Alfred Holbrook 1816 - 1909 (Professor & President of college) - Lebanon, OH

PROF. ALFRED HOLBROOK, President of the National Normal University, Lebanon, Ohio; was born in Derby, Conn., Feb. 17, 1816; he was the elder of two sons, the only children of Josiah Holbrook, celebrated as the founder of Teachers’ Institutes, the American Institute of Instruction and the lyceum or lecture system of popular instruction. He lost his mother when three years of age, but was tenderly cared for by several aunts, who faithfully laid a sturdy Christian foundation to his character; his school-days were almost entirely during his first twelve years; her read a chapter from the Bible when 3 years of age, his father giving to the aunt who was his instructor a promised silk dress for teaching him this feat. When about 11 years of age, he went to school to Elizur Wright, at Groton, Mass., where he boarded with the distinguished John Todd, than a Congregational minister of that place. At the age of 13, he went to Boston, where he was employed a year and a half in his father’s manufactory of school apparatus; he was here an indefatigable workman and a most zealous student, his studies being directed by his father. For a watch, promised by his father, if he should accomplish the task, he read Day’s algebra through in three months, very thoroughly, working all the examples; but his work and his study broke his health, and he returned to his native village, where he lived until 17 years of age, when he entered upon his first experience as a teacher, in Monroe, Conn. A year later, he went to New York and engaged for some eighteen months in the manufacture of surveyors’ instruments, he having determined to become an engineer. One of the few requests his father ever denied him was the one to go to Yale College, of which his father was a graduate. The reason assigned was the bad methods and the bad morals