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THE

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

PRESENTED BY

. Jones. Library , Inc.*— JanlO,1923.

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

SAMUEI MINOT JONES

MHERST BOY

BY CHARLES S. WALKER

PRESIDENT OF THE AMHERST HISTORICAL SOCIETY

AMHERST, MASS. 1922

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

THE STORY OF AN AMHERST BOY

BY CHARLES S. WALKER

PRESIDENT OF THE AMHERST HISTORICAL SOCIETY

AMHERST, MASS. 1922

77^07 A

THE JONES LIBRARY INCORPORATED AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS

PUBLICATION NO. 1. SEPTEMBER, 1922

Copyright, 1922, by Thk Jones Library, Inc.

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THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF AMHERST, FOR WHOM THE JONES LIBRARY WAS FOUNDED AND TO WHOM IT IS GIVEN FOR SELF-CULTURE AND FOR THE SERVICE OF MANKIND

SAMUEL MINOT JONES FOREWORD

Amherst, mother of men, has had many children, soldiers and scholars, readers and writers, tillers of the soil and master craftsmen, adventurers and missionaries of the cross : but no one of these has been more grateful, or shown his gratitude in a more fitting manner, than Samuel Minot Jones. He received both from his father and from his mother those traits of New England char- acter, developed in a long line of ancestors, physical strength and intellectual vigor, magnanimity of soul and decision of character, industry and perseverance, public spirit and patriotism, morality and religious faith, which he so utilized as to make himself always the man for the emergency, a brave soldier, a pioneer in unbeaten paths, a successful business man, a loving son, brother, hus- band, father and friend, and a public benefactor.

CONTENTS

I. Heredity 1

II. Birth and Early Education 12

III. The Soldier in the Civil War 53

IV. The Man of Business 68

V. Private Life 77

VI. The Jones Library 87

ILLUSTRATIONS

Samuel Minot Jones

The Minot House, Dorchester, Mass. . Mary Minot's House, Enfield, Mass.

Thomas Jones

The Thomas Jones House, Enfield, Mass. . Interior of the Thomas Jones House,

Enfield, Mass

"The Homestead on the Hill," Amherst,

Mass

Amherst Academy

Cutler's Store

The Meeting House

Amherst Landscape, Holyoke Range, 1840

The Morristown Home

The Morristown Study

Mrs. Harriet Stenger Jones and Son .

Minot Jones

The Jones Library Board of Trustees

Frontispiece Facing page 7 9 11 13

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17 37 43 45 51 75 81 83 85 91

CHAPTER I HEREDITY

Samuel Minot Jones was born in Enfield, Massachu- setts, September 16, 1836. His mother was Mary Hub- bard (Field) Jones, a lineal descendant of Hubertus de la Field who came from Colmar near Strasburg in Alsatia on the German border of France. He was a member of the family of the Counts de la Field, who resided at Colmar as early as the sixth century. He came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066, and in 1068 held land in Lancaster, granted to him by the Conqueror for military service.

Zechariah Field, of a later generation, who was the son of John Field and grandson of Sir John Field, was born in Ardsly, England, in 1600 and emigrated to Boston and settled in Dorchester in 1630. He moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636 and came to Hadley in 1659 and to Northampton later. In 1663 he went to Hatfield, where he died in 1669. His youngest son, Joseph Field, settled in Sunderland, on the site of the present Congregational Church, and died February 15, 1736. Joseph's son Jonathan married Esther Smith of Hatfield and in 1752 moved to Long Plain, Leverett. He was a Captain in the Indian Wars and a brave soldier. His son, Seth Field, born in 1741, married Mary Hubbard of Sunderland in 1764 and settled in

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Leverett. Martin Field, the third son of Seth, born January 12, 1778, was a graduate of Williams College in 1798, studied law in Chester, Vermont, and practiced his profession in Newfane, Vermont. He was attor- ney of Windham County, a member of the General Assembly, and Major General of the First Division of the Vermont Militia.

General Field, February 21, 1802, married Esther Smith Kellogg, daughter of Daniel Kellogg of Am- herst, who died June 6, 1867. She was educated at Maplewood Seminary in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. On her return home she decorated the parlor of her father's house with mural paintings illustrating agricultural scenes. She was a woman of fine personal appearance and of many accomplishments. Her father served as selectman of Amherst and as a soldier in the Revolution. His father, Daniel, born in Hadley, came to Amherst about 1745 and settled on East Street. The only daughter of General Martin Field and Esther Smith Kellogg was Mary Hubbard Field, the mother of Samuel Minot Jones. She was born in Newfane, Ver- mont, September 13, 1804. She was educated at the famous school of Emma Willard in Troy, New York. Her brother, Roswell Martin Field, was the Nestor of the Missouri Bar and the father of Eugene Field, the poet. She married Theodore Francis French, a leading merchant of Troy, New York, who died September 11, 1828. They had three children, Mary Field French, born June 30, 1825, died April 15, 1900; Theodore Francis French, born May 3, 1827, died June 30, 1828; Theodore F. French, born December 11, 1828, died September 21, 1865. For her second husband she

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married, December 24, 1835, Thomas Jones and left Newfane, Vermont, to make a new home in Enfield, Massachusetts.

Thomas Jones, the father of Samuel Minot Jones, was a lineal descendant of John Jones, who died June 22, 1673, and whose wife was named Dorcas. Their son, Samuel Jones, was born in Cambridge, Massachu- setts, in 1648, married Elizabeth Potter January 16, 1672, and died in 1717. Samuel's son Nathaniel was born in 1676, married Mary Rait, September 1, 1696, and died March 22, 1745. Their son Elnathan, born March 29, 1697, married September 22, 1721, Hannah Pierce, born 1701, died 1730. He died July 29, 1772. Elnathan Jones, Jr., the father of Thomas Jones, was born the son of Elnathan Jones and Hannah Pierce in 1736, married Mary Minot February 10, 1774, and died February 27, 1793. He was a prominent citizen of Concord, Massachusetts, and a prosperous merchant engaged in the East India trade. Thomas Jones was born March 6, 1787, and died in Amherst October 21, 1853.

Mary Minot, the grandmother of Samuel Minot Jones, after whom he was named, was a remarkable woman, inheriting the best traits from a distinguished ancestry. She was the eighth child of Deacon Samuel Minot of Concord, Massachusetts, and the fifth child of his second wife, Dorcas Prescott, whom he married in 1738. He died in Concord March 17, 1766, and Dorcas died June 13, 1803, aged ninety-one years. Mary Minot was born October 5, 1755, and died December 20, 1845, aged ninety years.

Deacon Samuel Minot was born March 25, 1706, the

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son of James Minot, the tenth child. This James Minot, Mary's grandfather, was born September 14, 1653, was graduated from Harvard College in 1675, studied divinity and physic and kept the grammar school in Dorchester in 1679. Later he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where he practiced medicine and taught school. In 1685 he was preaching in Stow. He served as justice of the peace in 1692. He was a Captain in the militia and represented his town in the legislature. He was a man of versatile talents and of sterling char- acter. He married Rebecca Wheeler, daughter of Cap- tain Timothy Wheeler, the founder of the ministerial fund in Concord, and inherited the homestead of his father-in-law near the residence of the Hon. Daniel Shattuck, where he died September 20, 1735, at the age of eighty-three.

These epitaphs in the Hill burying ground, Concord, where he and his wife were buried, bear testimony to the high esteem in which both were held by their contemporaries.

Here is interred the remains of

James Minott Esq. A. M. an

Excelling Grammarian, enriched

with the gift of prayer and preaching,

A Commanding officer, a Physician of Great Value,

a Great Lover of Peace as well as of justice and,

which was His greatest Glory, a Gent'n of distinguished

Virtue and Goodness, happy in a Virtuous Posterity,

and living religiously died Comfortably,

September 20, 1735 Aet 83.

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HEREDITY

Here is interred the body of Mrs. Rebecca Minott Ye Virtuous Consort of James Minott, Esq. and daughter of Capt. Timothy Wheeler. She was a person of Serious piety and abounding Charity, of great usefulness in Her Day and a pattern of Patience and Holy Submission under a long Con- finement and resigned Her Soul with joy in her Re- deemer, September 23, 1735. Aged 68.

This famous James Minott was the second son of Capt. John Minott and Lydia Butler of Dorchester, whose estate was valued at £978/5. He was born April 2, 1626, and married Lydia Butler May 19, 1647. Captain John's father was Elder George Minott, who was the son of Thomas Minott, Esq., of Saffron, Walden, Essex, England, born August 4, 1594.

This Thomas Minott was among the first Pilgrim emigrants in Massachusetts and the first settlers of Dorchester. His residence was near Neponset Bridge and he owned the land which has been known as S quan- tum. He was a freeman in 1634, representative of the town 1635-1636 and for thirty years a ruling elder in the church. He died December 24, 1671, with an estate valued at £277/7/7. His death was much lamented by the town whose weal he sought and whose liberties he defended. He was contemporary with Elder Hum- phrey. In the ancient Dorchester burying ground these quaint lines carved on the tombstone tell the story of his service:

Here lie the bodies of Unite Humphrey and Shining Minot. Such names as these, they never die not.

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A picture of the house in Dorchester occupied by Elder George Minott has been preserved and used to illustrate Winsor's "History of Boston." President Timothy Dwight of Yale College tells a story of an incident connected with this house which gives a vivid impression of the courage, self-control and heroism which marked even the women and children of the house- hold of the Minott family in those early times- While Mr. and Mrs. George Minott were absent, hav- ing gone to Boston, an Indian, left by a roving band, attempted to avenge his chief for some fancied injury caused by Elder Minott's refusal to grant a demand for supplies. This Indian, coming out of the bushes where he had been concealed, tried to enter the house, but failed because the maid, warned by her master, had barred the door. Concealing the two children under brass kettles with instructions to keep quiet, she seized a musket and guarded the house. The redman's shot missed its mark, but returning the fire the maid shot him through the shoulder. Ignoring his wound the man made a rush to climb in the window. Here he was stopped by a shovel- ful of red-hot coals thrown in his face. He fled to the woods, where his dead body was found the next day. For this act of heroism the girl was honored by the Gov- ernment of Massachusetts Bay, from which she re- ceived a silver wristband with the motto inscribed upon it, "She slew the Narrhaganset Hunter."

Such were the ancestors of Marv Minot. From them she inherited intellectual power, varied talents, a strong body, brilliant traits and a resolute spirit. In The Jones Library is preserved a rare volume, a quarto, bound in calfskin, showing the marks of long use. It was pub-

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lished 1766 in London by Mark Baskett. It contains the Apocrypha and the following inscription: "Mary Minott. Her Bible. The Gift of her mother, Dorcas Minott, November 27, 1766." Mary was only eleven years old when she received this precious volume which she kept until her death, using it for eighty years as the light of her pathway, and then bequeathing it as a rich legacy to her children. In it she recorded the birth of her seven children, three daughters and four sons. Here also is recorded her own death and that of her children and grandchildren, as well as their marriages.

Mrs. Mary Minot Jones was a leader in the social circles of Concord in her day, a famous beauty, whose portrait Gilbert Stuart was pleased to paint. As the wife of Captain Elnathan Jones, the successful East India merchant, her home was filled with the treasures of the Orient, many of which were long preserved as heirlooms in the family. During the Revolutionary War, Captain Jones and his wife were among the lead- ing patriots.

"There were received," so the records of those days show, "from Mr. Daniel Cheever of Charlestown 20 loads of stores containing 20,000 pounds of musket balls and cartridges, 50 reams of cartridge paper, 206 tents, 113 iron spades, 51 wood axes, 201 bill hooks, 19 sets of harnesses, 24 boxes of candles, 14 chests of medicine, 27 hogsheads of wooden ware, 1 hogshead of matches, 20 bushels of oatmeal, 5 iron worms for cannon, rammers, etc." These were stored at Captain Elnathan Jones', Joshua Bonds', W. Houghby Prescott's, James Hay- wood's, Colonel Barrett's and the town house, and 5 tierces of rice at Deacon George Minott's.

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Hearing of these stores, the British sent out an expedi- tion from Boston to seize them. But when the soldiers came to Captain Elnathan Jones' East India Ware- house where many supplies were concealed, Mary Minott, the Captain's wife, was equal to the occasion. She invited the British officers into her parlor, served them the best wine and entertained them with games of cards played on her mahogany table. Her fascinating and charming hospitality proved so attractive that her guests forgot all about the supplies until the patriots had sufficient time to remove them to a place of safety. Ralph Waldo Emerson and others have told this story of Mary Minott's quick wit and patriotic service, for the inspiration of her posterity.

Mrs. Mary Minot Jones on her wedding day, when she married for her second husband Robert Field, Esq., made a sensation as she came into the church beautifully dressed. Her bonnet was the latest creation of the Boston milliners. Her second husband was a justice of the peace, selectman for five years, representative of the town in the legislature 1801-1804, an innkeeper, a manu- facturer and for many years a leading man in the com- munity. It was in his honor that, when the southern dis- trict of Greenwich was constituted a town by itself, it was called Enfield. The house he built in 1776, to which he took his new wife, still stands, although one only of the two elms that shaded it now survives. Mrs. Mary Minot Field's reputation as a good cook and house- keeper as well as leader in society still persists and her recipe for cake has been handed down from mother to daughter.

Mary Minot was the mother of seven children, of

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whom three were ffirls and four boys. After the Revolu- tion times changed. The East India trade was no longer prosperous. Her husband died February 27, 1793. Ten years later, May 8, 1803, she married Robert Field, Esq., who had fought at Bunker Hill, and went to live in a fine house which he built in Enfield, where her sons developed the water power and manufactured satinets and other fabrics. One of their factories was named the Minot Mill. Her son, Samuel Jones, died in Enfield September 26, 1819. The three remaining sons, Elnathan, Marshall and Thomas, carried on the business for many years and their families became the patrons of the industrial, social and religious life of the community. Dr. Francis H. Underwood in his story of Enfield, written in 1892, gives the following account of the life there of Mary Minot and her sons : "A few houses in the village had an indefinable charm for those who remem- bered their former occupants. There is one in a com- manding position near the crossroads which is venerable in slow decay, and out of relations with modern neigh- bors. Two ancient elms tower over the grounds and are seen afar. One of the patriots who fought at Bunker Hill built the house, then considered a mansion. His wife, the descendant of a Huguenot family, had three sons by a former marriage ; and these in their maturity, were the only persons in Quabbin (the name by which Enfield was then known) that could in the strict sense be called Gentlemen. The bright old lady long sur- vived her husband and made a striking picture as she moved about in her wheeled-chair, accompanied by one of her sons, a grave and stately man who lived with her. Another son built a dwelling nearer the meeting house.

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It appeared to be the dream of some inspired carpenter, a dream of wooden pilasters, wreaths and scrolls, with a fretwork balustrade of wheel patterns upon the eaves and an arched and decorated gateway all in a glittering white. Hillside terraces at the rear with flower beds and fruit trees were to youthful eyes like the hanging gardens of Babylon. The owner, with his tropical com- plexion of pale orange, his gold-rimmed spectacles and his distinguished manners, in which dignity, courtesy and kindness had equal share, was a wonderful person in Quabbin society years ago. For he had actually sailed around the world; his cheeks had acquired their rich color in China, where he had been a tea merchant; the bronze idols and the great vases that adorned his rooms had come from farthest East. Besides he knew Euro- pean capitals, and along with his well-earned wealth, he had brought to the village an aroma from spice lands, a knowledge of the world, and the grand air that so becomes a traveled man.

"The third of the brothers, a manufacturer, built a fine house, but with less ornament, on a knoll not far distant. All three could have been presented with credit at any court. They spoke the language of the educated world; but, along with their somewhat ceremonious manners they had a sense of what was due to others, especially to humble neighbors, and as they were public spirited, just and generous, they were respected and loved. No one envied them their good fortune — a rare experience whether in Quabbin or elsewhere.

