Elmira Free Academy - Torch / Sagoyawatha Yearbook (Elmira, NY)

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1859 1860 1860 CHAPTER II. Q PRIN. CONVERSE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1359-'so. , September 13th, 1859, the Board fixed the re- quirements for admission to the Academy at the standard of the Regents' preliminary certificate. The 15th of September, 1859, was the real begin- ning of the Free Academy as an organized school. Its first principal was Mr. Moses Sumner Converse, a man of marked ability and a well-known figure in Elmira until the latter part of the nineteenth century. He had been a teacher in the old Academy and later conducted a private school in the rear of his home at 311 William Street. Miss Helen M. Phillips, the last Preceptress of the old Academy, became the first Preceptress of the new. These two constituted the entire faculty. . Previous to the closing of the old Academy, its trustees had bought the land on Clinton Street that is the site of the present Academy. Two houses were standing there ronting on ClintoI1 Street. As the Board of Education had not yet purchased a site for an Academy building, one of these houses was secured for temporary use and remodelled to meet immediate needs. What had probably been the parlor and sitting-room were thrown into one good-sized room. This was presided over by Prin. Converse, and used for his recita- tion room and the boys' study room. A room at the east side became the boys' cloak-room. Directly north of Prin. Converse's room was the girls' cloak-room. . Beyond that, to the north, an annex was built for Miss Phillips's recitation mom, where the girls studied. The entrance was at the east side leading west to the girls' cloak-room and south to-the boys! . For some classes, the boys wouild pass into Miss Phillips's roomy for others, the girls, into Prin. Converse's room: but for ' 'd ation study purposes there was rigi separ - In the Board of Education meeting of March 30, 1860, Commissioners Hart,Arnot,and Thurston were appointed a committee to confer with the trustees of the old Academy, Simeon Benjamin, President in regard to transferring the Clinton Street property to the Board. Before this was settled, the Academy was removed, April 9, 1860, to the basement of the old Congregational Church, the predecessor of the present Park Church. Mr. Converse and Miss Phillips remained the faculty. This might be termed the .Udark age of.Academy history in a very literal sense. The Board considered two sites, and It was not until june 12, 1860, that the decision was made in favor of the Clinton Street property, and the deed was not signed until Nov. 23, 1860. At this June meeting, the estimated cost of building was increased from 10,000 to 12,000 dollars. . Au ust 1 1860 the Board offered a premium of .50 dollars for the best plan for an Academy Euildiiig. On August 21st, the plan of Mr. E. Kingsbury was adopted and the build- ing seemed like a thing of the near future. CHAPTER III. K PRIN. WELLINGTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1860-1865. The fall term of 1860 opened September 30th, - in a third location, the factory of j. M. Robinson, at the south-east corner of Church and William Streets. The dilapidated old building still stands, a blot on the land- scape. Prin. Converse had retired at the close of the first year and was succeeded by Prof. Isaac Mortimer Wellington of Fryeburg, Me., who had been appointed the 19th of the previous June. The lower floor of the factory was utilized for the school. The girls' entrance was on Church Street and the boys' on William. The seats faced east. With the design, noted before, of separating the sexes, the main room was divided by a partition extending as far as the students' seats went. A sliding door at the east end of the partition connected the two rooms and was open at recitation time. Prin. Wellington's desk was in front of the boys and Miss Phillips's in front of the girls. The classes occupied benches extending in front of the students' desks, boys and girls remaining on their respective sides. One of the students, recalling those days,writes:- During the summer and fall of 1860 was the presidential campaign of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglass. The latter came to Elmira on his lecturing tour, and was taken around the town to see tne sights, one of which must have been our school building. When his carriage

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J History of Elmira Free Academy CHAPTER I. THE OLD ELMIRA ACADEMY. As the golden anniversary of the Elmira Free Academy, nineteen hundred nine is a very fitting time to recall the origin and history of that deservedly famous institution. May 24, 1859 was the date of its establishment as a free school, but the Elmira Academy as a private school had a previous history of nearly a quarter of a century. The First Presbyterian Church, on the corner of Church and Baldwin Streets, was the pioneer church in the Chemung Valley. In 1836, to make way for a larger edifice, the building then in use was removed to the opposite side of Baldwin Street, on the site of the Partridge brick blocks, just south of the present First M. E. Church. Here it became the shelter of the Elmira Academy, a private school. It was a white wooden building, from which the steeple had been removed when it was transformed from a religious to an educational institution. The cut of it that accompanies this history is made from a drawing kindly lent to us by Mrs. George Archibald Palmer. She had it made from a painting of the building, the work of a young girl student of the old Academy. The late Ausburn Towner, himself once a student of the Baldwin Street Academy, pronounced it a very faithful picture of the building, but not of the trees. These appear to have been placed in accordance with the girl's own idea of land- scape gardening, a decidedly original one. , Readers of the Vindex will be interested to know that in 1839-'40 the Academy pub- lished a school paper of several two-columned sheets, called The Pierian Spring. From the title it is not surprising to find that some of its contributors cultivated the lyric muse. On March 31, 1840, the Elmira Academy was incorporated by the Regents. After that, it had a varied history for nineteen years before it became a free institution. Some men of note received their secondary education there, among whom may be mentioned the Hon. Chas. B. Farwell, U. S. Senator from Illinois at one time, Rear-Admiral Francis Roe, Maj.-Gen. Wm. W. Averell, I-Iull Fanton, Esq., Maj. R. M. McDowell, George M. Diven, Francis Colling- wood, Dr. N. R. Seeley, Harry Covell, Chas. E. Rapelyea, T. W. Elmore, Richard Guion, and Ausburn Towner, Among the teachers, older Elmirans still remember Moses S. Converse, H. M. Aller, S. R. Schofield, Elijah N. Barbour and Miss Adaline Tubbs, who later became his wife and the mother of Mrs. George Spring of this city. It was largely due to the efforts of Dr. Erastus L. Hart that the system of free schools became a possibility in Elmira. The rate-bill school system proving unsatisfactory, an amend- ment to the Village Charter, providing for the free system, became a law, April 4th, 1859, through the aid of Senator A. S. Diven. A Board of Education was organized April 19, 1859, with Dr. Erastus Hart as President, an office he retained until 1867. District schools were opened under the free system, April 26, 1859, and the Academy was re-established and made free May 24, 1859. This closed the old private Academy on Baldwin Street, but the Free Academy did not convene until the following September. The' last principal of the Elmira Academy, Mr. S. R. Schofield, became the first Superintendent of Schools. Tradition says that the old Baldwin Street Academy building was later removed farther up the street, where its purchaser, Mr. S. H. Laney, used it as a paper-rag factory, until it perished by fire, possibly burning with shame at such indignity to a building of its history.

