A One-Name Study for the BARNUM/BARNHAM Surname
From The New York Times, February 26, 1933: Dr. Merritt W. Barnum. Physician and Head of the Ossining Trust Company. Ossining, N. Y., Feb. 25. -- Dr. Merritt Wright Barnum, prominent local physician and for the last eight years president of the Ossining Trust Company, died suddenly at his home last night of a heart attack. He was 64 years old. A member of an old Westchester family, he moved from Chappaqua to this village thirty-six years ago. He was formerly health officer of Briarcliff Manor. A widow, Madeline Hawley Barnum, and a son, Merritt W. Jr., survive.
Dr. Barnum studied at Cornell University and received his medical degree from the University of Jena, Germany, in 1891. He had been chiefly concerned with nervous diseases, and it was in the capacity of a neurologist that he had been associated with the Ossining Hospital and the New York Neurological Institute and the Vanderbilt Clinic in New York City. He belonged to the American Medical Association and the New York Academy of Medicine.
Jena, Germany, where Doctor Barnum studied, is located in the Gera area, on the Saale river. It was historically a noted academic center, long the focus of liberal ideas in Germany, including those of evolutionist Ernst Haeckel and of Karl Marx. The city was damaged in World War II.
The University of Jena was founded in 1558. In 1547, the elector John Frederick 'the Magnanimous' of Saxony, while a captive in the hands of the emperor Charles V, conceived the plan of founding a university at Jena, which was accordingly established by his three sons. After having obtained a charter from the emperor Ferdinand I, it was inaugurated on February 2, 1558.
Prior to the 20th century, University enrollment peaked in the 18th century. The university's reputation peaked under the auspices of duke Charles Augustus, Goethe's patron (1787–1806), when Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Hegel, Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich von Schlegel and Friedrich Schiller were on its teaching staff.
Founded as a home for the new religious opinions of the sixteenth century, it has ever been in the forefront of German universities for political radicalism. More than any other German university, Jena carried out what were popularly regarded as the characteristics of German student life — duelling and the passion for Freiheit. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, the opening of new universities, along with the suspicions of the various German governments as to the democratic opinions which obtained at Jena, militated against the university, which remained unpopular until recent times.
In 1905 it was attended by about 1,100 students, and its teaching staff (including privatdozenten) numbered 112. Amongst its numerous auxiliaries are the library, with 200,000 volumes; the observatory; the meteorological institute; the botanical garden; the seminaries of theology, philology, and education; and the well-equipped clinical, anatomical, and physical institutes. In 1934 the university was renamed in honor of Friedrich Schiller.
Officers of the Continental and US Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-1900
A Research Guide to the Genealogy of the Barnum/Barnam/Barnham Family Worldwide
AncientFaces - Family History Photos
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