A blind graduate at Bates College in 1889 is a forgotten pioneer

May 26—LEWISTON — Bates College often touts its willingness from Day One to accept women and Black students in its classrooms, the first institution of higher learning in New England to be so open.

But it doesn't ever mention another pioneering student who graduated in 1889, a Wilton native named Arthur Elmer Hatch.

He was completely blind.

Hatch wasn't the first blind student to graduate from college in the United States. That distinction belongs to New Hampshire's Joseph Brown Smith, who earned a Harvard College degree in 1844.

But if anyone did it again until Hatch, there is no clear record of it. The newspapers of the day proclaimed Hatch as the second blind college graduate in America — and he did it at the little liberal arts college in Lewiston while its first president still reigned.

Noting the achievement shortly after Bates' commencement that year, The Boston Globe called Hatch's endeavor "a plucky struggle for an education in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles."

"For a man totally blind, and, moreover, without the advantages which wealth can give, to attempt to obtain a collegiate education would, at first thought, seem to be a well-nigh impossible task," its story began.

But Hatch, who ultimately had a successful career as a preacher, showed what was possible.

Born in 1864 to poor parents in Franklin County, Hatch "became blind at the age of 6 weeks, from sore eyes, for which a physician was not called in time," according to a short biography published in 1902 by a church paper called Our Hope.

At age 7, after his father died, Hatch was admitted to the Perkins Institute for the Blind and Massachusetts School for the Blind in South Boston.

"His parents were too poor to accompany him," the Globe said, "and young and helpless as he was, he made the trip alone by boat to Boston."

When he arrived at the dock, Hatch asked a bystander to call a police officer to help him get across the city. "To be certain he was not being deceived," the paper said, the youngster "made the officer lift him up until he could feel the shield" pinned to his shirt.

At the school, considered one of the more progressive places for a blind child to be at the time, the Globe said he learned to read English as well as the trade of "chair bottoming."

While there, Hatch joined the Philips Congregational Church in South Boston, an early sign of his religious interests.

Returning home to Wilton in 1880, Our Hope stated, Hatch "decided to do what few blind people have ever done, namely, to attend a school for pupils able to see."

"I conceived the idea that a blind man ought to have a college education as much as anyone else, and I determined to have one if possible," Hatch told the Globe.

That fall, he entered the Wilton Academy, run by I.C. Phillips, a Bates graduate who took a keen interest in Hatch "and aided him materially in fitting for college," the Boston paper said.

Hatch's mother and fellow student read to him, the paper said, until he could recall all the English, Latin and Greek required. When it was time for Hatch to read something aloud, the Globe said, his teacher would read it instead. Then Hatch would translate the words and discuss their grammatical construction.

Hatch also picked up a fair amount of French and German, the paper said, and mastered geometry by using pins and twine to make shapes on a pillow.

All the while, he earned the money for his education by working at the nearby New Sharon chair factory, where he could put his chair-bottoming skills to use.

In 1884, Hatch graduated from Wilton Academy with a triple diploma in English, classics and college preparation, the best record any Wilton student had ever compiled.

During his time there, Hatch also became a public speaker, briefly infatuated with Seven Day Adventist teachings.

After graduation from Wilton Academy, Hatch worked for a year to save up money for Bates College while also expanding his speaking engagements.

Our Hope hailed his "remarkable powers of memory, oratory and mental insight" as the key to his success from the pulpit.

Enrolled at Bates a year later, Hatch, according to The Globe, carried out the work for his classes in much the same way as he did in Wilton, getting help from classmates willing to read material to him.

The Lewiston Evening Journal said in 1907 that "one reading was usually sufficient for him to learn a lesson."

Hatch covered his expenses by lecturing across Maine on temperance, which he strongly favored, and education. In 1888, he published a volume of essays and poems called "The Progressive Annual," earning him some profits by selling it to people attending his speeches.

