Point and Counterpoint in Canaan

There were two more incorporators of Noyes Academy that were from Canaan. George Walworth was born in Canaan in 1779. He was married to Philura Jones and they had 9 children, 5 boys and 4 girls. Of George's children, only Emily and John would have definitely been eligible to attend Noyes Academy. Mary Ann would have been the right age, but she was deaf. Caleb would have been 20, so he might have been a student at the Academy, but he would have been a little old.

There is some discussion online about George being an incorporator who was not committed to the Negro students. His name was on a list of 17 people the school's enemies were recruiting to “use all lawful means to prevent the establishment of the school and, if established, to counteract its influence.” It is true that there is a George Walworth on the list. It is possible that the name on the list refers to his son George Walworth, who would have been in his mid-twenties at the time. It's also possible that the school's enemies intended to recruit him, not realizing he was one of the incorporators. However, he was firmly committed to abolitionism.

After the dismantling of Noyes Academy, George and many of his family accompanied George Kimball to Alton, Illinois. Alton Illinois is another town infamous in the annals of racism and anti-abolionist mob action. Elijah Lovejoy was a printer there who ran an abolitionist newspaper. His print shop was attacked three times. The third time, in 1837, the printing press was thrown into the river and Lovejoy was killed in a riot. There were 23 men indicted for rioting, but they were the men defending the press, not the men who destroyed the press and killed Lovejoy. George Walworth was one of the 23 indicted for rioting (although George Kimball was not). As with the name on the list in Canaan, it is unclear whether this name refers to George Walworth, Sr, or George Walworth, Jr.

1839 finds George and his family in Anamosa, in Jones County, Iowa. George's son, George, Jr, was an Iowa State Legislator for several years, but was killed in an accident in Texas at age 43. Mary Ann Walworth, another of George and Philura's children, was deaf. She met Edmund Booth, another deaf student, as a student at the school for the deaf in Hartford Connecticut. Booth became a newspaper editor and then adventurer. His letters home to Mary Ann from the gold fields of California, were published in a book, “Edmund Booth, Forty-Niner”. There is also a biography of Edmund Booth, “Edmund Booth, Deaf Pioneer”. Dartmouth College has a collection of Edmund Booth's writings.

The last named incorporator of Noyes Academy is John Hough Harris. John was born in 1782. He was elected to the first school committee in Canaan in 1811, which was a busy year for him, because he had a daughter that year, Hannah. Hannah had two sisters, Mary, born in 1806 and Lucy, born in 1808. Hannah, Mary and Lucy were joined by Sarah in 1813 and Eliza in 1818. Only Eliza would have been an appropriate age to attend Noyes Academy, as she would have been 17 in 1835. The rest of the girls were too old. Mary died in 1840, never having been married. The rest of the Harris girls married and had children. None of them stayed in Canaan.

Now that we know a little bit about the incorporators of Noyes Academy and their families, we can return to the story of the school itself. Apparently racism was nothing new in Canaan. Along with Nancy, George Kimball's wife's slave, there was a black boy who lived in Canaan. Henry Wallace says, “How curiously he was examined, the flat nose, kinky hair, thick lips, but most wonderful of all, the blackness that enveloped his skin. The other boys gathered around him in a circle and wondered to see him laugh and talk like themselves.” After a while the novelty disappeared and Dennison Wentworth became “just a colored boy”. Not just another boy, but just a colored boy. When the Congregational Church was built, a northwest corner was labeled the “Negro Pen”, and set aside for only Negroes to sit in during church. The George Kimball family absolutely refused to have Nancy sit in the “Negro Pen”. She sat with the rest of the family in the middle of the Congregation. Likewise, Dennison Wentworth, who lived with a Captain Dole, also sat with the rest of the congregation. The Negro pen was never used.

On September 3, 1834, there was a town meeting warned. The warning stated that the meeting was called “To take the sense of qualified voters relative to the contemplated institution about to be established in this town, avowedly for the pupose of educating black and white children and youth promiscuously and without distinction and what measures to adopt in regard to said institution.”

Residents present at the town meeting passed the following resolutions- I have paraphrased them but have certainly not changed the meaning of any. Please check out the History of Canaan by Henry William Wallace, Chapter 17 for the original wording of the resolutions

1. The town views with abhorrence every attempt to introduce a black population and will use all lawful means to counteract such an introduction.
2. We support the emancipation of the slaves, as long as it works out well for the rights, views and interests of the South, and provided the emancipated slaves don't mix with whites.
3. It's unfortunate that there has to be slavery, but we are not about to break up the union or shed blood so that our country can have Black Presidents, Black Representatives, Black Governors or Black Judges.
4. We will not send our children to school with black students.
5. We are not going to tolerate a school in our town exclusively for black students, either.

