HOSHOUR, SAMUEL KLINEFELTER: 1803-1883.
" Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour (Dec. 9, 1803-Nov. 29, 1883), clergyman, pioneer educator in eastern Indiana , was born in Heidelburg township, York County, Pa., his great-great-grandfather having immigrated to the state from Alsace early in the Eighteenth Century. Left fatherless at fourteen, the eldest of six children, Samuel was hired out to neighboring farmers as a helper. He received about three months' schooling each year, however, and at the age of sixteen was appointed teacher of the local school. Aspiring to become a German Lutheran minister, in 1822 he entered the academy at York where he remained until 1824, and then studied for two years more at Newmarket, Shenandoah County, Va., under Dr. Samuel S. Schmucker. On Feb. 7, 1826 he married Lucinda, daughter of Jacob Savage. After serving as principal of Newmarket Academy for a year, in the spring of 1828 he became pastor of the newly formed Lutheran parish in Smithsburg, Washington County, Md., having been ordained Oct. 23, 1827. In 1831 he removed to Hagerstown where he taught in a private school for a time but soon accepted a call to St. John's Lutheran Church of that place. While here he embraced the views of the Disciples of Christ, and in 1835 his name was expunged from the rolls of the (Lutheran) Synod.
"Having sacrificed his professional prospects and lost many of his friends by being true to his convictions, he decided to make a new start in the West. Accordingly, in Sept. 1835, he and a brother-in-law, putting their families into two covered wagons and a carriage, slowly made their way through the mountains and across Ohio to Indiana , where they settled at Centerville, Wayne County. Although he preached almost every Sunday for years, the remainder of his long life was devoted chiefly to education. His first work was in connection with private schools, and in the annals of the state he is numbered among a little group of pioneer teachers who brought these schools to such a degree of efficiency as to set a standard for the whole educational system. In the spring of 1836 he became principal of the Wayne County Seminary. This school was then the center of learning for much of eastern Indiana . Among his pupils were Oliver P. Morton and Lew Wallace. In 1839 he was asked to establish a similar institution in Cambridge City , and in November of that year he opened Cambridge Seminary, which he conducted successfully until 1846, when ill health caused him to seek less exacting duties. For the next five or six years he was principally engaged in giving special German courses in the colleges and cities of the West. Partly for the benefit of his health, in 1851 he bought a farm in Wayne County, which he superintended until 1858 when he was elected president of North Western Christian (now Butler) University, … Indianapolis , the institution, although opened in 1855, having had no head previously. In 1861 he resigned, but remained as professor of languages for fourteen years more. From May 15 to Nov. 25, 1862, he was also state Superintendent of Public Instruction. page: 156[View Page 156] In 1875, to use his own figure, the faculty tree was shaken, and having attained a ripe age, he fell off. The closing years of his life were spent in Indianapolis , where he gave private lessons in German …"
Condensed from H. E. S., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. IX.
- Letters to Esq. Pedant, in the East, by Lorenzo Ahisonant, an
Emigrant to the West. Published for the Benefit of Youth: By a Lover of the
Studious. "Wolle et Lege."
Cambridge City, Ind., 1844.
- Address on Education Delivered in the Hall of
Representatives, at Indianapolis … 17th of February,
1852. Indianapolis, 1852.
- Observations and Notes by the Way on Things East of the
Mountains. Indianapolis, 1867.
- Autobiography of Samuel K. Hoshour (with introduction byIsaac Errett). St. Louis, 1884.
