25

The New England hills were beginning to sew red and yellowpatches on their long green aprons. It was early in the morning,only eight o’clock, but already the sun was warming the corners ofthe day. Worcester newspapers that Wednesday of September in1865 made no note of this meeting of Institute trustees, although afull column of the Daily Spy was devoted to the Sterling AnnualFair and almost as much space to Worcester’s Cattle Show. Thepaper also noted that Secretary of War Stanton was to pass throughthe City that day.

But there was no mention of this meeting in which the locationof the new Institute was to be decided. As a matter of fact,Worcester appeared to be doing very well without another school.In the City there were seventy-six public schools and one highschool. There were three private schools and even one college,Holy Cross, which, although it did not receive its charter untilthis year of 1865, had existed since 1843.

Holy Cross and two of the private schools were situated highon hilltops, in scholastic seclusion and with good view of the valleybelow, where manufacturers congregated in such mundane pre -occupations as making paper machinery, wire, textile machinery,skates, razors, carriages, organs, boots and shoes, and leatherbelting. On Bigelow Court David Whitcomb had just finished build -ing a factory which was the first in the world for the exclusivemanufacture of envelopes. Already he had confided to friends thathe was making more money than he had made in all the Temple -ton years of manufacturing tinware. Crompton, Curtis, Heywood,Marble, Earle, Knowles, and Washburn were some of the world-known names in manufacturing. Recently Jerome Wheelock hadadded to Worcester’s international reputation by his developmentof a steam engine.

In Worcester there were seven railroads, seven national banks,four savings banks, and two insurance companies—all in a city ofonly thirty thousand persons. A horse railroad line had been or -ganized and at least half a mile of track had been laid on PleasantStreet. For five years Worcester had had a public library, housed inthe upper story of the bank building on Foster Street. In this yearof 1865 the policemen of the City had been issued their first uni-forms. There were still no hospitals, no telephones, no electriclights in Worcester. But there were three good hotels and twonewspapers.

This was the City in which the trustees of the Technical Insti -tute proposed to establish a school, and this was the day on whichthey intended to choose its location.

CHAPTER III

Pauca Fideliter g g g g g g g g g 1865–1868

26

When the first overture had been made to prospective contribu -tors, Stephen Salisbury had offered cash and also a triangular pieceof land at the north corner of Lincoln Square. This area was reallytoo small for the school. The Common in the center of the Cityhad also been suggested, but the argument of desecrating hallowedground had hurriedly eliminated that possibility. Dale Hospital onUnion Hill, where so many soldiers had convalesced during theCivil War, was a definite consideration. During the last few yearsfourteen large barracks had been added to the original building,which at one time had briefly housed a medical college. This prop -erty had four acres of land.

On the south of the City another possibility existed in the bat-tlement of buildings known as Oread. Built in 1849 of stone quarried from Goat Hill, where it stood, this feudal castle hadevolved into a ghost of the Middle Ages to the consternation ofmany Worcester citizens. Eli Thayer, its owner, had told no one why he was building it. Four stories high, it had turrets andtowers fifty feet in diameter. There were no moats, but this wasthe only anachronism.

As revolutionary as was its architecture, the building’s purposewas even more startling. In a year when Oberlin was the only col-lege where girls were admitted, and a quarter century before other women’s colleges existed, Oread had opened its doors towomen college students. Within four years the school had hadtwelve teachers and a hundred and fifty students. By 1865 itsfounder, Eli Thayer, had become prominent in Congress and innational issues, and the school had suffered from his absence.Oread offered a solid structure, if that were a prerequisite for theInstitute, and it could be bought for half its value.

The trustees conscientiously viewed all the sites and listened tothe details of possible purchase, even though it was a foregoneconclusion that they would choose another piece of property of -fered by Stephen Salisbury at the northwest end of town, whereMr. Salisbury owned at least two thirds of the land. The specifiedplot was part of the one hundred and fifty acres which the firstStephen Salisbury had bought from Cornelius Waldo on the westside of Mill Brook. The Salisbury land extended from LincolnSquare to far beyond Park Avenue and north to Chadwick Square.Almost all of it was uninhabited. The younger generation in theCity had dubbed the area beyond Chestnut Street as “Oregon,” be - cause it, as well as the new state, was so far away from the centerof Worcester. Far up Salisbury Street there were a few big farmsand the Highland Military Academy, where so many officers hadbeen trained during the Civil War. Every evening the City still heldits breath waiting for the big sunset gun to be fired, a signal thatthe flag at the Academy was taken down for another day and allwas well.

