OLIVER WOLCOTT GIBBS, 1822-1908.^ 



{Read May 20, 1910.) 



The father of Wolcott Gibbs, Col. George Gibbs, was a man of 

 some wealth. Possessed of much talent, and of much culture, 

 brilliant in conversation, of polished manners, and with a wide 

 experience of men and life, he was one of the marked men of his 

 day. His beautiful place at the northwest angle of Long Island, 

 with its front on East River at one of its most picturesque points, 

 was one of the landmarks of the river. This large mansion at 

 Sunswick Farms, near Hellgate Ferry, was the seat of an elegant 

 hospitality somewhat rare in this country at the time in question : 

 within was a fine library and a collection of minerals, for Col. Gibbs 

 was an enthusiastic mineralogist. He was for many years a vice- 

 president of a geological society which met at New Haven, and his 

 donations of valuable specimens to that as well as to other minera- 

 logical societies were frequent. During travel in Europe, he pur- 

 chased a large collection of minerals, which, in the years from 1810 

 to 1812, was arranged at New Haven. The use of this collection 

 was freely given to Yale College up to the year 1825, when the 

 college purchased it. Once meeting the elder Silliman in the 

 steamer Fulton, on Long Island Sound, he suggested to the latter 

 the establishment of the American Journal of Science, and urged it 

 with a zeal which was successful. To the first and second volumes 

 of the new journal, he contributed four notes and brief papers. 

 The mineral Gibbsite was named in his honor, and his name is 

 preserved in Rafinesque's curious " Manual of the Grape, etc." as 

 that of a public benefactor who had, before 1825, established one 

 of the earliest vineyards in the attempt to introduce European wine- 

 grapes into this country; and it appears also in lists of agricultural 

 competitions. 



^ The writer, not now having convenient access to a chemical library, has 

 depended for facts upon Clarke's " Wolcott Gibbs Memorial Lecture " to an 

 unusually large extent. 



