Who were the enemies of Noyes Academy?

Who were the people who were the enemies of Noyes Academy? The leaders of the group that was so rabidly against Negro students in Canaan were Dr Thomas Flanders, Elijah Blaisdell and Jacob Trussell. Thomas Flanders was born in Antrim New Hampshire in 1792. He married Susanna Follansbee in 1815 in Canaan. She died 7 years later, having had several stillborn children, a son who lived to the age of 4, and John Gilbert Flanders, who was born in Colebrook in 1818. Thomas remarried Ann Hilliard who came from Cambridge, Massachusetts and they had a son, Abraham and a daughter, Sarah. Thomas Flanders started his adult life in Colebrook and moved to Canaan in the late 1820's or early 30's. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1832. He lived in Canaan in 1830, and the census shows him having 2 young children and a teenager in his house with himself and his wife. By 1840, he was living in Durham, New Hampshire, where he lived until he died at age 75. His son John stayed in the Upper Valley, spending his whole adult life living in Enfield, New Hampshire. Abraham Flanders became a doctor, and moved to New York City.

The Noyes Academy situation wasn't the only controversy Doctor Flanders was involved in when he lived in Canaan. Benjamin Spencer was a blacksmith who came to Canaan in 1825. He started a blacksmithing business and was busy at his job for about six months when he disappeared. After he went missing, a sheriff showed up in town with a warrant for Spencer's arrest. Apparently he had taken out a loan from the Grafton Bank, in Haverhill, but the cosigner's note was a forgery. It was obvious that Spencer had to have had help with this, because he was illiterate. Dr Flanders had some enemies in town, and they started a rumor that it was him who had forged the note. After all, Dr. Flanders and Benjamin Spencer had both come from Colebrook, and they both arrived in Canaan at the same time.

Law authorities chased Benjamin Spencer all the way to Pennsylvania, where he was arrested. He was brought back to New Hampshire and charged with the crime of forgery. He served two years in prison, but never did say who helped him forge the cosigner's signature. He gave an impassioned statement swearing that Dr. Flanders did not have anything at all to do with the crime. William Allen Wallace tells us in his “History of Canaan”, that “The doctor was not popular. His impulsive temper often broke out without reference to propriety, and often gave offense. But he was regarded as a man of integrity and incapable of committing an act of dishonor.” Wallace claims that the reason Dr. Flanders left Canaan for Durham is that these accusations bothered him so much.

Elijah Blaisdell was born in Canaan in 1782. His wife's name was Mary Fogg. They had nine children. His son Daniel also became a lawyer and lived and had a law practice in Hanover, New Hampshire. Daniel was an incorporator of the Dartmouth Savings Bank, the bank that gave us the mortgage for our house. His son James graduated from Dartmouth and a Bible college. He was the superintendent of schools for Lebanon before moving West.

Elijah lived in a house on Canaan Street. He became a side judge for the court of common pleas in Grafton County. Elijah was a selectman in Canaan for 10 years, from 1822-1832. Then he moved to Lebanon “drive the niggers out of our beautiful town”. He went back to accomplish a task, but he did not move back to Canaan. When I read the accounts of the Canaan town meeting of August, 1835, I was surprised to find that Elijah Blaisdell's name wasn't mentioned. This is why. He didn't live in Canaan. He was a native of Canaan, and I believe that he loved Canaan and got involved with the Noyes Academy altercation because he really hated the idea of black students being educated in his hometown. I would be willing to bet that he left Canaan because of George Kimball, and I believe that his hatred of Kimball partially fueled his anger toward Noyes Academy. In the “History of Canaan”, Wallace tells us that Blaisdell was “overbearing, arbitrary, impatient of restraint, and not scrupulous of the rights and feelings of others.” I love the way Wallace wrote, and his History of Canaan is the best town history I've read so far, in part because he doesn't hesitate to include the juicy stories and give his opinion about the various people in the town. On the other hand, I think Wallace held a grudge against the enemies of Noyes Academy, and some of these people may not have been as bad as he portrayed them.

