KLIAM E. BARNEY. 



*Eliam E. Barney, to whose memory Barney Memorial Science 

 Hall was erected, was born at Henderson, New York, October 14, 

 1807. His father, an enterprising farmer, had made up by private ef- 

 fort for the deficiencies of his school training and was a man highly 

 esteemed among his neighbors. He served in the War of 18 12 and 

 his wife, Nancy Potter of Masachusetts, was the daughter of a soldier 

 of the Revolution. Eliam was the oldest of eleven children. Among 

 the traits recorded of his boyhood, perhaps the most suggestive of his 

 future career were the industry and the orderly method which he dis- 

 played in all that he had to do. In his fourteenth year he experienced 

 conversion and became a member of the Baptist Church, a connection 

 which he maintained during a long lifetime, bringing ever increas- 

 ing wisdom into the councils of the denomination and showing 

 towards worthy denominational enterprises a liberality commensurate 

 with the means at his command. 



His preparation for college was secured at Belleville, New York, 

 in the school since known as Union Academy. Rev. Joshua Bradley, 

 who fouunded the Academy, and lived for a time in the Barney house- 

 hold, afterward came to Ohio and acted as a traveling agent for Deni- 

 son University, then known as Granville College. Eliam entered as a 

 Sophomore at Union College, riding from his home to Schnectady, one 

 hundred and thirty miles, in his father's wagon. To pay the expenses 

 of his college course he had borrowed some money from an uncle and 

 to this was added what he could earn by teaching a writing school and 

 acting as tutor for less advanced students. During a part of his senior 

 year he taught a public school, reciting with his class only at intervals. 

 Thoroughness and accuracy in thought and expression was his ideal. 



He was graduated in 1831, and was soon afterward made princi- 

 pal of Lowville Academy, a position which he filled very successfully 

 for the two years following. Among his assistants here was Miss Julia 



^■Abridged from Memoir by Rev. H. F. Colby, D.D. 



