William Charles Redfield was an American meteorologist and paleontologist. Redfield is known in meteorology for his observation of the directionality of winds in hurricanes (being among the first to propose that hurricanes are large circular vortexes, though John Farrar had made similar observations six years earlier), though his interests were varied and influential.
Background
William Charles Redfield was born on March 26, 1789 at Middletown, Connecticut, the eldest of the six children of Peleg and Elizabeth (Pratt) Redfield. On his father's side he was of the sixth generation from one William Redfin, Redfen, Redfyn, or Redfyne, who was living in Massachusetts as early as 1639 and about 1653 settled near New London, Connecticut Peleg Redfield died September 10, 1802, leaving his family in straitened circumstances.
Career
William, thirteen years of age, was apprenticed the next year to a saddle and harness maker at Upper Middletown (now Cromwell), Connecticut What spare time he had evenings he spent in studying science by the light of a woodfire. During the latter part of his apprenticeship, he and certain other young men of the village formed a debating society, the "Friendly Association, " in which he took great interest. His chief inspiration, though, came from Dr. William Tully, a well-informed local physician, to whose excellent library young Redfield had free access.
In 1804, the year his apprenticeship began, William's widowed mother married Nathan Sears and in 1806, with an ox team, moved with him, his nine children, and her four youngest, to Portage County, Ohio. As soon as his apprenticeship was over William set out afoot to visit her. This seven-hundred-mile trip, much of it along mere trails and through forests, he accomplished in twenty-seven days, of which four were given to resting. During the journey, he kept an excellent and interesting diary of his experiences and observations. The next year, 1811, he tramped back along a more southern route to Middletown. Here he worked at his trade and also ran a small store. All the time, however, he gave every possible moment to the study of science.
On September 3, 1821, came the "great September gale. " Shortly after its occurrence, he went on a trip to western Massachusetts and from the lay of the trees felled by the wind and the times of the storm's occurrence at various places he concluded that it had been a progressive whirlwind. It was not until April 1831, however, that, in the American Journal of Science and Arts, he brought this correct and fundamental concept of the nature of such storms to the attention of the public, in an article entitled "Remarks on the Prevailing Storms of the Atlantic Coast of the North American States. "
In October 1833 he set forth in the same journal the facts he had noted and described the behavior of this storm so fully and so accurately as to make his paper, the first of importance on this subject, a meteorological classic ("Observations on the Hurricanes and Storms of the West Indies and the Coast of the United States"). This knowledge of the hurricane he immediately put to use by devising a set of practical rules by which the mariner could know where he was, in such a storm, and what to do to avoid its greatest danger.
His interests were varied. As early as 1820 his attention was directed towards steamboat navigation. Soon after this, when travel by boat had fallen off owing to a number of disastrous explosions, he devised and put into successful operation between New York and Albany a line of "safety barges. "
The barge, or passenger boat, was towed by the steamboat at a sufficient distance to be safe in case of a boiler explosion. The public soon went back to the cheaper and faster, if less safe, mode of travel, however, and the barges were then used to carry freight. Thus was begun a method of river shipment that still is in force after the lapse of more than a hundred years.
He also was interested in railroads, and as early as 1829 published a pamphlet of great foresight on a proposed railroad to connect the Hudson and the Mississippi rivers. A second and enlarged edition was issued in 1830. He likewise advocated the construction of other railroads, among them one from New York to Albany, which he urged despite the fact that he was then financially interested in travel and shipment between these points by boat and barge.
In 1848 he was elected the first president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an organization he had materially helped to found, and presided at its meetings in September of that year in Philadelphia.
A diligent student of science from his days as an apprentice, Redfield came to the insight that a storm was a “progressive whirlwind.” He drew this inference after observing the fall of trees on a trip from Connecticut to Massachusetts following the hurricane of 3 September 1821, and he confirmed it after two violent storms that struck New York in August 1830.
Membership
William Redfield was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1845.
American Association for the Advancement of Science
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United States
Connections
On October 15, 1814, Redfield married Abigail Wilcox, daughter of Eliphalet and Abigail (Shephard) Wilcox of Upper Middletown, Connecticut; she died May 12, 1819. By this marriage, he had three sons, the youngest of whom, Charles Bailey, became the father of William Cox Redfield.
On November 23, 1820, he married Lucy Wilcox, daughter of Seth and Hannah Wilcox, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and cousin of his first wife; she died September 14, 1821. They had one son, who survived but a few days. His third wife, whom he married December 9, 1828, was Jane Wallace, daughter of William Wallace, a New York merchant. They had no children.