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Author: Upham, Thomas Cogswell

Biography:

UPHAM, Thomas Cogswell (1799-1872: ANBO)

He was born in Rochester NH, son of Judith (Cogswell) and Nathaniel Upham. His father was a member of Congress 1816-24, during which time Upham graduated AB from Dartmouth College in 1818 and MA from Andover Theological Seminary in 1821. He was later awarded the honorary degrees of DD (1843) and LLD (1870) by other institutions. From 1821 to 1823 Upham worked as an assistant to his mentor at Andover, Moses Stuart, who encouraged him to produce the first of several translations he made of works by the German biblical scholar Johann Jahn, Biblical Antiquities (1823). In 1823 he was ordained as a Congregationalist minister and appointed to a church in Rochester NH, but he left early in 1825 to become professor of metaphysics and ethics at Bowdoin College in Brunswick ME, where he stayed for the rest of his working life. (Nathaniel Hawthorne and H. W. Longfellow were among the students of his first year teaching.) He married Phebe Lord of Kennebunkport ME in May 1825; they had no children of their own, but adopted and raised six orphans. Upham was an adventurous thinker and a popular teacher. He turned his writing talents variously to poetry, to translation, to church history, and to philosophy of mind. He wrote both a textbook for his field, Elements of Intellectual Philosophy (1828) and the first US study of mental disorders (1840). He supported the temperance movement, the release and return of slaves to Africa, and international peace (The Manual of Peace, 1836). He explored spirituality beyond the confines of doctrine with Principles of the Interior or Hidden Life (1843). His final collection of poems, American Cottage Life, appeared in 1850. In 1867 he retired to Kennebunkport. On a visit to one of his brothers, a doctor in New York City, in 1872, he had a stroke and died a month later. His remains were taken by rail to Brunswick to be met by officials and students from the college for the funeral and burial. Tributes appeared in newspapers throughout New England. (ANBO 2 Dec. 2020; ancestry.com 2 Dec. 2020; Lowell Daily Citizen and News [Lowell MA] 21 Mar. 1872; Boston Daily Advertiser 3 Apr. 1872)

 

Other Names:

  • T. C. Upham
  • Thomas C. Upham
 

Books written (4):

New York: David Longworth, 1819
Concord NH: printed by Hill and Moore, 1822
New York/ Boston: Leavitt, Lord, and Co./ Crocker and Brewster, 1835