Leonhard Hess Stejneger 1851-1943
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOLUME XXIV FOURTH MEMOIR BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR LEONHARD HESS STEJNEGER 1851-1943 BY ALEXANDER WETMORE PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE AUTUMN MEETING, 1945 LEONHARD HESS STEJNEGER 1851-1943 BY ALEXANDER WETMORE Leonhard Hess Stejneger, for more than 58 years a member of the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, was born in Bergen, Norway, October 30, 1851, the eldest of 7 children. Records of his ancestry on the paternal side carry back to Johann Carl Steineger, born in Prague, January 26, 1726, who had as an only son Leopold August Elias Steineger born in Braunschweig about 1755. The eldest son of Leopold, Carl Claus Heinrich Steineger, born in Hamburg, Germany, March 28, 1791, became a cavalry officer, and after a period of service in the army removed to Bergen, Norway, where he established the mercantile business of Steineger & Company. He married Margaretha Stamer, born in Bergen in 1799, who, following the death of her husband in 1828, possibly from the effect of wounds received in war, continued the family business as its head. Leonhard Stejneger's father, Peter Stamer Steineger, born of this union in Bergen, December 12, 1826, was educated in private schools and in a commercial academy. He became a merchant, and later an auditor, and died in 1921. The maternal grandfather, Leonhard Hess, a watchmaker of Bergen, was born in that place in 1789 and died in 1868. He married Maria Margaretha Brock, also of Bergen (born in 1799) who died in childbirth in 1830. Their daughter, Ingeborg Catharina, mother of Leonhard Stejneger, born February 5, 1830, was educated in a private school for girls, and married at the age of 20.
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