Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/652

618 He held the office of secretary from the time of its organization until 1866, when he was elected presi- dent, and remained in office till his death. Under his direction the company furnished bonds, bank- notes, revenue-stamps tor the governments and banks of Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, South and Central America, as well as for the govern- ment of the United States. He took an active interest in astronomy, and aided in establishing the Dudley observatory in Albany. At the time of his death he was president of the Microscopical society of New York, and he had made numerous investigations in this branch of science.

GAY, Claude, French naturalist, b. in Dra- guignan, 18 March, 1800 ; d. in Paris, 6 April, 1863. In 1822 he went to Paris to assist at the course of lectures in the museum, in order to study zoology and prepare himself for voyages that he projected. After a preliminary excursion to Greece and Asia Minor, he went to Chili to study the flora of South America, arriving at Valparaiso in March, 1828. The results of this expedition were so important that the Chilian government commissioned him, in 1829, to take astronomical observations and pre- pare a scientific survey of the republic. But he was greatly hampered in his work by want of proper instruments, and in 1832 went to Paris, where, during a stay of six months, several instruments of his own invention were constructed for him. He returned to Chili in 1833, and began a ten-years' exploration of the republic, in which he visited every province and the islands of Juan Fernandez and the archipelago of Chiloe. He made also the most detailed bibliographic investigations, taking copies of every important document, and soon had gathered an enormous collection of historical facts and an herbarium of over 4,000 species. The gov- ernment bestowed the highest honors upon him, and in 1841 congress appropriated the means to publish his work. He also explored Peru and the course of the Ucayali river, and visited Euenos Ayres and Rio Janeiro, and in 1843 returned to France, where he prepared for publication his great work " Historia Fisica y PoUtica de Chile " (Paris and Santiago, 1843-'51, 24 vols., with an atlas in 2 vols.). In May, 1856, Gay was elected a member of the Academy of sciences in the botanical section. He made a journey through Russia and Tartary in 1856-'8, and toward the end of the latter year was sent by the academy to study the mining system of the United States, returning in 1860. He published, besides his great work mentioned above, •' Conside- raciones sobre las Minas de Mercurio de Andacolla e Illapel con su posicion Geologica" (Valparaiso, 1837 ; Paris, 1851) ; " Noticias sobre las islas de Juan Fernandez " (Valparaiso, 1840) ; " Origine de la Pomme de terre " (Paris, 1851 ; a translation of an article in " La Araueana " of Santiago in 1834) ; " Triple variation de I'aiguille aimantee dans les parties Quest de I'Amerique " (1854) ; " Carte ge- neral e du Chili" (1855); "Considerations sur les Mines du Perou, comparees aux mines du Chili " (1855) ; " Notes sur le Brésil, Buenos Ayres, et Rio de Janeiro " (1856) ; and "Rapport a I'academie des sciences sur les mines des Etats-Unis" (1861).

GAY, Ebenezer, clergyman, b. in Dedham, Mass., 26 Aug., 1696 ; d. in Hingham, Mass., in 1787. He was graduated at Harvard in 1714, taught school at Hadley and Ipswich, at the same time studying theology, and in 1718 became pastor of the church at Hingham, Mass., where he re- mained till his death, preaching in the same pulpit within three months of seventy years. He was a man of great learning, and celebrated for his wit. Bis theology was liberal, and he is regarded by some as the father of American Unitarianism. Ex- President John Adams said, on the first distinctive announcement of Unitarian principles in this coun- try, that he had heard the doctrine from Dr. Gay long before. Savage speaks of him as " the hon- ored patriarch of our New England pulpit in that age." He was a Tory during the Revolution, and suffered some persecution at the hands of his own parishioners. He married Jerusha Bradford, a granddaughter of Gov. Bradford, of Plymouth colony, and by her had a large family. Dr. Gay published many sermons, among them one delivered on his eighty-fifth birthday, from the text " Lo, 1 am this day fourscore and five years old," which became widely known under the title of " The Old Man's Calendar," and went through several editions both here and in England, being also translated into some of the continental languages of Europe. — His son, Jotliam, b. in Hingham, Mass., in 1733 ; d. there in 1802. was a colonel in the Continental army, served through the old French war, and was part of the time governor of Fort Edward in Nova Scotia. At the beginning of the Revolution he left the army, being a Tory, and was a refugee in Nova Scotia during the war. He resided for the rest of his life in Hingham.— Ebenezer's grandson, Sam- uel, b. in Boston in 1755 ; d. in Fort Cumberland, New Brunswick, 21 Jan., 1847, was graduated at Harvard in 1775, and emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1776 with his father, Martin, who was formally banished from Massachusetts as a Tory in 1778. The son afterward settled in New Brunswick, was a member of the first house of assembly of that province, and chief justice of the court of common pleas. — Ebenezer's great-grandson. Martin, physi- cian, son of Ebenezer Gay, of Hingham, b. in Boston, Mass., 16 Feb., 1803; d. there, 12 Jan., 1850, was graduated at Harvard in 1823. He had a high rep- utation as an analytical chemist, and his frequent testimony as a witness in courts of justice, in cases of death "by poisoning, marks an era in the history of medical jurisprudtMice in this country. — Martin's brother, Sydney Howard, author, b. in Hingham, Mass., in 1814; d. in New Brighton, Staten Island, 25 June, 1888, entered Harvard, but was obliged to give up study on account of his health. The degree of A. B. was afterward conferred upon him. After some years, spent part- ly in travel, partly in a counting-house in Boston, he began the study of law in his father's office in Hing- ham. But he soon abandoned it from "conscientious scruples concerning the oath to support the constitu- tion of the United States; for he came to the conclusion that, if one believed slavery to be absolutely and morally wrong, he had no right to swear allegiance to a constitution that recognized it as just and legal, and required the return of fugitives from bondage. Of the "Garrisonian abolitionists," with whom he thereafter cast his lot, he says: "This handful of people, to the outside world a set of pestilent fanatics, were among themselves the most charming circle of cultivated men and women that it has ever been my lot to know." In 1842 he became a lecturing