How did Jacob Aaron Westervelt die?

Jacob Westervelt (1794–1881) is often confused with his brother-in-law John Jacob V.B. Westervelt (1805–1866), who was a Deputy Sheriff under him, and subsequently High Sheriff of New York City himself too (1846–1849), as well as Assistant Alderman from the 16th Ward (1844–1846). Another namesake is Jacob Aaron Westervelt (1800–1879), the shipbuilder, Alderman from the 13th Ward and later Mayor of New York City (1853–1855).

Jacob Westervelt (sheriff)

Jacob Westervelt (July 27, 1794 – May 10, 1881) was the Sheriff of New York County from 1831 to 1834. He was president of Lafayette Bank of New York City.

He was born on July 27, 1794 in Schraalenburgh, New Jersey to William Westervelt.

He married Elizabeth Westervelt, the sister of John Jacob V.B. Westervelt, in Schraalenburgh, New Jersey on March 21, 1812. He moved to New York City (880, Pacific street) immediately after his marriage. In the 1840s he purchased a farm in Upper Nyack, New York, which was subsequently sold. Jacob Westervelt and his wife had nine daughters and two sons: Isabella, Eliza, Margaret, James M., William, Maria, Gertrude, Rachel, Lavinia, Sarah Jane and Caroline Westervelt.

He was active in the grocery trade before he was elected Sheriff of New York County, an office he held from 1831 to 1834. After retiring from the Shrievalty, he became the president of Lafayette Bank of New York City for a short time. In his younger years he took an active part in the politics of the day, becoming a member of the Tammany Society. During the years 1837 and 1838 he was Assistant Alderman of the 9th Ward. For a certain period he was connected with the New York Custom House, and later became a City Weigher. While a resident of Brooklyn he was on the staff of the Department of City Works in that municipality, but during his latter days he retired from general business.

He died on May 10, 1881 in Brooklyn, New York.

A Sheriff, Jacob Westervelt was involved in the New York City Police Riot of 1857, known at that time as the Great Police Riot. It was a conflict which occurred between the New York Municipal and Metropolitan Police on June 16, 1857. Arising over Mayor Fernando Wood's appointment of Charles Devlin over Daniel Conover for the position of city street commissioner, amid rumors that Devlin purchased the office for $50,000 from Wood himself, Municipal police battled Metropolitan officers attempting to arrest Mayor Wood. During the battle, Conover and his attorney visited Sheriff Jacob Westervelt to request that he serve the warrants. Westervelt was advised by his own representatives, who agreed that it was his legal responsibility to do so, and left with the two men for City Hall. Upon his arrival, Wood again refused to leave his office.

Jay Westervelt (Jacob James Westervelt), contemporary 21st century New York biologist/professional snowboarder, is a namesake descendant of Jacob Westervelt.

Jacob Aaron Westervelt (January 20, 1800 – February 21, 1879) was a renowned and prolific shipbuilder who constructed 247 vessels of all descriptions during his career of over 50 years. From 1853 until 1855 he was Mayor of New York City.

Jacob Aaron Westervelt

Together with his partners (Westervelt & MacKay and Westervelt & Sons) he designed some of the fastest and most successful sailing packets, clippers and steamships ever built, among these the screw sloop and the clipper, as well as many vessels for foreign governments and Royal Houses. Westervelt was awarded the Order of Isabella the Catholic by the Queen of Spain for the preparation of models and plans for three Spanish frigates. For many years he was the President of the Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Marine Society, the Port Society and the St. Nicholas Society. He was also President of the Board of Dock Commissioners for several years. After Westervelt's death, the flags at City Hall were lowered to half-mast.

Westervelt was the eldest son of Ari and Vrowti Westervelt. Ari Westervelt was a builder by occupation. He built several houses in Franklin Street, New York, and constructed the South Church in Schraalenburgh in today's Bergenfield borough. Westervelt was born in Tenafly, New Jersey, on January 20, 1800 and was baptized at Schraalenburgh on February 16, being the first child to receive that sacrament after the completion of the new church. The Westervelts then resided at the old family homestead on Tenafly Road midway between Englewood and Tenafly. When Ari Westervelt was working on improving the riverfront, he moved, together with his infant son, to New York in 1804, to be nearer his work. It was to his father that Jacob Aaron owed his good education. His father died when Westervelt was only 14.

The sources differ as to Westervelt's further education and early career. He received additional education under the tutelage of James P. Forrester, then headmaster of the school connected with the Collegiate (Dutch) Church in New York, and was afforded greater educational opportunities under Barron & Brown, in a special course on surveying and navigation. Afterwards he went to sea, serving on ships for more than two years. He left the sea in 1817 and became an apprentice under Christian Bergh, a prosperous shipbuilder on the East River. A differing source reports that he went to sea directly after his father's death, while another states that he was already apprenticed to Christian Bergh in 1814.

Westervelt learned the "art, trade and mystery" of his profession in a most independent way—as a teenage sailor and as an apprentice to Christian Bergh, for whom he worked at the very latest from the year 1817. Such was his talent that he was in Bergh's absolute confidence. Before even graduating from his apprenticeship, Westervelt accepted an offer to start business in Charleston, where he undertook the construction of two schooners, with the help of African American slaves from planters in and around Charleston (with his employer's consent). He was so successful during those few months that he continued in business there, but he found the environment too confining for his ambitions and in 1822 he returned to New York, where he formed a partnership with Robert Carnley and his old master under the name of C. Bergh & Co. Some of the ships built by Bergh and Westervelt were "Hope" (1825), "Henry IV" (1826), "Charlemagne" (1828), "Albany" (1831), "Philadelphia" (1832), "Utica" (1833), "Westminster" (1835), and "Toronto" (1835). Christian Bergh retired a wealthy man in 1837, and was succeeded by his sons Henry and Edwin Bergh, who continued the business until just after their father's death in 1843.

In 1836 Westervelt built at least two ships under his own name, the "Baltimore" and "Mediator", in partnership with the 22-year-old ship chandler Marshall Owen Roberts as Westervelt & Roberts. Soon after Christian Bergh's retirement, Westervelt and Robert Carnley made an extensive tour of Europe, visiting the principal shipbuilding points, where Westervelt gathered information that he subsequently put to good use. Westervelt found an inactive life disagreeable and, after a year of travel, returned to the dry docks in 1838 and resumed shipbuilding.

There are differing reports as to the start of this new chapter of Westervelt's life. On one side it is stated that Westervelt bought out his former partners Carnley and the Bergh brothers and took control of the Bergh shipyard, at the foot of Gouverneur Street and extending to Water Street and up to Scammel. Other sources state that Westervelt and William MacKay (not to be confused with Canadian shipbuilder Donald McKay) established one of a few new yards at Corlear's Hook (the block bounded by Third, Goerck and Houston Streets) in 1841 and moved to Lewis and Seventh Street in 1844. Westervelt may also have designed and built ships in connection with Edward Mills. The shipyard Westervelt & MacKay, later Westervelt & Sons (which Westervelt formed with his sons Aaron and Daniel), became prominent and prospered. Together with MacKay and his sons he built 50 steamships, 93 traditional sailing vessels and clippers, 5 barques, 14 schooners, one sloop, two lightships, and 11 pilot boats—a total of 181 vessels of 150,624 tons. Westervelt built more vessels of medium tonnage than any builder of his time. Some of his noteworthy sailing packets are:

Westervelt also built clippers, for example "Contest" (1852), "Hornet" (1851), N.B. Palmer (1851), "Kathay" (1853), and. Clipper bows were distinctively narrow and heavily raked forward, allowing them to rapidly clip through the waves. The first archetypal clipper, with sharply raked stem, counter stern and square rig, was, built in Baltimore in 1833 by Kennard & Williamson. For some historians, the "Rainbow" was the first true "Yankee clipper". She was built in 1845 to a new design by the American naval architect John Willis Griffiths who is said to have based his design on the owner's previous ship "Ann McKim". This type of vessel had been in demand for the China trade, but they were rather small. From the experience gained in the service of these first clippers, the builder soon found the changes that were necessary in the design for the building of larger and faster ships demanded in 1850 for the California, China and Australia clipper routes.
The greatest New York clippers took shape in the yards of Westervelt and his friend William H. Webb. The "N.B. Palmer" was perhaps the most famous clipper built in the Westervelt yard, besides the "Sweepstakes". In China she was known as "the Yacht", and with her nettings in the tops, brass guns, gold stripe, and her lavish entertainment on the Fourth of July and Washington's Birthday, she well deserved the title. A full-rigged model of the "N.B. Palmer" was exhibited at The Crystal Palace, London, in 1851, and attracted much attention as a fine example of the American clipper ship. In 1858–1859 the "N.B. Palmer" with her 28-year-old Captain Hingham had tied the record of 82 days for the Shanghai to New York run. The "Sweepstakes", though black-hulled like other clippers, bore a stripe of gold, found on only a few others like the "N.B. Palmer", and was praised for her sleek lines and speed. "Sweepstakes" (which was the last clipper to be built by the Westervelt shipyard) gained celebrity for her record-breaking seventy-four-day run from New York to Bombay in 1857, and for making the trip between New York City and San Francisco in only 106 days.

