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Samuel Latham Mitchill (August 20, 1764September 7, 1831) was an American
physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
, naturalist, and
politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, ...
who lived in
Plandome, New York Plandome is a village in the Town of North Hempstead in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. It is considered part of the Greater Manhasset area, which is anchored by Manhasset. The population was 1,349 at ...
.


Early life

Samuel Mitchill was born in Hempstead in the
Province of New York The Province of New York (1664–1776) was a British proprietary colony and later royal colony on the northeast coast of North America. As one of the Middle Colonies, New York achieved independence and worked with the others to found the U ...
, the son of Robert Mitchill and his wife, Mary Latham, both
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
. He was sent to Scotland and graduated in 1786 from the
University of Edinburgh Medical School The University of Edinburgh Medical School (also known as Edinburgh Medical School) is the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the United Kingdom and part of the University of Edinburgh College of Medicine and Veterinar ...
with an M.D., his education being paid for by a wealthy uncle. Returning to the United States after medical school, Mitchill also completed law school. As a lawyer, he oversaw the purchase of lands in western New York from the
Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...
Indians in 1788.


Career

Mitchill taught chemistry, botany, and natural history at Columbia College from 1792 to 1801 and was a founding editor of '' The Medical Repository'', the first medical journal in the United States. In 1793, he was elected a Foreign Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
. His proposers were James Gregory,
Dugald Stewart Dugald Stewart (; 22 November 175311 June 1828) was a Scottish philosopher and mathematician. Today regarded as one of the most important figures of the later Scottish Enlightenment, he was renowned as a populariser of the work of Francis Hut ...
, and John Rotherham. In addition to his Columbia lectures on botany, zoology, and mineralogy, Mitchill collected, identified, and classified many plants and animals, particularly aquatic organisms. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 1797. From 1807 to 1826, he taught at the
College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) is the graduate medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Founded ...
and then helped organize the short-lived Rutgers Medical College of New Jersey, which he served as vice president until 1830. While at Columbia, Mitchill developed a fallacious theory of disease; however, it resulted in his promotion of personal hygiene and improved sanitation.Keir B. Sterling, "Mitchill, Samuel Latham
American National Biography Online
Mitchill served in the
New York State Assembly The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature, with the New York State Senate being the upper house. There are 150 seats in the Assembly. Assembly members serve two-year terms without term limits. The Ass ...
in 1791 and again in 1798 and was then elected as a
Democratic-Republican The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party and also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early ...
to the
United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
, serving from 1801 until his resignation on November 22, 1804. In November 1804, Mitchill was elected a
U.S. Senator from New York Below is a list of U.S. senators who have represented the State of New York in the United States Senate since 1789. The date of the start of the tenure is either the first day of the legislative term (Senators who were elected regularly before th ...
to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Armstrong, and served from November 23, 1804, to March 4, 1809. He then served again in the
House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
from December 4, 1810, to March 4, 1813. Mitchill was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814. On January 29, 1817, Mitchill convened the first meeting of the
New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wi ...
, originally called the Lyceum of Natural History, of which he was later elected president. Mitchill strongly endorsed the building of the
Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing ...
, sponsored by his friend and political ally
DeWitt Clinton DeWitt Clinton (March 2, 1769February 11, 1828) was an American politician and naturalist. He served as a United States senator, as the mayor of New York City, and as the seventh governor of New York. In this last capacity, he was largely re ...
; they were both members of the short-lived New-York Institution. Mitchill suggested renaming the United States of America Fredonia, combining the English "freedom" with a Latinate ending. Although the suggestion was not seriously considered, some towns adopted the name, including
Fredonia, New York Fredonia is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 9,871 as of the 2020 census. Fredonia is in the town of Pomfret south of Lake Erie. The village is the home of the State University of New York at Fredonia ...
. Some freebooters established a short-lived republic under that name in
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
in the late 1820s.


Personality

Mitchill was a man of "irrepressible energies... polyglot enthusiasms... nddistinguished eccentricities" who was not "a man afraid to speak out loud about the loves of plants and animals; indeed, he was not a man afraid to speak out loud on most any topic. In the early nineteenth century, Mitchill was New York's "most publicly universal gentleman... a man known variously as the 'living encyclopedia,' as a 'stalking library,' and (to his admired Jefferson) as the 'Congressional Dictionary.'"Burnett, 44. In 1828, Martin Harris, an associate of
Joseph Smith Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, h ...
, the founder of the
Latter Day Saint movement The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Jo ...
, visited Mitchill to ask him to authenticate the "
Reformed Egyptian The Book of Mormon, a work of scripture of the Latter Day Saint movement, describes itself as having a portion originally written in reformed Egyptian characters on plates of metal or "ore" by prophets living in the Western Hemisphere from perha ...
" characters that Smith said were taken from
golden plates According to Latter Day Saint belief, the golden plates (also called the gold plates or in some 19th-century literature, the golden bible) are the source from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, a sacred text of the faith. Some acco ...
to which he said he had been directed by an angel. Mitchill would have been unsympathetic to the view that Indians were related to the Jews or the Egyptians because he was one of the few scholars of his day who believed that Native Americans were descended from
Asians Asian people (or Asians, sometimes referred to as Asiatic people)United States National Library of Medicine. Medical Subject Headings. 2004. November 17, 200Nlm.nih.gov: ''Asian Continental Ancestry Group'' is also used for categorical purpos ...
. Mitchill left no record of Harris's visit.; ; .
"Once described as a 'chaos of knowledge,' Mitchill was generally more admired for his encyclopedic breadth of understanding than for much originality of thought." As a personality, he was affable but also egotistical and pedantic. Mitchill enjoyed popularizing scientific knowledge and promoting practical applications of scientific inquiry.


Published works

* Mitchill, S. L. 1818. Description of three species of fish. ''Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia'' 1, 407–412.
BHL link


See also

* :Taxa named by Samuel L. Mitchill


References


External links

* *
Francis, John W. ''Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchell'', (1859).
From the Digital Collections of the
National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...
.
Finding aid for the Samuel Latham Mitchill papers at the Museum of the City of New YorkSamuel Latham Mitchill Papers
at the
William L. Clements Library The William L. Clements Library is a rare book and manuscript repository located on the University of Michigan's central campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Specializing in Americana and particularly North American history prior to the twentieth centu ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchill, Samuel Latham American naturalists United States senators from New York (state) 1764 births People from Hempstead (village), New York 1831 deaths Politicians from Nassau County, New York Columbia University faculty Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Democratic-Republican Party United States senators Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the American Antiquarian Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery Economists from New York (state) 19th-century American physicians Democratic-Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from New York (state) People from Plandome, New York American expatriates in Great Britain House impeachment managers