Background
Asa Fitch was born on February 24, 1809, in Salem, New York, United States. Born into a prominent old Connecticut family that had resettled in eastern New York, Fitch was named for his father, a distinguished physician and farmer.
110 8th St, Troy, NY 12180, United States
Asa studied at the newly formed Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1827.
entomologist scientist natural historian
Asa Fitch was born on February 24, 1809, in Salem, New York, United States. Born into a prominent old Connecticut family that had resettled in eastern New York, Fitch was named for his father, a distinguished physician and farmer.
Despite a professional family background, young Asa had an erratic and disconnected education - due in part to the limited facilities that Salem afforded - and spent some time in search of a suitable career. In 1826, almost by chance, he came upon an announcement for the Rensselaer School (today Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in nearby Troy, headed by Amos Eaton. The school had an all-science curriculum and was the only one of its kind in the country. Fitch next devoted himself to the study of medicine, attending lectures at medical schools in New York City, Albany, and Castleton, Vermont, and capping it with an apprenticeship to a practicing physician.
Asa served briefly as an assistant professor of natural history at the Rensselaer School, then traveled to the Illinois frontier. Here, at Greenville, he spent an unhappy winter in 1830–1831, seeking to establish himself in the joint pursuit of medicine and science. Unsuccessful, he returned to his home state, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Fitch’s interest in medicine apparently was secondary to his zeal for natural history acquired under Eaton’s inspiration. He retired to the family farm, giving up medicine for agriculture. With it, however, he combined the assiduous collection and study of insects, especially in respect to their injurious or beneficial effects upon crops.
Fitch, who became known as the “Bug Catcher of Salem,” began publishing reports about insects in 1845. Between 1854 and 1870 he received modest financial grants from New York State for his work and thus he was, perhaps informally, the first entomologist in the service of a state. His numerous reports, published regularly in the Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society, were widely circulated and acknowledged for their combination of sound scientific knowledge of insect life cycles with the conditions and problems of agriculture. From his obscure rural home in upstate New York, Fitch carried on a wide correspondence. Entomology subsequently acquired a more professional character; but Fitch’s role in it was perhaps the epitome of early American science, primitive but practical and dedicated.
Fitch was a member of New York State Agricultural Society.