University History
“Old Aggie”
Levi Stockbridge not only rekindled public confidence in Mass Aggie, but he also inaugurated a building program which, by 1890, left an architectural legacy that still endures – South College, with its profusion of odd peaks and gables, the fine gothic chapel constructed with Pelham granite, the President's (now the Chancellor's) House, and the East and West Experiment Stations. In 1892, the finishing touch was added to the old campus when a small brook was dammed up to create the College Pond.
President Stockbridge was a radical agrarian who believed that the farmer must form "protective unions and granges" to insure that he receive "an equitable portion of the value he creates." Like the other founding fathers of M.A.C., Stockbridge adhered to the Jeffersonian vision of a republic which rested on a virtuous, enlightened, independent yeomanry. During the late nineteenth century, Dr. Charles S. Walker, college chaplain and Professor of Moral Science, urged the graduates to "Make farm life so much more desirable than the strife and struggle of the city street that the tenement home and the saloon shall be deserted, and men, women, and children shall hasten to enjoy real existence in the wholesome contact with nature and with nature's God."
The guiding spirit of Mass Aggie from 1886 until his death in 1905 was President Henry Hill Goodell. A modern language scholar, Goodell was converted to the cause of scientific agriculture by William Clark in 1867. From that point on he devoted his life to M.A.C., serving in every imaginable capacity -- Professor of French and English Literature, leader in gymnastics and military drill, dormitory supervisor (he was physically tough), director of the Hatch Experiment Station, state representative from the Fourth Hampshire District, librarian (his real passion), faculty secretary, and president. Stern, compassionate, literate, Goodell significantly expanded the academic scope of the college, determined, as he put it, that "Culture and refinement shall flourish in the homes of the masses as well as in the stately mansions of the classes."
During Henry Goodell's long presidency, many of the traditions that shaped "Old Aggie" for so long became firmly established. The student population grew slowly from 123 in 1870 to 250 by 1904. The student body was divided, as usual, between serious scholars and rowdy hell-raisers. The Washington Irving Literary Society might have their meetings interrupted by a rock thrown through the window. The Aggies organized secret societies such as Q.T.V., played baseball and football, dug potatoes in the fields, attended (or evaded) military drills, went to plays mounted by the Roister-Doisters, and occasionally went on strike. Classes challenged each other in contests for temporary possession of some object -- these brawls were politely called rushes. Some of the "class warfare" was eventually channeled into less destructive forms such as the freshmen-sophomore rope pull, held at the campus pond. Finally, despite male student opposition, women began to be admitted to the college in the 1890s. By 1905, enough female students were present to warrant special dormitory accommodations in Draper Hall, the new dining commons. The increasing presence of women, particularly after World War I, seemed to modify the somewhat rough-edged character of student life at Mass Aggie.
Henry Goodell was succeeded in 1905 by the last of the ardent agriculturalists, young Kenyon Butterfield of Michigan. He quickly introduced extension courses for area farmers, and began a practical two-year program in agriculture which, in 1928, was institutionalized as the Stockbridge School. Butterfield revamped the curriculum to include courses with titles such as "Agricultural Economics," "Rural Home Life," "Rural Journalism," and even "Rural Sociology." Frustrated by the increasingly urban-industrial character of the Massachusetts economy, Butterfield returned to Michigan in 1924, and old Aggie began its slow, halting, but irresistible drift toward a broad-based liberal arts curriculum. The agricultural renaissance which Butterfield sought to promote was never to be.
Credits
The content of this Web page was adapted from a series of displays created for the 1988 celebration of the 125th anniversary of the founding of the University of Massachusetts. They were produced by the then Office of Humanities Programs in the Division of Continuing Education of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and were funded by a grant from the University President’s Office. Project Director: Kerry W. Buckley; Researcher: Robert J Wilson, III.
