Samuel Train Dutton, a biography

Dedication

TO

Cornelia North Dutton, always the devoted helpmate and faithful counselor of her husband, whose untiring labor and sympathetic assistance have made possible this tribute to his memory.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Boyhood and Education, 1849-1873 . . 1

11. First Professional Experience. School Management in South Norwalk, New Haven and Brookline, 1873-1900 . . 20 III. College Work and International Affairs,

Chapter I 1849—1873

This is the story of a good man and useful citizen whose life was always a progress, and whose horizons were always widening. The world upon which he opened his eyes was the narrow circle of a rural farming community in the New Hampshire town of Hillsborough, and the exact center of that world for him then was the rocky farm, one mile and a half from the village, which was the homestead of at least three generations of Duttons.^

His father, Jeremiah Dutton, was a man of granite character, like the soil that nourished him. The same house and farm sheltered and supported him from his birth to death. His one and only divergence from Hillsborough was in his early manhood when for six months he tried the life of a clerk in Boston. He was strongly Whig and Republican in politics, and strictly orthodox according to the profession of the Congregational Church, in which he was for a long time a deacon.

1 The original seat of the Buttons (=Dunton=:Hilltown) is in Cheshire, England. The first Dutton immigrant to New England, 1630, lived first in Woburn and afterwards settled permanently in Billerica, Mass., from whence his descendants went to New Hampshire, Vermont and other states. Jeremiah Button's father was also Jeremiah, and the maiden name of his mother was Betsy Baker.

Like so many of his Puritan ancestors Deacon Button's best powers were continually devoted to the duty of justifying the ways of God to Man. Like other Puritans whose gaze was fearfully fixed upon the invisible world, he felt sure that he saw the straight and narrow way thither, but was harassed by the same dread that oppressed the Apostle, lest he himself should be a castaway.

He was a pattern of punctuality and constancy in his attendance at religious services in his church, and even in the midst of haying he would not miss a Thursday afternoon prayer-meeting.

He tried to hold not only himself but his neighbors to a rigid standard of conformity with the Puritan ideal of word and deed, and was quick to censure sharply what seemed to him any variation from the standard. Although he was taciturn and unsocial, he was admired for his integrity. His judgments were heard and his few words carried weight. The little community admitted that his strictures were right, and liked him none the better for that. Few people came to his house as visitors, and his manner never invited familiarity. Everyone in town respected him and, outside of his own household, none loved him.

And yet at the age of eighty years, after a long life of brooding over the teachings of his faith and of austere fidelity to every jot and tittle of the law, he approached the end of life in uncertainty and apprehension, and in evident mental anguish said to a young member of his household, "Pm not sure that Pm saved."

It goes without saying that he and all his family were hard workers. The Button farm was deemed a model.

famous for its butter and its fruits. Deacon Dutton raised thirty varieties of grapes, his apple sauce and maple sugar were famous far and near, and his maple sugar received a medal at the Centennial Exposition.

Underneath the severe moralist and the silent farmer, there were other natures, partly restrained or suppressed. He was fond of flowers and always had some around the house. Unlike so many farmers of his day, he always liked to read, and was fairly well informed, although he seldom talked about his reading. He had a Boston paper in the house, and such weeklies as the Mirror and Farmer and the Congregationalist. He greatly enjoyed the magazines which his oldest son, when adult, used to send home for his use. He loved music of all kinds. He was a singer, and in the days before organs supplanted orchestral music in the churches, he played bass-viol in the choir. All his family sang, and hymn-singing was a feature of the daily family prayers. There were, then, aesthetic qualities within this man's soul, which might have made him more sympathetic and companionable if his cramping beliefs had not done so much to induce doubt and distrust of emotions not closely associated with his accepted plan of salvation.

The best evidence of Deacon Dutton's inherent worth is to be found not in the rather chill esteem with which his neighbors rendered homage to his character, but in the fact that two good women, to whom at different periods he was united in marriage, were devoted to him and admired and loved him.

