Biographical Note

John William Burgess, American Educator, 1844-1931

John William Burgess, son of Thomas and Mary Edwards Burgess, was born in Pulaski, Giles County, Tennessee on August 26, 1844.  He attended Cumberland University in Tennessee from 1860-61 before joining the Union Army.  In 1864 he began studying at Amherst College, graduating in 1867.  In 1869 he became a member of the Massachusetts Bar and also married Augusta Thayer Jones, sister of the benefactor of this library.  Augusta Burgess died in 1884 and Burgess married Ruth Payne Jewett, a cousin of Augusta, a year later.  They had one child, Elisha Payne Jewett Burgess.  John William Burgess died in Brookline, Massachusetts, on January 13, 1931.

Between 1869 and 1876, Burgess taught at Knox College in Illinois, studied in German universities, and taught history and law at Amherst College.  He began to teach constitutional law at Columbia College in 1876, beginning a relationship with that institution that would last nearly forty years.  In 1880 Burgess, with the assistance of colleagues, established the School of Political Science at Columbia, which was Columbia's first graduate school and the first collegiate Political Science department in the United States.  Under Burgess's tenure Columbia organized the Academy of Political Science, which in 1886 began publishing the scholarly journal Political Science Quarterly.  He was named Dean of the School of Political Science in 1890, a position he retained until his retirement in 1912.

In 1906-07 Burgess was the first Theodore Roosevelt Professor of American History and Institutions at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, Germany.  This high honor help re-establish old ties with German scholars and politicians.  He was teaching in an Austrian university when the First World War began.  As a German sympathizer, Burgess was scorned and attacked by many in the United States.  He retired to Newport, Rhode Island, and spent the remainder of his life writing and lecturing.  He was the author of many important studies of American political history and constitutional law.

Ruth Payne Burgess, American Artists, 1865-1934

Ruth Payne Jewett Burgess, daughter of Elisha Payne and Julia Kellogg Field, was born in Montpelier, Vermont on October 11, 1865.  She was educated at the Burnham School in Northampton, Massachusetts.  At the Art Students' League in New York City as well as in Germany and Italy, Burgess pursued her passion for art.  In 1885 she married John William Burgess, a political science professor at Columbia University.  The couple had one son, Elisha.  After opening an art studio in New York, Burgess became known for her works in oils and watercolors.  Portraiture, still lifes, and landscapes were her preferred subjects.  She later moved her studio to Newport, Rhode Island where she died on March 11, 1934.

Ruth Payne Jewett's great-aunt was Mary Hubbard Field French Jones, the mother of Samuel Minot and Augusta Thayer Jones.  Ruth's great-uncle was Roswell Field, a lawyer famous for his representation of Dred Scott.  One of Roswell's sons was American writer Eugene Field.