The economic boom spurred on by the California Gold Rush that had brought on the era of the clipper ships had turned to bust. All the secrets of building lofty clippers had been discovered and there were too many of them in existence. The dropping freight rates now gave no incentive to build any more. The San Francisco market was so saturated that many a disgusted ship captain dumped unwanted cargo overboard in the bay before sailing on to other ports. The diary of Robert Underhill, which recorded his 1856 travels on the "Sweepstakes", revealed that Westervelt was also traveling on this voyage to San Francisco and the Orient. Underhill's entries made clear that Westervelt recognized the economic situation facing the port of New York and was seeking other possible venues for the family business.

By 1859 most of the extreme clippers had been dismasted more than once after half a decade or more of relentless hard driving. All were in a leaky condition, and most of their owners were by then in dire financial straits and could not afford expensive repairs to clippers that could not find a paying cargo to justify such expenses. Their masts were cut down, their yards shortened and their sails reduced as they were refitted and re-rigged with the new Howes rig to make them easier to handle by smaller crews. Other less fortunate clippers were discarded outright and sold for a pittance.

Some historians take the view that Westervelt built the first true American steamship that crossed the Atlantic to Europe. The Marquis Claude de Jouffroy d'Abbans from France invented and constructed the first steamboat, the so-called "Palmipède", in 1774, and a second one, the steamboat, in 1783. Robert Fulton built the first commercially successful steam paddleship in the US, the (also known as "Clermont") in 1807, using a Boulton and Watt engine.

The is usually said to be the first steamship to cross the Atlantic (in 1819). She was originally planned as a sailing ship but was changed into a steamer. Because she did not make the entire passage under steam, some dispute the "Savannah"s claim as the pioneering ocean steamer of the Atlantic. The British steamer "City of Kingston" and the, a Quebec-built craft, have been suggested as the first true steamers to make the crossing.

Three side-wheel steamers were also built in New York: the "Lion" and the "Eagle" (subsequently "Regent" and "Congress"), built in 1841 by Jacob Bell for the Spanish navy, and at about the same time the "Kamschatka" built by William H. Brown for the Russian navy. After the "Savannah", there was no steamship owned or run by an American company that navigated the Atlantic Ocean to a port in Europe until 1847.

In 1846 began inquiries regarding the building of steamships for regularly scheduled transatlantic service. Edward Mills, a novice in the shipping business, led a syndicate that received the contract for mail delivery to Le Havre and Bremen for five years. With his associates C. H. Sand, Mortimer Livingston and John L. Stephens, he founded the Ocean Steam Navigation Company in May 1846. The company was unable to attract sufficient capital to carry out its original business plan to build four ships and instead ordered two ships from Westervelt & MacKay, "Washington" and "Hermann" (1848). The Westervelt shipyard built the hull, and the engines were made by Stillman, Allen & Co. This was one of the less successful chapters in the history of the Westervelt shipyard. Both paddle steamers were said to be slow and had insufficient cargo space, and the government soon revoked the Le Havre portion of the mail contract because of the line's poor performance.

Westervelt and his associates later built very successful steamships. Through 1850 they built 8 of the 38 steamships constructed in New York until that year, including the "Franklin" and "Havre" (the first steam vessels for the Havre Line), followed by and "Rhode Island" (for the government) and "Eagle" and "Morro Castle" (for Spofford, Tileston & Company). Westervelt & Sons also built "Foong Shuey", afterwards named "Plymouth Rock", of 287 feet in length, with an engine from the Lake Erie steamer "Plymouth Rock". This vessel made the voyage from New York to Singapore in 51 days. (The all-time record for a sailing vessel on that route is 78 days.) The SS Winfield Scott built in 1850 by Westervelt & MacKay, wrecked on Middle Anacapa Island in 1853, and has been the object of numerous salvage operations since; she currently rests underwater as part of the Channel Islands National Park and Marine Sanctuary. The wreck site of the "Winfield Scott" is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

By 1855, the gold rush was over and Westervelt, like other shipbuilders, began looking for new markets to keep his yard busy, as the shipping lines that had carried almost 2.7 million emigrants across the Atlantic by sailing vessels between 1846–1855,were ordering fewer ships than before. The declining trend continued because of the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Between 1855 and the end of the war in 1865, only 1.4 million emigrants were conveyed from Europe to the United States.

On March 3, 1857 the U.S. Congress authorized five screw sloops of war, one of them the (the first ship so named by the U.S. Navy). It was laid down later that year by Westervelt and his sons, launched in 1858, and commissioned on January 26, 1859 with Captain (later Admiral) David G. Farragut in command. USS "Brooklyn" was active in Caribbean operations until the start of the American Civil War. In 1861 she was an active participant in the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America. She received orders for many different missions: she was one of the ships that attacked the Forts St. Philip and Jackson, and under the command of Captain James Alden, Jr. she was part of the fleet that helped to blockade Mobile Bay. During the battle of Mobile Bay, which lasted a little more than three hours, 54 of "Brooklyn"s crew were killed and 43 wounded while firing 183 projectiles. After spending the next few weeks helping reduce the Confederate land works guarding the entrance, "Brooklyn" departed Mobile Bay on September 6, 1864 and headed for Hampton Roads for service in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Soon thereafter, "Brooklyn" was in the task force that arrived off Fort Fisher on January 13, 1865, and her guns supported the attack until the fort surrendered on January 15. Since this victory completed the last major task of the Union Navy during the Civil War, "Brooklyn" sailed north and was decommissioned at the New York Navy Yard on January 31, 1865. Admiral Farragut declared "Brooklyn" to have been the most efficient man-of-war in the American navy.

Besides the "Brooklyn", also built at the Westervelt shipyard were the gunboats, and the revenue cutter, all of which performed efficient blockading services during the war. Westervelt also built many vessels for foreign governments, among these the frigate "Hope" in 1825 for the Greek government, "Guadalquiver" for Spain, and "Eusiyama" for Japan. Westervelt was awarded the Order of Isabella the Catholic by the Queen of Spain for the preparation of models and plans for three Spanish frigates.

The most successful year for Westervelts's yard was 1858 when 12 ships were built (aggregating 14,081 tons). At the outbreak of the Civil War, Westervelt was one of the richest shipowners in the country. He was a supporter of the Union cause. President Abraham Lincoln esteemed his judgment highly, and entrusted him with the purchase of many of the river craft which were altered to suit the demands of blockading and transport service. Westervelt accepted nothing for such service, but contented himself with the profits accruing from his shipyard. It was during this period that his fortune shrank very much faster than it had been accumulated. Steamer after steamer was wrecked, burned or captured by Confederate cruisers, until at the close of the war he was almost bankrupt. During one year alone his losses from marine casualties amounted to $500,000.

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the U.S. government auctioned off the hundreds of ships it had requisitioned during the war at firesale prices, depressing the market and leaving American shipyards with no work. The result was that most American shipyards, along with marine engine specialists, failed. Not only the Westervelt shipyard, but the whole shipbuilding industry in New York was badly affected by the slump, being practically wiped out in the ensuing years. As the demise of shipbuilding after the war afforded him little opportunity to recover from his losses, the firm was dissolved in 1868, with no large surplus of assets. By this time Westervelt had constructed 247 ships with his partners, more than any other American shipbuilder in his day.

When the Dock Department was created in 1870, Wilson G. Hunt prevailed upon Westervelt to accept the duties of Superintendent of the Department. His management was characterized by prudence, sagacity and honesty. When William Frederick Havemeyer became Mayor in 1873, Westervelt was appointed a Commissioner of Docks and at the same time elected President of the Board of Dock Commissioners (which position he also held at the time of his death), and as such made tremendous improvements in piers and docks. His chief engineer, whom he selected in July 1870, was General George B. McClellan, and his secretary General was Louis Fitzgerald. In 1875 George S. Greene Jr. became the new chief engineer.

