Lawrenceville School - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Lawrenceville, NJ)

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KXXQMM Jbiwlidrilm HAMILL HOUSE, 1843 Tradztzons , Hiiiui was oxcli ix young man who combined both a sense of good business and high efficiency with lofty idealism. U Q He was a struggling young minister in the tiny town of A ' Maidenhead just live or more miles from Princeton. l'er- haps his salary was not very great and his family was grow- ing: perhaps he saw the need of education in a young landg perhaps his eye for business and a certain love of boys pos- wg ge: gf:-' '-12, .A g v L J ' v Q x r 1 sn J L S sessed him-we shall never know for sure-but. at any rate. he made up his mind to begin a school. So, one line morning i11 1810 he cut himself a stout elm switch. gathered nine boys in a little house on the Kings High- way. took lf1n'IifI'.t lflellzezifx from the shelf. and set himself up as school- master. The young man's name was lsaae Yan ,Xrsdale llrown, and his tiny school grew into Our Lawrenceville. The story of the growth of the school. as the history hooks go, reads like a fairy tale. and yet when one thinks about it, there is much more reality than imagination in the chronicles of its sturdy development. 'l'he Rev- erend Mr. llrown. as has been said, had an eye for business. lly l8l2 he called his school the .Xcademv of Maidenhead, had a board of trustees fcom- posed of men with names famous in Lawrenceville memoryj. and was ad- vertising widely lor boys. ln lSl-l a suitable building. the llamill house. was constructed. .-Xnd by l83-l when he retired from its directorship, the school was happily llourishing. llll

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F xoffa jJ2Qaa'QftM'W But this man was not all business. lle was a dreamer, too. lle in- novated the system of having separate classes recite in separate rooms fa radical departure in those daysj. lfle not only saw that his boys learned l,'enmanship, the Art of Speaking, the Classics, Modern Languages, Sur- veying, and Navigation, but he announced that their morals, their manners, their amusement, and their health would receive particular attention. Gym- nastick exercises and other athletick amusements, horsemanship and riding in carriages, are employed to improve health and inspire cheerfulness among the pupils, says his adivertisernent. A sound rock upon which to build a school was Isaac Van Arsdale Brown. They say that a school is like its headmaster, that it rises or falls as its leader is strong or ineffectual. He is a doctor that watches or neglects its health. lsaac Brown was most litted to superintend its birth and infancy, but none the less suitable have been the men who have nurtured it and sat up nights feeling its pulse beats since those early times. For three years it was. guided by a man named Phillips, and then Dr. Samuel Hamill, a scholar and a teacher, served forty-six years of a long active life to keep alive the bold little Hame of erudition that llickered out in many another institution during his day. In the iinal period of Dr. HHl1llll'S career, john C. Green, one of the nine original boys, died and left to his trustees the foundation endowment fund that the school has rested upon until this day. Dr. Mackenzie, an organizer, was administrator in the new beginning. Then came the great old man who watched through the trouble of war times. giving his very life that the old school should continue to keep all the old good and attain some new things, too. McPherson was his name. The regime of Dr. Abbott is known well enough-dreamer. builder, and teacher, he has made the sound of the carpenter's hammer and the ring of the l1liLSO11,5 trowel familiar on the campus. Through his efforts have come more numerous eighties and nineties in the College Boards, a liveliness that keeps us up to date, a11d a certain lineness and nobility mixed with the fire of inspiration. Thus go the traditions of Lawrenceville as the history books tell them. But there are other traditions, too-little feelings that words cannot express. feelings that play in our hearts at the mention of Lawrenceville, feelings that are peculiar to l,awrenceville alone. They are the consunnnate expres- sion of everything that is good in school life. Every master, every single boy, and even those only vaguely associated with the school have added to or subtracted from their store of riches. Down from the time when a master's contract with the school stipulated that he should cut his own tire- wood, have they come. Through the bowl-and-pitcher and the oil lamp age, they grew, imbedded themselves, became the priceless heritage that we today may call ours! And beautiful is the thought that on they may go, those traditions that are our love for Lawrenceville, forever and forever and forever. ' mi I