Brand Blanshard - Life

Life

Brand Blanshard was born August 27, 1892 in Fredericksburg, Ohio. His parents were Francis, a Congregational minister, and Emily Coulter Blanshard, Canadians who met in high school in Weston, Ontario. The freethinker and sometime The Nation editor Paul Beecher Blanshard was his fraternal twin. During a visit to Toronto in 1893, their mother Emily fell down stairs while holding a kerosene lamp. She died of burns the next day. The Rev. Mr. Blanshard brought his sons to Grand Rapids, Michigan for maternal care by his mother, Orminda Adams Blanshard, widow of Methodist clergyman Shem Blanshard. Francis left them in her care, briefly to pastor a church in Helena, Montana. In 1899 the four moved south to Edinburg, Ohio. Upon being diagnosed with tuberculosis, Francis was advised to seek the drier climate of the American West. In 1902, Francis Blanshard bade his mother and sons goodbye. They moved northwest to Bay View, Michigan and he moved alone to Albuquerque, New Mexico where, in 1904, he died, alone in a tent.

Mrs. Orminda Blanshard raised her grandsons on an annual pension of $250 from the Methodist church while the boys washed dishes at a restaurant. Realizing their need for good education, the family located to Detroit in 1908 so the boys could graduate from the well known Central High School. Soon both were at the top of their class, joined the debating team, and Brand was made class Poet. Many years later, Bertrand Russell was to express surprise at the quality of Brand's poetry. Brand also excelled at baseball.

In 1910 the Blanshard brothers entered the University of Michigan, whose annual tuition was only $30 for state residents. Brand discovered philosophy while majoring in classics. After a mere three years at Michigan, he obtained a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, where he studied under Horace W. B. Joseph, who greatly influenced him, and met F.H. Bradley and T.S. Eliot. Upon the outbreak of World War I, he interrupted his studies and joined the British Army YMCA, which sent him to Bombay and Amhara, where he witnessed poverty and the horrors of war at first hand. German submarine warfare forced him to return to the USA via Japan. Fate reunited the Blanshard twins at Columbia University where Paul was studying the new field of Sociology. The brothers participated in a project run by their shared mentor and friend, John Dewey. On this project they met Frances Bradshaw of Smith College - see below. Brand obtained his M.A., studying under W.P. Montague. From Columbia, he went straight into the US Army, serving in France. Once demobilized, he returned to Oxford to complete his BA (Hons) and then earned his doctorate at Harvard under Clarence Irving Lewis.

After a short teaching stint at Michigan, he taught at Swarthmore College from 1925 to 1944. He spent the remainder of his career at Yale University until his retirement in 1961. At Yale, he served as chairman of the Department of Philosophy for many years. In 1952, he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Scotland.

In 1918, Blanshard married Frances Bradshaw, who would become dean of women at Swarthmore. It came as a great blow to him when Frances died in 1966. He completed her book Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore, publishing it in 1970. In 1969, after what he later described as "loneliness, failing health, and failing motives," he married Roberta Yerkes, a daughter of his Yale colleague Robert M. Yerkes. Brand Blanshard died in 1987 at the age of 95, in New Haven, Connecticut.