character, the writings, and the services of this eminent man, but the
portraiture which I shall draw will be but a miniature. To do it full
justice a larger canvas would be required than the one I propose to take.
He acted in so many important capacities; he was connected in so many ways
with our literature, our legislation, our jurisprudence, our public
education, and public charities, that it would require a volume adequately
to set forth the obligations we owe to the exertion of his fine faculties
for the general good.

Gulian Crommelin Verplanck was born in Wall street, in the city of New
York, on the 6th of August, 1786. The house in which he was born was a
large yellow mansion, standing on the spot on which the Assay Office has
since been built. A little beyond this street, a few rods only, lay the
island of New York in all its original beauty, so that it was but a step
from Wall street to the country. His father, Daniel Crommelin Verplanck,
was a respectable citizen of the old stock of colonists from Holland, who
for several terms was a member of Congress, and whom I remember as a
short, stout old gentleman, commonly called Judge Verplanck, from having
been in the latter years of his life a Judge of the County Court of
Dutchess. Here he resided in the latter years of his life on the
patrimonial estate, where the son, ever since I knew him, was always in
the habit of passing a part of the summer. It had been in the family of
the Verplancks ever since their ancestor Gulian Verplanck with Francis
Rombout, in 1683, purchased it, with other lands, of the Wappinger Indians
for a certain amount of money and merchandize, specified in a deed signed
by the Sachem Sakoraghuck and other chiefs, the spelling of whose names
seems to defy pronunciation. The two purchasers afterwards divided this
domain, and to the Verplancks was assigned a tract which they have ever
since held.