After 1835 the family scattered, Melville to begin his wanderings on land and sea,—Gansevoort to drift about Albany for two years, Maria and the rest of the children to move to Lansingburg—now a part of Albany.
The publication of the Celebration of the Semi-Centennial Anniversary of the Albany Academy (Albany, 1862) in its list of alumni, and the date of their entrance, offers the following record:
1831: Melville, Allan.
1830: Melville, Gansevoort.
1830: Melville, Herman.
This Semi-Centennial Anniversary Celebration took place in Tweedle Hall, which, so says the publication, “was crowded with an appropriate audience.” “The meeting was presided over by the Honourable Peter Gansevoort, the President of the Board of Trustees,” the publication goes on to say, “and by his side were his associates and the guests of the festival, among whom was warmly welcomed Herman Melville, whose reputation as an author has honoured the Academy, world-wide.” As Melville sat there, “the Rev. Doc. Ferris ... made prayer to Heaven the source of that knowledge which shall not vanish away;” Orlando Mead, LL.D., read a Historical Discourse; and “at successive periods the exercises were diversified by the music of Home, Sweet Home or Rest, Spirit, Rest, and of other appropriate harmonies.” What recollections of his school-days at the Albany Academy were then passing through Melville’s head, we haven’t sufficient knowledge of his schooling to guess. As part of the celebration, Alexander W. Bradford, who was a student at the Academy between 1825 and 1832, spoke of the “domestic discords and fights between the Latins and the English, and the more fierce and bitter foreign conflicts waged between the Hills and the Creeks, the latter being a pugnacious tribe of barbarians who inhabited the shores of Fox Creek;” of “the weekly exhibitions in the Gymnasium grand with the beauty of Albany;” of “the lectures and experiments in chemistry, which being in the evening, were favoured by the presence of young ladies as well as gentlemen.” In what capacity, if any, Melville figured in these activities there is no way of knowing.
Dr. Henry Hun, now President of the Albany Academy, in answer to a request for information about Melville, answers: “Unfortunately, the records of the Albany Academy were burned in 1888. It is impossible to say how long he remained in the school or what results he achieved. He probably took the Classical Course, as most of the brighter boys took it. It was really a Collegiate Course, and the Head-master (or Principal as he was then called) Dr. T. Romeyn Beck was an extraordinary man, but one who did not spare the rod, but gave daily exhibitions in its use.” In a postscript Dr. Hun adds: “It was a God-fearing school.”
Joseph Henry, at one time teacher at the Albany Academy, later head of the Smithsonian Institute, in an address before the Association for the Advancement of Science, in session in Albany in 1851, said of Melville’s Alma Mater: “The Albany Academy was and still is one of the first, if not the very first, institution of its kind in the United States. It early opposed the pernicious maxim that a child should be taught nothing but what it could perfectly understand, and that the sole object of instruction is to teach a child to think.”
Since Melville was in 1834 employed as clerk in the New York State Bank (a post he doubtless owed to his uncle, Peter Gansevoort, who was one of the Trustees) he must have ceased to enjoy the advantages of the Albany Academy before that date. During the time of Melville’s attendance, the same texts were used by all students alike during their first three years at the Albany Academy. This, then, would seem to be a list of the texts (offered by the courtesy of Dr. Hun) studied by Melville:
1st Year:
Latin Grammar
Historia Sacra
Turner’s Exercises (begun)
Latin Reader
Irving’s Universal History