It was due to his fine discipline and leadership that more teachers, preachers, lawyers and judges came from that school during the two years he taught there than in all the years since. Though small in stature and crippled in limb, he was a man of unusual courage, unswerving honesty, unfailing firmness and accurate judgment. This was George W Bates, and to him, next to my mother, I owe more than to any person who ever influenced my life. When I was fifteen years old, it was my good fortune to come under the influence of a very superior country school teacher. Thus it was made possible for teachers following him, who had less muscle but more ability to impart knowledge, to devote themselves to the purpose for which they were employed, namely, the dispelling of the darkness of ignorance and the creation of the light of knowledge. When I was about twelve years old, R V Allen, a young man with grit and courage, was employed to teach the school and, after he had introduced himself by taking some of the older boys, who had bullied his predecessors, by the nape of the neck and shaking them as a dog shakes a rat, the atmosphere clarified, discipline followed, and order came out of chaos. The older boys felt it incumbent upon them to make life as varied, active and uncomfortable for the teachers as possible. I attended the Ridge country school in Fairfield County, Ohio, until I was eighteen, giving scant attention to the acquisition of knowledge of any kind.

Until I was seventeen years of age I had never seen a geometry or an algebra. My early knowledge of mathematics was very meagre and the outlook for future mathematical development very unpromising. In Finkel gives an insight into his schooling:. Benjamin was the second of his parents' five children, having an older sister Elizabeth Ann (1863- 1950) and three younger siblings Emanuel, John P (who both died as infants ) and Theresa (1871- 1945). After her first husband died, Louisa Kibler married John Philip Finkel. The Kiblers, with one son, emigrated to America in 1853 where they had four more children. Louisa Frederica Stickle was born in WГјrttemberg, Germany and had married a Mr Kibler. John Philip Finkel had been born in Frederick, Maryland, into a family that had emigrated from England around the middle of the 18 th century. Biography Benjamin Franklin Finkel's parents were John Philip Finkel (1820- 1893) and Louisa Frederica Stickle (1829- 1926).

Benjamin franklin glimpses of the man