The life of Daniel Coit Gilman

Preface

It was at Mrs. Gilman's request that I undertook in part to write and in part to edit this Life of President Gilman. The first chapter, relating to his boyhood and youth, was written by his brother, Mr. William C. Gilman, of Norwich, Conn. ; the second, covering the period of his connection with Yale College as librarian and professor, is the work of Miss Emily H. Whitney and Miss Margaret D. Whitney, daughters of the late Prof. W. D. Whitney; and the third, giving the story of his presidency of the University of California, was contributed by Prof. William Carey Jones, of that University. The editing of these chapters, and the preparation of the remaining five, embracing Mr. Gilman's life from the time of his coming to Baltimore until its close, fell to my share.

After the work was completed, and ready for the printers, came the unexpected failing of Mrs. Gilman's health, and her death after a brief period of critical illness. The appreciation of Mr. Gilman, signed by her initials, which appears at the close of the biography, was written by her for the book, and occupies the position which had been assigned to it in the first place; the few references to her occurring in the volume have likewise been left unaltered. Her relation toward her husband was not only perfect in point of personal attachment, but included an ideal completeness of sympathy with him in his labors and his aspirations; and after his death devotion to his memory was the absorbing interest of her life.

F. F.

Contents

Chapter Pagb

I Boyhood and Youth . . . . . f . : .< . . i

II New Haven 39

Chapter I

The apostle's exhortation, " Avoid genealogies, for they are unprofitable and vain," should not be disregarded, yet it will not be amiss to answer briefly the natural inquiry, who were the ancestors of Daniel Coit Gilman, before reflecting upon the influences surrounding him in his boyhood and youth that prepared him for his work in later years.

His paternal ancestry has been traced in Wales for several generations previous to 1638, when Edward Gilman, the progenitor of most of those who bear the Gilman name in America, came from Hingham, Norfolk, England, with his wife and family, in the good ship " Diligent " to Hingham, on the shore of Massachusetts Bay. A few years later he removed to Exeter, New Hampshire, where his sons were already established in the lumber and milling business. Descendants of his are useful and influential in Exeter to-day, and in almost every state in the Union representatives of his family have been respected and esteemed for sound judgment and sterling traits of character, while not a few have risen to positions of distinguished usefulness.

It is noteworthy that on the maternal side also, Daniel Coit Gilman is of Welsh descent, John Coit, the pioneer in this country, having come from Glamorganshire, Wales, to Salem, Massachusetts, before 1638. He migrated to New London, Connecticut, in 1647, where many of his tribe still remain. His twice great-grandson, Daniel Lathrop Coit, grandfather of Daniel Coit Gilman, removed at an early age to the neighboring town of Norwich, where he married Elizabeth, daughter of Captain Ephraim Bill, a marine agent for the United States during the Revolutionary War.

He was also in direct descent in the seventh generation from the Rev. John Lathrop, a graduate of Oxford University and a clergyman of the established Church of England, who, after two years' imprisonment for nonconformity, was banished from his native land in the stormy days of Charles I and Archbishop Laud. He came to Boston in 1634, settled in the Plymouth Colony, and died at Barnstable in 1653.

Among other ancestors was Simon Huntington, who came from Norwich, England, in 1633. From him descended a long line of distinguished men, and of honorable women not a few.

Other ancestors were Governor Thomas Dudley, one of the founders of Harvard College; William Gager, " right godly man, skillful chyrurgeon, and one of the Deacons of the Congregation"; and Thomas Adgate, who, with the son of Gager and the two sons of Simon Huntington, was numbered with the founders of Norwich in 1659. All these, and indeed all of his ancestors in America, so far as is known, were of English stock transplanted to New England soil between 1630 and 1640.

William Charles Gilman, the father of Daniel, born in Exeter, New Hampshire, was enrolled in his boyhood at Phillips Exeter Academy. Diverted from a purpose of entering Harvard College, by relatives who were iron merchants and nail manufacturers in Boston, he was indentured to them at an early age, and gained a thorough knowledge of the various branches of their work. Diligent in business, in his leisure hours he was the Secretary of the Howard Benevolent Society, organized for the relief of the sick and needy; and as a member of "The Rangers," a light infantry company, he did service in 18 15 at Fort

Strong in Boston Harbor. Long-continued correspondence with his parents and sisters shows that he was the center of the family group, and that absence from home did not weaken domestic ties. When he became of age, in 18 16, having learned something of the practical process of manufacture by actual work in the nail mill, he removed to Norwich, Connecticut, bringing with him experienced workmen, and built a large mill for the manufacture of cut nails by what was then a new process.

In New England every little stream with a waterfall earns its right of way by turning mill wheels, and Mr. Gilman soon became interested in establishing other manufactories on the neighboring Yantic and Shetucket rivers. An extensive and prosperous business demanded his close supervision, but with rare judgment he gathered about him, almost instinctively, competent assistants in his counting room and the mills. Thus, relieved of the burden of routine work, for more than twenty-five years there was hardly an important business enterprise in the town, whether for manufactures, finance, commerce or transportation, with which he was not identified. He was prominent in efforts for the improvement of public schools, and in all movements of a moral, religious or benevolent character he took an active part. He made a careful study of the early history of the town, was deeply interested in the welfare of the vanishing tribe of Mohegan Indians on their reservation a few miles distant; and, while devoted especially to affairs at home, his benevolent purposes were not circumscribed by narrow limits, but extended to remote places in this and other lands. He was a ready speaker and writer, he had a pleasant voice and manner, a cheerful religious faith, a hopeful disposition, and, desiring to strengthen the things that remain, looked constantly for improvements in the future.

Changes in his business affairs caused his removal in 1 844 to the city of New York, where, until his death nearly twenty years later, his interest in works of practical benevolence and philanthropy was unabated. Of silver and gold he had little, but of that little he gave gladly, and was unceasingly generous in gifts of time, thought and personal service. In a letter to his son he said, " the secret of being happy is in aiming at the happiness of others, — doing good as we have opportunity." These traits of his character are noteworthy because, as will be seen, they were afterwards manifested in his son; so much so,- that one of Daniel's sisters said " he is more like father than any other of his children."

Daniel's mother, Eliza Coit, was a daughter of Daniel Lathrop Coit, a retired merchant of Norwich, a man of extensive reading, cultivated tastes and ample means, who had traveled in Europe at a time when to have crossed the Atlantic was a mark of distinction. She had an attractive person and a warm heart. Devotedly attached to her husband in prosperity and misfortune, and sympathizing in all his interests in every way, she made it the great business of her life to increase the happiness of her children and to strengthen the bonds of affection between them.

Daniel was the fifth in a family of nine children, three sisters and one brother being older, and three sisters and one brother younger than himself. He was born in Norwich, Connecticut, July 6, 1 831, in the height of his father's prosperity, in a home surrounded with spacious gardens leading to a natural grove on a hillside overlooking the Yantic River and the manufacturing village at the Falls in which his father was interested.

After graduating at primary schools, he entered the Norwich Academy, a school far above the average of schools in inland towns at that day, liberally supported by parents desiring to have their sons educated at home. The principal, Calvin Tracy, a graduate of Dartmouth College in 1 83 1, was a good all-round teacher in the days when the schoolmaster was abroad in the land, and was supposed to know something about everything. The Wednesday afternoons were given to declamation — " speaking pieces," as the phrase was — and Saturday mornings were divided between " experiments " with the philosophical and chemical " apparatus " with which the school was provided, and the exercises of a debating society in which grave political, moral and literary questions were formally discussed by regularly appointed disputants.

Dr. Timothy Dwight of Yale University, a schoolmate of Daniel's, writing of this school forty years later in his interesting paper, " How I was Educated," said:

This school was conducted by Mr. Calvin Tracy. . . . He had the good fortune, as I also had, to be surrounded by a bright company of boys gathered from the best families of the place. . . .

The boys, I think, complained in after years that he did not have the best system of instruction; but somehow or other, either by means of what he did, or because of nature's gifts and the subsequent advantages they enjoyed, a goodly number of those boys have had an honorable place in the world. . . .

The man whose happy lot it is to have been born in Norwich, Connecticut, and whose early years were familiar with its beautiful hills, has a recollection of the past, as he passes on in his manhood life, which is full of peace and pleasantness. And so long as the recollection abides with him, he will be thankful for it and will be glad to think of everything which makes a part of its joyousness.

During an interval, after Mr. Tracy had closed his school, Daniel for a time played the schoolmaster's part for his younger sisters and brother in their studies at home. This was the beginning of his work as an educator !

After this for a year he was under the instruction of Mr. Weld, an excellent teacher, and in his school sharpened his wits against those of bright girls as well as boys of his own age. He greatly enjoyed his studies here, was reading forty lines of Virgil a day, and, as a prize for English composition, received a copy of John Foster's essay on " Decision of Character."

