- Samuel Latham Mitchill
Samuel Latham Mitchill (
August 20 ,1764 –September 7 ,1831 ) was an Americanphysician , naturalist andpolitician fromNew York . He was born in Hempstead, New York. In 1786 he graduated from theUniversity of Edinburgh . He served in theNew York State Assembly in 1791 and again in 1798. Mitchill taught chemistry, botany, and natural history at Columbia College from 1792 until 1801, and was a founding editor of "The Medical Repository ", the first U.S. medical journal. He was elected as aDemocratic-Republican to theUnited States House of Representatives and served from 1801 until his resignation onNovember 22 ,1804 .Mitchill was elected to the
United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation ofJohn Armstrong, Jr. and served fromNovember 23 ,1804 untilMarch 3 ,1809 . He served once more in theUnited States House of Representatives fromDecember 4 ,1810 untilMarch 3 ,1813 . Mitchill was the author of "The Fishes of New-York, described and arranged" (1815).Mitchill was one of the founders of
Rutgers Medical School and was vice president from 1826 until 1830. He celebrated the opening of theErie Canal , sponsored by his friend and political allyDeWitt Clinton ; they were both members of the short-livedNew-York Institution .During the United States of America's first decades a few efforts to change the nation's name were launched. The main criticisms of the name "United States of America" were that it was too long, vague or imprecise, and "unpoetic". The strongest proposal for a new name was Columbia, which failed to become the nation's name but did become the name of numerous places in the country. Another proposal was advanced by Mitchill. He combined the English word "freedom" with a Latin ending, creating
Fredonia . While there were some advocates of renaming the nation Fredonia, it was never a serious contender. However, many towns and cities adopted the name, such asFredonia, New York (Stewart, pg. 173).References
*
George R. Stewart . "Names on the Land". Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston (1967).External links
*
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.