MEMORIAL OF G. F. WRIGHT 21 



demonstrated a similar geologically short period for the departure of 

 the latest portion of the European ice-sheet, since its border was melted 

 back from the basin of the Baltic Sea, 



Many localities or districts testifying of prehistoric man in the United 

 States were thoroughly studied by Professor Wright, including the Dela- 

 ware Eiver valley in the vicinity of Trenton, New Jersey, also at Clay- 

 mont, in the northeast corner of Delaware, and numerous places in Ohio, 

 Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Idaho, and California. 

 In New Jersey and Minnesota the valley drift beds yielding human relics 

 belong to the latest, or Wisconsin, stage of glaciation, which is con- 

 spicuously marked by prolonged belts of knolly and ridged marginal 

 moraines. Discoveries of stone implements in drift terraces of river 

 valleys in Ohio and Indiana and of human bones and implements in 

 the Missouri Valley loess prove that man was there somewhat earlier in 

 the Ice Age. His greatest ascertained antiquity in America, so far as 

 it is determined by relationship with glaciation, is shown by Wright to 

 be at Claymont, in Delaware, giving evidence of man's presence on this 

 continent probably as long ago as in western Europe. 



At the first annual meeting of the Ohio State Archaeological and His- 

 torical Society, in 1886, Professor Wright read a paper on the "Relation 

 of the Glacial Period to Archaeology in Ohio." Thenceforward through 

 his life he was an active member of that society, was its president twelve 

 years, from 1907 to 1919, and later served as president emeritus. 



In the Geological Society of America he was an original Fellow, from 

 its organization, in 1888, and contributed to it numerous papers from 

 1890 to 1918. He was also a member of the American Anthropological 

 Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 the Boston Society of Natural History, the Western Reserve Historical 

 Society, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, and an honorary 

 member of the Minnesota Historical Society. 



Brown University conferred upon him in 1887 the honorary degree 

 of Doctor of Divinity and Drury College, in the same year, gave him that 

 of Doctor of Laws. 



He was married, August 28, 1862, to Huldah Maria Day, who died 

 in July, 1899. Their four children, each yet living, are all graduates 

 of Oberlin College, namely, Mary Augusta (the wife of Dr. A. A. Berle) ; 

 Etta Maria, literary assistant of her father; Frederick Bennett, during 

 twelve years editor of Records of the Past; and Helen Marcia, also in 

 literary work and in social service. He was again married, September 

 22, 1904, to Florence Eleanor Bedford, who survives him, residing in 

 Oberlin. 



