THE 
AMERICAN GEOLOGIST. 
Vol. XXXII. JULY, 1903. No. 1. 
SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF 
CHARLES BAKER ADAMS. 
By Henry M. Seely, Middlebury, Vt. 
PORTRAIT— PLATE I. 
Amherst College was greatly honored by the men that 
graduated in the class of 1834. A member of this class in 
later years said something very like this : "We led our class, 
you at one end and I at the other." This playful recognition 
by Henry Ward Beecher of the superior scholarship of a loved 
and loving friend and classmate must not be taken too serious- 
ly for the great preacher himself was no mean scholar in rhet- 
oric and kindred studies. But whoever was the trailer evi- 
dently there was a leader of this class of eminent men. The 
'name of this leader stands as the title of this sketch. 
Charles Baker Adams was the son of Charles Jeremiah, 
and Hannah Baker Adams. His birthplace was Dorchester, 
Mas?., the time of his birth January 11, 1814. He was for- 
tunate in many respects, particularly in ancestry, in surround- 
ings, in taste, and in training. 
The father, Charles Jeremiah, was a Boston merchant born' 
at Medfield, Mass., 1789, and of that kind of stock that made 
the family name Adams famous. 
It is not always possible to say what a man is worth, the 
sum having a sliding scale from the minus of a pauper or the 
lower down minus of a criminal, to the plus high power of a 
president of the Lnited States. When Henry Adams stepped 
out on the landing place at Salem near 1632 there went with 
him unseen potentialities the value of which one can hardly 
overestimate. No bound or recoil answered the footfall of this 
man as he walked forth into the new world to which he was 
