Biography and Obituary of John Henry House
Biographies of John Henry House and his founding and involvement with the American Farm School (Thessalanica Agricultural and Industrial Institute) of Thessaloniki, Greece can be found in the books, "A Life for the Balkans" written by Susan Beers House and Joice M.Nankivell and "Stewards of the Land" by Brenda L. Marder.
Transcript of Obituary ...
DR. JOHN H. HOUSE, EDUCATOR, IS DEAD
Founder of American Farm School in Saloniki, 90, Was Honored by Greece.
64 YEARS IN THE BALKANS
Spent Life Teaching Peasants Modern Agriculture - Son Carries on His Work.
Wireless to THE NEW TORK TIMES
ATHENS, April 19.- Dr. John Henry House. missionary and founder of the American Farm School at Saloniki, died there this morning. Dr. House was known throughout the Near East for his various philanthropic and cultural activities.
Daughter Was His Aide
With Dr. House at his death were his widow and one of his daughters. Miss Ruth House, who has been engaged in work at the American Farm School or several years. He was 90 years old.
Six other children survive: Jonn Henry House Jr., architect, of this city: Miss Grace Bigelow House of South Carolina, Miss Florence House of Teachers College, Columbia University: Mrs. Benjamin B. Bliss of this city, Charles House, who is a visitor here from Saloniki, where he heads the American Farm School, and Mrs. Edward Williams 3d of Woodstock, Vt.
In 1872, the year after he left the Union Theological Seminary. Dr. House went to the Balkans as a Congregational missionary. with him went his bride, the former Adeline Susan Beers of New York. They traveled widely in a region then largely under Turkish influence and Dr. House came to the conclusion that the reason the Balkan peasants, who made up 80 per cent of the population, were always so ready to go to war was that their peacetime lives were almost unendurably poverty-stricken through their ignorance of scientific agriculture.
He decided to make his life work the instruction of these people In the science of "dry farming" in the agricultural methods which we have used on the sagebrush plains of the West. The usual supporters of missionary labors did not take to his plan and thirty years went by be fore he was able to buy a tract of fifty-two acres of desert land near Saloniki, the Thessalonica o! St. Paul. In 1903 he opened the Thessalonica Agricultural and Industrial Institute, or, as it is now generally known, the American Farm School.
Honored on 90th Birthday
The school began with ten orphan boys in a two-room adobe cottage. In 1934 the enrollment was 134 boys. The Greek Government found the graduates so valuable to the country that an act of Parliament in 1930 provided for annual scholarship of $150 each for 100 boys to be trained for four years each. Both Dr. House and his son, Charles L. House, who succeeded him as bead of the school on his retirement In 1910, have been decorated with the Grecian Gold Cross of the Chevalier of the Order of the Saviour.
On May 22, 1933, Dr. House celebrated his ninetieth birthday at the school. He received nine bound volumes of greeting cards, each containing ninety greetings from friends in all parts of the world: and $5,000 was presented to the school in bis name, the sum being made up of gifts in multiples of from 20 cents to $90.
Dr. and Mrs. House have spent sixty-four years in the Balkans. He was a professor and a director of the American College and Theological institute at Samokov, Bulgaria, 1874-01; editor of the Bulgarian paper Zornits, at Constantinople, 1801-02: and from 1894 to 1931 was engaged in evangelistic and educational work in Saloniki.
A native of Painesville. Ohio, a son of John and Jane Electa Moseley House, he received his A. B. In 1868 from Adelbert, College, now Western Reserve University, which made him a Doctor of Divinity In 1884, a Doctor of Laws In 1920. He belonged to the Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Delta Phi fraternities.
The school Dr. House founded is only a few miles from the site of the home of Philip of Macedon, where Aristotle taught Alexander the Great.
In 1902, when Miss Ellen M. Stone was kidnapped by Macedonian bandits. Dr. House spent nine weeks in the mountains making contact with her captors, and finally obtained her release.