Note on top: Charles P. Goodyear’s recollection of F.W. Gunn April, 1883 sent to assist in the preparation of The Master of the Gunnery at the request of Amy C. Kenyon.
April 14th, 1883
To Miss Amy Kenyon
Of Committee on Memorial
Volume to Mr. Gunn’s Memory
My Dear Friend,
In answer to your letter of the 11th _____ _______ request, I give you hurriedly such memories as I recall of the “Gunnery” tour. Dear teacher and his wife, our Dear Mother Gunn, endeavoring to give them as nearly as I can in chronological order as perhaps in that way best suited for your purpose.
To explain my first introduction to the “Gunnery” and the circumstances of my story there, differing from that of scholars from abroad will necessitate a short reference to events preceding it. I was one of a large family not blessed with an abundance of this world’s goods. At six years of age my mother was seized with the illness which finally caused her death in 1861just before I went in the army. At eleven years of age sickness of my mother and my sister so embarrassed our family that, young as I was, it seemed to me that it was time I was doing something, and with a little bundle of clothes and my dear mother’s blessing, I trudged out into what appeared to me a very wide world to find a place in it, and found employment for my board and clothes with Mansfield Logan, two miles and a half from Washington and it seemed to me as far as a hundred miles would now. I was the boy on the farm. Mr. Logan’s Father had been a hard man on boys on hire. He became hard on other boys, he conceived it to be the true way to bring them up. His wife and his daughter were very kind to me, atoning for much of his harshness. George Sheldon Logan took a deep interest in me. They both belonged to the Library Association and purchased at the monthly auction sale books suited to my years and took a deep interest in my reading, giving it direction. The next summer I worked for Mr. Logan again. I became a voracious reader, reading, I think now, for more than was good for me, and assimilating very little. Looking back to that twelfth year of my life I can see that while a hard man, Mr. Logan was a good man and that his treatment of me was not intended unkindly but from a belief that it was the way a boy should be brought up. No one but the boy who has tried it knows the drudgery of a boy’s life on a New England farm with old-fashioned ideas. I worked through the haying and the harvesting peas. O how often I have wondered if they ground scythes in heaven and have wondered if it would be sufficient heaven _____ _____ turning the grindstone when scythe after scythe had to be ground. The boy was to do all the errands, help milk the cows, driving them up _____ _____ for luncheon. Spread all the hay, learn how to mow, rake with a man behind him to ______ of need for _____, by hitting his heels with a rake if he lagged ever so little. This was boy life on the farm. I think it has _______ many a boy off New England farms. After haying and harvesting Mr. Logan set me at work for the purpose of clearing land. My brush scythe was dull and I went up to the house to get Mr. Logan to sharpen it. He thought it good enough for a boy and I went back rebellious with a little boy’s sense of injustice getting very strong. The field of ____ through which a little brook ran, always lonesome, I had no company seemed more so. It was 3PM. I ran away, taking the fields as frightened as if I had been guilty of murder, reached home. Mr. Logan, like the just man he was, came and settled every dollar he owed with my mother but did not want me back any more than I wanted to go. I was thus deprived of the Library Association’s books. Woolsey Leavitt was on the eve of leaving for Wisconsin. The price of a life membership was $3.00. He offered to sell me his for $2.50. I drove cows night and morning for $0.14 per week until I earned this money and was again provided with books. I earned money in other ways to bid for books. Mr. Gunn took a deep interest in the Library and for a long time devoted a considerable portion of his time to it. Up to this time I had, in winter attended the public, I think we called it District School. I think it a very grave question whether it did me any good. It as a rule was a _____ process. I took up rules, definitions and under this system as readily as a sponge water, but looking back on my first winter with Mr. Gunn, I don’t think I learned anything in a way to be of much service, except my alphabet, and a few purely formal rules, until my 13th year when I commenced going to school to him.
I think, indeed, I know that Mr. Gunns attention was attracted to my passion for reading and I think that among other things determined him to take me in his family and give me such education as I could obtain in the winter months. I doing the chores and cutting some wood and through the winter and working for him in summer for wages. He knew my circumstances and here I think it Mrs. Gunn who always took a deep interest in my mother, probably was consulted, Anyway I commenced going to school, the schoolroom at that time being in what afterward was occupied by the family as a parlor. The south East Room of the house as it then was. This was in the winter of 1855 and 6.
