Doing History in the Science Museum, Part II: Specimens 67783.01-.04 (mammoth tusks)
For the past couple of years, I’ve been on the hunt for documentary traces of inanimate representations of a long-extinct animal. The particular objects of my search are woolly mammoth “restorations” sold and displayed by Henry A. Ward (1834-1906), proprietor of the Rochester-based museum supply company Ward’s Natural Science Establishment. Ward’s restorations were hyper-realistic ersatz models of mammoths made of metal, wood, and papier mâché, enveloped in a layer of jute or pampas grass “fur.”
In 1877, Ward purchased his first restoration from its original creator, taxidermist Philipp Leopold Martin of Stuttgart, Germany. Martin had modelled his lifelike creation on the bones of several mammoth specimens held at the Stuttgart Royal Natural History Museum and the hair of one particular mammoth specimen, the Adams Mammoth, which was unearthed from melting Siberian ice in 1807[1]. After purchasing the restoration from Martin, Ward deconstructed it, shipped it to Rochester, and made a mould – a move that would allow him to replicate, display, and sell multiple copies. Starting in 1878, displays of Ward’s restorations at a variety of sites across the US brought a novel and fully realized image of mammoths to 19th-century Americans.
Initially, my research task was straightforward: determine how many copies of the restoration were made by Ward and track their movements. One might think that playing detective on the trail of now-destroyed models of long-extinct animals could yield meagre or less than compelling results. On the contrary, the body of evidence has turned out to be so substantial that I continually find myself overwhelmed by seemingly unending avenues of inquiry to pursue.
(Left: A Wardian mammoth on display at the Chicago Field Museum ca. 1895, “Hands off” sign visible on the trunk. Courtesy, Field Museum. CSGEO8786.)
There are diaries tracing movements of mammoths and men across bodies of water and thousands of miles of train track; letters of negotiation, persuasion, apology, and praise; memos bemoaning insect damage and evolving understandings of mammoth anatomy; photographs intimating tactile audience interaction (a sign on the specimen once displayed at the Field Museum warns: “Hands Off”); and sensational newspaper articles galore. These pieces of evidence have spurred divergent research questions surrounding the role of mammoths (both real and fake) in American business, entertainment, imagination, and in the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge.
We now know that at least four restorations existed and were displayed in at least fifteen museums and expositions, though the facts of exactly which copy was displayed where is still somewhat unclear. And despite generally poor documentation of their ultimate deconstruction, we also know that none of these “Wardian mammoths” are left standing today[2]. For this reason, my research has entailed searching archives and library databases rather than seeking out specimens in museums.
But in 2022, while visiting the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco to see some unrelated mammoth hair and skin specimens, I received an unexpected lead on a possible Wardian mammoth remnant.
Starting in 1882, the Cal Academy was a site of display for one of Ward’s restorations[3]. Unfortunately, according to an archivist at the Cal Academy’s Library and Archives, the specimen and almost all its accompanying documentation are believed to have been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire that devastated the Academy’s old Market Street Location. All that remains in their archives are a handful of photographs.
During my visit to the Academy well over a century after the disaster, I mentioned to the Geology Collections Manager that, though I was there to see the skin and hair specimens, my primary research area at the Lab was tracking the movements of Ward’s restorations. Unexpectedly, she replied that she knew of the specimen – and that it was rumored some mammoth tusks still in the collection had once been part of the restoration.
Would I like to see them?
Certainly. (In fact, I gasped.)
Until that moment, I had understood that the restorations’ tusks were purely wooden constructions, not bone. Wood was the only tusk material mentioned in both Ward’s own correspondence and contemporary newspaper reports. Further, the diaries of Ward’s colleague, geologist Edwin A. Howell, contain only two mentions of tusks: painting and varnishing the tusks of the specimen at the Ward Natural History Museum at Coronado Beach and “putting Elephas tusk together” at the Cal Academy[4]. I had taken the former to be indicative of material artificiality, while the latter was not even a definite reference to the mammoth restoration; Ward’s Cal Academy cabinet also included a “very large and fine Elephant,”[5] and the genus Elephas still held associations with both species at that time.
But that day at the Academy, curiosity bested disbelief. I followed the Collections Manager to a section of the geology storeroom where the tusks (specimens 67783.01-.04) were stored in specially made supports. Survivors of the 1906 disaster, they exhibited cracks and stains left by blackening flames and smoke – physical traces of circumstances that could not be more different than the icy conditions in which many mammoth tusks are found in thawing ground.
(Left: mammoth tusks in specially built supports. Photo by Chloe Chaitov, courtesy of the California Academy of Sciences)
After leaving the storeroom, the Collections Manager located a handwritten museum logbook containing an entry from 1996 that described the origins of the tusks as likely Alaskan, but ultimately unknown, and noted the assumption that they had survived the 1906 fire. No further details about the tusks’ life history at the Academy – Wardian or otherwise – were provided.
Photographs of the Academy’s display show other tusks surrounding the restoration, so it is perhaps most plausible that those tusks are the ones that survived. Over the course of a century-long game of museum telephone, Ward’s fabricated specimen probably just got mixed into the messaging.
(Ward’s restoration at the California Academy of Sciences Market Street location, before the 1906 fire and earthquake. Courtesy of the California Academy of Sciences Library & Archives.)
Ultimately, all evidence (or lack thereof) considered, the rumor of the tusks’ role in Ward’s restoration remains unproven.
And yet, I remain delighted by the possible reality of a restoration that was not only lifelike but also partially composed of real mammoth tissue. The rumor demonstrates the difficulties of pinning down the life histories of extinct and ersatz animals, a task that entails looking for records of birth and death in museum memos, letters, diaries, and stock inventories. Although my job is ostensibly to seek facts, I welcome the wonder and challenge of unexpected rumors – however impossible they may be to prove true.
Notes
Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, Inc., “Notices of the Mammoth” (E.R. Andrews, 1878), 3, AW23 Ward (Henry Augustus) Papers, Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester, https://wardproject.org/items/show/1016.
The only restoration with a clear record of destruction is the University of Virginia specimen, which was displayed in the campus’ natural science museum, Brooks Hall, from 1877-1948 (the longest continual display of a Wardian mammoth). “Monsters Turned Into Rubble With U. of Va. Student Rush,” Evening Star, December 2, 1948.
The California Academy of Sciences provided three separate sites of display as it moved across various locations: first in the Mercantile Library Hall (Bush Street), then to a location at Dupont and California Streets, then to Market Street. Following the earthquake and fire of 1906, the Cal Academy moved to its current location in Golden Gate Park. “Our History,” California Academy of Sciences, accessed October 28, 2024, https://www.calacademy.org/our-history.
Edwin Howell, “Personal diaries, 1867-1889” (Diary, Rochester, NY, 1888), Howell (Edwin E.) Papers 1864-1911, Box 3, University of Rochester Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation.
Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, Ward’s Natural Science Bulletin, vol. 1 (Rochester, N.Y: Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, 1881), https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/51951134.
