It begins. August 15, 1834.

The people Wallace writes about in his History of Canaan seem so alien they might as well be from another planet. They are also so familiar they instantly bring to mind people you know. When Wallace is on his game, this is what makes him worth reading.

Unfortunately, Wallace’s History is also full of the least-interesting information imaginable, unless you crave details of who lived where, when they were born, the name of their eldest child, and how much corn they planted. The book is stuffed with minutes of town meetings at which nothing occurred. It’s stuffed also with Wallace’s hectoring complaints about the poor record-keeping skills of men who dared call themselves town clerks.

So when I got to the four paragraphs on page 256 that I am going to spend this entire blog post writing about, I dismissed them as more of the really tedious stuff the book is chock full of. But they are not! They are interesting.

These paragraphs didn’t become interesting until I took a look through a wonderful archive of vintage newspaper articles about Noyes Academy collected by the Canaan Historical Society.

untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

In what seems to be a transcript of a newspaper account from the time, someone is so angry they are fuming at what a bunch of lying, cheating scoundrels the founders of Noyes Academy were. There are other newspaper articles in which opponents of the school rail about the dangers involved of bringing Blacks to Canaan and the insult to the South the school represented. But this one was weirdly specific, and in that specificity I remembered those dull paragraphs from page 256.

Those dull paragraphs were a bit of a cover-up. And perhaps also a bit of a hatchet job.

For those who don’t have intimate familiarity with the timeline of Noyes Academy, the nation’s first integrated co-ed school, let me catch you up. We’re right at the beginning.

On July 4, 1834, the founders of Noyes Academy (not yet open), inspired by the Spirit of July 4, decided to open their new school to Black students. This was announced with great fanfare. However the school was a private institution with a charter from the state. They had to follow the general laws of such private institutions and they had a legal document filed with the state that expressed the purpose of the institution.

When the founders decided to enroll Black students, they had to get the consent of the proprietors of the school and update the charter. There were 51 proprietors of Noyes Academy. A proprietor is more or less a shareholder. A proprietor has invested money or has at least pledged to. Some proprietors are listed as still owing money.

Most of the proprietors of the school were friendly to the abolitionist movement. Opponents of adding Black students to Noyes made sure they, too had representation among the proprietors because this gave them a vote. Many people in town wanted a new school. Not all of them wanted Blacks to attend.

untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

On August 15th, the first meeting of the proprietors of Noyes Academy was held. They had a lot of business to conduct.

First off, they had to amend the charter to admit Black students. The July 4 announcement wasn’t binding. The proprietors had to vote to accept this new charter amendment.

The proprietors also had to elect a board of trustees to administer the new school.

The August 15, 1834 first meeting of the proprietors is the beginning of the narrative of Noyes Academy. It was the first organizing event and it served to organize not only the new school, but its opponents as well.

On page 256, the four paragraphs I want to discuss are about this August 15 meeting. I’ve interlaced them with comments. That made it a little confusing, so I present the four paragraphs in a contrasting color.

Page 256

“Thursday, Aug. 14th, 1834. Rode around town, electioneering, exorted a promise from every man I called upon to appear on Canaan Street tomorrow at 2 o’ck.”

Wallace's first paragraph (above) is a quote from a diary. I suspect it is the diary of Wallace’s brother James. The writer says they were riding around town on the day before the meeting to tell friends to show up. This is a problem because the meeting should have been “warned” at least two weeks before the event. Not the day before.

Other trusty messengers were dispatched about town to notify all persons interested to appear. At the general meeting the plan was formally laid before it and discussed fully by friends and opponents.

The opposition was led, with much bitterness of spirit, by Hon. Elijah Blaisdell, a gentleman who was not a subscriber, holding no pecuniary interest in the institution. Other prominent opponents were present — Dr. Thomas Flanders and Rev. Joseph L. Richardson, all of Canaan.

The following paragraph is from Wallace's History, but it is lifted almost exactly from a letter from John Harris, one of the Noyes trustees, published in the Herald of Freedom.

After a deliberate hearing, a ballot was taken when thirty-six of the fifty-one proprietors present voted in favor and fourteen against it. Two did not vote at all and declined to express an opinion. Two of the fourteen negatives afterwards declared themselves in its favor. One who was not prepared to vote at this meeting afterwards gave in his assent. Two others hoped the school would go on upon the proposed plan and flourish, and six others who were not present afterwards sent in their decided assent, making a total of forty-nine subscribers who favored the proposed plan. The plan submitted was thus adopted, the proprietors proceeded to elect a board of trustees, and fix on a day for their meeting and organization.

