Joseph McKean (academic)
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Joseph McKean | |
|---|---|
| Born | 19 April 1776 Ipswich, Massachusetts, USA |
| Died | 17 March 1818 (aged 41) Boston, Massachusetts, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Harvard University |
Joseph McKean (19 April 1776 – 17 March 1818) was the second Boylston Professorship of Rhetorick and Oratory at Harvard University.[1]: 10 He was also the seventh librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society, occupying that position from October 1809, to April, 1812.[2]: 34 . It was during this time that he created the first catalog of the Boston Athenæum.
Biography
McKean's family immigrated from Glasgow, Scotland, in 1763. McKean prepared for the University at Andover Academy and entered Harvard College in 1790 at fourteen. Legend has it that it was McKean who, during his undergraduate years, brought a pig to his room in Hollis thereby founding Harvard's Porcellian Club. Upon graduation with honors in 1794, he returned to Ipswitch to teach and study theology. A year later he moved to Berwick and then finally back to Boston to prepare for the ministry with Rev. Dr. John Eliot. Ordained in 1794, he accepted a position at the Congregational Church in Milton where he stayed until 1804. In 1800 he married Amy Swasey, the daughter of Bunker Hill legend, Major Joseph Swasey.[3]
In 1806 McKean was offered the Hollis Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard after the chair had been declined by Nathaniel Bowditch. In the event, McKean also declined and the chair eventually went to John Farrar. Two years later on October 31, 1809, McKean did accept the appointment as the second Boylston Professorship of Rhetorick and Oratory when the first Boylston Professor, John Quincy Adams, resigned in order to become the federal government's minister to Russia[4]
Milton Academy was established by an act of the Massachusetts Legislature on March 3, 1798, "...for the purpose of promoting piety, religion & morality & for the education of youth in such Languages, & in such of the liberal arts & sciences, as the Trustees of the said Academy shall direct..." [5]: 476 As part of this legislation, McKean was appointed a Trustee of Milton Academy along with Fisher Ames, William Aspinwall, Samuel Bass, Nathaniel Emmons, Thadeus Mason Harris, Zachariah Howard, George Morey, Eliphalet Porter, Thomas Thatcher, Stephen Metcalf, John Read, Edward Robbins, and Ebenezer Thayer.
Late in 1818, on the recommendation of his doctor to escape Boston's winter, McKean traveled to Havanna where he died.[1]: 12
The First Catalog of the Boston Athenæum
Joseph McKean was never the librarian of the Boston Athenæum but he did compile its first catalog.[6] The 266-page book organizes the approximately 3,500 titles in the collection into fifteen classes including Theology, Law, Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and Mineralogy, and Poetry and Dramatic Works. McKean's estate was paid $100 for his efforts.[7]: 67 In the telling of a tract [8] by Athenæum reference librarian, James Belliveau, it was McKean who added a hand-written letter K to the title page of the books in a recently acquired collection, the Henry Knox Collection.
References
- ^ a b Levi Hedge, Eulogy on the Rev. Joseph McKean, D.D.LL.D. Boylston Professor of Rhetorick and Oratory, Delivered before the University, Cambridge, April 22, 1818. Cambridge: University Press., Hilliard & Metcalf, 1818.
- ^ Samuel Abbot Green, Origin and Growth of the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1893.
- ^ Sarah McKean Folsom Enebuske, "Charles Folsom and the McKeans," Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, Volume 25 (1938), pp. 97--112.
- ^ "Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory" in Harvard University History of Named Chairs, Sketches of Donors and Donations. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Secretary to the University, 1991.
- ^ Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1796-97, Boston: Young & Minns, 1796.
- ^ Joseph McKean, Catalogue of the Books in the Boston Athenœum, Boston: Boston Athenæum, 1810
- ^ Kenneth E. Carpenter, "America's Most Influential Library?" in The Boston Athenæum Bicentenial Essays, ed. Richard Wendorf, Hanover: University Press of New England, pp. 33--68.
- ^ James E. Belliveau, K equals X, and Then Some: A Problem in Identification, Boston: Boston Athenæum, 1965
Category:1776 births Category:1818 deaths Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts Category:Harvard University alumni