NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Fifty years later we find his son, Capt. Daniel King, a resident 

 merchant of St. Kitts, in the West Indies. On the floor of St. 

 George's chapel at Basseterre, on that island, is a stone bearing 

 the arms of the King family and recording the death of Benjamin 

 King, presumably Daniel's son. 



Benjamin King, a grandson of the first Daniel, moved from 

 Salem to Newport in the first half of the eighteenth century, 

 dying there in 1786. In him already was Commerce giving way 

 in a measure to Science, for he displayed strong tastes in the 

 latter pursuit, which the means acquired in the former permitted 

 him to indulge, and he made a point of importing from Europe 

 the latest philosophical instruments. It is a family tradition 

 that the great Benjamin Franklin, on one of his voyages between 

 Philadelphia and Boston, visited him to view the latest electric 

 novelty — a Ley den jar. 



Next Art came to pay her tribute, for Samuel, son of Benja- 

 min the scientist, was a portrait painter of no mean repute, and 

 numbered among his pupils the famous Washington Allston and 

 Malbone, the miniaturist. 



The maternal side contributed literary culture and statesman- 

 ship. 



The Honorable Ashur Bobbins, one of King's great-grand- 

 fathers, was born* at Weathersfield, Connecticut, in 1761, and 

 died at Newport, in 1845. He graduated at Yale in 1782, mar- 

 ried Mary Ellery in 1791, was United States district attorney at 

 Newport in 1812, received the honorary degree of LL.D. from 

 Brown in 1835, and from 1825 to 1839 served his country with 

 distinction in the United States Senate. He was distinguished 

 as an orator and classical scholar and was a friend and associate 

 of Daniel Webster. 



William Little, another great-grandfather, was a graduate of 

 Yale in the class of 1777 and received an honorary 'degree from 

 Harvard in 1786. His son, William Little, Jr., was already dis- 

 tinguished as a linguist and classical scholar, when he died at the 

 early age of 10. His wife, Mrs. Sophia Little, Clarence's grand- 

 mother, from whom he evidently inherited many characteristic 

 traits, was a poetess and philanthropist, a woman of remarkable 

 public spirit, energy, and decision of character. She retained 

 her mental and phvsical vigor in the most remarkable degree up 



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