Chapter VII: To Let the Community Know

Sam sat quietly and, he hoped, calmly. Inwardly he was seething. Packed around him in the Syracuse convention hall were scores of New York teachers, gathered that July 30 of 1945 to declare their professional independence, form a state society, and belabor their natural enemies: county superintendents, ultra reformers, and any other high-flown outsiders who pretended to know more about the inside of the schoolroom than teachers did.

Principal G. H. Anthony of the Albany Classical Institute was just warming to his subject, "The Rod Versus Moral Suasion." Reformers, cried he, favor change whether for better or worse. Reform is the watchword of the day: reformers, "the most prominent if not the most useful members of society,"

Insubordination to law and a whole host of other evils the speaker shortly discovered to be rooted in the reformers' abandonment of the schoolteachers' trusty friend, the rod. Moral suasion, "that milk and water system" which deplores physical coercion, could stem only from that philosophical infidelity, the doctrine of perfectibility. Perfectibility, mind you, that concept that man is naturally holy, that monster born of atheistic France and the transcendental Germany ! Such a false system could circumscribe the usefulness of the school, undermine family order, and aim a death blow at the reign of law. . . .

"We believe," he concluded, addressing any reformers who still survived in the hall, "that you really do consider yourselves the great lights of the present age . . . .

"Perhaps it is painful . . . but we must tell you that your rushlight is not quite so brilliant as the sun . . . . "(1)

There was the usual applause and the usual motion to print. Sam jumped to his feet. His abolition battles had given him a good technique for managing meetings and a thorough grounding in parliamentary law. Speaking "calmly but with determination," he congratulated himself afterward, he declared the lecture repulsive and false. He also opposed the motion to print. An approving outburst came from the audience; Anthony's supporters, stunned by this unexpected parliamentary tactic, withdrew the motion. However a minister who looked to Sam "as if he were a lineal descendent of John Calvin" rushed off with the manuscript to publish it immediately in the Religious Recorder,(2) a Syracuse weekly with a strongly orthodox point of view and a distaste for "distinguished Unitarian ministers."(3)

Next on the agenda came Thomas Valentine of Albany, a man dedicated to organizing a New York teachers' association "as a prairie dweller sets a backfire," he liked to say, against the "streams which emanate from Massachusetts . . . poisoning all our channels of education with their hateful influence."(4)

Valentine rose to commend the present school system as "sound and useful," deplore the use of European models for American teacher training, and aim a few venomous barbs at Horace Mann. At that time Mann was engaged in a bitter controversy with 31 Boston schoolmasters. He had charged them with brutal floggings in the classroom; the schoolmasters had retaliated by ridiculing Mann's normal schools. Many New York teachers sympathized fervently with their Boston counterparts.

Certain visionaries, remarked Valentine, imagine a day when all vice and crime and inclination to wrong will be done away with . . . they are unfit for any office and "ought at once to be translated to the eternal regions of Utopia."(5)

May jumped up again, this time to defend Mann and oppose adoption of Valentine's report.(6) The convention haggled through a loud afternoon, finally amending the report to omit the offending passages.(7) Victory! May went home to rest.

He returned to battle next day, refreshed and ready to move an insertion in the minutes specifying that the motion to print Anthony's address had been withdrawn. He pushed a good thing too far; the convention indignantly rejected Sam's motion as an "implied stigma" on the address. Mr. Anthony also protested. He had been abused and insulted by those calling themselves moral suasionists and if he was treated to much more of it, he would show fight.(8)

May was glad to oblige. He was pained at the frequent sneers at moral suasionists. He did not advocate the entire disuse of the rod, but he and other moral suasionists believed that mischievous and ill-disposed people might be reformed by kindness without the use of violence. Moral suasionists had sought to arouse teachers' confidence in the power of love. Solomon had enjoined the use of the rod, May conceded, but Jesus Christ was an "infinitely wiser man," than Solomon and he gave no such precepts. "If teachers will go into their schools in the spirit of Christ, rather than of Solomon, we believe they will find no need of the rod."(9)

This appeared too much for one J. N. McElligott, a New York City teacher who disputed with some heat the implication that teachers who used the rod were not Christians.

