48 Transactions Tennessee Academy of Science 



JAMES M. SAFFORD 



BY JOHN T. MCGILL, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 



[Read before the Academy, December 1, 1916.] 



James Merrill SafFord was born at Janesville, Ohio, August 13, 

 1822. He came of an English family that landed in Massachusetts 

 in 1630. Having prepared for college in the Janesville schools, he 

 attended the Ohio University at Athens, from which he received the 

 degree of A.B. in 1844, and the degree of A.M. in 1846. He then 

 went to Yale College and pursued a special scientific course, and 

 for this and his investigations later he received the Ph.D. degree 

 from Yale in 1866. 



While at Yale, in 1848, an application came for a teacher of 

 science at Lebanon, Tennessee. Professor Silliman recommended 

 him for the place, and advised him to accept, telling him that Ten- 

 nessee was a fine field for geological exploration. So he came to 

 Lebanon in 1848 as Professor of Chemistry, Natural History and 

 Geology in Cumberland University, a position he held for twenty- 

 four years. Becoming Professor of Chemistry in the Medical De- 

 partment of the University of Nashville in 1872, and of the Medical 

 Department of Yanderbilt University in 1874, he filled the chair of 

 Chemistry for both departments during their union, from 1874 to 

 1894. In 1885 he succeeded Professor Lupton as Dean of the De- 

 partment of Pharmacy in Yanderbilt University, and for the year 

 1885-86 he had charge also of the School of Chemistry in the Aca- 

 demic Department. His work of fifty-two years as a teacher, one- 

 half of which was in connection with Yanderbilt University, closed 

 in 1900; but the University continued to print his name in the Fac- 

 ulty as Professor Emeritus. His letter of resignation contains the 

 following paragraph: 



"I hereby tender my resignation as Professor of Natural History 

 and Geology in Yanderbilt University. I am impelled to this course 

 by failing strength and ill health. To me this severance is a break- 

 ing of many strong and lender ties. With me the University loses 

 the last member of the original Academic faculty. A band of noble 

 brothers was that faculty. I look back on them with much appre- 



