Mining Engineer
Centurion, 1919–1958
Born 30 July 1872 in Jersey City, New Jersey
Died 8 October 1958 in Knoxville, Tennessee
Buried Berry Highland Memorial Cemetery
, Knoxville, Tennessee
Proposed by Ehrick K. Rossiter and Robert Peele
Elected 3 May 1919 at age forty-six
Century Memorial
William Y. Westervelt was born on the Jersey City Heights in 1872. He graduated from the Columbia School of Mines in 1894, and, in turn, worked at being a chemist, surveyor, engineer, and superintendent of mines for the Ducktown Sulphur, Copper, & Iron Co. in Tennessee. He was a shrewd and capable engineer, and after a time he was able to put some mining companies together at Ducktown and became president of the combine. Meanwhile, he worked as a mining engineer, all over the West from Montana to Arizona, traveling here and there, inspecting mines, making appraisals for bond issues, and consulting on production methods. He even made a report on the copper mines in the Island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
Westervelt was well known to the copper fraternity and highly respected. His handbook Mine Examinations, Valuations, and Reports was a standard work used all over the world.
He lived the latter years of his life in Jackson, Mississippi. He never recovered from the shock of his wife’s death, which came two months before his.
George W. Martin
1959 Century Association Yearbook
