Edmund Clark Sanford, ca. 1910s (Shinn House archives)

My Cousin Eddie*

*Well, not my—The Author's—cousin, but Milicent's.

Dr. Edmund Clark Sanford (1859-1924)—favorite cousin of Dr. Milicent Washburn Shinn—was an early experimental psychologist. Closely associated with psychologist G. Stanley Hall throughout his career, Eddie (as he was often called by family and friends) taught at Clark University and was later president of the university's undergraduate institution, Clark College (1910-1924), in Worcester, Massachusetts (1). The Sanford and Shinn cousins grew up more like siblings: the Shinn children lived at the Sanford residence in Oakland to attend Lafayette Grammar School and later Oakland High School during the school year, and Eddie and his sister Martha Lewis Sanford—Mattie—stayed with the Shinn family in their one-room cottage in the countryside during their summers (2).

Edmund Clark Sanford, ca. 1870s-1880s (Ancestry.com)

Martha Lewis Sanford, ca. 1875, around
14 years old (Shinn House archives)

A wonderful example of the close relationship between the cousins can be seen in the story of an 1881 camping trip, entitled H. U. C. (or The Hard-Up Club). The Bancroft Library has an incomplete typewritten copy of the original manuscript, which seems to have been a journal kept by the group of campers, all of whom were current or former UC Berkeley students (3). Millie later wrote a four-part series that was a fictionalized account of their trip—“Out of Reach: A Camping Medley”—that was published serially in The Californian in 1882 (4).

The members of HUC gathered for a group portrait in a studio to commemorate this camping trip; Eddie is in the front row, first from the left, sitting next to his cousin Milicent (Bancroft Library) (5)

High Sierra camping trip, c. 1880s [Shinn, Sanford, and Gill cousins]. Eddie standing at far right. (Shinn House archives)

Ad for Sanford's Drug Store (1869 Alameda County directory)

Eddie attended the local schools in Oakland—Irving Grammar School and later Oakland High School (6). He graduated from high school when he was 19, a few years later than was common at the time, due to several periods of severe illness related to rheumatic fever in his youth (7). There are indications that Eddie struggled in high school, with family correspondence describing how his mother Jennie was worried sick—literally—about his future and how his father E. P. was initially against Eddie attending UC Berkeley, instead wanting him to work in the family drug store (8). Eddie himself, looking back many years later, remembered how UC Berkeley’s entrance exam was “no small ordeal when looked forward to from a high school period only moderately well spent. I remember seeing a fire one evening in the direction of the University and thinking with a kind of relief that if the University were burning up it would at least postpone the entrance examinations” (9).

Eddie's father, Edmund Philo Sanford (Shinn House archives)

Eddie's mother, Jane“Jennie” Clark Sanford (Ancestry.com)

But Eddie's father did eventually relent—thanks to the “remonstrance” of Professor Martin Kellogg (later the seventh president of the university) and Mr. J. B. McChesney (principal of Oakland High School), as well as the influence of his wife Jennie—and Eddie entered UC Berkeley in the Classical Course in 1879, his cousin Millie's senior year (10). Unfortunately his studies were cut short when his father E. P. suddenly became ill and passed away after several weeks, on February 16, 1880 (11). This “necess[itated] an immediate entrance into the business world as his mother's representative in the long-established 'Sanford's drug-store'” (12). He did this work for several months, but didn't enjoy it, and returned to Cal, making up for lost time and graduating with his original class in 1883 (13).

Eddie's mentor, Edward Rowland Sill (Wikipedia)

One especially profound influence on Eddie's life was his English professor, Edward Rowland Sill. Professor Sill was a well-known poet at the time (14), and Eddie admired his professor so much that “all his life long his judgment in matters of literary taste, his choice of books for holiday reading, his attitude to music and to other arts, his whole aesthetic outlook were, with but little modification by personal temperament, the judgment and attitude and outlook of his former professor” (15). Eddie also attended some meetings of Professor Sill's informal “Psychology Club,” which may have planted the seeds for his future career (16).

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1883, Eddie accepted a two-year position at Oahu College teaching “the Classics, Mathematics, and Ancient History,—a wide field, for Mathematics included 'Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Surveying and Navigation'” (17). He appears to have had a positive influence on his students, “teach[ing] his scholars to love poetry, the old Greek myths, the best in a broad range of literature” (18), just like his favorite professor had done for him. Prior to leaving for Hawaii, Eddie had planned to return to school to become a doctor in order to continue his father's drugstore business, but during his time in Oahu he realized his true passion: teaching (19).

By the Fall of 1886, Eddie had started a PhD at Johns Hopkins University, studying psychology and politics (20). Johns Hopkins would have been an easy choice for Eddie, as his cousin Charles H. Shinn had recently received his Bachelor's degree from the same institution in 1884 (21). Johns Hopkins was where Eddie first fell into G. Stanley Hall's orbit, which he would not be able to escape for the rest of his life—for better or for worse. 

