Abbot, Gorham Dummer (03 September 1807–03 August 1874), educator of women and clergyman, was born in Brunswick, Maine, the son of “Squire” Jacob Abbot, a land trustee and sometime merchant, and his wife and second cousin, Betsey Abbot. Gorham Abbot grew up in the nearby town of Hallowell and, like his four brothers, graduated from Bowdoin College (A.B., 1826; A.M., 1829) and studied at Andover Theological Seminary. All of the Abbot brothers became teachers and clergymen, the two eldest, ...
Article
Abbot, Gorham Dummer (1807-1874), educator of women and clergyman
Patrick G. Williams
Article
Abbott, Cleveland (1892-1955), Tuskegee Institute educator, administrator, and athletic coach
Anne M. Blaschke
Abbott, Cleveland (09 December 1892–14 April 1955), Tuskegee Institute educator, administrator, and athletic coach, was born in Yankton, South Dakota, one of seven children of Mollie Brown and Elbert B. Abbott. The family moved to Watertown, South Dakota, during Abbott’s childhood. Early on he excelled at sports, earning sixteen varsity letters at Watertown High School in football, basketball, track and field, and baseball. His family was among a small percentage of black residents of South Dakota in the early twentieth century....
Article
Abbott, Edith (1876-1957), social reformer, social work educator, and author
Kathleen Banks Nutter
Abbott, Edith (26 September 1876–28 July 1957), social reformer, social work educator, and author, was born in Grand Island, Nebraska, the daughter of Othman Ali Abbott, a lawyer and first lieutenant governor of Nebraska, and Elizabeth Maletta Griffin, a woman suffrage advocate. Abbott grew up in a comfortable and politically progressive household on the American prairie. However, the severe economic depression that began in 1893 caused Abbott to postpone her college plans after graduation from an Omaha girls’ boarding school. Instead, at the age of seventeen she became a teacher at the Grand Island High School....
Article
Adams, Herbert Baxter (1850-1901), historian and educator
Raymond J. Cunningham
Adams, Herbert Baxter (16 April 1850–30 July 1901), historian and educator, was born in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Dickinson Adams, a lumber merchant, and Harriet Hastings. Adams’s father died when the boy was six; as a result the family moved to nearby Amherst where his mother had relatives. There he attended local schools and later Phillips Exeter Academy....
Article
Ain, Gregory (1908-1988), architect and educator
Anthony Denzer
Ain, Gregory (28 March 1908–10 January 1988), architect and educator, was born Gregory Samuel Ain in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Baer Ain, who ran a small business, and Chiah Ain (maiden name unknown); the couple had recently fled Russian Tsarist rule together. In 1911 the family settled in Los Angeles. Ain was raised in Boyle Heights, a dense mixed neighborhood of Eastern European immigrants. His father, a shopkeeper, openly despised capitalism and participated in socialist political groups. In fact, his father's socialist convictions ran so deep that in 1916 he moved the family to Llano del Rio, an experimental collective farming colony in the Antelope Valley of California. The Ains were among the colony's earliest members. Although the family returned to East Los Angeles a year and a half later, the experience contributed decisively to Ain's developing political beliefs and his social conscience. Cooperative housing projects became a consistent area of exploration later, in his architectural practice....
Article
Ainsworth, Dorothy Sears (1894-1976), physical education teacher and founder of international organizations for her discipline
Christine Shelton
Ainsworth, Dorothy Sears (08 March 1894–02 December 1976), physical education teacher and founder of international organizations for her discipline, was born in Moline, Illinois, the daughter of Harry Ainsworth, an engineering draftsman, and Stella Davidson. Miss Ainsworth graduated with a B.A. in history from Smith College in 1916. After her undergraduate education, she taught physical education at Moline High School. In 1918 she was invited to join the first Smith College Relief Unit, founded by another Smith alumna, ...