Absorbed now into other estates was the old eighty-five acre farmof Jo Bill, for whom the old trail that ran through the Salisbury

In those days it was a foreign countrybeyond the slope at Fruit Street wherecivilization then stopped. It was a com-mon sight to see cows driven throughElm Street to pasture on Newton Hill.

—Robert M. Washburn, 1923

27

land had been named. This road was now just a wagon path run-ning in a straight line over the lower edge of the hill. IntersectingJo Bill Road, before it reached the hill, was a street known asWaldo (later changed to Boynton); between it and LancasterStreet there were no houses at all, only an uninhabitable swamp.

It was on a hilltop in this remote area that Stephen Salisburyproposed the school be built. His offer included a little more thanfive acres of land. The hill was heavily wooded, mostly with pine,but that, of course, could be cut and its profit used for landscapingin civilization’s usual circle of clearing land in order to plant trees.

Subsequently Mr. Salisbury’s offer was formally accepted. Be -fore going further, the building committee then wisely visited the fewscientific schools in existence. They also inspected the new gym-nasium at Williams College. Paul A. Chadbourne, one of the professors at Williams, advised that “all buildings to which they(the students) have access be made just as simple as possible, sothat they shall have no temptation to do mischief,” and added“without hesitation” that they should not have water closets in thetwo upper stories. Actually, he didn’t think they should be in -stalled anywhere in the building—”I think that they would be use-less expense.”

The committee listened politely to all the advice for which theyhad asked, then made their own plans for a three-story building witha laboratory of two stories so “that the roof could be raised.” Thereought to be an entrance carried up into a tower where astronomicalobservations could be conducted. It might also be pleasant to have aroom with a French roof built over it for classes in natural history.They suggested common brick for the outside of the building andstipulated that the school must be big enough to accommodate onehundred and fifty students. There should be a laboratory for thirtychemical students, a drawing room for fifty students.

To insure complete impartiality in choice of architect, the com-mittee asked that all bids be identified only by mottoes. “Prove allthings; hold fast that which is good” submitted such a satisfactoryplan along with the good advice, that Stephen C. Earle and hisassociate, James E. Fuller, were chosen for the job. StephenEarle, a Leicester Academy boy and cousin of the prosperousmanufacturer, Timothy K. Earle, was just beginning his career as anoted architect of public buildings.

Stephen Earle followed a few of the more important specifica-tions made by the trustees, then digressed for the sake of economy.First of all, he advised that the building be faced with granite fromMillstone Hill. From the earliest history of the town, this quarryhad belonged to Worcester inhabitants. They were free to take asmuch of the stone, as often as they wished, for any kind of buildingpurposes. This was much too valuable a prerogative to ignore. Todress up the building, Stephen Earle suggested Uxbridge granite ofa lighter color.

There were to be several classrooms and a chapel, the whole to

It is entirely useless for persons whohave never had experience to say whatstudents ought to be.

—Paul A. Chadbourne, 1866

28

be topped by a tower eighty-six feet high. The inside woodworkof the whole building was to be of chestnut, and the windingoverhanging stairs, which were to jut out securely from the walls,were to be provided with a black walnut handrail.

The building was to be equipped with ventilating flues “forwarming with stoves or furnaces,” and, expert advice notwithstand -ing, there were to be four water closets. Up in the attic an elaboratepressure system was to consist of two sixty-gallon cisterns of whitepine, lined with lead. It was estimated that the plumbing of thebuilding would cost about a hundred and seventy-five dollars.Fortunately, water would no longer be a problem, for in 1865 theWorcester Water Works had effected a connection of the waters of Bell Pond with a forty-eight acre reservoir in Leicester, thusproviding Worcester’s first adequate water supply. The City hadbeen inconvenienced so long by lack of water, however, that therewas still a special tax assessment for people who owned “bathingtubs” in their homes.