I at once found that I was in a new school room atmosphere. That the mere knowledge of the rules was not what Mr. Gunn was trying to teach. Mr. Gunn expressed the ideas I seek to convey so far as mere teaching is concerned by the expression (I think I quote him correctly) “It is more important to learn how to learn, than to merely learn.” That at least was the sentiment but his teaching did not stop here. He looked upon us as the material out of which men are made, and realized to its utmost the responsibility resting on him for our future. I think he was in its best sense the most conscientious man I have ever known. He realized that it was more important that his scholars should become good men and women than that they should be merely smart, full of the knowledge acquired in books. He realized the fact that that our characters were formed more perhaps in our sports than in the schoolroom, therefore he played with us at football and sliding down hills, our main sports at that time with all the abandonment and joy of a boy apparently, but he watched the game and would not tolerate a mean action, an unfair advantage, and I have a number of times known him to pick up the football in the midst of a heated game, stop the playing and give us a lecture in the schoolroom over the importance of manly honorable conduct taking the mean action for a text. In the summer Mr. Gunn encouraged me to pursue my studies. I was given a quiet room by myself and many a night would he come to my little room and assist me that I might keep up with my studies classes who had the advantage of going to school both summer and winter.
The second winter of my stay with Mr. Gunn the older boys made up their minds to go to a public ball at the old Hines house ballroom, where Truman Woodruff’s house now is, I believe. Mr. Parish kept the hotel where Dr. Brown now lives. A number of the younger boys also agreed, and we quietly stole from the house by a window, which was to be the means of as quiet a return. We went to the Ball. I shall never forget how guilty we felt. We went down to Mr. Parishes to the supper. We returned about 3:00AM to find our means of ingress carefully bolted. We slept in Mr. Abernathy’s hay loft and when the house was opened quietly sneaked away to bed, all but me. It was Saturday morning. There was no school but I had work to do. How weary I was, but how much more was I troubled by the thought that I had grieved and wounded our teacher. He had a way of making us feel that way without saying anything. Then what course would e feel compelled to pursue. Would he feel compelled to expel us? He said nothing all that day or Sunday. We had a study room, the extreme northern portion of the house as then constructed. Each boy who had taken part in this escapade was called in, and no others. A court was organized and we were called upon, in violation as I now should say of the rules of Law not only to give evidence against ourselves and each other but to sit in judgment upon ourselves. And when this trial was over, when our honor being appealed to we had told what we knew about it, Mr. Gunn gave us a lecture as kind and fatherly as it could be, but which stung worse than any whipping, and had the desired effect. His punishments were according to no rule, were invented for the case, were nearly always efficacious – I could give many illustrations of methods of punishment. It was Mr. Gunn’s habit at times to leave the school for an hour or more, sometimes even for an evening or morning session in charge of one of the older boys, putting us upon our honor so to speak. He had a wonderful faculty for knowing what was going on without appearing to. To such an extent that we were never certain when into mischief that he did not know all about it, and yet this was done without any system of espionage, direct or indirect. I think that Mr. Gunn was a wonderfully thorough, yea an intuitive reader of Human Nature as it is found developed in the average boy or girl., and this I think accounts for this wonderful faculty which we used to call “having eyes in the back of your head”
Every Pic nic [sic] trip, evry hunt through the woods, every thing found in the papers which could convey a lesson to us was conveyed. A despiser of sham & Humbug & pretense, Mr. Gunn sought to instill the same sentiment in his scholars
I remained with Mr. Gunn until the winter before going into the army obtaining all the education from schools which I have ever received at his hands and earning enough in excess of my clothing to ameliorate the unfortunate situation of my mother & sister both invalids. During that time the many acts of kindness to my mother & sister, of many of which I had no knowledge until long after both my mother & Mrs. Gunn relieved them from much distress. I left Mr. Gunn the winter before the war (1860) simply because I felt that I must be earning more. It was a sad change from that lovely home life, but I was always made to feel that I was welcome at his house by him & Mrs. Gunn.
I learned to sympathize with Mr. Gunn in his anti-slavery views & when the war came on I think his teaching had much to do with my prompt volunteering for the war in the commencement of the struggle. I was sad and almost weary of living when the war news came that Fort Sumter was fired on. Mrs. Gunn told me the news in the field just south of Mr. Parrishes where I was working for John Woodruff. My mother had just died. She had died under sad circumstances not recognizing me . I felt that I ought to enlist. The first opportunity which offered was when Ed Smith & one or two others from Litchfield came down & announced that a company for Litchfield County was forming. I was ploughing in John Woodruffs field near his barn on the south side of the House. I turned the oxen into the yard, he was away, notified his wife & went to Litchfield later that night & enlisted. We were three months men. But that quota was filled without our company & we were notified that if we desired to go we must enlist for three years. Upon this I consulted Mr. Gunn although I had about made up my mind to go & he told me that it would gratify him very much to have me to go. Had I doubted before this would have determined me. He corresponded with me all through the war and after up to 1871. In 1872 I lost my house and every thing it contained among other things every letter I received from him up to that date. I had occasional letters from that time to including the yellow fever epidemic of 1876. These were destroyed in two fires one January 27, 1882 and one June 17, 1882 in both of which my office was destroyed, and in the last all of my books, papers &c. burned. I regret this very much, for many letters written were stronger evidence than anything that I can write of his true goodness of heart, his watchful care over his boys even after they had gone out in the world.
