March 29, 1861

Albert Homer Purdue, who became a renowned geologist and served as ex-officio state geologist of Arkansas from 1907 to 1912, was born in Yankeestown, Indiana, second of eight children of a farm family. Having had minimal formal education before the age of twenty, he entered Indiana Normal School (later called Indiana State University) where he received a diploma, and later attended Purdue University where he worked with John Casper Branner, state geologist of Arkansas from 1887 to 1893. He later became the first geology student to graduate from Stanford University in California. During his career, he published many works on the geology of Arkansas and Tennessee.