8(55 WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER. 



TN'ILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER (1840-1910) 



FeUow in Class III, Section 3, 1881. 



William Graham Sumner, for thirty-eight years professor of Politi- 

 cal and Social Science in Yale University, passed away on April 12, 

 1910, at Englewood, New Jersey. He was born at Paterson, New 

 Jersey, October 30, 1840, of English parents, his father, Thomas 

 Sumner, having come to America in 1836 and his mother, Sarah 

 Graham, in 1825. He states in an autobiographical sketch that his 

 ancestors on both sides had been artizans, and that, so far as he knew 

 he was the first member of the family who ever studied Latin and 

 Algebra. 



His early years were spent at Hartford, Connecticut, he was gradu- 

 ated from Yale College in 1863, studied French and Hebrew in Geneva 

 in 1863-64, Divinity and History at Gottingen in 1864-66, and during 

 a part of the year 1866 he studied Anglican Theology at Oxford. 

 Having been elected tutor at Yale he entered upon his duties in 

 September, 1866, in which position he remained until March, 1869. 

 He was ordained deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1867, 

 and became assistant to the rector of Calvary Church in New York 

 City in 1869. From September, 1870 to September, 1872, he was 

 rector of the Church of the Redeemer at Morristown, New Jersey. 

 In September, 1872, he began his long career as Professor of Political 

 and Social Science at Yale, having been elected in June of that year. 



His death marked the close, as his appointment at Yale had marked 

 the beginning, of an epoch in university teaching and in the develop- 

 ment of economic thought in this country. When he began the teach- 

 ing of Political and Social Science at Yale in 1872, his subject had 

 received very little attention in our institutions of learning, and the 

 scientific attitude was non-existent in our public discussions. Francis 

 A. Walker began his work in the Sheffield Scientific School the same 

 year, and Charles F. Dunbar had begun at Harvard the year before. 

 For many years Professor Perry at Williams and Amasa Walker at 

 Amherst had been lecturing on Political Economy. But the rapid 

 development of interest in these subjects may be said to date from the 

 early seventies. Probably no one contributed more to that awaken- 

 ing than Professor Sumner. His teaching was so clear, so strong, and 



