JOHN TORREY. 1 



John Torrey, M. D., LL. D., died at New York, on the 

 10th of March, 1873, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. 

 He has long been the chief of American botanists, and was 

 at his death the oldest, with the exception of the venerable 

 ex-President of the American Academy (Dr. Bigelow), who 

 entered the botanical field several years earlier, but left it to 

 gather the highest honors and more lucrative rewards of the 

 medical profession, about the time when Dr. Torrey deter- 

 mined to devote his life to scientific pursuits. 



The latter was of an old New England stock, being, it is 

 thought, a descendant of William Torrey, who emigrated 

 from Combe St. Nicholas, near Chard, in Somersetshire, and 

 settled at Weymouth, Massachusetts, about the year 1640. 2 



His grandfather, John Torrey, with his son William, re- 

 moved from Boston to Montreal at the time of the enforce- 



1 Proceedings American Academy of Arts and Science, ix. 262. (1873.) 



2 In some notes furnished by a member of the family, the descent is 

 endeavored to be traced through the eldest of the five sons who survived 

 their parent, namely, Samuel, who came with him from England, became 

 a minister of the Gospel, and had the unprecedented honor of preaching 

 three election sermons (in 1674, 1683, and 1695), as well as of having 

 three times declined the presidency of Harvard College (after Hoar, after 

 Oakes, and after Rogers). Although educated at the college, he was not 

 a graduate, because he left it in 1650, after three years' residence, just 

 when the term for the A. B. degree was lengthened to four years. The 

 tradition has it, that, " at the prayer-meetings of the students, he was 

 generally invited to make the concluding prayer," — for which an obvious 

 reason suggests itself, — for, " such was his devotion of spirit that, after 

 praying for two hours, the regret was that he did not continue longer." 

 Students of the present day are probably less exacting. 



The desire to claim a descent through so eminent a member of the 

 family is natural. But our late venerable associate, Mr. Savage, in his 

 Dictionary of early New England families, states that he could not as- 

 certain that Samuel had any children. 