The man responsible for bringing water to Worcester was a self-taught civil engineer, Phinehas Ball. By popular vote of appreciation,he became Mayor at the next election. He thereby automaticallybecame a member of the Institute’s first board and subsequently a member of its building committee. (In October of 1867 a four-inchwater pipeline was brought to the top of Tech Hill, a privilege forwhich the Institute was charged the sum of $19.67.)

It was agreed by everyone—the committee, the architects, andthe builders—that the school building was to be completed by July of 1868.

Meanwhile, the hill was cleared and its top sliced off to make alevel area for the foundation. The grading carefully followed themost professional advice in America, from no one less thanCalvert Vaux, who had laid out Central Park in New York. Cen -tral Park’s beauty was attributed to the care given to it by the Com -missioner, Andrew Green, who was a native of Worcester. It is veryprobable that Mr. Green helped to make the arrangements wherebyMr. Vaux came to Worcester.

For only a hundred dollars Mr. Vaux submitted a complete planof walks, grades, and excavations. He also proposed a road to runfrom the southeast corner to the center of the property, then sweepdown the southerly slope to soften the sharpness of the hill.

No part of the building had been started when on March 25,1867, John Boynton died. He had not been well for many months,his feebleness causing concern when in the previous Novemberand December he had visited the Whitcombs in Worcester. Di -rectly resulting from pneumonia, his death was precipitated byexposure in a severe snow storm in which he had driven by sleighto Templeton. His death occurred in the big house on the Common,just around the corner from his old tinshop. He had seemed totravel full circle. “He just went away and I never saw him againalive,” sadly reminisced David Whitcomb.

Spiral staircase in Boynton Hall

29

Mr. Boynton’s death, wrote the secretary of the Institute, “de -mands a brief memoir on our records.” Only the trustees hadknown his identity as the donor of the hundred thousand dollarswith which the school began. There is no evidence that he andIchabod Washburn ever met except for one instance when Mr.Boynton attended a board meeting in 1866. At that meeting hisoffer of a Library and Apparatus Fund had been formally ac-cepted and he had confirmed his willingness to extend the timefor completing the building. There is no record that he spoke aword during the meeting; his wishes were made known entirelythrough David Whitcomb.

Up to the time of Mr. Boynton’s death, the building he had initiated had been given no name. Neither had he received anykind of public recognition. With good timing to remedy both situations, the trustees promptly announced that their unfinishedbuilding was henceforth to be known as Boynton Hall.

In the same month of March, Ichabod Washburn made his formal proposal to establish what he called a Department of Practi-cal Mechanism. Overlooking nothing, his document was as long ashis thoughts. What he hoped to do, he wrote, was to elevate me -chanics as a class (it is true that they were low on the socialscale), to add to their personal independence and happiness, andmake them better citizens. He went on to say: “I propose to you ascheme. There shall be a machine shop with at least twenty ap -prentices, a suitable number of teachers and workmen, and all thenecessary equipment to carry on as a practical working establish-ment.”

All this he intended to make possible by his gift of a building,its equipment, and an endowment.

Running all through Mr. Washburn’s document a continuousthread of concern tied the proposal to his own philosophy of per-sonal benevolence. He wanted to be sure, whatever happened,that some of the income would be used to help “indigent anddeserving young mechanics.” He even hoped that it might supplyfood and clothing for some of the boys.

Although Mr. Washburn meticulously outlined every detail oforganization and operation, he had lived long enough to knowsomething of the caprice of time. To be sure, he wanted the plan“to be given a fair trial.” To see that it would be, he declared there must be a Board of Visitors with the responsibility of keep-ing the “balance of education in the shop and education in theschool.” He did not intend that time required for work be en -croached upon “by attention to study or vice versa.” In addition tothe Board of Visitors, another group of men were to exercise a“visitorial power” over the funds.

