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OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (FAY FESTETITS.) 



expedition to Paraguay in 1858-^59, and he subse- 

 quently received the commendations of Flag-officer 

 Shubrick and the Secretary of the Navy for " the 

 skill and zeal with which he used the very efficient 

 vessel under his command in extricating naval ves- 

 sels from perilous situations," besides a silver pitcher 

 from the officers of the fleet. The " Harriet Lane" 

 was one of the vessels forming the small fleet that 

 was hastened to the relief of Fort Sumter in April. 

 1861, and was present at the capture of the fortifica- 

 tions at Hatteras Inlet in the following August, being 

 under the command of Capt. Faunce on both occa- 

 sions. After the war he was one of the first officers 

 appointed to locate stations of tne life-saving service 

 on our coasts, and thus had much to do with the or- 

 ganization of the first experimental service authorized 

 by Congress and of the present model system. He 

 remained in active service till May, 6, 1881. 



Fay, Julius Augustus, lawyer, born in Baltimore, 

 Md., in 1840; died in Elizabeth, N. J., Sept. 26, 1891. 

 He was graduated at Williams College, entered the 

 national army as a lieutenant in 1862, served in the 

 30th, 35th, and 40th New Jersey regiments, and was 

 promoted colonel in 1865, and brevetted lieutenant- 

 colonel in the regular army for gallantry before 

 Petersburg. After the war he held the office of In- 

 spector-General of Militia of New Jersey under Govs. 

 Randolph and Parker. He studied law, was admitted 

 to the oar in 1866, and soon became eminent as a 

 criminal lawyer, and during the ten years he was 

 prosecutor of" Union County he was credited with 

 3,000 convictions out of 3,040 cases tried by him. 



Featherstone, Winfield Scott, lawyer, born in Tennes- 

 see, in 1818; died in Holly Springs, Miss., 'May 28, 

 1891. In early life he removed to Mississippi, where 

 he studied law and was admitted to the bar. He was 

 elected to Congress in 1846 and 1848, and declined a 

 third term that he might confine himself to his law 

 practice. At the beginning of the civil war he en- 

 tered the Confederate army, served through the war 

 in Virginia and in the Transmississippi Department, 

 and attained the rank of brigadier-general. He was 

 a member of the State Legislature in 1875, and chair- 

 man of the committee that prepared the articles and 

 conducted the impeachment of Gov. Adelbert Ames 

 and other State officers, and as chairman of the 

 Judiciary Committee in 1879-'80 he aided largely in 

 revising the State code. 



Ferrel, William, meteorologist, born in Bedford (now 

 Fulton) County, Pa., Jan. 29, 1817 ; died in May wood, 



Kansas, Sept. 18, 1891 His early education was ac- 

 quired at winter schools in log cabins, and at four- 



teen his schooling ended. In 1832, while working on 

 liis father's farm, he observed a sun eclipse, which so 

 excited his interest that he procured mathematical 

 text-books and studied them until he was able to 

 predict eclipses. So accurate were his results that 

 when the almanac was issued his calculations showed 

 no greater error in time than nine minutes. Other 

 text-books were procured and studied by the light 

 of a dim candle or the blaze of light-wood until he 

 attained the age of twenty-two, when, by the aid ot 

 money earned in teaching and promises of assistance 

 from his father, he entered Marshall (now Marshall 

 and Franklin) College. After two years he taught 

 in Virginia until he nad earned sufficient money to 

 pay his expenses at Bethany College, where he was 

 graduated in 1844. Resuming his vocation as a 

 teacher, he settled in Liberty. Mo., and devoted much 

 of his leisure to study, especially in the line of higher 

 mathematics. Then he taught in Southern Kentucky 

 for seven years, after which for four years he was 

 professor in a commercial college in Nashville Tenn. 

 At this time he published " Winds and Currents of 

 the Ocean" in the Nashville " Journal of Medicine 

 and Surgery," and wrote for Dr. Benjamin A. Gould's 

 " Astronomical Journal." These led to his acquaint- 

 ance with scientific men, through whose influence ho 

 was appointed in 1857 assistant in the office of the 

 " American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac," then 

 issued in Cambridge by Prof. Joseph Winlock. Ten 

 years later he accepted an appointment under Ben- 

 jamin Pierce in the service of the Coast Survey, 

 with special charge of the consideration and discus- 

 sion of tidal relations. This place he held until 1882, 

 and subsequent to 1874 the annual reports of the 

 Coast Survey contain his special contributions of 

 " Tidal Researches." He invented a maxima and 

 minima tidal-predicting machine, which was con- 

 structed at a cost of $2,500, and which is described 

 in Appendix No. 10 of the " Report of the Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey " for 1883. By its use the labor 

 of more than thirty men was saved. In 1882 he became 

 Professor of Meteorology in the Signal Office in 

 Washington, D. C., where he remained for four years, 

 and then retired to devote himself exclusively to 

 private researches. In Europe as well as in this, 

 countiy Prof. Ferrel was regarded as the leader in 

 the methods of mathematical meteorology. The 

 honorary degrees of A. M., and Ph. D. were conferred 

 upon him, and in 1868 he was elected to the National 

 Academy of Sciences. He was an associate fellow of 

 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an 

 honorary member of the Austrian, London, and Ger- 

 man Meteorological Societies. His professional pa- 

 pers numbered more than fifty, many of which are 

 in the series of " Professional Papers of the United 

 States Signal Service," and include " Motions of 

 Fluids and Solids relative to the Earth's Surface," 1 

 (1859) ; " Determination of the Moon's Mass from 

 Tidal Observations" (1871); "Converging Series, 

 expressing the Ratio between the Diameter and the 

 Circumference of a Circle" (1871); "Meteorological 

 Researches," Part I, " On the Mechanics and the 

 General Motions of the Atmosphere" (1877); Part 

 II, On "Cyclones, Tornadoes, and Waterspouts" 

 (1880) ; Part III, " On Barometric Hypsometry and 

 the Reduction of the Barometer to Sea Level " (1882) ; 

 and " Temperature of the Atmosphere and the Earth's. 

 Surface " (1884). His books were : " On the Recent 

 Advances in Meteorology" (Washington, 1886), a 

 text-book designed for use in the Signal-service School 

 of Instruction, and also for a hand-book in the office 

 of the chief signal officers, and " A Popular Treatise 

 on the Winds'" (New York, 1889). 



Festetits, Count Charles Albert, civil engineer, born 

 in Hungary, about 1840 ; died in Jersey City, N. J., 

 June 25, 1891. He was a nobleman of ancient line- 

 age, although the fact was not known to the public 

 till after his death. His father was chamberlain of 

 the court of Austria, and the son was graduated at 

 the Austrian military academy, and attained the rank 

 of colonel in the Austrian army. Charles set out for 



