Samuel Haldeman
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Samuel Stehman Haldeman (August 12, 1812 – September 10, 1880) was a United States naturalist and philologist.
Biography
Haldeman was born in Locust Grove, Pennsylvania on August 12, 1812, the oldest of seven children of Henry Haldeman and Frances Stehman Haldeman. Locust Grove was the family estate on the Susquehanna River, twenty miles below Harrisburg. His father was a prosperous businessman and his mother was an accomplished musician who died when Haldeman was twelve years old. In 1826, he was sent to school at the Classical Academy in Harrisburg. After two years in the academy, he enrolled at Dickinson College where his interest in natural history was encouraged by his professor, Henry Darwin Rogers, who would later become a distinguished geologist.[1][2] Two years after entering Dickinson, the college was forced to close temporarily and Peck left without earning a diploma.[3]
After leaving school, Haldeman took over management of his father's new sawmill and became a silent partner with two of his brothers who started an iron manufacturing business in the area. He eventually became an authority on smelting iron. However, he was always drawn to science and mechanics and often neglected the family businesses in pursuit of these interests.[3] He later said, "I developed a taste for rainy weather and impassable roads; then I could remain undisturbed in the perusal of my books."[1] In 1833-1834 he attended lectures in the medical department at the University of Pennsylvania in order to better prepare himself for the study of natural history.[2]
In 1835, his former professor, Henry D. Rogers, was appointed state geologist of New Jersey and in 1836 he sent for Haldeman to assist him. A year later, on the reorganization of the Pennsylvania geological survey, Haldeman was transferred to his own state, and was actively engaged on the survey until 1842, preparing five annual reports, and personally surveying the counties of Dauphin and Lancaster. In 1840 he began the publication of his monograph on the “Fresh-Water Univalve Mollusca of the United States,” in which he described the Scolithus linearis, a new genus and species of fossil plant, the most ancient organic remains in Pennsylvania. During the year 1842/3, he gave a course of lectures on zoology at the Franklin Institute. He visited Texas in 1851 to investigate the presidency of an institution there, but declined the position. On his return trip from Texas, he was offered the position of president of Masonic College in Selma, Alabama, which he accepted and held from January to October 1852.
In 1852 (apparently listed by some sources as 1851 in error), Haldeman was appointed professor of the natural sciences in the University of Pennsylvania. In 1855 he went to Delaware College, where he filled the same position. While there, he also lectured on geology and chemistry in the state agricultural college of Pennsylvania. In 1869, he returned to the University of Pennsylvania as professor of comparative philology. He remained there until his death, which occurred at Chickies, Pennsylvania.
Haldeman made numerous visits to Europe for purposes of research, and when studying the human voice in Rome determined the vocal repertoire of 40-50 varieties of human speech. His ear was remarkably delicate, and he discovered a new organ of sound in lepidopterous insects, which was described by him in Benjamin Silliman's American Journal of Science in 1848. He made extensive researches among Amerindian dialects, and also in Pennsylvania Dutch, besides investigations in the English, Chinese, and other languages. Haldeman was an earnest advocate of spelling reform. He was a member of many scientific societies, was the founder and president of the American Philological Association, and one of the early members of the National Academy of Sciences.
Raised a Protestant, Haldeman converted to Catholicism, after undertaking a systematic study of religion.[1]
Evolution
Haldeman was a proponent of Lamarckian evolution and transmutation of species.[1] In the third edition of On the Origin of Species published in 1861, Charles Darwin added a Historical Sketch that acknowledged the ideas of Haldeman.[4]
Works
- A monograph of the Limniades and other freshwater univalve shells of North America. Philadelphia, J. Dobson. (1840)
- A monograph of the freshwater univalve mollusca of the United States, including notices of species in other parts of North America (1842)
- Zoological Contributions (1842–1843)
- “Monographie du genre leptoxis” (in Chenu's Illustrations conchologiques, Paris, 1847)
- “On some Points in Linguistic Ethnology” (in Proceedings of the American Academy, Boston, 1849)
- “Zoölogy of the Invertebrate Animals” (in the Iconographic Encyclopædia, New York, 1850)
- Elements of Latin Pronunciation. (1851)
- “On the Relations of the English and Chinese Languages” (in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1856)
- Analytic Orthography (1860) In 1858, this essay gained Haldeman the Trevelyan Prize in England over 18 European competitors.
- Tours of a Chess Knight (1864)
- Pennsylvania Dutch, a Dialect of South German with an Infusion of English (1872)
- Outlines of Etymology (1877)
- Word-Building (1881)
Notes
- Attribution
- Ripley, George; Dana, Charles A., eds. (1879). The American Cyclopædia. .
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Haldeman, Samuel Stehman". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1892). . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
References
- Brinton, D. G (1881). "Memoir of S. S. Haldeman, A. M., Ph. D., etc". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 19 (108): 279–285. JSTOR 982249.
- Essig, E. O. (1931). A History of Entomology. New York: Macmillan Company. pp. 646–647.
- S. W. Geiser, "Notes on Some Workers in Texas Entomology 1839-1880", Volume 49, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online (accessed 2 June 2007)
- Haldeman, Horace L. (1898). "A Memoir of Prof. Samuel Steman Haldeman. LL. D." Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. 9 (3): 257–292.
- Lesley, J. P. (1881). "Memoir of Samuel Stedman Haldeman 1812-1880" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences.
- Mallis, Arnold (1971). American Entomologists. Rutgers University Press. pp. 33–36. ISBN 0-8135-0686-7.
- Sorenson, W. Conner (1995). Brethren of the Net: American Entomology, 1840-1880. University of Alabama Press.
- Dickinson College Archives (2005). "Samuel Stehman Haldeman (1812-1880)". Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.
External links
- Finding aid to the Samuel Stehman Haldeman papers at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
- Works by or about Samuel Haldeman at Internet Archive
- DEI Entomology
- Samuel Stehman Haldeman Archive
- 1812 births
- 1880 deaths
- American entomologists
- Conchologists
- American naturalists
- American philologists
- American Roman Catholics
- Dickinson College alumni
- Lamarckism
- Proto-evolutionary biologists
- University of Pennsylvania faculty
- Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
- People from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
- Catholics from Pennsylvania