Abraham Crum Shortridge
19th-century American educator
Abraham Crum Shortridge (October 22, 1833 – October 8, 1919) was an American educator who was superintendent of the Indianapolis Public Schools and the second president of Purdue University.
Early life
Shortridge was born in Indiana in Henry County. He was named for his maternal grandfather, Abraham Crum (1768–1836). He earned no college degrees and began his teaching career after a few months of study at Rush County's Fairview Academy and Richmond's Greenmount College.
Career
In 1854, Shortridge was part of the group of educators who founded the Indiana State Teachers' Association. In 1868, he served as President of ISTA.
Indianapolis
In 1861, Shortridge accepted a job in Indianapolis at the preparatory department of what is now Butler University. While in Indianapolis, Shortridge served as the editor of several education journals and helped establish the public library and a teachers' training school.
He became the superintendent of the city's public schools in 1863. This was the year that the state's supreme court reversed a previous decision that prohibited using local taxes to support public schools. Using this newly allowed tax revenue, Shortridge was able to extend the school year from three and a half to nine months and reopen several schools, including Indianapolis High School, which was later renamed as Shortridge High School in his honor.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abraham Crum Shortridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.