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“We wanted to see what they were like before they became well known,” said Director of Special Collections & Archives Kat Stefko, curator of a new exhibition in the celebrating members of the Class of 1825.

“I think many people have this idea of them as very accomplished, intimidating, and, frankly, stiff old guys (as suggested by their portraits in the lobby of the library), so we wanted to get a sense of who they were as students: their friendships, their interests, their studies, how they lived.”

The exhibition, called , has an online and a physical component, said Stefko, and is the culmination of years of research. With the help of undergraduate assistant Annabel Winterberg ’21, Stefko began digging into the archives, including many unpublished sources. “I chased down all the surviving letters I could find, not only from ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿’s own archives but also from places like Harvard, the Maine Historical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society in Massachusetts. I read everything I could.” Their results include a collection of of the Class’s thirty-seven graduates focusing on their time at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿, a central part of the online exhibit.

“One of my favorite parts of the online exhibit is the ,” said Stefko. “These students had really strong opinions, so it was fun to discover what they perceived about the faculty at the time.”

Longfellow, for example, had this to say about Professor of Mental Philosophy Thomas Upham: “No one of our government, … not even a student is so universally admired in college, as he is. His ‘sayings and doings’ are altogether different from anything we have hitherto met with…”

There were less kind words for College President William Allen, whom many students found uninspiring, including Hawthorne, who wrote these words in a letter to his sister: Our President is a short, thick little lump of a man, with no talents, and, as I have been told, no extraordinary learning. He is quite an inoffensive little animal, and causes me no trouble except to put my hand to my hat when I meet him.

“The exhibit is really about teasing out stories through artifacts, college records, and personal manuscript materials to get an idea of what life was really like at the College during those four years,” said Stefko. “This was only the twentieth graduating class in ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿’s history, and it was a very small and intimate group of students. They all knew each other, often from their hometowns. Many had studied together under the same tutors before coming to ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿. Their lives were intertwined, and the relationships they formed here influenced them deeply.”

One letter on display, for example, contains details of a bet between Nathaniel Hawthorne and future congressman Jonathan Cilley about whether Hawthorne—“a painfully shy self-professed misanthrope”—would still be single twelve years after graduation (he was). In 1838, Hawthorne wrote a eulogy  celebrating Cilley after he was killed in a duel.

How they lived
Housing: Artifacts and records on display reveal how ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ struggled to provide adequate housing for its students as a fledgling college in the 1820s. When the Class of 1825 began its studies in October 1821, there was only living space for about a third of the students at the College’s sole residential building, Maine Hall, requiring many undergraduates to live off campus (often in rooming houses along Park Row, we are told). To make matters worse, Maine Hall burned down in a fire in 1822. The following year, however, it reopened, along with the newly built Winthrop Hall, providing dormitory space for all students who desired it.

A ledger book open to the Summer 1825 term provides some insight into the cost of lodging at this time. There were three trimesters in a year, and to share a room for one term cost $3.34 per person. If a student wanted his own room, it was $6.67 per term. Among the students who could afford this were future US Navy Commodore Horatio Bridge and lawyer and cleric-to-be Patrick Greenleaf, who graduated at seventeen, the youngest in his class. Many of the students were not from rich families, noted Stefko, and had to work to sustain themselves. “A lot of them had support from the Benevolent Society, which was the early version of financial aid for students.”

Rules and regulations: Two centuries ago, students were expected to abide by the sixty or so laws of ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ College, which were regularly updated by the College’s conservative administration and emphasized obedience, civility, and discipline. 

For some students, though, this was an invitation to misbehave, to escape the adolescent boredom of small-town life. Most infractions were minor ones—taking long walks on a Sunday or playing cards, for example. Some students, however, were guilty of greater breaches of discipline, such as the young man in 1823 who became violently sick during Sunday Service after drinking “an excess of egg posset” (similar to eggnog), attracting the ire of the preacher, and the student in 1824 who detonated an explosive device in Winthrop Hall, blowing out the first floor windows and disrupting a session of the executive government!

Academic study: The rare book holdings in Special Collections contain all but one of the textbooks the Class of 1825 were assigned, including some of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s personal copies. These are all on display in the order in which they were introduced to students across their four years at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿.. “If you want to know about the academics, looking at that case is extremely telling,” said Stefko. “It's a pretty dry curriculum, with a heavy emphasis on Greek and Latin classics, biblical studies, and mathematics. Interestingly, though,” she added, “much of the math they studied was applied. So, it was about learning how to navigate, for example, or how to run a business.”

³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ at this time also had a medical school, established in 1820, so if a student was in good standing, he could pay a little extra and attend medical lectures as well. (The medical school was the subject of an exhibition that Special Collections mounted in 2021. Read more.)

will be on physical display on the second floor of the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library through the spring semester. The online component will be available indefinitely.

_{More 1825-Related Events}

Longfellow Days is an annual event organized by the Brunswick Downtown Association exploring the legacy of the poet and his connection to the community. This year’s , held throughout the month of February, celebrates the 200^th anniversary of ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿’s Class of 1825.

Among the highlights was an evening of music and poetry inspired by Longfellow's words. Some of Longfellow's poems were set to music, courtesy of several contemporary composers and including local artists. The evening featured a performance by the combined ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ Chamber Choir, chorus members from Brunswick High School, and area community choirs. 

The event was held in Studzinski Recital Hall, Kanbar Auditorium on February 22.

The ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ College Museum of Art recently launched an exhibition inspired by two members of the Class of 1825. Poetic Truths: Hawthorne, Longfellow, and American Visual Culture, 1840–1880 explores how the two authors and their compelling stories influenced American visual culture during this period.

Artists created many remarkable paintings, sculpture, and prints in response to Hawthorne's novels and Longfellow's poetry. Conversely, the authors drew inspiration from art and objects of all ages, often using them as narrative devices. This show runs in the museum’s Markell Gallery until July 20, 2025.

Among the upcoming highlights is a  with Laura F. Sprague, senior consulting curator, ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ College Museum of Art, who will share observations about Henry Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne and their influence on nineteenth-century American visual culture. Following gallery talk will be a tour of Before They Were Famous: The Student Days of the Class of 1825 in the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library led by Director of Special Collections Kat Stefko.