Syllabus of Lectures on Civil Engineering in the University of Georgia (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Syllabus of Lectures on Civil Engineering in...)
Excerpt from Syllabus of Lectures on Civil Engineering in the University of Georgia
On land, he digs tunnels through hills or mountains, he sinks Artesian wells one or two thousand feet deep, and builds those massive machines or structures which require great strength and superior mechanical skill in their con Struction.
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Eighty Years' Progress of the United States From Revolutionary War to the Great Rebellion: Showing the Various Channels of Industry Through Which the ... to Their Present National Importance ... Wi
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Charles Francis McCay was an American mathematician and actuary.
Background
Charles Francis McCay was a brother of Henry Kent McCay. He was born on March 8, 1810 at Danville, Pennsylvania, and was the son of Robert and Sarah (Read) McCay and great-grandson of Donald McCay who came to the United States in 1758 from the Isle of Skye.
Education
McCay attended Jefferson College and was graduated in 1829.
Career
For a year, 1832-33, McCay taught mathematics, natural philosophy, and astronomy at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, then for twenty years, 1833-53, he was at the University of Georgia at Athens. His retirement from the University of Georgia was occasioned by a "disagreement" which he and the brothers John and Joseph L. Le Conte had with the then chancellor of the university, Alonzo Church. From 1848 to 1855, he served as actuary of the life department of the Southern Mutual Insurance Company of Athens, Georgia. His connection with that company ceased when its life business was transferred to the Southern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Columbia, S. C. , in 1855. While in Athens, he also acted as agent for the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York (1846 - 53). In December 1853, McCay was elected professor of mathematics at South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina) at Columbia. In 1855 he became president.
In 1859, he proposed a bill for the Georgia legislature which was passed and signed by the Governor, making effective for valuation purposes in Georgia his Southern Mutual Mortality Table. This was said to have been the first adoption of a life-insurance valuation table by any of the states. His connection with South Carolina College ceased in 1857 and he later entered the insurance business in Augusta, Ga. There he was also cashier, then president, of a bank. He accumulated a modest fortune and in 1869, he gave $1, 000 to the University of Georgia for a collection of books on the Civil War. McCay removed from Augusta to Baltimore in 1869.
In 1886, he suggested to President Garrett of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad the formation of the Employees Relief Association of which he became actuary, serving without pay through the remainder of his lifetime. He acted as consulting actuary to a number of life insurance companies at various times between 1848 and 1889, achieving the high regard of insurance officials in this country and abroad. In 1875 he passed upon the validity of the mortality statistics of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York for the period 1843-73. He died in Baltimore in 1889.
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Personality
McCay's career there was stormy, but despite some of his eccentricities, he was regarded as one of the most remarkable men on the faculty at the time. On December 18, 1848, McCay established an agreement with the Girard Trust Company of Philadelphia, whereby an original sum of $337. 35, with additional contributions to $2, 000, was to be invested and its proceeds reinvested until the amount should equal the state debt of Pennsylvania, at which time the fund was to be used to extinguish the debt. About 1906 his children heard about the trust accidentally, and instituted suit to test the validity of the "elaborate and somewhat fantastic scheme, impossible of accomplishment. " Judge J. B. McPherson in the United States Circuit Court (Eastern District of Pennsylvania) rendered an opinion in the case, directing the payment of $21, 000 to the McCay heirs, on the ground that the trust violated the Pennsylvania statute against perpetuities. On appeal, the decision was affirmed. On August 5, 1879, the board of trustees of the University of Georgia signified their willingness to accept from McCay the sum of seven thousand dollars in bonds, which sum by successive reinvestment would by 1970 amount to about $1, 000, 000 and then be used to pay the salaries of the faculty. The fund is now valued at more than one hundred thousand dollars.
McCay was also actuary of the relief fund for the clergy of the Southern Presbyterian Church, and of the Maryland Insurance Department from its formation in 1871 until his death.
Connections
McCay was married, on August 11, 1840, to Narcissa Harvey Williams, the daughter of William and Rebecca Harvey Williams of Georgia.