Background

He was born on August 19, 1884, on Martha's Vineyard, Massachussets, the eldest of the four sons of William and Julia Adelaide (Sprague) Barbour. His father was president of Barbour Brothers, a flax-spinning company, a director of the linen mills of William Barbour and Sons in northern Ireland, and head of many other firms in many fields of business. Barbour's mother came from a prominent New York family; his brother, William Warren Barbour, became a United States senator from New Jersey.

Barbour's interest in natural history developed at an early age. It was nurtured by his father, a lover of the out-of-doors, who, taking the family with him on many of his business trips abroad, exposed the children to nearly all the major natural history museums in Europe. Observation of creatures in the wild was also encouraged by his father, who had a large estate on Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks, where Thomas spent many vacations in his youth, and by his paternal grandmother, whom he visited a number of times at her home, Walden Cottage, at Eau Gallie, on the then almost unsettled east coast of Florida. He was an enthusiastic fisherman and hunter all his life, but he tended even as a boy toward the scientific study of animals, particularly reptiles and amphibians, the field of herpetology.

Education

Thomas was privately tutored by Dr. Theodore W. Moses before preparing for college at the Browning School in New York. Crucial to his career was a visit, when he was fifteen, to Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, the "Agassiz Museum. " He decided then and there that he would someday become director of that institution. Barbour entered Harvard in 1902 and from that moment to the end of his life the M. C. Z. was the center of his work and interests. He took his bachelor's degree in 1906.

Career

He was then appointed an associate curator of reptiles and amphibians at the M. C. Z. ; some years later he was promoted to full curator. At the time of Barbour's first appointment the Harvard Museum was entering upon a period of decline. It had been founded by the famous naturalist Louis Agassiz, and his son Alexander continued in charge until his death in 1910. Seventeen stagnating years for the museum followed until, in 1927, Barbour was made director, a post which he held until his death.

Under him the museum was rejuvenated. "Glory-holes" of useless material were emptied; the collections were put in much improved order; and exhibits were revised. Barbour made every effort to encourage the research of the scientific staff, so that the M. C. Z. achieved an enviable reputation among its workers in systematic zoology. Barbour interested himself in all fields of museum activity. An example was his encouragement of vertebrate paleontology, notably the Thomas Farm project in Florida. The material brought up in digging a well on this abandoned property was found to contain remains of fossil mammals. The farm was purchased and for a dozen years actively explored, resulting in the discovery of one of the most important sites for fossil mammals in the eastern United States.

Barbour's energies were not confined to the museum; major external interests were the development of the Atkins' Garden in Cuba and the Barro Colorado tropical station in the Panama Canal Zone. The Atkins family of Massachusetts owned a large sugar plantation at Soledad, near Cienfuegos, Cuba. They gave Harvard a plot of land which at first was utilized for experimenting in the improvement of Cuban sugar canes. Barbour became interested, and this area was enlarged and developed as a botanic garden where was to be found any type of tree or shrub that would flourish in the Cuban climate; two buildings were erected to house resident and visiting scientists and to provide quarters for research. With the building of the Gatun Dam of the Panama Canal, a hill, Barro Colorado, enclosed within the lake formed by the dam, became an island of about eight square miles of tropical jungle with magnificent flora and fauna. This was made a natural reserve by the U. S. government. Barbour became executive officer; under his supervision a laboratory building was erected and a series of nature trails laid out; as a result Barro Colorado became a major American center for the study of tropical natural history.

Barbour's own work lay mainly in systematic zoology, and for the most part in herpetology. Over the years, he described 274 species representing 120 genera. A major work was A Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles; the first edition appeared under joint authorship with Leonhard Stejneger in 1917; four revised editions were published during Barbour's lifetime. He was much interested in Cuban birds and published two books on this subject. Arising naturally out of his work in systematic zoology was an interest in the geographical distribution of animals. His Ph. D. thesis was a memoir on the zoogeography of the East Indies, published in 1912. This was followed two years later by a similar work on the West Indies, and he remained actively concerned throughout his life in the geographical history of the Caribbean-West Indian region.

Barbour was an inveterate traveler throughout his life. In later years he went to South America and Africa on several occasions, but Florida and the West Indies, particularly Cuba, were areas of especial interest and these he visited almost every winter. As he grew older, Barbour developed a hypertensive arteriosclerotic heart disease. He died on January 8, 1946, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. He was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachussets.

Achievements

• Barbour is remembered as a naturalist, whose interests lay in many different spheres. His works are highly appreciated by specialists.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A naturalist in Cuba

    (VERY GOOD stated FIRST EDITION Little Brown 1945 dust jac...)

  • Plant Biology With Infotrac (Available Titles CengageNOW)

    (PLANT BIOLOGY, Second Edition provides a complete introdu...)

  • Study Guide/Workbook for Rost/Barbour/Stocking/Murphy’s Plant Biology, 2nd

    (Written by Cherie Wetzel, this 200 page Study Guide inclu...)

  • Botany: A Brief Introduction to Plant Biology

    (A revised edition of the widely used undergraduate text f...)

  • The Herpetology of Cuba (Facsimile Reprints in Herpetology)

    (The frist comprehensive review of Cuban amphibians and re...)

  • A Naturalist's Scrapbook

    (Hard Cover; Very Good; No Dust Jacket; Harvard University...)

  • REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS THEIR HABITS AND ADAPTATIONS

    (Boston 1934-revised edition. Houghton Mifflin. 129p. Inde...)

  • The Lamarck Manuscripts at Harvard

    (First Edition. Bound in red cloth. Book about Fine. Minor...)

  • That vanishing Eden,: A naturalist's Florida
  • Naturalist at large. An autobiography. With plates

Religion

Barbour, like his father, was raised a Presbyterian, but he was confirmed in the Episcopal church and later served on the vestry of Trinity Church, Boston.

Views

Quotations: "I suspect that I am the only living American naturalist who has visited all parts of the island again and again, for I am not only a Cuban by adoption, but a devoted friend of the land and its people. "

Membership

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1916.

Personality

He was an enthusiastic fisherman and hunter all his life, but he tended even as a boy toward the scientific study of animals, particularly reptiles and amphibians, the field of herpetology.

He was a facile and charming conversationalist, outspoken but possessing a keen sense of humor, abundant enthusiasm, and much restless energy.

Connections

On October 1, 1906, he married Rosamond Pierce of Brookline, Massachussets, a strong-minded New England girl. They had six children, three of whom reached maturity: Mary Bigelow, Julia Adelaide, and Louisa Bowditch.

Father:

William Barbour

Mother:

Julia Adelaide (Sprague) Barbour

Wife:

Rosamond Pierce of Brookline