Item #5488 [Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college]. Phineas Fiske, Fisk.
[Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college].
[Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college].
[Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college].
[Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college].
[Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college].
[Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college].

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[Manuscript lesson book of an early Yale tutor and pillar of the college].

[Saybrook?, Connecticut, circa 1706]. 4to, original full calf. 43 pp. of manuscript.

A manuscript lesson book compiled by one of the first few graduates of Yale College, evidently while he was serving as a Yale tutor, sometime between 1706 and 1713. As such it is not only a significant and early Yale item, but also a rare survival of the dawn of higher education in 18th century Connecticut.

This manuscript was once in the possession of historian David Field, the author of History of the Towns of Haddam and East Haddam (Middletown, 1814) and is mentioned in his note on Fiske included therein. Since that time it has apparently drifted down the years more or less unrecognized. It came to us recently improperly identified as a Harvard manuscript.

The contents, which are partial (and were when Field owned it), consist of sections on Logic, Physics, and Ethics. The logic section reflects the Aristotelean system of Harvard’s Charles Morton and includes such chapters as “The Third Part of Logick of Syllogisme or Argumentation and Method,” “Of Secondary Argumentation,” “Of ye Division of Demonstration in That [and] Why,” “Of Topical Syllogisme,” and so on. Somewhat later Fiske has copied out “Peeter [Pierre] Du Moulins Table of Substance,” which is followed by two pages of Du Moulin on “The Elements of Logick.” At the end of the second page Fiske has written a note revealing his deliberations regarding the authorities informing his teaching: “I haveing writ thus far out of Du Moulin and looking back upon Mr. Morton’s Sublime of Logick I think it…not worth a while to write Du Moulin having Mr. Morton already.”

The Physics section includes chapters entitled “Of Terrestriall Body and of the Elements in Generall,” “Of Water,” “Of Air,” “Of Comets,” “Of Airy Meteors,” “Of Metal and Minerals,” etc. One of the last pages in the Physics section—a table of natural philosophy—carries the heading “Idea Physica Mr. Pierson.” According to James Kingsley in his 1835 Sketch of the History of Yale College in Connecticut, the College’s first rector, Abraham Pierson, “composed a system of natural philosophy, which the students recited for many years.”

The final section, which is in Latin, is entitled Ethica and is arranged under such headings as “De Principis Virtutis,” “De Vitio Morali,” “De Æquabilitate,” “De Taciturnitate,” and so on.

The text is carefully organized, with much of the matter arranged in two columns within single-rule manuscript borders and with each definition, principle, and statement of fact typically numbered. Fiske has inscribed his name in a calligraphic hand at the foot of two pages. The first of these reads “Phineas Fisk Phineas Fiske” and the second “P Fisk Phineas Fiske Lydia.” Fiske was married to his wife Lydia by 1712. A note on the front paste-down, possibly in the hand of David Field, indicates where Fiske’s name appears in the volume.

Phineas Fiske (1682–1738) was one of three members of the Yale class of 1704. Founded in 1701, Yale began operation in 1702 in the home of Killingworth, Connecticut minister Abraham Pierson, the first class initially consisting of a single student, Jacob Heminway. He was later joined by Fiske and John Russell, the three being the first students trained entirely at Yale to graduate (others had been awarded degrees in 1702 and 1703 wholly or partly on the basis of education received elsewhere, mainly Harvard).

David Field provides a good note on Fiske:

Mr. Phineas Fisk, was the colleague and successor of Mr. Hobart. He was the son of. Dr. John Fisk of Milford, and graduated at Yale College in 1704, being of the third class which received the honours of that institution. In 1706 he was elected a tutor, and…discharged the duties of the tutorship seven years. In March following his election, the venerable Rector Pierson, minister of Killingworth, died; the senior class was removed to Milford and placed under the tuition of the Rev. Samuel Andrew, Rector pro tempore; while the other classes were removed to Saybrook, and put under the special care of Mr. Fisk, who in connection with a fellow tutor, instructed and governed them with the greatest wisdom and fidelity. Part of a manuscript volume written by him is in my possession, containing a general view of the sciences, which he probably used for the purpose of refreshing his mind while an instructor at College [italics ours]. While the churches in the state were looking to this institution for pastors, he was the happy and honoured instrument of preparing a number in part for their work, and rendered immense service to the cause of literature and religion in the rising colony of Connecticut. President Stiles in a sermon at the interment of the Rev. Chauncey Whittlesey of New-Haven, who had been a distinguished tutor, speaks of Mr. Fisk in high terms as an instructor, and declares him to have been a pillar of the College and to have had great renown in his day. Dr. Trumbull also speaks of him as an excellent tutor and as having made fine scholars…

“Phineas Fiske…was a tutor from 1706 to 1713…whose relatively long term of service in that position gave some stability and continuity to the college” (Kelley, Brooks Mather. Yale: A History).

A fascinating manuscript intimately related to the inception of Yale and the rise of the Colony of Connecticut.

REFERENCES: Field, David. A History of the Towns of Haddam and East-Haddam (Middletown, 1814); Schiff, Judith Ann. Yale’s First Student at archives.yalealumnimagazine.com; Kelley, Brooks Mather. Yale: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 16.

CONDITION: Covers heavily worn, but intact; contents partial, lacking first twenty leaves or so; partial loss of outer margin to two leaves including some numbers and initial letters, a section of margin is detached from another leaf but tipped-in; iron gall ink loss to paper corresponding to a few letters in one word on first page, and a few other much smaller losses of the same nature elsewhere; one leaf with horizontal tear all the way across; 5” diagonal tear in final leaf.

Item #5488

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