Background

William H. Edwards was born on March 15, 1822, at Hunter, New York, the son of William W. Edwards and Helen Ann Mann. His father, a tanner by trade, was a son of William Edwards, whose grandfather was Jonathan Edwards, the great divine.

William H. Edwards, born and brought up in the Catskill Mountains, undoubtedly gained his love of nature during his early days.

Education

Edwards entered Williams College, and graduated with the class of 1842, then studied law in New York City.

Career

In 1846 Edwards made a journey to South America, in the course of which he collected many birds and butterflies, and as a result of which he wrote Voyage up the River Amazon, a delightful book with vivid descriptions of the tropical vegetation and the strange creatures of the Amazon forests. It was published by the Murrays of London in 1847, and in 1909, there was still a steady sale.

Returning to the United States, Edwards was admitted to the New York bar in 1847, and settled at Newburgh on the Hudson.

Some years later, having become interested in West Virginia coal fields, he removed to Coalburg in that state, where he was the president of the Ohio & Kanawha Coal Company. He owned much land, built railroads and opened coal-mines, and led a very busy life. He always found time, however, to study butterflies and to prepare articles about them for publication. He sent his first contribution to the Canadian Entomologist in October 1868, and later published many papers in that periodical, in the Transactions of the American Entomological Society, and in the journal called Papilio. His main plan throughout his study was to issue in parts a complete and beautiful work on the butterflies of North America.

The first part was issued in 1868. It was a quarto pamphlet of beautiful appearance, with plates that were a revelation. The first volume was completed in July 1872, with fifty plates. The second volume was completed in November 1884. The first part of the third volume was issued in December 1886, and the eighteenth and last in 1897. Edwards paid the greatest attention to the life histories of the insects treated, every stage being described and figured. Important discoveries in the way of seasonal dimorphism and trimorphism of certain species were discussed. Nearly all the plates were drawn by Mrs. Mary Peart, and the coloring was done by Mrs. Lydia Bowen. The Butterflies of North America received the enthusiastic praise of European biologists, and ranks as one of the finest contributions to the biology of insects that have come from the United States.

At the age of seventy-five, Edwards gave up his studies of butterflies and spent his remaining years in the production of two books of entirely different character. The first of these was a remarkable volume entitled Shaksper not Shakespeare, published in 1900, in which he took up with great vigor the question of the authorship of the Shakespearian plays. It shows a wealth of reading and a remarkable combination of the trained legal mind with the trained scientific mind. It is an aggressive book, and insistent upon the thesis that Shaksper, the actor, could not have written the plays attributed to Shakespeare. The second work was Timothy and Rhoda Ogden Edwards of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and their Descendants (1903), a genealogy of the Edwards family. William Henry Edwards died on April 2, 1909, at Coalburg, West Virginia.

Achievements

• William Henry Edwards was a scientist and entomologist, who was an industrial pioneer in the coalfields of West Virginia, opening some of the earliest mines in the southern part of the state. He was also a prominent naturalist specializing in the study of butterflies.

Works

More photos

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  • Synopsis of North American Butterflies (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Synopsis of North American Butterflies By N...)

  • Timothy and Rhoda Ogden Edwards of Stockbridge, Mass., and their descendants: a genealogy

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

  • A Voyage Up The River Amazon, Including A Residence At Para

    (Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)

  • Shaksper not Shakespeare

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • Catalogue Of The Diurnal Lepidoptera Of America North Of Mexico...

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • Memoirs of Col. William Edwards: formerly of Stockbridge and Northampton, Mass., later of Hunter, Greene Co., N. Y., and of Brooklyn, N. Y.; written ... W. Edwards, and by his grandson … 1897

    (Originally published in 1897. This volume from the Cornel...)

Interests

• William H. Edwards was interested in genealogy and literature.

Connections

On May 29, 1851, William H. Edwards married Catherine Colt Tappan, at Belleville, New Jersey. The couple had three children.

Father:

William W. Edwards

Mother:

Helen Ann Edwards (Mann)

Sister:

Frances Rebecca Gilkison (Edwards)

Sister:

Mary Elizabeth Foster (Edwards)

Wife:

Catherine Colt Edwards (Tappan)

Daughter:

Edith Mead (Edwards)

Daughter:

Anne Smith (Edwards)

Son:

William Seymour Edwards

Brother:

Arthur Tappan Edwards

Brother:

Jonas Mann Edwards