Jonathan Baxter Harrison

Infobox Person
name = Jonathan Baxter Harrison

---

caption = Jonathan Baxter Harrison, around 1880
birth_date = birth date|1835|4|5|mf=y
birth_place = Greene County, Ohio
death_date = death date|1907|6|17|mf=y
death_place = Franklin, New Hampshire
occupation = journalist, Unitarian minister
known_for = advocacy of forest preservation; studies of New England working class, Indian reservations, and postbellum South

Jonathan Baxter Harrison (April 5,1835 - June 17,1907), Unitarian minister and journalist who was involved in many of the social causes of his day: abolitionism, Indian rights, forest preservation, and the cultural improvement of the working class. Best known for his realistic depictions of everyday American life, he is acknowledged as an important influence in the development of literary realism. [ (Fryckstedt 1958)]

Life

Born in a log cabin in Greene County, Ohio, he early showed an eagerness for reading, often studying beside the fire at night after a long day spent working in the fields. As a young man, he became a backwoods Methodist minister, and then worked for a Quaker-run abolitionist paper. Volunteering for service in the Union Army, he was soon given a medical discharge, and spent the remaining war years as editor of the "Winchester Journal" in Randolph County, Indiana. [ (Turner 1999)] During this time he began corresponding with Charles Eliot Norton, the secretary of the Loyal Publication Society, beginning a lifelong friendship. In Norton’s papers we see Harrison described as a figure much like Abraham Lincoln: an unaffected frontiersman, at once virtuous and wise. [ (Turner 1999)]

After the war, Harrison became a Unitarian minister and active in Spiritualism, [ [http://www.spirithistory.com/66mich.html Though a resident of Indiana, Harrison apparently addressed the Michigan State Spiritual Association in 1866,] [http://www.spirithistory.com/66prov.html and went on to address the Third Annual Convention of the American Association of Spiritualists in Providence, Rhode Island, in that same year.] ] a religious movement that attracted many abolitionists and other reformers. To be closer to Norton, Harrison moved east, obtaining a position as Unitarian minister 1870-1873 in Montclair, New Jersey, [ [http://216.181.70.227/NJ/essex/Essex70.htm History of Essex County, New Jersey] ] and then from 1879-1884 in Franklin Falls, New Hampshire, [ [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nhcfrank/history.htm From "The History of Merrimack and Belknap Counties, New Hampshire", edited by D. Hamilton Hurd and published in 1885.] ] where he lived until his death. He made the acquaintance of members of Norton’s circle, such as Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect and social critic, and William Dean Howells, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.

At the encouragement of Norton and his friends, Harrison began writing on some of the most important social issues of the day. These included the conditions in the South after the end of Reconstruction; working class culture and political life in New England; the condition of the American Indians; and the deforestation of the Northeast. During the 1882 campaign to preserve the natural environment around Niagara Falls, Harrison wrote a series of letters to newspapers in Boston and New York that turned public opinion in favor of preservation. [ [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/cnchron2.html The Niagara Falls Association] ]

Harrison was recognized by his friends as someone with a unique and perceptive view of American life. [ (Turner 1999; Sedgwick 1994; Fryckstedt 1958)] His work has an ethnographic feel, particularly his documentation of life in the post-bellum South, based on extensive travels and contact with ordinary people in the everyday business of life. [ (Crimmins 1979)] One of his major concerns was to show the highly educated cultural elite how the rest of America lived, thought, and felt. Like Charles Eliot Norton, he was a conservative in the stamp of Matthew Arnold, worried that capitalism insidiously worked to degrade culture, and part of his intentions—particularly in documenting the life of the New England working class—was to make the cultured elite more aware and more concerned about the spiritual life of ordinary people. [ (Turner 1999; Sedgwick 1994; Fryckstedt 1958)] His work remains today as an important testimony of the conditions of life in the United States of the late nineteenth century. [ (Denning 1996: 40)]

Notes

References

*Crimmins, Timothy J. 1979. "Frederick Law Olmsted and Jonathan Baxter Harrison: Two Generations of Social Critics in the American South," pages 137-151 in Dana F. White and Victor Kramer (editors), "Olmsted South: Old South Critic/New South Planner". Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press.
*Denning, Michael. 1996. "The Cultural Front".
*Fryckstedt, Olov W. 1958. "In Quest of America: A Study of Howells’ Early Development as a Novelist." Upsala, Sweden: Thesis.
*Sedgwick, Ellery. 1994. "The Atlantic Monthly 1857-1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb". Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
*Turner, James C. 1999. "The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton". Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

elected Writings of Jonathan Baxter Harrison

Religion

*"Religious Condition of the West." "Radical: A Monthly Magazine, Devoted to Religion." 2(1866):234
*"Lessons of Methodism." "Old and New." 4(1871):189
*"Methods of Dealing with Social Questions." pages 249-254 in "Institute Essays; read before the Ministers’ Institute, October 1879, Providence R.I." with Introduction by Rev. H.W. Bellows. Boston: G.H. Ellis. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC17493232&id=yNgF5KQm1jQC&dq=%22Institute+Essays%22&as_brr=1 1880.]

