John Ruggles Cotting (1784–1867), educator and geologist, changed his surname from “Cutting” early in adulthood. He was born in Acton, Massachusetts, and apparently attended Harvard University briefly before graduating from Dartmouth College in 1802. Cotting was ordained a Congregational minister in 1807 and pastored a church in Waldoborough (later Waldoboro), Maine, before resigning in 1811 and becoming an Episcopalian. He spent the next twenty-four years teaching in a number of different schools in Massachusetts and lecturing on the physical sciences. Cotting taught chemistry for one term at the Berkshire Medical Institution, 1824–25, and served as an instructor at Amherst Academy while editing the Chemist and Meteorological Journal at Amherst College in 1826. He published A Synopsis of Lectures on Geology in 1835, and later that year he moved to Augusta, Georgia, where he conducted a geological survey of Burke and Richmond counties. Cotting’s report on his survey having gained the attention of state authorities, in 1836 he was appointed geologist of Georgia and commissioned to conduct a survey of the entire state. Delays in the work and waning legislative support led to the termination of his official position in 1840, but the General Assembly allowed Cotting to retain the uncompensated title of state geologist. He published An Essay on the Soils and Available Manures of the State of Georgia … founded on a geological and agricultural survey in 1843 but never received enough support to publish the report of his full survey. Neither the report nor Cotting’s field notes survive. He moved permanently in about 1840 to Milledgeville, Georgia, where he operated a female academy beginning in 1842. Cotting was one of the first members of the Association of American Geologists in 1840 and of its successor, the American Assocation for the Advancement of Science, eight years later. He hosted the British geologist Charles Lyell during the latter’s 1846 visit to Milledgeville. In 1860 Cotting’s combined real estate and personal property were valued at $350 (Lester D. Stephens, “John Ruggles Cotting and the First State Geological Survey of Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 97 [2013]: 296–321; General Catalogue of Dartmouth College and the associated schools, 1769–1925 [1925], 108; DNA: RG 29, CS, Ga., Baldwin Co., 1850, 1860; Milledgeville Southern Recorder, 15 Oct., 5 Nov. 1867; gravestone inscription in Memory Hill Cemetery, Milledgeville).

The enclosed prospectus and accompanying sample have not been found. Late the previous year Mathew Carey & Son took subscriptions in Philadelphia for Cotting’s Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy, which was projected to run to 750 pages and cost $3 for subscribers and $4 for nonsubscribers. The advertisement included the endorsement of John Gorham, Harvard’s professor of chemistry (Philadelphia Franklin Gazette, 30 Nov. 1820). The work seems never to have been printed, but Cotting soon published a 420-page volume entitled An Introduction to Chemistry, with Practical Questions designed for beginners in the science. from the Latest and Most Approved Authors. to which is added A Dictionary of Terms (Boston, 1822).