Troy scientist recognized
By Don Rittner

Silas Watson Ford is a name that doesn't come up often in the annals of American Geology but that may change soon with the publication of a paper by paleontologist Linda VanAller Hernick of the New York State Geological Survey.

Hernick's research on Ford, a Troy telegrapher, has elevated him to a position that he long deserves, as a paleontologist who made some of the most important discoveries regarding Cambrian paleontology in the 19th century.He found the first early Cambrian period fossils in North America, helping to resolve a geological controversy that was going on for 30 years. In his short life span, Ford published more than 23 scientific papers. His 7-part series of geological processes in the New York Tribune in 1879 was so popular that Union College awarded him an honorary master's degree.

The Ford family was originally from Glenville. Silas and his family moved to Schenectady after the death of his parents, and then to Troy. His brother, Stephen Van Rensselear Ford, went from station agent for the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad in 1854, to a joint partnership with George P. Ide in 1865 to make collars and cuffs. Ide & Ford located their business at 506 Fulton St.

Silas appears to have moved to Troy the following year, boarding at 208 North Second St., and was listed as a telegraph operator. His brother, Isaac, was a telegraph operator at the Union Railroad depot and probably trained his younger brother. Later, he is listed as a bookkeeper and may have worked at Stephen's collar company. The partnership desolved between Ford and Ide, and George Ide went on to become one of Troy's largest collar companies. Silas went back as a telegraph operator but his keen interest in geology finally led him to James Hall, the state geologist in Albany.

Hall and fellow geologist Ebenezer Emmons were in an intellectual battle. Emmons had proposed the Taconic System to describe the formation of the Taconic Mountains and rocks of easternmost New York and western Massachusetts. Emmons had given an older Cambrian age (540 to 505 million years ago) to these rocks while Hall said they were younger, of Ordovician age (500 to 438 million years ago). The Taconic Orogeny or mountain building period happened about 450 million years ago when a volcanic island arc collided with proto-North America (around the Connecticut Valley region). This event ran from Newfoundland to Alabama. The rocks, which had originally been deposited in a deep-water area where stacked together by these plate collisions and formed the Taconic mountain range. Originally this mountain range was as high as the Himalayas, but quickly eroded and the sediments were deposited into a shallow sea that covered most of the middle half of proto North America.

In Troy you can see this overthrust where older rocks are sitting on top of younger rocks (especially in the Mt. Ida Gorge) and geologists attempted to explain this anomaly (now called the Emmons Thrust, earlier Logan's Fault). Ford had found fossils in parts of these rocks in Beman Park, which helped explain the older age of the rocks and in the long run helped support Emmons theories. Eventually Emmons was proven correct (he is buried close to Hall in Albany Rural Cemetery and it's reported he is facing Hall in his grave -- poetic justice?).

Ford jumped into the fray. His discoveries of fossils of Cambrian age proved that portions of the Taconic were older than what Hall had proposed. While not formally trained in geology, early on he wrote to Hall, at the urging of William Gurly, in an attempt to get help and guidance in training in geology, his real passion. Ford had offered loans of his fossils to Hall and Hall visited Ford in Troy. In 1871, Ford published an important article in the American Journal of Science that correlated the Troy rocks to the older Cambrian period and described the first ever fossil, Hyolithes opercula, found in North America. At 23, this established Ford as a leading authority on Cambrian fauna east of the Hudson. He even had one of his fossils named after him by a leading paleontologist, in 1881. Fordilla troyensis is one of the oldest know bivalves in the world. Throughout all of this he was still a telegraph operator now working for the American Telegraph Company, then absorbed into Western Union at
249 River Street, where City Hall is today (and adjacent to my office).

What appeared to be a promising career however came to an early end. He temporarily worked with the US Geological Survey, got married, and was prolific in his writings. However, as Ms. Hernick points out, Ford had either an alcohol or opium addiction and always seemed to be in debt, needing to borrow money. Eventually most of the geologists he had been corresponding with or working with wrote him off. Ford had a $72.20 debt that he couldn't afford to pay off.

Separated from his wife, she tried to sell off his fossil collection of 419 specimens and 170 volume personal library to repay the debt. Ford himself had been declared legally incompetent so Mrs. Ford assumed all liability for the debt. James Hall tried to get the State Regents to buy the fossil collection but problems arose and continued to occur as they agreed to buy it then reneged on the deal. While the State bickered back and forth, Mrs. Ford died on February 24, 1895. The collection was finally purchased (no one know who the seller was) in 1900 for $70.70 and is now in the State paleontology collections. No one knows what happened to Ford's personal library. Mr. Hernick believes the great Capitol fire of 1911 in which almost half a million of the State's library's collections were lost may have consumed them.

Four months after Mrs. Ford died, Silas died at his cousins' home in Wilton on June 25, 1895, and was buried in Schenectady's Vale Cemetery. He was 47.

Regardless of his personal problems and short life, Troy's Silas Watson Ford's 20 year contributions to American Paleontology are well documented and finally given the recognition he deserves, thanks to the research of Albany paleontologist Linda VanAller Hernick.