2 5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF GEORGE FREDERICK WRIGHT. 



PROF. WRIGHT has come forward within a few years to a 

 foremost position among authorities in geology and the an- 

 tiquity of man. His studies of glacial action have been thorough, 

 extended, comprehensive, and fruitful of results beyond those of 

 almost any other single observer, and make singularly fitting the 

 curious designation given him by Judge Baldwin, Secretary of 

 the Western Reserve Historical Society, as " the apostle of the 

 Ice Age and Early Man." 



George Frederick Wright was born in Whitehall, N. Y., 

 January 22, 1838. His parents were plain people, in moderate cir- 

 cumstances, not exempt from the necessity of labor, who, participat- 

 ing in the sentiment which that institution then represented, sent 

 their son to Oberlin College, five hundred miles away. Thence he 

 was graduated, from the classical course in 1859, and from the 

 Theological Seminary in 1862. While in the Theological Semi- 

 nary he responded to Lincoln's first call for troops, and enlisted 

 as a private in the Seventh Ohio Volunteers. He served five 

 months, and was then discharged after a severe sickness. During 

 ten years from the fall of 1862 he served as pastor of the First 

 Congregational Church in Bakersfield, Vt., in a parish from 

 which, though it could pay its minister only the most modest 

 of salaries, he was able to send many young men to the denomi- 

 national colleges. Besides attending to his pastoral duties and 

 engaging actively in revival work in his own church and in the 

 surrounding towns, he entered vigorously into educational move- 

 ments ; started and presided over a vigorous farmers' club ; 

 studied the local geology and wrote articles for the country 

 paper on the glacial phenomena of the region ; read his Hebrew 

 Bible through; and translated Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 

 and several of Plato's philosophical works. His geological studies 

 led to an acquaintance and correspondence with Prof. Hitchcock. 

 In 1871 he became pastor of a Congregational church in An- 

 dover, Mass., where he enjoyed the friendship of the professors in 

 the Theological Seminary ; made the acquaintance of Prof. Asa 

 Gray, of Harvard ; and began an active literary career. His eyes 

 were open to the geological phenomena of the region — one of the 

 first questions he asked upon his arrival, of a fellow-minister, re- 

 lating to that subject. He was told that the country was under 

 the glacial drift, and he soon gave his attention to that. " During 

 his walks and drives he would stop to measure a ' kettle-hole/ or 

 he would push far into the country to follow some gravel ridge. 

 He made constant inquiries of fellow-ministers in other places as 

 to the phenomena of their region. Every book that he could find 



