In
my blog about the stories behind the names of the schools in Wolcott I gave a
brief bio of Addin Lewis. While Lewis School was torn down nearly 50 years ago,
I’d like to give some further details about him, especially since there is no
write-up in the Wolcott History website like there is for the other four people
for whom schools are named.
Addin
was born in 1780 in the southeast corner of Farmingbury (as it was then known)
as the fourth child of Captain Nathaniel and Sarah (Gridley) Lewis. He married
Fanny Lewis (the daughter of his second cousin and the widow of Anson Judd) and
had three daughters, but all of them died young.
His
early education was at the South School (when he graduated from there it was
still called Farmingbury). (His father, Nathaniel, was one of the members of
the School Committee of Farmingbury and was the representative of the South
School.) The support for the schools was “by the poll”, i.e. parents paid for
their children in proportion to the number of pupils and the number of days in
attendance. Under this system it was often quite difficult for some parents to
pay their school bills and thus many children were educated very little. At the
time, wages for the average man were six to ten dollars a month and for a woman
one dollar week, so a school bill of eighty-eight dollars for the year was a
very substantial burden.
After
finishing his education at the South School, Addin then went to Yale College in
New Haven. In 1804, at the age of 24, he accepted a position as
Instructor/Tutor at the University of George in Athens, GA and remained there
for four years. During this time he gained such a reputation and esteem that he
was appointed the first Collector of the District of Mobile, without even
applying for the position. The importance of this position induced him to
accept it and he became the chief representative of the general government. At
the same time he filled the office of Postmaster and later became Mayor of the
city and President of the local bank. He served as mayor from 1822 to 1823 and
1824 to 1827.
As
the years passed he became identified with all the public interests of the city
and amassed quite a fortune. But having suffered for several years of
consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis), and being weary of the long hours needed
for public service, he retired from all those duties after his final year as
mayor. For several years prior he had spent summers in Connecticut and the
winters in the South. But having become quite deaf as well, he returned to New
Haven permanently in 1827. His wife died in 1832 and he also died there in 1842
at the age of 63.
When
he died, he left, by bequest, $8500 to the town of Wolcott, the interest to be
used for the support of public schools. He also left nearly $15,000 to the School
Society of Southington and $5,000 to the President and Fellows of Yale College.
I detailed in the prior blog how there were also conditions attached to the
funds left to the School Society of Southington regarding allowing up to ten
men each year to attend that school (subsequently named the Lewis Academy)
tuition-free.
The
$8500 left by Addin can best be put into perspective by its proportion to the
total costs of the schools of Wolcott at the time. It generated about $500 a
year and was to be distributed to each of the school districts “in proportion
to the number of children” in that school, providing that the school district
raised an equal sum. In the history of Wolcott, by Samuel Orcutt in 1874, it
was noted that in the prior year in addition to the $500 from the Addin Lewis
fund, the schools received $220 from State appropriation, and $130 from the
Town of Wolcott. The actual expenses of all the schools combined was about
$1200 that year. That meant that parents only had to pay a total of $350
instead of $1200, so 70% of the cost of educating their children was provided
from these other sources. That had a tremendous impact on the number of
families who could afford to educate their children.
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