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Samuel Francis Batchelder

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1870 - 1927

Biographyhttp://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84075755
http://cambridgehistory.org/research/samuel-francis-batchelder-papers-1765-1930/ accessed 9/1/2017
Samuel Francis Batchelder was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1870. His parents were Samuel Batchelder (Harvard College Class of 1851, d. 1888) and Marianne Giles Washburn. From 1870 to 1878, the Batchelder family resided in the Vassall House on Brattle Street at the corner of Hawthorne Street. Batchelder’s early education was under the supervision of Mrs. Arthur Fuller and later Miss Howe. At the age of nine, he moved with his family to Andover, Massachusetts and attended public school. Eighteen months later, the Batchelder family returned to Cambridge where Batchelder began his education under Emma F. Harris (whose school was located above a shoemaker’s shop on Hancock Street, in Cambridgeport). At age fourteen, he entered the Classical Department of the Cambridge High School (known as the Latin School). Ill health compelled Batchelder’s parents to send him, in the fall of 1887, to St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. There he was the editor of the school paper, the Horae, and received a number of academic prizes for his poetry.

From 1889-1893 he attended Harvard participating in a number of activities and organizations including Freshman Crew, Signet Society, O.K. Club, Fencing Club, St. Paul’s Society, Harvard St. Paul’s School Club, and the Hasty Pudding Society. He was also the editor of the Harvard Lampoon for two years.

Batchelder taught for one year at St. Paul’s School in Garden City, Long Island, New York. Thereafter, he enrolled in Harvard Law School and received his degree in 1898.

Batchelder served as clerk of Christ Church in Cambridge, also playing the organ and managing the choir. In addition, he served as the Secretary of the Cambridge Historical Society from 1916 to his death in 1927. A notice published in the CHS Proceedings stated that he was a “faithful and efficient secretary; he was its mainstay, the originator of its activities, inexhaustible in its suggestions for its meetings and its resources for attracting members and sustaining their interest.”

Batchelder published several works during his lifetime and one was published posthumously. The first was Christ Church, Cambridge: some account of its history and present condition, especially prepared for visitors (1893), which was largely a continuation of his undergraduate thesis at Harvard College. His next work was a biography on Peter Harrison. This volume appears to have never been published—in a review of the book Peter Harrison, First American Architect by Carl Bridenbaugh, in The William and Mary Quarterly (Jul., 1949), Hugh Morrison states that Bridenbaugh paid tribute to the material collected by Batchelder but does not mention a book or publication. A small portion was published, though, in the Bulletin of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (January 1916) under the title “Peter Harrison.” In, 1924, Batchelder published Bits of Harvard History. Several chapters were previously published elsewhere: “The Singular Story of Holden Chapel” (1921), “The History of the Commons” (1919), “Harvard Hospital-Surgeons of 1775” (1920), and “Wanted!—‘College Characters’” (1922) in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin; and “C.C. Langdell, Iconoclast” (1906) in The Green Bag. In 1930, Bits of Cambridge History was published posthumously. Variations of several chapters had previously appeared in the Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings: “Adventures of John Nutting, Cambridge Loyalist” (1910); “Colonel Henry Vassal and His Wife Penelope Vassal” (1915); “Burgoyne and His Officers in Cambridge, 1777-1778” (1918), which included a map of Cambridge in 1777; and “The Washington Elm Tradition” (1925).

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Last Updated8/7/24

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