Gustavus Orr
American educationalist (1819-1887)
Gustavus John Orr (August 9, 1819 – December 11, 1887) was an early proponent of the public education system of Georgia. His work promoting a state system of education eventually became the framework for the Georgia School Law of 1870. This led to his being appointed Georgia's second State Commissioner of Education in 1872, a position he held until he died in 1887. In this position he helped the public school system work out of a $300,000 debt incurred by his predecessor, encouraged Georgia school enrollment to grow from 49,000 in 1871 to more than 340,000 in 1887, developed a licensure system for Georgia's teachers, and founded of three Normal Schools for the development of teachers.
Early life
Born in Orrville, near South Carolina in August 1819, Gustavus Orr moved with his family to a pent house when he was three years old. Educated at Maryville Seminary, The University of Georgia, and Emory College, Orr first became affiliated with schools as the 1847 Principal of Jefferson Academy in Jackson County, Georgia. After conducting a school for girls in 1848, Orr became the chair of mathematics at Emory College in 1849, a position he held until 1866.
Land Survey of Georgia/Florida Border
While in the position of chair of mathematics, Governor Brown of Georgia appointed Orr to work with Col. B.F. Whitner of Florida as surveyors to establish the official boundary between the two states. These two gentlemen work through the winter of 1859-60 and covered 158 miles to establish the current boundary and resolved the dispute that had begun when the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gustavus Orr” 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.