White Watson

White Watson (10 April 1760 – 8 August 1835) was an early English geologist, sculptor, stonemason and carver, marble-worker and mineral dealer. In common with many learned people of his time, he was skilled in a number of artistic and scientific areas, becoming a writer, poet, journalist, teacher, botanist and gardener as well as a geologist and mineralogist. He 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. As an artist he was well known locally for his silhouettes, both on paper and as marble inlays.

Life 1760–1800

Watson was born at Whitely Wood Hall, Whiteley Woods, near Sheffield, on 10 April 1760. His father was Samuel Watson, a millstone manufacturer of Baslow, Derbyshire, his mother Martha White (which is from where his unusual first name derives). Watson's great-grandfather, Samuel Watson, and his grandfather, also Samuel Watson, had been sculptors and stonemasons engaged on the re-building of Chatsworth House between 1687 and 1706. Continuing the family tradition, in later years White Watson would also work for the Chatsworth Estate.