USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 65
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Edward Bromfield also made sundials, and maps in various kinds of projection. He had a talent for drawing, and cultivated it by the purchase of valuable engravings ; among them a glorification of Sir Isaac Newton, by G. Bicknell, 1733 (the first en- graver of his day, according to Walpole), doubly memorable as having ornamented the room of President Quincy in Massachusetts Hall during his college days, between 1 786 and 1790. Of the few drawings of Bromfield which have escaped the accidents of time and war, the most interesting one was placed by Miss Quincy in the volume given to the Society of Natural History.
Samuel Danforth was born in Cambridge in 1740 and graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1758. He studied medicine, and practised two years in Newport and the rest of his life in Boston, where he died in 1827. His knowledge of chemistry was exten- sive for his time, and he imported the best collection of chemical apparatus that had then been seen in Boston. Dr. Eliot refers to his father, the Hon. Samuel Danforth of Cambridge, as eminent for his acquaintance with natural philosophy and chemistry.
1 [See Vol. II. p. 521 .- ED.]
2 Phil. Trans. Royal Soc., London.
8 American Magazine, 1746, p. 548.
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BOSTON AND SCIENCE.
Samuel Tenney was born in Rowley in 1748, and graduated at Harvard College in 1772. He studied medicine in Andover and settled in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1775, intending to practise ; but he soon joined the army and remained in it to the close of the war. He returned to Exeter, but not to the practice of his profession. He was judge, member of Congress, and member of his State Convention. He published in the Memoirs of the American Academy a paper on the Waters of Saratoga, and another on the Prismatic Colors ; and in the Medical Repository an explanation of a curious phenomenon in the heating of water. He died in 1816.
John Lathrop was born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1740, and graduated at Prince- ton College in 1763. After he was prepared for the ministry he was settled at the Old North Church in Boston, in 1768.1 In 1779 his society united with another, their own building having been destroyed during the war. He received honorary degrees from Harvard in 1768 and from Edinburgh in 1785, and was a Fellow of the Corporation of Harvard College from 1778 to 1815. Elected a member of the American Academy in 1790, he made several contributions to its Memoirs on the effects of lightning, and on the springs and wells in the peninsula of Boston. Dr. Lathrop died in 1816.
Loammi Baldwin was born in Woburn in 1745, and died there in 1807. He had a good education at school, and was fond of mathematics. In 1770 he and Benjamin Thompson obtained permission to attend the lectures on natural philosophy of Pro- fessor Winthrop, at Cambridge. A journey of nine miles on foot back to their homes, after each lecture, was not able to damp their zeal. With such rude apparatus as they could extemporize they repeated the experiments which had illustrated the lectures. Mr. Baldwin became a surveyor and engineer, and superintended the construction of the Middlesex Canal, which was called at that time an "immense undertaking." 2 He served in the Revolutionary Army from June 16, 1775, to 1777, when ill health com- pelled him to retire, with the rank of colonel. He was sheriff of Middlesex from 1780 to 1794. He received an honorary degree from Harvard College in 1785. In 1771 Mr. Baldwin attempted to repeat Franklin's experiment on a thunder-cloud, with a kite ; but when the kite had reached an elevation not much above that of the high- est trees in the vicinity, he was enveloped in a glare of light which induced him to desist from his attempt. In 1797 he suggested to the American Academy the substi- tution, for the round lightning-rod, of a square bar jagged at the edges, and other im- provements which are now in general use.
Aaron Dexter was born in Malden in 1750. His father was a farmer. He wished to send one of his boys to college, and Aaron was selected.3 After graduating at Har- vard College in 1776 he studied medicine with Dr. S. Danforth, and then made sev- eral voyages as ship-surgeon. He was taken prisoner and carried to Halifax. At the close of the war he settled as a physician in Boston. In 1791 the professorship of chem- istry was founded in Harvard College by Major Erving, partly as a token of respect and affection for Dr. Dexter. He was professor of Chemistry and Materia Medica from 1783 to 1816, and honorary professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy from 1816 to the time of his death in 1829. In 1793 he published in the Memoirs of the American Academy a paper on the manufacture of potash.4
John Prince was born in Boston in 1751. His father was a hatter, and he was apprenticed to a tinman. When he came of age he prepared for Harvard College,
1 [See Vol. II. p. 240. - ED.] 8 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings,
2 Mass. Hist. Coll., xii. 174. [See Mr. Adams's i. 421.
chapter in this volume. - F.D.]
