Background
John Curtis Burroughs was born on December 2, 1817 in Stamford, Delaware County, New York.
John Curtis Burroughs was born on December 2, 1817 in Stamford, Delaware County, New York.
John entered Yale at twenty-two and graduated three years later (1842). He was a divinity student at Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution until 1846.
After a year as a Baptist clergyman in the little town of Waterford, New York, and five years in a pulpit in West Troy. It was here that his career of distinction in education took definite form. The community itself was swiftly changing and expanding, and Burroughs took active interest in its educational problems.
Three years after his arrival, he was offered the presidency of Shurtleff College, which he declined. But in the following year he gave up his pastorate to engage in the movement which resulted, largely through his own tireless industry, in the establishment of the (old) University of Chicago. Stephen A. Douglas had given impetus to the undertaking in 1855 by his gift of a ten-acre tract.
For the next four years he was its chancellor. Financial difficulties forced the institution to close its doors in 1886, and the buildings were torn down.
Burroughs, who lived in the immediate neighborhood, never thereafter allowed himself to look at the spot where they had stood.
He served on the Chicago Board of Education, with special supervision over the high schools, from 1880 to 1883, when he was made assistant superintendent of schools, a position he held until his death.
John Burroughs left New York state for the rapidly growing city of Chicago (1852), to become pastor of the First Baptist church.
John Curtis Burroughs was married to Elvira S. Fields of New Haven 1843.