George Lyman Kittredge
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 28 Feb 1860 - Boston, Massachusetts
Baptism:
Death: 23 Jul 1941
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
Notes
General:
Kittredge, George Lyman (28 Feb. 1860-23 July 1941), professor of English, was born in Boston, the son of Edward Lyman Kittredge, a storekeeper, and the widowed Deborah Lewis Benson. Kittredge went to Roxbury Latin School in 1875 and to Harvard to study classics in 1878, supported by money from friends. At Harvard he came under the influence of Francis James Child, the first professor of English at Harvard and a pioneering scholar in ballad literature. After graduating Kittredge became in 1883 a Latin teacher at the Phillips Exeter School in Exeter, New Hampshire. There he met Frances Gordon, daughter of another teacher at the school; they married in 1886 and had three children.
Kittredge, who had been working privately under the direction of Child and had spent a year of study in Germany (1886-1887), began teaching in the English department at Harvard in 1888 and was appointed full professor in 1895. He taught principally Shakespeare, Chaucer, English and Germanic philology, and Old English. His classes were famous, and he became a legendary figure in undergraduate mythology (his graduate classes were notably more relaxed and informal). He lectured on texts line by line, answering appropriate questions from students in minute philological detail, and kept his classes in awe with a mixture of genuine erudition and pedagogic trickery (he always brought his remarks to a close walking down the aisle and out of the lecture hall as the hour bell tolled). He cut an imposing figure, white-haired and white-bearded from the age of 40, handsomely patriarchal, an inveterate cigar smoker; he always dressed in a pale-gray suit and carried a cane, with which he would remove offending undergraduate headgear; he was ever conscious of his dignity and lived in a barely suppressed fury at any slight that might be offered to his favorite authors, himself, or the English language.
He was never chairman of the English department, nor did he ever take a Ph.D. "Who would have examined me?," he is reputed to have replied when asked why he lacked a doctorate, but honors and honorary degrees were showered on him throughout his life. In 1913 he was presented with the Kittredge Anniversary Papers and in 1917 was named first Gurney Professor of English Literature. Two high points in his career were the address on Shakespeare that he gave on 23 April 1916 in the Sanders Theatre at Harvard at the request of the president and Fellows of Harvard College, and the Northcliffe lectures on Shakespeare that he gave at University College, London, in 1932. The latter were followed by a triumphal tour throughout England, as the foremost American literary scholar of his day, and the award of an Honorary Litt.D. at Oxford. His retirement in 1936 was a public event, announced in the Boston newspapers; he toured the United States in 1937, lecturing on Shakespeare, a kind of royal progress.
Kittredge's first published work was the revision, with James Bradstreet Greenough, of Joseph H. Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar (1888), but he soon began to emulate F. J. Child, his great teacher. His Observations on the Language of Chaucer's Troilus (1894) was modeled directly on Child's study of Chaucer's language, and Words and Their Ways in English Speech (1901), a nontechnical account of English word formation, etymology, and semantic change that he wrote with Greenough, was dedicated to Child's memory. His edition of Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1904) is a work of the first importance in making Child's formidable scholarship more accessible to the general reader. Meanwhile, he was doing other editorial work (the Latin Arthur and Gorlagon, 1903) and much occasional work as a writer of reviews, encyclopedia articles, and school textbooks, such as The Mother Tongue (1900), a primer that he wrote with Sarah Louise Arnold, and An Advanced English Grammar (1913).
Another area of activity, again pioneered by Child, was in the study of folklore and folk history. The Old Farmer and His Almanack (1904) is a popular collection of New England folklore, but Witchcraft in Old and New England (1929) is a lavishly annotated compendium consisting of three long and substantially researched chapters (on medieval witchcraft, English witchcraft and James I, and the New England background to the Salem witch trials of 1692, the last two published separately some years before) filled out with chapters of a more anecdotal kind on broader topics. The book is written, as always, in a lively and engaging way, and the tone is wise, benevolent, paternal, authoritative: "common misapprehensions" were meat and drink to Kittredge. But, though "historical understanding" is constantly invoked, there is little sense of historical contingency or change: like folklore, witchcraft for Kittredge is universal and identical whether found among our forefathers, "uneducated folk today," or "contemporary savages" (p. 23).
