Background
David Perkins Page was born on July 4, 1810 in Epping, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. His father was a well-to-do farmer.
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David Perkins Page was born on July 4, 1810 in Epping, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. His father was a well-to-do farmer.
David's father refused for years to allow his son to leave the farm to attend an academy. Finally, when David was sixteen, his entreaties prevailed and for a few months he attended Hampton Academy in New Hampshire.
After a few more months at the academy, David Perkins Page taught successively in a district school in Epping for a winter and then in Newbury, Massachussets. By this time he had determined to make teaching his profession and at the age of nineteen opened a private school in Newburyport. He began with five pupils but before the end of the term there were more applicants than he could accommodate. Two years later, in 1831, he was appointed associate principal of the Newburyport High School, in charge of the English department. In this position he remained for twelve years. During the winter of 1843 the legislature of the state of New York adopted the normal school system then in operation in Massachusetts and made an appropriation to establish a normal school in Albany in 1844. Opposition was determined and unscrupulous, and the success of the plan depended largely upon the choice of the principal.
On the recommendation of Horace Mann and other eminent educators in Massachusetts members of the executive committee entered into correspondence with Page and he was appointed to the position. In Albany he found chaos. The rooms were unfinished; there was no apparatus, and nothing was ready for the opening session. By his tact and energy he was able to overcome the obstacles to progress and soon he had won favor. For three years he gave himself no rest. During the vacations he visited the different parts of the state, attended teachers' institutes, and lectured day after day. Everywhere he removed prejudice, won friends, and attracted pupils to the school. Opposition had died down.
By 1847 the school was no longer an experiment, but to achieve this success Page had undermined his own strength. After an illness of a few days he died from pneumonia on January 1, 1848. Page possessed a singular aptitude for teaching. His intense fondness for study had led him to acquire a good knowledge of Latin and a fair amount of Greek. He was an excellent mathematician and had rather more than an ordinary acquaintance with chemistry and the other natural sciences in addition to a thorough knowledge of history and literature. He studied the natures and capacities of his students and won from them a respect which insured a high degree of order and harmony in his school. He was liked as a teacher and his students attended his lectures with interest. Before he left Newburyport he had delivered several addresses before the Essex County Teachers' Association, which Horace Mann praised most highly. Of his lecture, "The Mutual Duties of Parents and Teachers, " six thousand copies, a large number for those days, were printed and distributed among the teachers of Massachusetts.
His one published book, The Theory and Practice of Teaching, or the Motives and Methods of Good School-Keeping, was issued in 1847, the year before his death. It passed through many editions and was considered an invaluable guide for the inexperienced teacher. He also prepared a "Normal Chart of Elementary Sounds" for class-room use. The best edition of his work on teaching is that issued in 1885 by William H. Payne.
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David Perkins Page's contemporaries have described him as a man of great personal charm.
On December 16, 1832 Page was married to Susan Maria Lunt.