Part 1 of 3 Parts. Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries.

Part 1 of 3 Parts. Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries.

By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Lawrence A. Cremin’s parents (Arthur T. Cremin and Theresa [Borowick] Cremin) owned the private New York Schools of Music. Lawrence worked there part-time while attending the Model School (elementary) of Hunter College and Townsend Harris High School, a public high school for the gifted. He entered City College of New York, 1940 (age 15 1/2), served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and received the City College B.S. degree, 1946. At Columbia University’s Teachers College (hereafter TC), he earned the M.A. (1947) and Ph.D. degrees (1949) under distinguished professors Lyman Bryson, George S. Counts, Harold O. Rugg, Bruce Raup (whose daughter Charlotte, a mathematics teacher, he married on September 19, 1956), John L. Childs, Kenneth Benne, and R. Freeman Butts.

At TC he was instructor, 1949-51; assistant professor, 1951-54; associate professor, 1954-57; and professor, 1957-61; then held a joint appointment as TC’s Frederick A.P. Barnard Professor of Education and professor in Columbia University’s history department, 1961-90. He directed TC’s Division of Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Education, 1958-74; directed its Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education, 1965-74; was TC president, 1974-84; and also Spencer Foundation president, 1985-90.

Cremin wrote The American Common School: An Historic Conception, New York: Teachers College Press, 1951, his revised TC doctoral dissertation; (with major professor R. Freeman Butts) A History of Education in American Culture, New York: Holt, 1953; (with D.A. Shannon and M.E. Townsend) History of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1954; Public Education and the Future of America, Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1955; (with Merle L. Borrowman) Public Schools in Our Democracy, New York: Macmillan, 1956; and edited The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men, New York: Teachers College Press, 1957, with excerpts from Horace Mann’s writings, first of 52 volumes in the “Classics in Education” series, which Cremin edited.

His seventh book won the 1962 Bancroft Prize in American History: The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961. Cremin saw progressive education as part of a larger movement of Progressivism, “a vast humanitarian effort to apply the promise of American life” to a “puzzling new urban-industrial civilization,” a many faceted movement that sought “to use the school as a fundamental lever of social and political regeneration.”

Evaluating the book 30 years later, educational historian John Rury thought Transformation “an indispensable piece of any educational historian’s library.” Reading it as an undergraduate, he was thrilled at how Cremin had made educational history exciting and meaningful; it was the “starting point toward [his] becoming an historian of education,” a sentiment repeated by educational historian Michael B. Katz.

Reviewing Transformation in 1964, educational philosopher Paul Nash faulted Cremin for not defining progressive education; and for not relating it to Rousseau, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Peirce, and James. Cremin, Nash felt, was not sympathetic to progressive education, which was not dead but still waiting to be tried.

Cremin’s well written, prize winning Transformation helped advance a new interpretation of U.S. educational history. A Fund for the Republic conference in 1958 found U.S. educational history “shamefully neglected by American historians.” A Fund-sponsored Committee on the Role of Education in American History (founded May 1956) offered grants to history department faculty or students for research on the role of education in American history.

The new interpretation first came in historian Bernard Bailyn’s Committee-funded Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1960. He criticized as “educational missionaries” Paul Monroe (1869-1947) and Monroe’s student at TC, Ellwood P. Cubberley (1868-1941). Their dominant textbooks were evangelistic in using school history to inspire teachers with professional zeal. In contrast, Bailyn saw education as including the influence of family, community, church, race relations, apprenticeship training, the economy, and formal schools. He saw education “as the entire process by which a culture transmits itself across the generation.” Emphasizing the complex socioeconomic and political structure which education served, Bailyn led educational historians to rethink assumptions about education and its history.

Educational historian Sol Cohen blamed excessive criticism of the Monroe-Cubberley flawed historiography on liberal arts and science faculty antipathy toward educationists. Public school weaknesses from the 1930s were blamed on John Dewey and his disciples. This disdain increased as educational history was often used to support social reconstructionism, an ineffectual, short lived urging of educators to use schools to solve socioeconomic problems. Younger educational historians like Cremin turned from progressive educators and identified with Bailyn, the Committee, and liberal arts historians. The History of Education Society and its History of Education Quarterly withdrew from patronage by progressive education organizations. Cremin’s Transformation, published a year after Bailyn’s book, became a prestigious and admired standard of a new U.S. educational historiography.

Cremin’s Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay in the Historiography of American Education, New York: Teachers College Press, 1965, traced the origin of the Monroe-Cubberley laudatory approach to educational histories of European countries Henry Barnard published in his American Journal of Education (1855-82) and in his federal Bureau of Education publications (Barnard was Commissioner, 1867-70). This view was reflected in state centennial histories of education (1776-1876) and influenced Monroe and Cubberley.

Cremin’s Wonderful World of…Cubberley was originally a paper he read at a 1964 Committee on the Role of Education in American History symposium. There he was invited by American Historical Association and U.S. Office of Education officials to write a comprehensive history of U.S. education for the Office of Education’s 1967 centennial. He accepted, thinking that he could complete a 3-volume history in 7 years. But the American Education trilogy took 23 years and covered 1,775 pages of text, plus 240 pages of bibliographic essays.

Before the trilogy, Cremin gave the Horace Mann Lectures, University of Pittsburgh, published as The Genius of American Education, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965. Cremin saw the essence of U.S. education as its commitment to popularization, a main theme of the trilogy.

Volume one, American Education, The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783, New York: Harper and Row, 1970, showed how inherited European educational agencies were transformed to serve U.S. civic and economic needs. His Public Education, New York: Basic Books, 1976, from his February 1975 John Dewey Society lectures, and Traditions of American Education, New York: Basic Books, 1977, from his March 1976 University of Wisconsin Merle Curti lectures, explored the trilogy’s ideas and themes.

Volume two, American Education, The National Experience, 1783-1876, New York: Harper and Row, 1980, analyzed the trilogy’s theme of popularization, or increasing accessibility to schools and other learning agencies for students of diverse abilities, backgrounds, and ages; and the theme of proliferation of schools and colleges, plus such numerous non-school educative agencies as newspapers, libraries, clubs, bookstores, and so on.

Volume three, American Education, The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980, New York: Harper and Row, 1988, explored the theme of politicization, or using schools rather than political action alone to solve social problems. These three themes affected schools greatly as the U.S. became a nation of cities, exporting its culture to the world. After World War II, U.S. schools were increasingly criticized, their mediocrity bemoaned, and their weaknesses blamed for America’s relative world economic decline. Despite alleged quality debasement, Cremin pointed to the phenomenal growth of U.S. schools and how much they attempted, even while they fell short. The genius of U.S. education, he wrote, its popularization and proliferation, allowed almost everyone to learn and to rise through learning, especially in cities, which he saw as learning and teaching cornucopias.

In a published forum evaluating Metropolitan Experience, Cremin replied to three educational historians’ critical comments. He conceived of the trilogy as a synthesis, a selective reinterpretation of U.S. educational history, showing how popularization, proliferation, and politicization became U.S. education’s chief characteristics, leading to both achievement and problems.

Cremin liked the complexity of education in big cities because they offer an extraordinary range of curricular and educational opportunities. The eight New Yorker case studies in Metropolitan Experience took from the city’s educational milieu what they wanted and needed, often in non-school educative agencies. Examples: Alfred E. Smith, Jr.’s most important educational experience came, not from public schools, but from lower Manhattan political clubhouses; Elizabeth D.H. Clarke’s most important educational experience came from her family and the YWCA; Chinese immigrant Hop Kun Leo Chiang’s most important educational experience came from the laundry business; and so on.

An admirer wrote: “Metropolitan Experience by itself is a seminal work in American educational historiography…a rich and learned text…. Cremin’s breadth of knowledge is staggering.”

An extreme critic wrote: “His trilogy, many in the field argue, was ponderous as well as scholarly, a chore to write and to read. The prose was choppy and the themes much open to question. The field had passed Cremin by. While a voracious reader, he never seemed to learn anything from those who criticized him. He read the radicals and referenced them in his massive bibliographies, but had he really learned a thing? Quite simply, schools matter more than Cremin thought. His work will remain more irrelevant as reform movements from the right and left continue to define our age.”

Cremin died of a heart attack, September 4, 1990, aged nearly 65. His students and colleagues remembered him as a voracious reader who seemed to recall all that he had ever read. His classes were packed, he was well organized, and he lectured with intellectual vigor.

Among many honors were his 15 honorary degrees. He gave eight distinguished lecture series, most of them published; was advisory editor for the Arno Press’s “American Education: People, Ideas, Institutions” series, which reprinted 161 important out-of-print education books, 1970-72; and he helped found the National Academy of Education and was its second president.

He was a university lecturer and administrator of note. Yet Cremin’s renown as educational historian rests on his Transformation, the American Education trilogy, and his influence on his students.

Appendices

Cremin as Editorial Advisory Board Member:

American Journal of Education

American Scholar

Education Research and Perspectives (Australia)

History of Education (England)

History of Education Journal

International Review of Education

Journal of Family History

Sociology of Education

Teachers College Record (Cremin was associate editor, 1952-59)

Institutions Where Cremin Was a Guest Professor:

Bank Street College of Education

Harvard University, 1957, 1961

Seminar in American Studies at Salzburg, Austria, 1956

Stanford University, 1973

University of California, Los Angeles, 1956

University of Wisconsin

Cremin as Board of Trustees Member:

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences

Charles F. Kettering Foundation

Children’s Television Workshop

John and Mary Markle Foundation

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Rockefeller Archive Center

Spencer Foundation

World Book Yearbook

Year Book of Education (jointly published by Teachers College, Columbia University and University of London)

Cremin as Distinguished Lecturer:

Horace Mann Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh, 1965

Sir John Adams Memorial Lecturer, University of London, 1966

Cecil H. Green Visiting Professor, University of British Columbia, 1972

Merle Curti Lecturer, University of Wisconsin, 1976

Sir John Adams Memorial Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles, 1976

Vera Brown Memorial Lecturer, National Institute of Education, 1978

Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, Simon Fraser University, 1982

Irving R. Melbo Visiting Professor, University of Southern California, 1982

Cremin as Professional Organization Member (and Offices Held)

President, History of Education, 1959

President, National Society of College Teachers of Education, 1961

President, National Academy of Education, 1969-73 (founding member in 1965)

American Philosophical Society

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Antiquarian Society

Society of American Historians

Council on Foreign Relations

Other Offices Cremin Held:

Chair, Curriculum Improvement Panel, U.S. Office of Education, 1963-65

Chair, Regional Laboratories Panel, U.S. Office of Education, 1965-66

Chair , Carnegie Commission on the Education of Educators, 1966-70

Vice Chair, White House Conference on Education, 1965

Cremin’s International Travel:

Head of delegation of American educators to People’s Republic of China, summer 1978

Lectured extensively in England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Israel, and Sweden

Cremin’s Fellowships and Awards:

Phi Beta Kappa

Guggenheim Fellowship, 1957-58, for research in history of American education

Pulitzer Prize in History, 1981

Bancroft Prize in History, 1962

Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1964-65; Visiting Scholar, 1971-72

American Educational Research Association’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research, 1969

New York University’s Award for Creative Educational Leadership, 1971

Columbia University’s Butler Medal in Silver, 1972

College of the City of New York’s Townsend Harris Medal, 1974

New York Academy of Public Education’s Medal for Distinguished Service to Public Education, 1982

Hunter College’s President’s Medal, 1984

Carnegie Corporation of New York Medal, 1988

Cremin’s Honorary Degrees:

L.H.D., City University of New York, 1984

Litt.D., Columbia University, 1975

L.H.D., Ohio State University, 1975

LL.D., University of Bridgeport, 1975

LL.D., University of Rochester, 1980

L.H.D., Kalamazoo College, 1976

Litt.D., Rider College, 1979

LL.D., Miami University, 1983

L.H.D., Suffolk University, 1983

L.H.D., Widener University, 1983

L.H.D., College of William and Mary, 1984

L.H.D., Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1984

L.H.D., Northern Illinois University, 1984

L.H.D., State University of New York, 1984

L.H.D., George Washington University, 1985

Cremin’s Administrative Positions:

Director, Division of Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Education, Teachers College, 1958-74

Director, Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education, Teachers College, 1965-74

President, Teachers College, 1974-84

President, Spencer Foundation, Chicago, 1985-90

Cremin’s Books and Reviews of His Major Books:

1951: The American Common School: An Historic Conception. New York: Teachers College Press.

1953: (With R. Freeman Butts). A History of Education in American Culture. New York: Holt.

1954: (With D. A. Shannon and M.E. Townsend). A History of Teachers College, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press.

1955: Public Education and the Future of America. Washington, DC: National Education Association.

1956: (With Merle L. Borrowman). Public Schools in Our Democracy. New York: Macmillan.

1957: (Editor). The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men. Classics in Education No. l. New York: Teachers College Press.

196l: The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education,1876-1957. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Barnard, Harry V. Current History, Vol. 41, No. 239 (July 1961), p. 51.

Beck, John M. School Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Winter 1961), pp. 488-490.

Brickman, William W. School and Society, Vol. 89, No. 2201 (December 16, 1961), p. 442.

Chambliss, J. J. “The View of Progress in Lawrence Cremin’s The Transformation of the School,’” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 1963), pp. 43-52.

Cunningham, L. L. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 67 (March 1962), p. 602.

Hechinger, Fred M. New York Times Book Review (July 9, 1961), p. 3.

Hogan, David John. Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago,1880-1930. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, pp. xiii, 228-229, 316-317.

Continued in Part 2 of 3 Parts. Corrections and comments to bfparker@frontiernet.net

Part 2 of 3 Parts. Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries.

Part 2 of 3 Parts. Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries.

Horlick, Allan Stanley. “The Rewriting of American Educational History,” New York University Education Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Summer 1974), pp. 25-28.

Kraft, Ivor. Nation, Vol. 194 (June 9, 1962), p. 521.

Leeper, Robert R. Educational Leadership, Vol. 23, No. 4 (January 1966), pp. 349-350.

Mann, Arthur. American Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 1 (October 1961), pp.156-157.

Marland, Sidney P. Chicago Sunday Tribune (August 13, 1961), p. 5.

Nash, Paul. “The Strange Death of Progressive Education,” Educational Theory, Vol. 14, No. 2 (April 1964), pp. 65-75, 82.

Qualey, C. C. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 3 (September 1962), pp. 472-473.

Rudy, Willis. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 340 (March 1962), p. 155-156.

Rury, John L. “Transformation in Perspective: Lawrence Cremin’s Transformation of the School,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 3l, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 67-76.

Russo, Francis X. “Educational Wastelands Revisited,” Choice, Vol. 25, Nos. 11 & 12 (July/August 1988), p. 1661 [entire article, pp. 1659-1669].

Toch, Thomas. In the Name of Excellence: The Struggle to Reform the Nation’s Schools, Why It’s Failing, and What Should Be Done. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 44-47.

Watson, James E. Social Education, Vol. 26, No. 2 (February 1962), p. 112.

Weiss, Robert M. History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2 (June 1962), pp. 130-132.

Woodring, Paul. Saturday Review, Vol. 44, No. 15 (April 15, 1961), pp. 70-71.

1965: The Genius of American Education. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Sizer, Theodore R. Teachers College Record, Vol. 68, No. 4 (January 1967), pp. 341-343.

1965: The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay in the Historiography of American Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Brubacher, John S. Teachers College Record, Vol. 67, No. 3 (December 1965), pp. 230-232.

Cartwright, William H. American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 2 (January 1966), pp. 725-726.

Hodysh, Henry W. “A Note on History, Educational Policy, and the Uses of the Past,” Alberta Journal of Education, Vol. 37, No. 4 (December 1991), pp. 323-332.
Journal of American History, Vol. 52, No. 3 (December 1965), p. 678.

Tyack, David. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Spring 1966), pp. 202-205.

1969: (With Lee J. Cronbach, Patrick Suppes, et al.). Research for Tomorrow’s Schools: Disciplined Inquiry for Education. New York: Macmillan.

1970: American Education, The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783. New York: Harper and Row.

Book List, Vol. 67, No. 14 (March 15, 1971), pp. 567, 572.

Borrowman, Merle L. Teachers College Record, Vol. 73, No. 1 (September 1971), pp. 117-120.

Choice, Vol. 8, No. 2 (April 1971), p. 268.

Cohen, D. Ronald. Socialization in Colonial New England,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring 1973), pp. 73-82.

Demos, John. Commonweal, Vol. 94, No. 6 (April 16, 1971), pp. 145-146.

Hofstadter, Beatrice Kevitt. “Schooling in Democracy,” Commentary,
Vol. 52, No. 5 (November 1971), pp. 85-86.

Kalisch, P. A. Library Journal, Vol. 95, No. 16 (September 15, 1970), p. 2910.

Lazerson, Marvin. “Lawrence Cremin and the American Dilemma,” American Journal of Education, Vol. 99, No. 1 (November 1990), pp. 95-104.

Middlekauff, Robert. Journal of American History, Vol. 58, No. 2 (September 1971), pp. 432-434.

Powell, A. G. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (May 1971), pp. 250-255.
Publishers Weekly, Vol. 198, No. 15 (October 12, 1970), p. 51.

Sizer, Theodore R. Saturday Review, Vol. 54, No. 12 (March 20, 1971), pp. 50-51.

Tolles, Frederick B. American Historical Review, Vol. 77, No.1 (February 1972), pp. 198-200.

Tully, Alan. “Literacy Levels and Educational Development in Rural Pennsylvania, 1729-1775,” Pennsylvania History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (1972), pp. 301-312.

Vassar, Rena. William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4 (October 1971), pp. 679-681.

1976: Public Education. New York: Basic Books.

Borrowman, Merle L. Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 1 (September 1977), pp. 139-144. (also reviewed 1977 Traditions of American Education.)

Choice, Vol. 13, No. 8 (October 1976), p. 1028.

Christian Century, Vol. 93, No. 26 (August 18/25, 1976), p. 714.

Cunningham, Jo Lynn. Science Books, Vol. 13, No. 1 (May 1977), p. 11.

Eckberg, Carol. Library Journal, Vol. 101, No. 11 (June 1, 1976), p. 1283.

Featherstone, Joseph. New York Times Book Review (November 21, 1976), pp. 58-60.

Hechinger, Fred M. “The World is a Classroom,” Saturday Review, Vol. 3, No. 18 (June 12, 1976), p. 34, 36.

Instructor, Vol. 86, No. 2 (October 1976), p. 198.

Marani, Vicki. National Review, Vol. 28, No. 39 (October 15, 1976), p. 1137.

Mehl, Bernard. Journal of Education, Vol. 159, No. 2 (May 1977), pp. 114-117.

