Joseph Dorfeuille and the Western Museum" Are in the Library of the Natural History Museum with My Detailed Notes in Longhand and Complete Correspondence

Joseph Dorfeuiile and the Western Museum N time of peace and plenty, we can afford to indulge in the pastime of disparaging and debunking our saints and heroes, Ibut when storm and stress come, we turn to a respectful study of the men and women who have built up our nation and feel inclined to put them back on their pedestals again. That, doubtless, is the reason why historians great and small all over our land are writing and why we are reading about the American, his vast and shifting background and varied achievements, throwing into fresh relief the great figures we already know and finding others who once upon a time accomplished their work and have since been forgotten. Such a man I stumbled upon in trying to piece together the tattered shreds of history which connect the Cincinnati Society of Natural His- tory, organized in 1870, back through the Western Academy of Sci- ences (1835) with the Western Museum, opened to the public as one of the first scientific museums in the United States (1820). I found in this research a great many other interesting people and things which had helped build up the reputation of our city but are now no longer heard of, but this one man in particular took such strong hold of my imagination that I must needs try, at least, to rescue him from the limbo of vague and forgotten figures and clothe him once more in flesh and blood. He was French, one of those cultured aristocrats, widely scattered, who leavened our crude young communities with the love of letters, science and the arts, and then nurtured them. Some of these men had belonged to our soil since the Grand Monarch held sway over so much of it. Some of them had come later, looking for liberty in the new land dedicated to freedom and had thrown in their lot with ours as Lafayette so ardently did. And then there were occasional companies seeking better homes like the tragic pilgrims to illstarred Gallipolis. Joseph Dorfeuiile may have been the offspring of one or another of these groups, already a part of our hybrid American stock. We have not yet determined the place or the precise date of his birth—about 1790. We do know that he was French, a nephew of the Duchesse de Richelieu, and that he bore the title of Count. Our historians speak, but without detail, of his extensive travels in Europe, the Orient and America, before he brought his collections of scientific and archaeological specimens to Cincinnati and settled here. A scientist by inheri- tance and enthusiastic bent, he had, it seems, earned a modest living by showing his curios, for a small admission fee, as one of the numerous travelling museums of the day. Incidentally, his extensive wanderings gave him a wide knowledge of American archaeology and natural science which held his chief interest. John P. Foote, in his "Schools of Cincinnati" (1855), refers to him as a "zealous naturalist from Louisiana, who had made some collections and was seeking a suitable place for the establishment of a

[3] museum." As Foote was an ardent worker in the group with whom Dorfeuille became associated and was for a long time secretary of the Western Academy of Natural Sciences, his statement carries authority. Dorfeuille himself adds a few clues. Our illustration III shows part of a classification of insects in his scrapbook which he inscribed as being for a work on the insects of Louisiana. We have also his own statement (Western Quarterly Reporter of Medical, Surgical and Natural Science, 1822) that in 1808 he examined a curious "insect-plant" found in Natchitoches. In the same publication he speaks of his father, M. G. Dorfeuille, as having made a new application of numbers under the name of Octorithmal Calculus. It would be delightful if we could establish his kinship with C. L. M. Dorfeuille, whose work, "Sur l'existence des Dragons," published in a little town near Poitiers in France (1799), is listed in Sherborn's "Index Animalium" (London, 1902). Clara Longworth, Countess de Chambrun, gives a good deal of space and praise to Dorfeuille and as she had access to the Longworth family papers and also to a wealth of material preserved in the Sor- bonne and other great French libraries, some details which she alone has given us deserve consideration. In "Cincinnati: Story of the Queen City" (1939), she writes: "Count d'Orfeuille, he who had lived long enough at Gallipolis to know the settlers' tastes, proved himself a precursor of Barnum when he invested his capital in the Western Museum. Visitors to the Queen City unanimously declared that Mon- sieur d'Orfeuille had the best natural history collection on the conti- nent and admired the examples of Indian arts and crafts which were shown with the prehistoric utensils excavated from the seven mounds of the region." Incidentally, it may be noted that the French spelling of his name, which Mme. de Chambrun uses here, did not come into use until after his death. His own consistent use of the anglicized form, Dorfeuille, as well as his command of fluent English, inclines one to think that he was born in this country. He is variously recorded as having come to Cincinnati from St. Louis, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, etc. His scrapbook (Illustration V) reveals his having been in St. Louis, 1817 and 1818. Dorfeuille may have been drawn to Cincinnati in 1820, or a little earlier, as was Audubon, to help Dr. Drake in preparing for exhibition the specimens of natural history and archaeology for the Western Museum, which was opened to the public in 1820. He soon became a curator there, together with Dr. Robert Best and seems to have worked also in a similar, though purely commercial museum, opened by Ralph Letton in 1819. (Letton and Willet). Cincinnati newspapers speak of Dorfeuille's lectures for the benefit of the Greeks in 1822. They mention his playing the organ at a con- cert of the Haydn Society, December 27, 1822 (Advertiser). In 1823, when the stockholders of the Western Museum realized that they could no longer bear the burden of work and expense involved in carrying it on and their efforts to sell it to advantage proved unavailing, they gave it to Dorfeuille, his only obligation being to admit the original subscribers and their families free of charge. Dor- [4] feuille added his own collections to it and undoubtedly expected to earn his living from it. He must have been quite confident of this, as he very soon invested a considerable sum in the purchase of an important Kentucky collection. A very complete and at the same time amusing inventory of the Western Museum was published in The Cincinnati Literary Gazette, edited by J. P. Foote. This appeared on March 13, 1824, in the form of a poem of ten eight-line stanzas signed by "P" and metered to the old tune "Songs of Shepherds in Rustical Roundelays." It is too long to quote in full, but part must be included here:

"Wend hither, ye members of polished society— Ye who the bright phantoms of pleasure pursue— To see of strange objects the endless variety, Monsieur Dorfeuille will expose to your view. For this fine collection, which courts your inspection, Was brought to perfection by his skill and lore, When those who projected and should have protected Its interests, neglected to care for it more. "Here are pictures, I doubt not, as old as Methusalem, But done in what place I can't say, nor by whom; Some of which represent certain saints of Jerusalem, And others, again, monks of Venice and Rome; Old Black Letter pages of far-distant ages, Which puzzled the sages to read and translate, And manuscripts musty, coins clumsy and rusty, Of which time, untrusty, has not kept the date. "Lo, here is a cabinet of great curiosities, Procured from the Redmen who once were our foes; Unperished tokens of dire animosities, Darts, tomahawks, war-cudgels, arrows and bows, And bone-hooks for fishes and old earthen dishes, To please him who wishes o'er such things to pore, Superb wampum sashes, and mica-slate glasses, Which doubtless the lasses much valued of yore." The seven verses which follow complete the catalogue by including "things unnatural," such as young pigs with two heads and lambs with eight feet bottled in spirits, while "the mighty Magician of these things Elysian is plain to your vision" Dorfeuille, of course. Many travellers of distinction visited Cincinnati in the 1820s and 1830s, when it was regarded as one of the showplaces of America, and they wrote of their admiration for both the city and its Western Museum. Among them were Wm. Bullock, the Trollopes, Maximilian Prince of Weed, Dr. Frederick Hall, Fredrika Bremer, Michel Cheva- lier. Contemporaries in Cincinnati who approved and promoted the Museum were Daniel and Benjamin Drake, E. D. Mansfield, Timothy Flint, John P. Foote, and other well-known citizens. Our later histories of Cincinnati by Howe, the Fords, Wm. H. Venable, Charles Greve, Charles Goss, and others, all accepted the tradition of the Western Museum's importance and of Dorfeuille's high standing as a scientist and educator. Venable describes him as "a cyclopedia of popular knowledge who gave didactic addresses on languages, books,

