Among 19th century Antiochians, teacher, artist, poet Irene Hardy (1841-1922), class of 1885, lived one of the more well-documented lives due to the memoir she began in retirement, “The Making of a Schoolmistress.” After her death, her 530-page manuscript ended up in the hands of her brother Lewis, an Antiochian of the 1870s, who resided in Yellow Springs, and he gave it to Antiochiana, where it was eventually discovered by longtime Antioch Professor of American Civilization Louis Filler. He edited the work and published it in 1980 under the title “An Ohio Schoolmistress,” leaving out only the instances where she repeated herself and “Miss Hardy’s practice of footnoting the Latin name of just about every flower and tree she mentions in the text.” On her extraordinary powers of recall, Filler wrote in his introduction that “Irene Hardy’s mind was an all but fabulous repository of memories of the world in which she lived.”

Irene Hardy, 1908.

Hardy wrote the following letter to Arthur Morgan, then the fairly new president of the College, at a time when he was about to launch his

“New Antioch” based on alternating work and study, which of course we call Cooperative Education. Part of that launch was a mass mailing to former students about the exciting changes to come to their school, and it seems he also asked if she would serve as a representative of her graduating class, which on paper was 1885. After sharing the fears she had about his transformation of Antioch College (her comment on “omitting the things which pertain to the moral and spiritual ideals now so much needed in the world” rings frighteningly familiar in the 21st century landscape of higher education), she explains why she isn’t really a member of the Class of 1885 at all.

None of the hopes she shares for the College had been realized by the time of her letter, though before it was finished, the Morgan administration would expand the library, build a separate gymnasium “west of the quadrangle” just as she envisioned it, and “a building otherwheres constructed for chemical and other laboratories” we called Science. Morgan would also construct a new place for worship called Rockford Chapel. The chapel she so cherished would never again serve “the religious life of the College” as she put it, but remained central to campus life as Kelly Hall until Main Building was closed down in 2008.

No. 453 Melville Avenue,
Palo Alto, California.

July 19th 1921.

My dear Mr. Morgan:

Antioch College President Arthur Morgan in 1921.

I thank you for the opportunity given by your letter of July 2nd to express my feeling of gratification at the prospects of Antioch College.

I was somewhat disturbed in mind at the first news relating to what seemed to me a radical change in the ideals of the first President and the founders of the College; but later bulletins and other information have removed my fears concerning that point.

It seemed to me that if the College were to be turned into a trade school for the purpose of furthering material progress mainly, omitting the things which pertain to the moral and spiritual ideals now so much needed in the world, it would wholly destroy the purposes of the founders. I see, however, now, that these things are to be not only kept alive but restored to their original force.

I am very sorry that I am unable to undertake the Chairmanship of the Class of 1885 with which I took my degree. I am not personally acquainted with a single member of the Class; I never saw or met any of them for reasons which you will understand with some explanations

I entered Antioch College in September, 1861, as partial freshman. My preparatory school had  given me no Latin, no Greek, and no ancient history. I had, therefore, to do three years’ work in these subjects, which I did in two years. At the end of that time, owing to conditions brought about by the War, the College classes were suspended for one year and the faculty gave all their time to the preparatory school.

I went home, to teach. To shorten my story,- I was in and out of the College a number of times to teach, until 1867, when I was nearly ready to take my degree. Although I was matron of North Hall and teacher in the preparatory school from 1874 to 1876, I did not care to take my degree, notwithstanding I had done work enough to entitle me to it; nor was I ever afterward a student there. In 1871 I came to California, and on a return visit In 1883-4, when Dr. Daniel Long was President, he urged me to take my degree at the next Commencement. I could not return to do so, but the degree was granted in 1885 – eighteen years after It was mainly earned. You will see by this somewhat tedious story that I could not possibly act as Chairman of the Class.

Other reasons are,- that I am approaching my eightieth birthday, and that I was deprived of my sight more than ten years ago.

I am not in a position financially to do much, though my inclinations would lead me to carry out my many dreams for endowing the College liberally.

And here I venture to speak of some of the things I had hoped for and imagined; also, some of the things done in the past few years which were a source of grief to me and to a few others of my time and a little later:

My hopes were that the College might be endowed and made able to continue work Iike that done by Horace Mann, Thomas Hill. Austin Craig, and other later successors. In imagination I saw the beloved old chapel adorned with portraits of Presidents Mann, Hill, Craig, Weston, Orton, Hosmer, and other great teachers like Suliot and Claypole.

I hoped, too, to see the small library enlarged to liberal proportions; to see the College acquiring the Glen property for the study of forestry and other sciences; to see a gymnasium built on the west side of the quadrangle, and a building otherwheres constructed for chemical and other laboratories. So then it was a real grief to me when I heard that the chapel, sacred to the religious life of the College and peopled by memories of the great teachers, had been made into a gymnasium and renamed, Kelly Hall. I wonder if I can hope that this may be remedied some day.

