_Joseph BRIDGHAM ____+
| (1766 - 1851) m 1789
_Levi Bradley BRIDGHAM _|
| (1814 - 1887) m 1837 |
| |_Betsy LANE _________
| (1770 - 1840) m 1789
_Levi BRIDGHAM ___________|
| (1841 - 1895) m 1877 |
| | _____________________
| | |
| |_Lucinda KILTON ________|
| (1814 - 1870) m 1837 |
| |_____________________
|
|
|--John Merrill BRIDGHAM
| (1882 - 1967)
| _____________________
| |
| ________________________|
| | |
| | |_____________________
| |
|_Fannie Morrill BRADBURY _|
(1856 - 1922) m 1877 |
| _____________________
| |
|________________________|
|
|_____________________
[NI0009]
John Merrill Bridgham, was born March 25, 1882, in Dexter, Maine. After high school in Dexter, he attended and graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, suma cum laude, in 1904. He received his Master of Arts from Dartmouth in 1905, teaching at Hanover High School at the same time. He taught at Groton School, Massachusetts, from 1905 to 1907. He did graduate work toward his Ph. D. at the University of Chicago from 1907 to 1908. That is where he met his future wife, Miriam Low, who was getting her Master's degree there. He taught Latin, Greek, and History at Bowdoin, from 1908 to 1909 studying for additional credit at the same time. He was professor of Latin at Ripon College in Wisconsin from 1909 to 1911. He married Miriam Low on June 18, 1910. He did more graduate work at the University of Wisconsin from 1911 to 1912, and in the summer of 1913. He taught at the University of Washington in Seattle, from 1912 to 1913. He completed his Ph. D. thesis in 1913, receiving his Ph. D. in 1913 from the University of Wisconson. He was a professor at Wisconsin State Teacher's College, LaCrosse from 1913 to 1918, and professor of Latin at Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa, from 1918 to 1926. He finally settled down at Grinnel College, where he was Professor of Latin and Greek from 1926 to 1950.
Paul E. Bridgham adds:
"The Bridgham family moved from Cornell College to Grinnell College in 1926, a move of great interest and appeal to all of us. To mother, it was like 'going home.' At some early point in his association with Grinnell, Dad took on the college band, and was its director most of the time he was a faculty member.
"My father had a love of and devotion to learning and teaching. He did a great deal of studying at home, tutored students who needed help, studiously corrected those 'blue book' exams and papers, all the while making sure his four boys never made a grammatical error or mispronounced a word. A 'new' word never came to his attention, but that he would immediately look it up in the reference books in his personal library, to insure proper pronunciation, to insure himself of exact meaning, and most important of all - to learn of its derivation, which in most cases would be Latin or Greek; in fewer instances French or German. He had to know the derivation of every word in his vocabulary.
"Every meal-time at home was a teaching-learning session. Grammatical errors were immediately corrected, as were mis-pronounced words. If these were lacking, he could, and would, spin fascinating yarns, true, or perhaps true. And he was not averse to point out the short-comings of 'others' - having to do with grammar, and so, forth.
"Dad had no musical training. He apparently loved music, and soaked it up like a sponge as he went along. We know of no time when he ever had lessons, or formal training of any kind. He just taught himself as the opportunities became available. The earliest instance of which we know came at Bowdoin, where he became a member of a Mandolin Club. From thence forward he somehow obtained instruments, and 'self-taught' himself to be reasonably proficient at playing guitar, violin, string bass; then the brass instruments: Cornet, alto horn, baritone horn, trombone, and tuba. Somewhere in there are the major percussion instruments. It has to be assumed that along the way he learned to read music. All that I can vouch for from first-hand 'hearing' is that he would practice at home, cornet and violin. He had a fair to good singing voice, sang in church choirs where possible, and a few older living acquaintances will remember that he was often asked to sing (at faculty parties or other gatherings accompanying himself with guitar), popular ballads, folk songs, and whatever struck his musical fancy.
"Dad thoroughly enjoyed pursuing these opportunities, and music obviously became his number-one avocation. I'm sure it was a gratifying release from the academic pursuits which kept him quite busy.
"From his first experience as a member of a mandolin club, he went on to organize an 'orchestra' at Ripon, 1910-1911. He organized and rehearsed the 'Cochrane Cadet Band' at Cochrane, Wisconsin (near LaCrosse, where he was teaching), 1916-1918. At Cornell College, he not only organized and directed a college band, but during summer months he rode the interurban to Mechanicsville - a small town near Mt. Vernon, and directed a band which played weekly concerts, 1918-1926.
"Dad was a stamp collector throughout his entire life. In the process, he made sure that he learned almost all there was to know about almost every U.S. stamp, and probably about many foreign stamps also. There was a 'method in his madness!' He made no bones about his dislike for life insurance, willingly explaining that his stamp collection was his insurance. He received considerable local and also State-wide publicity because of his continuing endeavors in this field. At one time, state media proclaimed that he possessed the most valuable collection in the state.
"He organized a local stamp club, of which he was president continually until failing health intervened. He was also president of the State organization of stamp clubs. Just as he could expound at length about the derivation, pronunciation, and meaning of a given word, so could he regale you with the history, value, perforations, imperfections, conditions, et al, of almost any given stamp. All of this information had to be absorbed from diverse sources, mainly from the standard stamp catalogs, and committed to memory. To this day, I am in awe of his ability to do this (remember, this was an avocation - 'just for fun!')
"Dad retired in 1950, and remained active on and around the campus until about 1966, having been appointed campus mailman in 1959 - a job which he very much enjoyed, and which just incidentally allowed him to draw social security. During these 'retirement' years, he also played bass drum in the Pioneer pep band - which I gather was the only band on campus at the time, and which played for football and basketball games. There were articles, and a good-sized picture of him enjoying this activity, in not only the local paper, but in many papers across Iowa also."