4 Vol. II. 165.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and graduated in 1776. In 1779 he was settled over a church in Salem, where he had a prosperous ministry of fifty-seven years and seven months, and which termina- ted only with his death in 1836. He observed at Beverly the solar eclipse of Oct. 27, 1780,1 but his taste was more in the direction of mechanics and natural philosophy than of astronomy. He was not only familiar with the best physical apparatus of his day, but he could make it himself ; and in some cases he improved upon what could be purchased, by his own inventions. He was often, in deference to his superior judg- ment, commissioned by colleges and individuals to import apparatus from London. He had collected a valuable library of scientific books which was accessible to Dr. Bowditch before he was known to fame. Mr. Prince encouraged him by his appreci- ating sympathy, and was always ready to supplement his imperfect early education from his own superior advantages. The improvements which he made in Smeaton's air-pump,2 accounts of which were widely circulated in foreign journals, made his science and mechanical skill as highly respected abroad as they were at home ; and the American air-pump was exalted to a place among the constellations in celestial maps and globes. The eminent mechanician of London, Mr. Adams, adopted the modifications which Dr. Prince had made in his Lucernal Microscope (an instrument now superseded by the photographic camera), with the bare statement that he had re- ceived some suggestions from a clergyman.3 In 1831 Dr. Prince published an ac- count of a new stand which he had constructed for a reflecting telescope. He closes the description of it with this sentence : "I made the brass work myself, and finished it on my birthday, -- 80 years old." 4
James Thacher was born in Barnstable in 1754. He studied medicine under Dr. Hersey of Hingham, served in the army as surgeon from 1775 to 1783, and then practised in his profession in Plymouth, where he died in 1844. Most of his writings relate to his profession ; but he published in the second volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy a paper on the art of extracting salt from sea-water. His Ameri- can Dispensary which first appeared in 1810 shows his familiarity with chemistry.
Benjamin Thompson, already mentioned in connection with young Baldwin, was born in Woburn in 1753. At school his special taste was for arithmetic and elementary mathematics, and he found a congenial teacher in the Rev. Samuel Williams of Bradford. Forced at thirteen into a counting-room in Salem, he beguiled his time in these studies and in mechanical pursuits. He then made an unsuccessful attempt to study medi- cine with a physician in Woburn. After making a second trial of a counting-room, in Boston, he came home with the reputation of being unfitted to support himself or give any comfort to his friends. While teaching school in Concord, New Hampshire, he formed an acquaintance which led to his marriage at nineteen, and introduced him to a social circle suited to his ambition. When the army of the Revolution was in Cambridge, he was active in protecting the library and philosophical apparatus from injury. Disappointed in obtaining· the preferment which he courted, and suspected of disloyalty (though acquitted by a court martial), he left the country for England in 1776,5 and for the Continent in 1784. He received great attention wherever he went, and made himself highly acceptable to the King of Bavaria, from whom he acquired his title of Count Rumford. In his turn he rendered the greatest services to the Bavarian
1 Mem. Amer. Acad., i. 130.
2 Ibid., i. 497.
$ Mass. Hist. Col., v. 271. -
4 Mem. Amer. Acad., i. 334.
5 [But came back for a brief interval to take part in the army acting against the Colonies, and served in South Carolina and near New York. - ED.]
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BOSTON AND SCIENCE.
Government and its impoverished subjects. For his scientific acquirements he was honored with membership of the Royal Society of London and the Institute of France ; but his interest in science was largely for its applications to the comfort and happiness of the people. That he could have been great in theoretical science is shown by his experiment at Munich in 1798, and his clear reasoning upon it, which was in advance of the prevailing scientific opinion by half a century. If Massachusetts can claim no exclusive property in his scientific renown, his title to a place in this memorial may rest on the munificent gifts which he made to the American Academy of Sciences in Boston and the scientific department at Cambridge. Count Rumford died in France in 1814.1
Nathan Reed was born in Warren in 1759, graduated at Harvard College in 1781, and was employed as tutor in the College from 1783 to 1787. Later he studied med- icine and taught a school in Salem ; moved to Danvers in 1795, and was a member of Congress from Essex in 1801. In 1807 he changed his residence to Belfast, Maine, where he died in 1849. He had an aptitude for mechanics and mechanical inven- tions ; 2 applied steam to paddles, as Fulton did afterward to wheels, testing his invention in 1789 on Wenham Pond. The Governor, Nathan Dane, Dr. Holyoke, and Dr. Prince went on the trial trip between Danvers and Beverly. "He conceived the idea of storing the tidal waters and utilizing their energy. The invention of tubu- lar boilers has also been claimed for him.
