USA > Pennsylvania > A biographical album of prominent Pennsylvanians, v. 1 > Part 39
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Dr. Knox took his place as President of the Faculty in November, 1883, but did not deliver his inaugural address till the following commencement, in June, 1884.
As early as 1861 his Alma Mater, Columbia College, had conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity ; in 1885 she added the degree of Doctor of Laws.
Obviously the time has not yet come to speak of Dr. Knox's work in this new field, for he has but just begun it. This much, however, may be said: he has taken his place and performed his part thus far with quiet dignity and pru- dence, and in a manner to commend him to the confidence and esteem of his colleagues, of the students, and of all friends of the college. One or two extracts from the inaugural address will show both the liberal conservatism of his views of college education and his conviction of the supreme importance of the relig- jous training of the young.
" The curriculum of former days has been greatly modified by the demands of the present age ; but still the end in view has not been changed. The college is not and cannot be a school for apprentices, who will immediately on leaving its halls begin to work at their trades. Nor is it a professional school, to send out its graduates as fully prepared men to engage at once in their chosen life-occu-
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pations ; but it is a disciplinary institution in which to train the mind so that it shall lay hold of and appropriate the learning needful to fit it for the special call- ing in life, whatever that calling may be. It is this foundation work a college does."
And again : " My profound conviction is that a seminary of any sort which does not inculcate the principles of true religion, which does not hold and illus- trate in its life and with positiveness the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, might better not exist."
Dr. Knox, too, has a most profound faith in the future of the institution of his choice. Lafayette College has had her "great fight of afflictions," and through them all " has done good work for God and man." "She has lived," he says, " and sent forth her graduates into all lands, and on errands of uplifting power in every department of commanding influence, and by doing it she has earned the right to live not only, but to be lifted into a condition of prosperity such as by her past experience she has been fitted to use rightly."
It is gratifying to be able to say that the internal life of the college over which Dr. Knox presides was never more satisfactory and delightful than at present. And by this is meant not simply the personal relations existing between the mem- bers of the " community of scholars," but the discipline, the standard of diligence and scholarship, and the prevalent manliness and high moral tone of the students.
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PROF. FRANCIS A. MARCH, LL.D
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FRANCIS A. MARCH.
Tr has been the good fortune of Lafayette College to have for long periods the . presence and active influence of eminent and gifted men in the faculty- men whose lives and characters have been inspiration for good to the community of scholars, and who have, by their own long-continued and devoted labors, illustrated wise educational methods and impressed them upon the college. To no one does this remark more fitly apply than to Professor Francis A. March, Professor of the English Language and Comparative Philology.
Dr. March was born at Millbury, Mass., in 1825 ; was educated at the public schools of Worcester and at Amherst College, where he graduated in 1845 with the highest honors. For two years after his graduation, he was tutor at Amherst College, and after a visit to the West Indies for the benefit of his health, he taught at Fredericksburg, Va. In 1855 he came to Lafayette College as tutor. The faculty at that time consisted (in addition to President McLean) of the emi- nent physician and scholar, Dr. Traill Green, who is still at his post ; James H. Coffin, the distinguished mathematician ; Joseph Alden, afterwards President of Jefferson College : William C. Cattell, afterwards for twenty years President of Lafayette College; and Alonzo Linn, now the Vice-President of Washington and Jefferson College. Such men were not slow to learn the great acquisition the faculty had made in their new associate. This was happily referred to by President Cattell at the re-dedication of Pardee Hall in 18So, an occasion that was honored by the presence of an immense crowd of distinguished scholars, and of men eminent in public life, including the President of the United States and the Governor of Pennsylvania. Dr. March was orator of the day, and in introducing him, President Cattell said :
" During the fall term of my first year at Lafayette as Professor of Ancient Languages-this was in 1855-the faculty found it necessary to ask the trustees for an additional teacher. We had heard of a young scholar of great promise, a native of Massachusetts, but then residing in Fredericksburg, Va., and we per- suaded the executive committee to appoint him tutor in ancient languages. He entered at once upon his duties-at a salary, I believe, of $400-and heard the freshmen recite in one of the old basement rooms of the college, then known as " the Tombs." I always claim to have been the first to find out that the tutor knew more about Latin and Greek than the professor. (Laughter.) Others soon found it out too-my claim is only that of being the original discoverer (renewed merriment); and I said to the trustees that if we both continued in the depart- ment of ancient languages our places should be reversed. But the situation was relieved after a year or two by promoting the young tutor to a department of his own-one that placed the English language, as a college study, upon the same footing as the ancient languages. (Applause.)