As Dock Commissioner, Westervelt followed in the footsteps of his father by continuing to improve the riverfront.

In 1873 the draughtsmen and engineers in the office of the Engineer-in-Chief were engaged in the preparation of maps and drawings to show the grants of land under water, around, and adjoining the island of Manhattan which had been made by either the state or Municipal governments from 1696 till 1873. They were also been engaged in the preparation of plans for a proposed exterior bulkhead wall which was planned to be built all around the city.

A new dock system was also proposed of which the main feature was a wide river street encircling the waterfront to afford ample accommodation for the movement of freight and its transportation by rail. The new river and sea wall was to be constructed of granite and a Beton concrete, composed of Portland cement and broken stone. From this wall projecting into the river were a series of piers constructed of wood, iron, and stone. The large concrete blocks used in the construction of the new river wall were manufactured at the yards of the Dock Commission in Gansevoort Street, Manhattan. Two to three blocks, of forty to fifty tons each, were made daily. Westervelt was closely involved in these improvements.

Westervelt was politically an ardent but not very active Democrat. In 1840 he was elected to the Common Council, in which he served for two years as an Alderman from the thirteenth ward. Westervelt stepped back from active political involvement for a couple of years, but remained a shrewd observer of current affairs and recognized nuisances and the needs of the people of "his" town. He witnessed sharply increasing taxes between 1850 and 1852 and the establishment of a reform movement that began to decry excessive government spending. Grand jury revelations of widespread corruption on the common council heightened such concerns. Reformers mobilized and ran the Democratic incumbents out of office, electing in their place a combination of Whigs and reform Democrats committed to "economy" in government. In November 1852 Westervelt was nominated for Mayor of the city by reformist representatives of the Democratic party. The mayoralty election was held at the same time as the presidential election, and the Democrats were successful in both.

Westervelt was elected by a majority of 10,000, the largest ever received by a candidate up to that time (being nearly as much indebted to Whigs as to Democrats for his seat), against the most popular member of the Whig party, Alderman Morgan Morgans, carrying his own ward by a majority of nearly 1,000, and only a few votes behind the electoral ticket for President Franklin Pierce. The new mayor inherited the bad financial situation of the city, corrupt politicians, and an ailing police system. In his first message to the Community Council he declared the subjects he planned to deal with first, and that according to him, needed the attention of the council:

Westervelt's term was marked by many reforms of the city's police. One of the most controversial was his attempt to enforce a police uniform.

In 1844, New York City's population of 320,000 was served by an archaic police force, consisting of one night watch, one hundred city marshals, thirty-one constables, and fifty-one municipal police officers. On 7 May 1844, the state legislature approved a proposal that authorized creation of a city police force, along with abolition of the nightwatch system. Under Mayor William Havemeyer, the NYPD was reorganized on May 13, 1845, with the city divided into three districts, with courts, magistrates, and clerks, and station houses. Within eight years this system showed weaknesses. "The New York Times" wrote in 1853, "Our police are inefficient. Worse has been said of them." Another publication delineated the situation much more precisely:

It was Mayor Westervelt's stated aim to sort out the bad seed. In 1853 an administrative body was created, called the Board of Police Commissioners, consisting of Mayor Westervelt, the recorder and the city judge. Apart from the fact that the chief of police was selected by the Mayor with the Board's approval, the Board had full powers of appointment and dismissal of all members of the force and was charged with general administrative duties.

In nothing was the undisciplined attitude of the police more clearly shown than in their refusal to wear uniforms. "Un-American", "undemocratic", "militarism", "King's livery", "a badge of degradation and servitude"—ideas of this kind formed the basis of opposition against Westervelt's wish to put policemen in uniform, mainly from the force itself and an influential number of citizens who deemed it "unrepublican" to put the servants of the city in livery. On June 24, 1854 there was a large, angry meeting of 1,000–1,500 policemen. The objects of the meeting were stated in a notice posted prominently in the streets and published in the morning papers:

Westervelt's position was clear: that a uniform incites a high degree a chivalrous sentiment; that it involves a "pride of cloth" and that the wearer knows that if he disgraces it he disgraces himself and the profession in which he serves. Westervelt earned many party enemies by his determined policy to keep appointments to the police force, which were then a large part of the patronage appertaining to the mayoralty, free from political influence.

By the early 1850s New York had grown to sufficient size and prominence that the city decided to host a major exhibition of the type that London had pioneered in 1851. Such early exhibitions were forerunners of the later world's fairs. The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations opened during the term of Mayor Westervelt on July 14, 1853, in a sparsely developed part of the city. Fortieth and Forty-second streets bounded the fair's four-acre site to the immediate west of the Croton Distributing Reservoir—today's Bryant Park. Within New York's Crystal Palace, designed by Karl Gildemeister, four thousand exhibitors displayed the industrial wares, consumer goods, and artworks of the nation. Westervelt was President of the Exhibition, which set off one of the first major tourism booms in New York; many hotels were built to handle the influx of visitors. Over one million people visited the Crystal Palace Exhibition, which closed on November 1, 1854 (in spite of its popularity, the exhibition's sponsors lost $300,000 on the venture). The structure remained standing after the fair, and was leased for a variety of purposes before being destroyed by fire on October 5, 1858.

Mayor Westervelt did not shy away from unpopular decisions if he considered them to serve the general good. In 1853 the New York legislature designated a area from 59th to 106th Streets for the creation of the planned Central Park, at a cost of more than $5 million for the land alone. In the climate of the fiscal retrenchment of these years, Westervelt in January 1854 proposed to reduce the size of Central Park. Westervelt, who had supported the Central Park bill, had second thoughts about the dramatic expansion of state power and especially the public spending entailed by the new park. Some predictable voices defended the Central Park boundaries. In part because of differing reduction proposals in the common council, city lawmakers remained stalemated for the rest of the year. In March 1855 the board of councilmen resumed hearings on a cutback, and in the chilly economic climate of the winter of 1855, the board of aldermen voted fourteen to three to cut both the lower twelve blocks (from 59th to 72nd streets) and four hundred feet from each side. However, on March 23, 1856, the new Democratic Mayor, Fernando Wood, saved Central Park by vetoing the measure.

The New York Draft Riots, the worst riots in United States history with respect to lives lost, took place during the Civil War in 1863, when immigrant factory workers forcibly resisted the federal government's military draft. In the United States, the period from 1820–1870 was generally characterized by conflicts on the domestic front, such as the police riots and the riots of the Know-Nothing movement. It was during Westervelt's term as mayor that some of the first Know-Nothing riots occurred. This nativist American political movement was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. This body of thought was often propagated by street preachers. One of the most ambivalent characters was Reverend Mr. Parsons, who had been in the habit of regularly preaching on the wharves, in shipyards and other "obscure" places along the East and North Rivers. On December 11, 1853 he planted himself upon a pile of timber in the Westervelt & MacKay shipyard. His voice traveled far, and in the course of half an hour there was an assemblage of some ten thousand people. As a result of his speech a serious riot occurred and on the orders of Mayor Westervelt the preacher was taken into custody. Some Know-Nothinger hastened to the station house with the intention of liberating him. Finding no redress there, five thousand excited men marched to 308 East Broadway and surrounded the residence of Mayor Westervelt. Finding that he was absent from home, they contented themselves with daubing a large cross on the door.

The feelings of the members of this movement against the participation of foreign-born citizens in municipal affairs had grown very bitter, and Westervelt set himself so sternly against them that his house was mobbed again. Probably due to the paucity of support for his reformist efforts during his term, but also because he applied himself more and more to the business of shipbuilding again, Westervelt declined a renomination, which for him was equivalent to an election, and was succeeded as Mayor by Fernando Wood. In 1857 Westervelt became a member of the New York State Assembly for Rockland County.

Westervelt, as his name indicates, came from old Dutch stock. The name was known in the Netherlands at a very early period, and although the family members were not of nobility, they had been extensive property owners for many generations. The earliest mention of the Westervelts that has been recorded is of a Dirk van Westervelt and his family who resided in and around the town of Harderwijk for many years. Some individuals sharing that name appear to have been early inhabitants of Zwolle, and their descendants are still to be found there, known by the name Westerveld.

