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citizens of Worcester furnish the funds necessary to purchase a lot
and erect a suitable building or buildings for its accommodations. "
To sound out local sentiment on this point, a letter was sent on March
6 to about thirty influential and wealthy members of the community,
informing them of the general proposition. So many favorable responses
were received that a meeting was called for March 27, at which the
subject would be more fully presented.
The group was skillfully chosen. It included merchants, manufacturers,
and bankers, whose names would have contributed prestige to any local
enterprise. It was probably realized that the support of at least two
of the group was absolutely essential. One was Stephen Salisbury, and
the other Ichabod Washburn.
Stephen Salisbury, the second of the name, was the landed proprietor
and foremost citizen of the community. Son of a wealthy merchant,
graduate with honors from Harvard College, and a member of the
Massachusetts bar, he had devoted his long life to public service and
to the administration of his property. He was a man of intelligence
and culture combined with a forceful personality. At sixty-seven he
had a background of service in city and state legislation, was
president of two leading banks, director of railways, and president of
the American Antiquarian Society. The abundance of his interest in the
Institute was to be increasingly apparent during the remaining two
decades of his life.
In his Commencement address of 1871, Mr. Salisbury said that the
announcement of Mr. Boynton's project "came upon Mr. Ichabod Washburn
with the shock of an earthquake, as it seemed to remove the ground
from a good work on which he had exercised his mind for a long time
with the zeal and thoroughness that were his prominent traits."
Dr. Sweetser gave a more complete account of Mr. Washburn's disturbed
state of mind, recalling that:
eight or ten years before this time we had conversed together in
regard to the great need there was of a school for the scientific
education of mechanics.
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