Calvin Henderson Wiley
BiographyCalvin Henderson Wiley (February 3, 1819–January 11, 1887) was a North Carolina educator, the first superintendent of public schools in the state, a lawyer, and a novelist. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1840 and was admitted to the bar in 1841.
He married Mittie Towles on February 25, 1862, and they had five children.
After serving two years in the North Carolina legislature he became superintendent of common schools on January 1, 1853, and served in that office until the end of the Civil War in 1865 when along with all other state officials he was removed from office. During his term as superintendent he founded and edited the North Carolina Common School Journal in 1856, which lasted only one year but was subsequently put on a firmer footing as the North Carolina Journal of Education. He was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in 1866.
His two novels are historical romances set in North Carolina during the American revolution, Alamance (1847) and Roanoke (1849). Roanoke was reissued under a number of titles, including Life in the South (1852), Utopia (1851), and Adventures of Old Dan Tucker (1852). The stories incorporate North Carolina traditions, legends, history, and settings. Under the title, Life in the South, Roanoke was given the subtitle A Companion to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in an effort to capture some of the popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous text.
Bibliography
Alamance; or, The Great and Final Experiment (1847)
Roanoke; or, “Where is Utopia?” (1849)
The North-Carolina Reader (school-text, 1851)
Scriptural Views of National Trials (1863)
Other links
NCpedia
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Wikipedia