Horace Mann, founding Secretary of the Massachusetts Commonwealth Board of Education, 1837 - 1848

Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 – August 2, 1859) served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1827 to 1833 and then the Massachusetts Senate from 1834 to 1837.

In 1838, under his strong leadership, state funds were appropriated to match a $10,000 gift from Edmund Dwight of Boston to establish in Massachusetts the first state-supported institutions in the United States for the training of teachers for the “common schools”. He guided the establishment of the normal school at Barre, which first admitted students in the fall of 1839, and would eventually become Westfield State University.

After serving as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education he was elected to the US House of Representatives, replacing John Quincy Adams. He later moved to Ohio where he founded Antioch College.

Mann was a brother-in-law to author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Image: Taken between 1843 and 1859 by Matthew B. Brady; half plate daguerreotype, gold toned. Source: Library of Congress LC-USZC4-7396.