Article
Akeley, Mary Leonore Jobe (1878-1966), explorer, author, and educator
Robert L. Gale
Akeley, Mary Leonore Jobe (29 January 1878–19 July 1966), explorer, author, and educator, was born near Tappan, Ohio, the daughter of Richard Watson Jobe and Sarah Jane Pittis, farmers. (The year of her birth is sometimes erroneously given as 1886.) She received a Ph.B. at Scio College in Alliance, Ohio, in 1897. (Scio, a Methodist school, merged with Mount Union College in Alliance in 1911.) She took graduate courses at Bryn Mawr (1901–1903) and taught at Temple College (now Temple University). She was head of the Department of History and Civics at the New York State Normal School and Training School in Cortland, New York (1903–1906), studied history and English at Columbia University, and in 1907 began to teach American history at the Normal College of the City of New York (now Hunter College). She received her M.A. in history at Columbia in 1909....
Article
Albee, Ernest (1865-1927), philosopher and educator
Brendan Sweetman
Albee, Ernest (08 August 1865–26 May 1927), philosopher and educator, was born in Langdon, New Hampshire, the son of Solon Albee and Ellen Lucillia Eames. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1887 with a bachelor’s degree. He then went to Clark University in Massachusetts, where he studied psychology. In 1892 he transferred to Cornell University, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1894. He had already been made a fellow of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell, and in 1892 he was appointed to the faculty. Appointed a full professor in 1907, he remained at Cornell for the rest of his career. He married Emily Humphreys Manly in 1911....
Article
Alberty, Harold Bernard (1890-1971), professor of curriculum design and development
Craig Kridel
Alberty, Harold Bernard (06 October 1890–02 February 1971), professor of curriculum design and development, was born in Lockport, New York, the son of Willard K. Alberty and Carrie L. Post. Alberty attended rural schools in northeastern Ohio and was graduated from Liverpool Township High School in Medina County, Ohio, in 1908. In 1912 Alberty was graduated from Baldwin University (now Baldwin-Wallace College) in Berea, Ohio, where he studied liberal arts and pre-law subjects. He taught eighth grade in the Berea schools during his final year of college in an effort to underwrite his tuition and continued to hold this position until 1913, when he was graduated from Cleveland Law School and was admitted to the Ohio bar. Because no law positions were then available, Alberty continued to teach, an activity that fascinated him, and he rose quickly in the county school administration, serving as assistant principal of Berea High School from 1913 to 1915; superintendent of Berea schools from 1915 to 1917; district superintendent of Cuyahoga County schools from 1917 to 1920; and assistant Cuyahoga County superintendent from 1920 to 1924. He received an A.M. in school administration from Ohio State University in 1923. Throughout this period Alberty planned to return to the practice of law. In 1916 he married Anna Hower; they had one child. Their marriage ended with her death in the latter 1940s....
Article
Alexander, Joseph Addison (1809-1860), Presbyterian scholar and minister
Mark A. Noll
Alexander, Joseph Addison (24 April 1809–28 January 1860), Presbyterian scholar and minister, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Janetta Waddel and Archibald Alexander, a Presbyterian minister. Alexander, who was always called Addison, grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where in 1812 his father was called to be the first professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. At an early age, Alexander displayed the ability in languages that would make him a marvel throughout his life. By the time he began formal instruction with local tutors, his father had taught him the rudiments of Latin and Greek and also introduced him to Semitic languages. By the time he graduated from the College of New Jersey as a seventeen-year old in 1826, he had read the Koran in Arabic, made considerable progress in Persian and Syriac, and begun the wide-ranging study of contemporary European languages that he never stopped. It was his habit, begun before entering college and continuing to the week of his death, to read the Bible daily in at least six languages. Alexander’s nephew and biographer, Henry Carrington Alexander, concluded that he read, wrote, and spoke Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; that he read without helps and wrote Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Romaic, and Chaldean; that he could read Ethiopic, Dutch, Sanskrit, Syriac, Coptic, Danish, Flemish, and Norwegian; and that he knew enough Polish, Swedish, Malay, Hindustani, and Chinese to peruse works in these languages. The linguistic marvel was also a social recluse who never married and who, despite great interest in travel and world affairs, lived contentedly in Princeton as a student and professor his whole life. ...
Article
Allen, Alexander Viets Griswold (1841-1908), Episcopal priest, theologian, and educator
William L. Sachs
Allen, Alexander Viets Griswold (04 May 1841–01 July 1908), Episcopal priest, theologian, and educator, was born in Otis, Massachusetts, the son of Ethan Allen, a teacher and Episcopal priest, and Lydia Child Burr. His father served churches in Massachusetts and Vermont. Both parents were strongly evangelical in the Episcopal manner of the time, emphasizing biblical authority and teaching more than sacramental theology—a conviction that produced conflict in several of the churches that Allen’s father served. Their piety shaped Allen’s early views, leading him to enroll at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1859. Kenyon was an Episcopal institution then of an evangelical stamp. An excellent student, Allen delivered the valedictory address upon graduating in 1862 and immediately entered Bexley Hall, a theological seminary in Gambier....
Article
Allen, William G. (1820–?), abolitionist and educator
Milton C. Sernett
Allen, William G. (1820–?), abolitionist and educator, was born in Virginia, the son of a Welshman and a free mulatto mother. After the death of both parents when he was young, Allen was adopted by a free African-American family in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Allen soon caught the eye of the Reverend William Hall, a New Yorker who conducted a black elementary school in Norfolk. Hall wrote ...
Article
Allen, William Henry (1808-1882), educator and college president
Milton C. Sernett
Allen, William Henry (25 March 1808–29 August 1882), educator and college president, was born at Readfield (now Manchester), near Augusta, Maine, to Jonathan Allen and Thankful Longley, farmers. He went from his parents’ farm to district school, then attended Wesleyan Seminary in Maine in preparation for Bowdoin College. He graduated with an M.A. from Bowdoin in 1833. The same year Allen was appointed to teach Latin and Greek at the Oneida Methodist Conference Seminary in Cazenovia, Madison County, New York. In the spring of 1836 he became principal of the high school in Augusta, Maine, a post he held for six months....
Article
Allen, Young John William (1836-1907), missionary, educator, and journalist in China
Adrian A. Bennett
Allen, Young John William (03 January 1836–30 May 1907), missionary, educator, and journalist in China, was born in Burke County, Georgia, the son of Andrew Young John Allen and Jane Wooten. Because of the early death of both parents, Allen was raised by an aunt and uncle, Wiley and Nancy (Wooten) Hutchins, who lived in Meriwether County, Georgia. He received a sizable inheritance from his father, which financed his education at several small private schools near his home in Starrsville, Georgia, including the Baptist-run Brownwood Institute in LaGrange, Georgia, and the Morgan H. Looney schools in Palmetto, Georgia. His inheritance also allowed him to collect a personal library, which made him the envy of his classmates as early as 1850, when he was only fourteen years old. He began college work at Emory and Henry College in Virginia in 1853 but transferred to Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, in the spring of 1854. At Emory, Allen acquired the secular learning of the European tradition as well as knowledge of Christianity. His extracurricular activities included membership in a debating society and religious study groups, both of which prepared him for his subsequent careers in China....
Article
Allinson, Anne Crosby Emery (1871-1932), educator
Linda Eisenmann
Allinson, Anne Crosby Emery (01 January 1871–16 August 1932), educator, was born in Ellsworth, Maine, the daughter of Lucilius Alonzo Emery, a lawyer, and Anne Crosby. She described her home as a literate and busy household where her parents encouraged their two children in serious study. Lucilius Emery, attorney general of Maine and later chief justice of Maine’s supreme court, and Anne Emery both pushed their daughter “Nan” to “develop independence of thought and vigorous belief in the capabilities of her sex.”...
