William Russell

Who was William Russell?

William Russell was an educator and elocutionist. He was formally educated in the Latin school and in the university of Glasgow; and, he came to the USA in 1819, wherein that year, he took charge of Chatham Academy in Savannah, Georgia. He moved to New Haven, Connecticut, a few years later, and there he taught in the New Township Academy and also in the Hopkins Grammar School. He then devoted himself to the instruction of classes in elocution in Andover, Harvard, and Boston, Massachusetts. He edited the American Journal of Education 1826-1829. In 1830, he taught in a girls' school in Germantown, Pennsylvania, for a time with Bronson Alcott. He resumed his elocution classes in Boston and Andover in 1838, and he lectured extensively in New England and in New York State. He established a teachers' institute in New Hampshire in 1849, which he then moved to Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1853. His subsequent life was devoted to lecturing, for the most part, before the Massachusetts teachers' institutes, under the guidance and instruction of the state board of education.