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The Portland Society of Natural History
The Portland Society of Natural History (PSNH) began as the Maine Institute of Natural Science, organized in 1836 and later incorporated by a group of 24 White men in 1843, making it one of the first natural history museums in America. The PSNH rivaled organizations like Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, Yale’s Peabody Museum, the Boston Society of Natural History (Museum of Science), and Salem’s Essex Institute (Peabody Essex Museum).
PSNH members embraced the 1820s lyceum movement initiated in Massachusetts that offered attendees educational and self-improvement opportunities through lectures on literary, scientific and “moral” topics. Eventually the PSNH operated a renowned museum, library, herbarium, and collections archive, rebuilt three times over 135 years. First, after disbanding the organization in 1839, second after fire destroyed the museum’s rooms in the Merchant’s Exchange in 1854, and third after their Congress Street building burned in the Great Fire of 1866.
Undaunted, the PSNH commissioned Portland architect Francis Fassett to build a new facility on the corner of Elm and Congress Streets where the Society displayed natural history collections from 1880 to 1970. For financial reasons, the PSNH merged with Maine Audubon in 1961, sharing an executive board and membership but maintaining separate identities.
In November 1970, the Elm Street building’s decaying condition and the widening of Elm Street by the city led to the decision to close the PSNH. By 1972, the PSNH became part of Maine Audubon, whose mission to support live animals and conservation efforts outweighed curating museum collections. Maine Audubon staff spent years disbursing the collections—including over 3,500 mammal study skins, hundreds of taxidermy mounts, 100,000 shells, tons of minerals and fossils, over 30,000 herbarium sheets, thousands of linear feet of publications, and worldwide cultural materials—to locations from Maine to Hawaii.
Interior of Portland Society of Natural History showing shell display, 1927
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
The first incarnation of the PSNH was the Maine Institute of Science in 1836, created, “To promote the General Good,” and to make “contributions in specimens of Metals, Minerals, Birds, rare Animals, Reptiles, Fishes, Insects, Shells, Plants & Co. & Co.” For unrecorded reasons, the Maine Institute of Science disbanded in 1839.
In 1843, former members of the Maine Institute of Science organized the Portland Society of Natural History, created a constitution and by-laws, and began collecting natural history specimens. They formally incorporated in 1850.
The Merchant’s Exchange on Middle Street was the first physical home of the PSNH. When fire destroyed the building in 1854, PSNH leadership noted the casualties of “rare and valuable specimens” including a first edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, mounted birds, minerals, and curiosities.” The PSNH records and a stuffed Passenger Pigeon specimen were the only survivors of the fire.
Other casualties included the shell collection amassed by Dr. Jesse W. Mighels, a founding PSNH member. Prior to moving from Portland to Ohio, Mighels sold his entire shell collection for $1,000 to the PSNH, consisting of more than 3000 mollusk species and nearly 10,000 specimens., Mighels wrote a telegram after hearing about the fire,
My Dear Sir: Is it possible that my beautiful collection of shells is destroyed? Is it all ruined? Must I know I can see that collection no more? The work of nine years of delightful enthusiastic industry—is it all gone? Your beautiful collections of shells, and birds, and minerals and fossils-alas, are they all lost?
In 1854, the Portland Society for Natural History rented rooms in Portland’s Old City Hall, the museum’s second location. Built in 1825, Portlanders also called the building Old Market House and Old Town Hall, depending on the era.
The PSNH moved to the second floor of the Merchants Bank at 34 Exchange Street in 1857 for its third location in Portland, where the Society displayed collections until 1859.
Within five years, donors added natural history specimens including shells, minerals, birds, insects, fossils, plants, animal skulls, and eggs to the PSNH. The library also was replenished. Of note was poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s donation in 1857, a commissioned copy portrait of naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
The watercolor attributed to Anna Bucknam of Maine’s original Statehouse in Portland on the right also features the three story Portland Academy brick building on the left side of the painting. The State established the Portland Academy by legislation in 1794.
The First Maine State House, Portland, ca. 1832
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society and Maine State Museum
The PSNH purchased Portland Academy building in 1859 and spent nearly a year transforming it. The building had a central room with a lecture hall, lit by a cupola, and contained specimen cases on two levels with rod iron balconies. Museum inventories from this era include worldwide materials such as fossils from Japan, taxidermy marmosets from Madagascar, and palm leaves.
