360 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
ment of the Boston Port Bill. But neither of them was dis- 
posed to be a refugee. For the son, then a lad of seventeen 
years, ran away from Canada to New York, joined his uncle, 
Joseph Torrey, a major of one of the two light infantry regi- 
ments of regulars (called Congress’s Own) which were raised 
in that city ; was made an ensign, and was in the rearguard 
of his regiment on the retreat to White Plains; served in it 
throughout the war with honor, and until at the close he re- 
entered the city upon Evacuation Day, when he retired with 
the rank of captain. Moreover, the father soon followed the 
son, and became quartermaster of the regiment. Captain 
Torrey, in 1791, married Margaret Nichols, of New York. 
The subject of this biographical notice was the second of 
the issue of this marriage, and the oldest child who survived 
to manhood. He was born in New York, on the 15th of Au- 
gust, 1796. He received such education only as the public 
schools of his native city then afforded, and was also sent for 
a year to a school in Boston. When he was fifteen or sixteen 
years old his father was appointed fiscal agent of the state 
prison at Greenwich, then a suburban village, to which the 
family removed. 
At this early age he chanced to attract the attention of 
Amos Eaton, who soon afterwards became a well-known 
pioneer of natural science, and with whom it may be said that 
popular instruction in natural history in this country began. 
He taught young Torrey the structure of flowers and the rudi- 
ments of botany, and thus awakened a taste and kindled a 
zeal which were extinguished only with his pupil’s life. This 
fondness soon extended to mineralogy and chemistry, and 
probably determined the choice of a profession. In the year 
1815, Torrey began the study of medicine in the office of the 
eminent Dr. Wright Post, and in the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, in which the then famous Dr. Mitchill and Dr. 
Hosack were professors of scientific repute ; he took his medi- 
cal degree in 1818; opened an office in his native city, and 
engaged in the practice of medicine with moderate success, 
turning the while his abundant leisure to scientific pursuits, 
especially to botany. In 1817, while yet a medical student, 
