University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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Homer Nash Bibbarcl, LL. D. By Salim 5. Deabody, Db. D., LIL. D., Class of 185 2. HOMER NASH HIBBfXRD, son of Samuel Hibbard and Edith Nash, was born at Bethel, Windsor County, Vermont, November 7, 1824. For several genera- tions his ancestors had passed their lives amid those influences of New England scenery and society which have developed in her sons sturdy and sterling char- acter. On his fathers side he was sixth in descent from Robert Hibbard, who in 163, 5 was recorded as a member of the Congregational church in Salem, Massa- chusetts. On the side of his mother he was sixth from Thomas Nash of the Reverend Iohn Davenport's church in Quinnipiac, now New Haven, Con- necticut. His early life was that common to a far1ner's boy born in a Vermont valley. In the summer he was ubiquitous on the farm, in the winter he attended the district school. Cf how many men of mark is their boyhood's history told with equal brevity ! An elder brother had worked his way into and nearly through a collegiate course, and although this one died in his junior year, his example was not lost on the younger brother. In his sixteenth year he began to attend an academy in the neighboring town of Randolph, earning while there, by manual labor, something more than his board. In the next winter he taught his first school. His plans for further prosecution of his studies were interrupted by his father's iinancial needs. At eighteen he fell under the notice of Mr. I. C. Dexter, an eminent lawyer of Rutland, Vermont, who was looking for just such a lad to enter his office as clerk and student. Soon after Mr. Dexter was appointed postmaster of Rut- land, and the young clerk was assigned to duty on the mails. The Rutland post oliice was a distributing office, and the heavy mails arriving from Boston and New York had to be handled in the night. The days the clerk had mostly to himself. The eager longing for a college education still burned within him. I-Ie began systematically to it himself for college, at first under the private instruction of the Reverend VVilliam Mitchell. He continued to teach school in the winters. After two years of such summer and winter service he had saved enough to pay for a term's attendance at the seminary in Castleton, Vermont, in 7

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Co the Memory OF Bon. Homer Nash Eibbard of the Class of 185o 'Che Hriel is respectfully dedicated by the Class of Gigbteen Hundred Ninety-Nine

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1846. In the autumn of that year he was admitted to the Freshman class of the University of Vermont, at Burlington. In those days the normal occupation of a college boy in the winter was school teaching, for which the colleges provided a long vacation, beginning soon after the thanksgiving holiday, lasting until the first of February, and subject to further continuation. Doubtless young Hibbard made this fact a large factor in his calculations, for he taught during every winter, as well as during the junior fall, of his college course. It is said that while he was a Freshman his maternal grandmother died, leaving him by will the niunificent legacy of forty-six dollars, enough to pay most of his expenses for that year. Board was reckoned in those days at one dollar and a quarter a week. After a struggle, common enough in those days, but which the college student of these times feebly appreciates, Hibbard graduated in 1850, winning the only honor which the college regimen then recognized, election to the society of the Phi Beta Kappa. He was popular with his own class and with the college. He was elected to the presidency of his literary society, was the first president of the college temperance society, and was readily recognized as the leading senior of his year. His principal class competitor was his warm friend, Edward Carter Palmer, of Danville, Vermont, who, like himself, entered the law. Palmer died in 1888, judge of a circuit court in Minnesota. In 18 50 the town of Burlington was the nrst in Vermont to establish a free high school under authority of a recent enactment of the legislature. Mr. Hib- bard, whose capacity as a teacher had been demonstrated in one of the district schools of the town, was chosen as principal of the new school. His assistants were Miss jane Noble, afterwards his wife, teacher of English and French, and the writer of this article, teacher of mathematics. After two years of this em- ployment, having saved from his modest salary of six hundred dollars a year enough to warrant the further prosecution of study in his chosen profession, he declined re-election and entered the Dane Law School of Harvard College. In this movement he was accompanied by john Alexander Jameson of Irasburg, Vermont, who was in age a year his junior. Mr. jameson graduated at the University of Vermont in 1846, and was tutor there in the years 1850-52. After attending a course of lectures at the law school the two returned to Burlington, where Hibbard studied six months in the oiiice of Lieut-Governor Levi Under- wood. In September, 1853, he and his friend, jameson, were admitted to the bar in Burlington. The examiners were George F. Edmunds, afterwards the distinguished senator, and Lucius B. Chittenden, who became Register of the Treasury under President Lincoln. Within a month the two came to Chicago and opened the law office of Hibbard and jameson. Chicago was then a city of 8