John Preston (ca. 1755–1842), educator, was born in Connecticut and served as a private in the New York Continental Line during the Revolutionary War. By 1790 he was in Albany County, New York, having settled at Van Leuven’s Corners in the present-day township of Westerlo. Here Preston ran a tavern and an establishment that tanned and curried leather. He also began teaching at a nearby Quaker school. Preston championed the instructional methods established by the English-born educator Joseph Lancaster, under whose system older students tutored younger ones and inexpensive visual aids replaced textbooks. Adherents established numerous Lancasterian schools in the United States early in the nineteenth century. In 1812 Preston borrowed $500 from the state of New York to assist in publishing Lancasterian spelling-book cards and an arithmetic textbook. Some of this material was in circulation early the following year, but in 1816 Preston admitted that his efforts had failed and that he could not repay the loan. He had, however, written another arithmetic book, which he expected to be more successful. Preston included a survey of schools and wrote on the importance of education in his Statistical Report of the County of Albany, for the Year 1820 (2d ed., Albany, 1824), 7–8, 28–9. As late as 1835 he petitioned the New York legislature to implement the Lancasterian system throughout the state (National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Patriot Index [2003], 3:2172; The Pension Roll of 1835 [1835; indexed ed., 1992], 2:355; A Census of Pensioners for Revolutionary or Military Services [1841], 73; DNA: RG 29, CS, N.Y., Albany Co., 1790–1840; George R. Howell and Jonathan Tenney, eds., Bi-Centennial History of Albany. History of the County of Albany, N.Y., from 1609 to 1886 [1886], 265, 921, 924, 927; Journal of the Senate of the State of New-York [Albany, 1812], 220, 228, 254, 270 [2, 3, 10, 13 June 1812]; Albany Register, 12 Jan. 1813; Journal of the Assembly, of the State of New-York [Albany, 1816], 397, 430, 440, 495 [21, 25, 26 Mar., 1 Apr. 1816]; Preston, Every Man His Own Teacher; or, Lancaster’s Theory of Education, Practically Displayed; being An Introduction to Arithmetic, written in thirteen parts. to which are annexed, Thirty-Two Cards of Lessons, to be suspended in the school-room conformably to the Lancaster Plan [Albany, 1817]; Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York [1835], 1–4; gravestone inscription and memorial plaques in Westerlo Rural Cemetery).