Author: Van Tassel, Truman
Biography:
VAN TASSEL, Truman (1803-87: ancestry.com)
The name is sometimes spelled Vantassel but his title-pages use Van Tassel. He was born in New York State, probably in Rensselaerville, to Rachel (Pierce) and Abraham Vantassel. In the early 1830s he married Jerusha Busby, with whom he had at least three children. In 1835, when he published "odes" to be sung to familiar tunes on behalf of the temperance movement, he was starting his career as a Methodist Episcopal circuit preacher in western New York State; later he appears to have had a congregation of his own. But about 1844 he was converted to Unitarianism and was, in his own words, "honorably dismissed" from the Methodist Conference. He became instead a schoolteacher in Syracuse. He published a new system of notation for teaching music, The Phonographic Harmonist (1846), and was instrumental in starting a night school in the city in 1852. In 1880 he and his wife were still living in Syracuse with a 16-year-old grand-daughter as a third member of the household. Genealogists' family trees give his place of death as New Castle DE but no official record has been found. (ancestry.com 7 Dec. 2020; findmypast.com 7 Dec. 2020; Edward Smith, History of the Schools of Syracuse [1893] 82-3; The Bible Christian [1846] 56-60) HJ