Daniel Coit Gilman papers

Daniel Coit Gilman, educator, university president, and author, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, July 6, 1831, the son of William Charles and Elizabeth Coit Gilman, descendants of the founders of Norwich. He was educated at Norwich Academy where Timothy Dwight was a classmate. At the age of fourteen Gilman's family moved to New York City where he attended a school under the direction of Calvin Tracy, his old instructor at Norwich Academy. As a result of his excellent penmanship, Gilman was introduced to library work, obtaining a position with Henry Stevens to catalog the books from the library of George Washington which had been purchased in 1848 by the Boston Athenaeum. This was followed by catalog work in the Mercantile Library of New York, with S. Hastings Grant, whose intimate friend Gilman became. From this relationship grew Norton's Literary Gazette, which they edited for several years. Through their efforts there was held the first annual meeting of American librarians in 1853.

Gilman continued his studies at the Cornelius Institute in New York before entering Yale College in 1848. After graduation in 1852, he studied for a few months at Harvard College, living in the home of Professor Arnold Guyot, who aroused in Gilman an interest in geography. In December, 1853, he and Andrew Dickson White, a close friend and classmate at Yale, sailed for Europe as attachés of the American legation at St. Petersburg. After two years abroad, Gilman returned to the United States to become assistant librarian at Yale College. In 1858 he succeeded Edward C. Herrick as librarian. Gilman was also instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School, in which he served for nearly seventeen years as librarian, secretary, and professor of physical and political geography. He was also a member of the New Haven Board of Education and was influential in the adoption by New Haven schools of graded classes.

In 1872 Gilman became president of the University of California, but left that post in 1875 to become president of the newly created Johns Hopkins University. He served as president of Johns Hopkins until 1902, during which period its mode of graduate studies became the model for American universities. Gilman's success was attributable in part to his ability to attract outstanding scholars to Hopkins, but also because he placed great emphasis upon science at a time when most American college presidents regarded science as inimical to the religious and moral development of their students. In addition, Gilman was largely responsible for making Johns Hopkins the leading center of medical education in the country.

Upon retirement from Hopkins, Gilman became the first president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. In addition, he served as vice-president of the American Bible Society; was a member of the U.S. commission investigating the U.S.-Venezuela boundary dispute; served in 1879 as president of the American Social Science Association; was a trustee of various foundations, including the Russell Sage Foundation, the Peabody Education Fund, and the John F. Slater Fund; and served as president of the National Civil Service Reform League from 1901 to 1907.

Gilman was twice married: first, on December 4, 1861, to Mary Ketcham of New York City, who died in 1869, and again, on June 13, 1877, to Elizabeth Dwight Woolsey, who survived him by fourteen months, dying in 1910. Gilman died on October 13, 1908.