Background
Horace Manley Lane was born at Readfield, Maine, the son of Rufus King Lane by his second wife Electa (Davis) Lane, both of New England stock.
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Horace Manley Lane
Edit ProfileEducation
He studied medicine.
Career
At nineteen Lane went to Brazil to take a commercial position. While he was prospering in business he became interested in Christian missions and education, and finally went into teaching. The understanding of the people and the mastery of their language gained in these years qualified him for his later achievements among Brazilians. He returned to the United States and, settling in Missouri, entered upon the life of a physician.
A letter from a Presbyterian missionary in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1886, contained the request that he take charge of a school there. Though he had a large practice, and his wife's death had just left him with eight children to care for, he immediately went to São Paulo with his family, under appointment from the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions.
In his Escola Americana he adapted the essential features of American school practice to Brazilian conditions and showed a unique gift for educational method. This school was the first coeducational institution in the country, the first to receive students without distinction of race or color, and the first to provide manual training. Lane was inexhaustibly energetic and ceaselessly active. He had a rare faculty for winning friends, unusual administrative ability, and "a wizard's mastery of school finance in a Latin land. "
As the school developed it produced a demand for higher education, and in 1891 an independent nonsectarian institution named Mackenzie College was organized. Mackenzie graduates became prominent in engineering, business, public-school teaching, and intellectual leadership. Students were sent for advanced training to the United States, for Lane had a vision of Pan-American unity of spirit. They felt his friendliness and to many he communicated his spirit. They were "scattered" he said, "throughout the land to aid in its regeneration. " The wholesome religious influence of the college was a recognized power in Brazilian life. To this life he contributed in other ways than through his students. His methods and textbooks were the model for public schools throughout the nation, and he took a large part in the organization of an independent Brazilian Presbyterian Church. In the physical weakness of his last years he held to his work with characteristic resolution and fidelity, and died at his post after a short illness.
Achievements
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His character and services won the confidence of the leading men of São Paulo and he was undoubtedly the most influential foreigner and educator in Brazil. For twenty-one years Lane presided over the college and the school, and created one of the most valuable educational forces in South America. During his presidency more than fifteen thousand students entered the college and the school. He was also the founder of Mackenzie College and Brazilian Presbyterian Church.
Connections
In 1863 Lane married Ellen Williams.