Publishers Weekly, Vol. 209, No. 8 (February 23, 1976), p. 113.

Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr. “Historical Revisionism, Educational Theory, and an American Paideia.” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1978), pp. 201-210.

1977: Traditions of American Education. New York: Basic Books.

Book List, Vol. 73, No. 16 (April 15, 1977), p. 1222.

Borrowman, Merle L. Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 1 (September 1977), pp. 139-144. (Also reviewed 1976 Public Education.)

Butcher, Patricia Smith. Library Journal, Vol. 102, No. 13 (July 1977), p. 1491.

Choice, Vol. 14, No. 5/6 (July/August 1977), p. 726.

Christian Century, Vol. 94, No. 17 (May 11, 1977), p. 460.

Church, Robert L. “Democracy and Education Reaffirmed,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 1978), pp. 29-35.

Finn, Chester E., Jr. “School and Society,” Commentary, Vol. 63, No. 6 (June 1977), pp. 89-91.

Fisher, David Hackett, “David Hackett Fisher on History, ” New Republic, Vol. 177, No. 23 (December 3, 1977), p. 24.

Fiske, Edward B. New York Times (April 16, 1977), p. 23.

Hopkins, Thomas R. Educational Leadership, Vol. 36, No. 2 (November 1978), pp. 154-155.

Instructor, Vol. 87, No. 2 (September 1977), p. 242.

Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 45, No. 3 (February 1, 1977), pp. 130-131.

Mattingly, Paul. H. Journal of American History, Vol. 64, No. 4 (March 1978), pp. 1149-1150.

Publishers Weekly, Vol. 211, No. 4 (January 24, 1977), p. 323.

Rippa, S. Alexander. American Historical Review, Vol. 82, No. 5 (December 1977), pp. 1320-1321.

Science Books, Vol. 14, No. 1 (May 1978), p. 10.

Smith, Wilson. History: Reviews of New Books, Vol. 5, No. 10 (September 1977), pp. 221-222.

Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr. “Historical Revisionism, Educational Theory, and an American Paideia,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1978), pp. 201-210.

Wright, Richard A. Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 4 (July 1978), pp. 438-439.

1980: American Education, The National Experience, 1783-1876. New York: Harper and Row.

Atlantic, Vol. 246, No. 5 (November 1980), p. 98.

Cohen, D. Ronald. Journal of Southern History, Vol. 47, No. 3 (August 1981), pp. 441-442.

Coughlin, Ellen K. “An Eloquent History of Education, Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 21, No. 1 (August 25, 1980), p. 29.

Finn, Chester E., Jr. Book World (Washington Post), Vol. 10, No. 32 (August 10, 1980), pp. 25-26.

Howe, Daniel W. “The History of Education as Cultural History,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 205-214.

Ihle, Elizabeth. “This Pulitzer-Prize Winner Moves Beyond the Scope of Traditional Education History,” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 62, No. 10 (June 1981), pp. 749-750.

Katz, Michael B. American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 1 (February 1981), 205-206.

Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 48, No. 11 (June 1, 1980), pp. 748-749.

Kraus, Joe W. Library Journal, Vol. 105, No. 13 (July l980), p. 1511.
Lazerson, Marvin. “Lawrence Cremin and the American Dilemma,” American Journal of Education, Vol. 99, No. 1 (November 1990), pp. 95-104.

Lazerson, Marvin. “Lawrence Cremin’s Democracy in America,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 9, No. 3 (September 1981), pp. 382-386.

Lynn, Kenneth S. “The Making of a Disciple,” New York Times Book Review, Vol. 86 (January 25, 1981), p. 23.

Michaelsen, Robert S. Church History, Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 1982), p. 229.

Publishers Weekly, Vol. 217, No. 21 (May 30, 1980), p. 80.

Roche, John F. America, Vol. 143, No. 13 (November 1, 1980), pp. 275-276.

Sedlak, Michael W. Journal of American History, Vol. 68, No. 1 (June 1981), pp. 125-126.

Smith, L. Glenn. Educational Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Winter 1981-82), pp. 468-469.

Smylie, James H. Religious Education, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Fall 1989), pp. 620-624. (Also reviewed Metropolitan Experience below.)

Spaeth, Robert L. “Persons More Than Places in a Compelling Story,” Change, Vol. 12, No. 6 (September 1980), pp. 58-59.

Welter, Rush. Teachers College Record, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Summer 1981), pp. 702-705.
1988: American Education, The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980. New York: Harper and Row.

Beirne, Charles J. America, Vol. 160, No. 7 (February 25, 1989), pp. 177-178.

BJC. Booklist, Vol. 84, No. 12 (February 15, 1988), pp. 957-958.

Bowyer, Carlton H. Educational Forum, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Fall 1988), pp. 93-96.

Church, Robert L. et al, “The Metropolitan Experience in American Education,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Fall 1989), pp. 419-446.

Cohen, Sol. “Review Essay, Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience 1876-1980,” Historical Studies in Education, Vol. 1 (Fall 1989), pp. 307-326.

Cordasco, Frank. Choice, Vol. 26, No. 1 (September 1988), p. 192.

Crunden, Robert M. “A Liberal Synthesis,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 16, No. 4 (December 1988), pp. 652-656.

Continued in Part 3 of 3 Parts. bfparker@frontiernet.net

3 of 3 Parts. Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries.

3 of 3 Parts. “Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries,” By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Foote, Timothy. Book World (Washington Post) , Vol. 18, No. 13 (March 27, 1988), p. 6.

“Forum: The Metropolitan Experience in American Education,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Fall 1989), pp. 419-446.

Gutmann, Amy. New York Times Book Review, Vol. 93 (May 8, 1988), p. 17.

James, Thomas. Journal of American History, Vol. 75, No. 4 (March 1989), pp. 1340-1341.

Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 56, No. 2 (January 15, 1988), p. 99.

Lazerson, Marvin. “Lawrence Cremin and the American Dilemma,” American Journal of Education, Vol. 99, No. 1 (November 1990), pp. 95-104.

NEA Today, Vol. 7, No. 2 (October 1988), p. 19 (1).

Publishers Weekly, Vol. 237, No. 4 (January 26, 1990), p. 4l4.

Reese, William J. Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 80 (June 3, 1988), p. B4.

Reimen, Jacqueline. Journal of American Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (August 1989), pp. 332-334.

Rodgers, Daniel T. Journal of Social History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter 1989), pp. 388-391.

Solberg, Winton U. Church History, Vol. 59, No. 1 (March 1990), pp. 128-130.

Stuttaford, Genevieve. Publishers Weekly, Vol. 233, No. 4 (January 29, 1988), pp. 419-420.

Sutherland, Neil. Educational Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Fall 1990), pp. 315-318.

Veysey, Laurence. American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 1 (February 1990), p. 285.

Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Autumn 1988), p. 116.

1990: Popular Education and Its Discontents. New York: Harper and Row.

Best, John Hardin. History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 179-181.

Blair, Christine E. Religious Education, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Summer 1991), pp. 487-488.

Carbone, M.J. Choice, Vol. 27, Nos. 11/12 (July/August 1990), pp. 1867-1868.

Cremin, Lawrence A. “The ‘Ideal’ of Popular Education” (Excerpts from Popular Education and Its Discontents), Education Week, Vol. 9, No. 23 (February 28, 1990), p. 30.

Digilio, Alice. “Making Schools Work,” Book World (Washington Post), Vol. 20, No. 21 (May 27, 1990), p. 4.

Haber, Samuel. Journal of American History, Vol. 77, No. 4 (March 1991), p. 1414.

Howe, Harold, II. Teachers College Record, Vol. 92, No. 2 (Winter 1990), pp. 316-319.

Publishers Weekly, Vol. 236, No. 21 (November 24, 1989), p. 65.

Reference & Research Book News, Vol. 5, No. 3 (June 1990), p. 25.

Weakland, Allen. Booklist, Vol. 86, No. 10 (January 15, 1990), p. 957.

Reviews of the Combined 3 Volumes of American Education

Dyer, Thomas G. “Review Essay: From Colony to Metropolis: Lawrence Cremin on the History of American Education,” Review of Higher Education, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Winter 1990), pp. 237-244.

Hawes, Joseph M., and N. Ray Hiner. Children in Historical and Comparative Perspective: An International Handbook and Research Guide. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991, p. 503.

Herbst, Jurgen. “Cremin’s American Paideia,” American Scholar, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Winter 1991), pp. 128-129, 132-134, 136-138, 140. (Also reviewed Popular Education and Its Discontents.)

Articles and Speech by (or Interviews with) Cremin

Cremin, Lawrence A. “Curriculum Making in the United States,” Teachers College Record, Vol. 73, No. 2 (1971), pp. 207-220.

_________________. “The Decline and Fall of Progressive Education,” in Background Readings: The White House Conference on Education, July 20-21, 1965. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Education,1965, pp. 58-60.

_________________. “The Ecology of American Education,” New York University Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Spring 1972), pp. 2-5.

_________________. “The Education of the Educating Professions,” Research Bulletin (Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute), Vol. 18, No. 3 (1978), pp. 1-8 (Charles W. Hunt Lecture given at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, February 21, 1978. ERIC ED 148 829); American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, The Knowledge Base for the Preparation of Education Personnel, Yearbook 1978, Volume 1. Washington, DC: AACTE, 1978, pp. 3-24.

_________________. “Family-Community Linkages in American Education: Some Comments on the Recent Historiography,” Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 4 (May 1978), pp. 683-704.

_________________. “The Free School Movement–A Perspective (Discussion and Postcript),” Notes on Education, No. 2 (October 1973), pp.1-11; Today’s Education, Vol. 63, No. 3 (1974), pp. 71-74; also in Alternatives in Education; Infopac No. 8. Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1974.

_________________. “Further Notes Toward a Theory of Education,” Notes on Education (Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University), No. 4 (March 1974), pp. 1-11.

_________________. “George S. Counts as a Teacher: A Reminiscence,” Teaching Education, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1988), pp. 28-31.

_________________. “John Dewey and the Progressive Education Movement,” The School Review, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer 1959), pp. 160-173.

_________________. “Looking Back,” National Elementary Principal, Vol. 52, No. 6 (1973), pp. 8-13.

_________________. “The Popularization of American Education Since World War II,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 129, No. 2 (1985), pp. 113-120.

_________________. “The Problematics of Education in the 1980s: Some Reflections on the Oxford Workshop,” Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1983), pp. 9-20.

_________________. “The Progressive Movement in American Education: A Perspective,” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Fall 1957), pp. 251-270.

_________________. “Public Education and the Education of the Public,” Teachers College Record, Vol. 77, No. 1 (September, 1975), pp. 1-12. Reprinted in History, Education, and Public Policy, edited by Donald R. Warren. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978, pp.22-34, 49-50.

_________________. “School is Only One of the Nation’s Teachers,” New York Times (November 14, 1976), p. 30.

_________________. “History: ‘A Lamp To Light the Present,’” (an interview), Education Week, Vol. 7, No. 25 (March 16, 1988), pp. 5, 20.

Friedman, John. “Striving Towards Quality and Equality in Education,” American Educator, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1978), pp. 17-19.

Houts, Paul L. “A Conversation with Lawrence A. Cremin,” National Elementary Principal, Vol 54, No. 3 (1975), pp. 22-35.

Ryan, Kevin et al. “An Interview with Lawrence A. Cremin,” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 60, No. 2 (October 1978), pp. 112-116.

Westerhoff, John [interview with Lawrence A. Cremin]. “Freeing Ourselves from the Mythmakers,” Myth and Reality: A Reader in Education. Glenn Smith and Charles R. Kniker, editors. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1975, pp. 4-11.

Writings About Cremin

Angelo, Richard. “Ironies of the Romance and the Romance with Irony: Some Notes on Stylization in the Historiography of American Education Since 1960.” Paper read at the Canadian History of Education Association and the United States History of Education Society Joint Meeting, October 14-16, 1983.
Bremer, John. “John Dewey and Lawrence Cremin’s Public Education,” National Elementary Principal, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1976), pp. 32-38.

Buder, Leonard. “New History of Education in U.S. Under Way with Carnegie Aid,” New York Times (February 23, 1965).

Button, Warren. “Creating More Useable Pasts: History in the Study of Education.” Paper read at American Educational Research Association, March 27-31, 1987. ERIC ED 155 088.

Butts, R. Freeman. “Public Education and Political Community,” History, Education, and Public Policy, edited by Donald R. Warren. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978, pp. 90-108, 113-115.

Cohen, Sol. “History of Education as a Field of Study: An Essay on Recent Historiography of American Education.” History, Education, and Public Policy, edited by Donald R.Warren. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978, pp. 35-49, 50-53.

Cohen, Sol. “The History of the History of American Education, 1900-1976: The Uses of the Past,” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 46, No. 3 (August 1976), pp. 298-330.

Hechinger, Fred M. “A Warning on the Decline of Quality in Teacher Education,” New York Times, June 16, 198l.

________________. “Lawrence Cremin: Looking Toward the Heights,” Saturday Review/World, Vol. 2, No. 3 (October 19, 1974), pp. 54-55.

Hiner, N. Ray. “History of Education for the 1990s and Beyond: The Case for Academic Imperialism,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer 1990), pp. 137-160.

Hodysh, Henry W. “T.S. Kuhn’s Idea of Progress and Its Implications for Theory Choice in the Historiography of Education,” Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 18, No. 3 (December 1984), pp. 136-151.

Horlick, Allan Stanley. “Landmarks in the Literature: The Rewriting of American Educational History,” New York University Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1974), pp. 25-28.

McLachlan, James. “Lawrence Cremin on American Higher Education: A Review Essay,” History of Higher Education Annual, Vol. 8 (1988). Evanston, IL: School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, 1988.

Parker, Franklin. “Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-90), U.S. Educational Historian and President, Teachers College, Columbia University (l974-84): Contributions to Higher Education.” Academic Profiles in Higher Education. Edited by James J. Van Patten. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992, pp. 277-305. Same in CORE (Collected Original Resources in Education), XVI, No. 32 (June, 1992), Fiche 1 AO4.

Randolph, Scott Kellogg. (Ed.D.). “An Analysis of the Committee on the Role of Education in American History and Lawrence Cremin’s Revisionist View on the Nature of History of American Education.” Rutgers, The State University, 1976. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. 181 pp.

Ravitch, Diane. The Revisionists Revised: A Critique of the Radical Attack on the Schools. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Schlossman, Steven L. “Family as Educator, Parent Education, and the Perennial Family Crisis.” Paper read at the Parents as Educators Conference, November 19-21, 1978. ERIC ED 187 425.

Shapiro, H. Tsvi. “Functionalism, Ideology, and the Theory of Schooling: A Review of Studies in the History of American Education,” Paedagogica Historica, Vol. 22, No. 1-2 (1982), pp. 157-172.

______________. “Society in the History of Educational Change: A Brief Review of Studies by Bernard Bailyn and Lawrence Cremin,” Educational Theory, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer 1978), pp. 186-193.

Sloan, Douglas. “Historiography and the History of Education,” Review of Research in Education, 1. Fred M. Kerlinger, editor. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1973, pp. 239-269.

Urban, Wayne J. “Historiography,” Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Fifth Edition. Harold E. Mitzel, Editor in Chief. Vol. 2. New York: Free Press, 1982, pp. 791-793.

Warren, Donald R. “History of Education,” Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Fifth Edition. Harold E. Mitzel, Editor in Chief. Vol. 2. New York: Free Press, 1982, pp. 808-817.

Wilson, Andrea. “Two Partnership Models Aimed at Easing Transition from School to the World of Work.” Paper read at the National Conference on Urban Education, November 18-21, 1978. ERIC ED 179 653.

Biographical Sketches of Cremin

“Cremin, Lawrence A(rthur),” Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Authors and Their Works. Ann Evory, editor. Vols. 33-36. First Revision. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1978, p. 216.

_____, Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Authors and Their Works. Hal May and James G. Lesniak, editors. New Revision Series, Vol. 29. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1990, pp. 100-101.

_____, Directory of American Scholars, Eighth Edition, Vol. 1. New York: R.R. Bowker Co., 1982, p. 157.

_____, International Who’s Who 1990-91 Fifty-Fourth Edition. London: Europa Publications Ltd., 1990, p. 345.

_____, Who’s Who in America, 1990-91, 46th Edition, Vol. l. Wilmette, IL: Marquis Who’s Who, 1990, p. 705.

_____, Who’s Who in World Jewry: A Biographical Dictionary of Outstanding Jews. I. Carmin Karpman, editor. Tel-Aviv, Israel: Olive Books of Israel, 1978, p. 178.

Obituaries and Memoirs of Cremin

Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, and Patricia Albjerg Graham. Lawrence A. Cremin (October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990), A Biographical Memoir. Washington, DC: National Academy of Education, 1992 (brief version in Educational Researcher, Vol. 20, No. 5 [June-July 1991], pp. 27-29.

Lawrence A. Cremin, October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990. A Memorial Tribute. New York: St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, Sunday, September 30, 1990. Tributes by David L. Cremin [son], David S. Tatel, Harold J. Noah, and Ellen Condliffe Lagemann.

“Lawrence A. Cremin,” New York Times, September 5, 1990, p. D21.

“Lawrence A. Cremin,” New York Times Biographical Service, Vol. 21 (September 1990), p. 809.

“Lawrence A. Cremin, October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990,” TC Today, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Fall 1990), pp. 1, 5.

“Prize-winning Author Cremin Dies at Age 64,” Education Week, Vol. 10, No. 2 (September 12, 1990), p. 4.

Ravitch, Diane. “Lawrence A. Cremin (October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990),” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 135, No. 4 (December 1991), pp. 599-603.

Ravitch, Diane. “Lawrence A. Cremin,” The American Scholar, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Winter 1992), pp. 83-89.

U.S. Educational Historiography Bearing on Cremin

Bailyn, Bernard. Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960.

Buck, Paul H. et al. The Role of Education in American History. New York: Fund for the Advancement of Education, 1957.

Committee on the Role of Education in American History. Education and American History. New York: Fund for the Advancement of Education, 1965.

Kaestle, Carl F. “Conflict and Consensus Revisited: Notes Toward a Reinterpretation of American Educational History,” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 46, No. 3 (August 1976), pp. 390-396.

Warren, Donald R., ed. History, Education, and Public Policy. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978.

[References in articles that list Cremin's books are in Social Sciences Citation Index, A to Z, 1A (January to April, 1992), column 1424, and in earlier SSCI indexes.].

END OF MANUSCRIPT. Corrections and suggestions to bfparker@frontiernet.net

Arthurdale, West Virginia, 1933: Historic First FDR New Deal Homestead Community.

1 of 2 Parts. Arthurdale, West Virginia, 1933: Historic First FDR New Deal Homestead Community

By Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Some 60 years ago, Arthurdale, in northern West Virginia, was a storm center of New Deal controversy. The first, most controversial, New Deal subsistence homestead project was sited there in 1933.

