Darton, Nelson Horatio (17 December 1865–28 February 1948), geological mapper, groundwater specialist, and bibliographer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of William Darton, Jr., a shipbuilder and civil engineer, and Caroline Matilda Thayer. Darton was a self-trained geologist who dropped out of public school before the age of thirteen to apprentice as a chemist in his uncle’s business. He became a member of the American Chemical Society at age sixteen and shortly thereafter started his own business, selling distilled water. As a practical chemist he became interested in minerals and collected in New Jersey. By age seventeen, Darton had spoken before the New York Academy of Sciences and published his first paper. The conclusion he derived from fieldwork was that some of the rock strata in eastern New Jersey were ancient lava flows, a new concept at that time, but one that was immediately accepted....
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Darton, Nelson Horatio (1865-1948), geological mapper, groundwater specialist, and bibliographer
Ellis L. Yochelson
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Evans, Lewis (1700-1756), cartographer and geologist
Elizabeth Noble Shor
Evans, Lewis (1700–11 June 1756), cartographer and geologist, was born in Llangwnadl, Carnarvonshire, Wales. His background and details of his personal life are not known. The earliest American record of him dates from 1736, when he was a surveyor and mapmaker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He often bought books from ...
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Gould, Laurence McKinley (1896-1995), educator, geologist, and explorer
Richard Harmond
Gould, Laurence McKinley (22 August 1896–21 June 1995), educator, geologist, and explorer, was born in Lacota, Michigan, the son of Herbert Gould and Anna Updike, farmers. In 1914 he left the family farm and moved to Boca Raton, Florida, where he taught in a one-room schoolhouse. He also helped to found a Sunday school class and with his students published the ...
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Heilprin, Angelo (1853-1907)
In
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Heilprin, Angelo (1853-1907), geologist and explorer
Samuel Willard Crompton
Heilprin, Angelo (31 March 1853–17 July 1907), geologist and explorer, was born in Satoralja-Ujhely, Hungary, the son of Michael Heilprin, a scholar and encyclopedist, and Henrietta Silver. His father was originally from Russian Poland. In 1856 Heilprin and his family immigrated to the United States, searching for the freedom that had evaded them in both Poland and Hungary. He grew up in New York City and attended the public schools of Brooklyn and Yonkers. At the age of fourteen he entered a hardware concern in New York City in conjunction with his younger brother Louis. He worked there for several years, but he had already decided to become a naturalist and enthusiastically pursued the opportunity to write articles for the ...
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Hill, Robert Thomas (1858-1941), geologist and explorer
Ellis L. Yochelson
Hill, Robert Thomas (11 August 1858–28 July 1941), geologist and explorer, was born in Nashville, Tennessee; details of the lives of his parents are not known. Hill was born into a family of eight children just before the Civil War. He was orphaned at the age of five, raised by his grandmother in the war-torn city. He began work when very young, helping to support his family; at the age of sixteen, he finally completed the sixth grade. An older brother invited him to come to Comanche, Texas, 100 miles from the nearest railroad, and the youth eventually arrived there in 1874, penniless....
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Keith, Arthur (1864-1944), structural geologist and geologic mapper
Ellis L. Yochelson
Keith, Arthur (30 September 1864–07 February 1944), structural geologist and geologic mapper, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Harrison Alonzo Keith, a high school principal and city administrator, and Mary Elizabeth Richardson. Keith grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, attended Harvard University, and, after graduating in 1885, investigated the local geology around his hometown. In connection with graduate work at Harvard, for which he received an A.M., he mapped for the Massachusetts Topographic Survey in 1886. In June 1887 Keith joined the U.S. Geological Survey as a field assistant to ...
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Lesley, J. Peter (1819-1903), geologist and topographer
Patsy Gerstner
Lesley, J. Peter (07 September 1819–01 June 1903), geologist and topographer, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Peter Lesley, a cabinetmaker, and Elizabeth Oswald Allen. He was christened Peter Lesley but adopted the initial J. to avoid confusion with his father. Lesley graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838, planning to enter the Princeton Theological Seminary to prepare for a career as a Presbyterian minister. Poor health delayed his plans, and in an effort to rebuild his health through vigorous outdoor life he joined the first state geological survey of Pennsylvania under ...
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Powell, John Wesley (1834-1902)
In
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Powell, John Wesley (1834-1902), explorer, geologist, and anthropologist
Don D. Fowler
Powell, John Wesley (24 March 1834–23 September 1902), explorer, geologist, and anthropologist, was born in Mount Morris, New York, the son of Joseph Powell, a tailor and Methodist Episcopal licensed exhorter, and Mary Dean. Powell’s parents, who were emigrants from England, moved the family successively west and finally settled in Wheaton, Illinois. Young Powell’s education was intermittent but included some course work at Wheaton and Oberlin Colleges. He worked on the family farm and taught school, but his real interests lay in all phases of natural history and in archaeology. He made numerous collections of natural objects, often by traveling overland or alone in a boat along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. He became well known among amateur natural historians and was elected secretary of the Illinois Society of Natural History in March 1861....
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Pumpelly, Raphael (1837-1923), geologist and explorer
Margaret D. Champlin
Pumpelly, Raphael (08 September 1837–10 August 1923), geologist and explorer, was born in Owego, Tioga County, New York, the son of William Pumpelly, a merchant and banker, and Mary H. Welles. His father and surveyor uncles, from whose stories Pumpelly may have acquired his taste for outdoor life and adventure, were prominent in the development of Tioga County. His father acquired a “comfortable fortune” through his investments in land and timber, as Pumpelly later recalled in ...
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Stevenson, Matilda Coxe Evans (1849-1915), ethnologist, geologist, and explorer
Nancy J. Parezo
Stevenson, Matilda Coxe Evans (12 May 1849–24 June 1915), ethnologist, geologist, and explorer, was born in San Augustine, Texas, the daughter of Alexander Hamilton Evans, a lawyer, writer, and journalist from Virginia, and Maria Coxe of New Jersey. Stevenson grew up in a privileged, middle-class household in Washington, D.C. Following her education in a girl’s finishing school and seminary, she defied convention and studied law as well as served an apprenticeship in chemistry and geology at the Army Medical School. Even though there were no opportunities for college or advanced degrees or employment in the sciences for women at the time, Stevenson decided to become a mineralogist and geological explorer. She was able to pursue these goals through her marriage, in 1872, to geologist and naturalist Colonel ...
