Word: bancrofts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Columbia University was delighted and flabbergasted to read in the papers last week that it had inherited some $2 million. Its benefactor was a competent but obscure historian named Frederic Bancroft,* who died in Washington last fortnight...
...news presented two mysteries: 1) how a historian came by such a fortune; 2) why he bequeathed it to Columbia. Investigation soon disclosed that Bancroft, born in Galesburg, Ill. and an Amherst A.B., had taken his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1885, and lectured there for a year...
Except for other brief tenures as lecturer, Bancroft held only one other notable job, as librarian of the State Department from 1888 to 1892. A bachelor, he joined Washington's old, exclusive Metropolitan Club in 1891. A pleasant but solemn man, he was known to fellow members as a "very retiring and quiet sort." Historians respect his excellent studies of the South (Slave-Trading in the Old South, The Negro in Politics...
...torpedo had blasted Wajda's ship, a U.S. merchantman, at night; shellfire pummeled her carcass. Shell fragments got Wajda in the head and ankle, rolled him overboard like a sack. He came to on a pitching raft where ship's Engineers Mahlon Benton and Lindgren Bancroft had dragged him. They rigged a sail of two big yellow quarantine flags, dressed Wajda's wounds, doled him out a supply of chocolate and hardtack...
...fish guts they threw into the water lured hungry sharks which, Wajda said, "slapped the raft with their tails and we were afraid it would overturn." Benton began to grow weak. "On the 24th day he died and we put him overboard, mumbling what prayers we could remember. . . . Then Bancroft started to go out of his mind. ... He tried to jump. . . . I grabbed him . . . and we rolled around. . . . The raft lurched and he went over. I was too weak to try to save...