Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Berard, Claudius

BERARD, Claudius, educator, b. in Bordeaux, France, 21 March, 1786; d. at West Point, N. Y., 6 May, 1848. He was educated in his native land, and became an eminent Greek and Latin scholar. He was conscripted into the army of Napoleon, but had no taste for a military life, and his father purchased a substitute. From earliest youth his mind was given to books, and the martial ardor that animated most young Frenchmen in the days of Napoleon failed to affect him. Learning that his substitute had been killed in the Spanish campaign of 1805, he determined to remove to the United States. He arrived in New York in the spring of 1807, and soon afterward became professor of ancient languages in Dickinson college, at Carlisle, Pa., where he remained until his appointment, in 1815, as professor of French in the U. S. military academy at West Point. He held this chair until his death, a period of over thirty-three years. He was conversant with the language and literature of most of the countries of Europe, and possessed, at one time, a copy of the Bible in nearly every language into which it had been translated. He published “Leçons Français,” long in use at the military academy (1824), and “A Grammar of the French Language” (1826). — His daughter, Augusta Blanche, b. in West Point, N. Y., 29 Oct., 1824, has devoted her life mostly to teaching and study, principally at West Point, where, for many years, she has been in charge of the post-office. Miss Berard has published a “School History of the United States” (1854); a “School History of England” (1861); a “Manual of Spanish Art and Literature” (1868); and has edited and revised “Goodrich's Child's History of the United States” (1878).