Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Russell, William (elocutionist)

RUSSELL, William, elocutionist, b. in Glasgow, Scotland, 28 April, 1798; d. in Lancaster, Mass., 17 May, 1873. He was educated in the Latin-school and the university of his native city, and came to this country in 1819, in which year he took charge of Chatham academy, Savannah, Ga. He removed to New Haven a few years later, and taught in the New Township academy and Hopkins grammar-school. He then devoted himself to the instruction of classes in elocution in Andover, Harvard, and Boston, edited the “American Journal of Education” in 1826-'9, and subsequently taught in a girls' school in Germantown, Pa. He resumed his elocution classes in Boston and Andover in 1838, and lectured extensively in New England and New York. He established a teachers' institute in New Hampshire in 1849, which he removed to Lancaster, Mass., in 1853. His subsequent life was devoted to lecturing, for the most part before the Massachusetts teachers' institutes, under the care of the state board of education. He published “Grammar of Composition” (New Haven, 1823); “Lessons in Enunciation” (Boston, 1830); “Rudiments of Gesture” (1838); “American Elocutionist” (1844); “Orthophony, or Cultivation of the Voice” (1845); “Elements of Musical Articulation” (1845); “Pulpit Elocution” (1853); “Exercises in Words” (1856); and edited numerous school-books and several minor educational manuals. — His son, Francis Thayer, clergyman, b. in Roxbury, Mass., 10 June, 1828, was educated at Andover, graduated at the theological department of Trinity in 1854, and ordained priest in 1855. Afterward he became pastor of Protestant Episcopal churches in New Britain, Ridgefield, and Waterbury, Conn., and was professor of elocution at Hobart, Trinity, the Berkeley divinity-school, and the General theological seminary, New York city. Since 1875 he has been rector of St. Margaret's diocesan school for girls in Waterbury, Conn. Mr. Russell has won reputation as an elocutionist, still holding professorships in two theological seminaries. He has published “Juvenile Speaker” (New York, 1846), “Practical Reader” (1853), and edited a revised edition of his father's work under the title of “Vocal Culture” (1882), and is the author of “Use of the Voice” (1882).