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About the Book
Titles about politicians relate to peopl...)
About the Book
Titles about politicians relate to people who were active in party politics, or sought office in government. These include politicians in both democratic and non-democratic countries. Some politicians that were engaged in the art or science of government, created laws or policies that governed their countries and the people who lived in them. These may be biographies or autobiographies.
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Zerah Colburn was an American schoolteacher and clergyman. He was a professor of Latin, Greek, French and Spanish languages and English Classical Literature at Norwich University fro 1835 to 1839.
Background
Zerah Colburn was the son of Abiah and Elizabeth (Hall) Colburn, was born on September 01, 1804 in Cabot, Vermont, United States. When Colburn was less than six years old, it was discovered that he could solve rapidly in his head any problem of arithmetic that was assigned to him. His father, a poor man already nearing fifty, recognized in the child’s unique ability a means of gaining a livelihood for his wife and nine children. He exhibited the prodigy throughout New England, and as far south as Richmond, and in April 1812, leaving only a small debt-incumbered farm as support for the family, set out with him for England. In London, erudition, nobility, and even royalty acclaimed the marvel of Zerah’s faculty; but Paris, “owing, ” Zerah thought, “to the native frivolity and lightness of the people” received him without enthusiasm.
Education
Colburn's schooling was spasmodic, and no more than moderately effective even in mathematics. His French residence of eighteen months, beginning July 1814, was financially disastrous, but half of it was spent under regular instruction at the Lycée Napoléon. During 1816-1819, public interest in mathematical prodigies having ceased, the boy attended Westminster School, under the patronage of an earl, a period in which he distinguished himself chiefly by his rebellion against “fagging. ” Angered because funds which he thought properly destined for himself were being diverted elsewhere, the father quarreled with the Earl of Bristol who had favored him. Soon, plagued by poverty, he urged his son to redeem their fortunes by a career on the stage. Accordingly, he studied for this profession, and was for a few months under the tuition of Charles Kemble. His first appearance, however, dissatisfied both his instructor and himself so much, that he was not accepted for the stage.
Career
At the beginning of 1820s Zerah a school-master in London, England. His father died in 1824 and soon afterward he returned to America. Here he gave his attention so earnestly to religion that to his surprise he was early pronounced “a child of grace” and received into the Congregational Church. Doctrinal questions of free-will and foreordination continued unanswered, and he could not feel spiritually at home, until, affiliating himself with the Methodists and becoming a minister, he set out on a nine years’ itinerancy in Vermont.
In 1833, he published A Memoir of Zerah Colburn Written by Himself, and in 1835, he ended his official career as a minister to become professor of languages in Norwich University. His prowess in mental arithmetic, though somewhat impaired, remained with him always.