1, 1686, died July 30, 1775, in his eightyninth year, married June 17, 1714, Mary Fowle (Captain James, 3, Lieutenant James, 2, George, 1), born June 18, 1689, died March 9, 1762. Their daughter, Ruth Simonds, born October 10, 1730, married May 30, 1752, Benjamin Thompson (V.) and was the mother of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.

His Converse ancestry is this: Deacon Edward Converse of Woburn, son of Allen Converse, was the father of Lieutenant James Converse, who died at Woburn, May 10, 1715, aged ninety-five years; married first, October 24, 1643, Anna Long, of Charlestown (Robert), born about 1625, died August 10, 1691. Their son, Major James Converse, born November 16, 1645, died July 8, 1706, married January 1, 1669, Hannah Carter (Captain John), born January 19, 1651, who married second, November 22, 1708, Henry Summers, of Charlestown. Their son, Captain Robert Converse, born December 29, 1677, died July 20, 1736, married December 19, 1698, Mary Sawyer, daughter of Joshua and Sarah (Wright-Potter) Sawyer. Their daughter, Hannah Converse, born May 10, 1706, married September 27, 1728, Ebenezer Thompson (IV).

(BY WILLIAM R. CUTTER.)

So much has been written RUMFORD concerning the life of Count Rumford that the principal events in the career of this remarkable man may be summarized in a cursory manner geographically for the sake of convenient reference, paying particular attention in passing, to a few facts or incidents that are not generally known.

AT WOBURN.-Woburn was the place of his birth. Aside from the date of the event and the names of his parents, and the fact that his father died soon after the birth of his distinguished son, and that his mother soon married again, almost nothing is actually known of his early childhood. He was brought up in the residence of his stepfather, Josiah Pierce ; attended the Woburn grammar school, kept by the celebrated master, John Fowle; was playmate with younger members of the Baldwin family, his stepfather's opposite neighbors; attended scientific lectures at Harvard College with Loammi Baldwin, later famous as a colonel under Washington in the Revolutionary War and a projector of the Middlesex

a

Canal and as the namesake of the Baldwin apple.

Some account of the history of the house in which he was born has been given elsewhere in this work.

Dr. George E. Ellis, the author of the only standard "Life of Count Rumford" (Memoir of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, with notices of his daughter. By George E. Ellis. Published for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston)* mentions Rumford as dependent on his own exertions, without inherited means, or patronage, or even good fortune; and while this may be to some extent true of his early life in Woburn, it was not true of his later life. Likewise it must be admitted that he had in his early, as he had in his later life, a lack of that rigid purity of principle, which, as even Dr. Ellis admits, would not insure with propriety all his domestic relations being the subject of exact record. The cause of these failings in virtue is referred to the influences he encountered on foreign soil, and to foreign customs in such matters which prevailed in his day.

The emblazoned diploma of arms which he received in his thirty-first year from the king of England when he became a knight, states in dignified terms that he was the "son of Benjamin Thompson, late of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, Gent: deceased, and one of the most ancient families in North America ; that his ancestors have ever lived in reputable situations in that country where he was born, and have hitherto used the arms of the ancient and respectable family of Thompson, of the county of York, from a constant tradition that they derived their descent from that source."

He was born, it is said, in the west end of the house now standing at North Woburn, and generally known by the name of the Rumford birthplace. His widowel mother was remarried when he was three years old, and his stepfather took his new wife and her child to another house not far distant, but long since

"The Life of Rumford by Prof. James Renwick" (Spark's Biography, 2nd ser., vol. V.) is the next considerable American performance on the subject. Professor Renwick expresses obligation for the use of a manuscript belonging to Josiah Pierce, half-brother of Count Rumford, entitled by its author "Outlines of the Family, Infancy and Childhood of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford." This manuscript was in existence in 1845, but its present whereabouts is to us unknown. Josiah Pierce, half-brother of Count Rumford, married Phebe, daughter of Daniel and Phebe (Snow) Thompson, of Woburn. His wife's father was killed in the battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19. 1775. For an account of their children see "Thompson Memorial" (Boston, 1887), p. 50. This branch of the Pierce family were among the founders of the present town of Rumford, Maine.

removed, which stood opposite, as before said, the present Baldwin mansion.

