Sewell , Silas McDenny, 1868-1949

Dates

• Existence: 1868 February 17-1949 September 2
• Existence: 1868-02-17 - 1949-09-02

Biography

Silas McDenny Sewell was born February 17, 1868 in Greene County, near Springfield, Missouri. He began teaching in 1889 in Polk County, Missouri. He taught in the summer sessions at Southwest Texas Normal School in San Marcos, Texas in 1913, 1914, and 1915. He began teaching in the mathematics department full time in 1915 and retired in 1941 after a fifty-two year teaching career. He was chairman of the mathematics section of the Texas State Teachers Association from 1939-1941, and served as the director of Riverside Park for twenty-two years. Dr. Sewell died in Springfield, Missouri on September 2, 1949.

Sewell is known for his idea in 1916 that college students at the Southwest Texas Normal School needed a park along the San Marcos River. The college leased four acres of land from the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries; student workers cleaned the river and built up the banks, and Riverside Park opened in the summer of 1917. Dr. Sewell devoted more than twenty years to swimming and lifesaving instruction at Riverside, which was renamed Sewell Park in his honor in 1946.