John Snowdon Howland was born on January 23, 1851, in Brooklyn, NY to George Snowdon Howland (1809-1866) and Elmina E. Williams (1809-1854). His family suffered many tragedies. His sister died at age 14 in 1849 and a brother of 2 years old in 1850. His brother, Joseph, age 8, died when Snowdon was a year old. Perhaps the worst tragedy of all was losing his mother and another brother when he was 3 in 1854. I’m sure his mother needed a cruise after the loss of her three children. She was on board the SS Arctic along with her son, Augustus, age 14, her brother and his wife when it collided with another ship while on passage to New York from Liverpool on September 27, 1854. The sinking of the SS Arctic was a disaster that killed around 350 people, including all women and children.
Snowdon’s father married Caroline Florence Little King in July 1860. She had suffered losses, as well, with the deaths of two of her three children (1845, 1848) and her husband in 1848. Unfortunately, the family’s bad luck was not over. Snowdon’s father died in September 1866 leaving behind Florence and three young children. George Howland worked as a white lead worker and perhaps it was the toxics of the job that sealed his fate.
There is little information about Snowdon’s life. He had a crippling disease from birth which kept him house bound for the most part. He’s listed in the June 1885 city of Newport, RI census as a lawyer. We don’t know when he started collecting eggs. The earliest record we could find are white-throated sparrow eggs collected by him in 1876 and are at the University of Washington Burke Museum. There are letters to William Brewster, a renowned ornithologist, from 1877-1881 regarding his eggs and a drawing of his egg collection cabinet. He hired collectors to acquire eggs for him in Texas, Georgia, and other states from our research. The egg data sheet would say “for Snowdon Howland” or something to that effect. Because there are very few data sheets scans online in museum’s databases, we could not verify if he physically collected the eggs himself. We believe it doesn’t matter since he was still the “collector” of the eggs. Some of his eggs can be found at the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, Museum of Comparative Zoology and the American Museum of Natural History, to name a few.
1885 article on golden eagle eggs written by Snowdon Howland
Tragically, Snowdon died at the age of 34 on September 19, 1885. Obituaries state that he found pleasure in music, oology, natural history and artistic handicraft. His life was full of interest and beauty despite his lifelong suffering. He was greatly respected and esteemed by those of his fellow workers who had the pleasure of his personal acquaintance. One obit ends “While we miss one whom we have so respected and honored, we cannot feel sad when we think that his sufferings have ended.”
In 1887, Florence Howland wrote to Yale Peabody asking them to accept her son’s collection and they responded they would if not required to display all of them. Our research showed only two sets of eggs at YPM. However, Snowdon’s stepbrother, Clarence King, donated his collection (1,000 clutches/3,000 eggs) to the American Museum of Natural History in 1889 per an 1890 article in The Auk and a 1911 History of the AMNH. Unfortunately, although their database is available online, we are unable to search by collector for verification.
It’s interesting to know that Clarence King was famous for his work as an American geologist, mountaineer and author, and that he led a double life pretending to be African-American so he could common law marry Ada Copeland.
Sources: Biodiversitylibrary.org, Newspapers.com, Ancestry.com, Wikipedia.com, Findagrave.com, Archives.library.wcsu.edu
There are two sets of eggs in Pember’s collection collected “for” Howland, but one set is missing.
There is only one egg in Williams collection which is on display for Howland. This Fulmar Petrel egg was laid on the Isle of St. Kilda, Scotland on May 21, 1880 and collected by Barrows of Leeds, England. It found its way to Snowdon in Newport, RI who then transferred it to Moses Griffing of Shelter Island, NY in 1883. From there it was acquired by William L. Ralph of Utica, NY but the date is unknown. Ralph transferred it to his colleague William J.B. Williams of Holland Patent, NY in 1892. Once again, we do not know when Williams collection ended up in Thomas’s possession but know that Thomas donated it to the Pember Museum in 1996. Now, let’s do some math. This egg is 145 years old and yes, it’s cracked, but you would be too if you travelled 4,064 miles over a 116-year period! Awesome!
