The Specimen Dealer: Entrepreneurial Natural History in America's Gilded Age

Journal of the History of Biology33: 493–534, 2000.© 2001Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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The Specimen Dealer: Entrepreneurial Natural History inAmerica’s Gilded Age

MARK V. BARROW, JR.Department of History (0117)Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityBlacksburg, VA 24061, U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The post-Civil War American natural history craze spawned a new institution – thenatural history dealer – that has failed to receive the historical attention it deserves. The indi-viduals who created these enterprises simultaneously helped to promote and hoped to profitfrom the burgeoning interest in both scientific and popular specimen collecting. At a time whenother employment and educational prospects in natural history were severely limited, hundredsof dealers across the nation provided encouragement, specimens, publication outlets, trainingopportunities, and jobs for naturalists of all motivations and levels of expertise. This paperexplores the crucial role that specimen dealers played in the larger natural history community.After briefly examining the development of local taxidermy shops in the mid-nineteenthcentury, it then traces the history of four large natural history dealerships established in theUnited States during the latter half of the century: Ward’s Natural History Establishment,Frank Blake Webster’s Naturalists’ Supply Depot, Southwick & Jencks’ Natural History Store,and Frank H. Lattin & Co. By the early twentieth century, changing tastes in interior design,the growth of the Audubon movement, and the dramatic expansion of alternate training andjob opportunities for naturalists led many specimen dealers either to shift their emphasis or toshut their doors.

Keywords: natural history, specimen dealers, entrepreneurial natural history, merchantnaturalists, natural history dealers, taxidermy, taxidermists, collecting, Henry A. Ward, FrankB. Webster, James M. Southwick, Fred T. Jencks, Frank H. Lattin

Introduction

Natural history experienced a remarkable awakening in the United Statesduring the second half of the nineteenth century. Historians have gatheredmuch evidence to demonstrate the burgeoning popular interest in locating,identifying, preserving, collecting, exchanging, and displaying variousnatural objects.1 Scientific societies, which more often than not focused onnatural history, sprouted across the post-Civil War American landscape like

1 See, for example, Keeney, 1992; Sorensen, 1995; and Barrow, 1998. For similar devel-opments in Great Britain, see Allen, 1994. Jardine, Secord, and Spary, 1996, places the

494 MARK V. BARROW, JR.

mushrooms after a thundershower, with an average of about fifteen per decadebeing established in the forty years before the war and sixty-four per decadein the forty years after it.2 Many well-known metropolitan natural historymuseums that continue to flourish to this day – like the American Museum ofNatural History (founded in 1869), the Field Museum of Chicago (founded in1893), and the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh (founded in 1895) – also datefrom latter half of the nineteenth century.3 During this same period, authors,illustrators, and editors issued a steadily broadening stream of publications toinspire, instruct, and entertain budding naturalists.4 While we lack an accuratecount of exactly how many Americans pursued some form of natural historyin the second half of the nineteenth century, all indications are that the numberwas quite significant.5

Underlying this impressive growth of interest in natural history was aseries of profound transformations – economic, technological, social andcultural. Between 1860 and 1900 the population of the United States morethan doubled, the gross national product quadrupled, and the total numberof individuals living in urban areas increased more than five times. A vast,newly constructed rail system helped create the first truly national markets,while revolutions in the publishing industry combined with reforms in thepostal service to decrease the cost and increase the availability of printedmaterials of all sorts.6 The wide diffusion of romanticism, once the provinceof a highly educated cultural elite, provided an intellectual framework bothfor critiquing the new urban-industrial order as well as for appreciating theaesthetic and spiritual values associated with wild nature and the outdoors.7

nineteenth-century interest in natural history into broader geographical and historical context.On the psychological, historical, and theoretical dimensions of collecting, broadly construed,see Stewart, 1984; Muensterberger, 1994; and Elsner and Cardinal, 1994.

2 The figures on the establishment of American scientific societies are from Goldstein,1998.

3 Of these three, only the American Museum of Natural History has gained much historicalattention. See, Hellman, 1968; Kennedy, 1968; and Rainger, 1991. On the Field Museum, seeAnonymous, 1894; Collier, 1969; and Dexter, 1970. On the Carnegie, see Van Trump, 1959.

4 See the publication figures in Barrow, 1992, pp. 14–17 and 165.5 The 1884 edition of theNaturalists’ Directory(Cassino, 1884) contains more than 5,000

entries, but only the most dedicated individuals were likely to bother with registering.6 On the growth of the railroads and their impact on American society, see Stover, 1978;

and Martin, 1992. On changes in the publishing industry, see the brief survey in Tebbel, 1975.On postal reform and its role in the dissemination of published material, see Fuller, 1972.

7 On the many manifestations of romanticism and its implications for art, literature,science, and outdoor leisure, see Nash, 1982; Novak, 1980; Huth, 1957; and Lutts, 1990,pp. 13–36.

THE SPECIMEN DEALER 495

At the same time, a growing middle-class with increased leisure time beganto experience limited relief from the stern grip of the work ethic.8

According to its many supporters, the pursuit of natural history was asuitably purposeful endeavor that offered its practitioners healthful exercise,recreational opportunities, the potential to “see the works of God in nature,”and an array of beautiful specimens that were prominently displayed in manyVictorian homes.9 Urban reformers hoped that the activity would providenerve-shaken city dwellers with a way to reconnect with nature, while theircounterparts in the Country Life Movement saw it as a means to alleviateboredom in the hinterlands, thereby helping to stem the rural exodus.10

One devotee even claimed that collecting natural history objects promotedthe powers of careful observation necessary for a successful businesscareer.11

Yet, the prolific growth of interest in natural history did not immediatelytranslate into the kinds of career trajectories for naturalists that historians ofscience have traditionally stressed: in museums, government agencies andnewly emerging universities. At least in the short run, the growth of popularinterest in natural history outran the ability of existing institutions to absorball of those who hoped to pursue a career in the field. This dilemma isreflected in the advice that Robert Ridgway, curator of ornithology at theU.S. National Museum, dispensed in 1887. Ridgway could offer preciouslittle comfort to an anxious mother from California whose twenty-year-oldson wanted to become a professional naturalist:

I would say that if one is without the means of living independently ofthe study of natural history (in any of its branches), he stands a very poorchance indeed of deriving the greatest benefit from such study. It is verynecessary, in fact, to have some regular business, profession, or otheroccupation which shall supply the means of defraying one’s expenses.The study of natural history affords to those whose tastes run in thatdirection a very agreeable and instructiverecreation, and the means ofemploying pleasantly and profitably hours of enforced idleness whichmight otherwise be passed in far more harmful ways. As ameans oflivelihood, however, it must, in at least ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,

8 Rodgers, 1978; Blumin, 1989.9 On the alleged benefits of collecting natural history specimens, see Keeney, 1992, pp.

38–111; Mitchell, 1904; Jackson, 1894; Keep, 1888; Keep, 1890; and Anonymous, 1890. Onthe use of natural objects to decorate homes, see Batty, 1880; Greir, 1988; and Green, 1983.

