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“An Odd Fish”—Samuel Keimer and a Footnote to American Educational History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert T. Sidwell
Robert T. Sidwell*
Affiliation:
State University College of Education, Oswego, N.Y.
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Extract

Samuel Keimer suffered the misfortune of having had his sole surviving historical portrait drawn by a caricaturist. The medium of caricature utilizes a technique of selective accentuation; one or another of the subject's features or attributes are presented so much larger than life that they totally dominate the whole and effectively submerge, or at best adumbrate, all the others. The portrait of Keimer, the preservation of which is due solely to the fame of its creator rather than its subject, was penned by a hand that had completely mastered this technique as an instrument for its own purposes. The artist in question was Benjamin Franklin, and the portrait of Samuel Keimer achieved a modicum of immortality due to its inclusion in Franklin's Autobiography.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Spring 1966 , pp. 16 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Sidwell, R. T., “The Almanacs of Colonial America: A Study in Non-Institutional Education ” (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 1965).Google Scholar

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4. The first explanation of the Copernican hypothesis to appear in English as a “popular” treatment was in the Astronomica Instaurata of Vincent Wing, in 1656. Brigden followed Wing in the “Philolaick” terminology. Philolaus was the Pythagorean who was regarded in the seventeenth century as the precursor of Kepler and Copernicus. Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Philosophers, London: 1853, p. 372) says that Philolaus was the first to claim that the Earth moved in a circle.Google Scholar

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28. Keimer had been one of Daniel Defoe's printers in London. In March of 1718, Defoe had interceded personally with Townshend to secure Keimer's release from prison (the charge was sedition on this occasion). Keimer, however, had been immediately reincarcerated for nonpayment of debts. (John R. Moore, Daniel Defoe … (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 353; Keimer, op cit., pp. 98-99.)Google Scholar

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