The Story of Wellesley

by Florence Converse

This helps us to understand his desire that Wellesley should welcome poor girls and should give them every opportunity for study. Despite his aristocratic tastes he was a true son of democracy; the following, from an address on "The Influences of Rural Life", delivered by him before the Norfolk Agricultural Society, in September, 1859, might have been written in the twentieth century, so modern is its animus:

"The age of iron is passed and the age of gold is passing away; the age of labor is coming. Already we speak of the dignity of labor, and that phrase is anything but an idle and unmeaning one. It is a true gospel to the man who takes its full meaning; the nation that understands it is free and independent and great.

"The dignity of labor is but another name for liberty. The chivalry of labor is now the battle cry of the old world and the new. Ask your cornfields to what mysterious power they do homage and pay tribute, and they will answer—to labor. In a thousand forms nature repeats the truth, that the laborer alone is what is called respectable, is alone worthy of praise and honor and reward."

IV.

In a letter accompanying his will, in 1867, Mr. Durant wrote: "The great object we both have in view is the appropriation and consecration of our country place and other property to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, by erecting a seminary on the plan (modified by circumstances) of South Hadley, and by having an Orphan Asylum, not only for orphans, but for those who are more forlorn than orphans in having wicked parents. Did our property suffice I would prefer both, as the care (Christian and charitable) of the children would be blessed work for the pupils of the seminary." The orphanage was, indeed, their first idea, and was, obviously, the more natural and conventional memorial for a little eight-year-old lad, but the idea of the seminary gradually superseded it as Mr. and Mrs. Durant came to take a greater and greater interest in educational problems as distinguished from mere philanthropy. Miss Conant wisely reminds us that, "Just at this time new conditions confronted the common schools of the country. The effects of the Civil War were felt in education as in everything else. During the war the business of teaching had fallen into women's hands, and the close of the war found a great multitude of new and often very incompetent women teachers filling positions previously held by men. The opportunities for the higher education of women were entirely inadequate. Mt. Holyoke was turning away hundreds of girls every year, and there were few or no other advanced schools for girls of limited means."

In 1867 Mr. Durant was elected a trustee of Mt. Holyoke. In 1868 Mrs. Durant gave to Mt. Holyoke ten thousand dollars, which enabled the seminary to build its first library building. We are told that Mr. and Mrs. Durant used to say that there could not be too many Mt. Holyokes. And in 1870, on March 17, the charter of Wellesley Female Seminary was signed by Governor William Claflin.

On April 16, 1870, the first meeting of the Board of Trustees was held, at Mr. Durant's Marlborough Street house in Boston, and the Reverend Edward N. Kirk, pastor of the Mt. Vernon Church in Boston, was elected president of the board. Mr. Durant arranged that both men and women should constitute the Board of Trustees, but that women should constitute the faculty; and by his choice the first and second presidents of the college were women. The continuance of this tradition by the trustees has in every respect justified the ideal and the vision of the founder. The trustees were to be members of Evangelical churches, but no denomination was to have a majority upon the board. On March 7, 1873, the name of the institution was changed by legislative act to Wellesley College. Possibly visits to Vassar had had something to do with the change, for Mr. and Mrs. Durant studied Vassar when they were making their own plans.

And meanwhile, since the summer of 1871, the great house on the hill above Lake Waban had been rising, story on story.

Miss Martha Hale Shackford, Wellesley, 1896, in her valuable little pamphlet, "College Hall", written immediately after the fire, to preserve for future generations of Wellesley women the traditions of the vanished building, tells us with what intentness Mr. Durant studied other colleges, and how, working with the architect, Mr. Hammatt Billings of Boston, "details of line and contour were determined before ground was broken, and the symmetry of the huge building was assured from the beginning."

"Reminiscences of those days are given by residents of Wellesley, who recall the intense interest of the whole countryside in this experiment. From Natick came many high-school girls, on Saturday afternoons, to watch the work and to make plans for attending the college. As the brick-work advanced and the scaffolding rose higher and higher, the building assumed gigantic proportions, impressive in the extreme. The bricks were brought from Cambridge in small cars, which ran as far as the north lodge and were then drawn, on a roughly laid switch track, to the side of the building by a team of eight mules. Other building materials were unloaded in the meadow and then transferred by cars. As eighteen loads of bricks arrived daily the pre-academic aspect of the campus was one of noise and excitement. At certain periods during the finishing of the interior, there were almost three hundred workmen." A pretty story has come down to us of one of these workmen who fell ill, and when he found that he could not complete his work, begged that he might lay one more brick before he was taken away, and was lifted up by his comrades that he might set the brick in its place.