Prof. Eben Norton Horsford

Eben Norton Horsford (1818-1893) aka Professor Horsford; aka Ebenezer Norton Horsford; Chemist (b. July 27, 1818, Moscow, Livingston County, New York, USA - d. January 01, 1893, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA) Son of Jerediah Horsford (1791-1874) and Chary Maria Norton (c1790-1859) aka Charity Maria Norton. The following is from Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography: Eben Norton, chemist, born in Moscow, Livingston County, New York, 27 July, 1818, was graduated at the Rensselaer polytechnic institute as a civil engineer in 1838, was engaged on the geological survey of the state of New York under James Hall in 1838-'9, and in 1840 appointed to the professorship of mathematics and natural sciences in the Albany female academy, where he remained for four years, also delivering an annual course of lectures on chemistry at Newark college, Delaware, during this time( In 1844 he went to Germany, where he spent two years studying analytical chemistry and making experimental researches in Liebig's laboratory at Giessen. On his return to the United States early in 1847, he was elected to the Rumford professorship of science applied to the arts, in Harvard. Soon afterward he submitted to Abbott Lawrence a plan for a department of analytical and applied chemistry, which led to the formation of the Lawrence scientific school in Cambridge. After sixteen years of service in the earliest organized and equipped laboratory for instruction in analytical chemistry in the United States, Professor Horsford resigned his place to engage in chemical manufactures, and is now (1887) president of the Rumford chemical works in Providence, Rhode Island The most important of his discoveries relate to the preparation of white bread, and the restoration of the phosphates that are lost with the bran in milling, and the "acid phosphate," a medicinal agent. In recent years, Professor Horsford has specially interested himself in Wellesley college, providing for the endowment of the library, continuous supplies of apparatus for the departments of physics, chemistry, botany, and biology, and for a system of pensions to the president and heads of departments. By this, these officers are allowed to spend one year in seven in Europe, are given a progressive augmentation of salary after twenty-one years of service, after twenty-six years of service a pension of five hundred dollars a year for life. Professor Horsford has attached the condition that the beneficiaries must be women. He has received the degrees of A. M. from Harvard in 1847 and from Union in 1843. and that of M. D. from the medical college in Castleton. Professor Horsford is one of the very few surviving members of the original American society of naturalists and geologists, which has since grown into the American association for the advancement of science, and he is also a member of various scientific and historical societies. His contributions to scientific literature include numerous articles which have appeared since 1846 in technical journals. More than thirty years ago he published in the "Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science" the results of successful practical experiments in pouring oil on rough seas. His services as a chemical expert in courts of law were in frequent demand, more especially during the period of the vulcanized rubber litigation. In 1873 he was appointed one of the government commissioners to the Vienna exposition, and contributed an article on "Hungarian Milling and the Vienna Bread "to the United States government reports. He was one of the jurors in the Centennial exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876. Of his late publications there are several which show the results of his acquaintance with the Indian language, acquired in his childhood from the Indians who had been pupils of his father, notably one on the "Indian Names of Boston," and one "On the Landfall of John Cabot in 1497, and the Site of Norumbega." These places had been lost for more than three centuries when he established their exact location. His latest service has been the absolute reproduction in print of the manuscript Indian dictionary of David Zeisberger, the Moravian missionary. It is given in English and equivalent German, Iroquois (Onandaga), and Algonquin (Delaware). A large number of copies have been given to Wellesley college to enable it by exchange to provide facilities to specialists who desire to study comparative Indian philology.--His wife, Mary L'Hommedieu Gardiner, poet, born in New York city, 27 September, 1824; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25 November, 1855, was the daughter of Samuel S. Gardiner of Shelter Island. She was educated at the Albany female academy, and in 1847 married Professor Horsford. Besides contributing to the "Knickerbocker Magazine" and other periodicals, she published "Indian Legends and other Poems" (New York, 1855). In 1857, Professor Horsford married her sister, Phoebe Dayton Gardiner. ebem appears in the 1880 US Census living in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.