374 
THOMAS LINCOLN CASEY. 
many difficulties and embarrassments, succeeded in establish¬ 
ing the extensive factory for steel guns which is now in opera¬ 
tion at Watervliet arsenal, West Troy, New York. 
He was happily married in 1856 to Miss Laura Walker, 
of Kentucky, who survives him, with two sons, Captain J. 
Walker Benet, Ordnance Department, United States Army, 
and Lawrence Y. Benet, Ordnance Engineer of the Hotchkiss 
Ordnance Company. 
Rogers Birnie. 
THOMAS LINCOLN CASEY. 
1831-1896. 
[Read before the Society, May 23, 1896.] 
One of the forty-three signers of the initiatory letter to 
Professor Joseph Henry, in the early months of the year 1871, 
looking to the establishment of the Philosophical Society of 
Washington and requesting him to preside at its first meet¬ 
ing for organization, was Major Thomas Lincoln Casey, of the 
Corps of Engineers, United States Army, then in charge of the 
Division of Fortifications in the office of the chief of that 
corps. He had been stationed in Washington somewhat 
more than three years and had become well known among 
the learned men of the city for his interest in and acquaint¬ 
ance with the sciences qualifying him to aid materially in 
the foundation of this Society. 
He was born on May 10, 1831, at Madison Barracks, 
Sacketts Harbor, New York, where his father, the late Brevet 
Major General Silas Casey, a regular army officer and grad¬ 
uate of the West Point Militar}^ Academy, was then stationed. 
Naturally the child thus born and growing up in the army 
became a part of it, following the steps of his father and en¬ 
tering the Military A cademy himself at the age of seventeen, 
on July 1, 1848. From this time onward to the day of his 
death his career was unusually successful and brilliant. It 
