254 Joseph Barrell. 



The most widely known and wealthiest was Joseph 

 Barrell of Boston (1739/40-1804), after whom the sub- 

 ject of our sketch, his great-grandson, was named. He 

 married three times and had twenty children. This 

 Joseph Barrell was an original thinker and a good 

 speaker and writer. He is said to have " early espoused 

 and firmly maintained the cause of his country," and 

 for a time represented the town of Boston in the State 

 Legislature. He lived well, and it was in his splendid 

 home that General Washington was entertained during 

 his visit to Boston. He was also one of the group of 

 men who fitted out the ship "Columbia" and sent her 

 into the Pacific, where in 1792 her crew discovered the 

 Columbia River. Later they purchased of the Indians 

 the territory about this stream, and in this way began 

 the colonization of what has since grown to be the 

 northern Pacific states of the American Union. 



The father of Professor Barrell, Henry Ferdinand, 

 was born in New York City, October 3, 1833. His son 

 says he "grew up with a strongly developed taste for 

 books, for nature, and for life in the country." Henry 

 Ferdinand's father bought him a farm near Warwick, 

 Orange County, New York, and it was here that he met 

 Elizabeth Wisner, whom he married on April 15, 1858. 

 The Wisner s, originally from Switzerland, had been land 

 holders for 150 years and officers in the colonial and 

 later wars. In 1864, Henry Ferdinand sold this farm 

 and bought another of seventy acres at New Providence, 

 New Jersey, and here from 1875 to 1895 he was chair- 

 man of the trustees of the public schools in which the 

 subject of this biography received his primary educa- 

 tion. He was also interested in the public school library, 

 which later became the town* library. He had nine chil- 

 dren, of which Joseph was the fifth child and the fourth 

 son. 



Joseph was born at New Providence on December 15, 

 1869. As a child, he was more interested in books on 

 natural history, astronomy, and history, than in litera- 

 ture. His mother, now eighty-one years old, and after 

 whom he takes, relates in a personal communication that 

 " Joseph was always a good son and student, and a great 

 reader. When but a lad he would get down a volume 

 of the Encyclopedia Britannica and sit for hours reading 

 it. Nothing distracted his attention. When he was tired 



