Manuscript entitled, "Fossil Flora and Fauna of the Pennsylvanian Period, Will County, Illinois"
by George Langford (1876-1964)
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George Langford And His Fossils, [An Appendix] by Sydne Holmes
His Old Hobby Takes Care of Him Now
by Sidney Holmes
Mother had another speech that she occasionally about Father's hobbies over the years.  When things were dull, feature writers from for Chicago and Joliet newspapers had long since discovered that Father could produce an interesting story about his collecting adventures, and so [they] gave Father considerable exposure.  This exposure prompted requests for speeches by Father, and Mother gladly substituted for him.

The following [and ensuing]  pages are from her speech notes.
George Langford, Jr. ca. 1973
George Langford, Sr. with Mastodon tusk
 In sequence, we lived first with a herd of Mastodons, from youngsters to adults, one adult had a nine foot curved tusk, in which George posed for his picture, looking a lot like the picture in a crescent moon on the cover of the sheet music for a popular song.

Next, George excavated a large Indian Mound that turned out to be the first stratified Indian Mound found in Illinois [this was a salvage effort, as the mound was otherwise soon to be obliterated by local agricultural activities - GL,III].  George brought home bushel baskets full of skulls, bones and clay pots and set them up in rows on shelves in my studio, where they awaited further attention.

Lastly, there came hundreds of of nodules containing fossilized casts of the Flora and Fauna  of the Carboniferous Age, from the swamp forests of two hundred and fifty million years ago.  Many of these specimens were new to Science, and George felt that they were far too important to be kept as a private collection in a private home.
George sent one large and very fine collection to the Field Museum, and offered to develop, classify, and care for them there.  This led to George being appointed Curator of Plant Fossils at the Museum, where he still is [1948-1962 GL,III.]

Of all George's collections, his fossil plant nodules interested me the most, they were so beautiful.

When George made his first trip to the strip mines, he brought home bags of them and sat out in the driveway, where he showed me how he cracked them open by tapping  the thin edge with a hammer.  When he handed me a cracked-open nodule, it separated, and I had one half in each hand, each showing a different side of the leaf inside.  The leaf was a dark russet, against a bluish-grey background, resembling the Fall coloring of a modern leaf.  Every vein in every pinnule showed clearly.  I could even guess at the thickness of the leaf.

There are many varieties of plants in the strip mine spoil heaps near Wilmington, Illinois.  These plants grew in all parts of the world where coal is found, and were the actual source of the coal, first becoming swamp trash, then peat, and finally coal.

In the Wilmington area, probably an area like the modern "wet lands," and possibly subject to tidal action, these layers of peat became covered with sandy mud, which covered and protected the peat and the individual leaves.  This silting was so gentle that it did not harm the leaves at all, preserving perfectly every minute detail.

But, exposed to wind and air and Winter, this detail became blurred and dull, glossy only when being washed under water.  George thought out a process that he could [use to] "develop" a fossil.  After he cleaned a fossil of all dirt, he dried it out and then painted the leaf with a dilute solution of water and thin glue, which protected the surface and gave it a glossy texture which brought out the details and the color of the leaf, making these fossils a very attractive exhibit.

The Field Museum now has about thirty thousand of these fine specimens, one of the finest fossil plant collections in the world; about five hundred plant varieties; and over one hundred and fifty new to Science.

So now, long retired from a career operating a rail re-rolling business in Joliet, Illinois, his hobbies have enabled him to engage in a new career in Chicago, at the Field Museum.
Sidney Holmes Langford
Continued