| Notes |
Letter from Prescott Orde Skinner to Mitia Olga Skinner: [Mitia Olga is Prescott’s niece. First two pages of this letter are lost. Date is unknown]
“[…] her aunt Alice (my wife) is most attractive. They are all coming up to Hanover to pass the Christmas. Alicias’s family with her husband’s (John Carleton) family, and John Skinner and Helen with us.
“Now as to the Skinners, I will tell you what I know. The family in the late 17th or early 18th century, sailed from Chichester, England, settling in Colchester, Connecticut. Alice got a lot of the early history of our family from my mother who got it in turn from my father. Alice will write this early period to you. The Skinners that I descend from were all professional men, mostly ministers.
“My grandfather Joseph Churchill Skinner was a Baptist minister in Nova Scotia and then in New Brunswick. I have his portrait taken in the 1840s or 1850s; an impressive looking man, dignified in his white shirt, and the dress ot his time.
“At the beginning of the Revolution War, my ancestors Skinners were Tories (my father was not proud of this). They, with a few other of the same attachment to England, got into a large open boat and amidst all the perils of the sea, sailed north along the New England coast to Nova Scotia. I think they settled in what is known as the Evangeline country – but Alice will tell you about this.
“My grandfather, the Rev. Joseph Churchill was called to New Brunswick and lived and preached for many years in a town on the Washademoak Lake, about fifty miles from the City of St. John up the St. John river.
“My father was the second of seven children, born in Nova Scotia about two months before the family left for New Brunswick (1825). My father worked hard under difficulties, and finally entered Fredericton Academy (in New Brunswick) thence to Harvard University. He studied in the Harvard Medical School under such men as Professor Stones and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. My father used to tell us a great many anecdotes about Dr. Holmes in the classroom. My father was in the 1850s or 1860s interim in Mass. General Hospital.
“For a number of years, my father practiced in St. John, New Brunswick. He made some money there, then went to Boston in Tremont Street, near the Common where I was born, then to the South End where he bought a house and made his office there. Later he sold the house, and our family moved to Roxbury a sort of suburb of Boston.
“The story of my father’s marriage, Alice will tell you about. My mother, the best of women, insisted on us four boys having the finest opportunities for education. Macy and I in Harvard University, Vernon in Law School, and your father in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he stood well as a student.
“Later I studied at the University of Paris – Harvard graduate School, and taught for 38 years at Dartmouth College where I am now a professor emeritus on a pension.
“I don’t know but I think that the Daughters of the America Revolution insist on the ancestors being a native patriot. My own sympathies are all with the American cause, and in spite of my father’s ancestrial party membership, my father from boyhood always was in sympathy with the American cause.
“But ask me some more and I will try to answer. Your Aunt Alice and I congratulate you on your engagement most heavily. As you write it, it seems a perfect match. By the way your aunt Alice is very fond of you.
Love – Uncle Orde.”
From the “ Harvard College, Class of 1896 Fiftieth Anniversary Report”: .jpg) Prescott Orde Skinner (1908)
“After my childhood which was spent in one of the pleasanter (no longer so) parts of the South End in Boston,” he writes, “I passed eight long profitable years at the Public Latin School in Boston. After an interval of several years, I entered Harvard. My two years in the Graduate School were a great revelation to me under the inspiration of Professors Grandgent an Sheldon. there I formed lifelong friendships with other students, many of whom entered a profession similar to my own.
“My graduate studies were continued at the École des Hautes Études in Paris under world-famous scholars. I revisited Paris and other parts of Europe off and on – long enough each time to get the foreign atmosphere, cultivate some knowledge and love of the arts, and make some lasting friends, especially in France. Then followed thirty-seven years of teaching at Dartmouth College.
“Since my promotion (ironic user of the word) to the status of professor emeritus at the age of seventy, I have missed somewhat my old classroms, but have not suffered too much from boredom. I have always loved long walks along the open road, through fields, woods, and over hills – deambulare per amoena loca. Today the length and speed of these walks are considerably curtailed. I have enjoyed frequent sojourns with my married children and find my grandchildren most attractive.
“Locally, I frequent our splendid Dartmouth Library, have coffee down town with old cronies, and can appreciate the restfulness of my home life in our ancient Webster Cottage. Webster roomed in this house in his freshman year.
“As I no longer have to keep to my former professional specialties, I indulge in the most miscellaneous reading an rereading, generally but not always of a high order. I might add that I follow Harvard’s athletic activities and am still a confirmed Harvard rooter.”
Skinner was born April 28, 1867, at Boston, Massachusetts, the son of John Skinner and Jennie Reid (Terwilliger) Skinner. “The Public Latin School in Boston,” he writes, “offered an eight-year course of study. We had Latin twice a day regularly, five years of Greed, plenty of modern and ancient history, and mathematics, English, and French in addition. From this training I gained a lifelong love for these subjects which was further stimulated by my Harvard teachers. Today I am reviewing with great pleasure the works of Horace”.
On July 10, 1901, Skinner married Alice Van Leer Carrick at Boston, Massachusetts. Their children are: Margaret Van Leer (Mrs. Hancort), born August 12, 1902; John Carrick, born October 21, 1905; and Alicia Prescott (Mrs. Carleton), born December 10, 1909. There are five grandchildren. Skinner’s brother, Macy Millmore Skinner, received an A.B. from Harvard in 1894, an A.M. in 1895, and a Ph.D. in 1897.
In World War II Skinner’s son, John, was a lieutenant in the New York National Guard.
Skinner has written textbooks on his field. In 1937 Dartmouth conferred upon him the degree of Litt. D.
Source: Notes toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A.: Webster Cottage 1780 –
“.jpg) Webster Cottage – Dartmouth College
Occidental College Library Author: Dow, Louis Henry, 1872-
Title: Quelques contes des romanciers naturalistes; Pub info: Boston, D.C. Heath & company, 1907
Add author: Skinner, Prescott Orde Descript ix, 244 p. 17 cm.
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1867 - 1951 (83 years)
Siblings
. Margaret Van Leer SKINNER, b. 12 Aug 1902, Hanover, Grafton, New Hampshire 
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