Joseph Cogswell

Joseph Green Cogswell (September 27, 1786 – November 26, 1871) was an American librarian, bibliographer and an innovative educator.

Education Born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Cogswell received a grammar school education in Ipswich, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy. He graduated from Harvard in 1806, and studied law from 1807 to 1809. and practised for a few years in Belfast, Maine. In 1812 he married Mary, the daughter of Gov. John Taylor Gilman. She died in 1813. Her death, and a distaste for the profession, led him to abandon the practice of law. That year Cogswell went to Europe, and, in company with George Ticknor, spent two years at the University of Göttingen, where he paid special attention to the methods and principles of instruction. Two more years were passed in Europe, chiefly on the continent, in the principal capitals, and in the study of educational problems and bibliography. During part of this time, Edward Everett was his companion. He was, with his friend Ticknor, the guest of Sir Walter Scott, at Abbotsford. He also contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (February, March 1819) two anonymous essays critically examining education in the United States. He then assumed the charge of a similar institution in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was the Episcopal Boys School, founded in 1833 by Bishop Levi Silliman Ives on the model of the Church Institute at Flushing, New York, a most successful school founded by William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877) in 1828. Hence Ives and Cogswell intended to apply what had been learned about superlative instruction at both Flushing and Round Hill. Ill health and incompatibility with Southern culture led to Cogswell's resignation after only two years at Raleigh. Cogswell returned to Massachusetts—settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He resigned as a Trustee of the Astor library in 1863. He died November 26, 1871, in Cambridge.