"The sombre old house with its two elms connected the village with the by-gone days of the Colony; and the

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HEREDITY

little old lady, while she lived, was a link with the great world, as her family was justly distinguished

"A circle of brilliant associations ended for Quabbin when the places of the three brothers knew them no more. Relatives from the county town and from Boston used to enliven the village and the country roads in sum- mer, charming and cultivated ladies, budding clergymen and lawyers, the usual gathering of people of leisure at hospitable country houses. After the end of the old regime they came no more. Neither the balustraded villa near the meeting house, nor the ancient, sombre, elm- shaded mansion, ever knew again the gaiety of former days."

The youngest of these three sons of Mary Minot was Thomas Jones, the father of Samuel Minot Jones. He married for his first wife Elizabeth M. Lyman of North- ampton, June 3, 1829. In 1826, he and his brother, Marshall Jones, organized the Swift Manufacturing Company, which for eleven years manufactured satinets. This company was succeeded by the Minot Company, in which Marshall Jones was the senior partner.

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CHAPTER II BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

Thomas Jones, in 1829, bought four acres of land, including a knoll in the village of Enfield near the cross- roads, and built upon this site a commodious country- house to which he brought from Northampton his first wife. She was the mother of his two sons, Thomas and William. After her death he married Mary Hubbard Field French, the widow of Theodore Francis French. When she became mistress of the Enfield home, the family included her daughter, Mary Field French, ten years old, and her son Theodore, aged seven, in addition to the two sons of Mr. Jones.

The house was none too large for such a household. It was thoroughly built and stands today, after ninety- three years' service, one of the best residences in the town. The front, forty feet in width, is shaded by the spreading branches of elms and maples. The depth is one hundred feet, including the annex in the rear. A large broad hall is entered through a wide door fastened with a double lock. The front and back parlors are separated by folding doors which, when opened, make a capacious apartment for entertaining many guests. The floors are southern pine. The mantel over the fire- place and the rest of the woodwork are decorated with hand carving. The dining-room is connected with an

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BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

ample kitchen which contained the open fireplace and the brick oven. There is one bedroom on the ground floor and five on the second floor. The stairs leading up from the front hall are beautifully carved and protected by a handsome baluster.

A broad sandstone step leads up to the front door. The addition to the southwest afforded opportunity for the many household tasks essential to the support of family life in the first half of the nineteenth century. The outbuildings were suited to the mansion house. From the lawn at the rear of the house and from the upper windows an extensive view of the valley and surrounding hills toward the south and west can be obtained.

In this fine homestead, one of the best in the town, Samuel Minot Jones was born September 16, 1836, and here he spent the first three years of his life. The infant boy had the best of care, with pure air to breathe and food that gave strength to his muscles and vitality to his nervous system.

But it was fortunate for him that Enfield should not remain his home for the years of his youth. Shut in on all sides by hills and mountains, the narrow valley fur- nished scant subsistence for the farmers, while the sterile hillsides, in spite of the toil expended upon their stony acres, produced a class of people devoid of culture and denied opportunities for developing the best elements of manhood. Intemperance prevailed and immorality was common in the back districts. The schools were of an inferior grade. The Calvinistic doctrines of the Puritan Church tended to give a somber cast to religious

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SAMUEL MIXOT JOXES

life. Few were elected to be saved and the broad way was crowded with multitudes.

The Jones brothers and their friends brought with them from Concord a new element of progressive civil- ization. The East India trade having been made profit- less by the War of 1812, the Jones family turned to manufacturing to supply the demand for goods which household industries could no longer provide. In En- field they found in Swift River a good water power and in the people good operatives, which discovery justi- fied the erection of the Minot mill and other factories that for a time brought wealth to the owners and pros- perity to the community. But conditions soon changed. The panic of 1837 unsettled the business of the whole country. Moreover, the construction of the Boston & Albany trunk line of railroad left Enfield and its fac- tories unable to compete with other mills whose raw material and finished products could be transported by steam.

The Swift Company failed in 1837 and Thomas Jones was obliged to seek his fortune elsewhere. Having friends in Northampton and Leverett he found in Am- herst a new field for his business ability. In addition to its manufacturing facilities Amherst's social and edu- cational advantages appealed to him and his wife with their family of boys and girls for whom Enfield schools provided no adequate means for education.

In North Amherst were a good water power and a community able to furnish the needed working people. Thomas Jones therefore closed his business in Enfield and made a new start in Amherst. In March, 1839, he sold his Enfield house to Alvin Smith and April 26 of

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the same year he made a contract with Robert Cutler that he should build a house on Amity Street in Amherst as good as the one he had built in Oak Grove for Luke Sweetser. It should be located on the two acres of land bought of Elisha Pomeroy Cutler. It must have two stories, the ceilings eleven feet high on the first floor and ten feet on the second, and there must be a piazza forty- two feet long with balustrades on top.

Into this house Samuel Minot Jones was taken when he was three years old and in it he spent his boyhood and youth. It was, as his father intended it to be, one of the best houses in the town and is today a beautiful mansion. For a generation it was a center of Amherst business, social and religious life. Here, after her husband's death, Mrs. Jones from 1864 to 1876 took care of her two nephews, Eugene Field and his brother Roswell, whom her daughter, Mary Field French, taught Eng- lish literature. In this house, largely through the influ- ence of Mrs. Jones, who contributed a thousand dollars for the purpose, Bishop Frederick D. Huntington or- ganized, September 20, 1864, Grace Episcopal Church. Here during his life her husband planned his business enterprises. Here gracious hospitality welcomed many guests.

After the death of Mrs. Jones the heirs sold the house to Hiram Heaton, October 7, 1879, who filled its grounds with choice trees, shrubbery and flowers. Here his daughter, Mary Heaton Vorse, learned to write stories which have proved almost as popular as Eugene Field's poems. Here too David Grayson (Ray Stan- nard Baker) lived before his present home on Sunset Avenue was finished.

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The years from 1840 to 1854 formed a period of transition from household industry, in which the pro- ducer was his own landlord, capitalist, business manager and laborer, to the era of capitalistic production and the minute division of labor. Thomas Jones, first in Enfield and later in Amherst, was a pioneer in the new age of New England community manufacturing. Many diffi- culties beset his way. Failures, however, became means to final success. Fire again and again destroyed his mills. But he persevered resolutely until he won at last a competence.

In company with his brother, Elnathan Jones, in 1842 he rebuilt the cotton mill in Factory Hollow, North Amherst. About this time he owned three mills there in which Kentucky jeans were made. These mills he sold to the Amherst Manufacturing Company, chartered in 1846 by Thomas Jones, John S. Adams and J. M. Whitcomb. In 1845, in company with Bradley, he built a woolen mill which was burned in 1857. In 1852 he was a member of the Westville Company, which built a woolen mill on Meadow Street in North Amherst. His business interests, however, were not confined to Am- herst. He was a stockholder in many manufacturing concerns in western Massachusetts. He was at one time president of the Carew Paper Company at South Hadley Falls.

Understanding the value of railroad transportation, in company with John Leland and Charles Adams he raised $72,000 for a railroad planned to run around Mount Holyoke at Hockanum and to pass through Amherst. His fellow townsmen showed their apprecia- tion of his public spirit by electing him in 1845 to the

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legislature. He served as a trustee of Amherst Acad- emy from July 14, 1841, to his death, October 21, 1853.

The following notice, which appeared October 28, 1853, in the Hampshire and Franklin Express, shows the esteem in which he was held by his fellow citizens :

"The sudden death of Thomas Jones, Esq., strikes this community with more than ordinary surprise and sorrow. Though he had been very ill several months, for some weeks past he had been rapidly improving and was rejoicing in the prospect of speedy recovery.

"We shared the hospitality of his house and table only the night before his death and found him serenely exult- ing in the luxury of returning health and renewed life. He remarked that it was the best day he had seen for a long time. At midnight a sudden alarm of fire awaked him out of sleep and before three o'clock his heart, which was doubtless the seat of his disease, had ceased to beat. How impressive the lesson to his friends and neighbors to be also ready.

"The loss of Mr. Jones will be felt — how severelv it will be felt by the afflicted family, of which he was not only the support but also the joy, we dare not under- take to tell — but it will be felt by the whole community. His enterprise and public spirit, his large hospitality and liberal charity, his singular kindness and urbanity, will be remembered with affectionate regret, not only by the citizens of Amherst, but by strangers who occa- sionally visit the town, long after that pleasing and benignant face, so familiar in our streets and so welcome to our sight, shall have moldered to dust."

After the death of her husband, Mrs. Mary Hubbard Field Jones continued as the head of her family and

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maintained her position as gracious hostess, social leader and religious worker until her death, January 9, 1879, at the age of seventy-four years. The Amherst Record in the notice of her death pays this tribute to her memory :

"Mrs. Jones was a woman of very high character, highly esteemed by those with whom she was so long associated, and a wide circle of friends will mourn her loss."

Funeral services were conducted by Rev. Frederick Burgess, rector of Grace Church, and she was buried in West Cemetery, where a granite monument marks the plot containing her remains resting by the side of those of her husband.

A tablet in her honor has been placed at the left of the pulpit in Grace Church. The inscription names her as one of the founders of the church.

Amherst during the years from 1839 to 1854, in which Samuel Minot Jones grew from infancy to young man- hood, furnished an excellent environment for the de- velopment of those traits and characteristics which he inherited from his distinguished ancestry. Nature's method of making good specimens of her handiwork in- volves two stages of progress. The first is isolation and protection: the second is the bursting of barriers, ex- pulsion, dispersion, thrusting her child out into the wide world to shift for himself, facing defeat and failure, or making stepping stones of difficulties to wrest success from untoward circumstances. At first the thistle is guarded at every part with sharp points: then it blos- soms and its silken petals are torn from their support and carried to distant fields to start a new life in a barren

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BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

pasture. The nestling, so tenderly guarded by the eagle, in due time is cast out of the nest on the top of the crag to fly or fall. The Jewish boy is shut up in the shop in Nazareth for thirty years and then driven into the wilderness from whence he emerges a Son of Man, a new type of humanity.

For fifteen years, from the age of three until he was eighteen years old, Sam Jones was an Amherst boy. In his home were two older half brothers, William and Thomas Jones, an older half sister, Mary Field French, and another older half brother, Theodore F. French, and a younger sister, Augusta Thayer Jones. The Am- herst house was commodious, but none too large for such a family of children. The yard was a big one overlook- ing the valley of the Connecticut. Immediately below stretched the Hadley meadows, out of which Mount Warner arose to hide the river, except in flood time when its waters rushed around the northern slope. To the south lay Mount Holyoke and, beyond, Mount Nonotuck and Mount Tom. There was a splendid big attic from whose western window could be seen gorgeous sunsets that glorified the evening skies as the sun ran his yearly course from Holvoke to Warner's northern slope. Past his house sometimes ran the stage to North- ampton, the shiretown, and many private teams bent on pleasure or driven on business. North of his house were the famous Cutler orchards. Down the hillside ran the brook that drained the marshy land between his house and the common. In winter time the coasting was splendid. The forests of white oak, of pine, of chestnut and of hickory afforded great opportunity for tramping and for filling one's bags with hickory nuts and chestnuts.

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SAMUEL MINOT JONES

Squirrels, rabbits, foxes, birds of all kinds abounded. There were trout in the brooks and pickerel in the ponds. But Sam was brought up to work. Play was not the chief end of boyhood. His father operated the mills at North Amherst and knew how to make his own boys as well as mill hands employ their time usefully. The care of the large house and grounds and the successful man- agement of such a household demanded that there should be no idlers and that each one should contribute according to his ability that he might draw from the general fund according to his need.

Amherst was a country town with a broad outlook, but nevertheless shut in by the encircling hills. It was a long way to Boston, reached only by relays of stage horses. Springfield was a thriving village. Northamp- ton was little larger than Amherst. Horses were com- paratively few, and ox teams were the main reliance of the farmer. Wood was the fuel which boys were ex- pected to chop, saw, split and store in the woodshed and as needed heap up in the wood boxes. There were nu- merous great fireplaces in the Jones mansion and it was no slight task to keep the fires blazing during the long winters.

It was in this same homestead, under the care of Samuel Jones' mother and his sister, Mary French, that Eugene and Roswell Field were trained in their boyhood. Eugene's testimony as to the value of this environment enables one to understand how it must have influenced the older boy Samuel in his day. When asked who had exerted the most influence in shaping his life and character, Eugene Field at first said that it was his grandmother. But later he declared that he was

20

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

sorry that he had said that, for after mature thought he was certain that the woman was Mary Field French. To her he dedicated his "Little Book of Western Verse" in a poem that shows how much she did for him. These are the verses :

To Mary Field French

A dying mother gave to you Her child a many years ago; How in your gracious love he grew, You know, dear, patient heart, you know.

The mother's child you fostered then Salutes you now and bids you take These little children of his pen And love them for the author's sake.

To you I dedicate this book, And, as you read it line by line, Upon its faults as kindly look As you have always looked on mine.

Tardy the offering is and weak ; — Yet were I happy if I knew These children had the power to speak My love and gratitude to you.

The influence of this New England homestead never left him. Traces of it appear again and again in his writings. Here is one of his pictures :

We see it all — the pictur' that our mem'ries hold so dear — The homestead in New England far away, An' the vision is so nat'rul-like, we almost seem to hear The voices that were hushed but yesterday.

******* 21

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

Why the robins in the maples and the blackbirds round the pond,

The crickets and the locusts in the leaves,

The brook that chased the trout adown the hillside just beyond,

An' the swallers in their nests beneath the eaves —

They all come trooping back with you, dear Uncle Josh, today,

An' they seem to sing with all the joyous zest

Of the days when we were Yankee boys an' Yankee girls at play,

With nary thought of livin' way out West.

The brook that ran down the hillside northwest of the Amherst homestead made a lasting impression upon Eugene so that in after years he wrote:

To a Little Brook

You're not so big as you were then,

O little brook !— I mean those hazy summers when We boys roamed, full of awe beside Your noisy, foaming tide, And wondered if it could be true That there were bigger brooks than you,

O mighty brook, O peerless brook !

*******

But once — O most unhappy day

For you, my brook ! — Came Cousin Sam along that way ; And, having lived a spell out West, Where creeks aren't counted much at best, He neither waded, swam, nor leapt, But with superb indifference, stept

Across that brook — our mighty brook. 22

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

In his verses entitled "My Playmates" his memory- reverts to his Amherst boyhood and the Jones mansion on the hill :

The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool, Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool ; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning

trill ; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know Where the sassafras and snakeroot and checkerberries grow.

O cottage 'neath the maples, have you seen those girls and boys That but a little while ago made, oh! such pleasant noise?

0 trees and hills and brooks, and lanes, and meadows, do you

know Where I shall find my little friends of forty years ago? You see I'm old and weary and I've traveled long and far;

1 am looking for my playmates — I wonder where they are!

One of these playmates was Mary Smith and in his lines to her he begins :

Away down East where I was reared amongst my Yankee kith There used to live a pretty girl whose name was Mar}r Smith.

Continuing he exclaims :

How often now those sights, those pleasant sights recur again : The little township that was all the world I knew of then — The meeting-house upon the hill, the tavern just beyond, Old Deacon Packard's general store, the sawmill by the pond, The village elms I vainly sought to conquer in my quest Of that surpassing trophy, the golden oriole's nest.

23

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

Roswell Martin Field, who shared with his brother Eugene the Amherst life, attributes to it much of the influence which shaped his character and developed his genius. In his sketch of Eugene's life, Roswell says :

"The formative period of my brother's youth was passed in New England, and to the influences which still prevail in and around her peaceful hills and gentle streams, the influences of a sturdy stock which has sent so many good and brave men to the West for the up- building of the country and the upholding of what is best in Puritan tradition, he gladly acknowledged he owed much that was strong and enduring. While he gloried in the West and remained loyal to the section which gave him birth and in which he chose to cast his lot, he was not the less proud of his New England blood and not the less conscious of the benefits of a New Eng- land training. His boyhood was similar to that of other boys brought up with the best surroundings in a Massa- chusetts village, where the college atmosphere prevailed. He had his boyish pleasures and his trials, his share of that queer mixture of nineteenth-century worldliness and almost austere Puritanism which is yet characteristic of many New England families."

