William Henry Brewer. 71 



WILLIAM HENRY BREWER. 



Professor William Henry Brewer was born September 14, 

 1828, at Pougbkeepsie, N. Y., and while be was still an infant 

 his family moved to Enfield, about six miles from Ithaca. 

 Here Brewer's childhood and youth were spent on his father's 

 prosperous farm, where the boy took his part in all kinds of 

 farm work, from the clearing of tbe forest to the mai'keting of 

 special crops. He went to the village school and later to a 

 private academy in Ithaca, intending after his " schooling " was 

 done to follow his father's business. 



Early in life he bad a strong taste for natural science, par- 

 ticularly botany and cbemistry. The published letters of Prof. 

 J. P. Norton, wbo was studying with Johnstone, the Scotch 

 agricultural chemist, and of Prof. Horsford, a student of 

 Liebig's, fixed his attention on the application of chemistry to 

 agriculture, and the reading of Liebig's letters on the subject 

 determined bis career. It was tbe spark that fired him, that 

 "educated him away from the farm," and though he left it 

 for a year to prepare himself to be a better farmer, with no 

 thought but to live and die there, he was drawn to the ends of 

 the earth, — as a botanist, a chemist, a sanitarian and an ex- 

 plorer, the servant of all men and friend of all the world. 



In 1848 he came to New Haven, to learn from Prof. J. P. 

 Norton, of Yale College, how to analyze the soils of that hill- 

 top farm near Cayuga Lake and by it to learn how to make 

 them more productive. On the same day that Brewer reached 

 New Haven there also came George J. Brush, and then began 

 between these two an acquaintance which ripened into a com- 

 panionship for many years in the work of the Sheffield Scien- 

 tific School, and into a friendship which was lifelong. 



Just when young Brewer definitely decided to leave the 

 farm for the work of study and teaching is uncertain. After 

 study in Yale College and two years of teaching natural sci- 

 ence in the state of New York, he came again to New Haven, 

 passed his examinations and received his degree with the class 

 of 1852, the first to be graduated by the Sheffield Scientific 

 School. 



After some further time spent in teaching, he went abroad 

 and studied in Paris, Heidelberg and Munich. 



