Stephen Haskins Carpenter

Early life and education Stephen Haskins Carpenter was born on August 7, 1831 in Little Falls, New York, to parents Reverend Calvin Green Carpenter and Laura Haskins-Carpenter. Carpenter was homeschooled as a child before entering his formal education at the Munro Collegiate Institute (also called the Munro Academy) in Elbridge, New York.

Career Carpenter first moved to Wisconsin in 1852 where he initially worked as a tutor for the University of Wisconsin–Madison. From 1857 to 1860 Carpenter served as the clerk of the Wisconsin Board of Education. In 1860 Carpenter was appointed as the professor of ancient languages at St. Paul's Episcopal College in Palmyra, Missouri. Carpenter was also the superintendent of Dane county schools before he eventually became a tutor and later an associate professor for UW-Madison.

In 1872 Carpenter published the book English Of The XIV Century, Illustrated By Notes, Grammatical And Philological, On Chaucer's Prologue And Knight's Tale: Designed To Serve As An Introduction To The Study Of English Literature which contains a significant study of the English language during the times of Geoffrey Chaucer. Later in 1875 Carpenter was appointed as the president of the University of Kansas but declined the offer. In 1876 Carpenter served as the head examiner for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wisconsin. Carpenter is described by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences as an "evolutionist but not Darwinian" in terms of his studies and speculations on Charles Darwin's theory of human evolution which peaked in popularity around the 1860s and 1870s. One of Carpenter's works during his time with the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences was his 1874 title The Philosophy of Evolution: Together With a Preliminary Essay on The Metaphysical Basis of Science.

Carpenter died on December 7, 1878 in Geneva, New York, due to complications of diphtheria. English Of The XIV Century, Illustrated By Notes, Grammatical And Philological, On Chaucer's Prologue And Knight's Tale: Designed To Serve As An Introduction To The Study Of English Literature (1872). An Historical Sketch of the University of Wisconsin: from 1849 to 1876 (1876). An Introduction to the study of the Anglo-Saxon language: Comprising an elementary grammar, selections for the readings with explanatory notes and a vocabulary (1880). The Elements of English Analysis Illustrated by a New system of Diagrams (1887).