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- 
yania 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 Arcade 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 $5000 or $6000 by Moses 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 
Museum, but also with the great scientific establishments of Europe, 
in Paris, London, Stockholm, ete. Peale and his sons were in corre- 
spondence, moreover, with many of the most prominent naturalists 
of Europe; as, Geoffroy 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 
laturalist. But the chief cause of the importance ascribed to Peale’s 
vollection lay in the use made of it by that remarkable coterie of 
> one who made Philadelphia the metropolis of natural history 
-n America during the early part of the nineteenth century; as ob- 
) 
] 
0 
I Sir Ashton Lever’s famous collections were disposed of by lottery in 1788 to James 
arkinson, and were finally dispersed at public auction sale in London in 1806, 
he sale numbering 7,879 lots and lasting sixty-five days. 
| 
} 
| 
| 
| 
| 
