William Maclure

• William Maclure
• Born: October 27, 1763
• Died: March 23, 1840

Geologist, philanthropist, and educational reformer, was born in Ayr, Scotland, the son of David McClure and Ann (Kennedy) McClure. Baptized John, he changed his first name as well as the spelling of his surname. He was educated by a tutor with a good reputation in science and mathematics, but later described his education as “classical” and virtually worthless. Survived by a brother, Alexander, and a sister, Anna, he never married.

Shortly after the end of the American Revolution the young Maclure, an employee of a London mercantile house, visited New York City to establish a correspondent relationship with merchants there, and came to America again on business in 1796. Within a short time after becoming a partner in the London firm of Miller, Hart & Company, Maclure made a fortune, retired from business, and moved to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen.

In 1803 Maclure was named to the commision appointed to settle spoliation claims between the United States and France. While engaged in this work he traveled theough Europe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic studying geology and collecting specimens. On his return to America he began the task of constructing the first geological map of the United States, based on personal observation during his travels over the entire region east of the Mississippi River. It was published in 1809 and in a revised edition in 1817 with an accompanying volume, Observations on the Geology of the United States. One of the earliest members of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, he was elected president annually from 1817 to the year of his death. His benefactions made possible a permanent building for the academy, to which he also donated his 2,500-volume library. For several years he was president of the American Geological Society.

A true product of the Enlightenment, Mac-lure was an ardent republican and believer in the advancement of the masses through practical education. He believed that in this way the knowledge, wealth, and power of the several classes of mankind could be more nearly equalized. In 1819, excited about the advent of the liberal Cortes government in Spain, he bought 10,000 acres of land and began to build the structures for a great agricultural school for the common people that would combine instruction with practical labor. The project evaporated with the overthrow of the Cortes and the reclaiming without compensation of Maclure’s land by the church, from which it had been taken by the former government. In 1824 Maclure returned to the United States still intent on establishing a school.

While traveling in Europe he had visited the school of Heinrich Pestalozzi in Switzerland and persuaded a teacher, Joseph Neef, to come to Philadelphia at his expense and establish himself as an instructor in Pestalozzian methods. He met two more Pestalozzian teachers in Paris, Madame Fretageot and Guillaume Phiquepal (later the husband of reformer Frances Wright). They had become enthusiastic about the communal experiment of Robert Owen in New Harmony, Indiana, and convinced Maclure that his school should be established there. Maclure bought a vast tract of land, persuaded several well-known scientists to join him on the journey down the Ohio, and sent a wealth of books and scientific instruments ahead to equip his School of Industry. After the failure of the Owenite experiment the school continued as the New Harmony Working Men’s Institute, directed for a time by Maclure’s friend, the noted scientist Thomas Say. The institute combined the characteristics of a research organization, a university extension, and a university press, continuing to publish scientific works until the late 1840s. It survives today as the chief repository of records concerning the various movements that centered in New Harmony.

Although described as a man of naturally robust frame and a serene temper, Maclure began to suffer from poor health in the 1820s, and was forced to seek a milder climate. Repelled by the slavery in New Orleans, he moved on to Mexico, where he spent most of the rest of his life.

In Mexico Maclure came to believe that the newly independent country offered a promising field for his educational experiments. He told friends that he planned to bring a number of aboriginal youths to New Harmony to be trained in knowledge of the useful arts “that may fit them both to rule and to obey, in a republic.” But he was not equal to the task. In 1839, knowing that the end was near, he set out for the United States but died on the journey, near Mexico City.

While in Mexico Maclure continued to correspond with his many scientific friends, including Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale, to whose geological laboratory he contributed many instruments and specimens. He carried on a continuous correspondence with Mme. Fretageot about matters at New Harmony, and sent numerous articles, mostly on political economy, to the Working Men’s Institute newspaper, the Disseminator. These were later collected into two volumes under the title, Opinions on Various Subjects, Dedicated to the Industrious Producers (1831, 1835). Through his influence on his colleagues and his many material benefactions Maclure made significant contributions to the kind of practical education that found its first home in his adopted country.

Maclure’s correspondence concerning the New Harmony school has been edited by A. E. Bestor, Jr., under the title, Education At New Harmony: the Correspondence of William Maclure and Marie Duclos Fretageot, 1822-1833 (1948). See also T. J. de la Hunt, History of the New Harmony Working Men’s Institute (1927); G. P. Merrill, The First One Hundred Years of American Geology (1924); and The Dictionary of American Biography (1933). On Maclure’s role in the Philadelphia Academy see S. G. Morton, A Memoir of William Maclure, Esquire (1841).