" This is not the time nor the place for me to speak of the most friendly and
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intimate relations that have, without interruption, existed between my colleague and myself, as both of us have steadily grown older during this quarter of a century; but I may say here, what all scholars know, that he has come to be a recognized authority in philology even in the oldest universities of Europe, and that his great learning reflects honor, not only upon this college and upon this country, but upon the age in which we live. (Applause.) It is this great scholar, Dr. Francis A. March, who will now address you."
In 1856 he was raised to the rank of Adjunct-Professor. In 1857 his present department was constituted, and he was made " Professor of the English Lan- guage and Lecturer in Comparative Philology." This was something new, for it had not been usual for colleges to set apart time for the special philological study of English, nor to associate comparative philology with the study of a modern language. Whether from some inherent fitness in such an association, or from the genius and ability of the man, the experiment was an assured suc- cess, and this distinctive feature of Lafayette's curriculum has steadily grown in renown.
In the early years of Professor March's connection with the college, while the faculty was still small, he often heard classes in studies outside the range of his special department, in Greek and Latin, in Metaphysics, in Constitutional Law, and even the Natural Sciences, and everywhere with the same efficiency and vigor which has ever characterized his work.
As an educator, however, he is best known by his admirable method of pur- suing the English classics. The following extract from the college catalogue gives the outlines of his method :
"The English language is studied in the same way as the Latin and Greek. An English classic is taken up. The text is minutely analyzed, the idioms ex- plored, and synonyms weighed : the mythology, biography, history, metaphysics, theology, geography are all looked up. The rhetorical laws of English compo- sition, and the principles of epic and dramatic art, are applied to Milton, Shakes- peare, and other English classics, line by line. The character of the author, and his life and times, are studied, and an attempt is made to comprehend these great representative works in their relations to the English literature, and the English race. The text is also made the formation of more general study of language ; the origin and history of recurring words, the laws by which words grow up from their roots in our language, the laws by which changes from our language to another are governed, are stamped on the mind by continual iteration ; and an attempt is made to ground all these facts and laws in laws of mind, and of the organs of speech."
The course is well exhibited in the " Method of Philological Study of the English Language," a little work prepared by Dr. March, and published in 1864. It contains passages from five of the great English classics-Bunyan, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser and Chaucer-and a few pages of specimen questions on each selection.
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FRANCIS A. MARCHI.
Professor Owen, himself a pupil of Dr. March, says in his " Historical Sketches of Lafayette College," " as an educator he is earnest, thorough and vigorous, and his work is characterized by a straightforward energy which secures the interest of students, and stimulates the dullest as well as the brightest to vigor- ous exertion. It is perhaps not too much to say, that in no class in any college is better work done by the young men than in his, nor with a more genuine scholarly enthusiasm. He will take the little speech of Flavius that opens the play of Julius Caesar, and engage the class for an hour upon it, during which time, though it may seem all too short to them, they will have gleaned with him far and near, and brought in rich burdens from many fields. It is a matter of surprise to the student how many sources of knowledge are compassed in these rapid excursions. The classic page itself is but the starting-point ; from it they go forth in every direction : to Rome, and the carly times of the empire ; to the court of Elizabeth, and the history of her reign; to Shakespeare's masterly development of human character ; to dramatic art, its aims, rules and devices ; and upon the manifold lines of linguistic investigation ; the author's diction, the influences that determine it, the adaptation to character ; the forms and relations of sentences ; the growth, history, uses and relations of words; and so to the psychology and physiology of speech. These topics, many of which, as ordi- narily discussed, might seem abstruse and unintelligible, are opened up and illus- trated by easy and natural questions growing out of the passage, so that a knowledge of the most important principles of art and linguistic science is grounded in and associated with the forms of our daily speech."