Jacob Trussell was born in 1779. He was a sawmill owner and a leading citizen of Canaan. He was a prominent Mason and was very active in the Congregational Church. When the Noyes Academy episode was finally over, the Congregational Church excommunicated Jacob for his leadership of the mob that destroyed the school. You have to wonder where these people were when the whole thing happened, and why they didn't stop it rather than condemn the main players after the fact. Jacob and his wife Persis moved to Franklin, New Hampshire. Persis is listed among the members of the Congregational Church there, but Jacob isn't. He wouldn't have been allowed to join another Congregational Church after having been kicked out of the church in Canaan.

The anonymous footnoter that added the comments to the list of participants in the town meeting wrote that Chamberlain Packard was “killed by God”. Chamberlain Packard was killed by a train, in Canaan, but he was 62 when it happened. The same person wrote that Bartlett Hoyt was “killed by God after have stolen money sent to him to keep his wife's father from starving and going on the town”. Here's the story. Bartlett Hoyt's wife was named Prudence Wilson. Prudence's mother died and her father, Robert, married another woman, Sally Dole. Sally was an invalid for a long time, and Robert hired Phoebe Pattee to be his housekeeper and help take care of Sally. He ended up having several children by Phoebe, while Sally was still alive and living in his house. Sally finally recovered and left Robert, going to live with her brother, who she lived with until she died. Robert married Phoebe even before Sally died and kept on having children by her. He lived to be 77. The town gave Bartlett Hoyt the money to bury his father-in-law. Eventually, Bartlett and Prudence moved to Genessee, New York, maybe to get away from her family.

Most of the major players that founded Noyes Academy didn't stay in Canaan, and neither did many of the Academy's enemies. Nathaniel Currier stayed in Canaan. The Patees stayed in Canaan, and many of the less prominent families on the committee list stayed in Canaan, as did many of their children.

As I did the research about these families, I found that people either had no children, one or two children,or 8, 9, or 10 children. I found no families with three or four children, but quite a few childless couples. It seems like if you were fertile and your babies were strong enough to live, you would have a large family. Some families might have been lucky enough to have a child or two survive, in a long list of stillbirths, miscarriages and infant deaths.

George Kimball - hero or villain?

An inquiry into the backgrounds of the major players in the 19^th century drama of Noyes Academy in Canaan brings some interesting insight into the possible motivations and relationships between the allies and antagonists. First, who was Samuel Noyes and why name the school after him? Samuel Noyes was 80 years old in 1835. He was born in Atkinson, New Hampshire and served in the Revolutionary War in a regiment from Plaistown. He was one of the leading residents of Canaan at that time,certainly one of the oldest, and probably the only remaining Revolutionary War soldier. In 1794, records show that Samuel was the only man in Canaan who paid any taxes on cash on hand, paying a tax on 15 pounds. This tells us that he was quite prosperous, although he wasn't the wealthiest in terms of real estate. He was a selectman in 1788, and in that same year he was listed as being a Baptist, although in 1817 he joined the Congregational Church. William Allen Wallace says, in “The History of Canaan”, that at that time there was a strong feeling that they should form a society, like the Baptists had done, to assist the church in the management of its affairs, regardless of their denomination.” Samuel's farm was “the first farm at the southeast corner of the town following the Enfield town line along the South Road”. His wife's name was Lydia, and she died in 1833, two years before the controversy over the academy. They did have a daughter, Relief, who was born in 1791, but it is unclear whether or not she lived to adulthood, although she was alive in 1800. At 80, Samuel was active enough to be one of the incorporators of the Academy, although his name is not mentioned much in association with the events that transpired after the granting of the charter.

It's impossible to be absolutely sure why the patrons and incorporators chose to name the school after Samuel Noyes. I think it was because he was a very old leading citizen, and a Revolutionary War veteran. It wouldn't be accurate to say that he was one of the founders of the town, but he had been there for sixty years or so, and was one of the wealthier farmers in the town. He was probably also a nice person that everyone liked. Samuel lived 10 years after the Noyes Academy controversy. He died in 1845 at age 90.

