12 Facts About Thomas Barbour

Thomas Barbour was the first president of the Dexter School in 1926.

Colonel Thomas Barbour was founder and president of The Linen Thread Company, Inc.

At age fifteen, Thomas Barbour was taken to visit Harvard University, which, entranced by its Museum of Comparative Zoology, he later attended.

Thomas Barbour particularly enjoyed Panama, Costa Rica, and Cuba, which he visited at length on at least thirty occasions beginning in 1908, generally staying in Soledad at the Harvard Botanical Gardens, now known as the Jardin Botanico de Cienfuegos.

Thomas Barbour served as custodian of these gardens from 1927 until his death in 1946.

Thomas Barbour was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1916.

Thomas Barbour said at the time "We shall hope for specimens' of the kangaroo, the wombat, the Tasmanian devil and Tasmanian wolf," and the mission was a success with over 300 mammal and thousands of insect specimens returning to the United States.

Thomas Barbour was elected to United States National Academy of Sciences in 1933 and the American Philosophical Society in 1937.

Thomas Barbour was a trustee of the Carnegie Institution from 1934 until he died in 1946.

Thomas Barbour was at the Museum of Comparative Zoology as usual on January 4,1946, and in happy mood at home in Boston that evening.

Thomas Barbour is commemorated in the scientific names of the following species and subspecies of reptiles.

Also, the street he grew up on was named after him, Thomas Barbour Drive, in Melbourne, Florida; the street on which Ballard Park is located.