During Portland’s Great Fire of 1866, which lasted for two days and destroyed over 1,800 buildings in the city, the PSNH also perished. During the fire, curator Edward Sylvester Morse saved the PSNH library and the adjacent portrait of Baron Von Humboldt. The rest of the PSNH–including the Passenger Pigeon saved in the 1854 fire–went up in flames.
Dr. William Wood, PSNH’s President described the fire, and the efforts of curator Edward Sylvester Morse to save the PSNH collections during the Great Fire of 1866,
Such was the scene and hour, when for the first time it became apparent that danger threatened the City Hall and other public buildings in that vicinity, and among them the Hall of the Portland Society of Natural History. When two or three of the members of the Society, wearied with their exertions in other parts of the city, entered the building, they found there only the General Curator. He had been busy making preparations to remove the cabinets, by unlocking and opening all the cases, placing empty drawers in front of them, swinging the table-cases athwart the tables so that they could readily be seized by their ends, and in other ways making the best and every arrangement that suggested itself for effecting a rapid clearance of the Exhibition Hall.
George F. Morse painting of Congress Street during the Great Portland Fire, 1866
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
PSNH member George Frederick Morse painted this scene of Congress Street, including the PSNH building, during the Portland fire of 1866.
Morse’s brother, Edward, served as curator to the PSNH. Reports detail Edward Sylvester Morse’s heroic efforts which saved the majority of the PSNH’s library, and his failed attempt to save a giant slab of redwood by rolling it through the museum. Due to the size of the specimen he left it to burn with the remainder of the collections.
On July 10, 1866, five days after the fire that engulfed the PSNH building and collections, membership voted, The Portland Society of Natural History still lives, notwithstanding the fearful calamity of fire that has again swept away its all. It will, under the blessing of Providence, still pursue its way, undismayed and earnest, believing that fortitude and courage will yet secure a good measure of prosperity.
The PSNH lost the entire ornithology collection in this fire, representing nearly every species of bird on the East Coast. The fire also took the only specimen of the Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus L.) indigenous to Maine (but no longer in the state). It was collected on Rattlesnake Mountain in Raymond and donated to the Society on February 20, 1862.
The PSNH met at the homes of President William Wood and other members until 1868, when the City of Portland offered a room, rent-free on the third floor of the reconstructed City Hall, located on the corner of Congress and Myrtle Streets, where the Society remained until 1880.
Natural History building after 1866 fire, Portland, 1866
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
After fire destroyed the Portland Society of Natural History (PSNH) building and collections in 1866, membership asked for donations, imploring “the aid of the friends of science everywhere to enable” the PSNH to continue its work.
They established ten areas for donations: minerals, rocks, and marls; fossils and petrifactions; shells: marine, land, or freshwater; corals, sponges, and seaweeds; insects, snakes, turtles, and lizards; birds and their nests and eggs; bones and skins of animals; pressed plants, seeds, and fruits; woods and barks; and mosses, lichens, and fungi.
Other museums donated collections. The Essex Institute of Salem, Massachusetts, sent crates of coral and shells, the Boston Society of Natural History sent publications, and the Smithsonian sent shells and ethnographic items from the Arctic and Fiji Islands.
The PSNH commissioned Portland architect Francis H. Fassett, known for the Maine General Hospital and the Baxter Building, to design their new home on Elm Street, on the site of Portland Public Library. as of 2023 The PSNH inhabited the building in 1880—its seventh and final location—opening to the public on October 3, 1881.
Many museums in the 18th and 19th centuries grew their collections through exchanges and gifts from around the world. Needing to fill their new Elm Street museum in 1881, the PSNH petitioned “seafaring” captains and men (not women) and fishermen to search the ocean and their nets for natural history items saying, “the most common things are the really desirable ones.” William Wood authored the appeal, deferring to the expertise of Charles Fuller, Keeper of the Cabinets. They asked that if “visiting foreign lands,” potential supporters of the PSNH could pick up starfishes, crabs, or shrimp and pack them in salt and seaweed or tie them up with paper. Perhaps a tourist to the South Pacific could drop some fresh fruits or seed pods into a jar with preservatives and bring them back to Portland. Nothing was mundane to the PSNH, with William Wood proclaiming, “They are sure to be objects of great scientific interest and more heartily welcomed to our collections than many other curiosities that are bought with gold and silver.”
