THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DINOSAURS TO PITTSBURGH. 20 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | WINTER 2001-02 ne afternoon inAugust 1899, a farm wagon rattled Then on August 9, back at the main camp, Holland suffered a along a rocky track north of Medicine Bow, Wyo. sudden attack of appendicitis. He had to get back toMedicine Bow It was a warm day: sparse grass and sagebrush and medical help as fast as he could. The only problem was the stretched in all directions, and mountains rimmed driver, who was unaccustomed to being bossed around by an the northern and eastern horizons. Here and there, eastern patrician witha large mustache and well-made clothes. the tan landscape was relieved by a meandering After returning to Pittsburgh, Holland was well enough to write arroyo full of green grass. It had been a wetter year than most. his chief paleontologist, still incamp: AMr.S. Sage drove from the wagon seat, while inback, eyes closed I believe [Sage] to be a man utterly unworthy, and I and his face twisted, lay William Jacob Holland, director of the may say the same thing of Hoggshedd, who turned up four-year-old Carnegie Museum of Natural History. at the railroad station on Friday morning to bid me He was a man who was used to command, and the helplessness good-by, almost too drunk to stand straight. He was of this situation tortured him as they jolted along. According to full as a tick. This man, Iunderstand, has applied to an account he wrote to the supervisor of the museum's field you for work, and would liketo be permanently in our operations in Montana, Holland politely asked Sage to drive a employment. Do not employ him. Iam satisfied that littlefaster. Inreply, he is a bad egg. At all events he is not the kind of man ... Ireceived from him a volley of oaths, he informing we wish to have any dealings with, and Iam very sorry me that he was doing the driving and guessed he to have introduced either of these men to your atten- knew how to do it better than Idid. Iallude to this cir- tion and by employing them myself to have given color cumstance because in view of the facts his conduct to the belief that I approve of them, which Ido not. was simply brutal, and Ido not wish the man to be Verbum sat. [Enough said.] 2 employed in any capacity whatever by yourself or any of our people. 1 Holland turned 51 inthe summer of 1899. He had risen steadily inhis career through ambition, hard work, a habit of command, Holland wasn't used to having his commands disputed. He and good social connections. After he died in 1932, more than one spent his entire working life in charge of institutions, and was memorialist praised Holland as a "Renaissance man," which,inhis never an easy man to work for. He had been in Wyoming this overbearing way, he was. He was educated for the ministry, spent time for three weeks, much of it visiting the museum's new most of his career as a professional administrator, and thought of dinosaur quarry on the high plains north of the little railroad himself as a naturalist. town of Medicine Bow. The bone digging was producing spec- He and his wife, Carrie Moorhead Holland, raised two sons: early Holland, a Pittsburgh banker, tacular —results. Moorhead who became successful and Everyone a laborer, a cook, three museum paleontologists, Raymond Holland, who became an artist, moved to Connecticut, a couple young men come along appears to parents worry and of who'd— withHolland from and have caused his considerable Pittsburgh for a summer outing was exhilarated by clear air and far into their old age. camp life. There had been lively visits from a group of American Of the connections outside his family, Holland seems to have Museum of Natural History paleontologists, also digging for valued his friendship with Andrew Carnegie the most. A tone of dinosaurs just 10 miles away. And the final week of the stay, command underlies nearly allHolland's correspondence, withone Holland,a cook, and the two young men had gone to the mountains important exception; when he wrote Carnegie, he was extremely ; tocamp, fish,and collect animal skins and butterflies for the museum. eager toplease. I, WILLIAM HOLLAND 21 Building crates at William Holland was born in 1848 in Jamaica, where his Carnegie saw in Holland a lieutenant ,„ sheep Cre(jk 18g9 parents were missionaries inthe Moravian Church. He grew up in whose loyalty would be permanent, and to transport dinosaur North Carolina and Bethlehem, Pa., then graduated from Amherst Holland found in Carnegie a patron bones -back to Pitts- College inMassachusetts. Early on, he had a love for the natural who would open doors to influence burBh From left: WillieReed, Jacob world, especially insects. In 1874, he graduated from Princeton and power. Wortman, Paul Miller, Hebrew, 1886, , Theological Seminary, where he added a knowledge of In Holland became a trustee of and wi||ie s father Chaldean, and Arabic to the Greek and Latin he had already the Western University of Pennsylvania, William H. Reed. The learned as an adolescent. 