Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY)

 - Class of 1936

Page 74 of 108

 

Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 74 of 108
Page 74 of 108



Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 73
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Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 75
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Page 74 text:

The Peg Board 1936 may be of some interest to the student in anthropology. When I came of age, and on my return to England in 1830, I was relating to an aunt on my father's side, whom I had never before seen, that I had always had stored up in my memory one thing that I could not account forg I could remember nothing before or after it to give it a meaning, and none of my mother's relatives knew anything about it. I saw the inside Q' a coach, and was handed out of it from a woman'.f arms into lhose cj some other person. My aunt was utterly astonished, and stated that my mother was coming down from London to Birmingham, when I was not more than .fix months old, that something happened to the horses which frightened the party badly, and that I was handed out fjust as I had seen and rememberedl by my mother into the arms of another person. - When I was four years of age my mother died, and I was thrown among her relatives, who sent me to school at Stourbridge, where there were some two hundred scholars, and the position the master assigned to me was that of the poorest scholar in the school, which effected my release from the schoolroom, to my great satisfaction and peace of mind, for, if there was one thing more than another that I hated, it was schoolbooks and an English schoolmaster, with his flogging proclivities. I was then about eight years old! As yet no definite record of Evans's attendance has been found in any Stourbridge school However, through the kindness of Mr. Harry E. Palfrey, Chairman of the Governors of the King Edward School at Stourbridge, the following interesting information has been made available to US. Mr.Palfrey says: I I am greatly 'interested in your statement about Evans and the Shakers, and his early connection with Stourbridge. Unfortunately the records of our Grammar School in the early 1 9th century are practically non-existent and there are no records of the scholars in the school. Indeed about the critical time of Evans' boyhood there were no boys in the school for several years as you may gather from a quotation I enclose. There were four schools in Stourbridge between 1808 and say, 1830 viz. CID The Grammar School of K. Edward VI C21 Oldswinford Hospital C31 Wheeler's Charity School 14D Scott's School I have ascertained that there is no trace of Evans at the Oldswinford Hospital. Wheel- er's Charity School was closed many years ago and the funds are administered by the Governors of the Grammar School. Scott's School came to an end about 20 years ago. I have the accounts for Scott's School in the early 19th century 11793-18325 but there is no mention of Evans. I am afraid, therefore, it is not possible to trace his scholastic career in Stourbridge. The name Evans is fairly common in this district and there was a very well-known surgeon, William Evans, who would be a contemporary of Frederick. From Stourbridge Evans went to live at Chadwick Hall, a fine old English manor house which is still standing. He thus continues his narrative: Henceforth my lot was cast with my uncles and aunts at Chadwick Hall, near Licky Hill, the scene of one of Cromwell's battles, where a systematic arrangement of all things obtained, from the different breeds of dogs,-the watchdog in his kennel, the water spaniel, the terrier of rat-catching propensities, the greyhound, the pointer, and the bulldog,-to the diversity of horses of the farm, the road, the saddle, and hunting, there were five hundred sheep, with a regular hereditary shepherd to change them from pasture to pasture in summer, and to attend to all their wants, and fold them in the turnip-fields all the winter. Every field on the farm was subject to a rotation of crops as regular as the seasons, which are generally bad enough for the English farmer. The farm was very hilly and woody, and dotted with five fish-ponds formed from a stream that ran through it. There was plenty of fish and game, and the woods were vocal with the great variety of singing birds, from the jackdaw to the nightingale. 2. Frederick W. Evans, Autobiography of a Shaker, Glasgow and New York, 1888, pp. 2. If. 66

Page 73 text:

1936 The Peg Board THE NORTH FAMILY DWELLING HOUSE Limitations of time and space make any adequate study of Elder Frederick's life and writings impossible in this number of the Peg Board. We shall, therefore, attempt no more than to tell what is known of his boyhood days, hoping to present the story of his later life in future issues. Of Frederick Evans's early years we have practically no record except what his autobiography gives us, and unfortunately it gives us less than we should like to have. When the Atlantic Monthly asked Evans to write about his life and his experience as a seeker after truth, apparent- ly he was reluctant to agree. The reasons for his reluctance and for his final acquiescence are set forth on the first page of his Aufobiograplzy of a Shaker: I can see great importance in a prineiple, very little in an individual. Not of myself should I write of myself, but in the hope that others may be advantaged thereby, I acquiesce in the foregoing suggestion. I have always lived much in the future, yet my present life has been a practical suc- cess, while my work has ever been before me, my reward has ever been with me. I am satisfied with the continued realizations of the prophetical spirit within-of the abstract principles that have been my inner life. Evans was born in England, and there he spent the first twelve years of his life. When he was four years old, his mother died, and he passed into the care of her relatives. All attempts to educate him seem to have failed. These things, he himself, can recount best: My father's family were of the middle class in England. They were long-lived, my grandmother reaching the advanced age of one hundred and four, and my grandfather approaching one hundred. My father, George Evans, was the youngest of twelve children and died comparatively youngg he was sent into the English army, was under Sir Ralph Abercrombie in the Egyptian expedition, cooperating with the Heet under Nelson, and held a commission in the service. My mother was of a class a little above, so that the marriage caused a perpetual breach between the two families. Her name was Sarah White. I was born in Leominster, Worcestershire, England, on the 9th of June, 1808. The first fact that I can remember 65



Page 75 text:

1936 The Peg Board As my friends had given up all attempts and hopes to educate, and thereby fit me for good society, I was allowed to follow my own instincts and affinities, and these led me to associate almost exclusively with the servants, of whom eight or ten were kept on the place, there being two distinct classes of human beings, and two separate establishments, at Chadwick Hall, as on a Southern plantation in the olden times of .seven years ago. Here I was allowed to educate myself to my heart's content, reading and studying the vegetables and fruits fand of these there were variety and abundance, including the apple and pear to the apricot and gooseberryj, in all of which I was deeply interested. The land and its crops, the animals and the servants who attended them, together with, those who officiated in- doors, were all my school-masters and mistresses, and the servants were not less my particular friends, for I was a Democrat. When almost twelve years of age, my father and brother, whom I did not know, ap- peared at Chadwick Hall, not to me among the servants, but to my uncle and aunts in the parlour, and to my grandmother, who had not given me up for lost, as had the others fso far as a school education was concernedj, but had taught me to say prayers before going to bed, and when I rose in the morning, had caused me to learn the text, and patiently endure an occasional gentle knock on the head from the sexton's long wand. For all of this I had a proper respect, but an organ fwhich I heard for the first timej in another church alarmed me, and caused me to cry out in a fright, to the amazement of a large congregation. My father, brother, and uncles and aunts, as I subsequently learned, had a sharp contention about taking me off to America, of which I only knew so much as I used to hear the common people sing in a doggerel originating at a time recruits for the Revolutionary war were being raised: The sun will burn your nose off, And the frost will freeze your toes off, But we must away, To fight our friends and our relations In North America. The different parties became warm in their feelings, and quarrelled, each party laying claim to meg and, as neither would give way, Englishmen-like, they agreed to settle the matter on this wise: I, Frederick, was to be called into the parlour, no word upon the subject to be spoken to me previously, and uncle was to put a question to me, which he did, as follows: Frederick, will you go to America with these men Cwho are your father and brotherj, or will you stay with us? I will go to America with my father and brother, was my instant reply, and that settled it. I was soon fixed off, and on my way to Liverpool. This was-in the year 1820 and I attained my twelfth year at sea. Evans refers to Licky Hill as the scene of one of Cromwell's battles. The battle to which he refers was probably a skirmish not known to history, but remembered locally and perhaps magnified in local tradition. Concerning the reference to a battle Mr. Palfrey has this to say: There is no record of any fighting near Lickey Hills during the Cromwellian times that I can trace. There may have been some skirmishing, of course, but the nearest battle would be Worcester, sixteen miles away in 1651. It is curious to note, however, that there is a Battlefield Brook running through the Estate. Who Elder Frederick's uncles were we have not yet been able to ascertain. They may have been managers of the Chadwick Hall estate. But be that as it may, Evans's association with this old English manor and his schooling in Stourbridge suggest that he came of good family. In any event, the Peg Board purposes to carry these researches farther, and it is possible that in some future number information of a more definite character concerning the boyhood of this great Shaker theologian may be presented. 67

Suggestions in the Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) collection:

Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1955 Edition, Page 1

1955

Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1959 Edition, Page 1

1959

Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 58

1936, pg 58

Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 41

1936, pg 41

Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 8

1936, pg 8

Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 102

1936, pg 102


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