In 1878 he and Mrs. Gunn took a short trip to Florida and returned on a steamer to Savannah which stopped a short time at Brunswick, G.. It also stopped at St. Mary’s I was there at least and within three hundred yards of our Dear Teacher, but neither he knew it or I, the steamer went on to Brunswick & he called during its short stay to see me. I found a little note on my desk on my return. I have always deeply regretted this failure to meet him.
In the summer & fall of 1881, I was in Atlanta in attendance on the legislature on some business for our railroads. It was the crisis in the passage of the bill I had in charge. I bought a Constitution but had no time to read it. I returned to the hotel elated because our bill had passed the ordeal & glancing over a column of items saw “The late Mr. Gunn used to say that the danger was from empty pistols not loaded ones.” That is the substance of the item. The word late was a sad shock to me. I had heard nothing from Washington for years. The sun shine seemed to grow dim & yet I waited, hoping that this stray item meant nothing. Soon a stray item in the paper was not all. I received a tribune containing an obituary article announcing his death & later a letter from Fannie. It was a sad blow to me . But he lives in the hearts & in the memory of his scholars. He is dead but his influence will live in whatever state his pupils are scattered & will live in their teachings to their children.
I feel I have sadly failed in presentation of any thing you will need for the memorial volume. Should other matters occur to you in which I can be of service please write me.
It seems to me that it would be well, it would be only just to Mr. Gunns memory to refer to the undoubted fact that he was far more than a mere teacher, that he was a careful observer of affairs, a profound thinker, and could have carved for himself in political life a place of no mean prominence – And especially it seems to me in view of the superficial view entertained of him in years past by many who could not or would not see, therefore called him irreligious, that someone fitted for the task should write a sympathetic and just estimate of his religious character, his spiritual life.
There are many Items I might give should you think it desirable, of his methods of punishment, and of teaching outside of books.
Your Friend
Charley Goodyear
April 14th, 1883
To Miss Amy Kenyon
Of Committee on Memorial
Volume to Mr. Gunn’s Memory
My Dear Friend,
In answer to your letter of the 11th _____ _______ request, I give you hurriedly such memories as I recall of the “Gunnery” tour. Dear teacher and his wife, our Dear Mother Gunn, endeavoring to give them as nearly as I can in chronological order as perhaps in that way best suited for your purpose.
To explain my first introduction to the “Gunnery” and the circumstances of my story there, differing from that of scholars from abroad will necessitate a short reference to events preceding it. I was one of a large family not blessed with an abundance of this world’s goods. At six years of age my mother was seized with the illness which finally caused her death in 1861just before I went in the army. At eleven years of age sickness of my mother and my sister so embarrassed our family that, young as I was, it seemed to me that it was time I was doing something, and with a little bundle of clothes and my dear mother’s blessing, I trudged out into what appeared to me a very wide world to find a place in it, and found employment for my board and clothes with Mansfield Logan, two miles and a half from Washington and it seemed to me as far as a hundred miles would now. I was the boy on the farm. Mr. Logan’s Father had been a hard man on boys on hire. He became hard on other boys, he conceived it to be the true way to bring them up. His wife and his daughter were very kind to me, atoning for much of his harshness. George Sheldon Logan took a deep interest in me. They both belonged to the Library Association and purchased at the monthly auction sale books suited to my years and took a deep interest in my reading, giving it direction. The next summer I worked for Mr. Logan again. I became a voracious reader, reading, I think now, for more than was good for me, and assimilating very little. Looking back to that twelfth year of my life I can see that while a hard man, Mr. Logan was a good man and that his treatment of me was not intended unkindly but from a belief that it was the way a boy should be brought up. No one but the boy who has tried it knows the drudgery of a boy’s life on a New England farm with old-fashioned ideas. I worked through the haying and the harvesting peas. O how often I have wondered if they ground scythes in heaven and have wondered if it would be sufficient heaven _____ _____ turning the grindstone when scythe after scythe had to be ground. The boy was to do all the errands, help milk the cows, driving them up _____ _____ for luncheon. Spread all the hay, learn how to mow, rake with a man behind him to ______ of need for _____, by hitting his heels with a rake if he lagged ever so little. This was boy life on the farm. I think it has _______ many a boy off New England farms. After haying and harvesting Mr. Logan set me at work for the purpose of clearing land. My brush scythe was dull and I went up to the house to get Mr. Logan to sharpen it. He thought it good enough for a boy and I went back rebellious with a little boy’s sense of injustice getting very strong. The field of ____ through which a little brook ran, always lonesome, I had no company seemed more so. It was 3PM. I ran away, taking the fields as frightened as if I had been guilty of murder, reached home. Mr. Logan, like the just man he was, came and settled every dollar he owed with my mother but did not want me back any more than I wanted to go. I was thus deprived of the Library Association’s books. Woolsey Leavitt was on the eve of leaving for Wisconsin. The price of a life membership was $3.00. He offered to sell me his for $2.50. I drove cows night and morning for $0.14 per week until I earned this money and was again provided with books. I earned money in other ways to bid for books. Mr. Gunn took a deep interest in the Library and for a long time devoted a considerable portion of his time to it. Up to this time I had, in winter attended the public, I think we called it District School. I think it a very grave question whether it did me any good. It as a rule was a _____ process. I took up rules, definitions and under this system as readily as a sponge water, but looking back on my first winter with Mr. Gunn, I don’t think I learned anything in a way to be of much service, except my alphabet, and a few purely formal rules, until my 13th year when I commenced going to school to him.
