EDWARD HITCHCOCK. 689 



EDWARD HITCHCOCK. 



BORN at Deerfield, Mass., May 23, 1793; died at Amherst, 

 Mass., February 27, 1864. 

 The first of this family emigrated to this country in 1635, com- 

 ing probably from Warwickshire in England. He was one of the 

 original members of the New Haven, Conn., Colony. Two or three 

 generations of the family resided in New Haven ; the fourth in 

 the line emigrated to western Massachusetts, and was an officer in 

 the Revolutionary War. His son, Justin, the father of Edward, 

 was a soldier in the army of General Gates when Burgoyne's 

 army was captured. Justin married one of the Hoyts, who was 

 descended from the sufferers at Deerfield at the French- Indian 

 raid of 1704. He settled at Deerfield, and was a hatter. Be- 

 coming embarrassed financially by obligations incurred in the 

 continental currency, he suffered from poverty all his life, and 

 was unable to give his children more education than was afforded 

 by the common school and the local academy. Edward was 

 therefore compelled to educate himself, and that under the draw- 

 back of ill health, caused by overwork and carelessness. Six 

 particulars may be mentioned, going to show that by improving 

 his opportunities he was well educated in many respects : 1. For 

 several years he was a leading member of a debating society. This 

 afforded the opportunity to practice extempore speaking, composi- 

 tion, and acquire facility in philosophical reasoning. A few short 

 poems showed that he essayed the higher type of composition. 

 One of these was a tragedy entitled The Downfall of Bonaparte, 

 written at the age of twenty-two, just after the battle of Waterloo, 

 and acted by himself and friends before the people of the village. 

 2. For four years from twenty-two to twenty-six he was the 

 principal of the academy in his native town. As there were 

 always in this school a number who were fitting for college, he 

 found it necessary to review all his classical studies not once 

 merely, but several times. The same was true of scientific studies 

 also, so that quite a large number of subjects were gone over very 

 thoroughly, and the details were fixed in his memory. It was a 

 better discipline than if he had simply taken these studies as a 

 college student. The academy owned a very good philosophical 

 apparatus, and young Hitchcock prepared a number of lectures 

 on physics, which were delivered with experiments both before 

 his classes and in the evening to people of the village. 3. Perhaps 

 the best mental discipline came from the use of the astronomical 

 instruments belonging to the academy. He observed first the 

 comet of 1811. From September 7th to December 17th, during 

 the presence of the celestial visitor, he noted the distance of the 



TOL. XLVII. 61 