Mr. May protested. He had not implied they were not Christians. He had said if teachers had true Christian spirit, the rod would rarely be necessary.

Had Mr. May forgotten the fact, interposed another delegate cuttingly, that Jesus Christ once used the whip himself?

The Religious Recorder in its report of the meeting printed no retort to that last sally, from Mr. May, but the Recorder always came down strongly on the side of Solomon.(10)

The proceedings concluded with a rousing exhortation by one Professor Frederick Emerson of Boston, concluding a program planned by the Albany teachers to discredit Mann and all his adherents. An old antagonist of May's, Emerson dwelt lovingly on the wickednesses of modern transcendentalists, no-government men, and advocates of labor-saving educational machinery.(11)

May, on his feet, was blocking the motion to print Emerson's lecture and pelting the Bostonian with pointed questions when opposition appeared from an unexpected quarter. Thundering into the arena came a new antagonist, General James R. Lawrence, ponderous Syracuse attorney appalled by the explosive tactics of this upstart Unitarian newcomer to the community. A stout Episcopalian conservative, General Lawrence professed great regret at the indignity offered to strangers in Syracuse by this process of "catechising and fault-finding." He had born it in silence hitherto, but would bear it no longer! The motion to print, reported the Religious Recorder with satisfaction, was carried by a strong majority.(12)

"Perhaps my course towards Mr. Emerson was not the most politic," May wrote to Mann afterwards. "But it was so evident he had been invited here, dubbed Professor, and set up before the community as a great man, in order to carry a point—that I felt called upon to put to him the questions I did—and if the Syracuse lawyer who knew nothing of the merits of the case had not interfered, I presume I should have obtained such an answer from "Prof." Emerson as I wished. As it resulted—I believe my course did more good than hurt."(13)

May wrote happily. Shortly afterward he found the Boston conservatives attacking his July stands,(14) and his cup overflowed. It was good to be back in the thick of battle, hurling insults and dodging brickbats, instead of cowering in a schoolroom with lessons to hear and fires to build and the intellectual and political punity of 60 young women to preserve immaculate.

The net effect of the convention proved heartening to May and Mann. Thwarted in its attempt to present a solid front against Mann's reforms, the Albany teachers' clique also lost its battle to locate the publication of the newly-formed New York State Teachers' Association in Albany.

The Teachers' Advocate began publishing immediately in Syracuse, the site selected by the convention, and in its columns May carried on his war with Valentine. They clashed repeatedly over the success of the Massachusetts normal schools. On this ground May had sure footing. He bombarded Valentine through several issues with facts and figures to show that normal education flourished in Massachusetts, and eventually had the satisfaction of a published apology from Valentine disavowing any intention of malice or misstatement, plus the Albany educator's promise to withdraw from the paper war.(15) No further installments of Valentine's projected series on normal schools appeared.

"So you see," May wrote Mann somewhat smugly as one who had been accused of turning renegade by leaving Massachusetts, "I may yet have an opportunity to do something for the reform of the schools."(16)

Coached carefully by May, Mann himself made a series of forays into New York, and eventually converted some of his more vocal opponents. New York State, however, remained officially committed to the practice of scattering its primary teacher training facilities in academies across the state rather than centering them solely in normal schools designed for the purpose.

* * *

Syracuse had now made itself a splendid spot for the Advocate, for May, and indeed for anyone deeply involved in the era's educational issues. Many of the questions agitating Massachusetts in the thirties had stirred New Yorkers by the time May arrived in 1845; if Massachusetts had grown less lively with Mann's successive victories over the recalcitrant, upstate New York bubbled with the most satisfying ferment of conservatism and dissent. In addition, New York had one enormous advantage over the Bay State, Mann declared. New Yorkers had been "exempted from the immense labor of forever boasting of their ancestors and have had more time to devote to their posterity."(17)