Roswell thus describes how the literary atmosphere of Amherst led Eugene when a child to write his first poem:

"The family dog at Amherst, which was immortalized many years later with 'The Bench-Legged Fyce,' and which was known in his day to hundreds of students at the college on account of his surpassing lack of beauty, rejoiced originally in the honest name of Fido, but my brother rejected this name as commonplace and un-

24

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

worthy and straightway named him 'Dooley' on the pre- sumption that there was something Hibernian in his face. It was to Dooley that he wrote his first poem, a parody on 'O Had I Wings Like a Dove,' a song then in good vogue. Near the head of the village street was the home of the Emersons, a large frame house, now standing for more than a century, and in the great yard in front the magnificent elms which are the glory of the Connecticut Valley. Many times the boys, returning from school, would linger to cool off in the shade of these glorious trees, and it was on one of these occasions that my brother put into the mouth of Dooley his maiden effort in verse :

.. .

O had I wings like a dove I would fly Away from this world of fleas ; I'd fly all around Miss Emerson's yard And light on Miss Emerson's trees.

? JJ

This house still stands, used as headquarters of the Amherst Historical Society and shaded by two magnifi- cent sycamore trees, but the great elms have both been broken down by time and stress of weather.

How Amherst scenery affected Eugene, especially that seen from the Jones mansion, is thus described:

"Throughout his writings may be found the most earnest appreciation of the joyousness and loveliness of a beautiful landscape, but as he would share it intellec- tually with his readers so it was a necessity that he could not seek it alone as an actuality. In his boyhood, in the full glory of a perfect day he loved to ramble through the woods and meadows, and delighted in the azure tints of the far-away Berkshire hills.

25

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

"Acting was his strongest boyish passion. Even as a child he was a wonderful mimic and thereby the delight of his playmates and the terror of his teachers. He or- ganized a stock company among the small boys of the village and gave performances in the barn of one of the less scrupulous neighbors."

That neighbor was Lucius Boltwood and the barn stood near the ground where now is located Pratt Memorial Dormitory at Amherst College. But the literary atmosphere of New England did not stimulate alone the dramatic and poetic genius of Eugene. It even compelled him before ten years of age to write a sermon showing the results of those arduous Sabbath days in the old meeting house on the hill. But the most powerful and lasting of all the many influences which shaped the life of Eugene Field during his boyhood in Amherst was revealed by Rev. Frank N. Bristol in these words quoted in Slason Thompson's biography of the poet, from the address given at the funeral :

"I have said of my dear friend that he had a creed. His creed was love. He had a religion. His religion was kindness. He belonged to the church — the church of the common brotherhood of man. With all the changes that came to his definitions and formulas he never lost from his heart of hearts the reverence for sacred things learned in childhood and inherited from a sturdy Puritan ancestry. From that deep store of love and faith and reverence sprang the streams of his happy songs and ever was he putting into his tender verses those ideas of the living God, the blessed Christ, the ministering angels of immortal love, the happiness of heaven, which were instilled into his heart when a boy."

26

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

The Jones mills at North Amherst produced material wealth, but the Jones home on Amity Street, where pre- sided Mary Hubbard Field Jones and her daughter, Mary Field French, opened its doors to the orphan boy from the wild West and so trained his passions wild and strong and so shaped his eccentric genius that he became the sweet singer of the nineteenth century whose songs still make music in the heart of humanity.

Dr. James Tufts, who in his famous academy at Mon- son prepared Eugene Field for college, bears this testi- mony which explains much :

"Mary Field French, a daughter of Mrs. Jones by her first husband, was a lady of strong mind, and much culture, with a sound judgment and decision of char- acter and very gracious manners. She was always sociable and agreeable and so admirably adapted to the charge of the two brothers. Here in this charming home, under the best New England influences and religious instruction, with nothing harsh or repulsive, the boys could not have found a more congenial home. Indeed few mothers are able or even capable of doing so much for their own children as Miss French did for these two brothers, watching over them incessantly, yet not spoil- ing them by weak indulgence or repelling them by harsh discipline."

Such was the home life in which the bov Samuel Minot Jones shared and which was a potent factor in shaping his character. If Mrs. Jones did so much for the Field bovs what must she have done for her own son ? And if Mary Field French accomplished so much for her cousins, surely she must have been an inspiration to her

27

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

brother Samuel, who was eleven years younger than herself.

But the Jones home was only one of many other similar homes in Amherst. At the present time the influence of many parents over their own children is greatly hindered by the conflicting customs and fashions of neighboring families. But seventy years ago the best families in Amherst were united in their common ideas and practices concerning the education and train- ing of the young.

Professor John W. Burgess, who came to Amherst from eastern Tennessee during the Civil War, found this Massachusetts village with its peace, beauty and charming homes to be for him a Garden of Eden in con- trast with his own Southern home, which had been harried first by the Confederate and then by the Union armies. He became a member of the Jones family and finally the husband of Augusta Jones, Samuel's own sister. "I think," he states in a recent letter, "it would be too much to say that the Jones home on Amity Street was the center of the social life of Amherst. It was certainly a center, but Amherst social life was on a very high plane between 1864 and 1879, the period when I knew it. In fact, it was almost brilliant. The homes of the Stearns, the Seelyes, the Tuckermans, the Dick- insons, the Tylers, the Boltwoods and Clarks were equally delightful social centers."

The home of the Tylers is one especially worthy of mention, for in it were reared four boys, Mason, Henry, William and John, under conditions very much like those which prevailed in the Jones family. They lived in a home in Oak Grove adjoining the Sweetser house,

28

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

which was the model for the Jones mansion. All these became men of distinction, one a soldier and a lawyer, two professors and the other a manufacturer. The Tyler house was placed upon the summit of the hill, the view from which, similar to that from the Jones house, is thus described by Professor Henry M. Tyler of Smith College :

"There were naturally many beautiful glimpses of scenery to be obtained from different points on the piazza. The view toward the northwest was peculiarly fine. You could look out over the rich fields of the Connecticut Valley, with trees scattered here and there covered with freshest green in springtime, growing more sober as summer advanced, and then in autumn covering themselves with an indescribable variety of brilliant colors, as if Nature were bent upon proving that with all of the uniformity of her laws she could indulge in infinite changes of ornamentation. And over this fore- ground which seemed never twice to be the same the eye passed to the sloping hills on the other side of the river, dotted with white houses and nicked with smooth fields and rough woodlands, and rested beyond upon the heights which look down into the valley of the Deerfield. Strangers were taken to look out over that scene as one of the best treats of hospitality which could be offered them, and friends of the house took a last view of it ere they went away that they might carry its impression as a part of the remembrance of the house. It was a land- scape full of gentleness in the summer time. But in the winter from the wild snows of those same heights the wind came howling across the open fields never finding

29

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

an obstruction to check its onward rush until it struck the house upon the hill."

It was the fashion for Amherst boys to work. Con- tinuing his story of his youthful training, Professor Tyler says: "Both indoors and out the boys were taught to work. Regular duties were assigned to everyone and they were trained to do things in the proper way and at the proper time. Most of the time we had a horse, if not a horse and cow, and had to learn to take care of them. There was always something to be done on the place. When the hay was to be cut, a man was hired for the mowing and heavy work, but we all had our parts to perform, and so generally we were expected to do

what we could We learned to do our work

together We had our regular duties to perform,

but a fair allowance of time was alwavs left to us for play. We understood that the work had to be done."

The Tyler home was a place where many guests were entertained whose influence for good was a large factor in the education of the boys, giving them an outlook on life. The story continues : "There was in fact a continu- ous procession of pleasant people going in and out from the house and helping to dispel the atmosphere of drudgery and hardship which might be in danger of gathering there. The house might well be said, I think,

to be given to hospitality To ministers and

teachers the house was always open, so that their visits were more frequent than those of relatives. But above all others, missionaries were counted welcome. It would have been reckoned a misfortune not to have them come. .... The social life of those days had some decided advantages. There was less of conventionality than

30

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

now, but more time and better opportunity for making

lasting friendships The social life of Amherst

half a century ago had some features of rare attractive- ness It was at the annual commencement season

that Amherst reached the climax of its social advan- tages The strangers and friends who were thus

brought to the house left in it an influence of culture and grace, an atmosphere of thought worth more than if it had been an abode of wealth."

In the making of men the influence of such Amherst homes was a prime factor. How the thought of such a home influenced Mason W. Tyler and kept him sane and sound when a soldier may be learned from these words from his letter to his parents written November 15, 1863, from Brandy Station, Virginia: "I have man- aged to get time enough to write my Sunday letter. I have managed to read the Independent and Congrega- tionalist at odd spells while waiting for things to progress and standing over the fire drying myself. Last night at sundown, the real old Saturday night feeling came over me and I lay in my tent a good share of the evening thinking in the dark while outside it was rain- ing hard. I thought of you gathered around your cheer- ful fireside, and with your work all laid aside for the pleasant Sunday, books and papers in each and all of your hands. I could see you perfectly. I thought you looked very comfortable. I only wished I could step in on you for a moment."

With such thoughts of home the boy, even in the midst of the wild temptations of civil war, could not go wrong. Another letter home tells of his reading "Old Curiosity Shop" and "The Last Days of Pompeii." "The fact

31

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

is," he writes, "I sit in my tent and read the most of the day except when I am occupied with my camp duties." "While out on picket I read Bulwer Lytton's 'Rienzi.' " At Winchester he read Haynes' and Web- ster's great speeches and wrote home: "I have had a very pleasant Sabbath today. In fact the privilege that we have here of spending a Christian Sabbath in some- thing like a Christian neighborhood is more like home than any military experience we have previously had. The Chaplain has a regimental service in the afternoon and in the morning I usually attend church in the city and the rest of the day the quiet of my own room affords me a place for reading, meditation and praj^er. The quiet is as marked here Sunday as in our own New Eng- land village."

Entering the army as Second Lieutenant, Mason W. Tyler was discharged with the rank of Brevet Colonel after a brilliant service. His army life instead of un- dermining his physical strength and moral character developed both, so that when he entered New York city life he was master of himself and circumstances and won both fame and fortune as a leading lawyer and public- spirited citizen. How much his success was due to his Amherst home may be inferred from these words quoted from his recollections :

"My three brothers and I worked the garden in summer, which composed nearly an acre of ground, raised vegetables and fruit, harvested the hay, took care of a horse, a cow and the chickens, sawed the wood and piled it, and at all seasons carried it by armfuls into the house until the wood-boxes were filled, built and fed the fires, and if occasion required helped about the cooking,

32

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

the bed making, the dish washing, and the other domestic employments. Many hands made light work, and we were adepts in the art of despatching work. Our hours for play were short but they were appreciated and made the most of.

"Of course the college attracted a great many dis- tinguished strangers and visitors from all parts of the world and as accommodations at the hotels were very uncomfortable, such persons were generally entertained by some member of the college faculty, who in such cases exercised a very simple but charming hospitality. I have seen under my father's roof and at his table governors of states, United States senators and mem- bers of the House of Representatives, justices of the courts, foreign ministers, distinguished preachers, ora- tors and teachers from my own country and from foreign lands, and professors connected with foreign universities altogether too numerous to mention."

Mason Tyler was less than four years younger than Samuel Minot Jones so that his description of a typical Amherst home gives one a good idea of what the Jones home and the environing circumstances must have been. Mason Tyler thus describes the Amherst of his boyhood: "I was born June 17, 1840, at Amherst, Massachusetts. It would be hard to find a more quiet and peaceful hamlet of twenty-five hundred inhabitants than Amherst was in my boyhood days. There was not a public bar nor a drinking saloon in town. There was not a man in town worth one hundred thousand dollars. They mostly owned the houses they lived in. No family had more than one servant; most of them not any servants. One of the principal industries of the place

33

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

was furnishing board to students of the college. There were few wealthy students. Many of the students were working their way through college to become ministers or missionaries. The price of board ranged from seventy-five cents to two dollars and a quarter a week."

Amherst schools were a factor of prime value in the environment added to home training which developed and molded the character of Samuel Minot Jones. When Noah Webster sold his house in New Haven, Connecticut, and came to Amherst to complete his dic- tionary, the work of his life, he found the schools little better than those of the average New England country town. He found the Amherst public school to be as his daughter thus describes it: "I remember well the forlorn, unpainted, unshaded building on one side of the village green. There was an entry way where hats and cloaks were kept and then one large room with an open fire- place at each end, and in winter full of green logs with the sap oozing out of them. Two or three rows of hard benches with desks before them were on each side and a tall desk in the center of the room was for the teacher. There were no maps or pictures of any kind — no maps or equipments for the assistance of the teacher, but I remember that the children were happy and anxious to learn."

But Webster, being a graduate of Yale College and a scholar and writer of national and international fame, had, his granddaughter declares, "a passion for educa- tion, and the fire of his enthusiasm helped to kindle the desires of the townspeople. He talked in private, he harangued in public, he showed the advantage and he pressed the necessity of it. Moreover, he gave his own

34

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

daughters a far longer and higher course of study than was then customary. Indeed, he felt the need of this more advanced school in educating his younger chil- dren."

As a result of this agitation started by Webster, which was continued for a generation, we find in Amherst greatly improved public schools. From an examination of school reports we learn that the children were taught both to think and to behave themselves. R. L. Parsons, who won the approbation of the school board, taught the winter school. "From the outset," the committee re- ported, "there was a constant improvement in the order of the school and in the behavior of the children. Even when at play in the school yard, they studiously avoided disturbing the neighbors, and Mr. Parsons was attentive to the cultivation of good manners. At the close of each day's session the scholars passed out of the school room with a courtesy or bow to their teacher which was always returned. Absence of rudeness and the presence of easy, graceful manners characterized the school. The studies included arithmetic, history, physiology, analysis and geography. Much attention also was given to writ- ing and spelling."

One cause of the excellence of the Amherst schools is thus revealed by the school report of 1853: "Your com- mittee attribute the uniform success of the public schools under Providence to the superior teachers employed. These were selected with particular reference to their past experience, tact in government and literary attain- ments. Other qualifications being equal, one who could sing was preferred. Singing has been an occasional exercise in every school. Females were selected gen-

35

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

erally on account of their superior ability to govern and educate children, and because their wages are about fifty per cent less than those of male teachers. The continu- ance of an excellent teacher in the same school for suc- cessive terms was always secured when possible." This committee was guided in its action by the advice of Horace Mann and Dr. Sears, secretary of the state board of education.

Another cause of the excellence of the Amherst public schools was the success of Amherst Academy, which was founded largely through the influence of Noah Webster.

Mrs. Jones, a daughter of Noah Webster, who re- ceived her education chiefly within its walls, thus de- scribes it: "The school became a favorite with the public, its teachers were Christian gentlemen, and entirely com- petent for the places they filled, and the lady teachers were refined, gentle and cultivated, and exerted a beau- tiful influence on their pupils." Mrs. Ford says: "The school opened with a large number of students and attracted pupils from every part of New England. It had at one time as many as ninety pupils in the ladies' department and quite as many more in the gentlemen's." "It was," says Professor W. S. Tyler, "the Williston Seminary and the Mount Holyoke of that day com- bined."

Among the pupils in Amherst Academy were Mary Lyon, the girl from Buckland who afterwards founded Mount Holyoke Seminary; Abby Maria Wood, niece of Luke Sweetser, who lived with him in Oak Grove and who afterwards became the wife of Dr. Daniel Bliss, the founder of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, Syria, giving her useful life to the service of

36

, r.-SlO%

Amherst Academy

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

Syrian boys and girls; Helen Fiske, afterwards known as Helen Hunt Jackson, whose writings signed "H. H." were famous; and Emily Dickinson, the unique genius whose posthumous poems and letters, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, twenty-five years ago charmed many readers and made a sensation in the literary world.

