| Description | The papers of Tring Museum, Lionel Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild (1868-1937) and/or his curators Dr Ernst Johann Otto Hartert (1859-1933) and Dr Karl Jordan (1875-1972). The papers are comprised mainly of correspondence to the Museum (c.1885-1953), with a small amount of file copy reply letters and four letter-books. Other material includes maps, photographs, news articles and other non-correspondence papers.
Please note that cataloguing of this collection is in progress. Please also consult RefNo TM when searching |
| AdminHistory | The Museum at Tring was built in 1889 for Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (1868-1937) by his father Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild (1840-1915) on his Tring Park estate to house Walter's collection of natural history specimens. The museum opened its doors to the public from 1892, and Walter Rothschild employed two curators, ornithologist Ernst Hartert (1859-1933) and entomologist Karl Jordan (1875-1972). Both Jordan and Hartert assisted Walter with studying and maintaining his collection for almost 40 years. They described over 5,000 new species and published the periodical Novitates Zoologicae from 1894 to 1939. Walter's museum became one of the largest single collections of zoological specimens accumulated by one man. It housed 200,000 birds' eggs, 300,000 bird skins, thousands of mammals, hundreds of reptiles and over 2 million butterflies and moths. The bird skins were sold to the American Museum of Natural History in 1931, but the rest of the specimens and correspondence were bequeathed to the Natural History Museum on Walter's death |