The Americana; a universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biography, geography, commerce, etc., of the world . hers,and from kind traits which he showed, theimpression of an innately gentle nature, but alsoof a man who was renouncing, not without bit-terness, the youthful hope of fame. Smithsons will, dated from London 23 , is a brief document leaving his property toa nephew, and in the case of the death of thenephew without leaving a child, he adds: Ithen bequeath the whole of my property to theLnited States of America to found at Washing-ton
The Americana; a universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biography, geography, commerce, etc., of the world . hers,and from kind traits which he showed, theimpression of an innately gentle nature, but alsoof a man who was renouncing, not without bit-terness, the youthful hope of fame. Smithsons will, dated from London 23 , is a brief document leaving his property toa nephew, and in the case of the death of thenephew without leaving a child, he adds: Ithen bequeath the whole of my property to theLnited States of America to found at Washing-ton, under the name of the Smithsonian Institu-tion, an establishment for the increase and dif-fusion of knowledge among men. The will was proved in the PrerogativeCourt of Canterbury, the value of the effectsbeing sworn to be not over ii20,ooo, asum much larger in relative importance at thetime than it would be now. The money ap-pears to have come from his mothers family:there is, at least, no indication that any portionwhatever of the Smithson bequest was derivedfrom his Northumberland ancestry. It is notdefinitely ascertained why Smithson made the. JAMES SMITIISOX. POVNUEK OV THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION United States his legatee, in which he is notknown to have had any correspondent or friend. Smithson was buried in the little Englishcemetery on the heights of San Benigno, the re-mains and monuments in which are now beingremoved by the Italian government to anotherlocation. The regents of the Smithsonian Insti-tution, who had caused a tablet to be erected tohim in the cemetery and in the church, on theremoval of the cemetery, appointed one of theirnumber, Doctor Graham Bell, tobring the remains from Genoa to Washington,where they arrived in the early part of 1904,being brought from New York to Washington,by order of the President of the United Statesupon a government vessel, and transferred fromthe Washington Navy Yard, under military andnava
Size: 1374px × 1819px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidamericanaunivers14newy
