Clarence King

Clarence Rivers King (January 6, 1842 – December 24, 1901) was an American geologist, mountaineer, and author. He was the first director of the United States Geological Survey from 1879 to 1881. Nominated by Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes, King was noted for his exploration of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Early life and education

Clarence King was born on January 6, 1842, the son of James Rivers King and Florence Little King. Clarence's father was part of a family firm engaged in trade with China, which kept him away from home a great deal, and he died in 1848, so Clarence was brought up primarily by his mother. By 1848, his two sisters, named Florence King and Grace King, had died early in their lives.

Clarence developed an early interest in outdoor exploration and natural history, which was encouraged by his mother and by Reverend Dr. Roswell Park, head of the Christ Church Hall school in Pomfret, Connecticut, that Clarence attended until he was ten. He then attended schools in Boston and New Haven and, at age thirteen, was accepted to the prestigious Hartford High School. He was a good student and a versatile athlete, of short stature but unusually strong.

His mother received an income from the King family business until it met with a series of problems and dissolved in 1857. After a few years of straitened circumstances, during part of which Clarence suffered from a serious depression, his mother married George S. Howland in July 1860 and had a daughter with him named Marian Howland. Howland financed Clarence's enrollment in the Sheffield Scientific School, affiliated with Yale College, in 1860.