Noyes Academy Part 2
- Alisa Kline
- Jan 24
- 8 min read
Why Canaan?
Canaan, N.H. has never been important in any way other than to those who love and depend on her. The fact that the country’s second school to educate Black and White students together was founded (and destroyed) here is a great story, but not because it influenced the course of human events, or even that it was in some way out of the ordinary. It’s a great story because a great story-teller got hold of it and dove deep inside.
William Allen Wallace was not in Canaan in 1834 and 1835. He left at the age of 15 (in 1830) to make a life as a newspaperman when newspapers were the Internet. He traveled to California and became a prominent journalist. He spent the Civil War in Washington, D.C. sending dispatches back to Alta California, his paper. Only after the war was over and slavery unexpectedly ended, did Wallace, a man in his 50s, return to Canaan and begin writing her history.
Wallace grew up with the men who were important to the doings around Noyes Academy. Although he was not a participant in any of the goings on, his brothers and mother were. The story he tells leans heavily on several diaries and letters from the time. They were very likely from his members of his family, many of whom feature in his History.
Wallace was an abolitionist. His family were abolitionists. Canaan was an abolitionist town. It was part of the underground railroad. Canaan was a good place for the early abolitionist movement to try again to establish a school to educate Blacks and Whites together. This would be the second effort.
The first was in Canterbury Ct. where, in 1832, Prudence Campbell spontaneously opened her academy for women to a single Black student. Overwhelmed by protest, Campbell closed the school and reopened as an academy for Black students. She was arrested, laws were passed and 1834, the school was shut down by a nighttime mob. It made the papers.
The abolitionists were on the hunt for a better location. There were a few factors that made Canaan attractive. For one thing, Canaan was willing to host the school. At least at first. This is no small thing. The mob violence that ultimately destroyed the school was commonplace at the time and much worse in the cities, where bashing abolitionists was practically a sport. Being isolated was an advantage. Also, Canaan is very near Dartmouth, which early on accepted a few Black students.
But the most important reason Canaan became the home of this experiment was Nathanial Peabody Rogers. N.P. Rogers, as he is known, was part of the inner circle of the abolitionist movement, and that inner circle was very much a moving force behind Noyes Academy. It was never simply a Canaan effort. Wallace makes it clear when writing about George Kimball (one of the Canaan founders of the school), in his chapter on lawyers, that Noyes was a project of a larger movement
Page 323
Mr. Kimball was acting as the agent of such men as Samuel E. Sewall, Samuel H. Cox, Arthur Tappan, David L. Child, Benjamin Lundy, and the great body of Abolitionists of the country, who cherished the hope that this free academy might be instrumental in developing the capacities of the negro, and in some degree mitigating the social rigors that environed his race.
Rogers was closely connected to at least two of the school’s Canaan founders. The most deeply explored by Wallace is his friendship with the above-mentioned George Kimball. Not discussed in the History is his deep and lifelong friendship with another Noyes founder from Canaan, Nathanial Currier. Currier and Rogers were boyhood friends in Plyouth, where Rogers continued to live. Currier moved to Canaan in 1815, at the age of 24. N.P. Rogers would have been 21. Their friendship was lifelong.
For all we know, Rogers may have been close to all the Canaan foundes of Noyes, but Wallace doesn’t write about it. In fact, the only Noyes founder that Wallace writes about in detail is Kimball. While the other Canaan Trustees are discussed in Wallaces’ book in other areas. Their connection to Noyes is not explored. I imagine some of this was simply personal. Wallace wasn’t intending to write the definitive accounting of Noyes Academy. In a letter to noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in 1868, Wallace explains that he is writing a “sketch” of Noyes because he wants his young son to understand the “spirit of old slavery.” I will return to that “spirit” thing later in this series.
Wallace, in his telling of Noyes, is also telling the story of his own family and sometimes, he glosses over information a later reader (like ME!) would really like to have had. The information I do have about N.P. Rogers and Nathaniel Currier comes from Canaan Town Historian Donna Zani Dunkerton, who is herself a Currier and has made a specialty of her family history.
I don’t know how Rogers came to be close with George Kimball. In Wallace’s book, it is simply stated that not only were Kimball and Rogers close friends, Kimball depended on Rogers, a man seven years his junior, to keep his legal career on track. Kimball, may very well have had ADD, but whatever his challenges, he seemed unable to maintain a legal career without close supervision. I discuss George Kimball and his relation with N.P. Rogers in greater detail here.
Another reason Canaan was receptive to the scheme of the abolitionists is that Canaan really wanted the school and really needed the money that was going to come with it. The year before Noyes Academy was proposed, the Congregational church in Canaan lost it’s beloved minister of eight years, Amos Foster, because they could not pay him enough to remain. Under Foster’s leadership, the Old North Church was built and the Congreagationalists had their own church. Prior to that, the Congreagationalists met in the Meeting. House, but it belonged to the Baptists and they didn't give it up often. Under Foster, enough members were drawn to the church that they could afford their own building. His loss was a blow to the beleagured town.
