Samuel L. Mitchill

{{Short description|American politician (1764–1831)}} {{redirect|Samuel Mitchill|other people with similar names|Samuel Mitchell (disambiguation){{!}}Sam Mitchell}} {{Use mdy dates|date=September 2020}} {{Infobox officeholder |name = Samuel Latham Mitchill |image = Samuel Latham Mitchill.jpg |jr/sr1 = United States Senator |state1 = New York |term_start1 = November 23, 1804 |term_end1 = March 4, 1809 |predecessor1 = John Armstrong, Jr. |successor1 = Obadiah German |office2 = Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York |constituency3 = {{ushr|NY|2|2nd district}} (1801–03) {{ushr|NY|3|3rd district}} (1803–04) |term_start3 = March 4, 1801 |term_end3 = November 22, 1804 |predecessor3 = Edward Livingston |successor3 = George Clinton, Jr. |constituency2 = {{ushr|NY|2|2nd district}} |term_start2 = December 4, 1810 |term_end2 = March 3, 1813 |predecessor2 = William Denning Gurdon S. Mumford |successor2 = Jotham Post, Jr. Egbert Benson |birth_date = {{birth date|1764|8|20}} |birth_place = Hempstead, Province of New York, British America |death_date = {{death date and age|1831|9|7|1764|8|20}} |death_place = New York City, New York, U.S. |party = Democratic-Republican }} '''Samuel Latham Mitchill''' (August 20, 1764{{spaced ndash}}September 7, 1831) was an American medical doctor, naturalist, politician, and public'' gadfly'' (see Personality),<ref name="chautauquacountyny/Naming-Fredonia">{{cite web |title=Naming the Village of Fredonia |last1=Shepard |first1=Douglas H. |url=https://chautauquacountyny.gov/sites/default/files/document-files/2019-09/Name%20of%20Village%20%28PDF%29.pdf |website=Chautauqua County, New York (.gov) |access-date=16 January 2026}}</ref> who lived in Plandome, New York.<ref>[https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/62369#/summary Details - Plantae Plandomenses; or, A catalogue of the plants growing spontaneously in the neighbourhood of Plandome, the country residence of Samuel L. Mitchill. - Biodiversity Heritage Library] Retrieved October 7, 2014.</ref>

==Early life== Samuel Mitchill was born in Hempstead in the Province of New York, the son of Robert Mitchill and his wife, Mary Latham, both Quakers.<ref name="josephsmithpapers.org">{{Cite web | url=http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/samuel-latham-mitchill | title=Samuel Latham Mitchill – Biography}}</ref>

He was sent to Scotland and graduated in 1786 from the University of Edinburgh Medical School with an MD, his education being paid for by a wealthy uncle.<ref>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), p. 45.</ref> Returning to the United States after medical school, Mitchill also completed law school.<ref name=BDUSC>{{cite web|title=Mitchill, Samuel Latham, (1764 - 1831)|url=http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=m000831|publisher=Biographical Directory of the United States Congress|access-date=November 29, 2015}}</ref> As a lawyer, he oversaw the purchase of lands in western New York from the Iroquois Indians in 1788.<ref name="josephsmithpapers.org"/>

==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. His proposers were James Gregory, Dugald Stewart, and John Rotherham.<ref>{{cite book|title=Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002|date=July 2006|publisher=The Royal Society of Edinburgh|isbn=0-902-198-84-X|url=https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp2.pdf|archive-date=March 4, 2016|access-date=October 5, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304074135/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp2.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>

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 in 1797.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterM.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=August 7, 2014}}</ref> 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, for which he served as vice president until 1830. While at Columbia, Mitchill developed a fallacious theory of disease, but it resulted in his promotion of personal hygiene and improved sanitation.<ref name="American National Biography Online">Keir B. Sterling, "Mitchill, Samuel Latham" [http://www.anb.org/articles/13/13-01154.html American National Biography Online].</ref>

Mitchill 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.<ref name="Bio1"/> As a congressman, he was one of the impeachment managers, who in the impeachment trial, successfully prosecuted the articles of impeachment adopted by the House against Judge John Pickering.<ref>{{cite web |title=List of Individuals Impeached by the House of Representatives |url=https://history.house.gov/Institution/Impeachment/Impeachment-List/ |website=history.house.gov |publisher=United States House of Representatives: History, Art, & Archives |access-date=7 July 2023 |language=en}}</ref> 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 4, 1809. He then served again in the House of Representatives from December 4, 1810, to March 4, 1813.<ref name="Bio1">{{cite web |title=Mitchill, Samuel Latham |url=http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000831 |website=bioguide.congress.gov |publisher=Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. |access-date=7 July 2023}}</ref>

Mitchill was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814.<ref>[http://www.americanantiquarian.org/memberlistm American Antiquarian Society Members Directory]</ref> On January 29, 1817, Mitchill convened the first meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences, originally called the Lyceum of Natural History, of which he was later elected president.<ref name="BaatzHistory">{{cite journal|last1=Baatz|first1=Simon|title=Knowledge, Culture and Science in the Metropolis: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1817–1970|journal=Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences|date=1990|volume=584|pages=1–256|doi=10.1111/nyas.1990.584.issue-1|pmid=2200324}}</ref>

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.<ref>See [http://www.history.rochester.edu/canal/bib/colden/App16.html Mitchill's speech at the dedication of the Erie Canal] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20000524044954/http://www.history.rochester.edu/canal/bib/colden/App16.html |date=May 24, 2000 }}.</ref>

{{anchor|Fredonia}} Mitchill suggested renaming the United States of America to 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.<ref>George R. Stewart, ''Names on the Land'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967) 173.</ref> Some freebooters established a short-lived republic under that name in Texas in the late 1820s.

