Pennsylvania Superintendent of Public Instruction James Pyle Wickersham, circa 1870.


Oil on canvas portrait, head and shoulders, facing front, of a bearded, mustached, man wearing a suit coat, white shirt, and a bow tie.
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Nineteenth-century Pennsylvania's most influential public educator, J. P. Wickersham served as Principal of the Lancaster County Normal School between 1855 and 1865. From 1866 until 1875 Wickersham served as state superintendent of public instruction. A prolific author, he published his History of Education in Pennsylvania in 1886.