Letter from GEORGE PERKINS MARSH to SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD, dated November 10, 1847.
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My dear Sir
We left Burlington on the 28' of Oct, a week later than we intended spent a week in
Boston, where I delivered a lecture, and arrived here yesterday morning. Our
unexpected detention at Burlington leaves us so little time, that we shall be
obliged to deny ourselves the pleasure of a visit to Carlisle, and indeed in the
heavy affliction which Mary & your family have just been called to suffer, I
suppose you would all prefer to see us at another time. I knew little of your late
brother-in-law from personal observation, but I had always heard an excellent
account of him, and my strong attachment to my good old friends Col. & Mrs Churchill & their other
children would have excited a warm sympathy in their affliction, had I known nothing
of
the departed. We expect to be in Washington on the 16. & hope to
find your father & mother-in-law still there.
I was much interested in your account of Meyers & [...] works, & I have ordered them both.[...] name was familiar to me, as that of an able naturalist, but I had never heard of this book -- Bartlett & Welford have Tschudi, Fauna Peruana, an immense 4to of 1000 or more pages, with respectable coloured plates, at $28. I suppose this may be to your taste, though it is a dear book.
I left my boy with D Siedhof, & suppose he will remain a year. I am afraid the house-keeping is a little Deutsch, but otherwise I am pleased with the establishment.
It is our present intention to go to Phila. on Monday morning, & to remain
only till Tuesday morning,
in which case I shall not have time to see Mr Philips or the Academy, though very sorry to
miss either.
Mrs Marsh will write to Mary soon, and begs that she will consider our visit as only postponed. I am sorry I have not a spare Swedish Dict. I saw Widegren's at Boston (at Burnham's or Perkin's) at $5. but it is good for nothing, and you had better order a modern one through Garrigue.
I sent you two copies of my Cambridge discourse, which I hope you recd. Mary's of the 6' I found here, and we all thank her very sincerely for her kind invitation. Mrs Marsh & Lucy join me in the most affectionate remembrances to her as well as yourself.
I am, dear sirmost sincerely yoursGeo. P. MarshProf. S. F. Baird
P.S. Charles, whom we have just seen, is well & will write you in a day or two.
References in this letter:
Sylvester Churchill and Lucy Hunter Churchill were Mary Churchill Baird's parents. A Vermont native, Sylvester Churchill (1783-1862), served in the War of 1812, was Inspector General in the Mexican War, and Brigadier General during the Civil War.
Johann Jakob von Tschudi, Untersuchungen ueber die Fauna peruana. 3 vol. St. Gallen, Scheitlin und Zollikofer, 1844-1846.
Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, a college preparatory boarding school, was founded in 1778 by Samuel Phillips (1752-1802). Marsh attended the school in 1816.
Gustaf Widegren's Svenskt och engelskt lexicon. Stockholm, J.A. Carlbohn, 1788.
Charles Rudolph Garrigue, a New York publisher, obtained the plates to F. A. Brockhaus's Bilder Atlas zum Conversations Lexicon (Leipzig) with the intention of republishing them with an English text. Marsh suggested that Baird translate and revise the work. It was a massive undertaking on which Baird spent four years. Published in 1852 as The Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature, and Art, it established Baird's reputation.
George P. Marsh, Human Knowledge: a Discourse Delivered before the Massachusetts Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, Aug. 26, 1847. Boston, 1847.
Charles Marsh (1821-1873), Marsh's youngest brother, maintained the family farm in Woodstock until his death. He and Marsh frequently corresponded about barometric pressure, precipitation, mountain heights, and other natural and meteorological phenomena