The American Museum Journal 
VoL. X MAY, 1910 No. 5 

ROBERT PARR WHITFIELD 
OBERT PARR WHITFIELD, Curator Emeritus of Geology 
and Invertebrate Paleontology, died on April 6 after a long 
illness. Coming to the Museum while still in the prime of life, 
he rendered most faithful service to the institution for thirty-three years 
and did his full share in placing it in its commanding position in the 
scientific world. 
He was born at New Hartford, Oneida County, New York, May 27, 
1828, and therefore came from a region which has furnished several 
of the most famous geologists and paleontologists of America. At the 
age of nine, the boy began work in a cotton mill, later entering the shop 
of his father, who was a spindle maker. When he was twenty, his 
father gave young Whitfield his time, and he was employed by Samuel 
Chubbock, a well-known manufacturer of philosophical instruments at 
Utica. THis spare moments were spent in collecting the fossils for which 
the region around that city is famous and in preparing, mounting and 
studying them, his interest in natural history having been aroused and 
fostered in very early life by an English nurse who was in the family. 
School education did not fall to his lot; in fact, as he has stated in con- 
versation with the writer, his entire school training amounted to less 
than three months of time in all, and he never saw the inside of a school 
house as a student after he was twelve years old. Hence Professor 
Whitfield’s career as a scientist is even more remarkable than it would 
have been, if he had had the advantage in early life of the scholastic 
and other training that has fallen to the lot of the majority of men who 
have attained eminence in science. 
In the early fifties, Professor James Hall heard of young Whitfield’s 
collection, visited him and saw the scientific promise in the young 
mechanic. When, therefore, poor health obliged him to give up his 
work in the shop in 1856, Professor Hall was glad to get his assistance on 
the Natural History Survey of the State, and Mr. Whitfield removed to 
Albany, where he remained as an assistant in paleontology and geology 
