OBITUARY MEMOIR* 



BY 



PROF. JOSEPH LOVERING, 



VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



JOSEPH HENRY, who was united with this Academy as an 

 Associate Fellow on May 26, 1840, was born in Albany, N. Y. on 

 December 17, 1799, and died in Washington, D. C. on May 13, 

 1878, in the plenitude of his years, his labors, and his honors. 

 The child is always father to the man : but there was nothing in 

 the childhood or youth of Henry to proclaim the advent of one 

 whose life would be a blessing to mankind, and whose death would 

 be felt as a nation's loss. Descended from Scotch ancestors, who 

 had recently immigrated to this country, and losing his father at an 

 early age, he passed a. large part of his youth under the care of his 

 maternal grandmother, at Galway, in Saratoga County. Here he 

 attended the district school until he was ten years old. Then he 

 was taken into a store, where he was treated kindly and allowed to 

 be present at the afternoon session of the school. Obtaining access 

 to the village library, at first by accident, afterwards by stealth, and 

 finally by permission, he revelled in an ideal world of fiction, and 

 perhaps cultivated, unconsciously, that faculty of imagination which 

 served him as the interpreter of Nature. 



At the age of about fifteen Henry returned to Albany and entered 

 a watchmaker's shop as an apprentice. Whatever knowledge of 

 mechanism and delicacy of touch were thus acquired were not 

 thrown away upon one destined to plan and handle the nice appli- 

 ances of physical research. And yet his heart was not in the new 

 occupation. The stage, before the scenes and behind the scenes; 

 private theatricals ; a club of amateurs of which he was president, 



[* Report of the Council of the Am. Academy of Arts and Sciences, May 27, 1879.J 



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