Pictured
here is the oil portrait by Charles Willson Peale of Thomas Say in the uniform
of the first Long Expedition, 1819, from the Ewell Sale Stewart Library, The
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Say who, Thomas Say… that is who! He was an American naturalist (1787,
Philadelphia, PA—1834, New Harmony, IN) who is the founder of
descriptive entomology in America. In
fact, Thomas Say is considered the Father of American Entomology! Let me take
you back in time, say (pun intended) to the early 1800s in southwest Indiana.
New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River
in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana,
United States.
It lies 15 miles north of Mount Vernon, the county seat.
It is part of the Evansville metropolitan
area.
Established by the Harmony
Society in 1814, the town was originally known as Harmony (also
called Harmonie, or New Harmony). Bought at two dollars an acre, the 20,000
acre settlement was the brain child of George Rapp
and was home to exclusively German Lutherans in its early years. Here, the Harmonists built a new town in the
wilderness, but in 1824 they decided to sell their property and return to Pennsylvania.
Robert Owen,
a Welsh
industrialist and social reformer, purchased the town in 1825 with the
intention of creating a new utopian
community and renamed it New Harmony. While the Owenite social
experiment was an economic failure just two years after it began,
the community made some important contributions to American society.
New Harmony became known as a
center for advances in education and scientific research. New Harmony's
residents established the first free library, a civic drama club, and a public
school system open to men and women. Its prominent citizens included Owen's
sons, Indiana congressman and social reformer Robert Dale
Owen, who sponsored legislation to create the Smithsonian Institution; David Dale
Owen, a noted state and federal geologist; William Owen; and Richard Owen, state geologist, Indiana University professor, and first
president of Purdue University. The town served as the
second headquarters of the U.S. Geological Survey and
numerous scientists and educators contributed to New Harmony’s intellectual
community, including William Maclure, Marie Louise
Duclos Fretageot, Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, Joseph Neef, Frances
Wright, and others.
Now, all the way back to more
modern times. Over the last 25 years or
so, as a Pest Control Professional, I maintained the monthly pest control
program of most of the New Harmony’s historic buildings. I do not ever recall any mention of Thomas
Say… most of the other people mentioned above, I have known about them in detail. I find it odd that I do not remember him discussed
within my profession, either. I have
been familiar with entomology since I was a kid in 4-H, I took the entomology
project, entering my display box of the insects I had collected and labeled at
the county 4-H Fair. I knew what too
many others did not know that entomology is the study of insects, not the study
of words (which is etymology).
I was a participant in the State
4-H Entomology Judging Contest held at Purdue University my last 2 years of
being a 4-H’er. Later in life, my kids
took entomology in 4-H. In all of this
time I did not know of the Father of American Entomology, Thomas Say, who lived
and died not far from where I have lived my whole life! This is the purpose of this blog article: to
ensure that southwest Indiana people learn about this famous individual.
Thomas Say was a self-taught
naturalist. At the age of 25, he became
a charter member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Living
frugally in the Academy building, Say took care of the museum and became a
friend of William Maclure, President of the Academy from 1817 to 1840.
In 1818 Say accompanied Maclure and
others members of the Academy on an expedition to the off-shore islands of
Georgia and Florida. In 1819-20, Major Stephen H. Long led an exploration to
the Rocky Mountains with Thomas Say as zoologist, and in 1823, Say served as
zoologist in Long's expedition to the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
During the 1819-20 expedition, Say
first described the coyote, swift fox, western kingbird, band-tailed pigeon,
Say's phoebe, rock wren, lesser goldfinch, lark sparrow, lazuli bunting, and
orange-crowned warbler.
Thomas Say
accompanied William Maclure and other scientists and educators from
Philadelphia on the famous "Boatload of Knowledge." The party arrived
in New Harmony, Indiana, in January, 1826. One of the passengers was the artist
Lucy Way Sistare, whom Say married secretly, near New Harmony, on January 4,
1827.
In New
Harmony, Say continued his descriptions of insects and mollusks, culminating in
two classics:
Thomas Say, American
Entomology, or Descriptions of the Insects of North America, 3 volumes,
Philadelphia, 1824-1828.
Thomas Say, American
Conchology, or Descriptions of the Shells of North America Illustrated From
Coloured Figures From Original Drawings Executed from Nature, Parts 1 - 6, New
Harmony, 1830-1834; Part 7, Philadelphia, 1836. (Some of the illustrations in American
Conchology were drawn by Mrs. Say.)
Say was a
taxonomist, as were most of the early entomologists, and he described
considerably more than 1,000 new species of beetles and over 400 insects of
other orders, including species in every important insect order. A hasty check
of his writings shows 404 new species definitely listed from Indiana, including
eight orders.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, his work, which
was almost entirely taxonomic, was quickly recognized by European zoologists. Say accompanied various expeditions to North
American territories, including an exploration of the Rocky
Mountains led by Stephen Long in 1820. He served as curator of the
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia (1821–27), and was professor of
natural history at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1822–28). He
was invited to join the experimental ideal community at New Harmony, Indiana.
Although the community was disbanded in 1827, Say remained in the town, which
grew as a cultural center.
Volumes of Say’s American
Entomology, on which he began work in 1817, were published in
1824, 1825, and 1828. His American
Conchology, 6 vol. (1830–34), was illustrated by Charles A. Le Sueur, a
colleague in the New Harmony experiment. Collections of Say’s extensive
writings in entomology, conchology, and paleontology were published after his
death.
In her book, Thomas Say: New World Naturalist (Hardcover,
340 pages, published May 1st 1992 by University of Pennsylvania Press), Patricia Tyson Stroud states:
Explorer, pioneering natural scientist, and a founder of
the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Thomas Say (1787-1834) devoted
his life to establishing the authority of American scientists to name and
describe their native flora and fauna (until then, specimens were sent to
Europe for that purpose). He was the first to name and describe for science the
coyote, plains grey wolf, and swift fox, in addition to several western birds
and many amphibians. He ranks with William Bartram, Alexander Wilson, Thomas
Nuttall, and John James Audubon as one of the great naturalists of early
America. In the early nineteenth century, Say was successful in founding the
sciences of entomology and conchology in the United States. He wrote the first
book published in America on insects, American
Entomology (1824-1828).
The Purdue University entomology department’s web site is
supporting a movement to enact through the Indiana State Legislature, the
creation of a state insect. State
Representatives Sue Scholer and Sheila Klinker are sponsoring a bill to name
the Pyractomena angulate (Say) as the Indiana State Insect, known as Say’s
firefly (or by many of us as a lightning bug).
It is, specifically, Say’s firefly that he described in New Harmony
about 1824 that is being proposed. Fireflies
are widely known as beneficial, attractive and… enlightening!
Son of a wealthy Quaker merchant,
Say himself chose to sacrifice material comforts for the sake of science and
was chronically ill from the malnutrition he experienced as a young man. In the
1820s he followed British philosopher Robert Owen to Indiana, where Owen
established the utopian community of New Harmony. While the utopian experiment
failed and Owen returned to England, Say remained in New Harmony and made it
the base for all his scientific expeditions.
Each moss,
Each shell, each crawling insect, holds a rank
Important in the plan of Him who fram'd
This scale of being.
--Stillingfleet
This epigram graces the three-volume
work American Entomology: or Descriptions of the Insects of North America
(1824-28), the masterwork of Thomas Say (1787-1834), the Father of American Entomology.
