Robert Ridgway - Biography

Biography

Ridgway was born in Mount Carmel, Illinois. He was educated at common schools in his native town, where he showed a special fondness for natural history. A correspondence with Spencer F. Baird in 1864 led to his appointment, three years later in the spring of 1867, at the age of 16, as the naturalist on Clarence King's Survey of the 40th Parallel. In an undertaking that lasted nearly two years, Ridgway collected many bird specimens and served as a key member on one of the four great surveys of the American West. Upon his return to the Smithsonian, he was taken on in an informal basis until he was formally named as the Curator of Ornithology. Ridgway had a high school education as well as an honorary master's degree in science from Indiana University in 1884, as a sign of gratitude for his supplying them with bird specimens after their museum burned down. However, he was articulate and literate, and served as the Smithsonian's mouthpiece and representative for many years in the study of birds. Friends and colleagues described him as almost painfully shy, and he generally shirked publicity and the limelight.

He was founding member of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) in 1883 and co-editor of the AOU journal The Auk from its founding in 1883, and served as president of the AOU in 1900. He was also corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London, and the Academies of Science of New York, Davenport, and Chicago, foreign member of the British Ornithologists' Union, and member of the permanent ornithological committee (Vienna), also honorary member of the Nuttall Ornithological Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Brookville, Indiana, Society of Natural History, and of the Ridgway Ornithological Club of Chicago, Illinois.

In 1899, he joined E. H. Harriman on his famous Harriman Alaska Expedition of the Alaska coastline, where he was accompanied by John Muir and a number of other naturalists and scientists, for an extended study of Alaska's coastline flora and fauna.

In 1916 he moved to Olney, Illinois, to give himself the freedom from distraction to work on his major opus Birds of North and Middle America. Eventually he acquired two properties there, the first a tract of eighteen acres located in the country, which he called Bird Haven (located on present day, North East Street, Millers Grove, adjacent to East Fork Lake) and which he developed as a bird sanctuary. The second purchased as the state of his wife's health was such that it was prudent to be nearer to town. This was called Larchmound and his skill in landscaping and tending to the grounds was such that his expertise in that area was in some demand.