The other incorporators were George Kimball , Nathaniel Currier, John Harris and George Walworth. It's really important to keep in mind that at first, it wasn't the plan of the incorporators and patrons of Noyes Academy to admit black people into the school. There were no Negroes in Canaan. The citizens of the town had a high quality school system that served the lower grades and they wanted to establish a secondary school in Canaan so that their older children wouldn't have to board in another town to receive further education. William Allen Wallace gives George Kimball the credit, or maybe the blame, for transforming the plan for Noyes Academy. He says that Kimball and his friend M.P. Rogers of Plymouth were instrumental in “changing the original features of Noyes Academy so as to admit colored students.”

George Kimball was born in Harvard, Massachusetts in 1787. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1809, and practiced law in Union, Maine and Warren, Maine. Then he taught school in Concord, New Hampshire and Richmond, Virginia. From Richmond, Virginia he went to Bermuda and was a schoolteacher there. In 1815, in Bermuda, he married his wife, who was a woman of some property. Some of her property was slaves. George returned to the United States with his wife and her Bermudan “servant” Nancy.

It is common knowledge that slavery was illegal in New Hampshire in 1835, and in fact, all of the accounts of George Kimball's life in New Hampshire call Nancy a “freed slave”, but how free was she? The Kimballs couldn't sell her, but they removed her from Bermuda and brought her to New Hampshire, and from the accounts of Nancy that I have read, she was very black. What was she going to do, leave them? I am dying to know if they paid her, but I would bet they didn't. Here is an excerpt of a letter William Allen Wallace quoted in The Annals of Our Village, an article in “The Granite Monthly”. The letter is from his friend M.P. Rogers. Rogers is complaining about not being able to keep good household help. He says, “I wish we had a good little Bermudese like Nancy, instead of these white birds of passage. They are as restless and troublesome as French Jacobins. I can't keep one a week. Our Lydia is about retiring, and then we have got the whole planet to circumnavigate for another. When you next go to Bermuda you must bring Mary (his wife) a neat little Bermudean, a She-Othello as black as a blackberry and as neat as a penny. Your faithful servant is cut off by her ebony hue, and by the waves that wallop our shores, from a propensity to run home among white clowns, and send you polling after another witch, to run away as soon as you have got her half learned.” This is the man who wants to admit black students to Canaan's Academy?

George Kimball returned to Concord from Bermuda and became the editor of the Concord Register. He is described in “The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire” by Charles Henry Bell, as being “refined, intelligent, companionable, and amiable, but indolent and too fond of snuff and good whiskey”. Indolence is not a quality that makes a successful newspaper editor, then or now, and George was always asking his friends, especially Mr Rogers, to help him out with his newspaper duties.

Finally they got sick of it and told him he should go back to practicing law. They advised him to see about starting a law practice in Canaan. Canaan had plenty of sheriffs and justices. There would be plenty of work, and there was only one other lawyer, Elijah Blaisdell, who was also a Mason, being very active in the Mount Moriah Lodge.

George did relocate to Canaan and set up a law office. Soon he was the postmaster, too. He got a lot of business but had been away from practicing law a long time and made a lot of errors in his work. He ended up calling on his old friends to help him for help almost as often as he did when he was a newspaper editor. In addition, the other lawyer in town, Elijah Blaisdell, wasn't too happy to have competition, and harassed George constantly.

George was also terrible at managing money. He would pay sheriffs and court fees, and then never collect the fees from his clients. He often bought on credit and was in significant debt. He liked to get involved in social movements. He provided a large portion of the funding for the new Congregational Church, he was involved in the temperance movement, and the anti-Masonic movement.

In 1829, he convinced Nathaniel Currier, John Shepherd and Hubbard Harris to publicly renounce their membership in the Masons. Elijah Blaisdell and Jacob Trussell, committed Masons, were furious. William Allen Wallace quotes Blaisdell: “Neither one could explain why they had renounced”.

By 1829, Elijah Blaisdell and George Kimball were avowed enemies. The competition between them as Canaan's two lawyers became worse when George convinced Nathaniel, John and Hubbard to quit the Masons. George comes across as a slick talking, manipulative character who likes to feel important by joining various causes and then supporting them with money he doesn't really have. It also seems like a natural progression of events that the two enemies, Elijah and George, would be the leaders on opposite sides of a controversy that would rock the town.