Santa Clara County Biographies


This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm



          
PROF. H. B. WORCESTER
 
            Prof. H. B. Worcester, proprietor of the Garden City Business 
College and Academy, came to San Jose in the fall of 1876, and took charge of 
the Business College Department of the San Jose Institute for one term; and in 
January, 1877, opened a school for instruction in book-keeping, and for business 
training, in his own private parlors.  Eight years before, in 1869, Prof. Jams 
Vinsonhaler established a commercial college in San Jose, which he conducted 
successfully until his death, in the spring of 1876.  The business college was 
then connected with the Institute, changing the name to Institute Business 
College.  But the combination proved unsuccessful, and the school soon went 
down.  After the collapse of the institute, Professor Worcester leased its 
building on First and Devine Streets, in which he carried on his young and 
growing school till near the close of 1878.  He then leased the hall in the 
Farmers� Union Building, corner of Santa Clara and San Pedro Streets, and 
removed his school to it.  There was at first considerable unoccupied room in 
the large hall, forty by eighty feet in area, but under the professor�s able 
management it soon grew to the full capacity of the hall.  Still thinking to 
improve and enlarge the facilities of the college, Professor Worcester leased 
the still more commodious quarters the college now occupies, known as Commercial 
Hall, at 59 South Market Street.  The room is one hundred feet square, and is 
divided into a lecture-room, school-room, recitation-rooms and office.  It is 
admirably lighted and in every way well adapted for the purpose, and is fitted 
up and furnished with all the furniture and appliances of a first-class 
commercial college, including desks and sittings for a hundred students.  The 
attendance during the school year numbers from one hundred and fifty to two 
hundred.  The business course embraces book-keeping, penmanship, arithmetic, 
business paper, commercial law, business correspondence, business practice, 
lectures, and reading.  The academic course includes such studies and 
instruction as will fit the pupils to enter any of the literary colleges or 
universities.  Many of the graduates from the Garden City Business College are 
filling prominent positions in banks and other large business establishments.
            After obtaining his early education, Professor Worcester enlisted in 
the U. S. Army, from which he was discharged at the end of two years� service on 
account of ill health.  He took a course in Bryant & Strattan�s Business 
College, and entered upon a career of twelve years of practical business life, 
at the end of which he was tendered the principalship of the Aurora Business 
College, in Aurora, Illinois.  He filled this position from 1873 till 1875, when 
he resigned to come to California, to recover his wife�s failing health.  As an 
instructor in the school-room Professor Worcester has few equals.  His methods 
are original, and his power to present facts and impart knowledge to the 
receptive mind, is peculiarly striking and impressive.
 
Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, 
Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 
1888.
Pg. 145
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler