Ypsilanti High School - Ypsi Dixit Yearbook (Ypsilanti, MI)

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Professor Estabrook took charge of the Public Schools of Ypsilanti in the spring of 1853. He was tl1en nearly thirty-three years of age, and full of life and hope and vigor. He had been a teacher in district schools and at Clinton and Tecumseh for a period of thirteen years, and had preached the gospel to the edification of a community for over two years. He had acquired so high a reputation that the Ypsilanti Board of Education sought his services. He brought to his new field a rich teaching experience, a college education, fine ability as a public speaker, and great energy and enthusiasm. He remained at the head of the Ypsilanti schools nearly fourteen years. His term of se1'vice here included the period of the Civil War in which he took an active interest, presiding and speaking at public meetings, and going to the front in the work of the Christian Commission. The war took from the High School many of its ablest students, and the scholastic work was necessarily interrupted by the larger duties of patriotic citizenship. The grad- uating classes during the war period were thus greatly redncedg but in june, 1866, at the close of Professor Estabrook's administration, there was a rallying and a class of twenty-six was graduated. This has stood as the largest class in the history of the School until within the last two years. Professor Estabrook left Ypsilanti to take charge of the schools of East Saginawg but in 1871 returned to Ypsilanti as principal of the State Normal School, which position he held until 1880, when he went to Olivet College as college pastor and professor of teach- ing, remaining in that position until his death. The reputation of Professor Estabrook and the esteem in which he was held, extended beyond the immediate field of his teaching activities. He became widely known thruout the state. He was a Regent of the University for six years and State Superin- tendent of Public Instruction for four years. From Dr. Putnam's History of the State Normal School, I am permitted to make the following excerpts relative to the character- istics of Professor Estabrook:- The most potent element of his power in the school was his own person- ality. Without attempting any complete or critical analysis of his character, it will be sufficient to speak of Lwo or three of his most obvious and prominent characteristics. First of all he was blest with abounding physical vitality, an organism full of energy and elasticity, forming a strong and reliable basis for

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llbrofessor Zfosepb Estabrook SUPT. AUSTIN GEORGE ROFESSOR ESTABROOK came fronfa long line of scholars and mi11isters. One of his ancestors was a Puritan divine, a graduate of Cambridge, England, who had a son, Joseph Estabrook, who graduated from Harvard in 1664 and was for forty- four years pastor at Concord, Mass. The line of ministers or deacons remained unbroken until the death in 1799, at Bath, N. H., of Rev. Experience Estabrook, D.. D., who was a graduate of Dartmouth, 1776. He left his family in great poverty, and his sons were bound out. One of these, Joseph, E., was the father of Professor Estabrook. He moved from New Hampshire to Alden, N. Y., in 1833, where he did the work of a lumberman and pioneer, maintaining a large family, and a few years later removed to Clinton, Mich. Professor Estabrook was born at Bath, N. H., July 3, 1820. His early education was in the district school. In 1836 his father gave him his Ifmf, when he worked on a farm summers and taught school winters. In 1839 he entered the old branch of the University at Tecumseh, Mich., and fitted himself for college. In I843 he entered freshman at Oberlin, and graduated in 1847. He carried on his studies under great financial embarrassment, being obliged to labor two hours a day at six cents an hour. In 1853 he received from his Alma Mater the degree of M. A., and during the last year of his life the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He died September 29, 1894, at his home in Olivet. After leaving Oberlin, young Estabrook taught a select school at Clinton, and in 1848 took charge of the Tecumseh Institute, an incorporated academy, which -was organized after the University branch was discontinued. He remained there three years. In 1850 he began to supply the pulpit of the Congregational church at Franklin Center-now Tipton-and two years 1246? was ordained Find installed pastor.

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a noble, intellectual, moral, and spiritual temple. 'X' if 'X' Next, with gi wel-l developed intellect, he was blessed with 'unusual depth and strength of emotional nature. it if' Beyond these qualities he had an abiding faith in goodness and in God, and a profound spiritual apprehension and experience which enabled him to lay fast hold upon the unseen and eternal, and make them real in his daily life. No teacher ever connected with the school was more loved, was remembered with kindlier feelings, or greeted wherever he went with warmer or more sincere words of personal regard. 'X' if' W Like us, Professor Estabrook was humang he was a man among meng he lived in tl1e flesh subject to its infirmities and its limitations. He had fewer limitations and faults than most of his fellowsg and he struggled more manfully and successfully than most of us against the narrowing- limitations which hemmed him in and made him conscious, as we are all conscious, of the imperfections of our common humanity Take him all in all, he was one of the noblest examples of Christian manhood that I have ever known. The portrait on the preceding page was made from a photo- graph taken when Professor Estabrook was about fifty-five years of age, and represents him as he is fondly remembered by most of the citizens of Ypsilanti. X X ., S j x -Ui I W!!