Page:The History of the University of Pennsylvania, Wood.djvu/74

68 ACCOUNT OF THE PROFESSORS OF THE UNIVERSITY.

will be most convenient, for the sake of avoiding confusion in the subsequent narrative of events, to pursue at once down to the present time the succession in the faculty of arts, without immediate reference to the particular situation of the seminary at the period of each new appointment As the mere name of an individual is a blank to those unacquainted with his person, character, or history, a few condensed biographical notices will be necessary, in order that correct conceptions may be formed of the condition and merits of the institution of which the subjects of the proposed notices were the conductors.

The Rev. Dr. John Ewing, the first provost of the university, had risen by his own exertions from very humble beginnings. The son of a farmer of moderate circumstances in Maryland, and one of a numerous family, he had neither, when a boy, the advantages of a regular education, nor, in his manhood, the assistance of any influential relatives to push his fortunes in the world. Gifted, however, with a strong propensity to scientific pursuits, he improved the slender opportunities which were afforded him in his native place by industrious and eager application; and when old enough to enter upon an independent course of life, left his father's house, to seek elsewhere the means of instruction