Peale, A. C. (Albert Charles), 1849-1914

A. C. Peale (1849-1914) was a paleontologist who collected fossil specimens for the United States Geological Survey in Colorado during 1908.

Smithsonian Institution Archives Field Book Project: Person : Description : rid_738_pid_EACP735

Albert Charles Peale, geologist, mineralogist, and paleobotanist, was born April 1, 1849, in Heckscherville, Pennsylvania, the son of Charles Willson Peale (1821-1871) and Harriet Friel. His father was the namesake of Albert's great-grandfather, painter and museum proprietor Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Albert's grandfather was Rubens Peale (1784-1865); his great-uncles included portraitist Rembrandt Peale (1778-1840) and artist, naturalist, and early photographer Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885). Albert had one sibling, a sister named Clara Elizabeth (b. 1851).

Peale attended Central High School in Philadelphia, obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1868 and a master's in 1873, and finished medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1871. From 1871 to 1879, Peale served as a mineralogist and geologist for the United States Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories. As such, he traveled on several of the Ferdinand Hayden expeditions that explored and mapped the western United States. In 1875 he married Emilie Wiswell, the daughter of the Rev. George F. Wiswell (1820-1892), a Philadelphia minister and former president of Delaware College (today the University of Delaware).

In 1882, Peale wrote Yellowstone National Park and Thermal Springs, a landmark survey of the nation's first national park. The following year, he became a geologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a post he held until 1898. While employed there, he wrote several other notable works: Mineral Springs of the United States (1886), The Classification of American Mineral Waters (1887), and The Natural Mineral Waters of the United States (1895).

In 1898, Peale joined the staff of the United States National Museum (today the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History), as a paleobotanist, a role he served in until his death. He wrote two other notable scientific works, Classification of Mineral Waters (1902) and The Stratigraphic Position and Age of the Judith River Formation (1913), as well as a work of family history, Biographical Sketches of Charles Willson Peale and of Titian R. Peale (1905). Peale died in 1913 in Washington, D.C.

While at the National Museum, one of Peale's proteges was Edwin Roger Kirk (1884-1955). Born December 6, 1884, in Richland, South Dakota, the son of Nathan and Caroline Kirk, Edwin's's interest in geology began early, as he was already corresponding with Frank Springer about crinoids at the age of fifteen. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1907, and served as an assistant paleontologist at the university until 1909 (he would later earn a doctorate there). That year he entered federal service as a junior geologist with the USGS, assisting Edward Oscar Ulrich in studying Ordovician and Silurian sediments of the Appalachians. (USGS operated out of the United States National Museum at the time, Kirk when Kirk would have met A. C. Peale.)

Kirk became a paleontologist with USGS in 1914, and conducted field trips to the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and southeastern Alaska. He married sometime prior to his 1918 World War I draft registration; his wife was named Page. In 1920, he left USGS to work as a paleontologist for the Bolivia-Argentina Exploration Corporation.

He returned to USGS in 1921 and remained there for the rest of his career as an associate geologist (1921-52) and geologist (1952-54). He assembled Peale’s papers sometime before his death in 1955. Peale and Kirk’s papers then passed to Page Kirk, then to the Kirks’ daughter and granddaughter before the latter donated them to the American Philosophical Society in 2007.

References

Not including APS accession records and finding aids, biographical dictionaries, or encyclopedias.

Massa, William R., Jr., and William Cox. “Record Unit 7245: Edwin Kirk Papers, 1783-1893, 1905-1941 and undated.” Smithsonian Institution Archives, 2003, http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/FARU7245.htm (9 April 2009).

“Presidential Objectives Project: George Franklin Wiswell.” University of Delaware Archives, 2004, http://www.udel.edu/csg/PresWeb/bios/Wiswell.doc (9 April 2009).

Randall, Emilius O., and Daniel J. Ryan. “William Rush Taggart.” History of Ohio: The Rise and Progress of an American State, Vol. 6. New York: Century History Company, 1915. 155-157.

“Rush Taggart dies at his summer home.” New York Times 29 September 1922, 15 (New York Times Article Archive).

Sellers, Charles Coleman. Charles Willson Peale . Vol. 2. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1947.

From the guide to the Albert C. Peale Papers, Bulk, 1869-1910, 1842-1913, (American Philosophical Society)