Harriet Newell Haskell

Harriet Newell Haskell

Harriet Newell Haskell (14 January 1835 - 1907) was an American educator and administrator from the U.S. state of Maine. She taught from 1855 to 1860 in Waldoboro, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. From 1860 to 1868, she was a teacher and principal at Castleton Collegiate Seminary, Vermont. Thereafter, for 39 years, she served as principal at Monticello Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois. She earned a Litt.d. in 1904 from Mount Holyoke College.[1]

Early years and education

Harriet Newell Haskell was born in Waldoboro, Maine, 14 January 1835. Her father was Bela B. Haskell, a banker and shipbuilder, and a citizen of Lincoln County, Maine. He served two terms in the Maine Legislature and was collector of customs of his district under President Zachary Taylor.[2]

Haskell was educated in Castleton Collegiate Seminary, Vermont, and Mount Holyoke Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College), Massachusetts, from which school she was graduated with honor in 1855.[2]

Career

Her first experience in teaching was in Boston, in the Franklin school. Afterwards, she was principal of the high school in her own town, and later in Castleton Collegiate School. It was while in that school the Rev. Truman Marcellus Post, D. D., president of the board of trustees of Monticello Seminary wrote to a friend in Maine, asking him if he could recommend to him a woman to take the then vacant place of principal of Monticello, who was a scholar and a Christian, a woman of good business capacity and a good educator as well. The friend replied that there was only one such woman in the world, and that was Haskell, of Castleton College, but that she could not be removed from the State of Vermont. After three years of solicitation, Haskell became principal of Monticello, in 1868. The last years of her father's life were passed with her in the seminary; he died in 1887. The Monticello Seminary was destroyed by fire in November, 1888, just as the institution was beginning its second half-century. Through Miss Haskell's energetic efforts a temporary building was put up, and the school was reopened with eighty-nine of the one-hundred-thirty young women who were in the institution when the fire came. In less than two years, the buildings were erected with the corner-stone of the new building laid on 10 June, 1889.[2] Haskell died 1907 in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Personal life

While attending Mount Holyoke, Haskell made the acquaintance of Emily G. Alden, and the two became constant companions and had a common home for 55 years. Alden was a teacher of physiology, zoology and United States history at Monticello. Haskell's death in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri was due to heart disease. She had been ill for some time.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "Harriet Newell Haskell 1855". Mount Holyoke College. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 Willard 1893, p. 361.
  3. ↑ American Educational Company 1906, p. 1079.

Attribution

  • This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: American Educational Company's The American Educational Review (1906)
  • This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: F. E. Willard's A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (1893)

Bibliography

  • American Educational Company (1906). The American Educational Review (Public domain ed.). Chicago: American Educational Company.
  • Willard, Frances Elizabeth (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton.
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