Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library© 2002 By the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. All rights reserved.
Funding: Web version of the finding aid funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Processed by: Special Collections Department
There are no restrictions.
See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.
William Morris Fontaine Letters, Accession #1227, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
This collection was given to the Library by Wilbur A. Nelson of Charlottesville, Virginia on September 20, 1941.
This collection consists of 31 letters, 1874-1885, to William Morris Fontaine, Professor of Chemistry and Geology at West Virginia University in Morgantown, chiefly from geologists concerning the study of plant life, minerals, fossils, and the strata of West Virginia and Virginia. Correspondents include Elisha Benjamin Andrews (1844-1917), Charles Albert Ashburner (1854-1889), Persifor Frazer, Jr. (1884-1909), William Schaeffer Glenn (1858-1931), Hilary Pollard Jones (1863-1938), Washington Caruthers Kerr (1827-1885), J. Peter Lesley (1819-1903), Fielding Bradford Meek (1817-1876), James Constantine Pilling (1846-1895), William Barton Rogers (1804-1882), Eugene Allen Smith (1841-1927), John James Stevenson (1841-1924), and Israel C. White (1848-1927). The correspondents were officers of such organizations as the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Coast Survey.
William Morris Fontaine (1835-1913) was educated at the University of Virginia, receiving his masters degree in 1859, and at the Royal School of Mines in Freiberg and Saxony, Germany, 1869-1870. He was professor of chemistry and geology at West Virginia University from 1873 to 1878, and professor of geology and natural history at the University of Virginia from 1878 to 1911. He was a fellow of the Geological Society of America, and wrote several geological publications.