BRYANT, Gridley, engineer, b. in Scituate, Mass., in 1789; d. there, 13 June, 1867. He was left fatherless at an early age, was apprenticed to a builder in Boston when fifteen years old, and when twenty-one began business on his own account. In 1828 lie invented the portable derrick. He obtained the contract for building the U. S. bank in Boston, and other public buildings, and was master builder and contractor to supply stone for Bunker Hill monument. In order to bring the stone from his quarry at Quincy, he conceived the plan of building a railroad, suggested by the Liverpool and Manchester railroad, then in contemplation in England, but not yet built. Thomas H. Perkins and other members of the Bunker Hill monument association consented to the project, though doubtful of its success ; the legislature hesitated to charter the corporation, and finally granted a charter that was encumbered with vexatious restrictions. Mr. Perkins alone of the original subscribers was willing to risk capital in the venture, and took the whole stock when the others neglected to pay their assessments. The railroad, four miles long, including branches, was begun on 1 April, 1826, and on 7 Oct. of the same year the first train of cars passed over the entire line. Bryant devised a swing platform, balanced by weights, to receive the loaded cars as they came from the quarry. The platform was connected with an inclined plane, on which the cars were lowered, by means of an endless chain, to the railroad, eighty-four feet below. He also constructed a turn-table at the foot of the quarry. All the cars, tracks, and machinery were invented by him. His cars had four-wheeled trucks, which were used singly, or were joined in pairs, by means of a platform and king-bolts, to form eight-wheeled ears. The turn-table, switches, and turnouts invented by Bryant were not patented, but were abandoned to the public, and were afterward in general use on railroads. In 1834 Ross Winans patented an eight-wheeled car with appliances and improvements adapted for general railroad use; but, instead of taking out a patent for his improvements and combinations, he claimed the invention of the principle of eight-wheeled carriages. Other railroads besides the Baltimore and Ohio, which controlled the Winans patent, used eight-wheeled cars similar to those of Winans, on the strength of Bryant's prior invention, which was not patented; and after five years of litigation the courts decided against the validity of the Winans patent. Mr. Bryant's testimony was frequently required in the Ross Winans suit. He had become reduced in circumstances, and was encouraged to incur much trouble and outlay by repeated promises of ample compensation from the interested railroad corporations; and their failure to keep these promises, after winning the suit, greatly depressed his spirits and hastened his death from paralysis.
BRYANT, Joel, physician, b. in Suffolk co., N. Y., 10 Nov., 1813 ; d. in Brooklyn, N. Y., 20
Nov., 1868. He was graduated at Pennsylvania medical college, and entered upon his profession in his native village, but removed to Brooklyn in 1850, and became quite prominent as a practitioner. For some years previous to his death he was a great sufferer, and was unable to attend to
his duties as a physician. He was the author of several treatises on homoeopathy, the best of which was "The Pocket Manual, or Repertory of Homoeopathic Practice" (New York, 1851).
BRYANT, Solomon, Indian clergyman, b. in Massachusetts in 1695; d. 8 May, 1775." After the resignation of Rev. Joseph Bourne as pastor of the
Indian church at Marshpee, Mass., Bryant was ordained in his stead in 1742 and preached to the Indians in their own language. He was a good minister, but imprudent in admitting members to the church, and was deficient in economy. He was dismissed from his place in 1758, on account of dissatisfaction among his flock, and was succeeded by Rev. Mr. Hawley, but continued to preach occasionally at Marshpee for several years.
BRYANT, William Cullen, poet and editor,
b. in Cummington, Mass., 3 Nov., 1794; d. in New
York, 12 June, 1878. His ancestry might have
been inferred from the character of his writings,
which reflect whatever is best and noblest in the
life and thought of New England. The first Bryant
of whom there is any account in the annals of
the New World, Stephen, came over from England, and was at Plymouth, Mass., as early as 1632, of which town he was chosen constable in 1663.
He married Abigail Shaw, who had emigrated with
her father, and who bore him several children
between 1650 and 1665. Stephen Bryant had a son
Ichabod, who was the father of Philip Bryant, born
in 1732. Philip married Silence Howard, daughter
of Dr. Abiel Howard, of West Bridgewater, whose
profession he adopted, practising in North Bridgewater.
He was the father of nine children, one of
whom, Peter, born in 1767, succeeded him in his
profession. Young Dr. Bryant married in 1792 Miss
Sarah Snell, daughter of Ebenezer Snell, of Bridgewater,
who removed his family to Cummington,
where the subject of this sketch was born. Dr.
Bryant was proud of his profession; and in
the hope, no doubt, that his son would become a
shining light therein, he perpetuated at his christening
the name of a great medical authority, who
had died four years before, William Cullen. The
lad was exceedingly frail, and had a head the
immensity of which troubled his anxious father.
How to reduce it to the normal size was a puzzle
that Dr. Bryant solved in a spring of clear, cold
water, into which the child was immersed every
morning, head and all, by two of Dr. Bryant's
students. William Cullen Bryant's mother was a
descendant of John Alden; and the characteristics
of his family included some of the sterner qualities
of the Puritans. His grandfather Snell was a
magistrate, and without doubt a severe one, for
the period was not one that favored leniency to
criminals. The whipping-post was still extant in
Massachusetts, and the poet remembered that one
stood about a mile from his early home at
Cummington, and that he once saw a young fellow of
eighteen who had received forty lashes as a
punishment for theft. It was, he thought, the last
example of corporal punishment inflicted by law in
that neighborhood, though the whipping-post
remained in its place for several years.
Magistrate Snell was a disciplinarian of the stricter sort; and as he and his wife resided with Dr. Bryant and his family, the latter stood in awe of him, so much so that William Cullen was prevented from feeling anything like affection for him. It was an age of repression, not to say oppression, for children, who had few rights that their elders were bound to respect. To the terrors of the secular arm were added the deeper terrors of the spiritual law, for the people of that primitive period were nothing if not religious. The minister was the great man, and his bodily presence was a restraint upon the unruly, and the ruly too, for that matter. The lines of our ancestors did not fall in pleasant places as far as recreations were concerned; for they were few and far between, consisting, for the most part, of militia musters,
