15 Facts About White Watson

White Watson was an early English geologist, sculptor, stonemason and carver, marble-worker and mineral dealer.

White Watson kept extensive diaries and sketchbooks of his observations on geology, fossils and minerals, flora and fauna, and published a small but significant and influential number of geological papers and catalogues.

White Watson's father was Samuel Watson, a millstone manufacturer of Baslow, Derbyshire, and his mother Martha White.

Whilst still a child, White Watson became interested in minerals and fossils, and began his own collection as well as providing specimens for sale in his uncle's shop.

Henry Watson was largely responsible for founding the trade in the local Blue John fluorite and Ashford Black Marble, and provided the magnificent black and white marble flooring for the Great Hall at Chatsworth House in 1779.

Henry White Watson died in 1786, and the Ashford-in-the-Water business was then sold.

White Watson had been unsuccessfully attempting to raise funding for such a publication since 1790, and produced a one-page ' Prospectus of a Catalogue and Description of Derbyshire Fossils ' outlining the proposal that year.

White Watson was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1795, and remained a member until his death.

White Watson was a member of the Derby Philosophical Society from 1800, nominated by Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, and a member of the British Mineralogical Society.

White Watson was then commissioned in 1804 to work on the rest of Georgiana's collection, the Chatsworth Mineral Collection, adding a considerable number of items during this time and further refining his understanding of the different types of rock and minerals and their relationships.

In 1808 White Watson married Ann Thorpe, aged 29, from Buckminster, Leicestershire, who was a relative of Sir Isaac Newton.

Probably in the same year, White Watson produced an unusual circular stratigraphical diagram A DELINEATION of the ten deepest STRATA as yet discovered in the MINERAL DISTRICTS of DERBYSHIRE.

Later in his life, White Watson designed improvements for Bakewell Baths, his residence, for the Duke of Rutland, who wanted to establish Bakewell as a fashionable spa town.

White Watson died in Bakewell on 8 August 1835, and is buried in Bakewell churchyard.

White Watson's collections were broken up and sold on his death.