10 Bowers, 1974.11 Jackson, 1894, p. 279.


prove a complete failure, success being. . . a question not of only ofexceptional ability, but also of exceptional circumstances.12

Faced with a lack of opportunity to pursue natural history as a voca-tion, many aspiring naturalists resorted to various entrepreneurial activitiesto gain financial support for their activities. Historians have long recognizedthe extent to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American naturalistssought to establish new institutions and cultivate various forms of patronageto support their scientific endeavors. For example, the artist-naturalist CharlesWillson Peale’s ongoing efforts to wrest a living from the gate receipts at hispioneering Philadelphia Museum, established in 1796, have attracted muchattention.13 Alexander Wilson’s exhaustive campaign to find subscribers forhis lavishly illustrated book,American Ornithology(9 vols., 1808–1814), andJohn James Audubon’s similar efforts on behalf of his own grand publication,Birds of America(4 vols., 1827–1828), are legendary, but they are hardlyunique.14 Like many other naturalists before and since, Wilson and Audubontraveled far and wide with samples of their work to secure the financialsupport needed so that their ambitious, multi-volume projects could see thelight of day. The activities of Louis Agassiz and Spencer F. Baird, two of themost successful entrepreneurial naturalists from the mid-nineteenth century,have also been subjected to much historical scrutiny. Agassiz, founder ofthe Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, organized a vast corres-pondence network to provide him with specimens to fill his museum andcustomers to purchase his expensive publications.15 Similarly, Baird, founderof the U.S. National Museum, nurtured an expansive network of sportsmen,Army surgeons, avocational naturalists, travelers, and others whose constantstream of specimen donations kept his museum pushing at the seams.16 Andhistorians have begun reconstructing the multi-faceted links between naturalhistory and imperialism, especially in Europe. They have shown, for example,how individual naturalists, like Joseph Banks, and natural history institutions,like Kew Gardens in England and the Société zoologique d’acclimatation

12 Robert Ridgway to Anne Taylor, June 26, 1887, Division of Birds Records, RU 105,Box 1, Volume 3, pp. 406–407, Smithsonian Institution Archives (hereafter cited as SIA),Washington, D.C.

13 See, Appel, 1980; Scholfield, 1989; Brigham, 1995; and Sellers, 1980.14 See, Porter, 1986; Hunter, 1983; Fries, 1973; Welch, 1998; and Blum, 1993. Selling

books by subscription was a practice that had long been used to finance expensive publications.15 On Agassiz’s many and varied entrepreneurial activities, see Lurie, 1960; Winsor, 1991;

and Barrow, 1995.16 On Baird’s collecting network, see Goldstein, 1994; Deiss, 1980; and Rivinus and

Youssef, 1992.


in France, facilitated the movement of domesticated plants and animals thatmade overseas colonization economically viable.17

What has yet to be fully appreciated, however, is the degree to whichmany late nineteenth-century entrepreneurial naturalists engaged in a partic-ular form of commercial venture – the natural history dealership – in anattempt to promote and profit from popular interest in natural history.18

Offering a bewildering array of specimens, supplies, books, and periodicalsto the thousands of Americans who pursued natural history at some level,these dealers responded both to their personal need for financial support aswell as to the broader cultural imperatives of the Gilded Age. Viewed fromthe perspective of an era that witnessed the apotheosis of economic indi-vidualism, the growth of the consumer culture, and the symbolic and literal“incorporation of America,” the natural history dealership seems but onesmall manifestation of a much larger, more fundamental postwar transform-ation in American society.19 But for many individuals who either could nototherwise find employment in natural history or who were unable to supportthemselves on the often paltry salaries offered at other scientific institutions,the sale of specimens represented an important source of income. Besidesoffering employment opportunities, dealers also provided critical encourage-ment to young collectors, training opportunities in natural history, valuablepublication outlets, and a steady supply of specimens that helped fuel themuseum movement in the second half of the nineteenth century. And at a timewhen natural history was firmly focused on collecting and formal certifica-tion procedures for naturalists were minimal or nonexistent, the boundariesbetween commercial and scientific naturalists were quite fluid.20

Historians of science have already begun to appreciate how commercialactivities played an important role in the scientific careers of the British natur-alists Henry W. Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace, both of whom supportedthemselves through the sale of exotic specimens before making more theor-etical contributions to evolutionary theory.21 Bates and Wallace, however,

17 See, for example, Dunlap, 1999; Browne, 1996; Brockway, 1979; Gascoigne, 1998; andOsborne, 1994. On the cultural links between natural history and imperialism, see Ritvo, 1987,especially pp. 205–242. Pauly, 1996, provides a fascinating look at debates surrounding theimportation of non-native flora and fauna into the United States.

18 The single major exception is Kohlstedt, 1980. Commercial activities also receive abrief mention in Mearns and Mearns, 1998. Dealers that supplied zoos and circuses with liveanimals have received scholarly attention in Flint, 1996.

19 Trachtenberg, 1982, is among the best interpretive histories of the economic, social, andcultural transformations during this period.

20 On the complex social dynamics of the ornithological community (a subset of the largernatural history community) in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Barrow, 1998.

21 See, Camerini, 1996; George, 1980; and O’Hara, 1995.


are only the most familiar illustrations of a phenomenon that was pervasivethroughout the United States and Europe. During the second half of thenineteenth century, naturalists on both sides of the Atlantic often engagedin various commercial enterprises to support themselves.22 For some naturalhistory enthusiasts the sale of specimens provided a temporary source ofready cash. For example, the ornithologist and mammalogist J. A. Allenfinanced his first semester at the Museum of Comparative Zoology throughthe sale of his youthful collection of mounted birds, while the fictional ElnoraComstock, the protagonist in Gene Stratton Porter’s 1909 novel,A Girl of theLimberlost, sold moths and Native American relics to pay for her secondaryschool and college education.23 For other naturalists, however, specimensales became a longer-term prospect, a way they might make a reasonableliving in a field that fascinated them and yet that offered limited employmentprospects.

Taxidermy Shops

Local taxidermy shops were one early prototype for the more expansivenatural history dealerships that emerged in the United States during thesecond half of the nineteenth century. These institutions have their ultimateorigins in the discovery of reliable methods of preserving bird and mammalskins at the turn of the eighteenth century.24 Before then naturalists had longknown how to tan skins and thus protect them from decay, but not how tospare them from the ravages of insects. According to Paul Farber, by 1830arsenic had become widely adopted as “the standard preservative againstinsect attacks.”25 The development of effective techniques to thwart insectinfestations made the existence of large, stable avian and mammal collections

22 Natural history dealerships seem to have begun developing much earlier in Europe,though these institutions are beyond the scope of this paper. See the brief discussion ofEuropean specimen dealers in Mearns and Mearns, 1992, pp. 95–101; and in passing in Dance,1986. Chalmers-Hunt, 1976, and Frost, 1987, provide other views of European dealers.

23 See, Allen, 1916; and Barrow, 1995, p. 60.24 On the development of taxidermy, especially as it relates to museum practice, see Star,

1992; Morris, 1993; Frost, 1987; and Rogers, Schmidt and Güterbier, 1989. Taxidermy wasan overwhelmingly male enterprise. The one prominent exception at the end of the nineteenthcentury seems to have been Martha Maxwell, whose activities are documented in Benson,1986.

25 Farber, 1977. Charles Willson Peale was among the first American naturalists to importthe new taxidermy techniques from Europe. He was also among the first to begin displayinghis mounted specimens with backgrounds painted to resemble the organism’s natural habitat.See Wonders, 1993.


possible for the first time, and thus proved a tremendous boost to the fields ofornithology and mammalogy both in the United States and abroad.26

Naturalists were not the only ones who wanted to preserve animal skinsand mounts. Sport hunters also desired to shape their prize takes intopermanent trophies with which to decorate their homes and offices withtangible evidence of their prowess. Sport hunting in Europe had long beenassociated with the upper classes. In the mid-nineteenth century, however,many ideals associated with hunting for sport – for example, the notion offair chase and the belief that a hunter should possess knowledge about thelife history of the intended quarry – began to spread both geographically(from Europe to the United States) and socially (from the upper to the middleclasses).27 Sometimes hunters tried to mount skins themselves, with the aidof one of the many available published guides, but increasingly they relied ona growing number of commercial taxidermists, whose establishments becamemore commonplace with the rise of sport hunting in the middle of the century(Figure 1).28

John G. Bell (1812–1889) established one of the most famous Amer-ican taxidermy enterprises from the middle of the nineteenth century.29

While most of his business undoubtedly came from sportsmen in the regionsurrounding his New York City establishment, Bell was also a “friend andassociate” of many well-known naturalists, including Baird, Audubon, TitianR. Peale, John Cassin, George N. Lawrence, John LeConte and others. In1843 Bell accompanied Audubon on an expedition along the upper MissouriRiver, where he collected several new species of birds. One of these, Bell’svireo, was subsequently named in his honor. Six years later he headed west-ward again, this time to the newly acquired territory of California. Therehe found four more new species, including a new sparrow that John CassindubbedAmphispiza belli. But most of his long career was spent in closerproximity to his famed taxidermy shop on the corner of Broadway and WorthStreet. Until his retirement in the mid-1880s, a wide array of sportsmen,collectors, and naturalists gathered there regularly to exchange stories, topour over the latest acquisitions, and to purchase specimens. One of themany budding young naturalists who sought out Bell’s shop was TheodoreRoosevelt, who received taxidermy instruction there in the 1870s, before

26 See Farber, 1977; Farber, 1982; and Hoffmeister and Sterling, 1994.27 Reiger, 1975. The links between sport hunting and ornithology remained strong

throughout the nineteenth century. See Barrow, 1998, pp. 30–33.28 One of the most famous early guides available in the United States was the American

edition of Bullock, 1829.29 As with most taxidermists and natural history dealers mentioned in this paper, biograph-

ical information on Bell is scanty. See Mearns and Mearns, 1992, pp. 66–70; and Chapman,1890.

