West Chester University - Serpentine Yearbook (West Chester, PA)

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Page 4 SERPENTIN E 1914 A i ' krtrlj of tl|0 ICtfr nf J rotesor S ' mttli lurnltam r t 9 OV ALL the .trains wliich have gone to make up the tine compound of American citizenship none is more vigorous than the sturdy stock that came to New Lngland out of Old England. The stock which served under Cromwell and put an end to kinglv misrule in England by cutting off the head of the king, was the same stock that joined the Puritan migration to this country. It is from this Roundhead blood that there came into Connecticut, out of Xorfolkshire, in England, the Burnham ancestors of tiie subject of this sketch. Settling first in Connecticut, the stream worked its way into central and western New York and still pressed for- ward until the early forties found the father of Smith Burnham located in southern lichigan as one of the pioneer set- tlers. Into this same neighborhood came Margaret Smith, of a strain of sturdy Germans who had settled the Mohawk Valley in New York. From this vigorous Palatinate German line, grafted onto the English Roundhead has sprung the subject of this sketch. Smith Burnham. professor of history in the West Chester State Normal School, was born and reared in contact with Mother Earth, with nothing of luxurv to pamper, nothing of pri -ation to weaken, with just enough rigor of coun- try life in the seventies to bring self-reliance and vigor of frame and miml. Smith Burnham was Ijorn near Battle Creek, Michigan, on August 20, i S66. To no operation known on the ordinary farm was Smith Burnham a stranger. The chores which fell to the lot of a boy of his time were his ; the rustic pleasures, we may be sure, were his, too. Educated in the district school until he was sixteen vears old, he found in his high school course the first great stimulus which led him on to scholar.ship. In tliose days, high schools were few, and were unlinarilv taught by men who in scholarshiji and in serious devotion to their calling, ipiite equalled the clergy. In the little town of Vicksburg, with a po|nilation of less thpn a thousand, such a teacher gathered about him a group of one hundred and twenty-five girls and boys, brought in from all the countrv round about. Snu ' th Burnham had known and associated with vigorous-minded, straight-thinking men. but they had been men whose education, from the scholastic standpoint, had been restricted. Here was a man who firi? ' ! him with, ambition. Within two years Smith Burnham was an assistant in the high school, and two years later found him at Albion College. It must always be a question whether the small or the large college offers the greatest advantages to an earnest young man. If the young man who comes of .scholarly surroundings has in him the impulses and needs only the facil-

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I9I4 SERPENTINE Page 3 ®n am brlnurJi frirnb. mitb Hurnhain. tulp Ips giuru murh tuapiratinn tn our uiork anb brnabrnfii nur mttlnnk nu lifp. lup tl)r (Elaaa of Niurtrrn ifintrtppn, rpaprrtfulUi iirbiratr tltta Sljr rrprntiup 6 J 56

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I9I4 SERPENTINE Page 5 SNAP-SHOTS OF PROF. BURNHAM