A land of transplanted Yankees, upstate New York had been settled by families from the New England hills. These immigrants brought with them a Puritan concern for education and established schools almost as soon as fields were plowed and cabins roofed. These early settlers provided an elementary education for their children which in quality at this basic level exceeded that available in any other state west of New England. Thus prepared, upstaters read voraciously a greater variety of newspapers than could be found in any other state except Massachusetts. Yorkers of that era were, in the opinion of their biographer, Whitney Cross, "extraordinarily wide-awake, well-informed and ambitious for greater knowledge."(18)

New York organized a common school system, however, much later than did Massachusetts. The Empire State established a $50,000 school fund in 1795, adding to it subsequently by a variety of devices including a state-wide lottery, but did not organize a permanent system of common schools until 1812.(19) The school law of 1812 provided, however, for a state superintendent of schools and for a more realistic state control of education than did early Bay State legislation.(20) By the time May arrived in 1845, town and county superintendents supervised the common schools under close direction from Albany.(21) In addition to teacher training departments in eight academies over the state and a normal school in Albany, the state maintained a system of annual teachers' institutes for those already in practice. This annual post-graduate education program so attracted Mann that he imitated it with his own teachers' institutes in 1845. Such a sincere form of flattery gratified New Yorkers.(22)

"Gentlemen known to have excelled as educators or to have given much thought to . . . education" appeared before these institutes, May found. As a prime example of the species he soon was traveling the state to participate in these admirable undertakings.

"They help to create a public opinion that will demand suitable preparation in those who would be teachers," May wrote Mann approvingly. The crude manners of the young males he met at the institutes, teachers who seemed to punctuate every sentence by spitting on the floor, appalled the erstwhile Brahmin, but he kept his eyes resolutely on the horizon.(23)

* * *

As one now primarily concerned with the creation of public opinion, May delighted in his new home. He had left the glittering excellence of Massachusetts feeling that "I was coming away from more good than I should find here or anywhere . . . . " he wrote Mann. Especially in education he expected Syracuse to be much behind the Bay State. To his surprise he found Syracusans passionately involved in all the conflicts over development of the common schools.(24)

Syracuse had been slow in sharing these heady concerns. The country around it was well settled before this village exploded into existence with the building of the Erie Canal in the early 1820's. By 1845, however, it had mushroomed into a community of more than 8,000 people,(25) and was making up in intensity what it lacked in experience. In 1845 the canal cut directly through the village, trains dashed down the streets, and carriages raised whirls of dust as they rolled along unpaved roads. Young trees and plank sidewalks attested to the youth of the community, but already Syracuse proved an exciting gathering spot for New Yorkers who came from all over to this rapidly growing commercial center. Commercial travelers declared the new Empire House the finest public house between Buffalo and Albany. There you could get a meal for twenty-five cents and, as the teetotaling Mays might have been pained to discover, whiskey for three cents a glass.(26) The Teachers Advocate, however, had settled in Syracuse not only because of its central position in the state but because of the "intelligent, liberal and enterprising spirit of its citizens."(29)

Such recognition was new. Five years before, educators who were looking for a horrible example invariably pointed to Syracuse. At that time an itinerant lecturer took a model of the best schoolhouse in the village and exhibited it about the state to show how bad a schoolhouse could be.(30)

Of the 1600 children at the time, 600 had never attended any school and the remainder attended only sporadically. One Syracuse school crammed half its students into "a dark and damp cellar, which excluded the cheerful light of day and must have had a remarkable effect in repressing that hilarity in the pupils which is so annoying to nervous teachers."(31)

A school without a schoolhouse also floated about the village, a "migratory, mendicant school," once located temporarily in the basement of a public house where classes were enlivened by the "brawl and confusion of dram drinking, arrival and departure of noisy travelers, and their lumbering vehicles." The school finally came to rest in a loft above a machine shop, scholars vibrating in tune with the lathes and steam engines below. "There was apparently a great emulation between the pupils, engines and workmen to produce the greatest confusion, and it required delicate perceptive faculties to decide which succeeded."(32)

Syracusans finally wearied at serving as butt for such dubious humor. They raised taxes, improved schools, formed a common school association,(33) and in August of 1845 achieved recognition from Superintendent Francis Dwight of Albany for their "wonderful reformation that has . . . placed [Syracuse schools] among the best schools of the Union."(34)