[5] birds and I know not what besides." The press of the period noted repeatedly his musical skill and his contributions to the fine arts as well as science, and attested his activity and the scope of his knowledge. One of our English visitors (1818-1823) wrote two books about America, devoting a good deal of space to Cincinnati, the Western Museum, and in particular to some beautiful colored drawings of parasitical insects which she saw there. These were numerous, made by Dorfeuille in his examination under a powerful miscroscope, of specimens collected by him for the illustration of a book on the subject. (Cincinnati Literary Gazette, Vol. 1, p. 194.) My list of references, printed, and through correspondence, is too long to include in this pamphlet. This list and my preliminary typewritten notes for "Joseph Dorfeuille and the Western Museum" are in the library of the Natural History Museum with my detailed notes in longhand and complete correspondence. Nor is there room for all the names of those who have so gen- erously helped me in this unaccustomed task. Some are recorded later, in specific connections, but a few more must be set down here. These should be, in Cincinnati, beside Mr. Senior, Dr. Caster, Mr. Dury and Mrs. Brammer of the Natural History Society, Mr. F. W. Hinkle, Miss Sophie M. Collmann, Miss Eleanor Wilby, Miss Lillian M. Keller and Mr. Milton Kinder who guided this pamphlet through the press. Out-of-town, I owe especial thanks to Mr. Paul Weer of the Indiana Historical Society, Mr. Harry B. Weiss, co-author of "Thomas Say, Early American Naturalist," Miss Mary B. Cobb, Li- brarian of the Boston Society of Natural History and Miss Mary A. Willcox, formerly Professor of Zoology at Wellesley College. The prestige of the Western Museum continued high in the early 1820s and it was well attended and drew many a tribute from press and public. Rev. Timothy Flint, in his magazine for May, 1827, writes: "To see such numerous and magnificent collections from the several kingdoms of nature, so happily arranged in such large and commodious apartments, in a city little more than thirty years old, is a circumstance that excites surprise." In the course of time, however, the scientific displays and even sensational monsters and malformations became too familiar to attract the community, nor were there enough sightseers from the teeming river traffic which brought, almost hourly, fresh groups who rushed to the nearby museum to spend a short interval on shore. Local patronage might have been sustained on a high plane had it been possible for Dorfeuille to acquire fresh scientific exhibits such as were constantly flowing from their native Cincinnati source to institutions far and wide in America and even abroad. The interest of Thomas Jefferson, when President, and also of Benjamin Franklin, should be recalled here. Jefferson had extensive explorations made at Big Bone and sent large and important collections, as gifts, to Phila- delphia and also to France. Museums are expensive institutions! A few figures will be of interest here. T. R. Adam, in his little book "The Civic Value of Museums" (1937, American Association of Adult Education), makes the statement that the fabulously rich American Museum of Natural History in New York had just decided that a further $10,000,000.00 in endowment was required to meet its annual expenses. Pause for a moment to compare this sum with the largest single gift which in 125 years of continuous effort the Natural History movement in Cincinnati has ever received—the bequest of $50,000.00 which Charles Bodman left to the Society of Natural History in 1875! Not that we could expect to rival in size and wealth the vast institutions in New York and Washington and Chicago, but we cannot help asking ourselves why we have starved this valuable institution of ours, while lesser cities all over the country have adequately housed and staffed and added to their Natural History collections. It takes more than one reason to account for the falling off of interest in Dorfeuille's museum. First, a privately owned institution seldom grows, or even endures for very long. Then, the religious backing earlier given to the study of natural science as evidence of the handiwork of God began to give way before the discoveries and conclusions of Darwin, Cuvier, Wra. Smith and other epoch-making scientists. Again, the physicians who, for their own research as well as the education of the public had been the most ardent promoters of the Western Museum, began to put their resources more and more into developing the laboratory work required by their profession. The cutting up of the vast domain of science, which had been the field and had furnished the inspiration of such museums as the Western, was beginning to take place. To quote Max Meisel, these early museums were the "pioneer beginnings of now numerous and distinct branches of Natural History; mineralogy, botany, geology, palaeontology, em- bryology, comparative anatomy, physiology, microscopy, anthropol- ogy and ethnology, and zoology with its various branches and these branches were beginning to separate themselves into more specialized laboratory fields." We may add to these general trends the difficulties to be overcome in all pioneer settlements, and the terrific pressure which early Cincinnati labored under from floods, diseases such as cholera and malaria, and grave financial depressions both local and national. Some one should record the struggles and appraise the achievements of these early museums. The Peales in Philadelphia and John Scudder in New York went through the same ordeal as Dorfeuille, when varied entertainment and sensationalism had to be added to science to attract enough gate receipts to furnish them a living. It required the genius of a P. T. Barnum to accomplish this! Dorfeuille tried various expedients to increase his income. In "Thomas Say, Early American Naturalist," by Harry B. Weiss and Grace M. Zeigler (1931) we learn that Say wrote to Dorfeuille, June 19, 1834, to order type from his foundry. It is understood that Dor- feuille occasionally worked for Lumen Watson, the watch and clock

[7] maker, who employed Hiram Powers. His extraordinarily skillful craftsmanship may have been employed by others and he may have been paid for some of the lectures and other entertainment he provided outside his museum. As early as 1829, we learn through a letter, kindly copied for us by Mr. Paul Weer of the Indiana Historical So- ciety, that Dorfeuille was negotiating the sale of a large collection of his fossils for the sum of $1,000.00. The letter is in the Mss. Division, Dreer Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Phila- delphia. It was from Dr. Samuel George Morton, a distinguished Philadelphia physician, who was trying to secure the collection for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and it says that Mr. John Vaughan, a Philadelphia merchant and philanthropist, was also trying to secure it for the American Philosophical Society in that city. Neither of these organizations could give me any record of acquisition, so the sale probably fell through for lack of funds. Minutes of our Western Academy of Sciences in the Historical Li- brary in Cincinnati record that at a meeting February 17, 1837, Dor- feuille offered to sell to the Academy of which he was then a curator, 10,000 specimens of natural history and a large library of scientific books. The committee appointed to confer with him comprised Messrs. Daniel Drake, Robert Buchanan, George Graham and J. G. Anthony. No further reference to the matter could be found. This was shortly before he moved away from Cincinnati. When the reputation of Cincinnati drew Mrs. Frances Trollope here (1827) for her disastrous three years struggle to wrest a fortune from the frontier, she met and liked Dorfeuille and his museum and included a tribute to them in the midst of her otherwise vitriolic attack on American life in general. She wrote: "Cincinnati has not many lions to boast of, but among them are two museums of natural history: both of these contain many respectable specimens, particularly that of Mr. Dorfeuille, who has, moreover, some highly interesting Indian antiquities. He is a man of taste and science, but a collection formed strictly according to their dictates would by no means satisfy the western metropolis. The people have a most extravagant passion for wax figures and the two museums vie with each other in displaying specimens of this barbarous art. As Mr. Dorfeuille cannot trust to his science for attracting the citizens, he has put his ingenuity into requi- sition, and this has proved to him the surer aid of the two. He has constructed a pandemonium in an upper story . . . one of the most amusing exhibitions imaginable." The "pandemonium" to which she refers was constructed in 1829 but before then Dorfeuille had started to use the "barbarous art" of wax figures with the aid of Hiram Powers, then a mere lad eking out a precarious livelihood by his varied talents and ingratiating personality. Dorfeuille seems first to have noticed Powers's skill when he repaired some figures on a clock for Lumen Watson, and to have employed him to mend some of his own broken figures and later to construct the historical portrait figures—famous and often infamous —then so generally popular. Such figures, often of real educational

[8] value, are universally known through collections like that of Mme. Tussaud in London, the Musee Grevin in Paris and our own Eden Musee in New York (1860-1910). For us, the most interesting figure in the Western Museum would be that of Dorfeuille himself, described as presiding over his collections like a gracious, dignified host. A separate gallery in his museum was devoted to historic characters. On an upper floor, open only after dark and murky with dim, artificial light, was the climax of Hiram Powers's skill and ingenuity, the "Infernal Regions" or "Dorfeuille's Hell." According to Tom Trollope, who spent a few months in Cincinnati while it was being built, this sensational tableau was a representation not only of the Inferno but of Purgatory and Paradise as well. He says that his mother, a great lover of Dante, conceived the plan of it when Powers was casting about for a new attraction. He snapped it up eagerly and carried it out with the aid of Hervieu, the painter. Tom Trollope gives a very full account of its origin in his book, "What I Remember" and his article, "Some Recollections of Hiram Powers" in Lippincott's Maga- zine. Both were published in 1875. Tom Trollope's enthusiastic friendship for Powers, a few years his senior, may have caused him to divert to Powers some of the credit which belongs to Dorfeuille, whom he dismisses with youthful nonchalance as "a little Frenchman named Dorfeuille—not a bad sort of little man, I believe, and with some amount of literary and other talent." The friendship of Tom and Powers was renewed when, years later, Tom and his mother moved to Florence just after Powers had completed his Greek Slave. The two had a jolly time recalling the lively days when the Infernal Regions was being constructed. Aside from its sensational features, the spectacle gave evidence of great skill and ingenuity, especially in mechanics and the early application of elec- tricity. In such matters Hiram Powers is considered a genius who might easily have become even more notable as an inventor than he was as a sculptor had not fate in the person of Nicholas Longworth intervened and packed him off to study in Italy. In a letter to his patron in 1858 he wrote with nostalgia of the happy days spent in his little workshop in the Western Museum where he is said to have been employed for seven years. A relic of those happy days is preserved in the Industrial Museum of the Ohio Mechanics Institute as part of the important collection of instruments of Dr. John Locke given by his son about 1914. The label reads: "This lathe was made by Hiram Powers, the famous sculptor. It was constructed for the purpose of making the mechanical parts of a representation of Dante's Inferno for the old Museum formerly located on Main and Pearl St. Col. Locke Collection."

