Samuel L. Mitchill

Samuel Latham Mitchill
United States Senator from New York
In office November 23, 1804 – March 3, 1809
Preceded by	John Armstrong, Jr.
Succeeded by	Obadiah German
Personal details
Born	August 20, 1764(1764-08-20) Hempstead, New York
Died	September 7, 1831(1831-09-07) (aged 67) New York City, New York
Political party	Democratic-Republican

Samuel Latham Mitchill (August 20, 1764 – September 7, 1831) was an American physician, naturalist, and politician from New York. He was born in Hempstead, New York. In 1786 he graduated from the University of Edinburgh, an education paid for by a wealthy uncle.^[1]

Mitchill taught chemistry, botany, and natural history at Columbia College from 1792 until 1801, and he was a founding editor of The Medical Repository, the first medical journal in the United States. At Columbia Mitchill lectured on botany, zoology, and mineralogy, and he collected, identified, and classified many plants and animals, particularly aquatic organisms. From 1807 to 1826, he taught at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York 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, which however resulted in his promotion of personal hygiene and better sanitation.^[2]

Mitchell served in the New York State Assembly in 1791 and again in 1798 and was then elected as a Democratic-Republican to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1801 until his resignation on November 22, 1804. In November 1804, Mitchill was elected a U.S. Senator from New York to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Armstrong, and served from November 23, 1804, to March 3, 1809. He then served again in the House of Representatives from December 4, 1810, to March 3, 1813.

Mitchill strongly endorsed the building of the Erie Canal, sponsored by his friend and political ally DeWitt Clinton; they were both members of the short-lived New-York Institution.^[3] 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.^[4]

Mitchill was a man of "irrepressible energies...polyglot enthusiasms...[and] distinguished 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.'"^[5] "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.^[6]

References

1. ^ D. Graham Burnett, Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton University Press, 2007), 45.
2. ^ Keir B. Sterling, "Mitchill, Samuel Latham" American National Biography Online.
3. ^ See Mitchill's speech at the dedication of the Erie Canal.
4. ^ George R. Stewart, Names on the Land (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967) 173.
5. ^ Burnett, 44. Despite his interest in philology, Mitchill may have escaped connection with Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, only because he died in 1831 before the new religion became generally known. Smith had sent Mitchill a sample of "Reformed Egyptian" said to have been taken from golden plates given to Smith by an angel, but Mitchill sent Smith's associate Martin Harris on to Charles Anthon with a note saying that he could not read the script. Charles Anthon to E. D. Howe, February 17, 1834, in Early Mormon Documents, 4: 378.
6. ^ Keir B. Sterling, "Mitchill, Samuel Latham" American National Biography Online.

External links

• Samuel L. Mitchill at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Francis, John W. Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchell, (1859). From the Digital Collections of the National Library of Medicine.

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by Edward Livingston	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 2nd congressional district 1801 – 1803	Succeeded by Joshua Sands
Preceded by Philip Van Cortlandt	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 3rd congressional district 1803 – 1804	Succeeded by George Clinton, Jr.
United States Senate
Preceded by John Armstrong, Jr.	United States Senator (Class 1) from New York 1804 - 1809 Served alongside: John Smith	Succeeded by Obadiah German
United States House of Representatives
Preceded by William Denning, Gurdon S. Mumford	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 2nd congressional district 1810 – 1813 with Gurdon S. Mumford and William Paulding, Jr.	Succeeded by Jotham Post, Jr., Egbert Benson

Persondata
Name	Mitchill, Samuel Latham
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	August 20, 1764
Place of birth	Hempstead, New York
Date of death	September 7, 1831
Place of death	New York City, New York