One day in the spring of 1778, after George Washington had moved his troops out of Valley Forge, that noble eccentrician, Governor John Hancock, put his bold signature on the last bill passed by the Provincial Court of Massachusetts. The bill gave young Samuel Phillips Jr. the right to open a school for boys at Andover, Mass. Horseman Paul Revere designed a silver seal (finis origine pendet) for the school; and 13 boys began to study under Eliphat Pearson, whom they dubbed "Elephant." In 1789, President George Washington came to Andover to make a speech; later eight of his nephews and grandnephews went to school there.
Last week another President, Calvin Coolidge, clad in black academy robes and mortarboard cap with gold tassel, stood before a microphone on the Georgian portico of Samuel Phillips Hall to help celebrate the sesquicentennial of Phillips Academy. Mrs. Coolidge was sitting behind him, moved not so much by what he was saying as by a hymn she had just heard. It was her favorite Jesus I Love Thee and also the hymn of Mercersburg Academy, where her son Calvin Jr. schooled before his death in 1924. It was sung by nearly a thousand Andover students, and Mrs. Coolidge added her voice.
In President Coolidge's speech was many a ringing sentence such as: "Our doctrine of equality and liberty of humanity and charity comes from our belief in the brotherhood of man, through the fatherhood of God."
The "Old Boys" of Andover applauded the President's speech. They had walked in the ways of the world and had returned to do honor to Andover. Among them were Thomas Cochran, partner in J. P. Morgan and Company; Arthur Stanley Pease, president of Amherst College; Walter Prichard Eaton, dramatic critic, who told in verse about his first arrival at Andover "moist with maternal tears."
America was written by an Andover graduate, Samuel F. Smith, in a house now used as a dormitory by Andover students. The chair in which Mr. Smith sat is also preserved at Andover. Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, too, went to Andover. A library named after him is now being built there.
Headmaster Alfred Ernest Stearns of Andover presented President and Mrs. Coolidge with gold medals in commemoration of the occasion, in the presence of Educators Ernest Martin Hopkins of Dartmouth, Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, James Rowland Angell of Yale,
John Grier Hibben of Princeton, and other prexies.
After the celebration, Edward Stephen Harkness, Manhattan financier, announced hat he would give $320,000 to Andover and $320,000 to Exeter for their endowment funds, provided that Exeter would complete its drive for $1,600,000 by July 1.