Charles Frederick Hartt

Charles Frederick Hartt (23 August 1840 in Fredericton, New Brunswick – 18 March 1878) was a Canadian-American geologist, paleontologist and naturalist who specialized in the geology of Brazil.

Hartt graduated from Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1860, and by his graduation he had made extensive geological explorations in Nova Scotia. In 1860, he accompanied his father, Jarvis William Hartt, to St. John, New Brunswick, where they established a high school for young women in which Charles Frederick taught for a year. Hartt also studied the geology of New Brunswick, and devoted special attention to the Devonian shales, in which he discovered an abundance of land plants and insects.

In 1861, Hartt started to work as a student assistant for Louis Agassiz at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. This work lasted until 1864, when he received an appointment on the geological survey of New Brunswick. In 1865 he accompanied Agassiz to Brazil in the Thayer Expedition. A creationist, Agassiz believed he could find geological proof of his theory concerning glacial action in Brazil that would knock down the evolutionist theory of Charles Darwin.

Hartt fell in love with Brazil, and spent 15 months exploring the coastal regions from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro. The large zoological collections he made were later used to prepare his Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil (Boston, 1870). In 1868 he was elected professor of natural history at Vassar College, but later in the same year he accepted a post at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, and planned to return to Brazil. Charles married Lucy Cornelia Lynde of Buffalo, New York, in 1869. They had two children, Mary and Rollin. Both children became writers.

...
Wikipedia