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Figure 1. A rare view depicting the interior of a typical small taxidermy shop from the nineteenth century, 1882. (From: Franklin H. North, “TheTaxidermical Art,”The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine25 [1882]: 235.)


attending Harvard College. Later in life Roosevelt described Bell as “a veryinteresting man, an American of the before-the-war type. He was tall, straightas an Indian, with white hair and a smooth-shaven, clear-cut face; a dignifiedfigure, always in black frock coat.”30

Naturalists also flocked to the shop of another well-known New Yorktaxidermist from the mid-nineteenth century, John Wallace, “a stout dark-haired . . . forceful looking man, rather short in stature with a decided cockneyaccent.”31 Eugene P. Bicknell, an ornithologist and botanist, recalled withfondness his frequent youthful visits to Wallace’s shop on upper WilliamsStreet in the 1860s and 1870s: “Thither as a youth I used often to go, hesitantof troubling this always busy man, yet impelled by expectation! Almostalways there would be news of unusual local birds, for many were the speci-mens that came to that work-shop, and it even might befall, on good days, thatI should be allowed to take into my hands some rarity not yet dispossessedof the fresh beauty of it natural form and plumage.”32 For several months in1871, a teenage C. Hart Merriam, who was later to head the U. S. Depart-ment of Agriculture’s Bureau of the Biological Survey, spent his weekendsaway from school learning taxidermy with Wallace.33 Three years later theornithologist and Lawrence Scientific School graduate W. E. D. Scott workedunder Wallace for several months until he found a museum curator positionat Princeton.

Most other large urban areas had at least one taxidermy shop. In Phil-adelphia, for example, the establishment of John Krider (1813–1886) wasopened on Second and Walnut Streets in the 1830s and for the next fourdecades remained a “popular resort of the local sporting fraternity.”34 Kriderwas a taxidermist, gunsmith and “quasi-scientific sportsman,” who kept asmany as half a dozen journeyman taxidermists on his payroll during thebusy bird migration season. Like Bell, he was in contact with many prom-inent American naturalists, including Baird, Cassin, Ridgway, Thomas MayoBrewer, Elliott Coues, and others whose publications contain regular refer-ences to specimens he collected. His travels up and down the eastern seaboardand as far west as Denver resulted in the capture of many rarities, including anew raptor he found in Iowa in the 1870s that was dubbed “Krider’s hawk.”Unlike other taxidermists, however, Krider actually placed some of his fieldobservations into print. His first book on the habits of American game birds,

30 Cutright, 1985, pp. 31–33.31 The description is from Scott, 1904, p. 71. For several years, Wallace was a partner in the

firm of Wallace and Hollingsworth, located on William Street in New York City.32 Bicknell, 1924, p. 65.33 Sterling, 1974, p. 14.34 The quote is from Burns, 1933, p. 74. Additional information on Krider is found in

Trotter, 1912; and Trotter, 1914.


published in 1853, was followed by a series of notes inForest and Streamaswell as a second book,Forty Years Notes of a Field Ornithologist, publishedin 1879.

The line between taxidermy establishments and natural history dealers isfar from distinct. As popular interest in natural history grew in the secondhalf of the nineteenth century, however, some taxidermy shops began to stockshells, insects, fossils, minerals, and other natural objects in addition to theskins and mounted specimens that had long represented the bulk of their trade.In other cases, particularly enthusiastic collectors – like the physician andmineralogist A. E. Foote, the shell collector William D. Averall, the ento-mologist Herbert K. Morrison, and the fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg– established businesses that specialized in a particular branch of naturalhistory.35 Regardless of whether they specialized or not, many dealers alsobegan to reach a more national clientele, a move made possible by the creationof reliable transportation networks for shipping and receiving specimens aswell as by the creation of advertising outlets in nationally circulated period-icals.36 By the end of the nineteenth century, more than a hundred specimendealers were plying their wares to collectors across the United States.37

Ward’s Natural Science Establishment

Henry Augustus Ward (1834–1906; Figure 2) organized what proved to beone of the earliest, largest, most important, and most enduring of the manynatural history enterprises established in the second half of the nineteenthcentury. More than any other single institution, Ward’s Natural Science Estab-lishment of Rochester, New York, provided the specimens that helped fuelthe American museum movement, the tremendous growth in natural historymuseums that occurred in the last three decades of the century.38 And at a timewhen opportunities for advanced training in natural history were severely

35 Kraus, 1958; P[ilsbury], 1928; Abbott, 1973, p. 62; Abbott, 1975, pp. 513–514; Mann,1885; and Rogers, 1991.

36 Dealers issued many of the periodicals listed in the following bibliographies: Burns,1915; Underwood, 1954; and Fox, 1908.

37 The list in Barrow, 1992, pp. 579–590, contains the names of more than a hundred naturalhistory dealers, most of whom were located either through a systematic examination of thevarious editions of theNaturalist Directoryor of periodicals aimed at oologists and ornitholo-gists. The total number of natural history dealers in the United States was undoubtedly higherthan this.

38 The history of Ward and his enterprise that follows is largely drawn from Kohlstedt, 1980;and Ward, 1948. See also Hornaday, 1896; news of the establishment regularly appearing inthe first series ofWard’s Natural Science Bulletin(1881–1886); and Anonymous, 1892.


Figure 2. Henry A. Ward, 1865. This photograph depicts Ward at about the time he beganhis natural history dealership, which eventually grew into the largest such business in theUnited States. (From: Roswell Ward,Henry A. Ward: Museum Builder to America[Rochester:Published by the Rochester Historical Society, 1948], facing p. 113.)

limited, Ward’s venture provided an important training ground for dozensof future naturalists, taxidermists, and museum administrators.

Ward was born in Rochester, New York, to a prominent family that madea fortune in mercantile pursuits, insurance sales, and land speculation as thebustling city had expanded in the mid-nineteenth century. His mother was adeeply religious woman who hoped her son would enter the ministry; hisfather was a restless spirit who preferred reading books to surveying andfarming. Family finances were firmly under the control of his grandfather andthen his grandfather’s oldest son, Ward’s uncle. At about age ten, young Wardbegan to develop an interest in rock collecting. Seven years later he enrolled


in Williams College, where he studied under the geologist Ebenezer Emmonsand began selling geological specimens to supplement his family’s meagerallowance. A lack of academic preparation and continuing financial woesforced him to withdraw and enter Temple Hill Academy, which was muchcloser to his hometown. There he met his future wife, Phebe Howell, and hislifelong friend, Charles Wadsworth, both of whom shared his growing enthu-siasm for collecting mineralogical and geological specimens. When Wardheard that Louis Agassiz was to lecture in Rochester, he made the thirty-miletrip on foot and led the famed naturalist on a tour of the area surrounding hishometown. Impressed with the knowledge of his enthusiastic young guide,Agassiz invited Ward to become a special student at the MCZ, where he spentseveral months.

