Excerpt from In Memoriam; Edward Orton, Ph.D., LL. D: Addresses Delivered at the Ohio State University, Sunday, November 26, 1899

In September 1856 he became Professor of the natural sciences in the State Normal School at Albany. This position he Was constrained to resign at the end of three years of successful service. He was charged with holding heretical opinions. From 1859 to 1865 Mr. Orton was principal of an academy at Chester, Orange Co., N. Y., and his reputation was so enhanced by the success of the school that in 1865 he was elected Professor of Natural History in Antioch College, Yellow Springs, O. This position he held until he was chosen President of Antioch, June, 1872. In 1869 Governor Hayes had appointed him one of the Assistants upon the Geological Survey of Ohio. In 1873 Mr. Orton was elected Professor of Geol ogy and President of the new Agricultural and Mechanical College, located at Columbus. Of this institution, which in 1878 became the Ohio State University, he remained President until 1881when he resigned the presidency, but retained the chair of Geology until the end of his life.

In the summer of 1874 he went to Europe and traveled in England and on the Continent. Upon the reorganization of the State Geological Survey in 1882 Dr. Orton became its chief and held the oflice of State Geologist for the remainder of his life. Volumes 5, 6, and 7 of the final Reports of the Geological Survey, two Annual Reports and other special ones were brought out under his direction. During these later years his attention was directed chiefly to Economic Geology. He gave, also, much time and thought to the problems of sewage disposal and public water supply as affecting the public health of the community and the state at large. Early in December, 1891, he delivered a public lecture at Antioch College and while returning to Columbus suffered a stroke of paralysis which wholly deprived him of the use of his left arm and caused a decided limp in his gait, but left his mental powers unimpaired. Dur ing the early autumn of 1899 Dr. Orton's health failed perceptibly, yet he was spared a long illness and retained his faculties to the end, which came suddenly and almost painlessly, Oct. 16, 1899. He died, as he lived, with the simple dignity and fortitude of a Christian gentleman.

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