[Speech given at the Sawyer Award Ceremony at Gloucester High School on November 15, 2006]

I am honored to have the opportunity to say a few words about the life of Samuel E Sawyer, and to contribute in a minor way to our better appreciating the significance of the medal that will be awarded this evening. What is the Sawyer Medal, and what meaning does it have for us here tonight?

For the students, who in a few moments will step forward to receive this special recognition, the award means that you are living the values of Samuel Sawyer, and at the same time we are honoring the association made between your achievement and his inspiring life. You share in Sawyer’s enthusiasm for learning, and in recognizing the importance of educational achievement to your future success.

In a similar manner, Gloucester is recognizing one of its most respected and esteemed citizens, a person who played a key role in shaping Gloucester’s history. If Gloucester had a Citizens Hall of Fame, Samuel Sawyer would most assuredly belong to the front ranks of this select group. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Sawyer is Gloucester’s greatest benefactor and philanthropist, the city’s own Andrew Carnegie of the 19th century.

Samuel Sawyer embodies the life of the self-made man of that century. Born in 1815, only a couple of decades after the founding of our country, Sawyer was raised in comfortable but relatively modest circumstances on his family homestead known as Brookbank, located near Freshwater Cove. Growing up in the 1820s and 30s, Sawyer lived during a vital time in our country’s history, a time when it evolved from a more aristocratic form of democracy based on representation, to one that became a true democracy based on full, universal participation. His formative years coincided with the era of Andrew Jackson, the first president who was neither an aristocrat nor of a wealthy family. The basis for success in such a world centered on education, both for individuals like Sam Sawyer and for a country experimenting with this novel form of government. It was recognized that in a true democracy individual success means success for the community as a whole, and the key to individual achievement is education. This principle followed Sawyer throughout his life, and it became the foundation for the breathtaking growth and success of this country.

Formal public education was still in its infancy in the 1820s, but Sawyer had the good fortune to live near Master Joseph Moore, himself a gifted man who devoted his life to teaching and who personally mentored Sawyer. At 18 years of age, Sawyer went to Boston to continue his education as a clerk’s apprentice in the Merchant Marine. I have a letter in my office from Sawyer that is dated 1836, the same year that he left for Boston. The three-page letter is eloquently written and betrays the fine hand of a confident and educated 23-year old. In a letter sharing his remorse for a recently deceased uncle, he quotes a poem that recently stirred him:

“As we go floating down the stream of time, ever evolving, ever changing—now basking in the sunshine of prosperity, then losing that which has cost us years of hard labor and anxiety to accumulate, now enjoying health and happiness, then languishing under pain and disease—there is no givens in this life, all is transitory and uncertain—let us prepare ourselves.”

Capable of such prose as reflected in these early letters, Sawyer was clearly a precocious and well-read young man. Through hard work and shrewd investments in international trade to South America and the Caribbean, he quickly amassed a sizable fortune for the time. He acquired commercial merchant ships and he went on to purchase significant properties in Boston, Gloucester, and even Chicago.

Recognizing the importance of reading to one’s education, the young Sawyer used the Mercantile Association Library in Boston until he could join the Boston Athenaeum. Sawyer regularly traveled between Boston and Gloucester, spending much time in both cities. Some time in the 1840s he became an active member of the Gloucester Lyceum, which was formed a few years earlier to bring community members together to participate in lectures and debates of both "literary and philosophical merit", and to foster learning. This of course also meant having books, and the Lyceum inevitably led to the formation of a library. His involvement and support led to the continuing growth of the library until, in 1884, the Gloucester Lyceum & Sawyer Free Library was dedicated in the same building it occupies today.  At the dedication ceremony Mr. Sawyer explained the reasons for his generosity: "Books are the food of the mind; from the earliest years of childhood books are sought to feed the intellect, and so from school to college; later on they are a course of recreation to the idler, the tools of the student, the scholar and the man of letters."

Sawyer gave generously to Gloucester throughout his life, which over the course of five decades included countless gifts to the city, the Gloucester schools, charities, and other institutions. His primary interests were the arts, music, education, libraries and reading, as well as in enhancing the aesthetic beauty of his beloved Gloucester. Among many other acts of giving, he once had 100 elm trees planted along city streets, he donated a piano for City Hall to entertain people while they waited in line, he presented Gloucester with the bell and clock for the newly built City Hall in the 1870s, and of course he gave the city Ravenswood Park. In his last will and testament, he bequeathed to the city and countless charities hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and property. This may not sound like a lot of money today, but one must remember that this was at a time when the Rockport librarian was paid $100 a year for her salary!

With a rich life of giving, a life that became synonymous with education, reading, and libraries, it is not difficult to understand why we are awarding the Sawyer medal this evening. Indeed, so rooted is this award in Gloucester’s history it was Samuel Sawyer himself who first thought of awarding the medal to students of excellence. As a member of the Gloucester School Committee, Sawyer proposed in 1865 that a special medal of value be awarded to the best scholars at the recently founded Collins School. In the Annual Report of 1868, we know that this became reality with the note: “By [Sawyer’s] generosity five of the graduates of 1867 received each a handsome gold medal, of the value of twenty dollars.” One should remember that $20 was quite a bit of money at that time! The awarding of this medal most likely continued to his death in 1889, for Sawyer bequeathed $3000 to the city for setting up a special endowment dedicated to awarding students with “meritorious and exemplary conduct” medals on an annual basis.

As you can see, the students we are honoring tonight belong to a long and honored tradition in Gloucester, a tradition that is as rich as the city itself. In so doing, they join generations of Sawyer medalists in carrying on this tradition.