WASHINGTON, D. C., Apr. 20, 1878.

     Platt R. Spencer was a man of a rare combination of qualities.  With an intellect clear and active, and a memory exceedingly tenacious, he united a strong poetic sense, lively imagination, and sincere love for the beautiful in nature and in art. At times subject to melancholy, he was in general of a cheerful disposition, prolific in anecdote, and possessed of a keen relish for humor.  With a fine sense of justice and honor, he was inclined to be more exacting of himself in his dealings than of others.  His affections were strong and his friendships abiding.  He was a generous, open-hearted man, overflowing with good-will, with few enmities, and not a particle of guile or hypocrisy in his nature.
     The father of the subject of our sketch was Caleb Spencer, a native of Rhode Island, and a soldier of the Revolution.  He married a Massachusetts woman, Jerusha Coveil, from the town of Chatham, on Cape Cod.  They settled in the eastern part of the State of New York, living for a few years in Dutchess county.  Then for a time in Westchester, when they returned to Dutchess, and occupied a farm on the high hills of East Fishkill. It was here, on the 7th of November, in the first year of this century, that Platt Rogers Spencer was born.
     He was the youngest of a family of eleven, nine of whom were boys.  Two of these gave their lives to their country in the War of 1812,—one dying at Malden, Canada, in the army under Harrison, and the other while a prisoner by the surrender of Detroit.
     In Platt’s third year we find the family removed from Fishkill and living near the Hudson, in the vicinity of Wappinger’s Falls.  Their next home was upon the Catskill mountains, in Windham, Greene county, New York.  The parents were true children of New England, born and reared upon its rugged coast, and nothing seems to have pleased them better than to face the mountain winds, and wring from intractable soils the necessaries of life.  They had few riches beyond the promising band of young hearts that gathered at their fireside.  These they gave such educational privileges as their scanty means would afford, and trained to the exercise of sterling virtues.
     The beautiful scenery of the Catskills and the Hudson left a lasting impress upon Platt’s susceptible young mind, and ever afterwards in his western home, among attractions less picturesque, and of a quite different order, he cherished a delightful remembrance of the charms of nature,—the blue mountain ridges, the glens, cascades, and expansive views that surrounded him in early childhood.
     It was here in Windham, at the age of seven, that he began to exhibit a fondness for his favorite art.  His taste manifested itself, almost before he had begun to handle the pen, in his observations and criticisms of the handwriting of the public notices posted at the door of the school-house.
     His first, and, it seems, his only instructor in writing, was Samuel Baldwin, the district schoolmaster. Of the beginning of his “ chirographic pilgrimage,” seated upon a slab bench in the Windham school-house, and armed with the indispensable goose-quill and Barlow knife, he afterwards gave one of his characteristically graphic and humorous accounts.
     Nothing will better illustrate the intensity of his boyish passion for his art than the story of his first whole sheet of paper, which we cannot forbear reciting in his own words.  He says, “Up to February, 1808, I had never been the rich owner of a whole sheet of paper.  At that time, becoming the fortunate proprietor of a cent, I dispatched it by a lumberman to Catskill, which, though twenty miles distant, was the nearest market, and instructed him to purchase the desired paper.  He returned at midnight, and the bustle awakening me, I inquired eagerly for the result of his mission.  He had been successful, and brought the sheet to my bedside, rolled tightly and tied with a black linen thread.  Having carried it the entire distance in his bosom, it was of course much wrinkled.  I at once arose, and having smoothed it commenced operations.  Before its arrival, my imagination had pictured to me what beautiful work I could do thereon.  But the trial proved a failure.  I could not produce a single letter to my mind; and after an hour’s feverish effort, I returned to my bed disappointed, and to be haunted by feverish dreams.”
     Paper being to Platt a luxury rarely attainable in those days, he had recourse to other materials.  The bark of the birch-tree, the sand-beds by the brook, and the ice and snow in winter, furnished his practice sheets.  One of his favorite resorts also was the shop of his indulgent old friend the shoemaker, whose depleted ink-horn and sides of leather covered with the efforts of the young enthusiast, gave frequent proof of his boyish zeal.
     Platt had lost his father in his sixth year, and the care of the family had devolved upon the mother, a woman of much energy and perseverance, and upon the elder brothers.  The pioneer spirit seized the family, and quitting their mountain home, they turned their faces towards the new State of Ohio, in the then far western wilderness.
     After a tedious journey of fifty-one days in wagons, they arrived in Jefferson, Ashtabula County, Ohio, on the 5th of December, 1810.  The family gradually separated, settling in the shore-towns of Kingsville, Ashtabula, and Geneva.
    Platt had left  his eastern home with reluctance.  He feared that even the meagre advantages of schools and education he there enjoyed would in the new country he denied him, and the hopes that had begun to dawn in his young breast be doomed to disappointment.  In the many privations and rugged labors of the pioneers he had to bear his part, but his love for his pen and desire for learning were too deeply rooted to die out.  Of books there were few, and teachers almost none; yet, without repining for denied advantages, he made industrious use of those at hand.  The poet's injunction,

