GEORGE LANSING RAYMOND
RAYMOND, GEORGE LANSING, professor of oratory and esthetic criticism at the college of New Jersey (Princeton university) 1880-93, professor of esthetics at Princeton university from 1893-1905, and professor of esthetics at the George Washington university since 1905, was born in Chicago, Illinois, September 3, 1839. His father, Benjamin Wright Raymond (1801-83) was a native of Rome, New York, and twice mayor of Chicago, a man of great public spirit, generosity and foresight, and of a peculiar delicacy in the perception of social and financial obligations. He did much to secure to Chicago and to Northern Illinois, parks, railroads and institutions of higher learning. His mother, Amelia, daughter of Reuben and Anna (Root) Porter of East Bloomfield, New York, removed with her husband to Chicago in 1836; and from her Professor Raymond seems to have inherited many of his intellectual traits and tendencies. His first ancestor in America, Captain William Raymond of Beverly, Massachusetts (1637-1709) commanded an expedition to Canada and received a grant of land from the crown. Benjamin Raymond (1774-1824) the first civil engineer to explore Northern New York, founder of the town of Potsdam, and of St. Lawrence academy, and judge of St. Lawrence county, was his grandfather; while Governor William Bradford and Edward Doty, Mayflower pilgrims; Governor John Webster of Connecticut, 1590-1661; Captain John Gallop the swamp fighter, 1675 — were ancestors; and James Otis, Noah Webster and the Reverend Samuel Hopkins of Newport, Rhode Island, were first cousins of his great grandparents.
He attended private schools in Chicago, a boarding school in Auburn, New York, was graduated at Phillips academy, Andover, in 1858, at Williams college, A.B., 1862; A.M., 1865, and at Princeton theological seminary, 1865. On leaving the seminary he studied in Europe for three years going through courses in esthetics in the University of Tübingen under Vischer and at the Berlin Museum under Curtius, the Greek historian. Subsequently, "believing that all the arts are, primarily, developments of different forms of
