Mark Walrod Harrington

Biography

Born in Sycamore, Illinois, to James and Charlotte Walrod Harrington, he married Rose Martha Smith in 1874. Their first son died in 1876; their second, Mark Raymond Harrington, arrived in 1882 and grew up to become a noted archaeologist. From 1879 to 1891, Harrington taught astronomy and ran the Detroit Observatory at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. During that time, he recorded an astronomical observation that Johan Ludvig Emil Dreyer later listed as NGC 7040 in the New General Catalogue.

In 1884, he started The American Meteorological Journal and put out its first seven volumes. President Benjamin Harrison named him the first chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1891, but he was fired in 1895 after Secretary of Agriculture J. Sterling Morton persuaded President Grover Cleveland to let him go. Harrington then took over as president of the University of Washington from 1895 to 1897, following Thomas Milton Gatch. One evening in 1899, he left home and disappeared for roughly ten years.

In 1908, his son spotted a newspaper story about a man who had been admitted as John Doe No. 8 to the State Asylum for the Insane at Morristown, in Morris Plains, New Jersey. That man turned out to be Harrington. He had lost his memory but eventually grew fond of music, stayed at the institution, and died there on September 10, 1926.

Did You Know?

• Harrington knew half a dozen languages.
• After losing his memory, he developed a fondness for music while at the psychiatric institution.