In the middle of the 17th century a few Westervelts lived in Meppel, situated a few miles from the eastern shore of the Zuiderzee, in the province of Drenthe and three miles east of Zwolle. Amongst them were two brothers, Willem and Lubbert Lubbertsen van Westervelt, both farmers and cattle raisers, who with their wives and children decided to move to the New World. They left Amsterdam on board ("Hope") on April 8, 1662. On their arrival on May 24, 1662, New Amsterdam (which later became New York City) was suffering from a prolonged drought as no rain had fallen for eighty consecutive days. Lubbert settled near Hackensack, New Jersey and was one of the promoters of the Dutch Church organized there in 1686. Willem was a member of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in New Amsterdam (1667), whilst his son lived at New Utrecht on Long Island. This son sold his lands in 1706 and is supposed to have moved to New Jersey, where the family has been numerous and prominent for the past 300 years. William Lubbertsen van Westervelt with his wife and six children, and Lubbert Lubbertsen van Westervelt, with his wife and four children, became the progenitors of the "van Westervelt/Westervelt" family in America, and were at one time the second largest family in Bergen County, New Jersey. Jacob Aaron Westervelt was a seventh-generation descendant of Lubbert Lubbertsen van Westervelt.

Westervelt married Eliza M. Thompson in New York City on April 25, 1825. They had eight children:


What country does the island of Lesbos belong to?

Lesbos Prefecture () was one of the prefectures of Greece. It comprised three main islands: Lesbos itself, Lemnos, and the smaller island of Agios Efstratios. Its capital was the town of Mytilene, on Lesbos. In 2011 the prefecture was abolished and the territory was divided between the regional units of Lesbos and Lemnos."Note:" Provinces no longer hold any legal status in Greece.

Lesbos Prefecture

Lesbos (, ;, ) is an island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of with of coastline, making it the third largest island in Greece. It is separated from Turkey by the narrow Mytilini Strait and in late Palaeolithic/Mesolithic times was joined to the Anatolian mainland before the end of the last glacial period.

Lesbos

Lesbos is also the name of a regional unit of the North Aegean region, within which Lesbos island is one of five governing islands. The others are Chios, Ikaria, Lemnos, and Samos. The North Aegean region governs nine inhabited islands: Lesbos, Chios, Psara, Oinousses, Ikaria, Fournoi Korseon, Lemnos, Agios Efstratios and Samos. The capital of the North Aegean Region is Mytilene. The population of Lesbos is approximately 86,000, a third of whom live in its capital, Mytilene, in the southeastern part of the island. The remaining population is distributed in small towns and villages. The largest are Plomari, Kalloni, the Gera Villages, Agiassos, Eresos, and Molyvos (the ancient Mythimna).

According to later Greek writers, Mytilene was founded in the 11th century BC by the family Penthilidae, who arrived from Thessaly, and ruled the city-state until a popular revolt (590–580 BC) led by Pittacus of Mytilene ended their rule. In fact the archaeological and linguistic record may indicate a late Iron Age arrival of Greek settlers although references in Late Bronze Age Hittite archives indicate a likely Greek presence then. The name Mytilene itself seems to be of Hittite origin. According to Homer's "Iliad", Lesbos was part of the kingdom of Priam, which was based in Anatolia (present day Turkey). Much work remains to be done to determine just what happened and when. In the Middle Ages, it was under Byzantine and then Genoese rule. Lesbos was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1462. The Ottomans then ruled the island until the First Balkan War in 1912, when it became part of the Kingdom of Greece.

From Ancient Greek Λέσβος (Lésbos), meaning 'forested' or 'woody'. Possibly a Hittite borrowing, as the original Hittite name for the island was Lazpa.

Lesbos lies in the far east of the Aegean sea, facing the Turkish coast (Gulf of Edremit) from the north and east; at the narrowest point, the strait is about wide. The shape of the island is roughly triangular, but it is deeply intruded by the gulfs of Kalloni, with an entry on the southern coast, and of Gera, in the southeast.

The island is forested and mountainous with two large peaks, Mt. Lepetymnos at and Mt. Olympus at, dominating its northern and central sections. The island's volcanic origin is manifested in several hot springs and the two gulfs.

Lesbos is verdant, aptly named "Emerald Island", with a greater variety of flora than expected for the island's size. Eleven million olive trees cover 40% of the island together with other fruit trees. Forests of mediterranean pines, chestnut trees and some oaks occupy 20%, and the remainder is scrub, grassland or urban.

The island has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ("Csa" in the Köppen climate classification). The mean annual temperature is, and the mean annual rainfall is. Its exceptional sunshine makes it one of the sunniest islands in the Aegean Sea. Snow and very low temperatures are rare.

The entire territory of Lesbos is "Lesvos Geopark" which is a member of the European Geoparks Network (since 2000) and Global Geoparks Network (since 2004) on account of its outstanding geological heritage, educational programs and projects, and promotion of geotourism.

This geopark was enlarged from former "Lesvos Petrified Forest Geopark". Lesbos contains one of the few known petrified forests called Petrified forest of Lesbos and it has been declared a Protected Natural Monument. Fossilised plants have been found in many localities on the western part of the island. The fossilised forest was formed during the Late Oligocene to Lower–Middle Miocene, by the intense volcanic activity in the area. Neogene volcanic rocks dominate the central and western part of the island, comprising andesites, dacites and rhyolites, ignimbrite, pyroclastics, tuffs, and volcanic ash. The products of the volcanic activity covered the vegetation of the area and the fossilization process took place during favourable conditions. The fossilized plants are silicified remnants of a sub-tropical forest that existed on the north-west part of the island 20–15 million years ago.

According to Classical Greek mythology, Lesbos was the patron god of the island. Macar was reputedly the first king whose many daughters bequeathed their names to some of the present larger towns. In Classical myth his sister, Canace, was killed to have him made king. The place names with female origins are claimed by some to be much earlier settlements named after local goddesses, who were replaced by gods, however there is little evidence to support this. Homer refers to the island as ""Macaros edos"", the seat of Macar. Hittite records from the Late Bronze Age name the island "Lazpa" and must have considered its population significant enough to allow the Hittites to "borrow their gods" (presumably idols) to cure their king when the local gods were not forthcoming. It is believed that emigrants from mainland Greece, mainly from Thessaly, entered the island in the Late Bronze Age and bequeathed it with the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, whose written form survives in the poems of Sappho, amongst others.
The abundant grey pottery ware found on the island and the worship of Cybele, the great mother-goddess of Anatolia, suggest the cultural continuity of the population from Neolithic times. When the Persian king Cyrus defeated Croesus (546 BC) the Ionic Greek cities of Anatolia and the adjacent islands became Persian subjects and remained such until the Persians were defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Salamis (480 BC). The island was governed by an oligarchy in archaic times, followed by quasi-democracy in classical times. For a short period it was a member of the Athenian confederacy, its apostasy from which is recounted by Thucydides in the "Mytilenian Debate", in Book III of his "History of the Peloponnesian War". In Hellenistic times, the island belonged to various Successor kingdoms until 79 BC when it passed into Roman hands.

During the Middle Ages it belonged to the Byzantine Empire. In 802, the Byzantine Empress Irene was exiled to Lesbos after her deposition, and died there. The island served as a gathering base for the fleet of the rebel Thomas the Slav in the early 820s.

In the 10th century, it was part of the theme of the Aegean Sea, while in the late 11th century it formed a "dioikesis" under a "kourator" in Mytilene. In the 1090s, the island was briefly occupied by the Turkish emir Tzachas, but he was unable to capture Methymna, which resisted throughout. In the 12th century, the island became a frequent target for plundering raids by the Republic of Venice.

After the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) the island passed to the Latin Empire, but was reconquered by the Empire of Nicaea sometime after 1224. In 1354, it was granted as a fief to the Genoese Francesco I Gattilusio, whose family ruled Lesbos until it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1462. It remained under Turkish rule, named () in Turkish, until 1912 when it was taken by Greek forces during the First Balkan War.

The cities of Mytilene and Methymna have been bishoprics since the 5th century. By the early 10th century, Mytilene had been raised to the status of a metropolitan see. Methymna achieved the same by the 12th century.

The oldest artifacts found on the island may date to the late Paleolithic period. Important archaeological sites on the island are the Neolithic cave of Kagiani, probably a refuge for shepherds, the Neolithic settlement of Chalakies, and the extensive habitation of Thermi (3000–1000 BC). The largest habitation is found in Lisvori (2800–1900 BC) part of which is submerged in shallow coastal waters. There are also several archaic, classical Greek and Roman remains. Vitruvius called the ancient city of Mytilene "magnificent and of good taste". Remnants of its medieval history are three impressive castles.

