The Autobiography and Letters of Matthew Vassar (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTERS OF 1860 AND 1861 These letters from the year of organization of the college are addressed to persons who were to play an important part in its future. Milo P. Jewett, the founder of the idea of the college in Matthew Vas- sar's mind, became the first president. John Howard Raymond, one of the charter trustees, then head of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, was the second president of the college. Martin Brewer Anderson, a charter trustee of the college, was President of the University of Rochester. Rufus Babcock was also a charter trustee, a Baptist clergyman who held charges in Poughkeepsie at two different times. Edward L. Youmans, student of science and medicine, was a lyceum lecturer on science, planned the International Scientific Series, and founded and edited the Popular Science Monthly, and Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, the editress of Godey's Lady's Book, was one of the leading feminists of the time and the person to whom the Founder addressed some of his most confidential and intimate letters about the college. These letters of 1860-1861 range over such subjects as the first meeting of the board of trustees, the college investments, salaries, the visits of President Jewett to Brown University, Dartmouth College and Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and over more general themes, ?the Founder's common sense theory of education, the mental stimulus of the young, wise control of the pupils, the desirability of a uniform costume for Copyright by Vasaar College MRS. MATTHEW VASSAR Autobiography and Letters 51 them. They show the excitement of launching a new venture and the smooth progress of the first days of the voyage. Pokeepsie, May 8th, 1860. Mrs. Sarah J. Hale Philadelphia My dear Madame Having been temporaly indisposed since the receipt of your...