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SPRING was born January 5, 1840, in Grafton, Vermont. His father was Edward
Spring, of English ancestry, a descendant of John Spring, who settled in Watertown,
Massachusetts, in 1634; his mother was Martha Atwood, of Scotch-Irish forbears, who settled
in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Our classmate's boyhood was spent on a farm preempted
by his great-grandfather, one of Grafton's pioneers. The family removed to Manchester,
Vermont, in 1854, and two years later Spring became a student in Burr and Burton
Seminary. In 1858, he entered Williams College in the Class of 1862, but about the middle
of Freshman year he was obliged, on account of failing eyesight, to give up study. For about
a year he was clerk in a country store, becoming acquainted with all sorts and conditions of
goods and wares and dispensing them to all sorts and conditions of customers. His eyes
recovering in a measure, though troublesome throughout his college course, Spring was able
to resume his studies, and he entered our Class sometime in the early part of Freshman
year, as his name is enrolled with the Class in the autumn of 1859.
In college, he was a member of the Equitable fraternity; of the 'Logian Literary
Society; was assigned the Latin oration on Junior exhibition, April, 1862; one of the
disputants in the Adelphic Union Debate, March, 1863; on the editorial board of Williams
Quarterly, 1862-63; orator on Class Day program, July, 1863; and was assigned the
philosophical oration on the Commencement program, and later, when a chapter of the Phi
Beta Kappa was formed in our college, Spring, with the other first and second honor men,
was made a member.
When Spring's eyesight had recovered and he returned to college, his first appearance
in our Class was in Professor Lincoln's Latin recitation. He made a decidedly favorable
impression, "raked an X," as we used to say when a specially good recitation was made.
This was evidence that '63 had received another excellent scholar.
After graduation, Spring entered the theological seminary at East Windsor Hill,
Connecticut, in the autumn of 1863. He remained there two years and followed the
seminary to Hartford, and was graduated in 1866 in the first class after the removal from
East Windsor to Hartford. Then followed a few months at Andover as a graduate student
until the spring of 1867, when Spring went to Castleton, Vermont, where he supplied a
Congregational church for nine months while the pastor was on a leave of absence. After
the return of the pastor to his post in the Castleton church, our classmate accepted an
invitation to supply the Congregational church at Middlebury, Vermont, and he there spent
the winter of 1867-68. Before the conclusion of this engagement, our classmate received
overtures from a committee which had been appointed in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, with the
view of establishing a new Congregational church in that city. The proposals of the
committee were accepted and Spring began to preach in the hail of a hotel, March 9, 1868.
A little later a church was organized, Spring was ordained and installed as its first
pastor, and continued in office between seven and eight years. During this pastorate, a
meeting house costing $85,000 was built, and a church membership of three hundred and
fifty was attained.
On account of failing health, Spring resigned in 1875, and after spending a few
months in Reading, Massachusetts, he became pastor of the Plymouth Congregational
Church, Lawrence, Kansas. He remained in this pastorate five years, and then resigned to
accept the chair of English literature in the University of Kansas, about 1881. Here he
found his position exceptionally agreeable and here he remained until 1886, when he
accepted the Morris professorship of rhetoric in Williams College, a designation that is a
misnomer, for Spring has never taught rhetoric but has confined himself to English
literature, particularly Elizabethan drama and the literature of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The fields which Spring has cultivated during these years since his
return to our Alma Mater have been very agreeable to himself and very satisfactory to his
pupils and to the college authorities. They were an unexplored region in our college years,
except as we ventured along its borders without guide or map or compass. We never
penetrated far inland and our gleanings were meager and ill assorted.
Spring's literary activity, aside from that connected with his college work, has been
largely on historical lines. From the outset of his residence in Kansas he became interested
in the history of the State, but he published nothing until after his connection with the
university.
His first ventures were two articles on certain phases of John Brown's career, printed
in The Advance, of Chicago. In Lippincott's Magazine for January, 1883, he published a
more elaborate article on the Pottawatomie massacre, entitled, "Old John Brown at Dutch
Henry's Crossing," and a few months later one in the Overland Monthly on "Catching Old
John Brown." These articles, because of their candid and impartial manner of treating the
John Brown episode in Kansas history, attracted considerable attention, and not long after
their appearance Spring was asked to prepare the history of Kansas for the Commonwealth
series, published by Houghton, Muffin and Company, which was issued in 1885 - a revised
edition of which is to appear in the autumn.
Perhaps the best characterization of our classmate's book is that given by J. F.
Rhodes, who without dispute is one of the best authorities on the slavery period of our
national history.* "But," writes Mr. Rhodes, "the story of Kansas, which in our own day
Professor Spring, of Kansas, has told impartially and without a blur of theory,' is not the
story that the truth-seeking voter of 1856 heard at Republican meetings and read in
Republican newspapers."
This history is a fine, impartial piece of work of first-class quality, and it was this
book chiefly that secured Spring's election to membership in the Massachusetts Historical
Society, an honor that came to him unsolicited and unknown before he received notice of
its bestowment. Since the publication of this book our classmate has put forth occasional
papers on Kansas history; one in The Western Historical Review, on "Kansas and the War of
the Rebellion;" one in the American Historical Review, on "The Career of a Kansas
Politician;" and a paper read, in 1900, before the Massachusetts Historical Society, on "John
Brown and the Destruction of Slavery," together with several reviews of Kansas books for
the American Historical Review. Since returning to Massachusetts, Spring has given a little
attention to Williams history. In 1888, he published a monograph, "Mark Hopkins,
Teacher"; an illustrated article in The New England Magazine for October, 1893, with the
title, "Williams College." Also, the same year, he edited the "Williams Centennial Book"
and "The Discourses of President Hopkins and the Rev. Joseph Alden, D.D., at the
Semi-Centennial in 1843." On educational topics, Spring has printed little. The principal
titles are: "On Teaching English," "Shakespeare's Ideal King," "Shakespeare's Life Beyond
Life' of Queen Margaret," "Milton on Education." In 1891 he delivered an address before
the alumni of Hartford Theological Seminary, on "English Literature and the Theological
Seminaries," which was afterward published in the Atlantic Monthly.
Our classmate spent the summers of 1889 and 1890 and the year 1892, a vacation
year, with his wife in Europe.
After our classmate's resignation of his chair in Kansas University, that institution
conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1886.
While in Castleton, Vermont, Spring married Elizabeth, the daughter of Prof.
William Thompson, of Hartford Theological Seminary. They have had two children: Mary
Thompson Lord and Samuel Romney. The former died in the summer of 1887, at the age
of seventeen; the latter graduated at Williams in 1894 and at Harvard Law School in 1897.
He is now a member of the law firm of Matthews and Thompson, with offices in Tremont
Building, Boston.
*History of the United States. Vol. II, page 218.
Source:
Class of Sixty-Three Williams College Fortieth Year Report, by
the Class Historian, Thomas Todd Printer, Boston, 1903
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