WILLIAM ALBERT SETCHELL 



A Biographical Sketch 

 By T. H. GooDSPEED 



WILLIAM ALBERT SETCHELL was bom on April 15, 1864, 

 in Norwich, Connecticut. Remotely o£ Danish an- 

 cestry,' the Setchell family came to America from 

 the North Coast of England in late Colonial or early Revolution- 

 ary times. They intermarried with the old Standish, Case, and 

 Jans families, whose American beginnings were still older. His 

 mother was born in England of English-Welsh parents, and 

 came to America as a small child. He is, therefore, of a decidedly 

 American descent which involved English, Dutch, and Welsh 

 ancestry. 



From his earliest years, Profesor Setchell exhibited a decided 

 predilection for "natural history!' As a small child, among other 

 pursuits in this domain, he sought attractive and interesting 

 plants from which he would pull portions and plant them, to 

 be replaced, when faded, with others. This and other evidence 

 of interest in plants ultimately attracted the attention of the 

 family physician, who, when the boy was nine or ten years old, 

 gave him a copy of Mrs. Lincoln's Botany for Young Ladies, 

 which contained a species of manual arranged on the Linnean 

 system. Therewith he puzzled out the names of many plants 

 and made a beginning in systematics which cannot have failed 

 to leave its mark, particularly since the labor involved in these 

 first steps stimulated rather than dampened his enthusiasm for 

 plant study. It was further aroused (in 1876) by a journey with 

 his parents and his grandmother to Philadelphia and the Cen- 

 tennial Exposition, with stops in New York City and elsewhere; 



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