December I.ISGS.] f;-ro [Sharswoorl. 



OBITUARY NOTICE OF JOSEPH KEEI) INGERSOLL. 



Read before the American FhilosopJiical Societt/, 

 By George Suarswood. 



The object of the American Philosophical Society in providing 

 that wherever practicable, an Obituary Notice shall be prepared 

 of deceased members, was not, as in some institutions abroad, to 

 have an elaborate eulogy delivered. Jt was rather a brief 

 memoir recording the principal events and literary or scientific 

 works of their associate. The writer of this feels bound to con- 

 fine himself within these limits, and therefore will not undertake 

 to sketch the character or dwell upon the many marked excel- 

 lencies of the member, in regard to whom the Society has as- 

 signed to him this sad but grateful dnt}'. 



Joseph Reed lugersoll, the tliird son of Jared and Elizabeth 

 Ingersoll, was born on the fourteenth day of June, 17 80, in the 

 City of Philadelphia. 



Of his father, nothing need be here said. He was the son of 

 an eminent lawyer, afterwards an Admiralty Judge of Pennsyl- 

 vania under the colonial system. He was himself, perhayjs, the 

 most distinguished of the leaders of the Philadelphia Bar in its 

 palmiest days. His life and character have been given to the 

 public, in a spirited sketch, b}^ a master hand. Jared Ingersoll 

 was an honored member of this Society, having been elected 

 January 19, 1781 — eight 3^ears before he took his seat in the 

 Federal Convention, that illustrious assembly over which George 

 Washington presided, and which framed the Constitution of the 

 United States. The early school days of the subject of this no- 

 tice were passed in the city of his birth, under, no doubt, the 

 best teachers in every department which it could then afford. 

 He entered the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, in the year 

 1800, and graduated with the highest honors of his class in 1804. 

 In this class, in which he bore away the palm of scholarship, 

 were man}' men who afterwards attained high pul)lic eminence. 

 He was a most earnest and indefiitigablc student, ambitious 

 from the first, of that distinction which he succeeded in winning, 

 and he used to mention as no small incentive to his api)lication 

 and industry during the period of his collegiate course, thnt al- 

 most every letter which he received from his father, wound up 

 with the words, •' Remember the honors." 



