Biographical Excerpts from: 

Peter & Susan Lesley, A Memorial Discourse by Charles Gordon Ames

Peter Lesley was a city boy, son of a Philadelphia carpenter, a man of high-strung nerves, but of sterling sense and Christian virtues.  The children were taught the use of their minds, their eyes and hands; taught also to revere God and keep the commandments.  This lad was a passionate lover of knowledge, especially devoted to language and science, and passed swiftly forward in school and college to a course in divinity at Princeton…

In 1844, having  been licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Philadelphia, he went to study for a season at the University of Halle, in Germany; then for about two years he traveled in Pennsylvania as evangelist and colporteur of the American Tract Society; but from 1848 to 1851 he was pastor of the Congregational church in Milton, Mass.  Meanwhile he found himself suspected and accused of unsoundness of doctrine… The same impulse of honesty and faithfulness that led him into the Calvinistic ministry soon led him through it and out of it, and made him a man of science and a practical servant of mankind.  Withdrawing from the pulpit about 1852, he settled in Philadelphia, and devoted himself to science, and especially to the study of geology, in which he rapidly rose to distinction as an authority and to eminence as an expert….

In 1874 began the great work of his life – a mountainous work – as head of the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania….  He was already fifty-four years old, and had been admonished of constitutional liabilities by sharp crises of nervous suffering….  Conceive the magnitude of his undertaking….  Yet, if not always serene, he was always dauntless, strong in his conscious rectitude and in loving for his work….  Like his friend Agassiz, he could not afford to make money; and, in trying simply to do his duty, he literally worked like a willing horse harnessed to a heavy load…  In 1895, when already past his seventy-fifth birthday, with failing sight and faltering nerve, he let fall into another hand the completion of the closing volume (of the Survey….)   He lived eight years longer, but with a wrecked constitution, impaired fortitude, and permanent incapacity for sustained mental or physical activity.

Yet this is not the whole story.  Through all the strenuous years he had kept in touch with the great world of thought, of art and humanity….  He had his turn in the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He was long the Secretary of the American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin….  

Yet I believe his chief interest was not in physical science, but in humanity.  An altruistic principle mixed itself with all his work, and pervaded his thinking like an atmosphere….  He threw himself into the religious movement which produced the Spring Garden Unitarian Society of Philadelphia.  Occasionally he would drop all else and enter the pulpit or lecture-room, to surprise and delight his fellow-worshippers with a rich outpour of thought and feeling, illustrated by telling parables, drawn from stores of knowledge and experience….  He also found or made time for notable contributions to the magazines and journals.

Amid all the exactions and distractions of this man’s life there was one reposeful centre….  When Susan Lyman first crossed his field of vision, he started …with an impression clear as a voice, “That is my wife!”  The health of both was frail: the counsel of their friends was discouraging.  But the man and maid thought, if their life together was to be short, the sooner it began the better.  The engagement lasted but three months; and the married life, which began in 1849, extended to fifty-four years.

Quotes by J Peter Lesley

JPL to SIL Jan 24, 1849, speaking of wedding presents during the month before their wedding:  “Did you mean to congratulate me on your presents, or must I congratulate you, or what shall we do?  I would help you wear your new dresses if I could, but really I can’t.  I once heard of a man who always said our hat, and came very near saying one day our pantaloons, but drew up in time….  But I too have had my presents.  Stockings came in alarmingly; one would think Chris Krinkle was getting up a depot in my second right hand drawer; and they are of all colors:  variety’s the spice of life.”

JPL to SIL May 17, 1851 from Mt Carmel PA:  JPL was traveling via stage coach to a surveying job location.  “At Pottsville (PA) there was a crowd.  The proprietor said he could only expedite me to within 4 miles of my point.  When we arrived there, the driver told the agent there that if there was a seat I was to go on.  He looked in & said there was & charged me an extra half dollar.  I was about to pay it with a remonstrance, but I thought how hard this would go to some poor man or widow woman & became indignant. (LAC’s italics)  I ordered them to take forward my valise & shawl & leave it at (Mt Carmel) and set off with my great coat & walked the 4-1/2 miles over the lowest mountain and arrived twenty minutes before the stage, so as to secure my luggage against their resentment.  The rascals!”

Per Charles Gordon Ames’ Memorial Discourse, 1904:  (Peter’s wife Susan) wrote down from memory some samples of what (Peter) said to her during the dark hours…  “When he feels useless and in the way, he is comforted by reflecting on the part which nitrogen plays in the atmosphere.  It is quite inert, it does nothing to keep up life or combustion.  Oxygen has to carry on all the actual business:  nitrogen seems to obstruct every process; yet, if nitrogen were removed, oxygen would flame up and burn the earth to a desert of ashes.  Nitrogen is good as a restraint.  The air has nine parts of nitrogen to one of oxygen.  Human society requires nine fools to one sage, and all organized benevolence requires nine parts of obstruction to one of zeal.” (A footnote points out “the truer proportion of the two gases is as four to one.”)

Per CGA Memorial Discourse…  CGA tells of a letter received from JPL on the death of JPL’s brother Joseph:  “I shall so soon go to join him that his apparent departure first inspires me with no grief whatever. I have always loved men and women in the spirit, and not in the flesh.  As far as I can remember, the death of the dearest friend caused only a momentary pang.  My friends have always been eternal, immortal.  I never change myself, and cannot comprehend any change passing on them.  Neither God, nor the world, nor people, nor things, ever change to my view….  The most moody and uncertain of men myself, I am conscious of an absolute unchangeableness in myself; and I take it for granted that I shall never lose a friend.”