BENJAMIN SILLIMAN CHEMIST 1779-1864 BY DANIEL COIT GILMAN BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, for fifty years a leader among the scientific men of the United States, has won the grateful remembrance of his countrymen by important services in four distinct fields. He was an admirable teacher of undergraduates in Yale College, and was an efficient aid in building up every department of that famous institution during his long connection with it. He was a pioneer in providing advanced instruction for special students of science. By his lectures delivered in every part of the country, he contributed, in a large degree, to the promotion of a love of science and to the foundation of scientific institutions. He began and maintained, with much sacrifice, the American Journal of Science which has continued for nearly fourscore years and ten to be a leading repository of American science. An extended memoir of Professor Silliman, including extracts from his correspondence, was prepared and published soon after his death by one of his younger colleagues, Professor George P. Fisher. This work is so complete and is based on such trustworthy papers, that very little, if anything, can be added to it. Moreover, the memoir is so readable that the present writer would not venture upon the preparation of this paper, were it not that younger generations, to whom "Professor Silliman" is a name and but little more, may read a short article while a long biography might deter them. By the permission of Dr. Fisher, free use will be made of his material, for which this general acknowledgment is gratefully made. I have besides read over afresh the appreciation of Professor A. W. Wright, the affectionate estimate of President Dwight, and the six volumes of Silliman's Travels,-three on Europe as seen by him in 1805-06; two on Europe visited forty-five or six years later; and one on Canada in 1810. For the sake of a personal flavor, may I be allowed to add that during my college course I attended, with my classmates, his lectures on Geology, Mineralogy and Chemistry, and I had also the privilege of being a frequent and informal visitor in his house, where I learned to love and admire his noble qualities, as I enjoyed his fund of anecdotes regarding the men whom he had met and the events of which he had been a witness or in which he had taken part. Hearing Silliman and Kingsley, friends of half a century, cap each other's stories as they sat together in the parlor, after the tea-cups, is a delightful and ineffaceable memory. I remember him at that time, when he was not far from seventy years old, six feet in height, broad-shouldered, of elastic step, with thin, grayish well-trimmed hair and a smooth chin, never hurried and never worried, entirely self-possessed before an audience, successful in his demonstrations, graceful in his gestures, fluent and sometimes discursive in his speech, loving to hear or to tell appropriate anecdotes, welcomed everywhere in private or in public, a reverent worshiper in the college chapel, where in his turn he conducted prayers, never troubled by religious doubts, an unquestioning believer. While his pecuniary resources could not be called affluent, he was always able to live like a gentleman in constant unostentatious hospitality. Among college professors I have never known one who bore his selfconscious dignity with so much ease and affability, and who extended his courtesies so naturally and so acceptably to superiors, inferiors and equals. Among hoary headed men, I have never seen a finer example of conservatism without senility and of never failing enthusiasm, enriched by experience, always ready for progress, always welcoming new light, always encouraging the young and seconding their endeavors. The ancestry of this eminent man was of the best New England stock. His grandfather, Ebenezer (Yale, 1727), was a Judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut, and the proprietor of a large landed estate in Fairfield. His father, Gold Selleck Silliman, a successful lawyer, who had graduated at Yale in 1752, took an active part in the Revolutionary struggle, and acquired the rank of Brigadier-General in the Connecticut militia. He was engaged in the battles of Long Island, White Plains and Ridgefield, and was charged with the defense of southwestern Connecticut from the incursions of the enemy. So active did he become that a special expedition was sent by Sir Henry Clinton for his arrest, which was effected at midnight, May 11, 1779, at his house on Holland Hill. After military imprisonment for a year, General Silliman was restored to his family. Soon after her husband's arrest, Mrs Silliman retreated, with her eldest child, to a retired settlement, not far away, then called North Stratford, and now Trumbull. Here Benjamin was born, August 8, 1779. When he was eleven years old, his father died, July 21, 1790, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. The mother traced her descent from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, of the Mayflower Pilgrims, whose romantic story has been told by the poet Longfellow. She was the daughter of Rev. Joseph Fish, for fifty years a Congregational minister in North Stonington, Conn. Her death occurred in 1818 when her son, at the age of forty years, had acquired distinction. Both parents were of unusual excellence, well born, but not in affluence, well placed, well connected, well educated, very patriotic and deeply religious. Until the death of the mother, the home of the Silliman family continued to be in that part of Fairfield known as Holland Hill, some two or three miles from the village. Upon the same lofty ridge, commanding a beautiful view over Long Island Sound and its adjacent coasts, is Greenfield Hill, where Timothy Dwight, afterwards President of Yale College, maintained an academy |