The intention of the donor is to furnish competent instruction in such applications of science to the mechanical arts, manufacturing, and agriculture, as will fit young men to engage in those branches of active industry with intelligence; also to fit young men for mercantile life by a thorough course of training in the appropriate studies and to educate both young men and females for teachers, in a department adopted to that subject. —From March 3, 1865, letter sent to thirty citizens
No part of my subsequent business life gave me more pleasure than that winter. —Ichabod Washburn, when speaking of his first experience as a blacksmith
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ported no cause until and unless he was sure it deserved his interest. In this case he wanted to be sure that the people of Worcester wanted a technical school. The best way to find out was to ask them. In the first week of March a four-page handwritten letter was sent to thirty men of Worcester. Signed by Emory Washburn and Seth Sweetser, it told of a “liberal proposal to found a Free School of Industrial Science in this City” and called for a meeting later in the month. Early the next morning Seth Sweetser had a caller. He was not surprised when he opened the door to Ichabod Washburn; he had been half anticipating, half dreading this visit. Many years previously Mr. Washburn had also talked about es tablishing a school, intending that it be supported by the mechanics of the town, much as they had cooperated in forming an association and in building the great Mechanics Hall. Naturally Ichabod Washburn expected to be instrumental in its founding even as he had been the initiator of the other enterprises. The background of Ichabod Washburn had already become proud legend in Worcester. He was not directly related to Emory Washburn, but in a previous generation the two had had a common ancestor who had left the coastal region of the State to travel west to Leicester. There he had forever enriched the history of that town and had become Emory Washburn’s forebear. Ichabod Washburn’s family, meanwhile, had stayed near the sea. Only nine years old when his father died, Ichabod had been “let out” by his mother to ease the financial pressure. Even at that age Ichabod Washburn thought that he wanted to become a machinist, but there were persons who advised against it. By the time he was grown, they told him, there would be no more machinery to be built. He therefore decided to become a blacksmith, and when sixteen years old, had applied and was accepted as an apprentice in a Leicester blacksmith shop. With his twin brother Charles (who had the handicap of a withered arm) at one end of the trunk and Ichabod at the other, the two boys trudged two miles across the Kingston pastureland to the wharf where Ichabod took the boat to Boston. In that city he boarded the stage for a dismal trip punc tuated by an overnight stay in Worcester, where the lonesome boy cried himself to sleep without any supper. By just the proper proportions of ambition, religious zeal, ability, and heartbreak, Ichabod Washburn became a good blacksmith. In the Leicester shop he met and knew Emory Washburn and, in cidentally, heard of the wiremaking experiments of that town and of nearby Spencer. There, too, he earned enough money to attend the school in Leicester in the same year that Stephen Salisbury and Emory Washburn graduated from the Academy.