City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library
Samuel Akerly (1785 - 1845)
Reader
Borrowing activity from 1/26/1805 to 12/19/1805.
Borrowing activity from 1/26/1805 to 12/19/1805.
Dr. Samuel Akerly, a physician, educator, and naturalist, was born in 1785 in New York City. He graduated Columbia College in 1807, and was chosen to be an attending physician at the New York Dispensary. He served as a hospital surgeon during the War of 1812 and was honorably discharged in 1815 (Marshall 416). Akerly was superintendant and physician for the New York Institute for the Deaf before helping to found the New York Institute for the Blind in 1831. He wrote several books, such as Hooper's Medical Dictionary (written with Robert Hooper) and Elementary Exercises for the Deaf and Dumb, and published articles on minerology in scientific journals. He was one of the original members, and in 1819 second vice president, of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, later the New York Academy of Sciences, for which he wrote "An Essay on the Geology of the Hudson River, and the Adjacent Regions" in 1820, dedicated to his brother-in-law, the scientist and natural historian Samuel Latham Mitchill (Greene and Burke 52).
Samuel Akerly married Mary Ketchum. They had at least one child, Samuel Mitchill Akerly.
Akerly purchased a property on the south shore of Staten Island in 1839, which he named Oakland Farm, and retired there. Akerly's family inherited the property upon his death, and in 1848 it was purchased by Frederick Law Olmstead, the future designer of Central Park. Olmstead lived and worked on the 125 acre farm through the 1850s (Martin 54). It is now a part of the City's Department of Parks and Recreation.
Akerly died on July 6, 1845. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY.
Samuel Akerly married Mary Ketchum. They had at least one child, Samuel Mitchill Akerly.
Akerly purchased a property on the south shore of Staten Island in 1839, which he named Oakland Farm, and retired there. Akerly's family inherited the property upon his death, and in 1848 it was purchased by Frederick Law Olmstead, the future designer of Central Park. Olmstead lived and worked on the 125 acre farm through the 1850s (Martin 54). It is now a part of the City's Department of Parks and Recreation.
Akerly died on July 6, 1845. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY.
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