Is your surname Sparks?

Connect to 17,431 Sparks profiles on Geni

Share your family tree and photos with the people you know and love

  • Build your family tree online
  • Share photos and videos
  • Smart Matching™ technology
  • Free!

Jared Sparks

Birthdate:
Birthplace: Willington, Tolland, Connecticut, United States
Death: March 14, 1866 (76)
Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States (pneumonia)
Place of Burial: Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States
Immediate Family:

Son of Joseph Sparks and Eleanor Sparks
Husband of Frances Anne Sparks and Mary Crowninshield Sparks
Father of Maria Verplank Sparks; Maria Crowninshield Sparks; Florence L. Moore; William Elliot Sparks; Mary Eliot Sparks and 2 others

Managed by: Douglas Arthur Kellner
Last Updated:

About Jared Sparks

http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/HVDpresidents/sparks.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Sparks

Jared Sparks (May 10, 1789 – March 14, 1866) was an American historian, educator, and Unitarian minister. He served as President of Harvard University from 1849 to 1853.

Biography

Born in Willington, Connecticut, Sparks studied in the common schools, worked for a time at the carpenter's trade, and then became a schoolteacher. In 1809-1811 he attended Phillips Exeter Academy where he met John G. Palfrey, a lifelong friend. He graduated from Harvard University (A.B., 1815 and A.M., 1818); in 1812 served as a tutor to the children of a family in Havre de Grace, Maryland, taught in a private school at Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1815–1817; and studied theology and was college tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard in 1817–1819. In 1817–1818 he was acting editor of the North American Review.

He was pastor of the First Independent Church (Unitarian) of Baltimore, Maryland, from 1819 to 1823, Dr William Ellery Channing delivering at his ordination his famous discourse on Unitarian Christianity. During this period Sparks founded the Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor (1821), a monthly, and edited its first three volumes; he was chaplain of the United States House of Representatives from 1821 to 1823; and he contributed to the National Intelligencer and other periodicals.

In 1823, his health failed and he withdrew from the ministry. Removing to Boston, he bought and edited in 1824-1830 the North American Review, contributing to it about fifty articles. He founded and edited, in 1830 the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, which was continued by others and long remained a popular annual.

After extensive researches at home and (1828–1829) in London and Paris, he published the Life and Writings of George Washington (12 vols., 1834–1837; redated 1842), his most important work; and in 1839 he published separately the Life of George Washington (abridged, 2 vols., 1842). The work was for the most part favorably received, but Sparks was severely criticized by Lord Mahon (in the sixth volume of his History of England) and others for altering the text of some of Washington's writings. Sparks defended his methods in A Reply to the Strictures of Lord Mahon and Others (1852). The charges were not wholly justifiable, and later Lord Mahon (Stanhope) modified them. While continuing his studies abroad, in 1840–1841. In the history of the American War of Independence, Sparks discovered in the French archives the red-line map, which, in 1842, came into international prominence in connection with the dispute over the north-eastern boundary of the United States.

Professorship

Sparks was one of the American intellectuals who received Alexis de Tocqueville during his 1831–32 visit to the United States. Sparks's extensive conversations and subsequent correspondence informed Tocqueville's best-known work, Democracy in America.

In 1842, Sparks delivered twelve lectures on American history before the Lowell Institute in Boston. In 1839-1849, he was McLean professor of ancient and modern history at Harvard. His appointment to this position, says his biographer, was the first academic encouragement of American history, and of original historical research in the American field. In 1849, he succeeded Edward Everett as president of Harvard and moved into a home on campus now called Treadwell-Sparks House. He retired in 1853 on account of failing health, and devoted the rest of his life to his private studies. For several years he was a member of the Massachusetts board of education.

Death

Jared Sparks died on March 14, 1866, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. His valuable collection of manuscripts and papers went to Harvard; and his private library and his maps were bought by Cornell University. He was a pioneer in collecting, on a large scale, documentary material on American history, and in this and in other ways rendered valuable services to historical scholarship in the United States.

Works

Other works by Sparks include:

Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard (1828)

The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution (12 vols, 1829–1830; redated 1854)
Life of Gouverneur Morris, with Selections from his Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers (3 vols, 1832)
A Collection of the Familiar Letters and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Franklin (1833)
The Works of Benjamin Franklin; with Notes and a Life of the Author (10 vols, 1836–1840; redated 1850), a work second in scope and importance to his Washington
Correspondence of the American Revolution; being Letters of Eminent Men to George Washington, from the Time of his taking Command of the Army to the End of his Presidency (4 vols, 1853)
He also edited the Library of American Biography, in two series (10 and 15 vols respectively, 1834–1838, 1844–1847), to which he contributed the lives of Anthony Wayne, Henry Vane the Younger, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, Marquette, La Salle, Count Pulaski, Jean Ribault, Charles Lee and John Ledyard, the last a reprint of his earlier work.

In addition, he aided Henry D Gilpin in preparing an edition of the Papers of James Madison (1840), and brought out an American edition of William Smyth's Lectures on Modern History (2 vols., 1841), which did much to stimulate historical study in the United States.

Memorials

Francis Parkman's The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851) was dedicated to Sparks.

Bibliography

Herbert B. Adams, The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (2 vols, Boston, 1893).

Brantz Mayer, Memoir of Jared Sparks (1867), prepared for the Maryland Historical Society.
George E. Ellis, Memoir of Jared Sparks (1869), reprinted from the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for May 1868.



https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=adk&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&p...


http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou02720


https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10449-13970022/the-cecil...

view all 12

Jared Sparks's Timeline

1789
May 10, 1789
Willington, Tolland, Connecticut, United States
1834
1834
Hyde Park, NY, United States
1842
May 29, 1842
Salem, MA
1845
October 25, 1845
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
1847
October 23, 1847
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
October 23, 1847
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
1849
May 1, 1849
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
1851
March 26, 1851
Salem, MA