Caleb Burwell Rowan Kennerly

Caleb Burwell Rowan Kennerly (* 1829 in White Post , Virginia , † February 6, 1861 at sea in the Pacific off Baja California ) was an American doctor and naturalist . He participated in three government-sponsored expeditions, the Pacific Railroad Survey (1853-1854), the United States Mexican Boundary Survey (1854-1855) and the Northwest Boundary Survey (1857-1861). These expeditions contributed greatly to the natural history collection of the Smithsonian Institution , in which Kennerly played a major role.

biography

Caleb BR Kennerly was born in 1829 to the family home of Ann Susan Carnegy and Rev. Thomas Kennerly at White Post, Virginia. He grew up in Greenway Court , a country estate about two kilometers south of White Post. In Carlisle , Pennsylvania , he attended Dickinson College , where Spencer Fullerton Baird was Professor of Natural History. Baird conducted biological excursions there and aroused his interest in ornithology . In 1849 he graduated from Dickinson College with a Bachelor of Arts degree and moved to the University of Pennsylvania to study medicine . There he received his doctorate ( MD ) in 1852 .

Kennerly maintained contact with Baird, who joined the Smithsonian Institution as an advisor in 1850, throughout his life . Baird mediated Kennerly as a participant in the US government- funded Pacific Railroad Survey (1853-1854). On this and the following expeditions, in which Kennerly participated, he acted as a doctor and naturalist. The Pacific Railroad Survey was about the investigation of the terrain for the construction of a rail link along the 35th parallel from Arkansas to the Mojave Desert . From 1857 to 1859, Kennerly took part in the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey , which, in addition to defining the course of the border, also explored the nature of the border area. He was then a participant in the Northwestern Boundary Survey (1857-1861), in which the border between the Washington Territory and present-day Canada , which was British territory at the time , was mapped. On this expedition, too, a focus was on exploring nature.

On the way home from the Northwestern Boundary Survey , which was to lead over the Isthmus of Panama , Kennerly died four days after casting in San Francisco on February 6, 1861 of a sudden brain disease and was buried at sea. He was 32 years old. After returning to Virginia, he had planned to get married.

Act

Kennerly made great contributions to the study of the then little-known nature in the western United States. His mentor Baird, with whom he was in correspondence during the expeditions, paid tribute to him in the Smithsonian Annual Report in 1961:

No one of the gentlemen who have labored so zealously to extend a knowledge of the natural history of the west within the last ten or twelve years has been more successful than Dr. Kennerly. Many new species have been first described by himself or from his collections, while his contributions to the biography of American animals have been of the highest interest.

“None of the gentlemen who have so zealously contributed to the expansion of natural history knowledge in the West over the past ten or twelve years has been more successful than Dr. Kennerly. Many new species were first described by him or on the basis of his collections, and his contributions to the life history of American animal species have been of great interest. "

He made a particular contribution to the Smithsonian Institution's ichthyological collection . Many of the copies collected by him were the basis for initial descriptions by Charles Frédéric Girard or George Suckley , the latter was entrusted with the processing of the remaining material he had collected after Kennerly's death. Girard dedicated a species of sucker carp to him in 1856 with Moxostoma kennerlii (today Erimyzon sucetta ) , and in 1861 Suckley named Salmo kennerlyi (today Oncorhynchus nerka ) a species of salmon after him. Kennerly was the first to describe the North American subspecies of the black swift ( Cypseloides niger borealis ), which he observed in 1858 on the coast of Puget Sound in today's Washington state . He was able to collect a copy of this sailor, which was initially thought to be a new species.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Dickinson College Chronicles - Caleb Burwell Rowan Kennerly (1829-1861) ( Memento August 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ ^{A b} Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: Caleb Burwell Rowan Kennerly (1829-1861)
3. ↑ George Suckley: Notices of certain New Species of North American Salmonidæ, chiefly in the Collection of the NW Boundary Commission, in charge of Archibald Campbell, Esq., Commissioner of the United States, collected by Doctor CBR Kennerly, Naturalist to the Commission. In: Annals of The Lyceum of Natural History of New York. 7: 306-313 April 1862 ( abstract )
4. ↑ R. Levad: The Coolest Bird. A Natural History of the Black Swift and Those Who Have Pursued It. Page 11f, American Birding Association, 2010 ( online ; PDF; 3.7 MB)