JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 



VOLUML XXX MARCH, 1915 No. 4 



ELISHA MITCHELL, D. D. 



BY EX-PEESIDENT KEMP P. BATTLE, LL. D., 



The last survivor of the Faculty of June, 1857 



Elisha Mitchell was born in Washington, Litchfield County, 

 ■Connecticut, August 19th, 1793. His father was a respected 

 farmer, content to live a farmer's life. His mother, Phoebe 

 Eliot, was a descendant of Rev. John Eliot, the "Apostle to the 

 Indians," a learned man, who translated the Bible into the lan- 

 guage of the Indians of Massachusetts. Her grandfather was 

 also eminent as a divine and a scientist, — Rev. Jared Eliot, 

 M. D., and D. D. who was honored bj the Royal Society of Lon- 

 don with a gold medal for a discovery in the manufacture of 

 iron. 



Young Mitchell showed from boyhood the talents of the 

 Eliot family. He graduated in Yale University, then College, 

 with high honor in 1813, along with President Longstreet, the 

 author of Georgia Scenes, Dr. Denison Olmstead, author and 

 professor at the University of North Carolina and Yale, and 

 Thomas P. Devereux, Reporter of the Supreme Court of North 

 Carolina. Senator George E. Badger was a classmate but left 

 before graduation. 



After graduation he taught in a school for boys at Jamaica, 

 Long Island. In the spring of 1815 he took charge of a school 

 for girls in New London, where he married Maria S. — the 

 Daughter of Dr. Erasmus North, a physician of the City. In the 

 next year O'n the recommendation of the Chaplain of the Senate, 

 Rev. Sereno E. Dwight, through an active Trustee of this insti- 

 tution, Wm. Gaston, a representative in Congress, he was elect- 



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