That fourth paragraph is almost breath-taking in its granular detail. Since Wallace often provides us with stupefying lists, I just dismissed it as yet again Wallace’s delight in boring everyone to death. I should, in fairness, note that Wallace’s boring recitation of detail has been a massive gift to anyone interested in genealogy.

But the fourth paragraph is so detailed because it contains proof that the proprietors voted in favor of Blacks attending the school. This proof was needed, because someone (who I will quote at length in a moment) took on John Harris’s statement in The Herald of Freedom point by point.

The argument the unknown opponent made was that the August 15 meeting was illegal because the school’s charter clearly stated that the first meeting of the proprietors, which this was, had to be “warned” two weeks in advance. Warning a meeting is standard law in New Hampshire. If a body is meeting to deliberate, whether a town meeting or other public function, people must be given notice in advance.

untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

The first paragraph from the diary entry, dated August 14, 1834, states “Rode around town, electioneering, exorted a promise from every man I called upon to appear on Canaan Street tomorrow at 2 o’ck.”

This is the day before the meeting. Not 14 days notice.

I think it deserves note that Wallace chose to include this passage in his history. Authors make decisions all the time about what to include and what to drop. So much of Wallace’s History is a patchwork assembled by his son, it’s unfair to always assume that Wallace meant to include something. But the Noyes chapter is carefully written. I think in this instance, it is fair to ask why Wallace included the admission that the meeting wasn’t fairly warned? It adds nothing to the story except to point out that Harris shaded the truth.

By providing a diary entry that proves that the founders actually did try to pack the meeting, Wallace seems to be undercutting Harris’s calming assertion that everything was on the up and up.

I digress for a moment to say that the Harris family, which played a prominent role in the foundation of Noyes Academy is notably absent from Wallace’s History and a descendant of the Harris family recently commented to me that Wallace had a personal grudge against Harris. Perhaps this is true.

untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Despite everyone getting hugely excited about exactly how and when this meeting was warned, the details of the meeting are not what everyone was really up in arms about. They were worked up about the possibility of Black students attending school with white students in Canaan.

The founders of the school wanted to use Noyes to demonstrate that Blacks were in every way human and deserved not to be enslaved and tormented. The opponents of the school didn’t give a rat’s patootie about Black people they didn’t know and didn’t trust; they didn’t want the South to secede and destroy the country. This is what divided the town.

But the argument they were having. Very passionately. Was about an obscure election that was held, perhaps in violation of a private charter.

These objections, valid or not, were utterly beside the point. Everyone knew the school was intended to be integrated. The complaints were not being raised by a shareholder of the school, who may have had their rights violated when the meeting was not properly warned. The complaints were being made by people who wanted to stop Blacks from attending the school.

As with all opposition, they picked at any loose thread they could find. In this case, the fact that the meeting wasn’t properly warned.

The opponents were nit picking. And then everyone got invested in arguing about each nit picked and no one talked at all about slavery or human rights or even keeping the country together. They talked about who was told what when and weirdly about a four-foot by four-foot counting room.

This sounds exactly like Twitter threads I’ve seen where people take apart some video frame by frame to prove something that may or may not have happened and didn’t matter anyway.

untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

I wish I knew the provenance of the document I am about to quote from. It seems to be in the voice of an opponent of the school getting very worked up about that lack of “warning” and the sinister nature of a very small room. I found it in the archive created by the Canaan Historical Society. It seems to be the result of an OCR scan of an old newspaper. I have taken the liberty of correcting obvious errors and added a few paragraph breaks. People in the 1800s seem to have been allergic to them.

I think the meeting being called to order in the first line is the “town meeting” held on September 3rd, 1834; it will be the subject of next week's blog post. Again, I have used a different color for the original document.

Mr. Trussel called the meeting to order — and then Mr. Eastman came forward and read a publication from the “Herald of Freedom” signed by J. H. Harris, Sec. pro tem, purporting to be a statement of facts in behalf of the Trustees of Noyes Academy, relative to the course that had been pursued by the citizens of the town, respecting the school before and since its operation, and remarked that it was unnecessary for him to make any remarks upon the publication of J. H. Harris to the citizens of Canaan, as it was well known to them, that it was generally false, and an insult to the town; but as there were many strangers from other towns present, who had come here to aid in putting down a faction more dangerous to the civil institutions of our country than the plot of Aaron Burr — he believed it to be his duty as a citizen of the town to make a statement of facts, that the citizens of New Hampshire might know how much the abolitionists of Canaan are willing to misrepresent and suppress the truth to save themselves from the vengeance of an insulted and indignant public.

