Education of the Founding Fathers of the Republic: Scholasticism
in the Colonial Colleges by James J. Walsh; Fordham University
Press, 1935. Excerpts from Chapter One: The Education of the
Fathers In his introduction to the revised edition of
Sanderson’s Biographies of the Signers of the Declaration of
Independence, Robert T. Conard said: “It may be doubted whether
any popular body has comprised so large a proportion of highly
educated members [as the Continental Congress who signed the
Declaration of Independence]. The number of those who had
regularly graduated in the colleges of Europe or America was
twenty-seven or nearly one-half the whole number, fifty-five.
[There were] Twenty other members whose education though not
regularly collegiate was either academic or by dint of unaided
energy as in the case of Franklin was equal or superior to the
ordinary course of the universities. Nine of the members only of
that august body can be set down as of ordinary and plain
education, though in that number are incl