North American Scholar

BONBRIGHT, Daniel

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  • Date of Birth (YYYY-MM-DD): 1831-03-10
  • Born City: Youngstown
  • Born State/Country: PA
  • Parents: Daniel & Mary Smith B.
  • Date of Death (YYYY-MM-DD): 1912-11-27
  • Death City: Daytona
  • Death State/Country: FL
  • Married: Alice D. Cummings, 1890.
  • Education:

    Dickinson Coll., 1846-8; A.B. Yale, 1850; A.M., 1853; study at Berlin, Bonn, & Göttingen, 1856-8; LL.D. Lawrence U., 1873; Northwestern, 1908.
  • Professional Experience:

    Tutor math., Yale, 1854-5; Lat., 1855-6; prof. Lat. lit. & lang. Northwestern, 1858-1902; dean fac. lib. arts, 1899-1902; actng. pres., 1900-2; mng. comm., ASCSR.
  • Notes:

    Bonbright's devotion to teaching covered well over 50 years. He was appointed Northwestern's first professor of Latin in 1856 but was granted immediate leave to pursue further work in Germany, as so many of his contemporaries (Gildersleeve, Goodwin, Lane, Whitney, et al.) had done. Attending the lectures of Jahn, Ritter, and Ritschl at Bonn, of Bopp, Haupt, and Mommsen at Berlin, and of Sauppe and von Leutsch at Göttingen, he brought back to Evanston a remarkable preparation which he coupled with institutional loyalty and devotion to his students. He published nothing, however. In the words of Omera Floyd Long, "In this single respect the example of his life . . . cannot be urged upon the present generation; and yet his service towers high above the too often restricted influence of a specialist, and he lives imperishable in the larger life of a university and in the praise of literally thousands whom he trained and inspired."
  • Sources:

    O. F. Long, C7 8 (1912-3); WhWh 1910:188.
  • Author: Ward W. Briggs, Jr.