HORACE BIKNEY. 851 



HORACE BINNEY. 



Horace Binney was born in Philadelphia, on the 4th of January, 

 1780, and died in that city on the 12th of August, 1875, having more 

 than half completed his ninety-sixth year. Though Philadelphia saw 

 his birth and death, and witnessed his honored public and private life 

 for tliree quarters of a century, Massachnsetts furnished the sound 

 stock from which his paternal ancestry sprung. The first Binney of 

 his race emigrated to New England in 1680. He came from Hull, in 

 England, and was one of the founders of the worthy little town of the 

 same name on our coast, looking towards Nantasket Roads, distin- 

 guished for many years as the seat of the smallest constituency entitled 

 to representation in the country, vying in that particular with Old 

 Sarum itself, until the ruthless hand of reform swept away its Lillipu- 

 tian franchise. The sea offered an obvious career to the inhabitants 

 of the miniature township ; and, accordingly, early in the last century 

 we find the grandfather of Mr. Binney sailing out of Boston, as 

 master of a vessel, and afterwards established there in trade. His son, 

 Barnabas Binney, made a step forward in life, being one of the first 

 thirty graduates of Brown University, taking his degree in 1774. He 

 received whatever medical education the countiy then afforded at 

 Philadelphia, and, on the breaking out of the war, he took service 

 as a surgeon in the Massachusetts line, fi-om which he was afterwards 

 transferred to that of Pennsylvania. Dr. Binney settled in Phila- 

 delphia, and married Mary Woodrow, of a good Scotch-Ii-ish family, 

 in 1777. He is described as having been a man of unusual intellectual 

 power, uncommonly well-read, of great strength of jjrinciple and 

 force of character. His wife strongly resembled her husband in all 

 the material qualities of his mind and character, and was in every 

 respect a helpmeet for him. 



Whatever qualities of mind and tendencies of disposition Mr. 

 Binney may have derived from his father, they came to him by 

 inheritance only, as Di\ Binney died in 1787, when his son was but 

 seven years old. His mother, however, was equal to the charge of his 

 education, the beginnings of which were had at schools in Philadelphia 

 and its neighborhood. In the year 1791, when her son was eleven years 

 of age, Mrs. Binney entered into a second marriage with Dr. Marshall 

 Spring, of Watertown, in this State, a connection which was in every 

 way favorable to the happiness and improvement of the young boy. 

 His mother survived her second marriage only two years, dying in 



