Mr. Schoolcraft is of English descent by the paternal side, his great-grandfather having come from England during the wars of Queen Anne, and settled in what is now Schoharie county in New-York, where in old age he taught the first English school in that part of the country, from which circumstance his name was not unnaturally changed by the usage of the people from Calcraft to Schoolcraft. Our author recently attempted in his own person to revive the old family name, but soon abandoned it, and concluded to retain that which was begotten upon his native soil, and by which he has long been so honorably distinguished. He is a son of Colonel Lawrence Schoolcraft, who joined the revolutionary army at seventeen years of age, and participated in the movements under Montgomery and Schuyler, and the memorable defence of Fort Stanwix under Gansevoort. He was born in Guilderland, near Albany, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1793. In a secluded part of the country, where there were few advantages for education, and scarce any persons who thought of literature, he had an ardent love of knowledge, and sat at home with his books and pencils while his equals in age were at cock-fights and horse-races, for which Guilderland was then famous. He is still remembered by some of the octogenarians of the village as the "learned boy." At thirteen he drew subjects in natural history, and landscapes, which attracted the attention of the late Lieutenant-Governor Van Rensselaer, then a frequent visitor of his father, through whose agency he came near being apprenticed to one Ames, the only portrait-painter at that time in Albany; but as it was demanded that he should commence with house-painting the plan was finally abandoned. At fourteen he began to contribute pieces in prose and verse to the newspapers, and for several years after he pursued without aid the study of natural history, English literature, Hebrew, German, and French, and the philosophy of language.