XX OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEAIBERS DECEASED. 



Laura (Wolcott) Gibbs, the mother of Wolcott Gibbs, was a 

 daughter of OHver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury from 1795 

 to 1800, under Washington and Adams; afterwards justice of the 

 United States Circuit Court, and, for the last eleven years of his 

 life, governor of Connecticut. Her grandfather, Oliver Wolcott 

 was brigadier general of Connecticut militia, member of the Con- 

 tinental Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, 

 and lieutenant governor and governor of Connecticut. Her great- 

 grandfather, Roger Wolcott, was major general of the army which 

 captured Louisberg in 1745, being second in command at the siege, 

 and was afterwards governor of the colony of Connecticut. 



An older brother of Wolcott Gibbs was named George Gibbs. 

 He early acquired a taste for natural history, so that, before he 

 was twenty, he had made and mounted a collection of birds. After 

 some years of travel, he studied law, and opened an office for the 

 practice of the law in New York. He was for many years the 

 librarian of the New York Historical Society; in 1846 he published 

 *' Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, 

 edited from the papers of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treas- 

 ury." He was appointed collector for Astoria in 1854. Residence 

 here naturally gave him an opportunity for geological and for 

 ethnologic and linguistic studies; in 1857, he accompanied an ex- 

 ploring expedition as botanist and geologist. Later, he served on 

 a boundary commission. He edited, for the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, a large collection of documents relating to the ethnology and 

 philology of certain Indian tribes. 



Wolcott Gibbs was born in New York City, February 21, 1822. 

 His parents gave him the name Oliver Wolcott, but he dropped the 

 first name on entering adult life. His early days were spent mostly 

 at Sunswick Farms. At the age of seven years, he was sent to a 

 private school at Boston, where he was in the care of a maiden 

 aunt. Some part of his vacations were spent at Newport, R. I., 

 in the house of the distinguished Unitarian divine, William Ellery 

 Channing. When he was about eleven years in age, his father died ; 

 his mother survived her husband by more than . thirty-five years, 

 and her strong character, and the great abilities which she had 



