Samuel Haldeman Biography

Dromo's Den

HALDEMAN, Samuel Sethman (1812-80). An American naturalist and philologist, born at Locust Grove, Lancaster Co., Pa. He studied for two years at Dickinson College, was made assistant in the Geological Survey of New Jersey in 1836, and from 1837 to 1842 was engaged in similar service in Pennsylvania. He became professor of the natural sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1851 and in 1855 was called to a similar chair in Delaware College. From 1869 until his death he was professor of comparative linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania, he being the first to occupy the chair in that institution, and during this period made a careful study of Indian dialects. In 1876 he was elected president of the American Philological Association. In addition to numerous papers on scientific and philological subjects, he published: Elements of Latin Pronunciation (1851); Taylor's Statistics on Coal (2d ed., 1855); Analytical Orthography: An Investigation of the Sounds of the Voice and their Alphabetic Notation (1860); Tours of a Chess Knight (1864); Affixes in their Origin and Application, Exhibiting the Etymologic Structure of English Words (1865); Pennsylvania Dutch (1872); Outlines of Etymology (1877); Word Building (1881).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. X (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 582.