The times make people great, and great people make the times.

(A tribute to and a poem by Alexander Wilson)

  Seneca Falls, New York. The Barns family left here for Jackson, Michigan, in 1843. Five years later a local woman named Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a gathering in Seneca Falls that became the first act in the Women's Rights (and Suffrage) movement.

  Macedon, New York. The Page family was living in this area when great-grandfather Riley P. Page was born in 1839. In Rochester, a short distance to the northwest, Susan B. Anthony made her home. Launching from there she assisted her close friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the fight to attain Women's Rights. To the southeast a few miles, near Palmyra, the Angel Moroni made revelations to Joseph Smith Jr. between 1820 and 1827 that led to the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Ten miles north of Smith's home, in 1848, Margaret, Catharine and Leah Fox heard rapping noises coming from the walls and furniture of their home in Hydeville, Wayne County, NY. They developed a code for communicating with its supernatural source and thus founded Spiritualism.

  Jackson, Michigan. The Pa(i)ge and Barn(e)s families would ultimately come together in this town, birthplace of the modern Republican Party in 1854--marking the political beginning of slavery's end in this country. Long before the Europeans came to the Jackson area, the Potawatomi Indians fought a great battle here, along the Washtenong Sepe (what is now called the Grand River and flows "under" the town). They had been pushed north by other tribes until finally taking a stand and establishing this as their territory, achieved as result of the battle.

  Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) is a lonely though shining example of a relative that excelled and actually became famous, though international recognition mostly arrived after his life had passed. In Scotland he was a spark in search of something to ignite. When the authorities there sought to quench him, it took a voyage to the new United States of America for Wilson to share what fuel remained in the fast-dissipating Age of Enlightenment. So eager was he to be enflamed by and part of the great minds and movements loosed in Philadelphia that, when he shoved his eager spark to it, he had neither the resources, experience nor the inclination to use moderation. Consequently, while Wilson pursued and promoted enlightenment and his contributions to that trend, his health broke against the simultaneous need to contest a resurgent benightedness across the land.

  The continuing academic interest in Alexander Wilson, I believe, has more to do with the quality of the man than with his ornithological pursuits, although one cannot be divorced from the other. Many of his letters survive, and each attests to his caliber. He had a winning combination of keen mind and deep sense of love and commitment. Besides his great works and extensive travels that were packed into an unacceptably short period, he still made time to care for the needs of his family in upstate New York, my ancestors. Neither was he selfish in his assistance to others, and was a true member of the Human Race.

  Charles Robert Leslie became apprenticed to Wilson's publisher, Samuel Bradford, at age 17. Charles' father, who had died shortly before, leaving the family in dire financial circumstances, had been a good friend of Benjamin Franklin. Bradford's great-grandfather had given Franklin his first employment as a printer, so perhaps Bradford took Charles on as a favor. The young man soon proved himself a natural and gifted artist. After helping Wilson with the Ornithology for three years, Wilson and some other Philadelphians bought out Leslie's apprenticeship and helped him travel to England. There, under Wilson's friend Benjamin West, the American-born president of the Royal Academy and court painter to George III, Leslie's natural talents were honed. He later became court painter to Queen Victoria. When telling of his time working with Wilson, Leslie wrote in his memoir that "He looked like a bird."  

"His eyes were piercing, dark and luminous, and his nose shaped like a beak. He was of spare, bony frame, very erect in his carriage, inclining to be tall; and with a light, elastic step, he seemed perfectly qualified by nature for his extraordinary pedestrian achievements.... I assisted him to color some of his first plates. We worked from birds which he had shot and stuffed, and I remember the extreme accuracy of his drawings, and how carefully he had counted the number of scales on the tiny legs and feet of his subject."

  Malvina Lawson was a daughter of Alexander Lawson, an engraver for the Ornithology. This Alexander developed a circle of artists and scientific personages, among them being the friends Merriweather Lewis and Alexander Wilson--two men, Malvina says in her memoir, who were of similar temperament. Malvina also wrote the following of Wilson.  

"I remember perfectly his brilliant eyes, and hair as black as an Indian's, and as straight .... I think that a great moral lesson may be drawn from his life. When a man in seven years becomes famous as a man of science and as a draughtsman whose birds live forever, without any other help than the cheering voice of friendship to aid him in his new standing, it seems almost a miracle. When we think of Wilson shouldering his gun and setting out for the wilderness, not only of nature, but of ignorance and prejudice, and after months of weary travel, returning with his drawings and specimens, worn out with fatigue and oppressed by poverty, to sit down to the composition of a work as truthful, as beautiful and as charming to read as any romance, what a sermon on the virtues of faith and perseverance!"

  I corresponded with the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, of which Alexander Wilson was a member, asking what types of information they had on him. I received back not only a very encouraging letter from the Society's librarian but also a packet of reference card file photocopies, and a poem by Wilson. The poem, included here and the motivation for this essay, expresses Wilson's love of nature and gentle spirit.

  Alexander Wilson traveled extensively by foot, to which he was well accustomed from his years in Scotland, and later by horse. His excursions took him to every town along the coastal states from Maine to Georgia, and they took him inland at least to Ohio. He made the most of those outings by collecting specimens, studying, drawing and keeping notes on birds, and meeting people of similar or other intellectual interests--thus establishing a network of correspondents. There was also the perennial gathering of subscribers to his Ornithology. A result of all this exposure to the elements and fellow researchers made his list of friends and acquaintances a virtual Who's Who of early nineteenth century American intelligentsia.

  Wilson's love of wildlife ensured that he always had company when traveling vast distances without human companionship. It is said that a Louisiana Parakeet accompanied him on many travels. It nestled inside one of his pockets by day and perched beside the campfire at night.

  Wilson did not live to see the final volumes of the ten-volume Ornithology. It was left to his friend George Ord, and to Napoleon's nephew Prince Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte to complete the task. Wilson's own fame was slow to initiate, but its growth was steady and insistent. Eventually the significance of his accomplishments reached his birthplace of Paisley, Scotland, and in the mid-1800s a statue was erected in his honor.

  Personally, I offer that a study of Wilson's life and letters would be a commendable task for anyone interested in becoming part of the larger world, with a wish to make it a more thoughtful and thought-provoking place. Pulling it all together he was, as Malvina Lawson wrote, "a sermon on the virtues of faith and perseverance!"  

Memoir extracts were taken from Robert Cantwell's book Alexander Wilson Naturalist and Pioneer, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1961. [Highly recommended reading.]

  © 1995 by Charles W. Paige  

American Philosophical Society has a set of the Ornithology minus Volume 8, which is missing.

The original, handwritten copy of this undated poem by Alexander Wilson is held in trust by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.--C. W. Paige

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