 He was educated at the Rochestern College Institute, was ordained as a Universalist clergyman and accepted a call to Newark, New Jersey (1850).Three years later he left the church to engage in literary work.In 1865 he graduated in medicine at the Long Island College Hospital; in 1874 was appointed State geologist and Surgeon General of Wisconsin, and afterward served as health commissioner of Milwaukee (1878–1880) and of Detroit.