May 2d, 1887. 



President Nipher in the chair ; fifteen members present. 



Prof. Potter described an interesting example of ii'on-ore deposit 

 at Iron Mountain, Mo., being a surface deposit of iron ore of Hu- 

 ronian or Lower Silurian age, since covered by strata of Lower 

 Silurian rocks. 



May i6lh, 1887. 



President Nipher in the chair ; twelve members present. 



The Committee appointed to draught suitable resolutions in re- 

 gard to the death of C. Shaler Smith, a member of the Academy, 

 presented through its chairman, Mr. Rob't Moore, the following: 



Chai-Ies Shaler Smith was born in Pittsburg, Pa., Jan. i6th, 1S36. His 

 father, Frederick Ross Smith, died when the son was but nine years of 

 age, and his mother died when he was but sixteen. Up to this time he had 

 attended a private school, but with his mother's death his days of formal 

 schooling ended, and his days for work and study began. The same year, 

 1852, he began the study of his profession in what was then the only school 

 open to American engineers, the school of practice, by entering as rodman 

 an engineer party on the Mine Hill and Schuylkill Haven Railroad. From 

 this position he was presently promoted to the rank of leveller and then 

 to that of assistant. After his services on the Schuylkill Haven Railroad 

 he was for a short time employed at Pittsburg, and then, in 1854, in rail- 

 road surveys in the mineral regions of Lake Superior. His final term of 

 pupilage was in the service of the Louisville i.<: Nashville Railroad, which 

 he entered in the summer of 1855 as an assistant with the late George 

 McGood, then chief engineer. For two years he was employed in Ten- 

 nessee, at first in local and then in construction. 



In 1857 he was transferred to the chief engineer's oflice at Louisville as 

 an assistant to Mr. Albert Fink, then engineer in charge of bridges and 

 buildings. It was here in Mr. Fink's office that his attention was first 

 directed to the special department of engineering which became after- 

 wards his life-work — the designing and construction of bridges. 



In October, 1859 when lacking yet a few months of completing his 24th 

 year, he left the service of the Louisville & National Railroad to take the 

 position of Chief Engineer of bridges and buildings on a railroad in North 

 Carolina, where he was found at the outbreak of the war in 1861. 



As was almost inevitable from his surroundings, he entered the service 

 of the Confederacy as an engineer, and remained in it until the close of 

 the war, taking rank as a Captain of Engineers. During this period, as 

 Chief Engineer of the Augusta District he constructed the Confederate 

 State powder-works, one of the largest that had then been built. 



