White Watson

White Watson (1760, near Whiteley WoodsFord, Trevor D., 'White Watson's Tablets', "Geology Today" 14:1 (1998), 21-25] – 1835) was an English geologist and sculptor.

Watson's grandfather, Samuel Watson, had been a sculptor engaged on the building of Chatsworth House; White Watson (his first name was his mother's maiden name) was apprenticed to his uncle Henry Watson, a marble sculptor in Bakewell and Ashford-in-the-Water, and on his uncle's death in 1786 succeeded to the business. Although much of his business continued to be gravestones and monumental church marbles [Gunnis, R., "Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851", 1953] , his fame rests on his novel geological tablets.

Inspired by John Whitehurst's diagrams of statigraphic sections, in 1785 Watson presented Whitehurst with a diagrammatic 'Tablet' showing 'A Section of a Mountain in Derbyshire' from samples of the rocks themselves, and would produce about 100 such tablets, accompanied with explanatory leaflets, over the rest of his life. In the early 1790s Watson collaborated with William Martin (1767-1810) on an illustrated catalogue of Derbyshire's Carboniferous Limestone fossils, which Martin published (without crediting Watson's contribution) as "Petrificata Derbiensa" in 1810. He also researched Derbyshire geology with John Farey, though the two later fell out.

From 1810 Watson started making Tablets of a line of section across the Peak District from Buxton to Chesterfield, publishing a book based on this section in 1811. An 1813 pamphlet argued, against Farey, that Derbyshire mountains were caused by underground volcanic action. He lectured on geology from his rooms in the Bath House in Bakewell. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

Works

*"A delineation of the strata of Derbyshire", 1811. Republished, 1973. ISBN 0903485060
*"A Section of the Strata forming the Surface in the Vicinity of Matlock Bath in Derbyshire", 1813

References

External links

*worldcat id|lccn-nr93-41847
*NRA|P29922