practical suggestions brought out in the discussions, and the earnest and thoughtful interest in the exercises manifested by all in attendance, this meeting was probably unsurpassed by any of its kind ever held in the State. The State Teachers' Association held its twenty-seventh anniversary at Saratoga Springs during the three days commencing July 23, 1872. The arrangements made by the local committee for the meeting and for the entertainment of members have rarely been equaled, and the attendance of many from this and other States who have become eminent in various departments of educational labor gave character and interest to the proceedings. OBITUARIES. The following notable persons connected with the educational work have died during the year: PROF. JOHN TORREY. The death of Prof. John Torrey, of Columbia College, which occurred March 10, 1873, at the ripe age of 75 years, removed one who for nearly half a century has occupied a high place in the scientific world. He became known at first by a catalogue (published in 1819) of the plants growing about New York. In 1824 he was appointed professor of chemistry, geology, and mineralogy at West Point; in 1827 was called to the chair of chemistry and botany in the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, which he occupied until 1855, and in 1864 was appointed chief assayer in the United States assay-office. In several valuable works he communicated much interesting information on the flora of North America, the principal of these being the Flora of the Northern and Middle States, 1824; Cyperaceae of North America, 1836; Flora of the State of New York, 1843-44. As a man of science he commanded universal respect. At home and abroad he was regarded as an accomplished botanist, and made many valuable contributions to this, his favorite science. Above all, he was a sincere Christian, and illustrated in his life the real harmony between science and religion. JAMES CUSHING, JR. The death of James Cushing, jr., one of the recently-appointed members of the board of education of New York City, will prove no common loss to the cause in which he was engaged. He had entered earnestly upon the duties connected with his important office. No one was more keenly alive to the need of a more perfect system of public instruction or felt more deeply that the highest interests of the city and the country were bound up in the fate of the common schools. All his labors, therefore, since his entrance upon his office had been given to improve and elevate the condition of public instruction. He led the minority in the board who demanded a thorough reform in the educational department. His high character and vigorous intellect gave force to his arguments, and had he lived he must have produced a signal change in the views of many of his associates. Mr. Cushing was only 41 years of age, yet he had been for a long time connected with the public schools; was school-commissioner in 1858 and 1859; and had also been a ward-trustee. He was an active member of the church of the Divine Paternity, (Dr. Chapin's,) and was engaged in mercantile pursuits. Although solicited to accept other public offices, it is stated that he would consent only to be school-commissioner. He died in the service of that cause to which he had given a lasting devotion. The teachers of the schools are indebted to him for several important services. He aided in preventing the reduction of their salaries or the abridgment of their privileges; he defended their interests and was sensible of their value. Had he been able he would have begun that thorough reform in the method of instruction which must at last be carried out to render the teachers and public schools of New York the firm support of equality and freedom. He felt that it was because the people were so often uneducated that they were led into measures fatal to their own welfare. He was anxious that all should be educated alike. It is, therefore, with no common regret for his loss that those who have faith in popular instruction offer their tribute of respect to the high character and generous aims of James Cushing, jr. REV. T. T. TITUS. Rev. T. T. Titus, A. M., professor of theology in Hartwick Seminary, died on Saturday, February 15, 1873. He was born in Loudoun County, Virginia, on the 4th day of March, 1829. At a very early age he displayed a remarkable desire for education, though of poor parentage, and his unbending will found a way to gratify his desire. When only 16 years of age he was converted, joined the church, and entered the institution at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with the view of preparing for the gospel-ministry. He literally