Arthurdale housed displaced and jobless coal mining families. What began as a grand scheme to ease Great Depression suffering by providing homes, gardens, a community school, and jobs for those in want, became a much criticized, costly project which Congress forced the federal government to sell.

Yet Arthurdale has also been praised as a noble New Deal experiment to uplift dispossessed West Virginia coal miners, among the most wretched of Depression-era Americans.

Lorena A. Hickok “Discovers” Scott's Run, WV

The Arthurdale story began with Associated Press reporter Lorena A. Hickok (1893-1968), who covered Eleanor Roosevelt during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (FDR) first run for the presidency. They became friends and confidantes.

Mrs. Roosevelt urged Hickok to work as relief needs investigator for Harry L. Hopkins (1890-1946), Federal Emergency Relief Administration head and later Works Progress Administration head. Hickok reported to him on economic conditions and relief needs in 32 states during 1933-36. She sent the same information in letters to Mrs. Roosevelt. FDR saw both her reports to Hopkins and letters to Mrs. Roosevelt.

Hickok first sought advice from the Philadelphia-based Quaker relief agency, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Executive Secretary Clarence E. Pickett (1884-1964) told her, “If you want to see just how bad things are, go down to the southwestern part of the state and into West Virginia.” Of conditions among jobless mining families in northern West Virginia, she wrote :

“Scott's Run, a coal-mining community, not far from Morgantown, was the worst place I'd ever seen. In a gutter, along the main street through the town, there was stagnant, filthy water, which the inhabitants used for drinking, cooking, washing, and everything else imaginable. On either side of the street were ramshackle houses, black with coal dust, which most Americans would not have considered fit for pigs. And in those houses every night children went to sleep hungry, on piles of bug-infested rags, spread out on the floor. There were rats in those houses.”1

Appalachian Coal Miners and the Great Depression

Scott's Run, the name of a creek that empties into the Monongahela River, is also the name of coal mining communities along its banks. It had been an active mining area near Morgantown, WV, site of West Virginia University (WVU).

The late nineteenth century coal boom, heightened by World War I energy needs, lured marginal small farmers to work for wages in Appalachian coal mines. Large and many smaller mines flourished in boom times, owned mainly by profit-hungry companies based outside the coal mining areas. Before unions demanded better conditions, miners were housed in low-cost company-owned shacks, paid in scrip redeemable only in a company store, and were controlled and constrained in company-owned and policed towns.

The 1920s saw coal mine overexpansion, competition, strikes, and labor-union conflicts. Scott's Run was sometimes called Bloody Run because of its labor union violence. West Virginia coal mining cutbacks and closings became acute by 1928. The 1929 Wall Street crash and Great Depression meant even harder times for miners. Mines closed, lights were turned off, and water pumps shut down. Some families were allowed to live in shacks lest empty ones be torn down for firewood.

By 1930, with little mining and much hunger at Scott's Run, a White House Conference on Child Welfare publicized the plight of undernourished Appalachian miners' children. Federal money left from post-World War I aid to Belgian and French children was given to the AFSC in 1931 to help feed needy miners' children in the West Virginia-Pennsylvania Monongahela River Valley. AFSC relief work in the area was centered at Scott's Run because of its poverty and because of earlier relief efforts of Morgantown social agencies and of the WVU Extension Service.

Mrs. Roosevelt knew of Scott's Run, having bought some furniture made there as part of the relief effort. She was subsidizing a furniture-making cottage industry for poorer people at Val-kill near the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park. She also knew of the AFSC relief work at Scott's Run.

Hickok's description of miners' plight led Mrs. Roosevelt to visit Scott's Run in August 1933. FDR's election, the Depression, passage of subsistence homestead legislation (June 16, 1933), and Mrs. Roosevelt's personal concern over Scott's Run miners' plight led to the founding of the first New Deal subsistence homestead project at Arthurdale, near Reedsville, in Preston County, W. Va.

With homesteaders selected mostly from displaced Scott's Run coal miners and Mrs. Roosevelt's publicized frequent visits there, Arthurdale became a conspicuous example of FDR's more controversial experiments to counter the Great Depression.

Subsistence Homestead Projects, 1933-1948

The subsistence homestead idea came from the 1920s back-to-the-land movement, which FDR favored. He had tried to resettle jobless families in rural communities during his New York governorship. As president, FDR first urged congressional friends to enact a bill to allot $25 million to put 25,000 needy families on farms at an average cost of $1,000 per family. When such a bill was formulated, the White House suggested that it be attached as Section 208 of Title II of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA).

Thus was passed with little debate in 1933 a controversial subsistence housing experiment which Congress later forced the government to sell. The Subsistence Homestead Division was placed under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (1874-1952), who named as its administrator Milburn L. Wilson (1885-1969), an Agricultural Adjustment Act administrator and a back-to-the-land enthusiast. AFSC relief director Clarence E. Pickett became Wilson's assistant.

Mrs. Roosevelt Goes to Scott's Run, August 18-19, 1933

Genuinely concerned after hearing Lorena Hickok's description of dreadful Scott's Run conditions, Mrs. Roosevelt, at FDR's request and at the AFSC's invitation, visited Scott's Run on August 18-19, 1933.2 With her were Lorena Hickok and Clarence Pickett. Unrecognized, she talked to miners, their wives, and children.

To the end of her life she recalled how Scott's Run's plight had affected her. Conditions were so bad and the people so dispirited, she told FDR, that she feared a fascist-type revolution there.

FDR urged his adviser, Louis M. Howe (1871-1936), to start quickly the first subsistence homestead community near Scott's Run. Howe was a newspaperman who had masterminded FDR's political career. Ill and knowing he was near death, Howe pushed Wilson, Pickett, and others to start the northern West Virginia subsistence homestead project. A WVU agricultural experts' committee recommended federal purchase of the Richard M. Arthur farm, part of a l,200-acre estate l5 miles southwest of Morgantown, about to revert to the state for unpaid taxes, and being used as a WVU experimental farm.

With the Arthur farm purchased, Interior Secretary Ickes on October 12, 1933, approved the Arthurdale Resettlement Community Plan for 200 five-acre plots, a community school, and a cooperative store.

New Deal and local officials wanted to show that they could move quickly to cut red tape to ease human misery. They also wanted to avoid undue attention and bad publicity. Rightly or wrongly, because residents of the area insisted on it, only native-born Americans were selected as homesteaders. African Americans and the foreign-born were excluded. It was thought that to raise local ire would bring undue publicity and ruin the project.

By January 1934 several New Deal agencies were paying a thousand workers on relief $3 per day to build the first houses and roads and to landscape. Problems caused by undue haste and unwise selection of homesteaders were compounded by cost overruns on homes and failure to find industrial jobs for the homesteaders.

Trouble in Paradise

Arthurdale faced frequent disagreements, mismanagement, and lack of communication between New Deal and local officials. Louis Howe is said to have told Harold Ickes: you buy the land; I'll buy the houses. Despite Mrs. Roosevelt's caution, but pressed by a desire to house the homesteaders before Christmas 1933, Howe ordered by phone 50 prefabricated Cape Code cottages from Boston.

Designed for summer use and unsuitable for northern West Virginia winters, they were also smaller than the foundations prepared for them. Mrs. Roosevelt asked New York architect Eric Gugler to recut, rebuild, and winterize the cottages to fit the foundations and the weather. Costs, of course, skyrocketed.

Arthurdale suffered from too many uncoordinated committees trying to get too many things done too quickly. There was also interference, though well intentioned, from Howe and Mrs. Roosevelt. There were contradictory orders, delays, waste, and cost overruns. Interior Secretary Ickes, a frugal administrator, wrote in his diary, “We have been spending money down there like drunken sailors.”3

Despite delays and some incomplete and unoccupied homes, Arthurdale opened officially June 7, 1934.

Finding Industry for Arthurdale

A small industry could not be found to supplement homesteaders' inadequate gardening and handicrafts incomes. In October 1934, the Public Works Administration allocated $525,000 to the U.S. Post Office Department for a factory at Arthurdale to manufacture post office furniture and mail boxes. Congressmen and others from furniture-producing states attacked the appropriation as a step toward socialism that would destroy capitalism. Indiana Representative Louis Ludlow, pressured from the Keyless Lock Company in his district (it made post office boxes and equipment), blocked the U.S. Post Office appropriation on January 26, 1935.

On presidential adviser Bernard Baruch's suggestion, a General Electric Company subsidiary built a vacuum cleaner assembly plant in Arthurdale in the fall of 1935. Its opening was aborted when the U.S. Comptroller General ruled that federal funds could not be used for a private business. Some homesteaders early in 1936, with money borrowed from the government, purchased the plant, but it closed after a year because of financial loss.

Other industries that failed included a men's shirt factory in 1937, a poultry farm, a grist mill, and a New York firm making cabinets for radios. World War II defense needs did open coal mines again and many homesteaders returned to work in the mines. By the time an industrial firm was producing war materials at Arthurdale, the government was divesting itself of all of its homestead projects.

Other Arthurdale Critics

Attacks on Arthurdale mounted. Critics derisively called it “Mrs. Roosevelt's project.” One such attack from journalist Wesley Stout in the widely read Saturday Evening Post (August 4, 1934) focused on waste at Arthurdale.4 Critic William A. Wirt, Gary, Indiana, school superintendent, alleged a New Deal conspiracy to subvert the economy of Morgantown, WV. He charged that resettled miners would no longer be paying rent and taxes in Morgantown. Mrs. Roosevelt pointed out that few if any of the jobless miners had paid rent or taxes for years.

Arthurdale Community School

From the first Mrs. Roosevelt saw the school as a center of Arthurdale activities. The community school she envisioned was one which John Dewey and other progressive education leaders advocated: a child centered, community centered school, emphasizing children's interest and their learning, not by drill in a set curriculum, but by active involvement in community affairs.

This progressive concept went back to Jean Jacques Rousseau's Emile (1762) and was practiced from the mid-nineteenth century by Swiss educator Heinrich Pestalozzi and others in Europe and the U.S.

During the Depression, there was also a “social reconstructionist” element in the community school concept. Teachers College, Columbia University educator George S. Counts (1889-1974) wrote Dare the School Build a New Social Order? in 1932. His colleague, Harold O. Rugg (1886-1960), had developed and teachers were using social studies textbooks that stressed American society's faults as well as successes. Reconstructionists believed that students and teachers should discuss current problems, take sides on issues, and that the school should be an active agent to reform (i.e., improve) society.

In this context Mrs. Roosevelt in January 1934 formed a National Advisory Committee for Arthurdale made up of leading prestigious progressive educators: Dean William Russell of Teachers College, Columbia University; Columbia University philosopher John Dewey; Clarence Pickett; E. E. Agger of the Resettlement Administration; Fred J. Kelly of the U.S. Office of Education; Lucy Sprague Mitchell of New York's Bank Street School; and W. Carson Ryan, Progressive Education Association president.

Because Preston County, WV, was poor, it was decided to build the Arthurdale school at federal expense and to divide staff and operating costs with county and state education agencies. Thinking that operating costs for the kind of community school she envisioned would be too costly for the state and county, Mrs. Roosevelt determined to donate to the school her earnings from radio talks and newspaper articles and to solicit private funds.

It was Clarence Pickett who brought Elsie Ripley Clapp 1879-1965) to Mrs. Roosevelt's attention as particularly suitable to be director of the Arthurdale school.

Arthurdale School Director Elsie Ripley Clapp (1934-36)

Elsie Ripley Clapp, born in Brooklyn, NY, on November 16, 1879, had attended Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, 1899-1903; received the B.A. degree in English from Barnard College, New York, in 1908; and the M.A. degree in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1909. She had assisted John Dewey in his Philosophy of Education classes at Teachers College, Columbia University, 1909-13, and again during 1923-29. She had taught in the following private schools: Ashley Hall, Charleston, SC, 1913-14; Brooklyn Heights Seminary, NY, 1914-21; Milton Academy, Milton, MA, 1921-22; City and Country School, New York, NY, 1922-24; and Rosemary Junior School, Greenwich, CT, 1924-25.

As Principal of Rogers Clark Ballard Memorial School, Jefferson County, near Louisville, KY, 1929-34, she developed a community school atmosphere, described later in her two books and several articles. By the early 1930s she was a leader in the Progressive Education Association (1917-55) and headed its Community School Division, which advised government agencies on education.

Mrs. Roosevelt interviewed Elsie Ripley Clapp in February 1934. They agreed on the community school approach. Clapp was appointed that summer as Arthurdale School director. She visited Scott's Run and the Arthur farm, met the parents and children selected to move there, viewed possible school sites, and got the architect to adapt his school building plans to facilitate student group work and community school activities. Clapp brought six experienced progressive teachers with her from the Ballard School and helped select the three local teachers who were paid by the Preston County Public Schools.

Buildings were not yet completed when the Arthurdale school opened in September 1934 with 246 students. Classes were temporarily held in the Arthurdale farm's main building. When finished, the school complex included a school center, a nursery school, elementary school, high school, and a community recreation center.

Community School Activities

Arthurdale, then a rural beehive of construction, was a natural place to involve school children in community activities. First graders were taken to see buckwheat threshed and potatoes disked. When some cows were acquired, children studied butter and cheese making. A surviving log cabin from colonial times was restored and taken over by fourth graders for a study of pioneer life. Children painted, sang folk songs, and wrote and produced plays. There were square dances, sports, and an annual summer music festival. Classes were organized around small interest groups rather than by formal grades. The nursery school, a source of community pride, served as the community child care center.

Most parents were impressed with the school, although some felt that the 3 Rs were being neglected. Some complained because the high school was not accredited in 1936. Elsie Clapp made light of the complaint, saying that none of the 3 high school graduates that spring planned to go to college.

Private aid was needed to supplement federal, state, and county funds. Mrs. Roosevelt gave the AFSC her radio talk and newspaper earnings to pay Clapp's salary ($6,000 a year, criticized as too high for the times), buy library books and equipment, and pay other costs. Bernard Baruch, who shared her enthusiasm for the school, contributed, mostly to the nursery school which was not eligible for state funds: $33,518 in 1934-35, $23,775 in 1935-36, $l0,272 in 1936-37, and $5,000 a year for the next few years.

Elsie Clapp's Departure

When other private funds could not be found, Clarence Pickett told the school advisory committee in early 1936 that the time had come to transfer school control and finance to West Virginia supervision and Preston County administration. Mrs. Roosevelt reluctantly relayed the decision to disappointed homesteaders, who wanted Clapp and her staff to remain, possibly paid by Preston County.

But Clapp discouraged plans to keep her on. She and the six teachers from the Ballard School left after school ended in 1936. She became editor of Progressive Education, journal of the Progressive Education Association, October 1937 through May 1939. She wrote several articles and two books, Community Schools in Action, 1939, and The Use of Resources in Education, 1952, extolling her community school experiments at the Ballard School in Kentucky and the Arthurdale School in West Virginia. She lived in retirement in Exeter, NH, where she died July 28, 1965, some three decades after her work at the Arthurdale school.

Was the Arthurdale School Successful?

As a progressive community school under Elsie Clapp as director, Arthurdale enjoyed esteem and praise. The school fostered a spirit of community cooperation. Better student social adjustment and a higher standard of community health were achieved. Rexford Tugwell, federal administrator of the Homestead Projects, in praising the original Arthurdale school, said, “Morale at Arthurdale and conditions there were 90 percent better than in other homesteads, entirely due to the school.”5

Critics said that in its zeal for community service, the school neglected the realities of the complex industrial world around it. Some criticized its lack of long-range planning. In a 1941 survey of its first 49 graduates, all but one said they had enjoyed the high school, valuing its smallness and friendly informality, but several faulted its limited course offerings. The school's promoters–Mrs. Roosevelt, Baruch, Tugwell, and Pickett–were convinced that the school was the most successful part of the Arthurdale experiment.

After June 1936, Preston County, WV, took over the school and appointed a principal. Its original progressive education and community influences dwindled. Traditional teaching and administration followed. The high school was organized along subject department lines. With the approach of World War II, it became just another rural school.

Eden Liquidated: Arthurdale on Its Own

By 1938 national sentiment for socioeconomic reform had waned. New Deal critics in Congress in 1939 cut funds for the subsistence homestead projects. Congress in 1942 directed the federal government to sell all interests in the homestead communities. Homes, land, and properties were sold to homesteaders and others. With wartime employment high and new building scarce, the homes sold readily by 1948. Arthurdale cost the government an estimated $2 million from 1933 to final liquidation in 1948.

Epilogue

Arthurdale remains a pleasant community in northern West Virginia. Its fiftieth anniversary celebration was held on July 14, 1984, with meals and speeches. Of the original homesteaders, 27 persons were still living there, 42 couples had lived there until one or both spouses died, and 76 children or grandchildren were heads of families living in Arthurdale, some in the homes of their forebears.6 Arthurdale, a controversial New Deal experiment, is but a footnote to history, a dream that was.

Footnotes

1. Hickok, Lorena A. Reluctant First Lady. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1962, pp. 136-137.

2. Haid, Stephen Edward (Ph.D. dissertation). “Arthurdale: An Experiment in Community Planning, 1933-1947.” West Virginia University, 1975, p. 66.

3. Ickes, Harold L. The Secret Diaries of Harold L. Ickes; Vol. I: The First Thousand Days, 1933-1936. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1953, pp. 152, 207, 218.

4. Stout, Wesley. “The New Homesteaders,” Saturday Evening Post, CCVII (August 4, 1934), pp. 5-7, 61-65.

5. Haid, op cit., p. 295.

6. Eble, Jettie and Charles. The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Homesteading of Arthurdale, W. Va. Arthurdale, WV: Privately Printed, 1984, pp. 9, 14.
References

Elsie Ripley Clapp's two books on community schools during the Depression years were Community Schools in Action, New York: Viking Press, 1939; and The Use of Resources in Education, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952. Her journal articles include “Plays in a Kentucky County School,” Progressive Education, VIII, No. 1 (January 1931), pp. 34-39; “A Rural Community School in Kentucky,” Progressive Education, X, No. 3 (March 1933), pp. 123-128; “The Teacher in Social Education,” Progressive Education, X, No. 5 (May 1933), pp. 283-287; and [Editorial] “Schools Socially Functioning,” Progressive Education, XV, No. 2 (February 1938), pp. 89-90.