May's position as pastor of a Unitarian congregation distinctive for its intelligence, leadership, and liberalism provided the best possible podium for assisting in such reforms. Of the 56 male members of the Unitarian society in 1845, fully half were outstanding men on the community.(35) A number proved sympathetic enough to work with their pastor for the reforms he loved, and several, such as Dudley Phelps and Hiram Putnam, helped shape the educational renaissance of the community during the 1840's. In the opinion of another parishioner, Schoolmaster Joseph Allen, May's church deserved great credit for May's achievements as "probably the only congregation in which he could have the full swing he was given."(36) Over the years his parishioners gave May exceptional freedom to write, organize, petition, and travel at his own discretion. Occasionally they opened their private purses to help him do it.

May had come to New York as a sort of desperation move when no other attractive post consistent with his reform views had presented itself; but he had preached several sermons to the Unitarians in Syracuse on various reforms dear to his heart before he accepted their call, and he considered they were sufficiently warned of his peculiarities in advance.(37) He found Syracuse exceptionally congenial and so consistently exciting that he remained for the rest of his life. Samuel J. May proved a major influence in creating for the city its nineteenth century reputation as a hotbed for reform.

Now coming into his prime at 48 years of age, May in 1845 could reassume his most effective role in education: skilled publicist, promoter and defender of educational reform. From the time he first determined as a Harvard freshman to improve faculty and student opinion of his scholarly abilities, May had displayed shrewd talents for moulding public opinion.

"My opponent has really spoken, once or twice, as if he had unmasked me, dragged me out of my hiding place," May cried in mock despair during a series of theological debates with a Methodist parson in 1854. "Why, Sir, I have been as much above board and outspoken, as a man could be, ever since I lived in this city . . . . I am anxious to let the community know all my sentiments and purposes, and to interest as many in them as I may be able to."(38)

May bowed to no one, even the expert Horace Mann, in his ability to let the community know, and to create a favorable climate of opinion for whatever reform he espoused at the moment. In this lifelong undertaking he employed all the available methods and media: meetings, conventions, posters, placards, public notices, brochures, tracts, letters to the editor, petitions, surveys,(39) audio-visual education,(40) advertisements, button-holing of legislators, celebrity endorsements, direct mail, great debates, and a good many others the twentieth century would come to think of as its own.

May also had fine command of more subtle methods. He could achieve wonders via friendship with the decision makers of his society as well as through a knowledge of the processes of group dynamics. When a meeting was called or an organization formed, May could rarely be found presiding from the chair. He almost always managed to snag one of the backstage positions where power was more likely to lie; he made his influence felt either as secretary or as chairman of the resolutions committee. Other people ran the meetings and made the pronouncements: May decided in advance what they would say.

May's personal talents and preferences suited him admirably for this role. He wrote with vigor and clarity; his speaking voice was striking for the beauty of its tone. At the art of personal persuasion he admitted few peers. He professed great respect for the skills of the professional communicator and proposed that journalists should be ordained as were ministers of religion.(41) The fact that newspaper editors usually loved or hated him insured ample space for all his projects.

Jailing the refined Miss Crandall in 1833(42) was only one example of May's flair for the dramatic; it cropped out consistently when he needed it most. In 1857 he decided he would help a young Syracuse friend, Andrew D. White, enroll a colored man at Yale. May found a likely candidate for this venture. "He is, I am happy to say," May wrote White, "an unmistakable negro, an unmixed descendant from African ancestors. He has thick close curly hair, a flat broad nose and lips of ponderous size . . . . he will excel in the dead languages and elegant literature."(43)

