Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 02.djvu/85

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arranged and set adrift kegs charged with pow- der, so as to destroy the British sliips. which held possession of the Delaware river. In the dark- ness lie made a miscalculation as to the distance, and the explosion did not occur until the follow- ing day, when it caused slight damage, though creating consternation among the officers and sailors aboard the ships. A humorous poem, Tlie Battle of the Kegs written by Hon. Francis Hopkinson, was founded on this inci- dent. Though the principles on which Mr. Bushnell's machines were constructed were shown to be corre-t, the accidents attending his experiments and his disappointment at not receiving government support, rendered him very dejected, and at the close of the war he went to France. Years passed without his friends hearing from him, and it was supposed that he had perished during the French revolu- tion. He returned to America and for years had charge of a large school in Georgia, after which he practised medicine, under the name of Dr. Bush. The tidings of his death was the first news his friends had had of him in forty years. His death occurred at Warrenton, Ga., in 1826.

BUSHNELL, Horace, theologian, was born in New Preston, Litchfield county. Conn., April 14, 1802. In boyhood he worked on his father's farm and in a fulling and carding mill. When he was nineteen years old he began to de- vote himself to study, and lie was graduated from Yale with honor in 1827. He taught school in Norwich, Conn., and then engaged as literary editor of the New York Journal of Commerce. He returned to Yale in 1829, to take a course in law, and accepted a tutorship in the college. In 1831, when about to be admitted to the bar, a religious revival in the college led him to enter tiie Yale divinity school, and upon completing the course and receiving his license he was unanimously chosen as pastor of the North Con- gregational church, Hartford, May, 1833. He was married on Sept. 13, 1833, to Mary Apthorp of New Haven. In 1839 he delivered an address on Revelation, before the society of inquiry, at Andover theological seminary, and his views upon the doctrine of the Trinity awakened sus- picions as to his orthodoxy, as they did again in 1849, upon the pul)lication of his God in Christ, and he was called before a committee, appointed by the Hartford central association, of which he was a member, to answer to a charge of lieresy. Among his accusers were the leading theological authorities, but they did not agree as to what the heresy was. Dr. Bushnell made a spirited defence, and the committee reported througli its chairman, Dr. Noah Porter, that " tiiough there were in the views ])resented variations from the historic formulas of faith,

the errors were not fundamental."' He re- signed his pastorate in 1859. Bushnell Park at Hartford, which he was influential in se- curing, was named in his honor. His prin- cipal works are: Christian Nature (1847); God in Christ (1849); Christ in Theology (18.")1); Nature and the Supernatural (1858); Sermons for the Neiv Life (1858); Character of Jesus (1861); Work and Play, a collection of Ad- dresses (1864); Christ and his Salvation (1864); Tlie Vicarious Sacrifice (1865); Moral Uses of Dark Things (1868); Woman Suffrage, the Reform against Nature (1869); Sermons on Living Subjects (1872), and Forgiveness and Law (1874). He received the degree of D.D. from Wesleyan university in 1842, and from Harvard in 1852, and Yale gave him the degree of LL.D. in 1871. Hisdaugliter, Mary Bushnell Cheney, pub- lished Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell (1880). He died at Hartford, Conn.. Feb. 17, 1876.

BUSIEL, Charles Albert, governor of New Hampshire, was born in Meredith, N.H.. Nov. 24, 1842; son of John W. and Julia (Tilton) Busiel; grandson of Moses F. Busiel, and a descendant of William Buswel, the immigrant. He was edu- cated at Gilford, Belknap county, N.H., and en- tered on a business career in 1863, becoming the head of a large inanufacturing plant at Laconia, N.H., in 1873. He was chief engineer of the Laconia fire department, 1872-'85; a representa- tive in the New Hampshire legislature, 1878-'79, and a delegate to the Democratic national con- vention in 1880. In 1890 he became president of the Lake Shore railroad, and a director of the Concord and Montreal railroad. He was elected first luayor of Laconia by the Republican party, serving, 1883-"94, and was governor of New Hamp- shire, 189.5-'96. He was president of the Laconia national bank and of the City savings bank. He died at Lacdiiia. N.H.. Aug. 29, 1901.

BUSSEY, Benjamin, philantliropist was born at Canton, Mass., March 1, 1757. At the age of eighteen he enlisted in the continental armj'. At the close of the war he engaged in business as a silversmith and acquired a large fortune. In 1806 he retired from business and devoted liis life to agricultural pursuits on his estate in Rox- bury. B}"^ his will he provided that upon the death of his last survivor, one-half of his estate sliould go to Harvard college to endow a fnrin school, for j)romoting a knowledge of scientific agriculture, and the other half to endow the law and divinity schools of the university. In compliance with the terms of his will. Harvard college in 1869 established a school of practical agriculture and horticulture on his estate at Jamaica Plain. Tiie value of the property thus distributed exceeded three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He died Jan. 13, 1842.