The Arthurdale School is described in: College of Education, West Virginia University, Report of the Survey of Arthurdale School, Morgantown, WV: College of Education, West Virginia University, May 6, 1940; Thomas H. Coode and Dennis E. Fabbri, “The New Deal's Arthurdale Project in West Virginia,” West Virginia History, XXXVI, No. 4 (July l975), pp. 291-308; Holly Cowan, “Arthurdale,” Columbia University Faculty of Political Science thesis, 1968?; Kathleen Irwin, “Schools at the Center of Society's Values and Vision,” paper read at the American Educational Research Association annual meeting, Chicago, April 2, 1985, ERIC ED 254 961 [abstracted in Resources in Education, XX, No. 8 (August 1985), p. 57]; Richard S. Little and Margaret Little, Arthurdale–Its History, Its Lessons for Today, Morgantown, WV: 1940; Franklin Parker, “The Progressive Educator: Elsie Ripley Clapp,” The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Homesteading of Arthurdale, W. Va., coedited by Jettie and Charles Eble, Arthurdale, WV: Privately Printed, 1984, pp. 11-12; Carleton E. Preston and Vester M. Mulholland, “Experiments in Community Education,” in Secondary Education in the South, edited by W. Carson Ryan et al., Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946, pp. 199-205; Bob Robinson, “Great Social Experiment in Arthurdale Inconclusive,” Dominion-Post (Morgantown, WV), June 7, 1981, p. 2-A; and Steward Wagner, “School Buildings, Arthurdale, West Virginia,” Progressive Education, XV, No. 4 (April 1938), pp. 304-316.

Books by Eleanor Roosevelt describing Arthurdale include This I Remember, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949, pp. 126-133; and My Day, Edited by Rochelle Chadakoff, New York: Pharos Books, 1989, pp. 36-37, 86, 170-171, 245, 380.

Works mentioning Eleanor Roosevelt's involvement in Arthurdale include Maurine H. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987, pp. 62-64, 74, 104, 127; Bruce G. Beezer, “Arthurdale: An Experiment in Community Education,” West Virginia History, Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (October 1974), pp. 17-36; Tamara K. Hareven, “Arthurdale: A Venture in Utopia,” Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience, New York: Da Capo Press, 1975, pp. 91-111, 290-292; Lorena A. Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1962, pp. 136-137; Joseph P. Lash, “Mrs. Roosevelt's 'Baby'–Arthurdale,” Eleanor and Franklin, New York: W.W. Norton, 1971, pp. 393-417, 737-738; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Friend's Memoir, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964, pp. 110-111; Lois Scharf, Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady of American Liberalism, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987, pp. 100-103; Graham White and John Maze, Harold Ickes of the New Deal: His Private Life and Public Career, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 128-132; J. William T. Youngs, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life, Boston: Little, Brown, 1985, pp. 164-169, 177.

Elsie Clapp's earliest work on the community school, done at the Junior School of Rosemary Hall, Greenwich, CT, 1924-25, is briefly mentioned in Harold Rugg and Ann Shumaker, The Child-Centered School: An Appraisal of the New Education, Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Co., 1927, p. 51. Her later community schools in Kentucky and West Virginia are mentioned in Harold Rugg, Foundations for American Education, Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Co., 1947, pp. 572-573; and Harold Rugg and B. Marian Brooks, The Teacher in School and Society: An Introduction to Education, Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Co., 1950, pp. 259-260.

Doctoral dissertations on Elsie Ripley Clapp's community school in Arthurdale, WV, include: Robert A. Naslund (Ph.D. dissertation), “The Origin and Development of the Community School Concept,” Stanford University, 1951; more fully in Stephen Edward Haid (Ph.D. dissertation), “Arthurdale: An Experiment in Community Planning, 1933-1947,” West Virginia University, 1975; and Martin L. Berman (Ph.D. dissertation), “Arthurdale, Nambe, and the Developing Community School Model: A Comparative Study,” University of New Mexico, May 1979.

There is a biographical sketch in the “Elsie Ripley Clapp Papers 1910-1943″ Mss. Collection 21, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901.

Elsie Ripley Clapp obituaries appeared in The Exeter News-Letter (Exeter, NH), August 12, 1965, and in The New York Times, July 31, 1965, p. 21.

END OF MANUSCRIPT. Send comments and corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net

1 of 2 Parts: Abraham and Simon Flexner: Medical Education Reformers.

1 of 2 Parts:”Abraham and Simon Flexner: Medical Education Reformers:

An Interpretive Dialog between Betty J. and Franklin Parker,” bfparker@frontiernet.net



Betty: We review first Abraham Flexner, An Autobiography (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 1960). Frank, who were the Flexners?


Frank: The Flexners of Louisville, Ky., were a remarkable family, nine children of immigrant German-Jews, the father a peddler in the South. We focus on Abraham Flexner, then on Simon Flexner, each outstanding in medical education in the U.S. and beyond. We then tell how Abraham Flexner encouraged our own research 45 years ago on educational philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869). Betty, briefly characterize Abraham Flexner.


Betty: Teacher, researcher, and philanthropic foundation executive, Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) won early attention for his private Flexner prep school in Louisville, successful in getting indulged and lazy wealthy boys into Ivy League colleges. His first critical book, American College (NYC: Century Co., 1908), prompted a Carnegie foundation executive to ask him in 1906 to examine medical schools in the U.S. and Canada. The 1910 Flexner Report created a revolution, remade medical education in the U.S. and beyond, highlighted medical quackery, made science, medicines, and supervised clinical training central in the professional preparation of physicians. He helped make medical doctors top professionals, highly esteemed, valued, and well paid. Frank?


Frank: Abraham Flexner was at the center of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and other multi-million dollar foundations that tackled difficult problems?educational, social, racial, health, and others–in the U.S. South, nationally, and internationally. He topped his career by creating (1930) the first U.S. think tank, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. As its first director he brought from Hitler’s Germany Albert Einstein as mathematics professor. Einstein was named Time magazine’s “Man of the 20th Century.” We then tell of Abraham’s equally famous brother, Simon Flexner. But first, Betty, tell of their immigrant father, Morris Flexner.


Betty: The first Flexner in the U.S., Morris Flexner (1819-1882), grandson of the chief rabbi of Moravia and Bohemia, was born in Germany in an impoverished family. Because his parents had more children than they could feed, Morris was sent at age 13 to live with an uncle in Strasbourg, Alsace, on the French-German border. There he was a teacher for a time, very poor, hoping for a better life in the U.S. He spent 90 days in steerage on a sailing ship to NYC, worked there two years among French-speaking Jews, living from hand-to-mouth. Knowing of French-speaking Jewish countrymen in New Orleans, hoping to do better there, he arrived during a yellow fever epidemic, was stricken, and barely recovered at a charitable hospital run by Catholic nuns. An unknown French-speaking Samaritan fed him, heard him speak of a countryman living in Louisville, Ky., and paid his fare to Louisville. Frank?


Frank: He arrived in Louisville on crutches, recovered, and became like his friend a pack peddler, selling goods house to house, store to store. Adept at sharing news and gossip, jovial and likable, he won customers and friends in isolated farm homes, where he was often asked to stay for meals and for the night. He bought a crippled horse for $4, later another horse and a wagon, made a living, stopped frequently at a Jewish merchant’s house in Louisville, the Godshaw family, where he saw and was smitten by an immigrant French-speaking Jewish seamstress, Esther Abraham, whom he married. Betty, what of Esther Abraham?


Betty: Esther Abraham (1834-1905) was born in Germany near the French border. Her father, a dealer in cattle and other items, sent her to school to age 13. When she was 16, an aunt in Paris with a lingerie shop took in Esther and her sister and trained them as seamstresses. Their Uncle Godshaw, the Louisville, Ky., merchant, visited them several times in Paris and sent them tickets for passage to America. After nine weeks crossing the Atlantic the sisters were met in NYC in Sept. 1855 by a cousin and reached Louisville, where they lived with Uncle Godshaw’s family. They successfully made and sold women’s Paris fashions. Esther, popular socially, took to Morris Flexner. He at 34, married Esther, 22, Sept. 15, 1856. Frank?


Frank: A year later when the oldest of their nine children was born, Jacob, (1857), Morris Flexner went into business in Lawrenceburg, Ky., taking his family with him. But Civil War raiders made that town unsafe. After six years in Lawrenceburg (1857-63), the enlarged Flexner family returned to Louisville. Morris sold hats wholesale on the road, traveling in Tenn., Ala., Ga., Texas, elsewhere in the South. But the Panic of 1873 ruined him. From 1873 the family lived hand-to-mouth, dependent on first-born Jacob who, apprenticed to a druggist, had his own drugstore until the Panic of 1893 ruined him. The older children and later Abraham earned enough to pay the bills that kept the family together. oBetty, what of Abraham Flexner’s early life?


Betty: From ages 15 to 17, 1881-83, after Louisville High School hours, Abraham Flexner, worked in the private Louisville Library, six days a week, 2:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., checking and shelving books, eating a cold supper behind the card catalog, earning $16 a month. Besides charging and shelving books, he dipped into classical books and listened to adult conversations on politics, literature, religion, music, and art. “The decisive moment of my life came,” he later wrote “in 1884.” Oldest brother Jacob told Abraham, 17 and just graduated from high school: take this $1,000 I saved from my drugstore and go to college in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University. Frank?


Frank: Why Johns Hopkins University? Jacob had heard of its high reputation from a Louisville friend, a view confirmed by the medical doctors who came to his drugstore. Philanthropist Johns Hopkins (1795-1873) was a Baltimore Quaker, bachelor, merchant, and the B&O RR’s largest stockholder. B&O RR Pres. John Work Garrett (1820-84), knowing that Johns Hopkins sought advice about his will, brought Hopkins together with visiting Mass.-born George Peabody (1795-1869), a former Baltimore merchant, then a London-based banker and a well-known philanthropist. George Peabody, when asked why and how he came to give away his millions, told Hopkins (condensed quote): “Like you, I wanted to be rich. I worked hard and succeeded. When age and illness came upon me, I wanted to make the best use of my money. I found trustees who carried out my wishes for U.S. libraries, museums, and a music conservatory to serve people; and for low-cost housing for London’s working poor (from 1862). Seeing the good my institutes did made me happy.” Johns Hopkins soon after recorded his will, leaving some $7 million to found Johns Hopkins University, Medical School, and Hospital. Betty?


Betty: Its first President Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908) made Johns Hopkins University the first graduate university in the U.S., based on the German university idea that a university creates new knowledge as well educates new generations. While Abraham Flexner learned the classics in Hopkins undergraduate program, such doctoral candidates as Woodrow Wilson were writing the books and experimenting in the labs that would make them future leaders. Frank?


Frank: Weak in Latin and Greek, Flexner asked his Greek prof. what to do. The prof. said: See me each day at 1 PM. I can only give you 5 minutes but I will tell you what to read and check to see what you have learned. Concerned because he had only enough money for two years’ tuition and board, he asked and was given permission to double up on classes. At final exam time, finding that two or more exams came at the same time, he explained his dilemma to Pres. Daniel Coit Gilman, who said: all we require is that you know the subjects. I will arrange to stagger your conflicting exams. oFlexner later remarked at the informality at Johns Hopkins, and at the understanding and help that enabled him to get a bachelor’s degree in two years. Betty?


Betty: Back in Louisville (1886), aged 20 to 22, Abraham taught for two years in the Louisville Male High School he had attended. In the late afternoons and evenings he tutored well-to-do boys whose parents anxiously wanted them to get into college. A prominent Louisville lawyer whose only son had been expelled from an eastern preparatory school asked Flexner to help get his son into Princeton. Flexner said: if you can get together from your friends five of their sons for tutoring at $500 a year each, I will prepare your son for Princeton. Thus began “Mr. Flexner’s School” which, for 15 years (1890-1905), won high praise locally and nationally. Harvard Pres. Charles W. Eliot (1834-1926) wrote to Flexner (condensed): “Boys from your school come to Harvard younger than most and graduate in a shorter time. How do you do it?” Frank? “


Frank: Abraham Flexner used every strategy on boys who had failed elsewhere: humor, encouragement, emulation, competition. He played able students against indolent ones, built on what each knew, patiently overcame their weaknesses. Flexner kept the school small, tuition high, and discipline strict. He drilled, joked, cajoled, used every means to get his boys into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and elsewhere. In the early 1890s prominent Louisville businessman John M. Atherton asked Flexner to tutor his bright niece, Anne Crawford, for entrance to Vassar. He demurred at first but then thought it might be fun to teach a young woman. Betty?


Betty: Anne Laziere Crawford was born while her parents visited Ky. but she was raised in Ga. Her great grandfather, William Harris Crawford (1772-1834), was a U.S. senator from Ga., U.S. Minister to France, U.S. Secretary of War and of the Treasury, and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. presidency in 1824. Her grandfather was a Methodist minister and president of Mercer College. Her father was impoverished by the Civil War when she went to live with her Louisville uncle. Frank?


Frank: Abraham Flexner did get Anne Crawford into Vassar, where she edited the college literary magazine. She returned to Louisville, taught in “Mr. Flexner’s School” two years, and published several stories. They went bicycling together and became engaged in 1896. But because Abraham, eight years older than Anne, was the Flexner family’s financial mainstay, they put off marriage for over two years. Anne went to NYC, reviewed Broadway plays for the Louisville Courier-Journal, studied writing at New York University, and began writing plays. Betty?


Betty: Anne returned to Louisville, married Abraham Flexner (June 1898), and while Abraham ran his school, she wrote plays, some for leading actress Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865-1932). Anne Flexner’s biggest dramatic success was Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, based on the best selling novel, which opened in NYC Sept. 3, 1904, ran for seven seasons, was played by three touring companies, and was presented in England, Australia, China, India and Korea. She wrote other plays but none as successful. Frank?


Frank: In 1904 Anne asked Abraham: If you had not married me, what would you have done by now? He answered: Quit teaching and gone to Europe. She said: Then that’s what we will do. The three Flexners (they had a six year old daughter) first went to Cambridge, Mass., where he studied at Harvard’s graduate school of education (1905-06). They then sailed for England and the Continent. With letters of introduction, Abraham attended lectures at Oxford and Cambridge universities, visited Rugby and Eton, and studied at the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg. In Europe, reflecting on his 16 teaching years, he wrote his first book, The American College (NY: Century Co., 1908). It criticized trends he had observed at Harvard and other colleges:
1-free electives which allowed unwise students foolishly to take only easy courses,
2-large classes which limited student interaction, and
3-overuse of teaching assistants, busy and harried as graduate students themselves and unprepared to teach effectively. Betty?


Betty: One of the few who read his critical book was Henry Smith Pritchett (1857-1939), president of the new Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. They met several times and Pritchett asked Flexner: Would you consider making a study of U.S. medical schools? Taken aback, Flexner said: You are confusing me with my medical doctor brother Simon Flexner. No, said Pritchett, I know Dr. Simon Flexner and I know that the American Medical Association has a committee examining medical schools. But medical doctors can’t or won’t criticize their colleagues. I want you because you are an educator and a critic. You can call the shots as you see them. Frank?


Frank: Henry S. Pritchett, graduate of a college which his father had started in Missouri, earned the Ph.D. in science at the University of Munich (1894); was an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory; then taught astronomy at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. (1883-97). He headed the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (1897-1900) and became president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1900-06). There he suggested to steel magnet Andrew Carnegie that he establish the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which Pritchett headed for 24 years (1906-30). Pritchett’s list of things to accomplish at the Carnegie Foundation included:
1-a national pension plan for teachers and professors (today’s TIAA),
2-a national standard for high school graduation (the Carnegie unit), and
3-studies to uncover weaknesses in and to professionalize schools of medicine, law, engineering, and others. Betty?


Betty: Reading the history of medical education in the U.S., Flexner found that in all there had been 457 medical schools in the U.S., some still-born, most short lived, 155 of which survived in 1907, all private, all to make money. Nearly all accepted any applicant who could pay, used as teachers local physicians who taught part time for extra money. There were no state licensing boards. Few medical schools were connected to a hospital or had clinics, research facilities, or good equipment. Medical students were still little more than apprentices. Frank?


Frank: Flexner soon saw that Johns Hopkins was the best of the medical schools, largely led by its first medical faculty: Drs. William Henry Welch (1850-1934), pathology; Howard Atwood Kelly (1858-1943), gynecology and obstetrics; William Stewart Halsted (1852-1922), surgery; and William Osler (1849-1919), medicine. Betty, why did Flexner pick Johns Hopkins Medical School as his model?


Betty: Entrance requirements were high and its medical faculty were highly trained, mostly in European universities. Medical students examined and studied patients in hospital wards under experienced physicians; discussed symptoms, findings, and lab tests results with experienced physicians; and consulted their superiors about the best course of treatment. Patients benefited and medical students became competent. Frank?
Frank: Visiting the 155 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada, Flexner looked for:
1-entrance requirements: what were they? Were they rigidly followed?
2-faculty: size, training, how many full time (few), part time (most)?
3-finance: what endowment, what fees, what financial stability?
4-laboratories and equipment: how many, what kind, what quality, how much used, and how often updated?
5-library: books, journals, quality, quantity, upkeep, budget?
6-Hospital access by medical faculty, by medical student; the amount of student supervision by experienced physicians? Betty?


Concluded in 2 of 2 Parts: “Abraham and Simon Flexner: Medical Education Reformers,” by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

2 of 2 Parts:Abraham and Simon Flexner: Medical Education Reformers.

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Conclusion): Abraham and Simon Flexner: Medical Education Reformers, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Betty: Pritchett and Flexner let medical school heads know when and how Flexner planned to evaluate their schools. Flexner talked to medical school heads and faculty (when present), toured the facilities, returned to Louisville, drafted his report (shared with Pritchett), and sent this draft report to the medical school heads for any corrections. His final draft report, he said, would be shared with local newspapers and journals before publication. Flexner had to deal with subterfuges, as when doors in one medical school, marked “Anatomy,” “Physiology,” and “Pathology,” were locked. No keys nor janitor could be found. When the medical school dean left Flexner at the railway station, he missed his train, went back to the school at night, found and bribed the janitor to open the locked doors, and found the rooms to be unequipped classrooms, and so stated in his report. Pritchett and Flexner were threatened with lawsuits and Flexner received threatening letters. In a year and a half he finished inspecting the 155 medical schools and completed his report, Medical Education in the United States and Canada (NYC: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin No. 4, 1910). Frank?


Frank: Of the consequences of his report, Flexner wrote: “…such a rattling of dead bones has never been heard in this country before or since. Schools collapsed to the right and left, usually without a murmur. A number of them pooled their resources. The seven schools of [Louisville] were reduced to one. The 15 schools in Chicago were consolidated to three.” Here are a few excerpts from Bulletin No. 4:
Birmingham Medical College [Ala.]: “A stock company largely given over to gunshot and other wounds. The dispensary service is as yet unorganized.”
California Medical College: “Entrance requirements nominal?. No dispensary. No access to the County Dispensary. The school is a disgrace.”
University of Louisville: “Entrance requirements: less than a high-school education.”
Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine & Surgery: “A building [of] filthy conditions. Its anatomy room, containing a single cadaver, is indescribably foul.” (Bulletin 4, p. 87), Betty?


