A Memoir of Henry Jacob Bigelow

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MEMOIR OF HENRY JACOB BIGELOW.1 By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Henry Jacob Bigelow was born in Boston, March 11,1818, and died in Newton, Mass., October 30, 1890. He was the oldest of five children of Jacob and Mary (Scollay) Bige- low. His father was distinguished in various branches of science and literature;...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MEMOIR OF HENRY JACOB BIGELOW.1 By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Henry Jacob Bigelow was born in Boston, March 11,1818, and died in Newton, Mass., October 30, 1890. He was the oldest of five children of Jacob and Mary (Scollay) Bige- low. His father was distinguished in various branches of science and literature; he was a former President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and a President of this Academy; a man of great ability, a leading practitioner in Boston during his long life, and especially memorable as the founder of Mount Auburn, the earliest of our garden cemeteries. His son inherited many of his father's qualities. After attending Mr. Thayer's school, which he entered in 1826, he joined the Latin School, then under the charge of Mr. Leverett. When Mr. Leverett left the Latin School and established one of his own, he followed his instructor, having among his schoolmates William M. Evarts and William W. Greenough. He entered Harvard College in 1833, graduating in 1837. If he does not become a distinguished man, Dr. James Jackson is reported to have said of him, it will be because Boston is not a large enough field for his ability. Mr. Henry Lee writes an interesting account of the early years he and Henry Bigelow passed together, from the age of three until Mr. Lee left to go to college, a year before his companion. He describes his young friend as a slender boy, lithe and active, a good gymnast and dancer, and full of contrivances and ideas of all sorts. He had a rather remarkable facility for mechanical work, ? took early to shooting, a taste which lasted to the later years of his life; he was also fond of bird's-nesting, with the usual knowledge, or rather more, of birds and their haunts and habits; like his father, he had a taste for botany, which came again ...