Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Beck, Charles

BECK, Charles, educator, b. in Heidelberg, Germany, 19 Aug., 1798; d. in Cambridge, Mass., 19 March, 1866. After completing his theological studies at Berlin and Tübingen, he was employed for some time as tutor at the university of Basle, Switzerland; but his republican sentiments endangered his liberty, and he took refuge in the United States, arriving in New York in December, 1824. Soon afterward he became connected, as teacher, with the Round Hill school at Northampton, Mass., until, in 1830, he, in connection with two other teachers, established a school at Phillipstown, on the Hudson, opposite West Point. In 1832 Prof. Beck was elected to the chair of Latin language and literature at Cambridge, and, on his retirement from that professorship in 1850, he devoted himself to literary pursuits and classical studies. In 1863 he published “The Manuscripts of the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, described and collated.” He was for two years a representative of Cambridge in the state legislature. He was specially interested in the soldiers' fund, the sanitary commission, and the agencies for the care and education of the freedmen.