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FOSTER was one of the thirty immortals of our Class, being on hand the first, and
remaining until the last, day of our undergraduate years. He was, while in college, a
member of the 'Logian Literary Society; of Mills Society, and one of its presidents during
Senior year; in athletics, he was a member of the Greylock Baseball Club, and one of its
secretaries; a member of the committee on songs for Biennial Celebration, composing a
song in Greek on the class motto; one of the Moonlighters during Sophomore year; on
the Prize Rhetorical exhibition, August 6, 1861; received an appointment of English
oration on Junior exhibition in 1862; received a first class honorary appointment, the
Esthetical oration, on the Commencement program; this appointment gave him Phi Beta
Kappa rank. He was also a member of The Williams Quarterly editorial board for our
Senior year. Beyond this paragraph, for which your Historian alone is responsible, our
classmate tells his own story, and it is this telling of these individual stories, "the trivial
round and common tasks," of what to each of us, in most cases, is an uneventful career,
which is going to make this fortieth year record book of immeasurable interest to our
class.
I am asked to tell my classmates something about myself. Briefly put, the main facts
in my "short and simple annals" are these:
Addison Pinneo Foster was born September 25, 1841, in Henniker, New Hampshire.
He was the son of Rev. Eden Burroughs Foster, D.D., and Catherine (Pinneo) Foster.
On his father's side he descended in the ninth generation from Rev. Thomas Foster, of
Ipswich, England; on his mother's side in the seventh generation from Jacques
Pineau, a
Huguenot who fled from Lyons, France, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He
fitted for college in the high school at Lowell, Massachusetts, and at Phillips Andover
Academy, graduating from this latter institution in 1859. After graduating from Williams
College he took two years of theological study at Princeton Theological Seminary,
graduating at Andover Theological Seminary in 1866. While at Princeton he
served three months in the Christian Commission during the War of the Rebellion, following
the army in Grant's campaign in Virginia from Washington to Petersburg. He has had
five pastorates in Congregational churches at Lowell, Malden, and Chelsea, Massachusetts; Jersey City, New Jersey; and in the Roxbury district of Boston,
Massachusetts. For the last ten years he has been secretary for New England of the
American Sunday School Union, having his headquarters in Boston. In 1886 his Alma
Mater kindly strengthened him for his work by giving him the title of Doctor of Divinity.
For about twenty-five years he has been a regular correspondent of the Chicago Advance, a Congregational religious paper, writing first from New York and
subsequently from Boston. His published writings are chiefly newspaper articles and
sermons. He has regularly contributed for twenty-six years one sermon or more to the
annual volume prepared by the Monday Club (an organization of Boston ministers), and
entitled, "Sermons on the International Sunday School Lessons by the Monday Club."
For a year he prepared, in connection with the Blakeslee Sunday School Lessons, a series
of homilies or essays on the sayings of our Lord, which were printed as syndicate articles
in a number of religious papers. He has prepared a memorial volume concerning his
father, Rev. Eden B. Foster, D.D., late of Lowell, Massachusetts. The American Sunday
School Union has also published a volume from his pen entitled, "A Manual of Sunday
School Methods."
He has married twice; first, August 8, 1866, his father officiating, Harriette Day,
daughter of Sherebiah Butts and Harriette (Sampson) Day, of West Springfield, Massachusetts. She was born March 9, 1840, and died August 1, 1896. He married,
second, September 22, 1898, Rev. John G. Davenport, D.D., officiating, Gertrude
Deyo, of Poughkeepsie, New York, born April 15, 1857, at New Paltz, New York. She was the
daughter of Theodore and Mary (Elting) Deyo, of New Paltz, New York. He has had
five children; viz., Mabel Grace (adopted), born September 28, 1869, in Boston; and by
his first wife, Edith, born January 15, 1876, in Chelsea, Massachusetts (died the same
day) ; Marion, born June 26, 1877, in Jersey City, New Jersey; Harold Day, born February 12, 1879, in Jersey City; and Winthrop Davenport (named for Dr. Davenport,
of Waterbury, Connecticut), born December 28, 1880, in Jersey City. Of these children
four are living: Mabel, who after writing a novel of Italian life in the north end of
Boston, entitled, "The Heart of the Doctor," published by Houghton, Mifflin &
Company, has been spending a year and more in Italy, studying the language, art, and
people there; Marion, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College in 1900, and now teaching
in a high school at Richford, Vermont; Harold, a graduate of Williams College in 1902,
and now studying in the School of Forestry, Yale University; and Winthrop, now in
Williams College, and to graduate in 1904. These facts, though of slight interest to the general public, mean much to me. It is
very gratifying that my classmates care to have them recited, and that this circle of men,
scattered over the land, are to a certain degree bound together in such a common
interest that the affairs of each member of the Class are matters of real concern to the
rest. I welcome this fact and find it not only a comfort so far as the sympathy of my
Class in my life is concerned, but a real pleasure, so far as I am permitted to know of my
classmates and to enter into their life.
Reviewing my forty years out of college, I recognize certain vital facts, which I know
the rest of the Class have also learned through their experiences. They are such as
these: the supreme importance of the home and the unspeakable blessing of a good wife
and of promising children; the immense responsibility of living, and the burden that falls
on every one of us to use wisely whatever God has committed to us; the stimulus and
excitement of a life among men in which we have a part in the great onward movement
of humanity; the certainty that we must fall short of our ambitions and, as the years pass,
lose some of the hope and courage with which we began; the insignificance and worthlessness of some of the ambitions with which we began life and the magnitude of
some things which at first we despised; the permanence of early friendships; the
increasing loneliness of this life as our friends one after another leave us, and the rising
into greater importance on the horizon, as the years go by, of the life beyond. As the facts have come to my view regarding the lives of my classmates during these
forty years, I can now see that at the time of graduation their future was substantially
determined, their characters formed, their habits established, their life work practically
decided. By the time we were ready to leave college, the molding period was largely
over. No doubt our subsequent experience in the world developed some peculiarities
previously existing only in embryo. Some of us have more self-reliance, some more
authoritative ways, some are more content, because they have reason, and some more
subdued, because life has brought them pain. Yet after all we are today largely what we
were when our Alma Mater sent us forth.
And now we have passed through forty years. It is a period of time which has a
peculiar significance in Scripture. Moses was forty years in a king's palace, forty years in
meditative rural life, and forty years in the strenuous cares of a nation. Israel was forty
years in the incessant anxieties and struggles of tent life in the desert before God gave
them rest in the land of the vine and olive. There seems to be reason why forty years
should mark off a definite period of life, the completion of which is the introduction to a
new era. Forty years is about the average period of a man's activity. At the end of that
time he has secured a competency, if he does it ever; has shown what he can do, and has
accomplished his aims, if at all; is weary with his work, and has brought along his
children into manhood and womanhood, where they can take up his burdens and where
their success means much more to him than his own.
My classmates and I have passed through these forty years of toil and now our hair is
fast turning gray. It is not surprising if, as we find the sun is westering, we begin to think
of withdrawing somewhat from the strife of life and of resting for a while before we go
hence. May the period into which we now enter, as following our forty years of struggle,
bring us peace and comfort. May we find it a Beulah land.
Source:
Class of Sixty-Three Williams College Fortieth Year Report, by
the Class Historian, Thomas Todd Printer, Boston, 1903
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