Eldred James Simkins college notebook, ca. 1857-1859.

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Eldred James Simkins college notebook, ca. 1857-1859.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/271280779

Notebook of E.J. Simkins while a student attending South Carolina College and enrolled in the class of prominent educator and scientist Joseph LeConte (1823-1901). Simkins' detailed notes on LeConte's geology lectures illustrate both his own orderly study habits as a future jurist and his instructor's scientific thought as an articulate scholar who would shortly interpret the ideas of Charles Darwin for the American public. Like many college instructors before and since, LeConte slanted his lectures in the direction of his personal research interests. In 1856, he had delivered a series of lectures on "Coal" and "Coral" at the Smithsonian Institution. Similarly, his classroom lectures, ca. 1859, tended to dwell on these topics. The Simkins acquisition makes it possible to compare his notebook with that of Joseph E. Nettles, also held by the South Caroliniana Library. In January 1859, Nettles also took LeConte's course. Nettles' notes concern glacial and volcanic activity; Simkins' notes concern earthquakes, rock formation, and the fossil record. The marginal illustrations in both volumes hint that LeConte used elaborate blackboard diagrams as instructional tools; his symbol for a city was a miniature chapel perched atop a geologic formation.

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University of South Carolina, System Library Service, University Libraries

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SNAC Resource ID: 7237144

University of South Carolina, System Library Service, University Libraries

Related Entities

There are 3 Entities related to this resource.

South Carolina College

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6q27r17 (corporateBody)

LeConte, Joseph, 1823-1901

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w60863sd (person)

Joseph LeConte, born in 1823, graduated from the University of Georgia in 1841. He enrolled in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1844 and received an M.D. in 1845. He married Elizabeth Caroline Nisbet in 1847 and established a medical practice in Macon. Because his first love was geology, however, he enrolled in the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard College in 1850 to study with the famous naturalist Louis Agassiz. Upon completing his studies in 1851 he returned to Georgia and became...

Simkins, Eldred James, 1838-1903

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w61z69b8 (person)

Eldred J. Simkins (1838-1903) was a lawyer born in South Carolina who fought in the Civil War, lived on a plantation in Florida, and later in his life became a Texas state senator. He married Eliza Josephine Trescot, whose father, Edward Henry Trescot, was a physician who traveled to California in 1849 in search of gold and settled in Mariposa County, never returning to South Carolina. Eliza and Eldred had five children: Martha, Benjamin B., Joseph Stewart, Frances Earle, and Emma. F...