CHAPTER II 

 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE; PRIOR TO 1833 



Boyhood in Utica Early School-Days and Teachers Reminiscences of 

 Dr. Bagg Life in Yale College Distinguished Classmates Charac- 

 teristics as an Undergraduate Bent toward Natural Sciences. 



UTICA, in Oneida County, New York, not quite one 

 hundred miles to the west of Albany, is one of the 

 towns that owe their prosperity in part to the rich soil of 

 the Mohawk valley and in part to the Erie canal. By 

 this water highway Utica was brought into easy inter- 

 course, after 1825, with the great lakes of the west and 

 the harbor of New York, and hence its growth. It is 

 well to remember that the town was established upon 

 the site of Fort Schuyler, that famous post which in early 

 days protected the inhabitants of the upper Hudson from 

 the incursions of the Indians. It is now a flourishing 

 city of more than 55,000 inhabitants, but in 1813, the 

 year of Professor Dana's birth, it had but 1700 inhabitants, 

 and in 1830, when he went to college, somewhat more 

 than 8000. 



To this feeble settlement on the frontier James Dana 

 removed from Massachusetts, the home of his forefathers 

 for several generations, having married, in 1812, Harriet 

 Dwight, a daughter of Seth Dwight of Williamsburg, 

 Massachusetts. Her brother, Rev. H. G. O. Dwight, 

 D.D., was afterwards distinguished as a Christian mis- 

 sionary in Constantinople. Their first child, the eldest of 

 ten brothers and sisters, James Dwight Dana, was born 



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