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Bradford Academy part III

The main question which a history of Bradford Academy should answer is how did it happen that a co-educational academy became a school for the higher education of young women? ~ Jean S. Pond


Bradford Academy Class of 1849
Bradford Academy Class of 1849

This post continues the story of the Bradford Academy which became an all women's school in 1836


Benjamin's retirement


By 1836, the number of male students at the Bradford Academy had dwindled to the point that it was decided to keep the school open for females only. Our cousin Benjamin's (5C5X) time as principal of the Academy had come to an end. After leaving, he served in the Massachusetts legislature from 1837 to 1839, then went back to his first love, education. He wrote and published many textbooks including A Concise System of Grammatical Punctuation and numerous math books. Shown below are the cover and an inside page of one of his math textbooks.






Benjamin also took charge of the Bradford Teachers' Seminary and served kept his hand in the Academy by serving on the Board of Trustees, a post he held until a year before his death in 1864 at age 78.



born to teach


When Ben Greenleaf resigned, "the Trustees determined to make the Academy solely a female institution." As a female institution, the Academy increased in both popularity and "public patronage." The original building became insufficient for the needs of the girls. A new Hall was built at a cost of about $6,000. The building was dedicated in April of 1841.


The main question which a history of Bradford Academy should answer is how did it happen that a co-educational academy became a school for the higher education of young women? The answer can be reduced to one name Abigail Hasseltine (3C7X).


Education was obviously in the blood of all the Haseltine sisters. Sister Rebecca (3C7X), with a family to raise, worked tirelessly alongside her husband, the Reverend Joseph Emerson, at the women's seminary he had founded. Rebecca often took sole charge when ill health forced Joseph to travel south on occasion. Sister Mary is credited with beginning the Sunday School at their Congregational Church. Sister Nancy (3C7X) wrote educational books and started a school for girls during her time as a missionary in Burma.


Abigail's future success at the Bradford Academy might not have been so apparent in the little girl growing up in John Haseltine's household:


Abigail, unlike her sisters, was far from brilliant as a little girl; indeed, the story is that she could not talk at all till she was four years old, but that she then spoke with ease all at once. Slow also in learning to read, she seems to have been preoccupied and diffident. When, however, at the age of twelve, she was introduced to the wonders of arithmetic, she suddenly blossomed out as a real scholar. Her sister Nancy, younger by less than two years, was her closest companion, and that captivating charm which everyone felt in the younger girl no doubt retarded the self-expression of the older sister. She once said that when they were together in company she let Nancy do the talking.


Abigail entered the Academy at age 15 and knew straightaway that "to be a teacher, that was her ambition." She taught school between her Academy terms, even serving for a while in Beverly where her sister Rebecca lived.


. . .tall and slender, a fine figure, heavy braids of hair put around a, large comb, and worn high on the head, interesting in appearance but not handsome, with an air of conscious dignity"? Her pupils liked her all the better for her known weakness for good clothes. From the Hasseltine homestead, a few rods up the street, she used to walk into the west room of the Academy early in the morning, hang up on the peg behind her desk her shawl and bonnet, or calash according to the season, ready for a long day's work.


Bible study was the "bulwark of the school."


Miss Hasseltine was so familiar with the text of the Bible that she made it vividly interesting. Stories, characters, topography, all became clear to her students. No critical study of the text troubled her, so, inspired by her enthusiasm, her students constructed the Tabernacle and the Temple and wrote sketches of biblical characters, but woe to those who did not search their Bible first! "Be rich in Scripture, young ladies!" she used to exhort them. She planned this instruction with the purpose of bringing home to each student her need of personal religion, and she never allowed herself to forget her own responsibility for the spiritual welfare of each girl.


Abigail took over the sole principalship of the school in 1836 when she was 48 years old. Her father John Haseltine (2C8X) died a year later John (2C8X) and Abigail kept on at the homestead with her mother and his sister Mary.


the Academy thrives


Under Abigail's direction, the school continued to grow and expand, adding buildings to accommodate the needs of the students. In 1841, a new "commodious edifice" was built at a cost of $6,000 dollars which was "raised by subscription."


Miss Hasseltine's labors in behalf of the new building, ably guided by Rev. Joseph Merrill of the Board of Trustees, were heroic. When it was clear that the meadow east of the old Academy could not be bought, the building committee decided to move the old building back and use its site for the new one. Miss Hasseltine used to stand at the door and look longingly at the meadow where the present building stands and say, "That's where it ought to be."


