Albion Woodbury Small

Albion Woodbury Small (May 11, 1854 – March 24, 1926) founded the first independent department of sociology in the United States at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, in 1892. He was influential in the establishment of sociology as a valid field of academic study.

Biography Albion Woodbury Small was born in Buckfield, Maine, to parents Reverend Albion Keith Parris Small and Thankful Lincoln Woodbury. His ancestors settled in Maine in 1632. He lived in Bangor, Maine, and then Portland, Maine, where he attended public schools in both places.

He attended Colby University, now known as Colby College, from 1872 until he graduated in 1876. He studied theology from 1876 to 1879 at the Andover Newton Theological School. From 1879 to 1881 he studied at the University of Leipzig and the University of Berlin in Germany history, social economics and politics. While in Germany, he married Valeria von Massow in June 1881, Then, in 1894, along with colleague George E. Vincent, he wrote the first sociology textbook titled An Introduction to the Study of Society.