HENRY VAN DYCK was born in the city of New York in 1744, and was the only son of his parents. He graduated from King's (now Columbia) College in 1761, when the institution was in charge of its first president, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson. After graduating, he studied law and located himself in Stratford, Conn., whither the family had removed and become settled. He married Huldah Lewis of that place, August 9, 1767, and on the sixth day of the ensuing month, he and his wife were admitted as communicants in Christ Church, which was then under the rectorship of Dr. Johnson for the second time, he having resigned the college and returned to Stratford. It does not appear that he had much success in the legal profession, and he wrote his discouragements to William Samuel Johnson, special colonial agent from Connecticut, then in London, who confided in his integrity and had entrusted him with the collection of some debts that were his due. In his reply, Johnson said: "It gives me concern to find that you have not met with that obliging behaviour from the profession which you expected; those men at the bar have, I believe, most of them experienced the friendly assistance of those who have gone before them, and should not therefore in point of gratitude refuse it to help those who are coming forward and to succeed them, not to mention that it is exceedingly ungenerous and illiberal to endeavour to cramp rising genius, or use any attempts to monopolize a profession which should be ever open to men of merit, and especially those who enter into it in the regular methods of education. You will find, however, that nothing will so effectually overcome any difficulties, prejudices, or inconveniences of this nature as the course you say you are in, and in which therefore you will by all means persevere, of an assiduous, careful attention to your business and an upright, diligent conduct in every branch of your profession. This will secure you in the possession of the business you have, and increase it, enable you to transact it with ease and honor, and by degrees enforce the complaisance at least, if not the esteem, of those who by some slights and little negligences wished to have depressed you, and by that means perhaps secured to themselves a greater proportion of business. "I sincerely give you and Mrs. Van Dyck joy upon your marriage, and hope you will long, very long, enjoy all the blessings of the connubial state, which I have ever esteemed essential to human happiness. It would have given me an additional pleasure to have known that your father had consented to it, and though it seems he would not, I still hope he may yet see such happy effects of the measure as to approve it and be convinced by its consequences that he ought not to have been so inflexibly averse to it." [Footnote: Ms. Letter, November 23, 1767.]