The Jesup Collection: The Woods of the United States

 

Note: All items pictured on this website are in Frank W. Reiser's personal collection. Please contact if you wish to discuss exhibiting the collection at your institution or seek additional information about the topic.
The cover of Charles Sargent’s The Woods of the United States. The book is a taxonomically organized tree identification guide. It was written by Charles S. Sargent, the prime organizer of the Jessup Collection. The book was on sale at the museum to accompany the Jesup’s Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in 1886.

Jesup Collection of American Wood at the American Museum of Natural History

Harper’s Weekly announces the opening of the Jesup Collection of American Wood at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Jesup Collection of American Wood

The largest (and heaviest) exhibition of wood and trees ever assembled.

Morris Ketchum Jesup (1830–1908), president of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) from 1881 to 1908, was a philanthropist whose wealth fueled a significant scientific ambition: a comprehensive collection of 4-foot trunk sections from every tree species native to North America. The impetus came at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture showcased lumber and wood products from 400 tree species alongside Herman Hough’s transverse wood sections, prepared using microtome techniques honed under the supervision of Hermann Nordlinger in Germany. Jesup, struck by the taxonomic breadth of North America’s resources, resolved to translate the richness of diversity into a permanent museum exhibit.

To execute this, Jesup enlisted Charles Sprague Sargent, a botanist who had just completed the forest census for the Tenth Census of the United States. In 1880, Sargent delivered a seven-page proposal, framing the collection to be a material extension of his census—a systematic catalog of North American dendrology. He estimated $10,000 and two years for completion. Jesup funded the project entirely from personal funds, but Sargent, a leading authority on silviculture, supervised the endeavor without compensation for the public good, driven by scientific commitment.

The collection began with the delivery of 4.5-foot logs to AMNH in March 1881. Each specimen was accompanied by watercolor illustrations of leaves, fruits, and flowers, many executed by Mary Allen Robeson Sargent, whose 48 paintings, accessioned to the museum in 1897, provided precise morphological documentation. Sargent’s fieldwork for the collection informed his 1885 monograph, The Woods of the United States, published by Cambridge Press and dedicated to the Jesup collection, a scholarly supplement to the physical exhibit.

Woods of the United States by Charles S. Sargent 

The project’s scope exceeded projections. When opened to the public in 1895, the costs reached $50,000, five times Sargent’s estimate, yet none of the remuneration went to Sargent, whose years of work remained uncompensated. The opening, publicized in Harper’s Weekly, comprised 500 logs. The AMNH’s southeast wing, along the Seventy-Seventh Street facade, allocated its ground floor to the collection. The exhibit of American Trees was like a silent forest. It was the world’s largest xylotheque. It was huge and heavy. So much so that the walls of the building’s main structure began to move, requiring reinforcement of the AMNH’s basement. (Dill 1882) The exhibit was removed from the museum’s floor in 1953, leaving only the giant sequoia cross-section on display. Designated a “scientific storage collection.” Due to the expense of storage, the museum offered the collection to any organization willing to bear the cost of relocating it and maintaining its integrity. In 1971, the Jesup Collection was transferred to the Western Forestry Center (now World Forestry Center) in Portland, Oregon, opening in Washington Park. As the center’s primary interest expanded to encompass sustainability and global forestry, the collection’s taxonomic focus became less apparent to the public. In 1994, it was donated to Agricenter International in Memphis, Tennessee, at their expense. The agricultural center exhibited it briefly and then consigned it to storage, where it remains in obscurity to this day. A century and a half after its inception, the collection’s 500 logs and accompanying watercolors wait in storage for rediscovery. Unfortunately, like a hired cab, the meter is running while you wait. A Temperature and humidity-controlled storage facility, one large enough to hold tons of tree trunks, is expensive to maintain.

Sargent Wanted Sliced Wood Sections For the Jesup Collection

Most likely inspired by the positive publicity surrounding Romeyn Hough’s work with wood sectioning, Sargent decided to have a set of thin slices made from 200 of the tree trunks in the Jesup Collection.

