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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

OODBRIDGE N. FERRIS, founder of Ferris Institute, was born Jan. 6, 1853, in a log house on a small farm near Spencer, Tioga County, N. Y. His father was a man of notable industry and strict integrity, and, though unlearned, of keen mind, and excellent judgment; his mother a faithful housewife, devoted to her children, and eager that they should make use of every opportunity for education. Naturally, therefore, he early learned the value of hard work, the advantage of honest and clean living, the worth of a good home, and the usefulness of knowledge. He had a wiry physical organism, an active, inquiring mind, a quick temper, a boy's love of fun, an enthusiasm for great deeds and great men, and a wholesome fear of moral baseness. A district school teacher under whose influence he came when he was about twelve years old, centered all his good qualities in a fixed desire to do something and be something helpful in the service of humanity, although as yet he could not clearly see just what he was to do or be. He continued working on the farm in summer and attending district school in winter until he was fourteen, when he entered the Spencer Union Academy, where his real student life began.

In the spring following his sixteenth birthday, he entered the Candor Union Academy, eight miles from home. In the fall he was teaching in a school district called Fairfield, six or seven miles from Candor. The next spring he enrolled at the Oswego Academy in his home county, and during the school year passed the state examination for Regents Certificate, admitting the holder to Cornell University without examination. On a Saturday in the succeeding summer, he picked blackberries enough to enable him to buy a book he had seen advertised,O. S. Fowler's book on "Memory." This was a revelation and an inspiration. It revealed to him the wonders of the human mind. It induced him to begin the accumulation of a library. In the fall of this year he began teaching a second term at Fairfield, and when this was ended he made up his mind to take a course of study at the Oswego Normal and Training School. Here he was greatly cheered and encouraged by the sympathy and kindness of Dr. Edwin A. Sheldon, the President. He remained at the Oswego Normal School in all about three years. During this time a literary and debating society which he assisted in organizing, increased his desire to develop power as a public speaker; and the training he received in the debates and other exercises, confirmed his belief in the value of extemporaneous speaking as part of a really useful education.

Mr. Ferris left the Normal and Training School within a half-year of graduation. He did not feel that the "practice-teaching" required was needed to supplement his completed academic work. After another summer on the farm, he entered the University of Michigan as a medical student, taking this course not with a view of practicing medicine. but with the belief that the knowledge gained would aid him in his work as teacher. After six months at the University, he returned to Spencer, N. Y., as Principal of the Free Academy. He was now fairly settled in the teaching profession, and the next question was how best to employ his talent. In the fall of 1875 he organized at Freeport, Ill., the Freeport Business College and Academy. He was induced to relinquish this work the year following and undertake the principalship of the Normal department of Rock River University. He was disappointed in this position, as the institution proved to be financially embarrassed and he withdrew to establish the Dixon Business College and Academy. Both these ventures were at Dixon, Ill., and it was from Dixon that he drove to Sterling, sixteen miles away, to hear Theodore Tilton give his famous lecture on "The Human Mind." It is to this lecture that students who listen to Mr. Ferris owe the insistence with which he urges them to neglect no opportunity of hearing public speeches, especially addresses by great men. This lecture accounts, too, for the wonderful array of talent which has been heard from the platform of Ferris Institute-a list of noted names of which any institution might be proud. From this lecture, Mr. Ferris gained a new viewpoint for his future work-that the way to the mind is through the heart, that man's desires and aspirations, not his intellect, are the springs of action.

In the summer of 1879 work at Dixon was discontinued, and in the fall of that year Mr. Ferris became superintendent of the city schools of Pittsfield, Ill. Here he remained five years. He believed, however, that he could do his best work where he was free to carry out his own ideas, and he now determined to establish somewhere a school of his

own.

The city of Big Rapids, Mich., was finally chosen as a location, and in September, 1884, the Ferris Institute-then called the Ferris Industrial School- -came into being. Two small rooms, fifteen pupils. and two instructors constituted the equipment. On Wednesday, Dec. 23, ten years earlier, while principal of the Free Academy in his home. town, Spencer, N. Y., Mr. Ferris and Miss Helen Frances Gillespie were united in marriage. Mrs. Ferris, who was already a successful teacher, now became her husband's co-worker, and taught with him at Spencer and at Dixon. In his new venture she was his sole assistant. The struggle, the anxiety, the uncertainty of those early days, few realize.