The Parents: Rinaldo & Lydia Bradford Burleigh

Heads of the Household

Rinaldo Burleigh and Lydia Bradford Burleigh enjoyed a long marriage, and raised seven extraordinary children. But our knowledge of them is wispy and partial, with gaps of many years. The threads of evidence suggest that their children found a strong contrast between the two: they respected their father, and loved their mother. In the letters I have been able to peruse so far, they refer to their father without a hint of jocularity, but Mother with the full range of maternal affections - from "have Mom send me my clothing please" to "I miss/love Mom so much."

Federal census records in 1830 reveal an interesting fact: the Burleigh family had a resident woman household helper/servant who was African-American. The census of that year followed the protocol of only listing the head-of-household by name, so this woman's personal identity is not yet clear. She was listed in the age range of 10-24, and was a free woman. This is intriguing from many angles - was this an exploitative relationship? A friendly one? Did her presence in the household help to radicalize the core generation of siblings? Could this woman have become a student at the Canterbury Female Academy? Until there is more information, or references to her by the siblings in journals or letters, all questions must remain speculative.

II. John Adams, Educator and Mentor to Rinaldo Burleigh

Rinaldo was fortunate to be able to study with a man who became his mentor, John Adams (1772-1863). Adams was born in Canterbury to parents who were patriots (his father having fought in the American Revolution), but lacking in higher formal education. The family scraped some money together to send their John Adams to Yale, where he attended starting in 1791, until graduating in 1795. Upon returning to Canterbury, he remained in the vicinity to provide elder care for his mother. Therefore, starting in 1795, Adams ran a select academy on the Green in Canterbury - likely quite close to where Prudence Crandall's Academy would be some three+ decades later (Brown and Brown, The Story of John Adams, 18-23).

Ellen Larned sings Adams' praises in her description:

“Mr. Adams had in large measure the true teacher’s art of calling out the best that was in his pupils and awakening their enthusiasm for school, studies, and master. Combining sympathy and kindness with authority he won their most affectionate regard. He was especially noted for his kindness to indigent young men seeking education. Among those thus aided and encouraged was Rinaldo Burleigh" who persevered in the "face of great poverty and hardship...to fit himself for intellectual employment. Mr. Adams took him not only into his school but into his “very heart,” enabling him to meet his expenses by assisting in teaching till he was qualified to enter college.” (Larned, 253)

Adams likely recognized a similarity between his own situation as an impoverished young student, and that of the young Rinaldo Burleigh. Thus began what would become a most important relationship for both of them. As Larned refers to above, Adams was happy to employ Burleigh as a kind of co-apprentice teacher in Canterbury. He also must have recommended him to college, because Rinaldo Burleigh also attended Yale University, graduating in 1803. As soon as his college diploma was awarded, Burleigh took over for his mentor John Adams, but this time as the Preceptor of the prestigious Plainfield Academy. This location and school would shape the lives of the Burleighs in the nineteenth-century.

Rinaldo Burleigh was fortunate in his mentor. John Adams went on to great fame as an educator, leading Plainfield Academy (1801-1803), Bacon Academy in Colchester (1803-1810), Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts (1810-1833), and Monroe Academy in Elbridge, New York (1833-1835), before moving west to Jacksonville, Illinois where he led the Jacksonville Female Academy (1836-1843) next door to Illinois College. Jacksonville was a center of Abolitionist activity in Illinois, and his presence there indicates that Adams had at least nominal sympathy with the anti-slavery movement. The depth of his commitment to Abolition awaits further research. His most noted contribution to the Benevolent Empire was in endorsing Sunday Schools.

The Jacksonville Female Academy was vastly different from Adams' earlier work at largely male institutions. His daughter Emily co-taught with him in Jacksonville. Here are her reflections on her father's approach to the female students of the Midwest:

"Girls direct from the timber and the creeks, as wild as the dumb creatures who had their homes in these haunts, crowded about him. Their manners were uncouth, their language barbarous. It was a question whether the venerable pedagogue from Boston could understand such material or make anything from it....His policy in dealing with these wild girls was first of all to win their hearts, then he could mould them to any form he pleased. Love was the power by which he subdued them. This was his only threat, his only penalty. He had no occasion to call in parents or trustees to enforce his authority. Often the wrongdoer was melted by his tender manner and tearful eye, and would throw her arms about his neck in token of unqualified submission. His will was like iron, but his heart had grown soft as that of a little child. His law was like that of the Medes and Persians ; but it was law in the hands of a mediator." (Brown and Brown, The Story of John Adams, 224-225)

However, there is a major dissenting voice in the midst of the universal acclaim for John Adams. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was a student for one year at Phillips Academy, and found the Preceptor to be a rather stern character. His famous extended poem, "The School-Boy," features Adams in a somewhat unflattering stanza, which is then illustrated  as shown below.

         Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears    
Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares;    
Uneasy lies the heads of all that rule,    
His most of all whose kingdom is a school.    
Supreme he sits; before the awful frown    
That bends his brows the boldest eye goes down;    
Not more submissive Israel heard and saw    
At Sinai's feet the Giver of the Law.

Another of the preceptors who preceded Burleigh was Eliphalet Nott, a noted educator who served as president of Union College in Schenectady for many years. While at Plainfield, Nott did his best to elimate corporal punishment and whipping of students. He wrote movingly about how, as a youngster, he decided to change the cruel regime of physical violence visited upon school children

Being of a contemplative and forbearing disposition, this discipline of the rod became peculiarly irksome to me, and, as I thought, unjustifiable; and I formed a resolution, if I lived to be a man, I would not be like other men in regard to their treatment of children.

