George William Stow
| George William Stow | |
|---|---|
George William Stow
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| Born |
2 February 1822 Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England |
| Died | 17 March 1882 (aged 60) Heilbron, Orange Free State |
| Fields | Geologist and Ethnologist |
| Known for | poet, historian, artist, cartographer and writer |
George William Stow (2 February 1822, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England – 17 March 1882, Heilbron, Orange Free State) was a South African geologist and ethnologist, a poet, historian, artist, cartographer and writer.
Stow received his education at a school on the Isle of Dogs. He was articled to a Dr. Lattey of London and was intended to follow a medical career. At age 21, having little desire to become a member of the medical profession, he emigrated to South Africa, landing at Port Elizabeth in December 1843. In turn he taught at a mission near Cuylerville, was a clerk in the commissariat, tried his hand at farming, became a book-keeper in Port Elizabeth, a trader in Queenstown and a wine-merchant, diamond dealer and auctioneer in Kimberley.
Seeking refuge in the Renosterberg range near Middelburg during the Eighth Frontier War, he found an Early Triassic fossil skull resembling an amphibian. Thereafter Stow spent a great deal of his time exploring the Cretaceous deposits within the Sundays and Zwartkops basins near Port Elizabeth and the Karroo System near Dordrecht. After the war Stow was persuaded by Dr. Richard Nathaniel Rubidge to report his discoveries to Thomas Rupert Jones of The Geological Society. At a meeting of The Geological Society on 17 November 1858, a paper by Stow "On Some Fossils from South Africa" was read. The species was later named Micropholis stowi by Huxley, and is currently placed in the family Amphibamidae. The paper was the first of many contributions by Stow to geological journals, the most important probably being "Geological Notes on Griqualand West" published in the Quarterly Journal of 1874, shortly after he was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1872. His landmark work on the geology of Griqualand West was never published.
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