The fact, which has been stated, particularly in France, that the child's stepfather banished him from his house in his infancy, whether this information be gotten from Count Rumford himself or not, must be taken with much allowance for the exuberance of the French imagination. For it was contrary to the usual New England character and contrary to the regard which Count Rumford afterwards showed to his mother and her children born of Josiah Pierce. That his early life was always smooth we do not pretend to assert, but that any excessive cruel treatment was given the child, that we deny. Making allowance for overcolored statement, a few facts from the Count's lips are here advanced:

"If the death of my father had not, contrary to the order of nature, preceded that of my grandfather, who gave all his property to my uncle, his second son, I should have lived and died an American husbandman. Shortly after the death of my father, my mother contracted a second marriage which proved for her a source of misfortunes. A tyrannical husband took me away from my grandfather's house with her. I was then a child; my grandfather, who survived my father only a few months, left me but a very slender subsistence. I was then launched at the right time upon a world which was almost strange to me, and I was obliged to form the habit of thinking and acting for my self, and of depending on myself for a livelihood.

"My ideas were not yet fixed; one project succeeded another, and perhaps I should have acquired a habit of indecision and inconsistancy, perhaps I should have been poor and unhappy all my life, if a woman had not loved me, if she had not given me a subsistence, a home, an independent fortune."

Anticipating a little, we continue: "I married, or rather, I was married, at the age of nineteen. I espoused the widow of a Colonel Rolfe, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Walker, a highly respectable minister, and one of the first settlers of Rumford. He was already connected with my family. He heartily approved of the choice of his daughter, and he himself united our destinies. This excellent man became sincerely attached to me; he directed my studies, he formed my taste, and my position was in every respect the most agreeable that could possibly be imagined."

It is admitted by Baron Cuvier that Rumford had informed him himself that he would have probably remained in the modest condi

tion of his ancestors if the little fortune which they had to leave him had not been lost during his infancy. Thus a misfortune in early life, as in many other cases, was the cause of his subsequent reputation. His grandfather, from whom he had everything to expect, had given all he possessed to a younger son, leaving his grandson almost penniless." and the loss of his father and the second marriage of his mother, and his so stated removal from her care, leads to the conclusion that "Nothing could be more likely than such a destitute condition to induce a premature display of talent."

This

These statements and imputations resting apparently upon positive assertions made by himself, however, leave room for supposing that his eulogists, being both of them Frenchmen, may have erred in a matter of sentiment, by exaggerated expressions. (Ellis, Life, p. 10.) Common reputation gives him an excellent mother, who never neglected him, but appears to have treated him with a redoubled love. His own letters to her, when in a state of popular celebrity, comfort and affluence abroad, in her later years, are full of affection and tender regard. The alleged tyranny of his stepfather finds no statement on the part of the new husband's descendants as a reason for the justification of any charges of that kind. The stepfather appears to be in every aspect of the case a kind and faithful husband and took his wife's child with her to a new home, as already shown. The eldest son by her second marriage grew up with the Count as a playmate, and in after life as a correspondent, and a son of this half-brother never heard anything from his father that would warrant an imputation of ill treatment.

It is not to be doubted from his insistent will during life, that he exercised the patience and sympathy of his of his friends somewhat severely, and by, perhaps, at the outset, a determined unwillingness to apply himself to any routine and rewarding work in accordance with their old-fashioned New England ideas.

