Talk:François E. Matthes

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Page creation[edit]

I wrote this page due to my writings about Saint Louis, Missouri history. Edith (Coyle) Matthes is the granddaughter of William Radford, who was the son of Harriet (Kennerly) Radford Clark. Harriet became the second wife of William Clark and the three children from her first marriage were adopted by Clark. Clark was a very important person in early 19th century Saint Louis and Edith was his step-great-granddaughter.

I next noticed a good number of broken links to Matthes in Wikipedia from my first search for his name because he had no page. It is amazing how influential his work in topography and geology was in the first half of the 20th century, but how forgotten he had become.

I did find many photographs of Matthes at work but found no one to claim copyright ownership to them. Matthes has been deceased over 65 years, his wife over 50 years and there were no children. Any publisher I talk to has no idea who Matthes is let alone who a copyright owner to his personal photographs taken 100 years ago. Many of these photos may reside in the Bancroft Library archive, but they have no thumbnail or catalog. The only clear title photo I found is the portrait from the 1916 book Mount Rainier: A Record of Exploration.

I did find a link to fascinating film footage dated 1932 which Matthes shot of his field trip with some Boy Scouts to Yosemite National Park.

Seblake (talk) 23:49, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]