HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 301 



tion with this incident his name became changed to School- 

 craft. He died at the age of one hundred and two years. 

 John, his third son, was a soldier under Sir William Johnson. 

 Lawrence, John's son, distinguished himself during the siege 

 of Fort Stanwix. He was afterward director of the glass- 

 works of the Hon. Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, at Hamilton, 

 near Albany ; and established the manufacture of glass in 

 Western New York. 



Henry Schoolcraft spent his childhood and youth in Ham- 

 ilton, cultivated poetry, and maintained an excellent standing 

 in scholarship. At an early age he manifested a taste for 

 natural science, which was then (about 1808) little known 

 outside our seats of learning; formed the beginnings of col- 

 lections ; and organized an association for mental improve- 

 ment. He investigated the drift stratum of Albany County as 

 seen in the bed of Norman's Kill ; and afterward, while living 

 at Lake Dunmore, Vt., put himself under the teaching of Prof. 

 Hall, of Middlebury College ; added chemistry, natural phi- 

 losophy, and medicine to his studies ; erected a chemical 

 furnace, and went into experimenting ; and picked up a 

 knowledge of Hebrew, German, and French. He began writ- 

 ing for books and periodicals in 1808 contributing, among 

 other things, papers on the Burning Springs of Western New 

 York, and on archaeological discoveries that had been made in 

 Hamburg, Erie County. In the last paper, which was pub- 

 lished at Utica in 1817, he pointed out the necessity of dis- 

 criminating between the period of early European occupancy, 

 and that of aboriginal American antiquity. He was en- 

 gaged for a time in directing the building of works con- 

 nected with his father's glass-making enterprises in Vermont, 

 New Hampshire, and western 'New York. The ideas and 

 knowledge gained in these operations supplied the ma- 

 terial for his proposed work on Vitreology, or the applica- 

 tion of chemistry to glass-making, the publication of which 

 was begun in 1817. The supervision of these works re- 

 quired the making of considerable journeys, and these 

 created in him the desire to travel through the wilds of 

 the " Far West," which then hardly extended beyond the 

 Missouri River. 



He made some " preliminary explorations " to his con- 

 templated journey, in Western New York in 1816 and 1817, and 