Toward the end of her career at the Academy, Abigail created a program to help girls of "small means" by adopting a successful plan that Mount Holyoke College had put into operation. She was able to find a donor from England who bought our cousin Jesse Kimball's (3C7X) house.


Mr. A.S. Thornton. . .had bought the Jesse Kimball house, offering it rent free to the trustees for the use of girls who otherwise could not attend the school, on condition that they would do their own housework. The next task was to furnish the building. A "Benefit" was arranged and money was raised, but in order to have the house ready for occupancy Miss Hasseltine had to pay a large share from her own pocket for which the trustees reimbursed her in time.

Below is a picture of Jesse's house.


 


Abigail's last years at the Academy


By 1848, when she turned 60, Abigail was ready to retire. She chose as her successor Mary Ellison, who had recently become vice principal of the Academy.


She (Ellison) was made principal of equal rank with Miss Hasseltine for 1848-49, and the stage was set for Miss Hasseltine's long desired freedom. But some kind of rupture must have taken place that year. Suddenly on March thirteenth Miss Ellison was married to Rev. Luther Dimick . . .We all know that schoolgirls love a romance, so a majority of seniors, expecting to graduate in July, would not have withdrawn because a loved teacher deserted them for marriage, especially as the ceremony took place in the Bradford Church. They evidently thought that in some way Miss Ellison had not been treated fairly. They withdrew just before they were to finish their course.


Abigail again took up her duties "as if she had never laid any of them down" but continued looking for for someone to take her place. A likely replacement was found in Ann Crocker who took over the instruction and discipline at the school while Abigail performed the nuts and bolts of running the school.


All went well, for Miss Crocker was a brilliant teacher, especially in astronomy. She raised the standard of scholarship, and she seemed a promising successor to Miss Hasseltine, but after a year she withdrew and became principal of Hartford Female Seminary.


Five years later, Abigail was still hard at work as principal at the Academy.


In 1853 she was the sole head of a school of two hundred and thirty-nine girls with a faculty of twelve, occupying the new academy building erected largely by her efforts, where were eight rooms and an assembly hall, and nearby a boarding house already inadequate for the housing of students. A regular course of study of four years leading to the diploma included considerable work of collegiate grade.




Bradford Academy's semi-centennial


While Abigail continued her duties as principal of the Bradford Academy, plans were afoot for the celebration of the Semi-Centennial of the school. Cousin Benjamin Greenleaf was on a committee of three chosen to arrange the celebration.


Invitations had been broadcast, the weather was perfect, crowds came from far and near. A procession from the Academy to the church, the present church building, was led by Mr. Greenleaf and Miss Hasseltine, with the two hundred girls in white dresses with uncovered heads. . .Then followed the awarding of diplomas by Mr. Greenleaf, president of the Board of Trustees, to the ten graduates.


The celebration took place on July 6, 1853. Our cousin Hannah Swan (4C7X), who was the first preceptress of the school, was one of the guests. The address of the day was given by former Academy student, the Reverend Calvin B. Stowe.


He had married Harriet Beecher, whose interest in the education of girls was second only to that of her sister Catharine, and she showed that interest in various ways at Abbot Academy. Is it not altogether probable that Mrs. Stowe accompanied her husband to Bradford on the sixth of July, 1853? She is not mentioned in the accounts of the event, for it was a men's affair, so far as speech making was concerned; moreover the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin was scarcely known as yet, although the story had appeared the previous year in an Anti-Slavery periodical.


After Stowe's address, Dr. James Nichols read the anniversary poem in mock-heroic style:


Preceptor Greenleaf, on whose ample brow

Time's finger marks we scarce discern e'en now,

Hale, joyous, hearty ; that portentous nod

Wakes recollections of the birchen rod,

Which like the sword of Eden, day by day,

Grasped by his clenched hand, moved every way.

Oft have we started with a quickening bound

As though 'twere the last judgment's trumpet sound,

As the word "Boys!" came with stentorian breath,

Then followed silence, e'en like that of death.

Meekly we raised our eyes to learn our doom,

Or what new perils to our sports had come.


As twining tendrils love the parent vine,

So love fond hearts the name of Hasseltine

Name hallowed mid the prairies of the West,

Where the declining sun sinks down to rest;

On southern plains where hoar frosts never chill

Are the heart's altar fires kept burning still.

Not hers the mission in the lessons taught

To gild and polish at expense of thought,

And pander to that love of outward show

Which asks how one appears, not what they know.

