C. Koch, a physician and naturalist; Louis Boisliniere, who became 
St. Louis County Coroner; and Enno Sander, a pharmacist who ran 
a highly profitable mineral water company in St. Louis. In the same 
two years, the Academy elected seventy-nine corresponding members, 
including Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Louis 
Agassiz, the famed naturalist; and Lieutenant Governor K. Warren, an 
officer in the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. !9 
The growth of the Academy, which greatly heartened the founders, 
was overshadowed by a bothersome deficiency—the Academy did not 
own a building of its own. For the first thirteen years, the members 
met in the east wing of the O’ Fallon Dispensary building at the St. Louis 
Medical College. After that wing burned in 1869, the Academy was 
forced to move to the Hall of Public Schools. 
Lack of money kept the Academy from acquiring its own struc- 
ture. The Academy relied on dues and contributions for financial sup- 
port, and it frequently ran short of cash. Through its first quarter-century, 
Academy members often set the priorities of amassing an endowment 
fund and buying a building but never met their goals. They did main- 
tain their organization, however, even when membership declined during 
the lean and trying years of the Civil War.?° In fact, the Academy ac- 
tually benefitted from the war. When Federal troops confiscated 
McDowell College turning it into a prison, the Academy salvaged the 
school’s large natural history collection.?! 
At the Academy’s semi-monthly meetings, members read letters 
from their corresponding counterparts, considered papers for publica- 
tion in Transactions, discussed topics of scientific interést, elected new 
members, and gave presentations. These talks often had considerable 
merit, considering the ‘‘amateur’’ status of most of the members. For 
example, at the January 12, 1857, meeting, a member exhibited some 
specimens of aluminum, which at the time cost more than gold. He gave 
a brief history of the ore and talked about methods of mining and pro- 
cessing aluminum. He predicted, quite correctly, that aluminum would 
be manufactured in large quantities and at a cheap rate.?? 
Academy members regarded collecting and preserving scientific 
specimens an important and stimulating activity. Although the organiza- 
tion could afford to buy few items, its museum collection rapidly grew.”? 
Charles Chouteau donated many specimens he obtained from the area 
of the Upper Missouri River. In 1856 the intrepid businessman gave 
a large collection of fossils gathered by naturalist Ferdinand Hayden 
in the Nebraska Territory. Later that year Chouteau donated some animal 
skulls, a buffalo head, two stuffed buffalo, the head of a grizzly bear, 
three stuffed mountain sheep, a mastodon tooth, and Indian artifacts 
he obtained on his annual trip to his company’s trading posts. In 1857, 
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