He left the MCZ in May 1854 to accept an offer to join Charles Wadsworthin Paris, a trip that Wadsworth’s father initially financed. His six years abroadproved crucial to the eventual success of his business. Not only did he obtaina thorough scientific education while regularly attending lectures at the Ecoledes mines and the Jardin des plantes, but he also traveled widely throughoutEurope, the Middle East, and Africa; organized numerous collecting exped-itions; and became acquainted with the major natural history dealers andmuseum curators of Europe. By the time he returned to the United Statesin 1860, he had amassed an extensive geological collection, a unique seriesof fossil casts, and detailed, firsthand knowledge of how to conduct a naturalhistory dealership.39

Although he was appointed professor of natural sciences at the Universityof Rochester shortly after his return, in the ensuing years Ward graduallyabandoned his teaching career to build his private natural history enter-prise.40 His first major sale was to Vassar College, which in 1862 signeda contract to purchase a large geological cabinet from Ward (the price ofwhich was not to exceed $8000). During the next few years he added zoolo-gical specimens to his constantly expanding inventory of minerals and fossilcasts, erected two buildings as part of what soon became a large complexon the outskirts of the University of Rochester campus (Figures 3 and 4),and hired Grove Karl Gilbert, the first of many employees for whom Ward’sEstablishment became an initial stop on the way to prominent careers inscience. Over the years there were many major setbacks – a devastating firein 1869 and bankruptcy proceedings in 1874 and 1884 – but with continuedfinancial underwriting from his wealthy uncle (and later their heirs), Ward

39 Kohlstedt, 1980, pp. 648–649; and Ward, 1948, pp. 55–122.40 No doubt the modest salary he received from the university, “only a few hundred dollars

per year,” was one of the factors that led him to pursue commercial activities more vigorously.Ward, 1948, p. 134.

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Figure 3. Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, 1883. This picture, drawn by Frederic A. Lucas, shows the extensive Ward complex in its heyday.(From: Frederic A. Lucas,Fifty Years of Museum Work: Autobiography, Unpublished Papers, and Bibliography[New York: American Museum ofNatural History, 1933], facing p. 18.)

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Figure 4. Interior View of One of Ward’s Workrooms, 1883. Some of Ward’s taxidermists preparing specimens for sale and delivery. Note that the cratebeing filled is addressed to Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn by Frederic A. Lucas. (From:Ward’sNatural Science Bulletin2, no. 1 [1883]: 13.)


continued to build up the enterprise until gradually withdrawing from it in themid-1890s.41

Although he sold specimens to individual collectors, initially Ward’s mostimportant customers were museums and educational institutions.42 Oldercolleges seeking to expand established collections and new land grant insti-tutions with university aspirations were relieved to find a reputable dealerthrough which to purchase specimens in the large quantity and of the highquality they desired.43 Ward also became an important supplier to the newmetropolitan museums. For example, when officials at the American Museumof Natural History (AMNH) in New York wanted an exhibition series of allthe known North American birds and mammals in 1882, they contracted withWard.44 He in turn approached members of his extensive collectors’ networkto fill the $10,000 order.45 A year later Ward signed a contract to supplythe AMNH with “every species of monkey then known, with provisions foradding any found or discovered within three years.”46 By 1896 total sales tothe AMNH alone came to $28,048. Sales to other institutions were also brisk:the MCZ purchased $70,560 worth of specimens from Ward’s; the Universityof Virginia, $51,000; Princeton College, $33,272; Coronado Beach Museum,California, $31,989; and the United States National Museum, $20,837. Bythe end of the nineteenth century, Ward’s sales to 100 American museumshad reached a total of over $730,223.47

Though impressive, these figures alone fail to convey the prominent roleWard also played in bringing several important urban and university museumsinto existence. Ward not only provided specimens for new museums, heoften helped plant the idea, locate suitable patrons, initiate subscriptiondrives, design exhibits, and otherwise work to bring his ambitious schemesto fruition.48 For example, before the Columbian Exposition of 1893, Wardborrowed over $50,000 to mount an extensive exhibit that occupied thirtyfreight cars en route to Chicago and over 11,000 square feet of floor space

41 Kohlstedt, 1980, pp. 649–654; and Ward, 1948, pp. 123–287.42 Anonymous, 1883, blamed the late appearance of theBulletin on the “museums, and

colleges, and professors, and naturalists, and amateurs,” who had “beset the establishmentwith their orders for collections and specimens.”

43 Kohlstedt, 1980, pp. 651–652.44 The transaction is discussed in J. B. Holder to George A. Boardman, July 8, 1882, George

A. Boardman Papers, RU 7071, Box 1, Folder 17, SIA, Washington, D.C.45 See, for example, Henry A. Ward to George A. Boardman, October 12, 1882, George A.

Boardman Papers, RU 7071, Box 1, Folder 36, SIA, Washington, D.C.46 Quoted in Ward, 1948, p. 218.47 Hornaday, 1896, p. 149.48 For example, Kohlstedt, 1980, pp. 654–655, examines Ward’s critical role in the

formation of the Milwaukee Museum. See also, Ward, 1884.


at the fair. Ward, who had discovered previously that expositions often led tolarge specimen sales, was convinced he could persuade John D. Rockefellerto buy his massive exhibit for the newly established University of Chicago.When negotiations with university officials stalled, however, a nervous Wardpursued the Chicago department store magnate, Marshall Field, until hefinally agreed to purchase the collection for $100,000. Ward’s ColumbianExposition exhibit, together with anthropological material gathered for thefair by Frederic Ward Putnam, thereby became the nucleus for the FieldMuseum of Chicago, created in 1893.49

Ward’s expanding business attracted many talented individuals who recog-nized the unique training experience the enterprise offered. By the late 1870sand early 1880s Ward’s complex included about fifteen buildings and asmany as twenty-two workers, including such prominent figures as William T.Hornaday, Frederic A. Lucas, and Frederic S. Webster (Figure 5). This ambi-tious group persuaded Ward to initiate a short-lived, irregularly publishedperiodical,Ward’s Natural Science Bulletin, which like most such ventures,was largely designed to publicize the business.50 In March 1880 several Wardemployees also established a new organization, the Society of American Taxi-dermists, as part of a campaign to raise the general level of taxidermic practiceand the standing of the profession in America.51 Toward that end, the newsociety held several meetings during which members exhibited specimensof their handiwork and received prizes for the best examples of scientific andartistic mounting. The society also issued several annual reports before fallinginto obscurity as its leaders became preoccupied with their own professionalcareers after leaving Ward’s.52

Numerous other American naturalists and taxidermists also spent theirformative years at Ward’s, including Walter B. Barrows, William M. Wheeler,Carl Akeley, George K. Cherrie, Charles H. Townsend, and George B. Turner,

49 This account is from Ward, 1948, pp. 252–255. On the creation of the Field Museum, seealso, Dexter, 1970; and Collier, 1969.

50 Ward credited his employee’s as the impetus behind the periodical in the first number,Ward’s Natural Science Bulletin1 (June 1881): 1.

51 The story of the Society of American Taxidermists is told in detail in Dolph, 1975, andmore briefly in Star, 1992, pp. 270–271. On attempts to secure the support of prominentornithologists for the new venture, see Frederic A. Lucas to William Brewster, June 6, 1880and October 3, 1880, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Special Collections, Cambridge, Mass.,and William T. Hornaday to J. A. Allen, June 26, 1880, July 6, 1880, November 30, 1880, andDecember 7, 1880, Historic Correspondence File, Department of Ornithology, AMNH, NewYork, N.Y.

52 For example, Hornaday and Lucas left for the U.S. National Museum in 1882.

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Figure 5. Colleagues at Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, ca. 1880. During this period Ward’s bustling enterprise kept nearly two dozenemployees busy with collecting, preparing, and shipping specimens. (From: Frederic A. Lucas,Fifty Years of Museum Work: Autobiography,Unpublished Papers, and Bibliography[New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1933], p. facing p. 16.)


to name just a few.53 Several Ward employees, including Ward’s brother-in-law, Edwin Howell, and J. William Critchley, left to establish their own or tojoin existing natural history firms. According to the count of one former Wardassociate, by the end of the nineteenth century, the “graduates” of Ward’sincluded the “directors of three museums, the New York Aquarium, threecollege professors, the chief preparators of four of our greatest museumsand many occupants of positions in other scientific institutions.”54 It was aremarkable record and testimony to the importance of Ward’s enterprise as atraining ground for naturalists at the end of the nineteenth century.

