John H. Dillingham, 1839-1910, teacher, ministr in the Society of Friends, editor

Introduction

So far as possible it has been the effort in this volume to make John H. Dillingham WTite his own life. He left little if any material designed for that purpose. The habit of his Harvard training to have a " common book " in which he wrote a first draft of every exercise, theme, or letter, clung to him in measure through life. These books have been preserved and although there is one hiatus of nearly fifteen years in which there is no record, each distinct period of his life is represented. In addition, his mother preserved the bulk of his college letters, and of those received in the four or five years following his graduation. All this material has been most kindly entrusted to me by Mary P. Dillingham and her daughters. They have very properly retained those records that relate to themselves. Thus, it is possible to present material of greater value even than an autobiographical record would be. Having been written without a view to publication, it is perfectly natural and spontaneous.

There need be no apology for printing such a life. In the circle of the Society of Friends where his activities were known, John Dillingvi INTRODUCTION

ham was a unique figure. Naturally well endowed, he had the best education his time afforded; for several years after his college course he was in close touch with the most brilliant intellectual and social circle in the country; under a prompting of duty and encouraged by prophetic utterances of gifted ministers as to a future of usefulness, he entered Haverford College as an instructor. There, in face of a previous judgment against it, he embraced conservative Quakerism " as a conviction,'^ and during nearly forty years of his life found in it a greater measure of spiritual freedom than any of all the other forms of Christianity (he had tested them nearly all) seemed to contain. This choice was made in no narrow^ sectarian spirit. The following letter by one not of his chosen faith — a summer resident of the Cape and a neighbor of his — indicates very fairly the breadth of outlook compatible with what some might seem to regard a narrow path to walk in.

"Little Neck,

"West Falmouth, " Massachusetts, "July 16, 1911.

"My dear Mrs. Dillingham: " It is fitting that the life of a man like John

INTRODUCTION vii

Dillingham is to be published. None could better inspire others to right living and right thinking. He was a real teacher whose influence upon the minds and hearts of the young will be most beneficent and enduring. Everything of real value in life seemed to engage his interest and in a spirit most broad and tolerant. His activity was remarkable; he, evidently, received strength from God to go on and work beyond the limit of the ordinary man. His mental capacity always impressed me as most sound, with every indication of great knowledge. His conversation was direct, forcible, and enlightening; impressing one with the belief that he knew whereof he spoke. His convictions upon matters of religious principles were staunch, yet always gentle and tolerantly expressed. He was sane and well balanced; always rang true. He was gentle and modest.

" It is a distinct loss, in these days of careless thinking and reckless living, to have taken from ns a man like this. I miss his presence constantly, but am thankful to have had such a friend, whose memory is blessed. " Your friend,

" Edward L. Parker."

No larger hope is entertained in committing viii INTRODUCTION

these pages to print than that they may "inspire others to right living and right thinking."

J. Henry Bartlett.

TUCKERTON, N. J.,

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction v

I. Life [Written by John H. Dillingham]

Chapter I

LIFE [WBITTEN BY JOHN H. DILLINGHAM] FOR CLASS BOOK OF 1862 [HAEVARD]

In that part of the town of Falmouth, Barnstable County, Massachusetts, known as West Falmouth or " Hog Island," situate on the shore of Buzzard's Bay, and on the first day of June in the year 1839, as my father was hoeing corn in the field, I came into the world. My father, like, I believe, all his New England ancestors, was a farmer and still is a farmer on his paternal acres. His name is Abram. My mother's name before marriage was Lydia Beede Hoag; her residence and birthplace, Sandwich, New Hampshire.

On the back of a representation of the Dillingham coat-of-arms, made by an English genealogist not very long since, I find written the following information : "The family of Dillingham is originally from Wood Dyllingham in the county of Norfolk in England. [Description of Arms.] The cross and the arms were given to those who were in the fourth crusade with

King Eichard Cceur de Lion. The lion and the crest show second in command."

An Edward Dillingham settled in Lynn, Massachusetts, 1636, coming from Bitteswell, County Leicester, England, where he had estate: removed next year to Sandwich, Massachusetts; was representative in 1642 and had Henry and John; the younger born in England about 1636. Henry married Hannah Perry, 24 June, 1652, and lived in Sandwich; left children Edward, John, and Simeon. Edward, born 21 February, 1665, married Abigail Nye and lived in Sandwich. Their son Edward, born 1st mo. 1703 / 4, married Elizabeth Ooodspeed, who died 8 September, 1793, aged nearly ninety-six, and their son Ignatius, married Deborah Gifford, February, 1762 (?). They settled in Falmouth. Ignatius died 15 August, 1816. Deborah died 22 October, 1793, and Ignatius's second wife, Hannah, died 25 July, 1829. Ignatius and Deborah's son Joseph, one of eight children, born 1 November, 1776, married Esther Rogers (descended from John Rogers the Smithfield martyr, vid. Neiv England Primer) ^ and my father Abram who is one of their seven or more children married Lydia Beede Hoag, 1837. I am the eldest of their four children (all boys), the third and fourth of whom died

CLASS BOOK OF 1862 3

young. My brother is preparing for college at Exeter, New Hampshire. [For the American Dillinghams in general, see Savage's General Dictionary.]

