William Marsh Rice and His Institute: The Centennial Edition

1: The Early Years

( 1 ) The EarlyYears “Just below Springfield,” wrote the Reverend Timothy Dwight, that indefatigable traveler and preacher who was soon to become the president of Yale University, as he journeyed northward along the Connecticut River Valley at the end of the eighteenth century, “we crossed a vigorous millstream on which, a little eastward, is erected the most considerable manufactory of arms in the United States.”1 By 1812, when David Rice, the fourth to bear that name, moved his young family to Springfield from Norfolk County, Massachusetts, and went to work in the forging shop at the Springfield Armory, the town had changed very little.2 For “a few hundred dollars,” David Rice bought a square clapboard house of one and one-half stories on Hickory Street, perhaps not anticipating that four-month-old Louisa was to be the first of ten children.3 A son, David, was born in 1814, and a second,William, in March 1816. Josiah and Lucy Ann, who followed in 1819 and 1821, respectively , both died in infancy; but Minerva, Caleb, Charlotte, and Frederick , who followed at intervals of about two years, lived and thrived. The last of David Rice’s daughters, Susan, did not long survive her birth in 1833.4 TheHickoryStreethousestoodatnogreatdistancefromtheArmory’s Middle Watershops; with an accessible and abundant supply of waterpower , these continued to expand, and David Rice advanced from working in the forging shop to boring gun barrels and making bayonets, until in 1833 he was appointed an inspector of the Watershops.5 It was a position of some importance, which brought with it added responsibilities, and undoubtedly neither David Rice nor Patty, his wife, had the time to c hap t e r on e ( 2 ) David Rice fathered ten children, the third of whom was William Marsh Rice, born in 1816. Photo files,Woodson Research Center. the early years ( 3 ) single out any one of their children for particular notice; certainly, there is very little known about their second son, William Marsh Rice, during this Springfield period of his life. Central Massachusetts must nonetheless have been a pleasant place to grow up. Timothy Dwight observed that Springfield was the oldest town in Hampshire County (from which, in David Rice’s day, Hampden County had been separated), lying along a single street on the western side of the Connecticut River: “An uncommon appearance of neatness prevails almost everywhere, refreshing the eye of the traveller.” By 1816, the year of William Marsh Rice’s birth, the established pattern of New England existence, manufacture and trade, had been firmly laid down; merchandise went inland all over upper New England and, via a line of stages and transport wagons, as far to thewest as Albany.The Springfield Armory, whose only federal counterpart was at Harpers Ferry on the Potomac River, was turning out ten thousand muskets annually as well as bayonets, fieldpieces, mortars, and howitzers.6 Prosperity was on the rise: the next few years were to see the establishment in Springfield of a paper mill, a brewery, and factories that turned out cutlery and cotton goods, while by 1828 Thomas Blanchard’s stern-wheeler, the Blanchard, had already made the trip downstream to Hartford in an astonishing two hours and twenty minutes.7 Reverend Dwight, always prompt to round off his journal entries with an edifying moral, found one ready-made in the Connecticut Valley. Its inhabitants, he remarked, “are so remote from a market as to be perfectly free from that sense of inferiority customarily felt by the body of people who live in the neighborhood of large cities. Hence a superior spirit of personal independence is generated and cherished.” He added, “There is no tract of land of the same size in which learning is more, or more uniformly , encouraged,” and that observation is borne out by the character of men like David Rice.8 In onlyone extant document, so faras is presently known, did William Marsh Rice speak directly about his parents—a letter written to one of his sisters (most probably Charlotte) in the spring of 1899. Reflecting that he and she were no longer young, he looked back toward the past: “Our childhood had many pleasent hours . . . and the troubles were soon forgotten. Fathers and Mothers thoughts were mostly devoted to their children. I do not think they worried very much. Father had so firm a reliance upon providence that nothing seemed to lay heavy on...