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REELY, ADOLPHUS WASHINGTON, Arctic explorer, brigadier-general and chief signal officer U. S. army, author and scientist, was born in Newburyport, Essex county, Massachusetts, March 27, 1844. He traces his ancestry from John Howland, one of the passengers in the Mayflower, 1620; from Elder Henry Cobb, said to have been a passenger in the second voyage of the Mayflower, who settled in Scituate, Plymouth colony, in 1623, and married Patience Hurst; from John Balch, who settled on Cape Ann, Massachusetts Bay colony, 1623; and from Andrew Greely, his first paternal ancestor in America, who settled in Salisbury, Massachusetts Bay colony, in 1639. Adolphus Washington Greely was the son of John Balch and Frances Dunn (Cobb) Greely, and grandson of Joseph and Betsy (Balch) Greely and of Samuel and Eleanor (Neal) Cobb. His father was a shoe dealer, captain in the state militia, a man of independence of thought, patriotic, a lover of truth and knowledge. His grandfather Cobb, a man of strong religious convictions, was a farmer; and while a boy Adolphus assisted him for some time in farm work. He was educated in the public schools of his native town, graduating at the Brown high school in 1860.

At the outbreak of the Civil war he enlisted, July 3, 1861, as a private in Co. B, 19th Massachusetts volunteer infantry, although but seventeen years old. Serving in thirteen engagements, he was wounded at White Oak Swamp, at Antietam, and in the forlorn hope at the crossing of the Rappahannock, Fredericksburg, December 11, 1862, when he was promoted first sergeant for gallantry. Commissioned by Governor Andrew as lieutenant in Shaw's 54th Massachusetts (colored) regiment, he was unable to accept, owing to orders from the war department, which promoted him in a national organization as lieutenant, 81st U. S. infantry (colored). He was discharged from the volunteer service as a captain and brevet-major, to accept a lieutenancy in the 36th U. S. infantry. He had extended frontier and Indian service in Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming, from 1867 to 1871. Transferred in 1869 to the 5th U. S. cavalry, he