever-widening public service or beautiful home-making and home-keeping lives, have been among the true leaders of civilization in their time.

In the early years of the fifth decade of this century, perhaps in 1842 or 1843, the influence of the academy and the level of intelligence in the society of the town were, perhaps, at their height. I have often heard it said that in the congregation of the old First Church there were over twenty men, young and old, who were college graduates. This will give some idea of the progress of the village. The old order of things was fast passing away, but this was a moment when hope for the future seemed very bright, and pride in the past was most assured.

Perhaps this is the moment to call the character and achievements of the descendants of our early settlers most clearly before the mind, and to end this hasty sketch of the town's progress. A long process of change was about to begin. The assimilation of successive foreign elements which have not been without great value, the effects of the War of the Rebellion, the change of professional and educational ruling interests for those of various manufactures, were to work slow and certain changes in the aspect of the town and the character of its citizens. I believe that the general level of intelligence, the common stock of prosperity, were never better than now. We are returning to some of the old standards of good taste and wider interests, which we had at one time too hastily flung aside. We are more reverent of our past, and more appreciative of our academy, of our teachers and preachers, than ever before in the course of many years.

I should like to speak of many things and many people to whom the three towns of Berwick have owed much in these later days; especially of a mysterious figure among the academy teachers, Dr. Gray, "an Englishman who had achieved considerable distinction as an Oxford scholar, who gave the school a new impulse, and placed it on a higher level in some respects than ever before, being himself a man of culture and one whose experience of life had been wider than that of many of the other principals. His pupils are said to have borne the impress of his own knowledge of life and letters."

Fogg Memorial Library, Berwick Academy.

I should like to say how much good the Cogswell prize books have done, scattered as they are among the pupils, at the rate of ten or a dozen really valuable and charmingly bound volumes every year; of the five or six college scholarship funds which have helped so many young people to go on with the process of their education; of the liberality of those who have made gifts to the academy fund, like Mr. Francis B. Hayes, so that the price of the excellent tuition is kept so low that no bright boy or girl can possibly be hindered from sharing it. The greatest beneficence, however, is in the recent large legacy left to the school in memory of her husband, a former pupil, by Mrs. William H. Fogg of New York, for the building and equipment of a new schoolhouse and public library. This noble gift has been increased, according to her later wish, by the liberality of her executors, the late A. Phipps, Esq., of Boston, and Hon. H. H. Fogg of Bangor, to whose warm and generous interest in the town of his ancestors, the people of the three Berwicks and the old and new pupils of the school should be always most grateful, as they will also be to the devoted president of the trustees at this present time, Hon. Horatio N. Twombly of New York, and to Mr. George A. Dickey, the principal of the academy. Upon both of these men and their assistants has come unusual responsibility in the enlargement and new departure of the institution.

Hon. H. N. Twombly.

I am much tempted to speak of my own school friends and my kind teachers, and the affairs of my own time generally; but it is after all with the first two centuries of Berwick that my fragmentary sketches must be concerned. To have seen how the settlement began, and how it overcame its many hindrances and held fast to its many hopes, and bred its men and women to high callings, is to understand these later days very well. There is no better way of learning American history than to find out what one can of the story of an old New England town.

George A. Dickey, A. M.

Principal Of Berwick Academy.

Section IV

Old Town of Berwick
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