This is Mazon Monday post #220. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
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Jim Konecny wrote this piece for the June 1994 edition of the ESCONI Earth Science News. This year marks the 60th anniversary of George's death. He was a interesting man. His contributions were many... to Mazon Creek, science, ESCONI, and society in general. To learn more, visit the George's Basement website. That site has a wealth of information about George, his family, and many, many other things.
GEORGE LANGFORD
1876-1964
Top photo: Tony Sobolik, George Langford, and Jim Konecny. George is signing one of his books. Bottom photo: George in his office.
June 16, 1994 marks the 30th anniversary of the death of George Langford. The name George Langford is synonymous with the Mazon Creek Area. Not since Leo Lesquereux's published monograph in 1870 on Pennsylvanian flora had there been such a complete study of Pennsylvanian coal flora in the United States.
Who was this man George Langford? He was a paleontologist, archaeologist, author, artist, engineer, inventor, and athlete.
He was born on May 26, 1876 in Denver, Colorado. His family starting with his grandfather, had long been engaged in iron founding. Therefore, it was quite natural for him to enter into the same business. He graduated from Yale University in 1897 with an engineering degree. His athletic prowess surfaced at this time. He was a member of the rowing team, having been stroke on the crew for three years. In 1895, the crew went to the Henley Regatta in England.
In 1900 he moved to Joliet, Illinois where he was employed as an engineer and draftsman by the McKenna Processing Company - later becoming president of the company. It was at this time that he sustained a serious injury at the factory. While inspecting a piece of machinery his left arm was caught in some gears and literally pulled out of the socket at the shoulder. While with the McKenna Company, he was the originator of many inventions and secured numerous patents in the company name.
He was a dedicated family man amusing his children, George, Jr. and Lyda, with stories about prehistoric life. Later these stories were written down and published as 4 separate books. He also Sculpted bas reliefs of prehistoric animals for them.
In the early 1900's, he became engaged in an extremely valuable archaeological excavation - this being the famous ‘Fisher Mounds' site. He located the mounds and salvaged all of the artifacts and preserved this important village site from destruction by a gravel company. His reports were published in the American Anthropologist (1927) and in the Transactions of the Illinois Academy of Science. The artifacts were deposited with the University of Chicago.
It was however his work at the strip mines that he was best noted for. Although his first trip to these mines in 1937 was a disappointing one it sparked an interest that kept him coming back over and over. Accompanied by his son George, Jr. he spent countless hours collecting, sorting, and identifying his finds. He estimated that he had collected at least 250,000 concretion specimens. In order to expose the fossils, these concretions, or nodules, must be placed on a hard surface and struck with a hammer to split them open. In order for George to crack these nodules, it was necessary, for him, to hold them with his feet. Facetiously he would remark "Occasionally the collector misses his aim and hits his thumb —- a painful injury results. When I miss my aim my shoes protect my feet. I have split many thousands of nodules and I have never hit my thumb".
Because of a dispute with the federal government over the use of some of the McKenna patents, George closed the company in 1945 and left Joliet. He moved into an apartment near Lincoln Park in Chicago. His massive collection was divided into twelve smaller ones that were donated to small colleges, a major one that was placed in the Illinois State Museum and the bulk was placed in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. For the first time in his life he was without an occupation and without his collection. This did not deter this determined and energetic man. He secured permission from the Field Museum to come and curate his former collection.
In 1947, he started on a second career as Curator of Plant Fossils at the museum. Imagine this at age 71 when most men are retired. He continued collecting plant fossils not only in the strip mines but also on trips for the museum in Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. He discontinued his field work in 1959 and retired from the museum in 1962. Two of his monographs on the Mazon Creek Flora & Fauna have been published by Esconi Associates.
The last time I visited George was June 19, 1963 (the above photo was taken on that date by my wife Sylvia). He was working on his third monograph. His desire and energy remained with him to the end. He died on June 16, 1964 at the age of 88.
Jim Konecny
The September 1964 edition of the ESCONI newsletter featured a memorial to George.