Betty: Flexner’s 1910 medical education report emerged at the height of large scale philanthropic foundation growth. Civil War devastation had inspired George Peabody (previously mentioned as having influenced Johns Hopkins) to found the pioneer $2 million Peabody Education Fund (1867-1914) to aid white and black public schools in the 11 former Confederate States plus West Virginia (because of its poverty). The PEF inspired other northerners to aid southern black education: the John F. Slater Fund (1882-1937), Julius Rosenwald Fund (1917-48), and the Anna T. Jeanes Fund (1907-37). Four Conferences on Education in the South (1889-1902) led to the Southern Education Board (1901-14), which led to the John D. Rockefeller-funded General Education Board (1902-39), which soon employed Abraham Flexner. Frank?


Frank: Scottish-born steel magnate Andrew Carnegie’s (1835-1919) 1889 essay, “The Gospel of Wealth,” urged the rich to use their wealth to correct social ills and advance public good. His Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was only part of his $350 million gifts to solve American problems. Larger funds were started by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and Jr., devout Baptists who regularly tithed. Carnegie, the Rockefellers, and other giants of industry organized giant philanthropic funds, giving unheard of millions to help correct social ills. Betty?


Betty: Flexner’s 1910 medical school report impressed John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s philanthropic advisor Frederick T. Gates (1853-1929), a former Baptist minister. Gates once told Rockefeller, Sr. (abbreviated quote): Your wealth is piling up and will bury you. It will ruin your children and their children unless you use it for vast public good. Gates and the Rockefellers favored funds that aided medicine and the conquest of disease. This purpose was dramatic and brought public approval, despite critics who said that the Rockefeller foundations were intended to offset bad publicity about Rockefeller as a monopolist robber baron. Gates enlisted Abraham Flexner to work for the General Education Board (1913-28, 15 years), funneling millions to remake U.S. medical schools. Rockefeller, Sr’s biographer Ron Chernow (Titan, the Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., NY: Random House, 1998, p. 493) wrote: “by the time Flexner left the GEB in 1928, it had distributed more than $78 million to the scientific approach to medical education…[creating] nothing less than a revolution. In its thirty-year existence, the GEB dispensed $130 million, equal to more than $1 billion today [c.1998].” Frank?


Frank: Abraham Flexner capped his career by creating the nation’s first significant think tank. In 1930 he was approached by Newark, N.J., merchant Louis Bamberger (1855-1944) and his sister, Mrs. Caroline Bamberger Fuld, seeking advice on a foundation they hoped to establish. Flexner explained that German universities had led the world in creating new knowledge. But since Germany’s defeat in World War I, U.S. scholars no longer flocked to German universities. The U.S. needed an Institute for Advanced Study, an intellectual retreat, a place without students or courses where scholars, unhindered, could discover new knowledge. The donors asked what such an institute would cost. Flexner said $5 million. The donors agreed. Asked to be its first director, Flexner demurred. His wife Anne insisted that he had to help get it started. Betty?


Betty: The Institute for Advanced Study was located in Princeton, N.J., near to but independent of Princeton University. Flexner sought to first fill a mathematics professorship which did not require labs or buildings, only blackboards and chalk. He sought out Albert Einstein (1879-1955), already concerned about the rise of Hitler, who left Germany for Princeton and held the chair of mathematics to his death. Opening in 1933, the Institute for Advanced Study became a haven for scores of other European scholars fleeing the Nazis, including Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962). Other Institute scholars included John von Neumann (1903-57), who built an early giant computer there; physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67), who led the Los Alamos, N.M., scientists in developing the atom bomb (he was the Institute’s director in the 1950s). The Institute for Advanced Study currently has some 200 visiting U.S. and foreign scholars for up to two years, and 23 faculty in four schools: mathematics, natural science, social science, and historical studies. Frank?


Frank: Abraham Flexner’s wife died in 1955. In 1957 he moved to suburban Washington, D.C., to be near his married daughter. He died Sept. 21, 1959, at age 93. He often quoted French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-95): “Chance favors the prepared mind.” He ended his 1940 autobiography I Remember, with these words by Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881): “I burn that I may be of use.” Betty, tell of our correspondence with Abraham Flexner and his daughter.


Betty: In 1952, when Flexner’s book, Funds and Foundations (NYC: Harper), was published, you and I were studying at George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville (renamed Peabody College of Vanderbilt University from July 1, 1979). We soon embarked on reading George Peabody’s papers in Massachusetts, NYC, Baltimore, and in London, England. Since Flexner’s chapter on the Peabody Education Fund described it as the first pioneer U.S. multimillion dollar foundation you wrote him for his view of Peabody’s importance. He encouraged us to write a dissertation on George Peabody’s philanthropy. After his death we published three articles on Flexner : Journal of Medical Education, 36, 6, June 1961, pp. 709-714. History of Education Quarterly, 2, 4, Dec. 1962), pp. 199-209. Proceedings of the Southwestern Philosophy of Education Society, X and XI , 1959-60, pp. 16-27. Later in 1985, referring to our articles about her father, his daughter, Mrs. Jean Flexner Lewinson, wrote us. Thus, our long-time interest in the Flexners. Frank, what about Simon Flexner, based on James Thomas Flexner, An American Saga: The Story of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984)?


Frank: When Simon Flexner was 10 years old the Panic of 1873 bankrupted his father, plunged the struggling family into deeper poverty, and required those of the nine children who could work to do so. Simon, fifth born son, was small, weak, shy, and mischievous. “School,” he later wrote of his youth, “did not [then] interest me.” He barely finished grade school, never attended high school or college; instead held a succession of poorly paid dead-end jobs. At 16 he contracted typhoid fever, almost died, and suddenly saw himself in a new light. Oldest brother Jacob got him an apprenticeship in Vincent Davis’s drugstore. This devout Christian (Vincent Davis) encouraged Simon’s night attendance at the Louisville College of Pharmacy. Simon, earlier the family dunce, not only completed the pharmacy course but also won a gold medal. His son and biographer later wrote: “The ugly duckling had proven a swan” (James Thomas Flexner, p. 106). Betty?


Betty: Simon became a pharmacist in oldest brother Jake’s drugstore, open 24 hours a day. Jake subscribed to pharmaceutical and medical journals, had a good memory and liked to expound, making the drugstore a clearinghouse of medical information, and a mecca for local physicians. Simon acquired a microscope, learned much from other microscope enthusiasts among the visiting doctors, and was soon doing slide analyses for them. Yearning to become a pathologist and despite being tied to the drugstore because of the Flexner family’s financial needs, he did attend night courses at the nearby Medical Institute of the University of Louisville and earned the M.D. degree in 1889. Frank?


Frank: Meanwhile, Abraham had graduated from Johns Hopkins University, had taught in the Louisville Male High School, and was successful in the Flexner college prep school. Knowing Simon’s determination to become a pathologist, Abraham encouraged him to apply for a Johns Hopkins Medical School fellowship. Simon did apply but failed to get it. Seeing Simon’s disappointment, Abraham said to him in 1890: From my prep school earnings I will give you enough money to study pathology at Johns Hopkins for one year. Simon went to Johns Hopkins and studied under pathologist William Henry Welch, a mentor largely responsible for Simon’s becoming one of the great medical discoverers of his time. Thirty years later (June 1, 1920), Simon wrote Abraham in gratitude for “the great debt I owe you. To have sent me to the Hopkins and Dr. Welch in 1890 has meant more for me than anyone except myself can know. That you should have possessed the insight that Dr. Welch was the master in pathology is almost miraculous. How deeply I feel my unredeemable debt to you.” (Abraham Flexner, An Autobiography, p. 60). Betty?


Betty: Simon impressed Welch and others at Hopkins so that he was offered a fellowship the following year, became Welch’s assistant (1892), published studies in pathology, gained valuable experience fighting an outbreak of spinal meningitis in western Maryland (1893), visited Europe to study pathology at Strasbourg and at Prague, and was associated with Johns Hopkins during 1890-98. Studying diseases in the Philippines (1899), he discovered a widespread strain of the dysentery bacillus. He became pathology professor, University of Penn. (1899-1903), during which time (1901) he headed the U.S. Government commission investigating a bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco. In 1903 he joined Dr. Welch in the newly organized Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, NYC. In a 1905 NYC outbreak of spinal meningitis he found a serum that reduced mortality by 50 percent. In a 1907 epidemic of polio he identified the infectious virus and laid the basis of protective polio vaccines 50 years later. Frank?


Frank: Simon wrote over 200 pathology and bacteriology reports (1890-1909), edited the Journal of Experimental Medicine (19 years), was a Lt. Col. in the Army Medical Corps during World War I, building up its medical laboratories abroad. Simon directed all the Rockefeller Institute branches from 1924 to his retirement in 1935. He helped organized the Peking Union Medical College, China; was appointed Eastman Professor at Oxford University (1937-38); wrote with his son James Thomas Flexner, William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine (NYC: Viking Press, 1941), wrote in all over 400 medical and pathological reports and other books . He received many honors and died in NYC at age 83, leaving his wife, Helen, and two sons. Betty, what about his wife?


Betty: Helen Thomas Flexner was born Aug. 14, 1871 (d. April 1956), descendant of Welsh Puritans who settled in Maryland, 1650s, and became prominent Baltimore Quakers. Her older sister, Martha Carey Thomas (1857-1935), earned a European university Ph.D. degree (Zurich, 1882), helped found Bryn Mawr College for Women (Pa., 1884), and was its dean and president (1894-1922). Their father was a Johns Hopkins University trustee. Helen Thomas also attended Bryn Mawr (1889), traveled abroad, and met Simon Flexner several times: when he did post-doctoral study under pathologist Dr. Welch at Johns Hopkins Medical School, and again when he was pathology professor, University of Pennsylvania, near Bryn Mawr. Frank?


Frank: Simon Flexner was awed by her family culture and thought she was too much above him. She, too, thinking the gulf between them unbridgeable, rejected his first proposal, then had a change of heart. Despite doubts, they were married in 1903, when he was first connected with the Rockefeller Institute, NYC. She was 32, he 40. It was a wonderful marriage of 43 years, this blending of the daughter of a famous well-to-do and well-connected Baltimore Quaker family and the fifth son of a failed immigrant German Jewish peddler. One of Simon and Helen’s two sons was a mathematician and UN official; the second, James Thomas Flexner, was a prolific author, most famous for his four-volume biography of George Washington, published in one volume for the U.S. bicentennial and successfully produced as a television miniseries. Abraham and Simon were the only Flexners who married out of their parents’ faith. Surviving Simon by 10 years, Helen basked in his many honors. Betty?


Betty: Of the other Flexner children: Jacob (1857-1934), the druggist, become a successful medical doctor. His daughter, Jennie Flexner started and headed the New York Public Library’s Readers’ Advisor’s Office. Bernard (1865-1945), a prominent lawyer, was a juvenile court reformer of note; endowed at Bryn Mawr a Mary Flexner lectureship and at Vanderbilt University an Abraham Flexner fellowship; was an ardent Zionist, never married and lived in NYC with sister Mary. Mary, already mentioned, attended Bryn Mawr supported by Abraham in whose Flexner School she later taught. Frank, any last word?


Frank: At Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, TN, where we live, fellow residents connected with Johns Hopkins include Rev. Ed. Schnieder who studied at Hopkins; Barry Evans whose daughter worked in its fund raising program; Marge Childs who studied at the Peabody Prep, the feeder school to the Peabody Conservatory of Music, part of Johns Hopkins University since 1982.


The Parkers came to Uplands May 5, 1994, from Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, N.C., where Franklin was visiting professor (1989-94). He retired from West Virginia University, Morgantown (1968-86). The Parkers, a research and writing team for over 50 years, published among other works George Peabody, a Biography (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971, revised 1995). They met at Berea College near Lexington, Ky., 1946, attended what is now Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, 1952-56, and have completed a long manuscript: “The Forgotten George Peabody (1795-1869), A Handbook A-Z of the Massachusetts-Born Merchant, London-Based Banker, & Philanthropist: His Life, Influence, and Related People, Places, Events, & Institutions.


URLs for 138 blogontheweb.com, comprising the complete manuscript of above George Peabody (1795-1869) A-Z, can be accessed (although not in chronological order) through these blog searchers:



1-http://www.technorati.com/search/GP+Handbook+A-Z



2-http://search.blogger.com/?q=George+Peabody+(1795-1869)+Handbook+A-Z+&btnG=Search+Blogs&hl=en&as_eq=&bl_url=&lang=all&ui=blg&filter=0&sa=N&start=60



24 books written and published by Franklin and Betty June Parker are listed in:
http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P



End of manuscript. Part 2 of 2 Parts: “Abraham and Simon Flexner: Medical Education Reformers,” by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Part 1 of 2 Parts: Laying the Atlantic Cable, 1866; A Social Studies Dialogue.

Laying the Atlantic Cable, 1866; A Social Studies Dialogue
By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker (see end About Authors).

Introduction

In its time the laying of the Atlantic Cable in 1866 was a far reaching technical achievement. It was an important historical event, first, as an early example of international technical cooperation, specifically Canadian-U.S.A.-British cooperation. Secondly, it was important in science, technology, international relations, and international business. In many ways the Atlantic cable helped make the modern world possible.

After reading this dialogue and after doing library and internet research, teachers, students, and other readers may want to answer and discuss the following:

1. Name and describe the most influential leaders who helped lay the 1866 Atlantic Cable.

2. Tell which leaders were most crucial in this endeavor and why.

3. Describe economic, social, technical, and other developments necessary for the successful laying of the cable.

4. How was the laying of the cable financed?

5. Describe the important consequences of the successful laying of the cable.

6. Report the part played in the laying of the Atlantic Cable by the telegraph, the galvanometer, gutta-percha, oceanic studies, and other inventions.

7. Tell how the U.S. Civil War affected the laying of the Atlantic Cable.

8. Compare Britain’s interest and greater political need for the Atlantic Cable as against the U.S.A’s interest and need.
Dialogue

Betty: Why is the history of the 1866 Atlantic cable worth knowing? Why share this topic in dialogue form with high school and college students as well with other readers?

Frank: We have forgotten how important the Atlantic Cable was and what U.S. life was like in the 1850s and 60s. The story of the Atlantic Cable reminds us that Europe then dominated the world. Britain was its political and financial center. The U.S.A. was a far away backwater country separated from Europe by a wide and stormy North Atlantic.

Betty: It took weeks for letters, goods, and people to cross the Atlantic on a ship considered fast for the time. Then, on July 27, 1866, to the world’s amazement and on the fifth attempt over a 12-year period, the Atlantic cable, spearheaded by U.S. businessman Cyrus West Field, instantly connected New York with London.

Frank: John Steele Gordon’s Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable (see
Sources at end) concluded that the Atlantic cable electrified people in 1866, changed history forever, helped make the U.S. a major player on the world scene, and created the beginning of the world as a global village.

Betty: This great 19th century engineering feat was an epic struggle costing millions, involving British, U.S., and European politicians, financiers, ships, sailors, technicians, and scientists.

Frank: The Atlantic cable was an early instance of international cooperation. It followed decades of U.S.-British angers over the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and frictionable Civil War incidents. There were failures and disappointments in attempts at laying the Atlantic cable but it finally ended in a history-changing victory.

Betty: Historians have compared the successful completion of the transatlantic cable, July 27, 1866, to the U.S. landing on the moon, July 1969, 103 years later. Frank, tell us: What U.S. and British national factors hastened the laying of the cable? What technical developments, inventions, and economic factors made the Atlantic cable possible?

Frank: Americans in the early 1800s were little better off than the ancient Greeks or Romans in travel time and in speed of communications. Christopher Columbus took a month to reach the New World in 1492. The Mayflower took 23 days to cross the Atlantic in 1619. When the Atlantic cable was completed, the average ship using sail or steam still took several weeks to cross the Atlantic.

Betty: The Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s changed life by making goods and services faster and cheaper and more available than ever before. It is worth knowing exactly how this occurred.

Frank: Weaving cloth, the basis of the British economy, was advanced by British inventor John Kay’s (1704-64) flying shuttle and by the inventors of the spinning jenny and the water-driven power loom. Scotsman James Watt’s (1736-1819) steam engine increased textile factory output; and, when applied to cars on rails, increased and speeded the movement of people, goods, and services. The economy and life conditions improved, especially in Britain, Western Europe, and the U.S.A.

Betty: George Stephenson’s (1781-1848) first successful steam locomotive the Rocket on the Manchester to Liverpool railway spread railroad lines around the world.

Frank: The middle class grew. New wealthy factory owners, open to ideas, replaced landed gentry in influence. After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, peace enabled Europe to turn its energies from war to commerce and industry.

Betty: In the U.S., Eli Whitney’s (1765-1825) cotton gin, a rotating drum with spikes, efficiently pulled cotton fiber from its seed. It made cotton king in the South. New York City, which became the U.S. financial center partly by financing cotton sales abroad, grew in wealth and power.

Frank: Understanding electricity, essential in developing the telegraph, was hastened by Benjamin Franklin’s (1706-90) key hanging from a kite in a thunder storm.

Betty: Lightning from clouds to earth was recognized as the release of built-up differences in potential. Chemical batteries were developed that gave carbon a positive charge and zinc a negative charge.

Frank: A connecting copper wire between differences in potential allowed an instant flow of electric current. England’s Sir William Watson (1715-87) in 1747 proved that an electric current could travel a long distance along a copper wire.

Betty: On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872) used a sending key to make and break an electric circuit. This start and stop of electric flow at the receiving end, which had a highly coiled wire, made it an electromagnet which attracted and repelled a piece of metal, producing a click-clack sound.

Frank: The Morse code: dot-dash (or dit-dahhh) for A; dahh, dit dit dit for B, dit dit dit dahh for V, and so on, made telegraph messages possible. Morse’s first message on the telegraph wire between Baltimore and
Washington, D.C., was: “What Hath God Wrought?”

Betty: Another change: Canals replaced slow and costly hauling of mid-west farm products over the Allegheny Mountains to eastern markets. The Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River at Albany allowed cheaper, faster access along the Hudson River to New York City.

Frank: Between 1800 and 1860 the amount of U.S. commerce passing through New York City rose from only 9% to 62%. New York City became the biggest boom city in the world. In 1835, on the upswing of that boom, 16-year-old Cyrus West Field left his native Stockbridge, Mass., to seek his fortune in New York City.

Betty: Unlike his seven older brothers who attended Williams College, Cyrus Field persuaded his Congregational minister father to let him seek work in New York City. There a brother arranged his apprenticeship in A. T. Stewart’s (1803-76) dry goods department store, the biggest in New York City, which later became John Wanamaker’s (1838-1922).

