Amos bronson alcott biography of william

Alcott grew up in rural poverty; his schooling began with charcoal letters on the floor and formally ended at age thirteen. Afterward he found employment as a peddler and journeyed to the South before returning to Connecticut to work as a schoolteacher in His early educational innovations included beautifying the schoolroom with pictures and tree branches, adding physical exercise to intellectual exertions, and developing his students' reasoning capacities rather than their memorization skills.

Alcott found support in the educational reforms proposed by Johann Pestalozzi in Switzerland and Robert Owen in England. Yet his ideas were not well received by local parents, who withdrew their students from his school, forcing him into itinerant teaching after In Alcott married Abigail May, the reform-minded daughter of a socially prominent New England family.

At the birth of their first daughter, Anna, inAlcott started a journal of infant observation. He continued his scrutiny of Anna and her younger sisters for five years, filling over fifty journals. He concluded that children were born with intuitive wisdom and the potential for good; it was the responsibility of parents and educators to elicit children's innate morality and to develop their self-knowledge, self-control, and self-reliance.

Alcott's effort to understand child development have earned him a reputation as the first child psychologist. To put his philosophy into practice, Alcott opened the Temple School in Boston in The Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing supported the project and persuaded many elite families to enroll their children. Elizabeth Palmer Peabodywho later founded the American kindergarten movement, assisted.

Alcott tried to elicit his students' inner wisdom through silent study, physical exercise, journal writing, and Socratic conversations. He limited corporal punishment ; nonetheless, he was a stern disciplinarian, working on his students' consciences rather than their fears — twice he even had students hit him to evoke their contrition. His school was initially popular, but when Alcott published his Conversations with Children on the Gospelsmany were shocked by his unconventional approach to religion and withdrew their children from his classroom.

His admission of a black student the following year lost Alcott the remaining pupils, and the school failed. In Alcott moved to Concord to be close to his friends Emerson and Hawthorne. He engaged in many projects before his death inbut few were successful. Alcott's utopian community Fruitlands attracted many visitors but quickly fell apart.

Amos bronson alcott biography of william

His books had few readers, although his speaking tours were popular. He depended on his wife and daughters for economic support, especially after the success of Louisa May Alcott 's Little Womenthe text that best captures his ideas. Dahlstrand, Frederick C. Amos Bronson Alcottan Intellectual Biography. McCuskey, Dorothy. Bronson Alcott: Teacher.

New York : Macmillan. Strickland, Charles. Thus we were spared the affliction of his absence and the triumph of suffering for his principles. Lane and Alcott collaborated on a major expansion of their educational theories into a Utopian society. Alcott, however, was still in debt and could not purchase the land needed for their planned community.

In a letter, Lane wrote, "I do not see anyone to act the money part but myself. Their goal was to regain Edento find the formula for agriculture, diet, and reproduction that would provide the perfect way for the individual to live "in harmony with nature, the animal world, his fellows, himself, [and] his creator". The experimental community was never successful, partly because most of the land was not arable.

So we fell apart". One rumor is that Page was asked to leave after eating a fish tail with a neighbor. He quit the project and moved to a nearby Shaker family with his son. She wrote to her brother, "All Mr. Lane's efforts have been to disunite us. But Mr. The members of the Alcott family were not happy with their Fruitlands experience.

At one point, Abby May threatened that she and their daughters would move elsewhere, leaving Bronson behind. In JanuaryAlcott moved his family to Still River, a village within Harvard [ 92 ] but, on March 1,the family returned to Concord to live in a home they named "The Hillside" later renamed " The Wayside " by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Alcotts hosted a steady stream of visitors at The Hillside, [ 99 ] including fugitive slaves, which they hosted in secret as a station of the Underground Railroad.

He considered the war a blatant attempt to extend slavery and asked if the country was made up of "a people bent on conquest, on getting the golden treasures of Mexico into our hands, and of subjugating foreign peoples? InAbby May insisted they leave Concord, which she called "cold, heartless, brainless, soulless". The Alcott family put The Hillside up for rent and moved to Boston.

Participants, both men and women, were charged three dollars to attend or five dollars for all seven lectures. Alcott and his family moved back to Concord afterwhere he and his family lived in the Orchard House until InAlcott was named superintendent of Concord Schools. Alcott voted in a presidential election for the first time in In his journal for November 6,he wrote: "At Town House, and cast my vote for Lincoln and the Republican candidates generally—the first vote I ever cast for a President and State officers.

Alcott was one of several who attempted to storm the courthouse; when gunshots were heard, he was the only one who stood his ground, though the effort was unsuccessful. A group had broken down the door of the Boston courthouse but guards beat them back. Alcott stood forward and asked the leader of the group, Thomas Wentworth Higginson"Why are we not within?

