Maclure of New Harmony: Scientist, Progressive Educator, Radical Philanthropist

1 Origins and the Making of a Life

3 Origins and the Making of a Life The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World TheRoyalBurghofAyr,aportnearGlasgowandanancientcenterofagricultureandcommerce ,washometoabout4,000peopleinthemid-eighteenth century. The town lies in a rolling green region by the sea, the black hills of Arranloominginthedistance.WidelyknownasRobertBurns’scountry,the locale is remarkable for its many extraordinary sons who made their mark in the world.1 One of these was William Maclure, born on October 27, 1763. Hisfather,DavidMcClure,amerchant,likemanyotherScots,carriedonan export-import business with North America that fell on hard times during theAmericanRevolution,butWilliam’searlylifecannotbesaidtoberuled by poverty and deprivation.2 He was one of twelve children, half of whom survived—William and two brothers, Alexander (1765?–1850?) and John (1771?–1834?), and three sisters, Anna (1766–1834), Margaret (1768–1839), and Helen, who was the only Maclure who married. She and her husband, David Hunter, had seven children, and when she died, William assumed responsibility for his nieces and nephews.3 He had, in fact, been baptized James, but for reasons unknown, changed his name to William and his family name to Maclure, a change copied by his siblings.4 There is little question that William was the dominant member of the family who brought his siblings to America and arOne • 4 · Maclure of New Harmony ranged for them to spend their later years in New Harmony, Indiana. But despite the solicitude, he admitted to a friend that they gave him little pleasure. Insanity seemed to have run in the family. John, whom William called a “weaker brother,” ended his days in a mental hospital in Lexington , Kentucky. As many as three of Helen’s children were afflicted with significant mental instability, and Margaret was considered highly emotional , “ethereal,” and “nonsensical.”5 The suggestion has been made that William may not have had children for fear of perpetuating this family trait.6 Alexander proved to be a difficult, incompetent businessman, responsibleforfinanciallossesthatwerecoveredbyWilliam ,theonlymember of the family capable of earning a living.7 Relations between William and Alexander and his religious sister, Anna, were always strained; they openly disapproved of their brother’s philanthropy, and they taxed Williamtotheextreme .8 Thefamilystoryisoneofagenerousbrotherplagued by demanding siblings—worrisome financial millstones who continued to carry on their mischief, even after William’s death. The troubled relationship with his siblings may provide some insight into William’s silence about his parents; they simply disappear from his story. Little is known of Maclure’s formal education except that it was meager , nor do we know what sort of student he was. Since the family was not withoutmeans,Williamwastutoredprivatelyinhisearlyyearsbyayoung clergyman, then educated in a public school in Ayr, instructed by a Mr. Douglaswhowasknowledgeableintheclassics,mathematics,andscience. From his later pronouncements, Maclure benefited from learning “practical facts” and mastering science and natural history, while he belittled his classical education, as he did English education in general with its bias toward classical and clerical instruction which reflected the tastes of the ruling class and was directed toward the middle-class student. Maclure thundered that the classics drilled into young minds were the remnants of an outworn tradition, myths of the “perfection” of the Greek democracies and the Roman republic, false because they were the progeny of unstable, unrepresentativepoliticalsystems,“wanderinginlicentiousanarchy,”and the prey of “petty tyrants.” Their age was barbarous, he felt, and could not measure up to “the present advanced state of civilization.”9 Classical education had left Maclure “ignorant as a pig of anything useful ,”andwhathehadlearnedafteryearsofschoolingcouldnowbeacquired insixtoeightmonthsofpropereducation—thewasteofitall!10 Itdidlittleor Origins and the Making of a Life · 5 nothingtoeducatethechildrenofthepoor,toteachthem“useful”information that would equip them to acquire their fair share of the nation’s wealth, and it probably did not even prepare Maclure for a life in business. He consideredit “anoriginalsin”thatclassicaleducationwasbeingtransferredfrom Europe to American schools.11 His later involvement in the establishment of schools and libraries unquestionably derives from his own unsatisfactory scholastic experience, which laid the foundation for his radical thinking. Maclure ended his formal instruction without going to a university, which left him with woefully inadequate chirographic skills—his writing often indecipherable, becoming smaller and smaller as time went on. It also left this intelligent man with remarkably little talent for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.12 Indeed, for someone who read and wrote extensively, these failings were so pronounced and pervasive that they suggest a pathology or perhaps a lasting protest against his reviled classical education. Still, his extensive writings reveal an adequate vocabulary and an unadorned, forceful, polemical style of a...