Athletics, at that time, had not become an exact science, but he engaged with zest in the common sports of boys in the primitive forms of ball playing, rowing, skating and the like ; but no amusement gave him greater pleasure than he found in the home grounds and in long walks and rambles over the forest-covered hillsides of his native town.

He looked forward to the removal of his father's family to New York, in his fourteenth year, with some misgiving. He dreaded to think of living in a brick house in the middle of a city block with omnibuses rattling over the pavement, the noise and crowds, and the loss of the freedom of rural life. But he accepted unaccustomed conditions with a good heart, and soon found great pleasure in new scenes and occupations.

Almost immediately he entered a school kept by his old instructor, Mr. Tracy, and, after a short time, as a pupil assistant, had charge of a room full of younger boys, while pursuing at the same time his studies in the upper class with private recitations. For this service he received a moderate compensation above his own tuition.

His active, inquiring mind soon found abundant occupation for his leisure hours and holidays. He heard good music and saw good pictures. He heard the best political orators and the best preachers — Protestants, Jews and Roman Catholics; he visited the public charitable institutions for orphans, for the blind, and for the deaf and dumb, all the public buildings, the Navy Yard and the government forts. In short, he knew more about all the good things in the city in six months than most boys knew who had lived there all their lives. It gave him great pleasure to learn all he could about something new — a new packet ship, for instance, or a new invention — and to come home and tell about it. He was as ready then as he was in later life to acquire and to impart interesting and useful knowledge.

Before the family left Norwich he had begun to publish a weekly periodical called Our Paper. Intended exclusively for home circulation and as a means of communication with absent members, it was continued for years after the office of publication was removed to New York. It was carefully written with his own pen, with ornamental head lines, and was by no means a bad primary course in journalism. He also formed a respectable collection of minerals and natural curiosities which he exhibited as " A School Boy's Cabinet." He was keen to gain new specimens, and in 1846 wrote to his sister at Norwich for a fragment of Sillimanite, a not very common mineral which, he had heard, was to be found there.

He was also engaged for a short time in his father's mercantile house, where he gained some practical knowledge of business methods and acquired a remarkably clear and rapid handwriting. This facility with his pen introduced him to library work in making, for Henry Stevens, a card catalogue of books from the library of George Washington which were purchased in 1848 by the Boston Athenaeum. This experience was followed by catalogue work in the Mercantile Library of New York, with S. Hastings Grant, whom he spoke of later as his dearest friend outside his own kin; and from their intimacy grew Norton's Literary Gazette, which maintained under their editorship for several years a high reputation for disinterested criticism. Through their efforts was held in 1853 the first annual convention of American Librarians.

His studies preparatory to entering Yale College were continued at the Cornelius Institute, New York, under Dr. John J. Owen, well known as an editor of Greek and Latin text books. This school was established primarily, though not exclusively, for candidates for the Christian ministry. As he had already become a member of the Congregational Church with which his parents were connected, it was not strange that some persons who were not well informed assumed that his purpose was to become a clergyman. But whatever thoughts revolved in his mind, he expressed no such intention, and was too conscientious to commit himself to that course when he was not fully persuaded in his own mind. Referring to his having become a church member at an early age, he said in 1875, " I suffer to this day from the injudicious fervor of those outside the family by whom I was then surrounded."

In the summer of 1848 he went to New Haven, and, writing to his father, said, " the dreaded examination has passed and I have no more fears on that score. After two sessions of about five hours I received the usual certificate, and was surprised that I was not ' conditioned,' as I fully expected to be. I am greatly relieved. It seems as though a heavy load was removed, and I feel almost as free as the wind. I am sure if home had been within ten miles I should have set out for it on the full run this afternoon."

At the beginning of the fall term, six weeks later, when he was three months past his seventeenth birthday, he was enrolled as a member of the Yale class of 1852. This was in the second year of the presidency of Dr. Woolsey, when Professors Silliman, Kingsley, Olmsted, Larned, Thacher, Dana and Hadley were active in the academic faculty.

He found a number of Norwich boys, old comrades, in college, and among his intimate friends and contemporaries who have since reached eminent distinction were Timothy Dwight, who preceded him, and Andrew Dickson White, who succeeded him in the next class.

He entered immediately with enthusiasm upon the diverse occupations of college life, which he described in detail in family letters, saying, in conclusion, " and so they go, day after day, week after week; there is a good deal of variety, a good deal of merriment, a good deal of pleasure, a good deal of trouble, and, more than all, a good deal of hard work at study, which no one can understand but those who are engaged in it."

