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Last Modified 13 Feb 2003 | Created 15 Mar 2003 by EasyTree for Windows |
Also:
Glen Newton Says:
Dear Newton Relatives,+Roy Newton graduated from Duke University I think in Durham, N.C. [Editors note: He attended Trinity College, which is now Duke University, and graduated with an A.B. from Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, in 1925.] There was an excellent teacher - someone who would make you look forward to attending his class! I took a couple of classes from him, business English, history of education, what else? This instructor lectured for an hour once on how LUCK plays a part in your accomplishments. I loaned my notes from that class to Bob Davis or Bay City or Flint and never seen them again. What a bummer?
This was actually a featured (humorous) reading on the National Public Radio
show "This American Life", on November 8, 1997^ December
13, 1996; A reading from "How To Improve Your Personality" (1942) by Roy
Newton, published by McGraw-Hill. It was used as an example of how our society
(more so in 1942) advises men to appear masculine and avoid any appearance
of being feminine or a "sissy"
^
See also:
Editions
Dictionaries (by Glen Newton, edited by James Newton)
Published in 1964, the controversial Merriam-Websters Third New International Dictionary was widely criticized for not capitalizing god. Dad wondered what precedent there might have been for this, and he soon discovered that experts in the history of dictionaries had been using secondary sources, not the dictionaries themselves. That got him started collecting old dictionaries, researching their contents, and planning a book on the history of dictionaries.He never completed the book, but along the way he found a couple of kindred spirits Gene Freeman, an electrical engineer from California, and Warren Cordell^, a vice-president of the Nielsen Corporation. Neither of them was a writer, but Warren contributed his statistical knowledge to the project by trying (unsuccessfully) to convince Dad that he didnt need to count all the words in a dictionary; he could pick a random sampling of pages, count the words on them, and then estimate the margin of error in the mathematically-derived total.
Dad created a business card for his dictionary collection, whose first line was Roy NewtonBooks. (Note the punctuation an em-dash, rather than a hyphen.) After a while he got a few advertisements in the mail addressed to Dear Mr. Newton-Books.
A good source of old dictionaries was The Antiquarian Bookman, a newsletter for dealers in old books. By coincidence (at least I think its coincidence), theres now a bookstore in Blackshear, Georgia, by that name. (Blackshear is one of our family names. Dads mothers maiden name was Elizabeth Ellis Blackshear.) The newsletter was hand-typed. The most amusing issue that Dad received began with this apology:
Letter between r and t broken. Will fubftitute f inftead.
This way of spelling words in the newsletter would be perfectly natural for the newsletters audience. (If youve read very old printed texts, you may have observed what appears at first glance to be that same substitution in certain locations within the word, but if you look closer, youll see that the middle crossing line goes to both sides of the vertical line if the letter is an f but only halfway across if the letter is an s.)
With a college teachers salary, supplemented only by income from the latest edition of How to Improve Your Personality and Moms church organist salary, Dads budget for dictionaries was very small. Once when he received a collect call, which he accepted in case it was important news about a family member, he was angry when it turned out to be someone calling to try to sell him a dictionary at an inflated price. There was a belief among the general populace that if its old, it must be very valuable. Those not in the business routinely forgot that condition, rarity, and suitability for a particular project have a major influence on the value of a book. Invariably, these were worthless to him, and the sellers wanted much more than the dictionaries would have been worth to anyone.
Unfortunately, when Warren, with his lofty income, began collecting dictionaries, it drove the market up, and after a while, the remaining books Dad was interested in were out of reach of what he could afford to pay. By then he had collected over 1600 dictionaries and his direct access to the tomes gave him an insight missed by many experts in the field. He learned, for example, that Samuel Johnsons famous dictionary was not the first English-to-English dictionary. Indeed, a dozen or more preceded it, beginning with Robert Cawdreys A Table Alphabetical . ^ ^
He also shared some rather amusing definitions from various old dictionaries: {ed: Some paraphrasing here}
- oats 'a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' ^
(To which James Boswell, Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author is said to have replied: "... that's why in England you have better horses, and in Scotland we have better men")- chirurgeon One who cuts hair and bones. ^
- condog given as a definition of agree, resulting from the dictionary writers assistant in the next room asked him to repeat the definition concur, because he was in the next room and didnt hear it the first time. Cur is slang for dog, and the dictionary writer peevishly replied condog.
- Eclipse 'The obscuration of a luminary' (an example of defining a two-syllable word in terms of two 4-syllable words) ^
Neither Cordell nor Freeman was a writer, so the task of putting the Magnum Opus, the dictionary history, on paper fell to Roy; but he never seemed to get around to starting it. He gave up about the same time that Warren, who had his own collection of old dictionaries, was negotiating with his alma mater, Indiana State University, about donating the entire collection. He approached Dad about purchasing Dads collection to include in the donated collection, which would provide an unparalleled resources for the students in Indiana State Universitys Master of Library Science degree. Dad sold all except a few that he kept for his own continuing research.
http://library.indstate.edu/about/units/rbsc/cordell/cordell-idx.html
http://www.ferris.edu/library/dedication/runway.htm An article in the September 20, 1927 Institute+
News states that although a faculty member, Mr. Roy Newton, stayed in Mr. Ferriss office every day from
12:50 to 1:00 p.m. to check out books to students, few students took advantage of the service.
From left to right: Perry,
Frances, Roy, and
Celia; Photo thought to have been taken
between 1935 and 1937
Roy and David Newton. Thought to have been taken Oct 1941
Roy with Glen at 5 weeks. Here's an excerpt from
Roy's March 19, 1947, letter to Perry:
"Biggest news here is that we are expecting a baby the last of June or first
of July. At our age! The whole family, however, is delighted. Jim and Dave
are very happy about it. It would make you laugh to see how solicitous Dave
is of Dorothy, telling her where to step, and not to bend over, and watch
out for that little patch of ice on the walk, etc. Everybody's hoping for
a girl. Dorothy's bridge club gave her a shower last night, and she got some
very nice baby things. Most of our old stuff has been given away or sold,
but I discovered we do still have the high chair and one of those necessary
toilet seats. I hear diapers are hard to find."
Roy fishing. The young man behind him is not identified.
Pictures from the 1969 photo album of Dorthy Newton. The negative was in a sleeve marked April-May 1969 S. Carolina, The seated person is Elizabeth Ellis Blackshear, Judging from the presence of all four of her children and the fancy table setting, we guess that this picture commemorates her 89th birthday. The standing adults are (left-to-right) Celia, Roy, Frances, and Perry.
Roy with students in an office. Said to be 1941 on the 3rd floor of the Pharmacy
Building. Note the bookend carved to the letters FI for Ferris
Institute. The pictures on the board on the wall start with Albert Einstein,
an unknown person, then Abraham Lincoln, a framed letter, and Woodbridge
N. Ferris. At lower left, lying on its size may be one of the dictionaries
Roy collected; possibly a Coopers Dictionary, published more
than 400 years ago and currently held by Glen.
Many of those dictionaries ended up at Indiana State University in Terre
Haute via a gift from alumnist Warren Cordell who had purchased them from
Roy. At one time, part of the set was identified as The Roy Newton
Collections.
Roy tutoring a student. The portrait to her left may have been drawn by
Dorothy.
Roy in a classroom. On the blackboard the classes he was teaching that term:
Psychology, Business English, and History of Modern Education. It looks like
there was also a personality interest group, possibly related to his book:
"How
to Improve Your Personality"
See William Carson TOLAR Jr. - Celia Evelyn NEWTON family page for additional pictures.
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