Bandelier, Adolph Francis Alphonse (06 August 1840–18 March 1914), archaeologist, ethnologist, and historian, was born in Bern, Switzerland, the son of Adolphe Eugene Bandelier, a jurist and banker, and Marianne Senn, widow of Colonel Adrian Ritter, a Swiss army officer who served as a tutor in Russia—possibly at the Russian court. In 1847 Bandelier’s father, disagreeing with the Swiss parties in power following the Sonderbund war, traveled to Brazil. Finding, however, that he disliked Brazil’s slave-based society, he moved to the Swiss community of Highland, Illinois, where his wife and son joined him in 1848. In Highland, Bandelier was tutored at home. His mother died in 1855. In 1861 he married Josephine Huegy, daughter of one of his father’s banking partners. The couple had no children. Bandelier referred to French as his “native language” and preferred to pronounce his name Bahn-duh-lee-ay, but he appears to have been even more fluent in German....
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Bandelier, Adolph Francis Alphonse (1840-1914), archaeologist, ethnologist, and historian
Madeleine Turrell Rodack
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Brinton, Daniel Garrison (1837-1899), ethnologist
Regna Darnell
Brinton, Daniel Garrison (13 May 1837–27 October 1899), ethnologist, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the son of Lewis Brinton and Ann Carey Garrison. Many members of his influential Quaker Philadelphia family had emigrated in 1684 from England. Prepared for college by a private tutor, Brinton took an interest in American Indians by reading Alexander von Humboldt’s books of explorations and George McClintock’s ...
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Deloria, Ella Cara (1889-1971), linguist and ethnologist
Maija M. Lutz
Deloria, Ella Cara (31 January 1889–12 February 1971), linguist and ethnologist, was born on the Yankton Sioux (Dakota) Reservation at Lake Andes, South Dakota, the daughter of Native Americans Philip Joseph Deloria, an Episcopalian minister, and Mary Sully Bordeaux. She and her siblings received their earliest education at St. Elizabeth’s Mission, an institution associated with their father’s parish on the Standing Rock Reservation at Wakpala, South Dakota. The Deloria household, where Dakota was spoken as the primary language, provided an environment that was supportive of both Christian values and traditional Dakota language and culture. Deloria continued to intertwine elements of both cultures throughout her personal and professional life....
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Dorsey, James Owen (1848-1895), ethnologist and missionary
Bethany Neubauer
Dorsey, James Owen (31 October 1848–04 February 1895), ethnologist and missionary, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Thomas Anderson Dorsey and Mary Sweetser Hance. As a child, James showed an aptitude for languages, learning to read Hebrew by the age of ten. He entered Central High School in Baltimore in 1862 and in 1867 began studies at the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. Ordained as a deacon in 1871, Dorsey immediately left for the Dakota Territory, where he began missionary work among the Ponca Indians, a Siouan tribe. He quickly learned to speak the Ponca language well enough to communicate without an interpreter, and he was working on a Ponca grammar and dictionaries in 1873 when serious illness forced him to return east. Dorsey contacted the Smithsonian Institution, hoping to have his materials published, but his work was judged to be insufficiently professional....
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Goddard, Pliny Earle (1869-1928), ethnologist and linguist of American Indian languages
Deborah S. Dozier
Goddard, Pliny Earle (24 November 1869–12 July 1928), ethnologist and linguist of American Indian languages, was born in Lewiston, Maine, the son of Charles W. Goddard, a minister in the Society of Friends who supplemented his meager salary by selling home-grown produce and flowers, and Elmira Nichols. The fourth born in a family of seven children, Goddard learned self-reliance and frugality at an early age. These traits served him well, as he paid his own way to Oak Grove Seminary, a Friends’ academy in Vassalboro, a remote fifty miles from home. When the principal of the school was transferred to the Oakwood Seminary in Union Springs, New York, Goddard transferred, too. He graduated in 1889 and immediately enrolled at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Here he demonstrated interest in language by taking a full curriculum in Latin and Greek. He graduated with an A.B. in classical languages in 1892....
