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 archaeo- logical 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 collec- tions 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 state- ment (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'exist- ence 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 in- volved 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 impor- tant 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 his- tories 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.