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HASKELL, Thomas Nelson, educator, was born in Mina,Chautauqua Co NY, Jan. 20, 1826; son of Capt. George and Eliza (Knapp) Haskell; and grandson of Roger and Edith (Nelson) Haskell and of Alexander and Mary Knapp. His ancestor, Roger Haskell, emigrated from Wales about 1720. Capt. George Haskell removed from Middleborough, Mass., to Middlebury, Vt., and from New England to the Chautauqua Lakes, NY., and thence to Trumbull county, Ohio. Thomas taught school in 1842 at Warren, Ohio, and subsequently held several of the first teachers' institutes assembled in the state. He was principal of Wayne academy and of Sandusky high school, and was tutor at Oberlin college and at Miami university. At the latter he was a student on the Trumbull County scholarship and was graduated A.M. in 1851. He was graduated from the Union theological seminary, N.Y., in 1854, having spent the middle year of his theological course at Andover. He was pastor of a Presbyterian church at Washington, D.C., 1854-58, and was opposed to the secession of the synod of Virginia which met in Washington in 1857, to form a Southern proslavery assembly. He was a Congregational and Presbyterian pastor in Boston, Mass., 1858-66; was professor of logic, rhetoric, literature and æsthetics in the University of Wisconsin and conducted its female college, lecturing on ethics and evidences of Christianity. He was pastor of the New England church at Aurora, Ill., 1868-73, and was elected president of the Congregational association and trustee of Wheaton college. Assisted by his brother-in-law, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts, he founded the first college in the Rocky mountain region at Colorado Springs in 1874, and was its chief representative and correspondent. He was chaplain of the Colorado senate, custodian of the state library, and did much to bring the territory into the Union as "The Centennial State." He was married in 1855 to Annie, youngest daughter of Justin EDWARDS, president of Andover theological seminary. The honorary degree of L.H.D. was conferred on him by Miami university in 1896. He is the author of: Volume of Sermons on Human and Divine Governments (1858); Soldier's Mission (1861); Life of Sir Henry Havelock (1861); Echoes of Inspired Ages (1874); Civil Ethics in the United States (1876); Domestic and Occasional Poems at Home and Abroad (1889); Young Konkaput, the King of Utes (1889); Women of the Bible (1892); Wives of our Presidents (1892) and A Dark Secret (1896); besides articles on civil and ethical subjects, including A Review of Redpath's Memories of Jefferson Davis.
Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans:
Thomas Nelson Haskell 1826-
...Biography