>My grandfather, William E. GEDDES, was born in Troy, NY on 3-23-1878. He moved
to Braddock, PA around 1900. Before the move, he was supposed to have taken a
correspondence course in engineering, or something very close to that. Does
anyone know of a college in that time period that offered a course like that?
And would I be able to access their records to verify that he did take those
classes?<
Lisa:
This entails some history of American education. [Subscribers not interested,
hit DELETE now : ) ]
Most higher education in America before World War II was designed either to
produce well-rounded, cultured citizens to lead the commonwealth and industry
(men) or, in the case of women, to be well-educated, cultured mothers who would
raise well-rounded, cultured children to lead the commonwealth...... Also, men
were prepared for The Professions (ministry, medicine, law). A handful of
colleges incorporated engineering into their curricula: Sheffield College at
Yale, Harvard, MIT, RIT, RPI, Bucknell, and a few others.
But these were not the type of institution that would offer correspondence
courses, and they were generally not accessible to the full range of American
citizenry. (At some colleges, students in a class were not listed
alphabetically but "according to the precedence of their parents." [citation
available upon request]) And there were not then the large number of community
colleges and public universities that now dot the U.S. Many of what are now
major state universities were then agricultural schools.
Thus, after the decline of the apprentice system and as boys became less likely
to take up their father's trade, and as the U.S. industrialized and knowledge of
the new technologies became an employment advantage for workers, the need for
vocational education on a broad scale was met primarily by proprietary schools,
i.e. privately owned schools run for profit. Some of these operated in the
cities, near the factories and workshops where their students hoped to work;
others operated correspondence courses.
A few proprietary schools remain--Katherine Gibbs in Boston is one of the best
known. Some made a transition in the 20th Century into the kind of
self-governed, non-profit institution that we think of today as a "college."
But by far the majority of them folded or failed as technology changed, as labor
supplies changed, as their owners died or moved on to the frontier or to a new
opportunity. (The operators of these schools tended to be "entrepreneurial
types," most honest but some not.)
So, to make a short answer long, it seems unlikely that your grandfather's
correspondence school is still around to share its records with you.
BUT, because he was from Troy, NY, I suggest that you contact the alumni office
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, one of the country's premier
engineering schools. Since your information about the correspondence course is
both hearsay and vague, it is worth checking to see if he might have studied at
RPI.
Good luck!
Andrew Searle
Groton, Massachusetts
73712.3451@compuserve.com