HEREDITY AND THE HALL OF FAME 449 



Church Hamilton and Major-General Schuyler Hamilton satisfy the 

 criterion here imposed. 



Few people realize that Washington Irving was one of six Irvings, 

 all distinguished in authorship — three brothers and two nephews of the 

 author of Eip Van Winkle. Washington Irving, therefore, counts five 

 eminent close relations according to the test. 



Louis Agassiz, one of the few great Americans of foreign birth, was 

 the father of Alexander Agassiz, who also reached eminence in natural 

 science. Besides conducting many researches of a purely scientific 

 nature, such as deep-sea dredging and archeological explorations, he 

 served the cause of education by princely gifts to the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology at Harvard; money which he had himself made 

 through developing the now famous Calumet and Hecla copper mines. 

 Alexander Agassiz received the highest honors in the American scien- 

 tific world, inasmuch as he was president of the National Academy of 

 Sciences and also president of the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences. He was also given the Order of Merit by the German 

 emperor. 



Jonathan Edwards, America's greatest metaphysical thinker, was 

 one of a great group of interrelated eminent Americans. He is of the 

 first magnitude in a galaxy of stars. With grandfather, son and grand- 

 son, he is surrounded by these luminaries of the second rank. 



S. F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, is the center of a small 

 and isolated cluster. His father, Jedediah Morse, D.D., is considered 

 " the father of American geography." A brother, Sidney Edwards 

 Morse, won fame as an inventor. 



Henry Clay belonged to the distinguished Virginia Clays. Of his 

 four sons who reached maturity, one son, James B. Clay, enters the 

 3,500 group. He was a member of Congress and prominent politically. 

 He died in 1864, aged forty-seven. 



Peter Cooper, the wealthy New Yorker, who was elected to the Hall 

 of Fame as a representative philanthropist, was the father of Edward 

 Cooper, who was mayor of New York from 1879 to 1881 and 1883, and 

 is remembered in history on account of his activity in the overthrow of 

 the " Tweed ring." 



Oliver Wendell Holmes was the son of Rev. Abiel Holmes, pastor 

 of the First Congregational Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 

 1792 to 1832, who in 1805 published " American Annals," the result 

 of great industry and research. " We consider it," says Professor 

 Sparks, " among the most valuable productions of the American press." 

 The son of Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet, is Oliver Wendell Holmes, 

 of the Supreme Court of the United States. 



Eobert E. Lee, as every one knows, belonged to one of the most 

 distinguished families in America. Many of his relatives are the sub- 



VOL. LXXX1I. — 31. 



