MEMOIR OF JOHN B. HATCHER 549 



While it is now impossible to tell this remarkable story in detail, its 

 principal events may be compressed into a brief statement. 



John Bell Hatcher, the son of John and Margaret Hatcher, was born 

 at Cooperstown, Brown county, Illinois, on October 11, 1861, and at a 

 very early age removed with his family to Greene county, Iowa, where 

 he remained till his twentieth year. As a child, he was so weak that his 

 parents could scarcely hope to see him grow to manhood, and his early 

 education was given him by his father, who was a teacher as well as a 

 farmer. Gradually his strength increased, and as he grew older there 

 matured within him a determination to become a thoroughly educated 

 man — a determination which he followed with characteristically persistent 

 energy and scorn of obstacles, however seemingly insuperable. To secure 

 the funds necessary for his education, he became a coal miner, and, being 

 a born observer, the miner's life soon awakened in his mind a great and 

 ever growing interest in geology and in the fossils which he saw around 

 him. It was to follow this early bent that in 1880, after a short stay at 

 Grinnell College, Iowa, he went to Yale University, whither he was espe- 

 cially attracted by the fame of Professor J. D. Dana, whose books he had 

 zealously studied. At New Haven he devoted himself to the natural 

 sciences, more particularly to geology and botany. A collection of Car- 

 boniferous fossils, which he had made in his coal-mining days, was the 

 means of introducing him to Professor Marsh, who sent him to the West 

 as a collector immediately after his graduation. 



In this connection I may perhaps be permitted to quote what I have 

 elsewhere written : 



11 Thus began a career which was unrivaled of its kind, for Hatcher had a positive 

 genius for that particular work, as is well known to all who have had the privilege 

 of accompanying him in the field. Marvelous powers of vision, at once telescopic 

 and microscopic, a dauntless energy and fertility of resource that laughed all ob- 

 stacles to scorn, and an enthusiastic devotion to his work combined to secure for 

 him a thoroughly well earned success and a high reputation. He may be said to 

 have fairly revolutionized the methods of collecting vertebrate fossils, a work which 

 before his time had been almost wholly in the hands of untrained and unskilled 

 men, but which he converted into a fine art. The exquisitely preserved fossils in 

 American museums, which awaken the admiring envy of European paleontologists, 

 are to a large extent directly or indirectly due to Hatcher's energy and skill and 

 to the large-minded help and advice as to methods and localities which were 

 always at the service of any one who chose to ask for them. 



"Hatcher's uprightness and sincerity of character, no less than his remarkable 

 energy and persistence, attracted to him the admiration of many western men, by 

 whom frequent tempting offers were made him to leave the unremunerative paths 

 of science for the material rewards of business ; but in vain. He would not seri- 

 ously consider the abandonment of his chosen work for any reward whatever, and 

 he died in harness." 



