ASA GRAY. 321 



ASA GKAY. 



Asa. Gray was born on November 18, 1810, in Sauquoit Valley 

 in the township of Paris, Oneida Co., N. Y., and died on January 30, 

 1888, at Cambridge, Mass. On the paternal side he was descended 

 from a Scotch-Irish family who emigrated to this country in the early 

 part of the last century. His grandfather, Moses Wiley Gray, was born 

 at Worcester, Mass., December 31, 1745, and was married in 17 09 to 

 Sallie Miller. He went in 1787 to Vermont, where his wife soon 

 afterwards died ; and when their son Moses, the father of Asa Gray, 

 was eight years old, the father and son moved still farther west, to 

 Sauquoit Valley, then almost a frontier settlement. Sixteen years 

 later, Moses Gray was married to Roxana Howard,, a daughter of 

 Joseph Howard, of English descent, who, leaving his home in Massa- 

 chusetts, had settled in Sauquoit Valley the same year as the Gray 

 family. Of their family of eight children, five sons and three daugh- 

 ters, Asa was the first-born. 



When a boy he assisted his father in the smaller duties connected with 

 his farm and tannery ; but at an early age he showed a much greater 

 fondness for reading than for farm-work, and the father soon came to 

 the conclusion that his son would make a better scholar than farmer. 

 Until he was about twelve years old, the only education he received was 

 what could be obtained for a part of the year in the small district school, 

 and in the small private school at Sauquoit taught by the son of the 

 parish pastor. He was then sent to the grammar school at Clinton, 

 N. Y., where he remained for two years ; and when, in the autumn of 

 1825, his teacher, Mr. Charles Avery, accepted a place in Fairfield 

 Academy, young Gray followed his iustructor to that place, where for 

 four years he pursued elementary mathematical and classical studies. 

 Connected with the Fairfield Academy was a Medical School which 

 enjoyed a high reputation, and was attended by two hundred students, a 

 large number for that time. Dr. James Hadley, the Professor of Mate- 

 ria Medica and Chemistry in the Medical School, also gave some instruc- 

 tion in the Academy, and it was probably through his influence that 

 Gray's attention was first strongly drawn towards natural science. Ap- 

 parently, he was not at first so much interested in plants as in miner- 

 als ; and it was not until towards the close of his course in the Academy 

 that his passion for plants was aroused by reading the article on Botany 

 in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and his delight the following spring 

 at being able to make out with the aid of Eaton's Manual the scientific 

 name of the common Claytonia is now a well known story. 

 vol. xxxiii. (n. s. xv.) 21 