Emily Dickinson, when a girl of fourteen, wrote a letter in which she thus describes the school: "Viny and I both go to school this term. We have a very fine school. There are sixty-three scholars. I have four studies. They are Mental Philosophy, Geology, Latin and Botany. How large they sound, don't they? I

don't believe you have such big studies I have

written one composition this term, and I need not assure you it was exceedingly edifying to myself as well as everybody else We are obliged to write com- positions once in a fortnight, and select a piece to read from some interesting book the week we don't write compositions. We really have some charming young women in school this term I never enjoyed my- self more than I have this summer ; for we have had such a delightful school and such pleasant teachers. Our

examination is to come off next week on Monday

I am already gasping in view of our examination and although I am determined not to dread it I know it is so foolish, yet in spite of my heroic resolution I cannot avoid a few misgivings when I think of those tall, stern trustees, and when I know that I shall lose mv character if I don't recite as precisely as the laws of the Medes and Persians. But what matter will that be a hundred vears hence ? . . . . Have you heard anything from Miss Adams, our dear teacher? How much I would give to see her."

37

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

March 15, 1847, she again writes of her school: "I go this term and am studying Algebra, Euclid, Ecclesiasti- cal History, and reviewing Arithmetic again to be upon the safe side of things next autumn. We have a de- lightful school this term under the instruction of our former principals, and Miss R. Woodbridge, daughter of Reverend Dr. W. of Hadley, for preceptress. We all love her very much. Perhaps a slight description of her might be interesting to my dear A. She is tall and rather slender, but finely proportioned, has a most witch- ing pair of blue eyes, rich brown hair, delicate com- plexion, cheeks that vie with the opening rose-bud, teeth like pearls, dimples which come and go like the ripples in yonder little merry brook, and then she is so affec- tionate and lovely. Forgive my glowing description, for you know I am always in love with my teachers."

Another picture of life in the old Amherst Academy is given by Mrs. Gordon L. Ford (Emily Ellsworth Fowler Ford), daughter of Professor Fowler of Am- herst College. She wrote as follows :

"There was a fine circle of young people in Amherst, and we influenced each other strongly. We were in the adoring mood and I am glad to say that many of these idols of our girlhood have proved themselves golden. The eight girls who composed this group had talent enough for twice their number, and in their respective spheres of mothers, authors, or women, have been note- worthy and admirable.

"This group started a little paper in the Academy which was kept up for two years. Emily Dickinson was one of the wits of the school and a humorist of the 'comic column.' Fanny Montague often made the head

38

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

title of the paper — Forest Leaves — in leaves copied from nature and fantasies of her own pen work. She is now a wise member of art circles in Baltimore, a man- ager of the Museum of Art, and the appointed and in- telligent critic of the Japanese Exhibit in Chicago. Helen Fiske (the 'H. H.' of later days) did no special work on the paper for various reasons. This paper was all in script, and was passed around the school, where the contributions were easily recognized from the hand- writing which in Emily's case was very beautiful — small, clear, and finished. We had a Shakespeare Club — a rare thing in those days. There were many little dances, with cake and lemonade at the end, and one year there was a valentine party, where the lines of various authors were arranged to make apparent sense, but absolute nonsense, the play being to guess the names and places of the misappropriated lines. Emily was part and parcel of all these gatherings. Several of this group had beauty, all had intelligence and character, and others had charm. My busy married life separated me from these friends of my youth, and intercourse with them has not been frequent; but I rejoice that my early years were passed in scenes of beautiful nature, and with these mates of simple life, high cultivation and noble ideals." Such was Amherst Academy in the days of its glory, as seen through the eyes of the girls who were among its pupils. Professor W. S. Tyler, quoting the words of an eyewitness, records these facts concerning this famous school: "Under the government and instruction of such superior teachers the academy obtained a reputa- tion second to none in the State On Wednesday

afternoons all the scholars assembled in the upper hall

39

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

for reviews, declamations, compositions and exercises in reading in which both gentlemen and ladies partici- pated. Spectators were admitted and were often pres- ent in large numbers, among whom Dr. Parsons and Mr. Webster, president and vice-president of the board of trustees, might usually be seen, and often the lawyers, physicians and other educated men of the place. Not unfrequently gentlemen from out of town were present, including Dr. Packard, who early became a trustee, and was much interested in the prosperity of the institution. Once a vear at the close of the fall term in October, the old meeting house was fitted up with a stage and, strange to tell, in the staid town of Amherst where danc- ing was tabooed and cards never dared show themselves, reverend divines went with lawyers and doctors to the house of God to witness a theatrical exhibition."

A valuable library was provided for the use of the pupils. All were expected to take part in the weekly Bible lesson and all attended morning and evening prayers in the Academy hall and public worship in one of the churches on the Sabbath. There was a weekly literary society connected with the Academy. Scholars from out of town could get a room for fifty cents a week and board for $1.17. Pupils could attend college lec- tures without charge.

Thomas Jones served on the board of trustees of this Academy from 1841 to his death in 18.53 and sent his children to it to be educated. Thomas Jones, Jr., at- tended this school in 1842, 1843, 1847 and 1848; Mary French was a pupil in the French class. Samuel Minot Jones attended this school in 1847, 1849, 18.50 and 1851 and probably previous to 1847. Other Amherst pupils

40

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

were Charles H. Hitchcock, son of President Hitchcock of Amherst College, Charles U. Boltwood, Laura Emerson, Lavinia Dickinson, Henry Hills, M. Fayette Dickinson, Mason Tyler, Mary B. Snell and Emily Dickinson. Samuel M. Jones took part in the exhibi- tion held August 10, 1847, when he was eleven years old and declaimed Everett's oration. In 1849 he took part in a farce adapted from Charles Lamb.

The Academy building was for its time an imposing structure, devoid of ornament and planned for utility. It was a marvelous schoolhouse in comparison with the old district schoolhouse on Pleasant Street which Noah Webster found on his first arrival in Amherst. It stood in the center of a half-acre lot on Amity Street. It was a three-story building with a basement. It was fifty feet long and thirty-eight feet wide and contained recita- tion rooms, an apartment for a family, with a kitchen, and an assembly hall. The family superintended the building and kept a boarding house in the early years of the institution, but afterwards the building was de- voted wholly to school purposes. Amherst Academy was the nucleus out of which Amherst College was developed.

In this school Samuel Minot Jones was fitted for col- lege and received that thorough instruction and train- ing from his teachers which prepared him for practical life. The culture was intensive and yet broad enough to give him an outlook into the world. The frequent reviews and public oral examinations fixed what he learned in his mind, making it entirely his own for future use. His compositions and declamations taught him to express what he thought in the presence of others so that

41

SAMUEL MINOT JONES

they could get his ideas and feel his influence. By asso- ciating with scholars older than himself, both young men and young women, coming from distant parts of the state and country and actuated by a serious purpose, he gained self-control, self-reliance and self-direction.

The death of his father when Samuel Minot Jones was seventeen years of age changed the boy's plans. He would not consent to be dependent upon his mother for his support and therefore did not enter Amherst College but went to work in the country store of Sweetser, Cutler & Company, dealers in general merchandise. Here one could buy blue and green flannel reefing jackets, all kinds of clothing, dress goods, china, buffalo robes and ladies' furs. Groceries, paints, glass and hardware were offered at the lowest prices.

As in former times young men learned to be ministers of the gospel by studying divinity with settled pastors, boys learned to be doctors by studying with practicing physicians and helping them mix medicines in a mortar, and bright scholars studied law in the office of a noted judge where they learned not only principles from Blackstone but practical details of the profession by making out legal papers, so, as there were no business colleges available in his day, Samuel Minot Jones be- came a clerk and utility man in the village store. Here was the town forum where leading citizens gathered to pass the time of day and discuss questions of moment. Here farmers brought their produce from adjacent towns. Here women and girls came to do their shop- ping. Tea and coffee and spices from the East Indies, cashmere and fine fabrics from Europe, satinets and calicoes from American mills, led one's mind to think of

42

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BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

distant places and of a big world. Human nature dis- played itself between traders. Mercantile bookkeep- ing required accuracy and patience. Most customers had accounts which they settled at least once a year.

Today in a large department store the division of labor is so great that any one clerk or employee can learn only a small part of the business. She sells gloves, it may be, and nothing else. He measures calico by the yard and that is all. But in the old-fashioned country store the boy learned the whole business, dry goods, boots and shoes, groceries, hardware. He swept the floor, built the fires, delivered parcels, sold goods, kept accounts, studied human nature. He worked early and late with hands and feet, with tongue and brains.

Sweetser & Cutler's store was a town institution. In it George Cutler learned the business in his boyhood and continued his interest in it until his death at the age of ninety-six. His son, George Cutler, Jr., followed him in the same course. In it many of the leading busi- ness men of Amherst and other towns served their apprenticeship. One generation after another has passed, but the business is still continued at the old stand and conducted along similar lines.

In addition to the training provided by home and school and country store the influence of the village church was potent in giving decision of character to young Jones and in fitting him to accept responsibilities of life and to keep steadfastly in pursuit of the end of his being as duty pointed out the path.

Thomas Jones had a pew in the village church and that it was considered an asset of real value may be inferred from the following advertisement which ap-

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SAMUEL MINOT JONES

peared in the Hampshire and Franklin Express: "Pew for sale. Pew No. 15. Pleasantly situated near the center of Rev. Mr. Dwight's church on the south side of the middle aisle and in front of the pew of the late Thomas Jones." Rev. Edward S. Dwight, D.D., was pastor of the church from August 21, 1853, to August 28, 1860. He was a graduate of Yale College, and for many years secretary of the Amherst College board of trustees. He was a refined, scholarly gentleman of the old school. He succeeded Aaron M. Colton, who was pastor thirteen years, from 1840 to 1853, which com- prised most of the boyhood of Samuel Minot Jones.

This village church of the Congregational denomina- tion was the dominant institution in the town. Its or- ganization preceded by twenty years that of the town itself. The third meeting house was built in 1829 and was used until 1868, when it became the property of Amherst College. In this meeting house members of the family of Thomas Jones were regular attendants. Music was provided by a choir seated in the gallery. A bass viol, a flute and other instruments were in use be- fore an organ was secured. In 1832 stoves were allowed to be placed in the meeting house and in 1857 a chande- lier and lamps were used for lighting. The students of the Academy had seats in the gallery. The church prayer meeting was considered by young men preparing for the ministry as a school as well as a place for devo- tion. Mr. Colton's pulpit, as described by himself, was "of pine wood, narrow, doored and achingly plain. Man up there had to look well to his elbows in essaying a gesture. High and closed against all assaults; but so were the old Bastile towers in which prisoners were

44

The Meeting House

BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

immured." Its height, however, enabled the preacher to face his hearers in the galleries as well as the congre- gation below his desk. But when Sam Jones was a boy six years old a new pulpit, bought in Boston, replaced the old one. In later years Pastor Colton said, "Per- haps the parish has never since been stronger as to number, character, wealth and standing of chief men." These included lawyers, doctors, merchants, clergymen, teachers, an editor, bankers, the postmaster, manufac- turers and a score or more of leading citizens. Evening meetings were held in the Academy to save lighting the church. The pastor preached two sermons on fast days and two sermons on communion Sabbaths, when the sacrament was administered during the noon hour, and a prayer meeting was held the same evening.

During Mr. Colton's ministry there were three re- vivals, in 1841, 1843 and 1850. The last one began in January and continued until August. There were 150 conversions and 68 converts joined the church in one day, August 11. The spiritual awakening was greatly aug- mented by the temperance revival which accompanied it. The story as told by Pastor Colton at the 150th anniver- sary of the church in 1889 is as follows:

"Early in January, 1850, the prayer meetings were notably fuller and more solemn. A cloud of mercy seemed to hang over us and ready to drop down fatness. Days and weeks passed, but no conversions. What was the hindrance? Once and again the church standing committee — the Deacons — met in the pastor's study to talk and pray over this question. Oppressing fear was felt, lest our dawn should shut down in darkness. The trouble, we came to believe, was in the rum places in the

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village with fires of hell in full blast. What could be done? My counselors did wisely in advising prudence, for we were told the rum men were desperate. Kind words had been used, but availed nothing. You can imagine a pastor's anxieties in such an emergency. March meeting was close by. I drew up two articles and obtained five signatures asking for their insertion in the warrant : First, to see if it be the wish of the town of Amherst that places be kept open here for the sale of intoxicating drinks in violation of law; and, second, to see if the town will authorize and instruct their selectmen to close such places, if such there be in the town. I went to Lieutenant Dickinson of the South Parish, and Judge Conkey of the East, and Daniel Dickinson of the North, and President Hitchcock of the College. They all promised to give a helping word, Dr. Hitchcock to speak last. The meeting came. Sweetser's Hall was crowded to the stairs. There was much excitement. A man from South Amherst moved that the articles be dis- missed. This was voted down. Then the main question, and now the speaking as pre-arranged — Dr. Hitchcock closing — and a more affecting and effective appeal than his I have never heard. He said in substance: 'The people of Amherst are aware that I have not been in the habit of meddling in the affairs of the town. I feel that the interests of myself and family are safe in the care of the town, and I am confident that the good people here who have done so nobly for the College will not allow the institution to suffer injuries from evil causes among us'; and then with an emphasis that fairly choked his utterance he added : 'But it were better that the Col- lege should go down, than that young men should come

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BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

here to be ruined by drink places among us.' Then the voting — 400 hands shot up for abating the nuisances — so it was said. Contrary minds — just one hand, and one only and alone. The next morning at ten o'clock the selectmen went to these rum resorts and shut them up. 'Then the heavens gave rain and there was a great refreshing.' "

Professor W. S. Tyler at the 150th anniversary of the church bore this testimony to the important place it held in the community :

"As historian of Amherst College I ought to know something of the origin and history of these (educa- tional ) institutions. And I have no hesitation in saying that the officers and members of this church were the founders of Amherst Academy and Amherst College, and inasmuch as the Agricultural College was the daughter of Amherst College, this church is the mother of them all.

"Amherst College was founded . . . . by a single

local church The ministers and members of this

church took the lead. They bore the burden. They did the work. They gave the money to begin the work. They poured it out like water when money was scarce, when ten dollars was worth as much as a hundred is now, when it was more difficult to get ten dollars for a college than it is to get a thousand now. None of them was rich. Some of them literally made themselves poor by their liberal giving."

Noah Webster wrote the constitution of the First Church Sundav school and was the chairman of the board of managers. Joseph Estabrook, the first pro- fessor of Greek and Latin in the College, was the first

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SAMUEL MINOT JONES

superintendent of the first Sunday school in Amherst. Many of the teachers were college students. "Henry Ward Beecher," Professor Tyler continues, "then a senior in college, was the inspiring teacher of a large class of young men, when I was superintendent. The great revival of 1831, which was equally powerful in the Col- lege and the village, originated in the Sabbath School concert."

"Witness," says Professor Tyler, "the generous sub- scription to the building and the books of the library of Amherst College which, beginning as such subscriptions usually do, in the First Church and parish of Amherst, extended to the other parishes of this and several neigh- boring towns, gave the College not only a new library building but a new epoch in its general prosperity."

The First Church bell came from the foundry of Paul Revere. When that was worn out others took its place. The church bell not only tolled for the dead, one stroke for each year of age of the deceased, but it rang daily at noon for the dinner hour and at nine o'clock each night the curfew rang the hour for retiring. Its peals on Sab- bath day called the people to worship, when as a matter of course young and old, boys and girls, went to church.

Eugene Field, with his erratic genius, when a boy chafed under the strict discipline of the Jones family and the Puritan spirit of Amherst which compelled his attendance at the meeting house on the hill, where, ac- companied by George Cutler's flute and the bass viol played by Josiah Ayres and the strident notes of the violin, the choir and congregation sang "That awful day will surely come," and "That last great day of woe and doom," and "Broad is the way that leads to death." To

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BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION

him and other kindred spirits the Sabbath often seemed to be a veritable day of judgment. In his later years Eugene Field spoke humorously of those all-day ses- sions in church and Sunday school, so his biographer declares, "though he never failed to acknowledge the benefits he had derived from the enforced study of the Bible." "If I could be grateful to New England for nothing else," the poet declared, "I shall bless her for- ever for pounding me with the Bible and the spelling book."

