PARRY — MEMORIAL OF PROF. SHELDON. I 79 



PROFESSOR DAVID S. SHELDON, LL.D. 



P.V C. C. PARRY, 



(Read before the Davenport Academy of Sciences, at the 

 Memorial Meeting', fune it, 1SS6.) 



Having been requested to prepare, for this occasion, a somewhat 

 systematic account of the life and scientific labors of our late associate, 

 Prof. D. S. Sheldon, with special reference to his connection with this 

 Academy, of which he was one of the founders, and its first President, 

 I have endeavored to comply, as far as my limited information goes, 

 premising that this is necessarily an imperfect sketch of a noble char- 

 acter, such as could only be faithfully portrayed by an intimate personal 

 friend, having access to private documents and authentic journals. 

 Such as it is, I desire to lay it before you as at least, a sincere tribute 

 to his memory, and a faint recognition of his sterling qualities as a 

 man, and his endearing features as a friend. 



In the early years of the present century (December 6, 1809), among 

 the rugged hills of Vermont, David Sylvester Sheldon first saw the light 

 — the son of a well-to-do farmer, which meant, in that day and place, 

 more than it does in ours, a life of earnest toil and privation, develop- 

 ing faculties of self-reliance, and a sturdy physical frame. With such 

 an inheritance, young Sheldon was also favored with an early scholastic 

 training, such as was then in vogue in the New England Academy, well 

 fitted to impart not only solid learning, but better still, mental develop- 

 ment. So we find him, at sixteen years of age, a pupil at Castleton, 

 Vermont, long distinguished, as now, for its wild, romantic scenery, and 

 its elevated educational institutions. That with such surroundings he 

 should have early imbibed a taste for natural science is easily con- 

 ceivable, even amid the dry abstractions of classical learning and rigid 

 mathematics, which then formed the chief curriculum of study. 



So we find him progressing, becoming fitted for college at the age of 

 nineteen, and graduating at Middlebury in his twenty-third year. As 

 was usual in that day, he varied his duties, and, no doubt, economized 

 his means, by teaching in adjoining country schools. And now comes 



