Bridgewater State University - Alpha Yearbook (Bridgewater, MA)

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l u Ehreei Score Mears anb jfour Hn H11fObiOQI'8l3bQ ' AM a STATE NGRMAL ScHooL in the town of ,.Bridgewater, in I - the County of'Plymouth, in the State of Massachusetts. My originators weredistinguished fortheir philanthropy and the courage of their convictions. A, My first' godfather was Horace - A Mann, the iirst Secretary of the Massachusetts Boardof Educa- tionf .His associate 'sponsors were the first members ofthe Board, men widely known, Gov. Edward Everett, James G. Carter,'Rev. Emerson Davis, Rev. Edward A, Newton, Robert Rantoul Jr., Rev. Thomas Robbins, Jared Sparks, and Edmund Dwight who paid one-third the expenses of my sup+ port the first three years of my life. Other prominent friends of my advent were Rev. Charles Brooks, Hon. John Quincy Adams, Hon. Daniel lVebster, Honf Artemas 'Hale, Rev. George Putnam, and Tchabod Morton who said, Ulf the kingdom of heaven is to comeion the earth it will come through the Noi-nialschoolo.'7 I A ' o A A Nearly two years were spent in the vain endeavor to raise 310,000 to erect a new home for me. Then the town of Bridgewater gave the use of its- old 'Town Hall for my. home, and here I was born on Sept. 9, 1840. Twenty-one young women and seven young men were present to welcome me. My mother was the necessity for better teachers in the public schools of the State. My father was Nicholas Tillinghast, a native of Taunton, Mass., and a graduate of the United States Military Academy at NV est Point, in which he had been an Assistant Professor for four years. He had resigned his commission in the army and was teaching in Boston when he was selected by Horace Mann to bring me into being and establish my life. He was thirty- five years of age at this time. ' The Committee of the Board who reported rules and regulations for the government of the first Normal Schools had an interesting conception of what the head of the Normal School should be. They said in their report, I7

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'I l s for the internal discipline classifi- 'WVe will not undertake to prescri is ru c. L - , cation and order of study of the School. Wle want at the head of every 7 ' . . . school a man of such energy and skill, that having furnished hnn with school- house Scholars and ZLPPM-atrrs, and a bare outline of our plans and wishes, J ' F U we can trust him to say with the Principal of the Haarlem School, 'I am the Code, there is no other! And indeed there is no other that will accomplish our designs in a manner satisfactory to the public and to the benefactors of the Normal Schools. My father was a man of rare power of discernment, of singular purity of spirit, of marked aptitude for teaching, of most accurate scholarship, and of entire self-abnegation. He devoted himself unsparingly to the Work of establishing my life upon a broad and deep foundation. He said, HMy idea of a Normal School is that it should have a term of four years, that those studies should be pursued that will lay a jbzmzlution on which to build an education. The number of studies should be comparatively small, but much time should be given to them. The teacher should be so trained as to be above his text books. Whatever has been done in teaching in all countries, different methods, the thoughts of the best minds on the science and art of instruction should be laid before the neophyte teachers. ln a proper Normal School there should be departments, and the ablestmen put over them each in his own department. ilfVho knows more than one branch zz.-c1I?'f I was an experiment the first three years of my life, but I had so much vitality at the end of this period thatlmy lease of life was renewed for three years more, and when this lease expired, l was adopted by the State, and christened the Bridgewater State Normal School. At this time the friends of Horace Mann, as an expression of their appreciation of his labors in behalf of the common schools, contributed 3552500 and secured an equal appropriation from the legislature, which with the liberal co-operation of the town of Bridge- water and its citizens, provided a permanent home for me in the lirst State Normal building erected in America. Dr. George B. Emerson was a wa.r1n friend of the school, he contributed the furnaces for this new building. My ,father wrought for me for thirteen years, several terms in this period he taught without any assistant. Failing health compelled him to resign his charge. His work was taken up and carried forward in the same spirit for the next seven years by Marshall Conant, A. M., f1Fatlie1- Cgllglutu as hg was affectionately called by his pupils, a native of l'omfret, Vermont, who was fifty-three years of age when he came to this position from the varied life of an engineer, an author, and a teacher. The crowning traits of his Cl12LI'ELCl3CI' W61'6 his love of trutll 3,11Cl lllS fitltllg ll!! Sought the trlllzh with his I8