3 Eventually he learned French, Spanish, then located in the city of Allegheny, bones were wrapped in and German as well. now Pittsburgh's North Side. In1891, he P^ter-soaked . burlap, then packed in Holland was hired as the pastor at the Bellefield Presbyterian left the clergyo/ to become university' hay in the crates. in Pittsburgh, at chancellor, top executive. His Church the bell tower of which still stands— the social the corner of Fifth and Bellefield avenues, in Oakland a connections made him an effective fashionable church ina newlyfashionable part of the city.Church fund-raiser at a time when demand for the university's services connections enabled him to meet and marry the daughter ofJohn was growing fast. Enrollment grew from about 100 students when Moorhead, an ironmanufacturer. The Hollands' house stillstands Holland took over to more than 800 by 1899. 5 on the other corner of Fifth and Bellefield, and now houses the Meanwhile, Andrew Carnegie had offered tobuild a library for Universityof Pittsburgh's music department. Pittsburgh ifthe city would maintain it.City officials resisted for years until Carnegie upped his contribution to $1 million. The the 1880s, the Hollands began spending time in the increased funds also allowed a much larger building withroom for summers at the Mountain House, an inn at Cresson, Pa., on art galleries, a lecture hall, a music hall, and a natural history Inthe Pennsylvania Railroad at the crest of the Allegheny museum. Carnegie purchased 19 acres in Oakland from Mary Mountains. Sometimes they found themselves dining at a table Schenley for what would become the Carnegie Institute. The next to one occupied by Andrew Carnegie and his mother, who, building's foundation was finished in 1892, the year ofthe bloody though they had moved from Pittsburgh to New York many Homestead Strike. Construction continued, despite angry and years before, kept a summer house nearby. widespread opposition from workers appalled that the city would The twomen became friends, despite their differences; one an accept a giftfrom the man who owned the Homestead mill.6 ambitious young clergyman, the other, 13 years his senior, a Carnegie Institute opened late in 1895, withHolland serving on multimillionaire industrialist. They took walks in the woods, and some of its boards. He became its director inMarch 1898, while Holland taught the older man the names of plants and birds.4 retaining his university chancellorship. As his career advanced, 22 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | WINTER 2001-02 r\ The crew from New York's American Museum of Natural History visits the Carnegie Museum of Natural History crew at Camp Carnegie, 1899. Standing left to right: William DillerMatthew (AMNH), Richard Swann Lull(AMNH), Henry Fairfield Osborn (AMNH), WilliamJacob Holland (CMNH), Jacob Wortman (CMNH), and William H. Reed (CMNH). Seated: Walter Granger (AMNH), George Mellor (CMNH), Ira Schallenberger (CMNH), and Arthur Coggeshall (CMNH). t s s s I o Holland stillmade time for his intellectual pursuits. Through the By 1895, America's natural history museums had not done 1880s, he published articles on zoology, paleontology, and ento- much in the way of displaying dinosaurs. Marsh had a huge mology; in 1887, he accompanied a voyage to Japan to observe a collection on shelves, but the bones were not meant for the public solar eclipse; in 1889, he traveled to west Africa to collect moths to admire. Naturalist Joseph Leidy and sculptor Benjamin and butterflies. 7 Waterhouse Hawkins had erected a somewhat conjectural skeleton It was butterflies that he loved the most. By the mid-1890s, of a Hadrosaurus at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences Holland had assembled one of the world's largest collections of in 1868. Early in the 1890s, Henry Fairfield Osborn at the Lepidoptera, which he donated to the Carnegie Museum once American Museum of Natural History in New York began he began working there. In 1899, Doubleday, McClure & Co. displaying fossil skeletons in more-or-less lifelike poses, with published Holland's Butterfly Book. It and the Moth Book, painted backgrounds, but as yet, had put up no dinosaurs. published in 1903, became standard reference works inthe field. Nothing came of Carnegie's hope for help from Marsh. But Holland had also become a dedicated amateur oil painter, when, inDecember 1898, Carnegie read ofthe discovery ofa huge trustee of a number of colleges and universities, and a business- dinosaur inWyoming, he immediately sent Holland the story from banking Post, adding margin, "My — buy man withinterests in and real estate.