worked his way through the college and seminary, and, though receiving some aid as a beneficiary of the synod, paid a considerable part of his expenses by teaching while pursuing his studies, during the latter part of his course being tutor in the theologic seminary. His first pastoral charge was at Lower Merion, Pennsylvania; after five years he accepted a call to Milton, Pennsylvania; two years after he removed to Ohio, where he labored four years; after which he removed to Hagerstown, Maryland. Here he labored till June, 1871, when he was elected principal of Hartwick Seminary, in New York. After one year's labor in this office he resigned it, and was elected professor of theology in the seminary, which position he occupied at the time of his death. As a minister Mr. Titus was held in high esteem. He was possessed of talent of no common order. As a writer he was favorably known. His contributions to the Lutheran Observer have been widely read. He has given to the church two important evidences of his usefulness in the "explanatory question books" for Sunday-schools, the second volume of which issued from the press not long before his death. In the crowning work of his life, that of an instructor, Mr. Titus showed peculiar fitness. REV. HENDRICK METCALF. Hendrick Metcalf was born at Newport, New Hampshire, November 23, 1805, so that he was not quite sixty-seven years of age at the time of his death, on the eve of AllSaint's, 1872. By birth he was allied to a race of the intellectual giants of the Old Granite State, not the least of whom, among his kinsmen, is the honorable and venerable Theron Metcalf, of Boston, one of the retired judges, by reason of his advanced age, of the supreme court of Massachusetts. Dr. Metcalf had a thorough classic education, graduating with honor at Dartmouth College in the class of 1829 and immediately devoting himself to the business of education, teaching Latin and Greek, at first in Buffalo and then in Rochester. On December 12, 1831, he was admitted to the order of deacons and on August 15, 1832, he was ordained a priest, by Bishop B. T. Onderdonk, in the Protestant-Episcopal Church. From that time forth he became most emphatically a missionary, a first officiating in Wayne and Monroe Counties, where he is still remembered as the good man;" then for eight years the rector of St. Mark's Church, Le Roy; then sent to other places, mainly to compose differences, disagreements, and dissensions; and then, at last, called back to his old profession of teaching as professor of the Greek and Latin languages and literature in Hobart College in 1850. How well and how faithfully he discharged the duties of this office the recorded testimony of the trustees and faculty bears witness. In all that time he was occupied in the great interests of the college and the church and identified with them in some responsible office, always thought of, consulted, and especially relied upon for the wisdom of his counsel, the honesty, sincerity, and self-sacrificing independency of his advice and action. He was not a man of that broad and careless view of principles in church or state who could look upon all opinions with equal favor. Far from it. He held very decided and clearly-defined opinions upon all important questions and possessed the utmost fearlessness in declaring them on all proper occasions. And still he was as far as possible from opinionativeness or uncharitableness towards other persons and their opinions. He knew too well the effect of education and partisanship upon common minds to feel any surprise at meeting erroneous opinions upon all subjects wherever he went; and he was content not to be wiser than the Master, but to let truth and error-the tares and the wheat-grow together till the end of the world. And he entertained no suspicion that he had received any commission to sift or separate them. He was content to do his own duty in that state of life in which it had pleased God to call him. OTHER EDUCATORS. Many other laborers in the cause of education have fallen during the past year whose names should be recorded here, but of whose life and labors there is not space for even so brief a notice as the foregoing. Among these are Harvey Prindle Peet,. LL. D., who was for forty years principal of the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb; died at the institution January 1, 1873, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. He was the author of a Course of Instruction for the Deaf and Dumb, which passed through numerous editions, and in the line of teaching, to which he was devoted, stood among the first of the educators of this country, if not of any country in the