Lesbos is the birthplace of several famous people. In archaic times, Arion developed the type of poem called dithyramb, the progenitor of tragedy, and Terpander invented the seven note musical scale for the lyre. Two of the nine lyric poets in the Ancient Greek canon, Alcaeus and Sappho, were from Lesbos. Phanias wrote history. The seminal artistic creativity of those times brings to mind the myth of Orpheus to whom Apollo gave a lyre and the Muses taught to play and sing. When Orpheus incurred the wrath of the god Dionysus he was dismembered by the Maenads and of his body parts his head and his lyre found their way to Lesbos where they have "remained" ever since. Pittacus was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. In classical times Hellanicus advanced historiography, Theophrastus, the father of botany, succeeded Aristotle as the head of the Lyceum. Aristotle and Epicurus lived there for some time, and it is there that Aristotle began systematic zoological investigations. In later times lived Theophanes, the historian of Pompey's campaigns, Longus wrote the famous novel Daphnis and Chloe, and much later the historian Doukas wrote the history of the early Ottoman Turks. In modern times the poet Odysseus Elytis, descendant of an old family of Lesbos received the Nobel Prize.Twelve historic churches on the island were listed together on the 2008 World Monuments Fund's Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world. The churches range in date from the Early Christian Period to the 19th century. Exposure to the elements, outmoded conservation methods, and increased tourism are all threats to the structures. The following are the 12 churches:Lesbos is a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the regional unit Lesbos was created out of part of the former Lesbos Prefecture. At the same reform, the current municipality of Lesbos was created out of the 13 former municipalities on the island:The economy of Lesbos is essentially agricultural in nature, with olive oil being the main source of income. Tourism in Mytilene, encouraged by its international airport and the coastal towns of Petra, Plomari, Molyvos and Eresos, contribute substantially to the economy of the island. Fishing and the manufacture of soap and ouzo, the Greek national liqueur, are the remaining sources of income.In English and most other European languages, including Greek, the term "lesbian" is commonly used to refer to homosexual women. This use of the term derives from the poems of Sappho, who was born in Lesbos and who wrote with powerful emotional content directed toward other women. Due to this association, Lesbos and especially the town of Eresos, her birthplace, are visited frequently by LGBT tourists.

The "gay" connotation of the term is considered offensive to many Lesbos islanders to such a degree that, in 2008, a group of Lesbos islanders litigated unsuccessfully a court case against the LGBT community of Greece. The islander group had requested a legal injunction to ban groups from using the word "lesbian" in their names, which the petitioners claim violated their human rights as it is "insulting" and disgraces them around the world.

Local specialities:


How is hardness determined?

Hardness measurements quantify the resistance of a material to plastic deformation. Indentation hardness tests compose the majority of processes used to determine material hardness, and can be divided into two classes: "microindentation" and "macroindentation" tests. Microindentation tests typically have forces less than. Hardness, however, cannot be considered to be a fundamental material property. Classical hardness testing usually creates a number which can be used to provide a relative idea of material properties. As such, hardness can only offer a comparative idea of the material's resistance to plastic deformation since different hardness techniques have different scales.

Indentation hardness

Indentation hardness tests are used in mechanical engineering to determine the hardness of a material to deformation. Several such tests exist, wherein the examined material is indented until an impression is formed; these tests can be performed on a macroscopic or microscopic scale.

When testing metals, indentation hardness correlates roughly linearly with tensile strength., but it is an imperfect correlation often limited to small ranges of strength and hardness for each indentation geometry. This relation permits economically important nondestructive testing of bulk metal deliveries with lightweight, even portable equipment, such as hand-held Rockwell hardness testers.

Different techniques are used to quantify material characteristics at smaller scales. Measuring mechanical properties for materials, for instance, of thin films, can not be done using conventional uniaxial tensile testing. As a result, techniques testing material "hardness" by indenting a material with a very small impression have been developed to determine to estimate these properties.

The main sources of error with indentation tests are poor technique, poor calibration of the equipment, and the strain hardening effect of the process. However, it has been experimentally determined through "strainless hardness tests" that the effect is minimal with smaller indentations.

Surface finish of the part and the indenter do not have an effect on the hardness measurement, as long as the indentation is large compared to the surface roughness. This proves to be useful when measuring the hardness of practical surfaces. It also is helpful when leaving a shallow indentation, because a finely etched indenter leaves a much easier to read indentation than a smooth indenter.

The indentation that is left after the indenter and load are removed is known to "recover", or spring back slightly. This effect is properly known as "shallowing". For spherical indenters the indentation is known to stay symmetrical and spherical, but with a larger radius. For very hard materials the radius can be three times as large as the indenter's radius. This effect is attributed to the release of elastic stresses. Because of this effect the diameter and depth of the indentation do contain errors. The error from the change in diameter is known to be only a few percent, with the error for the depth being greater.

Another effect the load has on the indentation is the "piling-up" or "sinking-in" of the surrounding material. If the metal is work hardened it has a tendency to pile up and form a "crater". If the metal is annealed it will sink in around the indentation. Both of these effects add to the error of the hardness measurement.

The equation based definition of hardness is the pressure applied over the contact area between the indenter and the material being tested. As a result hardness values are typically reported in units of pressure, although this is only a "true" pressure if the indenter and surface interface is perfectly flat.

The term "macroindentation" is applied to tests with a larger test load, such as 1 kgf or more. There are various macroindentation tests, including:There is, in general, no simple relationship between the results of different hardness tests. Though there are practical conversion tables for hard steels, for example, some materials show qualitatively different behaviors under the various measurement methods. The Vickers and Brinell hardness scales correlate well over a wide range, however, with Brinell only producing overestimated values at high loads.

The term "microhardness" has been widely employed in the literature to describe the hardness testing of materials with low applied loads. A more precise term is "microindentation hardness testing." In microindentation hardness testing, a diamond indenter of specific geometry is impressed into the surface of the test specimen using a known applied force (commonly called a "load" or "test load") of 1 to 1000 gf. Microindentation tests typically have forces of 2 N (roughly 200 gf) and produce indentations of about 50 μm. Due to their specificity, microhardness testing can be used to observe changes in hardness on the microscopic scale. Unfortunately, it is difficult to standardize microhardness measurements; it has been found that the microhardness of almost any material is higher than its macrohardness. Additionally, microhardness values vary with load and work-hardening effects of materials. The two most commonly used microhardness tests are tests that also can be applied with heavier loads as macroindentation tests:In microindentation testing, the hardness number is based on measurements made of the indent formed in the surface of the test specimen. The hardness number is based on the applied force divided by the surface area of the indent itself, giving hardness units in kgf/mm². Microindentation hardness testing can be done using Vickers as well as Knoop indenters. For the Vickers test, both the diagonals are measured and the average value is used to compute the Vickers pyramid number. In the Knoop test, only the longer diagonal is measured, and the Knoop hardness is calculated based on the projected area of the indent divided by the applied force, also giving test units in kgf/mm².

The Vickers microindentation test is carried out in a similar manner welling to the Vickers macroindentation tests, using the same pyramid. The Knoop test uses an elongated pyramid to indent material samples. This elongated pyramid creates a shallow impression, which is beneficial for measuring the hardness of brittle materials or thin components. Both the Knoop and Vickers indenters require prepolishing of the surface to achieve accurate results.

Scratch tests at low loads, such as the Bierbaum microcharacter test, performed with either 3 gf or 9 gf loads, preceded the development of microhardness testers using traditional indenters. In 1925, Smith and Sandland of the UK developed an indentation test that employed a square-based pyramidal indenter made from diamond. They chose the pyramidal shape with an angle of 136° between opposite faces in order to obtain hardness numbers that would be as close as possible to Brinell hardness numbers for the specimen. The Vickers test has a great advantage of using one hardness scale to test all materials.The first reference to the Vickers indenter with low loads was made in the annual report of the National Physical Laboratory in 1932. Lips and Sack describes the first Vickers tester using low loads in 1936.
There is some disagreement in the literature regarding the load range applicable to microhardness testing. ASTM Specification E384, for example, states that the load range for microhardness testing is 1 to 1000 gf. For loads of 1 kgf and below, the Vickers hardness (HV) is calculated with an equation, wherein load ("L") is in grams force and the mean of two diagonals ("d") is in millimeters:

For any given load, the hardness increases rapidly at low diagonal lengths, with the effect becoming more pronounced as the load decreases. Thus at low loads, small measurement errors will produce large hardness deviations. Thus one should always use the highest possible load in any test. Also, in the vertical portion of the curves, small measurement errors will produce large hardness deviations.