At what period Quakerism found its way into the family I know not. Certainly my greatgrandfather Ignatius was a Quaker, as all his descendants have been. My mother's ancestors (the Hoags) have also been Friends for some generations, I know not how many. My mother is the daughter of John Hoag and Elizabeth ( Jilson) of Bolton, Massachusetts.

I myself in natural endowments, physical and intellectual, belong to the Hoags, rather than the Dillinghams. My ancestors on both sides as a general thing have been patriarchs in respect of length of years and multitude of children.

Till I was twelve years old I had the usual three months' schooling in the winter and three months' in summer. I recall distinctly most of the incidents of a journey made when I was seven years old, with my mother and brother to her old home in New Hampshire. We spent thus the greater part of the autumn, spending much time on the way going and returning in visiting various friends and relatives.

At the age of twelve I was sent to Lawrence Academy in Falmouth village, four miles from home. Up to the time of going to college I attended the Academy during the spring and fall terms, walking the eight miles nearly every school-day. In the winter-time I went to the school of my own school-district until I was sixteen, when I commenced teaching school. My first teacher at the Academy was George Dodge. He soon left the school and Mr. George Moore, who is now a Gongregationalist minister in Andover, was substituted. When I returned to the Academy in the spring, Mr. Moore had left, and his classmate at Williams, Mr. George Ellery Clarke, took his place, where he still faithfully labors. Whether to my mother or to Mr. Clarke I owe the most of my desire to get an education, I cannot tell. Certainly I owe much to the patience, encouragement, kindness, and interest in my case of Mr. Clarke. Having a taste for books and some ambition, I preferred the honor of being an educated man to other kinds of honor and gradually came to look beyond the Academy to the college as the best means of gaining an honorable prestige in society. Yet without this motive I think the desire of selfimprovement was strong enough of itself to send me to college. To college I came at the age of nineteen, with twenty dollars in my pocket, will-

CLASS BOOK OF 1862 5

ing to see liow far through that money and Providence Avould carry me. School-keeping and college benefices under that Providence have put me through uninterruptedly and with little debt. The school I first taught was in a part of my native town called Shumet, eight miles from home. The boys were rude and the teacher inexperienced and homesick. Yet if I am able to believe the committee, " good satisfaction was given.'' I went through my next school the winter before coming to college in the school-district in which I had always resided. My next school I taught in Pocasset, a part of Sandwich, six miles from home, in the winter of my Freshman year. The next winter I taught at home again, and have not taught school since.

As to prizes, I have received a Detur {Bacon^s Essays) and a President's scholarship for the Junior year and divided with O. W. Holmes, Jr., in my Junior year, the Boylston prize for Greek Prose Composition.

I have been a member of the Society of Christian Brethren, and of the Temperance Society from the evening it was organized. Was president of the Temperance Society during my Junior year. I belong also to the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

My chums have been Ben Major Davenport and J. Nelson Trask. With the former I lived during the Sophomore and with the latter during the Junior year.

It is my plan to teach school or engage in some other lucrative occupation for a few years after graduating and then to enter upon the Medical Profession. Had my views of the Christian ministry not received a bias from the influences by which I have been surrounded, I should probably hardly hesitate to become a preacher. But could I afford to gratify my inclination I should try to lead the life of a scholar and literary man and to make my study useful to the world by writing or as I should prefer by public speaking. I have quite a fondness for the study of languages.

As before intimated, I have always been a member of the Society of Friends. I entertain great respect for the vital principles of the Quaker creed, but I am so observant of tbe Quaker principle of discarding religious formalities that I cannot conscientiously observe the Quaker formalities with regard to any peculiar demeanor, dress, or address. Cambridge, 26 May, 1862.