The observance of Sunday, which began at sundown on Saturday and closed at sundown on Sunday, the evening and the morning comprising the first day, was enforced not only by the church but by the town as well.

In July, 1845, a circus was advertised to give two per- formances on Saturday afternoon and evening. There were to appear "a melodious brass band and female equestrians." There was little protest against the after- noon performance, but to permit a circus to exhibit Saturday night was to desecrate the Sabbath. The whole town became excited. The selectmen were called to account for permitting such a desecration of sacred time. They in their own defense declared that they had issued a license for the afternoon only and that the pro- posed evening exhibition was unauthorized. A special courier was, therefore, sent posthaste to Worcester bear- ing the town's ultimatum to the circus managers that no exhibition should be given in the evening and that if they were not satisfied with one performance only, in the afternoon, they must give none.

During the boyhood of Samuel Minot Jones, the Puritan home, the schools, the business organizations,

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SAMUEL MINOT JONES

the college, the church and the town were united. These were all factors of a homogeneous community cooperat- ing for the general welfare and for the education and training of the individuals of the rising generation. The social, intellectual, moral and religious atmosphere was all-pervasive and most powerful in its influence over the boy in his infancy and during the period of adolescence. The traits inherited from his forefathers were strength- ened in the growth of Sam Jones and so molded as to give him a character that fitted him for his future career. He learned the nobility of labor. He was brought up to work. Everybody worked, young and old, rich and poor, boys and girls. Labor was not the badge of a slave. Labor was divine. He was shown the value of intelligence. It was work intelligently planned and wisely executed that brought results worth the effort. In his large family of brothers and sisters he learned self-control and cooperation. The young folks worked together as they played together. Intelligence con- sisted not merely in memorizing ideas of other minds, but in the power to think for oneself, to discover the adaptation of means to ends. His father in his factories must look ahead and anticipate the demand of the market for his goods and then produce them by organiz- ing labor, applying it to raw material and producing what was fitted to supply human need. The Yankee farmer during the winter planned his next season's work; in spring, sowing seed to be harvested in autumn; in summer, preparing for the winter. Intelligence con- sisted in embodying the truth in such fashion as to be able to apply it to the practical affairs of life. The

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public schools, the Academy, the college, the Sunday school, combined to make him intelligent.

Sam Jones was taught the majesty of the law and reverence for law and order. The law of the family, the law of the factory, the law of the school, the law of the town, state and nation was not to be defied, ignored or evaded. It must be obeyed. License was not liberty. His declamation of Everett's oration and his studies in the Academy gave him an idea of the sacredness of law. The church and the Sunday school taught him the neces- sity of righteousness. The Ten Commandments re- vealed to him the meaning of two important phrases: "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not." They developed his conscience and strengthened his will. The sense of his own individual responsibility, involving self-control and self-direction, gave him the determination to think right, feel right, choose right, do right and be right. So at eighteen years of age we find Samuel Minot Jones trained to work intelligently, in accordance with the laws of nature, the laws of thought, the laws of the State, for righteous ends.

The death of Thomas Jones in 1853 changed the plans of his son, then seventeen years old. Although pre- pared for the college which was the pride of Amherst and which he might have attended while living at home, he nevertheless would not consent to be dependent upon his mother for support while spending four long years in study. He believed that it was his duty rather to sup- port her and help her maintain her position as head of the Jones mansion. He was ambitious for a business life. His half brothers, older than he, were already in the West located on the wide prairies of Illinois among

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SAMUEL MINOT JONES

other pioneers. So the young man of eighteen, no longer a boy, bade good-by to his mother and his sister Augusta, his schoolmates and many friends, and made the journey of a thousand miles to Chicago, then a growing city of 30,000 pioneers recently located on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan. A canal had been dug connecting the lake with the head of navigation on the Illinois River, which emptied into the Mississippi. Early settlers from New England had made their journey through the Erie Canal on packet boats, in which they could board themselves if they so desired, to Buffalo and thence by steamboats across Lake Erie, and perchance through Lakes Huron and Michigan. But in 1854 railroad connections had been made by the New York Central, the Lake Shore and the Michigan Southern. Other railroads made Chicago their center. Sam Jones found employment in the lumber office of James H. Ferry & Company, at the foot of Washington Street. Here he remained for two years. The contrast between his life in his Puritan home in Amherst, where he was protected from temptation on every side, and his life in the new city of Chicago, where were gathered to- gether on the western border men, women and children from all lands, each in the strenuous fight for money, for fame or for pleasure, was most remarkable. He was thrust into the midst of an entirely new world, his own master, where he could do as he pleased with no one to compel him to do this or to prohibit his doing that. But here his self-control, self-direction and dominant pur- pose to care for and please his mother, kept him from pitfalls on all sides, proved his salvation, and gave him final success.

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CHAPTER III THE SOLDIER IN THE CIVIL WAR

Samuel Minot Jones, after serving an apprenticeship in the city, went to Knoxville, Illinois, five miles from Galesburg, to be associated in the lumber business with his brother, William G. Jones. Later, about 1857, he went to Havana, the county seat of Mason County, located on the Illinois River, thirty-nine miles north- west of Springfield and midway between Chicago and St. Louis, Missouri. Here he was in business with his brother, Thomas Jones. Havana was the market not only for Mason County, but also for the rich farming communities on both sides of the river. Wood was found only along the rivers so that the dwellers on the prairies must trade their grain and dairy products for the lumber needed to construct their houses, barns and other buildings.

Here the Jones brothers, with their New England thrift and enterprise, were able to meet the demands of the pioneers who came not only from the Atlantic coast but also from Ohio and the South to seek their fortune on the fertile and cheap lands of the new commonwealth. The business of the firm prospered. The younger brother, Samuel Minot, became a man and he was fast realizing his dreams and achieving his plans to be the support of his widowed mother and his sisters in Am-

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herst, when the whole situation was changed by the out- break of the Civil War. Abe Lincoln, the Springfield lawyer, was elected President of the United States. The election of 1860 and the preceding events, including the debates between Lincoln and Douglas, created an at- mosphere in which all the inherited instincts for patriotic service and love of liberty in the soul of Samuel Minot Jones were aroused to action. His uncle, Roswell Martin Field, his mother's brother, won fame by his part in the trial of the Dred Scott case before the United States Supreme Court. The convention that nominated Lincoln was held in Chicago and Illinois was a pivotal state hotly contested in the election. It was from Springfield, only a few miles from Havana, that Lincoln started for Washington to run the gauntlet of assassins to assume his great responsibility.

Under such circumstances Samuel Minot Jones did not hesitate to give up his ambition for a business career and to subordinate his love of mother and of home to his love of country, and to consecrate his young man- hood to the service of freedom. He hastened to St. Louis at the beginning of the war and enlisted, July 9, 1861, aged twenty-five years, in the 9th Missouri Regi- ment, which afterwards became the 59th Illinois Regi- ment of Infantry. He was mustered in July 17, 1861, and commissioned bv the Governor of Missouri First Lieutenant and was assigned to Company A. He re- signed January 8, 1863, on account of severe illness re- sulting from a wound in his leg and an attack of typhoid fever, and was discharged on that date in Tennessee. During these eighteen months he shared in all the strenuous service of his regiment and was repeatedly

54

THE SOLDIER IN THE CIVIL WAR

cited for bravery and distinguished efficiency in critical emergencies.

The organization of the 9th Missouri Regiment, com- posed of stalwart, self-reliant pioneer citizens of Illinois and adjoining states, was completed September 18,1861, by Colonel John C. Kelton in St. Louis, Missouri. Three days later it was ordered to Jefferson City, and soon after was moved to Booneville and brigaded with the 37th Illinois, the 5th Iowa, the 1st Kansas and David- son's Battery of Illinois. Colonel J. C. Kelton com- manded the brigade and General John Pope the divi- sion. October 13 the regiment moved to Otterville and, later, to Springfield, Missouri. February 12, 1862, the regiment was changed to the 59th Illinois. Two days later, under the command of Major P. Sidney Post, it pursued the enemy to Cassville.

This regiment participated in the battles of Pea Ridge, Corinth, Perryville, Knox Gap, Liberty Gap, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Mission Ridge, Resica, Cassville, Dallas, Rockyface Ridge, Kenesaw Mountain, Smyrna Station, Atlanta, Love joy Station, Franklin and Nashville. It marched through Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Ten- nessee, enduring hardships innumerable in all kinds of weather.

The two memorable battles in which Lieutenant S. M. Jones took part were at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and at Stone River, Tennessee. The battle at Pea Ridge in the Ozark Mountains, in the northwest corner of Arkan- sas, occurring early in the war and resulting in a notable victory for the Union forces, did much to encourage the

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North and to make the South realize the nature of the struggle upon which it had entered.

The Union forces had been lured far from their base at Springfield, Missouri, into the mountains, just where the Confederate generals had set a trap for them. Van Dorn, McCulloch, Price and Mcintosh coming from different points concentrated their forces with a regi- ment of Indians under Pike and Ross so that their com- bined armies numbered about 75,000, or three times that of the Union forces. Their plans were skillfully laid to throw a strong force between the Union army and its line of communication with the base at Springfield, so as to surround it completely and ensure its capture. These plans succeeded so far that General Price threw his strong force in the rear of the Union army before its generals were aware of the fact. Why the South's hope of victory, so nearly attained, was suddenly turned into an ignominious defeat is explained by this interesting letter written on the battlefield by Lieutenant Jones and sent to his brother :

In camp on Sugar Creek, Ark., March 16, 1862. My Dear Brother :

You have doubtless seen e'er this will reach you the full particulars of our great fight and as I do not feel in a writing mood I shall not go into details, but merely state a few facts to you which will be likely to be kept in the dark by those in high position. Our whole army fell back some fifteen miles from the advance we first made and on the bluff of Sugar Creek made preparations to receive the enemy, if he advanced, and, if we found they were in too heavy force for us, we had the way open to fall back. Imagine our surprise when on the morning of the 7th of March at about 10 o'clock it was found the enemy

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had thrown their whole force into our rear and on our right. The truth is we had been entirely outgeneraled and were forced to fight a vastly superior force and to whip them or surrender. By a train of circumstances which seem little less than miracu- lous and the unflinching valor of our troops, we accomplished the former against odds of three to one. What I consider gained the day for us was the killing of McCulloch and Mcin- tosh the afternoon of the first day by our Brigade in its en- counter with their forces and the Indians under Pike and Ross. When they were killed, their troops were thrown into confusion and their reserve which amounted to some thousands failed to come up, leaving our boys victors. Meanwhile Price had been fighting Carr directly in our rear and had been gaining ground all day, having taken three of our cannon. So the first day closed. Our boys bivouacked on the field they had so dearly won. Towards morning it was found that the forces our Division had met and routed had left their portion of the field (since ascertained that discouraged by the loss of their generals they had all retreated in the night) leaving us Van Dorn and Price to fight the next day with our whole force which we did and after a hard fight of four hours completely whipped them at all points. Had we been obliged to fight their whole combined army the second day we should have had a terribly tough time of it.

Lieutenant Jones' reference to the Indians needs to be explained by this communication from General Curtis:

Head Quarters Army of South West, Pea Ridge, Ark.,

Mar. 9, 1862. Earl Van Dorn,

Commander Confederate Forces :

The general regrets that we find on the battlefield, con- trary to civilized warfare, many of the Federal dead who were

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tomahawked, scalped and their bodies shamelessly mangled, and expresses a hope that this important struggle may not degenerate into a savage warfare.

By order,

Brig. Gen'l S. R. Curtis.

How the victory was appreciated by the country may be inferred from these despatches :

Hdquarters Dpt of the Missouri St. Louis, Mar. 10, 1862. Brigadier-Gen'l Curtis,

Commanding in Arkansas.

I congratulate you and your command on the glorious victory just gained. You have proved yourselves as brave in battle as enduring of fatigue and hardship. A grateful coun- try will honor you for both.

H. W. Halleck,

Major General.

Hdquarters Dpt of the Missouri St. Louis, Mar. 10, 1862.

The Army of the Southwest under Gen'l Curtis, after three days' hard fighting near Sugar Creek, Arkansas, has gained a most glorious victory over the combined forces of Van Dorn, McCulloch, Price and Mcintosh. Our loss in killed and wounded estimated at 1000; that of the enemy still larger. Guns, flags, provisions, etc., captured in large quantities. Our cavalry in pursuit of the flying enemy.

H. W. Halleck,

Major General. Major Gen'l McClellan, Washington.

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The experience of Samuel Minot Jones as a business man was discovered soon after his enlistment and he was detailed from company duty to serve as brigade quartermaster. With the army so far from its base, the question of food, clothing and other supplies for men fighting continuously for three days and sleeping on their arms in the open field in the mountains, was of momentous importance. But he was the man for the hour and ready for the emergency. He seldom spoke of his part in the battle. His sensitive nature shrank from the bloody scenes enacted about him when, fighting for their lives and for their country, surrounded by forces three times as large as their own, those western stalwart pioneers, attacked by savages with tomahawk and scalp- ing knives, cut their way out and put the enemy to flight. But how well he played his part may be learned from official reports.

Colonel Julius White, commanding 2d Brigade, in his report to General J. C. Davis, 3d Division, of the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, March 11, 1862, says: "Brigade Quartermaster S. M. Jones and Brigade Commissary A. D. Baker have during the three days of the enemy's presence discharged their duties promptly and efficiently; their several departments, so essential to the welfare of the troops, having always been in order."

After this victory at Sugar Creek the regiment re- sumed its travels. Post was made its Colonel April 1, 1862. May 20 the regiment reached Hamburg Land- ing, Tennessee. Eight days later it joined General Pope's reserve. After the evacuation of Corinth the regiment pursued the enemy to Booneville and then

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marched to Ripley, Missouri. It participated in the skirmish at Bay Springs, Missouri, August 5, and on the eighth reached Iuka. August 18 the Tennessee River was crossed at Eastport and the regiment en- camped at Waterloo with Post commanding the brigade and General Robert B. Mitchell commander of the division. The regiment reached Florence, Alabama, August 24, and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, September 1.

The next march, September 3 to 26, ended in Louis- ville, Kentucky, with General Buell. A new campaign started in October in pursuit of General Bragg's forces to Bardstown and on the seventh the enemy was over- taken at Chaplain Hills near Perryville. The following day there was a battle in which 113 men out of 361 were killed or wounded. Pursuit of the enemy was resumed on the tenth of October and four days later there was a fight at Lancaster, Kentucky. Nashville, Tennessee, was reached November 7.

Here seven weeks were spent in preparation for the winter campaign under General Rosecrans, command- ing the Army of the Cumberland. The day after Christmas, 1862, the regiment drove the enemy until found in force at Nolensville, where after a fight the Confederates retreated in confusion. Knob Gap was attacked December 27 and the enemy driven out to Triune. Here the 59th Regiment rested for two days before marching to Murfreesboro, where it lay within a few hundred yards of the enemy's works. Early on the thirty-first the enemy, adopting the same plan as that which so nearly succeeded at Pea Ridge, surprised Rosecrans by throwing a strong body of troops in the

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rear of the Union Army. The right flank of the 20th Corps was turned so that the 59th Regiment was obliged to change front and face to the rear. Here, supported by the 5th Wisconsin Battery, it held the enemy for a long time and brought off the battery, whose horses were killed. As before, some one had blundered and only the dogged determination of those Western veterans saved the day. General McCook's right wing was routed. The enemy following up attacked Davis' division and speedily dislodged Post's brigade, including the 59th Regiment.

