Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

Page 22 text:

COLLEGE CLASSES LITERARY SOCIETIES FRATERNITIES COLLEGE ORGANIZATIONS RECEPTIONS CLASS SUPPERS CLUBS ATHLETICS LITERARY DEPARTMENT

Page 21 text:

.tt I y

Page 23 text:

Xife of 2)1-. IftagiU. R. EDWARD H. MAGILL was born on the 24th of September, 1825, in Solebury, Bucks County, Pennsylvania; the son of Jonathan P. and Mary W. Magill, both active members and ministers in the Society of Friends. Until 1839 he studied in the family and public schools of the neighborhood ; in that year he went to Westtown Boarding School, where he remained two years. Immediately after leaving Westtown, at the age of sixteen, he began the long career of teaching, which he has continued with his never-failing enthusiasm — with breaks of several years at a time, for college and foreign travel and study — for a period of fifty seven years. During the early time, after leaving Westtown, he taught in the Friends ' School, Race Street, Philadelphia, and in Benjamin Hallowell ' s School, at Ale.Kandria, Virginia. In the year 1849 he went to Williston Seminary, at Easthampton, Massachusetts, for a special preparation for college, entering Yale in 1850. A year only was spent at Yale. Just at this time Dr. Francis Wayland, President of Brown University, coming home from Europe, published his pamphlet on the elective system, then not in use, but since universally adopted in the college curriculum. This system attracted Dr. Magill to Brown, where he graduated in 1852, with the degree of A. B., taking his A. M. one year later by examination, a new method at that time. His experience of the working of the elective system at Brown had an important influence in his shaping the college course at Swarthmore, in the early years of the college. After graduating at Brown, Dr. Magill was for seven years Principal of the Classical Department of the Providence High School, and from there he went to the famous Boston Public Latin School, where he was sub- Master for eight years. In 1867 he went abroad for travel and study, chiefly in Italy and in France, where he