May disliked direct physical action; one year spent as agent of the violently controversial New England Antislavery Society in 1835 to 1836 was enough for him. Except for helping with the "rescue" of the slave, Jerry McHenry, from federal marshals in Syracuse in 1851, he never again engaged in anything so immediately violent. But he did love to prod others. "I smile to think how successful you are in getting up mobs," wrote Wendell Phillips after a May diatribe against the Mexican war had thoroughly aroused the pro-war faction in Syracuse. "You act in Connecticut—lo, Judson's mobs. You come to Boston—the mobs of 1835! You go into exile at Syracuse. Lo, war mobs! Is it not clear that summer—calm as you seem, it is but seeming and underneath lies the veritable mob compeller, S. J. May?(44)

May did not pretend to be an original thinker, but he did have a skill for discovering promising new thinking in others and then graphically distilling its essence for the public at large. He delighted in promoting the work of those he identified as the true instigators and original spirits of the great educational reforms. His support of Horace Mann was a case history in such relationships; Mann called on him countless times to influence legislators, sway meetings, and find funds. "Become all things to all men," Mann wrote him in 1842. "Go preach; and wherever you preach, speaking with a flaming tongue, miraculously convert. Let us carry the cause through one year more and I think the young giant will be able to take care of himself."(45) May was still raising money for Antioch College under Mann's presidency in 1859 when Mann was approaching his death bed.(46)

May was always sending off educators such as Henry Barnard or Andrew D. White with letters of introduction to the influential people May knew in Chicago, Detroit, or London. He assisted White into some closely guarded Boston libraries by a well-timed note to Charles Francis Adams,(47) and helped White achieve his first national publication in the Atlantic via a letter of recommendation to its editor, James Field.(48) Though May himself had hoped to publish an article on the education of idiots [sic] in Barnard's American Journal of Education, he generously stepped back and recommended another article on the subject to Barnard, an article first brought to May by Edouard Seguin,(49) a young Frenchman working at the Idiot Asylum in Syracuse. This French educator became known throughout the world as a pioneer in this hitherto neglected field.

During his years in Syracuse, May served as close friend and personal advisor to the eccentric millionaire-philanthropist of nearby Peterboro, Garrit Smith. May always had a new young educator who could use some of Smith's money; Andrew D. White and Horace Mann were only two of the hopefuls who rode the train with May from Syracuse to Canastota and found the Smith carriage waiting at the station to convey them to the major house at Peterboro.(50) White had particularly high hopes after he came home from one of these conducted tours to Peterboro. Shortly thereafter, in his mail was a letter from Smith: "I was proposing to contribute largely to a school. But I was taken sick and woke up in a Lunatic Asylum. This greatly reduced my courage."(51)

White eventually had his university, but the glory went to Ezra Cornell.

May sacrificed himself most thoroughly to that eccentric genius, A. Bronson Alcott. May first heard of Alcott's pioneer school in Cheshire, Connecticut, as a result of the call issued to the Brooklyn convention in 1827.(52) He promptly wrote Alcott, and was rewarded by a personal appearance from this pensive, dreamy young man in 1828. Alcott and May were mutually enraptured; they spent long hours under the Brooklyn elms discussing every possible scheme for meliorating the human condition.(53) Alcott emerged from this encounter with May's recommendation that he go to Boston to teach, and with a strong interest in May's sister, Abigail. For the good of American transcendentalism and the detriment of May's family finances, Sam married Alcott to "Sister Abba" in 1830(54) after Alcott's disastrous venture in keeping an Infant School in Boston, a venture well ahead of its time, the man destined to become the Sage of Concord never exerted himself consistently at any remunerative work again, depending on his wife, daughter, and the largesse of the Mays for support.

May's correspondence is filled with notes, letters, and records of the diversion of May funds to the support of the Alcott household. The income from Sam's inheritance of $8,000 was immediately appropriated on his father's death to support Abba's family. "All her portion of my father's estate," May explained to his Scituate congregation, had "gone to pay her husband's debts."(55)

In 1845 the interest on the $8,000 was still supporting "an indigent sister and brother," May explained to his new congregation in Syracuse.(56) That same year May and Ralph Waldo Emerson worked together to procure the home in Concord, Massachusetts, called "The Wayside" for the Alcotts after Bronson's disastrous venture into communal living at Fruitlands;(57) when Nathaniel Hawthorne bought the house in 1853, May directed that money from the sale go to Abba.(58) Not until the success in 1868 of Little Women, published by Alcott's daughter, Louisa May, could the Alcott's live in independence. In Miss Alcott's novel, the March family was poor because the father, Mr. March, had "lost his property trying to help an unfortunate friend."(59) May's niece was hardly autobiographical in this detail.

