370 JULIUS ERASMUS HILGARD. 



preserved tlirougli his founding the Kaval School, and through his 

 connection with the acquisition of California and the enlargement 

 of the rights of naturalized citizens, in the first capacity, through 

 his recognized pre-eminence as the historian of his country; or 

 through the grateful recognition of his forethought in founding 

 exhibitions at Exeter, Harvard, and Worcester, posterity alone 

 can tell. 



JULIUS EKASMUS HILGARD. 



The father of the subject of this sketch was a man of brilliant 

 mind and of high attainments. He gave up a promising judicial 

 career in Bavaria, against the wishes of that government, because 

 of his republican sentiments, and of his desire to find a congenial 

 sphere of action in the ideal republic which he expected to find on 

 this side of the ocean. Accredited to the good will of the American 

 people by a letter of introduction from Lafayette, he emigrated to 

 this country with a large family of children, and arrived at New 

 Orleans in the winter of 1835. Going up the Mississippi, he 

 purchased a farm near Belleville, St. Clair County, Illinois, and 

 there devoted his time to farming and to the education of his chil- 

 dren, when the latter were not engaged in the manual labor in- 

 separable from a pioiieer life in the West. His son Julius, born 

 in Zweibriicken, January 7, 1825, received from his father instruc- 

 tion in the classics and in the modern languages, but soon out- 

 stripped his teacher in mathematics, and at the age of eighteen 

 went to Philadelphia to study engineering. There, at the house 

 of a mutual friend, he met Professor Bache. 



In tracing the history of his connection with the Coast Survey, 

 to which his life was devoted, we find a letter from young Hilgard 

 to Bache, dated January, 1844, calling the attention of the latter 

 to errors in the formulas used by the Coast Survey in the computa- 

 tion of geographical positions, and giving his own development of 

 correct formulas. In reply. Superintendent Bache wrote to the 

 youth of nineteen, saying, ^'You have overriden two of our most 

 experienced computers, and have shown that they were seriously in 

 error." To an offer from Bache of employment in the Survey in a 

 subordinate capacity and at small pay, he responded tliat he would 

 rather do '* high work at low pay than low work at higli pay," and 

 gladly accepted the position. He entered at once upon his duties, 

 but his formal appointment was dated December 28, 1846. His 