InLouisa moved to Washington, D. On January 14,the Alcotts received a telegram that Louisa was sick; Bronson immediately went to bring her home, briefly meeting Abraham Lincoln while there. Her father wrote of it, "I see amos bronson alcott biography of william in the way of a good appreciation of Louisa's merits as a woman and a writer.

Henry David Thoreau died on May 6,[ ] likely from an illness he caught from Alcott two years earlier. Alcott served as a pallbearer along with Louis AgassizJames T. FieldsOliver Wendell Holmes Sr. He recorded in his journal: "Fair figures one by one are fading from sight. Alcott asked Niles if he would publish a book of short stories by his daughter; instead, he suggested she write a book about girls.

Louisa May was not interested initially but agreed to try. The book, which fictionalized the Alcott family during the girls' coming-of-age years, recast the father figure as a chaplain, away from home at the front in the Civil War. Alcott spoke, as opportunity arose, before the " lyceums " then common in various parts of the United States, or addressed groups of hearers as they invited him.

These "conversations" as he called them, were more or less informal talks on a great range of topics, spiritual, aesthetic and practical, in which he emphasized the ideas of the school of American Transcendentalists led by Emerson, who was always his supporter and discreet admirer. He often discussed Platonic philosophy, the illumination of the mind and soul by direct communion with Spirit; upon the spiritual and poetic monitions of external nature; and upon the benefit to man of a serene mood and a simple way of life.

Alcott's published books, all from late in his life, include TabletsConcord DaysNew Connecticutand Sonnets and Canzonets Louisa May attended to her father's needs in his final years. After the death of his wife Abby May on November 25,Alcott never returned to Orchard House, too heartbroken to live there. He and Louisa May collaborated on a memoir and went over her papers, letters, and journals.

On January 19,Alcott and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn wrote a prospectus for a new school which they distributed to potentially interested people throughout the country. In the school moved to the Hillside Chapel, a building next to the house, where he held conversations and, over the course of successive summers, as he entered his eighties, invited others to give lectures on themes in philosophy, religion and letters.

It continued for nine years. After visiting him, Alcott wrote, "Concord will be shorn of its human splendor when he withdraws behind the cloud. As he was bedridden at the end of his life, Alcott's daughter Louisa May came to visit him at Louisburg on March 1, Ida Harris. She chaired a committee to gather…. Ann Lee. Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, established a community in Harvard inthe amos bronson alcott biography of william oldest Shaker settlement in….

Elvira Scorgie. A woman of many talents, Elvira Scorgie was an authority on the history of the town of Harvard. Her research…. Othello, who had been given his freedom, remained a faithful servant to Colonel Henry Bromfield. Simon Stone. Simon Stone, born c. See all More related:. Search Submit Clear. He believed that the family teaches self-sacrifice, self-reliance, sense of duty, and charity —values that are very important in daily life.

Alcott's School in and more briefly Margaret Fuller. As students, he had the children of the Boston intellectual classes, including Josiah Quincy, grandson of the president of Harvard University. Alcott's methods were not well received; many readers found his conversations on the Gospels close to blasphemous. A few brief but frank discussions of birth and circumcision with the children were considered obsceneand many in the public found his ideas ridiculous.

The school was widely denounced in the press, with only a few scattered supporters, and Alcott was rejected by most public opinion. Alcott became increasingly financially desperate as the controversy caused many parents to remove their students from his school. Finally, Alcott alienated many of the remaining parents by admitting an African American child to the school, which he then refused to expel from his classes.

Inthe school was closed, although Alcott had won the affection of many of his pupils. Alcott gave numerous lectures and public speeches. These "conversations," as he called them, were more or less informal talks on a great range of topics, spiritual, aesthetic, and practical, in which he emphasized the ideas of the school of American transcendentalists led by Ralph Waldo Emersonwho was always his supporter and discreet admirer.

He often discussed Platonic philosophythe illumination of the mind and soul by direct communion with spirit; upon the spiritual and poetic monitions of external nature; and upon the benefit to man of a serene mood and a simple way of life. Alcott's philosophical teachings were often thought to be inconsistent, hazy, or abrupt. He formulated no independent system of philosophyand was heavily influenced by PlatoGerman mysticismand Immanuel Kant as filtered through Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Like Emerson, Alcott was always optimistic, idealistic, and individualistic in thinking. Of the contributors to the transcendentalist journal Dial, Alcott was the most widely mocked in the press, chiefly for the high-flown rhetoric of his "Orphic Sayings. Alcott published several major books, all later in life, including TabletsConcord Daysand Sonnets and Canzonets Earlier, he had written a series of "Orphic Sayings" which were published in the journal Dialas examples of transcendentalist thought.

The sayings, though called oracular, were considered sloppy or vague by contemporary commentators.