Spencer Fullerton Baird: Naturalist

In 1845 Spencer Fullerton Baird was chosen to become Professor of Natural History at Dickinson College and began the strenuous life of research that characterized his whole later career. He corresponded with naturalists and amateurs in this country and Europe, amassed enormous collections, and in vacation times made expeditions in various directions from the Great Lakes to Virginia and Ohio. Baird married Mary Helen Churchill of Carlisle, whose charming social qualities drew and retained many friends, and for the younger naturalists of Washington the privilege of intimacy with the household was a great boon. Baird's modest and genial attitude made friends wherever he went, and it is probable that no other naturalist of the time was so widely known in America and so affectionately esteemed.

Meanwhile he developed remarkable abilities in the line of administration, and his museum methods lie at the root of the best practices of the present day. His great opportunity came with his selection, in 1850, as assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution under Professor Joseph Henry. The exploration of the West for transcontinental railways soon began, and through the influence of Baird the various parties were encouraged to make biological as well as geographical investigations. Baird's reports upon them, published by Congress, are classical. He joined to a marvelous faculty for systematizing business, a capacity for steady and continuous work only limited by his waking hours. His frank, genial, and wholly unaffected manner put the scientist and laboring man alike at ease.

Always busy, he always seemed to have time for a friendly chat with every newcomer. Not only did he hold amicable relations with scientists actually engaged in research, but there was hardly a schoolboy of extraordinary genius for bird-nesting or fishing whom he did not know about and encourage. This was greatly facilitated by the wide distribution of checklists of animals and monographs issued by the Smithsonian. The care he took to encourage and stimulate the younger naturalists who were so fortunate as to gain his attention is well shown in scores of letters still preserved, all written in his fine but legible hand, and affording a hint of the tremendous amount of correspondence which he personally carried on at a period when pen and ink formed the principal means of communication.

The unexplored regions of the West naturally claimed most of his attention, but through intimacy with Farragut and other naval officers, as well as members—mostly surgeons—of the Revenue Marine, collecting in foreign waters was promoted. The scientific work of the Coast Survey and the dredgings of the Fish Commission vessels Fish Hawk and Albatross under Baird's influence produced results that were of worldwide importance.

By: davidbunch

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