G. Stanley Hall, Eddie's mentor (Wikipedia)

Under Hall's guidance, Eddie would prepare and annotate the writings of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf-blind American child to receive significant formal education, forty-five years before Anne Sullivan began teaching Helen Keller (22). He would also begin conducting early cognitive psychology experiments, with his dissertation examining the “relative legibility of the small letters” with the goal of improving typographical clearness for both distance and speed (23). Eddie became Dr. Sanford in 1888, and he was quickly poached by Hall, who was looking for staff to take with him to the newly-founded Clark University in Worcester, MA. (24).

Eddie's association with Hall would span the rest of Eddie's career (25). By all accounts, Hall had a strong, domineering personality that completely overpowered Eddie's more reserved, less confrontational one (26). As a result, Hall was often able to foist off some of the drudge work involved in management of university and departmental affairs, as well as the editing of Hall's American Journal of Psychology and responding to correspondence related to the American Psychological Association, also founded by Hall (27). Some people—including Eddie himself, though maybe not directly—blamed Hall's influence for Eddie's inability to complete the second volume of what was supposed to be a two-volume series called Course in Experimental Psychology, the first of which was published in 1898 (28). However, while Eddie might have wanted more for himself in terms of his career, and while he might have (rightfully) resented Hall foisting off much of his busywork on him, Eddie also loved mentoring students.

In fact, Eddie was so well-loved that after his death, the Clark University Library issued a 54-page-long publication that collected the fond memories of his family, friends, colleagues, and students. 

• His friend and fellow Clark professor Dr. Edward Bradford Titchener noted that "in social intercourse he did not easily let down the bars of an unvarying and somewhat formal courtesy; but those who were privileged to know him intimately know that he had a genius for friendship” (29). 
• One of Eddie's former graduate students, Dr. Arthur H. Daniels, wrote that “as a psychologist, Dr. Sanford was a type that I fear is becoming rare. He was a thoroughly trained investigator, a master of the literature of his subject, and a keen observer of human nature. He had the ability to discriminate between the important and the unimportant in the selection of subjects for investigation. His work was always well done. He wrote with a clearness of thought, accuracy of statement and literary finish that were characteristic of the scholar and cultured gentleman that he was” (30).
• His former graduate student Hikozo Kakise (who we'll talk more about in a bit) wrote that “besides being my teacher Dr. Sanford was my best friend as well as benefactor. I have been so much indebted to him in many ways. He was the kindest and noblest man I ever knew. He had the kindness to write to me so often so that I could keep myself in touch with the current events going on around Clark University. I am thinking of how to show my regards to the memory of so kind a scholar and friend” (31).
• His classmate and colleague, Dr. William H. Burnham, sums up the general sentiment presented in this volume thusly: “A mere list of the outstanding characteristics in Dr. Sanford’s rich personality would be a long one. A model of order and regularity in his personal habits; knowing and obeying the maxim that there is no way around a duty but by doing it; with human prejudices like the rest of us, but aiming at even handed justice in act and judgment; with keen critical ability, but sympathetic toward honest effort however humble; naturally an individualist, doing his own thinking, forming his own judgments, making his own decisions, desiring sympathy and the support of others, but willing if necessary to stand alone, bearing his own burdens; with attention concentrated on the present and the future, instead of wasting it on the mistakes of the past; knowing the inevitable limitations of human nature; and adjusting to conditions as they came, but having a sense of humor that sweetened his mind and made wholesome reactions possible; helpful and kind at home; dignified but ready to serve in public; a faithful, charming, and incomparable friend; an efficient and humane administrator, knowing that a good executive is one who decides things and is sometimes right, he made decisions and was usually right; and a teacher stimulating his pupils by example as well as instruction in knowledge and wisdom,—in a word, scientific investigator, psychologist, scholar, writer, poet, artist, executive, teacher, citizen.” (32).

Unlike Hall, Eddie wasn't in psychology to make a name for himself, as can be seen in his forward to his Course: “The author’s excuse for allowing the publication, even in this modest form, of so incomplete a work, must be the very extraordinary condition of experimental psychology at this time. Many laboratories have been opened, and many teachers of psychology are anxious to give their students the benefit of demonstrations and practice work, and yet there is absolutely no laboratory handbook of the subject to be had. At such a time half a loaf may be better than no bread—at least, so a number of the author's professional friends have seemed to believe” (33).

***

All of that to share this fun photo I somehow ran into going down one of my many rabbit holes:

Society of Experimental Psychologists (sepsych.org)

Yes, that's right—that's our Eddie standing right behind Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung!

Tune back in next time to find out how we got here!

