Origins of US Weather Data Collection (1807-1846)
In 1807 Jared Mansfield (1759-1830), then the Surveyor General of the United States, first established a system of daily weather observations. In 1817 Josiah Meigs (1757-1822), his successor, extended this program. Meigs was a professor at Yale University and in 1801 he became president of the University of Georgia at Athens. In 1814 he became Commissioner-General of the United States Land Office. In that position he established a system of weather observations three times a day at 20 land offices from Michigan to Louisiana and from Ohio to Missouri. Eventually these land offices were closed as settlers moved farther west.
Joseph Lovell (1788-1836) was the 8th Surgeon-General of the US Army. In 1819 he required all army posts throughout the country to provide quarterly reports on climatic conditions. An Army Meteorological Register of data collected by this program may be downloaded below (157 pages):
In 1825, New York State passed a law requiring academies accredited by the Regents of the University of the State of New York to report weather observations to the Regents. This was primarily temperature and rainfall data, and was subsequently published. Below is a copy of the 1855 publication of the 1826-1850 data (536 pages):
Joseph Nicolas Nicollet (1786-1843) was a French geographer, astronomer, and mathematician who came to the US in 1832. Among other things, he mapped the upper regions of the Mississippi River. In 1839 he wrote the following "Essay on Meteorological Observations" for the US War Department (44 pages):
James Espy (1785-1860) was a prominent American meteorologist in the 1830s-1850s. As meteorologist to the Franklin Institute and the American Philosophical Society in 1834, he established weather monitoring stations in Pennsylvania for the study of storms. In 1837, the State of Pennsylvania provided funds for these weather stations and provided an observer in each county with a barometer, thermometers and a rain guage. Espy fathered the convective theory of storms, and published the book The Philosophy of Storms in 1841. It is available for download below, courtesy Google Books (607 pages):
From 1841 to 1845 the US Patent Office under Henry L Ellsworth (1791-1858) prepared annual agricultural crop estimates organized by state. It collected weather data for the study of climate related to crop production. Ellsworth is considered the father of the US Department of Agriculture, which was founded in 1862.
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