Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/191

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TRUMBULL
TRUMBULL

1873 he was chosen lecturer on Indian languages of North America at Yale, but loss of health and other labors soon compelled his resignation. The degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by Yale in 1871 and by Harvard in 1887, while Columbia gave him an L. H. D. in 1887. He has been a large •contributor of articles to the proceedings of socie- ties and to periodicals, notably on the significance of the word " Shawmut," the supposed Indian name of Boston (1866), the significance of " Mas- sachusetts " (1867), and on the Algonkin name of "Manitou" (1870). His larger memoirs include " The Colonial Records of Connecticut " (3 vols., Hartford, 1850-'9) ; u Historical Notes on some Provisions of the Connecticut Statutes" (1860-'l); " The Defence of Stonington against a British Squadron, August, 1814 " (1864) ; Roger Williams's "Key into the Language of America" (Provi- dence, 1866) ; " Thomas Lechford's ' Plain Dealing, or Newes from New England, 1642'" (Boston, 1867); "The Origin of McFingal" (1868); "The Composition of Indian Geographical Names "(1870) ; " The Best Method of studying the Indian Lan- guages " (1871) ; " Some Mistaken Notions of Al- gonkin Grammar" (1871); "Historical Notes on the Constitution of Connecticut " (1872) ; " Notes on Forty Algonkin Versions of the Lord's Prayer " (1873) ; " On the Algonkin Verb " (1876) ; " The True Blue-Laws of Connecticut and the False Blue-Laws Invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters " (1876); "Indian Names of Places in and on the Borders of Connecticut, with Interpretations " •(1881) ; and also edited " The Memorial History of Hartford County" (2 vols., Boston, 1886). The catalogue of Americana belonging to George Brin- ley was made by him at the time of the sale of the collection, 1879-86, and gained for him the repu- tation of being perhaps the "most learned and .acute bibliographer in America." — His brother, Henry Clay, author, b. in Stonington, Conn., 8 June, 1831, was educated privately and for a time studied in Williston seminary. In 1851 he re- moved to Hartford and engaged in railroad busi- ness, but in 1858 was appointed Sunday-school missionary for Connecticut, which office he held until 1862. He was commissioned to the 10th Con- necticut regiment as a chaplain, ordained a clergy- man of the Congregational church, and served until the close of the civil war, except during a >art of 1863, when he was in prison in South Caro- ina and Virginia, having been captured before Fort Wagner. In 1865 he was appointed missionary secretary of the American Sunday - school union for New England, and in 1872 normal secretary of the same. He settled in Philadelphia in 1875, where he has since edited " The Sunday-School Times." During 1881 he travelled through Egypt, Arabia, and Syria, and while crossing the desert ■of Arabia Petrasa located the biblical site of Ka- desh Barnea on the southern boundary-line of Pal- estine, which had long been an object of research. He was Lyman Beecher lecturer at Yale in 1888. The degree of A. M. was conferred on him by Yale in 1866, and that of D. D. by Lafayette in 1881 and the University of the city of New York in 1882. His published books are many ; the more recent have been republished in London, and include " Some Army Sermons " (Hartford, 1864) ; " The Knightly Soldier" (Boston, 1865); "A Useful Life and a Fragrant Memory" (Philadelphia, 1866); " Falling in Harness " (1867) ; " The Captured Scout of the Army of the James " (Boston, 1869) ; " Chil- dren in the Temple" (Springfield, 1869); "The Worth of an Historic Consciousness " (Hartford, 1870); "A Model Superintendent "(New York, 1880); "Kadesh Barnea" (1884); " Teaching and Teach- ers " (Philadelphia, 1884); " The Blood Covenant " (New York, 1885) ; and " Yale Lectures on the Sun- day-School" (1888).— Another brother, Guidon, artist, b. in Stonington, Conn., 5 May, 1841, studied art under various teachers in Hartford, Conn., and also for a time under James M. Hart in New York. He is more successful in his paintings of fish, his best-known pictures being " Over the Fall," " A Plunge for Life," and " A Critical Moment." His last work in art was the illustration of Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson's "The China Hunters' Club" (New York, 1878). Of late years he has devoted himself principally to the study of ornithology, and has written " Names and Portraits of Birds which interest Gunners, with Descriptions in Language understanded of the People " (New York, 1888).


TRUMBULL, John, poet, b. in Westbury (now Watertown), Conn., 24 April, 1750 ; d. in Detroit, Mich., 10 May, 1831. At five years of age, without the knowledge of any one but his mother, he began the study of Latin. In 1757 he passed his exami- nation for admission to Yale, but, in consequence of his youth, he did not enter, and spent six years in study. He was graduated in 1767, and with his friend and fellow-student, Timothy Dwight, wrote papers in the style of the " Spectator," which they published in the Boston and New Haven journals in 1769. They became tutors at Yale in 1771, and Trumbull at the same time studied law, which he was licensed to practise in 1773. He published a poetical satire on the prevailing mode of education, entitled " The Progress of Dulness " (1772), adding the second and third parts a year later. In 1773 he entered the law-office of John Adams in Boston, and recorded his impressions of the spirit of free- dom and resistance in an " Elegy on the Times," a poem of sixty-three stanzas on the port bill, and other colo- nial themes (Bos- ton, 1774). He re- turned to New Ha- ven in 1774, and, while practising law, wrote the first two cantos of " Mc- Fingal," a modern epic poem in Hudi- brastic verse, in which he described the American con- test and the char- acter and customs

of the times, and

satirized the manner and extravagances of both his own countrymen find the British (Philadelphia, 1774). He married Sarah, daughter of Col. Leveret Hubbard, in 1776. and returned to Westbury, whence he removed to Hartford in 1781. He there completed "McFingal" (Hartford, 1782; 6th ed., London, 1793 ; new ed., with notes, Boston, 1826 ; revised and corrected, with notes by Benson J. Lossing, New York, 1860). Its popularity was great, and there were more than thirty pirated im- pressions of the poem in pamphlet and other forms. Two or three couplets of McFingal that still circu- late as proverbs are generally credited to Samuel Butler, author of " Hudibras " :

" No man e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law,"

and,

" But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen,"