People sometimes long for the good old days, but it takes a contemporary writer, a diarist, to capture what life was like. It just seems fitting in mid-August to feature a fishing expedition to the Neuse River on Aug. 19, 1836, that was the highlight of student life that summer at the manual institute that later became Wake Forest College.
George Washington Paschal, professor, coach and historian at Wake Forest College, introduced the excerpt from William Tell Brooks’ diary for that year in his first volume of “History of Wake Forest College.” “Rarely some form of recreation, such as a fishing party, was given the students to break the long monotony of the hot work in hoeing cotton and corn already ruined by grass in the low-grounds of Richland Creek. Such an event was talked of for weeks before, and on the eve of it the students would be so much elated as to forget to study. When the day was come they were up by candle-light and off to the fishing ground. When they had caught what fish they could, they prepared their own dinner, to which hunger gave a keen relish, though it was very crudely cooked. Towards night they would return, foot-sore and leg-sore, so much fatigued that they could not study that night, but well satisfied since they had gone “for the amusement of the thing, not the profit.”
Brooks wrote: “Friday Morning 19th. Bell rang quite early this morning to arouse us to make preparation for the long contemplated fish. Took breakfast before light. All divided off into messes of ten. Arrived at the Falls of the Neuse in good time; found the place quite romantic. Large rocks show their mossy heads, almost in every size, which is calculated to strike the beholder with mingled awe and delight. The whole establishment, the mills and other things included, seem as though they may bring in considerable profit. River very muddy so that we made but little speed catching fish. After we had quit fishing, we then commenced cooking, which was truly diverting. We had two large ovens in which we broke up corn bread, and also put in the fish with the bread after they had been cleaned and salted, and in addition to this, fat as seasoning. We stirred this composition together until properly done, which I assure was quite palatable. After the dinner was prepared every student prepared him a leaf plate, or got a piece of pine bark and spread leaves over it, and made wooden forks which answered every purpose. We dined as happy as kings, notwithstanding our manner was so very singular. After dinner we started for Institute; sun shining very hot. Quite fatigued before I reached Institute: feet and legs very sore; unable to study Friday night, though well satisfied with my trip. I went for the amusement of the thing, not the profit.”
William Tell Brooks (1809-1883) was one of the first students at the college, receiving one of the first degrees granted in 1835. After two years he returned as an instructor of Greek and Latin. He was also a Baptist minister, serving First Baptist Church in Henderson, Mount Vernon and Forestville, the longtime president of the college board of trustees, and president of the Baptist State Convention from 1869 to 1874.
He was the first minister at Forestville Baptist, serving from 1860 when it was built until 1874, when there was discord in the congregation because the college trustees finally convinced the directors of the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad to remove the original depot of 1840 from Forestville and move it to a site on the east side of the campus.
When Paschal listed the homes and buildings in the Wake Forest community in 1866, he noted that Dr. Brooks and his family lived in a house across from the northwest corner of the campus.
Some further information about Brooks’ early years were found in a memoir, “Saviors of Backcountry History: Brooks Gilmore” by William M. Nelson. Brooks Gilmore lives with his wife, Dawn, in a reconstruction of the 1755 John Brooks house, Chatham County’s first framed house with glass windows on land granted by King George II.
This is what Gilmore told Nelson, his son-in-law: “My father, and the Brooks men in general, went to Wake Forest, while the women went to Meredith. Soon after I arrived at the college I found out that the Brooks family represented exactly half of the first graduating class at Wake Forest in 1834. There were four graduates that year, two of whom were Josiah Hawkins Brooks (d. 1865) and William Tell Brooks. They were cousins.
“Josiah returned here to Chatham County, where he was prominent in the community as a teacher, a lawyer and a minister. But William Tell stayed on at Wake Forest as a member of the faculty.
“He had come home to Chatham after he graduated—to this house, in fact, because his family lived right here where we are talking now. But not long after William Tell got back, someone from Wake Forest came to the house and said they wanted him to return to the college to teach. So he returned to Wake Forest and stayed there until he died. He was professor of ancient languages, philosophy, and theology, and he served for a decade as Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
“Another point about William Tell was that he kept a diary of everyday activities when he went to Wake Forest. It is a personal diary in which he tells about what they did and how they attended classes in the morning and later worked in the gardens. This is the only extant account of how the students actually lived. All the other accounts of the period were financial records and so forth. This volume is in Special Collections in the Wake Forest University Library, I believe. Paschal used it to describe how the students lived when writing his three-volume history of Wake Forest.
Nelson asked how the opportunity for a college education came to the Brooks cousins, and Gilmore said, “Both William Tell and his cousin Josiah Hawkins were young farmers. They could read and write, and perhaps had a little more education than most boys around here. But in 1832 the Baptist State Convention met at Rives Chapel Church about a half mile from here. It was a new church and centrally located. So here it was proposed—and the resolution was passed—to establish a college for the training of young men for the ministry. They went out and looked for a suitable location and found it north of Raleigh. There was a Dr. Calvin Jones who owned a plantation called Wake Forest, or The Forest of Wake, and he sold his property to the school. So that is where William Tell and Josiah Hawkins went.”