<blockquote>The earliest recorded argument in its favor is found in a broadside, printed probably in 1803, with the title ''Generic Names for the Country and People of the United States of America''. The text refers to its “authors” who “are citizens of the United States, and are zealous for their prosperity, honour, and reputation. They wish them to possess a name among the nations of the earth. They lament that hitherto and at present the country is destitute of one.” The piece is signed, and some of the phrases used match those in later writings known to be Mitchill’s, so this 1803 broadside is also ascribed to him. It is impossible to tell if there really was a group for whom Mitchill was writing, or if that was merely a pious fiction.<ref name="chautauquacountyny/Naming-Fredonia"/></blockquote>

==Personality== Samuel L. Mitchill and Thomas Jefferson were letter correspondents.<ref name="Jefferson/03-11-02-0085">{{cite web |last1=Jefferson |first1=Thomas |author1-link=Thomas Jefferson |title=Thomas Jefferson to Samuel L. Mitchill |url=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-11-02-0085 |website=Founders Online: founders.archives.gov |access-date=16 January 2026 |language=en |date=20 February 1817}}</ref><ref name="loc.gov/mtjbib015871">{{cite web |last1=Jefferson |first1=Thomas |author1-link=Thomas Jefferson |title=Thomas Jefferson to Samuel L. Mitchill |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/mtjbib015871/ |website=loc.gov |access-date=16 January 2026 |language=english |date=14 February 1806}}</ref>

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.'"<ref>Burnett, 44. In 1828, Martin Harris, an associate of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, visited Mitchill to ask him to authenticate the "Reformed Egyptian" characters that Smith said were taken from golden plates 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. Mitchill left no record of Harris's visit.{{citation |author=Richard E. Bennett |title='Read This I Pray Thee': Martin Harris and the Three Wise Men of the East |work=Journal of Mormon History |volume=36 |date=Winter 2010 |pages=178–216}}; {{citation|author=Richard Bushman|author-link=Richard Bushman|title=Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling |publisher=New York: Alfred A. Knopf |year=2005 |page=64|title-link=Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling }}; {{citation|author=Fawn Brodie|author-link=Fawn Brodie|title=No Man Knows My History |publisher=New York: Alfred A. Knopf |year=1971 |page=51|title-link=No Man Knows My History }}.</ref> "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.<ref name="American National Biography Online"/>

== Published works ==

* Mitchill, S. L. 1818. Description of three species of fish. ''Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia'' 1, 407–412. ([https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/79416#page/479/mode/1up BHL link])

==Taxon described by him== *See :Category:Taxa named by Samuel L. Mitchill

== Taxon named in his honor == The Bay Anchovy, ''Anchoa mitchilli'' Valenciennes, 1848 was named after him.<ref>[https://etyfish.org/search/ The Etyfish Project]</ref>

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== * {{Commons category-inline|Samuel Latham Mitchill}} * {{CongBio|M000831}} * [https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101179317-bk Francis, John W. ''Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchell'', (1859).] From the Digital Collections of the National Library of Medicine. * [https://web.archive.org/web/20131019110832/http://mcnycatablog.org/2013/01/14/samuel-latham-mitchill-papers-1801-1859-bulk-dates-1802-1813/ Finding aid for the Samuel Latham Mitchill papers at the Museum of the City of New York] *[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mitchill Samuel Latham Mitchill Papers] at the William L. Clements Library

{{s-start}} {{s-par|us-hs}} {{US House succession box | state= New York | district= 2 | before= Edward Livingston | after= Joshua Sands | years= 1801–1803}} {{US House succession box | state= New York | district= 3 | before= Philip Van Cortlandt | after= George Clinton, Jr. | years= 1803–1804}} {{s-par|us-sen}} {{U.S. Senator box |class=1 |state=New York | before = John Armstrong, Jr. | after = Obadiah German | years =1804–1809 | alongside=John Smith }} {{s-par|us-hs}} {{US House succession box | state= New York | district= 2 | before= William Denning, Gurdon S. Mumford | after= Jotham Post, Jr., Egbert Benson | years= 1810–1813 with Gurdon S. Mumford and William Paulding, Jr.}} {{s-end}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchill, Samuel Latham}} Category:American naturalists Category:United States senators from New York (state) Category:1764 births Category:People from Hempstead (village), New York Category:1831 deaths Category:Politicians from Nassau County, New York Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Category:Democratic-Republican Party United States senators Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery Category:Economists from New York (state) Category:19th-century American medical doctors Category:Democratic-Republican Party United States representatives from New York (state) Category:People from Plandome, New York Category:Medical doctors from New York (state)

Category:American expatriates in the Kingdom of Great Britain Category:19th-century United States senators Category:19th-century United States representatives Category:18th-century members of the New York State Legislature