Biography

The museum’s origins go back to the 1870s, when Pres. Joseph Moore traveled to Hawaii and brought back barrels of natural history specimens. The construction of Lindley Hall in 1887 gave the museum appropriate quarters. Among the notable treasures were the fossil beaver, the Egyptian mummy, and the elephant Tippo Sahib. The last was lost in the 1924 fire, but most of the specimens survived.

In 1889, men digging a ditch in Randolph County, Indiana, found some bones they could not identify. After they were displayed in a bank in Winchester, an Earlham alumnus suggested contacting Joseph Moore. He acquired them and identified them as Castoroiedes Ohioensus, a prehistoric beaver. Earlham’s is the most complete specimen in existence.