Kittredge's greatest importance, however, is as a literary scholar and critic. A Study of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (1916) is a classic of its kind, a study of the relationships of the sources and analogues of the great fourteenth-century English poem, based on a division of the poem into plot elements that are then traced back to their different origins. The technique is that of historical phonology, textual stemmatics, or folktale motif analysis, all of them quasi-scientific forms of investigation that have remained influential throughout the twentieth century. Kittredge concludes by arguing that Gawain is derived directly from a lost French original in which the major plot elements were already combined.
Kittredge's work on Chaucer has been of much more far-reaching and long-lasting importance. It began early, with his brilliant essays, "Chaucer's Pardoner" (1893), "Chaucer and Some of His Friends" (1903), and "Chaucer's Discussion of Marriage" (1912), and the best of it is enshrined in the six lectures that he gave at Johns Hopkins in 1914 and published in 1915 as Chaucer and His Poetry. Here, in a wide-ranging survey of Chaucer's principal poems, Kittredge propounds his belief in Chaucer as a great dramatic poet and a master of psychological realism: as Bradley was to Shakespeare, so is Kittredge to Chaucer. Troilus and Criseyde is a "masterpiece of psychological fiction" and "the first novel, in the modern sense, that ever was written in the world, and one of the best" (p. 109). The Canterbury Tales is a "Human Comedy," principally interesting for its dramatic revelation of the character of the pilgrims: "the Pilgrims do not exist for the sake of the stories, but vice versa. Structurally regarded, the stories are merely long speeches expressing, directly or indirectly, the characters of the several persons" (p. 155). This view of Chaucer's two major poems has been enormously influential, and Kittredge's book is still widely read. Kittredge's technique is to present himself as an authoritative guide to the poems, serenely confident of all the eternal verities of the human condition, warm, optimistic and reassuring in his humanity, and genially dismissive of other views or of the possibility of conflict or disturbance within the poems (the salacious comic tales, or fabliaux, are never mentioned). The reading is characterized by Kittredge's inimitable grace and ease of style, dazzling simplicity, and fatherly certainty. Even when no one is left who believes what he says, everyone will want to read what he writes.
Kittredge's lectures on Shakespeare, for which he was perhaps most famous in his day, found their way into print only through a series of annotated editions of single plays, culminating in his one-volume annotated Shakespeare (1936). But he will be chiefly remembered as a critic of Chaucer, as a legendary Harvard cult figure, and as the teacher of generations of American medieval scholars, including John Matthews Manly, Karl Young, Carleton Brown, and John Livingston Lowes.
Bibliography
A large Kittredge archive is in the Widener Library at Harvard University, including college prize papers, lecture notes, class readings, and notes by eminent students (including those of F. N. Robinson, 1891-1892) from his Chaucer lectures. All of Kittredge's major full-length publications are mentioned above. His most important independently published essays are as follows: "Chaucer's Pardoner," Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1893, pp. 829-33; "Chaucer and Some of His Friends," Modern Philology 1 (1903-1904): 1-18; "The Date of Chaucer's Troilus," Chaucer Society, 2d ser. 42 (1909); "Chaucer's Discussion of Marriage," Modern Philology 9 (1911-1912): 435-67; "Chaucer's Lollius," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 28 (1917): 47-133. Clyde Kenneth Hyder, George Lyman Kittredge: Teacher and Scholar (1962), is a full-length biography. A briefer notice is in Rollo Walter Brown, "King of the Anglo-Saxons," chap. 4 of his Harvard Yard in the Golden Age (1948). See also James Thorpe, Bibliography of the Writings of George Lyman Kittredge (1948), and a valuable brief biographical introduction by Bartlett Jere Whiting to the 1970 reissue of Kittredge's Chaucer and His Poetry. An obituary by J. L. Lowes is reprinted in Harvard Scholars in English, ed. W. J. Bate (1992).
