Sacramento County
Biographies
EDMUND CLEMENT ATKINSON
Foremost
in the city of his adoption, and prominent in the state's educational history,
stands the name of Edmund Clement Atkinson, who for half a century devoted his
lifetime efforts to the instruction and character building of youth.
In
a farmhouse in the far-off state of Maine, in the year 1837, the subject of
this sketch was born, the youngest of a family of eight children. In his early
youth he labored in the logging camps of the Pine Tree state and acquired the
means wherewith to secure an education at Waterville college,
now Colby university, from which he later received the degree of A. M. He
entered Comer's Commercial college in Boston in the
early '60s, and after graduation was offered a position as instructor in that
institution. In 1866, in company with a fellow teacher, A. L. Reed, now of
Suisun, he immigrated to Wisconsin and established a chain of commercial
colleges in Janesville and Oshkosh in that state, and in Rockford, Ill.
Coming
to California and settling in Sacramento early in 1873, he established
Atkinson's Sacramento Business college, the first commercial school in the
Sacramento valley, which was successfully conducted by him up to the time of
his death, March 21, 1911, and is still in successful operation. During his
nearly forty years of educational work in Sacramento he stamped the indelible
impress if his powerful and upright character upon the minds of thousands of
pupils, many of whom are prominent in the business world of today. He attained
to great and state-wide eminence in the Masonic fraternity, where his rare
qualities of mind were admired and beloved by the members of that order, by
whom he was selected to be the grand master of the grand lodge of the state of
California, and elevated to the thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite.
Transcribed by Sally Kaleta.
Source: Willis,
William L., History of Sacramento County,
California, Page 833. Historic
Record Company,
© 2006 Sally Kaleta.