SKETCH OF WILLIAM WILLIAMS MATHER. 553 



When he had been one year at West Point as assistant pro- 

 fessor, Lieutenant Mather married his cousin, Miss Emily Maria 

 Baker. By this marriage he had three sons and three daughters. 



After leaving the army Mr. Mather was for a short time Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology in the University 

 of Louisiana, but before the close of 1836 Governor Marcy, of New 

 York, appointed him, together with Ebenezer Emmons, T. A. 

 Conrad, and Lardner Vanuxem, to make a geological survey of 

 that State. Each of these principal geologists was assigned to 

 one of four districts, into which the State was divided for the 

 purpose. Mather had the first district, which comprised Wash- 

 ington, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, and Delaware Counties, 

 and all that part of the State to the southeast of them. What 

 this survey accomplished has been told by Dr. James Hall, in the 

 Popular Science Monthly for April, 1883. The work of the survey 

 lasted about seven years. During this time Prof. Mather made 

 five periodical reports and a final report. This last forms a quarto 

 volume of six hundred and fifty-three pages, with forty-six col- 

 ored plates, being one of the set of volumes embodying the results 

 of the survey and published by the State. 



In 1837 a State Geological Survey of Ohio was projected and 

 Prof. Mather was made chief geologist. This ill-fated project 

 was killed after an existence of little more than two years by a 

 spasm of economy which attacked the Ohio Legislature of 1839. 

 Two annual reports had been presented, and were printed as State 

 documents, and a report on the collections was made afterward, 

 but there was no final report, and no provision was made for pre- 

 serving papers, field-notes, and maps. A geological reconnais- 

 sance of Kentucky, authorized by the Legislature of that State, 

 was made by Prof. Mather in 1838-'39, his report being issued as 

 a State document. Both his appointment in Ohio and that in 

 Kentucky had been accepted with the condition that they should 

 not prevent the completion of his work in New York. 



Colonel Charles Whittlesey has stated, in an article on the Per- 

 sonnel of the First Geological Survey of Ohio, that after the 

 suspension of the Ohio survey, Mather bought a tract of several 

 hundred acres, including the Pigeon Roost, north of the court- 

 house in Jackson County, and became a citizen of Ohio. He 

 cleared a part of this land for a farm and built him a comfortable 

 house on it. Afterward he and Prof. James Hall entered a large 

 tract of Government land in the southern part of the same county, 

 on which they erected an iron furnace. 



When Mr. Mather settled in Jackson County, in 1841, it was 

 impossible to obtain sperm oil there for domestic lighting. The 

 only recourse of the family was to mold tallow candles, which 

 was very unsatisfactory. In the following winter Mr. Mather 



