Richard Newman Brackett Papers
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: Mss-0102
The papers contain Dr. Brackett's research on Thomas G. Clemson, including evidence of presentations on Clemson before Chemical Societies, the Farmer's Institute and the S.C. Academy of Science and typed copies of Clemson's articles published in patent office. Correspondence and newspaper clippings document historically significant information about Clemson's buildings, rare agriculture books, biographical information about the original faculty, and obituaries for faculty, trustees, and outstanding citizens. There are also a small personal Bible given him by his father in 1876 and articles from Forum and Popular Science Monthly in 1888.
Dr. Richard Newman Brackett, one of the original faculty at Clemson College, was born near Columbia, South Carolina in 1863. He attended private schools in Charleston, and he earned an AB from Davidson College in 1883 and a PhD from Johns Hopkins (Chemistry, mineralogy, dynamics geology and microscopic petrography)in 1887. He worked four years as chief chemist to Geologic Survey of Arkansas before joining Clemson Agricultural College in 1891. He spent 22 years (1891-1937) at Clemson as professor & director of the Chemistry department and was chief chemist of the fertilizer department from 1911-1933. In April and May 1928 he published Thomas Green Clemson, LL.D., the Chemist in the Journal of Chemical Education. In 1889 he married Bessie Brandon Craig and they had three children. In He was professionally active in American Association for Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, and Association of Official Agricultural Chemists. He died November 27, 1937.
0.5 Cubic Feet
English
Many of the items were mounted or laid into two loose-leaf notebooks. The contents of the notebooks were copied onto archival quality paper and the notebooks were discarded. Folder titles reflect this provenance.
Madelyn Langdon, secretary in the Chemistry department, found these papers in a storage room and sent them to the library.
Several photographs, Thomas G. Clemson and Brackett Hall with greenhouses in foreground were removed from the collection.
Former call numbers A/.B797 and 79-1
Part of the Clemson University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Repository