Hoshour

that state from Alsace early in the eighteenth
century. Left fatherless at fourteen, the eldest of
six children, Samuel was hired out to neighbor-
ing farmers as a helper. He received about three
months' schooling each year, however, and at the
age of sixteen was appointed teacher of the local
school. Aspiring to become a German Lutheran
minister, in 1822 he entered the academy at York
where he remained until 1824, and then studied
for two years more at Newmarket, Shenandoah
County, Va., under Dr. Samuel S. Schmucker
[q.vJ]. On Feb. 7, 1826, he married Lucinda,
daughter of Jacob Savage, After serving as prin-
cipal of New Market Academy for a year, in the
spring of 1828 he became pastor of the newly
formed Lutheran parish at Smithsburg, Wash-
ington County, MA, having been ordained Oct.
23, 1827. In 1831 he removed to Hagerstown
where he taught in a private school for a time
but soon accepted a call to St. John's Lutheran
Church of that place. While here he embraced
the views of the Disciples of Christ, and in 1835
his name was expunged from the rolls of the
Synod.

Having sacrificed his professional prospects
and lost many of his friends by being true to his
convictions, he decided to make a new start in the
West. Accordingly, in September 1835, he and a
brother-in-law, putting their families into two
covered wagons and a carriage, slowly made
their way through the mountains and across Ohio
to Indiana, where they settled at Centreville,
Wayne County. Although he preached almost
every Sunday for years, the remainder of his
long life was devoted chiefly to education. His
first work was in connection with private schools,
and in the annals of the state he is numbered
among a little group of pioneer teachers who
brought these schools to such a degree of ef-
ficiency as to set a standard for the whole edu-
cational system. In the spring of 1836 he be-
came principal of the Wayne County Seminary.
This school was then the center of learning for
much of eastern Indiana. Among his pupils were
Oliver P. Morton and Lew Wallace [#£.#.]. In
1839 he was asked to establish a similar insti-
tution in Cambridge City, and in November of
that year he opened Cambridge Seminary, which
he conducted successfully until 1846, when ill
health compelled him to seek less exacting duties.
For the next five or six years he was principally
engaged in giving special German courses in the
colleges and cities of the West. Partly for the
benefit of his health, in 1851 he bought a farm in
Wayne County, which he superintended until
1858 when he was elected president of North
Western Christian University (now Butler Uni-

Hosmer

versity), Indianapolis, the institution, although
opened in 1855, having had no head previously.
In 1861 he resigned, but remained as professor
of languages for fourteen years more. From
May 15 to Nov. 25,1862, he was also state super-
intendent of public instruction. In 1875, to use
his own figure, the faculty tree was shaken, and
having attained a ripe age, he fell off. The clos-
ing years of his life were spent in Indianapolis,
where he gave private lessons in German. An
Autobiography published in 1884, with an intro-
duction by Isaac Errett and an appendix by Dr.
Ryland T. Brown, contains several of his ad-
dresses. He was also the author of Letters to
Esq. Pedant in the East by Lorenzo Altisonant,
an Emigrant to the West (1844), a work intend-
ed to teach the meaning of unusual words on the
principle of association of ideas. It went through
several editions.

[R. G. Bocme, A Hist, of Educ. in Ind. (1892) ; H. M.
Skinner, Biog. Sketches of the Superintendents of Pub-
lic Instruction of the State of Ind. (1884); F. D.
Power, Sketches of Our Pioneers (1898) ; Indianapolis
Journal, Nov. 30, 1883.] H.E. S.

HOSMER, FREDERICK LUCIAN (Oct.

16, i84O-June 7, 1929), Unitarian clergyman,
hymn-writer, was born in Framingham, Mass.,
the son of Charles and Susan (Carter) Hosmer,
and a descendant of James Hosmer of Hawk-
hurst, Kent, England, who came to America in
1635 and settled in Concord, Mass. For some
years during Frederick's boyhood, his father was
an unsuccessful farmer, and thereafter engaged
in sundry occupations. Frederick prepared for
college in his native town and graduated from
Harvard in 1862. He had taught school before
and during his college course, and from 1862 to
1864 was master of Houghton School, Bolton,
Mass., and from 1864 to 1866, of Adams School,
Dorchester, now Harris School, Boston. He then
entered the Harvard Divinity School from which
he graduated in 1869.

Ordained to the Unitarian ministry on Oct.
28 of that year, he became associated with Rev.
Joseph Allen in the pastorate of the First Con-
gregational Church, Unitarian, Northboro, Mass.
In 1872 he accepted a call to the Second Congre-
gational Church, Unitarian, Quincy, III. Re-
signing in April 1877, he spent eighteen months
in travel and study, and then from 1878 to 1892
was pastor of the Church of the Unity, Cleve-
land, Ohio. After a brief term as general mis-
sionary of the Western Unitarian Conference,
with headquarters in Chicago, he was pastor in
St. Louis until 1899. The later years of his life
were spent in Berkeley, Cal., where he was in
charge of the First Unitarian Church from 1900
to 1904. He never married.

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