Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/349

Rh the quadrant. His works include "Voyage fait en 1771 et en 1772 en diverses parties de l'Europe et de l'Amerique," etc. (Paris, 1778).

BORDEN, Enoch Robbins, journalist, b. in New Sharon, N. J.. 3 March, 1822 ; d. in Trenton, N. J., 16 May, 1870. ,For twenty years he was editor of the " Daily State Gazette," except while serving as aide-de-camp to Gen. Newell and as secretary to the New Jersey state senate in 1865-'6. Under the administration of President Fillmore he held an appointment in the public document department, and afterward in the pension agency at Washington.

BORDEN, Gail, inventor, b. in Norwich, N. Y., 6 Nov., 1801; d. in Borden, Texas, 11 Jan., 1874. His parents were of New England descent, and in 1814 they emigrated from New York, settling in Covington, Ky., and later in Madison, then in the territory of Indiana. In 1822, finding his health impaired, he removed to Mississippi, where he taught, and also filled the positions of county surveyor and U. S. deputy surveyor. In 1829 he went to Texas. He was elected delegate to the convention that, in 1833, petitioned the Mexican government for separation, and he was also in charge of the official surveys of the colony, compiling the first topographical map of Texas. The land office at San Felipe was under his charge up to the time of the Mexican invasion. In 1835, with his brother, Thomas H., he established the &ldquo;Telegraph and Texas Land Register&rdquo; at San Felipe, which was afterward transferred to Houston, and was the first and only newspaper published in Texas during the war for the independence of that colony. After the establishment of the republic of Texas he was appointed by President Houston first collector of the port of Galveston. That city in 1837 had not been laid out, and its first surveys were made by him. From 1839 till 1857 he was agent of the Galveston city company, a corporation owning several thousand acres of land on which the city is now built. About 1849 his attention was drawn to the need of more suitable supplies for emigrants crossing the plains, and after some experimenting he produced the &ldquo;pemmican,&rdquo; which Dr. Kane carried with him on his Arctic expedition. The &ldquo;meat biscuit,&rdquo; the most simple, economical, and efficient form of portable concentrated food, was invented by him. This article gained for him the &ldquo;great council medal&rdquo; at the world's fair, London, 1852, and he was elected an honorary member of the London Society of Arts. Meeting with opposition from the army contractors, he was unsuccessful in the manufacture of his biscuit, and lost his entire means. He then removed to the north and turned his attention to the preservation of milk, and in 1853 applied for a patent for &ldquo;producing concentrated sweet milk by evaporation in vacuo, the same having no sugar or other foreign matter mixed with it,&rdquo; but failed of securing it until 1856. Later, the New York Condensed Milk Company was formed, and works were established at Brewster's station, N. Y., and at Elgin, Ill. During the civil war his condensed milk was extensively used in the army and navy. Condensed meat-juices were then experimented upon, and he produced an extract of beef of superior quality, which at first he made in Elgin, but afterward established his factory at Borden, Texas. Later, he produced excellent preparations of condensed tea, coffee, and cocoa, and in 1862 patented a process by means of which the juice of fruit &mdash; such as apples, currants, and grapes &mdash; could be reduced to one seventh of its original bulk. Mr. Borden acquired great wealth from his patents, and was very liberal in the use of his money.

BORDEN, Simeon, inventor, b. in Freetown, now Fall River, Mass., 29 Jan., 1798; d. in Fall River, 28 Oct., 1856. He acquired a rudimentary education in the district school at Tiverton, R. I., and pursued by himself the study of geometry and applied mathematics. Without serving any apprenticeship, he made himself a thorough work- man in wood and metals. He also practised surveying with success, constructing his own compass. In 1828 he took charge of a machine-shop in Fall River. He devised and constructed, in 1830, an apparatus for measuring the base line of the trigonometrical survey of Massachusetts, which was found to be more accurate and convenient than any instrument of the kind then in existence. The apparatus, fifty feet in length, was enclosed in a tube, and was accompanied by four compound microscopes, the tube and microscopes being mounted on trestles, and adjusted so as to move in any desired direction. Mr. Borden assisted in fixing the base line, and in the subsequent triangulation in 1834 the state authorities appointed him superintendent of the survey, which he completed in 1841. This work, the first geodetic survey accomplished in America, is described in the ninth volume of the "American Philosophical Transactions." Its accuracy was subsequently established by the U. S. coast survey. Mr. Borden was employed as surveyor in the case of Rhode Island V. Massachusetts, tried before the U. S. supreme court in 1844. After the case was decided he surveyed and marked the boundary-line between the two states. He engaged later in the construction of railroads, and in 1851 published a volume entitled "A System of Useful Formulæ, adapted to the Practical Operations of Locating and Constructing Railroads." In 1851 he accomplished the engineering feat of stringing a telegraph wire, suspended on masts 220 feet high, across the Hudson river from the Palisades to Fort Washington, a distance of more than a mile.

BORDLEY, John Beale, agricultural writer, b. in Annapolis, Md., 11 Feb., 1727; d. in Philadelphia, 26 Jan., 1804. He was a lawyer by profession, was prothonotary of Baltimore co. in 1753- '66, judge of the provincial court in 1766 and of the admiralty court in 1767-76, and a commissioner to fix the boundary-line between Maryland and Delaware in 1768. He was one of the few members of the provincial councils who sympathized with the movement for independence. Removing to Philadelphia in 1793, he established there the first agricultural society in the United States. By his experiments upon his estate in Wye island, Chesapeake bay, and by his writings, he was instrumental in diffusing a knowledge of the art of husbandry. He published "Forsyth on Fruit-Trees, with Notes"; "On Rotation of Crops" (1792); "Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs, with Plates" (1799-1801); and "A View of the Courses of Crops in England and Maryland" (1784).

'''BOREMAN. Arthur Ingraham''', senator, b. in Waynesbnrg, Pa., 24 July, 1823; d. 19 April, 1896. "While he was a child his father removed to western Virginia. He received a common-school education, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1845, and began practice at Parkersburg. He was elected to the Virginia house of delegates in 1855, and re-elected for each successive term until the beginning of the civil war. He was a member of the extra session of the legislature in 1861, and a vigorous opponent of secession. Of the Wheeling convention of unionists of the northwestern counties, called in June, 1861, for the purpose of reor-