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price of fifty-three and one-third cents per acre, yielding eighty thou sand dollars, which were invested in six per cent. State bonds.

The general government of the college was vested in nine trustees, five of whom are appointed by the Governor with the advice of the Council, and four are taken from the trustees of Dartmouth College.1

The new college thus obtained the use of the libraries and the appli ances of Dartmouth, together with the special advantages of the Thayer School of Architecture and Civil Engineering and the Chandler Scientific Department.

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The Legislature granted the sum of five thousand dollars for buildings, and later granted twelve thousand dollars for an experimental farm and buildings thereon, on the condition that Hon. John Conant give twelve thousand dollars for the same purpose.

The sum of ten thousand dollars, five thousand for each of two years, 1883 and 1884-85, was voted by the General Assembly of New Hamp shire to pay the tuition of indigent students. By this same act it was provided that any resident student of the State is entitled to have his tuition paid by complying with certain conditions.2

Other appropriations have been made, sufficient to make the entire amount granted by the State fifty-four thousand dollars; during the same period the college has received $63,400 in benefactions-that is, the Congressional grant of eighty thousand dollars stimulated additional gifts aggregating $117,400.

SUMMARY OF GRANTS.3

Dartmouth College.

Appropriations by the royal province of New Hampshire:
May 27, 1773, for a new building, £500 (lawful money)..
April 5, 1777, for the subsistence of the president; £60
Total......

$1,666.66

200.00

1,866.66

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3 The writer is indebted to the acting president of the University of Vermont for many important points in this summary.

Agricultural College.

Total legislative appropriations to the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts from 1869 to 1888, inclusive.....

Entire money grants

71,900.00

106,933. 66

Land grants to Dartmouth.

By the Legislature of Vermont, June 24, 1785..

By the Legislature of New Hampshire, February 5, 1789

By the Legislature of New Hampshire, June 18, 1807

By the Legislature of New Hampshire, small grants at different times.

Acres.

23,000

40, 960

23, 040 4,000

Total land grants

101,000

MAINE.

EARLY SCHOOLS.

The Massachusetts system of schools extended in colonial times to the province of Maine, and the laws enacted by the General Court, or later by the Legislature of the parent State, remained in force in that province until the organization of Maine into a separate State.

The celebrated law1 of 1642, requiring the selectmen to "have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors" to see that their children and apprentices be taught to read, as well as the subsequent more general law of 1647, which required each town of fifty householders to sustain an elementary school, and each town of one hundred householders a "grammar school," obtained throughout the province of Maine. Thus the condition of education in the province must be determined largely by the general laws enacted by the Court of Massachusetts. The revised laws of 1789 likewise extended to Maine, and were in force at the time of the adoption of the State Constitution in 1820.

Thus the old "grammar schools" of New England, and subsequently the "New England academies," were found among the educational institutions of Maine, and the endowment of Bowdoin College by the General Court completed the system.

When Maine was organized into a State, the responsibility of educa tion was largely thrown upon the towns. Article VIII of the Constitution of Maine, adopted in 1820, provides for education as follows: "A general diffusion of the advantages of education being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, to promote this important object, the Legislature are authorized, and it shall be their duty, to require the several towns to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the support and maintenance of public schools, and it shall further be their duty to encourage and suitably endow, from time to time, as the circumstances of the people may authorize,

1 See Massachusetts., No. 49, p. 39.

all academies, colleges, and seminaries of learning within the State." The State reserved the right, prior to making any endowment, to limit or restrain any of the powers vested in the literary institution receiving the said endowment.

There was also incorporated into the Constitution at this time an act passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts June 19, 1819, confirming certain rights and privileges to the State of Maine, and among other things providing that the grants for educational purposes, particularly the bank tax for the support of Bowdoin, and all land grants, should continue upon the same conditions ;1 "but the tax on banks shall be charged upon the banks within the said district of Maine, and paid according to the tenor of said grant."2

Under these provisions the Legislature has from time to time made grants of land and appropriations of money for the aid of institutions. of higher learning, and aided academies and grammar schools, and in recent times has established a complete system of high school instruction.

STATE HIGH SCHOOLS.

The present free high schools of Maine are not classed with institutions of higher learning, although some of them are characterized by thorough discipline in the classics and the higher branches, but as there is a regularly constituted State system of these schools, they deserve a passing notice.

These schools represent the survivals of the old town grammar schools and the later academies. As the latter have been considered in the monograph on Massachusetts, it is not necessary to explain their nature here. After 1820 the towns began to provide for graded schools and high schools according to the provisions of the law. By the side of these the private academies continued their work of semi-advanced learning. The town schools grew more numerous and the academies fewer, until the law of 1873 established a State system of free high schools, and made provision for the absorption of the academies into the system. The law of 1873 provided that when any town had complied with the law by keeping a free high school for at least ten weeks during the year, such town was to "receive from the State one-half of the amount actually expended in said school, not, however, exceeding five hundred dollars, from the State to any one town." It was enacted the following year that the trustees might turn over the property of any academy to the town, and it should be subject to the conditions of the law.*

1 Bureau of Education, Circular No. 7, 1875.

2 Laws of Massachusetts, 1818. The tax on banks was divided among three institutions-Harvard, Williams, and Bowdoin.

3 School Law, sec. 95.

4 The languages were not to be taught in the schools unless at the expense of the city or town, except in those existing prior to 1873 in which said languages were taught.