His first wife, with whom alone we are here concerned, was Rebecca Hammond Train, daughter of Ephraim

Train, farmer in Hillsborough, and his wife, Lucy Lewis. The marriage of Rebecca and Jeremiah took place on February 20, 1840. Rebecca Train's family belonged to the old Yankee stock, springing from John Train, who came to the Bay Colony in 1635, and made a home at Watertown. In the course of years the Trains had acquired also a root in the same hill country of New Hampshire as the Buttons. This was not the only alliance between the two families, as the name of the well-known writer, Mrs. Adeline Button Train Whitney, indicates. Mrs. Whitney, whose home was at Milton, Mass., spent her summers in Hillsborough, and always visited the Buttons. A sister of Rebecca Train was married to a Mr. Baker, and lived upon a farm in Hillsborough near the Buttons.

Rebecca Train was an admirable helpmeet for Jeremiah Button; she was in many respects his complement. In her own way she was probably as deeply religious and devoted to her church as he was, but her disposition was gentle, generous and sympathetic. Her mental powers gave her insight into the character of the people around her. She caught some vision of the forces at play in the larger world outside of Hillsborough, and nursed ambitions for her children which were undoubtedly projections of her own unfulfilled desires. The children grew toward the warmth of the motherly spirit, which may have even imparted a glow to the sterner virtues of their father. Rebecca Train's face bore the impression of beauty as well as dignity, and all but one of the children resembled their mother physically. Not one of them reproduced both her bodily features and her mental and spiritual characteristics more faithfully and completely than her

Rebecca Hammond Train, Mother of Samuel Train Dutton.

eldest child and son, who was born at Hillsborough, October 16, 1849, and was christened Samuel Train Dutton.^

All of the children promptly learned that they had come into a little universe ruled by inflexible law. If any one of them showed signs of a possible habit of disobedience, it has not been recorded in the family annals. A big shade tree in the yard was the children's playhouse. Their games were always under it, and they never supposed that they could either take or leave their outdoor toys anywhere else. Deacon Dutton did not approve of any unnecessary noise. Not only obedience, but quiet was the Median-Persian law of the family, and visitors in the early days marveled that they never heard sounds of juvenile disturbance at Deacon Dutton's.

At the time of this writing a lady is still living who, as Miss Georgia Howard, was a teacher in the Hillsborough schools in 1863 and for eight years thereafter. She often made her home in the Dutton household, and became seamstress and mother's helper for Mrs. Dutton and like an elder sister to the younger children. She says, "It was an ideal family. I never received a disrespectful word from any one of the children, who were always courteous to everybody."

As Samuel and his brothers grew older, they were taught the third law of the farm, which was work. It was not easy to wrest a living from that rocky soil, and all of the family must become inured to long and hard labor. The older Dutton was willing to have his boys become farm-

1 There were five other children: Silas Baker; Ephraim, who died in infancy; Justin Edwards, known as "Ed"; Jeremiah Hammond; Mary Gertrude, who married George W. Haslet of Hillsborough, and died about a year later. All of the brothers are now dead. Before any of these children was born, Mr. and Mrs. Dutton had adopted a boy named Frank, who went into the Civil War as a soldier, and who is still living.

ers, and the oldest son became naturally the farmer's first reliance. Samuel followed the routine of the farmer's year, and learned to break not only clods, but also colts and steers, still more intractable material. Such experiences are indeed a training school in which to learn courage and confidence, the mastery of one's self and also of other wills, the readiness to face and overcome any obstacle in the path.

