55 
“Very shortly after I came to Washington for duty as a 
Passed Midshipman, members of Congress were told in my 
presence, ‘There is not an officer of the navy capable to 
conduct a scientific enterprise.’ The charge was intended 
prejudicially to the service to which I belonged, and was the 
more humiliating because the speakers were unknown, and 
defence was not possible. But from that hour no effort has 
been spared by which the standard of intelligence in the ser- 
Vice might be increased and its reputation enhanced.” 
How much the scientific reputation of the navy may have 
been directly or indirectly advanced by the exertions of our lost 
colleague, I will not undertake to estimate ; but thirty years 
have wrought a wondrous change, and the response which 
the logic of history would furnish to any disparaging remark 
to-day needs no added encomium of mine. 
So keenly was the young officer touched by the assertion, 
whether true or not, that on the instant he resolved to dis- 
prove it in his own person. Such is his account, and from 
that moment he was wont to date his scientific impulses; yet 
C. Joseph ice of Somerset Co., Maryland, (7th child of Thom- 
as,) married : 
E ‘Abas, eansinegh of Col. Isaac Handy. 
2. Betty Irving 
Children : — 
1. Thomas Handy, b. 1768, a. 1851, 
2. Esther (m. Dr. W. Cheney). 
Anna. 
6. Sarah (m. —— Polk). 
z wie 
Dd. as Gillis, of Georgetown, D. = (4th child of Joseph,) 
‘Married Mary Melville, their third child be 
£. James Melville Gilliss, born hiekuakie 6, 1811...’ 
