From "Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News," July 3, 1875
The Queen City has earned fame for music, for fine art, for sports and for industry, but should have a better reputation for its naturalists, those dedicated scientists (often amateurs) whose curiosity helped unravel the wonders of the natural world. Here are a few prime examples:
Charles Dury, Pigeon Killer
For more than a century, the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History was the fiefdom of the Dury family. The pater familias, Charles Dury, was an entomologist and many of the insects he collected around Cincinnati are still housed in the museum’s storage. It is hardly remembered that Dury bragged about contributing to the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. For the Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History in 1910, Dury recalled his boyhood hunting trips, firing at pigeons as fast as he could reload his muzzle-loading gun.
Goforth’s Collapsible Lion
Doctor William Goforth is mostly known today as the mentor of young Daniel Drake. Doctor Goforth heard about the gigantic bones found at Big Bone Lick, dug up some himself and interpreted the bones as those of an immense lion that stood 25 feet tall and measured 60 feet from nose to tail, rampaging through Cincinnati in ancient times, gobbling up mastodons like so much popcorn. He thought these beasts might still be alive out West. Additionally, Goforth believed this lion could scrunch up like an accordion and then spring forth to attack its prey; a collapsible lion, as it were. Later scientists confirmed those bones were relics of a giant, vegetarian, entirely extinct ground sloth.
Rowdy Rafinesque
An Ordovician brachiopod found abundantly on Cincinnati’s hillsides is named for Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz, a French naturalist who palled around with John James Audubon. One night, asleep in Audubon’s house, Rafinesque was awakened by a bat flitting around the room. He determined to catch it and, snatching up his host’s prized violin while naked as a jaybird, smashed the fiddle to flinders while attacking the winged intruder. Rafinesque is also known as the perpetrator of a curious hoax, the “Walam Olum” or “Red Record” which purports to be a historical record of the Lenape (Delaware) Tribe of Native Americans.
Audubon’s Prank
John James Audubon is renowned for his masterpiece, The Birds of America. Locally, he is remembered as the first employee of the Western Museum, which is the ancestor of today’s Museum Center at Union Terminal. It appears that Audubon was an incurable trickster, inventing birds and animals out of thin air. Even within his magnum opus, Audubon presented a detailed illustration of the “Carbonated Swamp Warbler,” a bird now known to be a complete fabrication. Audubon loved pranking his friend, naturalist Constantine Rafinesque. Audubon regaled the gullible Rafinesque with descriptions of the 10-foot-long “Devil-Jack Diamond” fish equipped with bullet-proof scales. Rafinesque dutifully published scientific papers on it, based solely on Audubon’s tall tales.
From New York Public Library
Bissell’s Fatal Prediction
Richard Bissell was already in his sixties when he drifted into Cincinnati, closing out a long career as a mineralogist out West. One spring day in 1885, he appeared in the offices of the Cincinnati Enquirer and filed a copy of his obituary, telling the editors they would be able to publish it that fall. Although elderly and somewhat frail, Bissell appeared in relatively good health, so the editors stashed the obit and gave it not another though until mid-November when Bissell, walking through the lobby of his hotel, threw up his hands and collapsed as a corpse. As it turned out, he had already purchased his headstone for a grave in Spring Grove Cemetery, with the full date of his birth and the year of his death already engraved, lacking only the month and date of his demise.
C.B. Dyer’s Hefty Fossils
Charles B. Dyer, a native of England, made his fortune in Cincinnati as a tallow chandler. Dyer’s legacy, however, is based on his hobby. He was among the earliest members of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History and was a rabid collector of Cincinnati’s abundant fossils. How rabid? When Dyer sold his collection to Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1880, the collection weighed more than 70,000 pounds, or 35 tons. A couple of Cincinnati fossil crinoids or “sea lilies,” Pycnocrinus dyeri and Lichenocrinus dyeri, are named in his honor.
When Wetherby Went Hunting
Albert Gallatin Wetherby was professor of natural history at the University of Cincinnati. He was an authority on mollusks of all kinds and his work attracted the favorable attention of Charles Darwin himself. On Thanksgiving Day in 1884, Wetherby went hunting in Clermont County. Like any good naturalist, he was soon distracted by some gleams in a farmyard stream and returned to Cincinnati with several pounds of rock for assaying. It was gold. Wetherby soon resigned from the university, forming a mining partnership to exploit the Clermont lode. That enterprise failed to generate income, but Wetherby had caught the goldbug and ended his days chasing riches in the mountains of North Carolina.
S.A. Miller’s Thirst
Samuel Almond Miller was a man of many talents. He primarily supported himself as an attorney but had published a newspaper, served on the school board and ran, unsuccessfully, for the United States Senate and for a local judgeship. Miller’s lasting fame, however, is based on his hobby of collecting fossils about which he authored several landmark books. He accomplished all of this despite a serious dedication to alcohol. Miller regularly cadged quarters for whiskey from a legal colleague, putting up a prize specimen as collateral. Word of this transaction got around and the Walker Museum at the University of Chicago supplied Miller’s fellow attorney with plenty of quarters. Consequently, the cream of Miller’s fossil collection ended up in the Windy City.
