Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
November 13, 1804
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 10
Additional Source Text:
"Through the hands of Majr. [Pierce] Butler."
United States Gazette (Philadelphia), 7 Feb 1806 adds: "found in Charleston."
Notes:
What Peale called the Library Company of Charleston was the Charleston Library Society (founded 1748). It provided the core collection of natural history artifacts for the founding of the Charleston Museum in 1773.
Pierce Butler (1744-1822) was an Irish-born South Carolina rice planter, slaveholder, politician, and an officer in the Revolutionary War. He was a member of the Confederation Congress, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and a U.S. Senator. He resigned in 1804 and thereafter spent much of his time in Philadelphia, where he had established a summer home and where he later served as a director of the Second Bank of the United States and, in 1821, as a trustee of Peale's Museum.
