CREEK ROAD GANG
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Autobiography of
Nathaniel Watson Ladd (1848-1932)
Part Two
Editor's note: This is the second excerpt from the autobiographical manuscript left by Nathaniel Watson Ladd. See the October issue for the first installment of Ladd's autobiography.
Born in 1848 in Derry, New Hampshire, the second child and first son of Daniel and Lucy Ladd, Nathaniel Watson Ladd went on to graduate from Dartmouth College and to study law at Boston University. He became a Boston lawyer and political figure, serving on the Boston Common Council, and later in the State Legislature. He was also a founder of the Boston Athletic Association. He died in 1932.
His illustrious career had humble beginnings on the farm on which he was raised. Nathaniel's father had given each of his children a choice of either going to school or going to work. Nathaniel's sister and two brothers chose school, but he himself said that he would go to work. From the age of seven, he was expected to work for his keep, either in the home or in the employ of others. After Nathaniel's father died of cancer, the boy continued to work, but also began schooling. Thus it was not until he reached the age of fourteen that Nathaniel began formal education, as described in the following passage:
On my father's death in February 1862, I remember that my grandfather Ladd walked the floor for hours, thinking what could be done for our family and he finally found the place for me in Tilton and places on adjoining farms in Canterbury for my younger brothers. Early in the Spring of that year, my cousin, Alonzo Eastman, the only child of my father's sister Mary, took me, in my father's horse and buggy which he had bought, to Tilton [New Hampshire].
At first I tried hard to please the farmer and often ran when I ought to have walked, but he turned out to be a hard master and used to give me the harder work to do while he did the easier. For example, he would make me hold the plough while he drove the oxen. He gave as a reason that he did not want me to drive the oxen, but he had the grace to teach me how to drive them and on occasions I did so, but lifting a heavy plough at the end of each furrow was too much for a boy of fourteen.
My grandfather's agreement with him was that I should have three months schooling and my board and clothes for my work. One of the first cases that I ever won was to contend that three months meant thirteen weeks, and in order to make that out, he had to hire schooling at Tin Corner for a few weeks.
This farmer made fun of me because I could not subtract one number from another and with great difficulty, added a few figures together. It was the time of the Civil War and they took the Boston Journal, I think a weekly paper. A man by the name of Burnett whose pen name was Carleton was the War Correspondent for that paper. In treasury reports and other things that appeared in it [the paper], there would often be figures running into hundreds of thousands and millions. The farmer could only read them by first enumerating units, tens, etc. Before I got through going to school that winter, I had no difficulty in reading them without any enumeration.
I had experienced what my father probably thought I would, a complete change in my ideas of education. I began arithmetic at the beginning. Coming home from school one day with a neighbor's boy, I was showing him how well I was getting along in that book. I was then in multiplication, I think. He turned over to fractions in the same book and asked if I did not wish I was over there. I said, "Indeed I do," but before we got through going to chool that winter, I was able to show that boy how to do examples in the same book.
He also went to Tin Corner to eke out his schooling, and in that school was a very pretty red headed girl with beautiful curls. She was very attractive to me, but she showed plainly enough that she preferred the neighbor's boy, and she afterward married him. She was the daughter of the man, a farmer, living near, who married the mother of a very pretty and attractive girl of my native town and they had a child, born while I was going to school at Tin Corner.
Years afterwards, when I was in Dartmouth College, and principal of the high school at Franklin Falls with assistant teachers, this girl with the beautiful red curls was working in one of the Mills there. Her husband had died, no children. I never saw her. Why should I? She preferred the other fellow and got him, and by that time, we had nothing in common.
My life there [in Tilton, working for the farmer], for two years and a half would have been intolerable had it not been for the kindness and tact of his wife. She was always talking to me about the girls and warned me against one girl in the neighborhood who had a brother with a large family of children, I think ten, all girls but one. One time she [the neighborhood girl] got me into the parlor with one of those girls. I had heard her boast that she had succeeded in making a match between her old maid sister and a Doctor by shutting them up in that same parlor, but in spite of the fact that she had selected rather a plain one of the daughters when most of them were very pretty, I had an attack of consciousness and fled from that parlor and have always been glad I did.