Derek Pearsall 1
Henry Crocker Kittredge
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 4 Jan 1890 - Cambridge, Massachusetts
Baptism:
Death: 22 Feb 1967 - Barnstable, Massachusetts
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: George Lyman Kittredge (1860-1941)
Mother:
Notes
General:
Biographical note from Sturgis Library, Barnstable, Mass.:
Henry C. Kittredge was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on January 4, 1890. His undergraduate life was spent at Cambridge Latin School and the Noble and Greenbough School. He enrolled in Harvard in 1908 and graduated in 1912. From 1912 until 1916 he was an instructor at Adirondack-Florida School where the Winter and Fall terms were held in the Adirondacks and the Summer term in Florida. He was called to St. Pauls School in Concord, New Hampshire in 1916 as an instructor in English.
On November 28, 1917 he married Gertrude (Patsy) Livingston and the following year he was made an Infantry Lieutenant serving in the U. S. Army in France during World War I. Upon his discharge, he returned to St. Pauls where he served as Head of the Lower School, Vice Rector and became Rector in 1947. Among his honors was being elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1935 and Honorary Degrees from Trinity College in 1938 and Yale in 1954.
Upon his retirement in 1954, he moved to his beloved Barnstable on Cape Cod where he was a lifelong summer resident and which he referred to as his "ancestral home". Proof of this love were books that he authored: "Cape Cod, it's People and Their History" (1930), "Shipmasters of Cape Cod" (1935) and "Mooncussers of Cape Cod" (1937) published by Houghton Mifflin. Henry and his wife, Patsy, bought three or four sections of marsh ranging from 25 to 60 acres. They also purchased three cranberry bogs and the vast majority of their holdings were donated to the town for conservation purposes.
His extra curricular activities embraced the Barnstable Finance Committee, Barnstable Historical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Tavern Club of Boston, Harvard Clubs of Boston and New York, Trustee of Sturgis Library and Chairman of the West Barnstable Memorial Foundation.
Henry died peacefully at his Pine Lane home in Barnstable on February 22, 1967. His large collection of papers, manuscripts and books were donated to the Sturgis Library by his wife.
Dr Theodore Kittredge
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: May 1775 - Tewksbury, Massachusetts
Baptism:
Death: 18 Sep 1798 - Wellfleet, Massachusetts
Burial: in Duck Creek Cemetery, Wellfleet
Cause of Death:
Notes
General:
"In memory of Doct'r Theodore Kittredge, son of Mr Benjamin & Mrs. Rebecca Kittredge of Tewksbury, who died Sept. 18, 1798, aged 23 yrs. & 4 months." 3Medical:
age 23-4
Henry Klimm
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 17 Mar 1884
Baptism:
Death: May 1974 - Hyannis (Barnstable), Massachusetts
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Events
• Soc Sec Num, 033-32-6951 in Massachusetts
Spouses and Children
Henry W Klimm Jr
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1916 - Hyannis (Barnstable), Massachusetts
Baptism:
Death: 10 Aug 2006 - Falmouth, Massachusetts
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Henry Klimm (1884-1974)
Mother:
Spouses and Children
1. *Edna L Lannquist (2 Mar 1916 - 7 Nov 2000)
Marriage:
Status:
Notes
General:
Barnstable Patriot obit:
Henry W. Klimm Jr., 90
Falmouth - Henry W. Klimm Jr., 90, died Aug. 10, 2006 at his home.
He was the husband of the late Edna L. (Lannquist) Klimm. They were married for 65 years.
Mr. Klimm was born on a houseboat in Hyannis Harbor. He was raised in Hyannis and graduated from Barnstable High School. He lived in Falmouth for more than 60 years. A lifetime commercial fisherman, he began fishing with his father in high school. He owned 12 fishing boats during his career and had several custom-made. He also fished with his son and grandsons on various boats.
