The Biographical Dictionary of America/Bailey, Rufus William

BAILEY, Rufus William, educator, was born at North Yarmouth, Me., April 13, 1793. He pursued his collegiate course at Dartmouth, where he was graduated in 1813. He then took a divinity course at Andover, and was licensed as a preacher, serving at Norwich Plain, and also teaching moral philosophy in the military academy. He held the pastorate of a church in Pittsfield. Mass., from 1824 to 1828, when he went south and was occupied as a teacher in the Carolinas and Virginia until 1854, in which year he was given the chair of languages in Austin college, Texas, holding it from 1854 to 1856, and was president of that institution from 1858 to 1863. He received the degree of D. D. from Hampden-Sidney college in 1859. While living in Texas he published a series of newspaper articles in opposition to slavery, and he was also the author of a number of volumes on religious and educational subjects, consisting of a book of newspaper letters called "The Issue"; "The Mother's Request"; "The Family Preacher"; "A Primary Grammar"; a collection of sermons; a "Manual of English Grammar"; and "The Scholar's Companion" (1841), which last passed through more than eighty editions. He died in Huntsville, Texas, April 25, 1863.