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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
At the south edge of New Harmony, Indiana, in Maple Hill cemetery, over the grave of Joseph Neef, a monument erected by his daughter, Mrs. Richard Owen, bears the inscription, “Joseph Neef was a co-adjutor of Pestalozzi, in Switzerland and was the first to promulgate the Pestalozzian system of education in America.” Mirroring the epitaph on his stone memorial, American educational historians have interpreted Neef as the lengthened shadow of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in America. Neef, although in many ways a reflection of his Swiss mentor, was also an educational theorist in his own right. Pestalozzi, as a European, had waited for the coming of a benevolent monarch to inaugurate a natural system of education. Neef quickly accepted the frontier egalitarianism of his adopted nation, blending both Pestalozzian and republican principles to develop an original theory of ethical education.
1. Francis Joseph Nicholas Neef was born on December 6, 1770, in the Alsatian town of Soultz, and he died in New Harmony, Indiana, on April 8, 1854. His daughter, Anne Eliza, was the wife of Richard Owen, a son of Robert Owen, the English Utopian socialist.Google Scholar
2. Published materials dealing with Neef, such as C. D. Gardette, “Pestalozzi in America,” The Galaxy, IV (August 1867), 432–39; Will S. Monroe, History of the Pestalozzian Movement in the United States (Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen, 1907); ibid., “Joseph Neef and Pestalozzianism in America,” Education, XIV (April 1894), 449–61; Theodore Schreiber, “First Pestalozzian in the New World,” The German-American Review, IV (October 1942), 25–27; C. H. Wood, “The First Disciple of Pestalozzi in America,” Indiana School Journal, XXXVII (November 1892), 559–665, depict him as a Pestalozzian disciple who first introduced the method in the United States. The following unpublished dissertations: Thomas A. Barlow, “Channels of Pestalozzianism into the United States,” University of Kansas, 1963; Helen Elliott, “Development of the New Harmony Community with Special Reference to Education,” Indiana University, 1933; Robert L. Phillips, “Joseph Neef and His Methods of Teaching,” Eastern Illinois University, 1962, also emphasize the similarities in the educational theory and practice of Neef and Pestalozzi.Google Scholar
3. Neef taught in Pestalozzi's Institute at Burgdorf in Switzerland from 1800 to 1803. He established a Pestalozzian school in Paris in 1803. He came to the United States in 1806 under the patronage of William Maclure, who was interested in introducing Pestalozzian educational methods. Neef subsequently wrote two pedagogical works: Sketch of a Plan and Method of Education (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1808) and The Method of Instructing Children Rationally, in the Arts of Writing and Reading (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1813). He also translated the Logic of Condillac (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1809). Neef established his first school in the United States, in 1809, at the Falls of the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia. In 1813, the school was moved to Village Green, Pennsylvania. In 1815, Neef moved to Kentucky and engaged in farming. In 1826, at the request of Maclure, he joined the Owenite community of New Harmony, Indiana. For an excellent account of the New Harmony experiment and its educational aspects see Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., Backwoods Utopias (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950) and the same author's Education and Reform at New Harmony: Conespondence of William Maclure and Marie Duclos Fretageot, 1820–1833 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1948). References to Neef are made in Paul Brown, Twelve Months in New Harmony (Cincinnati: Wm. Hall Woodward, 1827). The following also comment on Neef's educational work at New Harmony: Richard W. Leopold, Robert Dale Owen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940); George B. Lockwood, The New Harmony Movement (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1905); William E. Wilson, The Angel and the Serpent: The Story of New Harmony (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964).Google Scholar
4. Heinrich Pestalozzi, Johann How Gertrude Teaches Her Children (Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen, 1907), p. 183.Google Scholar
5. Neef, Sketch, p. 28.Google Scholar
6. Logic of Condillac, Translated by Joseph Neef, As an Illustration of the Plan of Education Established at His School Near Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1809).Google Scholar
7. Roger de Guimps, Pestalozzi: His Aim and Work (Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen, 1889), pp. 252–53.Google Scholar
8. Boyd, William ed., The Emile of Jean Jacques Rousseau (New York: Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1966), p. 38.Google Scholar
9. Neef, Sketch, pp. 83–84.Google Scholar
10. Ibid., p. 80.Google Scholar
11. Ibid., pp. 75–76.Google Scholar
12. Ibid., pp. 76–77.Google Scholar
13. Ibid., p. 78.Google Scholar
14. Ibid. Google Scholar
15. Ibid., p. 79.Google Scholar
16. Neef, Sketch, p. 75.Google Scholar
17. Ibid. Google Scholar
18. Pestalozzi, Leonard and Gertrude, in Barnard, Henry, ed., Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism (New York: Brownell Co., 1862), p. 660.Google Scholar
19. Neef, Sketch, p. 76.Google Scholar
20. Silber, Kate Pestalozzi: The Man and His Work (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1960) p. 64.Google Scholar
21. Pestalozzi, Leonard and Gertrude, p. 551.Google Scholar
22. For Maclure's socioeconomic and educational views, see William Maclure, Opinions on Various Subjects, Dedicated to the Industrious Producers (New Harmony: School Press, 1831).Google Scholar
23. Neef, Sketch, p. 29.Google Scholar
24. Ibid., p. 28.Google Scholar
25. Ibid., p. 29.Google Scholar
26. Lockwood, The New Harmony Movement, p. 277.Google Scholar
27. Neef, Sketch, p. 82.Google Scholar
28. Ibid. Google Scholar
29. Ibid. Google Scholar
30. Pestalozzi, Christopher and Alice, in Barnard, , Pestalozzi, p. 667.Google Scholar
31. Neef, Sketch, p. 27.Google Scholar
