SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER

Background

Sydney George Fisher was the only child of Elizabeth (Ingersoll) and Sidney George Fisher. He was descended on his father’s side from John Fisher who accompanied William Penn to America on his first voyage, and on his mother’s side from Jared Ingersoll, a distinguished lawyer who was judge of vice-admiralty for the middle colonies at the outbreak of the Revolution.

His father was a Philadelphia lawyer who gave much of his time and efforts to public affairs and was especially active with his pen during the period of the slavery crisis and the Civil War. Sydney’s boyhood was largely spent at his father’s country home, now a part of residential Philadelphia near Eighth and Erie avenues; there he acquired along the creek that intense love of nature and outdoor life which remained a passion with him, in spite of his absorption later in literary labors.

Education

He was prepared for college at St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hamshire, and entered Trinity College at Hartford, from which he received his B. A. degree in 1879.

From Trinity College he entered Plarvard as a law student and remained there for two years.

Career

In 1883 he was admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania and began the practise of law. He will be remembered chiefly for his historical writings, which began in 1896 with the publication of The Making of Pennsylvania, followed the next year by his Pennsylvania, Colony and Commonwealth and The Evolution of the Constitution, the latter of which went through three editions; in 1898 there appeared his Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times in two volumes, which also was published in three editions; and in 1899 The True Benjamin Franklin which went into seven editions.

In 1900 appeared The True William Penn that ran into four editions; in 1902, The American Revolution and the Boer War: An Open Letter to C. F. Adams which held up to scorn the latter’s opposition to a continuance of the struggle on the part of the Boers; also in this year, The True Story of the American Revolution, with five editions to its credit.

This history of the Revolution, after being reshaped, rewritten, expanded, and very greatly improved, appeared in 1908 in two volumes, under title The Struggle for American Independence.

In 1909 Fisher wrote an article for the Nation entitled “The South and the Negro”; in 1911 he published The True Daniel Webster', and in 1912 he wrote “The Legendary and Myth-making Process in Histories of the American Revolution, ” which was first read before the American Philosophical Society and then published in its Proceedings (vol. LI, no. 204, April-June 1912).

In 1917 came his American Education, and finally in 1919 The Quaker Colonies. A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware ( Chronicles of America Series). His Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth is sketchy, impressionistic, and not always accurate (American Historical Review, April 1897); but The Evolution of the Constitution is a more carefully constructed piece of work, collating for the first time all the provisions of the colonial charters and the early state constitutions relating to the same subjects (Ibid. , October 1897).

The True History of the American Revolution put in high light “certain facts about the Revolution upon which the best historians and teachers of history have been agreed for twenty years” (Ibid. , July 1903). It is not a well-balanced account of that epoch but it did have the merit of being the first popular work which challenged the orthodox interpretation.

His first published work was Church Colleges; Their History, Position and Importance with Some Account of the Church Schools, which appeared in 1895 and was concerned with a survey of Episcopalian educational institutions in the United States.

As a lover of the out-of-doors he spent many winters in Florida, much of the time in a shanty-boat on the Kissimmee River; and in Pennsylvania he finally took up his residence at Essington on the Delaware some miles below Philadelphia and close to the Corinthian Yacht Club of which he was an enthusiastic member.

It was at Essington that he died in 1927.

Achievements

• For many years previous to his death he served as the president of the board of trustees of his alma mater, Trinity College, and he was also a trustee of the Institution for the Education of the Blind and of the Library Company of Philadelphia. His volume on American Education came out of his endeavor to grapple with certain educational problems in connection with his service of these boards.

Works

More photos

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  • The Trial of the Constitution 1862

    (Originally published in 1862. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • Kanzas and the Constitution

    (Originally published in 1856. 16 pages. This volume is pr...)

  • The Law of the Territories 1859

    (Originally published in 1859. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • The Laws of Race, As Connected With Slavery (Classic Reprint)

    (Black spirits and. -vliitf .R ed. spirits and gra;; A lin...)

  • book

Views

He reached the high point in his role of historian in The Struggle for American Independence, with his insistence on the thesis that the American design from the beginning of the struggle was independence as the result of certain political ideas and material interests (Ibid. , October 1908).

Membership

He was a member of the Corinthian Yacht Club.

Interests

• In addition to his activities as a lawyer and historian Fisher was deeply interested in educational questions.

Connections

He was never married; his attachment to his own family, however, led him to retain possession of the ancestral home, Mount Harmon, on the Sassafras River near Chesapeake Bay.

Father:

Sidney George Fisher

Mother:

Elizabeth (Ingersoll)