Robert Floyd Kerr papers

Robert Floyd Kerr was born April 12, 1850 in Sugar Grove, Ind. He received his A.B. degree in 1877 and A.M. degree in 1880 from Indiana Asbury University (IAU). He embarked on a career in education, becoming a superintendent of schools in Newton County, Ind. in 1879. In 1881 he traveled to Hirosaki, Japan where he was appointed to teach English at To-O-Gijuku College for one year, continuing the success of fellow IAU alumnus, John Ing. Following this teaching assignment, Kerr returned to the United States to take a position as a civil engineer with the Toledo, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad and as a teacher and surveyor in Blair, Nebraska, 1882-84. Kerr's next teaching positions were first in the preparatory department and then as professor of political economy at the South Dakota Agricultural College, 1885-1895. Kerr took the post of superintendent of schools for Brookings County, SD, from 1895-1898. For the period 1898-1901 he served as principal for the preparatory department and librarian for the South Dakota Agricultural College in Brookings. Kerr then became director of the Historical Society of South Dakota from 1901-1905 and its president in 1907. He also served as private secretary to South Dakota Governor Samuel H. Elrod (IAU 1882), 1905-1906. He was the author of Block Map and Manual of South Dakota, 1907, and editor of the Minnesota and Dakota Farmer. Robert F. Kerr died Oct. 16, 1921.