A copy of these resolutions was sent to the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette. The town also sent copies to the offices of Southern Congressmen in Washington, so they rest easy. At least in the town of Canaan, New Hampshire, abolition wasn't getting the upper hand.

Wow, you couldn't make this up.

On September 11, the trustees of Noyes Academy had a meeting and issued a rebuttal. They restated their resolve to establish a school for high school students that both white and black students would attend. I wasn't going to print the whole thing, but after reading it, it impresses me as equal to or better than anything I've ever read on Civil Rights. Too bad we don't know who wrote this. It is amazing.

TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.

The undersigned Trustees of the Noyes Academy, in conformity with the wishes of a large majority of the donors of said Academy, and with the unanimous vote of the corporators, named in the act of the Legislature, have come to the resolution to admit to the privileges of this Institution, colored youth of good character on equal terms with whites of like character. In adopting this principle the Trustees deem that they are reducing to practice the spirit and letter of the Declaration of our National Independence, of the Constitution and laws of New Hampshire, and the Bills of Rights of all the States of this United Republic, except those which have made literature a crime, and prohibited the reading of the Bible under heavy penalties.

In the State of New Hampshire according to the law, character and not complexion, is the basis of every distinction, either of honor or infamy, reward or punishment. But what greater punishment can there be, what greater degradation, than to deprive the soul of its proper sustenance, the knowledge of divine and human things? Much better were it to kill the body than to doom the mind to ignorance and vice.

It is unhappily true, that heretofore the colored portion of our fellow citizens, even in the free States, while their toll and blood have contributed to establish, and their taxes equally with those of the white to maintain our free system of Education, have practically been excluded from the benefits of it. This Institution, propose to restore, so far as can, to this neglected and injured class the privileges of literary, moral and religious instruction. We propose to uncover a fountain of pure and healthful learning, holding towards all the language of the Book of Life: “Ho! EVERY ONE that thirsteth let him come and drink.”

We propose to afford colored youth a fair opportunity to show that they are capable, equally with the whites, of improving themselves in every scientific attainment, every social virtue, and every Christian ornament. 

If however we are mistaken in supposing, that they possess such capacity; if, as some assert, they are naturally and irremediably stupid, and incorrigibly vicious, then the experiment we propose will prove this fact; and will in any event furnish valuable data, upon which the excited patriotism and piety of the land may predicate suitable measures In time to come, or may relapse into undisturbed repose, and forever forbear to form designs upon this agitating subject,

There are in the midst of this republic, of slaves and men nominally free, a number much greater than the population of the six New England States, and about nine times greater than the entire people of the State of New Hampshire. This mighty mass of human beings, of intelligent spirits and active passions must remain here, for weal or for wo, until the Creator of all shall come to judge the world. They must not only remain here but they must in spite of all human efforts, go on to increase in a ratio, which inspires apprehension in those who are conscious of doing them continual wrong.

If, therefore, there really exists between them and the whites, that natural and invincible antipathy, which many allege as an argument against our plan, how important and necessary is it for the welfare of this whole country that some of their own color should be humanized, christianized and, qualifled to gain that access to their minds and that control over their evil propensities which upon the above proposition lt is impossible for any white ever to acquire.

It is a familiar remark, that it would be an incalculable injury to this country, if the restraint which the influence and instructions of the Catholic Clergy impose, were to be removed from the uneducated and depraved among the Irish emigrants. The total number of those emigrants does not exceed one fifth of the colored Americans! If, on the other hand, the alleged antipathy does not exist, then one of the most common and formidable objections to the free and equal participation of all our youth in the means and opportunities of improvement, vanIshes at once and forever.

We propose to do nothing for the colored man—but to leave him at liberty to do something for himself. It is not our wish to raise him out of his place nor into it—but to remove the unnatural pressure which now paralizes his faculties and fixes him to the earth. We wish to afford him an impartial trial of his ability to ascend the steeps of science and to tread the narrow way, which leadeth unto life. We wish to see him start as fairly as others, unconfined, by fetters, unincumbered with burdens and boyant with hope; and if he shall then fail, we shall at the worst have this consolation, that we have done our utmost to confer upon him those excellent endowments, which the wisdom of God and the solemn appeal of our fathers have taught us to regard as the appropriate distinction of immortal and infinitely improvable beings.

We profess to be republicans, not jacobins, nor agrarians; we think with a great and liberal Englishman, that political equality means “not a right to an equal part, but an equal right to a part,” not a right to take from others, but an equal right with others to make for ourselves. We profess to be Christians and we look with humble reliance for the blessing of Him, with whom “there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian nor Scythian bond nor free, but Christ is all In all.”

This declaration is intended to be preliminary to a detailed plan for the instruction and government of the Academy, which with the terms of tuition, the qualifications for admission, the time of commencement, and the name of the instructor, will form the subject of a future and early communication to our fellow citizens.