FAXON: RELICS OF PEALE's MUSEUM. 125 



and founder of the Philadelphia Museum — was born of English 

 parents in Chestertown, Md., in 1741. His museum had its modest 

 origin in 1784, in a Paddle Fish from the Allegheny River, some 

 bones of a ^Mastodon from Ohio, and his pictures, at first stored in a 

 frame building annexed to his dwelling at the southwest corner of 

 Lombard and Third Street. In 1794 his collection was moved to the 

 Hall of the Philosophical Society and in 1802 the State of Pennsyl- 

 vania granted a part of the old State House (Independence Hall) 

 for the exhibition of Peale's accumulations. The active manage- 

 ment of the Museum devolved upon Peale's sons in 1808, and in 1820 

 the property was divided into shares and a stock company incorpo- 

 rated by act of the Pennsylvania Legislature, the official title of the 

 corporation being the Philadelphia ^Museum Company. The collec- 

 tion was transferred in 1828 to the .-Vrcade on Chestnut Street above 

 Sixth Street and again in 1838 to a building in Ninth and Sansom 

 Street. Eight years after, the ^Museum Company came to grief, the 

 collections were sold off by auction, but the natural history collection 

 was still kept together and exhibited in ^Masonic Hall till 1850, when 

 it was bought for S5000 or 8G000 by :\Ioses Kimball and P. T. Barnum. 

 The scientific importance of Peale's Museum arose from several 

 causes. The records show that the institution was in touch not only 

 with the contemporary museums in the United States, such as the 

 Columbian of Boston, the New York Museum, and Mix's New Haven 

 JNIuseum, but also with the great scientific establishments of Europe, 

 in Paris, London, Stockholm, etc. Peale and his sons were in corre- 

 spondence, moreover, with many of the most prominent naturalists 

 of Europe; as, Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier, Lamarck, Maximilian, 

 Prince of Wied, and John Latham. I believe that a part of the 

 Leverian Museum ^ found its way into Peale's Museum ; certainly 

 the booty of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) was depos- 

 ited there in December, 1809, and the collections made by the Expedi- 

 tion of Major Long to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-1820 were 

 added on March 23, 1821. Peale's son Titian R. was Assistant 

 Naturalist of the latter expedition, Thomas Say being the head 

 naturalist. But the chief cause of the importance ascribed to Peale's 

 collection lay in the use made of it by that remarkable coterie of 

 naturalists who made Philadelphia the metropolis of natural history 

 in America during the early part of the nineteenth century; as ob- 



i sir Asliton Lever's famous collections were disposed of by lottery In 1788 to James 

 Parkinson, and were finally dispersed at public auction sale in London in 1806, 

 the sale numbering 7.879 lots and lasting sixty-five days. 



