Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/611

Rh elder son, John, known as, b. in Ipswich, Mass., 19 March, 1639; d. in Boston, Mass., 27 Nov., 1707, left Harvard without taking a degree in order to accept a commission in the parliamentary army, in which his father's brother, Stephen, and his mother's brother, Thomas Reade, were colonels. After seeing active service in Scotland, where he was for some time in command at Cardross, he accompanied Gen. George Monk on his famous march to London; but his regiment was disbanded at the Restoration, and he returned to New England in 1663, and passed the remainder of his life in the military and civil employment of Connecticut. He served with distinction in the Indian wars, sat in the council of Sir Edmund Andros, and was appointed in 1690 major-general commanding the joint expedition against Canada. The lukewarm support of the New York government and the bad faith of its Indian allies made this campaign a failure, but Fitz-John received a vote of thanks from Connecticut, and in 1693 was made agent of that colony in London, where he passed four years at the court of William III. His services in this capacity were so highly appreciated that, soon after his return in 1698, he was elected governor of Connecticut, continuing in office till his death nearly ten years later, while on a visit to his brother in Boston. His own principal residence was at New London, where he was noted for his hospitality. He was neither a great scholar like his father, nor a great statesman like his grandfather, but he was deservedly respected as a gallant soldier, a skilful administrator, and a man of conspicuous integrity and patriotism. He married, somewhat late in life, Elizabeth, daughter of George Tongue, of New London, and left an only child, Mary, who married Col. John Livingston, of Albany, but died without issue. &mdash; Another son of the second John, Wait Still, jurist, b. in Boston, 27 Feb., 1643; d. there, 7 Nov., 1717, was early in the military service of Connecticut, and took part in Indian wars; but after his father's death he resided chiefly in Massachusetts, where he was for about thirty years a member of the executive council and major-general of the provincial forces, besides holding, for shorter periods, the offices of judge of admiralty, judge of the superior court, and chief justice. He took an active part in the overthrow of Sir Edmund Andros, and an effort was made by the popular party to have him appointed governor, in place of Joseph Dudley. Judge Sewall speaks of him as &ldquo;the great stay and ornament of the council, a very pious, prudent, courageous New England man; for parentage, piety, prudence, philosophy, love to New England ways and people very eminent.&rdquo; In the intervals of public duty he devoted himself to agriculture and the study of medicine, often practising gratuitously among his neighbors. &mdash; Wait Still's son, (1681-1747), was graduated at Harvard in 1700, served for some time as a magistrate of Connecticut, and was afterward a fellow of the Royal society of London, to whose &ldquo;Transactions&rdquo; he was a contributor, and one of whose volumes was dedicated to him. &mdash; John, physicist, b. in Boston, Mass., 19 Dec., 1714: d. in Cambridge, Mass., 3 May, 1779, was the son of Chief-Justice Adam Winthrop. He was graduated at Harvard in 1732, and from 1738 till his death was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy there. The range of his acquirements was great, and he did good original work in several departments of science. It seems likely that we owe in part to his influence the attention of Benjamin Franklin and of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford,

to physical science. He was in the 18th century the foremost teacher of science in this country. In 1740 he observed the first of the transits of Mercury that took place in that century. In 1761 he observed the second transit, making a journey to Newfoundland for this purpose. The voyage was made in a vessel in the provincial service and the expenses were defrayed by the colonial government. This is believed to have been the earliest purely scientific expedition sent out by any American state. In the development of astronomy Prof. Winthrop made other important observations in the matter of comets, the results of which were published by means of two printed lectures (1759). He had an opportunity to observe the facts connected with the great earthquake that occurred in New England on 18 Nov., 1755. It was his habit to publish the more popular and interesting parts of his work in public lectures in the college chapel. His observations on this phenomenon were contained in a discourse printed in Boston within a month after the catastrophe. The observations recorded in this memoir and the scientific considerations that he based on them show that Winthrop had a clearer conception of earthquake movements than any of his predecessors. He recognized the fact that the movement was essentially a wave in the earth's crust, and perceived that the buildings affected by the shock took on a pendulum movement. Observing that the bricks were thrown from the chimney of his house, which had a height of thirty-two feet, so that they fell at a point thirty feet from the column, he com- puted the speed of their motion, and ascertained it to be twenty-one feet a second. He also perceived the fact that the shorter the vibrations the quicker they performed the movement. He saw also the analogy between the vibrations of the earth and those of the chord of a musical instrument. In this and many other observations he showed a capacity for observation and for the application of computative methods to this class of phenomena that was unusual in the scientists of his time. It appears probable that he was the first person to apply computations to earthquake phenomena. If this be the case, it may be claimed for him that he laid the foundations of the important science of seismology. Prof. Joseph Levering, in his account of &ldquo;Boston and Science&rdquo; in the &ldquo;Memorial History of Boston,&rdquo; says that &ldquo;Prof. Winthrop's views of the nature of heat were greatly in advance of the science of his day.&rdquo; We find in his lecture on earthquakes that he looked to the action of heat for an explanation of seismic disturbances. He had a considerable share in the public life of the colony where he lived. He was several years judge of probate for Middlesex county, a member of the governor's council in 1773-'4, and in the Revolution threw his influence with the patriots. The University of Edinburgh gave him the honorary degree of LL. D. in 1771, and the Royal society of London made him a member. Although Prof. Winthrop has left no work of any importance to modern physicists, his influence in determining a scientific spirit in New England was great. He laid the foundations of scientific inquiry in Harvard. Though not the earliest of the Massachusetts men of science &mdash; for he was preceded by Thomas Brattle, Zabdiel Boylston, and others &mdash; he deserves the first place among the pioneers of natural science in New England. His publications include &ldquo;Lecture on Earthquakes&rdquo; (1755); &ldquo;Answer to Mr. Prince's Letter on Earthquakes&rdquo; (1756); &ldquo;Account of some Fiery Meteors&rdquo; (1765); and &ldquo;Two Lectures on the Parallax&rdquo; (1769). His paper &ldquo;Cogitata de