Henry Harrison Straight

Henry Harrison Straight (July 20, 1846 – November 17, 1886) was an American geologist, professor, second president of Peru State College, and the father of investment banker and diplomat Willard Dickerman Straight.

Early life Henry Harrison Straight was born on July 20, 1846, in Charlotte, New York, within Chautauqua County, New York. He was orphaned while still a boy and supported himself by working on a local farm. He later attended special study at Cornell University and became a member of the Royal Geographical Society.

Career From January 1871 until 1873, Straight became a science teacher as well as the second president (referred to as principal at the time) of Peru Normal School in Peru, Nebraska, establishing the reputation for the young college that was only opened six years earlier in 1865.

In 1873, he joined the Science Department of Central Missouri Normal School in Warrensburg along with his wife, Emma, also an educator. In the summer of 1873, Henry and Emma attended the inaugural program at the Anderson School of Natural History on Penikese Island, a school for naturalists and science teachers ran by distinguished Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz. After Straight returned to Missouri, he tried to put into practice the methods of scientific study that Agassiz taught, combining them with procedures he developed as a classroom teacher at Peru. Henry worked at the college until 1875, when he and Emma both resigned. also an educator, who was born at Beardstown, Illinois, and was the daughter of Col. Willard Arms Dickerman (d. 1864), of the 103rd Illinois Infantry who died from a wound received while commanding of a brigade at Resaca, Georgia. Her mother was Margaret Elizabeth Deaver. Emma was descended from Thomas Dickerman, who likely came to America from Bristol with the Reverend Richard Mather in 1636 and settled in Dorchester. who in 1911 married Dorothy Payne Whitney (1887–1968), a member of the prominent Whitney family, in Geneva, Switzerland. Her father was William Collins Whitney, the United States Secretary of the Navy during the first Cleveland administration, and her mother was Flora Payne, the daughter of Senator Henry B. Payne of Ohio and sister of Col. Oliver Hazard Payne. Hazel Straight (1882–1922), who married James Forest Sanborn (1876–1949), a Harvard graduate of 1899, on September 19, 1911. He was the son of Jeremiah Sanborn (1837–1881) and Anna Elizabeth Batchelder (1841–1920).

Straight died on November 17, 1886, in California after a year of declining heath, followed shortly thereafter by his wife in 1890, also of tuberculosis. Willard and his sister were taken in by Dr. Elvire Ranier, one of the earliest woman physicians in the country, who cared for and educated the children. Beatrice Whitney Straight (1914–2001), an Academy Award-winning actress, Michael Whitney Straight (1916–2004), a former Soviet spy, and Dorothy Straight Sanborn (1918–1947).

Legacy According to the Nebraska State Historical Society: The success of Straight's career does not lie in his publications or even in the large number of students he influenced. Rather he was significant because he influenced other persons who themselves became educational leaders.

In the Annual Report of the Regents of the university, to the Legislature of the State of New York, Straight was described as follows: His great aim during mature years was to bring science to the people, through which he believed better thinking and better living could be secured; hence he chose to work in normal schools, rejecting higher salaries and more honored positions in other educational institutions, hoping thus to train teachers who in turn would train the children and youth of our land.