History of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, with special emphasis on the natural history

Abstract

THE BEQUEST On 17 December 1835 President Andrew Jackson sent a message to Congress informing it that the United States was the recipient of the estate of an English chemist and mineralogist named James Smithson and requesting Congressional action on acceptance or rejection of the bequest. This news of the beneficence of an almost unknown Englishman was received with much surprise on the part of Congress and with little enthusiasm by some of the members. Indeed, a few were in favor of refusing the bequest, but the eloquence of John Quincy Adams, the former president and now representative from Massachusetts, helped convince his colleagues that the claim should be pursued. There has been much speculation about Smithson's motives in leaving his considerable fortune to a country he had never visited and with which he had no ties of personal friendships or emigrated relatives. Perhaps the circumstances of his birth and life made him look favorably toward the new country founded on ideas of equality and democracy. There is no clue in his will to the reasons for his encouragement of American scholarship and intellectual pursuits. James Smithson was born in Paris in 1765 to a Mrs Elizabeth Hungerford Keate Macie, a well-to-do widow; he was the illegitimate son of Sir Hugh Smithson, later the Duke of Northumberland. Mrs Macie was related to Sir Hugh's wife who was a Percy, but little is known of her relationship with Sir Hugh or the circumstances preceeding James's birth. The boy was known as James Macie. When he was around ten, he was naturalized a British citizen; his father's name was not mentioned in the naturalization papers, which contained an unusual clause prohibiting him from entering politics, the Civil Service, the Army, Navy, the Church, and the Privy Council. Macie matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1782 and received his M.A. in 1786. He was a very good student, interested in chemistry, geology, and mineralogy. A few months after graduation he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, the youngest man to have been nominated up to that time. He had the use of the laboratory of Henry Cavendish and later the laboratories of the Royal Institution, of which he was a charter member.