History of Tufts College, 1854-1896
Start, Alaric Bertrand
1896
CHARLES D. BRAY, C.E., A. M.
| CHARLES DARLIN BRAY was born in Valley Falls, Rhode Island, March 15, 1844, and attended the public schools of that town. He early manifested a liking for mechanical pursuits, and his father, who was an expert mechanic in charge of the machine shops connected with the village factories, took pains to foster these tendencies in his son by familiarizing him with the various parts of the machines. Opportunities for this sort of practical education were increased about the time the boy was ready to enter the grammar school, the father then being employed in the Thurston and Lane Engine Works, of Providence. | |
After graduating from the grammar school he was sent to a commercial academy for a course in book-keeping, after which he spent the summer in the drafting room of the Providence Steam Engine Company, and then entered the Lonsdale High School to prepare for the engineering course at Brown University. | |
In the summer of 1861 he enlisted in the Ninth Regiment, R. I. Volunteers, an emergency regiment composed of boys from sixteen to eighteen years of age, on seeing which President Lincoln asked Governor Sprague if they had brought their cradles with them. He entered the university in the Fall, and graduated after a two years' course, having assisted in the observatory and instructed students in the use of instruments and methods of recording during the latter part of his course. | |
He refused the simultaneous offers of an instructorship at Brown and one in the Providence public schools to accept a position with the Providence Steam Engine Company, which | |
124 | was then building marine engines for the navy. He resigned this position after three years for that of Assistant Engineer on a Pennsylvania railroad contract. He returned to his old position in Providence in 1866, but resigned again soon after to accept an appointment as Third Acting Assistant Engineer of the United States Navy. After a course of instruction at Annapolis he was assigned to the North Pacific Squadron. He left the Navy a year later, and in 1869 received the appointment of Instructor of Engineering at Tufts, where he subsequently became Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering. |
In 1870 Professor Bray was married to Miss Josephine Compton, whom he had first met at Annapolis. They now have four daughters and one son. | |
Professor Bray is a member of all the leading engineering societies of the country. Brown University gave him an A. M. in 1873. He is a vestryman and very active member of the St. James Protestant Episcopal Church at North Cambridge, but resides at the Hill. | |
