Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour

Background

Hoshour was born in Heidelburg township, York County, Pa. , in 1803. Left fatherless at fourteen, the eldest of six children, Samuel was hired out to neighboring farmers as a helper.

Education

He received about three months' schooling each year. At the age of sixteen was appointed teacher of the local school. Aspiring to become a German Lutheran minister, in 1822 he entered the academy at York where he remained until 1824, and then studied for two years more at Newmarket, Shenandoah County, Va. , under Dr. Samuel S. Schmucker.

Career

After serving as principal of New Market Academy for a year, in the spring of 1828 he became pastor of the newly formed Lutheran parish at Smithsburg, Washington County, Md. , having been ordained October 23, 1827. In 1831 he removed to Hagerstown where he taught in a private school for a time but soon accepted a call to St. John's Lutheran Church of that place. While here he embraced the views of the Disciples of Christ, and in 1835 his name was expunged from the rolls of the Synod.

Having sacrificed his professional prospects and lost many of his friends by being true to his convictions, he decided to make a new start in the West. Accordingly, in September 1835, he and a brother-in-law, putting their families into two covered wagons and a carriage, slowly made their way through the mountains and across Ohio to Indiana, where they settled at Centreville, Wayne County. Although he preached almost every Sunday for years, the remainder of his long life was devoted chiefly to education.

His first work was in connection with private schools, and in the annals of the state he is numbered among a little group of pioneer teachers who brought these schools to such a degree of efficiency as to set a standard for the whole educational system. In the spring of 1836 he became principal of the Wayne County Seminary. This school was then the center of learning for much of eastern Indiana. Among his pupils were Oliver P. Morton and Lew Wallace. In 1839 he was asked to establish a similar institution in Cambridge City, and in November of that year he opened Cambridge Seminary, which he conducted successfully until 1846, when ill health compelled him to seek less exacting duties.

For the next five or six years he was principally engaged in giving special German courses in the colleges and cities of the West. Partly for the benefit of his health, in 1851 he bought a farm in Wayne County, which he superintended until 1858 when he was elected president of North Western Christian University (now Butler University), Indianapolis, the institution, although opened in 1855, having had no head previously. In 1861 he resigned, but remained as professor of languages for fourteen years more. From May 15 to November 25, 1862, he was also state superintendent of public instruction. In 1875, to use his own figure, the faculty tree was shaken, and having attained a ripe age, he fell off.

The closing years of his life were spent in Indianapolis, where he gave private lessons in German. An Autobiography published in 1884, with an introduction by Isaac Errett and an appendix by Dr. Ryland T. Brown, contains several of his addresses. He was also the author of Letters to Esq. Pedant in the East by Lorenzo Altisonant, an Emigrant to the West (1844), a work intended to teach the meaning of unusual words on the principle of association of ideas. It went through several editions.

Achievements

• Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour is remembered as a Lutheran minister.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Letters To Squire Pedant, In The East (1856)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Connections

On February 7, 1826, he married Lucinda, daughter of Jacob Savage.

Spouse:

Lucinda

References

• Sketches of Our Pioneers (Classic Reprint)
• Biographical Sketches of the Superintendents of Public Instruction of the State of Indiana (Classic Reprint)