Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/207

 GEORGE WALLACE MELVILLE ELVILLE, GEORGE WALLACE. Rear-Admiral George Wallace Melville is descended from a distinguished line of sterling Scotchmen, noted as soldiers, scholars and reformers, among them brave defenders of human rights against oppressive rulers, martyrs to their faith, of sturdy stock and extraordinary stature; a descendant of James Melville, the Protestant champion, slayer of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1546, and Andrew Melville (1545-1622) scholar and Protestant reformer, who bid defiance to James L, both companions of John Knox; Sir John Melville who died for his faith on the scaffold in 1549; and Sir James Melville first lord of the British admiralty whose name was given to Arctic lands in Baffin's Bay. From such stock comes the hero of the Jeannette tragedy in the Lena Delta, a skilled engineer and a man of note in American history.

He was born in New York city, January 10, 1841. His father Alexander Melville, son of James Melville of Sterling, Scotland, who came to America in 1804 and settled in New York city, was the father of a large family of stalwart sons; James, Andrew, George and Alexander. Alexander, or "Big Sandy," when sixteen years old, was sent to the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where so many of his ancestors had been trained, and returning to New York he became a dyer, having made a special study of chemistry as applied to that occupation. He married Sarah Dauther Wallace of New York city and three of their sons were soldiers in the Civil war of 1861-65, while the father raised and equipped a company of volunteers for the war. It is on record that the father was six feet six inches tall, and each of the sons measured up to and over six feet. George Wallace Melville was a pupil in public grammar school No. 3 of New York city, the school of the Christian Brothers, Brooklyn, New York, the Brooklyn Polytechnic institute, where he was graduated in 1860, and was under a private tutor who instructed him in mathematics and mechanical drawing, 1859-60. He says of himself that he was a slow scholar, and that as a boy he was made to earn by hard work every