ARCHIVES OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
26 Arnoldia 78/5-6 « October 2021 
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The Jesup Collection emerged from the collaboration of Morris K. Jesup (right) and Charles Sprague Sargent. 
Albert S. Bickmore, discussed the possibility 
of developing this exhibit at the museum for 
the expressed purpose of showcasing the con- 
tributions of American forests to industrial and 
artistic endeavors. 
In August 1880, while attending the annual 
meeting of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science in Boston, Bickmore 
approached Harvard botany professor Asa Gray 
for advice. He described the museum’s planned 
Department of Economic Botany, which was 
primarily to feature important products from 
the forests of the country. Gray directed him 
to interview Sargent, who at the time was in 
charge of the census of American forests for the 
Tenth Census of the United States. Bickmore 
spent an afternoon at Dwight House on Sar- 
gent’s Holm Lea estate in the suburb of Brook- 
line. Although Sargent was away conducting 
fieldwork, Bickmore toured the grounds and 
learned about the work Sargent was pursuing 
for the forest census. 
Bickmore soon wrote to Sargent in care of 
the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where Sar- 
gent was briefly stopped along the last leg of 
his grand tour of western forests. As Bickmore 
explained, a “generous friend” of the museum 
wished to develop an “instructive and attrac- 
tive collection” of the wood products of North 
American forests, “placing it in a tangible, 
visual form before our citizens and our tide of 
visitors from all parts of the continent.”° Of 
course, that unspecified friend was Jesup, who 
would become the museum’s president from 
1881 until his death in 1908. His foresight had 
led him to Sargent, whose zeal and breadth of 
knowledge were positively suited to realizing 
this singular goal, and whose awareness of his 
own expertise prevented him from letting the 
opportunity pass to someone else. Jesup also 
sponsored other collections and many expedi- 
tions in varied fields of study during his tenure 
at the museum, and Sargent simultaneously 
expanded the Arnold Arboretum’s living col- 
lection and pursued an astounding schedule of 
publication. Yet, the wood collection was seen 
as a crowning achievement during the lifetimes 
of both men. It was, according to one commen- 
tator, “a perfectly unique collection which can- 
not anywhere be repeated.””° 
AMNH RESEARCH LIBRARY DIGITAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 2.45200 