It was an inestimable advantage to him that his home during his college life was in the family of his uncle, Professor James L. Kingsley, whose varied learning, accurate scholarship, keen perceptions and delightfully subtle humor were stimulating and inspiring. Through his aunt and cousins he had such an introduction into the best social life of New Haven as would have been impossible had he been confined strictly to college walls. Fifty-six years later, his cousin said of him in a letter of pleasant reminiscence, " You have mentioned many activities: I can say he never seemed hurried or worried amidst them, but was always ready to lend a helping hand to whatever was going on in the family, and was just like a son and brother to us all."

His college life was a full life. He was a thorough Yale man and deemed no Yale interests foreign to him. He maintained an honorable position in scholarship, but was not a recluse, and his education was on broader lines than those of the college curriculum. Every hour not required for prescribed duties was so fully occupied with other affairs that he had " not time for so much as a walk in the woods," but found his recreation in change of occupation.

As an undergraduate he was sensible of the obligation io LIFE OF DANIEL COIT OILMAN

resting upon the student for the maintenance of the honorable traditions of the college and for the advancement of sound learning. His dissertation at the Junior Exhibition was on " The Poetical in our College Life," and at the beginning of his senior year he said in a letter, " I had the pleasure last night of delivering before the three literary societies, Brothers in Unity, Calliope and Linonia, an oration on ' The Claims of Yale College upon its Undergraduate Students.' "

" Biennial examinations," introduced in his sophomore year, more rigid and exacting than former methods, were regarded by some, in the words of the song of the day, as " a bore," but he believed them to be valuable and instructive. So, also, he cordially approved of a new method of instruction in rhetoric and elocution, by which the student was required to write what he had to say on a given subject in the limits of a single page and declaim it before his class. This, he was sure, would commend itself to his father as a good exercise in the art of brevity and condensation. At this time also he said, " I am more interested in my studies than ever before, particularly in mathematics."

In his senior year the study of Latin and Greek was not required, and the students were permitted to take as " optionals " such studies as they preferred. Daniel chose surveying, " not merely for the purpose of being able to make surveys, but so as to understand them when they are made." Was this a foreshadowing of the Venezuela Boundary Commission?

He also took as optionals Astronomy, Optics, Logic and Ancient History. " I am interested," he said, " in every one of these studies, and have never before taken so much interest in entering enthusiastically into all the college requirements."

Before the end of his freshman year he and some of his

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH n

classmates organized an afternoon Sunday school for children of the less favored class in the lower part of New Haven, and his interest in it was unabated throughout his college life. The purpose of the teachers was not to give strictly religious instruction alone, but generally to promote the moral and physical well-being of the boys and girls who came under their influence. His father, always deeply interested in similar work in New York, where he was one of the founders of the Home for Friendless Boys, the Children's Aid Society, the Juvenile Asylum, and a " Boys' Meeting " on Sunday afternoons, fully sympathized with Daniel in this work, and many were the conferences they had, continued late into the night, on the best ways and means of extending it. At the outset Daniel said, " I believe we all understand that a great deal of persevering work will be necessary, but if we can add to the happiness or the goodness of even a few we shall be well paid. . . . I am sure there is great need to teach those who are ready to work the best means of going to work." Hopeful and encouraging, yet cautious and prudent, his father said, " If you should see half as many plans checked as I have, you will find in many cases that the hindrance was a blessing, though at the moment unwelcome." There can be no doubt that the influence and example of his father were a powerful and life-long incentive to his progressive yet conservative philanthropic work.

A letter to his father, written in his last year at college, and relating to the Sunday-school work, has been preserved :

New Haven, May 24, 1852.

My dear Father :

You will be interested in hearing that the annual meeting of the " City Mission " of N. Haven was held last evening & that a prominent topic of consideration was the " Davenport S. School." The Center Church was crowded, & Dr.

Bacon made a great speech upon the subject of doing good here in the city, dwelling at some length upon this Sabbath School enterprise. He gave with some minuteness an a/c of his visit to the School that very afternoon, & encouraged the teachers by his public remarks of approbation. He told the audience that he did not believe there were greater savages anywhere than some who were bro't under the influence of this School — yes not even in Koordistan! His idea, & I believe the city ministers all concur, is to have a building erected for a free church with convenient rooms for our S. School, sewing & singing classes, & an office for the city missionaries, who are to be dispensers of charities to the poor as well as of tracts & bibles to the destitute. A minister in addition to lay laborers he wishes to have employed, & all this done right away.