[This farmer] kept me working for three summers and only gave me two Winters schooling, and then said he guessed we could not get along together any longer.
Born in 1848 in Derry, New Hampshire, the second child and first son of Daniel and Lucy Ladd, Nathaniel Watson Ladd went on to graduate from Dartmouth College and to study law at Boston University. He became a Boston lawyer and political figure, serving on the Boston Common Council, and later in the State Legislature. He was also a founder of the Boston Athletic Association. He died in 1932.
His illustrious career had humble beginnings on the farm on which he was raised. Nathaniel's father had given each of his children a choice of either going to school or going to work. Nathaniel's sister and two brothers chose school, but he himself said that he would go to work. From the age of seven, he was expected to work for his keep, either in the home or in the employ of others. After Nathaniel's father died of cancer, the boy continued to work, but also began schooling. Thus it was not until he reached the age of fourteen that Nathaniel began formal education, as described in the following passage:
On my father's death in February 1862, I remember that my grandfather Ladd walked the floor for hours, thinking what could be done for our family and he finally found the place for me in Tilton and places on adjoining farms in Canterbury for my younger brothers. Early in the Spring of that year, my cousin, Alonzo Eastman, the only child of my father's sister Mary, took me, in my father's horse and buggy which he had bought, to Tilton [New Hampshire].
At first I tried hard to please the farmer and often ran when I ought to have walked, but he turned out to be a hard master and used to give me the harder work to do while he did the easier. For example, he would make me hold the plough while he drove the oxen. He gave as a reason that he did not want me to drive the oxen, but he had the grace to teach me how to drive them and on occasions I did so, but lifting a heavy plough at the end of each furrow was too much for a boy of fourteen.
My grandfather's agreement with him was that I should have three months schooling and my board and clothes for my work. One of the first cases that I ever won was to contend that three months meant thirteen weeks, and in order to make that out, he had to hire schooling at Tin Corner for a few weeks.
This farmer made fun of me because I could not subtract one number from another and with great difficulty, added a few figures together. It was the time of the Civil War and they took the Boston Journal, I think a weekly paper. A man by the name of Burnett whose pen name was Carleton was the War Correspondent for that paper. In treasury reports and other things that appeared in it [the paper], there would often be figures running into hundreds of thousands and millions. The farmer could only read them by first enumerating units, tens, etc. Before I got through going to school that winter, I had no difficulty in reading them without any enumeration.
I had experienced what my father probably thought I would, a complete change in my ideas of education. I began arithmetic at the beginning. Coming home from school one day with a neighbor's boy, I was showing him how well I was getting along in that book. I was then in multiplication, I think. He turned over to fractions in the same book and asked if I did not wish I was over there. I said, "Indeed I do," but before we got through going to chool that winter, I was able to show that boy how to do examples in the same book.
He also went to Tin Corner to eke out his schooling, and in that school was a very pretty red headed girl with beautiful curls. She was very attractive to me, but she showed plainly enough that she preferred the neighbor's boy, and she afterward married him. She was the daughter of the man, a farmer, living near, who married the mother of a very pretty and attractive girl of my native town and they had a child, born while I was going to school at Tin Corner.
Years afterwards, when I was in Dartmouth College, and principal of the high school at Franklin Falls with assistant teachers, this girl with the beautiful red curls was working in one of the Mills there. Her husband had died, no children. I never saw her. Why should I? She preferred the other fellow and got him, and by that time, we had nothing in common.
My life there [in Tilton, working for the farmer], for two years and a half would have been intolerable had it not been for the kindness and tact of his wife. She was always talking to me about the girls and warned me against one girl in the neighborhood who had a brother with a large family of children, I think ten, all girls but one. One time she [the neighborhood girl] got me into the parlor with one of those girls. I had heard her boast that she had succeeded in making a match between her old maid sister and a Doctor by shutting them up in that same parlor, but in spite of the fact that she had selected rather a plain one of the daughters when most of them were very pretty, I had an attack of consciousness and fled from that parlor and have always been glad I did.
[This farmer] kept me working for three summers and only gave me two Winters schooling, and then said he guessed we could not get along together any longer.
