Gessner Harrison, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Gessner Harrison

American classical philologist

Date of Birth: 26-Jun-1807

Place of Birth: Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States

Date of Death: 07-Apr-1862

Profession: university teacher, classical philologist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Cancer


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About Gessner Harrison

  • Gessner Harrison (June 27, 1807 – April 7, 1862) was appointed by James Madison as an associate professor of classics at the University of Virginia (1828–1859); he was later named faculty chairman and was required to put down student riots.
  • He was acclaimed in classical languages, taught the fundamentals and science of the Latin and Greek languages, and advanced the study of linguistics through his publications. As an undergraduate, Harrison was one of the first students to enter the university in its initial year of operation (1825).
  • He was a devout Christian, and his religiosity soon made a distinct impression upon the university's founder, Thomas Jefferson.
  • He graduated with a Medical Degree, and a Doctorate in Ancient Languages, and he was an academic standout among his classmates, who included Edgar Allan Poe.
  • In 1828 he became the first alumnus to join the faculty there, at age twenty-one. Harrison served as chairman of the university faculty for over a third of his thirty-year tenure.
  • As such, he responded to multiple violent encounters with ill-mannered and disorderly students by whom he was viciously assaulted on occasion.
  • With the assistance of the University's board, he instituted a code of conduct and played a key role in the reclamation of campus civility.
  • His work in comparative grammar equalled that of other scholarly leaders in the field at the time from the German and English schools. In 1859 he retired from the university, and started a prep school, the nearby Locust Grove Academy.
  • Harrison was a slaveholder and supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War.
  • In 1862, he was nursing a son who had returned home from the war when he contracted the young man's illness, was forced to close the school, and died soon thereafter.
  • His death was considered a momentous loss for education in the South.

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