He explored all the possibilities he could think of, then paidpoignant tribute to the transitoriness with which any human venturemust comply. “Knowing the impossibility of providing for con -tingencies in the future,” he released the trustees of the Institute

Like the workmen on the outside and theinside of a boiler, our benefactors did notlabor in sight of each other.

—Stephen Salisbury II, 1871

30

from practically every phrase with which he had tried so hard tobind them.

The building itself was another matter. This was something hecould control. No one to this day knows the exact amount ex -pended on the brick structure which evolved on the hill nearBoynton Hall. The two buildings had different architects, differentbuilders. It was as if the two were not related at all. They eventurned their backs on each other.

In a much later year, George Hoar told of the worried reaction:“When Deacon Washburn endowed the machine shop . . . every-body who took an interest in the school felt the gravest anxiety asto the result. Deacon Washburn was getting to be an old man, and his health was feeble. So far as the trustees were informed,there had been no instance in this country and very few in theworld, where an institution of education has conducted profitablya manufacturing establishment.”

In February of 1868 Mr. Washburn suffered a paralyzingstroke. His machine shop, with its walls only half up, might havebeen abandoned if not for the rescuing interest of a young superintendent at the wire mill, Charles H. Morgan.

It was only because of a chance recommendation that CharlesMorgan was in Worcester at all. Trained in nearby Clinton, thisyoung engineer had moved from Massachusetts and was living inPhiladelphia when recommended to Ichabod Washburn by ErastusB. Bigelow of the famous Clinton mills.

In 1864 Charles Morgan came to Worcester to become Mr.Washburn’s most valued confidante and to weave forever the nameof Morgan into the story of the Technical Institute. In 1866, at the suggestion of Mr. Washburn, Charles Morgan was elected atrustee of the school, and to this young man was given the re -sponsibility of erecting and equipping the machine shop, as wellas planning for its continuance.

Brick by brick and stone by stone the two buildings grewtoward the skyline in a dichotomy for the whole City to see. Thetwo contrasting roofs, with towers rivaling each other for atten-tion, expressed the relationship in eloquent lines. Here are twoideas, they seemed to say to anyone sensitive enough to listen withhis eyes, two ideas which are different. The history of the worldhas shown both of them to be necessary, and here, if not in thesame building at least on the same campus, they shall exist to -gether, sometimes complementing each other, often in conflict, andalways dependent on each other.

While the school was turning into two buildings, it was alsoquietly shaping into a curriculum. The first formal vote which indi -cated the kind of education to be expected from the Institute wasrecorded in October of 1865, when it was agreed that a “profes-sorship of engineering and one of chemistry” be established.

Even before its doors were opened the school was thus broaden -ing its scope, for this is the first time the term “engineering” had

Charles H. Morgan

31

been mentioned in connection with the school. This developmentwas largely possible because Stephen Salisbury had increased hisgifts. His first letter to the treasurer noted casually: “I enclose mycheck for $10,000 for the expenses of instruction.” Less than ayear later he gave a fund of $50,000 for the same cause, hoping, hesaid, that it would “encourage contributions from others.” It did, ina very few cases, but at the same time it set a precedent forSalisbury generosity which all too often was a comfortable hedgefor others to hide behind.

Engineering had worked its way through a series of definitionsand was now more than a union of art and craft in which the menwho operated machines were called engineers. Now engineeringsuggested techniques and skills which had picked up the tools ofchemistry, physics, and mathematics. There was a substantial bodyof principles, and already there was evidence that science wouldsoon be part of engineering’s connotation.

Formerly the United States had relied almost entirely uponEuropean-trained men for all of its engineering. As Emory Wash -burn deplored, “Instead of educating scientific men to take care ofour shops, we went abroad for them.” The pattern had been thesame when civil engineers had been needed for the railroads. “So itwas with mechanical engineering, in the invention and constructionof our machines. They picked up their education by piece meal in the best way they could. They were educated by the necessity ofthe case, at a very great expense, as well as loss and inconvenience.”

Only one nation-wide society of engineering existed in America,the American Society of Civil Engineers, founded in 1852.

