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��PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY.
��PHILLIPS EXETEB ACADEMY.
��This venerable institution is one of the oldest nurseries of classical education in America. It was founded in 1783 by Dr. John Phillips, a merchant of Exeter, in the days when that town was a business centre and the shipment of heavy goods was by water, in vessels of a few hun- dred tons burden. Dr. Phillips, having amassed a considerable fortune, seems to have determined on the perpetuation of the family name, not especially to grat- ify family pride, but to confer a lasting blessing on a posterity ever ready to ac- knowledge its obligations to the world's benefactors. It should be remembered that the Exeter of that day was quite as important a town relatively, as it is now. There the Colonial Legislature held its sessions in common with its wealthier neighbor Portsmouth : there dwelt mem- bers of the Colonial Congress and there resided the Gilmans and others, after- wards Congressmen and Governors of the State. A hundred years since, Ports- mouth, Dover and Exeter were the towns of the Province of New Hampshire. Though the thought of Dr. Phillips can not be read, he doubtless imagined Exe- ter to gradually grow in importance as an inland town and that his Academy would flourish with its growth, not dreaming that railroads, half a century later, without destroying old land marks or degrading the venerable dignity of what the fathers had consecrated, would so change the currents of trade as to plant large cities far away from the sea- board and nearly annihilate the com- mercial importance of those dependent on harbor and tide water. But so it is ; and Exeter of to-day only contains double the number of inhabitants it did in 1776. Yet its natural beauty remains almost undisturbed. The Squamscott river is as placid and the falls above it awaken scarcely a new echo, while many of those incident to shipping died along its banks
��forty or fifty years since. A cotton mill by the river side and a machine shop and foundry near the depot, are the princi- pal manufactories, and which occupy the place of corn mills, saw mills and a few tanneries. The latter, in active oper- ation, with shipping, ship-building and country trade, were the foundation of prosperity and wealth one hundred years ago. It was the fortune of Dr. Phillips to endow an institution more lasting than all of these, and the fortune of posterity to reap the manifold results of such a beneficent endowment. It appears by the catalogue of 1783 that 56 students at- tended and of these, 38 belonged to Exe- ter. This would indicate that no mod- ern advertising was resorted to in order to swell the number of pupils, and the inference is clear that Exeter and sur- rounding towns might have regarded the Academy as peculiarly theirs. A further and closer examination of catalogues shows us that the tree planted by Dr. Phillips bore such goodly fruit that it was plucked with avidity by dwellers in the several States of the Union and by many in foreign lands. As early as 1785, there was one student from the West Indies. Before the year 1800, a dozen had attended from the West Indies ; and other States besides New Hampshire, Avere well represented. The number at- tending to April, 1869 was 3,855. This number must have increased to nearly 4,500.
The list of Principals is wonderfully short. Only three names appear. Dr. Benjamin Abbott, Dr. Gideon L. Soule, and Albert C. Perkins, A. M. The labors , of Dr. Abbott and Dr. Soule cover more than three-fourths of a century of indefa- tigable toil and unremitting aid to those climbing the hill of science. Dr. Abbott was Principal of the Academy from 1788 to 1838, just half a century. Dr. Soule having been already associated with Dr.
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