THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THIS SOCIETY; BEING THE ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT [Delivered Nov. 29, 1886, by SIMEON E. BALDWIN] IN fulfillment of the duty imposed by our constitution on the President upon this anniversary, I ask your attention, this evening, to a brief review of the present condition of the society, and of its record in the past. The year that closes to-night has been one to us of marked. prosperity. With enlarged rooms, and steadily growing collections, this society has continued in uninterrupted course to promote among our citizens those sentiments of local patriotism and attachment, and that interest in the soil on which we live, which the character of our institutions makes of the first importance, because they are the best guardians of free government. No standing army of a million men is needed on this vast territory covered by the United States, to keep the peace or uphold public authority. The tax-ridden peoples of Europe, where every tenth man, almost, is a soldier in actual service, find it hard to understand how we are able to rely on a citizen militia. It is not only because we are free. It is because we know what freedom cost; how it was won; how it has grown and broadened. It is because we feel that we are the heirs of great men who have gone before us; because we love to keep their memories green; to tell our children of their great achievements; to maintain their bright examples before our own eyes, as a daily pattern of true living and high thinking. Our methods of government may not be the same as Theophilus Eaton's, but they can spring from no higher spirit of patriotic devotion. Our lines of religious thought may not be the same as those of John Davenport, but they may well be consecrated by the study of his life, given to the development of a great ideal. Our theories of education may not be those of Master Cheever or Rector Pierson, but there is no teacher of men that may not gain inspiration as he thinks of their struggles through long years of rugged difficulty, to keep the flames of learning alive in the wilderness of a new world. This looking to the past for what is worthy of remembrance, and drawing from it its best lessons for the present and the future, is the high mission of this society. Planted in this chief city of our State, under the shadow of the venerable university which has done so much to promote the growth of American scholarship, we have a position of no little responsibility. Our feet, as we stand to-night on New Haven Green, are over the graves of the earliest settlers on these shores. Here was their modest church, and spreading churchyard. Here on one side rose the town house or State house, and on the other the Grammar School. Here for now nearly two centuries and a half has been the center of our municipal life. In this historic building, whose noble proportions and stately chambers, still give the best idea of the massive simplicity of Greek architecture to be found in New England, here I say, ten years ago sat for the last time the legislature, that was the representative of the sovereignty of the old New Haven Colony. If the forms of government have departed from these halls forever, it is the more important that they should stand to cherish the sentiments and recollections of patriotism, on which governments rest. It is the more important that we should bring together here the memorials of other days—the musket of the Revolution-the battle scenes that paint the victories of Hull-the sword of the great admiral* who could cut his way past Chinese barriers, or Mississippi forts-the letters of Washington, and Franklin and Trumbull-all things that tell how liberty has been won and must be defended. And as we look around these walls to-night, we may well congratulate ourselves on the work of our first quarter of a century. The first volume of our Transactions gives the brief story of our organization in 1862. A memorial was presented to the Court of Common Council in October of that year, asking that a room in the new City Hall, then just completed, be devoted to the purposes of an historical association; and the request was promptly granted. Among the signers of this paper are many honored names of those who are no longer with us. Mayor Galpin, with his courtly air of native dignity; Judge Croswell, one of those centers about whom men like to gather; Judge Foster, with his ringing voice and open heart; Governor Tyler, the keensighted man of business, vigilant to protect every public interest committed to his charge; these were some of the men to whom this institution owed its origin. Others of them we are glad and proud to count with us still. The list of the signers was headed by him† who was then and is now the senior partner of our oldest shipping-house, one who seems to have stopped growing old himself, who served us many years as vice-president, and whose modesty alone prevented us from making him our president two years ago. I could go through the other names, and you would recognize in them those who have been and are leaders in the public life of New Haven. They laid their foundations well. It was not long before the rooms in the third story of the City Hall, dedicated to the use of this society, were full of objects of interest and value. * Admiral Foote of New Haven. + Thomas Rutherford Trowbridge, who died after a brief illness, May 26, 1887. Dr. Edward H. Leffingwell, was for many years its faithful and intelligent curator, and only surrendered his trust when growing infirmities made it impossible longer to continue his daily task, remunerated only by the gratitude of his associates. We were glad to hear the other night from one of his near kinsmen,* and to find that uncle and nephew shared the same high appreciation of the work that is being done here, and of its possible and natural results. Then came the abandonment of New Haven as a capital city, and the cession to her of this State House by Act of the Legislature. The Court of Common Council placed these apartments at our disposal, more accessible and ample than our original chamber, and rich in historic reminiscence. Two rooms were at first enough; then we required a third; and now a fourth and fifth have been filled with the memorials of the past. These spacious halls have acquired for many a New Haven family something of the charm of the old family home. That may have been broken up in the natural course of events. The children scatter, the grandparents die; the old house is sold. What has become of that old portrait that once hung in the front parlor; then was sent off by the next generation to the spare bed-room; and very possibly at last dangled from a peg in the garret? What has become of the grandfather's old armchair, of the last pieces of the Canton china tea-set, of the sampler worked by a great-grandmother whose very name is hardly remembered? Here is the place for things like these, and here they are coming in steady stream. Many is the descendant of a New Haven stock who will return to the City of Elms in future years and in future centuries, and find in these rooms the only remaining memorials of his ancestry. If any one of us wishes to preserve a family portrait, or a family letter, or commission, or diploma, for his descendants to look upon in the third and fourth generation, his safest way is to place it here. They may be rich and live in the splendor of great cities and foreign capitals; they * Captain Douglas Leffingwell, who read a paper on the True Aim of our American Historical Societies. |