Much confusion has arisen because thes Western Museum and its Inferno remained in Cincinnati after Dorfeuille left and opened one, only slightly different, in New York. Foote says it was the original which was taken to New York and the advertisement of it says the same. The Cincinnati Inferno about this time was closed for renova- tion and reopened March 1, 1838. [9] Although the Cincinnati spectacle is called in the advertisement "Dante's Hell," it continued to be popularly known as "The Infernal Regions" or "Dorfeuille's Hell" long after Dorfeuille was dead and gone, a tribute, surely, to the impression created by his personality. Considering the fact that by 1840 there were two Infernal Regions in Cincinnati as well as Dorfeuille's own particular Hell which he had carried away, it is not to be wondered at that misstatements should appear in our most trustworthy histories. In a number of these it is stated that Dorfeuille's Hell went up in smoke on March 31, 1840. This error, at least, may be disposed of by referring to newspaper reports, as follows: The Daily Chronicle, March 31, 1840. "At 1 o'clock, a fire broke out in Franks' Museum, in the building owned by Mr. McGrew on Front Street, between Syca- more and Broadway. At 2 P.M. the upper part of the building is enveloped in flames, but the adjoining houses will probably be saved." Daily Gazette, April 1, 1840. "FIRE—The Infernal Regions took fire yesterday afternoon and before they could be extinguished the two upper stories of the building on Front Street, between Sycamore and Broadway, occupied by Franks' Museum, were destroyed. There was danger at one time, of a large conflagration, but the power and activity of our admirable fire department succeeded in over- coming the flames. We are not informed of the extent of Mr. Franks' loss." Daily Gazette, April 2, 1840. "Western Museum, April 2, 1840. Gentlemen: I find in your paper of today an editorial stating that the 'Infer- nal Regions' were consumed by fire yesterday. I hope you will have this statement corrected, for the exhibition originally got up by Dorfeuille, and made by Powers, now in Italy, is still in operation in the Western Museum at the corner of Main and Pearl Streets. Mr. Franks had something in his Museum which he called 'Hellas Regions' (got up long after this) which I learn was consumed yesterday. I hope therefore you will refer to this subject again, as your notice of yesterday will evidently injure this institution. W. W." (It is supposed that the initials are those of William Wood, an active member of the Western Academy of Sciences.) Daily Gazette, April 2, 1840. "EXPLANATORY—An interested correspondent requests us to state that it was not the real 'Infernal Regions' which were burnt day before yesterday. These he located at the S. W. corner of Main and Pearl Streets, where he says they are constantly open for the reception of all persons whose evil inclinations may lead them to enter therein." The fullest description of the "REAL" Inferno which continued to amuse or terrify Cincinnatians until about 1853 was in the original leaflet advertising it. A copy of this, perhaps the only surviving copy, was in the hands of Tom Trollope when he wrote about it in 1875. In his book and in his Lippincott article he gives a full account of the astonishing tableau, quoting in part from the grandiloquent "program and bill of the exhibition as it was drawn up by my mother" which covered "four pages of a folio sheet." Very lively early descriptions of the Museum are given by Wm. H. Venable in his "Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley" (1891) and in his "Buckeye Boyhood" (1911), the chapter of the latter, "Going Down to Cincinnati" having been published earlier in "The Hesperian Tree" (1900). Venable visited Cincinnati in the late 40s, when a boy, and records his impressions with all the gusto of an exuberant boy. His visit was made fully ten years after Dorfeuille had left Cincinnati but he speaks of it always as "Dorfeuille's Museum." [10] Although "Dorfeuille's Hell" is better known and remembered than anything else connected with the Museum, a part of Venable's description deserves a place here. He writes: "I recall yet the feeling of terror with which I beheld the glaring eyes of the frightful female named Sin, who sat hard by the infernal gates, and who jumped at me with a horrid cry. The King of Terrors himself, I recollect as a decidedly good-natured though long-haired old gentleman, and I did not understand why all the visitors laughed so impolitely when he assured them he was very glad to see them in that place." Let us quote, too, a few lines from an advertisement in rhyme which appeared in The Cincinnati Chronicle and Literary Gazette (later the Mirror) in June, 1834. The lilt of these lines recalls the earlier verses by "P"—and how we would like to know who "P" was! But already the Infernal Regions have taken the spot light away from science. "Come hither, come hither by night or by day, There's plenty to look at and little to pay, You may stroll through the rooms and at every turn, There's something to please you and something to learn. If weary and heated, rest here at your ease, There's a fountain to cool you and music to please, And further, a secret I still have to tell, You may ramble upstairs, and on earth be in—" Although we know that the Western Museum with its Infernal Regions was carried on for many years after Dorfeuille left Cincinnati, we do not know positively whether he retained an interest in it nor how he distributed his scientific collections if he did dispose of them. No mention of them appears in his New York advertisements when he opened the Inferno there and we have been able to find no trace of them elsewhere. Venable saw exhibits of the kind and refers to them briefly. Greve, an extremely reliable historian, repeats Shot- well's statement that the Western Museum was taken over by the Western Academy of Sciences. There is no evidence of this in the minutes of the Academy which are preserved in our Historical Society. These minutes are, however, very incomplete and there are none at all later than April 24, 1854, although the Academy did not dissolve until about 1870, when it turned over all its collections and its balance in funds to the newly organized Cincinnati Society of Natural History. We cannot help wondering whether the signature "W. W." on the news item about the Western Museum in connection with the fire of March 31, 1840, may prove to have some value as a clue. William Wood was a prominent member of the Western Academy. In Dor- feuille's absence, William Wood could have been managing the Western Museum and have formed a link between Dorfeuille and the Academy. Both Dorfeuille and Wood died in the summer of 1840 and we know that, a few years later, Frederick Franks, whose museum on Front Street had been confused with the Western at the time of the fire, had reestablished himself, combined his new accumulations with whatever was left of the Western Museum and was running it as proprietor at the old location, Pearl and Main. He later moved it to