The whole scheme of linguistic study in the college is shaped and organized upon the methods of Dr. March, with a view to the application in daily work of the best results of modern research, and to laying the foundation for the thorough study of the science of language. A progressive course is laid out in each department, and each part studied with reference to some particular set of lin- guistic facts. These facts are kept constantly in review, and it is found that the student soon learns to work at language with a true scholarly interest, and is all the time working toward the real mastery of the laws of speech.
The studies in Professor March's department at Lafayette have attracted the attention of the most distinguished educators, both in this country and in Europe. The British Quarterly, in a review of the higher education in the United States, gives some details, and adds: "Nowhere else is the subject treated with equal competence and success." The London Atheneum says : " The studies of a philological character carried on at Lafayette College are not surpassed in thoroughness by those which we are accustomed to associate with German universities." The results of the course, too, in the philological at- tainments of its graduates have been in the highest degrec satisfactory, and a good many excellent teachers have been trained at Lafayette.
In 1869 appeared the "Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Lan- guage," a work of great value and profound scholarship, which, as Max Muller
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says, " everybody praises." The Anglo-Saxon Reader soon followed. In 1874- ;6 he edited four volumes in the Douglass series of Christian classics, viz. : Latin Hymns, Eusebius, Athenagoras and Tertullian, and from time to time has written and spoken upon educational, philosophical and philological subjects, especially before the American Philological Association, of which he was Presi- dent in 1875. The College of New Jersey, in 1870, conferred upon him the degree of LL. D., and in 1871 Amherst, his Alma Mater, did the same.
The following tribute by one of Dr. March's pupils may fitly close our sketch of this renowned scholar and educator: " He went early and lovingly to the great masters of linguistic science, caught the inspiration of their methods and of their latest conquests, and has pursued his work with results which bespeak the highest type of scholar. A man of singularly large, clear and candid in- sight, of rigorous intellectual as well as moral integrity, his mind in its ap- proaches to truth seems not to have the hindrances of most thinkers and inves- tigators, but to move directly and by the instincts of a sturdy common sense to the very heart and gist of things. If his greatest work, the Anglo-Saxon Gram- mar, as he himself modestly suggests, grew up in the light of Grimm, Bopp, Curtius, Grein and the rest, it is equally truc that this worker in the light of others has now become an illustrious giver of light-a pcer of the masters. Much that such a man does must of course be remote from his daily duties as a teacher, but Dr. March has a full share of the daily instruction in the college and frequent contact with large numbers of students, and in truth he enters into these duties with heart and life. Any one who mects him as an instructor can- not fail to see that for this work his vast knowledge is constantly freshencd and vivified; that upon these more elementary phases of his subjects a great light is thrown, by which learners kindle their own enthusiasm and are stimulated to the most faithful effort. He is not simply a profound scholar shut up to books, but a man of skill, of tact, endowed by nature and by training with a manifold capacity for intelligent outlook upon this varied world. He knows men and things, and is therefore a linguist who in his teaching can make many sources of knowledge and many directions of insight tributary to the study of speech ; who can measure and bring out the individuality of cach student ; who can make the bright know that they are recognized, give confidence to the backward and diffident, and make all feel that they are in the presence of a man who respects honest effort whatever the degree of success, and who is wedded with a sincere and constant love to truth and integrity. Candid and kind, a wise and true friend, a noble naturc, not only well knowing the needs of students as learners and thinkers, but tenderly alive and solicitous where it concerns their higher in- terests, it is no wonder that Dr. March is regarded in the whole college commu- nity with a feeling akin to reverence. To sit at the fect of such a man, to have his guidance in study and the inspiration of his daily presence, is a high privi- lege, and the distinguished place which he holds in the love and esteem of all is proof that the privilege is amply appreciated."
PRISI ADAM H. FETTEROLF, LL.D.
ADAM H. FETTEROLF.