Nearly twenty years in teaching English Literature in the Oakland High School and Stanford University and the great enjoyment of that work make me wish that I might be of use to you in advising with the head of your English Department on the subject of courses,- especially in the literature and history of America. I hope that the there will be expanded courses of reading in these subjects both in the preparatory school and in the College, and that whoever the teachers are they will be men end women of great enthusiasm and liberal spiritual endowment.

I wish I might be able to tell you and others who are to administer College affairs of some of the customs and traditions of the old time, not a few of which would be worth reviving and keeping alive.

With cordial wishes for the success of your plans for the College, I am

Very sincerely yours,

Irene Hardy

In the Summer of 1861 the Mann Memorial Committee decided that sculptor Emma Stebbins would create the bronze statue of Horace Mann for the grounds of the Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston. Four years later, with the statue a month from its dedication on the Fourth of July, his widow Mary wrote the following letter to Senator Charles Sumner. A gigantic figure of his time, Sumner was a leading member of the political faction known as the Radical Republicans, who made certain that the goal of the US Civil War was the destruction of slavery, pushed hard to ensure that the Fourteenth Amendment passed, started impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson, and enforced the most punitive Reconstruction policies that they could upon the former Confederacy.

Only a personality with the force of Sumner’s could stay at the head of such a strong willed faction. From the moment he entered the Senate in 1851, Sumner attacked the slave interests with the blistering oratory that had made him a public figure when he was still in his twenties. In 1856, he delivered his famous “Bleeding Kansas” speech against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, excoriating its architect Andrew Butler (D-SC) and his love for “the harlot, slavery.” Two days later, Butler’s cousin and Democratic Representative of South Carolina Preston Brooks redressed the insult with his cane, beating Sumner nearly to death as he sat at his Senate desk. He survived and served until his death in office in 1874.

Though permanently diminished by the assault, Sumner remained at the forefront of government as well as its most courageous champion for civil rights the rest of his life. He also continued to be a much sought-after public speaker, such as he is about to do at time Mary wrote this letter, the original of which resides at the Library of Congress (Antiochiana has a facsimile copy known as a “photostat”). Mary refers to Sumner doing “justice to Mr. Lincoln” in the eulogy he is scheduled to deliver in two days time. Entitled “The Promises of the Declaration of Independence,” Sumner’s address came in at just under 17,000 words, so if “justice” was not done surely the people of Boston got their money’s worth that day. She then makes reference to her “little book,” first of the five volumes of Life and Works of Horace Mann, so hardly little at all.

Mary seems to not care too much about her late husband’s statue or for its artist. Years earlier she had expressed her desire that a man named Ball Hughes should do the work, and perhaps she’s still disappointed he wasn’t selected. That she told Stebbins that a good statue would “be a miracle” seems thoughtless if not directly unkind, and her reference to “genius” makes no supposition that the artist actually possesses any at all. To interpret this apparently dismissive comment another way, her last paragraph says she is proud of her country for the first time in her life, and maybe she is simply too overwhelmed by the fact that slavery had finally become illegal to give thought to such earthly concerns.

Photo: Carte de visite of Senator Charles Sumner by Alexander Gardner. Matthew Brady Studio

Concord, May 30th 1865

My Dear Mr. Sumner,
I have just learned thro’ the papers, for I have no other notice of the fact, that the statue of my husband has arrived in Boston, and that it will soon be set in its place. If any of the gentlemen interested in the matter ask you to speak any words upon the occasion, I hope you will consent, for I think no one would do so much justice to him in all respects. I am jealous of sons of those Boston men who in hard times flinched from their friendship to him. You will feel and know that no man who has passed from our sight would so deeply (one line masked in photostat) over our land. I do not know whether you will do justice to Mr. Lincoln – if you do, so much the more precious will your tribute to him be – but I think you fully realised my husband’s interest in human freedom.

A few days since I read the last proof sheets of my memoir. It is a singular coincidence that the two things should happen at once – the arrival of the statue and the issue of my little book. I know how inadequate it is as a memoir, but my chief object was to let him speak for himself. I have written enough about him to fill volumes but this is all they would print. It will be pleasant to me to have (one line masked in photostat) hands, who knew so well the motives that actuated him – and after all it is a man’s motives that make the man.

It will be a miracle to me if Miss Stebbins statue is good, as I told the dear lady herself, but there is no knowing what genius may do.
Let me here rejoice with you that your labors have been so crowned with success. How my husband would have loved to work with you – but if the spirits of the departed ever aid their earthly brethren, he has kept watch and ward with you, strengthened you when you needed strength, sustained you in the dark hours, & poured the wine of triumph into your cup of joy when all was achieved. And he will continue to uphold you in the work yet to be done. I tremble for the next step, but if God spares you for another Congress, I shall not be without hope and even faith that the crowning glory will be given to what has already been done, and that we shall indeed be a nation of freemen enjoying equal rights before the law. For the first time I am proud of my country, & if this last great event has not compacted us into a nation of moral heroes, nothing can. I hope you are not to pronounce a requiem, but only a benediction, for surely Mr. Lincoln passed from life to Life at just the right moment.

With great regard,
Mary Mann