Boyhood Of Dr. Eliphalet Nott

( Originally Published 1885 )

FEW subjects interest boys more than the boyhood of distinguished men. Few convey more important lessons to boys or men.

Among the most noted men of our country may be mentioned Rev. Eliphalet Nott, D. D., LL. D. He was born in Ashford, Conn., June 25, 1773, just before the be-ginning of the American Revolution. He was graduated at Brown University, when he was twenty-two years of age. He was licensed to preach the same year, and his first pastoral labors were in Cherry Valley, N. Y. From 1798 to 1804 he was pastor of a Presbyterian church in Albany. Here he acquired great celebrity as a pulpit orator, especially by a sermon on the death of Alexander Hamilton, the great statesman, who was shot in a duel by the noted Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States. Soon after this he was chosen president of Union College at Schenectady, which position he held for more than sixty years. He there-fore educated a large number of young men, and when he had been president of the college for fifty years, six or eight hundred gentlemen, from all the walks of life, who had graduated under his presidency, came together to do him honor at the Commencement in 1854.

He was one of the model teachers of America. Besides his distinction as a pulpit orator and a college president, he gained great note by his practical inventions, especially in the construction of stoves for neating buildings. By his inventions he acquired considerable wealth, from which he contributed largely to the funds of Union College.

What opportunities had this justly distinguished, truly learned, and eminently devout man in his boyhood ? What was the character of his parents ?

His father and his mother were very excellent Christians. They were devout, conscientious, godly persons. They lived on a small farm of poor soil, In Southern Connecticut, until a little while before the birth of this son, when their house was burned down, and, as they had not the means to rebuild it, they sold their farm, and with the proceeds bought a still poorer one, of fewer acres, in an extreme corner of the hill town of Ashford. It was four miles from the village and the church. During the early boyhood of Eliphalet his father had no horse, but, in bad weather, when they could not walk to church, the family were drawn over the rough and hilly roads of that long four miles by their only cow. Yet they were always at church.

During one winter, Mr. Nott's overcoat had become so well worn that Mrs. Nott told her husband it was not fit to be worn to church any longer. But he had no money to buy a new one. Should he stay away from divine service? Not he ! To this proposition, neither he nor his good wife would assent. Soon, however, the good woman devised a plan to free them from the difficulty. She suggested to her husband that they could shear their only " cosset " sheep, and that the fleece would furnish wool enough for a new overcoat.

" What ! " says the old man, "shear the cosset in January ! It will freeze."

" Ah, no, it will not," says the good wife, " I will see to that : the lamb shall not suffer."

She sheared the cosset, and then wrapped the sheep in a blanket of burlaps, well sewed on, which kept it warm till its wool had grown again.

This fleece Mrs. Nott carded, spun, and wove into cloth, then cut and made the garment for her husband, and it was worn to church on the following Sabbath.*

But Eliphalet contended not only with poverty, but with orphanhood. While yet a mere lad, he lost by death that good father, and also his devoted mother. The orphan boy then went to live with his older brother, the Rev. Samuel Nott, D. D., in Franklin, Conn. This brother had risen from poverty and obscurity, had fitted himself for college, graduated at Yale when he was nearly twenty-seven years of age, received from his alma mater the degree of D. D. five years later, was settled over the church in Franklin in 1782, and held the office of pastor of that church till his death in 1852, a period of seventy years, the full age of man, — " threescore years and ten." "Although thus outliving his generation," says his biographer, " he was feeble and sickly when young."

It was his son, Rev. Samuel Nott, who was one of that first band of missionaries sent out by the American Board to India in 1812. President Nott died in the ninety-third year of his age. His brother Samuel lived to be over ninety-eight, and the missionary Samuel at the time of his death was eighty-one years old.

"I have been young and now am old," says the Psalmist, "yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."