Xll MEMOIR. 



Thacldeus William Harris was born in Dorchester, Mass., 

 November 12, 1795. He was the son of Thaddeus Mason 

 Harris, D. D., and Mary (Dix) Harris. The elder Dr. 

 Harris was a native of Charlestown, Mass., born in 1768, 

 graduated at Harvard College in 1787, and Avas librarian of 

 that institution from 1791 to 1793. He left that position 

 to be ordained over the First Congregational Church in Dor- 

 chester, where he remained until within a few years of his 

 death, which occurred in 1842. I remember in my boyhood 

 the little quaint old man, bent almost incredibly, but still 

 wearing a hale aspect, who used to haunt the alcoves of the 

 old library in Harvard Hall. It was rumored among us that 

 he had once been appointed private secretary to Washing- 

 ton, but had resigned from illness ; and it was known that 

 he was arranging and indexing for Mr. Sparks the one hun- 

 dred and thirty-two manuscript volumes of Washington's 

 correspondence. He was not without his poetic laurels, too, 

 since it was whispered that he had composed for Mr. Ever- 

 ett's youthful recitation the verses : 



"You'd scarce expect one of my age 

 To speak in public on the stage." 



He was, moreover, a learned antiquarian and divine, and had 

 come to Natural History by a strictly professional path ; 

 for besides his proper harvest of fifty-eight occasional 

 sermons, and seventeen other publications, 1 he had found 

 time for an elaborate " Natural History of the Bible," which 

 was published in 1820, and long remained a standard work, 



1 See a list of them in an admirable memoir of the elder Dr. Harris, by N. L. Froth- 

 inghnm, D.D., in the Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th series, U, 130. 