[11] Third and Sycamore andjiturned it over to his son, Frank Franks, who continued it until about 185"^ when it faded out as a general museum with characteristic vagueness and was continued as a gallery of the fine arts as it had been when Frederick Franks first opened it in 1828. With all these changes it appears inevitable that Dorf euille's museum should have been broken up and, more than likely, that the Western Academy should rescue at least a part of the scientific collections. The only tangible object which we can say positively belonged to it beside Hiram Powers's lathe in the O. M. I. is the fine head of a wooden statue of Minerva which used to stand in front of the Museum at Main and Pearl and later at 78 Sycamore Street. It was made by Schaefer who carved many a figurehead for the Ohio River steamboats and doubtless also many of the wooden Indians which used to enliven our streets. Ford states that Schaefer, a German, came to Cin- cinnati in 1814 and made the Minerva in 1822. He later anglicized his name as Shepherd and went into business with Sims, the firm being highly regarded. A footnote in "Cincinnati in 1826" reads: "The Fig- ure Heads and other sculptured ornaments with which our steamboats are decorated and which are so justly admired are made by Messrs. Sims and Shepherd of this city." Meantime, what about Joseph Dorfeuille himself! Surely, never did a showman leave fewer records of his personal life! Dorf euille's scrapbook and miniature in the Library of the Historical and Philo- sophical Society of Ohio, located in Cincinnati, are the most intimate and interesting personal records of him that we have found. His appearance and character are revealed in the miniature (our frontis- piece) which shows a refined, alert face, of the blond type found in certain parts of France, with blue eyes and clean-cut, long, thin, slightly aquiline nose. It is painted on ivory of the conventional oval, about three inches high. The mounting, in a pin, is unusual with indi- cations that Dorfeuille may have worked on it himself, especially as it does not exactly fit the ivory. There is a smaller oval glass at the back through which can be seen two strands of blond hair intertwined in a "true lovers' knot" and two little wisps alongside of these. The costume resembles Hervieu's illustrations for Mrs. Trollope's book (1830) and we would like to think the miniature was painted by Hervieu who included Dorfeuille's portrait in the group of distinguished men who received Lafayette when he visited Cincinnati in 1825. In making his huge painting of this event a few years later, Hervieu made his portrait heads with meticulous care and as he was a very fine painter it would be a wonderful thing if we could see again, through his genius, such men as Governor Morrow, Generals Harrison, Lytle, and Desha then Governor of Kentucky, Captain Lytle, Colonels Pendleton and King, Judge Burnet, Daniel Gano, William Ruffin, Daniel Drake, Timothy Flint, and Messrs. Foster, Foote, Symmes, Payton, Hiram Powers and Joseph Dorfeuille. But the painting (12 by 16 feet) is one of the many interesting documents we have lost! A very complete description of it can be found in The Western Monthly Review, February, 1830. [12] Although the large scrapbook is filled mainly with prints in all media and from all sources of the things Dorfeuille was interested in collecting, the most important pages are devoted to his own drawings, charts and notes on scientific subjects. These furnish such valuable clues to his work and deepest interests and such convincing proof of his skill and taste as draftsman, designer and chirographer that a few pages as well as his miniature have been used as illustrations in this pamphlet. The one entitled "A convenient way to calcu- late the latitude of a place" is headed "St. Louis, 15th January, 1817." (Illustration V). The ease, almost playful, with which he handles an involved technical problem here, the precise and ready English, the casual use of French in one brief note, the erasure of pencilled figures before the finishing in ink, all have significance, as well as the beautiful penmanship, though it was evidently written in haste and probably for his own eyes alone. A delightful swirl in red ink which does not show in our black and white reproduction serves to accent and also ornament the place where he has set down the results of his calculations, "Monday, 20th January, 1817." There are two delicate and beautiful pencil drawings in the scrapbook of the same stretch of country along a river with mountains beyond, one of which (Illustration VI) he has labeled "Campo di Cincinato," that Dr. Kenneth Caster, Professor of Geology and Geog- raphy at the University of Cincinnati, identifies as probably at the edge of the Dolomites, because of the precisely defined topographical forms. A small figure in Tyrolean garb seems to verify this opinion. Dr. Caster says that many of these low lying, arable stretches in Italy are called by this name, after the great agrarian Emperor. A meticulously drawn and colored chart of the Mississippi shows a familiarity with its every curve, islet and sand bar equal to that of a river pilot. Could this knowledge be taken to indicate that his early home was indeed in Louisiana, on the River? Or perhaps merely that he was associated with Dr. Drake in his vast plans for studying the great western rivers region? Of paramount interest in the scrapbook are the diagrams (Illustra- tions III and IV), which show the relation between the Linnean system of classifying insects and one which he had derived from it and named the "Modern System." His original drawing for the large circular chart of the same subject, published later in the Western Quarterly Reporter (1822), has corrections and many minutely written amplifications in his own beautiful hand. Among subjects of prints and drawings not his own included in the scrapbook may be roughly itemized anatomy, human and animal; Indians; a New Zealand Chief; monsters and malformations; antlers; insects; mastodon bones; diluvial graves in Montgomery County; fossils; coins and medals; Greek and other vases; alphabets, etc. Also, a plan of Cincinnati for Drake's Statistical View, 1815, a map of America showing the location of Indian tribes about 1800, a plan of the Bastille, one of Cherbourg Harbor in 1786 (in color), Falls of the Ohio drawn by J, Flint in 1824, and many maps and diagrams by the [13] noted Dr. John Locke whose early educational work was so closely linked with that of the men who organized the Western Museum and, later, the Western Academy of Sciences. In the Advertiser of May 8, 1824, appears one of the few personal items to be found about Dorfeuille. It states briefly that he and Jeanette Davis were married May 6, 1824, by the eminent Presby- terian divine, Joshua Lacey Wilson. Since a rather elaborate advertisement of Dorfeuille's Western Museum appears in the same issue of the Advertiser as his marriage notice, I searched diligently and fruitlessly for something further in the news columns. In those days, the newspapers carried scarcely any free personals. In a letter in our Historical Library of June 28, 1825, to Wm. T. Howell in Philadel- phia, Mr. W. G. W. Gano refers to his enclosure on "Dorfeuille's Romance." This may have been a cutting from a local magazine, but we have not been able to find it. The years 1824-5 were momentous in the history of our region. Along with Lafayette came Fanny Wright whose enthusiasm induced the Trollopes to make their venture later. After her own spectacular adventures, the beautiful and brilliant Fanny settled down here as the wife of a by no means spectacular French scientist. She herself is said to have stood well among men of science in France and to have cooperated with Wm. Maclure, the fairy godfather of New Harmony. It was in 1825 that Robert Dale Owen started his colony there and Maclure's munificient enthusiasm brought many brilliant scientists, like Thomas Say, within reach of us. Rafinesque records that he visited the "Museum of Mr. Dorfeuille" and lectured there. That Joseph Dorfeuille should have played a notable part in these stirring times among such men and women and then have faded out so completely seems very odd, indeed! On January 10, 1824, he was Master of Ceremonies of the Euterpian Society, a prominent musical organization, and about that time he was lecturing for the benefit of the Greeks. Throughout the 1820's both travellers and the local press were giving unstinted praise to both him and his museum. I have a letter from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia which establishes him among "type founders." Let me quote it in part: "Dr. Isaac Lea, a very eminent naturalist and President of this Academy from 1858 to 1863, apparently was in touch with Joseph Dorfeuille. We find that Joseph Dorfeuille sent to Dr. Lea a specimen of a land shell for identification. This specimen was described by Isaac Lea in the 'Transactions' of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. VI, 1839, Page 107, and named Polygyra dorfeuilliana. Isaac Lea states in his description that this is the only specimen of this particular shell that he has seen and that it was sent to him by Mr. Dorfeuille." Let us recall now a few known dates near the time of his disappear- ance. Our Directory, 1836-37, has his residence on Third Street, between Vine and Race. On March 31, 1838, Dorfeuille is recorded as present at a meeting of the Western Academy of Natural Sciences. The name does not reappear in our directories from 1836-7 until 1842