Nott's success at a district school, where he instituted the no corporal punishment idea, led to his appointment at Plainfield, where he instituted the same policies. Rinaldo Burleigh did not follow this noble precedent, though his children in their own teaching (and all of the core siblings did some teaching except for George) eschewed the whip (though they tend to credit this to their pacifist and non-resistant ethics rather than imputing it to their father).

The evidence that Rinaldo Burleigh used corporal punishment at Plainfield Academy stems from an anecdote including in William Kinne's synopsis of the early Preceptors of the Colchester Academy. He had a pupil from Boston whose lessons were neither prompt nor up to the level:

Mr. B's sole remedy for this was the hickory which he applied unsparingly. One day he was whipping the Boston lad -- too severely as [another student, Mr.] Ensworth thought, who therefore ventured to speak and remonstrate with Mr. B., but only to the effect of bringing the hickory upon his own shoulders. Ensworth appeared at the Academy no more.

The Ensworth in question was likely Nehemiah Ensworth (1779-1861). He played a minor role among the opponents of Prudence Crandall and the Canterbury Female Academy, because his daughters had been enrolled in the first version of the Academy. 

The other noted predecessor was Zachariah Eddy, who went on to a storied legal career in the Plymouth area of Massachusetts, where he also taught law to a young Charles Calistus Burleigh.

References

Brown, Mary Elizabeth and Helen Gilman Brown, The Story of John Adams, A New England Schoolmaster. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1900. 

Gertrude Kimber Burleigh, letter to Samuel May Jr., November 14, 1857 -  online from the Boston Public Library Abolitionist collections

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. The School Boy. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Company, 1879. [excerpt p. 41]

Kinne, William, Records of Mr. William Kinne Pertaining to Bacon Academy, "Preceptors" - Manuscript held by Colchester Historical Society.

Nott, Eliphalet. "Letter from Rev. Eliphalet Nott, D.D., Dated Jan. 1861." The American Journal of Education, Vol XIII, New Series. Vol. III, 1863, p. 132-134.

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29512989/nehemiah-ensworth: accessed June 19, 2024), memorial page for Nehemiah Ensworth (30 Jun 1779–12 Jun 1861), Find a Grave Memorial ID 29512989, citing Carey Cemetery, Canterbury, Windham County, Connecticut, USA; Maintained by James Bianco (contributor 47745493).

III. Rinaldo Burleigh's Professional Life

Rinaldo Burleigh attended Yale (where he was in class with America's evil genius John C. Calhoun!), graduating in 1803. The best reconstruction of his career as a teacher and preceptor that can be deduced from the evidence currently available would break down thus:

Plainfield Academy - 1803-1810

Woodstock Academy - 1811-1812

Colchester Academy - 1813-1815

Plainfield Academy - 1816-early 1830s (documentation not yet clear)

Rinaldo Burleigh became a highly successful pedagogue. He oversaw the Plainfield Academy when it was at its strongest, with robust enrollments and an enviable reputation as a feeder school to Yale. His fiscal discipline resulted in a healthy financial situation for the Academy. This brought him to the attention of a new local Academy in Woodstock, Connecticut. Rinaldo had some family in the area, too, making this a relatively comfortable move for his growing brood of baby Burleighs. We can date the outline of his time in Woodstock by the births of two of his children there - William in 1812, and the short-lived infant Lydia Ann in 1814. There is also supporting evidence of his success at the Woodstock Academy from the county historian Ellen Larned and town historian Clarence Bowen. His leadership there "was efficient and profitable, bringing the institution to the culmination of its early prosperity" (Larned 373); this corroborated the story Bowen tells of the town voting bonds to the Academy when Burleigh first took over, and then "five years later the bonds were returned" - a fact rare enough to be remarkable, apparently (p. 378).

In addition to his effective leadership over the Plainfield and Woodstock Academies, he once again followed his mentor, John Adams, in becoming a preceptor at Colchester Academy (now known as the Bacon Academy). This links Rinaldo Burleigh to one of the more famous instances of higher education for African-Americans available in Connecticut prior to Canterbury - albeit in a segregated separate building. 

For all of the accolades that follow Rinaldo's name as a strong teacher and capable administrator, there is little in the way of warmth that emerges in descriptions of him, especially compared to some of the other figures already mentioned, such as John Adams and Eliphalet Nott.

But Rinaldo Burleigh's position as a deacon of the Congregational Church, and as a leader of the school, definitely provided him with social capital, and, to his credit, he used that during the crisis of the Canterbury Academy.

The Anti-Slavery Society of Plainfield was formed in the immediate aftermath of the first trial of Prudence Crandall for her violations of Connecticut's Black Law, in August of 1833. Rinaldo Burleigh proudly took the role of President, and did so with his title as Deacon before his name. He understood the storehouse of good will he had accumulated as a force he could leverage in making change. This is anti-racist politics in action: by lending his prestigious name to the Anti-Slavery Society of Plainfield when it was forming, in the midst of the Canterbury Academy scandal, he potentially influenced the many former students and colleagues he had around the county, state and region. His voice speaking for the Abolitionist cause may have muted the criticism of anti-slavery politics that had so poisoned the waters of Canterbury, too.

References

"Anti-Slavery Society of Plainfield and Its Vicinity," The Abolitionist 1:10:159 (October 1833)

Bowen, Clarence Winthop, The History of Woodstock, Connecticut. Vol. 1. Norwood, Massachusetts: The Plimpton Press, 1926. p. 378; see also p. 460.

Larned, Ellen D. History of Windham County, Connecticut,  v. 2, 1760-1880. Worcester, Massachusetts: Charles Hamilton, 1880. p. 253.