Article
Alston, Melvin Ovenus (1911-1985), educator
Peter Wallenstein
Alston, Melvin Ovenus (07 October 1911–30 December 1985), educator, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of William Henry “Sonnie” Alston, a drayman, and Mary Elizabeth “Lizzie” Smith, a laundress. Of middle-class background in terms of an African-American family in the urban South in the 1920s, he grew up in a house that his family owned, free of any mortgage. After attending Norfolk’s segregated black public schools and graduating from Booker T. Washington High School, he graduated from Virginia State College (B.S., 1935), honored for his debating and for excellence in scholarship, and began teaching math at Booker T. Washington High School in 1935. Beginning in 1937 he served as president of the Norfolk Teachers Association, and he also held local leadership positions in the Young Men’s Christian Association and the First Calvary Baptist Church....
Article
Amberg, George (1901-1971), professor of film and dance critic
Judith Brin Ingber
Amberg, George (28 December 1901–27 July 1971), professor of film and dance critic, was born Hans Aschaffenburg in Halle, Germany, the son of Gustav Aschaffenburg, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist, and Maja Nebel. He was educated in Davos, Switzerland, from 1916 to 1918, at a fashionable boys’ private high school where the kaiser sent his children, and also in Cologne, Munich, and Kiel. In 1923 he founded Cassette, the avant-garde theater in Cologne, and was also a stage director there. From 1924 to 1928 he worked in theatrical festivals with noted German director Gustav Hurtung, first as a dramaturge and play director at the Cologne Theatre, then in 1926 at the Heidelberg Theatre Festival, and thereafter in 1927–1928 as director in the Darmstadt Theatre. Amberg earned his doctorate in December 1930 from the University of Cologne on the German novelist Theodor Fontane as critic. He was also a lecturer and member of the drama department at the university. From 1930 to 1933 Amberg helped to organize the University of Cologne’s theater museum and also established and directed its film library and institute. His published writings from this period concerned the subject of dance. He was a contributing editor on dance to the Ullstein and Herder encyclopedias. Amberg also gave visiting lectures in Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, and Basel. He established a cabaret as well, which was usually considered a low-class entertainment venue, but his was experimental theater that included all of the arts....
Article
American, Sadie (1862-1944), social welfare activist and educator
Gerald Sorin
American, Sadie (03 March 1862–03 May 1944), social welfare activist and educator, was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of German-Jewish immigrant Oscar L. American and Amelia Smith. Little is known of her childhood, but she was educated in Chicago public schools.
American became a founder in 1893 and later executive secretary of the philanthropic, middle-class reform organization the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). In her early thirties she held positions in dozens of social welfare, charitable, and educational institutions from 1893 to 1904, including that of president of the New York Section of the NCJW and of the Consumers’ League of New York State (1893–1894). She also directed the Woman’s Municipal League in New York City and was chair of its Tenement House Committee (1893–1894)....
Article
Ames, Van Meter (1898-1985), professor of philosophy
Angus Kerr-Lawson
Ames, Van Meter (09 July 1898–05 November 1985), professor of philosophy, was born in De Soto, Iowa, the son of Edward Scribner Ames, a minister, and Mabel Van Meter. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1924 and took a position in the philosophy department at the University of Cincinnati the following year. He was married in 1930 to Betty Catherine Breneman, with whom he had three children. During his career Ames held a number of visiting appointments at other American universities, including Cornell, Texas, Hawaii, and Columbia, and abroad, on a Rockefeller grant to France and a Fulbright Fellowship to Japan....
Article
Andrews, Eliza Frances (1840-1931), author and educator
Cita Cook
Andrews, Eliza Frances (10 August 1840–21 January 1931), author and educator, was born at Haywood Plantation near Washington, Georgia, the daughter of Garnett Andrews, a judge and planter, and Annulet Ball. After attending the Ladies’ Seminary in Washington, Georgia, Andrews, often known as “Fanny,” was, in 1857, one of the first students to receive an A.B. degree at LaGrange Female College in LaGrange, Georgia....
