Samuel Stillman Greene

Background

Samuel Stillman Greene, the eighth of eleven children of Ebenezer and Sybil (Hitchcock) Greene, was born and passed his boyhood on his father’s farm in Belchertown, Massachusetts. He was descended from Thomas Green, who came to America about 1635 and in 1651 was a resident of Malden, Massachusetts.

Samuel’s parents, educated in Leicester Academy, a school of high rank in Massachusetts, gave their children an endowment of rugged health and mental energy. The household had, in Samuel’s childhood, a touch of pedagogical atmosphere. His father, known as “Master” Greene, taught the district school, and an older brother, Rev. John Greene, kept a private school.

Education

At an early age Samuel showed a fondness for study, and mastered without aid, according to family tradition, a Latin grammar, Pike’s Arithmetic, and a geometry.

He attended brief terms of district school and spent one winter under his brother’s instruction. At nineteen he was employed to teach a district school in his native town. For his services he was “boarded ’round” and the sum of ten dollars a month was paid to his father, because Samuel was under age.

He entered Brown University in 1833, paying his expenses by teaching school, and was graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1837, valedictorian of his class.

Career

After graduation he taught for three years in Worcester Academy, and in 1840 he was appointed superintendent of public schools in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first position of its kind in the state.

From 1842 to 1849 he taught in the public schools in Boston, first in the English High School, and for five years as master of the Phillips Grammar School. In 1849 he assumed the duties of another pioneer post as agent of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, the first office of the kind in the United States. He was a contemporary and associate of Horace Mann. In 1851 he became superintendent of schools of Providence, Rhode Island, and at the same time held the position of professor of didactics at Brown University. In 1852, with others, he opened a private normal school in Providence, which in 1853 was given support by the city and in 1834 taken over by the state, as the Rhode Island Normal School, now Rhode Island College of Education. Greene was regarded as the founder of this institution.

In 1855 he was appointed professor of mathematics and civil engineering at Brown University, in 1864 transferred to the chair of natural philosophy and astronomy, and in 1875 transferred again, to the chair of mathematics and astronomy. Although identified with Brown University for more than thirty years, he continued to be actively interested in the problems of elementary education.

He was president of the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, 1856-60, president of the National Teachers’ Association, 1864-65, and president of the American Institute of Instruction, 1869-70.

He died in his seventy-third year.

Achievements

• His progressive ideas regarding teaching were embodied in text-books which made his name a household word. Published, for the most part, between 1848 and 1878, they sold at an average rate of 50, 000 copies a year. Among the best known were: Greene’s Analysis: A Treatise on the Structure of the English Language, revised and enlarged as An Analysis of the English Language. Greene’s First Lessons in Grammar; The Elements of English Grammar, an abridgment of which was published with the title: Greene’s Introduction: An Introduction to the Study of English Grammar in 1856; A Grammar of the English Language; and An Introduction to the Study of English Grammar. He also prepared and published, in 1858, A Genealogical Sketch of the Descendants of Thomas Green of Malden, Massachusetts.

Works

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  • Greene's Inroduction. An Introduction to the Study of English Grammar

    ( About the Book Study Guides are books can be used by st...)

  • The Elements of English Grammar: So Arranged As to Combine the Analytical and Synthetical Methods : With an Introduction for Beginners, and Various ... Classification and Correction of

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • An introduction to the study of English grammar

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A genealogical sketch of the descendants of Thomas Green of Malden, Mass

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Thought and Expression: The Child's First Book in Written Language

    (Thought and Expression - The Child's First Book in Writte...)

  • A Grammar of the English (Classic Reprint)

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  • Greene's Analysis: A Treatise on the Structure of the English Language; Or the Analysis and Classification of Sentences and Their Component Parts With ... to the Use of Schools (Classic Reprint)

    (The following treatise contains, as its title indicates, ...)

  • The Elements of English Grammar

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • A treatise on the structure of the English language ; or, The analysis and classification of sentences and their component parts: with illustrations and exercises adapted to the use of schools

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

Connections

In August 29, 1839, he was married to Edna Amelia Bartlett of Worcester. His wife had died in 1851, and on August 10, 1854, he married Mary Adeline Bailey of Salem, Massachusetts.

Father:

Ebenezer Greene

Mother:

Sybil (Hitchcock) Greene

Spouse:

Mary Adeline Bailey

Spouse:

Edna Amelia Bartlett