NECROLOGY • 571 



iJEMOIR OF WILLIAM BUCK DWIGHT 

 BY F. J. H. MERIULL 



. William Buck Dwight was born in Turkey at Constantinoi^le May 22. 

 1833. His father was the Eeyerend Harrison Gray Otis Dwight, who in 

 1831 settled in the Turkish capital as the first American missionary to 

 the Armenians. His mother's name was Elizabeth Barker. 



The subject of this sketch came to America in 1819 and entered Yale 

 College, from which he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of 

 Arts in 1851. He then entered the Union Theological Seminarj^ in New 

 York and was graduated in 1856. Eeturning to New Haven and renew- 

 ing his studies at Yale, he received the degree of Master of Arts in 1857. 

 and two years later was granted the baccalaureate degree in Science. 



This broad educational foundation was planned to support him in the 

 undertaking which he and his elder brother had contemplated, of found- 

 ing at Constantinople an unsectarian Christian institution for higlier 

 ■education. 



This idea was, however, soon after, absorbed and developed by others, 

 and "William B. Dwight turned his energies to the field of teaching at 

 home. 



In 1859 he married Miss Eliza Howe Schneider and in the same year 

 founded and became principal of the Englewood, New Jersey, Female 

 Institute, in which he remained until 1865. From 1865 to 1867 he was 

 occupied •\vitli work in mining geology in Virginia and Missouri, in the 

 course of which he examined and reported on the now familiar Mine La 

 ]\Iotte. and in the latter year opened a school for the children of the Mili- 

 tary Officers at West Point, New York, which he conducted until 1870. 

 He was then appointed Associate Principal and Professor of Natural 

 Sciences in the Connecticut State Normal School, at New Britain. There 

 he became actively engaged in teaching the branches to which he subse- 

 quently devoted his life, and in 1878 was called to the chair of Natural 

 History in Vassar College, which he held until his death, in August, 1906. 

 From 1878 to 1890 he was also in charge of the Zoological Department 

 in the Marthas Vineyard Summer Institute, at Cottage City, and not 

 long since was actively engaged, in cooperation with Professor N. S. 

 Shaler, in editing the definitions in geology for the Standard Dictionary. 



Shortly after taking up his residence at Poughkeepsie, Professor 

 Dwight became interested in the geology of the surrounding district. 

 Witli this began a fruitful investigation of the stratigraphy and paleon- 

 tology of the limestone belts of Dutchess county, of which the age was up 

 to that time undefined by recognized fossils, although it had been rather 



