REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 33 



NECKOLOGY. 



RANDALL LEE GIBSON. 



Randall Lee Gibson was born at Spring Hill near Versailles, Ky. 

 September 10, 1832; was educated in Lexington, Ky. ; in Terre Bonne 

 Parish, La.; at Yale College, and in the law department of the Tulane 

 University of Louisiana. During the civil war he commanded a com- 

 pany, regiment, brigade, and division in the Confederate army. He was 

 a representative in the Forty-fourth, Forty-fifth, Forty-sixth, and Forty- 

 seventh Congress, and was elected to the Senate in 1883, and his sec- 

 ond term as Senator would have expired on March 3, 1895. 



Senator Gibson was originally appointed a Regent of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, and was reappointed March 28, 1889, rilling the office 

 till his death, on December 15, 1892. His services as a Regent were 

 warmly recognized in the memorial and resolutions presented at the 

 meeting of the Board on January 25, 1893. 



Senator Gibson brought to the performance of his duties as Regent a 

 rare preparation as student, scholar, and statesman. With inherited 

 talents for oratory, and with strong literary tendencies, he was sur- 

 rounded in youth by all the influences that direct the energies of a man 

 to the public welfare. At Yale College he took a very prominent stand 

 in a group noted for talent and enthusiasm. Foreign travel, the study 

 of law, the life of a planter, a distinguished military career, and long* 

 service in the Congress of the United States, tilled his capacious mind 

 with a store of a rich and varied experience, and trained him for the 

 highest duties. Life was to him a consecration to public duty, and the 

 performance of that duty his highest felicity. Benevolent, brave r 

 patient, prudent, faithful, his grace and gentleness were the rich 

 drapery of an inflexible will and tenacious purpose. 



He came to the Smithsonian Institution as a servant animated by the 

 fullest sense of his responsibilities and self-pledged to a rigid perform- 

 ance of them. His interest in the Institution has been limited only by 

 the conditions of his position. His death, Avhich occurred at Hot 

 Springs, Ark., on December 15, 1892, is a loss to his State and his 

 country, in whose councils he has served for eighteen years. 



THOMAS GEORGE HODGK1NS. 



Thomas George Hodgkins was born in England in 1803, and his 

 early boyhood was spent there. AY hen about 17 years of age, led by 

 a youth's love of adventure, as well as by the desire to aid his family, 

 then in somewhat reduced circumstances, he shipped on one of the 

 East India Company's vessels, and made a voyage to the farther east, 

 where he narrowly escaped death by shipwreck. Consequent upon 

 this misadventure, came confinement in a hospital in Calcutta for some 

 mouths. During this period of enforced quiet and physical inaction, 

 he formed the resolve that his life, if spared, should henceforth be 

 devoted to advancing the welfare of his fellow men. 

 386A 3 



