Jacob Wilkinson (1773–1844) was an English naturalist working in the fields of

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...

and

paleobiology Paleobiology (or palaeobiology) is an interdisciplinary field that combines the methods and findings found in both the earth sciences and the life sciences. Paleobiology is not to be confused with geobiology, which focuses more on the interactio ...

Life

Born in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

on 28 April 1773, he was the fifth surviving son of John Wilkinson (1732-1779), a wealthy businessman, and his wife Sibella Berdoe (1737-1807), daughter of his father's business partner John Berdoe. It is possible he was named after Jacob Wilkinson, a friend and maybe business associate of his father. Living all his adult life outside Bath, Somerset, he became a keen collector of fossil remains of extinct creatures found in the area. In 1801 he acquired a huge

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...

tusk 2.4 metres (8 feet) long, together with other remains from the same site. These he presented to the

Geological Society of London The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

, who in 1807 made him one of their first honorary members. In 1805, he found the skeleton of an ichthyosaur at

Weston, Bath Weston is a suburb and electoral ward of Bath in Bath and North East Somerset, South West England, located in the northwest of the city. Originally a separate village, Weston has become part of Bath as the city has grown, first through the deve ...

. By 1811 he was reported to have perhaps the finest private collection of fossil bones in England, which he was glad to show to visitors. As well as his scientific pursuits, when Britain was threatened by French invasion in 1803 he joined the Bath Forum Volunteer Infantry, in which he was commissioned as a Captain. In 1840 he gave land for founding a school, which was still flourishing in 2016 as St Stephen's Primary School. He died in Bath at the age of 70 on 11 April 1844, with his will being proved in London on 27 June 1844.

Family

At the age of 21 he married Olivia Maria Cranke Stephen (1771-1815), the ceremony being in Bath on 28 March 1795, and they had six children, three of whom married: * Mary Sibella Wilkinson (1799-1867) in 1835 married the Reverend Jeremiah Awdry; *

Charles Edmund Wilkinson Charles Edmund Wilkinson (1801–1870) was a British army officer who rose to the rank of Major-General and served as acting Governor of British Ceylon. Life He was the only son of the naturalist Jacob Wilkinson (naturalist), Jacob Wilkinson ( ...

(1801-1870) in 1837 married Mary Drought Armstrong; and * Caroline Margaretta Wilkinson (1806-1874) in 1841 married the Reverend Edmund Ward Pears. After the death of Olivia, in 1818 he married Louisa Savage (1781-1859).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilkinson, Jacob (naturalist) 1773 births 1844 deaths Paleobiologists British geologists British naturalists