The History of Dartmouth CollegeSmith, Baxter Perry
History
The History of Dartmouth College
Smith, Baxter Perry
Dartmouth College -- History
The following tribute to one of Dartmouth's most eminent and honored
teachers is from a "Discourse" by Professor (now President) Brown.
"Charles Bricket Haddock was born in that part of Salisbury, N. H.,
which is now Franklin, June 20, 1796. His mother was Abigail Webster,
an older sister of Ezekiel and Daniel Webster. She had two children,
Charles and William. She was a person of uncommon excellence and
loveliness, a favorite with her brothers, who always spoke of her with
great affection. She was a religious woman, and on her death-bed
manifested great solicitude for her sons, especially dedicating the
oldest, Charles, to the Christian ministry. This expression of feeling
was almost the only recollection which Mr. Haddock had of his mother.
"The place of his birth was retired, but full of rural beauty; the
rushing Merrimac-making sweet music of a summer evening, the broad
intervals basking in the summer sun, the granite mountains 'dumbly
keeping watch all round,' from whose summits, looking almost to the
White Hills on one side, and almost to the sea on the other, you would
behold a landscape picturesque and lovely beyond the power of
description. The quiet scenes of his youth, the simple pleasures, and
the common amusements of village life, varied with few excitements,
could not have been without their effect upon the mind of a sensitive
boy. To what age he was left to these alone, I do not know.
"He fitted for college mainly at the academy in Salisbury, and entered
in 1812. Nature had done more for him than his instructors, and he
very soon took the position, which he ever maintained, as intellectual
leader in a class, which, though small, numbered among its members
several young men of distinguished ability. In that little community
he was at once the best scholar and the most popular man. 'In looks,'
writes one of his class-mates,[41] 'Haddock was decidedly the most
striking man in the class. He was tall and well-proportioned. He had
an intellectual cast of features, a well-chiseled profile,--and
altogether you might pronounce him a man intended for a scholar, and
destined, if he lived, to make his mark in the world. I, who entered
college a mere boy, singled him out the first day. He was always an
industrious student. He never failed of a recitation, so far as I can
remember, and he never failed to be prepared for it.'
[41] Professor Torrey, of Burlington.
"Adding thus to the distinction of attainment and scholarship so much
beauty of person, so much modesty, gentleness, and propriety of
demeanor, it was natural that he should be regarded as a model young
man, nor was there wanting that profounder moral element, without
which no character can be complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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