American scholar, brother of Henry Clay Trumbull; born in Stonington, CT, on the 20th of December 1821. He studied at Yale, but ill-health prevented his graduation. He was state librarian in 1854–1855, assistant-secretary of state of Connecticut in 1847–1852 and in 1858–1861, and secretary of state in 1861–1866; and was a prominent member of the Connecticut Historical Society, of which he was president in 1863–1889, the National Academy of Science, to which he was elected in 1872, and of other learned societies. In 1871 Yale College, and in 1887 Harvard University, conferred the title of LL.D. upon him, and in the latter year Columbia College conferred the same degree. He died in Hartford on the 5th of August 1897. He wrote Historical Notes on some Provisions of the Connecticut Statutes (1860–1861), The True Blue Laws of Connecticut (1876), and Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), and edited The Colonial Records of Connecticut (3 vols., 1850–1859). He is better known, however, as a student of the Indian dialects of New England.
He edited Roger Williams’s Key to the Language of America (1866), and wrote The Composition of Indian Geographical Names (1870), The Best Methods of Studying the Indian Languages (1871), Indian Names of Places in … Connecticut with Interpretations (1881) and other works on similar subjects. See also The Origin of M’Fingal (1868).
