Alerander Winchell, 75 
lecture which called together so many that his class room had to be ex- 
changed for University Hail—that his last public address was again 
devoted to one of the noble problems of creation. It was a fitting sub- 
ject for the last discourse, and a fitting close for the public life of so 
great, so able and so devout a man. 
A noble and striking personality,a man of great learning and lofty 
ideals, has been stricken down, and-we grieve at his loss; a gentle and 
earnest spirit has left us, and we mourn. * * * 
The University Musical Society, the Ann Arbor Geological 
Society, the Wesleyan Guild of the University of Michigan, and 
the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal church at Ann Arbor, of 
all of which he was president, adopted similar tributes. The 
Hamilton (N. Y.) Theological Seminary and the Davenport Academy 
of Science adopted resolutions of regard and sympathy. 
The Geological Society of America, of which he was also pres- 
ident, at its meeting in the following August, had an appropriate 
memorial address, delivered by his brother, Prof. N. H. Winchell, 
and adopted resolutions presented by a committee, of which Prof. 
Edward Orton, of Ohio, was chairman, The address and resolu- 
tions are published in the Bulletin of the Society for 1891. 
A multitude of tributes from personal and _ scientific friends 
were received by his stricken family, but they need not here be 
further referred to. An extract from one simply will suffice: 
My admiration for him was boundless. He was the most learned man 
I have ever met, and I preferred his society to that of any other Ameri- 
can scholar.— Bishop Newman. 
- Il, PERSONAL HISTORY. 
Alexander Winchell was born of parents in humble but com- 
fortable circumstances, December 31, 1824, in the town of North- 
east, Dutchess county, New York. The ancestral homestead, a 
large frame farm-house, for many years used as a hostelry by his 
grandfather, Col. Martin EK. Winchell, for the accommodation of 
the travelers who passed by the stage route between the Hudson 
valley and the towns of southwestern Massachusetts, still standing, 
is surrounded by an undulating mountain plateau forming one of 
the spurs of the Taconic mountains, and long known as Win- 
chell mountain, His father was Horace Winchell, fifth child and 
third son of Col. M. KE. Winchell. His mother was Caroline 
McAllister, of Northeast, of Scotch-Irish ancestry, from the 
Protestant families of the north of Ireland. His father’s descent 
is traceable directly to Robert Winchell, an Englishman who set- 
