William Henry Edwards

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William Henry Edwards 1911

William Henry Edwards (born March 15, 1822 in Hunter, Greene County , New York , † April 4, 1909 in Coalburgh, West Virginia ) was an American entrepreneur and entomologist .

life and work

Edward's parents were William W. Edwards and Helen Ann Mann. His father owned a tannery and when his son was a child he bought more than 400 hectares of forest to make tanneries . It was through this forest that Edwards discovered nature and his love for her. He first studied law and found coal and oil on inherited land, which is where he started a business.

Amazon traveler

In 1846, at the age of 24, Edwards traveled to Brazil and drove up the Amazon with his uncle Armory Edwards . Armory had been the US consul in Buenos Aires working for the family's leather business in Argentina. It is possible that the original purpose of their trip was related to the family business, but for Edwards the beauty and unobstructed wilderness were central to this journey, which he experienced while exploring the vast delta island of Marajó as it went upriver from Belem to Manaus to lead. He collected birds, insects and other animals.

Edwards took careful note of his experience and shortly afterwards wrote the book " A Voyage Up the River Amazon, with a residency at Pará " (German: A journey up the Amazon), which was published in 1847. He is credited with arousing the interest of natural scientists in the region; in particular, Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace read Edward's report and were inspired to make the Amazon the destination of their famous expedition. After all, Edwards' book was only the first of several works by naturalists who captured the growing interest in scientific exploration of the Amazon.

Coal entrepreneur

After the death of his youngest brother in 1847, Edwards inherited 30,000 acres in the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia (then still part of Virginia). His family had bought the property unseen from property speculators, but Edwards soon discovered that it was prime coal land, on some of the thickest coal seams in the world. He became one of the first to enter coal mining in the region. In 1852 he opened the first coal mines on Paint Creek and in 1856 developed the first coal-oil refinery. During the American Civil War, Edwards organized the Kanawha and Ohio Coal Company and opened the Coalburg mines in 1863. Edwards later launched the mining industry's first coal tugboat and used it to haul coal on the Ohio River to Cincinnati .

Butterfly researcher

Although Edwards had been interested in natural history since childhood, he did not become a serious collector and student of butterflies until around 1856 at the age of 33 . He probably learned the basics of entomology from John Weidemeyer , a New York entomologist who wrote one of the first American books on butterflies, and John Akhurst, a New York taxidermist who also collected insects. In the 1850s, Edwards built a significant collection of butterflies and corresponded with many prominent entomologists and other naturalists, including Spencer Fullerton Baird . Baird, the first curator at the Smithsonian Institution , supported Edward's new passion by sending him numerous specimens of butterflies from the museum's collections. Other museums followed him and sent him butterflies from around the world for identification.

Edwards published his first scientific paper in 1861, in which he described several new butterfly species. During his career he published about 250 scientific papers on Lepidoptera. In addition to much work describing new butterfly species, he made important contributions in the field of polymorphism (the occurrence of more than one form in the same population of a species). Entomologists began to see polymorphism in insects as a demonstration of natural selection and an opportunity to study evolutionary processes. Edwards discovered many examples of polymorphism in butterflies in North America and showed that temperature was an environmental factor affecting the polymorphic species.

By 1865 Edwards had begun work on The Butterflies of North America , a three-volume masterpiece that was described as "one of the most important entomological publications of the 19th century". Originally intended to be a descriptive catalog of North American species, it grew to include detailed life histories of many species and some of the best butterfly illustrations ever published. The illustrations were drawn by Mary Peart, a talented Pennsylvania artist, and hand-colored by Lydia Brown. Edwards spent the remainder of his career completing what would become his most important legacy. The third and final volume appeared in 1897. Edwards withdrew shortly thereafter from entomology.

Other work

He wrote a genealogy of the Edwards family and published a monograph in which he questioned the authorship of Shakespeare's plays:

He was an observer of the American Civil War and correspondent to Charles Darwin .

Private life

Edward married Catherine Colt Tappan, daughter of the abolitionist Arthur Tappan , in 1851 . They raised three children. Her son, William Seymour Edwards grew up to become prominent in the politics, industry and literature of West Virginia. Her daughter, Edith Edwards, married Theodore Luqueer Mead , a notable entomologist who had apprenticed to her father.

Edwards died at his Bellefleur home in Coalburg, West Virginia . The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

Works (selection)

Essays

Edwards has published over 250 articles in various science journals.

Books

  • A Voyage up the River Amazon . The Narrative Press, Santa Clara, Calif. 2004, ISBN 1-5897-6244-4 (reprint of the New York 1847 edition).
  • The Butterflies of North America . Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass. 1868/97 (5 vol.).
  • Synopsis of North American Butterflies . Philadelphia, Penn. 1872.
  • Catalog of the Diurnal Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico . In: Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. , Vol. 6, pp. 1-68.
  • Revised Catalog of the Diurnal Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico . Philadelphia, Penn. 1884.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jim Planck: William H. Edwards & the Amazon . In: Greene County History . 37, No. 2, 2013.
  2. ^ A b c d W. Conner Sorenson: Brethren of the Net: American Entomologists, 1840-1880 . University of Alabama Press, 1995.
  3. ^ Debra K. Sullivan: William Henry Edwards . 2012. Retrieved April 11, 2016.
  4. ^ John V. Calhoun: The Extraordinary Story of an Artistic and Scientific Masterpiece: The Butterflies of North America by William Henry Edwards, 1868-1897 . In: Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society . 67, No. 2, 2013, pp. 67-110.
  5. ↑ Mallis: American Entomologists . Rutgers University, 1971, ISBN 0-8135-0686-7 , pp.  288-292 .
  6. ↑ Michael J. Pauley: National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: William H. & William S. Edwards House . West Virginia. 1990.
  7. ↑ Andrew Gray Weeks: Illustrations of diurnal lepidoptera . University Press, Boston, Mass. 1910.

Web links

Commons : William Henry Edwards  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Edwards, William Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entomologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Hunter, Greene County
DATE OF DEATH April 4, 1909
Place of death Coalburgh, West Virginia