Joseph Baldwin was born on October 31, 1827 in Newcastle, Pennsylvania of Quaker and Scotch-Irish descent, the son of Joseph and Isabel (Cairns) Baldwin. In early childhood he formed the habit of reading books of solid worth. Even when he was plowing upon his father's farm, a useful book was his companion, and from it he would occasionally read a paragraph or two, upon which he would meditate after he resumed his toil.
After attending a district school, he was fitted for college at Bartlett Academy in his home town. Desirous of preparing himself for the ministry in the Christian Church, he spent four years in Bethany College, receiving the B. A. degree in 1852.
With the advice and consent of his wife, who believed he was a born teacher, he decided to adopt teaching as his life-work. In the fall of 1852 he removed to Platte City, Missouri and conducted an academy for a year, directing in Savannah, Missouri, a boarding school for girls the ensuing three years. In 1856 he assisted in founding the Missouri State Teachers' Association, of which he was chosen vice-president. Returning to Pennsylvania for a year, he was a student in the Millersville Normal School and for a short time was principal of the Lawrence County Normal School. Then, for ten years, he was in Indiana, conducting private normal schools for nine years, and serving in the Union army one year. Being urged by friends in Missouri to return to that state, he founded in 1867 a private normal school in Kirksville. This institution became a state normal in 1870, Baldwin remaining as principal until his resignation eleven years later.
For a portion of the summer of 1881 he was employed by the General Agent of the Peabody Fund to deliver lectures to teachers' institutes in Texas. One result of this engagement was his election to the principalship of the Sam Houston Normal Institute, located in Huntsville, Texas. Here he served a decade. In 1891 the regents of the University of Texas selected him as the first professor of pedagogy. He was the author of four professional books, three of which were published in the International Education Series, edited by William T. Harris. The titles, together with the respective dates of publication, are as follows: The Art of School Management (1881), Elementary Psychology and Education (1887), Psychology Applied to the Art of Teaching (1892), and School Management and School Methods (1897).
He was married to Ella Sophronia Fluhart of Ohio. Baldwin had nine children: Icilius Victor Baldwin (1853), Anabel B. Baldwin Sublette (1856), Olivia Artemesia Baldwin (1858), Coramantha M. Baldwin Haston (1860), Joseph Rolla Baldwin (1863), Rachel Irene Baldwin (1865) Harold Baldwin (1868), Norma Mable Baldwin (1870), and Zoe Lenore Baldwin Sublette (1874).
