The Biographical Dictionary of America/Alcott, Amos Bronson

ALCOTT, Amos Bronson, educator, was born at Wolcott, Conn., Nov. 29, 1799. He began his education in the "Cross-roads school house" near his humble home. Hungry for knowledge, he visited on Saturday afternoons the farmhouses for miles around to read the few books he might find there. In 1813 he went to Cheshire as errand boy to his uncle, and had opportunity to attend the district school, which he afterwards, as its teacher, made famous. From 1818 to 1823 he was employed as a canvasser in the Southern states; in 1823 he started an infant school. He gained quite a reputation by discarding text-books and teaching by conversation. The school attracted so much attention that in 1828 he started another in Boston, where he met with the opposition of the press, and his methods were held up to ridicule. This discouraged him and he gave up his school. But as has been well said, "He achieved what was probably his greatest success in life by marrying, in 1830, Miss Abby May." All reports concur in extolling her patience, endurance, and placid good nature under much privation and serious perplexity. She reflected Mr. Alcott's own beautiful spirit, and their home, however humble, was a very happy and attractive one. For about three years after his marriage Mr. Alcott endeavored to establish a school in Germantown, Pa. It was in this place that his daughter, Louisa May, was born. Not meeting with the success he desired, Mr. Alcott returned to Boston with his family and undertook a school in the old Masonic Temple in Tremont street. He had as his assistants Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth P. Peabody. The school had a wide reputation, and for several years good success, but finally lost caste and failed. His views, as set forth in "Conversation with Children on the Gospels," published 1836, induced some of his patrons to remove their children from his school, and others were seriously annoyed when he received a colored girl as a pupil. A second time the school was closed, and Mr. Alcott removed to Concord, Mass., at the instigation of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mr. Alcott pursued his studies in reform, in social economics, and in theology, getting a very humble living by lectures and conversations. Mr. Emerson said of him: "I think he has more faith in the ideal than any man I have known;" and his daughter, in her grand way, referring to his reputation, and knowing the close poverty his home had witnessed, gave the definition of a philosopher as, "A man in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth, and trying to haul him down." Mr. Alcott visited England in 1842 at the invitation of James P. Greaves of London, an educational theorist and friend of Pestalozzi. Mr. Greaves died before his arrival, but he was cordially received by his friends, and on his return was accompanied by two of these, Charles Lane and H. G. Wright. These gentlemen, impressed with Mr. Alcott's enthusiasm, went with him to Harvard, Mass., where Mr. Lane purchased a farm, which was called "Fruitlands." Here it was proposed to gather a community that should live in the region of high thought on a vegetable diet. The farm was sold. His English friends returned home, and Mr. Alcott went back to Concord. Here he remained, eking out an often-times scanty living by lectures and conversations in public halls or private homes throughout the country. The topics he presented were largely of a transcendental character, although including a wide range of purely practical questions. It was with difficulty that Mr. Alcott could write. Emerson said of him: "When he sits down to write, all his genius leaves him — he gives you the shells and throws away the kernel of his thought." In fact, his first book, "Tablets," was published in 1868, and 1839-'42 he contributed frequently to the "Dial" in a series of papers called "Orphic Sayings." He was, withal, brave. When Garrison was dragged through Boston streets, Alcott was close beside him, and when one remonstrated, said, "I do not see why my body is not as fit for a bullet as any other." His publications include: "Concord Days" (1872); "Table Talk" (1877); "New Connecticut" (1881); "Sonnets and Canzonets" (1882): "Ralph Waldo Emerson" (1882). He died at Concord, Mass., March 4, 1888.