1891.] 41 [Lesley. 



residence, and here his children, Louise, Arthur, William, and Harry 

 were born and educated, his sons becoming partners in his enterprises, 

 sharing the toils, the responsibilities, and the wealth of their father, and 

 fitted well to maintain the honor of his name. 



In 1850 Peter Sheafer took an active and influential part in tbe effort 

 inaugurated by William Parker Foulke of Philadelphia and other gen- 

 tlemen to obtain an appropriation from the Legislature for publishing 

 Prof. H. D. Rogers' Final Report on the Geology of the State. Half of 

 the appropriation was to be spent in field work, to bring the Report up to 

 date, especially that part of it which related to the anthracite coal fields. 

 Mr. Rogers formed a corps, consisting of Peter Sheafer and his cousin, 

 John Sheafer, for underground surveys ; myself for surface topography ; 

 Edward Desor, of Neuchatel, for the study of the surface deposits, and 

 Leo Lesquereux, of Columbus, 0., for the study of the coal plants. This 

 work only lasted one year, and this corps was disbanded, but a good deal 

 of special work was done in the following year or two in other parts of the 

 State ; and the Report did not appear until 1858. 



At the organization of the Second Survey of the State, in 1874, Peter 

 Sheafer's business interests were too exacting and important to permit of 

 his taking an active personal hand in it, but he did all that he could to 

 further the interests of the survey at Harrisburg and elsewhere through 

 the following fifteen years of the continuance of the survey ; and I am 

 happy to say that the intimate friendship which he and I formed in 1851 

 was confirmed and continued with unabated cordiality to the present 

 time. His son Arthur was commissioned as Mr. Ashburner's assistant 

 in the long and difficult survey of McKean, Elk, Cameron, and Forest 

 counties, where he exhibited great abilities for field and office work in- 

 herited from his father; and the greatest part of the "Report on Elk 

 County," with its illustrations, is from Arthur Sheafer's own pen. 



Peter Sheafer was a genial and lovable man, a religious man, and, 

 what always struck me as very interesting, a man of poetical temperament, 

 and a reader of the poets. But he was never properly trained to express 

 his thoughts in a style of elegant composition. His business writings were 

 unexceptionable. His statements of business facts and contracts were sat- 

 isfactory, but he was unused to a logical, consecutive, well-systematized 

 and picturesque presentation of a subject. This is, of course, to be as- 

 cribed to his lack of youthful classical training. I have often thought of 

 him as that one of my friends whose life career best illustrated the advan- 

 tages and disadvantages of college discipline. For by not going to college 

 he gained more than he lost, and enjoyed great worldly and social pros- 

 perity at the very small cost of missing literary facility. I even doubt 

 that the lack of technical school training in his profession as civil and 

 mining engineer was at any time an obstacle in his path of life. He 

 learned enough to join his experienced father in earlier enterprises ; and 

 in after ones his intercourse with business men and technical books and 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXIX. 135. F. PRINTED JUNE 1, 1891. 