The high schools were abolished by an indiscreet act of the Legislature in 1879, but re-instated in the following year. The maximum State allowance for each town was fixed by the law of restitution at two hundred and fifty dollars, and the total annual appropriation at twentysix thousand dollars. In 1880 there were eighty-six towns reported as receiving State aid, and in 1886 the number had increased to one hundred and sixty towns. During the period from 1830 to 1886 the amount expended by the State was $121,243.39. Besides this amount small appropriations were made at different times to seminaries and academies.

COLBY UNIVERSITY.2

This institution owes its existence and support chiefly to the Baptists, under whose control it now is.

The first Baptist association in the district of Maine was formed at Bowdoinham in 1787. At a meeting of this association held at Livermore in 1810, it was proposed "to establish an institution in the district of Maine for the purpose of promoting literary and theological knowledge." Steps were taken toward organization, and the Governor of Massachusetts signed the act of incorporation of the “Maine Literary and Theological Institution."3 The General Court endowed the institution with a township of land fifteen miles above Bangor, in the unbroken wilderness, and enacted that the school should be located in the said township. Subsequent legislation enabled the corporators to locate the institution at Waterville.

The school was opened in 1818, and the first State Legislature in 1820 created it a college.

Besides the grant of a township of land by Massachusetts, the State of Maine endowed the college with two half-townships. For the first seven years after it was chartered as a college the State granted an annuity of one thousand dollars, and subsequently other annuities, making the total benefactions of the State fourteen thousand five hundred dollars. In 1821 the name was changed to Waterville College by the Legislature, and again that of Colby University was adopted by the trustees January 3, 1861.5

MAINE STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE.

An act to establish the Maine State College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was passed by the Legislature February 25, 1865. This act provided for the complete organization of the college, and among

'Laws, 1880, chap. 224, sec. 1.

2 The following facts concerning Colby University are taken from President Small's excellent paper in the New England Magazine for August, 1888.

3 Laws of Maine, 1813, II, 856.

To be paid from the proceeds of the bank tax.

5 Laws of Maine, II, 854, 861.

'Maine Laws, 1865, chap. 523, p. 529.

other things created a board of trustees, with power to choose a site for the college and to make general laws for its control, and provided for a liberal course of instruction, including military tactics, and for free tuition to resident students of the State.

The land scrip1 of the Federal grant, amounting to 210,000 acres, had already been accepted, and in the following years (1866) 193,600 acres were sold at a little more than fifty-three cents per acre, which yielded one hundred and two thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine dollars, and when invested in State securities, made a fund of one hundred and four thousand five hundred dollars.

The remainder of the land was subsequently sold, swelling the permanent fund to the amount of one hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred dollars, yielding in 1886 an income of seven thousand four hundred and thirty-eight dollars.2

In 1866 the trustees chose the site for the institution at Orono, a village situated seven miles from the city of Bangor. Upon condition of its location at this place the citizens of Bangor donated the site and contributed the sum of fourteen thousand dollars, and the citizens of Orono raised by taxation the sum of eleven thousand dollars for the purchase of an experimental farm. Two years later the Legislature granted the sum of ten thousand dollars for the purpose of purchasing apparatus and erecting buildings.

3

This would seem like a favorable beginning for the new institution, and the subsequent appropriations by the State show that there was no lack of interest in the Agricultural College.

The Legislature made appropriations from time to time according to the apparent needs of the institution. A few of the more important will be cited. An act of March 12, 1869, appropriated the sum of twenty-eight thousand dollars for building and general purposes; this was followed in 1870 by an appropriation for similar purposes of twenty-two thousand dollars, including that part of the twenty-eight thousand dollars already drawn.

Again in 18726 there was voted the sum of eighteen thousand dollars, for general purposes; and two years thereafter twelve thousand and five hundred dollars.7

At this time (1875) a very peculiar act of the Legislature was passed, soliciting proposals from the various denominations and organizations to take the school and sustain it according to the original plan.. It seems that it was thought at this time that the successful conduct of the college by the State was impracticable. Possibly it was like the legislation of 1879, which abolished the free high schools as an economical measure. At any rate, the Agricultural College remained in the

1 Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1867-63, 299. 2 Report of State Superintendent of schools for 1886.

3 Laws of Maine (Resolves) 1868, 203.

4 Ibid, 1869, 24.

5 Ibid, 1870.

6 Ibid, 1872, p. 22.

7 Ibid, 1874, p. 179.

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