Mr. Klimm collected more than 800,000 squid for the Marine Biological Laboratory for scientific research. He also worked for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which chartered a series of his custom-built boats, Captain Bill II, III and IV. He was also instrumental in developing a long-line fishing program in the U.S.
In 2001 the MBL named its dock off Waterfront Park the Henry W. Klimm Jr. Pier.
He retired in 2004.
Mr. Klimm was a longtime member of the Masons and Odd Fellows.
Survivors include a son, H. William Klimm III of Falmouth; a granddaughter; two grandsons; and two great-grandchildren.
Services were private.
Memorial donations may be made to the charity of one’s choice.
Elizabeth Knapp
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 2 Feb 1784 - Cambridge, Massachusetts
Baptism:
Death: 13 Jun 1822 - Boston, Massachusetts
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Honorable Lemuel Shaw (9 Jan 1781 - 30 Mar 1861) 4
Marriage:
Status:
Children:
1. Elizabeth Knapp Shaw (1822-1906)
2. John Oakes Shaw (1820-1902)
Notes
General:
Father: Josiah KNAPP b: 22 MAR 1753 in Newton?
Mother: Mary FAIRSERVICE b: 19 NOV 1755 in of Boston
Frederick Bruce Knapp
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 24 Aug 1918
Baptism:
Death: 22 Dec 2001 - Chatham, New Jersy
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Events
• Soc Sec Num, 121-05-6904 in New York
Spouses and Children
1. *Clara Watson (10 Sep 1915 - 27 Jun 2008)
Marriage: Jun 1951 - New York City, New York 5
Status:
Herbert Russell Knapp
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 15 Jul 1879
Baptism:
Death: 26 Jan 1959 - Wellfleet, Massachusetts 6
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Notes
Medical:
age 79-6-11
Herbert Russell Knapp
Clarissa Kneeland
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: Est 1789
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Sparrow Snow (20 Dec 1786 - ) 7
Marriage: in (Sandisfield, Mass.)
Status:
Henry Kneeland
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1818
Baptism:
Death: 18 Aug 1867 - Provincetown Harbor
Burial: in Cemetery #2, Provincetown
Cause of Death:
Esther Knight
Sex: F
AKA: Easther Knights
Individual Information
Birth: 28 Feb 1793 - Truro, Massachusetts 9
Baptism: 14 Jul 1793 - Truro, Massachusetts 10
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Peter Knight (1764-1800)
Mother: Reliance Dyer (1766-1829)
Spouses and Children
George Knight
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: Cir 1757
Baptism:
Death: Bef 1811 - Gorham, Maine
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Rebecca Davis (15 Jul 1766 - 18 Jun 1836) 11
Marriage: 11 Mar 1787 - Maine
Status:
Notes
Marriage Notes (Rebecca Davis)
Children
Hannah KNIGHT b: 12/2/1780 in ME
Sarah KNIGHT b: 8/8/1791 in Windham,ME
Mary KNIGHT b: 11/22/1794-below re husband in ME
George jr. KNIGHT b: 8/19/1796 in ME
George Knight
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1881
Baptism:
Death: 1968
Burial: in Curtis Cemetery, Swan Island, Maine 12
Cause of Death:
Johanna Knight
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: Cir 1627 - (Rowley, Massachusetts Bay)
Baptism:
Death: After 1695 - (Yarmouth, Massachusetts)
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Thomas Gage (1625 - 17 Jul 1695)
Marriage: 1648 - Lynn, Massachusetts Bay
Status:
Children:
1. John Gage (1649- )
2. William Gage (1650-1676)
3. Henry Gage (1651-1676)
4. Lieutenant Thomas Gage (1656-1707)
5. Benjamin Gage (Cir 1658-1708)
6. Adam Gage (1665-1691)
7. Moses Gage (1668-1748)
Notes
General:
Father: William KNIGHT b: 1596 in Moulstham, Chelmsford, Essex, England
Martha Knight
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 1768
Baptism:
Death: 30 May 1801 - Gorham, Maine 13
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Elkanah Harding (7 Jul 1759 - 27 Aug 1850) 14
Marriage:
Status:
Mary Ann Knight
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 1780 - England
Baptism:
Death: 31 Jan 1803 - Truro, Massachusetts
Burial: in Old North Cemetery, Truro 15
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Captain Israel Gross Collins (14 Mar 1776 - )
Marriage:
Status:
Children:
1. Edward Knight Collins (1802-1878)
Peter Knight
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 14 May 1764 - Falmouth, Maine
Baptism:
Death: 1800 - Lost At Sea
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Reliance Dyer (5 Jun 1766 - Jan 1829)
Marriage: 15 Jun 1791 - Truro, Massachusetts 16
Status:
Children:
1. Esther Knight (1793- )
2. Priscilla Knight (1795-1869)
3. Reliance P Knight (1797-1870)
Notes
General:
son of George & Esther (Butman) Knight.
