DELIA WOODRUFF GODDING, JANE KILBY WELSH, AND THE RELIGION OF GEOLOGY IN NEW ENGLAND

Beginning in the 1990s, Ann Shteir and other authors labored to bring to light the contributions of female popular science writers in the 17^th-19^th centuries, a segment of the larger movement led by Margaret Rossiter and others to bring attention to the important role women have played in the history of science. However, the physical sciences, including physics, chemistry, geology, and astronomy, were seen as a male bastion, and there were far fewer women writers in these fields. Michelle Aldrich noted in 1990 that Margaret and Robert Hazen’s seminal catalogue of early American geological writings contained approximately a dozen works that were penned by women, a small fraction of the more than 11,000 total works listed. This small subset contained two books written by American women, First Lessons in Geology (1847) by Miss D.W. Godding, and Jane Kilby Welsh’s two-volume work Familiar Lessons in Mineralogy and Geology, designed for the use of young Persons and Lyceums (1832-1833). Welsh’s and Godding’ works are situated in an interesting intersection point in time and space in the history of geology; not only were they published within a short time of Charles Lyell’s famous and discussion-provoking Principles of Geology but in New England (Boston, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut respectively), the center of the American arm of the complex reconciliation movement. The reconciliation authors sought to weave together religion and geology in such a way to do justice to the tenets of both fields. Therefore a close study of these two texts offers a window into this volatile slice of geological history and its intersections with issues of gender, religion, and education. This poster will also make public for the first time the only known biographical study done on Godding and the most detailed information published thus far on Welsh.