MELVILLE WESTOX FULLER— 1833-1910. 



[With 1 plate.] 



By Charles D. Walcott, 

 Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 



Melville Weston Fuller, doctor of laws, Chief Justice of the United 

 States, chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution, was born at Au- 

 gusta, Me., February 11, 1833, and died at his summer home, Sorrento, 

 Me., on the morning of July 4, 1910. He became a statutory member 

 of the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution, and also a mem- 

 ber of the Board of Regents on October 8, 1888, by virtue of his 

 appointment as the Chief Justice of the United States. He was 

 elected chancellor of the Institution by the Board of Regents at its 

 annual meeting January 9, 1889. 



The chancellors who preceded Chief Justice Fuller were : Vice 

 President George Mifflin Dallas, 1846-1849; Vice President Millard 

 Fillmore, 1849-1850; Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, 1850-1864; 

 Chief Justice Samuel Portland Chase, 1864-1873 ; and Chief Justice 

 Morrison Remick Waite, 1874-1888. 



For 22 years, until his death in 1910, Chief Justice Fuller was most 

 deeply interested in the general welfare of the Institution. He pre- 

 sided over the meetings of the Board of Regents most wisely and 

 judiciously. With one exception, there was not a meeting of the 

 regents during that entire period when he failed to be present. 



The Regents of the Institution expressed their sorrow in the fol- 

 lowing words of tribute to his memory, adopted at the annual meet- 

 ing of the board on December 8, 1910 : 



Whereas the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution have 

 received the sad intelligence of the death, on July 4, 1910, of Melville 

 Weston Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States, and for twenty- 

 two years chancellor of the Institution ; therefore be it 



Resolved, That we desire here to record our profound sorrow at the 

 severing of the tie that has bound us to him for so long a period of 

 honored service ; that we feel keenly the loss of a wise presiding officer, 



97578°— SM 1910 8 113 



