Left: A page from Charles E. Hamlin’s Bird Journal detailing various bird specimens he collected during April 1962. Photograph was taken March 24, 2021 from Colby College Special Collections.
Right: Sialia Sialis, an Eastern Bluebird specimen collected by Charles Hamlin in Waterville, ME (April 15, 1862). Photograph was taken March 24, 2021 from Olin Life Science Building 223.
Charles E. Hamlin was a professor of Chemistry and Natural History at Colby College for 20 years. Born in Augusta, Maine on February 4, 1825, Hamlin graduated from Waterville College, now Colby College, in 1847. In the next six years, he was a highschool teacher in schools in Brandon, Vermont, Bath, Maine, and Suffield, Connecticut. He was anointed secretary of the chemistry faculty in 1855 and served until 1873. Hamlin spent a majority of his research studying the hibernation habits of certain species of frogs and collecting different species of birds in Central Maine. These collections of birds were preserved in the former Coburn Hall and stayed there even during the time of Professor Webster Chester in the early 1900s. Not only did Hamlin keep the specimens, but he also took extensive notes looking at the morphology of the birds. One of the items in the Colby College Special Collections is Charles Hamlin’s Bird Journal where he wrote a majority of his field notes in. Hamlin observed and measured many physical characteristics such as the bird’s length, wingspan, and tail length. He noted these morphological features as well as the taxonomy of the bird such as its scientific name, common name, and location of where he collected the bird. His clear and thorough notes made him famous for his contributions to the collection and system of documentation of organisms at Colby College. Hamlin spent his winter vacations while working at Colby in practical scientific study at the laboratories of Harvard University. Hamlin had close relations with the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.
On April 15th, 1862, Hamlin collected Sialia Sialis, an Eastern Bluebird, in Waterville Maine. He noted some physical characteristics of his specimen in his bird journal such as it’s “red breasted” chest (Figure 1). Hamlin observed hundreds of birds, but few can be identified as officially captured by Hamlin. In Olin, we observed Hamlin’s specimen displayed inside a glass case on a wooden stand in one of the laboratories for students to observe and classify (Figure 2). Many of the specimens were used as teaching materials.
In addition to collecting bird specimens in Maine, Hamlin was an avid explorer of Maine. He visited Mount Katahdin frequently to observe the mountainous region, eventually writing one of his famous scientific papers, Physical Geography and Geology of Katahdin. He published more than a hundred scientific articles and two other papers called, The Birds of Central Maine and An Examination of Syrian Molluscan Fossils (1884). Two years after the publication of his paper, An Examination of Syrian Molluscan Fossils, Charles Hamlin died of acute pneumonia in 1886.
Curated by Christo Dragnev