John Davis was born in Plymouth in 1761, and graduated at Harvard College in -1781. He was one of the Fellows from 1803 to 1810, and treasurer from 1810 to 1827, and judge in the United States district court from 1801 to 1847. Most of his life was spent in Boston, where he died in 1847. When a Junior in college he was selected as one of the students who accompanied Professor Williams to Penobscot to observe the eclipse of the sun. Outside of his profession he was best known for his antiquarian researches, but he always took a lively interest in astronomy, chemistry, and natural history. In 1811 he republished Winthrop's Lectures on Comets and Oli- ver's Essay on Comets, with sketches of their lives ; and a Supplement on the comet of 1811, by himself. He was the first president of the Linnæan Society of New Eng- land, and in 1815 delivered an address on the Advantages of the Study of Natural History, and contributed to the scientific proceedings.
Jacob Perkins was born in Newburyport in 1766. He was a goldsmith by trade, but an inventor by Nature's patent. At the age of twenty-one he made dies for the mint ; when he was twenty-four he invented machinery for making nails, and steel plates for bank-notes. He resided for a time in Boston and New York. In 1818 he went to England, and died in London in 1849. There his machinery was highly appreciated and freely adopted. The Society of Arts honored him with its medals. Experiments with his steam-gun, which could discharge a thousand balls a minute, interested the Duke of Wellington and other military men ; but gunpowder still holds its place against steam. Among his other inventions was one for measuring the depth of the ocean, and another for registering the speed of a vessel. His measure of the compressibility of water stood for many years as the best word of science on the sub- ject, though it is now thought to be too large. He was elected a member of the American Academy in 1813.
1 [The Life of Count Rumford, by George E. A portrait by Page, after one by Kellerhofer, Ellis, was published by the American Academy in hangs in Memorial Hall, Cambridge. - ED.] 2 Hist. Coll. Essex Inst., i. 184. 1871, and contains engraved likenesses of him. VOL. IV .- 65.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Samuel Dexter was born in Boston in 1761, graduated at Harvard College in 1781, and died in Athens, N. Y., in 1816. At a college exhibition in 1780 he deliv- ered a poem on the Progress of Science, which Judge Story states was received with great applause ; but he is most widely known as a lawyer and statesman. His father, of the same name (1726-1810), published in 1785, in the Memoirs of the American Academy, a paper on the retreat of house-swallows in winter.
In 1792 Captain John Foster Williams communicated to the Boston Marine Society his process for distilling fresh water from salt water, which was published, with draw- ings, in volumes four and five of the Massachusetts Magazine.
Loammi Baldwin, Jr., was born in Woburn in 1780, and graduated at Harvard College in 1800. He studied law, and followed this profession until about 1815, as Professor Ashur Ware (afterward Judge) studied in his office until he left Cam- bridge. In 1809 Mr. Baldwin published Thoughts on Political Economy; but he had a taste for engineering, and visited Europe to accomplish himself in this direction. He became distinguished as an engineer, and was employed by the Government in planning and constructing the dry docks at Norfolk and Charlestown.1 In 1834 he made his report on the introduction of water into Boston, and in 1835 an additional report.2 He died in Charlestown in 1838.
John Gorham was born in Boston in 1783, graduated at Harvard College in 1801, and received his medical degree in 1804. He went to Edinburgh to perfect himself in his profession. He was assistant professor of Chemistry and Materia Medica in Har- vard University from 1809 to 1816, and professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in the College from 1816 to 1827. He published Elements of Chemical Science in two vol- umes in 1819. In 1810 he-made an analysis of sulphate of barytes, which was after- ward published.3 He died, greatly lamented, in 1829.
Dr. John Feron of Paris, an honorary member of the Academy, published memoirs in 1783 and 1793 on the well-waters of Boston ; and S. Godon of Paris, also an hon- orary member, published an account of mineralogical observations made in 1807-8 in Boston and its vicinity.
