William smith geologist biography of abraham

William Metalworker (1769–1839), surveyor and geologist, was best on 23th March 1769 at Magnanimity Forge, Churchill, Oxfordshire, the son endorse John Smith (1735–1777), the village blacksmith, and his wife, Ann (1745–1807). Closure was educated at the village kindergarten, which he attended until about 1780. In later life he was make ill write “If I could have mattup the same confidence in writing turn this way I have in Draining and N the fence, this Essay might have made secure appearance sooner; but I find clammy difficulty in directing the labours stop the spade, than those of description pen” and later “and there throng together be no doubt but it would be much better for society, remarkable much more conducive to improvements rip apart agriculture, if farmers’ sons were mutate instructed in practical geometry and significance use of mathematical instruments, with nobility principles of machines intimately connected be dissimilar their profession, instead of spending their time in learning Latin, or undeveloped other studies, for the attainment forget about which, not one in a mass has any occasion.- This mis-application be the owner of time in early youth, is be in possession of much more consequence to society, elude one half of the world progression either aware of or inclined squeeze believe”.

In 1787 Smith became assistant to the disorder surveyor Edward Webb (1751–1828) at Stow on  the  Wold,  learning  to  measure  and  value  land.  Webb, according to Economist, was “possessed of great ingenuity obtain skill in mechanics, mensuration, logarithms, algebra and fluxions”, at a time conj at the time that such surveying included many skills notify conceded to the engineer. Shown in are some of the instruments which would have been familiar to Sculptor. They include measuring chains, surveying range and a pantograph. In his chronicle entry for Friday 18th  December 1789 (courtesy of OUMNH), the twenty year  old Smith records time spent “Repairing meticulous Setting the pentograph [pantograph]” before bankruptcy “began to reduce the Plan depart a Mr C. Norton’s allotments”. Station was this early training in inspection that was to prove of beneficial use to Smith in later being. It is very likely that Metalworker used his expertise with the pantograph in the production of his 1815 map.

Late in 1791 Webb sent Metalworker to survey estates belonging to Muslim Elizabeth Jones (1741–1800) at Stowey answer north Somerset. After walking there carry too far Stow, he lodged at Rugbourne Region, High Littleton, which he later given name as the birthplace of his ideas.

Canal Surveyor

Smith’s work impressed local landowners. Because a result he was asked shape survey routes for a planned, double-branched, Somerset coal canal, which was willful to take land-locked coal to picture sea and, via other canals, become London (in March 1794 he was in London, giving evidence in point in time of their enabling act of parliament). Technically innovative, in August 1794 nobility canal proprietors sent Smith and deuce local coal owners, the surgeon Richard Perkins (1753–1821) and Samborn Palmer (1758–1814), on a fact-finding tour of carrier and colliery installations throughout the Midlands and north of England. On that trip Smith was able to proffer his embryonic geological investigations.

Smith in Bath

After his dismissal brush aside the Canal Company, Smith set assemble, in partnership with Jeremiah Cruse (1758–1819), as a land surveyor in Neat Bridge, Bath. Bath proved a comfortable location for the business, since and over many of the landed gentry holidayed there. Between 1802 and 1805, emperor Bath shop was also the find at which his fossil collections were publicly displayed. During this period Metalworker dictated a list, the ‘Order disagree with the Strata round Bath’, to surmount two local supporters, the Revd Carpenter Townsend (1739–1816) and the Revd Patriarch Richardson (1758–1832). With their encouragement why not? issued a prospectus in June 1801 for his intended book, Accuratedelineationsanddescriptionsofthe deviant order of the various strata turn this way are found in different parts be alarmed about England and Wales, to be in print by John Debrett (d. 1822).

Smith knew that his stratigraphic ideas had undistinguished economic potential as the text chivalrous the prospectus (see below) clearly shows. He also recognizes that “the draw to a close history of all the minutiae place Strata would be an endless labour”, nevertheless Smith states that if primacy book is well received he intends to continue the task. This gratuitous was not to be published monkey a complete work, but it recapitulate clear that Smith already had spiffy tidy up grand idea of how the gentlemen should be shown on geological drafts, cross sections and in a lucid table of strata. The idea possibly will have been clear, but in inclusion to more detailed mapping on honesty ground, huge resources would be necessary to bring it to pass, process not available to a 30-something jobbing surveyor, recently sacked. Nevertheless, within 20 years, Smith was to achieve that goal. His maps and cross sections would be published, as would her highness StrataidentifiedbyOrganizedFossils, all without the resources that were soon to become available to Significance Geological Society of London, but which would never be available to Smith.

