Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
| Franklin Benjamin Sanborn | |
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| Born | December 15, 1831 Hampton Falls, New Hampshire |
| Died | February 24, 1917 (aged 85) Concord, New Hampshire |
| Resting place | Sleepy Hollow Cemetery |
| Occupation | journalist, author, historian, abolitionist, social reformer |
| Children | Victor Channing Sanborn |
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (December 15, 1831 – February 24, 1917) was an American journalist, author, and reformer. Sanborn was a social scientist, and a memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures. He founded the American Social Science Association, in 1865, "to treat wisely the great social problems of the day." He was a member of the Secret Six, or "Committee of Six," that funded the militant abolitionist John Brown.
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[edit] Biography
Sanborn was born at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, the son of Aaron and Lydia (Leavitt) Sanborn.[1] He graduated Harvard in 1855.
[edit] Professional life
In 1856, he became secretary of the Massachusetts Kansas Commission[2] and came into close touch with John Brown. From 1863 to 1867 Sanborn was an editor of the Boston Commonwealth, from 1867 to 1897 of the Journal of Social Science, and from 1868 to 1914 a correspondent of the Springfield Republican. He was one of the founders of, and was closely identified with, the American Social Science Association, the National Prison Association, the National Conference of Charities, the Clarke School for the Deaf, the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, and the Concord School of Philosophy. From 1874 to 1876 he was chairman of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities. He was secretary from 1863 to 1868 and a member from 1870 to 1876. In 1875 he made a searching investigation into the abuses of the Tewksbury almshouse, and in consequence that institution was reformed. In 1879 he helped to reorganize the system of Massachusetts charities, with special reference to the care of children and insane persons, in July 1879 becoming State Inspector of Charities under the new board, serving until 1888.[2] He lectured at Cornell, Smith, and Wellesley, edited writings of Thoreau, Paul Jones, J. H. Payne, Mary Shelley, and Thomas Love Peacock, and also published a number of books.
[edit] Personal life
Sanborn lived at Concord, Massachusetts. He was twice married, first to Ariana Walker in 1854 for eight days until she died. Following his first wife's death, Sanborn courted nineteen-year-old Edith Emerson, the daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson of Concord.[3] Sanborn ultimately proposed to Miss Emerson in 1861, and was rejected. Sanborn apparently took offense, and launched into a series of letters to Miss Emerson's mother. Those letters apparently inflamed the Emerson family, with the result that Ralph Waldo drafted a chilly letter to Sanborn, informing Sanborn of Emerson's wife's displeasure at having been accused. The matter did not end happily, with Mrs. Emerson writing her own letter of reproach to Sanborn.[4]
Ultimately, Sanborn begrudgingly apologized and moved on. He married as his second wife his cousin Louisa Augusta Leavitt in 1862—said to look enough like Sanborn to be his sister—the daughter of Sanborn's uncle Joseph Melcher Leavitt, a Boston merchant, with whom he had three sons.[5] (Sanborn's other uncle was Benson Leavitt, once a partner of his wife's father and later acting mayor of Boston.) Louisa Leavitt had worked as a schoolteacher at the Concord school Sanborn founded. The couple were married at the Church of the Disciples in Boston by abolitionist minister James Freeman Clarke.[6] Their son Victor Channing Sanborn became a Chicago lawyer, and wrote frequently about his father, as well as authoring a book researching his ancestor Thomas Leavitt's origins.[7] Sanborn died February 24, 1917, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
[edit] Works
- Thoreau (1872)
- John Brown (1885)
- Dr. S. G. Howe (1891)
- A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy (with William Torrey Harris) (1893)
- Emerson (1895)
- Dr. Earle (1898)
- Personality of Thoreau (1902)
- Personality of Emerson (1903)
- A History of New Hampshire (1904)
- Hawthorne (1908)
- Recollections of Seventy Years (1909)
- Final Life of Thoreau (1914)
[edit] References
- ^ New Hampshire Biography and Autobiography, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Privately printed, Concord, New Hampshire, 1905
- ^ a b
"Sanborn, Charles Henry". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. - ^ Sanborn's aunt Miss Alice Leavitt (his mother's sister), was personal nurse to Ralph Waldo Emerson's widow Lydian.[1]
- ^ The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Leslie Rusk, Eleanor Marguerite Tilton, Columbia University Press, 1931, ISBN 0231081022, 9780231081023
- ^ The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. LXXI, 1917, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Published by the Society, Boston, 1917
- ^ The Concord Magazine, November 1998
- ^ Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, by Victor Channing Sanborn of Kenilworth, Illinois, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, October 1917, The New England Historic Genealogical Society, Vol. LXXI, Published by the Society, Boston, Mass., 1917
[edit] Further reading
- A. Bronson Alcott: his life and philosophy, Volume 1 Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, William Torrey Harris, John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, Mass., 1893
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn |
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn |
- The Significance of Being Frank, by Tom Foran Clark
- Franklin Benjamin Sanborn Papers, 1845–1936, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Massachusetts
[edit] See also
- This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
