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ASAPH HALL, CARPENTER.
Like many other impecunious Americans (Angeline Stickney included),
Asaph Hall, carpenter, and afterwards astronomer, came of excellent
family. He was descended from John Hall, of Wallingford, Conn., who
served in the Pequot War. The same John Hall was the progenitor of Lyman
Hall, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Governor of Georgia.
The carpenter’s great-grandfather, David Hall, an original proprietor of
Goshen, Conn., was killed in battle near Lake George on that fatal 8th
of September, 1755.[1] His grandfather, Asaph Hall 1st, saw service in
the Revolution as captain of Connecticut militia. This Asaph and his
sister Alice went from Wallingford about 1755, to become Hall pioneers
in Goshen, Conn., where they lived in a log house. Alice married; Asaph
prospered, and in 1767 built himself a large house. He was a friend of
Ethan Allen, was with him at the capture of Ticonderoga, and was one of
the chief patriots of Goshen. He saw active service as a soldier, served
twenty-four times in the State legislature, and was a member of the
State convention called to ratify the Federal Constitution. Hall Meadow,
a fertile valley in the town of Goshen, still commemorates his name. He
accumulated considerable property, so that his only child, the second
Asaph Hall, born in 1800 a few months after his death, was brought up a
young gentleman, and fitted to enter Yale College. But the mother
refused to be separated from her son, and before he became of age she
set him up in business. His inheritance rapidly slipped away; and in
1842 he died in Georgia, where he was selling clocks, manufactured in
his Goshen factory.
Footnote 1:
_See Wallingford Land Records, vol. 13, p. 541._
Asaph Hall 3rd, born October 15, 1829, was the eldest of six children.
His early boyhood was spent in easy circumstances, and he early acquired
a taste for good literature. But at thirteen he was called upon to help
his mother rescue the wreckage of his father’s property. Fortunately,
the Widow, Hannah (Palmer) Hall, was a woman of sterling character, a
daughter of Robert Palmer, first of Stonington, then of Goshen, Conn. To
her Asaph Hall 3rd owed in large measure his splendid physique; and who
can say whether his mental powers were inherited from father or mother?
For three years the widow and her children struggled to redeem a
mortgaged farm. During one of these years they made and sold ten
thousand pounds of cheese, at six cents a pound. It was a losing fight,
so the widow retired to a farm free from mortgage, and young Asaph, now
sixteen, was apprenticed to Herrick and Dunbar, carpenters. He served an
apprenticeship of three years, receiving his board and five dollars a
month. During his first year as a journeyman he earned twenty-two
dollars a month and board; and as he was still under age he gave one
hundred dollars of his savings to his mother. Her house was always home
to him; and when cold weather put a stop to carpentry, he returned
thither to help tend cattle or to hunt gray squirrels. For the young
carpenter was fond of hunting.
One winter he studied geometry and algebra with a Mr. Rice, principal of
the Norfolk Academy. But he found he was a better mathematician than his
teacher. Indeed, he had hardly begun his studies at McGrawville when he
distinguished himself by solving a problem which up to that time had
baffled students and teachers alike. But this is anticipating.
Massachusetts educators would have us believe that a young man of
twenty-five should have spent nine years in primary and grammar schools,
four years more in a high school, four years more at college, and three
years more in some professional school. Supposing the victim to have
begun his career in a kindergarten at the age of three, and to have
pursued a two-years’ course there, at twenty-five his education would be
completed. He would have finished his education, provided his education
had not finished him.
Now at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five Asaph Hall 3rd only began
serious study. He brought to his tasks the vigor of an unspoiled youth,
spent in the open air. He worked as only a man of mature strength can
work, and he comprehended as only a man of keen, undulled intellect can
comprehend. His ability as a scholar called forth the admiration of
fellow-students and the encouragement of teachers. The astronomer
Brünnow, buried in the wilds of Michigan, far from his beloved Germany,
recognized in this American youth a worthy disciple, and Dr. Benjamin
Apthorp Gould, father of American astronomy, promptly adopted Asaph Hall
into his scientific family.
If our young American’s experience puts conventional theories of
education to the blush, much more does his manhood reflect upon the
theory that unites intellectuality with personal impurity. The historian
Lecky throws a glamor over the loathesomeness of what is politely known
as the social evil, and calls the prostitute a modern priestess. And it
is well known that German university students of these degenerate days
consider continence an absurdity. Asaph Hall was as pure as Sir
Gallahad, who sang:
My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
Let it be conceded that this untutored American youth had had an
excellent course in manual training—anticipating the modern fad in
education by half a century. However, he had never belonged to an Arts
and Crafts Movement, and had never made dinky little what-nots or other
useless and fancy articles. He had spent eight years at carpenter work;
three years as an apprentice and five years as a journeyman, and he was
a skilful and conscientious workman. He handled his tools as only
carpenters of his day and generation were used to handle them, making
doors, blinds, and window-sashes, as well as hewing timbers for the
frames of houses. Monuments of his handiwork, in the shape of well-built
houses, are to be seen in Connecticut and Massachusetts to this day.
Like other young men of ability, he was becomingly modest, and his boss,
old Peter Bogart, used to say with a twinkle in his eye, that of all the
men in his employ, Asaph Hall was the only one who didn’t know more than
Peter Bogart.
And yet it was Asaph Hall who showed his fellow carpenters how to
construct the roof of a house scientifically. “Cut and try” was their
rule; and if the end of a joist was spoilt by too frequent application
of the rule, they took another joist. But the young carpenter knew the
thing could be done right the first time; and so, without the aid of
text-book or instructor, he worked the problem out, by the principles of
projection. The timbers sawed according to his directions fitted
perfectly, and his companions marveled.
To himself the incident meant much, for he had proved himself more than
a carpenter. His ambition was aroused, and he resolved to become an
architect. But a kindly Providence led him on to a still nobler calling.
In 1854 he set out for McGrawville thinking that by the system of manual
labor there advertised he could earn his way as he studied. When the
stage rolled into town, whom should he see but Angeline Stickney,
dressed in her “bloomer” costume!
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