J.W. Spencer : his life in Missouri and Georgia, and work on proglacial lakes

Geoscience Canada, Dec, 2004 by Gerard V. Middleton

The University consisted of a College of Arts (including a new Science Building), a Normal School (soon downgraded by the new President), a College of Agriculture, and a well established School of Medicine. Though Laws did his best for the School of Agriculture, by the time Spencer arrived he was involved in a dispute with the Dean, who resigned in 1882. Nevertheless, that spring the legislature awarded him a grant of $100,000 to enlarge the main building of the University.

Laws was strongly interested in science: he provided $2000 out of his own funds to help finance an improved observatory and telescope, and he hired Spencer mainly in order to design and purchase specimens for a new Museum, which was to occupy one of two new wings built on the expanded University Building. Spencer also became Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, a position previously held by the former Dean of Agriculture.

As it happened, on museum matters, Spencer could turn to his mentor, William Dawson, for advice. At McGill University, Dawson had just completed the construction and outfitting of the Redpath Museum. It had been built with a bequest of $140,000 from the "sugar baron" Peter Redpath, and incorporated Dawson's own collection of 10,000 rocks and fossils (Sheets-Pyenson, 1996, p. 66-72). By the spring of 1883, Spencer had drawn up some preliminary plans for the Missouri building, which he sent to Dawson for his comments (DP, Mar. 17, 1883). The legislature had voted $100,000 to enlarge the main university building. The new west wing was to have four stories, with a library on the third floor, and the fourth devoted to "rooms for [a] geological and Natural History Museum and lecture rooms." After further planning, the library was installed above the chapel in the east wing, and the west wing was devoted to rooms for the President, and a room and lecture room for each of the professors of geology, modern languages, and physics. The Museum occupied "... the front half of the west wing ... and consists of one floor and four galleries, each 45 x 20 feet and well lighted. My lecture room is the best geological room except yours that I know of." (DP, Apr. 18, 1885)

Construction of the Museum proceeded according to plan: Spencer wrote to Bell (BP, Dec. 1, 1884): "... I have got a magnificent museum--one of the best, with excellent lecture rooms, mineralogical laboratory and work rooms." His newly minted letterhead proudly displayed the enlarged university building and his status (Fig. 1). In 1886, he wrote to Dawson (DP, Jan. 1, 1886):

   "Our museum, according to Professor
   Ward of Rochester, is the largest and best
   lighted building west of the Hudson, and
   considering their means the authorities
   have been very liberal, through the
   influence of my perpetual "wanting" and
   the very warm support of Dr. Laws ... who
   is a great admirer of Dr. [Sterry] Hunt
   and yourself, both from hearing you
   lecture and from your books. For the last
   year and a half I have been very highly
   favoured as shown by the support of my
   department."