Cornelius Conway Felton (November 6, 1807 – February 26, 1862) was an American educator. He was regent of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as professor of Greek literature and president of Harvard University.
Queer Places:
868-898 Main St, West Newbury, MA 01985
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA
Cornelius Conway Felton (November 6, 1807 – February 26, 1862) was an American educator. He was regent of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as professor of Greek literature and president of Harvard University.
Felton was born in West Newbury, Massachusetts. Felton was the brother of Samuel Morse Felton, Sr., the half-brother of John B. Felton[3] and the uncle of Samuel Morse Felton, Jr..[4] His parents married in Newbury in 1806. Essex deeds indicate that they may have bought the Main Street, West Newbury, property cattycorner from what is now Felton Lane in July 1807, just before his birth on November 6. His mother, Anna Morse, had deep Newbury roots as the daughter of David Morse and Abigail Bailey. His father did not, being from Marblehead with family located on Cape Ann and points south. In West Newbury, Cornelius Felton, Sr., was reportedly a chaise-maker, building or assembling carts and carriages. Sometime before 1815, he moved the family south, becoming a toll-keeper in Chelsea. Deserving of note are his siblings Samuel Morse Felton, a civil engineer who as President of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad helped save President Lincoln and his train from being blown up in an assassination attempt during an inaugural event, and Lydia Brewster Felton, who taught at a Boston women’s school.
Felton put himself through Harvard while working as a teacher. He graduated from Harvard University in 1827, having taught school in the winter vacations of his sophomore and junior years. During his undergraduate years, he was also a member of the Hasty Pudding.
After teaching in the Livingstone High School of Geneseo, New York, for two years, he became tutor at Harvard in 1829, university professor of Greek in 1832, and Eliot Professor of Greek Literature in 1834.[1] In 1860 he succeeded James Walker as president of Harvard, which position he held until his death. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1854.[2] Felton edited many classical texts. His annotations on Wolf's text of the Iliad (1833) are especially valuable. Greece, Ancient and Modern (2 vols., 1867), forty-nine lectures before the Lowell Institute, is scholarly, able and suggestive of the author's personality. Among his miscellaneous publications are the American edition of Sir William Smith's History of Greece (1855); translations of Menzel's German Literature (1840), of Munk's Metres of the Greeks and Romans (1844), and of Guyot's Earth and Man (1849); and Familiar Letters from Europe (1865).
He died of "disease of the heart" while en route to a Smithsonian meeting in Washington.[5] He died at the home of his brother in Chester, Pennsylvania.[1]
My published books:
