John Seely Hart
John Seely Hart [1]
a Presbyterian minister, was born at Old Stockbridge, Massachusetts, January 28, 1810. He studied at Wilkesbarre Academy; graduated from Princeton College in 1830, with the highest honors of the class; the following year taught as principal of an academy at Natchez, Mississippi, and three years afterwards graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. During the last two years of his course he also filled the position of tutor in the college. In 1834 he was elected adjunct professor of ancient languages in Princeton College, and filled that chair two years. He was licensed by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, August 4, 1835., In 1836 he resigned his professorship in the college, purchased Edgehill School, in Princeton, and in 1842 was elected principal of the Philadelphia High School, continuing there until 1859, when he became editor of the - periodicals published by the American Sunday-school Union, and in this connection began the Sunday-school Times. In 1862 he was elected principal of the New Jersey State Normal School, at Trenton, and held that position with distinguished usefulness and success until February 1871. From 1864 to 1870 he also gave courses of lectures on English literature in Princeton College, where, in 1872, he was elected professor of belles- lettres and English literature, which chair he filled two years, returning in 1874 to Philadelphia, where he was engaged in literary pursuits until his death, March 26, 1877. Dr. Hart was the author of many volumes, an enthusiast in the cause of education, a devoted Sabbath-school worker, of elegant culture, accurate scholarship. During the months preceding his last illness, he had been delivering a course of popular lectures on the works of Shakespeare. He was an humble, consistent, and devout Christian. See Necrol. Report of Princeton Theol. Sem. 1877, page 29.
