nMtoEta 



TORREYA 



Vol. 32 January-February, 1932 No. 1 



Dr. John Torrey in the Catskills 

 Raymond H. Torrey 



An acquaintance established by correspondence, between 

 the writer and Mr. Franklin Benner, of the Franklin Benner 

 Land Company, of Minneapolis, Minn., who wrote to inquire 

 if I were related to Dr. John Torrey (which I am not, or at least 

 only very distantly, by way of Captain William Torrey, our pro- 

 genitor in America, who settled in Weymouth, Mass., in 1640) 

 has brought to me from Mr. Benner, an autograph letter, writ- 

 ten by Dr. Torrey, from Princeton, N. J., July 22, 1844. This 

 letter was to Robert Benner, 33 John Street, New York, re- 

 garding a trip which they and others proposed to make to the 

 Catskills, for botanical collecting. 



Mr. Benner, whose father Robert Benner married a niece of 

 Dr. Torrey, writes as follows concerning the letter: 



"In looking over some old correspondence I came across 

 some old letters to my father, and I thought perhaps you or the 

 Society would like to have an autographed letter from him. The 

 subject matter of these letters was the trip to the Catskill 

 Mountains, for the study of the botany of that region, as Dr. 

 Torrey was then preparing a monograph of the flora of that re- 

 gion published in the geological survey of the state. They spent 

 some time in the Catskills and my father joined them. While 

 on that expedition they found a huge boulder some ten or fifteen 

 feet in diameter on the top of 'Round Top' and they spent near- 

 ly a week digging away the ground underneath, and finally, 

 when they had it loose enough, they started it down the moun- 

 tain with levers and it did not stop until it got to the bottom 

 cutting a swathe through all the forest in its way. Whether this 

 item pertains to the study of Botany, I do not know, but evi- 

 dently it amused the botanists. On this trip my father met for 

 the first time Dr. Torrey's niece, whom he later married, and 

 who was my mother." 



Round Top is presumably the summit now called by that 

 name, about 3500 feet above sea, south of Haines Falls, and 



