James Hall Of Albany, Geologist And Paleontologist, 1811-1898

JAMES HALL OF ALBANY GEOLOGIST AND PALAEONTOLOGIST 1811-1898 - 1921 - PREFATORY WORD - The official scientific career of James Hall extended over a period of nearly sixty-three years. During this entire stretch of time he served the same State without interruption. He was a youth of 25 when he entered this service, an old man of 87 when this service ceased. It is probable that this record of official scientific activity has never been equaled in duration. As it was long in time, so it was great in fruitfulness and admirable in devotion. During his life he touched the rapidly developing science of geology in many of its phases in nearly all through the period of its romantic adventures. His publications are spread through a score of quarto volumes and several hundred pamphlets, but the intimate story of his life has never been written. The present volume is the effort to portray the man as he was the influences that guided him and that he imparted the work he did and the manner of doing it the friendships he made and the esteem he won. It has been prepared by one who was closely associated with him during his last twelve years. This work has reached unexpected size, but the interests of this single life to American geology and to the public service, its lessons of singleness of purpose and loyalty, seem to justify the picture as here presented. JOHN M. CLARKE CHAPTER I PARENTAGE, BOYHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS AT HINGHAM Hingham its location and settlement - Arrival of James Hall, Sr., from England - A woolen-weaver - General Lincolns mill - The Old Ship Church - Death of the parents - The haunts of my childhood -Boy interest in Nature - Poverty at home - Hingham schools and schoolmasters -Increase . N. Smith - Boyhood friendships and letters - Charles S. Kendall - Burning of Doctor Beechers church - The octogenarians - Halls lack of interest in the rocks - Boston influences - Martin Gay - The Linnaean Society - The Boston Society of Natural History - Amos Binney, George B. Emerson, Augustus A. Gould, D. Humphreys Storer - Natural History of Massachusetts. I N the early years of the last century the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, a cradle of distinguished Americans, was devoting itself to the practise of a liberal theology and, among other things, to the manufacture of woolens, satinets and silk umbrellas. Situated on the south shore of Boston Bay, this venerable post-town dated its first organized settlement back to the year 1633, and its t t assessment as a plantation to 1635, when the Reverend Peter Hobart and twenty-nine others Peter Hobarts daughter Rebecca rnamed, at Hingham, 1679, Daniel, son of Captain John Mason thence the writer of these pages. 191 10 JAMES HALL arrived out from Old Hingham, came ashore in the Cove, took up their lots and built their church. The village had grown to be one of mills which ground and sawed and wove for the countryside and made twenty thousand silk umbrellas a year and all honestly done, for it has been set down in the history of the town that some of these umbrellas were still in service after seventy years of use Prettily set on its own harbor of the bay where the tidal inlets of the waterside were made to serve some of its mills, and indeed do yet its rounded and weathered granite knobs and its occasional gravelly drumlins command the isletdotted expanse of the harbor and, out beyond, the broader waters bounded by the long armof Nantasket Beach. Its form, said Johnson in his Wonder Working Providence 1654, referring to the coast of Hingham, is somewhat intricate to describe by reason of the seas washing crookes where it beats upon a mouldering shore...