Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T04:09:35.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“An Odd Fish”—Samuel Keimer and a Footnote to American Educational History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert T. Sidwell
Robert T. Sidwell*
Affiliation:
State University College of Education, Oswego, N.Y.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Samuel Keimer suffered the misfortune of having had his sole surviving historical portrait drawn by a caricaturist. The medium of caricature utilizes a technique of selective accentuation; one or another of the subject's features or attributes are presented so much larger than life that they totally dominate the whole and effectively submerge, or at best adumbrate, all the others. The portrait of Keimer, the preservation of which is due solely to the fame of its creator rather than its subject, was penned by a hand that had completely mastered this technique as an instrument for its own purposes. The artist in question was Benjamin Franklin, and the portrait of Samuel Keimer achieved a modicum of immortality due to its inclusion in Franklin's Autobiography.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Spring 1966 , pp. 16 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 by New York University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Sidwell, R. T., “The Almanacs of Colonial America: A Study in Non-Institutional Education ” (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 1965).Google Scholar

2. “T. S.” (Thomas Shepherd), An Almanack for … 1656 (Cambridge: Printed by Samuel Green, 1656).Google Scholar

3. Brigden, Zechariah, An Almanack of the Coelestial Motions for … 1659 (Cambridge: Samuel Green, 1659).Google Scholar

4. The first explanation of the Copernican hypothesis to appear in English as a “popular” treatment was in the Astronomica Instaurata of Vincent Wing, in 1656. Brigden followed Wing in the “Philolaick” terminology. Philolaus was the Pythagorean who was regarded in the seventeenth century as the precursor of Kepler and Copernicus. Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Philosophers, London: 1853, p. 372) says that Philolaus was the first to claim that the Earth moved in a circle.Google Scholar

5. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), III, 176.Google Scholar

6. Keimer, Samuel, A Brand pluck'd from the Burning: Exemplify'd in the Unparallel'd Case of Samuel Keimer (London: Printed and Sold by W. Boreham … 1718), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., pp. 88-89.Google Scholar

8. Bloore, Stephen, “Samuel Keimer,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LIV (1930), 264.Google Scholar

9. Fisher, Joshua F., “Some Account of the Early Poets and Poetry of Pennsylvania,” Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, II, Part II (1830), p. 62.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., p. 63.Google Scholar

11. Thomas, Isaiah, The History of Printing in America …, I (Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, VI (1874), 230).Google Scholar

12. Franklin, Benjamin, Autobiography MacDonald, ed. W. (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1908), p. 26.Google Scholar

13. Ibid. Google Scholar

14. Ibid. Google Scholar

15. Ibid., pp. 33-34.Google Scholar

16. Keimer, , op. cit., p. 104.Google Scholar

17. Aldridge, Alfred O., Benjamin Franklin, Philosopher and Man (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1965), p. 17.Google Scholar

18. This conjunction is, sad to say, not at all oxymoronic.Google Scholar

19. Taylor, Jacob, A Compleat Ephemeris for … 1726 (Philadelphia: Printed by Samuel Keimer … 1726).Google Scholar

20. Ibid. Google Scholar

21. Ibid. Google Scholar

22. Ibid. Google Scholar

23. Thomas, , op. cit., p. 231.Google Scholar

24. Tolles, Frederick B., Meeting House and Counting House (New York: The Norton Library, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1963), p. 153.Google Scholar

25. Smith, John, Short Biographical Notices of William Bradford, Reiner Johnson, Andrew Bradford, and Samuel Keimer, Early Printers in Pennsylvania (London: Edward Hicks … 1891), p. 20.Google Scholar

26. Page Smith, John Adams (2 vols; New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1962), I, 378-79.Google Scholar

27. Lennart Carlson, C., “Samuel Keimer, A Study in the Transit of English Culture to Colonial Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXI, No. 4, (October 1957) 375.Google Scholar

28. Keimer had been one of Daniel Defoe's printers in London. In March of 1718, Defoe had interceded personally with Townshend to secure Keimer's release from prison (the charge was sedition on this occasion). Keimer, however, had been immediately reincarcerated for nonpayment of debts. (John R. Moore, Daniel Defoe … (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 353; Keimer, op cit., pp. 98-99.)Google Scholar

29. Labaree, Leonard W. (ed.), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), I, January 6, 1706, to December 31, 1734, 111-12.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., p. 121.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 121, n.1.Google Scholar

32. Aldridge, , op. cit., p. 25.Google Scholar

33. Carlson, , op. cit., p. 385.Google Scholar

34. Carl, and Bridenbaugh, Jessica, Rebels and Gentlemen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 78.Google Scholar