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A Tribute...
"Fannie Effie Sabin" was born September 6, 1870 in Naperville, Illinois, the fifth child of Albert S. Sabin and Sarah Ellis Sabin. The Sabin and Ellis families, old New England families, had migrated from Massachusetts and Connecticut to Vermont, New York, and then west to Naperville, DuPage County, Illinois in the early 1830s. Naperville was a newly founded town in the frontier west of Chicago, and for years it vied for the position of county seat of DuPage County. It later attracted Northwestern College (now North Central), founded by the Evangelical Society. The Sabin family valued education, and Guy Ellis Sabin was in the first class to began studies at Northwestern College after it relocated to Naperville in 1871.
Fannie later adopted Frances Ellis
Sabin as
her professional name. She taught at the University of Wisconsin,
and at the Teacher's College of Columbia University in New York.
She never married, but led an exciting and
adventurous life. She and her surviving sisters, Mary and
Daisy,
traveled extensively, and, near the end of their lives, lived near
their nephew (my grandfather), Bert Sabin, in Jonesborough,
Tennessee.
In 1934 Fannie attempted to reconstruct a list of all of her
destinations
in a little travel diary,
which I have transcribed below. The following is a biography which was published in ACL Historical Notes of "The Classical Outlook" in the winter of 1993: Frances Ellis Sabin In the fall of 1923 a woman passenger journeyed by train from Madison Wisconsin to New York City. Fellow passengers would not have suspected that this apparently tranquil trip was the beginning of an epoch in the teaching of Latin in this country; but so it was. They could not possibly know that their traveling companion was Miss Frances E. Sabin, who had already done more for secondary Latin than any other individual in the country, and who was on her way to found the Service Bureau for Classical Teachers (now called the Teaching Materials and Resource Center [TMRC] as a branch of the American Classical League. In 1923 the Service Bureau was a dream in Miss Sabin's mind; by 1936 the Bureau was known among teachers of the Classics throughout the length and breadth of the land. Miss Sabin's life was, in a sense, a series of such journeys, adventures, dreams come true. Miss Sabin was born in Naperville, Illinois, on 6 Sep. 1870. She received her BA from he University of Michigan in 1895 and her MA in 1896. She continued her graduate study at the University of Chicago and abroad. As a young graduate of the University of Michigan, she set out ambitiously to teach Latin better than it had ever been taught before, and it was not long before her brilliant work began to attract wide attention. From the high school at Fort Wayne, Indiana, when was called to Oak Park, Illinois. Here she was instrumental in designing and executing a "Classical Room," which soon became famous. She also taught at the Northern Illinois State Normal School at DeKalb, and for one year took a "breathing space" to study in Rome. In 1913
the cry for the "practical"
in education
was being raised with loud insistence, and the study of Latin was at a
low ebb. In that year, Miss Sabin prepared an exhibit entitled
"The
Relation of Latin to Practical Life." She displayed the whole set
of beautifully lettered and illustrated posters at a meeting of the
Classical
Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS) held at Indianapolis
in
April, 1913; to say that it took the meeting by storm is to put the
case
mildly. Members of the Association who saw the exhibit were still
speaking about it in 1936 and of the compelling impression which it had
made on all observers - professional classicists and laymen
alike.
Many credit Miss Sabin for staying a great part of the anti-Latin
feeling
across the country with that one project. In 1914 Miss Sabin became Assistant Professor of Latin at the University of Wisconsin and took charge of teachers' training and demonstration courses in Latin. The same year she published her first book, The Relation of Latin to Practical Life, a summary of the famous exhibit, with instructions for the construction of others like it. Not content to rest upon her laurels, Miss Sabin then proceeded to organize a state-wide service bureau for Latin teachers. She encouraged Latin teachers to send in teaching devices which they had found useful or to write for advice or help. She published a tiny leaflet called Latin Notes and distributed it to teachers of Latin in the state. In 1916 her fine work gained her the vice-presidency of CAMWS. From the idea of a state service bureau to that of a national one was a logical step. Dean Andrew F. West, first president of the American Classical League, succeeded in having a national bureau set up at the Teachers College, Columbia University. In 1922, Miss Sabin was called to nation-wide service as Director of the Service Bureau for Classical Teachers sponsored by the American Classical League and Teachers College of Columbia University. Latin Notes made its appearance as a publication of the League Service Bureau in November, 1923, under Miss Sabin's editorship (where it was to remain until 1936 when Lillian B. Lawler became editor and the name of the publication was changed to the Classical Outlook). Immediately both the bureau and the periodical were hailed with joy by teachers throughout the country. Together they helped, encouraged, and inspired Latin teachers by the thousands; through them Miss Sabin was, in her own phrase, "a Minister of Munitions to the Classics." In 1930 the Bureau was moved o the Washington Square branch of New York University, and Miss Sabin was made Associate Professor of Education there. In 1936, after a life of service matched by few, she retired as Associate Professor Emerita. Miss Sabin
was an inveterate
globe-trotter,
having been abroad 13 times in addition to a nine-month's trip around
the
world in 1932-33; she spoke as familiarly of India, China, and
Egypt,
as of Italy and Greece. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority
and Phi Beta Kappa, and of the Pen and Brush Club, as well as of most
of
the scholarly organizations in her own field. She was the author
of several books, among them Classical Associations of Places in
Italy, Classical
Myths That Live Today, and Classical Allusions in the New York
Times. Frances Ellis Sabin died in Jonesborough, Tennessee, on 10 Jan. 1943. It is not too much to say that Latin Notes, together with the literally thousands of League publications, great and small, prepared or inspired by Miss Sabin, have furnished aid, comfort and "ammunition" to thousands of teachers and that both the present Teaching Materials and Resource Center and the Classical Outlook stand as monuments to her devotion to the cause of the Classics.
Michelle P. Wilhelm This brief biography of Frances
Ellis Sabin is reprinted with
some
additions and changes from two short accounts of her life published by
Lillian B. Lawler in Classical Outlook 14 (1936); and by William L.
Carr
in Classical Outlook 20 (1943). The Travels of Frances Ellis Sabin This list was reconstructed by Frances ("Fannie") in small memo book dated 1934. In the beginning she says, "Several trips taken before 1900 but not recorded..." 1900-1901
1901
1909
1909 [this must mean winter or
maybe summer
1910?]
1912
1914
1915
1916
1925
1927
1929
1931
August 1932-May 1933
1935
1935
Frances Ellis Sabin is buried in Maplelawn Cemetery in
Jonesborough,
Tennessee. A marker also has been placed beside her sisters and
parents
in the Naperville, Illinois Cemetery. Note: I began this DuPage County site as an independent genealogy site.
When the DuPage County Genealogical Society chose to relinquish its
involvement in the USGenWeb Project, it removed all research material
from the ILGenWeb Project. This site (my original independent
history site) was migrated to the ILGenWeb Project. Please let me
know if you find any broken links. Pat Sabin, DuPage County ILGenWeb Coordinator |