HENRY BER(}H 



IN the obituary list of the month of March 

 is registered the name of Henry Bergh, 

 the founder and president of the Society 

 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; 

 a man who, although he achieved no dis- 

 tinction in arms or art or science, was 

 nevertheless the acknowledged peer of the 

 nation's greatest, in any and every depart- 

 ment of thought or action. 



Henry Bergh was essentially a man of 

 his age, a man who has impressed himself 

 ineffaceably upon his generation, and that 

 too for great good; a man who has moulded 

 the sentiments, and thereby so modified the 

 character of the nation that his life and 

 labors and personal characteristics are of 

 never failing national interest. 



Henry Bergh, as would be inferred from 



his name, is of German descent. His grand- 

 father, a ship carpenter by trade, came over 

 with his young wife from the Rhineland in 

 the early part of the eighteenth century, 

 and settled at Staatsburg-on-the-Hudson, 

 where he established a shipyard, which 

 proved a successful industry. In this he 

 was succeeded by his eldest son. Christian, 

 who married Miss Elizabeth Ivers, the 

 daughter of a Connecticut gentleman, by 

 whom he had several children, one of 

 whom, born in 1823, is the subject of our 

 sketch. The shipbuilding business, trans- 

 ferred to Brooklyn, came by inheritance to 

 him and his brother Edwin, but Henry sold 

 out his share and commenced a course of 

 study at Columbia College, reading for the 

 law, but never finishing his course. He had 



