Famous Givers and Their GiftsBolton, Sarah Knowles
History
Famous Givers and Their Gifts
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
Philanthropists
The press of North Easton says, "The influence and educational power of
such a series of lectures and course of instruction in a community
cannot be measured or properly gauged. From these lectures a stream of
knowledge has gone out which, we believe, will bear fruit in the future
for the good of the community. Of the many good things which have come
from the liberality of Mr. Ames, this, we believe, has been the most
potent for good of any."
Judge White of Lawrence, Mass., left at his death a tract of land in the
hands of three trustees, which they were to sell, and use the income to
provide a course of not less than six lectures yearly, especially to the
industrial classes. The subjects were to be along the line of good
morals, industry, economy, the fruits of sin and of virtue. The White
fund amounts to about one hundred thousand dollars.
Mrs. Mary Hemenway of Boston, who died March 6, 1894, will always be
remembered for her good works, not the least of which are the yearly
courses of free lectures for young people at the Old South Church. When
the meeting-house where Benjamin Franklin was baptized, where the town
meeting was held after the Boston Massacre in 1770, and just before the
tea was thrown overboard in 1773, and which the British troops used for
a riding-school in 1775,--when this historic place was in danger of
being torn down because business interests seemed to demand the
location, Mrs. Hemenway, with other Boston women, came forward in 1876
to save it. She once said to Mr. Larkin Dunton, head master of the
Boston Normal School, "I have just given a hundred thousand dollars to
save the Old South; yet I care nothing for the church on the corner lot.
But, if I live, such teaching shall be done in that old building, and
such an influence shall go out from it, as shall make the children of
future generations love their country so tenderly that there can never
be another civil war in this country."
Mrs. Hemenway was patriotic. When asked why she gave one hundred
thousand dollars to Tileston Normal School in Wilmington, N.C.,--her
maiden name was Tileston,--and thus provide for schools in the South,
she replied, "When my country called for her sons to defend the flag, I
had none to give. Mine was but a lad of twelve. I gave my money as a
thank-offering that I was not called to suffer as other mothers who gave
their sons and lost them. I gave it that the children of this generation
might be taught to love the flag their fathers tore down."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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