JOEL ASAPH ALLEN 1 



By Frank M. Chapman 



ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 



There is nothing in the immediate ancestry, the early environment, or associations of Joel 

 Asaph Allen to account for his obviously instinctive characteristics as a student of nature. 

 One can only say that he was born a naturalist and that the definite, pronounced interest which 

 at an early age he evinced in natural phenomena and in plant and animal life developed spon- 

 taneously. 



Doctor Allen was born at Springfield, Mass., July 19, 1838, and died at Cornwall-on- 

 Hudson, N. Y., on August 29, 1921. He came of good New England stock. On his father's 

 side he was a descendant in the eighth generation of Samuel Allen, who settled at Windsor, 

 Conn., in 1640, and who came to this country from England, it is believed, in 1630 with the 

 Dorchester Company io the ship Mary and John. 



On the maternal side, Doctor Allen was descended from John Trumbull, great-grandfather 

 of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull (said to have been the original "Brother Jonathan" and familiar 

 friend of Washington), who was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, and settled in Roxbury, 

 Mass., in 1639. 



Doctor Allen's immediate progenitors were farmers. His father, however, was a carpenter 

 in his earlier days, but later bought a farm on which he passed the greater part of his life. A 

 man of excellent judgment and sterling integrity whose advice was often sought by his neigh- 

 bors, he had, however, little appreciation of his son's desire to study nature, and evidently 

 expected him to succeed him in the care of the farm. Doctor Allen's mother, on the other hand, 

 had much sympathy with his yearnings for a knowledge of flora and fauna, and often used her 

 influence to secure for him opportunities to study. Possibly tastes latent in her may have found 

 expression in her son. They were not, however, possessed by Doctor Allen's two brothers, one 

 of whom became a molder, while the other remained on the parental farm. 



Doctor Allen's early training was rigidly puritanical. Both of his parents were members of 

 the Congregational Church and strict in their religious observances. His home was half a 

 mile from that of the nearest neighbor; but in thus being removed from external influences, he 

 evinced while still a toddling youngster so marked an interest in wild flowers that he was dubbed 

 " Doctor Sykes," in allusion to an herb doctor of local reputation. 



With no training or contact with the outside world, other than that to be gained by 

 attendance during the winter session at the conventional little red schoolhouse, distant a mile 

 from his home, the young farmer developed a desire to know more of the soil and rocks, the 

 animal and plant life, the ever-changing phenomena of sky and air which formed his environ- 

 ment. 



At the age of 13, after much pleading, his father presented him with a gun. At first used 

 for sport, it soon became a means of acquiring specimens. No books were available ; there was no 

 one to turn to for advice; and without instruction of any kind the tastes, not merely of the 

 "nature lover," common in varying' degrees to most men, but the deeper, rarer instincts of the 

 student naturalist, were manifested. The birds shot were measured, weighed, described, and 

 named. Attempts were even made to make colored drawings of them. A new world was 

 opening to the boy, and so far as he knew he was the only naturalist in it. 



His joy may be imagined, when, a little later, he made the acquaintance of one Bradford 

 Horsford, a teacher of drawing, who was also an amateur taxidermist and ornithologist. From 



1 The biographical and bibliographical portions of this memoir are based on "Autobiographical Notes and a Bibliography of the Scientific Publi- 

 cations," prepared by Doctor Allen, and published by the American Museum of Natural History in 1916. The more strictly historical portion is 

 taken from the memorial address on Doctor Allen presented by the writer before the American Ornithologists' Union, at its Thirty-ninth Congress, 

 held in Philadelphia, November 9, 1921, and subsequently published in "The Auk" for January, 1922. 



