NEWTON HORACE WINCHELL, 1839-1914 



A Memorial by Warren Upham, Secretary of the Minnesota 

 Historical Society 



A member of this Academy of Science who had attained a 

 worldwide fame by his work as the State Geologist of Minne- 

 sota, Professor N. H. Winchell, has fallen, — let us rather say, 

 and more truly, he has been promoted, called up higher. He was 

 born in North East, Dutchess County, N. Y., December 17, 

 1839 ; and died in a hospital of Minneapolis, the city of his home, 

 on Saturday afternoon, May 2, in the seventy-fifth year of his 

 age. 



Like his brother, Alexander, with whose family he had his 

 home during the early part of his university studies, at Ann 

 Arbor, Michigan, Newton Horace devoted himself mainly to 

 the science of geology, with allied interest in all branches of 

 natural history. In Michigan he did much early work for botany ; 

 and in his latest years, after his geological survey of Minnesota 

 was completed, he performed very valuable services for the Min- 

 nesota Historical Society on the archaeology and ethnology of 

 this state and the northwest. From the later work resulted a 

 quarto volume, published in 1911, entitled, "The Aborigines of 

 Minnesota," 761 pages, with many illustrations and about 500 

 maps of groups of Indian mounds. This volume, and the twenty- 

 four Annual Reports and six quarto volumes of Final Reports 

 of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, 

 are monuments more enduring than bronze, which will be con- 

 sulted and studied during all the coming centuries by investiga- 

 tors of the origin and history of the races of mankind and by all 

 interested in geology or earth lore, not only in the schools and 

 universities of Minnesota but of all the world. 



Newton Horace Winchell in boyhood attended the public 

 school and academy at Salisbury, Conn. ; and at the age of six- 

 teen years he began teaching in a district school of his native 

 town. Two years later, in 1858, he entered the University of 

 Michigan, where his brother was the professor of geology. The 



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