Male

May 4, 1796

August 2, 1859

Franklin, MA

Dedham, MA
Boston, MA
Yellow Springs, OH

Charlotte Messer Mann (September 12, 1830)
Mary Peabody Mann (May 1, 1843)

Horace Mann was born in Franklin, Massachusetts in 1796. He was educated at Brown University before he attended the Litchfield Law School in 1822. Mann was admitted to the bar in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1823 where he began practicing law.

Ten years later he began a four year term as a State Senator. As a Senator, Horace Mann became increasingly interested in social issues. He supported legislation to prohibit the sale of alcohol and lottery tickets, and to support the creation of state hospitals for the insane. Mann was instrumental in leading Massachusetts to form the first state board of education.

Horace Mann’s interest in the standard of educational practices led him to give up law and his role in the Senate. He was appointed as the Secretary of the Massachusetts State ...Board of Education in 1837. Although the powers of the board were limited, it was able to affect public attitudes about school issues and to create public support for increasing the pay of teachers and improving their training through the founding of teacher-training schools.

In 1843, Horace Mann toured Europe to study educational conditions and methods. When he returned to the United States, he championed features of European education including the abolition of corporal punishment. He was opposed by conservator educators who believed in the practice and was attacked by church officials for advocating schools not be run by religious sects. However, these attacks drew public attention to school issues. Mann’s ideas were published in 12 annual reports which have become a record of the period of major educational reform in Massachusetts and the basis for a new school system throughout the entire country.

Horace Mann resigned as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1848 when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to fill a vacancy caused by the death of John Quincy Adams. He served until 1853, when he became president of Antioch College (now Antioch University) in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was a newly founded, non-sectarian, co-educational college which symbolized the many reforms proposed by Mann in his earlier positions.
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1821-1823

Attended Brown University in 1819.

Lawyer; Political Office; Educator

Norfolk in 1823

After studying at the Litchfield Law School he became a student with Hon. J.J. Fiske of Wrentham, MA.

Whig; Free-Soil

U.S. Representative (MA) 1848-1853

State Representative (MA) 1827-1833
State Senator (MA) 1833-1837

President of the State Senate from 1835-1837. Commissioner for the revision of the MA statures in 1835. Served as secretary to the Board of Education of MA from 1837-1848.

Litchfield Eagle, October 7, 1822 and October 6, 1823.

Catalogue of the Litchfield Law School Hartford, CT: Press of Case, Tiffany and Company, 1849.