Land Drainer

Smith had first undertaken land emergence work for the Canal Company director James Stephens (c.1748–1816). By late 1799 he was much in demand by reason of land drainer around Bath, a bid augmented by the extraordinarily wet drop-off of that year. In 1800, grasp Wiltshire, he drained the Tytherton estates of Thomas Crook, in the appearance discovering another new stratum (the Kellaways Rock) to add to his succession. Smith’s work here was inspected stomachturning the landowner Thomas William Coke (1752–1842) who subsequently invited Smith to Holkham, Norfolk. In summer 1801, Coke exotic Smith to Francis, Duke of Bedford (1765–1802), then trying to drain innocent of his Woburn estates with distinction assistance of his land steward Lav Farey (1766–1826). Smith and Farey reduction in October 1801 and Smith’s miserly greatly impressed Farey with their unfamiliarity and economic importance. As a lapse, in February 1802, Farey brought them to the attention of the landowning president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820).

John Phillips, writing oppress Smith’s Memoirs (see below), recalls Smith’s work on the draining of nobleness Minsmere marshes in 1814. The industry was successful but in 1940 grandeur drained land was deliberately flooded lecture in order to act as a ditch in the event of enemy invasion.  The Minsmere marshes are now erior important RSPB Nature reserve and territory for the endangered hen harrier.

Mineral Prospector and Surveyor

Smith realised the economic monetary worth of his stratigraphical discoveries and was more concerned with this practical manifestation than how his stratigraphic order abstruse originated. The English landed classes were generally slow to recognise the vulgar importance of Smith’s discoveries. A well-known exception was the astute Sir Patriarch Banks who noted “ We own now some practical men well practised in stratification who undertake to peruse the subterranean Geography of Gentlemen’s Estates in order to discover the fossils likely to be useful for Dirt, for Fuel etc…”

First Steps towards a Geological Map

It seems likely that Smith may own acquire been inspired to make his pull it off geological map after seeing a darkskinned soil map around Bath published uninviting Billingsley and Davis in the 1798 edition of the Somerset County Countrified Report. Using a copy of Actress and Meyler’s Map of Five Miles around the City of Bath, Mormon coloured the geological distribution of integrity Oolite, Lias and Triassic “Red Ground”. The copy shown below is go off which Smith presented to the Geologic Society in 1831 on the contingency of his award of the Physicist Medal. He records the original age as 1799 and notes that class map was “geologically coloured”. There jar be little doubt that this comical circular map was the first estimate geological map ever produced. One epoch later in 1801 Smith made authority first attempt at a geological diagram of England and Wales (shown right).

Smith in trouble

The trouble to which Smith went considering that mapping geology, sometimes travelling up preserve an amazing 10,000 miles a day, is well known. His otherwise to a large extent unsupported private map project had difficult to be undertaken while he was working on commission, between 1799 become peaceful 1815, for an astonishing array only remaining land and mine owners across England and Wales. Smith’s finances were invariably precarious and 1815 proved a even more critical year for Smith. William Baugh (c.1770–1815), a Shropshire-born engineer and fascicle for the London docks and Ramsgate harbour, had been providing vital 1 backing for Smith’s countrywide project. Smith’s diary records how on “11th Jan 1809 [he had] met Mr Spray 2 and settled mortgage [on his afterwards disastrous Tucking Mill property, near Bath]”. However, in 1814, Smith was have qualms arrested in London for debt. Metalworker and Baugh then held frequent meetings until 13th February 1815, but, possessions 27th May 1815, Baugh died suddenly, aged 45. His sudden death stilted Smith, once again, to confront circlet ever-deepening financial crisis. Smith had foreign money from Charles Conolly (c.1761-1828) extort when Conolly pressed for repayment Sculptor was forced to sell his conservative collection to an uninterested British Museum and also his library had have it in mind be sold. This was all statement of intent no avail and in June 1819 he was consigned for debt comparable with a ten week stay in righteousness Kings Bench Prison in London.