During all this time May retained a genuine affection for his craggy brother-in-law, exploding only once and privately to his cousin, Samuel Sewell, about Abba's sad situation: "The more I think of her strange husband—the more I am shocked at his selfishness. I pity her with my whole heart." (Alcott's one-time assistant in the Boston infant school, Elizabeth Peabody, had been visiting the Mays and rousing Sam with stories of Bronson's odd behavior.)(60)

Generally Sam managed to think respectfully of the intellectual capacities of the lofty Alcott, to arrange for Bronson to present an occasional series of his "talks" in Syracuse, and to refer to Alcott when speaking to outsiders as "that remarkable man."(61)

Thus down through the years May cherished educational genius where he found it and made popular the ideas formulated by brilliant men. His was the role of both prophet and apostle for the great American educators of his age. He made straight in the desert a good many highways; he enjoyed preparing every one.

Footnotes

(1) Religious Recorder, August 7, 1845.

(2) May to Horace Mann, August 7, 1845, Massachusetts Historical Society.

(3) Religious Recorder, August 7, 1845.

(4) Teachers Advocate, I (December 31, 1845), p. 257. Consistency in metaphor was not an invariable hallmark of that enthusiastic age.

(5) Teacher' Advocate, I (September 10, 1845), pp. 17, 18.

(6) Religious Recorder, August 7, 1845.

(7) Ibid., also May to Mann, August 7, 1845.

(8) Religious Recorder, August 7, 1845.

(9) District School Journal, VI (September, 1845), pp. 115-116.

(10) Religious Recorder, August 7, 1845. No published account of these upheavals could be described as impartial. The Religious Recorder and the Teachers Advocate, new organ of the teachers association, invariably favored the orthodox-conservative side of a question: The District School Journal published by the New York State School Department in Albany always declared for reform and moral suasion.

(11) Religious Recorder, August 7, 1845.

(12) Ibid. Any interested person, minister, attorney, or citizen could attend almost any convention of the day and all felt free to speak at will, though they could not vote. Such varied participation considerably enlivened the proceedings.

(13) May to Mann, August 7, 1845, Mann Papers.

(14) May to Fowle and Capen, September 4, 1845, Massachusetts Historical Society.

(15) Teachers' Advocate, I (June 10, 1846), p. 621; I (August 19, 1846), p. 740; II (September 10, 1846), p. 8.

(16) May to Mann, August 7, 1845. Mann had told May in an earlier letter that he never should have left Massachusetts. Mann to May, July 4, 1845. Actually May had spent his lifetime moving from comfortable situations into difficult ones and, when the difficulties were conquered and his heresies accepted, leaving for more exciting places. He bore a similarity to Garrison whom in Lowell's phrase, was "so used to standing alone that, like Daniel Boone, he moves away as the world creeps up to him and foes further into the wilderness." C. E. Norton (ed.) The Letters of James Russell Lowell (New York: 1904), I, p. 177, cited by Arthur Schlesinger, The American as Reformer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 110.

(17) Common School Journal, I (March 15, 1839), p. 81.

(18) Whitney Cross, Burned-Over District (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), pp. 92, 93, 103.

(19) S. S. Randall, A Digest of the Common School System of the State of New York (Albany: Van Benthuysen & Co., 1844), pp. 8, 13.

(20) Frank P. Graves, "History of the State Education Department," Alexander C. Flick (ed.), History of the State of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933-1937), IX, p. 9.

(21) Ibid., p. 25.

(22) District School Journal, VI (December, 1845), p. 171.

(23) May to Mann, October 22, 1845. New York children were no better. "I will not spit on the floor," was suggested to the New York school superintendents convention in 1845 as a motto for their children, but most New York scholars remained, as one speaker commented wryly, "in a state of salivation." Common School Journal, VII (April 22, 1845), p. 240; District School Journal, VI (June, 1845), p. 50.