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Hale, Horatio Emmons (03 May 1817–28 December 1896), ethnologist
Jacob W. Gruber
Hale, Horatio Emmons (03 May 1817–28 December 1896), ethnologist, was born in Newport, New Hampshire, the son of David Hale, a lawyer, and Sarah Josepha Buell, a writer and journalist. After his father’s death when Hale was five years old, he and his four siblings were raised in a literary household headed by his mother, who had active intellectual interests. As a student at Harvard, inspired by the then romantic appeal of the vanishing Indians of the Northeast, Hale took the opportunity presented by a chance encampment of Indians on the campus to collect a small vocabulary; from his analysis of it, Hale determined that the group was a branch of the Algonkian-speaking Micmac. The resulting publication he set in type and printed privately in 1834 for a few of his friends. It was a period when the study of languages and the comparisons of their vocabularies and grammars promised to reveal the particular histories of linguistic communities as well as the historical relations between the culturally and racially distinct constituents of the human species. In 1836 Congress authorized its first overseas exploring expedition, to be led by Captain ...
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Harrington, John Peabody (1884-1961), linguist and ethnologist
Jane Walsh
Harrington, John Peabody (29 April 1884–21 October 1961), linguist and ethnologist, was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, the son of Elliott A. Harrington, a lawyer, and Mary L. Peabody, a teacher. The Harringtons moved to Santa Barbara, California, when John was two years old. As a high school student, Harrington exhibited a talent for languages, particularly German. He completed a B.A. in classical and modern languages at Stanford University in 1905, after only two and one-half years, and took graduate courses at the universities of Leipzig and later Berlin in anthropology and languages, with an emphasis on phonetics....
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Henshaw, Henry Wetherbee (1850-1930)
In
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Henshaw, Henry Wetherbee (1850-1930), ornithologist, ethnologist, and government official
Keir B. Sterling
Henshaw, Henry Wetherbee (03 March 1850–01 August 1930), ornithologist, ethnologist, and government official, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of William Henshaw and Sarah Holden Wetherbee. His interest in natural history was demonstrated from early childhood, and he began focusing has attention on birds. He completed his primary and secondary education in the local public schools, but poor health compelled him to defer plans to take the entrance examination at Harvard in 1869. While in high school, Henshaw met ...
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Hewitt, John Napoleon Brinton (1859-1937), ethnologist and linguist
Elisabeth Tooker
Hewitt, John Napoleon Brinton (16 December 1859–14 October 1937), ethnologist and linguist, was born on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in New York, the son of David Brainard Hewitt, a doctor, and Harriet Brinton. His mother was of Tuscarora, French, English, and Oneida descent. His father, of Scotch and English descent, had been orphaned as a boy, adopted by a Tuscarora family on the Tuscarora reservation, and raised as an Indian. Although both parents spoke fluent Tuscarora, they did not teach it to their children. Not until Hewitt—taught to read and write by his parents—entered the district school at the age of eleven did he begin to learn Tuscarora from his classmates. At sixteen, he entered the union school in Wilson, New York, where he studied for two years. He next attended the union school in Lockport, New York, but was unable to finish his last term there, as overstudy and a sunstroke had affected his health. After he returned to the reservation, he became a farmer and newspaper correspondent and established a private night school for Tuscarora men....
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Hough, Walter (1859-1935), ethnologist and museologist
James R. Glenn
Hough, Walter (23 April 1859–20 September 1935), ethnologist and museologist, was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, the son of Lycurgus S. Hough, an attorney, and Anna Fairchild. He was trained in chemistry and geology at West Virginia University (B.A., 1883; M.A., 1894; and Ph.D., 1894)....
