John Flesher Newsom was born in Elizabethtown, IN on September 6, 1869. He attended Indiana University and Leland Stanford Jr. University, earning his PhD in geology from the latter in 1901. He died on October 24, 1928, and is remembered as one of the top geologists of his time. This collection is comprised primarily of correspondence from Newsom to his wife written during his various excavation projects.