Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

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Tt)e Poanders of UJeUesleY. HE beautiful storv of tlie founding of Welleslev College is widely known. Sketches of Mr. Dinant ' s remarkable career have not infrec[uentlv appeared in print. The present article aims to be SLipplemental rather than complete in itself, presenting somewhat fully, eyen at the expense of proportion, such data as are new. More- over, previous accounts of the foimding of Welleslev have, naturally enough, thrown the man ' s work and the man ' s life into the foreground. But Mr. Diaant himself would not have had it so. Xone recognized more clearly than he the equal share borne bv ]Mrs. Durant in all the sacrifice, thought, and labor vhich went to the making up of their great joint gift. In the will of 1S70 occurs the emphatic sentence : All the provisions in this will are made with the knowledge of mv beloved vife, and to carr ' out our mutual plans and wishes. Welleslev has two founders. It is proposed in the present sketch to deal more particularly with the woman ' s life and work. Yet, in reality, the two histories are one. The separate life-streams early blend into a single river, known by music and bv shining, by burdens borne and toils promoted, by happy countries watered, bv fear- less flow through sun and shadow to the eternal sea. Irs. Durant comes of a distinguished ancestry. Her mother ' s family bore the name of de Cazenove, honorabh known in France for nearly a thousand years. The Huguenot branch withdiew from their native land at the Revocation of the Edict of Xantes, and estab- lished themselves in Geneva as bankers, dropping their titles as inconsistent with a business career. The deep religious feeling, innate in their Huguenot blood, no less than their financial station and authority, and their alliance with the nding families of Geneva, soon gave the de Cazenoves a high influence in that stronghold of religious liberty. Presently there were to be numbered among them not onl ' successors to the office of Premier Syndic, and other powerful positions, but theologians of eminence. Mrs. Durant ' s grandfather, Antoine Charles Cazenove, was educated for a military career, but developed a taste for financiering. Going to England, he spent three years in the great banking house of the Cazenoves, then ranking with the largest bankers of London. He returned to Geneva on the eve of the Jacobin Revolution, — a miniature copy of the Reign of Terror. He himself, with his father and elder brother, were seized by the mob and thrown into prison, several hundi ' cd

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HEHRY FOWLE DURAHT, JR. HENRY FOWLE DURAHT. PAULINE A. DURANT.

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other leading citizens of Geneva sufTering the samfe outrage. Not all of the Genevan aris- tocrats were so fortunate as the Cazenoves, who were acquitted and released, their reputation for goodness standing them in stead. Recognizing the precariousness of the times, and seeing the business of the city in confusion, they escaped to Holland, and thence to America. In Philadelphia the brothers met two sisters resident in that city, although natives of Balti- more, whom they afterwards married. Mrs. Durant ' s grandmother was Hogan bv name, of Scotch-Irish extraction, of American birth, of the Roman Catholic faith, — yielding in later life to the Protestant, — and of culture quite exceptional for the women of her day. The perfection of her French is a family tradi- tion and example. She was an excellent Latin scholar, trained by her father, a teacher of eminence, and she was widely read in history ' and literature. Her husband, in facing the rude American conditions of a century ago, displayed the characteristic energy and enterprise of his family. This young Swiss refugee, in company with the Hon. Albert Gallatin, carried the first millstones across the Alleghanies, established flouring mills in the backwoods of Western Pennsylvania, and set up at Uniontovvn the first glassworks in this coimtrv. John Jacob Astor oflered him partnership in his great fur venture ; but ]Mr. Cazenove decided to try his fortunes as a shipping merchant, and would gladly have settled in Philadelphia, then the most considerable seaport of the United States. He was deterred, however, by the ravages of yellow fever there, his wife ' s younger brother being among the victims. The horror of this pestilence, as it raged throughout Philadelphia and New York at intervals during the last decade of the preceding century, may still be realized from the graphic descriptions of our first American novelist. Reading Charles Brockilen Brown ' s Arthur Mervyn, or Ormond, one does not wonder that ]Mr. Cazenove .sought a safer home in Alex- andria, Virginia. The five sons and five daughters who in time enriched the household had the benefit of unusuallv good schools, kept, in part, by women from Massachusetts. Mrs. Diuant ' s mother received her earlier education in these, but was sent, like her sisters, to Mme. Greleaud ' s boai ' ding school in Philadelphia, for the accomplishments, while the brothers were despatched to Geneva. On a visit to Boston, in the winter of 1S30, Miss Pauline Cazenove, singularly fair and winning, met Major Fowle, of the United States Army, and after some months consented to become his wife. The Fowles of Watertown were no less interesting a familv than the Cazenoves of Alex- andria. Captain John Fowle, of English descent, had done good senice in the War of the Revolution, which swept away most of his propertv, together with that of man} ' another patriot. He was a man of lofty principles, not only hating evil, but despising it. Captain