The widest outlook which the children knew from the household cares into the larger life of the world was that of religion, the constant thought of both their parents. The whole family were, of course, constant attendants at the church, which Samuel joined at an early age. Their second contact with the finer arts lay in the talent for music and love for it, common to them all, from the father to the baby. In early youth Samuel would walk a mile and a half to hear a young lady, a summer resident in Hillsborough, play upon the piano, and later, as his own fine voice developed, he learned to sing with her.^

About half a mile from the Dutton farm, on the road to Hillsborough Center, stands the little district schoolhouse, where the children from the farm all began their education. That Samuel was naturally studious and able to make his way in the world his mother perceived and believed. She was eager to help and encourage him in an aspiration for a career, which at first seems to have taken the form of an ambition to enter the ministry. While Deacon Dutton hoped that Samuel would follow his father and grandfather on the ancestral acres, the mother understood the lad better, and talked and planned about sending him to school and college.

After the resources of the small district school at home

1 The young lady was Miss Eleanor L. Gilbert, afterwards Mrs. William Humphrey.

had been exhausted, the family found means to give Samuel a winter's schooling in an academy at Francestown ten miles away. His next step was to take charge of a district school at Cork Plains, in Hillsborough, to test his knowledge and character and to earn some money. Barely seventeen years of age and a novice in teaching, he faced pupils, some of whom had planned to remove him from his position on the first day of school. But he was alert and tactful, and his muscles had been well tested in wrestling with steers, so that he was soon acknowledged to be master of the situation and order reigned in the Cork Plains schoolhouse. During that term he went through that historic experience of the rural teacher known as "boarding round."

During the following summer Samuel aided his father as usual in the farm work. But there came a day, no doubt a hot one, when the youth, at work in the field, ended his troubled cogitations with the firm resolve, "I am not going to farm it all my life ; I am going to college." So he put the farming tools aside as often as possible, and betook himself to books and study, determined to continue his education in the fall in the New London Literary and Scientific Institution, at New London, N. H., about twenty miles away. Subsequently this school was called Colby Academy. His unfailing confidante and counselor, his mother, joyfully sustained him in his plans, and, in the family councils, cast the deciding vote that Samuel should prepare for college. Father Dutton agreed to "give hira his time," although he still harbored the hope that his son after a year at New London would change his mind and return to carry on the farm.

In the fall of 1867 the lad, not yet quite eighteen years old, betook himself to the Literary and Scientific Institution, and began the studies preparatory for admission to Dartmouth College. The village of New London straggles up to the crest of a noble hill, of which the academy building and grounds occupy the summit. A splendid view of hill and dale extends to the horizon in every direction, and just across the valley to the southeast rises the imposing bulk of Mt. Kearsarge. The lesson of that scenery was not the least inspiring of those set before the pupils in that academy.

Among the boys whom Dutton came to know as classmates was one Clarence F. Carroll, a kind of human Kearsarge, an earnest, bright, forceful, and serious-minded fellow. His high ideals appealed to Dutton and they became staunch friends. As time went on, their friendship became so deeply rooted that they were like brothers. Each one exerted a strong influence upon the other, and the mutual attraction and respect remained unbroken except by death.

Dutton did not find his work easy, handicapped as he was by deficiencies in his preliminary education. He held his own, however, with time to spare for such social opportunities as came his way. His extremely sociable disposition made the most of these opportunities, besides creating others — not a difiicult matter, as Colby Academy was — and is — coeducational.

During the winter of 1867-68, his best friend and constant inspiration, his mother, who had for some time suffered from an incurable ailment that would bring death by a sudden stroke, was prostrated and died. Shortly before her last hour came, Samuel, at New London, feeling that her life was to be short and that he must see her as often as possible, came home unexpectedly to spend a week-end. Miss Howard (later Mrs. Wilkins), in attendance upon Mrs. Dutton, chanced to see the young man entering the yard, and, thinking to avert a possible shock to the mother, said to her, "What would you think if you should see Sam coming in?" Mrs. Dutton with complete calmness answered, "I think it very likely that he may come," and a moment afterwards she was ready to greet him. Later, as he stood by her bedside, she said to him, "You are the oldest of the children and you know all that I desire for them. I want you to see that they all have an education. Remember that your sister Mary will especially need your care." This sister was then only five years old. Samuel promised that he would do everything that she asked, and he faithfully kept his word.