Such was the situation, as far as engineering was concerned,when the board of the Institute ambitiously voted to offer coursesin “Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Physics, Chemistry,Drawing, French, German, and English.”

Finding teachers for this advanced curriculum would not be easy.First of all, there had to be a principal. Paul Chadbourne atWilliams was invited twice, but twice refused. Professor C. F.Brackett of Bowdoin was asked with the same result. Recom -mended by the superintendent of the Boston public schools wasthe well-educated principal of the Arlington High School, CharlesO. Thompson, a graduate of Dartmouth with a special interest in chemistry.

Thinking that they might fill two posts with one man, the trus -tees invited Charles Thompson to visit a board meeting in April.With full dark-red beard, freshly trimmed now that it was spring,Mr. Thompson clearly impressed the older men. In spite of hisyouth (he was only thirty-one), he was asked to be “professor ofchemistry and to act as principal.” Mr. Thompson accepted theposition with the condition that the opening of school be delayedlong enough for him to visit the technical schools of Europe.

The board of trustees agreed, and by that agreement gave goodevidence of the scope of planning which characterized the begin-

I can remember when we thought theidea of a man’s tending a loom wassomething like that of rocking a cradle,because it was taking the place of awoman at home, and the idea of intro-ducing manufacturers into Massachusettswas as wild as it would be to introducethe navigation of ships in the lake inWorcester. —Emory Washburn, 1869

Engineering—“The art of directing thegreat sources of power for the use andconvenience of man.”

—Thomas Tredgold, 1818, in charter of Institute of Civil Engineering in Great Britain

Charles O. Thompson

32

ning of the school. This was no idle school-boy venture in whichthey were involved; it was a serious attempt at educational innova -tion, and they were willing to pay the price for it.

For the trip abroad, Mr. Thompson was given five hundred dollars in addition to half of his first year’s salary of twenty-fivehundred dollars, and an extra five hundred with which to buy laboratory equipment. His wife (Maria Goodrich of Ware), whomhe had married in 1862, was to spend the summer in Templetonwith her uncle’s family while Mr. Thompson was overseas andwhile she awaited the birth of their child. Templeton was a smalltown; it is impossible not to surmise that the Thompsons werethus well acquainted with John Boynton and David Whitcomb,which may in itself explain the choice of Charles Thompson asprincipal of the new school.

Charles Thompson sailed in May. He visited every school evenremotely resembling the new Institute of which he was to act asprincipal, then wrote to the trustees at home: “No schools herecan be imitated, but the ideas can be Americanized.” One of hismain impressions was the difference between European boys andAmerican boys. This difference, he wrote with emphasis, mustnever be ignored.

Mr. Thompson concluded that the Institute’s curriculum shouldoffer a four-year course and require a high-school entrance pre-requisite. This, however, seemed too ambitious to the trustees, whoannounced in their first circular that the course would last threeyears. Students on admission were to give evidence of an acquaint -ance with the usual studies pursued in the district schools, especiallyin arithmetic, geography, and history of the United States.

The board followed Mr. Thompson’s recommendation, however,in hiring his wife’s sister, Harriett Goodrich, to teach mathematics.Although Mrs. Thompson had graduated from the Oread Institutein Worcester, her sister was an alumna of Mount Holyoke and had been Mr. Thompson’s assistant in Arlington. George Glad-win, an artist who had studied abroad and worked in Worcester,had also been engaged as a part-time teacher of drawing.

School was to begin in less than a week when George I. Aldenof Templeton, only twenty-five years old, was asked to teach theo-retical and practical mechanics. How this young man found outabout the school, or how the school found out about him, is notknown. He had been graduated summa cum laude in June from theLawrence Scientific School, and for the few months since gradua -tion he had worked at the Harvard Observatory.

It is possible that John Boynton had reserved this teaching berthat the Institute for George Alden. It is certain that Mr. Boyntonknew the Alden family and knew them well. In the funds whichbecame a permanent part of the Boynton endowment to the Insti -tute there was evidence of this acquaintance in a hundred-dollarnote signed by one of Mr. Alden’s uncles in Templeton.

It is just as possible that David Whitcomb remembered and rec-

This school was not framed on the modelof any existing anywhere.