New England Social Classes and Everyday Life

*"Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life." "The Atlantic Monthly." October, 1878 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0042&byte=269382689 42(252):385-403]
*"The Nationals, their Origin and their Aims." "The Atlantic Monthly." November, 1878 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0042&byte=269500416 42(253):521-530]
*"Three Typical Workingmen." "The Atlantic Monthly." December, 1878 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0042&byte=269633736 42(254):717-727]
*"Workingmen's Wives." "The Atlantic Monthly." January, 1879 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0043&byte=269728520 43(255):59-71]
*"The Career of a Capitalist." "The Atlantic Monthly." February, 1879 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0043&byte=269852822 43(256):129-135]
*"Study of a New England Factory Town." "The Atlantic Monthly." June, 1879 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0043&byte=270367471 43(260):689-705]
*"Preaching." "The Atlantic Monthly." August, 1879 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0044&byte=270606443 44(262):129-137]
*"Sincere Demagogy." "The Atlantic Monthly." October, 1879 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0044&byte=270855887 44(264):488-500]
*"Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life, and Other Papers." Houghton, Osgood and Company, Boston. 1880.
*"Notes on Industrial Conditions." Franklin Falls, N.H.: J.B. Harrison & Sons. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC40669119&id=DcMnig0KgoQC&dq=jonathan-baxter-harrison 1886.]
*"The Sale of Votes in New Hampshire." "The Century: A Popular Quarterly." November, 1893 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABP2287-0047-31 47(1):149-150]

Post-Reconstruction Period in the South

"Studies in the South." "The Atlantic Monthly":
*January, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0049&byte=273899157 49(291):76-92] ;
*February, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0049&byte=274028623 49(292):179-195] ;
*May, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0049&byte=274379761 49(295):673-685] ;
*June, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0049&byte=274487301 49(296):740-752] ;
*July, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?frames=1&cite=http%3A%2F%2Fcdl.library.cornell.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmoa%2Fsgml%2Fmoa-idx%3Fnotisid%3DABK2934-0050%26byte%3D274712984&coll=moa&view=50&root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla0050%2F&tif=00007.TIF&pagenum=99 50(297):99-110] ;
*August, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0050&byte=274712797 50(298):194-205] ;
*September, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0050&byte=274840866 50(299):349-361] ;
*October, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0050&byte=274955641 50(300):476-488] ;
*November, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0050&byte=275062912 50(301):623-634] ;
*December, 1882 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0050&byte=275175648 50(302):750-764] ;
*January, 1883 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0051&byte=275285953 51(303):87-99]

Native Americans

*"Education for Indians." "Critic and Good Literature." 11(1887):321
*"The latest studies on Indian reservations." Philadelphia: The Indian Rights Association. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC11709360&id=0-wNAAAAIAAJ&dq=jonathan-baxter-harrison 1887.]
*"The colleges and the Indians, and the Indian Rights Association." (pamphlet) Philadelphia: The Indian Rights Association. 1888.
*"Indians of the United States." "Chautauquan: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture." 9(1888):140, 208

The Natural Environment

*"The Condition of Niagara Falls, and the Measures Needed to Preserve Them: Eight Letters Published in the New York Evening Post, the New York Tribune, and the Boston Daily Advertiser, during the Summer of 1882." [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=amrvg&fileName=vg59//amrvgvg59.db&recNum=0&itemLink=r?ammem/consrvbib:@FIELD(NUMBER(vg59))&linkText=0 (pamphlet)] New York: Cambridge, J. Wilson and Son. 1882.
*"Forest Destruction." (Editorial) "New York Times." Aug. 5, 1888 Page:4 Column:4
*with Frederick Law Olmsted, "Observations on the Treatment of Public Plantations, More Especially Relating to the Use of the Axe." (pamphlet) Boston: T. R. Marvin, Printers. 1889. Reprinted in F.L. Olmsted, Jr. and Theodora Kimball (editors), "Forty Years of Landscape Architecture: Central Park." Boston: MIT Press. 1973.
*"Abandoned Farms of New Hampshire." "Granite Monthly." 13(1890):153
*"Conservancy of Forests by the State." "Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine." 13(1892):300
*"White Mountain Forests." "Garden and Forest: A Journal of Horticulture, Landscape Art and Forestry." 6(1893): [http://memory.loc.gov/gardfor/v0000006/i0000262/p0012.tif 106] .
*"Our Forest Interests in Relation to the American Mind." "The New England Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly." December, 1893 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=AFJ3026-0015-85 | 15(4):417-424]

Persondata
NAME=Harrison, Jonathan Baxter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Harrison, J.B.
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Unitarian minister, journalist, early social scientist
DATE OF BIRTH=April 5,1835
PLACE OF BIRTH=Greene County, Ohio
DATE OF DEATH=June 17,1907
PLACE OF DEATH=Franklin, New Hampshire