Chapter II Childhood And School Envikonment

It is the custom of modern times to seek an exi)lanation of men in a study of their heredity and environment. A great apostle may claim, " By the grace of God I am what I am," and yet elsewhere point out that " I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia but brought up in [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel." The weight of birth and of education gave him a right to speak with authority, where otherwise he might not have been heard at all. In their proper place, which is of course in subordination to the principle of grace, these elements of birth and of education count decisively, even in religious character. In the life of John H. Dillingham much that is distinctive and of special interest may be noted under both of these heads.

He had a birthright membership in the Society of Friends. The Sandwich community into wliich he was born was largely descended from Pilgrim

Separatists. These had withdrawn from Plymouth in the seventeenth century after " assisting the Quakers and boldly opposing [their] persecution," by the authorities. A similar settlement at Sandwich, New Hampshire, had been gathered for much the same reason from the Lynn colony. Persecution, as many times before in history, had been " the seed of the Church." Thus in two centres of the same name, a heroic type of Friend, growing as a graft on Pilgrim stock, made an ancestry of the most sterling qualities. John Dillingham had the good fortune to belong to both communities. His mother was Lydia Beede Hoag of Sandwich, New Hampshire, and his father Abram Dillingham of Cape Cod.

The special marks of this Pilgrim-Quaker heredity have been more than once pointed out. A fine sense of tolerance, in protest against the Puritan spirit of persecution, was the very root of it. A strong loyalty to an evangelical exp*ression of faith was so well established that it was not appreciably disturbed by the conflicts of the first half of the nineteenth century in New England. A love of learning was deeply ingrained, and a sense that the amenities of life have a refining and elevating effect was found quite compatible with native simplicity and thoughtfulness. So with strength of character there was combined lovableness, and with originality a good measure of appreciation of the other man's point of view. How many worthy New England Friends with these characteristics adorn the pages of history!

As an introduction to some study of the environment into which John Dillingham was born, it may be well to make two quotations from a lecture given by him before his fellow-townsmen while he was still in college, 26th of 2d mo., 1861. Speaking of the Sandwich stock he said, " Did I wish to find that spot on the earth where the English blood has been kept in its greatest purity, I should hardly go even to England to find it; I should on the whole stay where I am. No race of people, as a whole, are purer English than the Cape Cod people. The Pilgrims settled our county, and their posterity, ' perpetuating their names and their virtues,' have occupied it unmixed with Irish, Germans, or any other race. That strong English common-sense (which is not so common after all) is very common here. That genuine English pluck, in all its strength and purity, is the basis of the sterling worth of the sons and daughters of Cape Cod. Indeed, to use the words of a Cape Cod Republican in Faneuil Hall on the evening after the last Presidential election, ' where there 's a good deal of sand you must expect a good deal of grit/ ''

A somewhat impassioned burst of eloquence concludes the lecture. It displays a loyalty for the land of his birth on the part of the Harvard Junior that never abated during his seventy years. " We are not ashamed of the land of our birth and adoption. For historic memories have hallowed every grain of her sand, rendering it more precious than gold-dust at the shrine of Patriotism and Liberty. It is fitting we are reminded to cherish a veneration for the land of our birth and a jealous regard for her sacred honor. That feeling surely incites her sons to resolve that if Cape Cod cannot be respected for her soil, she shall, indeed, be glorious in her men! Though we cannot proudly point to broad acres of luxuriant growth of wheat, top-heavy with its bounteous yield, nor fields of towering corn, yet let our lives show that :

'Man is the noller growth our soil supplies.'

May that land which was the ' Cradle of New England,' the cradle indeed of Liberty, never cease because of the remissness of her children to be the ^ Right Arm of Massachusetts,' as in topographical outline, so in the works and virtue of her inhabitants. Precious is their birthright — doubly precious may their children's birthright be. May their lives perpetuate the memory of the sandy Cape Cod more gloriously than the ' Sandy Pylos ' is signalized in epic song as the abode of Nestor; — with so much esteem for nobleness of purpose and purity of life, and so much of gratitude for useful service done, that in future generations it shall be no dishonor to Cape Cod that their graves are within her borders."

Considering now the matter of environment more specifically the hardy New England atmosphere has long been regarded as superior. Principal Herbert L. Rand of the Salem Normal School has thus analyzed its special merits: " The hand- work which it was necessary for the children to do in their homes, supplemented by the book- work in the school and the Bible study which all the children were compelled to do in the Sunday-school, were the principal means of developing a people whose strength has always demanded the wonder and admiration of the whole world." Hand- work in the home, book-work in the school, and Bible study in the " Sunday-school," are the three elements that come to the fore in a review of John H. Dillingham's early life.

