Thorndike, Israel
merchant, philanthropist, state legislator, was born in 1757 in Beverly, Mass. He was elected to the Massachusetts convention that ratified the constitution of the United States, and for many years sat in the Massachusetts legislature. He settled in Boston in 1810, and in 1818 purchased for the use of Harvard the library of Prof. Christoph Daniel Ebeling of Hamburg, which consists of 4,000 volumes, and is remarkably rich in works on American history and antiquities. He died May 10, 1832, in Boston, Mass.