It is evident from the handwriting of the Count when he was only thirteen years of age, and from the spelling and the almost faultless grammatical expressions in his letters and compositions before he had reached manhood, and from his skill in accounts, that he had not only remarkable native powers, but had been the subject of careful and thorough training. Credit for this is given to his village teacher, Master John Fowle, a graduate of Harvard College in 1747, a man of unusually good reputation in this line of work. The hand

writing of Rumford was clear, strong, and elegant in his youth, and it remained so through his life, and it has been asserted that the mode of instruction through which young Rumford and his contemporaries passed afforded a superior training with more signal results than was realized later under more elaborate provisions for elementary education. Rumford indicated from his earliest years an intense mental inclination for things scientific in their nature, and showed a particular ardor for mathematics, and his leisure was devoted to the manufacture of ingenious mechanical contrivances, leading early in his career to an interest in the deeper principles of mechanics and natural philosophy, as it was then understood.

It is said of him that he was for a time a pupil in a school at Byfield, under the charge of a relative, that he was, when eleven years old, put under the care of an able teacher in Medford, named Hill; that in 1766 he was apprenticed to a Mr. John Appleton, of Salem, an importer of foreign goods, and a bill for goods bought from this store and receipted by Rumford when he was only fourteen years old is remarkable for grace of penmanship, mercantile style, and business-like signature. But his career in Salem is to be treated separately, and we pass on to a later date in Woburn.

In 1771 young Rumford began the study of medicine with Dr. John Hay, of Woburn. He appears to have been a boarder in his house from December 15, 1770, to June 15, 1772. Dr. Hay lived on the estate now known as the Kimball estate, 732 Main street, Central Square, and his house at a later date was called the "Black House," and was standing as late as 1854. Dr. Hay returned about 1780 to his native town of Reading, where his father was also a physician. While boarding at Dr. Hay's, Rumford attended Mr. Winthrop's lectures at Cambridge (1771) and from December 9, 1771, to February 5, 1772, he was keeping school at Wilmington. In March and April, 1772, he was doing the same. And in June, 1772, he was absent for the part of a week at Bradford, probably arranging for work of a similar kind, as he is credited with having been a teacher there.

The following is an account of the division of his time while a student at Dr. Hays: "From eleven at night to six in the morning, sleep. At six, arise, and wash my hands and face. From six to eight, morning, exercise one-half and study one-half the time. Eight to ten A. M., breakfast, attend prayers. From

ten to twelve, study all the time. From twelve to one, dine. From one to four, study constantly. From four to five, relieve my mind by some diversions or exercises. From five till bedtime, follow what my inclination leads me, whether it be to go abroad, or stay at home and read either anatomy, physic, or chemistry, or any book I want to peruse." His studies while at Dr. Hay's were divided into days. The list was anatomy, physic, surgery, chemistry and the materia medica.

The above data are taken from minutes made by Rumford himself at the time.. Through the influence of Baldwin he obtained with his friend the privilege of attending Professor Winthrop's lectures at Cambridge, neither young man being a regular student at the college there. It is said that they walked to and from the place to their homes at Woburn, and were in the habit of repeating the experiments witnessed, with rude apparatus of their own contrivance at their homes afterward.

The exact time when Rumford taught school in Bradford is not definitely stated, but it was some time in the year 1772. His experience here led to his being appointed in the same year to the mastership of a school in Concord, New Hampshire, then known as a town by the name of Rumford; but his arrival there was followed by his speedy marriage.

It is our intention to ignore the various traditions which have befogged the actions of Count Rumford in Woburn about the time of the battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, and present only an extract from a letter of that time which has a very pointed reference to him in connection with his arrest on that date, while he was at his mother Pierce's house in North Woburn, by a military company of the town, when he was confined there by an illness, probably the one he mentions in his letter of October 1, 1775, which we have quoted elsewhere. He said, "I came out of Boston a few days before the affair at Lexington," having "enjoyed, since I left Boston a very indifferent share of health." It is supposed then that he took refuge at his mother's, and was ill there on the day of April 19, as before hinted. The quotation from the other letter mentioned is here presented. It is an autograph letter from Major Josiah Johnson to James Fowle, Esq., dated September 9, 1775, both influential men of middle life in the then town of Woburn :"

"The town of Woburn upon the shortest notice mustered and marched 180 brave men, well equipped, for the assistance and relief of