OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (WILDRICK WILLIAMS.) 



607 



in the World's Congress of Philology held in Chi- 

 cago during 1893, approved of its plans, and aided in 

 them by explicit suggestion of themes for discussion. 

 Prof. Whitney was a contributor to the great San- 

 skrit dictionary of Bohtlingk and Both (7 volumes, St. 

 Petersburg, 1853-'67). He was actively engaged on 

 various editions of" Webster's Dictionary," and later 

 was editor in chief of the great " Century Diction- 

 ary " (6 vols., New York, 1889-'91), the largest com- 

 pleted English dictionary in the world. The degree 

 of Ph. D. was conferred on him by the University of 

 Breslau in 1861, and that of LL. D. by Williams in 

 1868, William- and Mary in 1869, and Harvard in 

 1876, while that of J. U. D. was given him by St. An- 

 drew's, Scotland, in 1874, and Litt. D. by Columbia in 

 1S86. He was the lirst I 'resident of the American 

 Philological Association, which he helped to found 

 in 1869, and in 1865 was elected to the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, but resigned therefrom in 1882. 

 Besides his membership in many other scientific so- 

 cieties, both at home and abroad, he was a correspond- 

 ent of the Berlin, Turin, Rome, and St. Petersburg 

 Academies, the Institute of France, and was a foreign 

 knight of the Prussian order Pour le Merite. Prof. 

 Whitney wrote for the a North American Review," 

 the " New England Magazine," and similar period- 

 icals, and various articles in cyclopaedias, and has 

 contributed to the transactions of societies of which 

 he was a member. Many of his writings were col- 

 lected into book form under the title of " Oriental 

 and Linguistic Studies," of which 3 series were issued 

 in 1873, 1874, and 1875. Other important contributions 

 to philology include : " Contributions from the 

 Atharva Veda to the Theory of Sanskrit Verbal 

 Accent" (1856); " On the Tyotisha Observation of 

 the Place of the Colures and the Date derivable from 

 it "(1864); "On Material and Form in Language" 

 1872) ; " Darwinism and Language " (1874) ; " Log- 

 ical Consistency in Yic\vs of Language" (1880); 

 " Mixture in Language " (1881 ) ; " The Study of Hin- 

 du Grammar and the Study of Sanskrit " (1884) ; and 

 "The Upanishads and their Latest Translations" 

 ( 1886). His other works included " Compendious 

 German Grammar " (New York, 1869) ; " German 

 Reader in Prose and Verse" (1870); "Life and 

 Growth of Language" (1876), being Vol. XVI of the 

 " International Scientific Series," and which was 

 translated' into the French, Italian, German, Swedish, 

 and Russian languages ; " Essentials of English Gram- 

 mar " (Boston, 1877 ) ; " Sanskrit Grammar, including 

 both the Classical Language and the Older Dialects 

 of Veda and Brahmana " ( Leipsic, 1879 ; second edition, 

 1888), of which it is said that " wherever philology is 

 studied the Sanskrit grammar of Whitney is a unique 

 and indispensable adjunct"; and " Practical French 

 Grammar" (1886). He was regarded as one of the 

 foremost Sanskrit scholars of his time, and as a Ger- 

 man scholar he had no superiors in this country. His 

 text- books received high praise for their exact state- 

 ments of general grammatical doctrine. In the science 

 of language, of wnioh his expositions and classifica- 

 tions were accepted as authoritative, he claimed that 

 the development of speech was by the acceptance of 

 conventional signs, and that its beginnings were imi- 

 tative in lieu of the view advanced by others, who 

 contend that language was spontaneously generated 

 in the mind and coexistent with thought. He was 

 never idle, and kept his mind closely upon his studies 

 till the very last. In 1856 he married Elizabeth 

 Wooster, a daughter of Roger Sherman Baldwin, of 

 New Haven, who with 3 daughters and 1 son sur- 

 vive him. He was buried in New Haven, and the 

 services were conducted by President Dwight, while 

 his older colleagues acted'as pallbearers. A memo- 

 rial sketch, 28 "pages, by Thomas D. Seymour, has 

 been published. 



Wildrick, Abram 0., military officer, born in New 

 Jersey, Aug. 5, 18=36; died on Staten Island, N. Y., 

 Xov. 16, 1894. lie was graduated at West Point in 

 1857, and became brevet 2d lieutenant 3d Artillery. 

