The New International Encyclopædia/Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin

SAN′BORN, Franklin Benjamin (1831—). An American journalist and social reformer, born at Hampton Falls, N. H. He was graduated at Harvard in 1855, and in 1856 was made secretary of the Massachusetts Kansas Committee, which led to his knowledge of John Brown, with whose fame he was closely connected. Later he was active in the Massachusetts State Board of Charity, of which he was secretary (1863-68) and chairman (1874-76). He reformed the Tewksbury Almshouse, aided in founding the Massachusetts Infant Asylum and the Clark Institution for Deaf Mutes, and in ameliorating the treatment of the insane. In 1879 he was made inspector of charities. He was also active in the organization of the American Social Science Association, of which he became (1873) chief secretary, and he aided in establishing the Concord Summer School of Philosophy (1879). For several years, beginning with 1868, he was editorially connected with the Springfield Republican. He wrote Lives of Thoreau (1882), of John Brown (1885), his most important book, of A. Bronson Alcott, Emerson, and Dr. S. E. Howe; and edited William E. Channing's Wanderer (1871); Bronson Alcott's Sonnets and Canzonettes (1882); his New Connecticut (1886); and for a time The Journal of Social Science. A brief study of Emerson appeared in the Beacon Biographies (1901); and later he edited essays of Thoreau and poems by W. E. Channing the younger.