The People and Places in Collections

Historical specimens and documents in natural history collections can reveal how people interacted with nature and approached science, where they spent their time and how they traveled, and how the very landscape has changed over time.

Let's look at a few of the people and places that emerged from the Academy's herbarium through the botany project.

Historic collectors’ names on specimen labels often require deciphering as many times they are given as just the last name or initials and a last name. Women are often even more hidden, as it was common practice as a married woman to be known by your husband’s name. In the Academy’s collections, delving into collector’s names has revealed numerous women in science.

She had a love for nature and collected plants locally in the Chicago area and across the United States. She also had a large circle of friends with whom she exchanged exotic plant, mineral, and cultural specimens. She identified some plants new to science and had species named for her.

Mary Agnes Chase (1869-1963) was a self-educated botanist who started her pathway in botany in Chicago, where she learned to prepare plant specimens and began collecting. She began making illustrations for botanical publications in the 1890s for the Field Museum and the US Department of Agriculture. She eventually went on to work at the Smithsonian's National Herbarium, where she developed her expertise in American grasses and contributed to the field for over 60 years.

Herman Silas Pepoon (1860-1941) was a botanist and naturalist in the Chicago region. He studied local native plant species and how many of these natural habitats were being changed by the encroachment of agriculture and introduction of non-native plant species. He wrote the first book on plant species in Chicago, “An Annotated Flora of the Chicago Area,” in 1927. 

These local collections can be an important resource for research into how the local environment has changed and enable current scientists to build on the work done historically.

Natural history collections can also document events, both local and at a broader scale.

After the Civil War, government-sponsored expeditions into the western territories sought to map out the land and catalog its natural resources in order to pave the way for an invasion of settlers. In the process, many specimens of plants, animals, and fossils were collected and sent to eastern museums for study. In 1873, two botanists named John Wolfe and J.T. Rothrock accompanied a party of US Army engineers to Colorado where they collected and documented more than 12,000 specimens.

Natural history collections document plant and animal species found in different places and at different times. These are the key pieces of data needed for scientific specimens. Sometimes, though, they document more. They can be used to understand people -- how people moved and traveled, what they learned and the framework of that understanding, and how they interacted with nature.