 In the regular army he was promoted 2d lieutenant, 



Oct. 5, 1857 ; 1st lieutenant, April 27, 1861 ; captain 

 Feb. 8, 1864; major, 5th Artillery, Nov. 3, 1882- and 

 lieutenant colonel, 1st Artillery, July 1, 1892. In 1858 

 he had command of a battery during the San Juari 

 troubles. At the beginning of the civil war he was 

 in command of the arsenal at Fort Vancouver and its 

 quartermaster and commissary stores, arid promptly 

 tendered his services to the Governor of New Jersey, 

 desiring the command of one of the first regiments 

 raised in that State ; but through the wish oi Gens. 

 Wright and McPherson for his services on their staff 

 he was unable to accept a volunteer command till the 

 latter part of the war. He was commissioned colonel 

 of the 39th New Jersey Infantry Oct. 11, 1864, and 

 was mustered out of the service June 17, 1865. He 

 was ^brevetted major in the regular army for gallant 

 services during the siege of Petersburg, and lieutenant 

 colonel for meritorious services during the war, both 

 on March 13, 1865, and brigadier general of volunteers 

 for gallantry in leading the assault on Fort Mahone 

 in front of Petersburg on April 2 following. 



Wilkinson. Morton Smith, lawyer, born in Skaneateles, 

 Onondaga County, N. Y., Jan. 22, 1819 ; died in St. 

 Paul, Minn., Feb. 4, 1894. He received a fair educa- 

 tion ; removed to Illinois in 1837, and was employed 

 on railway work for two years; returned to Skan- 

 eateles and studied law ; was admitted to the bar in 

 Syracuse in 1842 ; and settled in Eaton Rapids, Mich., 

 in 1843. In 1847 he went to St. Paul, and in 1849 was 

 elected to the first Legislature of Minnesota Territory. 

 Subsequently he was appointed to a commission to 

 prepare a code of laws for the government of the 

 Territory and his draft was adopted. In 1859 he was 

 elected to the United States Senate as a Republican, 

 and there served as chairman of the Committee on 

 Revolutionary Claims and as a member of the Com- 

 mittee on Indian A If airs. He was defeated for re- 

 election, and President Lincoln declared publicly 

 that his defeat was a national calamity. In 1864 he 

 was a delegate to the Baltimore convention, and in 

 1866 to the Loyalists' convention in Philadelphia. He 

 was elected to Congress from the 1st Minnesota 

 District as a Republican in 1868, serving from March 

 4, 1869. till Marcli 3, 1871, and being a member of the 

 standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and of the 

 select committee on the ninth census. In 1872 he 

 joined the Liberal Republican party, and soon after- 

 ward the Democratic, and in 1874-'78 was a State 

 Senator. 



Williams, George Huntington, geologist, born in Utica, 

 N. Y., Jan. 28, 185(5; died there, July 12, 1894. He 

 was educated in Utica, and was graduated at Amherst 

 in 1878; then, after studying in "Brunswick and Got- 

 tingen, Germany, he settled in Heidelberg, where he 

 made a specialty of petrography under Rosenbusch, 

 and obtained his doctorate in 1882 cum summa laude. 

 On his return to the United States he received an ap- 

 pointment in the Johns Hopkins University, be- 

 coming associate professor in 1885, and Professor of 

 Inorganic Geology in 1892. His work at this univer- 

 sity attracted many students, and his classes were 

 large. The geology of Maryland became the special 

 subject of his investigations, and he published many 

 papers descriptive of his work, notably " Notes on the 

 Minerals occurring in the Neighborhood of Balti- 

 more" (1887), "Contributions to the Mineralogy of 

 Maryland " (1889), and " Geology and Physical' Ge- 

 ography of Maryland" (1894). The United States 

 Geological Survey availed itself of his services at 

 first in connection with his work on the microscopic 

 examinations of crystalline rocks of Maryland and 

 those elsewhere, publishing as special bulletins his 

 results on " The Gabbros and Associated Hornblende 

 Rocks occurring in the Neighborhood of Baltimore, 

 Md." (1886) and " The Greenstone Schist Areas of 

 the Menominee and Marquette Regions of Michigan " 

 (1890). He then prepared the "Baltimore Atlas 

 Sheet" for the " Geologic Atlas of the United States" 

 in course of publication by the United States Geologic- 

 al Survey, and also a " Geological Map of Baltimore 

 and Vicinity " (1892), as well as " Geology of Balti- 



