Noyes Academy

Simeon Ide left Windsor in 1835. When I googled “Upper Valley, 1835, I found the Noyes Academy of Canaan, New Hampshire. The story of Noyes Academy would make a drama as interesting as any show on the History Channel. The story is so complicated, though, and with so many contradictory players, it would be difficult to do justice to the story with a television show or even a movie.

In the early 1830's, several prominent families in Canaan, New Hampshire saw the need for a school of higher learning in their town. Twelve incorporators and trustees received a charter for the school they would call “Noyes Academy” after Samuel Noyes, an octogenarian farmer who was also one of the incorporators. Several of the incorporators were Abolitionists, who thought that the academy should admit black students as well. Classes at Noyes Academy began on March 1, 1835. Unfortunately, there were many in Canaan who were strongly against having a school that served Negro students. They combined with other like-minded souls from surrounding towns who formed an angry mob that used 80 oxen to pull the school off its foundation, move it down the road, and deposit it on the common next to the Congregational Church.

Churches were the center of a growing Abolitionist movement during the 1830's. A revival of religious fervor led congregations throughout New England to focus on the wrongs occurring in their society, leading to a focus on slavery. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began publishing his aboltionist newspaper “The Liberator”. In 1833, Oberlin College became the first college to admit black students.

Everywhere in New England, feelings ran high on either side of the slavery debate. The thing that was so remarkable about the people in Canaan was how far they were willing to go to act on their convictions. It is one thing to state your support for abolition, to go to meetings, make speeches, and maybe even participate in the Underground Railroad. It is another thing to start a school in your town that will admit free blacks, send your children to school with them, and let them live in your home while they went to the school. Conversely, it is one thing to be against abolition, and attend meetings against abolition, and maybe even help slave catchers who might come to your town looking for runaway slaves. It is another thing for you and your buddies to gather 80 oxen and use them to pull a school that allows black students off its foundation,then drag it a mile down the road and dump it on the town common.

In 1834, 60 Canaan citizens bought subscriptions equaling $1,000 for the creation of Noyes Academy. Five incorporators, Samuel Noyes, the octogenarian the school would be named after Nathaniel Currier, John Harris, George Kimball and George Walworth, applied to the State of New Hampshire for a charter for the school. The charter was granted on July 4, 1834, for “the education of youth”. All fired up from the fact that the charter was issued on the Fourth of July, the incorporators came up with the idea that the school should “be based upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence” and be open to all pupils regardless of race”.

The incorporators scheduled a meeting of the 60 patrons for August 15th to discuss the proposal. In the meantime, several Abolitionist orators came to Canaan to give speeches in favor of Abolitionism and increased rights for freed Negroes in general, and the Noyes Academy specifically. This drew a lot of attention to Canaan and to the issue at hand. The people of Canaan were divided on this issue, anyway, and these strangers coming into town got everyone all worked up. The debate in Canaan ceased to be for or against abolition, and came to be for or against Noyes Academy. William Wallace, author of “The History of Canaan”, says, “This was a question that took a man of great ability to straddle.”

Although the meeting was officially only for the patrons of the school, opponents of the plan attended and made speeches against having an interracial school in their town. These opponents were Elijah Blaisdell, Dr Thomas Flanders and Dr Joseph Richardson. At the meeting, battle lines were drawn. Of the patrons themselves, when the speeches and discussions were done, and a vote was taken, 36 voted in favor and 14 voted against. After a few changed their minds either way, and patrons who were absent weighed in with their votes, the final tally was 49 in favor and 11 opposed.