Background
William Verbeck was born in Nagasaki, Japan. He was the son of the Rev. Guido Herman Fridolin Verbeck and Maria (Manion).
William Verbeck was born in Nagasaki, Japan. He was the son of the Rev. Guido Herman Fridolin Verbeck and Maria (Manion).
Until Verbeck was seventeen, except for a brief visit to America, he lived in the Orient, receiving his early education from his father. Later, he attended the high school in Oakland, California, and the California Military Academy.
In October 1885, he joined the faculty of the Peekskill Military Academy, Peekskill, New York.
Verbeck enlisted in the California National Guard, in which he rose to the rank of major. For a time he was a commandant at St. Matthews Hall, San Mateo, California. In June 1885, however, he went to New York to market certain inventions which he had perfected, but litigation soon exhausted his resources. He became co-principal at Cayuga Lake Military Academy, Aurora, New York. His work at Aurora attacted the attention of the Rt. Rev. Frederick D. Huntington, Bishop of Central New York, and two years later Verbeck became head of St. Johns School, Manlius, New York, now the Manlius School, a diocesan preparatory school founded in 1869.
Only twelve students greeted him in the fall of 1888, but, within a year, the number had increased to sixty, and within five years, to double that number. He reorganized the institution, combining the stereotyped military system with English public school methods, following somewhat, particularly with respect to self-government, the methods employed by Henry A. Coit of St. Paul's School. Discarding both the autocratic English perfect system and cold, austere military authority, he secured his ends by developing esprit de corps and school loyalty. Successful in an extraordinary degree, notwithstanding financial difficulties and fires that all but destroyed the plant, he built up a school which at the time of his death numbered about three hundred boys.
His ability was widely recognized. He was elected a member of the National Institute of Social Sciences in 1914, was president of the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States, 1918-20, and was created a Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy in 1926. In New York, also, he served as an officer of the National Guard, and in June 1910, Gov. Charles E. Hughes appointed him adjutant-general. In the federalization of the National Guards of the states thereafter undertaken by the government, it became necessary to reorganize the New York troops into a modern division. Verbeck performed the duty with vigor and ability. His appointment expired December 31, 1912, and he retired from the Guard with the rank of brigadier-general.
A pioneer in the scout movement, Verbeck was one of the first three national scout commissioners of the Boy Scouts of America, 1910-11, a member of the National Council, 1911-16 and, except for a brief interval, an honorary member until his death. Verbeck was endowed with no little mechanical ingenuity, and between September 25, 1883, and June 5, 1917, he was granted six patents; the most of these covered photographic camera mechanisms, and included a folding stereoscope and a panoramic photographic apparatus.
a member of the National Institute of Social Sciences
Verbeck was a capable writer and a ready speaker. Personally magnetic, he had great appeal, especially for boys. He participated in field and track sports, was an expert fencer and swordsman in French and Japanese styles, and was an adept in oriental sword tricks.
He was a good horseman, an expert marksman, and an inspiring drill master. His funeral was held in a Japanese garden of his own creation at the school, and he was buried on the site of a proposed new chapel under the inscription: "He rests here where he lived, among the boys he loved. "
On July 28, 1886, Verbeck married Katharine Jordan of San Mateo. They had three sons.