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Jones, William (1871-1909), ethnologist
Ridie Wilson Ghezzi
Jones, William (28 March 1871–29 March 1909), ethnologist, was born on the Sauk and Fox Indian Reservation, Kansas, the son of Henry Clay Jones, a blacksmith and farmer, and Sarah Penny. After his mother’s death when he was a year old, Jones was raised by his paternal grandmother, Katiqwa, the daughter of a Fox chief. Jones had a traditional Fox upbringing until the age of nine, when his grandmother died and he returned to his father’s home. The eight years spent living with his grandmother had a strong influence on his personal interests and choice of career....
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Mallery, Garrick (1831-1894), army officer and ethnologist
James R. Glenn
Mallery, Garrick (23 April 1831–24 October 1894), army officer and ethnologist, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the son of Garrick Mallery, a jurist and state legislator, and Catherine J. Hall. The young Mallery studied at Yale University (A.B., 1850) and the University of Pennsylvania (LL.B., 1855)....
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Mason, Otis Tufton (1838-1908), ethnologist and museologist
James R. Glenn
Mason, Otis Tufton (10 April 1838–05 November 1908), ethnologist and museologist, was born in Eastport, Maine, the son of John Mason, a sea trader, and Rachel Thompson Lincoln. The father suffered financial reversals when Mason was a child and moved the family several times before again becoming prosperous and settling in 1849 at Woodlawn Plantation in Fairfax County, Virginia. A devout Baptist with certain advanced ideas, John Mason provided schools for his workers’ children and sent his own children to them. Otis Mason went on to study at Columbian College (now George Washington University) in Washington, D.C., where he earned an A.B. in 1861, an A.M. in 1862, and a Ph.D. in 1879....
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Nott, Josiah Clark (1804-1873)
In
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Nott, Josiah Clark (1804-1873), physician and racial theorist
Reginald Horsman
Nott, Josiah Clark (31 March 1804–31 March 1873), physician and racial theorist, was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of Abraham Nott, a U.S. Congressman, and Angelica Mitchell. Nott was brought up and educated in Columbia and on his father’s plantation in Union District. He graduated from South Carolina College in 1824. While there, he was strongly influenced by its free-thinking president, ...
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Pilling, James Constantine (1846-1895), government administrator and ethnologist
James R. Glenn
Pilling, James Constantine (16 November 1846–26 July 1895), government administrator and ethnologist, was born in Washington, D.C., the son of James Pilling, a carpenter and tax collector, and Susan Collins. He was educated at Gonzaga College, a Jesuit high school in Washington, D.C. Early in his career Pilling taught himself stenography; becoming quite skilled, he worked for courts, congressional committees, and special government commissions. In 1875 ...
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Roberts, Jack (1916-1990), anthropologist and ethnologist
Roland Armando Alum and Ralph Bolton
Roberts, Jack (08 December 1916–02 April 1990), anthropologist and ethnologist, was born John Milton Roberts in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of John Milton Roberts, Sr., a roads engineer and contractor, and Ruth Kohler. The young Roberts attended public schools in Lincoln, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1937 and entered the University of Chicago Law School. After a disenchanting term, he took anthropology courses. He left in 1939 for Yale University, where he studied principally under Clellan Ford, Cornelius Osgood, and ...
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Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1793-1864)
In
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Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1793-1864), author, ethnologist, and Indian agent
Helen Hornbeck Tanner
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (28 March 1793–10 December 1864), author, ethnologist, and Indian agent, was born on a farmstead on Black Creek, near Albany, New York, the son of Lawrence Schoolcraft, a farmer and glass manufacturer, and Margaret Anne Barbara Rowe. He attended school and received tutoring in Latin in Hamilton, New York, where his father served as justice of the peace. After the family moved to Vernon, New York, in 1808, he held responsible positions in the construction and management of glass factories in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont, often in business with his father. Although for a time he had the stimulating intellectual influence of an older mentor, a professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, Schoolcraft never attended classes. He acquired a library of scientific books and performed experiments in chemistry and mineralogy. Despite his recognized competence, he achieved only temporary success in glass manufacturing....