(24) May to Mann, April 26, 1845, Mann Papers.

(25) Syracuse population in 1844 was 8,256. Franklin H. Chase, Syracuse and its Environs (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1924), p. 412.

(26) Paul Paine, "Books and Folks," a column describing Syracuse when May arrived. Undated, unidentified clipping, May file, Onondaga Historical Association. Also see Joseph May, Services in Honor of Samuel Joseph May (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1886), p. 29.

(27) Quoted in the Onondaga Standard, September 2, 1846.

(28) May to William B. Fowle, May 9, 1845, Massachusetts Historical Society.

(29) Prospectus for the Teachers' Advocate, printed in the Religious Recorder, August 21, 1845.

(30) District School Journal, VI (June, 1845), p. 54.

(31) "Schools of Syracuse," District School Journal, VI (August, 1845), pp. 77, 78, 91. The author did not sign his name; presumably he was a personage considered important enough to have his article published at length in the official organ of the state education department.

(32) Ibid., p. 91.

(33) District School Journal, V (April, 1844), p. 19.

(34) District School Journal, VI (August, 1845), p. 91.

(35) Estimate based on comparing the 1845 membership list of the church found in May Memorial Church Records with biographical material in individual members' files at the Onondaga Historical Association. Interview with Richard N. Wright, president of the Onondaga Historical Association, December 12, 1955.

(36) Syracuse Daily Standard, October 21, 1897.

(37) May, Brief Account, p. 33. Also Dudley P. Phelps, "History of the Unitarian Society, 1838 to 1845," pp. 9-10. No date. Onondaga Historical Association.

(38) Discussion of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Syracuse: Wesleyan Book Room, 1854), p. 20.

(39) To stand off critics of the Lexington school in 1844, he surveyed the graduates. Of the 34 he had certified, "only two have failed to realize my expectations and one is recovering herself." May to the Massachusetts Board of Education, Common School Journal, VII (November 6, 1844), pp. 65-66.

(40) May waxed especially enthusiastic when some village artist would bring him a new chart showing a map of the heavens or the progressive stages in the life of a drunkard. He regularly badgered publishers to print them. The "audio" part in that day had to be provided by the teacher.

(41) Barrows (ed.), Life and Letters of Thomas J. Mumford, p. 169.

(42) See Chapter V.

(43) May to Andrew White, November 18, 1857, Cornell University.

(44) Galpin, "God's Chore Boy," p. 178.

(45) Mann to May, December 13, 1842, quoted in Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 166.

(46) May to the Rev. Henry W. Bellows, December 24, 1858.

(47) May to Charles Francis Adams, July 25, 1858, Harvard University.

(48) May to White, July 30, 1862, Andrew D. White Papers, Cornell University. Also, May to Editors, Atlantic Monthly; May 3, and August 15, 1861. White Papers.

(49) May to Barnard, February 19, 1856, Barnard Papers.

(50) May to White, August 3, 1862; May to White, July 30, 1862, White Papers.

(51) Gerrit Smith to Andrew D. White, September 3, 1862, White Papers.

(52) Mumford, May Memoir, pp. 121-122.

(53) Ibid., p. 122.

(54) Ibid., p. 123.

(55) May to members of the Second Parish in Scituate, April 18, 1842, quoted in Mary L. F. Power, "The Pastorate of the Rev. Samuel Joseph May at the South Parish of Scituate, 1836-1842," Onondaga Historical Association.

(56) May to Hiram Putnam, Thomas Spencer and John Wilkinson, January 27, 1845, Unitarian Records.

(57) May to Ralph Waldo Emerson, January 13, 1844; December 22, 1844. Harvard University.

(58) May to Samuel Sewall, June 12, 1853, Massachusetts Historical Society.

(59) Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (New York: Little, Brown, Co., 1868), p. 31.

(60) May to Samuel Sewall, July 12, 1853, Massachusetts Historical Society.

(61) May to Henry Barnard, July 30, 1857, Barnard Papers.