Samuel Harvey Taylor

Background

He was born in 1807 at Londonderry, New Hampshire, the son of Captain James Taylor and Persis (Hemphill) Taylor.

Education

At fourteen he was largely responsible for the conduct of two extensive farms, and he seemed destined for a life of hard manual labor until a fall weakened his physique and made him decide to follow an intellectual life. Entering Pinkerton Academy in his native town, he prepared himself in two years to enter the sophomore class at Dartmouth, whence he graduated with honors in 1832. For the next five years he studied at the Andover Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1837, taught at Phillips Academy, Andover, and at Dartmouth, and occupied his Sundays with preaching.

Career

In 1837he became the sixth principal of Phillips Academy, a position he held for nearly thirty-four years. His strong personality left its stamp enduringly upon the school. His word was law, his position that of an autocrat to whose will even the trustees deferred. In the classroom, where at times Taylor taught as many as seven different subjects, his stern and domineering manner made him the terror of shy and sensitive boys, but those who had the strength to stand up under his merciless questioning, his emphasis upon absolute accuracy of memory in the smallest detail, learned the delight and the value of thorough scholarship. Taylor was not an innovator, and the curriculum of Latin, Greek, and mathematics he devised remained unchanged throughout his long administration despite the altered entrance requirements of the colleges.

Between 1843 and 1870 he published five textbooks exemplifying his theories: Guide for Writing Latin (1843), from the German of J. P. Krebs; Grammar of the Greek Language (1844) and An Elementary Grammar of the Greek Language (1846), both from the German of Raphael Kühner; Method of Classical Study (1861); and Classical Study; Its Value (1870). While they were models of accuracy, these showed little breadth of vision or literary appreciation. For many years, 1852-71, he was an editor of Bibliotheca Sacra. The spiritual health of his pupils was always a matter of vital import to Taylor. In addition to frequent church services and prayer meetings, he fostered with what to many would seem mistaken zeal the hysterical revivals common in Andover at the time, in which youngsters still in their teens were "converted. "

On the stormy morning of January 29, 1871, while hastening to meet his Sunday Bible class, he fell dead in the entry of the Academy building.

Achievements

• Under his guidance Phillips Academy prospered, its numbers more than doubled, and its standards of scholarship and conduct improved until it reached into the far West and South and even to foreign countries for its students.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An Elementary Grammar of the Greek Language: With Exercises and Vocabularies (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from An Elementary Grammar of the Greek Language:...)

  • Classical Study

    (Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)

Religion

In both his virtues and his faults he was representative of that Puritan New England where Phillips Academy was founded. His sternness, his accuracy, his dislike of frivolity and hatred of evil, his confidence in religious conversion, his absolute trust in his own infallibility were all qualities of the old, strict Puritan code which has passed away.

Connections

On December 8, 1837, he married Caroline Persis Parker.

Father:

Captain James Taylor

Mother:

Persis (Hemphill) Taylor

Spouse:

Caroline Persis Parker

References

• A memorial of Samuel Harvey Taylor