The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Steele, Joel Dorman
1836–86, American educator and textbook writer, b. Lima, N.Y., grad. Genesee College (now Syracuse Univ.), 1858. While serving as principal of the Elmira (N.Y.) Free Academy (1866–72), he wrote (1867) Fourteen Weeks in Chemistry, the first of a series of science texts that did much to popularize the subject. In collaboration with his wife, Esther Baker Steele, he also wrote a number of unusually successful history texts, including Barnes’ Brief History of the United States (1871).
