G.W. FEATHERSTONHAUGH: AN EARLY PROPONENT FOR THE CAMBRIAN AND SILURIAN SYSTEMS IN NORTH AMERICA

George William Featherstonhaugh was born in London in 1780 and emigrated to the United States in 1806. With the financial backing of his American wife, Sara Duane, he engaged in ‘scientific farming’ near Troy, New York for about 20 years. In 1826, he secured a charter for the first railroad in New York. He then spent two years in Britain studying railroad technology and geology, and made the acquaintance of many of the leading British geologists. Shortly after his return to New York in 1828, Featherstonhaugh lost his wife and a year later his house burned to the ground. These events caused him to move to Philadelphia where he established the short-lived Monthly Journal of Geology and Natural Science in 1831. Upon the demise of the journal, Featherstonhaugh sought a new occupation and became the first ‘United States Geologist’, a post he held from 1834 to 1837. During his tenure he made three trips as far west as the Mississippi River watershed (1834, 1835 and 1837), which resulted in two official reports. His reports were among the earliest accounts of the geology of regions he visited and they contain the most up-to-date stratigraphic terminology then available. His efforts informed interested parties, both at home and abroad, about the geology of large areas of the United States, including mineral prospects in the Midwest. His contributions to the development of geology in the U.S. resulted from an open immigration policy and the free exchange of ideas.