Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn 1831-1917, American journalist, author, and philanthropist, b. Hampton Falls, N.H., grad. Harvard, 1855. An active abolitionist, he was a friend and agent of John Brown, although he disapproved of the Harpers Ferry raid. He was a correspondent of the Springfield Republican, editor (1863-67) of the Boston Commonwealth, and a founder of the American Social Science Association and editor (1867-97) of its journal. He served as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Charities and helped found the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, the Clarke School for Deaf Mutes, and the National Prison Association. Long a resident in Concord, he wrote valuable biographies of Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. E. Channing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and others.

Bibliography: See B. P. Broadhurst, Social Thought, Social Practice, and Social Work Education (1971).

Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin (1831–1917),born in New Hampshire, graduated from Harvard (1855), and settled in Concord as a schoolteacher, where his pupils included the children of Emerson, Hawthorne, and the elder Henry James. He became an Abolitionist leader, and was arrested for refusing to testify concerning his aid to John Brown. He was associated with the Springfield Republican (1856–1914), and was also active in humanitarian work as the head of state charities. His acquaintance with the Transcendentalists resulted in the publication of many books, which include Henry D. Thoreau (1882); A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy (2 vols., 1893), written with W.T. Harris, who also contributed to his Genius and Character of Emerson (1885); The Personality of Thoreau (1901); Hawthorne and His Friends (1908); and Recollections of Seventy Years (2 vols., 1909).