History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Charles Wachsmuth
CHARLES WACHSMUTH, crinoid specialist, was born in Hanover, Germany, September 13, 1820. From early youth his health was delicate and at the age of sixteen he was obliged to abandon study. In 1852 he came to America as agent of a Hamburg shipping house. As the climate of New York did not agree with him, he came to Iowa, locating at Burlington. His frail health compelled him to lead an out of door life and he began to collect fossils as a pastime. He gave much time to an examination of the quarries and ravines in that locality and in a few years his collection of crinoids had “reached such dimensions as to attract attention of eastern scientists. Professor Louis Agassiz came to see it, and Meek and Worthen asked the loan of specimens for description in the Geological Reports of Illinois.” In 1885 he visited Cambridge, studying the collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Extending his travels he visited the great museums of Europe and collected specimens. Upon reaching England he found that the fame of his Burlington collection had preceded him. Returning to his home he determined to give the remainder of his life to the study and collection of crinoids. In 1873 Professor Agassiz paid Mr. Wachsmuth a second visit, the result of which was the transfer of the collection to Cambridge and the appointment of Mr. Wachsmuth as assistant in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He was induced to publish the results of his observations. The position which he held until Agassiz's death gave him ample opportunities to become acquainted with the literature on crinoids and here was laid the foundation of a classification which divides all Paleozoic crinoids into three primary groups. These groups were sketched out in 1877 in a paper on “The Internal and External Structure of Paleozoic Crinoids.” In 1874, after a second trip abroad, he returned to Burlington and in a few years made up a new collection much superior to the first. Becoming acquainted with Frank Springer, the two worked, studied and wrote together, and in 1878 the results of their researches were published under joint authorship. The work is mainly directed to the morphology of crinoids with a view to classification and was published as a monograph of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy. Mr. Wachsmuth was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society of America, Davenport Academy of Sciences and a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. He died on February 7, 1896. He left unfinished his “Monograph on Fossil Crinoids.” Of the collections and publications of Messrs. Wachsmuth and Springer, Dr. Charles R. Keyes says: (Annals of Iowa, Vol. III)
“So valuable has it become that a fire proof building has been erected to contain it. So famous has it become that it and its modest owners are perhaps better known in all the centers of learning and culture in this country and in the old world, than in the city that claims them as residents. . . . The State may well be proud of this great achievement. The entire work may be regarded as essentially an Iowa production. Almost all of the material upon which it is based was obtained within the borders of the State. Both the authors were Iowa men. . . . All the work was done in the State, at Burlington.”