Almost all of the men involved with Noyes Academy, both in its creation and in its destruction were prominent members of the Congregationalist Church. The school was built right nextdoor to the church. The chief instigator, Jacob Trussell, was excommunicated from that church because of his involvement in the school’s destruction.
The school's supporters may not have wanted the attention that would come when Black students arrived. But they most certainly wanted a great school, and they decided they would endure the blow-back, which they believed would be relatively mild, in exchange for having this glorious school plopped right in the middle of town. Especially because it would have been so well funded. There was a prize of $15,000 on offer for the first school to educate Black students. That's about half a million dollars in today money. It was going to be awarded to Noyes Academy. The school was going to work!
Page 264
It is possible, that the action of the trustees, inviting “colored youth,” to partake of the benefits of the Academy, might have had its origin in a desire to secure to itself the benefits of the fund which several philanthropic gentlemen had set apart for the education of “colored youth,” but certain it is, that some two years before the establishment of “Noyes Academy” efforts were commenced for the establishment of a Manual Labor School, somewhere in New England, to promote the improvement of the free people of color. Several thousand dollars, the sum was stated as high as $15,000, were subscribed and several places were recommended as suitable for such an undertaking. […]
When this decision [to admit Black pupils] was announced, as it was by the trustees in their circular of the 11th of September, it was decided that the subscription with all its patronage, should be bestowed upon Noyes Academy, thus securing to it a permanent fund and placing its success beyond a doubt.
The funders backed out after the Academy was destroyed in August of 1835.
When Noyes was being contemplated, Canaan schools were held in this or that barn, home, second floor. The instruction was adequate. In comparison, the education imagined by the founders of Noyes was beyond belief. It covered all normal subjects, multiple foreign languages, ancient languages, the classics, astronomy, mathematics. It was a pipe dream. But why not think big. These were people in the process of creating a whole new country. Why not a top-notch school in the wilderness?
Wallace quotes from a diary commenting on the 1834 founding of Noyes Academy
Page 258
A school is about to be opened here, where spirits of all colors are to receive instruction together.
The master spirit of the age is benevolence. The earth, the atmosphere, everything seems pregnant with the spirit of benevolence. What must be done, can be done. What ought to be done, will be done.
At the founding of our country, people must have allowed themselves to think in those terms. They were doing something entirely new. They were creating a country. And not just an ordinary country. This was a new country founded on the Enlightenment virtues of equality and justice. All Men are Created Equal. We still, after everything we have been through, believe in the goodness of those words. Yes, we have had to really stretch the meaning of the word “men.” And yes, we have failed utterly to live up to our ideals. But we do still have the decency to feel ashamed when we fail.
So, Canaan became home to Noyes Academy. Had things gone as planned, the school would not have remained a purely local institution. David L. Child, another prominent abolitionist was on his way to Canaan and he was to take charge of the school. Below is from what Wallace refers to as a letter from a friend, who was no doubt his younger brother Oscar. This is, as far as I can tell, the only instance in the book where Nathaniel Currier is called "Mr. Currier."
Page 265
Oct. 28, 1834: Mr. Currier has returned from Boston. He brings intelligence that David L. Child, Esq., will come on in about six weeks and take charge of the school. The receipt of this interesting news affected each party in a different manner. There was a joyous rubbing of hands among our friends.
Kimball had to holler long and loud. Old Dr. Tilton smiled all over. He has declared that the only epitaph he desires upon his tombstone is that he was ‘The Slaves’ Friend.’
BTW, he got this. Tilton’s tombstone in the Canaan Street does say, although no longer entirely readable, “The Slaves’ Friend.”
Col. Isaac Towle gave a grunt of satisfaction. You know, he is a very positive man. His ‘I will’ and ‘I won't’ settles all controversy with him.
The hostiles were not pleased,— in fact they were mad — very mad! Trussell, Arvin, old Cobb, and Blaisdell, were hardly peaceable for some days. Their minds were much preoccupied. I am told that persons who approached them upon business matters received only such answers as ‘Abolition scum,’ ‘villains,’ ‘perjured Masons,’ ‘unconstitutional acts,’ &c.
But for these men, who like Cassius ‘have a lean and hungry look’ there would be general cheerfulness among the people. Parson Fuller will teach the school until the arrival of Mr. C. He entered upon the task yesterday. Probably not more than twenty pupils attend. I do not go yet.”
This was written in October 1834. It was but a single month since the circular annouced that the school would educate both Black and White students there were already twenty pupils in attendance. The building had been built before the first papers were filed. Students were already in class. Canaan was very invested in having a school.
Next post will be about those men with the lean and hungry look muttering about "perjured Masons." They were the real movers of the tale from here on out.
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