"That is best which lieth nearest,
Shape form that they work of art,"

found an early lodgment in his heart.
     The shore of the noble lake near which he dwelt had a peculiar fascination for him.  There he loved to spend his leisure hours, and its broad, beautiful beach from spring till autumn, and its expanse of ice in winter, he covered with endless chirographic tracings.
     To a mind like his, keenly responsive to Nature’s touch, such a school, even in such an art, could not be fruitless.  The perfections of form and movement in the things about him—in wild flowers and trailing vines that adorned the bank, the rounded pebbles at his feet, the birds that soared or skimmed the surface of the lake, and, more than all, the restless, unwearied, rhythmic sweep of the waves—diffused through him their influence upon his work, and, as he practiced on, those forms and ideas grew that in after-years lent a charm both to his teachings and to the products of his pen.  Of the impress thus received, he long afterwards beautifully wrote, under the title “ Origin of Spencerian Writing,” the following:

“ Touch not the juice that wooes the taste,
Its promises are false and frail;
Its siren pleasures quickly waste,
And all its proffered treasures fail.”

     When the crusade against slavery began in this country, Mr. Spencer was among the first who rallied to the standard.  Human slavery was a thing abhorrent to his generous, liberty-loving soul; and he joined earnestly in the work of freeing his country from that terrible blot of crime and suffering.  A friend of Joshua R. Giddings, he was one of those men whose hearty co-operation and sympathy at home upheld the hands of that gallant old disciple of freedom in the national councils.
     It was the influence of such spirits that, when two-thirds of the north cowered at the feet of the slave power, made the Western Reserve one of the strongholds of freedom.
     In his public addresses, particularly in the Fourth of July orations he was called upon to deliver from time to time, Mr. Spencer would frequently employ the opportunity to raise his voice effectively against the great national crime.  Among his papers we find the following note from Mr. Giddings, addressed to him from the hall of representatives at Washington:
     “Thanks for that speech, which I presume was delivered on the Fourth. That is the true style; let us have the words of independent freemen on every hand, in every place, and on every occasion.  These are stirring times.  Our cause is onward.”
     He lived to see the contest between freedom and slavery transferred from the court of reason to the terrible arbitrament of the sword.  And although he was not permitted to see the end, he retained a firm faith that the principles he so cherished would eventually triumph, and his country emerge from the conflict a truly united people.
     Mr. Spencer took a deep interest in historical subjects, especially those relating to his own county.  When the Ashtabula Historical and Philosophical society was formed, in 1838, he was chosen its secretary; an office he continued to fill till the time of his death.  He loved the annals of the early times, and it was mainly through his efforts that the history of his county was gathered and recorded for preservation.
     While Mr. Spencer was widely known for his noble personal qualities and generous sympathies in matters of general interest and welfare, his name, in connection with his own profession, has become a household word throughout the land.  The admirable system of writing which he produced forms the root whence nearly all others taught in the schools of our country to-day are but outgrowths.  In style he chose the golden mean between the labored fullness of the round hand and the rigid sharpness of the angular, aiming to combine the legibility of the one with the ease and directness of execution of the other.  He introduced, also, improved forms of capitals, a simple and beautiful analysis and classification of both small letters and capitals, and a tasteful mingling of light and shade.  With these he combined a correct theory of position and movement, and a free use of exercises to discipline and develop the muscles employed to wield the pen.
     His idea was, as expressed in his own words, to present a system

