Albert Gallatin Wetherby

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Albert Gallatin Wetherby (born August 1833 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † February 15, 1902 in Magnetic City , Mitchell County , North Carolina) was an American malacologist , mineralogist and fossil collector. He worked as a professor at the University of Cincinnati and later became a businessman.

He became known for his publications on North American snails, mussels and local fossils. Including the first description of the genus Enoploura , an extinct echinoderm from the Silurian.

biography

Fossil of the genus Enoploura described by Wetherby.

AG Wetherby Jr. was born in 1833 as the first son of AG Wetherby and Wilhelmina Pauline Auchentbough. He had three brothers and a sister. As a child, he moved with his parents to Cleveland, Ohio , where he graduated from college. He then worked for a few years as a village school teacher and as a farmer in the summer months. In 1861 he moved to Cincinnati. There he met his future wife, Mary Frances Voorhees. He married her on June 18, 1869 and started a large family with her. The marriage resulted in 5 boys and 7 girls.

From 1870 he worked as a teacher at the Woodburn Public School and five years later became the school director. However, his passion has always been natural history . His friend George W. Harpner , a knowledgeable fossil collector, introduced him to the biodiversity of American land and water snails, and Albert Gallatin Wetherby soon became an expert on invertebrate classification. In collaboration with him, a catalog was created in 1876 about the native snail fauna in Cincinnati.

In 1878 Wetherby found his calling to the University of Cincinnati and became a curator of the University Museum. There he threw himself into his studies in malacology and mineralogy full of enthusiasm. As a professor of natural history, he undertook a chair in geology and botany. In addition to his other duties, he participated in the " Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History " and published several articles therein. Including some about fossil finds from the area, although his specialty was the etymology of living molluscs . By misinterpreting the genus Enoploura as a crustacean species, he drew the mockery of Henry Woodward of the British Museum of Natural History . After six years of constant revision and differences with science colleagues, he got burned out and quit.

In 1885 he became General Manager of the American and European Investment Corporation and in 1886 moved to Magnetic City, North Carolina. There he became administrator for a large piece of land owned by the Roan Mountain Steel and Iron Company . At his new home, a wooded valley surrounded by high mountains, he and his wife worked as a naturalist and published articles on fossil finds and local fauna.

He died on February 15, 1902 at the age of 68. His grave is in Oak Hill Cemetery in Johnson City, Washington County, Tennessee.

Works and publications

  • 1876 ​​- Remarks on the variation in form of the family Strepomatidae with descriptions of new species ; published in: Proceedings of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, No. 1; Pp. 1-12
  • 1876 ​​- Catalog of the land and fresh water Mollusca, found in the immediate of Cincinnati ; in collaboration with George W. Harpner as lead author; O. James Barclay Printing House, Cincinnati, Ohio.
  • 1877 - Review of the genus Tulotoma, with remarks on the geographical distribution of the North American Viviparidae ; published in: The Quarterly Journal of Conchology 1; Pp. 207-215
  • 1878 - Terrestral mollusca of Texas ; published in: The American Naturalist 12; Pp. 184-185
  • 1878 - On the deformities of some Tennessee Helices ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History1; Pp. 154-158
  • 1879 - Notes on some new or little known North American Limnaeidae ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 2; Pp. 93-100
  • 1880 - Some notes on American landshells (part 1) ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 3; Pp. 33-40
  • 1881 - Some notes on American landshells (part 2) ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 4; Pp. 323-335
  • 1881 - On the geographical distribution of certain fresh-water mollusks of North America, and the probable causes of their variation (part 1) ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 3; Pp. 317-324
  • 1881 - On the geographical distribution of certain fresh-water mollusks of North America, and the probable causes of their variation (part 2) ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 4; Pp. 156-166
  • 1882 - Directions for collecting and preparing land and freshwater shells ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 5; Pp. 44-51
  • 1882 - The distribution of M. Margaritifera ; published in: The American Naturalist 16; Pp. 675-676
  • 1893 - Natural History notes from North Carolina. Notes on some landshells of Roan Mountain and vicinity ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 16; Pp. 87-93
  • 1894 - The landshells of Roan Mountain and vicinity, continued. II Jour ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 16; Pp. 209-216
  • 1894 - The landshells of Roan Mountain and vicinity, continued. III Jour ; published in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 17; Pp. 66-77
  • 1894 - A few notes on Helix appressa ; appeared in The Nautilus 8; Pp. 14-16
  • 1894 - A few notes on Helix tridentata ; appeared in The Nautilus 8; Pp. 43-45
  • 1895 - New records of reversed American Helices ; appeared in The Nautilus 9; P. 49

Animals described by AG Wetherby (selection)

  • Lithasia armigera (Say, 1821) - Angitrema angulata (Wetherby, 1872)
  • Triodopsis vultuosa (Gould, 1848) - Helix vultuosa copei (Wetherby, 1872)
  • Planorbella duryi (Wetherby, 1879) - Planorbis (Helisoma) duryi (Wetherby, 1879)
  • † Enoploura Wetherby (Wetherby 1879)
  • Helicodiscus fimbriatus (Wetherby, 1881)
  • Ariolimax dolichophallus (Mead, 1943) - Ariolimax columbiana hecoxi (Wetherby, 1880)
  • Mesomphix perfragilis (Wetherby, 1894) - Zonites perfragilis (Wetherby, 1894)
  • Lithasia obovata (Say, 1829) - Lithasia plicata (Wetherby, 1876)
  • Elimia plicatastriata (Wetherby, 1876) - Goniobasis plicatastriata (Wetherby, 1876)
  • Leptoxis umbilicata (Wetherby, 1876) - Anculosa umbilicata (Wetherby, 1876)

literature

  • GH Harper: "Albert Gallatin Wetherby"; Biography in The Nautilus (1902); Digitized at Archive.org (English)
  • Richard I. Johnson, "Albert Gallatin Wetherby: Malacology at the Cincinnati Society of Natural History and in Ohio (1843-1896)"; in Occasional papers on mollusks, March 11, 2002, Edition: 6, No. 79; Digitized at Archive.org (English)
  • Richard Arnold Davis, David L. Meyer, "A Sea without Fish: Life in the Ordovician Sea of ​​the Cincinnati Region"; Indiana University Press (2009) (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Enoploura Wetherby, 1879. In: GBIF.org. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Find a Grave ; However, GH Harper mentions Magnetic City, North Carolina as the burial site in the biography .
  3. ^ Wetherby group: "Notes on some new or little known North American Limnaeidae"; in: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, 2 (1879), pp. 93-100. Description from page 99; as a digitized version on Archive.org
personal data
SURNAME Wetherby, Albert Gallatin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wetherby, Albert Gallatin, Jr.; Wetherby, Albert G .; Wetherby, AG
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American malacologist and mineralogist
DATE OF BIRTH August 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania, USA
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1902
Place of death Mitchell County , North Carolina, USA