4 John E. Cooper 



near Method, between what is now west-central Raleigh and Cary, were 

 of limited success. H.H. turned to teaching in a one-room log schoolhouse 

 in House Creek Township near the site of present Meredith College, but 

 this venture also ended in failure, at least partly because his English ac- 

 cent and the southern drawl of his students proved incompatible. In his 

 words, "I will never know which of the three bodies were happier when I 

 resigned — the school committee, the students or myself. We just could 

 not understand each other." 



Fortunately, although not endowed with much in the way of worldly 

 possessions, H.H. and C.S. brought with them two incredibly inquisitive 

 minds and an intense interest in nature developed in the hedgerows and 

 fields of the Ouse River valley. Immediately upon arriving in their adop- 

 ted land, and as time permitted between various unsuccessful attempts at 

 earning a living, they set about studying its wild creatures, especially the 

 birds. Sometime in 1882 or 1883 they came into possession of a 50-cent 

 book entitled Taxidermy Without a Teacher, and began dabbling in the art of 

 mounting and modeling animals. As their skills in this field developed, es- 

 pecially those of H.H. , a whole new enterprise enabling them to indulge 

 their love for the outdoors and natural history collecting opened before 

 them, and they drifted into a business under the name of "Brimley Bros., 

 Collectors and Preparers." In 1942 H.H. wrote, "Following our arrival in 

 Raleigh in 1880 the main activity of my brother, C.S., and I in endeavor- 

 ing to keep the justly celebrated wolf from the not-too-securely fastened 

 door was a crude grade of custom taxidermy together with the collecting 

 of bird skins and eggs for wealthy men in the big cities, who vied with 

 each other over the comparative magnitude of their collections." As we 

 shall see, these unsure commercial beginnings were the foundations of 

 two outstanding careers in natural history. 



At about the time the Brimleys were just beginning their "meddling 

 with living creatures," and probably well before either had ever heard of 

 North Carolina, a series of events was unfolding here, which, in 

 retrospect, almost seemed tied to them by some arcane cosmic threads. 

 They culminated in formation on March 12, 1877 of the N.C. Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, Immigration and Statistics, and appointment of the 

 first commissioner of agriculture, Colonel Leonidas Lafayette Polk. Some 

 time before assuming this office Polk had urged the State Grange to es- 

 tablish a central headquarters containing a "Patron's State Musuem" for 

 the display of North Carolina's agricultural products. Shortly after 

 becoming commissioner he began such a museum himself in a room ad- 

 joining his office in the Briggs Building on Fayetteville Street in Raleigh, 

 which since 1875 had also housed the Geological Survey. Washington 

 Caruthers Kerr, state geologist, was maintaining a mineral collection 



