Background
Franklin Carter was born on September 30, 1837 in Waterbury, Connecticut, United States; the son of Preserve Wood Carter, a farmer, and Ruth Wells (Holmes) Carter.
Franklin Carter was born on September 30, 1837 in Waterbury, Connecticut, United States; the son of Preserve Wood Carter, a farmer, and Ruth Wells (Holmes) Carter.
At Phillips Academy, Andover, where Franklin graduated in 1855, he was valedictorian of his class. He entered Yale with the class of 1859, but a hemorrhage at the close of his sophomore year obliged him to leave college and devote himself to restoring his shattered health. In the autumn of 1860 he joined the junior class at Williams College, taking his degree in 1862.
In 1865 Carter began his career as professor of Latin and French at Williams College. Resigning in 1872, he went abroad for another year in preparation for a new position as professor of German at Yale, where he taught for the next seven years. In 1880, upon the retirement of President Paul A. Chadbourne, Carter was called to Williams as the sixth president of that institution, being formally inaugurated on July 6, 1881. With him began the period of what Prof. Leverett Wilson Spring rightly styles "the new Williams. " During the twenty years of his administration he secured funds for the college to the amount of more than a million dollars. Furthermore, eight new buildings were erected, and improvements were carried out in many of the older structures. He appointed and maintained a scholarly faculty, doubling the number of instructors and adding to the staff several remarkably brilliant men. He modernized the curriculum by announcing elective courses, first for seniors and then for juniors and sophomores also, and by dropping Greek from the list of subjects required for admission; and he adopted the honor system for examinations. While he was president, the undergraduate body increased in numbers by 68 per cent. Although he was temperamentally an aristocrat, he insisted that Williams should be democratic, not a "refuge for rich men's sons. " A thorough and cultivated scholar, Carter especially emphasized the intellectual side of college life. In 1892 Williams observed its centennial with appropriate exercises, and Carter presided over a large gathering of the alumni at Williamstown. His health had never been rugged, and in 1901 he felt constrained to resign, being relieved from duty on September 1. After that date he continued to reside in Williamstown, occasionally giving a series of "interesting and thought-provoking lectures" on "Theism, " for seniors only, but going for the summer to the Adirondacks and for the winter to Florida.
He published The Life of Mark Hopkins (1892), and an edition of Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (1879), as well as numerous articles in scholarly periodicals; but he was not a fluent or a productive writer. He died of pneumonia, November 22, 1919, at Williamstown.
Franklin was the head of a language scholar organisation called the Modern Languages Association. He later became president of the Williams College in 1881, the first president of the university to also be a scholar. As president, Carter doubled the size of the faculty and completed eight buildings.
His religious views were evangelical almost to the verge of fanaticism, and his finest and most enduring influence was exerted through his chapel prayers.
He was a trustee of Phillips Academy (1891 - 1902) and president of Clarke School for the Deaf (1896 - 1919). He served as presidential elector (1896), as member of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1896 - 1900), as president of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society (1896 - 1901), and as president of the Modern Language Association (1881 - 86).
Carter was tall and slender, with flowing side whiskers. Somewhat stately in his manner, he gave the impression of being reserved if not a trifle austere, but he was actually a person of warm emotions and generous purposes. Although he was quiet and unaggressive, he was a capable executive, getting the most out of his faculty by letting them put their own theories into practise. In judging undergraduates, he was frequently deceived, discerning piety often where it did not and could not exist. His chronic ill health, accentuated by some domestic afflictions, cast a shadow over the middle years of his life, but in his old age he mellowed, grew more genial and sociable, and was transformed into "the Sage of Williamstown. "
In 1863 he married Sarah Leavenworth Kingsbury of Waterbury. With his wife, Carter spent many months traveling and studying in Europe.
His wife died in 1905, leaving four children, and three years later he married Mrs. Elizabeth Sabin Leake, widow of a retired banker.
