David James Dove

Background

Dove was born c. 1696 in Portsmouth, England, the son of David and Mary Dove. His father was a tailor in his hometown. His early life is obscure.

Career

Dove was a surety in two marriage cases in 1728 in Chichester, where he taught grammar for sixteen years before coming to America. He arrived with his wife in Philadelphia in 1750 and applied for a position in the newly founded Academy. The trustees appointed him English master for one year, beginning January 7, 1751, at a salary of $150. Franklin quickly recognized his unusual abilities. The English school grew in numbers and he was given two assistants. Encouraged by his success he opened in September 1751 an academy for young ladies. The trustees of the Academy, however, thought that these new cares caused him to neglect his work in the English school and in February 1753 they reluctantly accepted his resignation which took effect in July.

In 1757 he published Labour in Vain; or, An Attempt to Wash a Black-Moor White, a lengthy caricature of Judge William Moore, then under arrest for having libeled the Assembly. His pen turned easily to Hudibrastic verse and the etchings with which he often adorned his broadsides are, despite his lack of formal training, as free and vigorous as any of Gilray or Rowlandson. On the last day of 1758 he issued a pamphlet entitled The Lottery. A Dialogue between Mr. Thomas Trueman and Mr. Humphrey Dupe and attacking the lotteries then employed by the Academy and other institutions to raise funds as "manifestly no better than public frauds. " At this time he conducted a school for both boys and girls in Videll's Alley. In his substitution of disgrace for corporal punishment and in other measures Dove showed himself to be well in advance of the pedagogy of his time. In February 1761 he was unanimously elected to the English mastership of the new Germantown Union School, founded to compete with the Academy in Philadelphia. His tenure began the middle of June, although the Union School was not opened until August. He lodged and boarded twenty of his students in his small quarters at the Union School. To the townspeople who were thus deprived of a source of income this was a genuine grievance; they petitioned the trustees who remonstrated with Dove. The eccentric English master and the trustees were temperamentally incapable of understanding each other; there was bickering and argument.

He was meanwhile building his own school alongside the Union School; and when this was completed in the summer of 1763 he resigned and opened his own academy. Under the pseudonym of Philopatrius he published on February 18, 1764, The Quaker Unmask'd; or, Plain Truth, Humbly Address'd to the Consideration of all the Freemen of Pennsylvania. This was a defense of the Paxton Boys; in it he suggested that the Quakers were enamored of both Indian squaws and Indian trade and demanded if a Quaker could consistently be the representative of a people who are constantly called upon to make war in their own defense. Noteworthy among the pamphlets and broadsides attacking him was The Medley by Isaac Hunt. This broadside, containing an etching of Dove probably by Henry Dawkins, accused him of gross immorality. He replied with The Counter-Medley, being a Proper Answer to all the Dunces of the Medley and their Abettors. He continued his school in Germantown until 1768 when he was again in Philadelphia conducting a school on Front St. , near Arch. In the spring of the following year he died and on April 4, 1769, was buried in Christ Church burying ground.

Achievements

• Dove is best known as the first person in Pennsylvania, and perhaps in the colonies, who attempted to supply higher education for women.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A history of the University of Pennsylvania, from its foundation to A. D. 1770; including biographical sketches of the trustees, faculty, the first alumni and others

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Personality

Richard Peters, once a student of Dove's, said that he was a "sarcastic and ill-tempered doggerelizer, who was but ironically Dove; for his temper was that of a hawk, and his pen the beak of a falcon pouncing on innocent prey. "

Connections

It is known that Dove was married, but the name of his spouse is unknown.

Father:

David Dove

Mother:

Mary Dove

References

• Memoirs of His Own Time. With Reminiscences of the Men and Events of the Revolution
• A History of the Germantown Academy (Classic Reprint)