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Geological Society of London

HARMER, Frederic William (1835-1923)


IDENTITY STATEMENT

Reference code(s): GB 378 LDGSL/714

Held at: Geological Society of London

Title: HARMER, Frederic William (1835-1923)

Date(s): [1865-1872]

Level of description: Series

Extent: 17 maps

Name of creator(s): HARMER | Frederic William | 1835-1923 | palaeontologist

CONTEXT

Administrative/Biographical history:

Frederic William Harmer was born on 24 April 1835 in Norwich. His father, Thomas Harmer, was a partner in the local clothes manufacturing company Harmer and Rivett. At the age of 15, Frederic joined the family firm and would eventually change the firm's name to F W Harmer and Co.

The early period of his life was focussed on business, but in 1864 he met the younger Valentine Searles Wood (1830-1884) on the Mundesley shore and began a firm friendship and geological partnership. Together they studied the Pliocene deposits, the fauna of which was then being described in the monographs of the Palaeontographical Society ('The Crag Mollusca') by Searles Wood the elder. The Drift deposits also engaged their attention, and between them the two men surveyed an area of 2000 square miles, Harmer undertaking the survey of Norfolk and Northern Suffolk. Their map, produced on a scale of 1 inch to the mile, was claimed to be the first 'drift' map of the kind.

The prolonged illness and then death of the younger Searles Wood in 1884, and his reluctance to study geology alone, saw Harmer devoting the next few years to municipal duties and politics of the day. However a disagreement over the question of Irish Home Rule, caused Harmer to return whole-heartedly to geology.

His later work concerned the Tertiary and Quaternary deposits of East Anglia and the Continent, and comparing the Pliocene sequence in Britain with that in Holland and Belgium. He devoted the last few years of his life updating the 'Monograph of the Crag Mollusca'. Harmer died on 11 April 1923.

He became a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1869, and was awarded the Murchison Medal in 1902 in recognition of his work on the Pliocene and other deposits of East Anglia.

CONTENT

Scope and content/abstract:

Papers of Frederic William Harmer, comprising maps of East Anglia, annotated with geological lines, notes and colouring, used as field maps during research into glacial deposits in the south east of England, in collaboration with Searles Valentine Wood jnr, [1862-1872]. Base maps are Ordnance Survey, one inch (Old Series) sheets nos 50-51, 65-69 (quarter sheets).

ACCESS AND USE

Language/scripts of material: English

System of arrangement:

Conditions governing access:

Access is by appointment only, daily readership fee is applicable unless you are a member of the Society. Please contact the Archivist for further information.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Copies, subject to copyright and the condition of the original, may be supplied. Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Archivist.

Finding aids:

Online, detailed catalogue will be available shortly.

ARCHIVAL INFORMATION

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

ALLIED MATERIALS

Related material:

For the field maps of Searles Valentine Wood jnr, see: LDGSL/713/2/3-8.

Other material relating to Frederic William Harmer include: Geological notebooks and correspondence, held by the British Geological Survey (refs: IGS1, IGS3, GSM1/512 ); Catalogues of fossils and autograph album containing 86 signatures cut from letters addressed to Harmer, held by the Natural History Museum (ref: L MSS HARM); 27 mineral specimens donated to the Norfolk Museum.

DESCRIPTION NOTES

Archivist's note: Sources: obituary, 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London', vol 80 (1924); www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk (accessed 4 October 2012); www.heritagecity.org (accessed 4 October 2012). Description Caroline Lam.

Rules or conventions: Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions: October 2012.


INDEX ENTRIES
Subjects
Geological mapping | Cartography | Surveying
Geological surveys | Surveys | Field work | Research work
Geologists | Scientists | Scientific personnel | Personnel | People by occupation | People
Geology

Personal names
Harmer | Frederic William | 1835-1923 | palaeontologist

Corporate names

Places
Norfolk | England | UK | Western Europe | Europe
Suffolk | England | UK | Western Europe | Europe