"Hardness" is determined by comparison with other minerals. In the Mohs scale, a standard set of minerals are numbered in order of increasing hardness from 1 (talc) to 10 (diamond). A harder mineral will scratch a softer, so an unknown mineral can be placed in this scale by which minerals it scratches and which scratch it. A few minerals such as calcite and kyanite have a hardness that depends significantly on direction. Hardness can also be measured on an absolute scale using a sclerometer; compared to the absolute scale, the Mohs scale is nonlinear.

Mineralogy

Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.

Early writing on mineralogy, especially on gemstones, comes from ancient Babylonia, the ancient Greco-Roman world, ancient and medieval China, and Sanskrit texts from ancient India and the ancient Islamic World. Books on the subject included the "Naturalis Historia" of Pliny the Elder, which not only described many different minerals but also explained many of their properties, and Kitab al Jawahir (Book of Precious Stones) by Persian scientist Al Biruni. The German Renaissance specialist Georgius Agricola wrote works such as "De re metallica" ("On Metals", 1556) and "De Natura Fossilium" ("On the Nature of Rocks", 1546) which began the scientific approach to the subject. Systematic scientific studies of minerals and rocks developed in post-Renaissance Europe. The modern study of mineralogy was founded on the principles of crystallography (the origins of geometric crystallography, itself, can be traced back to the mineralogy practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and to the microscopic study of rock sections with the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.

Nicholas Steno first observed the law of constancy of interfacial angles (also known as the first law of crystallography) in quartz crystals in 1669. This was later generalized and established experimentally by Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l'Islee in 1783. René Just Haüy, the "father of modern crystallography", showed that crystals are periodic and established that the orientations of crystal faces can be expressed in terms of rational numbers, as later encoded in the Miller indices. In 1814, Jöns Jacob Berzelius introduced a classification of minerals based on their chemistry rather than their crystal structure. William Nicol developed the Nicol prism, which polarizes light, in 1827–1828 while studying fossilized wood; Henry Clifton Sorby showed that thin sections of minerals could be identified by their optical properties using a polarizing microscope. James D. Dana published his first edition of "A System of Mineralogy" in 1837, and in a later edition introduced a chemical classification that is still the standard. X-ray diffraction was demonstrated by Max von Laue in 1912, and developed into a tool for analyzing the crystal structure of minerals by the father/son team of William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg.

More recently, driven by advances in experimental technique (such as neutron diffraction) and available computational power, the latter of which has enabled extremely accurate atomic-scale simulations of the behaviour of crystals, the science has branched out to consider more general problems in the fields of inorganic chemistry and solid-state physics. It, however, retains a focus on the crystal structures commonly encountered in rock-forming minerals (such as the perovskites, clay minerals and framework silicates). In particular, the field has made great advances in the understanding of the relationship between the atomic-scale structure of minerals and their function; in nature, prominent examples would be accurate measurement and prediction of the elastic properties of minerals, which has led to new insight into seismological behaviour of rocks and depth-related discontinuities in seismograms of the Earth's mantle. To this end, in their focus on the connection between atomic-scale phenomena and macroscopic properties, the "mineral sciences" (as they are now commonly known) display perhaps more of an overlap with materials science than any other discipline.

An initial step in identifying a mineral is to examine its physical properties, many of which can be measured on a hand sample. These can be classified into density (often given as specific gravity); measures of mechanical cohesion (hardness, tenacity, cleavage, fracture, parting); macroscopic visual properties (luster, color, streak, luminescence, diaphaneity); magnetic and electric properties; radioactivity and solubility in hydrogen chloride ().

"Tenacity" refers to the way a mineral behaves when it is broken, crushed, bent or torn. A mineral can be brittle, malleable, sectile, ductile, flexible or elastic. An important influence on tenacity is the type of chemical bond ("e.g.," ionic or metallic). Of the other measures of mechanical cohesion, "cleavage" is the tendency to break along certain crystallographic planes. It is described by the quality ("e.g.", perfect or fair) and the orientation of the plane in crystallographic nomenclature. "Parting" is the tendency to break along planes of weakness due to pressure, twinning or exsolution. Where these two kinds of break do not occur, "fracture" is a less orderly form that may be "conchoidal" (having smooth curves resembling the interior of a shell), "fibrous", "splintery", "hackly" (jagged with sharp edges), or "uneven".

If the mineral is well crystallized, it will also have a distinctive crystal habit (for example, hexagonal, columnar, botryoidal) that reflects the crystal structure or internal arrangement of atoms. It is also affected by crystal defects and twinning. Many crystals are polymorphic, having more than one possible crystal structure depending on factors such as pressure and temperature.

The crystal structure is the arrangement of atoms in a crystal. It is represented by a lattice of points which repeats a basic pattern, called a unit cell, in three dimensions. The lattice can be characterized by its symmetries and by the dimensions of the unit cell. These dimensions are represented by three "Miller indices". The lattice remains unchanged by certain symmetry operations about any given point in the lattice: reflection, rotation, inversion, and rotary inversion, a combination of rotation and reflection. Together, they make up a mathematical object called a "crystallographic point group" or "crystal class". There are 32 possible crystal classes. In addition, there are operations that displace all the points: translation, screw axis, and glide plane. In combination with the point symmetries, they form 230 possible space groups.

Most geology departments have X-ray powder diffraction equipment to analyze the crystal structures of minerals. X-rays have wavelengths that are the same order of magnitude as the distances between atoms. Diffraction, the constructive and destructive interference between waves scattered at different atoms, leads to distinctive patterns of high and low intensity that depend on the geometry of the crystal. In a sample that is ground to a powder, the X-rays sample a random distribution of all crystal orientations. Powder diffraction can distinguish between minerals that may appear the same in a hand sample, for example quartz and its polymorphs tridymite and cristobalite.

Isomorphous minerals of different compositions have similar powder diffraction patterns, the main difference being in spacing and intensity of lines. For example, the (halite) crystal structure is space group "Fm3m"; this structure is shared by sylvite (), periclase (), bunsenite (), galena (), alabandite (), chlorargyrite (), and osbornite ().

A few minerals are chemical elements, including sulfur, copper, silver, and gold, but the vast majority are compounds. The classical method for identifying composition is "wet chemical analysis", which involves dissolving a mineral in an acid such as hydrochloric acid (). The elements in solution are then identified using colorimetry, volumetric analysis or gravimetric analysis.

Since 1960, most chemistry analysis is done using instruments. One of these, atomic absorption spectroscopy, is similar to wet chemistry in that the sample must still be dissolved, but it is much faster and cheaper. The solution is vaporized and its absorption spectrum is measured in the visible and ultraviolet range. Other techniques are X-ray fluorescence, electron microprobe analysis and optical emission spectrography.

In addition to macroscopic properties such as color or lustre, minerals have properties that require a polarizing microscope to observe.

When light passes from air or a vacuum into a transparent crystal, some of it is reflected at the surface and some refracted. The latter is a bending of the light path that occurs because the speed of light changes as it goes into the crystal; Snell's law relates the bending angle to the Refractive index, the ratio of speed in a vacuum to speed in the crystal. Crystals whose point symmetry group falls in the cubic system are "isotropic": the index does not depend on direction. All other crystals are "anisotropic": light passing through them is broken up into two plane polarized rays that travel at different speeds and refract at different angles.

A polarizing microscope is similar to an ordinary microscope, but it has two plane-polarized filters, a ("polarizer") below the sample and an analyzer above it, polarized perpendicular to each other. Light passes successively through the polarizer, the sample and the analyzer. If there is no sample, the analyzer blocks all the light from the polarizer. However, an anisotropic sample will generally change the polarization so some of the light can pass through. Thin sections and powders can be used as samples.

When an isotropic crystal is viewed, it appears dark because it does not change the polarization of the light. However, when it is immersed in a calibrated liquid with a lower index of refraction and the microscope is thrown out of focus, a bright line called a "Becke line" appears around the perimeter of the crystal. By observing the presence or absence of such lines in liquids with different indices, the index of the crystal can be estimated, usually to within.