After selling much of his zoological stock to the Field Museum, Wardspent less and less time laboring at the business he had started. His withdrawalwas partly related to his relatives’ efforts to reign in Ward’s always ambitiousplans for finding new collections and promoting new museums, plans thatoften ignored the day-to-day economic realities of what was supposed to bea profitable business. In the last decade of his life he also became obsessedwith collecting meteorites, which he pursued with a zeal that had become histrademark. With the financial support of his wealthy second wife, by 1904Ward had amassed samples or entire meteorites representing more than 600falls, making his collection arguably the largest in the world. He died in 1906,after being struck by an automobile while crossing the street in Buffalo, NewYork. The business that bears his name has continued to the present.55

Frank Blake Webster’s Naturalists’ Supply Depot

In its size and longevity, Ward’s Natural Science Establishment was certainlyunique. But as I have already noted, Ward’s enterprise was only a muchgrander example of a much more pervasive phenomenon. Although none ofthese ventures achieved the remarkable success of Ward’s firm, the three deal-erships discussed below – Frank Blake Webster’s Naturalists’ Supply Depot,Southwick & Jencks Natural History Store, and Frank H. Lattin & Co. – eachmade a significant impact within the culture of collecting that emerged in theUnited States during the Gilded Age.

Frank Blake Webster (1850–1922), a native of Pawtucket, Rhode Island,organized a natural history business in the mid-1870s that rivaled Ward’s inlongevity, if not in total sales volume. In 1868, one year after graduating from

53 Wheeler and Akeley’s years at Ward’s are discussed in Bodry-Sanders, 1991; and Evansand Evans, 1970. For biographical information on other former employees of Ward’s, seeFisher, 1925; Townsend, 1930; Palmer, 1951; and Townsend, 1927.

54 Lucas, 1933, p. 13. Lucas’s autobiography also includes an account of his years at Wardand a lengthy list of former Ward employees.

55 See their website, http://wardsci.com/.


Figure 6. Frank Blake Webster in His First “Work Room,” 1867. Here Webster proudlydisplays some of his early efforts at taxidermy. It would be nearly a decade later before hebegan pursuing natural history as a full-time occupation. (From: Frank B. Webster,Results inTaxidermy[Boston: The Marsh Press, 1905], plate 7.)


the Highland Military Academy at Worcester, Massachusetts, the eighteen-year-old Webster returned to his hometown to accept the first in a series ofclerical positions. He soon ended up at the J. & P. Coats Thread Company,where he was to remain for the next fourteen years as paymaster and invoiceclerk.56 While Webster toiled away in the mill office, he dreamed of estab-lishing an enterprise more in keeping with his burning interest in naturalhistory. After studying natural history and taxidermy informally during hisspare hours for several years, he began taking more definite steps to bring hisaspirations to fruition (Figure 6).

In 1875 Webster found a kindred soul, A. L. Ellis, to help finance andoperate a new business, which they soon launched as A. L. Ellis & Co. AsWebster later explained, he and his partner hoped to exploit the commer-cial opportunity represented by the increased popular interest in naturalhistory: “The vast numbers scattered over the country who are engaged inmaking private collections, and who by the routine of life are confined toa locality, must look to others for assistance, and procure specimens fromother localities either by purchase or exchange. This is often done by directcommunication between collectors, but as a rule will be found to require agreat deal of time and patience and liability to be tinted with disappointment.It was to meet a demand for centralization of exchange that stimulated thewriter to establish the Naturalists’ Supply Depot.”57 The new business grewslowly but steadily until 1883, when it expanded rapidly after absorbing twoof its nearby competitors. First came the purchase of the extensive zoologicalinventory of William J. Knowlton of Boston (successor to the well-knownenterprise of Brewster & Knowlton) when Knowlton decided to specializein the sale of minerals and precious stones.58 One year later A. L. Ellis &Co. bought the “business, stock, trade and goodwill” of Aldrich & Capen,another Boston natural history establishment. Following this latest buyout,the partnership claimed to be in regular contact with “1,000 taxidermists and4,000 collectors” across North America.59

56 The biographical sketch that follows is largely from two obituaries and a brief autobio-graphy: Anonymous, 1922; Preble, 1923; and Webster, 1890.

57 Webster, 1890, p. 168.58 C. G. Brewster is listed among the “general dealers in specimens of natural history” in

the first edition ofThe Naturalists’ Directory, Putman, 1865, appendix, p. iii. By the 1877edition of theDirectory (Cassino, 1877), Brewster had joined forces with the mineralogistW. J. Knowlton. The firm took out one of the few full-page adds in this edition, which began:“Natural History Store, 18 Arch Street, Boston, Brewster & Knowlton, Dealers in Birds, Shellsand Minerals, also Objects of Natural History in General.”

59 The claim is found on the back cover of the April 1884 issue ofOrnithologist andOologist9.

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Figure 7. Frank Blake Webster’s Museum and Naturalists’ Supply Depot, 1890. A view of Webster’s enterprise, clearly more modest than Ward’s, froma nearby railroad station. Webster continued in business at this location until his death in 1922. (From: Frank B. Webster, “Natural History Business,”Ornithologist and Oologist15 [1890]: 169.)


Confident that the newly enlarged firm was now on sound footing, Websterresigned his clerical position at the mill to devote his full time to the busi-ness, which was renamed Ellis & Webster. After a year of commuting dailybetween his home in Pawtucket and a new branch office in Boston, Websterpurchased his partner’s interest in the firm and closed the Pawtucket office.In 1888 Webster built a large workshop and storage facility in Hyde Park, theBoston suburb where he had made a home (Figure 7).60 Four years later heclosed his Boston office and consolidated his mail-order and walk-in opera-tions at Hyde Park.61 He remained in charge of the business until his death in1922.62

In January 1884, during the period when his business was rapidlyexpanding, Webster also purchased theOrnithologist and Oologist. The peri-odical, the first in North America devoted exclusively to ornithology, hadbegun publication asThe Oologistin March 1875.63 The sixteen-year-oldproprietor of the venture, Samuel L. Willard of Utica, New York, producedmany of the early issues of the small, crudely printed monthly on his ownpress before joining forces with Joseph M. Wade, a textile mill agent fromRockville, Connecticut, in 1879. In 1880 Wade purchased Willard’s share inthe magazine, which he enlarged and renamed theOrnithologist and Oolo-gist. Wade published the periodical until November 1883, when he sold itto Webster. In his first two years of ownership, Webster issued nearly 40,000copies, many of which he sent out as samples to increase the subscription baseand advertise his business.64 Under Webster’s ownership, theOrnithologistand Oologistcontinued to appeal to a broad spectrum of North Americancollectors, taxidermists, dealers, and even scientists until falling victim to thedepression of 1893.65

In an effort to maintain a substantial and diverse inventory, Webster,like most larger dealers, developed a network of collectors and regularlysponsored expeditions. For example, in 1884 he and his partner Ellisannounced to interested “Museums, Naturalists and Dealers” that they hadarranged to receive the specimens of an experienced professional collector,Thomas Morris, who was departing for Trinidad and the Orinoco Valley

60 Webster, 1890, p. 169.61 Webster, 1892.62 Preble, 1923, p. 196.63 The story of theOologistand its transformation to theOrnithologist and Oologistis told

in more detail in Burns, 1915; Willard, 1881; Bates, 1891; and Emerson, 1911.64 Anonymous, 1886.65 The periodical did provide a regular forum for criticism of scientific ornithology, which

seemed to increasingly ignore the needs of less technically oriented collectors. See Barrow,1998, pp. 54–56, 69, 85, 89, 91, 122–125, 170, and 176.


in South America.66 But the most important of the many expeditions thatWebster organized was an 1897 trip to the Galapagos Islands, whose uniquefauna has long played an important role in the history of evolutionarybiology.67 While Webster handled the details of mounting the expedition,Walter Rothschild – the wealthy British eccentric who was amassing one ofthe world’s most important natural history collections at his estate in TringPark outside London – financed it.68

