"In 1810, Professor Shurtleff was united in marriage with Miss Anna Pope, only daughter of Rev. Joseph Pope of Spencer, Mass. Of her he said, 'She was truly an helpmeet—one who did me good and not evil all the days of her life.' By her vivacity and cheerfulness she was eminently fitted to comfort him in his hours of suffering and depression. But it pleased God to take her from him in March, 1826, after having enjoyed with her, during sixteen years, a degree of domestic happiness which rarely falls to the lot of man. He also lost two children, sons, in 1820, after a brief illness. Respecting the oldest, he had already begun to indulge very pleasing anticipations, although he was less than five years old at the time of his decease. Little did the speaker then know, when helping to carry to the grave the remains of these children, who, if they had survived, would now have been men of mature age, what hopes he was assisting to bury! But who knows the future? It was better they should die, than that they should live to dishonor him and themselves. The husband and father mourned incessantly, though not without resignation, for these bereavements, till the time of his own death.
"In 1825, Professor Shurtleff was in very feeble health, from the spring till Commencement. The Trustees adjourned at that time to reassemble in November, supposing it might be necessary then to appoint another professor of Divinity. But by the blessing of God on medical advice and careful nursing, he was able to resume instruction before the meeting of the Trustees.
"In January, 1827, Professor Shurtleff was transferred from the professorship of Divinity to one newly established, of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy, which he filled till the year 1838, when, by his own resignation, his active labors in the college ceased. It was understood, when this appointment was made, that Professor Shurtleff should instruct in all the Senior classes, and should also hear the recitations of other classes in particular branches. During the last half of this period, he preached in vacant neighboring parishes. No particular account of the literary labors of these years can be required. Any one of them may be regarded as a fair sample of the rest. A member of the class of 1828 can testify that that class greatly enjoyed his instructions. We never heard the summons to the recitation-room without pleasure. We were always interested and excited, always profited. The questions were put by the professor in the plainest Saxon. They were well adapted to develop the knowledge or the ignorance of the student, as the case might be, but not to give him undue assistance. If there was anything in the text-book which was obscure, the questions made it plain. A clearly wrong opinion advanced by an author was briefly, yet thoroughly, exposed. His own opinions were lucidly stated and sustained, and for the time being, at least, we seldom saw reason to differ from him. The recitation was enlivened with anecdote, illustration, and wit, and never dragged heavily. If our objections were sometimes curtly silenced, it was so effectually and handsomely done that we bore it with perfect good-nature. He ever lent a willing ear to our real difficulties, and assisted in their removal. Together with unusual freedom in the mode of conducting the recitations, there was good order and earnest attention to the subject in hand. He knew how to control us, while he had with us all the sympathy of a young man and an equal. I think it was the opinion of the class that Professor Shurtleff, in his ripe manhood, had few equals as an instructor.
"At the time of his retirement, in 1838, Dr. Shurtleff had been in the service of the college thirty-eight years. After what manner he has lived among us since that time, most of this audience know. He has not been noticeably active in the affairs of the village, but when you have met him in private intercourse, you have known that he retained the fine social qualities—the love of story-telling, and the keen, yet harmless wit—for which he was always remarkable. Those whose memory goes back thirty years, must have noticed, I think, that he became more uniformly serene and cheerful in the latter part of his life. The old graduates of the college who revisited the place know how cordially he received them, and with what hearty zest he recalled with them the scenes of their college days. He continued to be deeply interested in the prosperity of the college, and he was the means of eliciting in its behalf the interest and the benevolence of his friends. He continued the habit, commenced at an early period, of assisting students who were in needy circumstances. These were objects of benevolence toward which he was naturally drawn. In his feelings he never grew old, but carried forward the vivacity of youth into old age; and always enjoyed the society of the young. He loved to have young men about him; and he has thus, by his unobtrusive charities and counsels, and his interesting and instructive conversation, been a benefactor to a large number of students. The spiritual welfare of the college was near his heart. He had passed through many revivals of religion, and he longed for the return of such seasons. He devoutly observed the days set apart for prayer for colleges, and, as you remember, often urged the students, assembled on those occasions, to give their hearts to God.
"When he left his post as an instructor he was sixty-five years old. After this he had more than twenty-two years of leisure, during which he retained, in a remarkable degree, the vigor of his intellectual powers. But he had good and sufficient reasons, as he judged, for his resignation; and no new and suitable field of labor presenting itself to a man who wanted but a few years of threescore and ten, he could enjoy the offered leisure with a good conscience, occupying it with such pursuits as his taste suggested. Even at the time when his labors were the most multiplied, and the church and the college were successively engaged in bitter controversy, he had but little to do with administrative and practical matters. Even then a life of reflection appeared to be more attractive than a life of action. And when his public duties were ended, he naturally chose such a life. He was still intellectually active. He could not let his faculties sink into sluggish repose if he would. His temperament would not suffer it. If he was not a hard student, he was, what he had always been, a thinking man to the last."
In a published notice of Professor Shurtleff, by Professor (now President) Brown, we find the following language:
"The life of Dr. Shurtleff extended over the largest and most important part of that of the institution itself. For nearly twenty years he was college preacher, and at the same time pastor of the church on Hanover Plain,—during which period more than two hundred persons connected themselves with the church, a large proportion of them by original profession. In the contest of the college with the State, he and the late venerable Professor Adams, with the president, constituted the permanent Faculty for instruction and government. Upon the issues then presented he exerted a full measure of influence, though it was comparatively quiet and private.
"As a professor, Dr. Shurtleff had some remarkable qualities. He possessed a mind of extraordinary subtleness and acuteness, ever alert, active and ingenious. Whatever he saw, he saw distinctly, and was able, with equal clearness, to express to another. If a student were really perplexed, he knew how to relieve him by a pertinent example or illustration, but it was generally done by a question or a suggestion which demanded the activity of the student's own mind, and disciplined while it, helped him. If a pupil, on the other hand, were captious, or conceited, he was apt to find himself, before he suspected it, inextricably entangled in a web of contradictions, where he was sometimes left till he came to a sense of his weakness, or till he was dismissed with the benign declaration that 'he might sit.'
"Dr. Shurtleff's wit was sharp and pungent, and on any occasion which involved the exercise of it he was quite equal to his part. He sometimes engaged in controversy, and versed as he was in all logical art, those who encountered him once were seldom anxious to provoke a second contest. His opinions, both religious and philosophical, were early settled and firmly held. He was in nothing given to change; his friends were generally the friends of his life, and those who were familiar with his habits of thought could easily tell where, upon any given question, he would probably be found.
"His interest in young men was a noticeable trait in Dr. Shurtleff's character, while preacher to the college; the effect of his private conversations and friendly advice was almost equal to that of his public ministrations. His quiet study was often the scene of meetings for prayer or religious conversation from which were carried away influences for good, never to be forgotten, and for which many were grateful to their dying day.