The story, as told in the report of Colonel P. Sidney Post, commanding the 1st Brigade, follows:

"Dec. 26, Men after fighting in rain bivouacked on the field. Dec. 27, marched in rain in rear of Colonel Carlin's regiment nearly to Triune. Dec. 29, marched in rear of Colonel Woodruff's brigade toward Murfrees- boro. Dec. 30, the 59th in reserve to support battery. Afternoon attacked by Rebel battery, enemy in strong force. During the night men lay down without fires or shelter. Dec. 31, awakened in morning and stood in order of battle one hour before the first light of dawn. Horses stood by the battery all night.

"As soon as it became light the enemy were dis- covered moving in great numbers toward our right and nearly parallel with our line with the evident design of turning the right wing of the army. I immediately despatched Lieut. Jones of my staff to inform Brigadier General Davis."

After the battle of Pea Ridge the services of Samuel Minot Jones attracted the attention of his superiors so

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that he was made Adjutant. That was a memorable ride of his, after the days and nights of terrible conflict with the enemy and the elements, in the early morning to report at headquarters the serious turn of the battle. Reinforcements were needed badly and needed at once, but the appeal did not produce the desired results. Gen- eral Rosecrans would not believe that the enemy could circumvent him. It was not in his plan. He imagined that General McCook could hold his own.

Colonel Post's report continues: "The 59th prepared with fixed bayonets to receive the enemy's charge. But being cut off by the enemy in the rear the 59th withdrew dragging two Parrott guns."

Here Lieutenant Jones appears in a new light. Not content with bearing despatches he takes the initiative and does the thing that needs to be done without waiting for orders. "The 74th and 75th Illinois regiments," the report states, "fell back across the cotton field and under the direction of Lieutenant Jones, who also rallied a number of detachments from other regiments, made a determined resistance again checking the foe. The fresh troops from the reserves here relieved the brigade and I proceeded to the pike, reformed my shattered battalions and supplied them with ammunition. I was soon ordered by Brigadier General Davis to move up the pike and take position on the right of the line, and the men lay down for the night.

"The next morning I was ordered to occupy the open field where I built breastworks and stationed a battery. During the following day, after skirmishing, the men crossed Stone River in the afternoon, which was swollen by heavy rains, rushing through the flood

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to attack the enemy. They stood at arms all night with- out fires. Jan. 3, breastworks were constructed under the fire of sharpshooters. At night during a pouring rain the men again lay on their arms. At 2 a.m. the battery recrossed the river and at 4 a.m. the brigade forded the stream and took position on the right where it remained until January 6, when it encamped south of Murfreesboro after passing through the town."

In closing, Colonel Post pays this tribute :

"The zeal and decision shown by Lieutenants Jones, Hall, Hatch and Baker, members of my staff, and the intrepidity of my faithful orderly, George Forgel, de- mand my highest commendation."

"During the long contest and notwithstanding the extreme inclemency of the weather and the scarcity of provisions, no word of complaint was heard. Officers and men seemed alike anxious to do their full duty as patriotic soldiers. In our advance they pushed forward boldly and when greatly superior numbers were hurled against them they awaited the onset with the utmost coolness and determination. The temporary confusion which occurred when they fell back was caused to a considerable extent by the large force of skirmishers, thrown out to check the enemy, having been driven toward the left instead of directly upon their own regi- ments. The deliberation and order with which the 74th Illinois retired is especially commended."

The part played by Colonel Post's brigade, rallied by Lieutenant Jones, checked the enemy and gave time for General Sheridan to come to the rescue. General Mc- Cook's right wing was routed. The enemy following up attacked Davis' division and speedily dislodged Post's

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brigade. At this critical juncture Sheridan, after sus- taining four successive attacks, gradually swung his right from a southeasterly to a northwesterly direction, repulsing the enemy four times, losing his gallant General Sill of his right and Colonel Roberts of his left brigade, met the advancing enemy and checked his movements.

This report of Brigadier General Philip H. Sheridan tells the story:

Jan. 9. Headquarters 3d Div. Right Wing 14th

Army Corps Camp on Stone River, Tenn. My division alone and unbroken made a gallant stand to protect the right flank of our army, being all that remained of the right wing. Had my ammunition held out I would not have fallen back, although such were my orders if hard pressed. As it was, the determined stand of my troops gave time for a rearrangement of our lines.

The real nature of the battle may be learned from the following paragraph from a letter printed in the Amherst local paper, written by one who escaped alive from the fierce fight :

"We were ordered into the Cedar woods and formed our alignment about fifty yards from the edge. A brigade of our troops was giving way before the terrible fire of the enemy and we were relied upon to check the rebels. We lay down until our troops had all passed to the rear and the enemy approached to within a hundred yards. We arose and fired and must have done awful execution. That they damaged us was apparent. In fifteen minutes thirteen officers and 270 men out of 575 had fallen. We were forced to retire but our purpose had been accomplished. The division had reformed in our rear and the enemy did not advance beyond the edge of the timber.

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Our dead lay four days upon the field. I have been command- ing Co. E, 2d Battalion. Five days we lay upon the battlefield at one time eating corn issued to officers and men for rations."

Another participant in this battle wrote to his friends in Amherst describing the crushing of Rosecrans' right wing and the enemy's attack upon the right flank of the center of the Union Army. He says their rations were ears of corn and the promise of horse meat. Continuing he wrote: "We have had hard times all along. It has rained all the time since Friday evening and we have not had any kind of shelter and have had to lie in the mud, half starved, wet, frozen, awake."

The losses as reported were severe. The total killed and wounded were 8778, including 92 officers and 1441 privates killed and 384 officers and 6861 privates wounded. Colonel Post's brigade suffered a loss of 161 or 11.33 per cent killed and wounded. Rosecrans esti- mated the enemy's forces at 62,000 men, including 46,000 infantry, 1200 sharpshooters, 1800 artillery and 13,000 cavalry; and their loss 23% per cent of the fighting force. The Union forces were 42,000 and the loss 21 per cent. The mobile force of cavalry gave the enemy a great advantage in hurling an attack with concen- trated energy at the weakest points. Only the de- terminated resistance of the stalwart Western regiments and the genius of Sheridan prevented an utter rout and final defeat of the Union Army.

By fighting to the bitter end the Federal troops won the victory which gave new courage to President Lin- coln and the North. The following despatches an- nounced the result of the battles :

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Headquarters Department of the Cumberland

Via Nashville, Tenn.

Jan. 5, 1863. We have fought one of the greatest battles of the war and are victorious. Our entire success on the 31st was prevented by a surprise of the right flank ; but we have nevertheless beaten the enemy after a three days' battle. They fled with great precipitancy on Saturday night. The last of their columns of cavalry left this morning. Their loss has been very heavy. Generals Rains and Hanson killed. Chalmers, Adams and Breckenridge are wounded.

(Signed) W. S. Rosecrans,

Maj. Gen'l. H. W. Halleck, Gen'l in Chief.

Executive Mansion,

Washington, D. C,

Jan. 5, 1863. Maj. Gen'l W. S. Rosecrans, Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Your despatch announcing retreat of the enemy has just reached here. God bless you and all with you ! Please tender to all, and accept for yourself, the nation's gratitude for your and their skill, endurance and dauntless courage.

(Signed) A. Lincoln.

The part played by Adjutant Samuel Minot Jones won repeated citations for courage, gallantry and effi- cient service. He was always in the right place at the right time, the man for the crisis, with orders and with- out waiting for orders, doing the one thing that needed most to be done. In addition to other public notices of his valor on record in official documents is this report

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of W. P. Carlin, Colonel 38th Illinois Volunteers, com- manding Second Brigade, January 6, 1863.

"Among the staff officers of the army who made them- selves useful in rallying the scattered men Dr. L. F. Russell, 2d Minn. Battery; Lieut. S. M. Jones, 59th 111. Vols.; Capt. Thurston, aide camp to Major Gen'l Mc- Cook and Chaplain Wilkins, 21st 111. Vols., came espe- cially under my observation."

Lieutenant S. M. Jones by his distinguished service as Assistant Acting Adjutant General had attracted the attention of his superior officers. A brilliant future awaited him and rapid promotion. But his sensitive temperament and delicate constitution were not fitted for the horrors of war. He was not ambitious for mili- tary glory. Only patriotism and the stern imperatives of duty led him to enlist and to continue for eighteen months his arduous tasks.

After the victory of Stone River he found himself weakened by a wound in his right leg, completely ex- hausted by the long protracted hardships of marching, camping, bivouacs and battles, and his constitution undermined by a severe attack of typhoid fever. He was confronted by the question, Shall I remain in the army an invalid and a burden to the government until speedy death shall close the scene; or shall I resign and serve my country best as a private citizen? It seemed wise to choose the latter alternative, believing that a live servant is of more, value to the nation than a dead soldier. He resigned therefore at once. His resigna- tion was accepted and he was honorably discharged January 8, 1863, while his regiment was still encamped on the battlefield of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

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CHAPTER IV THE MAN OF BUSINESS

Samuel Minot Jones, returning to Amherst, sought rest and recuperation in his mother's home. He found the town busily engaged in making up its quotas of soldiers. The glamour of war had given place to stern reality. The draft had been found necessary to provide sufficient recruits. Those who could not go themselves provided substitutes. Bounties were freely offered by the town, the state and private individuals. Public meetings were held and the recruits were escorted to the station on their way to the front. But Adjutant Jones, no longer a citizen of Amherst, from which he had been absent for nearly ten years, spent his time quietly rest- ing until he gained strength enough for a trip abroad where he might forget the terrible scenes of fratricidal strife in which he had been driven by duty to participate.

As soon as his health permitted he returned to Chi- cago. Although he never fully regained the physical strength he lost during his army service, but suffered more or less during the remainder of his life, he never- theless continued to do a man's work as long as he lived. In 1864 he formed a partnership with Charles R. Barton, who had already begun business for himself. The new firm of Barton & Jones opened a lumber yard near the Chicago River at the southeast corner of

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Lumber and 12th streets and Mr. Jones resided at 523 Wabash Street. This firm continued to do business for twenty-two years, until the death of the senior partner in 1886.

The story of the prosperity of this firm is told in a sketch printed in "Industrial Chicago" in part as follows :

"He met with the success due to hard and intelligent application to business, to such an extent that the firm soon became interested in the manufacture of lumber at various points, having a half interest with the milling firm of B. Merrill & Company at Muskegon, acquiring a shingle mill at Manistee and a sawmill at Menominee, Michigan, with large holdings of pine lands in various portions of the State of Michigan, increasing the early manufacture of 4,000,000 feet per annum to 20,000,000 and as high as 30,000,000 feet in later years. The firm continued in the vard business until 1880 when it with- drew from that branch of the trade and confined itself wholly to wholesaling by cargo with office on the market at South Water and Franklin streets. In 1886 Mr. Barton died and his son-in-law, D. J. Kennedy, became associated with Mr. Jones, and the firm of Jones & Kennedy have for several years past been engaged in winding up the affairs of the former house, which task is now happily accomplished. During the continuance of the firm of Barton & Jones no less than 200,000,000 feet of lumber with a proportionate quantity of shingles and lath was manufactured at the mills which were wholly or partially owned by them. In the winter of 1894, the business of the old firm having been settled up, Jones & Kennedy dissolved partnership and Mr. Jones,

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who during his busy life had time to make several Euro- pean trips in the interest of health as well as of recrea- tion, decided to see more of his own country and has spent the past several months in the South, visiting the Pacific coast, storing his mind with a better knowledge of the resources and grandeur of his native land which he appreciates the more, not less, from his own personal sacrifices in its interest, than from that pride which swells the breast of every true-born son of America as he contrasts his own land with the world at large. Mr. Jones, with ample fortune, now devoted his time to its care, having retired from active business. His firm was for many years a member of the Lumberman's Ex- change."

An interesting account of Mr. Jones' business career in Chicago has been written by his former partner, D. J. Kennedy, as follows :

"Mr. Jones came to Chicago after the close of the Civil War and went into the lumber business as partner of Charles R. Barton, my wife's father, under the name of Barton & Jones, the yard being on the west side of Chicago River on 12th Street (now Roosevelt Road) bridge. They manufactured and sold lumber, lath and shingles. They bought land on which was standing pine which they cut and sawed (or had sawed for them) into merchantable lumber.

"Their customers were country lumber dealers, sash, door and blind manufacturing concerns, interior finish contractors, carpenters, etc. Later they bought stump- age, that is, the trees but not the land. They were one of the large firms though not the largest, and no lumber firm ever in this city had a better reputation for honesty

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and fair dealing than Barton & Jones. They were abso- lutely fair and square in all dealings with everyone.

"Mr. Barton died in 1886 at which time Mr. Jones was too ill to attend to business. He then insisted that I take the business until he should be well enough to help look after it. I took mv wife's interest and we con- tinued under the firm name of Jones & Kennedy until we had cut nearly all the standing lumber we owned, about 1894 or 1895.

"Barton & Jones were in business at 12th Street bridge at the time of the Chicago fire in 1871. The fire did not burn their yard, but sweeping just north of them and crossing the river it destroyed the main business part of the city and the eastern part of the north side. They had many men and managed to save their lumber by hiring fire engines outside the city to pump water from the river.

"In 1886, when I was in the business, we owned a con- trolling interest in a sawmill at Menominee, Michigan, on the Menominee River, just across from Marinette, Wisconsin. We contracted with loggers to cut down the trees in winter and cut them up into logs and draw them over snow or ice roads to the banks of Menominee or its branches or lakes tributary to it. We had estimators at each camp (usually eight or ten camps) who sent us each Saturday an estimate of the amount of feet of logs cut during that week, and we paid the loggers, using that estimate as a basis.

"About the first week in March of each year we took from Chicago one or more lumber buyers with us and went from camp to camp, looking at the logs piled up on the log rolls and estimating the quality of lumber

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that could be sawed from the loos, and settled on a price to be paid for the lumber including everything above the grade of mill cull. A mill cull is a piece too poor in quality to pay to ship. A shipping cull is poor quality but of enough value to pay the freight and handling.

"In the spring, when the ice melted, the logs in the lake and on the river banks were floated by the Drive Company at so much per thousand feet to the mill and put into the mill booms, storage places, and there sawed during the summer into lumber and piled on our docks and in the yard. Each Saturday the mill sent us a statement of the amount sawed that week. We sent a bill to the purchaser together with a sixty-day note which the purchaser signed and returned to us and which we deposited in the bank for collection. We also paid the mill for sawing, using these weekly statements as a basis. We finally sold our interest in the mill and our remaining standing lumber to the Soper Lumber Com- pany of Chicago. Mr. Jones and 1 bought and cut two rather small tracts after that, but he was ready to retire from the lumber business. Though I wanted to con- tinue. I felt that I had not sufficient experience to go on alone. He was a good judge of timber and of lumber, a good business man and was not 'close.' He was care- ful, but 'hadn't a mean hair in his head.' I consider him one oi the cleanest, squarest men I ever met. His word was absolutely good and his conduct in business a model."

Samuel Minot Jones was the man for the emergency in the business world as well as in the battlefields of the war for the Union. If he fought Indians at Sugar Creek and rallied panie-strieken soldiers at Stone River,

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he found need of a soldier's courage and a patriot's en- durance in his fight with the conflagration that was de- vouring the lives and the property of the great city on the shore of Lake Michigan.

The fire, starting from a lantern in a stable at 9 p.m. Sunday, October 8, 1871, spread through the lumber district on the west side, crossed the river and burned over 2024 acres, SYs square miles of business blocks and dwelling houses. The flames burned their way for 2% miles in an air line in 6% hours. The value of property destroyed was estimated^ at $187,000,000 and 300 lives were lost. People fled to the lake shore to escape the flames. Thousands of men, women and children fled south and west away from the roaring flames, conveying their goods in every kind of vehicles, paying extortionate prices for them. They spoke many different languages. Wooden pavements burning freely carried the fire in a stream. Brick walls burned and granite blocks melted.