In March 1897 the five-man Webster-Rothschild expedition party left NewYork bound for Panama, where it attempted unsuccessfully to secure a ship.Following a bout with yellow fever – which proved fatal for the leader and oneother member of the expedition – the group headed back north to San Fran-cisco. Following lengthy negotiations, Charles M. Harris, the expedition’snew leader, finally chartered a suitable boat and recruited two additional taxi-dermists and another collector, Rollo H. Beck, to join the expedition.69 Afterspending four months of their nine-month journey exploring the islands in theGalapagos Archipelago, the expedition party returned home with a cargo thatincluded 3075 bird skins, 400 birds’ eggs, 13 seals, 150 iguanas, 65 tortoises(many of which were still alive), 40 tortoise eggs, 8 turtles, 6 centipedes, andseveral hundred lizards and marine invertebrates.70

Like many other natural history dealerships and taxidermy establishments,Webster’s also became a frequent gathering place for local naturalists, whoregularly stopped in to socialize, to search through recent acquisitions, andto purchase specimens. For example, the naturalist Edward Preble, who laterwent on to a career in the Bureau of the Biological Survey, recalled withfondness his frequent youthful visits to Webster’s: “Some of the pleasantestrecollections of my boyhood are concerned with visits to his establishment,where I sometimes assisted him in arranging eggs or skins.”71 It was the kindof encouragement that often led to a lifelong interest and even subsequentcareers in natural history.

66 The announcement appeared on the back cover ofOrnithologist and Oologist9 (March1884).

67 See, for example, Sulloway, 1982; and Wiener, 1996.68 The story of the expedition is told in a fascinating biography written by Walter

Rothschild’s niece: Rothschild, 1983.69 This was to be the first of many international expeditions in the career of Rollo Beck; see

Murphy, 1936, 1: 2–8; and Pitelka, 1986.70 Rothschild, 1983, p. 201.71 Preble, 1923, p. 197.


Southwick & Jencks’ Natural History Store

Southwick & Jencks’ Natural History Store of Providence, Rhode Island,began just one year later and just down the road from Webster’s firstPawtucket firm. Like Webster’s Natural History Depot, Southwick & Jencks’amassed a large inventory of specimens through an extensive network ofcollectors and a series of sponsored expeditions. And like Webster’s, South-wick & Jencks’ also catered primarily to individual collectors. But duringthe second half of the nineteenth century, when scientific natural history wasalmost entirely focused on collecting, the firm also regularly sold specimensto the museums and scientifically oriented private collectors.

The enterprise began in the mid-1870s, when a thirty-year-old dry goodsstore owner, James M. Southwick (1846–1904), rented part of a friend’s storeand began filling it with a small stock of specimens during his spare moments.Southwick hoped eventually to bring together enough material to open a newbusiness more in keeping with his long-held passion for natural history.72

In 1876 he met Fred T. Jencks, an enthusiastic nineteen-year-old who hadrecently learned how to skin and mount birds from J. W. P. Jenks (no rela-tion), professor of agricultural zoology and founder of the museum of naturalhistory at Brown University.73 Following basic lessons in taxidermy, Jenckshad assisted his mentor during a three-month-long collecting expedition toFlorida.74 On December 1, 1876, only five days after first meeting each other,Southwick and Jencks launched their new firm.

The partners were aware that it would take time and hard work to maketheir new enterprise a success.75 Initially Southwick continued to workat his dry goods business, while Jencks minded the natural history store.Hoping to attract a national clientele, the firm soon began advertising innatural history periodicals and issued widely distributed catalogs of birds andeggs, minerals, shells, and supplies. Within three years, business prospectswere lively enough to rent out an entire store, hire an assistant, and permitSouthwick to abandon his dry goods business.76

By 1884, the same year in which Webster began publishingOrnithologistand Oologist, the firm initiated its own monthly periodical with the unusually

72 The early history of the establishment is told in Anonymous, 1885, pp. 16–17.73 Brief biographical sketches of J. W. P. Jenks can be found in J. A. Allen, 1895; and Elliott,

1979, p. 136.74 The Jenks and Jencks collecting expedition resulted in two publications: [Jencks], 1884;

and Jenks, 1887.75 Fred T. Jencks to Robert Ridgway, December 24, 1876, Division of Birds Records, RU

105, Box 20, Folder 1, SIA, Washington, D.C.76 Fred T. Jencks to Robert Ridgway, January 17, 1881, Division of Birds Records, RU 105,

Box 20, Folder 1, SIA, Washington, D.C.


Figure 8. Cover of Random Notes on Natural History, 1884. Southwick and Jencks usedvariations on this image to decorate the cover of their catalogs. Like many commercial estab-lishments at the time, Southwick and Jencks received preferential second-class postal rates byclaiming that their periodical was educational in nature.


frank title of Random Notes on Natural History(Figure 8). Like most suchventures, the periodical contained a mixture of advice to collectors, local listsof flora and fauna (focusing on the Rhode Island region), collecting exploits,and (most importantly) copious quantities of advertising, especially from thesponsoring firm. And as usually was the case, distributing sample copiesof the new periodical became an important part of the partners’ efforts topromote their expanding business.

The firm maintained regular contact with a spectrum of collectors, rangingfrom the rank beginner to the professional scientist. Jencks established aparticularly close relationship with the ornithologist Robert Ridgway, whoidentified uncertain birds, vouched for the integrity of the firm, and helpedlocate collectors to provide the partners with a steady supply of specimens.77

Ridgway, in turn, exchanged specimens with Jencks, received the right of firstrefusal for rare or unusual acquisitions, and used the Southwick & Jenckscatalog as a means to value the bird skins traded between the Smithsonianand other collectors and dealers.

In October 1886 Jencks was forced to sell out his interest in the busi-ness following a recurrent bout with an unspecified eye ailment.78 Southwickcontinued to run the firm alone for several years, but announced that withthe December 1886 issue he was discontinuingRandom Notes on NaturalHistory: “[T]here seems to be no special need for this publication except toadvertise my business. In view of the numberless claims upon my time by myconstantly expanding business, I can do this to better advantage through otherchannels.”79 For a time Southwick joined forces with J. William Critchley,formerly of Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, before selling out in 1894to Walter A. Angell and Harry A. Cash, who continued to operate their firmfor many years under the name of Angell & Cash.80 After selling his business,Southwick became curator of the natural history museum at Roger WilliamsPark, in Providence, Rhode Island.81

77 See, for example, Fred T. Jencks to Robert Ridgway, January 7, 1877, January 19, 1880,July 24, 1880, January 17, 1881, January 26, 1881, March 29, 1881, August 28, 1881, October12, 1881, and December 7, 1886, Division of Birds Records, RU 105, Box 20, Folder 1,SIA, Washington, D.C. See also, Robert Ridgway to T. W. McIlwrath, February 11, 1886,and Robert Ridgway to E. E. Thompson [Ernest Thompson Seton], February 9, 1887, also inDivision of Birds Records.

78 In Fred T. Jencks to William Brewster, November 26, 1886, Brewster Papers, MCZSpecial Collections, Cambridge, Mass., Jencks announced that he had been unable to read,write, or work for the previous six months.

79 [Southwick], 1886, p. 1.80 Critchley is found among the list of former Ward employees in F. A. Lucas, 1933, pp. 13–

14. Biographical sketches of Angell and Cash may be found in Schorger, 1952; and Palmer,1944.

81 Allen, 1904.


Frank H. Lattin & Co.

Another important natural history establishment located less than forty mileswest of Ward’s Rochester enterprise, Frank H. Lattin & Co., also cateredto the growing popular interest in natural history. Lattin’s large retail andwholesale business – which specialized in oological specimens and supplies– enjoyed a period of impressive growth in the 1880s and early 1890s beforefalling victim to the economic depression of the mid-1890s and increasinglystringent bird protection legislation that came in the wake of the turn-of-the-century Audubon movement. During his years of operation, however,Lattin’s enterprise became an important supplier of ornithological specimensand supplies, introduced the world of ornithology to thousands, and helped tolegitimize the activities of a growing number of bird skin and egg collectors.