We can only speculate why Sargent did not choose Hough for this project. Hough advertised his willingness to fill orders for custom-made slices of wood and also offered replacement sections for all the pages in the various volumes of American Woods. The most likely reason, based on information in Hough’s U.S. patent application, was that the trunks in the Jesup Collection were already dried and, therefore, did not meet Hough’s standard of only slicing green lumber. Apparently, Sargent wanted the thin wood slices to be derived from the same trunks being exhibited. He did not want to add specimens to the exhibit derived from trees not actually in the collection.

Sargent solicited the help of another company experienced in thin-slicing wood veneers., Charles W. Spurr. 

Spurr’s Papered Veneers was well-known in New England for producing wood slices. Unlike the thin wood slips made by Hough, Spurr’s products were designed to be glued onto other pieces of solid wood to enhance their appearance. Spurr’s slicing machines created large surface area veneers that were not intended to be handled or used unsupported. In addition to veneers, Spurr also produced business cards and other thin wood products, such as souvenirs, but these were always attached to a sheet of paper to prevent them from checking or splitting.

Wood Business Card by Charles W. Spurr
Wood Business Card by Charles W. Spurr. The printing is on the paper-covered side of the card. The obverse shows the wood, the name of which is at the bottom of the printed side. Being off-centered suggests that the paper was preprinted, then attached to the veneer, and finally cut.  

 

Spurr agreed to take on the task. A letter found in the papers of Asa Gray at Harvard discusses the payment for the veneers made for the Jesup Exhibition, detailing correspondence between the botanist Sarino Watson and Spurr. The letter offers some insight into the management and finances of the Jesup Collection. Spurr states that his company’s expenses exceeded reimbursements by $8,000, yet they had only received $600 to date. He speculated that the issues leading to the underpayment were related to the counting process. Each species of tree trunk required three slices: transverse, tangential, and cross. Therefore, the cost should be based on the number of slices produced, rather than the number of tree trunks sectioned. The letter concludes with Spurr agreeing to accept an additional payment of $350 to satisfy the remaining unpaid portion.

Charles Spurr Veneered Boston’s Famous Tree to Preserve Its Cultural Heritage

Great Elm of Boston Commons
The Great Elm On Boston Commons:   The Great Elm, More Ancient Than Boston Itself. Located on the “Long Path,” this historic tree, known as the “Old Elm” or “Liberty Tree,” served as a gathering spot for the Sons of Liberty during the Revolutionary War, where they would light it for celebrations and hang effigies of Tories from its branches. Likely predating Boston’s 1630 settlement, it appeared on a 1722 map and bore over 190 rings in a branch lost in 1860. After storm damage in 1832, the tree was protected by an iron fence in 1854 by Boston Mayor J.V.C. Smith. The tree was also used for early executions by hanging, and in 1728, it witnessed America’s first deadly duel between Benjamin Woodbridge and Henry Phillips. (Descriptive material on the stereo card’s obverse.)

Great Elm on Boston Common

The lithograph wooden panel bears a facsimile of a document handwritten by Samuel C. Cobb, Mayor of Boston. on March 31, 1876.

The Mayor certifies the authenticity of the picture and that it is printed on a thin wood originally cut from Boston’s Old Tree of the Commons.

A rare piece of history, as the wood veneer this lithograph is printed on was taken from the famous “Great Elm on Boston Common.” The historic tree symbolized the strength and endurance of Boston for over 200 years. By 1855, the tree had grown to be over 72 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter at the base. It fell on February 15, 1876. A magnificent chair was carved from its wood, which is now preserved in the Rare Book Room of the Boston Public Library. The veneer, which is paper-backed, was cut by Charles Spurr.  

Louis Prang – Father of the American Christmas Card

Louis Prang (March 12, 1824 – September 14, 1909). He was born in Germany, where he studied printmaking and learned engraving from his father, a noted master of the calico process. Around 1850, Prang immigrated to the United States, where he partnered with Julius Mayer, another German printmaker. Together, they established the Prang & Mayer firm. In 1860, Prang started his own chromolithography firm, L. Prang & Co.

 

Esoterica: The author, as a child, visited the AMNH several times during the early 1950s, but does not recall the Jesup Collection of American Wood. For a ten-year-old, tree trunks could not compete with dinosaurs and African mammals for lifelong memories.

S. D. Dill (1882) Departmental Records, 10/24, 091, Ser. I, AMNH.