White Watson (10 April 1760 – 8 August 1835) was an early English geologist, sculptor, stonemason and carver, marble-worker and mineral dealer.

In common with many learned people of his time, he was skilled in a number of artistic and scientific areas, becoming a writer, poet, journalist, teacher, botanist and gardener as well as a geologist and mineralogist.

His father was Samuel Watson, a millstone manufacturer of Baslow, Derbyshire, and his mother Martha White (which is from where his unusual first name derives).

Whilst still a child, Watson became interested in minerals and fossils, and began his own collection as well as providing specimens for sale in his uncle's shop.

From here on, White Watson became a finisher of marble—for many years a considerable part of his business continued to be gravestones and monumental church marbles[3]—and a fossil and mineral specimen dealer from his own premises in Bakewell which he maintained as a shop and museum for his collection until his death.

As a result, the pair eventually fell out, and Martin re-published the series under his own name as Volume I of Petrificata Derbiensia in 1809 without giving any credit to Watson at all.

Earlier the same year he produced a tablet showing a detailed cross-section of the stratigraphy of Derbyshire on a line from Buxton to Bolsover, which he presented to the Duke of Devonshire on 20 February 1808.

An 1813 pamphlet 'Section of Strata in the Vicinity of Matlock Bath', argued against John Farey (1766–1826), a contemporary surveyor and geologist who had produced a geological map, A General View of the Agriculture and Minerals of Derbyshire, early in 1811 (prior to Watson's Delineation).

However, any friction over personal theories or accusations by Farey of appropriation of ideas did not preclude their discussing their findings during a number of meetings in Bakewell around 1811.

In 1825, the year of Ann's death, Watson's business card stated he "executes monuments, tombs etc., gives lessons in geology and mineralogy and furnishes collections, affords information to antiquaries and amusement to Botanists".

Probably in the same year, Watson produced an unusual circular stratigraphical diagram A DELINEATION of the ten deepest STRATA as yet discovered in the MINERAL DISTRICTS of DERBYSHIRE.

Although this project ultimately failed, Watson was responsible for the Bath Gardens which were laid out in the town as part of the scheme, and these layouts largely survive today.

[5] As Ford notes of his still-surviving cash ledger from 1796–1833, "if the entries really are a complete record of his income and expenditure he was often close to bankruptcy!"