The death of his mother, although foreseen, filled Samuel with a deep and increasing sense of the loss that had befallen him. Throughout his life he never failed to acknowledge his debt to her unselfish and faithful devotion, to her unfailing motherly s3Tiipathies, and to her Christian spirit. After the close of the academy years, and after he had returned to the farm and plunged into the summer work, he wrote to his friend Carroll :

"I just begin to realize with awful force the fact that my dear Mother has gone — never to return.^ Oh, how I shall need her aid and counsel! Every day it seems as if I ought to be consulting her about my plans for the future."

His letters to Carroll and the reminiscences of Mrs. Wilkins reveal a very busy young man on the Dutton farm in that summer of 1868. A swift transition from student life to farm work in the fields makes a heavy demand on strength and endurance, and Samuel observes to his friend, "Father is quite slim and all the heavy work falls upon

1 His father. Deacon Dutton, lived until March 28, 1905.

me." After a few days he thankfully notes that he has "got toughened now." But his studies were ever with him. All leisure time, even to late hours at night, was devoted to books in the effort to fill the gaps in his preparatory training.

There is evidence that he had become naturally interested, as a normal boy should, in the social life at New London. He wants to have Carroll's "candid opinion" upon the advisability of further attentions to an evidently somewhat difficult young lady from Keene, N. H. Samuel writes that he doesn't "feel quite so Keene for hoeing in" as he once did, and it appears that this strongly agricultural figure of speech described for New London academicians the process of intrenching oneself in the good graces of the ladies. His uncertainty about Keene does not hinder him from planning for similar diversions "as soon as the plaguey haying is done." He feels "in duty bound to go over to Francestown" where there is an "old crony" at home from Amherst College ; also "an old flame of mine which I must kindle up a little."

The fall of 1868 found Dutton back at New London and in the Senior class. That he played his part in the school debating club appears certain from the program of the public meeting of the "Euphemian Association," held on Tuesday evening, November 24, 1868. The fine mediaeval and classic flavor of the school is shown not only in the name of its nursery for young orators, flaunting the Latin motto: "Bene Orasse Est Bene Studuisse," but also in the fact that two of the three orations delivered on this evening were tipped with Latin titles. Dutton's oration was labeled "Humana Omnia Vanitas Sunt." To lighten the gloom a little, the next oration carried the motto, "Nil Desperandum." It may be worth while to note that friend

Carroll upheld the affirmative in the evening's debate on the question, "Has War Been Productive of Reform?"

In the following month, December, young Dutton, at home for vacation, having lost his trunk on the way down from New London, draws a picture of himself, "sitting by the fire and toasting my shins," and tries to lure Carroll to come over from Warner and join him. "Be sure and come," he writes, "for bread and milk are cheap and cider is plenty."

During the spring vacation in the following March, Dutton sat down to tell his friend about his sight-seeing visit to the city of Concord, while on his way home, and in this letter makes the first recorded expression of his interest in a professional view of school work. Both of the young men had had some district school experience and they both looked now upon teaching as a means of paying expenses in college.

The letter begins in a vein of characteristic humor. Sitting "under mine own vine and figtree," the youthful Samuel assumes the tone of contemplative age: "I suppose you are having a fine time pursuing the gay phantoms of life, as busy as a bee and as jolly as a frog. Well, I don't blame you, for I was a boy once, and what was worse, I acted as a child, but now, having put away childish things, while I glory in my condition, I would pity rather than chide those treading the paths of youth."

Then after detailing his experiences in Concord, where he says he "found the old ladies quite sociable," he continues : "When I return to New London, I intend to spend three or four days in Concord, and shall endeavor to visit the schools, hoping I may learn something practical. Shall take the vacation as easily as possible. Am looking over English Grammar, but have found nothing new yet."