The panic brought to the front gangs of the under- world bent on plunder. Some even tried to extend the disaster. Two caught in the act of firing houses on the west side were arrested and immediately hung to lamp posts, one on 12th Street near Barton & Jones' lumber yard, and the other three miles away on the north side. This summary action checked the thieves and murderers. The police department was strengthened by 1500 addi- tional deputies. General Sheridan came to the rescue with 500 veteran soldiers. In making arrests forty-one persons were shot. Out of the ruins ninety bodies were recovered. Fire on the south side was checked on Mon- day by the use of gunpowder. On the north side the fire burned its way almost to the prairie before it was

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stopped after twenty-seven hours, when it began to rain. The thousands of homeless people found refuge in schoolhouses and churches which had been saved. Others were obliged to camp by the wayside exposed to rain and cold.

In the midst of all this terror Mr. Jones never lost his courage or his presence of mind. His lumber yard must be saved, not only because it was his property, but espe- cially because every foot of lumber would be at once needed to repair buildings and provide shelter for the homeless people. He did the one most essential thing. He sent out into the country and procured two fire engines and set his force of men pumping water from the river and throwing it in continuous streams upon the piles of dry lumber. He succeeded in saving the yard. Busy days followed when his depleted stock was re- plenished by shipments from his sources of supply in his lumber camps and mills in the northern forests.

He was a leader of men. He knew human nature and drew to himself men whom he could safely trust. No partnership papers were signed either with Mr. Barton or with Mr. Kennedy to guard the rights or to secure the performance of necessary work. His word was as good as a bond and so he esteemed his partners to be men of honor and honesty: nor was he disappointed. His wealth was acquired by efficient work for private and public welfare.

The firm of Jones & Kennedy was dissolved in the winter of 1894 and Mr. Jones retired from the lumber business at the age of fifty-eight after thirty years of strenuous activity in the city and in the forests. He did not, however, spend his time in idleness. He found it no

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easy task to keep the capital he had saved and to in- crease it. When a Chicago man learned that S. M. Jones had made several hundreds of thousands of dollars in the city and left with it for the East he exclaimed, "How did he get away with it?" He got away with it by the same method he used in getting it, by giving thought and good judgment to the employment of his time and his money for enterprises designed to promote the public good. His name appears in the Chicago di- rectory of 1895, "Jones, S. Minot, Capitalist, 100 Washington Street." He invested his capital in rail- road stocks, public service bonds, Chicago Telephone Company, Edison stock and in other diversified securi- ties. He was no gambler in stocks, but was a cautious investor. His travels, wide acquaintance with business men and with resources and demands of the great West, and his public spirit enabled him to invest his capital securely, profitably and for the common good.

Leaving Chicago he spent the last years of his life in the East, in Amherst, Philadelphia, Washington, D. C, Morristown, New Jersey, and Easthampton, Long Island, in close connection with New York City. Many men who have succeeded in the West have miser- ably failed when they have left their early environment and gone to New York City with the expectation of doubling their fortunes. But Mr. Jones was equal to the demands made upon him in the East and succeeded in keeping his fortune and increasing it, and at the same time in winning the respect and confidence of the busi- ness men with whom he was associated.

He was for several years a member of the board of directors of the Morristown Trust Company, to which

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he was elected January 10, 1909. The following tribute, taken from the records of this Trust Company, shows that his genius for business conducted for the good of others continued as long as life itself :

"The Board of Directors of the Morristown Trust Company has learned with deep sorrow of the death of their former associate, S. Minot Jones, and here record upon the minutes of the Company our respect and ad- miration for the sterling qualities of his nature, wisdom of his counsel, the generous kindness, the genial disposi- tion and sterling worth which, with his kind thoughtful- ness for others, have endeared him to us and to all who know him.

"Mr. Jones was associated with this Company little more than three and one half years, but during that time his constant and careful attention to the trust com- mitted to him was of great benefit to all interested, and proved the value of his past experience and keen intelligence."

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CHAPTER V PRIVATE LIFE

Samuel Minot Jones in his private life and in society was admired, respected, trusted and loved. His mother was the constant object of his filial love and service. He would not be a burden to her even to secure a college education for which he was well fitted, but at once after his father's death he began to support himself and to work for the welfare of his widowed mother and his young sister Augusta. Professor Henry M. Tyler of Smith College, writing of Mr. Jones, says in one of his letters, "My mother (Mrs. W. S. Tyler of Amherst) told me that his mother (Mrs. Thomas Jones) spoke to her of the comfort and help which he had given her in her advancing years." Professor John W. Burgess of Columbia University, New York City, writes: "Samuel Minot Jones was a very devoted son and he adored his widowed mother. He came constantly to Amherst from Chicago to visit her and would not marry so long as there was any likelihood of his having to support her. He was always contributing to her comfort." When his sister, Mrs. Augusta Thayer Jones Burgess, the wife of Professor J. W. Burgess, was ill in Switzerland, Mr. Jones left his business in Chicago and went at once to her relief.

His kindness of heart is shown by the following letter,

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written to his brother Thomas and his wife on the occa- sion of the death of their daughter, Augusta Thayer Jones, named for her aunt :

Chicago, July 13, 1872. My Dear Brother and Sister:

May God bless and give you strength to bear up under the great affliction which in his infinite mercy he has seen fit to visit upon you.

The dear little girl quite won my heart during my visit last winter and I had looked forward with pleasure to the time when I had hoped to be able to have done something that would have been not only of benefit to her but would also have shown my love for you. Would that I could find words to express my feelings of sympathy as well as of courage to you to bear up under what must seem to you an overwhelming burden of grief. Again I say, that God may comfort you is the sincere and heartfelt prayer of your attached brother,

S. M. Jones.

At the time of his mother's death he wrote to this same brother :

Amherst, January 15, 1879. My Dear Tom :

I presume you are prepared for the very sad news of Mother's death. I cannot tell you how grieved I am that I did not get here in time to see her alive. She died while I was on the road. On Monday we laid her in the tomb where she now sleeps in the fullness of the reward which our faith tells us is the future of a well spent life. She was a good mother to us all and you little know, Tom, how much she thought of you and your welfare. She felt you were a good son and did all you could to make her life one of happiness. It would have been a great satisfaction for her to have seen you and yours.

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The last letter she wrote me was that she wanted you to make her a visit. I wish you might have been here to the funeral, but

it was impossible, so we did not send you the telegram

Mary unites with me in much love to you and Minerva.

Ever yours,

Sam.

In society Mr. Jones was a man of attractive and winning personality. The writer in "Industrial Chi- cago" says: "He, being of a highly social nature, while remaining a bachelor, has held membership in various social clubs, including the Union, Washington Park and other clubs of Chicago, and the Union and New York clubs of New York City. Of a genial nature his society is sought by his friends, and few have a happier faculty of winning and holding valuable friendships."

His business partner, David J. Kennedy of Chicago, says: "He belonged to the Chicago Club. John Crerar, who gave the Crerar Library to Chicago, and Hunting- ton W. Jackson were his cronies."

He was a member also of the Morristown Field Club and of the Morris County Golf Club in New Jersey.

His brother-in-law, Professor J. W. Burgess, writes : "As to the character of Samuel Minot Jones I can truthfully say that he was one of the most admirable of men. He was very handsome in person, very intelligent, brilliant and vivacious, very upright and just in char- acter, exceedingly generous and charitable. He had sound business judgment and was a devoted citizen to

his country He was a close friend of Grant and

Sherman and Rosecrans, but especially of Sheridan. The country has never produced a finer man than

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Samuel Minot Jones. His character was more than fine. It was exquisite."

Mr. Jones was a friend also of Robert Lincoln, son of President Lincoln, and of Admiral Dewey. He fre- quently met Dewey in Professor Burgess' summer home in Montpelier, Vermont. One day, previous to the Spanish- American war, after these three friends had been recalling their reminiscences of the Civil War, Dewey suddenly remarked, "They will be making heroes of us yet!" The coming admiral whose exploits at Manila Bay made the people idolize him, spoke better than he then knew.

Having retired from active business with a compe- tence, having cared for his mother and his sister as long as they needed his assistance, and having been for many years the joy of the homes of many friends, the time came at last when his long cherished desire to have a home of his own was realized.

March 16, 1898, at Overbrook, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, he was married by Reverend Thomas A. Hoyt, D.D., to Miss Harriet Watson Stenger, the daughter of William S. and Helen M. Stenger. Her father was a lawyer of note with whom Mr. Jones had been associated in business. She was a beautiful and gracious young woman for whom her hus- band, after residing for a time in Washington, D. C, made a beautiful home in Morristown, New Jersey, in addition to their summer residence at Easthampton, Long Island, New York. It was his joy to provide her with all that her heart could wish.

Morristown is a beautiful suburb of New York Citv, composed of numerous elegant residences of wealthy

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people whose taste and health led them to escape from the crowded metropolis to the open country. The town on a high ridge of land commands extensive views and played an important part in the war of the Revolution. The Jones house was a fine colonial mansion, ample, open to fresh air and sunlight, in the midst of lawns shaded by maples, and commanding a beautiful outlook. A broad hall from the entrance on the front portico ran through the house to the stairway, dividing the reception room from the library. A large porch on the south was connected with the library. Everything about the home was in harmony with the character of the man, devoid of extravagance, nothing of pretense, all things real and genuine. The library was furnished with study tables, books carefully selected, walls hung with pictures, a homelike, comfortable place, a great contrast to the little wooden office in the midst of piles of lumber in Chicago where Professor Henry M. Tyler found Mr. Jones reading with much enjoyment Charles Dudley Warner's "My Summer in a Garden."

The character of Samuel Minot Jones is to be learned not only from his valor on the battlefield, from his work in the forests of Michigan and in the lumber yard rescued from the Chicago conflagration, and from his career as a capitalist, but also from the books he chose for his hours of leisure and for his relief amid the strain of his daily business toil. While his body was in the dust, heat and turmoil of a city lumber yard, his soul, wafted on the wings of imagination, delighted itself and gained recreation and new vigor by visualizing the flower beds and vegetable plots and the shrubbery of the

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Hartford garden and by listening to the humorous talk of the author and chuckling at his wit.

On the shelves of his private library were found stand- ard works of English and American literature, poetry, prose, history, fiction, biography, science and religion. Laurence Sterne, Fielding, Tennyson, Thackeray, George Eliot, Kingsley, Walter Scott, were his favorite English authors. Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Motley, Parkman, Julia Ward Howe, were his American friends. The volumes are beautifully bound, the print legible and the illustrations of the best. He loved to see his friends — his books were among his friends — dressed becomingly, not decked with meretricious ornaments, but in a garb suited to their real merit. His books explain in large measure his suc- cess as a soldier, a lumber merchant, a financier and a man of leisure. His guide books show that his extensive travels in Italy, throughout Europe, in Norway, in Great Britain and in America enriched and broadened his mind and gave him an insight into the secrets of nature and human nature and an appreciation of the best things in art.

Mr. John Crerar, the donor of The John Crerar Library to the city of Chicago, was one of the personal friends of Mr. Jones. His example, therefore, must have influenced the lumber merchant, when he came to consider the question how best to invest his fortune of $661,740 for the benefit of the boys and business men of Amherst, and must have convinced him that he would make no mistake in providing for them a library of the best books filled with the best thoughts and the most beautiful sentiments and the most inspiring incentives to

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PRIVATE LIFE

vigorous action, and in endowing it liberally, that as an institution it should during the coming generation do for its patrons as much as, and more than, his own library had done for himself. The Morristown home had many things to remind its owner of his boyhood home with his mother in Amherst. The summer home at the seashore at Easthampton was an unpretentious cottage near that of John Drew, the famous actor, with whom Mr. Jones enjoyed pleasant converse. Here he found recreation in afternoon walks, fishing and boating.

His life in Morristown was by no means one of idle- ness. To the last he was interested in the public welfare and in the worship and work of St. Peter's Episcopal Church. His wife joined him in private charities. While not a college graduate, she received a good edu- cation in her father's home from private tutors.

Their only child, Minot Jones, was born June 21, 1899, at Atlantic City, New Jersey. During the next eight years Mr. Jones devoted himself to the care of his family, providing his wife and son with everything that his loving care could secure. The mother, however, always having a frail and delicate constitution, soon began to decline. In spite of all that medical science could do for her, after protracted suffering she died September 22, 1907.

The loss of his wife was a severe trial of his faith, bringing disappointment to his plans for the home life he so dearly loved. But his religious nature, revealed in his letters at the time of the death of his little niece Augusta and of his mother, supported him in this hour of great sorrow. The following letter from his pastor, the Reverend Philemon F. Sturges, rector of St. Peter's

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Church in Morristown, shows the man steadfast in adversity :

"Mr. Jones came to Morristown and settled in the house on Miller Road, and I remember vividly how quickly he won the affection of that intensely conserva- tive little neighborhood and became part of it. He was a very regular attendant at the services of St. Peter's Church, and I think every one felt the force of the serenity and buoyancy of his Christian character which illustrated in a peculiar way the truth of the old proverb, 'Those whom the gods love are young until they die.'

"I first came into intimate contact with him at the time of Mrs. Jones' death and remember very vividly my impression of the man at the time with his very clear and very calm assurance of immortality deepening at the end of a very long life, wishing for the sake of their boy that he might have gone and Mrs. Jones had been left to care for Minot."

Rector Sturges closes with a reference to the "very lovable personality with its suggestion of light and peace at the eventide of a long and full experience of life" which was manifest in the daily conduct of Mr. Jones.

The habit of attending church, formed during his boy- hood in Amherst, was dominant in Morristown. His coachman recalls this incident. When a party of visitors arrived on Sunday, he sent his coachman to meet them and give them the message that he would welcome them on his return from church.

After the death of his wife Mr. Jones devoted himself to the care of his son, to whom was given the family name of Minot, so distinguished among New England patriots. He loved the boy and felt the responsibility

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Minot Jones

PRIVATE LIFE

for his education and training. While he was ready to provide him with all that his fortune could buy for the young man, he was careful that the boy should not be handicapped by the temptations which spring from the love of monev, the root of all kinds of evil. He believed in work, hard work, wisely directed. He himself was brought up by his Yankee father to work, and to his work from his childhood he attributed the success he had won. His son Minot was provided with the best of tutors and sent to the best schools, to Thacher's School for Boys, to the Taft School and to the Ojai School in Cali- fornia. With the aid of his housekeeper, Miss Jennie Canfield, who nursed his wife in her sickness, and by the help of John Mulcahy, his faithful coachman, he con- tinued to maintain his homes in Morristown and in East- hampton. He sought recreation at the Golf Club and the Field Club and in driving and walking about the country. As director of the Morristown Trust Com- pany, he found opportunity to serve others by wise counsel and generous kindness. But his heart, like that of his father, grew weaker and weaker so that he was obliged to favor it continually. He found that his daily walk in the open air fatigued him and must be shortened. Premonitions of the end led him on May 2, 1912, to add the last codicil to his will. Finally he closed his East- hampton house September 1, 1912, and hastened back to Morristown. Six weeks after his return from the seashore, at 1.30 a.m. on Thursday, October 10, 1912, his heart failed and his useful life of seventy-six years ended.

Simple funeral services were held in the Morristown home, conducted by Reverend Philemon F. Sturges,

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the rector of St. Peter's Church, assisted by Reverend Oscar Presdor, rector of St. Luke's Church at East- hampton, New York, his summer residence. The church quartet, directed by the choirmaster, sang "I heard a voice from Heaven" and "Peace, Perfect Peace." The burial was in Evergreen Cemetery, Morristown, in the family lot where he had laid his wife, Harriet Stenger Jones, to rest beneath a beautiful monument, and where later his son, Minot, was also to be buried. Many of his neighbors and representatives of Morristown or- ganizations attended the services and sent beautiful floral tributes.

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"Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die and not live," was a wise saying of an old prophet whose wisdom commended itself to Samuel Minot Jones and led him to devote much time and attention to the making of his will. It was drawn up and dated Washington, D. C, August 12, 1905. Feeling a due sense of responsibility in the disposal of his property that had been entrusted by Providence to his stewardship, he began; "In the name of God, amen, I, Samuel Minot Jones of the city of Washington, District of Columbia, being of sound mind and memory, do make, publish and declare this my last will and testament :" There follow twenty-two folio pages of legal cap, typewritten, including four codicils which were added from time to time to meet changed conditions, the last being dated May 2, 1912.