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[Blank Page] and then Cist's Directory has Jeanette Dorfeuille, McFarland Street, in the 2nd Ward. Very anxious to fill in this gap, I followed a clue thrown out by Foote and repeated by several of our later historians, that he took his possessions to New York and died there at no recorded date that I was able to find. I wrote to four learned associations in New York but without success. Next, thinking that some clue might be found in Chicago, since Dorfeuille's niece and grandniece who had owned the miniature and scrapbook had lived there, I appealed to Miss P. McLaughlin, one of my old students with a flair for research, and she gave me the necessary link: Longworth's New York Directory for 1839 iisted Joseph Dorfeuille's address as City Saloon, 218 Broadway. This was not a very inspiring discovery but in a brief and lucky hour in the special City reference room of the New York Public Library (42nd St. and Broadway) I found two invaluable items,—Dorfeuille's death notice (July 23, 1840) and the fact that the City Saloon, 218 Broadway, was a great exhibition room at the same address as John Scudder's American Museum, bought by P. T. Barnum a year later. Not having time to search further, I commissioned another of my artist friends with talent and experience in library detective work— Norbert Heermann, painter, art critic and biographer of Frank Duve- neck—to follow up these clues. His visits to the libraries of New York and Brooklyn yielded material which I have been able to enlarge later, by correspondence. So, for the last chapter of Dorfeuille's life, I can give documents. The advertisement of the Infernal Regions in the City Saloon, illustrated (Illustration VII) from a photostat from the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer, May 29, 1839, repeats almost word for word the advertisement of "Dante's Hell" as it appeared in Cin- cinnati papers (Gazette, March 1, 1838, and later) just before it reopened after being renovated with assistance of "the celebrated artist, Samuel M. Lee, Esq." The introduction and the concluding paragraph are different. There is no mention in the Cincinnati advertisement of "Skeletons of Ohio malefactors executed for criminal offenses." This grisly detail was, however, balanced in Cincinnati by the horrific head, heart and right hand of Hoover, pickled in glass for the "good moral and religious purpose" intended by the murderer himself, when, before his execution, he bequeathed his body to the Western Museum to be exhibited publicly as a "warning to others of the awful risk attending a departure from the paths of virtue." (A masterly understatement if ever there was one!) "Admission 25 cents without distinction of age. Republican, Whig, Post and Phoenix will copy for a week." It seems odd that not one of the many and explicit advertisements of the Infernal Regions, at any time, either in Cincinnati or New York, includes so much as a reference to the Purgatory and Paradise which, according to Tom Trollope, were described in the original folder got out at the opening of the spectacle. Nor in the numerous advertisements in the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer was [15] any reference made to scientific exhibits other than to various instruments involved in the manipulation of light to transform pictures into the appearance of reality. Such important sounding terms as "Noc- turnal Polymorphous Fantoscope, a new Philosophical Apparatus, lately from London" which filled in the time before the Infernal Re- gions opened and showed 27 subjects ranging from dancing cats to Cherubini and from George Washington and a shrouded skeleton to Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, were exploited. There was also a "faithful COSMORAMIC view of the conflagration of the National Theatre and French and African Churches, the viewing of which will relieve the teditousness heretofore felt in awaiting the Phantoscope and Infernal Regions." Such words, now mostly obsolete and very likely without precedent in the English language, as Spectaculum, Cosmorama, Diorama, Fantoscope or Plantoscope appear frequently in the New York advertisements of Dorfeuille's Museum and we wonder whether Hiram Powers, then in Italy, might not still have lent his inventive genius to some of these early contraptions for visual entertainment, some of which, such as the travel series, were of real educational value. That Powers was still in touch with Dorfeuille is made evident by the advertisement of an exhibition of his work in the City Saloon, the quality of which was vouched for by Wm. Bullock, "late of the Mu- seum of Egyptian Hall, London," whose wonderful home in Kentucky, two miles from Cincinnati, was one of our early show places. The Morning Courier of November 1, 1839, carried an extended advertisement of the Powers exhibition in which the star features were the "Male and Female Exquisite" and "General Jackson in the Roman costume crowned with laurels by the beauty of New Orleans, likeness taken in 1828." Let us turn from Dorfeuille's efforts to earn a living by novel and sensational entertainment such as suited his day to the bits of personal history brought to light by our research in New York and Brooklyn. The death notice which Mr. Heermann found at the newspaper branch of the New York Public Library, 737 West 25th Street, is from the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer, July 24, 1840. "DIED—On Thursday afternoon 23d inst, of consumption, Mr. Jo- seph Dorfeuille, formerly of Cincinnati, in the 49th year of his age. His funeral will take place at 5 o'clock from the home of his brother- in-law, B. W. Davis, 56 Fulton Street, Brooklyn. His friends and the friends of the family are invited to attend without further notice." He was later given by Mr. Herbert F. Ricard, Librarian of the Long Island Collection of the Queen's Borough Public Library in Jamaica, N. Y., two highly interesting items from the Long Island Star:—• "Friday, July 31, 1840. In this city on Thursday evening last, Joseph Dorfeuille, aged 49 years, formerly of Cincinnati. Mr. D. was distinguished as a geologist and naturalist and was preparing a work for publication on scientific subjects." The other:—"Friday, August 1, 1840. Antiquities of America.—We are happy to learn, that notwith- [16] standing the lamented death of Mr. Joseph Dorfeuille, his work on the 'Antiquities of America' will be published. The work has been completed for some time, and would, ere now, have been before the public, but for the sickness of the author. A person familiar with the views of the late Mr. Dorfeuille in relation to the book has undertaken to carry them out, and we trust that in a very few weeks we shall be able to announce the publication of the first number. A subscription list will be kept at this office." Following an earlier clue, I wrote to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and received from the Librarian, Gertrude D. Hess (June 30, 1944) a copy of the following letter from Dorfeuille's widow: "Brooklyn, September 19, 1840 "To Dr. Samuel Morton "Dear Sir: Presuming upon the acquaintance you had with my deceased husband, Mr. Joseph Dorfeuille, I take the liberty of addressing you. You have, no doubt, seen through the medium of the press, that my poor husband's career of usefulness was ended on the 23rd of July, myself and children left to mourn his loss. Mr. Dorfeuille had, for some time past, been projecting a work on the antiquities of North America, and to which he devoted the whole of last winter and spring, and had it nearly completed when he was attacked with the disease of which he died. This same work a gentleman of his place has engaged to bring forward. He is now getting ready for the press the first number which will appear in about two weeks from this time. It will be published in numbers or volumes, according as the subscription will justify. The price will be 50d, per no. (40 nos.) or $20 the work (in 33 volumes), and containing about 100 plates. What I would ask of you, my dear Sir, is that you aid by your influence the sale of this work, a prospectus of which, with the first number, will be sent to you. While you labor in the cause of literature, may I hope that you will not refuse your aid in behalf of the widow and fatherless. I will within a few days leave this place, and return with my children to Cincinnati. But communications for the work may be sent to my brother, Benjamin W. Davis, merchant, Brooklyn, or to Dr. William K. Northall, of the same place. The last named is the gentleman engaged in the work. Your services in what I have asked will be most gratefully received by me, a widowed mother, Jeanette Dorfeuille." Mr. Heermann learned from the Long Island Historical Society in Brooklyn (through the kind cooperation of Miss Huntington, there) that Benjamin W. Davis belonged to St. Anne's Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, and owned two lots in the Green Wood Cemetery. These [17] clues, followed up later, yielded, from Mr. H. C. Vail, of Green Wood, the following inscription from a headstone in Lot #152, Section #96: . "JOSEPH D'ORFEUILLE Died July 23, 1840 Aged 49 years" (Note: This spelling of the name, often used later and insisted upon by Virginia D'Orfeuille Start, is the earliest instance of it that we have found.) Mr. Vail wrote me also that I might get further information from Mrs. Frederick M. Ives of New York City whom he understood to be a connection of the late Benjamin W. Davis but as yet I have found no one connected with Dr. Wm. K. Northall who might be able to put us on the track of that unpublished book of Dorfeuille's. I still hope we may be able to trace, to its hiding place, that precious manuscript with its 100 plates. Into it Dorfeuille must have put a lifetime of his love of science, so continually thwarted by sordid, practical needs. If it could be found, we need not regret so keenly losing the objects on which his study was based or the lack of data about his personal life. I still hope that uncleared attics or forgotten corners in Cincinnati or Brooklyn may yield the data we have been seeking. It would be a public service, especially at this time, if such places were thoroughly ransacked, before the war paper drives sweep everything away, to sal- vage valuable records for our historical societies. If this sketch of mine should arouse the interest of some potential detective enough to carry on this research, I can both wish him and promise him "Good Hunting." Mrs. Ives has been most kind in giving me information about Jeanette Davis and her family which adds an interesting, authentic chapter to our records of American pioneer life. She has drawn this from family papers which included a little history "compiled rather loosely" from which she quotes. Although, with the death of his grandniece, Virginia Start, Dorfeuille's own line seems to have ended, the facts given by Mrs. Ives make it seem not unlikely that there are survivors of his wife's family who may, sometime, increase our knowledge of this neglected scientist. Mrs. Ives writes me that Jeanette was one of the ten children of William and Jeanette Price Davis. These were Evan, Margaret, Wil- liam, Moses, Joshua, Benjamin, Jeanette, Richard, Mary and Sophia, named here in order of age. They were all born in Wales where the father was a prosperous farmer. After he died, the widow decided to bring them to America. Evan had preceded the others and established himself in Newburgh on the Hudson and Moses remained behind, "in profitable occupation." The family "landed in the city of New York during the month of May, 1819" and "reached Pittsburgh by the prevailing mode of travel but thence to their destination they experienced the vicissitudes of pioneer life. A scow was bought— small—but large enough for the family party who partly rowed and partly floated down with the current of the Ohio River, stopping. [18] occasionally, until they spent two weeks in reaching Cincinnati. One of the incidents during the voyage was a most hospitable reception remembered to have been given them at Blennerhasset Island. The person who at that time lived there sent down to the boat a present of some delicious tea and other viands and also induced them—as a health precaution—for the first time in their lives to taste whiskey and tansy bitters. At Cincinnati the different members became variously employed." That is all the "history" tells of the family as a whole. It says that Benjamin Davis worked at different things in Cin- cinnati for a few years and then moved to Brooklyn and remained there. Richard Davis worked in his brother's store in Brooklyn at one time and then decided to go West and bought a farm in the S. E. part of Iowa. He never married. The pathetic letter of Jeanette Dorfeuille, after Joseph's death, tells us of her return to Cincinnati with her "fatherless" children. There were four of these, all girls, of whom Mrs. Ives gives us the names: Amanda, Josephine (Mrs. ?), Jeanette (Mrs. Brown), and Virginia (Mrs. Alonzo G. Sandford) who had a son, Benjamin Davis Sandford. In Cist's Directory of Cincinnati for 1842, Jeanette Dorfeuille is recorded as living on McFarland Street and thereafter her name appears with both first and last names variously spelled, usually as a "teacher," living longest on Longworth Street. In the City Directory of 1858 the mother's name is replaced by that of her daughter which is repeated until 1867, usually as "Miss Jeanette M. Dorfeuille, teacher." She remained on Longworth Street until 1866, then, York Street, and last, 448 W. 8th. In those days our directories carried only one name—that of the head of the family. It must have been Jeanette who, in 1863, loaned the Dorfeuille scrapbook to the Great Sanitary Fair for the relief of soldiers in our Civil War—a forerunner of the Red Cross. The Directory of 1868 records no Dorfeuille. Amanda, the only sister who did not marry, may have died. Jeanette, we may guess, at that time became Mrs. Brown, not an easy name to trace! We may guess, also, that there was no child to survive Joseph Dor- feuille's daughters since the family treasures, the miniature and scrapbook, passed into the hands of their cousin, Virginia D'Orfeuille Start, also a teacher, who died in poverty in Chicago. This we know from Mrs. Frank A. Whitten, of Detroit, the friend in need to whom Virginia gave them. The only other record of these women I found in "Daniel Drake and His Followers," by Otto Juettner, where it is said that Dr. T. C. Minor studied in a school kept by the daughters of Joseph Dorfeuille. This was doubtless one of the many little "dames' schools"—too small and transitory to be recorded even by J. P. Foote and John B. Shotwell. I have given details of these scanty records in the hope that some clue of apparently slight importance may bring forth information of real value such as Mrs. Ives has so kindly given us. We leave the personal history of Joseph Dorfeuille thus incomplete, with great regret but must now turn again to the Western Museum for certain details of the record. [19] The great Dr. Daniel Drake, "Cincinnati's Benjamin Franklin" is credited with starting it, as he is with starting so many of the educational institutions in Cincinnati and he had William Steele as his chief associate. Drake's interest in natural science and archaeology began early and was greatly stimulated when he came to Cincinnati (1800) as a mere boy to study medicine and found in his teacher, the dynamic Dr. Wm. Goforth, an almost fanatical enthusiast, and also found on every hand a wealth of fossils, "big bones" and mound builders' relics which made the region a happy hunting ground for students of science. Drake's two periods of study in Philadelphia (1805 and 1815) should also be remembered as stimulating, and space must be given here to borrow from two books recently published which extend our horizon in the period of Drake's and Dorfeuille's activities in a vivid and fascinating manner. "The World of Washington Irving," by Van Wyck Brooks (copyrighted by Van Wyck Brooks) pictures the vig- orous life which in the first quarter of the 19th Century centered in Philadelphia then the heart of intellectual America, and which also was felt pulsing through the Middle West and reaching towards the Far West then the Eldorado of the nation. Thomas Jefferson gave impetus to that mighty heartbeat and summed up its prodigal, varied interests and activities. In addition to his "encyclopaedic mind in a day of encyclopaedias" and his dauntless enthusiasm, Jefferson had a spiritual quality which deeply influenced his period. He believed that the moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of a man as his leg or arm and that men could therefore be trusted to check themselves. Also that America was " 'acting for all mankind.' He saw the main current of world thought no longer flowing from Europe westward, but flowing from America the other way." Thus, according to Brooks, "one found in Jefferson the earliest crystallization of what might be called the American prophetic tradition, of Whitman's 'Pioneers,' the 'Trust thyself of Emerson, and Lincoln's mystical faith in the wisdom of the people." All this was tremendously inspiring and inspiriting and the writers, artists and scientists of the day were profoundly influenced. Among those who followed Jefferson's thought were Charles Willson Peale, Brockden Brown, Brackenridge, Barlow, Par- son Weems, Alexander Wilson, Freeman, Robert Fulton, Dunlap, Cooper, Bryant and later, Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. The many-sided Jefferson typifies his time, when writers, artists, musicians and scientists shared each others' interests and skills. Jeffer- son was the great agrarian, but all the physically and mentally alert in our new world tramped the countryside where fresh wonders were continually unfolding until it became to them an open book with footnotes by Linnaeus and Buff on familiar to all. They enlivened their leisure by music of their own making on the violin, or, more often, the flute so easy to carry on sylvan wanderings. Patrick Henry and Jefferson played the violin but the flute was the favorite of Alexander Wilson, Washington Irving, Audubon and, imagine, of all people, Edgar Allen Poe!

