SKETCH OF JOHN B. STALLO. 549 



liis uncle, Franz Joseph Stallo, who, while a prosperous book 

 printer and binder at Damme, made a number of useful discov- 

 eries in physics and mechanics. He is accredited with having 

 introduced peat-burning and the cultivation of buckwheat into his 

 district, and with having promoted the irrigation of the heaths 

 and the sowing of fir-seeds upon them, whereby they were trans- 

 formed from barren moors into profitable pine-woods. He finally, 

 however, began to advocate views that brought him into conflict 

 with the authorities, and emigrated, followed by a number of his 

 countrymen, in 1831, to the United States, where he attempted to 

 found a colony at a place to which he gave the name of Stallo- 

 town, in Auglaize County, Ohio. His career and the prosperity 

 of the colony were cut off, two years afterward, by the ravages 

 of the cholera. 



Mr. Stallo's grandfather, an honorable old Friesian, although 

 he had passed his seventieth year when he became his grandson's 

 teacher, took a great interest in the child's development, and 

 rejoiced not a little when he found him, before the end of his 

 fourth year, able to read and to work out simple arithmetical 

 examples. His father gave him particular instruction in mathe- 

 matics, his favorite study, and took care that he should learn the 

 ancient languages, and French as well — which, out of resj^ect to 

 the old gentleman's national prejudices, had to be taught secretly 

 from the grandfather. In his fifteenth year, young Stallo was 

 sent as a free pupil to the normal school at Vechta, where he also 

 enjoyed the advantage of the instructions of the professors in the 

 gymnasium — an institution in high repute. In a short time he 

 had gained sufficient knowledge of the languages and mathe- 

 matics to fit him for entrance into the university, but his father 

 had not the means to send him there. The alternative was then 

 presented to him of continuing the chain of schoolmasters in his 

 family, or of emigrating to America. He chose the latter. 



He came to this country in 1839, bearing letters of introduc- 

 tion from his father and grandfather to clergymen and teach- 

 ers in Cincinnati. He at once found a position in a private 

 school in that city, and there he composed and published his first 

 literary work, a German spelling and reading book, which ap- 

 peared without an author's name. There had been great need of 

 such a book in the lower school classes, and, as this one seemed 

 admirably adapted to its purpose, it soon became popular and 

 passed through many editions. It attracted the attention of the 

 directors of the newly founded Roman Catholic St. Xavier's Col- 

 lege, and they, finding also how good a mathematician the author 

 was, appointed Stallo Professor of the German Language, to the 

 duties of which post were added also those of teaching mathe- 

 matics and the ancient languages. Physical and chemical sci- 



