Albert Homer Purdue (1861-1917) was born and attended school in Yankeetown, Indiana, in Warrick County on the Ohio River. He received a diploma from Indiana State Normal School in Terre Haute, Indiana (now Indiana State University) in 1888. Purdue taught school in Missouri and was later made Assistant Superintendent of the United States Indian School at Albuquerque, New Mexico. He studied geology at The Leland Stanford Junior University, later known as Stanford University, from 1890-93. Purdue was the first student of geology at Stanford and the first to graduate. While at Stanford, Purdue worked under Professor John Casper Branner, State Geologist of Arkansas from 1887-92. Purdue was an agent for a laundry in San Jose when he was at Stanford, operating this business with fellow geology student Herbert Clark Hoover, President of the United States from 1929 to 1933. Purdue named his older son Branner Purdue for John Casper Branner, and several letters that he exchanged with Herbert Hoover form part of the present collection.

Purdue was a fellow in geology at the University of Chicago in 1895-96 and became professor of geology at the University of Arkansas in the latter year; he was made professor of geology and mining at the University of Arkansas in 1902. The University of Arkansas awarded Purdue an honorary LL. D. degree in 1912. From 1907-12, he was ex officio State Geologist of Arkansas. When the state of Arkansas cut off its support, he resigned in 1912 to become State Geologist of Tennessee, a post he held until his death in 1917. He was a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers; elected in 1911 to the Council of the Geological Society of America. he was a member of the Geological Society of London and was President of the Tennessee Academy of Sciences at the time of his death.