BIG BETHEL. 64 fully attacked by Gen. E. V. Pierce, at the head of about 2500 Federals, acting; under the directions of Gen. B. F. Butler (q.v. ). The fight was characterized by a series of blunders on the Federal side, and General Pierce was soon forced to retire with a loss of 70 (including JIajor Theodore Winthro]) ) , the Confederates liaving lost only 14. Consult Official Records (Vol. II., Washington, 1S81-1!)01), and Johnson and Buel (ed.). Briitlrs ami Leaders of the Civil War. Vol. II. (Xew York, 1887). BIG BLACK RIVER. ( 1 ) An affluent of the Jtississijjpi, rising in Choctaw County, Jliss., and after a southwest course of 200 miles flowing into the greater river 20 miles south of Vicks- burg (Map: ^lississijjpi. E 5). It is navigable for nearly .50 miles to Bovina. (2) A tributary of the Porcupine River, Alaska, into which it flows a few miles above the latter's junction with the Yukon River at Fort Yukon. (3) One of the eastern feeders of Lake Winnipeg, Canada, which it enters in latitude 52° 20' N. BIG BONAN'ZA. A popular play adapted bv Bartlev Campbell from a German source ("1875). BIG'ELOW, Krastus Brigiiam (1814-79). An American inventor, born in West Boylston, Mass. He invented looms for weaving suspender webbing, piping cord, knotted counterpanes, car- pets, coacii laces, etc., founded Clinton. Mass., the headquarters of the Bigelow Carpet Co.. and was one of the original incorporators of the ^lassachusetts Institute of Technology. He pub- lished The Tariff Questions Considered in Regard to the Policy of Eni/land and the Interest of the United States (18C3). BIGELOW, Frank Hagar (1851 — ). An American meteorologist, born at Concord, Mass. He graduated at Harvard College in 1873, and the IDpiscopal Theological School in Cambridge (Mass.) in 1880, and took orders. For some time he was assistant astronomer at the national observatory in Cordoba, Argentina, and after- wards was successively professor in Racine Col- lege (Wis.) and assistant in the Nautical Al- manac oflice, Washington, D. C. In 1891 he was aijpointed a professor of meteorologv' in the I'nited States Weather Bureau, and in 1894 pro- fessor of solar physics at the Columbian Uni- versity. He also became, in 1890, assistant rec- tor of Saint John's Cluirch. Washington, and, in 1898, president of the Washington Philosophi- cal Society. He is best known as the invoitor of an instriiment for obtaining photographic records of stellar transits, and for researches demonstrating the connection between terrestrial magnetism, the aurora, and the solar corona. His most important publication is a monograph on the Kolar Corona (1889). BIGELOW, .Jacob (1787-1870). An Ameri- can physician and botanist. He was born in Sudbury. .Mass.. graduated at Harvard in 1S06, and began the practice of medicine in Boston in 1810. He was for more than forty years phy- sician to the Massachusetts General Hospital, and for a long time professor of materia mediea and clinical medicine in Harvard. In 1820 he was one of the committee of five who formed the American Pharnuicopa>ia, and assisted in estab- lishing the nomenclature which substituted a single for a doulile word when possible. He was also the originator of Mount Aul)urn Cenieterj". BIGELOW. His works include Suture in Disease (1854) ; a Jiricf Exi)osition of Rational Medicine (Philadel- phia, 1858) ; Jlislory of Mount Auburn (IStiO), and many pa|)ers on medicine and liotauy, chief among the latter l>eing his Florula Bostonicnsis (1814). For many years he was president of the ilassacliusetts Medical Society. BIGELOW, .ToHX (1817—). An American journalist, diplomat, and miscellaneous writer. A graduate ol Union College, 1835, he was later admitted to the bar, practiced law for some years, but gradially exchanged this profession for that of journalism. From 1845 to 1848 he was in- s)iector of the prison at Sing Sing; in 1849 he became joint owner of the Evening Post with William Cillen Bryant, and was its managing editor until 1801, when he becauu> consul at Paris, and, from 1804 to 1807. I'nited States Minister to France. Returning to America, he was Secretary of State f(U- Xew York ( 1S75-77), and after August, 1880, a trustee of the Tilden Fund for a New York public library. His more important publications are: .S'omc Recollections cf A. P. Bern/er (1809): MoUnos the Quietist (1882) ; Williatn Cullen Bryant (1880) : Life of tiamuel J. Tilden (1880, 2 vols.); and France and the Confederate yaiy (1888). He edited The Autohiographti of Franllin from a manu- script thal lip had discovered in France ( 1,S08, 3 vols.) ; also the Comjiletc ll'co-A'.s of Franklin (1887-88. 10 vols.) and the Speeches of S. ■/. Tilden (1880). He also contributed frcquentlv to magazines. In 1895 he was elected president of the Board of Trustees of the Xew York Pulilic Liluary. BIGELOW, Melville JIadison ( 1840—) . An American lawyer and author. He was born at Eaton Rapids, Mich., and was educated at the University of Michigan and at Harvard. In addition to his American edition of Jannan on 'Wills, he has ])ublished numerous treatises on estoppel, fraud, and torts, among which the fol- lowing are especiallv noteworthv: The Lair of Estoppel (1872-90)1 The Law 'of Torts (1878- 1901); History of English Procedure (1880); The Law of Mills, Sotes, and Cheques (1895- 1900) ; The Law of Bills (1898). BIGELOW, Poii.TNEV (185.5—). An Ameri- can journalist, son of John Bigelow (q.v.). After a cosmopolitan training in the United States, France, and Germany (where he was a fellow- pupil of the present German Emperor), he was graduated at Yale in 1879, and from the Cohnn- bia Law School in 1882. Admitted to the bar, he abandoned the law, after a few years, for journalism and travel in the East. Africa. Eu- rope, and the West Indies. He traveled widely by ship and canoe in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the islands of the Pacific. He was editor of Outing (18S5-87), and has since been London correspondent of Harper's Weekly, and corre- spondent of the London Times during the Span- ish-American War. He has published The tier- man Emperor (1889), The German Emperor and His Xeighbors (1892), Paddles and Poli- tics Down the Danuhe (1892), The Border Land of Czar and Kaiser (1894), gatlu'ring the mate- rials for whieli cost liim sunuuary expulsion from the Russian Empire, .4 History of the (Icrman Struggle for Liberty (1890), and White Man's .Africa (1898).
