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=                         Albert_S._Bickmore                         =
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                            Introduction
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Albert Smith Bickmore (March 1, 1839 - August 12, 1914) was an
American naturalist and originator of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City, becoming one of its founders.


                             Childhood
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Bickmore was born in the town of St. George near Martinsville harbor,
Maine, on March 1, 1839.  He attributed his childhood living on the
beach and near a forest to his love of nature and vocation as a
naturalist.  As a child, he collected shells and sea urchins, learned
the names of the local flora and fauna, and skated on a nearby pond on
winter evenings. According to Bickmore, the church and the school were
the centers of the community of St. George.  Books were scarce,
however, and in his earliest childhood, he remembered being permitted
to hold in his hands "Goldsmith's Natural History, Abridged," which he
treasured like a sacred relic.  He loved to look at its crude
illustrations of animals and to memorize them.  At age 8, he spent a
year traveling in France with his parents and sister.


                             Education
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He later attended prep school in New London, New Hampshire, then went
on to Dartmouth College, where his favorite subjects were chemistry,
geology, and mineralogy.  His love of natural history was noted by the
Dartmouth faculty, who gave him a letter of introduction to study
under the well-known Harvard professor Louis Agassiz.  After
graduating with the class of 1860, he went on to become one of
Agassiz's handful of special students.  He also worked in Agassiz's
Museum of Comparative Zoology, which helped him pay his way through a
four-year course of study.  It was during this time that Bickmore
began to visualize founding a Museum of Natural History in New York
City, as the European museums of natural history were in political and
monetary capitals, and New York was a logical American parallel city.
When the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) visited Cambridge, MA
in 1861, Henry Acland of the University of Oxford joined him.
Bickmore was privileged to discuss his plans for a museum with Dr.
Acland, whose encouragement strengthened his determination to found
such a museum.  Others had previously failed to generate the necessary
funds to establish a museum.


                     Civil War military service
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In late 1862, Bickmore joined the 44th Regiment of Massachusetts
Volunteers under Col. Francis L. Lee.  The Regiment was sent to New
Bern, NC, in October 1862 to serve under Major General John G. Foster.
They encountered the Confederate Army at Whitehall in December 1862,
sustaining heavy casualties, but Bickmore remained unharmed.  Bickmore
then requested to keep the meteorological record at a hospital near
Cape Lookout.  He then traveled home to resume his studies at Harvard.


                            Book written
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Albert S. Bickmore wrote a book titled: "Travels in the East Indian
Archipelago," published in 1868.  The preface begins by saying, "The
object of my voyage to Amboina was simply to re-collect the shells
figured in Rumphius's 'Rari-teit Kamer,' and the idea of writing a
volume of travels was not seriously entertained until I arrived at
Batavia, and, instead of being forbidden by the Dutch Government to
proceed to the Spice Islands, as some of my warmest friends feared, I
was honored by His Excellency, the Governor-General of 'the
Netherlands India,'..." His expedition in the East Indian Archipelago
covered April 1865 to May 1866. He arrived at Batavia on 30 April 1865
on the 'Memnon' a Sear's clipper ship, Captain Freeman, out of Boston.


License
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License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_S._Bickmore