I think, indeed, I know that Mr. Gunns attention was attracted to my passion for reading and I think that among other things determined him to take me in his family and give me such education as I could obtain in the winter months. I doing the chores and cutting some wood and through the winter and working for him in summer for wages. He knew my circumstances and here I think it Mrs. Gunn who always took a deep interest in my mother, probably was consulted, Anyway I commenced going to school, the schoolroom at that time being in what afterward was occupied by the family as a parlor. The south East Room of the house as it then was. This was in the winter of 1855 and 6.
I at once found that I was in a new school room atmosphere. That the mere knowledge of the rules was not what Mr. Gunn was trying to teach. Mr. Gunn expressed the ideas I seek to convey so far as mere teaching is concerned by the expression (I think I quote him correctly) “It is more important to learn how to learn, than to merely learn.” That at least was the sentiment but his teaching did not stop here. He looked upon us as the material out of which men are made, and realized to its utmost the responsibility resting on him for our future. I think he was in its best sense the most conscientious man I have ever known. He realized that it was more important that his scholars should become good men and women than that they should be merely smart, full of the knowledge acquired in books. He realized the fact that that our characters were formed more perhaps in our sports than in the schoolroom, therefore he played with us at football and sliding down hills, our main sports at that time with all the abandonment and joy of a boy apparently, but he watched the game and would not tolerate a mean action, an unfair advantage, and I have a number of times known him to pick up the football in the midst of a heated game, stop the playing and give us a lecture in the schoolroom over the importance of manly honorable conduct taking the mean action for a text. In the summer Mr. Gunn encouraged me to pursue my studies. I was given a quiet room by myself and many a night would he come to my little room and assist me that I might keep up with my studies classes who had the advantage of going to school both summer and winter.
The second winter of my stay with Mr. Gunn the older boys made up their minds to go to a public ball at the old Hines house ballroom, where Truman Woodruff’s house now is, I believe. Mr. Parish kept the hotel where Dr. Brown now lives. A number of the younger boys also agreed, and we quietly stole from the house by a window, which was to be the means of as quiet a return. We went to the Ball. I shall never forget how guilty we felt. We went down to Mr. Parishes to the supper. We returned about 3:00AM to find our means of ingress carefully bolted. We slept in Mr. Abernathy’s hay loft and when the house was opened quietly sneaked away to bed, all but me. It was Saturday morning. There was no school but I had work to do. How weary I was, but how much more was I troubled by the thought that I had grieved and wounded our teacher. He had a way of making us feel that way without saying anything. Then what course would e feel compelled to pursue. Would he feel compelled to expel us? He said nothing all that day or Sunday. We had a study room, the extreme northern portion of the house as then constructed. Each boy who had taken part in this escapade was called in, and no others. A court was organized and we were called upon, in violation as I now should say of the rules of Law not only to give evidence against ourselves and each other but to sit in judgment upon ourselves. And when this trial was over, when our honor being appealed to we had told what we knew about it, Mr. Gunn gave us a lecture as kind and fatherly as it could be, but which stung worse than any whipping, and had the desired effect. His punishments were according to no rule, were invented for the case, were nearly always efficacious – I could give many illustrations of methods of punishment. It was Mr. Gunn’s habit at times to leave the school for an hour or more, sometimes even for an evening or morning session in charge of one of the older boys, putting us upon our honor so to speak. He had a wonderful faculty for knowing what was going on without appearing to. To such an extent that we were never certain when into mischief that he did not know all about it, and yet this was done without any system of espionage, direct or indirect. I think that Mr. Gunn was a wonderfully thorough, yea an intuitive reader of Human Nature as it is found developed in the average boy or girl., and this I think accounts for this wonderful faculty which we used to call “having eyes in the back of your head”
Every Pic nic [sic] trip, evry hunt through the woods, every thing found in the papers which could convey a lesson to us was conveyed. A despiser of sham & Humbug & pretense, Mr. Gunn sought to instill the same sentiment in his scholars
I remained with Mr. Gunn until the winter before going into the army obtaining all the education from schools which I have ever received at his hands and earning enough in excess of my clothing to ameliorate the unfortunate situation of my mother & sister both invalids. During that time the many acts of kindness to my mother & sister, of many of which I had no knowledge until long after both my mother & Mrs. Gunn relieved them from much distress. I left Mr. Gunn the winter before the war (1860) simply because I felt that I must be earning more. It was a sad change from that lovely home life, but I was always made to feel that I was welcome at his house by him & Mrs. Gunn.