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

***

Notes and Asides

1. Martha L. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” in Edmund Clark Sanford, Nov. 10, 1859, Nov. 22, 1924 in Memoriam (Worcester, MA: Clark University Library, 1925), 3–10, google.com/books/edition/Edmund_Clark_Sanford_Nov_10_1859_Nov_22/uLBBAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0. ↩ 

2. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 3–10. ↩

3. HUC members included: Milicent Shinn and her younger brother Joseph; their cousin (and the subject of this post) Eddie; Millie's friends Rhoda Louise Tucker and Jane “John” Barry; Carroll Melvin Davis and his sister Ellen Miranda Davis; and Selim Maurice Franklin (who appears to have been the originator of this copy of the manuscript); Milicent Washburn Shinn, “H.U.C.,” June 1881. ↩ 

4. The Californian would soon become The Overland Monthly, the magazine which Millie became chief editor of in 1882, due to the urgings of her mentor, Edward Rowland Sill. All four parts of the series are available online for free on Hathitrust: Parts 1-2, Part 3, Part 4 ↩ 

5. Milicent Washburn Shinn, Miscellaneous Portraits Relating to Milicent Washburn Shinn, 1881 (BANC PIC 1980.056—PIC). ↩ 

6. “Irving Grammar School,” Oakland Daily Transcript, June 7, 1874; Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 4. ↩ 

7. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 4. ↩ 

8. Lucy Clark Shinn to Milicent Washburn Shinn, October 11, 1875, archive.org/details/cafrmph_000068; Lucy Shinn to Milicent Shinn, July 6, 1879, archive.org/details/cafrmph_000060. ↩ 

9. Edmund C. Sanford, “Recollections of Student Life in a Western University,” Clark College Monthly 4, no. 3 (December 1914): 102. ↩ 

10. James Shinn to Milicent Shinn, September 9, 1879, archive.org/details/cafrmph_000027. ↩

11. Uncle Sanford's death is recounted in several of the letters Lucy Shinn wrote to Milicent, as Uncle Sanford had been taken to James and Lucy's house in the countryside to recover from what sounds like may have been a stroke: e.g., Lucy Shinn to Milicent Shinn, January 21, 1880, archive.org/details/cafrmph_000077; Lucy Shinn to Milicent Shinn, February 1880, archive.org/details/cafrmph_000102. ↩ 

12. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 5. ↩ 

13. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 5. ↩ 

14. Professor Sill also happened to be Milicent's mentor who encouraged her to take the teaching position up in Red Bluff (read about how that went here: Millie's First Worst Job) and later pushed her to take on the editorship of the (failing and financially-strapped) literary magazine, the Overland Monthly, which Millie would earnestly labor to keep afloat for eleven years. ↩

15. Edward. B. Titchener, “Edmund Clark Sanford, 1859-1924,” in Edmund Clark Sanford, Nov. 10, 1859, Nov. 22, 1924 in Memoriam (Worcester, MA: Clark University Library, 1925), 28. ↩ 

16. Titchener, “Edmund Clark Sanford,” 28 footnote 5. ↩ 

17. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 5. Eddie's arrival and departure also appear in local newspapers of the time, e.g. see Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 2, 1883 and The Hawaiian Gazette, July 1, 1885. ↩ 

18. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 5. ↩ 

19. C. J. Goodwin, “In Hall’s Shadow: Edmund Clark Sanford (1859-1924),” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 23, no. 2 (April 1987): 161-62, doi.org/10.1002/1520-6696(198704)23:2<153::aid-jhbs2300230205>3.0.co;2-4. ↩

20. Sanford, “Biographical Sketch,” 6; Titchener, “Edmund Clark Sanford,” 23. ↩ 

21. Johns Hopkins University, The Johns Hopkins University Register 1884-85 (Baltimore, MD: Publication Agency of the Johns Hopkins University, 1885), 30, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112111882467&seq=106. ↩

22. His analysis of Laura Bridgman's writing was published in two parts in his cousin Millie's literary magazine, the Overland Monthly: Part 1, Part 2. ↩

23. E. C. Sanford, “The Relative Legibility of the Small Letters,” The American Journal of Psychology 1, no. 3 (1888): 402–35, doi.org/10.2307/1411012. ↩

24. Goodwin, “In Hall's Shadow,” 154. ↩

25. And actually, for the rest of both of their careers—Hall died in April 1924, and Eddie died just seven months later, in November 1924. ↩

26. Goodwin, “In Hall's Shadow,” 162-63. ↩ 

27. Goodwin, “In Hall's Shadow,” 157. ↩ 

28. Goodwin, “In Hall's Shadow,” 155, 163-65. ↩ 

29. Arthur H. Daniels, “Letters,” in Edmund Clark Sanford, Nov. 10, 1859, Nov. 22, 1924 in Memoriam (Worcester, MA: Clark University Library, 1925), 38; Titchener, “Edmund Clark Sanford,” 22. ↩ 

30. Daniels, “Letters,” 38. ↩

31. Hikozo Kakise, “Letters,” in Edmund Clark Sanford, Nov. 10, 1859, Nov. 22, 1924 in Memoriam (Worcester, MA: Clark University Library, 1925), 40–41. ↩

32. William H. Burnham, “Edmund Clark Sanford,” in Edmund Clark Sanford, Nov. 10, 1859, Nov. 22, 1924 in Memoriam (Worcester, MA: Clark University Library, 1925), 21. ↩ 

33. Edmund Clark Sanford, “Prefatory Note to Edition of Advanced Sheets,” in A Course in Experimental Psychology (Boston, MA: D. C. Heath & Company, 1895), iii–iv, google.com/books/edition/_/B38BAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.↩