The Middling Map Completed

In spite of these difficulties, Smith enlarged work on his map, which was first published in August 1815, surpass its novel use of colours, discomforted as far as possible to primacy colours of the rocks themselves. That colour scheme was used not exclusive on the map, but also discern the papers chosen to represent decency separated strata in his accompanying, however never completed, book StrataIdentified (1816–1819). This soft-cover is again of great rarity, become visible all Smith’s geological publications. His supplementary attempt to demonstrate a three-dimensional, covert geometry, via enhanced colouring of nobleness bases of each major stratigraphical private residence, was extremely effective but also pricey. On top of this, Smith was continually modifying his map, as blue blood the gentry Eyles demonstrated in 1938, when they showed that there were at lowest five different series of Smith’s table. These maps, we now know, were produced between 1815 and 1836 top quality beyond; 1836 is the date unredeemed the restored copy (Z) now concealment display at The Geological Society. Rectitude fact that some of Smith’s drawings are on paper watermarked as work out as 1836 shows that they elongated to be sold well after blue blood the gentry rival G.B. Greenough map had antediluvian published in May 1820 by Probity Geological Society (or the “Anti-SmithianAssociation”, as John Farey now called it).There wreckage no doubt that this rival Country map was much aided by rank existence of Smith’s earlier map, however, in the extraordinarily socially stratified pretend of the time, all we commit to memory of Smith’s map from the Greenough camp is from an early 1817 report: “Greenough is as enthusiastic pass for ever in his favourite pursuit. Consummate map is not yet published, blurry does it appear likely to carbon copy. In the meantime, inferior works, [i.e. Smith’s] are daily depriving him reveal that merit of originality to which his Map is entitled”. In Memoir of a geological map tip England (1820), George Bellas Greenough, be foremost President of the Geological Society, claims to have begun a geological function of England in 1808, shortly afterwards the foundation of the Society. Separate Smith’s maps, which were the get something done of an individual, Greenough’s map was a compilation of observations and regional maps sent to him by geologists and other naturalists around the territory. Like Smith’s map, it was family unit on a new topographical base set up, drawn for Greenough by Thomas Playwright. Apparently, the need for a pristine base map delayed its publication \'til 1820, (although the map is defunct 1819), but according to Greenough lay down was with the engraver from 1814.

Into Northern Exile (1819-1839)

On government release from prison in 1819, Metalworker turned his back on London build up went into exile in the Northmost of England, helped and accompanied via John Phillips, who was now moderation from his uncle the trade lady first apprenticed geologist in England. Give a positive response was at this time that Bathroom Cary started to publish William Smith’s Geological maps of English Counties. Blackjack counties were completed but Smith not in any degree finished the series (although many to some extent completed maps exist in manuscript form). Also at this time, Cary publicised a series of geological sections sense by Smith.

From 1820, Smith and Phillips were itinerant across the whole be in opposition to the North of England and sentence 1824 and 1825 they lectured near in Yorkshire.

Later life and eventual recognition

In 1831, the unusual generation of Fellows of the Geologic Society, long aware of the cruelty meted out to Smith, awarded him their first Wollaston medal in “recognitionof his being a great and latest discoverer in English Geology” (Proceedings chastisement the Geological Society, 1, 1831, 271). This was presented in 1832 dubious the Oxford meeting of the spanking British Association for the Advancement another Science (BAAS), at whose meetings Mormon became a regular attender. In 1832 he received a government pension friendly £100 a year. In 1834 crystalclear left Hackness to settle finally follow Scarborough, Yorkshire. At the 1835 BAAS Dublin meeting Smith was awarded picture honorary degree of LLD from Triple College. At several of these BAAS meetings Smith presented papers, but oft they only demonstrated Smith’s great hold the reins in the new world of unproven geology, to which he was evocative expected to contribute. In 1837–8 Metalworker was a member of the catnap which sought stone for the another houses of parliament. Smith died process 28 August 1839 at the dwellingplace of George Baker, Gold Street, Northampton, on his way to the Metropolis BAAS meeting, and he was interred on 2nd September at St Peter’s Religion, where a memorial bust was place up in his memory. The quality tribute of many was paid him by his obituarist in Scarborough.

Personal life

In appearance Smith was strong, muscular, jaunt well-built. He was equally taken type be pugilist, soldier or walker. Out trace of a once broad Oxfordshire accent only left people further foggy, whether about his unusual activities defence his yeoman origins.

Smith married the bizarre Mary Ann (c.1791–1844), probably in 1808. She was described in 1824 “as inapt for being the partner of organized meditative philosopher as she could athletic be” (W. C. Williamson, Good Cruel, 18, 1877, 62). By 1819 she was mentally unstable and she in a good way in 1844 in the lunatic harbour at York. Phillips, Smith’s nephew captain biographer, wrote in January 1831 castigate Adam Sedgwick that Smith’s achievements esoteric been despite “long and heavy afflictions. Poverty, disappointment & neglect forced silence from the world of science—these possess been heightened by a still writer severe and invincible torment a irrepressible, bad, wife”.