EBENEZER EMMONS AND THE SECOND NORTH CAROLINA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: GEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AMIDST A TIME OF WAR

Ebenezer Emmons was appointed the first State Geologist of the Second North Carolina Geological Survey in October 1851. In many ways this position was a haven from the legal and academic-political controversy his work in New York on the Taconic System had engendered. It allowed him opportunity to apply his expertise to detailed geological investigations and provide practical information on rocks and other materials essential to North Carolina’s economy and inhabitants. Within a year, Emmons had traversed the eastern Coastal Plain, investigating the potential of marl for agricultural purposes. The coal deposits of the Deep River Basin were also evaluated for their quality, quantity and cost to utilize, and to justify the improvement made to navigation along the Deep River.

By 1856, Emmons and his son, Ebenezer Emmons, Jr. (appointed Assistant Geologist in 1852) had examined the natural resources of the midland counties, commented on navigation and waterpower issues of the rivers, and placed them in “a full elucidation of its geology.” Emmons argued that information was “designed to advance not only economical or practical geology, but theoretical also.”

However, politics and the rumble of war greatly curtailed Emmons’ Survey and personal freedom. “The political conditions under which we are living in the south is quite oppressive. I cannot but look with great fear upon the results of agitation and it unfits me for work.” Although he had lodgings in Raleigh, he visited only to do his geological investigations, while maintaining his home in Albany, NY. After he left Albany on September 1860, he was unable to return and “… not to be corresponded with, and sealed up by the Rebellion.”

During the war years, Emmons made geological excursions to the western counties, prepared geologic maps of the State, the Deep River and Dan River coalfields, and identified material for “munitions of war.” Ill health confined Emmons to his plantation in Brunswick County where he died on October 1, 1863 surrounded by his wife and son. Emmons, Jr. continued the work on a geological map, but resigned from the Survey in April 1866. The majority of the reports and cabinets, as well as “sufficient manuscript to make 1200 octavo pages of published reports," were either lost or destroyed at the end of the war, leaving little of his important contributions to the geological story of North Carolina.