The product of a farming family of moderate means, Frank Haak Lattin(1861–1937; Figure 9) began collecting natural history specimens while ayouth.82 By the time he was in high school, the native of Gaines, NewYork, placed a series of exchange notices in collecting-oriented periodicalsto secure more correspondents with whom to trade specimens. He soondiscovered that many collectors who answered his advertisements, especiallythose in urban areas, lacked the necessary duplicates with which to undertakeexchanges and were more interested in purchasing specimens outright. Tocapitalize on this newly discovered opportunity, Lattin created a small mail-order natural history business in 1881. Lattin used his spare hours to nourishhis growing business while serving briefly as principal of the village school inGaines and reading law with a local firm in the neighboring town of Albion.

Lattin’s decision to launch a monthly periodical,The Young OologistinMay of 1884 – the same year that Webster and Southwick & Jencks begantheir own trade journal – reflected an increasing dedication to his expandingbusiness and his determination to begin specializing in oological specimensand supplies. As part of an ongoing effort to gain a larger circulation forhis new publication (and bring publicity to his natural history enterprise),Lattin widely distributed sample copies ofThe Young Oologistas well asits successor,The Oologist, while offering specimens as premiums to thosewho became, or induced others to become, regular subscribers to the publica-tions.83 He also created a short-lived ornithological association, The Knightsof Audubon, with the hope of emulating Harlan Ballard’s remarkable success

82 The biographical information on Frank H. Lattin that follows comes from a series ofsketches of his life: Anonymous, 1894; Malcolm, 1918; Malcolm, 1930, p. 66; Holmes, 1924,p. 761; and Grant, 1920.

83 For example, Lattin claimed to have distributed 5,000 copies of the first issue ofTheYoung Oologist1 (1884): 9. Most of the premiums offered came from Lattin’s stock. ByOctober 1884 Lattin claimed 1,063 regular subscribers (The Young Oologist1 [1884]: 88).


Figure 9. Portrait of Frank H. Lattin, undated. For nearly two decades Lattin’s natural historyestablishment did a booming business by catering primarily to individual collectors. (From:The Oologist15, no. 6–7 [1899]: 94.)

with the Agassiz Association, a loose-knit confederation of natural historyclubs.84 One year later Lattin published the first in a series of oological

Less than two years later (The Young Oologist3 [1886]: 9–10) he claimed over 2,000subscribers.

84 Lattin’s announcement concerning the Knights of Audubon appeared in March 1885and included a specific reference to the success of Ballard’s organization and contained aconstitution, instructions for organizing local chapters, and by-laws that were taken directly


guides, which he based on Ballard’s Agassiz Association handbooks, toprovide would-be collectors with details on how to obtain, display, transport,and trade specimens.85 Lattin’s publication included a complete list of knownNorth American birds with estimated values for the eggs of most species. Itwas not only a catalog of specimens available to collectors through Lattin,but also a widely accepted basis from which to value specimens intended forexchange.

During the mid-1880s Lattin continued to expand what had until that pointbeen largely a mail-order enterprise. In 1886 he opened two natural historyand “curiosity” stores for walk-in customers at Chautauqua, New York, thesite of the educational, religious, and cultural center that attracted thousandsto the shores of Lake Erie each summer.86 These two shops were the first ofseveral branch locations Lattin opened within the next few years in AtlanticCity, New Jersey; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Chicago, Illinois.

While he was experimenting with retail outlets, Lattin continued to pushthe wholesale side of his business. For example, in 1886 he sold “an immensestock of eggs” for $2500 to W. C. Brownwell of Plymouth, Michigan, whowanted to open a business of his own.87 A year later he sold $3350 worthof “birds, eggs, specimens and supplies” to an established business, R. B.Trouslot and Co., of Valparaiso, Indiana.88 He also bought out the oologicalstock of two large dealers, C. J. Maynard, of Boston, Massachusetts, andOliver Davie, of Columbus, Ohio.89 Both had decided to give up the sale ofspecimens following increasing involvement in publication efforts.

Like Ward, Lattin found that large fairs and exhibitions represented anexcellent opportunity to place his wares before the public. For example,Lattin exhibited specimens, books, and supplies at the Chicago Expositionin 1886, the Buffalo International Fair in 1888, and the Detroit InternationalFair in 1891. But his most ambitious effort was at the Chicago Expositionin 1893. Prior to the event Lattin sold one-half interest in his business toanother dealer, Walter F. Webb of Geneva, New York.90 Frank H. Lattin &Co.’s 2000-square-foot exhibit of bird skins and eggs, shells, taxidermy, and

from Ballard’sHandbook of the Agassiz Association. Lattin’s idea was quickly abandoned.The name, however, was soon taken up by a short-lived bird protection organization, TheAudubon Society, created in 1886 by George Bird Grinnell, and by a subsequent series of stateand national organizations that endure to this day. On the Agassiz Association, see Keeney,1992, pp. 140–145; Lutts, 1990, pp. 28–29; and Barrow, 1992, p. 14.

85 Lattin, 1885. Later editions were published in 1892 and 1897.86 Morrison, 1974.87 [Lattin], 1886.88 [Lattin], 1887.89 Maynard, 1888; and Lattin, 1889.90 Lattin, 1893; and Webb, 1893.


natural history supplies was directly next to Ward’s and won an award fromRobert Ridgway, a judge for the exposition.91 Nearly 10,000 visitors signedLattin’s fair register to receive future catalogs.92

In the years of economic depression following the Chicago fair, Lattinscaled down his once-bustling business. In 1894 he dissolved his partner-ship with Walter F. Webb.93 A year later Lattin announced that he had soldhis mail-order business including his “entire stock of Birds Eggs and Skins,and Naturalists’ Instruments and Supplies with a good general assortment ofMinerals, Fossils, Indian Relics, Shells (all of myduplicatescientific ones),Corals, Echinoderms, Land and Marine Curios, and specimens of all kinds”to one of his former employees, Ernest H. Short. Lattin retained an interestin The OologistandThe Natural Science News(a short-lived weekly that hehad just started) as well as his “jobbing and resort business.”94 In 1899 Lattin,who had recently earned a degree from the medical school at the Universityof Buffalo, announced that he was liquidating his remaining stock as quicklyas he could.95

Five years later Lattin hired Short to editThe Oologist, which beganto loose money with the gradual decline of interest in egg collecting thatfollowed in the wake of the Audubon movement. In 1909 Lattin sold theperiodical to Short, who published it for only three months before selling outto R. M. Barnes, a lawyer and avid bird egg collector from Lacon, Illinois.Barnes continued to publish the magazine for the next thirty-two years beforeallowing it to lapse into obscurity.96

Conclusion

Natural history dealers faced many obstacles in their effort to eke out a livingfrom the sale of specimens. When the economy was strong, maintaining asteady inventory of merchandise remained a constant challenge. When theeconomy languished, however, as it did with increasing frequency at the endof the nineteenth century, the demand for specimens tended to dry up, anddealers were often forced into bankruptcy. During this same period, postal

91 Ridgway, 1901.92 Lattin, 1894, p. 38.93 Shortly after parting with Lattin, Webb began his own periodical,The Museum, as an

outlet to publicize his natural history business. He also published Webb, 1895, a competitor toLattin’s popular oology manual.

94 Lattin, 1895.95 Lattin, 1899.96 An account of Barnes and his association with the periodical is found in the last issue,

Oologist58 (1941): 147–162.


officials initiated periodic campaigns to deny preferential second mailingclass rates to dealers who issued trade journals, thus increasing the cost ofa form of advertising that many merchant naturalists found effective.97

Changing tastes in interior decoration posed another threat to specimendealers. Although it is difficult to say exactly how many, a significant portionof the specimens that dealers sold were destined for the homes and offices ofindividuals who seemed more interested in conforming to the latest trends inhome fashion rather than in serious, methodical collecting or study. Duringthe late-Victorian period the typical middle-class household was heaped to thebrim with a dizzying array of pictures, books, and natural objects. This wasespecially true of that quintessentially Victorian institution, the parlor, whichserved as a kind of semi-public memory palace.98 At the turn of the centurythis aesthetic of exuberance gradually gave way to the more austere aestheticof the Arts and Crafts movement, which emphasized cleaner design linesand frowned on clutter. In 1900, as part of an ongoing campaign to simplifyhome interiors, the magazine editor Edward Bok declared that “[t]he curseof the American home to-day is useless bric-brac.”99 Increasingly Americanstook Bok’s advice to heart, thereby reducing the demand for natural historyspecimens as decorative objects.

