XXL 



HUBERT ANSON NEWTON. 



[American Journal of Science, ser. 4, vol. ill, pp. 359-376, May 1897.] 

 (Read before the National Academy of Sciences, in April, 1897.) 



HUBERT ANSON NEWTON was born on March 19th, 1830, at 

 Sherburne, N.Y., and died at New Haven, Conn., on the 12th day of 

 August, 1896. He was the fifth son of a family of seven sons and 

 four daughters, children of William and Lois (Butler) Newton. The 

 parents traced their ancestory back to the first settlers of Massa- 

 chusetts and Connecticut,* and had migrated from the latter to 

 Sherburne, when many parts of central New York were still a 

 wilderness. They both belonged to families remarkable for longevity, 

 and lived themselves to the ages of ninety-three and ninety -four 

 years. Of the children, all the sons and two daughters were living as 

 recently as the year 1889, the youngest being then fifty-three years 

 of age. William Newton was a man of considerable enterprise, and 

 undertook the construction of the Buffalo section of the Erie canal, 

 as well as other work in canal and railroad construction in New 

 York and Pennsylvania. In these constructions he is said to have 

 relied on his native abilities to think out for himself the solution 

 of problems which are generally a matter of technical training. His 

 wife was remarkable for great strength of character united with a 

 quiet temperament and well-balanced mind, and was noted among 

 her neighbors for her mathematical powers. 



Young Newton, whose mental endowments were thus evidently 

 inherited, and whose controlling tastes were manifested at a very 

 early age, fitted for college at the schools of Sherburne, and at the 

 age of sixteen entered Yale College in the class graduating in 1850. 

 After graduation he pursued his mathematical studies at New Haven 

 and at home, and became tutor at Yale in January, 1853, when on 

 account of the sickness and death of Professor Stanley the whole 

 charge of the mathematical department devolved on him from the first. 



* Richard Butler, the great-grandfather of Lois Butler, came over from England 

 before 1633, and was one of those who removed from Cambridge to Hartford. An 

 ancestor of William Newton came directly from England to the New Haven colony 

 about the middle of the same century. 