Frank: After his apprenticeship at A.T. Stewart’s department store, Cyrus W. Field joined his brother Matthew Field, a partner in a Massachusetts paper mill. From bookkeeper, Cyrus became a leading salesman of paper supplies in New York state and throughout New England.

Betty: Field then became a junior partner in E. Root & Co., a New York City paper wholesaler. That firm failed after the Panic of 1837. Field acquired its paper stock. Although not himself liable, he settled the firm’s debts at 30 cents on the dollar. His own firm, Cyrus W. Field and Co., became the leading U.S. wholesaler of paper and printing supplies.

Frank: Wealthy, living in New York City’s fashionable Gramercy Park, Field soon paid all of E. Root & Co.’s debts, although not obligated to do so. The golden reputation he earned enabled him later to raise millions from investors for the Atlantic cable.

Betty: Still in his 30s, Field gave the management of his own firm to others and looked for new worlds to conquer. In November 1853, his brother Matthew introduced him to a Canadian engineer Frederick Gisborne (1814-80). That meeting changed Field’s life.

Frank: Canadian Frederick Gisborne, a self-taught engineer, headed the Nova Scotia Telegraph Co. Nova Scotia, with its main city of Halifax, is a Canadian peninsula in the Atlantic, northeast of Portland, Maine. To Nova Scotia’s northeast is Newfoundland, fourth largest island in the world. Its main city, St. John’s, is North America’s nearest point to Ireland, England, and Europe.

Betty: Gisborne was trying to build a telegraph line from St. John’s, southwest to Cape Ray, Newfoundland, there to connect through a submerged cable under Cabot Strait in the Atlantic to Cape Breton Island; and continuing into Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was already connected by telegraph lines to Portland, Maine, Boston, and New York. Gisborne, out of money, his cable incomplete, was bankrupt.

Frank: Field asked: Why are you trying to build your telegraph line from St. John’s to Nova Scotia? Gisborne replied: So that ships carrying news from Europe landing at St. John’s can telegraph that news to New York City, saving a day or two.

Betty: Cyrus Field was not impressed. For European news to reach New York one or two days earlier was not worth his time or trouble. Later, at home, looking at his world globe, Field realized that to send an almost instant telegraph message by a cable submerged in the Atlantic Ocean between Ireland and Newfoundland and then to New York, would be worthwhile and could be profitable.

Frank: November 9, 1853, the day after talking to Gisborne, Field wrote Samuel F. B. Morse to ask if an Atlantic cable was a practical possibility. Yes, answered Morse. He had experimented with an underwater telegraph line in New York harbor in 1843 and was confident it could be done. Morse offered to help.

Betty: Field also wrote to Lt. Matthew F. Maury (1806-73), head of the U.S. Navy Charts and Instruments and an expert on ocean winds and currents. Lt. Maury replied that the U.S. Navy had just completed a survey of winds and currents and made depth soundings in the most traveled U.S. to Europe shipping lanes. Maury ended: “…between Newfoundland…and Ireland the practicality of a submarine telegraph across the Atlantic is proved.”

Frank: Needing capital Cyrus Field turned to his Gramercy Park neighbor Peter Cooper (1791-1883). Cooper had made a fortune in a glue factory and then built the first locomotive for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Cooper was then organizing Cooper Union, a tuition-free night technical school for working adults. Field’s cable plan stirred Cooper’s yearning to serve mankind.

Betty: To Cooper, Field’s Atlantic cable idea fulfilled the Biblical prophecy that “knowledge shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the deep.” Cooper told Field: you find other investors and I will support you.

Frank: Field persuaded three wealthy men to become investors: 1-Moses Taylor (1806-82), controller of New York City’s gas lighting industry; 2-Chandler White, who made a fortune in the paper business; and 3-Marshall O. Roberts (1814-80), a major ship owner.

Betty: The investors, with Frederick Gisborne, Samuel F.B. Morse, and Cyrus Field’s attorney brother, pored over maps and charts. They absorbed Gisborne’s telegraph company into their newly formed New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Co.

Frank: The Newfoundland government hoped for economic benefit. It granted the new company a 50 year charter and some financial aid. On May 8, 1854, Peter Cooper became president, Cyrus Field was chief operating officer, and other officers were named. They committed themselves to raise $1.5 million, a huge sum then, but as problems mounted, not nearly enough. Cyrus Field wrote 14 years later: “God knows that none of us were aware of what we had undertaken to accomplish.”

Betty: In early 1855 brother Matthew Field supervised 600 workers completing the telegraph line across southern Newfoundland. Cyrus Field went to England for advice about the cable. He spoke to John Watkins Brett (1805-63), expert in submarine telegraphy who, with his brother Jacob Brett, had in 1851 successfully laid a 22 mile telegraph cable under the English Channel between Dover and Calais, France.

Frank: John W. Brett suggested a cable of three twisted copper wires, each covered with a new insulator, called gutta-percha. Bundled together, the wires were wrapped in tarred hemp, covered with another layer of gutta-percha, and the whole sheathed in galvanized iron wire.

Betty: Gutta-percha came from trees grown in Malaysia. Unlike rubber, gutta-percha did not break down in cold salt ocean water but hardened, yet was supple, a perfect insulator.

Frank: The cable, made in England, was placed on the steamship Sarah L. Bryant, which headed across the Atlantic to lay the cable under the Cabot Strait, south of Newfoundland.

Betty: In Canada Field chartered the James Adgar to tow the Sarah L. Bryant across the Cabot Strait as it laid the
cable. Field entertained aboard the Sarah L. Bryant the Peter Coopers, the Samuel Morses, Field’s two daughters,
and two nationally known clergymen. Buffeted by storms and distracted by the partying guests, the towing ship’s
Captain Turner rammed the Bryant.

Frank: The cable kinked and, to prevent its weight already in the water from dragging the Bryant under, the cable
was cut and lost.

Betty: It was a painful lesson. The delicate maneuver to be learned was how to coordinate cable laying speed and
braking mechanism with cable weight, ship’s speed, wind gusts, weather changes, and shifts in currents. It had to
be learned by trial and error.

Frank: The cost of failure to lay a cable under the Cabot Strait in August 1855 was $351,000. The cable was
finally laid under the Cabot Strait in late 1856 and the telegraph line completed from Newfoundland to New York
City, about 1,000 miles. Total cost, $500,000, a third of the firm’s capital. Field returned to London in 1856 to
raise more money.

Betty: The British government, wanting rapid communication with its far-flung empire, backed Field with cable
laying ships and a £14,000 annual subsidy (that was $70,000 a year).

Frank: This subsidy gave British government messages priority over private messages. The exception was–U.S.
government priority over British government, if U.S. support matched Britain’s support.

Betty: Encouraged, Field, in London, formed the Atlantic Telegraph Co. (October 1856) and sold shares worth
£350,000 (that was $l.75 million).

Frank: The U.S. Congress hesitated to match Britain’s offer. Some in Congress doubted that the cable would
work. Others said that the rich cable backers should pay their own way. Others were traditionally anti-British.
The Senate passed the needed legislation by one vote, the House by a few more. Pres. Franklin Pierce signed the
aid bill on March 3, 1857.

Betty: Atlantic Ocean soundings between Newfoundland and Ireland made by a U.S. ship and a British ship
determined the best cable route.

Frank: Added to the team were British chief engineer Charles T. Bright (1832-88), who chose Valentia Bay,
Ireland, as the best cable connection port.

Betty: Also added as advisor was Glasgow University Professor William Thomson (1824-1907, later Lord
Kelvin). William Thomson, described by later historians as half Albert Einstein-half Thomas Edison, invented the
galvanometer, which precisely measured electric current variations in the cable.

Frank: No single ship at the time was big enough to carry the new, thicker, heavier 2,500 mile long cable. In July
1857 the cable was divided between the USS Niagara and the HMS Agamemnon. Samuel F.B. Morse’s plan was
followed: both ships to start from Ireland, one laying its cable, a splice made in mid-Atlantic, with the other ship
laying its part of the cable to Newfoundland.

Betty: Both ships set out from Ireland, each loaded with the 1,250 mile long carefully coiled cable. August 6,
1857: the cable was caught in the braking machinery. It broke. It was spliced. And the brake speed was adjusted.

Frank: August 8, 1857: 85 miles of cable was laid. August 10: the electric signal in the cable faded, was revived,
and the cable, after being laid 400 miles, broke and sank. The first Atlantic cable attempt of 1857 had failed.

Betty: Cyrus Field returned to a New York City hard hit by the financial Panic of 1857. His own paper firm was
in debt. Always optimistic, Field went to Washington, D.C., and got the U.S. Navy to lend him the USS Niagara
and the USS Susquehanna.

Frank: The Navy also assigned him the Niagara’s engineer William E. Everett (1826-81) as the Atlantic Cable
Co.’s chief engineer. Engineer Everett built more efficient cable laying and braking systems. Glasgow University’s
Professor Thomson built a more efficient marine galvanometer to measure cable electric currents more precisely.

Betty: Spring and summer 1858. Second cable laying attempt. Engineer Charles Bright’s plan was followed: one
ship laid cable from Ireland, the other from Newfoundland. They were to meet and splice their ends of cable
together. June 13, 1858: As the two ships approached each other, the worst North Atlantic storm in memory
buffeted them mercilessly.

Frank: Coal bins on deck broke loose. Coal dust, mist, fog, and mountainous waves caused a cable break; 45
seamen were in sick bay, some with broken bones. The second cable laying attempt of 1858 had failed.

Betty: In London, gloomy and defeated, the Atlantic Cable Co. chairman and vice chairman resigned. They
advised their fellow board members to sell all assets and liquidate the company. Staggered, Field used all of his
persuasive powers to hold the remaining board members. True, he told them, 300 miles of cable had been lost.
But there is still enough cable on the ships to complete the job. Let us try again.

Frank: Try again they did in 1858, with short-lived success. The cable worked for two weeks. Some 400
messages were exchanged. The signal then disappeared. Elation turned to despair. Press and public dismissed
the cable as a waste of time and money. Here is precisely what happened.

Betty: July 17, 1858: The cable laying fleet left Ireland, this time without cheering crowds. August 1858: The
cable laying ships grappled the ocean floor for the broken cable ends. Cable ends were found, raised, spliced and
the electric signal was faint but grew stronger.

Continued in 2 of 2 Parts: “Laying the Atlantic Cable, 1866; A Social Studies Dialogue,” By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker
(see end About Authors).

2 of 2 Parts: Laying the Atlantic Cable, 1866; A Social Studies Dialogue
By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
(see end About Authors)

Frank: August 5, 1858: The USS Niagara approached Newfoundland. The signal from HMS Agamemnon
nearing Ireland still worked. Elated, the USS Niagara crew docked at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. At the nearest
telegraph station Field telegraphed his wife, father, Associated Press, Peter Cooper, and U.S. President James
Buchanan (1791-1868): “The cable is laid. …By the blessing of Divine Providence it has succeeded.”

Betty: The HMS Agamemnon approached Ireland, docked in Valentia, its signal with the USS Niagara in
Newfoundland still working. Engineer Charles T. Bright telegraphed the London board of directors and the press:
“The Agamemnon has arrived in Valentia [Ireland], and we are about to land the cable. The Niagara is in Trinity
Bay, Newfoundland. There are good signals between the ships.”

Frank: Not knowing that this connection would last only a few weeks, David Field wired enthusiastic praise to his
brother Cyrus.

Betty: August 16, 1858: Queen Victoria (1819-1901) cabled congratulations to Pres. James Buchanan. But the
signal was weak. It continued weak for a time, stopped, and remained silent. Public jubilation turned to scorn.
Newspapers that had lionized Field now lampooned him. Friends and partners avoided him. Only Peter Cooper
told Field: “We will go on.”

Frank: But the Civil War drained U.S. resources. Field could not find U.S. investors. Britain, however, still
wanting quicker communication with its empire, formed a commission of inquiry.

Betty: The commission found, five years later (July 1863): 1. That Cyrus Field’s lack of expert advice led to the
1857 failure. 2. That a substitute cable voltage measuring device had permitted high voltage to burn out the cable
during the first and second 1858 attempts. 3. That cable laying would be more manageable if done by a single
large ship.

Frank: The ideal ship for laying the cable was the Great Eastern, the largest ship of its time. It had been launched
November 3, 1857, as an Atlantic passenger ship.

Betty: The Great Eastern had two iron hulls and water tight compartments. Its powerful steam engines propelled
both a screw-driven propeller and two enormous side paddle wheels. It had five smoke stacks and six sail masts to
catch the wind.

Frank: Earlier Field had met I.K. Brunel (1806-59), Great Eastern’s designer, when traveling from Valentia,
Ireland, to London. Brunel took Field to see the Great Eastern then being built and said prophetically to Field:
“Here is the ship to lay your cable.”

Betty: But it was the 1861 Trent Affair, an incident that provoked near war between the U.S. and Britain, that
persuaded Cyrus Field to contact U.S. Secretary of State William Henry Seward (1801-71). That contact and
Field’s success in finding investors in London revived the Atlantic cable attempt and involved the Great Eastern.

Frank: The Trent Affair began on October 11, 1861, when Confederate agents James M. Mason (1798-1871) and
John Slidell (1793-1871s) slipped through the Union blockade at Charleston, S.C. They went by ship to Cuba and
there boarded the British ship Trent. The Confederate agents were heading for England and France to raise money
and arms for the South.

Betty: November 8, 1861: USS San Jacinto’s Capt. Charles Wilkes (1798-1877), on his own, stopped the Trent
with canon shot, boarded her, forced Mason and Slidell’s removal, and imprisoned them.

Frank: Britain, officially neutral, protested this illegal seizure of passengers from a British ship as an act of war.
Britain demanded an apology and the prisoners’ release. Angers flared. Anticipating war with the U.S., Britain
ordered troops sent to Canada.

Betty: On November 24, 1861, in Washington, D.C., President Lincoln (1809-65) discussed the Trent Affair with
his Cabinet. Lincoln told them: one war at a time, gentlemen. He disavowed the illegal seizure, stated that Capt.
Wilkes had acted on his own. Lincoln ordered the Confederate agents released.

Frank: Cyrus Field immediately saw that had the Atlantic Cable been operating, rapid government exchanges
would have explained Capt. Wilkes’s rash act, resolved the incident, and Britain would have avoided large military
expenditure. Field shared these thoughts with U.S. Secretary of State William Seward. Seward agreed with Field
and instructed the U.S. Ambassador in London Charles Francis Adams (1807-86) to help Field raise more British
funds for a new cable attempt.

Betty: A greater irritant to U.S.-British relations that happened during the U.S. Civil War was later called the
Alabama Claims. The Confederacy, without a navy of its own, secretly bought British-built ships and armed them
as raiders. One such ship renamed CSA [Confederate States of America] Alabama sank many Union ships,
causing loss of lives and cargo.

Frank: After the Civil War an international court arbitrated the Alabama affair and required Britain to pay the U.S.
$15.5 million indemnity for illegally selling ships to the Confederacy.

Betty: Despite these irritants, Field, in London, secured from the British government an increase in the annual
subsidy to £20,000 (that was $100,000 a year), provided the cable worked. Field still could not find investors in
the U.S. which was mired in Civil War.

Frank: January 1864: Investors Field found in England included railroad contractor Thomas Brassey (1805-70)
and House of Commons member John Pender (1816-96). Field negotiated with a new gutta-percha company to
manufacture an improved cable. That company’s officials also agreed to invest £315,000 (just over $1.5 million) in Atlantic Telegraph Co. shares. Best of all, Field contacted the Great Western Railway’s head, Daniel Gooch (1816-89), who formed a syndicate to buy and use the Great Eastern as the cable laying ship.

Betty: July 23, 1865: The Great Eastern under Capt. James Anderson (1824-93), with attendant ships, left
Valentia, Ireland, to lay cable to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland. The Great Eastern carried 21,000 tons. This
included the heavy new coiled cable to be laid using an elaborate new braking system. It also included a 500-man
crew, scientists, and experienced cable technicians, all British subjects except Cyrus Field. It carried live animals
aboard for food (no refrigerated ships).

Frank: An electric signal sent on the cable from Valentia was monitored by the galvanometer aboard the Great
Eastern as it laid cable. When that signal weakened or stopped, cable laying stopped, the cable was reeled back
aboard ship until the bad spot was located, repaired, spliced, and cable laying was then continued.

Betty: August 2, 1865: After 1200 miles of cable laying a mechanical mishap caused the cable to break less than
600 miles from Newfoundland. Using grapples, the cable end was found but could not be brought up from the
ocean depth. With grappling rope gone and supplies short, Capt. Anderson marked the exact position of the lost
cable end by sextant readings and buoy markers and headed back to Ireland.

Frank: Instead of derision, Field found himself acclaimed as a hero in England. Press and public applauded the
fact that the cable had been laid two-thirds the way across the Atlantic. Encouraged, the Atlantic Telegraph Co.
directors raised new capital. The plan for the new try in 1866 was to lay a whole new cable from Ireland to
Newfoundland; then, on the way, retrieve the lost 1865 cable, splice it to new cable and have the incomplete first
one serve as a second cable line.

Betty: A legal difficulty prohibited the Atlantic Telegraph Co. from selling stock for a year. This delay led its
directors to create a new Anglo-American Telegraph Co. Shares were sold. Money was raised. A better cable was
manufactured. Better cable laying machinery was constructed. The Great Eastern was made sturdier for cable
laying.

Frank: June 30, 1866: the Great Eastern left the Thames Estuary, England. It flew U.S. flags on July 4, 1866, off
the Irish coast. July 13, 1866: fixing one cable end to its Irish port location, the Great Eastern laid cable toward
Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.

Betty: The Great Eastern crew, more professional, efficient, disciplined, and motivated than on previous attempts,
made good time laying cable. The ship’s 1866 route paralleled but avoided tangling with the 1865 cable whose end
the captain intended later to find, splice, and use as a second cable line.

Frank: July 24, 1866: The Great Eastern passed the point where the 1865 cable end lay. Three days later, July
27, 1866, was the magic day.

Betty: The rain had stopped. The fog had lifted. The Great Eastern reached the fishing village of 60 homes and a
church with the quaint name of Heart’s Content, Newfoundland. The cable end, taken ashore, was connected to a
land telegraph line.

Frank: The electric signal from Valentia, Ireland, to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, was loud and clear. When
this fact was confirmed, bells rang. People shouted. Cyrus Field telegraphed the Associated Press: “…We [have]
arrived…. Thank God, the cable is laid, and is in perfect working order.”

