When we recall the disadvantages under which John Bachman worked, it must be acknowledged that he was deserving of all the credit which he received. Born of Swiss and German stock at Rheinbeck, New York, in 1790, he clearly remembered walking in the mock funeral procession that was held in his village when the country was mourning the death of Washington in 1799. From early boyhood he was an ardent enthusiast in the study of nature, at a time when such studies were generally frowned upon in country districts as not only idle but positively harmful. He trapped the beaver, and from the sale of its skins was able to make his first purchase of books on natural history. While a young man he became acquainted with Alexander Wilson and learned to know him well, having joined him in field excursions and collected birds for him in northern New York; on Wilson's recommendation he succeeded both him and his nephew, William Duncan, in the Elwood School, at Milestown, Pennsylvania, where he taught for a year. While there, a youth of barely fifteen, he was invited, no doubt through the influence of Wilson, to meet Alexander von Humboldt at a dinner given in honor of the great traveler at Philadelphia in 1804. From a pastorate in Shagticoke, New York, Bachman in 1815 went to Charleston, South Carolina, where he presided over the Lutheran church for nearly sixty years, and became thoroughly identified with the South. Beloved as few men ever are in their community, he was widely honored for his attainments in natural science. In an address on Humboldt, dictated by Bachman when in his eightieth year, and too feeble to deliver it himself, he alluded to the event noticed above to show "how scanty, in those days, was the material in natural science." Among the few naturalists who were present on the occasion of the dinner, which was held in Peale's Museum, were, he said:[222] the two Bartrams, Wilson, the ornithologist, Lawson, his engraver, George Ord and a few others.... Few speeches were made and those were short—there was no formality.... Humboldt was then, as he was afterwards, in every society, "the observed of all observers".... I saw him every day during the few days he remained in Philadelphia. He inserted my name in his note-book, and for the last sixty years we corresponded at long intervals.... It would be very gratifying to me, and interesting to your societies, if I could have exhibited to you his autograph in some of his letters; but, alas! my whole library and all my collections in Natural History, the accumulation of the labors of a long life, were burnt by Sherman's vandal army, and, with the exception of a single letter, which, by accident, fell into the hands of another member of my family, I possess no memorials of one who condescended to speak of me as a friend.