Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 10.djvu/209

 TROUP

TROWBRIDGE

She is the author of: A Brother to Dragons and Other Old Time Tales (1888); TJie Quick or the Dead (1888): Virginia of Virginia; Herod and Mariamne; Witness of the Sun; According to St. John; Barbara Dering; Athelwold; Tanis; A Damsel Errant (1897), and poems and magazine articles.

TROUP, George flclntosh, senator, was born

at Mcintosh Bluflf, Ga., Sept. 8,1780; son of

and Catharine (Mcintosh) Troup. He was grad- uated from the College of New Jersey, A.B., 1797, A.M., 1800; studied and practised law in Dublin, Ga., and was a representative in the state legislature, 1803-04. He was twice married; first, in 1803, to Ann Saint C. McCormick; and secondly in 1808 to Ann Carter of Virginia. He was a Jeffersonian Democratic representative in the 10th-13th congresses. 1807-15; was elected U.S. senator to complete the unexpired term of William W. Bibbs, .serving, Dec. 12, 1816-March 3. 1817, and re-elected for a full term, but re- signed in 1819, and was succeeded by John For- syth. He was governor of Georgia. 1823-27; and was instrumental in obtaining from the Creek Indians the title to all their lands for the state in considei'ation of the payment of $27,491. In 1829 he was re-elected to the U.S. senate, serving from Dec. 7, 1829, until his resignation, March 2, 1833,'on account of failing health, and was nominated for the presidency by the States Rights party in 1833, and again in 1852. He died in Dublin, Laurens county, Ga., May 3. 1856.

TROUSDALE, William, governor of Tennes- see, was born in Orange county, N.C., Sept. 23, 1790. He removed with his father to Sumner county, Tenn., in 1796, and on the outbreak of the war with the Creek Indians in 1813 enlisted in the militia and took part in the battles of Talla- hatchie and Talladega. He joined General Jackson's army as a lieutenant, and participated in the battles of Pensacola and New Orleans. He was state senator, 1835-36; was appointed major-general of volunteers in 1836; and served in the Seminole and Mexican wars, being bre- vetted brigadier-general, U.S.A., for gallant con- duct at Chapultepec, where he was twice wounded. In 1840 he was presidential elector on the Van Buren ticket, and in 1849 was elected governor of Tennessee, defeating Gov. Neil S. Brown, the Whig candidate. In 1851 he was de- feated for re-election, and in May, 1852, was ap- pointed by President Fillmore, U.S. minister to Brazil. He returned to Tennessee in 1857, and retired from public life. He died in Nashville, Tenn., March 27, 1872.

TROWBRIDGE, John, physicist, was born in Boston, Mass., Aug. 5. 1843; son of John Howe and Adaline (Richardson) Trowbridge; grandson of John and Sally (Howe) Trowbridge, and of

James and Elizabeth Richardson, and a descend- ant of Chief-Justice Trowbridge of Cambridge colony, under George III. He attended the Bos- ton Latin school, 1860, was graduated from the Lawrence Scientific school. Harvard, S.B., 1866, and was tutor there, 1866-69. He was assistant professor of physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1869-70, and also at Harvard college, 1870-80, and professor of physics at Harvard, 1880-88. In the latter year lie became Rumford professor of tiie application of science to the u.se- ful arts and director of the Jefferson pliysical laboratory, which had its beginning in the hvbor- atory course in physics established by him at Harvard in 1870, and became one of the finest equipped laboratories at liome or abroad. He was a member of the international congre.ss of electricians at Paris, 1883. and a delegate to the U.S. congress of electricians at Philadelpliia, Pa., 1884. He was married in June, 1877, to Mary Louise, daughter of Seth and Elizabeth Thayer of Brookline, Mass. The honorary degree of S.D. was conferred upon him by Harvard college in 1873. He was a member of the National Acad- emy of Sciences; of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, audits secretary, 1879-84, also one of its vice-presidents, 1901; a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and vice-president of its physical section, 1884, and a member of the American Philosophical society. His scientific inventions include a new form of galvanometer, 1871, and of induction coil, 1875 (which is the present form of closed circuit transformer). His experiments of 1887-88 proved the presence of carbon and platinum in the sun, and he disproved the evidence brought forward by Dr. Diaper to prove the existence of oxygen lines in the solar spectrum. In 1897 he completed an X-ray apparatus with a battery of 20,000 volts, a power greater than that of any other similar apparatus in the world, and by which he discovered, contrary to all previously established scientific theories, that under certain conditions a vacuum is a good conductor of elec- tricity and that a discharge of lightning a mile long encounters no more resistance than a dis- charge of only afoot in length. Professor Trow- bridge was an associate editor of " Annals of Scientific Discovery for 1869 " (1870) and of the American Journal of Science from 1879. His works include: Coiitribut ions from the Physical Laboratory of Harvard College; Animal Electric- ity (1872); On Telegraphing ivithout a Cable. and The New Physics (1884); Niagara Falls Con- sidered as a Smirce of Electricity (1885); The Electrical Boy (1891); Tliree Boys on an Elec- trical Boat (1894): What is Electricity? (1896); TheResolnte'Slr. Pans?/ (1897), and Philips Ex- periments, or Physical Science at Home (1899).