Patterson.] ^<J(J [Dee. IG, 



noted Philadelpliia Museum. To him the country owes an extensive 

 series of portraits of the most distinguished men of our revolutionary 

 and post-revolutionary era. In the course of his profession, having been 

 called on to make drawings of bones of the mammoth, his attention be- 

 came attracted to natural history, and he began the accumulation of ob- 

 jects illustrating that department of science. - From very small beginnings, 

 Wilson Peale, by energy, enthusiasm and self-sacrifice above all praise, suc- 

 ceeded in building up the Museum referred to, which Philadelphians of 

 a past generation recall as one of the most interesting and useful institu- 

 tions of our city. He was a member of our Society — which was natu- 

 rally much interested in the success of his work — whence it happened 

 that, while the Museum was still in its early stage of growth, in the year 



1794, it was located in our building, the same which we now occupy ; 

 and here, in the northwest room, second story, now known as the Libra- 

 rian's room, Fkanklin Peale was born, on the 15th day of October, 



1795. His mother was Elizabeth De Peyster, second wife of Charles 

 Wilson Peale. She died while he was quite young, but his childhood and 

 youth were tenderly cared for by a stepmother, Wilson Peale's third wife, 

 a member of the Society of Friends. 



The father's views on the subject of education were peculiar. The 

 children were not directed according to any systematic routine, but left 

 much to their own choice in their course of study. They were guided 

 according to a fancied ability, and means were furnished (but not always 

 the teachers) to stimulate them to the acquisition of the knowledge to- 

 wards which their minds seemed naturally bent. Books, tools, canvas, 

 and pencils, besides the opportunities to see what had been done by 

 others, he thought sufficient, provided there was a disposition to learn ; 

 otherwise he considered any attempt to push them forward as but lost 

 time. If such a plan of education seems open to criticism, it may, per- 

 haps, be justified by the result, which has furnished to us, in the Peale 

 family, Rembrandt, the artist ; Franklin, the mechanician ; and Titian, 

 the naturalist. 



The instruction received by Mr. Peale seems, therefore, to have been 

 quite irregular. He had no systematic course of training, either in school 

 or college. He went first to a country school in Bucks County, was a 

 short time at the University of Pennsylvania, and finished his education 

 at the Academy in Germantown, where the family then resided. 



The bent of Mr. Peale's genius towards mechanics was developed at a 

 very early period. While quite young, he became distinguished as a 

 manufacturer of all the usual apparatus for games, and many curious 

 toys. As a school boy, he demonstrated a fondness for surveying as well 

 as mechanics — in the interval of school hours surveying his father's farm 

 near Germantown, and developing also the water power of some neigh- 

 boring streams. 



* I may be pardoned, I trust, the mention of the fact, since it illustrates a family friendship, ex- 

 tending now through several generations, that the first article presented to Mr. Peale, and the 

 earliest encouragement of his project, was from Robert Patterson, a former President of the Soci- 

 ety, and the grandfather of the writer. 



