Science
SAFFORD
(James M., Ph.D., Professor of Natural Science at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee and State Geologist of Tennessee)
Autograph Letter Signed to Robert Morton MIDDLETON , jr., F.L.S., F.Z.S.,
(1846-1909, English shipbroker and botanist), thanking him for the 1st Vol.of the 'Woods' and was very much pleased with them - desire to secure the other instalments. I am sorry you were not at the opening of Kimball... I became acquainted with Prof. Hall and was much pleased with him... With this I mail a photograph of the body 'who owes' you one, with an excellent cabinet photograph of Safford by Staples of Nashville, I start today for Erin, Houston Co., Tenn., where I have work going on under the auspices of the U.S. Geological Sur[vey]. I have three young men at work there now, with a newspaper clipping giving their names and saying that Dr. Safford is just back from surveying coal lands in East Tennessee before going to Erin, 2 sides 8vo., Nashville, Tennessee, 1st July
Item Date: 1890
Background
Middleton was employed at one time by the Hartlepools Shipowners' Society. About 1886 he and his wife settled in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains. He corresponded with many leading naturalists, collected autographs, and presented a herbarium of some 3000 American and other specimens to McGill University in December 1890, returning permanently to England in 1892. With his wife and sister he spent 1904-1907 as a missionary in Chile. Again returning, he took a house in Kew and was a Temporary Assistant at the Natural History Museum till 1909.
Stock No. 13929