Systematic mineralogy is the identification and classification of minerals by their properties. Historically, mineralogy was heavily concerned with taxonomy of the rock-forming minerals. In 1959, the International Mineralogical Association formed the Commission of New Minerals and Mineral Names to rationalize the nomenclature and regulate the introduction of new names. In July 2006, it was merged with the Commission on Classification of Minerals to form the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature, and Classification. There are over 6,000 named and unnamed minerals, and about 100 are discovered each year. The "Manual of Mineralogy" places minerals in the following classes: native elements, sulfides, sulfosalts, oxides and hydroxides, halides, carbonates, nitrates and borates, sulfates, chromates, molybdates and tungstates, phosphates, arsenates and vanadates, and silicates.

The environments of mineral formation and growth are highly varied, ranging from slow crystallization at the high temperatures and pressures of igneous melts deep within the Earth's crust to the low temperature precipitation from a saline brine at the Earth's surface.

Various possible methods of formation include:Biomineralogy is a cross-over field between mineralogy, paleontology and biology. It is the study of how plants and animals stabilize minerals under biological control, and the sequencing of mineral replacement of those minerals after deposition. It uses techniques from chemical mineralogy, especially isotopic studies, to determine such things as growth forms in living plants and animals as well as things like the original mineral content of fossils.

A new approach to mineralogy called mineral evolution explores the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere, including the role of minerals in the origin of life and processes as mineral-catalyzed organic synthesis and the selective adsorption of organic molecules on mineral surfaces.

In 2011, several researchers began to develop a Mineral Evolution Database. This database integrates the crowd-sourced site Mindat.org, which has over 690,000 mineral-locality pairs, with the official IMA list of approved minerals and age data from geological publications.

Access to such a database it possible to apply statistics to answer new questions, an approach that has been called "mineral ecology". One such question is how much of mineral evolution is deterministic and how much the result of chance. Some factors are deterministic, such as the chemical nature of a mineral and conditions for its stability; but mineralogy can also be affected by the processes that determine a planet's composition. In a 2015 paper, Robert Hazen and others analyzed the number of minerals involving each element as a function of its abundance. They found that Earth, with over 4800 known minerals and 72 elements, has a power law relationship. The Moon, with only 63 minerals and 24 elements (based on a much smaller sample) has essentially the same relationship. This implies that, given the chemical composition of the planet, one could predict the more common minerals. However, the distribution has a long tail, with 34% of the minerals having been found at only one or two locations. The model predicts that thousands more mineral species may await discovery or have formed and then been lost to erosion, burial or other processes. This implies a role of chance in the formation of rare minerals occur.

In another use of big data sets, network theory was applied to a dataset of carbon minerals, revealing new patterns in their diversity and distribution. The analysis can show which minerals tend to coexist and what conditions (geological, physical, chemical and biological) are associated with them. This information can be used to predict where to look for new deposits and even new mineral species.

Minerals are essential to various needs within human society, such as minerals used as ores for essential components of metal products used in various commodities and machinery, essential components to building materials such as limestone, marble, granite, gravel, glass, plaster, cement, etc. Minerals are also used in fertilizers to enrich the growth of agricultural crops.

Mineral collecting is also a recreational study and collection hobby, with clubs and societies representing the field. Museums, such as the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Natural History Museum, London, and the private Mim Mineral Museum in Beirut, Lebanon, have popular collections of mineral specimens on permanent display.

Water's hardness is determined by the concentration of multivalent cations in the water. Multivalent cations are positively charged metal complexes with a charge greater than 1+. Usually, the cations have the charge of 2+. Common cations found in hard water include Ca and Mg. These ions enter a water supply by leaching from minerals within an aquifer. Common calcium-containing minerals are calcite and gypsum. A common magnesium mineral is dolomite (which also contains calcium). Rainwater and distilled water are soft, because they contain few ions.

Hard water

Hard water is water that has high mineral content (in contrast with "soft water"). Hard water is formed when water percolates through deposits of limestone and chalk which are largely made up of calcium and magnesium carbonates.

Hard drinking water may have moderate health benefits, but can pose critical problems in industrial settings, where water hardness is monitored to avoid costly breakdowns in boilers, cooling towers, and other equipment that handles water. In domestic settings, hard water is often indicated by a lack of foam formation when soap is agitated in water, and by the formation of limescale in kettles and water heaters. Wherever water hardness is a concern, water softening is commonly used to reduce hard water's adverse effects.

The following equilibrium reaction describes the dissolving and formation of calcium carbonate and calcium bicarbonate (on the right):

The reaction can go in either direction. Rain containing dissolved carbon dioxide can react with calcium carbonate and carry calcium ions away with it. The calcium carbonate may be re-deposited as calcite as the carbon dioxide is lost to atmosphere, sometimes forming stalactites and stalagmites.

Calcium and magnesium ions can sometimes be removed by water softeners.

Temporary hardness is a type of water hardness caused by the presence of dissolved bicarbonate minerals (calcium bicarbonate and magnesium bicarbonate). When dissolved, these minerals yield calcium and magnesium cations (Ca, Mg) and carbonate and bicarbonate anions (CO, HCO). The presence of the metal cations makes the water hard. However, unlike the permanent hardness caused by sulphate and chloride compounds, this "temporary" hardness can be reduced either by boiling the water, or by the addition of lime (calcium hydroxide) through the process of lime softening. Boiling promotes the formation of carbonate from the bicarbonate and precipitates calcium carbonate out of solution, leaving water that is softer upon cooling.

Permanent hardness is hardness (mineral content) that cannot be removed by boiling. When this is the case, it is usually caused by the presence of calcium sulphate/calcium chloride and/or magnesium sulphate/magnesium chloride in the water, which do not precipitate out as the temperature increases. Ions causing permanent hardness of water can be removed using a water softener, or ion exchange column.

Total Permanent Hardness = Permanent Calcium Hardness + Permanent Magnesium Hardness

With hard water, soap solutions form a white precipitate (soap scum) instead of producing lather, because the 2+ ions destroy the surfactant properties of the soap by forming a solid precipitate (the soap scum). A major component of such scum is calcium stearate, which arises from sodium stearate, the main component of soap:
Hardness can thus be defined as the soap-consuming capacity of a water sample, or the capacity of precipitation of soap as a characteristic property of water that prevents the lathering of soap. Synthetic detergents do not form such scums.
Hard water also forms deposits that clog plumbing. These deposits, called "scale", are composed mainly of calcium carbonate (CaCO), magnesium hydroxide (Mg(OH)), and calcium sulfate (CaSO). Calcium and magnesium carbonates tend to be deposited as off-white solids on the inside surfaces of pipes and heat exchangers. This precipitation (formation of an insoluble solid) is principally caused by thermal decomposition of bicarbonate ions but also happens in cases where the carbonate ion is at saturation concentration. The resulting build-up of scale restricts the flow of water in pipes. In boilers, the deposits impair the flow of heat into water, reducing the heating efficiency and allowing the metal boiler components to overheat. In a pressurized system, this overheating can lead to failure of the boiler. The damage caused by calcium carbonate deposits varies on the crystalline form, for example, calcite or aragonite.

The presence of ions in an electrolyte, in this case, hard water, can also lead to galvanic corrosion, in which one metal will preferentially corrode when in contact with another type of metal, when both are in contact with an electrolyte. The softening of hard water by ion exchange does not increase its corrosivity "per se". Similarly, where lead plumbing is in use, softened water does not substantially increase plumbo-solvency.

In swimming pools, hard water is manifested by a turbid, or cloudy (milky), appearance to the water. Calcium and magnesium hydroxides are both soluble in water. The solubility of the hydroxides of the alkaline-earth metals to which calcium and magnesium belong (group 2 of the periodic table) increases moving down the column. Aqueous solutions of these metal hydroxides absorb carbon dioxide from the air, forming the insoluble carbonates, giving rise to the turbidity. This often results from the pH being excessively high (pH > 7.6). Hence, a common solution to the problem is, while maintaining the chlorine concentration at the proper level, to lower the pH by the addition of hydrochloric acid, the optimum value being in the range of 7.2 to 7.6.

It is often desirable to soften hard water. Most detergents contain ingredients that counteract the effects of hard water on the surfactants. For this reason, water softening is often unnecessary. Where softening is practised, it is often recommended to soften only the water sent to domestic hot water systems so as to prevent or delay inefficiencies and damage due to scale formation in water heaters. A common method for water softening involves the use of ion exchange resins, which replace ions like Ca by twice the number of monocations such as sodium or potassium ions.