A DAM H. FETTEROLF, Ph. D., LL. D., President of Girard College, is the son
of Gideon Fetterolf, and was born in Montgomery county in 1842. He is in the prime of a life the adult years of which have been given to educational pursuits. His career has been mainly that of a student and teacher. llis academic training was acquired at the Freeland Seminary, then under the man- agement of Rev. Henry A. Hunsicker. After completing his course and teaching for a time in the public schools, Mr. Fetterolf connected himself with the institution as professor of mathematics, and subsequently purchased Mr. Hunsicker's interest and became proprietor and Principal. Ile conducted the institute very success- fully for five years, when the buildings and grounds were purchased for Ursinus College. Professor Fetterolf then associated himself with Rev. Dr. Wells in the ownership and management of Andalusia Academy in Bucks county. After the death of Dr. Wells, in 1871, he assumed the entire charge, and continued at the head of the academy for the next eight years. In 1880 he was elected by the Board of City Trusts to fill the chair of Vice-President of Girard College. At the death of President Allen, two years later, Professor Fetterolf was chosen to succeed him. He has held the position and discharged the manifold duties ever since, with the confidence of the Board and the approbation of the public.
The college of which Dr. Fetterolf is now President was founded by Stephen Girard, a native of France, who had amassed an immense fortune as a shipping merchant and banker in Philadelphia, where he had arrived a poor boy and begun business in a very humble way, and who bequeathed $2,000,000 and the residue of his estate, after paying certain legacies, for the erection and support of a college for orphans. As many poor white male orphans who are residents of Pennsyl- vania are admitted, between the ages of six and ten years, as the endowment can support. They are fed, clothed and educated, and between the ages of fourteen and eighteen are bound out to mechanical, commercial and agricultural occupa- tions. They are given manual as well as mental training, and are in great demand in the shops and in the manufactories of Philadelphia as skilled work- men, after they have graduated.
By a provision in the will of the founder no ecclesiastic, missionary or minister of any sect whatever is to hold any connection with the college, or be admitted to the premises even as a visitor ; but the officers of the institution are required to instruct the pupils in the purest principles of morality, leaving them free to adopt their own religious opinions. The most minute directions were given for the construction, size and materials of the building, which was begun in July, 1843, and opened January 1, 1848. The main building is the finest specimen of Gre- cian architecture in America, and is even said to be the finest of modern times. The outer walls, staircases, floors and roof are all of marble, and the entire
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structure rests on a base of eleven steps, extending around the entire building. It is in the form of a Corinthian temple, surrounded by a portico of thirty-four columns, each fifty-five feet high, and six feet in diameter. Its length is one hundred and sixty-nine feet, its width one hundred and eleven feet, and its height ninety-seven feet. The entrances are on the north and south fronts, each door being eleven feet wide and thirty-two feet high. The east and west sides are pierced each by twenty-four windows. A marble effigy of the founder stands in the vestibule, and behind this statue, in a great stone cenotaph, lie the remains of Stephen Girard and those of his wife. Within the enclosure, which contains over forty acres, there are numerous other buildings, some of them recently erected, and the institution constitutes within itself a village of marble and brick.
The government of Girard College demands high and rather peculiar qualifi- cations. The position of the President is one of great responsibility, standing as he does in loco parentis to fourteen hundred orphan boys-the representative head of the greatest individual charity on the continent.
President Fetterolf has the charm of a genial, quiet, well-balanced character, a pleasing address, an impressive presence, and that subtle faculty which wins the confidence of boys. He is the fourth President of the college. The first pre- sided over but two hundred boys; the second saw five hundred assembled at chapel; the third witnessed the roll lengthen to eleven hundred; while Dr. Fet- terolf has fourteen hundred under his charge. It requires executive ability of the highest order to successfully direct the destinies and control the actions of so many undeveloped mental and physical organisms, and that President Fetterolf is able to accomplish this without harsh discipline, demonstrates in the strongest possible way his eminent fitness for the responsible position he occupies.
