The signature athletic field at �ֲ���ý — home of Bobcat football and lacrosse��— is named for Dr. Alonzo Garcelon of Lewiston, an illustrious 19th-century surgeon, civic leader, Maine politician, and one of the earliest and longest supporters of �ֲ���ý College.

Born in 1813, Alonzo Garcelon lived to age 93. His great-grandfather, James Garcelon, was one of Lewiston’s earliest settlers, a French Huguenot who arrived in 1776.

James operated a ferry across the Androscoggin River just south of town. (Ferries were good business in those days: There was no downtown bridge across the river until 1823.)

The Great Convincer

Alonzo Garcelon was a graduate of Bowdoin (because there was no �ֲ���ý College yet…!) who studied medicine in Ohio before establishing his practice in Lewiston.

Through the middle and late 1800s, he became a local and state political leader and an energetic champion for civic improvement.

On June 26, 1855, Garcelon traveled to Vienna, Maine, to sell Lewiston to the trustees of newly incorporated Maine State Seminary, who were casting about for a location for the new school.

Alonzo Garcelon is perhaps most responsible for �ֲ���ý College being in Lewiston. (Collections of Maine Historical Society, courtesy of MaineMemory.net, item 5584)

As a member of the Maine Senate, Garcelon had supported founder Oren Cheney’s work to secure a charter from the Legislature that winter. “In a sense [the seminary] was his child,” according to �ֲ���ý College and Its Background. “He had voted for it; he knew all about it; he had set his heart on its coming to the city.”

In Vienna, Garcelon pitched Lewiston as a city on the move, and he was right: Mills, railroads, and new citizens were arriving and thriving. The population would soar from 3,500 in 1850 to 19,000 by 1880.

Party Favor

An abolitionist prior to the Civil War, Garcelon switched from the Democratic to the Free Soil Party, which opposed slavery in new Western states. A Republican during the Civil War, he reverted to the Democratic Party after the war to protest Andrew Johnson’s impeachment — aligning himself with Johnson, despite the president’s significant .

Supporting the Troops

As Maine’s surgeon general during the Civil War, Garcelon was adamant that qualified surgeons be assigned to each Maine regiment. War, he predicted, will bring “shattered limbs and ghastly wounds” to Maine soldiers.

“It would be a burning disgrace to have our soldiers called into battle,” he wrote in a letter to then-Maine Gov. Israel Washburn in 1861, and have “preparations for their comfort” be “inefficient” or “totally unprovided.”

Old Stories

Garcelon stayed active well into old age, and newspapers delighted in sharing his age-defying exploits.

In 1889, when he was 76 and in his 50th year in medical practice, The New York Times noted that Garcelon had traveled 360,000 miles to make house calls (equivalent to 14 times around the world).

In 1896, when he was 83, the Times reported that Garcelon, en route home from a nighttime house call, got out of his shay to help his horse navigate a muddy section of road. He fell 8 feet into an abandoned cellar and, despite a back injury, managed to climb out.

With his daughter in the passenger seat, 92-year-old Alonzo Garcelon poses with his one-horse shay on East Avenue in October 1905. In the background is, likely, the family farm. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

In 1900, when he was 87, the Boston Daily Globe wrote, “Always a lover of a good horse, he drives one every day that many a man a great many years younger than he would hesitate to handle.”

At age 92, the Globe noted that Garcelon had traveled to Troy, 72 miles away in eastern Maine, to consult on a leg-amputation case.

Hats Off

Given a sombrero while attending a medical conference in Mexico City at age 83, he wore it proudly around Lewiston.

Final Praise

He “towered in character as in stature over the generality of men,” according to his obituary in The Boston Daily Globe.

Secret to Longevity

“Mingle with young people and cultivate their society,” he once said. He added:

“Old age is worth striving for if the striver has a purpose beyond the selfish end of slothful ease.”

Good Society

Other entities that carry the Garcelon name include, at �ֲ���ý, the Alonzo Garcelon Society, which provides scholarships, funded by civic and business leaders, to local students from Androscoggin County.

Two years after the 1899 completion of Garcelon Field, �ֲ���ý and Bowdoin square off in football in November 1901. �ֲ���ý won, 11-0. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

In Lewiston, there’s the Garcelon Bog Conservation Area (where �ֲ���ý students ) as well as Garcelon Cemetery (near the old ferry site) and Garcelon Street.

In 2008, Alonzo’s great-great-grandson David Garcelon donated an and other materials to �ֲ���ý.

The Harward Center for Community Partnerships at �ֲ���ý holds its annual community celebration at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5, in the Lewiston Public Library’s Marsden Hartley Cultural Center, 200 Lisbon St. The event is co-sponsored by the Alonzo Garcelon Society and is free and open to the public.

The event, now in its fifth year, features performances from a diverse array of groups including �ֲ���ý students and members of the Lewiston-Auburn community. Light refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served. For more information, contact Harward Center events coordinator Brenda Pelletier at this bpelleti@bates.edu or 207-786-6400.