J. G. Cogswell was born in Ipswich in 1786, graduated at Harvard College in 1806, studied law with the distinguished Fisher Ames, and was tutor in the College in 1814. In 1816 he went to Göttingen, and took a degree there in 1819. He was librarian of Harvard College from 1820 to 1823, and most of this time also professor of Mineralogy and Geology; he was afterwards one of the founders of the Round Hill School at Northampton. After 1839 he passed many years in New York, and rendered great services to literature and science by the ability he displayed in filling and administering the Astor Library. The last few years of his life were spent in Cambridge, where he died in 1871. He purchased and (with Mr. Andrew Ritchie) presented to Harvard College five thousand minerals and four thousand specimens of · plants.
Sylvanus Thayer was born in Braintree in 1788, graduated at Dartmouth College in 1807, and at West Point in 1808. He entered the corps of engineers and rose to the rank of Brevet Brigadier-General. He was engaged in the active duties of his profession until 1817, when he was appointed superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. His success in its administration was unrivalled, and the character
1 [See Admiral Preble's chapter on "The 2 [See Mr. Bugbee's chapter in Vol. III .- Navy and the Charlestown Navy Yard," in ED.] Vol. III .- ED.]
3 Memoirs of American Academy, iii. 237.
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and efficiency of the institution received from him an impulse which was felt for a long time after he left it. After 1833 he had charge of the construction of Forts Warren and Independence, in Boston Harbor. Fort Winthrop and the harbor im- provements began under him. He received honorary degrees from Harvard College in 1825 and 1857. He was chosen a member of the American Academy in 1834, and left it a legacy of one thousand dollars. After his retirement in 1863 he lived at South Braintree, and died there in 1872.1
S. F. B. Morse was born in Charlestown in 1791,2 and graduated at Yale College in 1810. He studied art abroad under Benjamin West. On his return to this country he resided in New York, and died there in 1872. His attention was drawn to the electro-magnetic telegraph in 1832, and his faith in its possibilities was not restrained by a knowledge of its difficulties. With the help of others familiar with the science of electricity, he devised or constructed instruments in 1835, the success of which encouraged him to persevere. In 1843 Congress granted an appropriation of $30,000 for establishing a line between Washington and Baltimore, which was completed in 1844. There are more than fifty claimants for the invention of the electrical telegraph. It is unjust to give the credit of it to any one man, and impossible to divide the honor fairly between them. It may be conceded to Mr. Morse that his writing tele- graph embodied the best combination of ideas which were in the air and were the common property of all who breathed. It has gradually supplanted the methods of other countries, and foreign Governments have recognized their obligation to Mr. Morse by gratuities amounting in the aggregate to $80,000.
Daniel Treadwell was born in Ipswich in 1791. His ancestors, back to 1637, were farmers. Equipped with a very common-school education he went, in his fifteenth year, as an apprentice to his brother, who was a goldsmith in Newburyport. At seven- teen he came to Boston in the same capacity under Mr. Churchill, also a goldsmith ; and at twenty-one he was received as a partner, and remained in the business four years. Meanwhile he had read such books as came within his reach, and studied French, geometry, algebra, mechanics, and the laws of mechanism. As jewellery was too expensive a luxury in time of war, his business was not encouraging ; and he turned to more congenial pursuits, which had filled his mind even when his hands were upon his work. His first invention was a machine for making wooden screws, on which two years were expended. In 1818 he began the study of medicine with Dr. John Ware, and continued it for one year and a half ; but his passion for machinery again prevailed, and determined the rest of his life. After inventing a printing-press to be worked by the legs instead of the arms, during a short visit to England in 1819 his attention was directed to the steam-press then recently introduced into the office of the Times. On his return, in the autumn of 1820, he invented his power-press. As there was not at the time a single steam-engine in Boston he worked it by horse- power ; but in order to introduce it he became printer himself for two years, when a Boston bookseller purchased his establishment and patent. The first sheet printed on this continent, by any other than hand-power, was printed on Treadwell's press. At the
1 [It was by his assistance that the selection of military works for the Boston Public Library was so well made, that, at the outbreak of the war in 1861, it was the collection of all in the country best supplied with authorities on war. Among the books which came from his estate to that library after his death, were found the
working drawings by which Fort Warren had been constructed, and which had long been lost to sight from their concealment between the leaves of a large volume. Their .absence had occasioned the Government some solicitude during the war .- ED.]
