Unsuspected Treasures in Thin Section (Part 2):
George Ashby

By Tony Nikischer
Excalibur Mineral Corporation


As a follow up to last month’s initial article, we continue here with another brief history of a thin section preparer whose works were discovered in the collections of Julius Weber. As we dig deeper into the pile of slide preparers, their stories become more difficult to tell, as there is both a lack of information on many of them, as well as some misinformation on a few as well.

George E. Ashby

Born in 1864, George Ashby was an active player in the New York Microscopical Society, as well as a member of the New York Mineralogical Club, both of which are still in existence today. Although one source suggests that Ashby died prior to 1930, we found evidence to contrary, as he delivered eulogies at meetings in 1934, was again elected to fill officer positions in two societies in 1935, and he subsequently published a paper in American Mineralogist with Clifford Frondel in 1937. He was still attending meetings and holding offices as late as 1944, apparently alive and well at 80 years of age.

It is unclear if Ashby’s interest in thin section preparation resulted from his interest in mineralogy or in microscopy, as he was not a scientist but rather a businessman who joined both New York societies in the mid-1890’s, rising to Secretary and/or President of both during his long association with each. (Coincidently, Ashby was nominated as Delegate to the New York Academy of Science at the same 1935 meeting my first college mineralogy professor, Dr, Daniel T. O’Connell, was nominated as Secretary of the New York Mineralogical Club. Both were unanimously elected, and some years later, my second college mineralogy professor, Purfield Kent, eventually became Secretary of the Club, a position held by Dr. Fred Pough and others!)

Ashby apparently lectured often, and a talk was given by him at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on January 28, 1917, pertaining to microscopic examination of grains of sand, illustrated by lantern photomicrography. (Now there is topic worthy of further research!) Kunz’s 1916 book, Ivory and the Elephant in Art, Archeology and Science, mentioned Ashby, so his prominence among the movers and shakers of his day had apparently been established by then.

The heyday of the sophisticated mineral crowd circa 1920 included the likes of not only George Kunz, but also mineralogists like Hebert Whitlock, Edgar Wherry, Edward Dana, Sam Gordon, James Manchester, George Merrill, Charles Palache, Waldemar Schaller, Washington Roebling and others, and Ashby was comfortable among this august group, attending the Abbé Haüy Celebration in honor of the 175th anniversary of the birth of this noted crystallographer. The gala celebration was held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on the evening of Thursday, February 28, 1918, under the auspices of the New York Mineralogical Club, jointly with the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other organizations. Ashby was there with all of the above-mentioned dignitaries, representing the New York Microscopical Society.

It was clear that Ashby enjoyed field collecting as well as microscopy, as Frondel’s 1937 American Mineralogist article, jointly authored by he and Ashby, cited some 500 muscovite specimens collected by Ashby in New York City as one of the primary sources of Frondel’s specimen observations pertaining to oriented magnetite inclusions in muscovite. Some years later at the November 15, 1944 meeting of the NY Mineralogical Club, Ashby presented a volume of his work on micas found on Manhattan Island during his field work in the 1900 to 1925 period.

Ashby’s mineral collection was rumored to have been sold to Brooklyn mineral dealer John Grenzig in the 1930’s or earlier, but we were unable to verify this fact; Ashby outlived Grenzig (who died in 1944), but we were unable to locate any specific details about Ashby’s subsequent death. However, we have a hot lead on an old reference, but we have to travel to another state to paw through dusty old papers to locate the details. Perhaps we will revisit George Ashby once again in a future installment.

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