Betty: New York Times article, July 31, 1866, p. 1, stated: Queen Victoria cabled congratulations to U.S. Pres.
Andrew Johnson (1808-75). Within the hour the U. S. President replied to Her Majesty. On the same day the
mayors of New York City and London exchanged cable greetings. New York Times headline, August 4, 1866, p. 1,
c. 7, headlined: “The Atlantic Telegraph. Immense Success of the Great Enterprise.”

Frank: Queen Victoria showered knighthoods on British cable participants: Sir Charles T. Bright, engineer; Sir
Samuel Canning (1823-1908), engineer; Sir William Glass, cable manufacturer.

Betty: Sir James Anderson, Great Eastern’s captain, Sir Daniel Gooch, who secured the Great Eastern as the
cable ship; and Sir Curtis Lampson (1806-85), Atlantic Cable Co.’s deputy chairman.

Frank: Glasgow University Professor William Thomson, who invented the galvanometer, was named Lord Kelvin.
At his death he was honored by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Betty: Queen Victoria would have also handsomely honored Cyrus W. Field had he been a British subject. The
British press soon dubbed him “Lord Cable.” The U.S. Congress awarded him a gold medal in March 1867.

Frank: Field, rich again, paid his debts, built New York City’s Third and Ninth Avenue Elevated Trains, owned two
New York City newspapers. But he was not a good investor. He lost about $6 million.

Betty: Field died in 1892. His tombstone in Stockbridge, Mass., reads: “Cyrus West Field To whose courage,
energy and perseverance the world owes the Atlantic telegraph.” Frank, could anyone else but Cyrus W. Field
have successfully laid the Atlantic cable?

Frank: Someone might have. But no one did. He alone came forward. He persisted to the successful end. He
alone pursued the Atlantic cable idea for 12 years, through five attempts. He alone convinced investors, raised
funds, and coordinated U.S. and British scientists, engineers, ships captains and crews. He made the Atlantic cable
an international affair. He got the U.S.A. and Britain, two nations historically at odds with each other, to work
together. He brought together the old and the new world.

Betty: Always seasick he made 50 Atlantic crossings. He used his skill, drive, personality, and determination to
make the Atlantic cable succeed. Not until the 1960s did satellite communication supplement but not replace the
cable. Frank, what did the Atlantic Cable accomplish?

Frank: The Atlantic Cable revolutionized communication in business, government exchanges, and international
news. It also made the haves aware of the have nots, and visa versa, another kind of ongoing revolution. Betty,
what do we owe this man?

Betty: Author John Steele Gordon’s very last sentence in his book says it all: “[Field] laid down the technical
foundation of what would become, in little over a century, a global village.”" What we have long needed do is to
work for peace in this global village we call earth.

Afterword

After reading the above dialogue and taking time for library and internet research, students and readers may answer,
orally in class or individually in writing, the concerns posed in the Introduction. Answers and opinions may then
be exchanged and discussed.

Book Sources

1. Buchwald, Jed Z. “Thomson, Sir William (Baron Kelvin of Largs),” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. by
Charles C. Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), Vol. XIII, pp. 374-388.

2. Dunsheath, Percy, ed. A Century of Technology (New York: Roy Publishers, 1951), pp. 272-273.

3. Gordon, John Steele. Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable (New York:
Perennial, 2002), 240 pp. This book, the primary source used in this article, is reviewed in: a-Internet URL:
http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=226 b-Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute,
Vol. 128, Issue 9 (Sept. 2002), p. 90.

4. John, Richard R. “Field, Cyrus West,” American National Biography, ed. By John A. Garraty and Mark C.
Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), Vol. 7, pp. 876-878.

5. McNeil, Ian, ed. An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 715.

6. Singer, Charles, et al., eds. A History of Technology (Oxford: Clarendon Press), Vol. 4, pp. 225-226, 660-661.

Internet Sources

1. “Atlantic Cable,” http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/hst/atlantic-cable/sil4-0045.htm

2. Canso and Hazel Hill, “Transatlantic Cable Communications; ‘the Original Information
Highway.’”http://collections.ic.gc.ca/canso/earlycab/tech.htm#transatlantic

3. “1866, Cyrus Field, The Laying of the Atlantic Cable,”
http://207.61.100.164/candiscover/cantext/science/1866fiel.html
4. “Field, Cyrus West (1819-1892),” http://74.1911encyclopedia.org/F/FI/FIELD_CYRUS_WEST.htm

5. _________________________. Short sketch and 1858 photo of C. W. Field taken by Civil War photographer
Mathew Brady, original in National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/brady/gallery/78gal.html
6. [Great Eastern]. http://www.greatoceanliners.net/greateastern.html

7. _____________. http://www.scripophily.net/eassteamnavc.html

8. Harding, Robert S., and Mumia Shimaka-Mbasu, “Anglo-American Telegraph Company, Ltd. Records, 1866-
1947.” http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d8073.htm

9. “History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy From …1850, to the present day ….”,
http://www.atlantic-cable.com/, is a near exhaustive Atlantic Cable database. It includes a Cable bibliography; a
Cable timeline from 1850; early British, Canadian, and U.S. Cable experimenters; and articles on the 1858, 1865
and 1866 transatlantic Cable laying attempts. It has photos of and articles about Cyrus W. Field and others
connected with the 1854-66 cable laying attempts, including the Great Eastern and other involved ships.

10. “History of Telecommunications from 1840 to 1870,” http://www.2.fht-esslingen.de/telehistory/1840-
.html#1866

11. “John Steele Gordon,” Rotary Club of New York. http://ussterilizer.com/bulletin_08-26-2003.pdf

12. “Laying the First Transatlantic Cable,” http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/4-14-01askeds.html

13. “Manufacture of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable, from Illustrated London News, 1857,”
http://www.victorianlondon.org/communications/telegraphcable.htm

14. “Samuel F.B. Morse,” http://www.invent.org/halloffame/106.html

15. “Sir James Anderson [Capt., Great Eastern], 1824-1893,” http://www.newman-family-tree.net/Sir-James-
Anderson.html

16. “The Transatlantic Cable.” http://www.history-magazine.com/cable.html

New York Times (chronological order)

1. “Telegraph, Atlantic.” New York Times Index: A Book of Records. Sept. 1851-Dec. 1862. Page 294 (entries
for Sept. to Dec. 1858), page 325 (1859). See also same topic in 1860 and 1862.

2. “Atlantic Cable,” July 29, 1866, p. 4, c. 7. July 30, 1866, p. 1, c. 1-4.

3. “Ocean Telegraph,” July 31, 1866, p. 1, c. 6-7.

4. “Atlantic Telegraph,” Aug. 2, 1866, p. 5, c. 4. Aug. 4, 1866, p. 1, c. 7.

About the Authors

The Parkers are graduates of Berea College near Lexington, Ky., where they met in 1946. They were married in1950; graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana, 1950; and from what is now Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 1956. Franklin Parker taught at the Universities of Texas, Austin, 1957-64; Oklahoma, Norman, 1964-68; West Virginia University, Morgantown, 1968-86; Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, 1986-89; and Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, 1989-94. Betty Parker, a researcher and writer, wrote and co-edited with Franklin Parker many education books and articles; and did extensive research resulting in George Peabody, A Biography, Vanderbilt University, 1971, revised 1995. The Parkers continue scholarly pursuits at Uplands Retirement Community, 63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571-8270, E-mail: bfparker@frontiernet.net END OF 2 of 2 Parts. End MANUSCRIPT.

Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), New England Colonial Teacher.

Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), New England Colonial Teacher.

by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

[63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571-8270, Ph. (931) 277-3268]

Ezekiel Cheever was the most famous colonial New England Latin grammar teacher of his time. He came from middle class Puritan roots in England, where he received a classical education before emigrating to Boston. His remarkably long teaching career of 70 years in four New England towns and the esteem shown by his famous pupils at his death tell much about how the New England colonial mind shaped American education and thought.


Ezekiel Cheever was born in London, January 25, 1614, the son of William Cheaver (as he spelled his name), who made his living in the cloth trade. Family circumstances were good enough so that Ezekiel received a classical secondary education that prepared him for Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. One account says he attended a secondary school attached to Christ’s Hospital in 1624. By another account, about which there is some doubt, he attended the well known St. Paul’s School in London.


If he attended the school near Christ’s Hospital, located at Newgate Street, London, it was originally the priory (or residence) of the Grey Friars. On that location a school was founded in 1553 by King Edward VI to support poor orphans. The school was commonly called the Blue Coat School after the blue uniform pupils wore. When fully enrolled, the school annually boarded and taught from 1,000 to 1,200 boys and a few girls who entered at ages 8 to 10 and left at ages 15 or 16. Each year five or six of the best pupils were sent to enroll in colleges at Oxford or Cambridge universities.


If Cheever attended St. Paul’s School, he was in good company. England’s famous poet John Milton, six years older than Cheever, also attended St. Paul’s. St. Paul’s was an endowed grammar school founded in 1509 (or 1512 by one source) by John Colet, famous humanist scholar, who founded it originally for the free education of poor children.


The colleges making up Cambridge University attracted such future leaders as Oliver Cromwell, who headed the Puritan Revolution in England. Other Cambridge-educated Puritans who left England for the New World and became leaders in America included William Brewster, John Winthrop, and John Cotton. John Milton entered Christ’s College, Cambridge University, in 1625. Ezekiel Cheever entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, eight years later in 1633.


Emmanuel College was founded as a Puritan institution in 1584 and was the model for Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. John Harvard, a Puritan and Emmanuel College graduate (1635), left for New England where he worked as an assistant pastor. His important gift of half of his estate and his library of 320 books led to the founding in 1636 of Harvard College at Cambridge, near Boston, Massachusetts, named in his honor.


Ezekiel Cheever arrived in Boston in June 1637. He came to the New World, like many before and since, for religious freedom and economic opportunity. He was 23 years old and single. Boston was then only seven years old. Two years before his arrival in Boston there was founded in that town, on April 23, 1635, the New World’s first college-preparatory secondary school, the Boston Latin Grammar School (still active as the Boston Latin School), where Cheever taught for the last 37 of his 70 years as a teacher.


Cheever’s first stay in Boston lasted only one year. He left in 1638 for the New Haven Colony, later named Connecticut, perhaps because, like Roger Williams before him, he disliked the rigid Puritan state-church atmosphere in the Boston area. In New Haven, where he was among the earliest founding settlers, Cheever began the first of his 70 years as a teacher. He taught Latin, first in his own home and later in a school house built for him. He married Mary (last name not known) and with the New Haven leaders signed the “Plantation Covenant” in Newman’s barn, June 4, 1639, a compact which formed New Haven’s religious and civic government. He received £20 for his teaching in 1641. This amount was raised to £30 in August 1644.


Although of very modest means when he went to New Haven (Cheever’s estate was then listed as worth £20), the esteem in which he was held as a teacher can be seen in the fact that in 1643 his name was listed sixth among the planters of New Haven . This respect can also be seen from his being chosen one of the twelve deacons in the New Haven church, from his being deputized to represent his district in the general court in 1646, and from his being occasionally asked to preach at New Haven’s First Church. He was respected as a teacher for his scholarly knowledge of Latin and Greek and also for his firm discipline, considered essential in colonial education. One of his pupils in New Haven who later became a well known minister and poet was Michael Wigglesworth.


But Cheever was also known as a man of strong independent mind, as shown in an incident of censure in New Haven in 1649. Some elders of the New Haven community were criticized for “partiality and usurpation”; that is, for having done some act or deed the community frowned upon. Many wanted the accused tried and disciplined. When the case was presented before church leaders, the accused individuals were cleared. Cheever, observing the proceedings, expressed strong disagreement with the verdict. Because of his independent stand, he was criticized by the church elders and censured for his “uncomely gestures and carriage before the church.” His own defense sounds better than the charges made against him. His arguments made some of the church leaders doubt that they had made the right decision. In ringing words he said to the church elders, “I had rather suffer anything from men than make shipwreck of a good conscience, or go against my present light.”


His wife Mary died the year of this trial, 1649, leaving him with five children. One child, named Ezekiel after him, had died in infancy. In 1650 he left New Haven after 12 years as its schoolteacher. It was probably while in New Haven that he wrote a Latin grammar textbook whose shortened title was Accidence. It was a highly popular textbook in colonial Latin grammar schools and was used long after his death in 1708. The eighteenth edition was published in 1785 and the twentieth edition was published in 1838.


While Cheever taught in New Haven, the Massachusetts General Court passed two important school laws. The Massachusetts School Law of 1642 required parents and masters to teach their children to read and write, on penalty of paying a fine. This law reflected the Calvinists’ desire for universal elementary education for moral and religious purposes. To understand the Bible, children had to learn to read. This law was based on the English Poor Law of 1601, which laid down England’s policy for the welfare of lower class children. This English law required pauper and orphan children to be apprenticed to a trade and stipulated that their masters see to their moral and religious welfare.


Two years later the Massachusetts School Law of 1647 went further. It required every town of 50 homes or more to employ an elementary school teacher, and every town of 100 or more homes to have a Latin grammar school. This 1647 law has been popularly called the Old Deluder Satan Law, after its quaint wording which said that since the Old Deluder Satan tried to keep men and women from reading the Bible, the best way to fight the devil was to promote schools and learning.


Even though these two school laws were not strictly enforced, they marked the first time an English-speaking legislature anywhere in the world had declared in favor of universal elementary and secondary education. The year Cheever left New Haven, 1650, Connecticut passed a school law which incorporated the main features of the Massachusetts school laws of 1642 and 1647.


In December 1650 Cheever went to Ipswich, Massachusetts, where he taught for 11 years. His school, endowed with grants of land and bequests, was called a free school but still required fees from pupils’ parents. There Cheever taught Latin and Greek to prepare boys for college. His teaching fame spread and helped make Ipswich more widely known. In 1652 he married his second wife, Ellen Lathrop, who had come from England two years earlier to live with her brother. The Cheevers had four children in Ipswich. In 1653 a philanthropic citizen gave the town a better school building and provided a house for Cheever with a few acres of land.


In November 1661 Cheever went to Charlestown, Massachusetts, as its teacher at a salary of £30 a year. He was not always paid, however, and in November 1666 he petitioned the selectmen of the town for his salary, mentioning that “the constables were much behind with him” (meaning that he might be jailed for his debts). He asked that the school building be repaired. He also complained that the agreement under which he was hired to teach was that he would be the only teacher in town. .But, now, a Mr. Mansfield was taking pupils away from him. In 1669 he petitioned for land on which to build his hme. The selectmen voted him the land, but Cheever left the next year after nine years of teaching in Charlestown.


On January 6, 1670, when Cheever was 56 years old and had taught for more than 30 years, he became schoolmaster of the Boston Latin Grammar School, where he remained for 38 years until his death in 1708. The still-existing Boston Latin School (as it is now called) was founded February 13, 1635, a year before the founding of Harvard College (1636). This Boston Latin School, the oldest and best known grammar school in New England, is believed to have been founded through the influence of John Cotton and based on the school John Cotton knew called the High School in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, founded in 1554. John Cotton came to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1633, and helped found the Boston Latin School two years later (1635), one year before the founding of Harvard College. John Cotton’s will provided that half of his estate go the “Free School of Boston.” Philemon Pormort was the Boston Latin School’s first master. It was early supported by the town of Boston. Five signers of the Declaration of Independence and four presidents of Harvard College attended the Boston Latin School. Its many famous pupils read like a who’s who of New England and included Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, Charles Sumner, William M. Evarts, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell Phillips, John Lothrop Motley, Francis Parkman, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles W. Eliot, Edward Everett Hale, and others. More recent Boston Latin School graduates include philosophers George Santayana and Bernard Berenson, journalist Theodore H. White, and education-writer Jonathan Kozol.


Cheever’s last 37 years of teaching at Boston Latin School established his reputation as the most famous teacher in the colonies. His salary was £60 a year, then a very good salary. Elijah Corlet, a schoolmaster of the Latin grammar school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and almost as well-known a teacher as Cheever, earned only £20 a year.
The school room in which Cheever taught was large and received little light from its high, small windows. Smoke from the large fireplace at one end of the room often drifted over the heads of the pupils and blackened the ceiling. Copying or listening, the pupils sat on long fixed benches with fixed desks in front of them. Cheever wore a black skullcap on his gray head and his white beard was long and pointed. The boys always knew when he was angry because he would start stroking his beard to the point faster and faster. The rod of birch twigs hung nearby. Cheever’s school was open mornings from 7 to 11 in summer and from 8 to 11 in winter and in the afternoons from 1 to 5. Boys learned their Latin from his Accidence and read the New Testament in Greek.


Cheever, who had seen many generations of boys come and go, knew that those who learned their Latin and Greek would go on to one of the colonial colleges and become mainly ministers or physicians. During Cheever’s lifetime three colonial colleges were founded by the established churches in three colonies. Harvard College was founded in 1636 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the Puritans and named after John Harvard because of his early gift. William and Mary College was founded in 1693 in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1693, by the Anglicans. Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, was founded in 1701 by the Puritans.


American colleges did not cluster at great learning centers as in England’s Oxford and Cambridge universities but were small and scattered. This diffusion of colleges was aided by the Great Awakening, whose resulting revivals and evangelism led to splits in the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches, splits that aided the spread of American higher education.


The fourth colonial college, Princeton College, founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, was founded by “New Side” Presbyterians. The fifth colonial college, Brown College, was founded in 1764 by Revivalist Baptists in Providence, Rhode Island. The sixth colonial college, Rutgers College, originally called Queen’s College, was founded in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1766 by Theodore J. Frelinghuysen and his followers of the Dutch Reformed Church. The seventh colonial college, Dartmouth College, 1769, in Hanover, New Hampshire, grew out of an Indian missionary school organized with visiting English Anglican evangelist George Whitfield’s help by Eleazar Wheelock, Congregational pastor. The eighth colonial college, King’s College, later Columbia University, was founded by Anglicans in New York in 1754. The ninth college founded before the Revolution was the secular College of Philadelphia, later the University of Pennsylvania, based on the first academy in America, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1755.


Cheever knew that those pupils who did not do well in their classical languages would become farmers, shopkeepers, merchants, or go to sea on sailing ships. For those trades they needed a little more arithmetic. Little history, geography, or literature were taught. The curriculum of the Latin grammar schools aimed at college entrance; and the entrance requirements at Harvard College were to read Tully or another classical Latin author in the original, write and speak Latin verse and prose, and be able to decline Greek nouns and verbs.


When his pupils grew in number, Cheever hired and paid his own assistant. In March 1699, when Cheever was 85, the selectmen voted to pay his assistant, Ezekiel Lewis, £40 a year, raising this to £45 in 1701. Cheever’s second wife died in 1706. He lived his last two years with his youngest daughter Susannah and her husband. Of his children Cheever was particularly proud of his son Samuel, a minister, who was well known and much respected.


