Eben Sperry was born on December 23, 1819 in Bedford, Massachussets, United States, the youngest son of the Rev. Samuel and Abigail (French) Stearns. He was descended from a long line of clergymen and teachers, the original ancestor in America having been Isaac Stearns, who came from England and settled in Watertown, Massachussets, in 1630.
He was graduated from the Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachussets, in 1837, and received the B. A. degree from Harvard in 1841. He taught in a school for young women at Ipswich, Massachussets, and at Portland, Maine, before receiving the M. A. degree from Harvard in 1846.
He also received a Doctor of Divinity and a Doctor of Laws from other universities.
After studies Stearns organized and acted as principal of the Newburyport, Massachussets, Female High School until 1849, when he succeeded Cyrus Peirce as principal of the normal school at West Newton. He remained as principal when the school, the first of its kind in the United States, was moved to Framingham in 1853.
Two years later he was elected principal of the Albany (New York) Female Academy, where he remained until he was appointed the first president of the Robinson Female Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1869. A strict disciplinarian, he often quoted to students and visitors that "order is heaven's first law. " In addition to the usual normal and classical studies, he inaugurated and taught personally a class in household science.
In September 1875 he was selected by officials of the Peabody Fund as first president of the new State Normal School at Nashville, Tennessee, and a few months later he was appointed, by the board of trust, Chancellor of the University of Nashville. At his inauguration the school had thirteen pupils; when he died it had over two hundred.
At the beginning any prospective teacher, regardless of previous training, could enter the school if he could pass an elementary examination, but he soon raised that standard so that high school graduates only were admitted. Stearns was an ardent missionary of popular education, and emphasized in many speeches that free government was based on the intelligence of its people.
He rapidly prepared teachers to meet the new demand in the South and kept in close touch, through correspondence and occasional tours, with Southern schools and county superintendents of education, all of his work being accomplished under the close supervision of the Peabody Fund. He also made a vigorous effort to beautify Southern colleges, and tree-planting became a yearly rite at Nashville.
He prevented the removal of the State Normal College, as it came to be known in 1878, to Georgia in 1880, and secured from a reluctant legislature the first grant of aid to the state normal school. A colorless but efficient administrator, Stearns left small imprint of his own personality on the school. The first two years he taught didactics; after that he was concerned only with administrative problems. In that field he was highly successful, leaving the school in good financial condition.
He died in 1887.
Eben Sperry Stearns was the first president of the Robinson Female Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire. He also served as the President of Framingham State University from 1849 to 1855, and as the Chancellor of the University of Nashville and President Peabody Normal School. Under his leadership, the school attendance grew from 13 to 179 students.
(Excerpt from Historical Sketch of the Normal College: At ...)
He was married to Ellen Augusta Kuhn, of Boston, on August 27, 1854; she died in 1873. He was again married in 1880 to Betty Irwin, of Marianna, Florida.
Their only child died in infancy, but his widow and three children of his first wife survived him.
