Richard Magoon Barnes was born in Lacon, Illinois on April 21, 1862, to George O. Barnes, a lawyer (1829-1896) and Mary I. Magoon (1837-1922).
At the age of 21, Richard completed law school and went to work at his father’s law office as a clerk. He became a member when his father’s partner died in 1885.
Richard married Hattie Myers (1864-1946) in 1892 and ran the firm alone for several years following his father’s death in 1896 before hiring a cousin for partner. He’s listed in the 1898 Naturalists Directory.
Richard became a circuit judge in the early 1900’s and purchased The Oologist journal becoming the publisher and editor from April 1909 to December 1941. The journal was established in 1875 and published notes on eggs, the nesting habits of birds and taxidermy for bird enthusiasts. He also wrote many articles during his lifetime and published a book titled “The American Oologists’ Exchange Price List of North American Birds’ Eggs” in 1922.
At some point he converted an old church into the R. Magoon Barnes’ Museum of Oology in Lacon, IL. It contained North American bird eggs, skins, nests and mounted specimens. One article also noted a catalog of 25,000 rare prehistoric specimens. Besides collecting eggs himself, he would trade or purchase eggs from other collectors. In 1893, he added 1,600 eggs collected by George Noble of Savannah, GA to his private collection.
In 1925, Richard deposited his entire egg collection (almost 40,000) in the Chicago Museum of Natural History, now the Field Museum. He was appointed to the staff in 1928. When he died in 1945, Richard bequeathed the collection to the museum. Obituaries mention that natural history and ornithology became his hobby at an early age. He began collecting eggs in 1876 at the age of fourteen. As a youth, he witnessed the great flights of the passenger pigeon, now extinct.
The Pember has in their collection two sets of eggs from R.M. Magoon.
Sources: Biodiversitylibrary.org, Findagrave.com, Newspapers.com, Ancestry.com, 1945 Chicago Natural History Museum Newsletter