First, as to hand-work in the home, it may be well to observe that in the middle of last century every country house was a centre of industrial activity. All the necessities and conveniences of living were home-made. In the Falmouth neighborhood the nearness of the sea added another field of activity to the young life. Practically every boy of John Dillingham's circle knew how to sail a boat, to fish, and to gather clams. So the '' chores " of housekeeping, a measure of agricultural work, and the toil of the sea gave training to the motor activities of child life in that day that now at the best can be but poorly imitated in schemes of manual training in the school. John Dillingham's boyhood home was not in any large sense a farm home. The original Dillingham estate might have included several hundred acres. Farming under such conditions could be conducted successfully even though the soil was sandy. The large families furnished the labor and a very considerable variety of products compensated in measure for a small return in some of the staples of agriculture. In the course of several generations, as the holdings became subdivided, families found themselves with comparatively small farms. Under intensive systems of culture these can be made profitable but the decades about 1850 were not distinguished by intensive farming. Abram Dillingham's share of his father's farm did not exceed eighty acres. When the portions of this in pine wood and the portions in salt marsh were deducted it left few acres of tillable soil.

So it came about quite naturally that other fields of occupation attracted the father as giving prospect of better provision for the mother and the two sons. There had been four children, but two died in early childhood. We find the Falmouth family then much of the time composed of the mother and the two boys, John and Moses. Long journeys as a travelling salesman often kept the father absent for months. Much earlier than in many cases, the boys felt the responsibility of sharing in the necessary activities of field and garden and household. They entered into all of these as happy co-laborers with their industrious mother, and soon learned the pleasure of saving her by rising early or working late. It cannot be said, however, that any particular love of work in the soil grew out of this devotion. A row of growing onions in after-life made John Dillingham put his hand to his back with some playful allusion to the pain incident to weeding them. Doubtless, however, a fondness for home scenes — a lifelong attachment with him — ^was in part traceable to labor in these fields. The homestead in which he was born, and his father's house across the road from it, command striking views. Standing at the birthplace and looking south, Oyster Pond is in the foreground. Beyond is Sippewissett and then Naushon Island. This is the largest of the Elizabeth Islands and in its varying colors is rightly designated as a great chameleon. Turning to the east. King's Hill, wooded with oak and pine, seems a sentinel for the range of hills bulwarking the shore toward Falmouth. Altogether the surface of the ground is so rolling and broken and the indentations of the sea make so many curving beaches and sparkling bays that one would be callous indeed to natural beauty if he were not moved by the outlook. To John Dillingham these omnipresent charms made a rich compensation for painful toil, and laid a sure foundation in his character of appreciation of the beautiful in nature.

Turning, however, from a consideration of the " hand- work of the home," what shall be said of the "book-work of the school''? In view of the emphasis put upon education in the early Quaker practice it may at first thought seem strange that there was no Friends' school in the Falmouth neighborhood. As a matter of fact, here as elsewhere, Friends maintained schools quite in advance of the public school system. When the States organized district schools, in not a few instances thej combined with the Friends' schools already established and in a sense superseded them. In some communities the teacher and a majority of the scholars would be Friends. John Dillingham often said he had never had the privileges of a Friends' school for a single day. He had, liowever, been more than once under a Friend as teacher and associated with a goodly number of children in the district school who were members with him of Falmouth meeting. Attendance at the district school during the three months of the winter term and the three months of the summer term continued until the age of twelve, when, to use his own language, he " commenced daily walks to LawTence Academy in the village [of Falmouth] four miles from home, continuing at this school in the spring and fall terms till the age of nineteen." The six years included in this period develop the key-note of John Dillingham's life. He becomes a scholar with a positive conviction that scholarship presents worthy avenues of service in the world. Whatever taunts any might utter in regard to this choice, and his young life as we shall see was not free from galling taunts, none could accuse him of choosing an easy path. The dailywalks of eight miles to and from school, the determined application to lessons in order to maintain a worthy standing in scholarship, the willing devotion to home duties to relieve a beloved mother, present a picture of determination and endurance rarely if ever rivalled even in New England. This picture was made most real as he would smilingly point out to his children the very stones in the garden patch which he had used as weights to keep a Latin book open, so that he could study as he moved back and forth in clearing weeds from long rows of onions !

One of his schoolmates at Lawrence Academy, Harriet E. Hammond, has written some recollections of those days in a letter replying to inquiries about John Dillingham as a schoolboy.

" I have had my thinking-cap on since I received your letter, but, oh, it has been so long ago, that I am afraid I cannot give you much of interest. . . . How I wish I could, for of all the class of boys in school no one stood so high in my estimation as John Dillingham. The difficult problems I had to contend with were oftentimes made so plain when John explained them out to me. He was a scholar in every sense of the word and I heard George E. Clark, who was our teacher, say that he never knew him to have an imperfect recitation. Honest in all his work ! yes, he was the soul of honor and the pranks and foolish tricks some of us had, were entirely unknown to him. He was ever ready to assist those who were not as bright as he, was always kind, and his wit often made a hearty laugh.