There seems to be no question that the enterprise wh. we started three yrs ago as a quiet Experiment, has the elements of success & that the churches are getting desirous of carrying on that & similar wks to a far greater degree than they have ever done before. I cannot tell you anything more than this bare announcement of the meeting, but will give you a fuller rept. when I see you.

Among other things Dr. Bacon came out very emphatically with the remark " It is a SHAME, yes my Hearers, it is a SHAME to N. Haven that a few young men at college in addition to their time & labor should be obliged to pay the expenses of such a school, especially that for want of a room in wh. to meet they should be compelled to hire a store at a rent of three dollars a Sunday, with the liability to be ejected at any time when the owner can secure a regular tenant."

What will be done after the talk remains to be seen. Meanwhile, our school has never appeared more prosperous. We have no trouble about noise. We have in attendance, in this new room more than we have ever had before, — on one Sund. 84 schol. on another 91. — We have started (in a separate room) an infant class, (numbering 22 last Sunday) for which Miss Jane Skinner & others are desirous of securing Harriet's services, & have spoken to me in relation thereto. Please give her an official invitation to assume its charge next Sunday. We have every wk. nowadays a sewing class at wh. twenty girls were present on Saturday & a singing class at a later hour with about 25 in attendance. The teachers are all I might say enthusiastic in their efforts, & have had one or two additions to their no. of great efficiency — Mrs. Dana is one. I want very much to have you see the school this summer & hope very much that you will be able to spend a Sabbath here.

Alongside this letter it is interesting to place one written a few months later to Charles Loring Brace, in which quite a different side of his religious nature is brought out:

New York, August 19, 1852.

My dear Brace :

Your letter of Sunday did not reach me until last evening or I assure you it would have been more promptly answered. Little did I think when I read of the Austrian adventures of our Pedestrian Correspondent and sympathized with his various and peculiar experience abroad that a year thereafter we should be journeying over Berkshire hills together with our friends, and should meet with such occurrences as would make us sympathize most closely and feel far more like brothers than like ordinary friends.

It was just like your own frank self to write so kind a letter to us on the Sunday after we parted. We thought and spoke of you several times upon that day and wished you had remained in Williamstown to enjoy the many things which we enjoyed, and it is pleasant now to hear from you that our many common interests were also on your mind. But I don't wish merely to thank you in a general way for writing as you did an expression of your sympathy, — but more especially to respond to the sentiments on Christian acquaintance which you there bring out. I agree with them most fully and only regret that I did not know at an earlier time upon our journey what were your feelings upon a few such topics. I tell you, Brace, that I hate cant and all that sort of thing as much as you or any one else can do. It is not with everyone that I could enjoy a talk upon religious subjects. I hardly ever wrote a letter on them to those whom I know best. But when any one believes in an inner life of faith and joy and is willing to talk about it in an earnest, every day style and tone, I do enjoy it most exceedingly. Some day or other we will have a talk upon such matters and see how we shall agree. For one, I don't believe that all the almsgiving, useful as it is, is going to do one half as much towards reforming our world as the giving which President Hopkins talked about on Sunday, — the giving of kind thoughts and acts and words to those who are in need or trouble, in short, the giving of one's self. I learnt some lessons on our recent expedition pertaining to this very matter which I shall not soon forget.

You speak of our last evening together and wish we had had more such interviews with one another. How queer it is that we feel constraint ever upon religious matters and especially when the avowals of all are almost the same. Yet this very feeling of constraint or some other reason prevented that which would have given zest to all our other pleasures, but if we ever start off upon another such excursion we shall know better how to manage in very many ways. ...

Throughout his collegiate course, and indeed at an earlier period, he was reluctant to be a burden on his father. He therefore improved at all convenient times every opportunity to engage in private teaching, and in newspaper and literary work. Even the skill in ornamental lettering with his pen acquired in his boyhood became remunerative in inscribing on their diplomas the names of candidates for academic degrees. He never waited for something to do; the thing to be done always came to him. The question was never what? but which? By these various means he not only contributed to his own support, but was enabled to indulge his generous impulses in promoting the happiness of others and in giving substantial aid to the undertakings in which he was engaged. Working with all his might for the good of the cause, he was alike devoid of selfishness and of personal ambition.

The year following his graduation was by no means time misspent. Inducements to enter a business career did not strongly appeal to him, and so many fields invited him that he could not fairly be charged with neglecting the teachings of Foster's " Decision of Character " if he took his own time for reflection and selection. He had no lack of counsellors, and among them those who were least competent were the most forward to determine for him whether he should be a journalist, a librarian, a clergyman or a general philanthropist.