Caleb Atwater (1778–1867), attorney, public official, and author, was a native of North Adams, Massachusetts, who graduated from Williams College in 1804. After working as a teacher in New York City and training as a Presbyterian minister, Atwater was admitted in 1809 to the New York bar. A business failure caused him to move in 1815 to Circleville, Ohio, where he practiced law and pursued his interest in local antiquities and earthworks. Atwater served one term in the Ohio House of Representatives, 1821–22. In that office and thereafter he promoted education and internal improvements. Following an unsuccessful run by Atwater for the United States House of Representatives and a short-lived newspaper editorship, in 1829 President Andrew Jackson appointed him as a commissioner to conduct negotiations with the Winnebago Indians. A treaty was successfully concluded, and Atwater drew on his experiences in his Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie du Chien (1831). His numerous publications also include a volume of collected Writings of Caleb Atwater (1833) and A History of the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil (1838). Atwater died in Circleville (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Clement L. Martzolff, “Caleb Atwater,” in Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, Publications 14 [1905]: 247–71; Calvin Durfee, Williams Biographical Annals [1871], 250–1; Madison, Papers, Pres. Ser., 2:138–9; Jackson, Papers description begins Sam B. Smith, Harold D. Moser, Daniel Feller, and others, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson, 1980– , 9 vols. description ends , esp. 5:421–2, 7:43–7).

Atwater’s essays on the prairies and barrens of the west and the prevailing currents of air were dated by him 28 May and 23 July 1818 and appeared in the American Journal of Science 1 (1818–19): 116–25 and 266–86, respectively. TJ had discussed the prevailing winds many years since in his Notes on the State of Virginia (Notes, ed. Peden description begins Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden, 1955, repr. 1995 description ends , 76–7). Atwater’s letter on our antiquities was published as a “Description of the Antiquities discovered in the State of Ohio and other Western States” in American Antiquarian Society, Transactions and Collections 1 (1820): 105–267, and large portions were excerpted or summarized in translation, with inadequate authorial attribution, in Friedrich Wilhelm Assall and Franz Joseph Mone, eds., Nachrichten über die früheren Einwohner von Nordamerika und ihre Denkmäler (1827), 1–81.

In his 1 Jan. 1818 letter to James Monroe, Atwater described the stone found in the mound at chillicothe as a three-inch-long pendant of black marble, “exactly such a one as the Emperor of China and the highest grades of his officers now wear around their necks” (American Monthly Magazine 2 [1818]: 334–5).