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Harold W. Arndt papers of the Delaware County Institute of Science, Geological and Mineralogical Section
Notifications
Held at: Delaware County Institute of Science [Contact Us]11 Veterans Square, Media, PA, 19063
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Delaware County Institute of Science. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Harold Wesby Arndt was born in 1892 in East Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Carbon County, Pennsylvania, but his family moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania when he was a youth. Arndt studied mining engineering at Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) and Lehigh University. Afterwards he joined the First Pennsylvania Artillery Division of the U.S. Army, serving in El Paso, Texas during the 1916 Mexican border conflict. Arndt then settled in Ardmore, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a design and structural engineer and draftsman for the Belmont Iron Works, a Philadelphia firm specializing in bridge design and construction. He remained there until his retirement in the late 1950s.
Harold was one of the best known amateur mineralogists in the United States, collecting minerals with Edgar Wherry, Morrell Biernbaum (Baldwin), Harry Trudell, Sam Gordon, and other professional mineralogists. Harold taught classes once each month for several years prior to 1941 at the Delaware County Institute of Science (Media, PA) on mineralogy and geology and was chairman of the Institute's geological and mineralogical section in the 1930s. He also served as president and vice president of the Philadelphia Mineral Society in the late 1940s and early 1950s, president (1953-1960) and treasurer (1960-1977) of the Delaware County Institute of Science, and curator of the mineral collections at Bryn Mawr College from 1958 until his death in 1979.
Bibliography:
Wilson, Wendell E. "Harold W. Arndt." Mineralogical Record Biographical Archive. 2014. Accessed August 11, 2014. http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=57.
This collection consists of minutes from meetings of the Delaware County Institute of Science's Geological and Mineralogical Section (established in 1938); typescripts and handwritten drafts of lectures delivered by Arndt at the Institute; a few newspaper clippings, many about geological topics; a few photographs and film negatives; and some illustrations on blueprint.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Delaware County Institute of Science directly for more information.
People
Organization
- Delaware County Institute of Science (Media, Pa.). Geological and Mineralogical Section
- Delaware County Institute of Science (Media, Pa.)
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Delaware County Institute of Science
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Sarah Leu through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact Delaware County Institute of Science for information about accessing this collection.