Not hers the painter's skill, not hers the art

To gloss the mind and leave untouched the heart;

But education vigorous deep inwrought,

Mastering all themes within the range of thought.


After the festivities, when the men had gone, the women and girls gathered in the Academy Hall for their own informal celebration. From her girls, Abigail received a "purse of money."


This gift was made up of many small donations in response to a circular letter which contained some unvarnished facts, in these words:


Our beloved Miss Hasseltine, after forty years of toil, has been in pecuniary results unrewarded; and now in her old age is in straightened circumstances. Many of her former pupils feel interested to make up a purse, hoping to render her last days comfortable and happy in her quiet Bradford home.


This gift with others which supplemented it Miss Hasseltine was wise enough to use in 1857, not in sitting comfortably at home, but in a tour in Europe of several months. Surely neither in those days when European travel was a rare luxury nor in these when it is so common, did any woman enjoy more thoroughly its endless variety of scenes for which a well-stored memory is the first requisite.


finally some rest for Abigail


Only a few months after the Semi-Centennial celebration, Abigail was able to truly resign her post when Rebecca Gilman took over as principal of the Bradford Academy. Rebecca, however, didn't last long. By April of 1864, "she quietly passed out of Bradford history." Luckily for Abigail, her namsake, Abby Haseltine Johnson quickly stepped into Rebecca's shoes. Abigail took on the role as honorary principal "with certain light duties.


Miss Hasseltine for some time kept her Monday morning Bible class, a lesson of distinctly ethical nature. She often enlivened it by questions to test the girls' memory of texts. "Is woman ever a thing?" she asked. The desired answer was "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing." (Prov. 18:22.) Her familiarity with the Bible was greater than her knowledge of the world. She once advised her students never to associate with young men who were accustomed to sit about the billiard table.


At the school Reception in 1855, "[t]he fact that the Academy property was mortgaged did not check the entertainment at the festival season, nor did it prevent the trustees from giving Miss Hasseltine a present of three hundred dollars."


In these later years she was most tenderly cared for by her sister Mary who with all her saintliness lacked, perhaps, Abigail's excellent sense of humor. Mary was a little troubled because Abigail did not keep her mind on the inevitable end of life. "If Abby would only trim her lamp!" she exclaimed. Whereupon an intimate friend, remembering Miss Hasseltine's fondness for dress, said "Abigail was not so much interested in trimming her lamp as in trimming her person."


In spite of her advancing age, Abigail was able to attend the Reception of 1866:


Again Miss Hasseltine was the center, presiding in her accustomed place. In her seventy eighth year, with fifty one years of service of the school to look back upon, she spoke strongly and hopefully to her old students of her joy in their successes and the spirit which they had carried from the school into their family and community life. All must have felt that it was the last time she would address them, for she had not her former strength, yet she appeared again in the 'evening and enjoyed the informal sociability of the crowd, all of whom wished to speak with her. Even at this distance one can feel the reverence and affection which encircled her at this last public event of her life.


Many a school head has wondered how Miss Hasseltine kept her health and carried for so many years the heavy load of responsibility and long hours of work. She surely could not have done it without unusual physical vitality; secondly, she always lived in her own home where a devoted sister cared for her; finally, she combined a beneficent sense of humor with a religious security that nothing could greatly disturb, a steadfast faith in the wisdom and goodness of the God she served. These three factors made it possible for her to be present at the reunion. Shortly before that event she was driving, as was her habit, over the Haverhill bridge, when her horse took fright and threw her from the chaise. She was unconscious for some time and in grave danger, but she recovered sufficiently to go through with the taxing occasion. From that time, however, she failed both mentally and physically, but fortunately she was released before many months of suffering were demanded of her.


In those last months she and her sister Mary were greatly cheered by frequent visits from their niece Nancy (JudsonHaseltine) (4C6X). . . of Sherbrooke, Quebec. A nephew whom the sisters had brought up from childhood was also there, ready for instant service, while a faithful friend, Mrs. Proctor, acted as nurse. In the intervals when her mind was clear she would recite Psalm after Psalm and all her favorite hymns.


On the morning of January thirteenth, 1868, the intrepid spirit passed to greater freedom.



Six months after Abigail's death, the Reverend Leonard Withington closed the Academy's 1870 anniversary celebration "with an imaginary interview with the spirit of Miss Hasseltine, in which she said, 'Tell them I am only a stepping stone.'"



 
 
 

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