Joseph Frederick Waring

Joseph Frederick Waring (September 12, 1902 – April 8, 1972) was an American scholar, preservationist and author. A Yale College graduate, he went on to teach at several schools, including over thirty years at the Western Reserve Academy. He also wrote three books.

Life and career

Waring was born in 1902, in Savannah, Georgia, the youngest of three sons of Pinckney Alston Waring, a real-estate broker, and Lillie Horton Ellis, who died before he reached the age of four. His paternal grandfather was Dr. James Johnston Waring (1829–1888), his great-uncle was Civil War lieutenant general J. Fred. Waring, and his cousin was Savannah amateur archaeologist Antonio J. Waring Jr.

He attended Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts, followed by a graduation from Yale College in 1923. Waring also attended the University of Cambridge for advanced study, and remained in England to teach for a year. While there, he edited fellow Georgian Joel Chandler Harris' The Tar Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus, one of the Uncle Remus volumes. He returned to his native land in 1926 to teach at the Salisbury School in Connecticut. He later earned a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison before teaching at a girls' school in New Hope, Pennsylvania, until 1935.