Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[55] the upper story of the southernmost one a Lowell High School was taught. Here I received, if not the most part, the best of all my educational teaching in my preparation for college.

In the year 1830 another contest was made, and, as its result, the Lowell High School was established. The school began in December, 1830, in a little one-story wooden building about forty feet square, rudely fitted up. Here were assembled about fifty pupils whom their parents claimed to be sufficiently advanced to come within the purview of its teaching. The scholars were drawn together by the spirit of enterprise in their fathers, not one of them having been born in Lowell.

At the risk of departing from the true course of self-narrative, I may be permitted to tell who and what were my classmates. There were eight of us in the first class, the classification being made according to apparent advancement in scholarship. The one alphabetically at the head, whose education went no further than in that one school, became afterwards a Boston merchant of high standing, and later still a merchant in the State of Vermont. He is an enterprising man, and is one of the wealthiest and best prized citizens of the State. Another fitted for college in the class, became a graduate of Dartmouth, and died young, standing very high in his profession as a surgeon. Another, whose education was ended there, became a civil engineer of the very highest standing, founded the manufacturing city of Manchester, New Hampshire, and was for several terms governor of that State. Another, who left the school and became a midshipman in the navy, rose to be of the first class in his profession, and afterwards was the active head of the navy, and the only efficient one it had during the War of the Rebellion. He lived to cross the Atlantic in a new vessel of the unheard — of class, a monitor, and to demonstrate its availability abroad as well as at home. Another, going from this class to a medical school, fitted himself for his profession as a surgeon, and, before his untimely death, became one of the most successful and best known surgeons of the country. Two others became reputable and somewhat distinguished citizens. The remaining one is the writer.

The Rev. Mr. Edson was the foster father of this school, and brought for us our teacher, Thomas N. Clark, a graduate of Yale. Mr. Clark taught us for nearly two years, and with him we went