I learned to sympathize with Mr. Gunn in his anti-slavery views & when the war came on I think his teaching had much to do with my prompt volunteering for the war in the commencement of the struggle. I was sad and almost weary of living when the war news came that Fort Sumter was fired on. Mrs. Gunn told me the news in the field just south of Mr. Parrishes where I was working for John Woodruff. My mother had just died. She had died under sad circumstances not recognizing me . I felt that I ought to enlist. The first opportunity which offered was when Ed Smith & one or two others from Litchfield came down & announced that a company for Litchfield County was forming. I was ploughing in John Woodruffs field near his barn on the south side of the House. I turned the oxen into the yard, he was away, notified his wife & went to Litchfield later that night & enlisted. We were three months men. But that quota was filled without our company & we were notified that if we desired to go we must enlist for three years. Upon this I consulted Mr. Gunn although I had about made up my mind to go & he told me that it would gratify him very much to have me to go. Had I doubted before this would have determined me. He corresponded with me all through the war and after up to 1871. In 1872 I lost my house and every thing it contained among other things every letter I received from him up to that date. I had occasional letters from that time to including the yellow fever epidemic of 1876. These were destroyed in two fires one January 27, 1882 and one June 17, 1882 in both of which my office was destroyed, and in the last all of my books, papers &c. burned. I regret this very much, for many letters written were stronger evidence than anything that I can write of his true goodness of heart, his watchful care over his boys even after they had gone out in the world.
In 1878 he and Mrs. Gunn took a short trip to Florida and returned on a steamer to Savannah which stopped a short time at Brunswick, G.. It also stopped at St. Mary’s I was there at least and within three hundred yards of our Dear Teacher, but neither he knew it or I, the steamer went on to Brunswick & he called during its short stay to see me. I found a little note on my desk on my return. I have always deeply regretted this failure to meet him.
In the summer & fall of 1881, I was in Atlanta in attendance on the legislature on some business for our railroads. It was the crisis in the passage of the bill I had in charge. I bought a Constitution but had no time to read it. I returned to the hotel elated because our bill had passed the ordeal & glancing over a column of items saw “The late Mr. Gunn used to say that the danger was from empty pistols not loaded ones.” That is the substance of the item. The word late was a sad shock to me. I had heard nothing from Washington for years. The sun shine seemed to grow dim & yet I waited, hoping that this stray item meant nothing. Soon a stray item in the paper was not all. I received a tribune containing an obituary article announcing his death & later a letter from Fannie. It was a sad blow to me . But he lives in the hearts & in the memory of his scholars. He is dead but his influence will live in whatever state his pupils are scattered & will live in their teachings to their children.
I feel I have sadly failed in presentation of any thing you will need for the memorial volume. Should other matters occur to you in which I can be of service please write me.
It seems to me that it would be well, it would be only just to Mr. Gunns memory to refer to the undoubted fact that he was far more than a mere teacher, that he was a careful observer of affairs, a profound thinker, and could have carved for himself in political life a place of no mean prominence – And especially it seems to me in view of the superficial view entertained of him in years past by many who could not or would not see, therefore called him irreligious, that someone fitted for the task should write a sympathetic and just estimate of his religious character, his spiritual life.
There are many Items I might give should you think it desirable, of his methods of punishment, and of teaching outside of books.
Your Friend
Charley Goodyear