Armstrong – Table of Contents

miles over unpaved roads and trails and several ranges of the Appalachian Mountains in
animal driven carts and wagons.] Dr. Robert Armstrong was a prominent physician and
had a very extensive and lucrative practice in Mahoning county and vicinity. The subject
of this sketch, Theodore, received a liberal common school course, and in the fall of
1865, he entered Mount Union College (3). He was appointed (a) tutor of a class in 1868,
in the meantime pursuing his own studies. Being of frail constitution, he was compelled
to give up his college work for a short time. Upon finding his health recruited by outdoor
exercise, he returned and graduated in the scientific course in Mount Union in 1870, and
in 1871 graduated in the classics. He was then appointed Professor of Penmanship and
Assistant Superintendent of the Department of the College. A ‘Professorship of
Penmanship’ was not an unusual faculty position at that time. The manual typewriter was
not invented until 1873; a legible written hand, therefore, became a necessity to provide
documentation in commercial, legal, official, domestic, and literary communications.
May 1, 1873 he married Emma Maria Bertolett [perhaps a schoolmate at Mt. Union
College], daughter of Zachariah and Mary Bertolett of North Benton, Ohio. They have
two children living – Mary I. and Bertolett. [This sketch was written before the birth of
Dr. Charles Armstrong.] Professor Armstrong has a very commodious home which he
has taken great delight in beautifying, doing all the work himself as recreation in his
leisure hours.”(2)
Charles Armstrong had a slightly different perspective of his father’s
career at the college. Following graduation and graduate work at Mount Union College,
Theodore Armstrong specialized in commercial law, bookkeeping and penmanship –
subjects which he later began teaching at the school (in 1873), then a struggling religious