His ability has had numerous recognitions from the faculties of other col- leges, the most recent of which was the conferring upon him of the degrees of A. M. and Ph. D. by Lafayette College, and by Delaware College of the title of LL. D.
In May, 1887, the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed an act authorizing and requesting the Governor to appoint a commission of five citizens of the Common - wealth to "make inquiry and report, by bill or otherwise, respecting the subject of Industrial Education." Governor Beaver placed President Fetterolf on this commission, his already extensive knowledge of the subject making the selection especially valuable and appropriate.
Dr. Fetterolf has been twice married, and has two sons. His first wife was Miss Annie Hergesheimer, daughter of George Hergesheimer, Esq., of German- town. In 1883 he married Miss Laura M. Mangam, daughter of William D. Mangam, Esq., of Brooklyn, N. Y.
REV. A. R. HORNE, D. D.
ABRAHAM REASOR HORNE.
A' BRAHAM R. HORNE, A. M., D. D., one of the most prominent instructors of
youth in the State, and the founder and editor of the National Educator, is the son of David L. and Mary Horne, and was born in Bucks county, March 24, 1834. The family is a very old one in that county, and the house in which he was born is said to be the oldest in Springfield township.
At an early age young Horne manifested a taste for reading, and in one of his crisp editorials in the National Educator he recounts how, when only eight years old, he waited every Wednesday evening, sometimes in the darkness of the night, for the " post-rider" who delivered the Doylestown weeklies to Springtown, and was willing to trade a Doylestown Democrat or Intelligencer for a basket of apples. Hle also early exhibited a talent for preaching, and frequently expounded the gospel to as many of his young playmates as he could induce to listen to his harangues, In 1850, at the age of sixteen, he commenced his work as a teacher of a public school within a half mile of his birthplace. He taught there for three successive terms, and was then called to preside over the public schools of Beth- lehem, Pa., where he remained until the fall of 1854, when he entered the Penn- sylvania College, Gettysburg, where he graduated in 1858. Before his gradua- tion he had already entered upon his labors as Principal of the Bucks County Normal and Classical School at Quakertown. While he had charge of this institution Professor H. L. Baugher, now the Rev. Dr. Baugher, Professor of Greek in Pennsylvania College, was associated with him as Assistant Principal. Dr. Horne continued in his work of educating teachers and others, both young women and men, at this institution until 1863. Many of the students of this school are now occupying prominent positions in life, among whom are Monroe B. Snyder, Professor of Astronomy in the Philadelphia High School; Rev. George U. Wenner, of New York; Superintendent J. B. Brunner, of Omaha, Neb .; City Superintendents Landis, of Allentown, and Buehrle, of Lancaster ; County Superintendents Knauss, of Lehigh, and Weiss, of Schuylkill, Pa. ; and Dr. J. E. Stahr, of Franklin and Marshall College.
In 1867 Dr. Horne became City Superintendent of Schools at Williamsport, Pa., which position he held until he was called to the Principalship of the Key- stone State Normal School at Kutztown, Pa., in 1872. While he was Principal of that institution the school attained a degree of prosperity that it had never enjoyed before, over five hundred students having been sometimes enrolled in a single term. Superintendent Thomas M. Balliet, Ph. D., of Springfield, Mass., who has distinguished himself as an educator, was one of the students; also Superintendents Werner, of Northampton, D. S. Keck, of Berks, and J. W. Paul, of Monroe county, and a large number of now prominent clergymen, lawyers, physicians, professors and teachers.
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ABRAHAM R. HORNE.
Hle resigned the principalship of the Keystone State Normal School in 1877 to take a chair in the Normal Department of Muhlenburg College at Allen- town, Pa. He occupied this position until ISS2. Here again a very promising number of young men were sent forth under his auspices. In the summer and autumn of 1881-82-83 he was engaged as State Institute Instructor in Texas and Louisiana, travelling over the greater part of these States, and co-laboring with the State Superintendents and prominent educators not only of these but of other States of the Southwest. Governor McEnery, of Louisiana, and State Superintendent Fay bear strong testimony to the value of his services in behalf of the instruction of teachers and in the cause of popular education.
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