2 [See Vol. III. p. 255. - ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
same time he was publishing, in conjunction with Dr. John Ware, the Boston Journal of Philosophy and the Arts. His election into the American Academy in 1823 brought him into intimate association with the best minds in literature and science. On the foundation of the Mechanics' Institution, in 1826, Dr. Bowditch was president, and Mr. Treadwell a vice-president. About this time he began to lecture in Boston on mechanics, and was employed by the city government in making surveys looking to the introduction of water into Boston.1 In 1829 he received an honorary degree from Harvard College, and gave a course of lectures to the students. In 1830 he invented his machinery for spinning hemp and flax, a description of which was pub- lished, with drawings, in the Memoirs of the American Academy.2 Seven years were spent in maturing this invention, by which yarns are made stronger and more uniform, and also at less cost, than before. By 1833 the number of these machines set up by the Boston Hemp Company was sufficient for the annual manufacture of one thousand tons of hemp. From 1834 to 1845 Mr. Treadwell was Rumford Professor in Harvard College. The remainder of his active life was devoted to the invention and construc- tion of cannon of lighter weight or of larger calibre than had hitherto been thought practicable. He published two memoirs on the subject, remarkable for their scientific precision and the knowledge he displayed of the materials with which he was dealing. After some years of infirmity, Professor Treadwell died in Cambridge in 1872.3
J. F. Dana was born in Amherst, N. H., in 1793, and graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1813. He studied medicine, partly with Dr. Gorham and partly in London, and took his degree at the Medical School in 1817. He settled in Cambridge as a physician, and in 1819-20 assisted in refitting the chemical laboratory of the College and in teaching chemistry. Dr. Dana was appointed lecturer on chemistry at Dart- mouth in 1817, and professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy from 1820-26. In 1826- 27 he was professor of Chemistry in the College of Surgeons, New York ; and died there in 1827. He contributed many papers on chemistry, etc., to Silliman's Four- nal, and published in 1826 Epitome of Chymical Philosophy.
Simeon Borden was born in Fall River in 1798, and was brought up in Tiverton, R. I. He was fond of mathematics, particularly geometry. He was educated as a surveyor and engineer, and made his own surveying compass. In 1828 he had charge of a machine-shop in Fall River. In 1830 he devised and constructed an instrument for measuring a base line, an account of which was published in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. From 1834 to 1841 he was in charge of the Trigonometrical Survey of Massachusetts, having already assisted in the measure- ment of the base line.4 Though it was the first example in this country of a geodetic survey, the work was found by the officers of the U. S. Coast Survey to be admirably done. Mr. Borden also laid down the boundary line between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In 1851 he was employed to suspend a telegraph wire across Hudson River, from the Palisades to Fort Washington, two hundred and twenty feet above the river. He constructed several railroads, and published in 1851 Useful formula adapted to the operations of constructing and locating Railroads. His residence was in Fall River, where he died in 1856.
1 [See Mr. Bugbee's chapter in Vol. III. - brary, the American Academy of Arts and ED.]
2 Vol. i. p. 348.
3 [He provided by will, that, upon the death of his wife, equal fifths of the residue of his estate should be paid to Harvard College Li- tion, p. xi .- ED.]
Sciences, the Boston Athenæum, the Boston Public Library, and the town of Ipswich. - ED.]
4 [See map mentioned in Vol. III. Introduc-
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John Lowell, Jr., son of F. C. Lowell, was born in Boston in 1799. After studying in the schools of Boston and Edinburgh, he entered Harvard College in 1813. He left at the end of two years on account of his health, and in 1816-17 made two voyages to India. On his return he was engaged in the East India business in Boston, giving his leisure to his own cultivation and the public service. After 1832 he made an extended journey in Europe and the East, and died at Bombay in 1836. He inherited a taste for mathematics, and made elaborate computations upon the dimen- sions of the Pyramids. In 1833, at Edinburgh, he studied mineralogy. While residing in Albania he kept a daily register of the thermometer, barometer, and hygrometer. His bequest of $250,000 for founding the Lowell Institute has, as one of its benefits to the community, been instrumental in diffusing a knowledge of the sciences, and, by that diffusion, inciting some to a scientific career.1
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