BARNARD, HENRY

born Jan. 24, 1811, Hartford, Conn., U.S. died July 5, 1900, Hartford educator, jurist, and the first U.S. commissioner of education (1867). With Horace Mann he shared early leadership in improving the U.S. educational system. Born into a wealthy family, Barnard graduated from Yale in 1830 and then studied law. As a Whig member of the Connecticut state legislature (183739), he was instrumental in legislation that created a state board of education. Serving as secretary of that board, he founded the Connecticut Common School Journal and Annals of Education (1838) and the first teachers' institute (1839). In 1843 Barnard was called to Rhode Island to make a study of that state's schools, and in 1845 he became the state's first commissioner of education. At his urging, appropriations were increased, teachers' wages were raised, buildings were repaired, and teaching and supervision were much improved. In 1851 he returned to his post in Connecticut as secretary of the school board. He instituted reforms similar to those in Rhode Island, but eventually the job proved too strenuous for him, and in 1855 he retired. In that same year he helped found the American Association for the Advancement of Education and the American Journal of Education. He edited 30 volumes of the Journal, spending so much of his fortune that he died a virtual pauper. Barnard travelled widely to confer with writers and educators abroad, among them William Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, and Thomas Carlyle. He was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Madison (185861), and president of St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. (186667). Additional reading The scope of Barnard's activities and publications is shown in the brief work by Will S. Monroe, Bibliography of Henry Barnard (1897); and in Anna Lou Blair, Henry Barnard, School Administrator (1938).