So far the young Dutton has appeared to be the usual thoughtful student, hard working, earnest, normally fond of his companions of either sex, impressionable, and full of an intelligent inquisitiveness. In later life he said, "I have yet to learn of any one who had a better time during his preparatory course than I did."

A few weeks before the close of his Senior year, he shook the New London Literary and Scientific Institution with a sudden manifestation of independence and impatience of petty restrictions.

A rule of the school forbade social intercourse between the girls and boys, excepting when it was duly authorized by the faculty officers. The rule was constantly broken, but the students were, of course, expert in seeking cover, and only on rare occasions was a culprit detected and punished. Probably Dutton's spirit revolted against the necessity of enjoying harmless pleasures only while in hiding. At any rate, the girls came out to play croquet on the lawn in front of their dormitory, and Dutton calmly carried his Senior dignity across the forbidden line, and entered the game.

Some fluttering onlooker carried to the office the news of this insubordination. A command was sent to Dutton to leave the ground. Instead of complying, he remained where he was until his game was finished. Then he was summoned before the Director and suspended from the school, the sentence implying that he would not be allowed to complete his course before the following year.^

Highly indignant over the great severity of the sentence, Dutton's classmates voted to stand by him, and to attend no more school exercises until he was reinstated. For a time it seemed likely that the whole class would be 1 The head of the Institution at that time was Dr. A. W. Sawyer, afterwards President of Acadia College in Nova Scotia.

suspended, and that there would be no graduation exercises. The young man himself remained with friends, not wishing to go home to worry his father with the story. Finally, on the day before Graduation Day, the faculty decided that the offense was not grave enough to cause the wreck of the class and all its festivities. The vote permitted Dutton to graduate with his classmates. He reappeared in his place, and the graduation exercises on the next day were conducted as if nothing had happened. Ten years later he was chosen to give the class oration at the decennial reunion of that class of '69, and Colby Academy has ever since inscribed his name high upon the list of its best known and best loved alumni.

Dutton and his friend Carroll went to their homes, determined to apply for admission to Dartmouth College, but tentatively decided to teach during the following year in order to secure funds. They made application in various places, and Dutton became a successful candidate for a school at Boscawen, N. H.

Early in the summer, during the haying season, Carroll came to the Dutton farm for a short visit. One afternoon, out in the hayloft, the boys discussed the relative advantages of Dartmouth and Yale, and decided in favor of the latter college. This was the argument which swayed them both. A boy derives much education from his environment. He should, therefore, seek the environment which is unfamiliar to him and which can teach him the most. Country boys should go to a college in a city, and city boys should enter a college in the country. Ergo, two New Hampshire farmer lads ought to apply at New Haven rather than at Hanover.

They feared that they were less fitted to take the Yale entrance examinations than those at Dartmouth. Acting upon the new decision with characteristic promptness, Dutton invited his friend to prolong his stay at the farm, so that they might assist each other in preparing for the ordeal of the September examinations at New Haven.

There was surprise in the Dutton household the next morning when Samuel descended the stairs with a load of books, and announced that the rest of his summer would be devoted to study and not to farm work. Deacon Dutton no longer expected to change the course of his son's ambitions, but felt troubled over the financial outlook. He accepted the situation, and was willing, as before, "to give his son his time," but he could not promise to help him much with money.

There were two neighbors, however, brothers, with the name of Clark, distant cousins of the Duttons, unmarried men, and deemed well-off for that simple community, who were very friendly to Samuel and much interested in his career. They promised to lend him money, and Deacon Dutton indorsed the notes which his son gave. In all, the Clark brothers loaned to him about two thousand dollars.

In September, 1869, a few days before the Yale entrance examinations were due, the two boy friends set out together for New Haven. The day was a Saturday, and early in the afternoon the pilgrims landed at the New Haven railroad station. Ignorant of the city and its distances, they hired a carriage whose driver took them to the best hotel in the city, the New Haven House, the predecessor of the present Hotel Taft.

