The grandfather of J. S. Newberry, General Roger Newberry, an officer in the army during the Revolutionary War, was for many years a member of the Governor's Council; he was also one of the directors of the Connecticut Land Company, proprietors of a great part of the "Western Reserve," in Northern Ohio. His son Henry, father of the subject of this notice, in 1824, with his family, emigrated from Windsor to the Western Reserve, and founded the town of Cuyahoga Falls, in Summit County.
Young Newberry received his academic education at the Western Reserve College, from which institution he graduated in 1846. Two years later he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the Cleveland Medical College. The years 1849-'50 he spent in study and in foreign travel, and in 1851 he began the practice of medicine at Cleveland. But the life of a practising physician was distasteful to Dr. Newberry, as affording but little opportunity for scientific study, for which he had from boyhood evinced great aptitude. Hence, in May, 1855, he accepted an appointment as assistant surgeon and geologist to Lieutenant Williamson's expedition for the exploration of the country lying between San Francisco and the Columbia River. The results of this expedition are published in the Pacific Railroad "Reports;" but Dr. Newberry's report on "The Geology, Botany, and Zoölogy of Northern California and Oregon" also appears in a separate quarto volume of 300 pages, with 48 plates.
He next, in 1857−'58, was attached to an expedition under the command of Lieutenant J. C. Ives, commissioned to explore and navigate the Colorado River, so as to open a route of communication with the army in Utah. An iron steamer, constructed in Philadelphia, was taken in sections to the Gulf of California, where it was put together and launched. The expedition navigated the river for the distance of 500 miles. Above the point reached by the steamer the course of the river, for hundreds of miles, is through deep canons with vertical walls, in some places over a mile in height. The report on the Colorado region, drawn up conjointly by Lieutenant Ives and Dr. Newberry, gives a graphic description of perhaps the most remarkable portion of the earth's surface. In the preface to the report, Lieutenant Ives speaks of Newberry's observations as constituting "the most interesting material gathered by the expedition."
The following year (1859) Dr. Newberry was ordered to join a party sent out by the War Department, to report to Captain Macomb, for the exploration of the San Juan and Upper Colorado Rivers. The party traversed a large part of Southern Colorado, Utah, Northern Arizona, and New Mexico, adding greatly to the sum of geographical knowledge, and opening a region of singular interest and of enormous mineral wealth. This expedition determined the point of junction of the Grand and Green Rivers, forming the Colorado; further, it explored the valley of the San Juan, a river whose banks