The original will left the bulk of his fortune to be divided, one-half to his wife, Harriet Stenger Jones, and one-half to his son, Minot Jones. The son's share was placed in care of trust companies so that he should have what was needed for his support and education during his minority, and should receive one-third of his portion upon attaining the age of twenty-one years, together with the annual interest of the remainder, and

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upon reaching thirty years of age should then receive the other two-thirds.

But in case no child of his should attain the age of twenty-one years, then the share allotted to such an heir should be given for a free public library in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, to be called "The Jones Library."

After the death of Mrs. Jones he disposed of her share for the further benefit of his son, Minot. Roswell M. Field was appointed his guardian. A legacy of $5000 was left to his housekeeper, Miss Jennie F. Can- field, and to his coachman, John Mulcahy, $2000. The final provisions of the will, in case his son should die before the age of twenty-one years, gave the entire residue of the estate to The Jones Library that should be incorporated according to the laws of Massachusetts with George Harris, John M. Tyler and George Cutler, Jr., as trustees, and directed that any vacancy on the board of trustees shall be filled by vote of the town of Amherst at the annual town meeting. The trustees were directed in due time to purchase a lot and erect thereon a fireproof building, leaving not less than $100,000 as a permanent fund to be put at interest and the income to be expended in the purchase of books and the maintenance of the library.

The following bequest shows his regard for the church and his love for his mother: "I give and bequeath to Grace Church, of Amherst, Massachusetts, the sum of one thousand dollars ($1000) absolutely. I do this in memory of my mother to whom said Grace Church of Amherst was very dear." He bequeathed a similar sum to St. Luke's Church in Easthampton, New York, but

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paid it before his death so that this bequest was revoked. For St. Peter's Church in Morristown he contributed from time to time during his life.

Minot Jones after his father's death continued his education, and for the maintenance of the home in Morristown and for his personal expenses an abundant provision was made. He became interested in automo- biles and when called to the service enlisted as a private in Company C, 305th Battalion, United States Tank Corps, at Camp Polk, Raleigh, North Carolina. But his constitution inherited from his mother was never strong and was poorly adapted to the severe training of military service. Attacked by the prevalent influenza he was sent to Base Hospital Number 12 at Bilt- more, Asheville, North Carolina. Pneumonia followed influenza and resulted in his death December 16, 1918. He was privately confirmed September 16, 1918, three months before his death. His body was brought to Morristown and buried in the cemetery where a stately granite shaft marks the family burial plot in which his father and mother lay side by side awaiting his coming. His friends received a beautiful certificate signed by President Woodrow Wilson, testifying to the fact that "Minot Jones, Private, Company C, United States Tank Corps, served with honor in the World War and died in the service of his country." Above this inscrip- tion is a significant picture entitled "Columbia Gives to her Son the Accolade of the New Chivalry of Humanity."

Samuel Minot Jones was a good judge of lumber. He could estimate the value of growing forest trees, the worth of a log in the woods, at the mill and in his Chi-

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cago yard when sawed into merchantable boards, lath and shingles. He was also a student of human nature and wise in his choice of friends. He knew whom to trust, and trustworthy men he associated with himself in business and trusted them implicitly without bonds and without suspicion. His partners were bound by no legal documents. Their word was sufficient. His own honor was unsullied and in his presence every man showed the best that was in him.

He loved the young and all children were dear to him. His hope was that his son would live and with every advantage at his command would embody and perpetu- ate the valor, patriotism and distinguished service of his New England ancestors. But knowing the uncertainty of human life, he made a wise provision for the future. Should his own boy die before attaining his majority and without an heir, it was decided that the fortune should be invested for the benefit of the people of Am- herst and of their boys and girls.

In all his travels north, south, east and west, in his own and in foreign lands he never forgot Amherst, the home of his boyhood, where from infancy to young man- hood he received his education and training in his home, his school and his church ; he could not forget his hills and valleys, his friendships, the beautiful town where his father and his beloved mother lived and worked and died and were buried.

He came back to Amherst and conferred with George Cutler, who employed him when a boy, and with George Cutler, Jr., whom he took with him as a companion when traveling in the mountains or on the sea, and he finally decided that the town of Amherst, the people of Am-

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Board of Trustees

George Hahris, D.D., LL.U., President

[Died March 1. 1982]

John M. Tyler, Ph.D.. LL.D., Clerk Georgk Cutler, Treasurer

THE JONES LIBRARY

herst, should be his heirs. For them his money should be expended, to provide a free public library. A suit- able building should be erected and an ample endow- ment provided for its perpetual support. He would not follow the plan of making his gift a burden to those receiving it, requiring them to tax themselves forever to perpetuate a memorial in his own honor. The Jones Library is a free gift to the people of Amherst without money and without price and without any onerous stipu- lations. He believed that the name of his father, Thomas Jones, and of his mother, Mary Minot Jones, and of the Jones family that during the generations had wrought so much for the public good, was worthy of remembrance. He would have them remembered not because of a huge mausoleum which should emphasize their superiority to common folks, but have them through their library be constantly inspiring each suc- ceeding generation to attain more and more knowledge, wisdom, virtue and happiness.

In his choice of men to found the librarv and to estab- lish it upon a sure basis he again showed his good judg- ment. John Mason Tyler was the son of a dear friend of his mother and one of the younger boys he knew before he left for the West, a native of Amherst, who from his lifelong educational work in the town knew the needs of the people and how best to supply them. George Cutler, Jr., he knew intimately from his child- hood and discerned in him genuine business ability joined to public spirit and a love for Amherst, his birth- place. George Harris, president of Amherst College, he knew by reputation as a New Englander from the state of Maine, an educator, an administrator, a minister

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of the gospel, of excellent judgment and long experi- ence. These three men he chose as trustees to whom, without any burdensome restrictions, he confidently committed his fortune to be expended in buying a lot, erecting a fireproof building, establishing an endowment and organizing and equipping the library. In order that the town might at length come into full control of his gift, his will provided further that vacancies occur- ring in the board of trustees shall be filled by vote of the town at its annual meeting.

The will was duly admitted to probate and after the death of the son, Minot Jones, before he had attained his majority, the trustees secured a special act of the legislature of Massachusetts incorporating the library with the three men named in the will as trustees. The act provided that the corporation shall be authorized to purchase, or with the consent of the town given by vote at a meeting legally called for that purpose, to acquire by eminent domain, a suitable lot of land and to erect thereon a fireproof building for the accommodation of said library, to maintain an endowment fund for its support, and to carry out and fulfill in all respects, in so far as they relate to said library, the provisions of the will; that the selectmen may require the trustees and their successors to give bonds for the faithful perform- ance of their duties ; that the corporation shall make an annual report to the town duly audited; that vacancies shall be filled by vote at an annual town meeting to serve for three years and that after the death of the last survivor of the original trustees the town may so arrange that one trustee shall be thereafter elected annually for the term of three years. This act of incorporation was

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approved by Governor Calvin Coolidge, March 21, 1919.

With the receipt of this authority "The Jones Library Incorporated" was organized with George Harris, presi- dent; John M. Tyler, clerk; and George Cutler, Jr., treasurer. The Morristown Trust Company of New Jersey immediately after the death of Minot Jones pro- ceeded to settle the estate according to the terms of the will. The real estate was sold and January 1, 1921, the treasurer, George Cutler, Jr., received the income from all the securities and The First National Bank of Am- herst was appointed fiscal agent of the corporation. The total amount received by the trustees from the Morris- town Trust Company was: stocks, $241,998; bonds, $405,207 ; cash, $14,542.08 ; total, $661,747.08. The net income received from these securities for fourteen months was $44,226.88. The total expense for the same period, ending December 31, 1921, was $29,608.21. This covered the entire cost of organizing the present library as now operated, including equipment, books, periodi- cals, supplies, rent, insurance, trust management and incidental expenses. The trustees adopted the policy of reinvesting and turning into principal all surplus of funds not required for operating the library.

After qualifying for their trust, the three trustees found their most important task to be the appointment of a librarian. This position was one for which many librarians might eagerly seek, but the trustees de- termined that the Jones librarian must be more than a cataloger and keeper of books, more than an expert in architecture and in booklore, more than a business ad- ministrator and executive, more than a figurehead, more

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than an embodiment of the latest fads in bibliography. He must be a man of vision, one capable of compre- hending the end for which a free public library designed to serve the common town's people of Amherst should exist and persist and one who should be able to secure at all times the adaptation of efficient means for the accomplishment of this end.

The trustees, therefore, instead of going far to fare the worse, found the man for the place, not in the metropolis, not across the seas, but right in the town of Amherst, one of the townspeople, Charles R. Green. After having been graduated Bachelor of Agriculture in 1895 from the Connecticut Agricultural College, he was employed in various capacities on The Courant of Hartford, Connecticut. He was soon, however, put in charge of the library of the editorial department. He made himself so useful in collecting material and putting it in such shape that the writers could get what they needed at a minute's notice, that he attracted the attention of the Connecticut state librarian, who called him from the newspaper office and set him to work in the State Library, where he remained for seven years, from 1901 to 1908. When Kenyon L. Butterfield succeeded Henry H. Goodell as president of the Massachusetts Agri- cultural College, he found Mr. Green to be the one man he must have to build up the college library. For thir- teen years he served the college with great efficiency, de- vising and putting into successful execution new plans for increasing not only the number of new books, but also the number of people who should make the best use of the facilities of the library. Branch libraries were placed in the fraternity houses and in the several depart-

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ments of the college. Traveling libraries were sent out to rural communities throughout the state. Lists of helpful books were made and distributed to secure more readers and better reading.

Librarian Green made the acquaintance of the people of this and other towns and worked to interest the young and old in the best books that he could furnish for their highest culture. He aimed to know the book, the reader and how to make the reader choose his book and get out of it into his own head the best ideas as food for thought, sentiments to cherish and motives to action. After care- ful consideration Mr. Green accepted the call of the trustees and began September, 1921, his work as libra- rian of The Jones Library.

The trustees decided that the present unsettled condi- tions in the building trades and in the financial situation of the country were unfavorable for erecting a library building that would be a fitting memorial and suitable for the work to be accomplished. It seemed best to them first to organize the library as a working institution, to find out the real needs of the community and then later, when the favorable time should come, to select the site and construct on it a building adapted in the best possi- ble manner to secure the ends the donor desired should be accomplished.

The second floor of the Amherst House was leased for three years and fitted up and equipped with whatever was necessary for the maintenance of a people's library. A reading-room, well lighted, was provided with periodi- cals and the latest books for consultation and for home circulation. A children's room was filled with the best juvenile books and papers. An assembly-room was

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put at the disposal of literary and other organizations for lectures and discussions. A study, removed from the deliverv-room, attracted those who wished to do special work or hold committee meetings. A stackroom with steel shelves furnished room for books not in con- stant use. A librarian's office and trustees' room was furnished with needed facilities for the business of ad- ministration. Storerooms and restrooms and work- rooms completed the apartment. Located at the center of Amherst's business life, at the meeting place of the town's thoroughfares, The Jones Library attracted public attention from the first and led all classes of the people to use freely the privileges offered. From the opening of the library, September 7, 1921, to December 31, less than four months, out of a population of 5530 in the town there was a registration of 1108, an attendance of 11,701 and a circulation of 10,632. The number of books on hand was 2890.

The plan adopted is one of growth from small be- ginnings to greater attainments. Instead of buying books by the thousands, they are procured one by one as the need for them is shown and their worth is proven. The Converse Library at Amherst College and the Agricultural College Library, the first with its 125,000 volumes and the latter with 70,000 cataloged books, pro- vide for the needs of college faculties and students, so that The Jones Library has for its special field the needs of the men, the women and the children of the towns- people.

The New England home such as that in which Samuel Minot Jones was born and reared is passing. The New England country church no longer dominates the com-

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munity. The town is no longer homogeneous. Instead of a few Yankee families constituting a society follow- ing the same customs, cherishing the same sentiments, obedient to the same moral standards, there is now a heterogeneous mass of immigrants, of native born, and of sojourners from all parts of our own land. The Polish people are cultivating the farms ; the Greeks are competing in trade; Italians, Chinese, French, Japa- nese, Irish and others are making homes in the village and in the open country. How shall they and their chil- dren be Americanized and so blended into a composite society as to make our democracy safe, sound and secure? The church is so divided into sects that the task, at least for the present, is too great for it. The public schools are wrestling valiantly with the problem and are attempting to teach things practical and theo- retical, handicrafts, business, sanitation, civics, science, morals, physical culture, art, music, agriculture, sew- ing, cooking; but alone they cannot accomplish the impossible.

In this emergency The Jones Library, in the spirit of its founder, is coming opportunely with its offer of assistance to the schools, to the churches, to the family. The Jones fortune, instead of ministering to the need of one boy, Minot Jones, his father's only child, has in the providence of God come to help all the boys and all the girls of Amherst and vicinity without respect of race, religion or social station, and to the relief of their parents as well.

The scholar who goes to school from his father's library, where from his infancy he has lived and played with books and pictures and music, and listened to the

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stories of his parents' guests who have gathered about the fireplace in the library on a winter's night, or sat by the open window on a summer's day, has an exceeding great advantage over the child who goes to the school- room from a house or an apartment destitute of any such thing as a library. Such a child has missed the inspiration of the best thought of the great thinkers and singers of the present and of the past; he has no taste for books; he knows not how to read; his imagination has never been kindled by visions and vistas of the great and glorious world; he has no friends in the realm of literature; his horizon is limited; he is like one in the bottom of a well with none to help him climb to the top.

It is the purpose of the trustees of The Jones Library to make it a home library ; a place where any and every child of Amherst may come and make himself at home ; where he can help himself to whatever his mind or heart shall crave ; where he can see the best pictures, hear the best stories told, listen to the best music, learn the mystic open sesame that shall reveal marvelous treasures all his own for the taking.

The trustees plan to make The Jones Library a place where teachers in Sunday school, in the day school, in the pulpit, in the home, in women's and in men's clubs, shall find the book, the paper, the information, they require to make their teaching a success; a place where the working man, or woman, ambitious to excel and rise to higher positions, shall find every facility for master- ing the courses of study he has determined to pursue.

There are library schools where one is trained to catalog books and to become a librarian. The Jones

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Library is designed to teach the people how to use a library for their own pleasure and profit. The progress of machinery, the eight-hour laws, the multiplication of holidays, are all increasing the amount of leisure time the common people have at their disposal. What shall they do with it ? If they waste it, or worse, abuse it, our democracy and our civilization will degenerate and be destroyed. But if this leisure be rightly valued and im- proved, the common people will grow in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man, and humanity in due time will develop sons of God. The powers of nature are so tremendous that the man who holds them in his hand must not only be wise, he must also be trust- worthy ; otherwise Jove's thunderbolts will destroy both those against whom they are hurled and also him from whose hand they explode. Every town in Massachu- setts, with one or two exceptions, has a public library. Our whole country from east to west is filled with libraries. The duty of the hour is to attract the multi- tudes within their doors and show the individual man and woman, boy and girl, how to use them for their own salvation and for the welfare of the human race.

Let The Jones Library become a school for the mul- tiplication of the number of readers, so that each year from its reading-room shall go forth young people with a passion for reading, such as shall inspire them to put into practice what the best thought of the world reveals for the practical benefit of themselves and their fellow men, then Samuel Minot Jones will not have labored in vain, nor will his son, Minot, have died in vain on his cot in the Base Hospital during the World War.

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Robert Frost, the poet, while teaching in Amherst College, in season and out of season said to his students : "Be a Reader! Be a Reader!" This message of the poet might well be emblazoned on the walls of the new Jones Library: "Be a Reader! Be a Reader!"

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REFERENCE DEPARTMENT

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