John Orne was born on April 29, 1834, in Newburyport, Massachussets, the son of John and Sarah Ingalls (Morse) Orne. The Orne family was well known and respected in Newburyport, and the name appears more than once in the early town records.
John Orne, after completing the regular course in the Newburyport high school, studied by himself and was able to enter the sophomore class at Amherst College in 1852. He graduated there in 1855 with the degree of A. B. , and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Orne received the degree of Ph. D. from Amherst College in 1896, "for eminent attainments in the Arabic language and literature. "
After college John Orne chose the teaching profession and taught with success in a number of secondary schools, chiefly in Newburyport, Lawrence, and Salem, from 1856 until 1867. In this year also he accepted the appointment as sub-master and teacher of physics in the Cambridge High School; and at this post he remained for about twenty years, after which he retired from teaching.
While in Cambridge, Orne became interested in the Semitic languages. Under the guidance of Crawford H. Toy, who went to Harvard as Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages in 1880, he began the study of Arabic, and was introduced by him to the most important working tools of research in this field. He also made considerable progress in Hebrew and was a member of the Harvard Biblical Club. The most of his spare time, however, he devoted to Arabic and Mohammedan studies, pursuing them with remarkable energy and enthusiasm, gradually collecting a considerable library of texts and translations, and ultimately reaching a degree of proficiency in Arabic rarely attained by one who is mainly self-taught.
In 1889 he was made curator of the Arabic manuscripts in the Semitic Museum of Harvard University, and he held this office during the remainder of his life. He was a corporate member of the American Oriental Society for twenty-one years, having joined in 1890. He contributed to the Proceedings of the society in 1892 two papers which gave evidence of his scholarship: the one dealing with an important medical treatise which he analyzed and in part translated from one of the manuscripts in the Harvard collection; the other describing, with specimen translations, a highly interesting collection of Arabic mortuary tablets from Egypt, dated in the ninth century A. D. , acquired for the Harvard Semitic Museum in 1890.
John Orne died on November 29, 1911.
John Orne was curator of the Arabic manuscripts in the Semitic Museum of Harvard University. Orne's major literary works were: the one dealing with an important medical treatise which he analyzed and in part translated from one of the manuscripts in the Harvard collection; the other describing a highly interesting collection of Arabic mortuary tablets from Egypt, dated in the ninth century A. D.
John Orne was a member of the Harvard Biblical Club and a corporate member of the American Oriental Society.
On November 28, 1867, John married Louisa Fisk, daughter of Richard Lindsay, of Salem. They had no children.