[20] James Truslow Adams in his "Frontiers of American Culture: A Study of Adult Education in a Democracy" (1944, Scribner), adds emphasis to the survey of Van Wyck Brooks. He calls Jefferson the "patron saint of our democracy." He quotes Prof. Chenard, leading French authority on Jefferson, as saying that in his "Notes on Vir- ginia" which appeared in French in 1786 there is the basis of the whole modern system of French education. He speaks of our "Fron- tier" in his period as three million square miles of "the greatest, richest and emptiest stretch of white man's country ever opened to exploitation and settlement," and as being "found and settled in perhaps the greatest period of expanding dynamic energy which the race has ever known. Its building-up coincided with the rise of explosive ideas—social, economic, political and religious. It also coincided, a little later, with the industrial revolution, the age of invention and of the enormous increase of Old World population, and the rise of the masses." Twice, when our Daniel Drake went to Philadelphia to study medicine, he came into the seething intellectual life there. He was fitted to receive the beliefs and enthusiasms he found and to promote them with vigor in Cincinnati, the city of his final adoption. He is that "kindly and understanding doctor" to whom Adams refers without naming who made such a deep impression on Harriet Martineau, whom Adams calls "one of the ablest and most sympathetic observers who came to us from England." In Cincinnati as well as Philadelphia the writers, artists, scientists and musicians fraternized and shared each others talents. Music is the field in which Cincinnati became most noted and we might say that the keynote was struck in pioneer days by the melodious boat horn which gave warning at every bend of the River and every landing. We cannot resist quoting a few lines from "The Boat-horn" by Wil- liam O. Butler, published, 1821, in Lexington, Kentucky, in the Western Review: "O, boatman! wind that horn again, For never did the listening air, Upon its lambent bosom bear So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain! "Delighted nature drew the sound, Enchanted echo bore it round, In whispers soft and softer still, From hill to plain and plain to hill." Many of our early artists and scientists were skilled musicians and writers. Dorfeuille and Hiram Powers were notably so. A forefather of Charles and Ralph Dury played the organ. Miner Kellogg, the painter, when a lad of 17, started East to study with only his talent for portrait painting, his violin and five dollars to speed him on his way. Daniel Drake himself turned to music and letters for refreshment, in the meetings of the Semi-Colon Club, first proving-ground of Harriet Beecher's talent. As early as 1815 Daniel Drake's own collection was important [21] enough to form the nucleus of a museum. In the summer of 1818, according to "Cincinnati in 1826," William Steele proposed to Drake that with a few others they organize a public museum. Drake, always inclined to large projects, preferred a more extended association and on this basis their society was formed. Wm. H. Venable ("Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley") says that the society was in effect a stock company, each member of which owned shares worth $500.00. He states also that the collections were rather meagre when the museum opened in 1820 and that chemical and philosophical apparatus out-balanced the natural history specimens. However, an energetic committee soon collected more of these by gift and purchase. It is interesting to recall that in those days philosophy and science were closely linked in the effort to discover fundamental laws which govern both the physical and the spiritual world, a problem that has preoccupied the wisemen since Greek and even more ancient times. An announcement in the American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review (Vol. 4, p. 67, N. Y., Nov., 1818) gives a brief but very comprehensive statement of the objectives of the society. It says: "Western Museum Society, Cincinnati (1818). A number of the citizens of Cincinnati have recently instituted a Society, the Western Museum Society, for the collection, preservation, exhibition, and illustration of natural and artificial curiosities, particularly those of the Western Countries. They intend to form a permanent museum. The following are the classes of objects that will especially attract their attention, and to which they invite the view of the public. 1) Our metals and minerals generally, including petrifactions. 2) Our indigenous animals, embracing the remains of those which are now extinct. 3) The relics of the unknown people who constructed the ancient works of the Western Country. 4) The various articles manufactured for ornament or use by the present savage tribes." The above statement reappears in "A Bibliography of American Natural History, 1769-1865" by Max Meisel (1926, The Pioneer Pub- lishing Company, Brooklyn), with other interesting data related to it. Meisel records that articles on Natural History were published by Cincinnatians belonging to the Western Museum Society 1818-1822 and notes the following names: Elijah Slack, Daniel Drake, James Findlay, William Steele, Jesse Embree, J. P. Foote, James Flint, Joseph Dorfeuille. In the Directory of 1819 this appears, in connection with the West- ern Museum: "The public exhibitions have not yet commenced but decent strangers will be cheerfully admitted if they apply to any member of the Society or to Messrs. Slack, Steele, Findlay, Embree or Drake, the managers." Early Cincinnati directories, magazines and newspapers follow the

