Smith, WILLIAM

Smith, WILLIAM, called the Father of English Geology, was born at Churchill in Oxfordshire, 23d March 1769. He became a land-surveyor and engineer, and so was naturally drawn to geology; and in 1794, after his appointment as engineer to the Somerset Coal Canal, he began his study of the strata of England. His epoch-making Geological Map of England was published in 1815, and from 1819 to 1824 he published, with self-denying zeal, no fewer than twenty-one geologically coloured maps of English counties, assisted in the latter task by his nephew and pupil, John Phillips, afterwards professor at Oxford. Smith received the LL.D. degree from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1835, and a pension of £100 from the crown in 1831. He died at Northampton, 28th August 1839. He was buried here, and thus had his wish to be buried in the Oolite as he had been born on it. See his Memoirs by Professor Phillips (1844).