Life of Count Rumford. 19 



keeping a retail variety-store, after the style of that day, 

 under the same roof with his dwelling-place, on the 

 south side of Essex Street, was also engaged in com- 

 mercial pursuits. His apprentice had open eyes and 

 ears for all that was to be seen or heard, in store or 

 house, from customers or visitors ; and his mechanical 

 and chemical propensities were well known. Doubtless 

 he was employed by others in the preparation of the 

 fireworks, in glorification over the repeal of the Stamp 

 Act, in the composition of which he met with so severe 

 an accident. The properties of gunpowder were then, 

 as they continued to be, a favorite matter for his studies 

 and experiments.* 



In his confidential relation of the incidents of his 

 early life to Monsieur Pictet, it will be remembered 

 that the Count, as reported by his friend, spoke of a 

 very respectable and enlightened minister, "Mr. Ber- 

 nard," who gave him such efficient patronage and such 

 impulse in his mathematical studies. Many who have 

 followed with interest the career of Thompson, meeting 

 with this name of Bernard, copied from Pictet's state- 

 ment in sketches of Count Rumford's life, supposing it 

 to refer to the minister of his native town, have been 

 puzzled in identifying him. The name, in his case, as 

 in that of one of our royal Governors, Sir Francis Ber- 

 nard, and of his son Thomas, a very intimate friend of 

 Rumford's, in London, was confounded with Barnard. 

 It was in Salem, not in Woburn, that young Thompson 

 found this friend. The Rev. Thomas Barnard was the 

 minister of the First Church in Salem from 1755 to 

 1776. His eldest son, Thomas, after graduating from 

 Harvard in 1766, taught school in Salem, and was 



* Essex Institute Historical Collections. Second Series. Vol. I. Part II. 1869. 



