Noyes Academy, Part 10

What to do with a Stolen School

On August 10 and 11, 1835, men from Canaan, Enfield, Dorchester and Hanover stole a building from its lawful owners. There is something wonderfully weird about this. Canaan very much wanted a school. Just not that one. So, they didn’t destroy the school building, they merely put the school under new management and gave it a new address. On some level, they thought this would work.

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The town by vote, repaired the building, appropriating the money from the Surplus Revenue Fund, and the spirit that “hauled” it from its first foundation was evoked to make good the pledges it made itself.

A teacher was hired and a few pupils attended for a few weeks, six or eight, and the money or the disposition failing, the school was discontinued. Several attempts were made to open it, but they ended in failure.

An attempt was made by the “town” or those who had abducted the building, to compromise with the proprietors, but these stood aloof, believing and hoping a day of redress would come, but it never came. These unlawful acts which it was claimed public opinion demanded, have been atoned for, but not in human courts of justice.

Carte de Visite, Gary Hamel, 2024

Many of the Canaan men who were instrumental in the destruction of Noyes Academy were not proud of what they had done.

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In after years, it is said, that many of these men regretted the part they took in that outrage. Joseph L. Richardson, a man of education, elected to all the offices in town, when upon a bed of sickness, and the vision of his past life returned to him, regretted that part of his life, and wished it had never occurred.

The Faleses, father and sons, afterwards became earnest Abolitionists.

It is said that Capt. James Pattee when the excitement had passed, and reason regained its control over him, was very demonstrative in regretting the part he took in that great folly, but it is said that his regrets were caused more by the fears of prosecution for trespass, etc., than from a change of sentiment.

On the other hand, it is said, that some were hardly satisfied with moving the building. Their vindictiveness would only be satisfied by making all the Abolitionists endure some personal affliction.

Old Cobb was one of this class. He was deputy sheriff under Blodgett, and was always ready to serve any process against those obnoxious persons. It is well known that on all such occasions he more than performed his threats. Many families were reduced to distress and suffering through his inhumanity and the only rebuke he ever received, was that he “should keep within the law.” He never repented the part he took in producing the chaos of those days.

It is said, that for a long time after those events, he was in the habit of hissing and spitting at clergymen whom he knew to be Abolitionists, as he passed them on the highway. Rev. Robert Woodbury was one of those thus annoyed. Rev. Jonathan Hamilton another.

Old Cobb reigned his terror almost two-hundred years ago, but Wallace’s telling makes him all too recognizable. We will never be without small men with a just enough power to be cruel.

Dr. Thomas Flanders, was noted for his violent sentiments and his frequent threats, but he could not face the public opinion that came afterwards. He disappeared forever from the face of this people.

James Doten was at that time an earnest Abolitionist. He looked upon the excited crowd as they destroyed the building and raising his hands he said “he wished God would strike them all dead for their crimes.”

James Tylor joined the Abolition Society, but a few days afterwards was persuaded to withdraw his name, through the influence of Mr. Weeks and Mr. Blodgett.

Jacob Trussell, like old Cobb, never repented the part he took on that occasion. He was expelled from the Congregational Church, and left town threatening that he would return upon occasion, and lead the “people” upon any similar occasion.

No such occasion occurred. But in 1854, having resided out of Canaan since the destruction of Noyes, Trussell wanted to come home. He wrote a letter to the Canaan Congregational Church in which he didn’t exactly apologize, but he did, at least acknowledge that something happened as he petitioned the church for readmission.

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The church in Canaan with which I was connected disapproved of those measures [the violent dissolution of Noyes Academy] and the part which I took therein was contrary to their wishes, and injurious to their feelings. Without entering into any discussion of the measure themselves, I feel free to say to the church, that I am sorry to have wounded the feelings of my brethren, and should be glad to have Christian fellowship restored between the church and myself.

So even in 1854, the non-apology apology was a thing. I'm sory if something I did hurt your feelings, not I'm sorry for what I did. Wallace continues in his own voice.

It will be seen that Mr. Trussell was not sorry for anything he had done, and there is no intimation that his opinions had changed from the time he had led the mob. But the church accepted his excuse and restored him to fellowship and communion, and he thereafter became one of the pillars and supports of the church.

