14 Facts About Henry Henshaw

Henry Wetherbee Henshaw was an American ornithologist and ethnologist.

Henry Henshaw worked at the US Bureau of Ethnology from 1888 to 1892 and was editor of the journal American Anthropologist.

Henry Henshaw was born to William and Sarah Holden Wetherbee.

Henry Henshaw studied at Cambridge High School where he met William Brewster.

In 1870 Henshaw traveled to Florida with naturalist Charles Johnson Maynard and artist Edwin Lord Weeks.

In 1872 Henry Henshaw went to Salt Lake City on the Wheeler Survey as a naturalist, and in 1874 had his most successful field expedition, going from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Gila River and south-western Arizona.

In 1894, in ill health after a severe attack of influenza that left him hospitalized, Henry Henshaw moved to Hawaii with the express intent of becoming a citizen of the island nation, and in search of better health.

Henry Henshaw collected and preserved hundreds of specimens and published two works on Hawaiian birds.

Henry Henshaw left Hawaii in 1904 to return to Washington, DC.

In 1910, Henshaw replaced his old friend C Hart Merriam as the head of the US Biological Survey.

Henry Henshaw handed Woodrow Wilson the pen with which Wilson signed the Act into law in 1913.

Henry Henshaw retired in 1916, and lived in Washington, DC unmarried until the end of his days.

Henry Henshaw was one of the founders of the Nuttall Ornithological Club in 1873, the American Ornithologists' Union in 1883, and the National Geographic Society in 1888.

Henry Henshaw is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard, Xantusia henshawi.