Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

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witli tliat illustrious corps known as Scott ' s ]5rigade, in the Niagara Campaign, remaining at the head of his company through the battle of Lundy ' s Lane, regardless of the wound he had received early in the action. He was much engaged, later, in the Indian wars on the frontier, in Arkansas and Minnesota. He was, like his father, a man of purest integrity, his nickname being Honest Jack. A strict disciplinarian, he was a commander who could command him- self. Card-playing, for instance, had been an accustomed pastime at home, but as soon as he noted its demoralizing effect upon the soldiers in garrison, he woidd no longer allow it either to his men or to himself. He made it understood that he counted it an aHVont to he invited to a card party; and so resolute and consistent was his opposition to cai ' ds in garrison, tliat his superior officers were embarrassed to be discovered b3- him in a game. There was nothing petty in his natme. Even the keeping of accounts was given up by him, because he would not, as he said, attach such consequence to a sixpence. Major Fowle exemplified the truth of the poet ' s words, The bravest are the tenderest. He appears to have been cjuite the ideal lover, yet with a margin of courtesy and kindness for others than the sovereign lady. A sister of his betrothed refers to him, in a letter now vellowed with the years, as the most thoughtful and considerate man for one in love we ever knev -. ' And another of these treasured letters of long ago bears this enthusiastic testimony : Sophia, Charlotte, and myself have unanimously agreed that since the creation of the world no lover ever was half so attentive and agreeable as the Major. The marriage took place in May of 1S31, and on the thirteenth of June in the following year was born, in Alexandria, the daughter without whcjm Welleslev College would never have been. She was a traveled baby. At the age of three months she journeyed on a pillow to Sault Ste. Marie, where Major Fowle was stationed. It was no easy trip in those early days. There was one little strip of railroad in Western New York, but apait from that and boats of one sort and another, the travelers had to depend on such rude vehicles as they coidtl obtain over frightful roads with gaping holes, of which it was said you could lose a wagon in anv one of them and never miss it. The little party went to Fort Brady by the last boat of the fidl, and were ordered to take their departure by the first boat of spring. The conditions of life there at the Sault were rough and primitive. Yet by the infrequent mails, carried on snowshoes or by dog teams, cheery letters went out from the brave young bride and her proud husband to the anxious people at home. The playful tone of the letter from which the following extracts are taken, a letter from Major Fowle to one of his wife ' s sisters, written in midwinter from the icebound, fort, shows how warm and happy were those wedded hearts among the snows. 14

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Fowle and his wife were reputed to be the handsomest bride and groom ever married in Newton; and their eight children, especially three of the daughters, were famed for extraor- dinary- beauty- It is said that the father would sometimes steal out of the house and close the blinds to shelter his three Graces, as they sewed or read by the window, from the lingering looks of the passers-by. The standing toast through Middlesex County was the couplet, origi- nating with Robert Treat Paine, — To the fair of every town, And the Fowle of Watertown. ' It was on many accounts a remarkable family, and one of peculiar interest to Wellesley College. The mother, Mary Cooke of Newton, was the daughter of Abigail Durant of Newton, from whom our founders take their name, and the sister of Susanna Cooke, who married Dr. Walter Hunnewell of Watertown, a Harvard graduate of 17S7, these being the parents of our neighbor across Waban. The youngest Miss Fowle, the all-admired Adeline, married Mr. Samuel Welles, who came to be the leading American banker in Paris. Mr. Welles was born in Natick, and from his father ' s family the town of Wellesley received its name. A sister of Mr. Welles, tiie banker at Paris, married her first cousin, Arnold Welles of Boston; and the Welles estate, now enlarged and known as the Hunnewell estate, was inherited by their daughter, the late wife of the present proprietor. But we must not let these fascinating Fowles fly away with us. Our concern is not with the beautiful Charlotte, who married Benjamin Wiggin, a successful American banker resident in London ; nor with the gentle Maria, whose husband dreamed of the burning of Moscow at the verv time wlien the conflagration was in progress; nor with the gallant young midshipman who fell in a duel with a British naval officer; nor with the graceful Eliza, who was said to be the only woman in Boston who could wear the long shawl elegantly; nor with the dazzling Adeline of Paris and Versailles, who, after the death of her husband, Mr. Welles the banker, married the Marquis de La Valelte, a diplomat who rose under Napoleon III. to be Minister of Foreign Affairs, and, later, Ambassador to the Court of St. James. But there are two of this brilliant household group in whom Wellesley has ever) ' right to be interested : Harriet, most intellectual of all the children, a passionate lover of books, the soul of honor, impulsive and imperious, with an irresistible charm of her own, who became the mother of Mr. Durant; and John, the Major Fowle already mentioned, who became the father of Mrs. Durant. Major Fowle was a man of two-score years when he made the acquaintance of Miss Cazenove. He had served in the War of 1S12 on the New York frontier, and had taken part, 13

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My dear Sister : I have been trying in vain to get my wife to give vou some account of her sudden change as respects her opinions of the natives ; therefore I must do it mv-self. A few days after our arrival here we walked out, to see and be seen. We came in sight of a number of wigwams; I proposed we should go and visit them. We went to the opening of one and found it occupied by a number of male Indians. After looking at them for a few moments we proceeded to another, and found it filled with females (Indians). Pauline entered into conversation with them in Frencli, and I assisted with Indian; at last one of them said, in English, that she (Pauline) was very beautiful. This, of course, I agreed to. But it is astonishing what a change it has wrought. She never speaks of the Indians except she remarks what shameful treatment they have received from the whites, and, finally, by saying she feels for them, and they are a much-injured people, etc. . . . The two Paulines are in good health, and are quite contented with their situation. The little pet is very good-looking (the mother says, a great beauty), and looks, as all say, very much like her father. . . . Pauline has found lier French of some use here. A Frenchman came one day to sell some partridges ; he could not speak Engli-sh, and she was called upon to make a bar- gain with him. The poor fellow was delighted to find she could speak French, and said he would come frequently to sell to her, and that his wife was very sick, and she would be much pleased to talk with her. I presume he thought his wife would be recovered by Pauline ' s conversation. As for making bargains, your sister is a very good Cazeno ' e at it; our money here is bread tickets, say two and a quarter poimds, which cost us five cents. In the spring of 1S33, Major Fowle was ordered to Fort Dearborn, Chicago, to relieve troops that had been there during the Black Hawk War. At this time there were no regular chaplains in the arin} ' , and Major Fowle invited the home missionary, Mr. Jeremiah Porter, a great grandson of Jonathan Edwards, to accompany him. Mr. Porter had come out to Sault Ste. Marie the year before, and had organized a little Presbyterian church there. As the re- moval of the troops virtually removed his congregation, and as there was already a Baptist chinxh at the Sault, where the Pre.sbyterian remnant could be cared for, Mr. Porter accepted the Major ' s invitation. Many years after, the veteran missionary spoke with pleasine of the little child who brightened the deck of the small schooner that brought the troops to Fort Dearborn. The new arrivals at Chicago, in this spring of 1S33, foimd themselves on the edge of the flowering prairie in a straggling, waterside village, where two-story frame houses were just beginning to go up among the log cabins, — a village of bareh ' three hundred inhabitants, in- cluding soldiers, traders of the American Fur Company, Indians, trappers, roughs; hard and wild characters, in the main, with a leaven of four praying men among them. These four gave delighted welcome to the newcomers; for the garrison embraced eighteen professing Christians, in addition to the missionary, and their coming was to the discouraged few like the bursting out of the sun from the darkest clouds. The new conunand, well-drilled and •5