DANIEL COIT OILMAN, LL.D. 



(Read February 19, 1909.) 



Daniel Coit Oilman, the first President of the Johns Hopkins 

 University, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, July 6, 1831. of 

 native New England stock. His early education was obtained in 

 the town of his birth, until at the age of fourteen he removed to 

 New York. Three years later he entered Yale College where he 

 ranked well, though not among the highest, and was active in all 

 that concerned the literary and social life of the community. 

 Toward the end of his course he became interested in lexicography, 

 and after graduation spent a year at Harvard College with the idea 

 of preparing a new English dictionary. At Cambridge he lived in 

 the house of the geographer Guyot and was brought under the 

 influence of the elder Agassiz, an influence that materially affected 

 his plans for the future and shaped, to no small extent, his views on 

 education. From this time his interest in a dictionary began to give 

 way to the larger demands of literature and education, a change of 

 purpose that was rendered permanent by an opportunity, rarer in 

 those days than now, of enlarging the scope of his observation and 

 knowledge by means of foreign travel and of coming into contact 

 with the culture and experience of the old world. In 1853 ^^^ ^^^ 

 his college friend, Andrew D. White, were invited by Gov. Seymour 

 of Connecticut, recently appointed Minister to Russia by President 

 Pierce, to go as attaches to the American Legation at St. Petersburg. 

 The opportunity thus furnished was utilized by Dr. Gilman not only 

 in obtaining a certain amount of diplomatic experience, but also in 

 extensive travel in England, Germany, France, and Russia, in meet- 

 ing men of distinction, and wherever possible in investigating edu- 

 cational conditions. His correspondence at this time, both public 

 and private, shows that he was visiting foreign libraries and institu- 

 tions of learning, and was widening the range of his inquiry by 

 studying the attitude of European States toward morality and phil- 



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