By 1900, the library housed nearly 3,500 bound volumes and about 3,200 pamphlets. The second floor contained displays full of specimens. Two balconies of display cases existed above the main museum floor, and a skylight on top lit the entire building.
The Great Depression and changing times affected the PSNH. By 1931, only 75 members remained. In 1937, curator Edward Norton noted that “twelve had been elected to membership , three had died, and one resigned.”
Dr. William Wood, President of the Portland Society of Natural History
William Wood was an original founding member of the Maine Institute of Science in 1836, and the PSNH in 1843. Although he
practiced medicine, Dr. Wood dedicated his life to natural history.
When the Maine Institute closed in 1839, Wood purchased much of the collections at auction in 1840, storing it in his home. Wood also served as president of the Portland Lyceum and secretary for the Maine Historical Society.
In 1852, the PSNH elected William Wood as the third president, a term that lasted for 47 years until his death
in 1899. Wood oversaw the two devastating fires that destroyed the PSNH, moving to five different locations, and supervised the renovation and construction of two buildings for the Society. Newspapers conveyed Wood’s connection to the PSNH, writing, “It will be difficult for us to think of him and this Society as separate and apart.”
Curator Arthur Norton
Lewiston Journal reporter Alice Frost Lord visited the PSNH in 1937 and wrote, “Curator Norton takes one over the building as if it was all new to him! He does that with everyone, without a doubt. He’s the kind of curator that's born, not made. The museum never goes stale for him.”
Arthur Norton (1871-1943) was a naturalist, specializing and writing about geography, botany, mammals and birds. He was curator of the Portland Society of Natural History from 1905 to 1943.
Norton’s true calling was ornithology, or the study of birds. The newly incorporated Maine Ornithological Society—the first statewide league of people interested in birds, a precursor to Maine Audubon—elected Norton president in 1897. Norton led the Ornithological Society’s activist efforts in 1901, along with a newly created National Audubon Society, successfully lobbying the Maine Legislature to pass a law protecting all non-game birds, nests, and eggs. Norton later worked as Field Agent and secretary-treasurer for the National Audubon Society, served as a president and a secretary of the Josselyn Botanical Society, and was a charter member of the American Society of Mammalogists.
During Norton’s tenure, the Portland Society became the center of the Audubon movement in Maine. When Arthur Norton died in January 1942 at age 72, after 37 years as curator for the Portland Society of Natural History, the organization briefly closed, reopening only after the end of World War II.
The Portland Society of Natural History and Maine Audubon
Conservation combined with education and advocacy has been a constant throughout the history of Maine Audubon and its founding organizations—the Portland Society of Natural History (1843) and the Maine Audubon Society (1902). From general knowledge and the cataloging and collecting of species from around the world in the early 19th century, the study of natural sciences has evolved from observation to action, and the same can be said for Maine Audubon.
At its inception, the PNHS invited people into the museum to engage with its collection which included stuffed birds, mounted fish, Rocky Mountain elk horns, and a first edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, and loaned objects to Maine educational institutions. Founded in 1902 for the purpose of preventing the extinction of bird species due to the millinery trade, the Maine Audubon Society aimed both to discourage the destruction of birds and to encourage an interest in birds and the study of natural history.
As the 20th century brought new changes both to the organizations and the world at large, the two groups eventually merged. When the ground swelling of an environmental movement began in the 1970s, Maine Audubon was poised to lead the charge, getting a landmark bottle bill passed, fighting against the pesticide DDT, and much more. The science-based conservation and action which we are known for today was launched.
For the past fifty years, Maine Audubon has continued to focus on awareness combined with action—educating future generations of environmental caretakers, advocating for public policies on state and national levels, and engaging with community scientists, government officials, partner organizations, landowners, and countless other constituencies on conservation initiatives around wildlife and wildlife habitat in Maine. Collections and natural history observations now serve not just as tools for education, but also provide data for research that underpins our conservation and legislative work.
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