world. Rev. Joshua Leavitt, who has been more generally known as a clergyman, journalist, and reformer than as a teacher, although after his graduation at Yale, and before entering the ministry, he was for five years a successful teacher, and during his life was author of some of the best reading-books for schools ever published, died in New York City, January 16, 1873, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. On the same day died, at Ithaca, Prof. William Charles Cleveland, C. E., of Cornell University, an accomplished scientist, who had been connected with the university since its organization. Miss Caroline Chesebro, who was more widely known as an author and magazine-writer than as a teacher, although she had been for eight years previous to her death one of the most efficient and beloved teachers of the Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, died at Piermont, February 16, 1873, at the age of about 45 years. Mrs. Ophelia M. Livingston, who was for many years at the head of a large seminary for young ladies in Savannah, Georgia, died in Brooklyn, March 3, 1873, at the age of 65 years. Mr. Samuel C. Barnes, who died in Brooklyn, February 18, 1873, at the age of 60 years, had been for more than thirty years, and until the last four or five years, a teacher in the public schools of that city and an efficient actor in all measures for their improvement. Samuel Adams Lyons Law Post, who commenced teaching at the early age of 14, and after his graduation at Yale College resumed the profession and continued in its successful practice fifteen years, or nearly all the remainder of his life, died at Ellenville, New York, aged 44 years. William W. Clark, A. M., professor of physical sciences in the State normal school at Albany, from 1845 to 1849, and afterward enaged in the geologic survey of the State, died at Rochester, August 10, 1873, aged 49. Rev. Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, D. D., for many years professor of systematic theology in the General Seminary of the Protestaut-Episcopal Church, located in New York, died August 13, 1873, at Amenia, New Jersey, at the age of 78. LIST OF SCHOOL-OFFICIALS IN NEW YORK. Hon. ABRAM W. WEAVER, State-superintendent of public instruction, Albany. Oneida Onondaga.. Ontario Orleans Otsego Putnam Rensselaer Richmond. Saratoga Schoharie Schuyler. Suffolk.... Sullivan.. Tioga Ulster..... Warren Wayne.... Wyoming Yates Edwin A. McMath, first, (158 Powers' Block).. S. A. Ellis, (city-superintendent) Henry Kiddle, (city-superintendent) T. F. Harrison, assistant city-superintendent. Esek Aldrich, second James Ferguson, (city-superintendent) Charles T. Burnley, second. Henry S. Ninde, third Horace O. Farley, fourth A. McMillan, (city-superintendent) E. Smith, (city-superintendent) Robert B. Simmons, second. George K. Smith, first. Ara Morehouse, second R. V. K. Montfort, (city-superintendent) William W. Phipps. Isane W. Marsh, first.. William B. Howard. second John W. Ladd, third V. C. Douglass, (city-superintendent) Eugene M. Lincoln, first. Garret J. Garretson, second. Alanson Palmer, (city-superintendent). Amos H. Allen, first.. George W. Hidley, second.. David Beattie, (city-superintendent) Spencer Wood Daniel S. Giffin, first A. Barton Hepburn, second.. R. B. Lowry, (city-superintendent) Oscar F. Stiles, second. David Elder S. B. Howe, (city-superintendent) John Van Schaick, second.. Reuben H. Williams, second. S. Orlando Lee, second Edward C. Whittemore, second Joseph Barrett, third .... Edson J. Quigley, second.. For term commenced January 1, 1872. Rochester. Amsterdam. New York. New York. New York. New York. New York, New York. Lockport. Johnson's Creek. Lockport. Clinton. Rome. Plank Road. New Hampton. Bowen's Corners. Fulton. Mexico. East Worcester. Long Island City. Troy. Port Richmond. Heuvelton. Colton. Lawrencevill. Bath. Woodhull. Huntington. Monticello. Ithaca. Kingston. Dale. NORTH CAROLINA. [From report of Hon. Alexander McIver, State-superintendent of public instruction, for the year ended June 30, 1873.] Disbursements for fiscal year ended September 30, 1873 .. Balance October 1, 1873 Amount of permanent fund October 1, 1873. Total. 41,705 011 102,975 571 83,007 18 19,968 391 3,821 541 16, 146 85 19,968 391 Balance remaining in the hands of county-treasurers June 30, 1873. 217,155 60 SCHOLASTIC POPULATION. The school-age is from 6 to 21 years. 233, 751 114, 852 Total scholastic population 348, 603 ATTENDANCE. Number of white children enrolled in school-males, 56,316; females, 49,993 Number of colored children enrolled in school-males, 20,578; females, 19,850..... 106,309 40, 428 Estimated number of public schools for white children .... |