Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Folwell, William Watts

FOLWELL, William Watts, educator, b. in Romulus, Seneca co., N. Y., 14 Feb., 1833. He was graduated at Hobart in 1857, and in 1859 became adjunct professor of mathematics there. He spent the years 1860-'1 in the study of philology at Berlin and in travel, and during the civil war served in the 50th N. Y. engineers, reaching the rank of major. He then engaged in business, but in 1869 accepted the chair of mathematics in Kenyon college, Ohio, and in the same year was appointed to the presidency of the University of Minnesota, after resigning which he remained professor of political science and librarian. He has published “Public Instruction in Minnesota” (1875), and “Lectures on Political Economy.”