Washing soda (sodium carbonate - NaCO) is easily obtained and has long been used as a water softener for domestic laundry, in conjunction with the usual soap or detergent.

The World Health Organization says that "there does not appear to be any convincing evidence that water hardness causes adverse health effects in humans". In fact, the United States National Research Council has found that hard water actually serves as a dietary supplement for calcium and magnesium.

Some studies have shown a weak inverse relationship between water hardness and cardiovascular disease in men, up to a level of 170 mg calcium carbonate per litre of water. The World Health Organization has reviewed the evidence and concluded the data was inadequate to allow for a recommendation for a level of hardness.

Recommendations have been made for the maximum and minimum levels of calcium (40–80 ppm) and magnesium (20–30 ppm) in drinking water, and a total hardness expressed as the sum of the calcium and magnesium concentrations of 2–4 mmol/L.

Other studies have shown weak correlations between cardiovascular health and water hardness.

Some studies correlate domestic hard water usage with increased eczema in children.

The Softened-Water Eczema Trial (SWET), a multicenter randomized controlled trial of ion-exchange softeners for treating childhood eczema, was undertaken in 2008. However, no meaningful difference in symptom relief was found between children with access to a home water softener and those without.

Hardness can be quantified by instrumental analysis. The total water hardness is the sum of the molar concentrations of Ca and Mg, in mol/L or mmol/L units. Although water hardness usually measures only the total concentrations of calcium and magnesium (the two most prevalent divalent metal ions), iron, aluminium, and manganese can also be present at elevated levels in some locations. The presence of iron characteristically confers a brownish (rust-like) colour to the calcification, instead of white (the color of most of the other compounds).

Water hardness is often not expressed as a molar concentration, but rather in various units, such as degrees of general hardness (dGH), German degrees (°dH), parts per million (ppm, mg/L, or American degrees), grains per gallon (gpg), English degrees (°e, e, or °Clark), or French degrees (°fH, °F or °HF; lowercase "f" is used to prevent confusion with degrees Fahrenheit). The table below shows conversion factors between the various units.

The various alternative units represent an equivalent mass of calcium oxide (CaO) or calcium carbonate (CaCO) that, when dissolved in a unit volume of pure water, would result in the same total molar concentration of Mg and Ca. The different conversion factors arise from the fact that equivalent masses of calcium oxide and calcium carbonates differ, and that different mass and volume units are used. The units are as follows:

Because it is the precise mixture of minerals dissolved in the water, together with the water's pH and temperature, that determine the behavior of the hardness, a single-number scale does not adequately describe hardness. However, the United States Geological Survey uses the following classification into hard and soft water,

Seawater is considered to be very hard due to various dissolved salts. Typically seawater's hardness is in the range of 6630 ppm. In contrast, freshwater has hardness in the range of 15 - 375 ppm.

Several indices are used to describe the behaviour of calcium carbonate in water, oil, or gas mixtures.

The Langelier saturation index (sometimes Langelier stability index) is a calculated number used to predict the calcium carbonate stability of water. It indicates whether the water will precipitate, dissolve, or be in equilibrium with calcium carbonate. In 1936, Wilfred Langelier developed a method for predicting the pH at which water is saturated in calcium carbonate (called pHs). The LSI is expressed as the difference between the actual system pH and the saturation pH:If the actual pH of the water is below the calculated saturation pH, the LSI is negative and the water has a very limited scaling potential. If the actual pH exceeds pHs, the LSI is positive, and being supersaturated with CaCO, the water has a tendency to form scale. At increasing positive index values, the scaling potential increases.

In practice, water with an LSI between -0.5 and +0.5 will not display enhanced mineral dissolving or scale forming properties. Water with an LSI below -0.5 tends to exhibit noticeably increased dissolving abilities while water with an LSI above +0.5 tends to exhibit noticeably increased scale forming properties.

The LSI is temperature sensitive. The LSI becomes more positive as the water temperature increases. This has particular implications in situations where well water is used. The temperature of the water when it first exits the well is often significantly lower than the temperature inside the building served by the well or at the laboratory where the LSI measurement is made. This increase in temperature can cause scaling, especially in cases such as hot water heaters. Conversely, systems that reduce water temperature will have less scaling.

The Ryznar stability index (RSI) uses a database of scale thickness measurements in municipal water systems to predict the effect of water chemistry.

Ryznar saturation index (RSI) was developed from empirical observations of corrosion rates and film formation in steel mains. It is defined as:The Puckorius Scaling Index (PSI) uses slightly different parameters to quantify the relationship between the saturation state of the water and the amount of limescale deposited.

Other indices include the Larson-Skold Index, the Stiff-Davis Index, and the Oddo-Tomson Index.

The hardness of local water supplies depends on the source of water. Water in streams flowing over volcanic (igneous) rocks will be soft, while water from boreholes drilled into porous rock is normally very hard.

Analysis of water hardness in major Australian cities by the Australian Water Association shows a range from very soft (Melbourne) to hard (Adelaide).
Total Hardness levels of calcium carbonate in ppm are:
Canberra: 40; Melbourne: 10–26;
Sydney: 39.4–60.1;
Perth: 29–226;
Brisbane: 100;
Adelaide: 134–148;
Hobart: 5.8–34.4;
Darwin: 31.

Prairie provinces (mainly Saskatchewan and Manitoba) contain high quantities of calcium and magnesium, often as dolomite, which are readily soluble in the groundwater that contains high concentrations of trapped carbon dioxide from the last glaciation. In these parts of Canada, the total hardness in ppm of calcium carbonate equivalent frequently exceed 200 ppm, if groundwater is the only source of potable water. The west coast, by contrast, has unusually soft water, derived mainly from mountain lakes fed by glaciers and snowmelt.

Some typical values are: Montreal 116 ppm, Calgary 165 ppm, Regina 496 ppm, Saskatoon 160-180 ppm, Winnipeg 77 ppm, Toronto 121 ppm, Vancouver < 3 ppm, Charlottetown, PEI 140–150 ppm, Waterloo Region 400 ppm, Guelph 460 ppm, Saint John (West) 160-200 ppm.

Information from the British Drinking Water Inspectorate shows that drinking water in England is generally considered to be'very hard', with most areas of England, particularly east of a line between the Severn and Tees estuaries, exhibiting above 200 ppm for the calcium carbonate equivalent. Water in London, for example, is mostly obtained from the River Thames and River Lea both of which derive significant proportion of their dry weather flow from springs in limestone and chalk aquifers. Wales, Devon, Cornwall and parts of North-West England are softer water areas, and range from 0 to 200 ppm. In the brewing industry in England and Wales, water is often deliberately hardened with gypsum in the process of Burtonisation.

Generally water is mostly hard in urban areas of England where soft water sources are unavailable. A number of cities built water supply sources in the 18th century as the industrial revolution and urban population burgeoned. Manchester was a notable such city in North West England and its wealthy corporation built a number of reservoirs at Thirlmere and Haweswater in the Lake District to the north. There is no exposure to limestone or chalk in their headwaters and consequently the water in Manchester is rated as'very soft'. Similarly, tap water in Birmingham is also soft as it is sourced from the Elan Valley Reservoirs in Wales.

The EPA has published a standards handbook for the interpretation of water quality in Ireland in which definitions of water hardness are given.
In this section, reference to original EU documentation is given, which sets out no limit for hardness.
In turn, the handbook also gives no "Recommended or Mandatory Limit Values" for Hardness.
The handbooks does indicate that above the midpoint of the ranges defined as "Moderately Hard", effects are seen increasingly: "The chief disadvantages of hard waters are that they neutralise the lathering power of soap... and, more important, that they can cause blockage of pipes and severely reduced boiler efficiency because of scale formation. These effects will increase as the hardness rises to and beyond 200 mg/l CaCO3."

A collection of data from the United States found that about half the water stations tested had hardness over 120 mg per litre of calcium carbonate equivalent, placing them in the categories "hard" or "very hard". The other half were classified as soft or moderately hard. More than 85% of American homes have hard water. The softest waters occur in parts of the New England, South Atlantic-Gulf, Pacific Northwest, and Hawaii regions. Moderately hard waters are common in many of the rivers of the Tennessee, Great Lakes, and Alaska regions. Hard and very hard waters are found in some of the streams in most of the regions throughout the country. The hardest waters (greater than 1,000 ppm) are in streams in Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Arizona, Utah, parts of Colorado, southern Nevada, and southern California.