"The origin of Mr. Chandler's endowment of the Scientific School is referable to an incident that occurred to him when a young man at Fryeburg. He fell in company with some students of Dartmouth College, and he was impressed by their superiority to himself. He conceived the purpose of being himself a scholar, and he fulfilled it. When, after a few years of honorable industry as a teacher he became a merchant, he saw himself, though now a scholar, ignorant, to a great extent, of the principles and methods of mercantile life. Whereupon he set himself to a new variety of learning. He gained it, and with it gained a fortune. But he saw other men around him, in different spheres, suffering as he had done from a similar want of knowledge,—merchants, traders, ship-masters, artisans, farmers, laborers.
"The Chandler School is the ripened fruit of a well-considered purpose to benefit mankind. He had confidence in the importance of his object, the integrity of his aims, and the wisdom of his advisers. He bestowed his charity with a hearty good-will, and left the event with God."
"John Conant was born in Stowe, Mass., in 1790. His family descended from the French Huguenots who were driven into England by Louis XIV. His father was an industrious and successful farmer. In the district school he was taught the merest rudiments of an English education. In after years, by the aid and sympathy of an intelligent and well-educated wife, he fitted himself to write for the public journals, to lecture on temperance and agriculture, and to perform with credit and honor the duties of important official stations, in town and State. His leisure hours were devoted to study. He collected a small private library of choice books in history, biography, and science, and made them the companions of rainy days and winter evenings.
"At the age of twenty-six, he purchased a farm in Jaffrey, under the shadow of 'the great Monadnock,' on which he labored for thirty-five years, and gathered 'a plentiful estate.' This was accumulated by means of those home-bred virtues, industry, prudence, and economy; for he never, in a single instance, increased his wealth by speculation.
"When the New Hampshire Insane Asylum was occupying the public attention, he contributed liberally to its endowment, and was at one time president of its Board of Trustees, being sole superintendent of the first buildings that were reared.
"Turning his thoughts toward the rising academy at New London, Mr. Conant proposed to add to its literary and scientific departments an agricultural school. He ascertained, however, that his whole estate would be inadequate to the work, and, after making generous donations to the academy, he turned his attention to the Agricultural College at Hanover.
"In his endowment of this institution, along with other things, he has provided a model farm for the college, and founded a scholarship for each town in Cheshire County, twenty-two in all, with an additional one for Jaffrey.
"Mr. Conant was through life a liberal contributor to public enterprises, and a supporter of the gospel, and for twenty years was an active member of the Baptist Church."
Boynton's History of West Point gives the following valuable paragraphs relating to Sylvanus Thayer, by whose munificence to the cause of education he has laid his Alma Mater and his native town under lasting obligations:
"Brevet-major Sylvanus Thayer, of the Corps of Engineers, on July 28, 1817, assumed command as superintendent of the West Point Military Academy, and from this period the commencement of whatever success as an educational institution, and whatever reputation the Academy may possess, at home or abroad, for its strict, impartial, salutary, elevating, and disciplinary government, must be dated. Major Thayer was an early graduate of the academy. He had served with distinction in the War of 1812, and had studied the military schools of France, and profited by the opportunity to acquire more complete and just views concerning the management of such an institution than were generally entertained by educational and military men of that day. The field before him was uncultivated; the period was one when rare qualifications for position were not considered valueless; and, blessed with health, devotion to the cause, and firmness of purpose, he was permitted to organize a system, and remain sixteen years to perfect its operation.