Biographical Details
Date of Birth: September 11, 1817
Birth Location: Chester District, SC, USA
Graduation Year(s): 1842
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelors
Date of Death: September 8, 1865
Death Location: Bloomington, IN, USA
James Woodburn II
Life Experience
James Woodburn II was born the fifth of nine children of Dorrance and Rachel Woodburn. He was named after his grandfather, who emigrated from Ireland in 1767, married a fellow Irish emigrant in 1775, and died in 1812. Beginning in 1822, Woodburn’s family was the target of accusations and persecution for their religious anti-slavery beliefs, including the placing of defamatory notes on area tavern doors about their “dangerous views” by proslavery neighbors. Dorrance, a schoolteacher, tried to politically fight slavery by supporting similarly minded state legislators and organizing a petition, but to no avail. In 1830, his family finally acquired the funds to move to Monroe County, Indiana.
From 1839 to 1844, Woodburn worked as a part-time instructor in rural schools. He obtained his bachelor’s degree at IU in 1842. His college era daybook listed over four hundred students, indicating his popularity and influential connections with the Bloomington community. Throughout his lifetime, Woodburn kept over forty books that his namesake grandfather had owned, having loved to read since childhood. Woodburn became a beloved lifelong instructor at IU. In 1848, his mother died. In 1851, Woodburn’s widowed father Dorrance (age sixty-four) married Woodburn's wife’s widowed mother Elizabeth, thus making Woodburn and his wife also brother and sister. Woodburn’s father died in 1856. Woodburn died in September 1865, leaving five children ages eleven months to eighteen years.
Marriage and Family
Woodburn married Martha Jane Hemphill of South Carolina in 1846. They had daughter Laura in 1847, son Walter in 1849, son Theophilus in 1852, son James Albert in 1856, and daughter Grace in 1864. Woodburn’s son and namesake, James Albert, went on to graduate from IU and have a fifty-year career as an American historian, writing several books and articles about the nation’s 19th century political leaders. James Albert completed his magnum opus, History of Indiana University, in 1940.
Interesting Anecdote
Woodburn Hall on the Bloomington campus bears Woodburn’s name and has a plaque in its entryway dedicated to James Albert.
References
- Wylie
- Findagrave.com
- Atwater, Amzi (1905) “Indiana University Forty Years Ago,” The Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History Vol. 1 #3 pp. 140-149
- Gant, Jesse J. (2012) “Younger and More Irreconcilable: James Albert Woodburn’s Undergraduate Orations at Indiana University, 1875-1876,” Indiana Magazine of History (June) Vol. 108 pp. 146-185