Fred Braun’s Landlady
Fred Braun was a naturalist for hire. He collected curious things for wealthy patrons and operated what he called a “naturalist agency” on West Canal Street in Cincinnati. In 1878, without telling Braun, his landlord sold the property to Anna Miller. Braun awoke one day to discover a posse of constables tossing his valuable specimens onto the street. Braun sued and the lengthy court battle ended in total victory for Mrs. Miller. Braun was forced to relocate and Mrs. Miller immediately opened a brothel in the building. At least one newspaper implied that a bribe might have been a factor.
Miami Bounced James
Joseph Francis James had many interests including geology, paleontology, agriculture and botany. Miami University recruited him in 1886 to fill the professorship of Botany and Geology. Just two years later, in 1888, the university trustees decided that James was insufficiently devout and fired him. A colleague recalled, “When religious beliefs were under fire at Oxford, professor James was accused of being an agnostic and defended as being essentially a Unitarian. So far as I knew it, his religion was an unswerving dedication to science.”
From Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
Fenneman’s Exam
Nevin Melancthon Fenneman was a longtime member of the geology faculty at the University of Cincinnati. His 1916 book, Geology of Cincinnati and Vicinity is still a useful guide. There is an apocryphal story about Fenneman’s response to the Great 1937 Ohio River Flood. Most UC students were excused from classes that spring to participate in various forms of flood relief, which often involved shoveling lots of debris out of basements and off streets. When the geology students showed up for their spring exams, Fenneman wrote a single word on the blackboard: Mud. He turned to the class and said, “Write everything you know about it.”
Turner’s Insects
Charles Henry Turner was born in Cincinnati. He was the first African American to receive a graduate degree at the University of Cincinnati and went on to earn a Ph.D. Turner, a pioneering entomologist, proved that insects could hear and distinguish different pitches of sound, that cockroaches are able learn by trial and error, the web-making skills of spiders, that ants have complex memories and that honeybees recognize visual patterns. As proof that even mistakes in science can yield important discoveries, Turner spent years trying to train bees with red targets, only to discover that bees cannot perceive that color at all.
Bassler’s Billion
Raymond Smith Bassler got his start as young man among the collections at the Cincinnati Society of Natural History and eventually joined the faculty of George Washington University. Bassler led classes on tours of the National Zoo. On one such tour, he stopped next to a large boulder and informed his class that the huge stone was one billion years old. At this point, a woman bystander stepped up and addressed him. “But, Professor Bassler, I believe that you have made a mistake. It happens that I was here last year when you brought your students. At that time you said that the rock was a billion years old. So, this year, it must be a billion and one.”
The Braun Sisters
Cincinnati sisters Emma “Lucy” Braun and Annette Braun made substantial contributions to natural history. Annette, an entomologist who became a world authority on moths, was the first woman to earn a doctoral degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1911. Lucy’s 1950 book, Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America, is considered among the foundational studies in ecology. The Braun sisters were raised in a very strict Cincinnati household. After she earned her doctorate, a distinguished out-of-town colleague sought Annette’s advice. Her father informed the visitor he could visit with his daughter for just one hour, while Dad sat outside the open parlor door. The sisters’ research took them through the backroads of Appalachia, where they earned the trust of the mountain folk by never snitching on the moonshiners’ stills. As children, Lucy was the favored child and was always dressed in pink, while Annette was always dressed in blue. When Annette died seven years after Lucy, she made sure to be buried in a pink dress.
Hale’s “Tree Sloth”
Kelley Hale was a medical doctor who founded what eventually became the Clinton Memorial Hospital in Wilmington, Ohio. He was also a dedicated amateur geologist and studied the ancient preserved undersea ripples found in Southwest Ohio. Hale once lectured about these formations but although he had many Kodachrome slides of his beloved ripples, he had very little to actually say about them, and so his text involved a lot of repetitions of “here’s another one.” Just as his audience was beginning to doze, Hale asked UC geology professor Otto C. Von Schlichten, who was operating the projector, “Professor Von Schlichten, isn’t the next slide that of the tree sloth?” The club members jolted to attention as the next slide displayed more ripple marks in a creek bed but, suspended by her knees from the branch of a huge oak tree overhanging the creek, a gorgeous red-headed nude woman, her long locks almost reaching into the stream. Cincinnati naturalists discussed the “tree sloth lecture” for many years afterward.
Spindler’s Second Career
Cincinnati’s Harry Spindler had the good fortune to find success in two entirely different fields. In the beginning, Harry was known as a wild jazz drummer, the leader of one of Cincinnati’s pioneer dance bands. His ensemble toured Asia and that sparked Spindler’s interest in exotic animals. By 1930, collecting wild animals for major zoos became his main source of income. Spindler was popular as a lecturer and radio guest, especially when he brought along Jerry, his trained mynah bird, or his pet black widow spider. So many of his Cincinnati fans swore they knew someone who had seen a hoop snake grab its tail and roll away that Spindler offered a $150 reward for anyone who could produce one. He never had to pay up.
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