Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Wheatley, Charles Moore

WHEATLEY, Charles Moore, mineralogist, b. in Essex, England, 16 March, 1822; d. in Phœnixville, Pa., 6 May, 1882. He came to this country when a boy, was educated in New York city, and, entering mercantile life in 1835, continued so engaged until 1845. Mr. Wheatley became in 1837 a member of the Mercantile library, was a director in 1841-'3, and served as recording secretary in 1844-'5. He then turned his attention to mining, and in 1846 became manager of the Bristol copper-mine in Connecticut, whence in 1848 he was called to a similar place at the Perkiomen copper-mine in Pennsylvania. From 1850 till 1857 he was general manager and part owner of the Wheatley silver-lead mines, which he discovered and opened. Subsequently he mined in Pennsylvania and in California, but finally settled in Phœnixville, Pa., where he established the Schuylkill copper works and was the first person successfully to reduce copper-ores. Mr. Wheatley was an active collector, and gathered a valuable library of books in geology and mineralogy. He also accumulated a collection of more than 6,000 minerals and shells, valued at $25,000, which was purchased by Edward C. Delavan and given to Union college to be kept as the Wheatley cabinets, forever subject to the control of the University of New York. Later he made an extensive collection of fresh-water shells. At the World's fair held in New York in 1853 he exhibited specimens from the Wheatley mine, plans of the mining operations and drawings of machinery, for which he received one of the two silver medals that were given. He discovered a cave near Port Kennedy, on Schuylkill river, where he found many specimens of fossils, an account of which was read before the American philosophical society in 1871 by Prof. Edward D. Cope, who named one of the species Megalonyx Wheatleyi in his honor. The degree of A. M. was given him by Yale in 1858. He was elected a member of the New York lyceum of natural history in 1840, was its treasurer in 1847-'58, and was connected with other scientific associations both in this country and abroad. He published “Catalogues of the Shells of the United States, with their Localities,” one of the first volumes of its kind that were ever published (New York, 1842).