Those dealers who relied on the sales of bird and mammal specimensfaced an additional hurdle at the end of the nineteenth century: changingpublic attitudes about the legitimacy of collecting these obviously sentientcreatures. Tension had long existed between the entrepreneurial and romanticimpulses that informed the desire to amass and display natural objects.100

The establishment of many businesses devoted to the sale of natural historyspecimens tended to reinforce the idea that nature was nothing more thana resource or commodity, existing solely for human ends. For example, thewide distribution of natural history dealers’ catalogs undoubtedly influencedthe ornithologist Elliott Coues to declare in his popular collecting manual of1874: “How many examples of the same bird do you want? -All you can get. . . Bird skins arecapital.”101

Romanticism challenged the economic calculus that undergirded thecommodification of nature. Certainly the romantic sensibility alertedcollectors to discover beauty in the natural objects around them and was amajor factor promoting the large-scale growth of natural history collecting.

97 Barrow, 1998, pp. 14–15.98 Greir, 1992.99 Shi, 1985, pp. 186–193, on p. 187.

100 This is not unlike the basic distinction between Arcadian and imperialistic science thatDonald Worster (1985) makes.101 Coues, 1874, p. 12. First emphasis is in the original, while the second is mine.


But romanticism also suggested that our interactions with nature were imbuedwith an aesthetic and spiritual dimension that defied simple economic valu-ation. For some followers the doctrine even implied that humans ought tobe kinder and gentler in their dealings with the natural world.102 This wasespecially true of birds and mammals, which engaged in behaviors that werequite easy to characterize in anthropomorphic terms. The fundamental tensionbetween these opposing conceptions of nature remained largely unarticulateduntil rise of the Audubon movement and the growth of popular interest inbirdwatching around 1900.103

Among the tens of the thousands of Americans who joined Audubonsocieties were some wildlife advocates who felt that all bird and mammalcollecting was anathema. Working with a broad range of less strident protec-tionists, they translated their concerns into educational campaigns designedto raise consciousness about the threat of declining wildlife populations,the creation of nature sanctuaries designed to protect native species fromhuman predation, and most importantly in this context, a series of stateand federal bird protection laws. Most of these laws included a provisionallowing for scientific collecting of protected species, but the individualscharged with enforcing them increasingly viewed much private collecting andmost commercial collecting as illegitimate (and hence, illegal). Even in stateswhere they might have been able to obtain collecting permits, many collectorsbegan to find more satisfaction in wildlife observation.

While some dealers failed to survive these challenges, others attempted toaddress them by changing the emphasis of their business. For example, WalterF. Webb, Frank H. Lattin’s erstwhile business partner, gradually stoppedcarrying birds and eggs and began to focus more on shells, for which thedemand remained healthy well into the twentieth century. With a stock thatincluded as many as 25,000 different species, Webb soon gained a reputa-tion as one of the “leading suppliers of specimen shells in the world.”104 Assales to individuals and larger museums began to decline, Ward’s NaturalScience Establishment began catering more to high schools and colleges thatwanted modest representative collections of plants, shells, insects, and rocksand minerals to use in teaching.105 The demand for these kinds of collec-tions increased dramatically with the nature study movement that emerged at

102 See, for example, Mighetto, 1991. On the humane movement more broadly, see Turner,1980.103 On the rise of the Audubon movement and it relationship to bird collecting andbirdwatching, see Barrow, 1998, pp. 102–181; Doughty, 1975; and Graham, 1990.104 Dance, 1986, p. 183; Abbott, p. 173; and Benson, 1994.105 Ward’s relatives, who provided financial backing for his business, had encouraged him tomove in this direction in the mid-1870s. See, Kohlstedt, 1980, p. 652.


Figure 10. Advertisement for Chas. K. Reed, Taxidermist and Dealer in Everything for theNaturalist, 1894. After many years of focusing on taxidermy, specimens, and naturalists’supplies, at the beginning of the twentieth century Reed and his son increasingly reorientedtheir business toward birdwatchers and wildflower enthusiasts. (From:The Oologist11 [1894]:373.)


the end of the nineteenth century.106 When Charles K. Reed, a taxidermistand natural history dealer from Worcester, Massachusetts, found his businessprospects declining at the beginning of the twentieth century, he and his son,Chester A. Reed, began catering more to birdwatchers and wildflower enthu-siasts (Figure 10).107 Together they published a series of extremely popularfield guides to birds and flowers, several of which remained in print until the1950s. By 1933 they had sold more than 600,000 copies of their bird guidesalone.108

At the same time, a healthy increase in training and career opportunities innatural history opened up a variety of new prospects for would-be naturalists.Many individuals who might have previously established their own specimenbusinesses or worked for another dealer now had the option of pursuing thestudy of natural history in the newly reformed colleges, which were admit-ting more students and placing increasing emphasis on science education,or the newly emerging universities, which began offering graduate degreesin various branches of biology.109 This curricular expansion also providednaturalists with access to more faculty positions at institutions of higherlearning. State fish and game commissions, which were charged with helpingto formulate wildlife policy and administer an increasingly complex seriesof wildlife laws, experienced a similar growth in the first half of the twen-tieth century, thus providing another avenue of employment for those whowere inclined toward natural history.110 The Progressive-era push for a moreactivist, expert-informed government also led to the expansion of employ-ment opportunities for naturalists.111 Federal agencies, like the Bureau of theBiological Survey, the Bureau of Economic Entomology, and the Bureau ofFisheries, all experienced impressive growth during this period.

Natural history dealerships were the product of a series of social, tech-nological, scientific, and cultural developments in the decades following theCivil War. They were born in an age that witnessed the tremendous growth

106 Kohlstedt, 1997; Henson, 1997; and Keeney, 1992, pp. 135–145.107 Charles K. Reed had at least one brush with the law when the New York Audubon Societyclaimed that some specimens he was preparing for exhibition at the St. Louis World’s Fair hadbeen taken in violation of Massachusetts game laws. See, Anonymous, 1904. A year later hesold his remaining stock of birds’ eggs to Frank H. Lattin. See the notice inThe Oologist23(1906): 67.108 See the discussion in Barrow, 1992, pp. 158 and 165. They did not entirely abandon theirinterest in taxidermy. See, Reed and Reed, 1908.109 On reforms in higher education, especially as they relate to science, see Vesey, 1965;Geiger, 1986; and Kohler, 1990. On the transformation of biology, see Maienschein, 1991;Coleman, 1977; Allen, 1978; Pauly, 1984; Benson, 1988; and Borell, 1989.110 On the history of game management in the United States, see Tober, 1981; Dunlap, 1988;Brumsted et al., 1993; and Young, 1997.111 Hays, 1959; and Dupree, 1957.


of popular interest in natural history, without an immediate correspondingexpansion of educational and career opportunities in the field. A variety ofenterprising naturalists scrambled to exploit this new niche. The commercialenterprises they created provided specimens, publication outlets, training, andjobs for naturalists of all motivations and levels of expertise, while stronglypromoting the continued expansion of the broad public interest in naturalhistory upon which their success depended.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Janet Hinshaw for tracking down several of the sourcesand illustrations used in this article; Llyn Sharp for granting access tothe book collection at the Virginia Museum of Natural History; and RoyGoodman, E. Philip Krider, and Amy Nelson for providing various usefulleads. The editors of this journal and two anonymous reviewers carefullyread the manuscript and provided many helpful suggestions, for which I amgrateful. The initial research for this publication was funded in part by aNational Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, while the final versionwas written during a research leave provided by Virginia Polytechnic Institu-tion and State University. I greatly appreciate the support that both institutionshave provided.

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