" I remember a composition he wrote at one time on the value of a good education. It was fine and Mr. Clark said so much about it that it made the rest of us feel that we could not write at all. It was easy to see that it was his aim in life to obtain the education which would count for great things in afterlife. How well he succeeded you well know. He was never at a loss for an answer. Hannah Gould, who was one of us, said one day you have got to get up early in the morning to get ahead of John. . . .

" One afternoon after school six or eight of us girls planned the next morning to go up just for a walk and meet the West Falmouth boys as we called them.

" So we did and sat down on the stone-wall of the cemetery to wait for them. We were having a real jolly time and when the boys got along John was the last one to speak, — ' It is a quiet place in there but it would be better for the home and the school if you had to go in one at time ! '

" At one time one of the girls said something to me which made me a little indignant, so John was my comforter and said : ^ Harriet, thou must not be offended if one throws salt at thee. It will not hurt thee unless thou hast sore places M ''

Fortunately we have access to the mental and emotional side of this unfolding character, in the artless confessions of a college theme. Perhaps it was in the Sophomore year of his Harvard course that this assigned subject set him at self -revelation : " Circumstances in your personal history (or in that of your family or the place you live in), to which you look back with pride or pleasure. '^ It seems appropriate to quote the whole of the theme.

" A review of my uneventful life discovers a few things that are hardly remarkable in themselves, but are of consequence only in view of the impression made by them upon my mind or their office in the forming of my present character.

" It is with pleasure that I look back upon a journey with my mother and younger brother which we took when I was seven years old to the central part of New Hampshire, visiting many friends and relatives on the way. Then, having been in the world for so short a time, when life was new and many things strange to me even among the most familiar scenes, what increase was there to my wonder and youthful joy, in the exciting variety of travel and occasional sojourn in city and country. I look back upon scenes of almost unalloyed pleasure, as T reflect upon my two months' stay at my grandfather's, rambling over the fields, shaking the ripe apples from the heavy-laden branches and contemplating the sublime mountains, — those mysterious things that Peter Parley's Geography had told me of before, and which I had wanted to see in their reality.

" Proud were the anticipations raised within me when my father proposed my going to the Academy which was in the village four miles from home, and walking to school mornings and home again nights. I was then twelve years old and continued going to the Academy, except in the winter term, for six years. I look back with a little of pride upon my history during that period, because I was not put down by the taunts of not one, but nearly all of the neighbors, who hinted that I had ^ better be at work and earning something' and asked whether I expected to be minister, lawyer, or president. But I look back upon that time rather with pleasure because I was under the guidance of a kind teacher who did much to encourage and stimulate me to advancement in learning and at length to a little ambition to rise by means of learning, — a feeling which would not rest satisfied with anything short of a collegiate education, or even with that.

" It is with deep pleasure that I look nearly three years back to a vacation, when, my father being away, I was working much of the time alone at hay-making. At times in those lone seasons the spirit of God operated within me, admonishing me thenceforth to give up the world, and to become a follower of Christ. At length I yielded, to my great peace — a peace that abides with me while I keep to the light that is given me. In view of these dispensations of Providence to which I look back with pride or pleasure, I feel a new responsibility to the great Giver for the right use of them. I now look back with some pride and pleasure upon difficulties surmounted in a severe discipline which I underwent for one winter when I was sixteen years old, in teaching my first school, in a rude, uncivilized district in the woods, with several reckless boys older than myself to take care of, while all the time I was distressed under a heavy weight of homesickness without sympathy from men, but being led by these trials to look for consolation in Jesus who had also suffered. Recognizing these and all past trials as wholesome blessings, I would look back with pride and pleasure upon them.

" While my heart was yet tender and susceptible, my mother imbued it with religious sentiments, chiefly by twilight conversations on holy things with her two children. I look back with the most solid pleasure upon that sowing of good seed. Its influence has been with me in some small degree thus far, and has rendered one trifling incident of vast good to me on account of a victory to which I look back with pride and pleasure. A boy with evil intent had swung a tin pail against the side of my head; with revengeful rage I pursued him; my conscience remonstrated, so that at length, even while on the pursuit, I was led to forgive him and overtake him in a spirit of love, and with the Divine favor felt in my heart. When I wish to have an idea of what it is for one to feel the Grace of God within him, I recur to the memory of that experience in my own heart.''