Some prominent Canaan abolitionists felt it prudent to leave town for a while. Committees of vigilance were forming. Abolitionists were treated with great suspicion. James Burns Wallace (our author’s older brother) and Hubbard Harris went on a long mercantile trip to Louisiana financed by Nathanial Currier, another Noyes supporter.

Carte de Visite, Gary Hamel, 2024

George Kimball and George Walworth, both Noyes founders moved to Alton, Illinois, another abolitionist hub and the site of another pro-slavery mob action. In 1835, the press of abolitionist printer Anton Lovejoy was thrown into the Mississippi and Lovejoy killed. Kimball and George Walworth were both living in Alton at the time. Only Walworth was among Lovejoy’s defenders. Kimball was absent, a fact that Wallace notes with disappointment.

In 1839, the building that had housed Noyes Academy burned in the night.

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The building had been standing several years a silent monument of all the bad feelings of the human heart. Its doors were seldom opened to the student. Many persons had expressed a wish that it might burn down, and its ashes scattered to the four winds, and that the recollection of it might cease from the recollection of man.

On the night of March 7, 1839, a great light illuminated the heavens. All the people leaped from their beds, and saw the building, the cause of so much sorrow and sin, enveloped in flames. No efforts were made to extinguish it. And the ashes were indeed scattered to the four winds.

They rebuilt it.

Carte de Visite, Gary Hamel, 2024

There was a great yearning for a fine school in Canaan. No one wanted to pay for it, but they still yearned. When Noyes Academy was established, it seemed that this desire for a school would be fulfilled. It wasn't exactly what everyone had dreampt of. In 1834, no one was talking about creating a society in which Blacks and Whites lived among one another as equals. That conversation was barely begun. But Canaan was an abolitionist town and likely would have gotten over themselves, especially because the addition of Black students came with a $15,000 endowment. Problem solved! Canaan could have its school without having to pay for it.

But the school was killed by Jacob Trussell. Likely people imagined that they could replace the offending school with another. They didn't want to imagine that they had killed the possibility of a school. So they just rebuilt it and opened it anew. Like that was going to prove something, or work.

The new school, established in 1939, was called Canaan Union Academy. That name was likely an attempt to distinguish it from Noyes Academy, which was thought of as a poke in the eye to the South and as such, not in support of the Union. Noyes Academy opponents saw themselves not as seeking to establish their supremacy over the Black race; rather their actions were entirely aimed at preserving the Union. That they harmed Black men and women in the process didn't matter to them. They weren’t in favor of slavery. They just weren’t willing to do anything about it because the minute they did the South would secede and there went the Union. They had just (sixty years prior) fought a war, in league with the South to create new country. Keeping the Union was their biggest concern, and taking the side of the enslaved over their enslavers was not going to help with that.

Carte de Visite, Gary Hamel, 2024

Led by many of the prominent opponents of Noyes Academy and some of her supporters, a group of investors put up promissory notes to get a loan from the town to build another new school to replace the one that burned. Both James Burns Wallace (our author's older brother) and Nathanial Currier, one of the Noyes propietors were part of establishing the new school. They really did want a school.

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With this money they built the academy, believing it would prove a successful and profitable investment; but this belief was a delusion, if not a snare. No steps were taken by the dominant party to conciliate the large number of citizens who were aggrieved; no kind words were spoken, nor did anyone propose any method to harmonize the antagonisms: and there the two nearly equal hostile factions stood, making faces at each other, the one pointing to that building as a monument of acts of aggression unatoned for and the other flinging back contemptuous epithets ad libitum.

I love Wallace's writing: “and there the two nearly equal hostile factions stood, making faces at each other, the one pointing to that building as a monument of acts of aggression unatoned for and the other flinging back contemptuous epithets ad libitum” [which means wontonly].