Cheever’s last illness came in August of 1708, in his seventieth year of teaching. On August 12, after going out to hear his old pupil, Cotton Mather, preach, he became ill. On August 13 his friend, Judge Sewall, another successful former pupil, who had arranged for an old age pension for Cheever, went to see him. Cheever, in bed, blessed the judge. On August 19 Sewall called again and Cheever took him by the hand several times. On August 20 Sewall called to find Cheever much weaker. In a very low voice Cheever called for his daughter and asked those in the room if they were ready for his end. He died early in the morning of August 21, 1708. He was 94 years old.


Cheever’s funeral was attended by many people of all stations of life, including the governor, councilors, ministers, and justices, most of whom had been his pupils. Cotton Mather preached a long funeral sermon for his old schoolmaster. He recalled Cheever’s long and distinguished teaching career: 23 years in New Haven, 11 years in Ipswich, nine years in Charlestown, and 37 years at Boston Latin School. Cotton Mather told how he and his classmates were taught by Cheever an oration by the Roman orator Tully praising his (Tully’s) schoolmaster; and how Cheever taught them Corderius’s Colloquies and the fact that Corderius had himself taught the great John Calvin. Mather praised Cheever’s scholarship, dedication as a teacher, and piety; and ended with “He Dyed, a Candidate for the First Resurrection.”


Cheever left behind an estate of £837, 19 shillings, and 6 pence. He also left behind him a legend of 74 years of teaching. His thousands of pupils remembered him as the most famous teacher in colonial New England.


The Latin grammar school was inherited from Europe via England as the first type of secondary school in colonial America, from 1635. It was succeeded by the more practical academy, introduced by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, 1751. The academy was succeeded by the high school after 1821 and especially after the 1872 Kalamazoo, Michigan, decision legalizing use of tax funds for public high schools.

END


References


Barnard, Henry. “Ezekiel Cheever,” American Journal of Education, I (1855), pp. 267, 297-310; XXVII? (1877), pp. 67, 73, 395; XXXIII? (1878), pp. 134, 286.


Barnard, John. [his autobiography-describes Latin School in Cheever's time] Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd Series, Vol. V.


“The Old Deluder Satan Act [original wording],” in Beckner, Weldon, and Wayne Dumas, eds. American Education: Foundations and Superstructures. ?place: International Textbooks, 1970.


Butterfield, Fox. “Boston Latin Marks 350th Anniversary as Oldest Public School in the U.S.” New York Times (April 24, 1985), p. 11.


Connecticul Historical Society Collections, I (1860), pp. 22-51.


Gould, Elizabeth Porter. Ezekiel Cheever, Schoolmaster. Boston: Palmer Co., 1904.


Mather, Cotton. “Cotton Mather’s Tribute to Ezekiel Cheever,” Old South Leaflets, No. 177. Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, Old South Meeting House, year ?, pp. 21-36; reprinted from Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (October 1889).


Parker, Franklin. “Ezekiel Cheever: New England Colonial Teacher,” Peabody Journal of Education, XXXVII, No. 6 (May, 1960), pp. 355-360.


Parker, Franklin and Betty J. “Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), New England Colonial Teacher.” CORE (Collected Original Resources in Education), XX, No. 2 (June 1996), Fiche 8 E11. Abstract in Resources in Education, XXXI, No. 8 (Aug. 1996), p. 151-152 (ERIC ED 393 774).


Woody, Thomas. “Ezekiel Cheever,” Dictionary of American Biography, IV. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, ?19??, pp. 47-48.


Also check for biblio info:


Jenks, Henry F. title not known [excellent history of the Boston Latin School]


Hassam, John T. Ezekiel Cheever and Some of His Descendants END.

Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), New England Colonial Teacher.

Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), New England Colonial Teacher.

by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

[63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571-8270, Ph. (931) 277-3268]

Ezekiel Cheever was the most famous colonial New England Latin grammar teacher of his time. He came from middle class Puritan roots in England, where he received a classical education before emigrating to Boston. His remarkably long teaching career of 70 years in four New England towns and the esteem shown by his famous pupils at his death tell much about how the New England colonial mind shaped American education and thought.


Ezekiel Cheever was born in London, January 25, 1614, the son of William Cheaver (as he spelled his name), who made his living in the cloth trade. Family circumstances were good enough so that Ezekiel received a classical secondary education that prepared him for Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. One account says he attended a secondary school attached to Christ’s Hospital in 1624. By another account, about which there is some doubt, he attended the well known St. Paul’s School in London.


If he attended the school near Christ’s Hospital, located at Newgate Street, London, it was originally the priory (or residence) of the Grey Friars. On that location a school was founded in 1553 by King Edward VI to support poor orphans. The school was commonly called the Blue Coat School after the blue uniform pupils wore. When fully enrolled, the school annually boarded and taught from 1,000 to 1,200 boys and a few girls who entered at ages 8 to 10 and left at ages 15 or 16. Each year five or six of the best pupils were sent to enroll in colleges at Oxford or Cambridge universities.


If Cheever attended St. Paul’s School, he was in good company. England’s famous poet John Milton, six years older than Cheever, also attended St. Paul’s. St. Paul’s was an endowed grammar school founded in 1509 (or 1512 by one source) by John Colet, famous humanist scholar, who founded it originally for the free education of poor children.


The colleges making up Cambridge University attracted such future leaders as Oliver Cromwell, who headed the Puritan Revolution in England. Other Cambridge-educated Puritans who left England for the New World and became leaders in America included William Brewster, John Winthrop, and John Cotton. John Milton entered Christ’s College, Cambridge University, in 1625. Ezekiel Cheever entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, eight years later in 1633.


Emmanuel College was founded as a Puritan institution in 1584 and was the model for Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. John Harvard, a Puritan and Emmanuel College graduate (1635), left for New England where he worked as an assistant pastor. His important gift of half of his estate and his library of 320 books led to the founding in 1636 of Harvard College at Cambridge, near Boston, Massachusetts, named in his honor.


Ezekiel Cheever arrived in Boston in June 1637. He came to the New World, like many before and since, for religious freedom and economic opportunity. He was 23 years old and single. Boston was then only seven years old. Two years before his arrival in Boston there was founded in that town, on April 23, 1635, the New World’s first college-preparatory secondary school, the Boston Latin Grammar School (still active as the Boston Latin School), where Cheever taught for the last 37 of his 70 years as a teacher.


Cheever’s first stay in Boston lasted only one year. He left in 1638 for the New Haven Colony, later named Connecticut, perhaps because, like Roger Williams before him, he disliked the rigid Puritan state-church atmosphere in the Boston area. In New Haven, where he was among the earliest founding settlers, Cheever began the first of his 70 years as a teacher. He taught Latin, first in his own home and later in a school house built for him. He married Mary (last name not known) and with the New Haven leaders signed the “Plantation Covenant” in Newman’s barn, June 4, 1639, a compact which formed New Haven’s religious and civic government. He received £20 for his teaching in 1641. This amount was raised to £30 in August 1644.


Although of very modest means when he went to New Haven (Cheever’s estate was then listed as worth £20), the esteem in which he was held as a teacher can be seen in the fact that in 1643 his name was listed sixth among the planters of New Haven . This respect can also be seen from his being chosen one of the twelve deacons in the New Haven church, from his being deputized to represent his district in the general court in 1646, and from his being occasionally asked to preach at New Haven’s First Church. He was respected as a teacher for his scholarly knowledge of Latin and Greek and also for his firm discipline, considered essential in colonial education. One of his pupils in New Haven who later became a well known minister and poet was Michael Wigglesworth.


But Cheever was also known as a man of strong independent mind, as shown in an incident of censure in New Haven in 1649. Some elders of the New Haven community were criticized for “partiality and usurpation”; that is, for having done some act or deed the community frowned upon. Many wanted the accused tried and disciplined. When the case was presented before church leaders, the accused individuals were cleared. Cheever, observing the proceedings, expressed strong disagreement with the verdict. Because of his independent stand, he was criticized by the church elders and censured for his “uncomely gestures and carriage before the church.” His own defense sounds better than the charges made against him. His arguments made some of the church leaders doubt that they had made the right decision. In ringing words he said to the church elders, “I had rather suffer anything from men than make shipwreck of a good conscience, or go against my present light.”


His wife Mary died the year of this trial, 1649, leaving him with five children. One child, named Ezekiel after him, had died in infancy. In 1650 he left New Haven after 12 years as its schoolteacher. It was probably while in New Haven that he wrote a Latin grammar textbook whose shortened title was Accidence. It was a highly popular textbook in colonial Latin grammar schools and was used long after his death in 1708. The eighteenth edition was published in 1785 and the twentieth edition was published in 1838.


While Cheever taught in New Haven, the Massachusetts General Court passed two important school laws. The Massachusetts School Law of 1642 required parents and masters to teach their children to read and write, on penalty of paying a fine. This law reflected the Calvinists’ desire for universal elementary education for moral and religious purposes. To understand the Bible, children had to learn to read. This law was based on the English Poor Law of 1601, which laid down England’s policy for the welfare of lower class children. This English law required pauper and orphan children to be apprenticed to a trade and stipulated that their masters see to their moral and religious welfare.


Two years later the Massachusetts School Law of 1647 went further. It required every town of 50 homes or more to employ an elementary school teacher, and every town of 100 or more homes to have a Latin grammar school. This 1647 law has been popularly called the Old Deluder Satan Law, after its quaint wording which said that since the Old Deluder Satan tried to keep men and women from reading the Bible, the best way to fight the devil was to promote schools and learning.


Even though these two school laws were not strictly enforced, they marked the first time an English-speaking legislature anywhere in the world had declared in favor of universal elementary and secondary education. The year Cheever left New Haven, 1650, Connecticut passed a school law which incorporated the main features of the Massachusetts school laws of 1642 and 1647.


In December 1650 Cheever went to Ipswich, Massachusetts, where he taught for 11 years. His school, endowed with grants of land and bequests, was called a free school but still required fees from pupils’ parents. There Cheever taught Latin and Greek to prepare boys for college. His teaching fame spread and helped make Ipswich more widely known. In 1652 he married his second wife, Ellen Lathrop, who had come from England two years earlier to live with her brother. The Cheevers had four children in Ipswich. In 1653 a philanthropic citizen gave the town a better school building and provided a house for Cheever with a few acres of land.


In November 1661 Cheever went to Charlestown, Massachusetts, as its teacher at a salary of £30 a year. He was not always paid, however, and in November 1666 he petitioned the selectmen of the town for his salary, mentioning that “the constables were much behind with him” (meaning that he might be jailed for his debts). He asked that the school building be repaired. He also complained that the agreement under which he was hired to teach was that he would be the only teacher in town. .But, now, a Mr. Mansfield was taking pupils away from him. In 1669 he petitioned for land on which to build his hme. The selectmen voted him the land, but Cheever left the next year after nine years of teaching in Charlestown.


On January 6, 1670, when Cheever was 56 years old and had taught for more than 30 years, he became schoolmaster of the Boston Latin Grammar School, where he remained for 38 years until his death in 1708. The still-existing Boston Latin School (as it is now called) was founded February 13, 1635, a year before the founding of Harvard College (1636). This Boston Latin School, the oldest and best known grammar school in New England, is believed to have been founded through the influence of John Cotton and based on the school John Cotton knew called the High School in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, founded in 1554. John Cotton came to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1633, and helped found the Boston Latin School two years later (1635), one year before the founding of Harvard College. John Cotton’s will provided that half of his estate go the “Free School of Boston.” Philemon Pormort was the Boston Latin School’s first master. It was early supported by the town of Boston. Five signers of the Declaration of Independence and four presidents of Harvard College attended the Boston Latin School. Its many famous pupils read like a who’s who of New England and included Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, Charles Sumner, William M. Evarts, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell Phillips, John Lothrop Motley, Francis Parkman, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles W. Eliot, Edward Everett Hale, and others. More recent Boston Latin School graduates include philosophers George Santayana and Bernard Berenson, journalist Theodore H. White, and education-writer Jonathan Kozol.


Cheever’s last 37 years of teaching at Boston Latin School established his reputation as the most famous teacher in the colonies. His salary was £60 a year, then a very good salary. Elijah Corlet, a schoolmaster of the Latin grammar school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and almost as well-known a teacher as Cheever, earned only £20 a year.
The school room in which Cheever taught was large and received little light from its high, small windows. Smoke from the large fireplace at one end of the room often drifted over the heads of the pupils and blackened the ceiling. Copying or listening, the pupils sat on long fixed benches with fixed desks in front of them. Cheever wore a black skullcap on his gray head and his white beard was long and pointed. The boys always knew when he was angry because he would start stroking his beard to the point faster and faster. The rod of birch twigs hung nearby. Cheever’s school was open mornings from 7 to 11 in summer and from 8 to 11 in winter and in the afternoons from 1 to 5. Boys learned their Latin from his Accidence and read the New Testament in Greek.


Cheever, who had seen many generations of boys come and go, knew that those who learned their Latin and Greek would go on to one of the colonial colleges and become mainly ministers or physicians. During Cheever’s lifetime three colonial colleges were founded by the established churches in three colonies. Harvard College was founded in 1636 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the Puritans and named after John Harvard because of his early gift. William and Mary College was founded in 1693 in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1693, by the Anglicans. Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, was founded in 1701 by the Puritans.


American colleges did not cluster at great learning centers as in England’s Oxford and Cambridge universities but were small and scattered. This diffusion of colleges was aided by the Great Awakening, whose resulting revivals and evangelism led to splits in the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches, splits that aided the spread of American higher education.


The fourth colonial college, Princeton College, founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, was founded by “New Side” Presbyterians. The fifth colonial college, Brown College, was founded in 1764 by Revivalist Baptists in Providence, Rhode Island. The sixth colonial college, Rutgers College, originally called Queen’s College, was founded in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1766 by Theodore J. Frelinghuysen and his followers of the Dutch Reformed Church. The seventh colonial college, Dartmouth College, 1769, in Hanover, New Hampshire, grew out of an Indian missionary school organized with visiting English Anglican evangelist George Whitfield’s help by Eleazar Wheelock, Congregational pastor. The eighth colonial college, King’s College, later Columbia University, was founded by Anglicans in New York in 1754. The ninth college founded before the Revolution was the secular College of Philadelphia, later the University of Pennsylvania, based on the first academy in America, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1755.


Cheever knew that those pupils who did not do well in their classical languages would become farmers, shopkeepers, merchants, or go to sea on sailing ships. For those trades they needed a little more arithmetic. Little history, geography, or literature were taught. The curriculum of the Latin grammar schools aimed at college entrance; and the entrance requirements at Harvard College were to read Tully or another classical Latin author in the original, write and speak Latin verse and prose, and be able to decline Greek nouns and verbs.


When his pupils grew in number, Cheever hired and paid his own assistant. In March 1699, when Cheever was 85, the selectmen voted to pay his assistant, Ezekiel Lewis, £40 a year, raising this to £45 in 1701. Cheever’s second wife died in 1706. He lived his last two years with his youngest daughter Susannah and her husband. Of his children Cheever was particularly proud of his son Samuel, a minister, who was well known and much respected.


Cheever’s last illness came in August of 1708, in his seventieth year of teaching. On August 12, after going out to hear his old pupil, Cotton Mather, preach, he became ill. On August 13 his friend, Judge Sewall, another successful former pupil, who had arranged for an old age pension for Cheever, went to see him. Cheever, in bed, blessed the judge. On August 19 Sewall called again and Cheever took him by the hand several times. On August 20 Sewall called to find Cheever much weaker. In a very low voice Cheever called for his daughter and asked those in the room if they were ready for his end. He died early in the morning of August 21, 1708. He was 94 years old.


Cheever’s funeral was attended by many people of all stations of life, including the governor, councilors, ministers, and justices, most of whom had been his pupils. Cotton Mather preached a long funeral sermon for his old schoolmaster. He recalled Cheever’s long and distinguished teaching career: 23 years in New Haven, 11 years in Ipswich, nine years in Charlestown, and 37 years at Boston Latin School. Cotton Mather told how he and his classmates were taught by Cheever an oration by the Roman orator Tully praising his (Tully’s) schoolmaster; and how Cheever taught them Corderius’s Colloquies and the fact that Corderius had himself taught the great John Calvin. Mather praised Cheever’s scholarship, dedication as a teacher, and piety; and ended with “He Dyed, a Candidate for the First Resurrection.”


Cheever left behind an estate of £837, 19 shillings, and 6 pence. He also left behind him a legend of 74 years of teaching. His thousands of pupils remembered him as the most famous teacher in colonial New England.


The Latin grammar school was inherited from Europe via England as the first type of secondary school in colonial America, from 1635. It was succeeded by the more practical academy, introduced by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, 1751. The academy was succeeded by the high school after 1821 and especially after the 1872 Kalamazoo, Michigan, decision legalizing use of tax funds for public high schools.

END


References


Barnard, Henry. “Ezekiel Cheever,” American Journal of Education, I (1855), pp. 267, 297-310; XXVII? (1877), pp. 67, 73, 395; XXXIII? (1878), pp. 134, 286.


Barnard, John. [his autobiography-describes Latin School in Cheever's time] Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd Series, Vol. V.


“The Old Deluder Satan Act [original wording],” in Beckner, Weldon, and Wayne Dumas, eds. American Education: Foundations and Superstructures. ?place: International Textbooks, 1970.


Butterfield, Fox. “Boston Latin Marks 350th Anniversary as Oldest Public School in the U.S.” New York Times (April 24, 1985), p. 11.


Connecticul Historical Society Collections, I (1860), pp. 22-51.


Gould, Elizabeth Porter. Ezekiel Cheever, Schoolmaster. Boston: Palmer Co., 1904.


Mather, Cotton. “Cotton Mather’s Tribute to Ezekiel Cheever,” Old South Leaflets, No. 177. Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, Old South Meeting House, year ?, pp. 21-36; reprinted from Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (October 1889).


Parker, Franklin. “Ezekiel Cheever: New England Colonial Teacher,” Peabody Journal of Education, XXXVII, No. 6 (May, 1960), pp. 355-360.


Parker, Franklin and Betty J. “Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), New England Colonial Teacher.” CORE (Collected Original Resources in Education), XX, No. 2 (June 1996), Fiche 8 E11. Abstract in Resources in Education, XXXI, No. 8 (Aug. 1996), p. 151-152 (ERIC ED 393 774).


Woody, Thomas. “Ezekiel Cheever,” Dictionary of American Biography, IV. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, ?19??, pp. 47-48.


Also check for biblio info:


Jenks, Henry F. title not known [excellent history of the Boston Latin School]


Hassam, John T. Ezekiel Cheever and Some of His Descendants END.