Artists in different media including music and spoken word are scheduled to perform. From �ֲ���ý, the Deansmen, an a cappella group, and the �ֲ���ý Step Team, a dance ensemble, will participate. The event will also feature students from the Androscoggin Valley Education Collaborative (AVEC) Writing Program and the Hillview Aspirations program as well as a performance by the Bald Hill Trio.

The are a 12-voice all-male group and the oldest a cappella ensemble at �ֲ���ý. Their albums include the independently distributed A Century Half Full (2007), Schlage (2004) and Vocal Syllogism (2001). Now in its 57th year, the group has performed at functions for the Boston Celtics, former U.S. President George Bush Sr., Rockapella and at other events in the Lewiston-Auburn area and around New England.

The Bald Hill Trio features Ben DeTroy on mandolin, fiddle and guitar, Mike Conant on guitar and Tim Clough on double bass. DeTroy, a lifelong musician, in recent years has performed with a New Gloucester-based band of eclectic musicians known as Mountain Avenue.
Also a member of Mountain Avenue, Conant has played guitar since his youth, and the last two years has focused on fiddle and banjo. DeTroy and Conant back up their two teenage daughters in a band called Chasini Shane.

Clough took his first electric bass lesson in the early 2000s and soon found himself drawn to the acoustic double bass. He also performs with a jazz band known as the Three Point Trio.

Students from Lewiston and Edward Little high schools will read poetry and stories they have written with the AVEC Writing Program, and girls in the Hillview Girls Aspirations Program will showcase projects including sewing and art pieces.

The Hillview program is in its third year of working with middle-school Somali girls. They meet weekly with an AmericCorps/VISTA staffer based at Lewiston Housing Authority’s Hillview Family Development and participate in activities like sewing, community service projects, visioning and goal setting, and skill building to help them to develop assets that support future success.

The Harward Center leads �ֲ���ý’ efforts in community involvement, including programs in community-based learning, community volunteerism and environmental stewardship. The center works with community partners to meet community needs and, in the process, to integrate civic engagement with the �ֲ���ý educational experience.

Learn more about the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

The Garcelon Society is a community organization that raises support for the Androscoggin Scholarship Endowment at �ֲ���ý, established in 2004 to increase financial support for the college’s students from Lewiston, Auburn and surrounding Androscoggin County communities.

�ֲ���ý College announced today a campaign to raise scholarship funds for local students who attend the liberal arts institution. Longtime Auburn resident and �ֲ���ý parent Barbara Trafton will lead the fund-raising effort for a new endowment that will be dedicated to the financial support of students from Lewiston, Auburn and surrounding communities in Androscoggin County.

�ֲ���ý College President Elaine Tuttle Hansen made the announcement to about 100 community members attending a �ֲ���ý Community Breakfast, the first of the 2004-05 academic year at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives on campus.

“The new Androscoggin Scholarship Fund will help to ensure that talented and deserving students from our community continue to have access to the very special kind of education that our faculty and staff work hard to provide,” Hansen said.

“It is very fitting that as we are about to mark the sesquicentennial anniversary of the founding of �ֲ���ý, we reconfirm our commitment to the young people of the community that has been our home since 1855. This fund is meant to be a guarantor of opportunity for the next 150 years.”

In her remarks, Hansen said that financial aid continues to be the college’s most pressing challenge. “Today it costs about $10,000 more annually to educate each student than we charge in tuition. And many of our students cannot afford the full tuition bill due to their financial circumstances. We can only make up the difference between our revenues and expenses through earnings on our endowment or through fund raising.”

Last year �ֲ���ý spent more than $14 million in financial aid awards to students. Included in this total was nearly $260,000 in direct grants to 21 students from Lewiston, Auburn and other towns in Androscoggin County. But �ֲ���ý has a lower endowment than its peers in New England, and so the college’s resources are strained by the increasing needs of students and families. While alumni have been generous in their support of scholarship awards, rapidly escalating costs have persuaded college officials to appeal for the first time to the local community for help.

Trafton, who recently led the highly successful $7 million campaign to restore and expand the Auburn Public Library, will chair an organizing committee to plan how to best support the Androscoggin Scholarship Fund. “My family has deep roots in the �ֲ���ý community spanning several generations,” Trafton said. “As a parent I witnessed first-hand the extraordinary effects of a �ֲ���ý education on my own son, Ben. As a member of the Lewiston-Auburn community I am excited to have this opportunity to make sure that others can benefit from a �ֲ���ý education.”

Trafton plans to begin recruiting members of the organizing committee in January. Donors to the scholarship fund will be able to join a new membership organization, the Alonzo Garcelon Society, which will provide special opportunities to participate in the social and academic life of the college. The Society is named for Lewiston native and former governor, Alonzo Garcelon, who persuaded the Rev. Oren Cheney, �ֲ���ý’ founder, to locate his new institution in Lewiston rather than in one of several competing towns.

According to Hansen, the college hopes to raise at least $500,000 for the fund locally over the next three years. “We intend to seek the support of businesses, foundations and individuals throughout the greater Lewiston-Auburn area to start building this endowment,” she said. “Several faculty and staff members have already expressed interest in making gifts. Meanwhile, we are also actively searching for corporate or foundation sponsors to provide a dollar-for-dollar match and hope to have a total of $1 million invested in the fund by 2008.”