—Seth Sweetser

When I entered Harvard no knowledgeeven of common arithmetic was prereq-uisite; nor were we required to know any-thing of geography, but simply the placeof our nativity.

—Emory Washburn, 1869

33

ommended this promising young man. On the other hand, thechoosing of George Alden, which initiated one of the school’s mostlasting relationships, may have hinged entirely on the reputation hehad earned for himself at Harvard. He was rated as one of themost brilliant students that was ever graduated from the ScientificSchool.

For the time being Mr. Salisbury was listed as principal of theInstitute, but this arrangement lasted for only a few months beforeit was announced that Mr. Thompson’s inauguration would coin-cide with the dedication of Boynton Hall. With four teachers sharing the teaching load for thirty-two students, the school was opened on Tuesday, November 10. There were middlers andjuniors—no seniors. All but two of the pupils were from theCounty of Worcester; one lived outside of Massachusetts. Twoboys came from Templeton. Most of the boys lived at their ownhomes in Worcester or in surrounding towns, relying on trains orhorse and buggy for transportation. A few boys planned to livewith Mr. and Mrs. Thompson in the big house rented fromStephen Salisbury; the rest would find places in nearby boarding-houses where board and room was available for four to six dollarsa week.

Among the students there were no girls. In the case of those fewwho had applied, Mr. Thompson answered: “We cannot receiveany women without undertaking to instruct all competent womenwho apply. This we have not room for now. It is our purpose tothrow the school open to youth of both sexes as soon as we can.”

The first day of school was a formality of greetings. The nextwas a vacation, for November 11 had been chosen as the date forthe dedication ceremony of Boynton Hall. It was a melancholyday, instituting what became almost traditional as far as weatherand Institute celebrations are concerned. A never-ending rain madelong rivulets down the steep hill, and according to the Spy report,“The streets leading to the grounds and the grounds themselveswere in a horribly muddy condition.”

Everybody had been invited to the ceremonies, either by specialinvitation or through the newspapers. Everybody had also been in -vited to bring food and instructed to leave it at Seth Sweetser’schurch in good time before the opening exercises. By actual count,there were ninety-nine persons on the collation committee.

The ceremony lasted all day, and its story by itself would fill abig book. There were twelve long speeches in which almost every -one concerned with building the school, plus a few visitors, triedmanfully to put into words the purpose of the school and hishopes for it. John Woodman said in his remarks that this was anera when people were judged by the kind of speech they couldmake. On this historic day there were many persons willing tosubmit to the test.

Greeting the guests who crowded into the new chapel of Boyn -ton Hall was D. Waldo Lincoln, chairman of the building com-

To be a Lincoln in Worcester was and is enough. —Robert M. Washburn

George I. Alden

34

mittee and a member of the board. It was he who reviewed theusual travails of building, paid tribute to architects and builders,especially to James White, the superintendent, then turned over thekeys and custody of the building to President Salisbury. The costof the building to the penny was $73,343.68.

Noticeably absent was Ichabod Washburn, who was still veryill at home. Early in the proceedings, Mr. Salisbury made mentionof his absence and paid him special tribute. Mr. Salisbury alsocould not resist this opportunity to state his own case for tradi-tional classical learning of which he was so fond, and he admittedto being “impatient with comparisons of book learning and prac-tical knowledge.”

The professional guests for the occasion included Chester S.Lyman of the Sheffield School at Yale and John Woodman of theChandler School at Dartmouth. During Professor Woodman’sspeech the young Charles Thompson was visibly moved. ProfessorWoodman, who had been his teacher at Dartmouth, spoke with the perspective of experience, and suddenly the portent of this daymade its impact. This was indeed a solemn thing to do —this starting of a school; it was almost like manipulating destiny. Pro -fessor Woodman spoke of the education of a former day whichwas “liberal on a literary basis” and the new kind which was “liberal on a scientific basis,” and expressed his belief that neithershould dominate.

