Bateman, Newton

Born: 1822-07-27 New Jersey

Died: 1897-10-21 Galesburg, Illinois

Born in Fairfield, New Jersey, Newton Bateman was a school principal, college professor, public administrator, and Republican. He moved to Illinois with his parents in 1833. After graduating from Illinois College in 1843, he studied theology for time, then traveled throughout the U.S. He became principal of a school in Saint Louis, Missouri, then served as a professor of mathematics at Saint Charles College in Missouri from 1847 to 1853. In 1850 he married Sarah Dayton, with whom he had at least one son before she died in May 1857. Bateman later became head of a school in Jacksonville, Illinois as well as acting superintendent of the city schools and commissioner for Morgan County. In 1858, he became principal of the Jacksonville Female Academy. He resigned this position after Illinois voters elected him superintendent of public instruction later that year. He won reelection to this position in 1860. In October 1859, he married Anna Newell Tyler, with whom he had at least two more children. By 1860, he owned $7,000 in real estate and another $1,000 in personal property. He died of heart disease.

U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Saint Charles, Saint Charles County, MO, 15; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Morgan County, 13 August 1850, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 27 November 1858, 2:3; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 1 June 1857, 2:5; 3 December 1858, 1:1; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Springfield, Sangamon County, IL, 112; James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., “Bateman, Newton,” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York: D. Appleton, 1888), 1:192; Illinois Daily State Journal (Springfield), 10 November 1860, 2:3; Willard I. Tyler Brigham, The Tyler Genealogy: The Descendants of John Tyler, of Andover, Massachusetts, 1619-1700 (Cornelius B. Tyler and Rollin U. Tyler, 1912), 1:625-26; Gravestone, Hope Cemetery, Galesburg, IL; The True Republican (Sycamore, IL), 3 November 1897, 2:3.