Background
He was born in Philadelphia, the son of John Fries Frazer and his wife, Charlotte Jeffers Cave.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
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He was born in Philadelphia, the son of John Fries Frazer and his wife, Charlotte Jeffers Cave.
He was educated in private schools of Philadelphia and at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received the B. A. and M. A. degrees in 1862 and 1865, respectively.
He participated in the Civil War: in 1862-63 as a member of the United States Coast Survey attached to the South Atlantic Squadron; as a member of the first troop, Philadelphia city cavalry, during the Gettysburg campaign; and later as acting ensign attached to the Mississippi Squadron, where he served until the close of the war.
On returning to Philadelphia he began the study of chemistry with the commercial firm of Booth & Garrett, but left after a few months to enter the Royal Saxon School of Mines at Freiberg, Germany.
After spending three years at Freiberg he returned to America in 1869 to become mineralogist and metallurgist to the United States Geological Survey, then under the direction of Ferdinand V. Hayden.
He wrote "Mines and Minerals of Colorado, " which appeared in the Third Annual Report (1869) of the Survey. In 1870 he was appointed instructor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, succeeding his father as head of that department in 1872; and on the division of the department in 1873 he served one year as head of the department of chemistry.
Since by training and predilection he was more geologist than chemist, he resigned from the University to become assistant to J. P. Lesley in the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania.
During the eight years that Frazer was connected with the survey his work was largely confined to the south-eastern counties, where the structure presented an intricate geological problem. His able study, published in five volumes of the Reports of the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, has not been greatly modified by subsequent work.
He served as general manager of the Central Virginia Iron Company, and a little later began to practice his profession as consulting and reporting geologist, metallurgist and mining engineer.
This commercial work necessitated extensive travels in America and abroad, but the professional nature of his work did not detract from the purely scientific value of the reports published in that connection.
Frazer was one of the founders of the American Geologist, and one of its editors from 1888 to 1905.
In this connection he published A Manual of the Study of Documents to Establish the Individual Character of Handwriting and to Detect Fraud and Forgery (1894). Later editions were published under the title: Bibliotics; or The Study of Documents. Later on he took up the study of the Bertillon system, and visited Bertillon in France to discuss his methods. In the capacity of handwriting and Bertillon expert, Frazer appeared at many trials, his most noted work in this connection being the Molineux murder case tried in the New York courts.
Frazer was one of the founders of the American Geologist, and one of its editors from 1888 to 1905. He was also noted for his researches in the characteristics of handwriting and the study of manuscript documents, making some original contributions, among which was the colorimeter, an instrument to determine the relative intensity and color value of ink-marks in handwriting. He was one of the most prolific of the scientific writers of the period, his publications numbering about three hundred titles, most of which were articles in scientific magazines, particularly the American Geologist and Journal of the Franklin Institute. The University de France bestowed upon him the degree of Docteur es Sciences Naturelles in 1882, the first foreigner to receive this degree, and in 1890 the French government gave him the honorary title of Officier de l'Instruction Publique.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
He was a member of the United States Coast Survey.
He was self-reliant and accurate in his search for scientific truths, but was often so vigorous in defense of that which he believed the truth that he gave offense to others.
In 1871 he married Isabella Nevins Whelen by whom he had four children.