He pleaded that the student not be forgotten in the controversywhich was sure to come in the resolving of this issue. In the pre-occupation of establishing and building the school, creating itsfunds and determining the curriculum, this was almost the firsttime that the student as a human being had been given much consideration. Let nothing interfere with the work of “makingsplendid men,” implored Professor Woodman. “You will be im -patient to have character and standing as an institution; but havepatience. The great element of character, not to be stepped over, istime.” Then, capsuling the whole future history of the school, heconcluded: “When graduates get out in the world, not until, theschool will have its character.”

Charles Thompson responded with soberness. He reviewed theschool’s founding and paid tribute again to John Boynton andIchabod Washburn. In the case of the latter he hastened to say that the details of the shop had not yet been determined, but hepromised that “every student . . . will have as broad an oppor -tunity as is possible . . . to learn the practical application of every -thing he studies.”

Mr. Thompson tried to temper the word “practical” for thewearying audience. He recognized it as a term which made univer -sity men shudder. At the same time he reassured skeptical membersof the community that “this school is not a subtractor from established means of education, but an addition to them.” Its pur-pose is not to expand instruction, he said in his crisp voice, but to

I see not simply a new institution, but a new class of institutions.

—Chester S. Lyman, 1868

We believe it will rank among modelpublic buildings of the Commonwealth.

—D. Waldo Lincoln, 1868

A man of action is no antagonist, but a co-worker with the student of books.

—Stephen Salisbury II, 1868

The only hope and ambition of the goodteacher is to make great and good men of his students.

—John S. Woodman, 1868

It is not the boy we are training, but the giant he is to become.

—Charles O. Thompson, 1868

35

concentrate it. “We should write a motto over our gates, Pauca

fideliter, a few things faithfully.”James Blake, the new Mayor of Worcester and therefore a

member of the board, invited the guests to the collation. After -wards the whole assembly reconvened for the afternoon session.Again there were speeches, this time by Alexander H. Bullock,Governor of the State and citizen of Worcester, Thomas A.Thacher, professor of Latin at Yale, the Reverend Seth Sweetser,the Honorable Emory Washburn from Harvard, who had been soinstrumental in founding the school, George F. Hoar, who in thisyear became a member of the United States Congress, JudgeHenry Chapin, and William P. Atkinson of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology.

Judge Chapin moved an adjournment but became so inter-ested in his own speech that he talked on and on, ignoring his own motion. It was he who told the only joke of the day; even that was feeble fare. His story referred to the old superstition thatwhen a new child is born, it becomes the possessor of a soul ofsomeone who dies at that same moment. Judge Chapin went on tosay that he knew one man so stingy that when he was born, nobodydied.

It was not much to lighten a whole day of ponderous eloquence,but it helped. Shortly afterwards, George Hoar finished the speech -making and Judge Chapin stood up again, this time to thank thepeople for bringing so much good food.

It was already dusk as the carriages grumbled down the muddydriveway. The two buildings stood stark and still on the bare hill now stripped of all its trees. Charles Thompson, fortified byonly one young teacher, a part-time artist, and his sister-in-law,must have felt he had fallen heir to a strange legacy.

The fathers and godfathers and advisers had had their say andnow had gone away, leaving what they hoped were adequate pro-visions and instruction to last the winter.

Now the test would come.There was nothing to do but pick up after the company, then

get on with the homework for tomorrow’s classes.

This school comes to us at the right time. —Alexander Bullock, 1868

We expect to send out boys who will not be ashamed to go back to the shop to work. —George F. Hoar, 1869

g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g

Salisbury Street, west end of Salisbury Pond, now corner of Park Avenue

36

Lincoln Square, first Salisbury house in center, second on top of hill at left

37 37Salisbury Street, with Salisbury land being broken up into streets and estates, 1888

Salisbury house from Harvard Street

38Above: Highland Military Academy

Below: Oread Collegiate Institute, for Young Ladies

39Above: First Letterhead

Below: Opening-day notice

40

Institute campus, with Boynton Street faculty row: Thompson,Alden, Cutler, Eaton, Kimball, Sinclair, George Gladwin lived on Harvard Street, Milton Higgins on Bliss Street.

Cartoon labeled “Our Gymnasium” by students, 1881