Benjamin Abbot

Benjamin Abbot (born September 17, 1762 in Andover , Province of Massachusetts Bay , † October 25, 1849 in Exeter , New Hampshire ) was an American headmaster of the Phillips Exeter Academy .

Life

Benjamin Abbot was a descendant of George Abbot, who immigrated from the northern English county of Yorkshire to what is now the United States around 1640 and settled in Andover, Massachusetts at the time that town was founded. For the next five generations, the eldest son in the family was given the first name John , and Benjamin Abbot was the son of the fourth John Abbot.

Benjamin Abbot attended the Phillips Academy in Andover from 1782 and completed his subsequent training at Harvard University in 1788 as a Bachelor of Arts. After that, from October 8, 1788, he headed a very prestigious boarding school, the Phillips Exeter Academy , for almost half a century , taught mathematics, Latin and Greek, among other things, and set great store by strict discipline and morality. He did not use corporal punishment for misconduct, but limited himself to ordering sweeps of the floor. He also knew how to inspire his students. These included prominent figures in US history such as Senator and Secretary of State Daniel Webster , Massachusetts Governor Edward Everett , clergyman and historian Jared Sparks , philosopher and educator Francis Bowen, and Secretary of War and Secretary of State Lewis Cass .

At the age of 29, Abbot married Hannah Tracy Emery on November 1, 1791. However, she died at the age of 22 on December 7, 1793. In 1798, he took a new wife with Mary Perkins. From his first marriage he had a son, and his second wife gave birth to two daughters and another son. In his free time, he loved to do garden work.

After completing his 50-year career at Phillips Exeter Academy, Abbot retired on August 23, 1838. Hundreds of his former students attended the related farewell party, and Daniel Webster paid tribute to his services in a well-worded speech. Abbot died on October 25, 1849 at the age of 87 in Exeter, New Hampshire . The oldest dorms at Phillips Exeter Academy were named Abbot Hall after him.

literature

• Abbot, Benjamin . In: Dictionary of American Biography . Vol. 1 (1928), pp. 9f.