1893. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 153 
who did the work, assumed the responsibilities and enjoyed the 
honors that came to him. 
Dr. Newberry was the youngest of nine children, seven 
daughters and two sons, none of whom are now living. He was 
born December 22, 1822, in the town of Windsor, Conn., where 
his eminent ancestors had lived since the settlement of the town 
by immigration from Dorchester, Mass., in 1635, nearly two 
centuries. His grandfather, General Roger Newberry, was one 
of the Directors of the Connecticut Land Company that in 1795 
purchased of the State of Connecticut the bulk of the tract in 
Northern Ohio known as the ‘‘ Western Reserve of Connecti- 
cut.’ Henry Newberry, the father of John Strong Newberry, 
removed to the Western Reserve in 1824. He owned at first a 
square mile of land near the present center of the city of 
Cleveland, but exchanged it for a tract at the falls of the Cuya- 
hoga River, nine miles south, where at that time the water power 
was very valuable. He founded the town since known as Cuya- 
hoga Falls, and engaged actively in the development of the coal 
resources of that region. Upon his property was mined the 
first coal known to have been offered for sale in Ohio.* Mr. 
Newberry-built a fine house of a local red sandstone, erected 
mills and was very successful in his enterprises. 
Dr. Newberry’s early life was passed amid fortunate condi- 
tions of competence and refinement, and the influence of his 
natural surroundings on the mind of the boy can be plainly 
traced. Wecan be sure that while he roamed the fields and 
woods with boyish love of sport he had the observant eye of 
the naturalist. The deep rock gorge of the river gave him a 
geologic section and an illustration of geologic agencies, while 
the coal mine on the estate supplied the plant fossils that 
awakened an interest in paleontology, which was to become a 
passion and the subject of much of his life work. His perse- 
verance is proof of his scientific bent, for by his own collecting 
and by exchange he accumulated a geologic cabinet which 
filled a large room in his father’s house, and was the nucleus of 
what eventually became that extensive collection, now one of 
the glories of Columbia College. Before he entered college he 
had collected and studied mollusca and made an herbarium and 
a catalogue of the flora of the state, and had substantially mas- 
tered the zoology and botany of his county. 
_ .* For most of the facts relating to the ancestry of Dr. Newberry the writer is 
indebted to Mrs. Newberry, and to his oldest living son, Arthur St. John New- 
berry, of Cleveland. For facts relating to his boyhood and college days to Rey. 
N. 8. Burton, Needham, Mass., Rev. E. Bushnell, Cleveland, Ohio, and Hon, 
M. C. Read, Hudson, Ohio. 