Their combined financial resources were very meager, but they were embarked upon a great adventure and did not descend at once to a close scrutiny of expenditures. Having engaged a room and enjoyed a square meal, they sallied forth to report to Alma Mater the arrival of two sub-freshmen. Upon the campus they were directed to the college offices, but found them closed. Impressed with the idea that they must get their names on the record if possible, they inquired their way to the President's house on Hillhouse Avenue. President Porter was not at home, but they learned that one of the professors lived across the street, so they pulled the bell at the house of genial James D. Dana. That sagacious and kindly man received the inquirers, gave them some paternal counsel, and dismissed them with the comforting knowledge in their minds, that, at any rate, some one in authority had cognizance of their presence at Yale.

Returning to their hotel, they took stock of their assets and liabilities, and suddenly realized what it meant to have only nine dollars between them — surely not a sum to warrant any extravagance. They perceived that the New Haven House was not the right home for them. A search for humbler quarters was successful. Before bedtime came, they were settled in their new location, to which they had wheeled their luggage from the hotel in a borrowed wheelbarrow, commandeered ^ under cover of darkness.

Dutton managed to leap the entrance hurdles in the examinations, but Carroll, abandoning the effort before the examinations were over, decided to teach for a while before beginning his college course. He left New Haven, returned to New Hampshire, and obtained charge of the school at Boscawen which his friend had originally intended to take.

Dutton's extra-curriculum activities during his four years at Yale were of necessity chiefly concerned with

1 Mr. Dutton's phrase was "hooked."

plans for earning money and thereby diminishing the burden of indebtedness to the folks at home. He drew some of his friends and congenial acquaintances into an eating-club, of which he became steward. Thus his board was provided for.

His pleasant baritone voice became part of his working capital. In the summer vacation he conducted singing schools in various small towns in Connecticut. During his Junior and Senior years until graduation he was choirmaster in the old Howe Street Church, afterwards the Dwight Place Church. He figured also as one of the best singers in his class. He belonged to the College Glee Club for two years and in his Senior year he was its President. In that year the Glee Club Quartet consisted of three seniors, Hart Lyman, for a long time an editor of the New York Tribune, John O. Heald, Samuel T. Button, and Thomas P. Wickes of the class of '74. Button was also one of the leading choristers of the B. K. E. fraternity. Button and Heald were together responsible for securing the services of Thomas G. Shepard as Birector of the Yale Glee Club, a position in which for many years Mr. Shepard was not only Birector, but a valued counselor and friend to many Yale men.

One summer vacation Button went forth to raise money by selling Bibles among the towns along the Hudson River. In this effort he earned enough money in one month to justify him in taking a vacation for the rest of the summer. His Junior year was unusually strenuous, for he was induced early in the year to become a teacher in the Hopkins Grammar School. He gave full time to the school and at the same time kept track as best he could of the college studies of his classmates. In the latter half of the year he returned to his college classes in time to make

Yale Collp;ge Glee Club — 1873.

Woodman, '76 Stewart, '73 Butler, '76

SamubIj T. Dutton in 1873.

up all the omitted work, and to pass all the final examinations. In his maturer years he was wont to refer to this experience as the time when he tried to do too much, but he always acknowledged the value derived from his close association with the remarkable teacher who then presided over the Hopkins School, Henry Norton ("Buck") Johnson of Yale, '61.

With such a comprehensive economic and social training Dutton could hardly expect to become a candidate for scholastic honors. So far as the ratings of his instructors could judge him, his standing was usually low. Genial "Baldy" Wright is said to have remarked, "Dutton did the best on the least study of any man I have ever known." He certainly had no spare time to devote to books, and his classmates then would not have believed that he possessed the makings of an educator. They would probably have been equally incredulous about Frissell, all of which illustrates the insubstantial character of many verdicts of collegiate opinion.