Education Greats:

                       

James W. Lathrop

          
James Lathrop came to Canton from Connecticut when he was twenty -five in 1816. Admitted to the bar that same year, he organized Canton's first library consisting of 30 books which were stored under lock and key at the Court House for use by private subscribers. He gathered prominent Canton businessmen in order to found the Canton Academy. They built the first schoolhouse in 1824 on the plot designated by Bezaleel Wells for a school, the site where Timken High School now stands. In 1822 he was responsible for the legislation which incorporated Canton as a town. After serving as town auditor he was elected to the Ohio legislature in the years 1825, 1826, and 1827, at which time he served as chair of the committee on education. Through him the Ohio Liberal Education Act established funding for the public schools and he earned the title "Father of Public Education" in Ohio. He had served as Canton's first President, County Auditor, and County Commissioner. And he served on a board incorporating Massillon's Charity Rotch School.
           
 
Augustus Juilliard

Augustus Juilliard was born at sea when his parents immigrated from France in 1836. Settling in Stark County, his father, Jean Nicolas Juilliard served as a shoe maker and farmer. When Augustus was thirty years old, he moved from Louisville, Ohio to New York and was involved in fabric manufacturing until the company for which he worked went bankrupt. He was able to find investors to incorporate the Augustus D. Juilliard Company and within several years was involved in banking. After marrying Helen Cositt in 1877, he became a board member of the Metropolitan Opera. When he died he willed some $15,000,000 to a corporation known as the Juilliard Musical Foundation. His nephew, Frederick Juilliard who served as one of three trustees of the foundation was able to form the Juilliard School.

   
   
 
 
Mother Angelica
 

Mother Angelica was born Rita Rizzo in 1923, and raised in Canton. Graduating from McKinley High School, she worked for a time in advertising at Timken Roller Bearing Company. In 1944 she joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Cleveland before joining a new foundation at Santa Clara Monastery in Canton in 1947.Developments in her life led her to found Our Lady of the Angels Monastery near Birmingham, Alabama. Her creative efforts to sustain the monastery following an unlikely path for a cloistered nun, giving rise to a worldwide Catholic Media Ministry with a traditional flavor called EWTN- The Eternal Word Television Network. Mother Angelica suffered a debilitating stroke in 2001.She yielded EWTN to a lay board and stepped down as CEO. She later developed the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament there and continues to live at the Monastery in Alabama. Time Magazine at one time called her "the most influential Catholic Woman in the world."