[22] fortunes of the Western Museum, but we are indebted to "Cincinnati in 1826" by Drake and Mansfield for the most circumstantial early account of it. From it we learn that the Museum "was first opened for general exhibition June 10, 1820. For several years it was under the management of a Board of Directors. In 1823, the Society placed it in the keeping of Joseph Dorfeuille, the present Proprietor. The exertions of Mr. Dorfeuille to render it worthy of the Society by which it was founded have been zealous, directed by good taste and successful. A multitude of persons have contributed by sale, donation and deposits. 1. Dr. Drake turned over to the Society, his cabinet of minerals, organic remains, fossil bones and Western antiquities. 2. Managers have made new explorations at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, famous for the remains of Mammoth and Arctic Elephant. 3. James Griffiths, J. J. Audubon and especially Dr. Best, succes- sively employed as Artists and Curators, made interesting collections of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles and fishes of the West. 4. Our Counsul General, Condy Raquet, Esq., at Rio Janeiro, with public-spirited countrymen while in that country collected and forwarded several hundred beautiful specimens of Natural History. 5. Mr. Dorfeuille united with previous collections of the Society his own extensive cabinet of Egyptian antiquities, foreign and do- mestic birds and Western amphibia. 6. The same gentleman has lately purchased the interesting collection of the late lamented Mr. John D. Clifford, of Lexington— many hundred choice specimens of American antiquities, ex- traneous fossils and minerals." We have abbreviated slightly in quoting this account. Taken altogether, according to this contemporaneous record, the Museum had 100 mammoth and Arctic elephant bones, 50 Megalonyx bones, 33 quadrupeds, 500 birds, 200 fishes, 5000 invertebrates, 1000 fossils, 3500 minerals, 325 botanical specimens, 3125 medals, coins and tokens, 150 Egyptian and 215 American antiquities, 112 colored micro- scopical designs, views of American scenery and buildings, tattooed head of a New Zealand chief and about 500 miscellaneous specimens of the fine arts and "an elegant organ." Everything was neatly and scientifically arranged, the minerals "according to Cleaveland's Sys- tem" with labels and descriptions cut from his book. Lectures were being given by Dorfeuille and others. The Museum, housed for a while in rooms in the large and hospitable building of the Cincinnati College on Walnut Street (East side just above Fourth) occupied "an extensive suite of rooms" at the North West corner of Second and Main Streets on the second floor in 1826. It moved later to the S. W. corner of Main and Pearl and was a landmark there for many years, merchants in the shops below it designating their location as "under the Museum."

[23] All the early accounts stress science. After 1829 the Inferno takes the limelight! As to the scientific and archaeological collections of the Western Museum, once rated as the most important in America, we have found no trace of them. Venable speaks, but not in detail, of seeing such exhibits when he visited the Museum in the late 1840s. No mention occurs in Dorfeuille's advertisements of his Infernal Regions after he opened it in New York. After failing to sell them to the Western Academy of Sciences they may have been sold piecemeal to private collectors and have drifted, unidentified, into the large hoards of the Art Museum, the University and our Natural History Museum, which throughout its history has never had adequate means to house or organize properly its very rich possessions. It may be some of these early specimens which, after passing into careless hands, reappear in the possession of those tireless youthful explorers who, from time to time, bring to "teacher" a handful of exquisite fossils or terra cotta fragments of fine Mayan origin, or perhaps even local origin like the wonderful Turner figurines in Cambridge. Our carelessness about the preservation of such things can hardly find excuse. Mr. Nevin M. Fenneman, when Professor of Geology at the University of Cincinnati, had something arresting to say along this line and we may very well give quotations here from his article on "The Museum Situation in Cincinnati" which was published in the Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, Vol. XXII, 2, 1917. He says: "Cincinnati could not wisely undertake a cosmopoli- tan museum (of natural history). Her appropriate field is the Ohio Valley. She ought not to be satisfied to see any other city becoming the representative metropolis of this section ... In most American historical museums the most important thing is Indian Archaeology ... It would not have been extravagant to hope that Cincinnati might in this respect have represented the Ohio Valley. Living as we do at a kind of focus of prehistoric civilization which left abundant remains, it is not creditable to this community that the student of Ohio Valley Archaeology must go to Columbus to make a fair beginning, and then to Washington, Boston, and perhaps to England to examine the data of his science. About 1846 Squier and Davis made one of the largest of such collections. It was stored for some time in the State House at Columbus, then at the Smithsonian, and then sold to a gentleman in England where we must now go to complete our studies of Ohio Archaeology . . . Natural History Museums owe most of their materials to two sciences: Zoology and Geology. In resources of these classes no city of the United States is so favored as Cincinnati. Those which approach it in geologic interest do not have the zoos to supply skins and skeletons; and those which have the zoos do not have the fossils . . Fossils are, of course, our chief stock in trade. For fossils in the hills we lead all American cities; but when the ground has been patiently searched and the specimens lovingly cared for, the valuable collections have with few exceptions been drawn away to other cities. Harvard, Washington and Chicago, at

[24] least, have better collections than remain with us." In relation to educational activities Mr. Fenneman writes: "The late Wm. Hubbel Fisher, who was President of our Natural History Society at the time of his death, was one of those who saw clearly the changed conditions and the new opportunities. Under his guidance the Society prepared cases of specimens (birds, minerals and insects) to be circulated among the schools. With no improvement since they were made (1907) and no increase in number (seven sets of three cases each), these continued to circulate up to the year 1916. The greedy demands for these poor makeshifts are pathetic. When they had been circulat- ing five years, Mr. Norman W. Harris, a Chicago banker, visited Cincinnati (among other places) to ascertain the workings of the plan. Several months later he announced a gift of $250,000 to the Field Museum, to endow a system of museum extension for the public schools. Not only were the travelling collections provided, but the necessary auto truck service to keep them in circulation." Loan cabinets based on this plan—the number, completeness and handling of them—have now reached colossal proportions in many American cities. The system has been adopted by Art Museums. What is it that makes Americans so wasteful? Is it because we have so much? Is it because we have not grown up enough to have lost the cocksureness which, though it may have a certain amusing quality in youth, is so very dangerous when older folk are entrusted with things of value? Can we dismiss it as a happy optimism, always expecting something better just around the corner? Is it a lack of reverence? Is that why the brisk novice feels so sure he can do a job better than the one who is doing it that he blithely takes it over, de- stroys what he doesn't understand—or like—and belittles or forgets the man who created it? In 1834, a distinguished Frenchman, Michel Chevalier, was sent by his government to observe and report on America. He spent two years doing this and devoted 20 pages of his book, "Society, Manners and Politics in the United States" (1839) to Cincinnati. Here, he noted General Wm. Henry Harrison, hero of Tippecanoe, drudging at a clerk's desk and expressed his astonishment at American neglect of any provision for great public servants like Harrison, Jefferson, Monroe and others. He could have multiplied names and if he were to come back today, he would fail to find much, if any, improvement. Long ago, I heard two eminent doctors discussing the American lack of respect for established reputation. One of them, who was nearing the age he had set for retiring from active practice, was considering his chances of being useful as a consultant. In his own picturesque way he compared the attitude of the French and Ameri- cans. "In France," said he, "a man would travel to Paris from a long distance to consult an eminent authority. If his man had gone off on a vacation, he would settle down for weeks, if need be, to await his return. But would anyone do that for me?" he queried. "If an important commuter from suburban New York with an important ailment thought me important enough to take time off to come to my office

