Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/178

174 resigned it 17 October, 1772. The Minutes of the Trustees, 15 October, record that

Dr Redman and Dr Peters reported that Mr Kinnersley had desired them to inform the Board that on the 17th inst, he designed to resign his office and Professorship in this Institution, the present state of his health requiring that he should make a Voyage to a warmer climate during the approaching Winter; and that he hoped the Trustees would give him a proper Certificate of his good Behaviour during the last nineteen years in which he has been employed in their Service, and that they will allow Mrs Kinnersley to occupy the House in which he now lives, till next Spring, which was at once granted. He passed the following winter in Barbadoes, thus again seeking strength under the restfulness of a tropical climate. On his return, he made his home in the country among the scenes of his early youth, and there died 4 July, 1778, and was buried at the Lower Dublin Baptist Church. It was as a graceful tribute to his memory that some of the Alumni and others erected a Window Memorial to Ebenezer Kinnersley in College Hall; it is on the Eastern stairway, and all who pass and repass under its tinted light must be reminded of the faithful professor who found time to contribute to his fellow men some better knowledge of Electricity, and who thus supplemented the discoveries of the great Founder of the institution to which the latter had called him to be a professor.

Graydon in his Memoirs describes his tuition in grammar and recitation under Mr. Kinnersley, and speaks of him as "an Anabaptist clergyman, a large, venerable looking man, of no great general erudition, though a considerable proficient in electricity." Provost Smith's notice of him in the American Magazine for October, 1758, where he noticed Alison and Grew, already referred to, will be quoted later in a more fitting connection than here.

An opportunity presented itself shortly after Mr. Kinnersley's appointment, to securing a teacher for modern languages; on 16 December, the Trustees being inform'd that Mr. Creamer a gent'n from Germany is