One of those lecture tours almost ended in disaster when Hatch, traveling alone through the Maine woods, mistakenly turned off the main highway onto an unused logging road, which penetrated deep into the vast forest. The Globe said Hatch wandered for six or seven miles before realizing his error.

With difficulty, it said, he managed to retrace his steps and regain the original highway.

Hatch's professors at Bates praised his ability, integrity, character and steadfastness, the Globe said, mentioning that Hatch won prizes for debate and English composition.

The Globe said Hatch supported the Prohibitionist Party, which had some clout in Maine at the time, and was outspoken in support of his Second Adventist religion.

"For the present, he will continue lecturing but hopes to teach history in some school, a task which his remarkable memory for facts and dates seems to render possible," the Globe said.

Chronicling his final day at Bates, the Journal reported that Hatch sat with 23 classmates at the Main Street Free Baptist Church in Lewiston on what started off as a lovely day near the end of June in 1889, and listened to Bates' leaders address the graduates in English, a change from the traditional Latin salutations until that year.

After listening to a series of speeches, the class collected their sheepskins and went to a dinner at the campus gymnasium.

It started to rain just as the procession reached the campus so students, faculty and "ladies who were clad in their summer clothing" raced for cover before having one last meal together, the Journal reported.

Hatch wasted no time in securing a preaching job in Westbrook.

In October of 1889, he married a 23-year Lewiston woman, Helen Jordan. Jordan, the daughter of a doctor, grew up in New Gloucester, Lisbon and Lewiston. They wound up having five children.

In 1890, Hatch took a job as principal of the Merrimac County Academy in Concord, New Hampshire.

In July 1891, The Daily Item in Lynn, Massachusetts, caught up with him during a lecture tour that took Hatch across New England.

It reported on a "very interesting speech" he gave to religious teachers at a chapel down the street from its offices.

It noted that Hatch could not see but used "notes written in raised letters" that he kept on the lectern in front of him.

"He was clear, sensible and forceful in everything he said," the paper reported.

Hatch urged Sunday school teachers to be as "lively, active and energetic" as the children they are trying to educate — and to rely on a progressive vision to imbue the truth of the Gospel.

"It is better to learn in a school that forms character rather than a reform school," Hatch concluded.

In 1893, Hatch visited the Low Hampton, New York, grave of William Miller, who had led a huge movement based on his prophecy that the Lord would return in 1844 and cleanse away the sins of the world.

When the date came and went, the Millerite movement became a national joke and a grave disappointment to many adherents who had sold or given away their earthly possessions as they prepared for the great day.

Something about Miller triggered a desire in Hatch to become a student of systematic prophecy, perhaps hoping that with more careful study of the Bible's clues, he could see the future more clearly than Miller had. He became a minister in the Advent Christian Church.

Hatch then spent a few years as Sunday school superintendent in Wisconsin before working as a professor for a Bible college in Minnesota and finally taking a professor's position at Aurora College in Illinois.

Along the way, he briefly served as a pastor for churches in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.

In 1901, Hatch published the first of several books chock full of prophecies that proved no more successful than Miller's. They mostly refer to events so distant and forgotten that it's impossible to make sense of them.

He wound up living in Leon, Iowa, for many years. He developed "a great reputation" in the Hawkeye State for "his political songs, which he has been singing all over the state," according to the Leon Journal-Reporter in 1900.

Hatch was in the middle of another lecture tour in October 1918 when he suddenly took ill.

He was staying with a family in Attleboro, Massachusetts, when the whole household got seriously sick. Taken to a sanitarium, Hatch died on Oct. 8, the Journal and Boston Post reported.

Though the news stories about his death at age 54 fail to specify the illness, a flu epidemic began raging in New England in late September. Hatch was likely among the millions who died during the worldwide pandemic.

Hatch is buried in Attleboro under a stone marker that holds his name, birth and death dates, and a single inscription: "Mine eyes shall behold the King."

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