“ Plain to the eye, and gracefully combined
To train the muscles and inform the mind,”

and he must be accorded the praise of having well achieved his high ideal.
     The first publication of the system by himself was in the year 1848, and in the form of copy-slips with printed instructions.  In this he was associated with Victor M. Rice, a former pupil, and afterwards superintendent of public instruction for the State of New York.  In 1859 he was induced to present the system in copy-book form.  In 1861, in connection with his sons and Mr. James W. Lusk, an old pupil and well-tried friend, he revised his system and produced a new and beautiful series of copy-books, which were first published by Phinney & Co., Buffalo; but in 1869 were transferred to the house of Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., of New York, the present publishers.  The popularity of the system was shown by the fact that, during the year succeeding the publication of this series, more than a million of copies were distributed to the youth of the country.
     Since Mr. Spencer’s death the care of the system has fallen to his sons, assisted from time to time by other teachers of experience.  And they have been enabled to build so well upon the noble foundation laid by the father, that his system now meets with perhaps wider use and favor than ever before.
     Mr. Spencer’s poetical spirit found early and frequent expression.  His first attempt at versification, that has been preserved, was written at the age of twelve, when a pupil at Mr. Nettleton’s school.  This youthful effusion was again read at a reunion of the survivors of that pioneer school fifty years afterwards.  It celebrated, in humorous style, the fall of the master through a rotten puncheon in the floor into an excavation beneath.  His emerging thence, greeted by the unbounded merriment of his scholars, is thus expressed in one stanza of the rhyme:

“He struggles up—he’s out again,
Greeted with sturdy roar,
A shout that burst our paper panes,
And died on Erie’s shore.”

     Most of his poetical productions appeared from time to time under his own name or the assumed titles, “Cleonora,” “A Young Lady,” and “The Western Bard,” in the periodical press.  These embrace poems humorous and sentimental, temperance and religious poems, and those historical and chirographic.  They evince the presence of a genuine poetical instinct, and reflect well the rich current of their author’s thought and feeling through life.
     His favorite poet was Burns, and the influence of his fondness for that poet may be traced in some of his own productions.
     His love for versification was continually manifesting itself, even in those things seemingly farthest removed from the realm of the muses.
     No prospectus for a writing class, no circular advertising his copy-slips, and no copy-book cover or sheet of instructions to accompany his slips or books, was regarded as complete without a few pertinent lines of poetry, which were usually of his own composition, and some of them veritable gems.  On one of his copybook covers we find the following:

     In the calls for meetings of the historical society, which as its secretary he issued from time to time, he was wont to weave in bits like the following:

     It was this poetical spirit, in the main, that enabled him to throw about an art commonly regarded as dry and uninteresting a charm that made it attractive often to the most stolid and indifferent.
     While Mr. Spencer’s occupation through life was mainly that of a teacher, he lived upon a farm which he owned and carried on.  Though the work of the farm was intrusted to other hands, yet he was fond of joining at times in its labors: which afforded a pleasant and healthful relief from the confinement of his profession.  Fishing and bathing parties to the lake were also favorite recreations with him, into which he entered with the utmost zest even to the last years of his life.
     In his domestic relations he was peculiarly happy.  One could hardly be found fonder of his own fireside or more loved and respected there than was he.  Called much from home by his profession, it still remained to him the one greenest, sunniest spot on earth.  He wrote, -

     These lines occur in a poem on “Home,” written when that home was a log cabin in the woods.  He loved to have his children about him, and for them would draw forth from his rich resources of knowledge, humor, and experience such things as would amuse and instruct, always inculcating lessons of the highest honor and truth.
      In 1862 he met with a sad loss in the death of his wife.  His intense sympathy for her in her long and trying illness, together with the affliction of her death, so wrought upon him that he seemed never to regain fully his wonted spirit and vigor; nor, though continuing in the discharge of his duties, did he retain in the affairs of life the interest of former days.
      He did not long survive his loved companion. As the spring of 1864 was beginning to open, his declining health obliged him to lay down his faithful pen, which was not again to be resumed.  An illness protracted through several weeks, but comparatively free from pain, seemed to be yielding kiudly to the treatment of his physicians, when an unexpected change in its character left little room for hope; and on the 16th of May,—when it was expected that he would still survive some days or weeks,—with scarcely a struggle, he passed peacefully away.
      From the tributes to his memory we select the following from the gifted pen of his nephew, W. P. Spencer, as a fitting conclusion to this imperfect sketch of a truly noble, useful, and beautiful life:

Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 107

Residence of
R. Spring,
Geneva,
Ashtabula Co., OH