GEORGE RUMFORD BALDWIN. 431 



Weston, the English surveyor fiom Phihidel[)hia. The canal served 

 its uses till superseded by the Lowell Railroad. Colonel Baldwin 

 was a Fellow of the Academy, and received the honorary degree of 

 A. M. from Harvard College in 1785. 



The fourth child of the Colonel was the equally eminent Loammi 

 Baldwin, Esq., born in 1780, graduated at Harvard in 1800. and a 

 Fellow of the Academy. The father, this son, and his two brothers, 

 yet to be mentioned, by their inheritance of scientific proclivities and 

 skill, furnish a markt-d illustration of transmission by heredity. The 

 second Loammi was employed in many public works by the govern- 

 ment, and was the constructor of the Naval Dry Docks in Charles- 

 town and Norfolk. His brother, James Fowler Baldwin, was 

 eminent as a Boston merchant and a State Senator, and, as one of 

 the Commissioners for the introduction of the Cochituate water into 

 Boston, found opportunity for the exercise of the family ingenuity, 

 and for engaging the professional services in his chosen work of his 

 younger brother, the subject of this sketch. 



Our late associate was a son of Colonel Loammi Baldwin by a 

 second wife. His middle name of Rumford recalls the relations just 

 referred to, which existed between his father and the distinguished 

 Count. The farmer boy Thompson early developed the ingenuity, 

 the inventive and philosophical genius, and the skill in practical 

 science, especially in utilitarian directions, which won him advance- 

 ment and distinction. As the close companion of young Baldwin, 

 they engaged together in the tentative trial of their experiments, and 

 walked to the lectures in Cambridge. After Thompson left his coun- 

 try in early manhood, under a cloud which obscured his patriotism, 

 the intercourse of the friends wa^ suspended.* When Thompson had 

 attained rank and title at Munich, a correspondence began between 

 the easily reconciled friends, which is of great personal and historical 

 interest. In a letter following the birth of our present subject, the 

 Colonel writes to the Count, " I have had a son born to me to 

 whom I have given your name." The father wished this boy, as he 

 grew up, to succeed his brother Loammi at College ; but the son was 

 disinclined to the pursuit of general scholarship in that institution. 

 From his earliest years his bent was for mathematical and scientific 

 studies pursued by himself, and for practical out of door work in 

 waterways, surveying and engineering, in the examination of mills 

 and water-power, dams and raceways. As has been noticed, he had 

 marked facilities for practice of this sort — after preliminary training 



* See Memoir of Count Rumford, by the present writer, published by the 

 Academy. 