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appeared, he seemed to be quite interested, and the pupils looking out of the Carriage Factory windows at him and his beautiful wife were quite as interested as he was. Another incident, in 1861, which gave interest to the pupils was the arrival in the neighborhood of a company of soldiers and their location in the nearby Baptist Church, where the Odd Fellows' new home now stands. These gave plenty of excitement with their blanket- tossings, pyramid formations, their drilling and marching and martial music. When the school returned to their home on Clinton Street, the change from warlike ways to peaceful quite was quite noticeable. December 26, 1861, the Board inspected the new Academy building on Clinton Street, and on the last day of '61, formally accepted the building. The winter was spent in equipping the Academy for occupancy, and the school did not move in until the spring term of '62. Mr. Orrin Robinson, Secretary of the Board of Education, delivered the keys of the new building to Prin. Wellington as the important feature of the formal opening of the building. The new Academy was a three-story brick structure facing Clinton Street, the first story being a basement largely above ground. On either side of the front, a long flight of stone steps with iron railings led to the second floor. When the building was torn down, nearly thirty years later, these steps were purchased by Contractor Gerity, and may now be found on the terrace of the Gerity or Queen City Cottage. on Keuka Lake. The third story was divided into four recitation rooms, with a hall and a small room or office on both east and west sides. The library cases were in the northeast room, tho' the room was eventually used for recitation purposes also. The second floor had halls and ollices the counterpart of those on the third, the chapel occupying the remainder of the story. It was an oblong room, the greater length being from north to south, and comfortably accommodated 150 students, though 213 could be crowded into it. As there were windows on four sides, the chapel was a light, cneerful room, which later had a very homelike appearance. Across the center from east to west was a row of pillars, and, true to traditions, there were sliding doors between these pillars that might be lowered to divide the chapel into two rooms. Despite this provision for separating the sheep from the goats, the doors were apparently never lowered, and as the girls' seats in the soutn end faced north and the boys' seats in the north end faced south, tho opportunities or the two sexes for observing each other were increased rather than diminished by the arrangement planned to separate them. Because of this intended division, there were two doors, close to- gether, opening into each hall. Near the west doors was a tiny platform, curved at the back to allow tor the swinging of the doors. This rostrum was the throne of the faculty, and, owing to its scant dimensions, the precarious foothold of the school orators on Priday afternoons. Later, the seating arrangements were altered. A larger rostrum was placed at the south end of the room, the seats all facing it. 'l'he office on the east side was Prin. Wellington's and that on the west side, Miss Ph1llips's. The basement contained, on each side, a hall running north and south with an exit at each end. From these halls opened the dark, windowless cloak-rooms. Along the north end of the basement were two rooms, the east one being used as a science laboratory for the few experiments then performed, and the west one for the Lyceum Society, after that was organ- ized. Across the south end, down several steps, was a long room extending the width or the building, an archway in the center giving it the appearance of double parlors. This archway well illustrated the principle of a whispering gallery and afforded amusement to experimenters. This room, after 1869, was the home of the Adelphic Debating Club, and other similar societies. The first two years after the organization of the Free Academy no class was prepared for graduation, as comparatively few students of the former Academy registered in the new school. Not until the new building was occupied was there a Commencement of the Elmira Free Academy. The official records of these early days were apparently not kept. In 1871, Mr. George Ivl. Diven of the Board, having a proper realization or the value of records, tried to remedy that defect by having a report compiled giving a resume of the previous years' history. The Academy report, being written by a later principal than Mr. Wellington, made an error in reporting the date of the first graduation, claiming the first class for '61, the second for '62, and no graduates for '63, That error has persisted, people of later days naturally assuming the date of the official report to be correct. 'l'he testimony of the graduates of the first four classes and the Advertiser reports of the Commencement exercises of '62 and '63 are ample proof that the first class was graduated in '62, the second in '63, and there was no year after '62 without graduates until 1866. The first Commencement exercises were held in the new Academy building, July 25, 1862. At first it was thought impossible to have exercises, but the under graduates made heroic efforts to secure a piano for the occasion and decorated liberally with flowers. Diplomas never having been needed before, were not ready, and Prin. Wellington was too conscientious to present dummy diplomas, so that customary feature of Commencement programs was perforce omitted. Nevertheless all went off well. There were but two graduates, james R. Monks, laterthe beloved principal of E. F. A., and Miss j. Amelia Munson, for a short time also a member of the faculty. It was an ideal beginning, each sex being represented by a con- spicuously able studentg for what the class lacked in quantity it maoe up in quality, and set a very high standard for later graduates. james R. Monks has long since 'tcrossed the bar and his eulogy has been spoken, but Miss Munson is still a resident of Elmira, a well-read and 1862 1862