20th President of Harvard University, American educator. He was regent of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as professor of Greek literature and president of Harvard University. Was born in West Newbury, Massachusetts. He graduated at Harvard College in 1827, having taught school in the winter vacations of his sophomore and junior years. After teaching in the Livingstone High School of Geneseo, New York, for two years, he became tutor at Harvard in 1829, university professor of Greek in 1832, and Eliot professor of Greek literature in 1834. When the presidency of the college became vacant by the resignation of Dr. Walker in 1860, Mr. Felton was not only chosen as his successor, but was designated by all the friends of the college as the only man who should or could be chosen. In this office it can hardly be said that he met, but he very far transcended, the expectations of his friends. They thought that he would fill the office with dignity and grace, and adorn it by the breadth, thoroughness, and fame of his liberal culture; and herein they were not disappointed. But they hardly expected that he would take upon himself in full the unnumbered details of prosaic duty and service which then made the presidency of Harvard University as multifarious a charge as could well be devised or imagined. Yet with an intense feeling of responsibility he entered upon a singularly energetic administration, mastering all the details of the office, taking cognizance of the work of all the teachers, and making himself felt in every department, not merely as a gracious presence, but as an efficient force. He even became, when there was need, a strict disciplinarian; though, in the infliction of censure and penalty, he evidently felt more pain than he gave. (from the papers of Cornelius Felton, Harvard University) which position he held until his death, at Chester, Pennsylvania. Dr Felton edited many classical texts. His annotations on Wolf's text of the Iliad (1833) are especially valuable. Greece, Ancient and Modern (2 vols., 1867), forty-nine lectures before the Lowell Institute, is scholarly, able and suggestive of the author's personality. Among his miscellaneous publications are the American edition of Sir William Smith's History of Greece (1855); translations of Menzel's German Literature (1840), of Munk's Metres of the Greeks and Romans (1844), and of Guyot's Earth and Man (1849); and Familiar Letters from Europe (1865). (Biography, part of a series of Harvard's Unitarian Presidents)
20th President of Harvard University, American educator. He was regent of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as professor of Greek literature and president of Harvard University. Was born in West Newbury, Massachusetts. He graduated at Harvard College in 1827, having taught school in the winter vacations of his sophomore and junior years. After teaching in the Livingstone High School of Geneseo, New York, for two years, he became tutor at Harvard in 1829, university professor of Greek in 1832, and Eliot professor of Greek literature in 1834. When the presidency of the college became vacant by the resignation of Dr. Walker in 1860, Mr. Felton was not only chosen as his successor, but was designated by all the friends of the college as the only man who should or could be chosen. In this office it can hardly be said that he met, but he very far transcended, the expectations of his friends. They thought that he would fill the office with dignity and grace, and adorn it by the breadth, thoroughness, and fame of his liberal culture; and herein they were not disappointed. But they hardly expected that he would take upon himself in full the unnumbered details of prosaic duty and service which then made the presidency of Harvard University as multifarious a charge as could well be devised or imagined. Yet with an intense feeling of responsibility he entered upon a singularly energetic administration, mastering all the details of the office, taking cognizance of the work of all the teachers, and making himself felt in every department, not merely as a gracious presence, but as an efficient force. He even became, when there was need, a strict disciplinarian; though, in the infliction of censure and penalty, he evidently felt more pain than he gave. (from the papers of Cornelius Felton, Harvard University) which position he held until his death, at Chester, Pennsylvania. Dr Felton edited many classical texts. His annotations on Wolf's text of the Iliad (1833) are especially valuable. Greece, Ancient and Modern (2 vols., 1867), forty-nine lectures before the Lowell Institute, is scholarly, able and suggestive of the author's personality. Among his miscellaneous publications are the American edition of Sir William Smith's History of Greece (1855); translations of Menzel's German Literature (1840), of Munk's Metres of the Greeks and Romans (1844), and of Guyot's Earth and Man (1849); and Familiar Letters from Europe (1865). (Biography, part of a series of Harvard's Unitarian Presidents)
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