The End of Noyes Academy

On August 10, 1835, the committee of Canaan residents eliminated a public nuisance from their town. With help from residents of nearby Enfield, Hanover and Dorchester, they ripped Noyes Academy right off its foundation, eliminating once and for all the specter of interracial education in Canaan, New Hampshire.

On the morning of August 10, all roads led to Canaan. When the sun rose, a few men began appearing on Canaan Street. By the middle of the morning, a steady stream of rowdy men with axes and iron bars became a mob gathered in the center of town. A contingent from Enfield had brought a string of 50 oxen, which added to the noise and confusion. That first day, they were not able to pull the Academy Building down because the chains they had brought kept breaking. The next day they were more successful. They hitched the team of oxen to the building and pulled the building off the foundation. Although it was a slow, difficult process, the crowd pulled the building down the street, stopping at Currier and Wallace's store, where they demanded the store owners give them rum. On August 10^th and 11^th, the crew that was attacking Noyes Academy was fed with beef paid for out of the town treasury.

 

 

The weather that week was scorching hot. William Wallace, in “The History of Canaan” says the temperature got up to 116 degrees. When the crew pulling the Academy building made it to Parson Fuller's house, they stopped to get some water from his well. The parson's wife ran out and cut the rope to the bucket so they couldn't use it. Mrs. Wallace also came out of her house and started yelling at them.

Once they had succeeded in dragging the building to the corner of the town square, many in the mob didn't go home. Drunk on rum, they ran around the village shouting obscenities and threatening to attack the houses where the black students were staying.

Wallace quotes from a letter written by one of the town's people during that time. Unfortunately he doesn't tell us who wrote the letter. In the letter, the writer comments that “Mr Kimball was absent during all this storm”, which is not surprising. It is a little surprising that Wallace picks this quote to share. The writer of the letter goes on to say that the whole thing was a feud between the Masons (Jacob Trussell and Elijah Blaisdell) and the anti-Masons (George Kimball, Nat Currier and Hubbard Harris).

The Academy building was left on a corner of the town square, where it blocked the road. Muster day was always held in September, and on September 10, Canaan combined muster day and relocation of the Academy building. Everyone who had been involved the month before, including the team of oxen, returned to Canaan and moved the school building to the Baptist Parsonage Field. After that was accomplished, they took the town cannon, dragged it through the streets of Canaan and fired at every house owned by a Noyes Academy supporter, breaking glass and causing damage at each home.

The Academy building sat in the field by the Baptist Parsonage for four years. Finally, when the town got sick enough of having to look at an eyesore, someone burned it down in early March of 1839.

What was at the root of all the trouble in Canaan over Noyes Academy? Was it a feud between two competing lawyers? Was it a feud between the Masons and the Anti-Masons, like Wallace's letter writer suggests? It's too bad Canaan's older students couldn't have had a way to complete their education. The original idea behind Noyes Academy was to provide a way for Canaan's students to prepare for college. Then George Kimball comes up with the idea that the new school should admit black students. This was admirable, but common sense would have to tell you this was not going to fly in this small town in New Hampshire, especially the way it was presented to the people of the town. If they had focused on their original intent, and invited a few black students to join the school, rather than focusing on the interracial aspect of the school, they might have been able to pull it off. If things had gone well, they could have had more black students join in later years. It's annoying that two of the biggest troublemakers had no commitment to Canaan and no children to educate. Although Elijah Blaisdell had grown up in Canaan, he lived in Lebanon at the time, and spent the rest of his life in Lebanon. George Kimball left Canaan very soon after the destruction of the Academy. He went west to start a business. Nathaniel Currier gave him $6,000 as start-up capital. Kimball's business failed, and he ended up finally returning to Bermuda. Kimball was always one to get really involved in causes, having been very involved in church and religious issues, and also quite involved in the temperance movement. Nathaniel Currier stayed in Canaan, ran his store, and stayed involved in the attempt to provide the older children of Canaan an opportunity to get an education.