(will_riged)
Priscilla Knight
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 7 Mar 1795 - Truro, Massachusetts 17
Baptism: 22 Mar 1795 - Truro, Massachusetts 18
Death: 14 Oct 1869 - Truro, Massachusetts
Burial: in Truro Congregational cemetery 19
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Peter Knight (1764-1800)
Mother: Reliance Dyer (1766-1829)
Spouses and Children
1. *Giraud Cordes (3 Mar 1790 - 11 Mar 1861) 20 21
Marriage: 7 Jun 1818 - Truro, Massachusetts 22
Status:
Children:
1. John Cordes (1819-1841) 23
2. William Boyd Cordes (1821- )
3. Andrew Lewis Cordes (1823-1841) 23
4. James Henry Cordes (1825-1909)
5. Napthali Dyer Cordes (1827- )
6. Charles Cordes (1830-1911)
7. Elizabeth Susan Cordes (1832- )
8. Priscilla Lewis Cordes (1835-1865)
9. Sarah Ann Cordes (1837- )
10. Cordelia Ellen Cordes (1839-1907)
2. Andrew Lewis (Est 1795 - Bef Jun 1818)
Marriage: 15 Apr 1813 - Truro, Massachusetts 24
Status:
Reliance P Knight
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 23 Sep 1797 - Truro, Massachusetts 25
Baptism: 24 Dec 1797 - Truro, Massachusetts 18
Death: 11 Sep 1870 - Truro, Massachusetts
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Peter Knight (1764-1800)
Mother: Reliance Dyer (1766-1829)
Spouses and Children
1. *Napthali Dyer (25 Aug 1795 - 8 Nov 1833)
Marriage: 19 May 1819 - Truro, Massachusetts 26
Status:
Children:
1. Delia S Dyer (1823-1872)
2. Angelina R Dyer (1828-1859)
Notes
Marriage Notes (Napthali Dyer)
1850 Census, Truro, Barnstable, Ma;
Reliance Dyer 53;
Reliance 20;
Hannah Y. 18;
John A. Wilson 18.
1860 Census, Truro, Barnstable, Ma:
Relyance Dyer, 62, $500, $200, Mass
1870 Census, Truro, Barnstable, Ma:
Dyer, Reliance, 72, No Occupation, Ma
Hall, Solomon, 38, Seaman, -, $100, Ma
Hall, Hannah F, 37, Keeping House, Ma
Hall, Willie A, 12, Fishing, Ma
Hall, Joshua S, 7, At Home, Ma
Freeman, Alden J, 16, Fishing, Ma
(Medical):widow, age 73-3-0
Children
Delia Swett Dyer b: 2 MAY 1823 in Truro, Barnstable, Ma
Angelina Rider Dyer b: 1 JUL 1827 in Truro, Barnstable, Ma
Reliance Priscilla Dyer b: 15 DEC 1829 in Truro, Barnstable, Ma
Hannah Freeman Dyer b: 7 JUL 1832 in Truro, Barnstable, Ma
(from will_riged)
Samuel Knight
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 26 Nov 1816 - Truro, Massachusetts 27
Baptism:
Death: 1817 - Boston, Massachusetts 22
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father:
Mother: Esther Knight (1793- )