[25] and found I had gone to lunch, he would depart and ask the next corner drugstore where to find a physician!" We do bestow laurels, yes! And on some who richly deserve them, but how much more often high-pressure salesmanship wins a reward, while honest work, quietly done, goes unnoticed. The American heart is big and very warm. An emotional appeal rarely fails to create a stampede; but strong institutions are not built up that way. When will we learn to "Stop, Look, Listen" for ourselves! It is not men alone that we throw on the scrapheap, but institutions as well, diverting their laboriously garnered funds to new projects. Our treasures are destroyed, or submerged, or carried away, as Dr. Fenneman has pointed out. Our historic buildings are defaced, muti- lated or completely "liquidated" overnight! And all the time we keep on worshipping at foreign shrines of which the guardians have been more careful! Among us, big, powerful institutions swallow up smaller ones without notice and with hardly a protest at the very moment when we are pouring out blood and treasure all over the world in an effort to make real the faith we profess in the inalienable rights of minorities—of "little people" and of small industries and institutions! And now, must we lose our Museum of Natural History and break, doubtless beyond repair, the chain of effort which for over a hundred years has striven to give to Cincinnati what every city laying claim to enlightenment needs and moreover has a right to expect? Perhaps, by recalling a few of Cincinnati's useful citizens who have both contributed to and profited by this effort on behalf of science, we may gain a more just realization of its value. Even a few names, taken at random, furnish an interesting cross section of the cultured members of our community for the last 125 years. From the Western Museum we have William Steele, Daniel Drake, Samuel Best, James Flint, Elijah Slack, John P. Foote, John Locke and Joseph Dorfeuille himself. From the Western Academy of Sciences, which, in 1835, made a fresh start, we get the above group in continuation and among new names, Joseph Clarke, Robert Buchanan, John A. Warder, Wm. S. Merrill, Samuel T. Carley, Oliver, Lincoln, Resor, Probasco, Judkins, Mendenhall, Gest. From the membership roll of the Society of Nat- ural History, of longer duration and due, we hope, to survive still longer, the names come thick and fast. We like to remember the Presidents, twenty-two in all, but must not forget the four salaried Curators on whom the chief burden of work has to fall. These have been notable for their superb equipment and tireless industry: Professor Joseph F. James, Horace P. Smith, Dr. Joshua Lindahl and Ralph Dury. The Presidents were men of distinction who have given unstinted service, Dr. John A. Warder, Samuel A. Miller, Dr. W. H. Mussey, R. B. Moore, V. T. Chambers, Dr. R. M. Byrnes, Dr. J. H. Hunt and Prof. George W. Harper, for years the head of Woodward High School, who spent his every free moment in working over the exhibits in the Museum. It is to the interest he aroused in an unknown visitor

[26] that the Society owes the Bodman Endowment. Next came Dr. Wal- ter Angus Dun, who organized and ardently promoted the Lyceum for Young People. J. Ralston Skinner was followed by Wm. Hubbell Fisher, whose most notable contribution was the loan cabinet idea. Next, T. B. Collier, Davis L. James, Dr. F. D. Langdon, Charles S. Dury, internationally known naturalist who served the organization indefatigably in almost every office and half a dozen curatorships. Dr. Oliver D. Norton, whose plans were used in building our Music Hall organ, was an authority on not organ construction alone, but Gregorian music. Dr. M. H. Fletcher was followed by Dr. Christian R. Holmes, the father of our expanded Cincinnati Hospital. Charles W. Dabney, Dr. Arch I. Carson, and last, but by no means least, Robert M. Senior, who has guided the Society during the ten critical years since it left its old building on Broadway at Arch Street to occupy cramped but safer quarters in the Ohio Mechanics' Institute. Mr. Senior has just resigned his position to Mr. Louis Coffin, the new President. Recall, more briefly, other family names on the seventy-five year old membership list of the Society: Hosea, Braun, Shaffer, Wright, Ulrich, Eckstein, Heigh way, Lloyd, Chickering, Langenbeck, Bullock, Foerste, Livingood, Mendenhall, Seasongood, Procter, Minor, Fleisch- mann, Caster, Kellogg, Schmidlapp, Kelley, Castle, Fenneman, Bene- dict, Gerrard, Hinkle, Geier, Rowe, Morrill, Williams, Dawson, Stan- ley, Laws, Esselborn, Hooker, Barbour, Stites. Many of those named above are still members. Many of the earlier ones are still represented by loyal descendants. How fine it would be if all the hundreds of names for which there is no room here were still on the membership roll where the space is unlimited! And if the early members were represented by their many-branched descendants in a sort of geometrical progression, this useful institution would have nothing to worry about, even if the City cannot grant it the modest subsidy which it has asked for and so sorely needs. Many names in the last list are still familiar, but how many of the earlier ones? Yet, every single one should be a household word. Not alone the professional scientists who give steady service towards making the world a better place to live in, but the many happy non- professionals pursuing their bent for free lance research and continually making important and usually unrecognized contributions to science. The late William Morton Wheeler, eminent biologist, pays tribute to these "amateurs" in a paper on "The Organization of Re- search" reprinted in "Essays in Philosophical Biology," a memorial volume from the Harvard University Press, 1939. He says: "In such vast and complicated sciences as biology and archaeology, the work of the amateur is so much needed and so worthy of encour- agement that we may regard it as one of the greatest defects of our educational system that a youth is ever able to leave the science courses of a high school or college and take up the humblest calling without a fixed determination to fill at least a portion of his leisure hours with the joys of research." And later, "There is no reason to

[27] suppose that the number of amateur investigators may not greatly increase under a more favorable form of society. In the ideal common- wealth of the future it may not be in the least surprising to find that the communal furnace-man, after his four-hour day, is conducting elaborate investigations in paleobotany, and that the communal laundress is an acknowledged authority on colloidal chemistry." It is in the popular museums of science, most often, that the first impulse toward research is felt and later nourished. Let me quote again, from T. R. Adam's little books. In "The Civic Value of Mu- seums," (1937) he says: "Museum education, whether in art or science, stands ready to fill some of the gravest cultural gaps in our civilization." And in "The Museum and Popular Culture": "Neither the individual nor the community may safely be left in ignorance of the simple environmental factors that affect human existence. Natural science provides the materials essential to the cultivation of practical knowledge and the foundation of independent judgment. Inventive or applied science, on the other hand, is the proper field of the specialist , . ." "Perhaps the fact that colleges and universities have taken over so many promising collections for the use of their students is one of the reasons why the smaller natural history museums have declined as instruments of popular education. Academic institutions have no- toriously shown little conscience in converting resources intended for popular education to their narrower purposes." Thomas Huxley, when he was preaching so ardently the value of scientific training in public, even elementary education, laid great emphasis on the value of natural history museums. (Science and Edu- cation by Thomas H. Huxley, published 1902, P. F. Collier 8B Son.) Among other significant things, he says: "A child seeks for information about matters of physical science as soon as it begins to talk. The first teaching it wants is an object-lesson of one sort or another: and as soon as it is fit for systematic instruction of any kind, it is fit for a modicum of science . . ." "This distinctive character of our own time lies in the vast and constantly increasing part which is played by natural knowledge. Not only is our daily life shaped by it, not only does the prosperity of millions of men depend upon it, but our whole theory of life has long been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the general conceptions of the universe, which has been forced upon us by physical science . . ." "Almost all the processes employed in the arts and manufactures fall within the range either of physics or of chemistry. In order to improve them, one must thoroughly understand them . . ." "Nobody will ever know anything about biology, except in a dilettante 'paper-philospher' way, who contents himself with reading books on botany, zoology, and the like." This paper is at once a record and, very frankly, a plea for wider and more democratic methods such as the free museums of natural history alone can offer for drawing more and yet more of our people, young and old, into the field of natural science either for fruitful labor there or wholesome refreshment of soul and body. In this moment of cataclysmal world war, we cannot do better in closing

[28] than to repeat a sentiment uttered by Louis Pasteur, the most beni- flcent scientist of all time. Let it be remembered that Pasteur did not belong to the accredited professional group of physicians, any more than did Metchnikoff, but the greatest of the professional group came to acknowledge and acclaim. Thomas Huxley reduced his service to understandable and convincing figures when he said that Pasteur's discoveries would be sufficient in themselves to make good the war indemnity of five thousand million francs paid by France to Germany. In our own time, a very great surgeon, physician and man of letters lauded him in a public address as "the most fruitful laborer that the world has known in the field of science which adds to the resources and the welfare of our community." In another address, he quoted Huxley's statement above and affirmed that Pasteur's work "has added more to the health and wealth of the world than that of any other man." The words with which I wish to leave you were spoken by Pasteur December 27, 1892, in the great theater of the Sorbonne, in Paris. The occasion was his seventieth birthday and the theater was filled with representative scientists and other notables from all over the world, and included a great number of his students. He was presented with a medal on which was inscribed: "To Pasteur, on his seventieth birthday, from a grateful humanity." In accepting it, Pasteur affirmed his "invincible belief that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignor- ance and War, that nations will unite not to destroy but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity."

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