Certificate of Distinction of the Virginia Collegiate Institute dated 1852 - Americana

Certificate of Distinction for Martha Jane Virnelson from the Virginia Collegiate Institute of Portsmouth, Virginia. Martha Jane Virnelson, born ca. 1833-37 and lived in Portsmouth, VA. Signed by N.B. Webster.

WEBSTER, Nathan Burnham, educator, born in Unity, New Hampshire, 13 June, 1821. He was educated at Norwich university, but left in 1840, without being graduated, to take charge of the Virginia literary, scientific, and military academy which had been established by Captain Alden Partridge in Portsmouth. Two years later he resigned and established a similar school in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1844 he returned to the Virginia military academy, but in 1847 he taught in Richmond and lectured on physics in Richmond college. During 1848-'9 he was a civil engineer in the United States navy-yard at Norfolk, Virginia, and then he founded the Virginia collegiate institute, and conducted it in Norfolk till 1862, when, owing to the civil war he removed to Ottawa, Canada, where he established a similar school. He opened the Webster institute in Norfolk in 1869, which he there continued till 1886. Professor Webster invented the meteorgraph, an automatic meteorological register, which he described in the "Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 1854," of which organization he has been a member since 1853 and a fellow since 1874. He was one of the founders, and for several years president, of the Ottawa natural history society. Professor Webster has published addresses on oil educational and agricultural topics, and edited "Notes, Queries, and Answers," published in Manchester, New Hampshire, during 1882-'3. He is the author of " Outlines of Chemistry" (New York, 1883).