BIOGKAPHICAL SKETCH 



And S<_ikntifr' Chakacter of Joseph Duncan Putnam, late 



President of the Davenport Academy of 



Natural Sciences. 



BY UK. C. C. PARRY. 



[Note. — The Biographical Sketch ol' Joseph Duncan Putnam, as hereiuafter given, was 

 lircpared l)y Dr. C. C. Parry, by request of the Memorial Committee, and presented at a 

 special meeting ol the Academy, held September 32d 1883.] 



A duty that has long- weighed on my mind as a not remote pos- 

 sibility, now calls for a present fulfillment at my hands. Accepting 

 the invitation of tlic memorial committee to prepare a biographical 

 sketch of our late associate, and President, I am prompted not less 

 by a personal desire to do justice to his memory, than by a profound 

 conviction that 1 am thereby complying with his own unexpressed 

 wMshes. 1 conceive that I shall be able to fulfill most satisfactorily 

 th(^ duty thus imposed on me, not by attempting a tletailed biography, 

 the ample material for which is spread over a most extensive and 

 exhaustive correspondence, preserved with scrupulous care and ex- 

 actness, but rather ])y drawing from various sources partly within 

 my own personal knowledge, the salient points that mark the devel- 

 opment of his mental character, and have left their lasting impress 

 on his scientific work. 



x-Vt noon-day on the IHtli of ()ctol)er, 1855, in the mansion of the 

 late Governor Joseph Duncan, at Jacksonville, Illinois, Joseph Dun- 

 can Putnam, a descendent in the second remove from this pioneer 

 western statesman, first saw the light. 



Inheriting no doubt not a few of the ancestral traits that belonged 

 to his distinguished parentage, though not destined to figure in the 

 ranks of statesmanship, he was called in the no less honorable annals 

 of science, to occupy a page reflecting credit upon the two historic 

 names he bore. 



Fiom this shaded rural retreat, to which his boyish feet often re- 

 turned, to enjoy its stately quiet, and to catch the early inspiration 

 of that external nature which afterwards absorbed the energies of a 

 vigorous mind, he was taken to his childhood home on the western 

 banks of the Mississippi. 



Davenport, Iowa, will hereafter claim the honor of nurturing this 

 noble spirit, devoted to unselfish ends, striving amid manifold weak- 

 [Proc. D. A. N. S., Vol. III.] 39 



