William Maclure - Biography

Biography

Maclure was born in 1763 in Ayr, Scotland.

After a brief visit to New York in 1782, he began work with the merchants Miller, Hart & Co, who traded and shipped goods to and from America. Maclure was based in the London office but regularly travelled to France and Ireland on business. In 1796 business affairs took him to Virginia, which he thereafter made his home. In 1803 he visited France as one of the commissioners appointed to settle the claims of American citizens on the French government; and during the few years then spent in Europe he applied himself with enthusiasm to the study of geology. While residing in Switzerland, he became impressed with what is now called the Pestalozzi School System, from Swiss pedagogist Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) in France during the Napoleonic ephemeral Empire and then in Alicante, Spain, during the three years, between 1820 and 1823, known as the Constitutional Period.

On his return home in 1807 he commenced the self-imposed task of making a geological survey of the United States. Almost every state in the Union was traversed and mapped by him, the Allegheny Mountains being crossed and recrossed some 50 times. The results of his unaided labours were submitted to the American Philosophical Society in a memoir entitled Observations on the Geology of the United States explanatory of a Geological Map, and published in the Society's Transactions (vol. iv. 1809, p. 91) together with the first geological map of that country. Maclure's 1809 Geological Map This antedates William Smith's geological map of England by six years, although it was constructed using a different classification of rocks.

In 1812, while in France, Maclure became a member of the newly founded Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP). In 1817 Maclure became president of the ANSP, a post he held for the next 22 years.

In 1817 Maclure, residing in Europe, brought before the same society a revised edition of his map, and his great geological memoir was issued separately, with some additional matter, under the title Observations on the Geology of the United States of America. Subsequent survey has corroborated the general accuracy of Maclure's observations.

In 1819 he visited Spain, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish an agricultural college near the city of Alicante. Returning to America in 1824, he settled for some years at New Harmony, Indiana, seeking to develop his scheme of the agricultural college. Failing health ultimately constrained him to relinquish the attempt and to seek (in 1827) a more congenial climate in Mexico. There, in 1840, at San Ángel, he died aged 77. His burial in Mexico was hardly left in respect:

At the distance of a few feet from them, repose the remains of William McClure, a countryman, dear to American science. The Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, of which he was so long the President and benefactor, erected a small marble monument over his grave, and surrounded it with an iron rail. A short time before I left Mexico, the rail was torn down, the monument upset, and, on the same night, the newly-buried body of a Scotchman was disinterred, stripped of its clothes, and thrown over the wall of the cemetery! — Brantz Mayer

Summary of the second phase of Maclure's life (after Moore 1947)

Date	Event
1778-1797 Mercantile career, based in London but with regular contact and travel to America
1796	Emigrated to the United States, settling in Philadelphia and became an American citizen.
1797	Retirement from business (Silliman claims this was 1799, Monroe claims 1803)
1799	Elected to American Philosophical Society. Council 1818-1829.
1803	Member of Spoliation Commission in France.
1803-1805 and subsequent years	Visits to Pestalozzi and other schools and travels and geological work in Europe.
1805	Brought Joseph Neef to Philadelphia to establish first Pestalozzian schools.
1805-1817	One-man geological survey. First report and geological map published 1809, extended and revised 1818.
1812	Member of Academy of Natural Sciences (President 1817-1840_.
1817-1819	Exploring trips to Georgia, Florida, and the Lesser Antilles Islands.
1819	First President of American Geological Society
1819-1824	Agricultural and industrial schools at Alicante, Spain.
1824-1828	With a body of teachers and scientists joined Robert Owen's colony at New Harmony. Established Pestalozzian, manual training and industrial schools and scientific center and library.
1826	Established New Harmony Educational Society and night-school for adults.
1827	With Thomas Say spent winter in Mexico.
1828	Health failing. Attended meeting of Armerican Geological Society for the last time.
1828	Founded New Harmony Disseminator of Useful Knowledge at Industrial School.
1828-1840	Residence in Mexico.
1831	Publication of Opinions on Various Subjects.
1836	Serious illness .
1837	Rejuvenated Workingmen's Institute and library.
1840	Death in Mexico, March 23. Will provided for a trust fund of most of his property under which160 workingmen's libraries were established.