We know about Noyes Academy because William Allen Wallace chose to write about it. He wrote in the 1870s, 80s, and 90s. He did not frame the story of Noyes Academy as part of a larger narrative about the place of Blacks in American society because he was unaware of how long we would struggle with that issue. He thought the problem solved by the ending of slavery. The Noyes story he told vanished under the weight of Wallace’s 800 disorganized pages until it was surfaced again in the 1990s by Canaan Town Historian Donna Zani Dunkerton by which point it very much was part of the larger narrative about the place of Blacks in American society. But not for Wallace

For Wallace, Noyes Academy was first and foremost about Canaan’s failure to ever acquire a good school. This was a genuine interest of Wallace’s during the years he wrote. He was instrumental in reviving the school in the 1870s. Canaan Union Academy limped along until at least the 1890s.

Wallace sums up his thoughts abut Noyes so very many years after the fact. Of course, it’s not in the chapter on Noyes, it’s in the chapter on Canaan Union Academy where his son placed it when trying to organize his father’s writing [sigh]. In the passage quoted below, Wallace refers to the doings around Noyes as happening more than sixty years in the past. That puts the writing date in the 1890s. Wallace died in 1893. He wrote this at the end of his life.

Carte de Visite, Gary Hamel, 2024

When Wallace's son, also named James Burns, organized his father's writings into the History we have today. He included many verbatim entries from his father's diaries, especially those from later in his life.

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he still continued to record events which interested him up to within a week of his death. He had kept a diary nearly all his life. His habit was to write it up at the end of the week. In later years it did not record events so much as his own thoughts upon them, the event serving as a text.

The following passage, clearly written at the end of Wallace's life, seems very much to sum up his own thoughts about Noyes Academy.

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At this day some are jealous of the apparent exercise of ownership of some people over the building, but no one claims it. If one person or another does anything to protect and preserve this old landmark of the Street, it is done with a feeling of respect for the memories which must cluster around its portals.

Unique in its position, it stands as a monument to the expression of the most trying times in the history of the town. Deserted and alone, it attracts the attention of every newcomer, who wonders that it should be so neglected. Like a bone that has been quarreled over by two dogs, it has been dropped, never to be taken up again.

The generation in whom the worst parts of man’s nature was aroused has passed away. More than sixty years have elapsed since it was a disturbing factor; not one of the signers of the thirteen notes is alive today; not one of the men who opposed their plans.

The notes he refers to here are the promissory notes signed by the founders of Canaan Union Academy. The town was never repaid. The whole incident was convoluted and unpleasant. But the hard feeling referred to in the next paragraph is about Noyes, not the notes.

The questions disputed at that time and at the bottom of all their hard feeling has long since been settled, and their children and grandchildren have grown up with no remembrance of the spite and abuse thrown broadcast by their parents and grandparents. The issue is dead and forgotten; the slave question has ceased to be; abolition, too; and we of this day can little realize the depth to which men’s feelings were stirred.

Such is the history of the attempts to establish a school of learning in Canaan, and when we look back upon its stormy course at no time having the good will and sympathy of all the people of the community, bitterly opposed and as bitterly favored, living along from year to year on the persistence some men have to accomplish their ends, and using the object in dispute only as a means, blind to the good there might be in it itself, if spite and revenge be eliminated, the good in it became secondary to the success of their plans for revenge, resorting to trickery, force and unlawful means to bolster up or oppose.

That was a single sentence. Wallace was old. He rambled. But there is so much in there, I want to pick it apart.

He refers to Noyes Academy as never having the goodwill of all the people. It was both bitterly favored and bitterly opposed. I lose him for a few words but I am certain that “the persistence some men have to accomplish their ends” is reference to Jacob Trussell’s persistence in destroying the school.

Wallace's “and using the object in dispute only as a means, blind to the good there might be in itself if spite and revenge be eliminated” describes what Jacob Trussell did. He destroyed what could have been an outstanding school because he wanted to pursue a personal vendetta against its founders. He was so consumed by “spite and revenge” that he was “blind to the good there might be” in having a world-class institution of education in Canaan.

Trussell through his venom, “trickery, force and unlawful means” so poisoned the water around the issue of education in Canaan, that nothing could ever be accomplished because no one wanted to even dip a toe in that water after all the vicious conflict.

Is it any wonder that such a cause should fail, when dependent upon such influences, that people who had not become involved should hesitate to take any part?

Canaan never got her school.