OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 

 FREDERICK FRALEY, LL.D., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY. 



{Read December 20, 1901.) 



Frederick Fraley, the fifteenth President of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society, died on the 23d day of September, 190 1, in the 

 ninety-eighth year of his age. He had been an active member of 

 the Society for more than fifty-nine years. After long service as a 

 Secretary and as a Vice-President, he, on 2d January, 1880, re- 

 ceived the merited honor of an election to the Presidency, and for 

 more than twenty- one years he administered that office of great 

 distinction, as he performed every duty, with fidelity and ability. 



He brought to the discharge of his many duties a wide acquaint- 

 ance with books, with men, and with affairs. * 



He was always, and to the very end, a student and an omnivorous 

 reader. To paraphrase a famous saying, nothing was too great for 

 his care and nothing too trivial for his attention. He mastered the 

 political, the economic, and the industrial history of his country. 

 He made himself profoundly learned in everything that could 

 possibly have relation to the national finances, and he became a 

 reservoir of accurate and thorough information as to the loans and 

 the currency of the United States. He kept himself in touch with 

 the scientific progress of the nineteenth century. He read not only 

 many of the best books of his time, but he also from time to time 

 found, as many other men have found, mental rest and recreation 

 in works of fiction, old and new. And with it all, he never failed 

 to hear the news of the day and to feel and express a lively interest 

 in everything of real importance that went on in the world. 



Mr. Fraley was a member of the Committee of Arrangements for 

 the Society's Centennial Celebration of 1843. On 19th October, 

 1877, he read before the Society a brief but comprehensive and 

 sympathetic biographical notice of his brother-in-law, John C. 

 Cresson. On 15th March, 1880, he presided upon the occasion of 

 the Centennial Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Society, 

 and he then delivered an address, in which he fittingly described 



