Albert SALISBURY
Biography

Albert Salisbury.—Was born in Lima, Wis., Jan. 24, 1843, being the first white child born in the town of Lima. He was the oldest of six children born to Oliver Salisbury and Emily Cravath, who both came to Wisconsin before they were married, which event occurred April 27, 1841. His father was one of the seven Salisbury brothers who spent more or less of their lives in the neighborhood of Whitewater. He built the first frame house between Whitewater and Milton, and to this took his bride, one of the nine grown-up daughters of Deacon Prosper Cravath.

Albert grew up on the Lima farm, experiencing all the responsibilities of the oldest child in a pioneer family. About 1855, his father added the nursery business to farming, and to this the boy served an apprenticeship of twelve years. He entered the Union Army as a recruit in the 13th Wis. Infantry in December, 1863, serving in the Army of the Cumberland. After the war was ended, his Army corps, the 4th, was sent to Texas under Gen. Sheridan, to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. During this summer (1865), he was detailed by Major General Stanley as Military Postmaster of the Dept. of Texas, with headquarters at New Orleans.

He was married Nov. 20, 1866, to Abba A. Maxson, daughter of Dr. John Maxson. By her, he had four children, Gertrude L., Oliver M., Grace E., and Winifred A. His father dying in November, 1866, he spent the next two years in managing two farms and closing out the nursery business. His education, begun in "the white school house," where his first teaching was also done, and prosecuted intermittently at Milton College, was resumed in 1868, and he graduated in 1870. He next became principal of the Brodhead High School. In March, 1873, he was called to the newly established position of Conductor of Institutes for the Whitewater Normal School, which he held until July, 1882, when he resigned to become superintendent of schools for the American Missionary Association, in the South and West, with residence at Atlanta, Ga. For the next three years, he traveled 30,000 miles a year in the inspection of schools, doing the travel chiefly nights and Saturdays. During the third of these years, his family resided in Montclair, New Jersey. Being called to the presidency of the Normal School, he returned to Whitewater in July, 1885, to take up the office which he has now held for twenty-one years, in which time the Normal School building has been three times enlarged, the number of graduates, meantime, increasing from 355 to 1,300. His experience in the nursery business had bred a taste for trees and gardening which has found scope in the care and ordering of the school grounds.

His first wife dying in 1881, he was again married Aug. 28, 1883, to Miss Agnes Hosford, who bore him a son, Albert H., who died May 15, 1905, just as he was about to graduate from the Normal School, a sad fate which had also befallen the youngest daughter, Winnie, eight years before.

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