That was just the first sentence, take a breath. Also, the writer continually says the meeting was held on August 5. It was held on August 15.

He remarked, that in the 4th section of the [act?] of Incorporation, it is enacted “that Samuel Noyes, George Kimball, and George Walworth or any two of them may call the first meeting of said Corporation, to be holden at a suitable time and place in said Canaan by notifying the members thereof at least fourteen days before the first meeting.” […]

Now the fact is, that prior to the first meeting of the Proprietors, which was on the Fifth of August, 1834, many of the Proprietors had no knowledge of the meeting, a right that the act of incorporation gave them: and some not suspecting that the Institution was to be converted into a colored school, and it being a busy season of the year, did not attend.

He pleads for these hard-working, innocent victims who didn’t attend the proprietors meeting because they never suspected such villainy to be afoot! Had they been warned, surely they would have voted against the proposal.

Reality check: Everyone knew the school was going to be integrated. It was publicly announced two months before. And please notice the weight being carried by the word "ascertained" below.

It has been ascertained that those who had no knowledge of the meeting, and those who, hearing of the meeting but suspecting the design of the enemy, did not attend, together with the honest fourteen who attended and voted against the “proposed plan” constituted a large majority of the Proprietors.

And the thirty-six that Mr. Harris speaks of, who voted in favor of the “plan” were not all proprietors, but some of them were drummed up and put on duty there to help swell the number and carry out the fraud that was practiced on the majority of the Proprietors.

Creative counting is being charged, something we always suspect our rivals of doing.

So this meeting on the Fifth of August so far from being a “general meeting of the proprietors,” as Mr. Harris says, was in fact a minority meeting, and designed to take away the rights of the majority, it was “conceived in sin” and “brought forth in iniquity” as the conduct of the agents in the business both [after?] and at the meeting and since the meeting fully shows.

If this was all a fair business transaction, why was the little handful of abolitionists in this town assembled together and shut up for hours before the time of meeting in a certain little counting room about four foot square?

Why were not all the Proprietors legally notified of the meeting, having their fourteen days notice, and why were they not told prior to the meeting, of the “contemplated [plan?]”?

Why were not the board of Trustees and the other officers chosen and their powers and duties prescribed, as is required by [the?] section of the act of Incorporation?

Why was all this hurry to transact all business at this illegal, minority meeting?

Why was the Board of Trustees, consisting of [Samuel?] Cox, Arthur Tappan, D. L. Childs, Mr. Monroe, colored minister at Portland, and Mr. Williams, colored minister at New York, amid others of the like, written out and arranged on a piece of paper in this said little counting room and carried from thence into the meeting and made Trustees by a hurried vote when [?] of this minority meeting was absent?

The unknown author is suggesting that the proprietors had no chance to elect their own trustees. The founders, huddled together in the tiny, sinister counting room, came up with the list of Trustees and foisted them upon the unsuspecting proprietors.

Why was not the meeting told who these Trustees were; that they were abolitionists, sowing seeds of discord in the churches, and scattering firebrands throughout this Union? Why did not the agent of this board of Trustees then tell as he has since told, that it was the intention of this Board of Trustees to have imported five hundred negroes from other States to become scholars in this school?

It goes on from there to an increasingly racist screed that I will spare you.

Besides my finding Wallace’s writing delightful, the reason I am working to make this story more easily understood is that while it is completely alien in every way and it seems to be exactly what we are living through. Wallace said this was his intent. He thought the story of Noyes was universal. Because it had beginning and an end, we could see within it a scale model of human behavior.

So far, I think he’s delivering.

untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Before I close, I want to talk about why I love including Gary Hamel’s artwork in this blog. Every time I walk into Gary’s studio, which is so full of work it’s hard to take it all in, I feel as though the people from Wallace’s book are looking back at me. Gary is fascinated by the people of New Hampshire, particularly as they lived in the past. These people are the aliens who populate Wallace’s book. Gary captures in an instant things that I don’t think my literary skills are up to expressing even given page after page.

There is usually no correspondence between image and text, but to me, Gary and I ask the same question: who were these people? The aspect that compels me is, for Gary, just one of the spirits moving through his work. This week’s images are from a recent series in which Gary is playing with light and darkness and its use in early photography.